‘This changes nothing, Salamander. Vulkan is dead,’ he laughed. ‘You’re all dead.’ He reached for his bolt pistol sat snug in his side holster and made the railing squeal. He was too heavy for it to hold. The metal broke away and the Iron Warrior fell. Heka’tan watched him carom off another gantry, then a piece of piping, before bouncing off into the nuclear core itself. There was a brief flash of azure fire and the Legionary disappeared, burned to ash.

With some effort, Heka’tan dragged his body back up onto the gantry. He tried not to think about the Iron Warrior’s last words, what he’d said about his father. It wasn’t true. He was merely being goaded.

The enemy had dropped something when they’d fought. It was a data-bundle of some kind, taken from one of the subterranean terminals. It was smashed up but the last piece of data was still on the recorder: war machine schematics, vast and terrible engines the likes of which Heka’tan had never seen. They’d been kept here in secret and now the saboteur was erasing their existence. Coming to Bastion had never been about winning allegiance. Limping, he went to the terminal screen. It displayed all the other nuclear hubs around the planet, but he didn’t know why.

With time running out and still weaponless, Heka’tan hurried back to the auditorium.

V

ARCADESE HAD DONE his best, but the time for talking was over.

The clave had heard the petitions of both parties, had deliberated and were about to give their answer.

On the balcony above, the high-noble came forwards into the light. His expression was unreadable.

‘We of Bastion are a proud people. None the less we joined the nascent Imperium on the promise of unity and prosperity. I would prefer independence but since that would see us consigned to atoms by Legion starships, I have little choice.’ The high-noble seemed reluctant to continue. ‘We honour our original oaths, Bastion will pledge for Hor–’

‘Arcadese!’ The warning brought all eyes to the Salamander and came three seconds before the rifle shot. The Ultramarine had enough time to discern the grainy red light from the laser sight, to catch the opening bloom of the muzzle flash as it flared wide and put his body between the assassin and its target.

Iterator Vorkellen screamed as the Legionary bore down on him, believing at first that the Ultramarine had finally cracked. The marshals were too slow to intervene, just as surprised as the iterator.

The bullet forced a grimace as it grazed Arcadese’s shoulder. He was trying to twist mid-air so he didn’t crush Vorkellen’s bones to paste when they landed. The second shot, taking a marshal in the neck and killing him instantly, gave the others pause. Only when the third went down, right eye ventilated, did they all look to the other balcony.

VI

HE WAS CROUCHED, nose of the rifle just peeking over the balcony edge, when Heka’tan found him.

The Salamander made the assessment of his enemy quickly, as he was reaching the top of the stairs and advancing.

Human, wearing nondescript clothes. He recalled the landman from earlier and knew this was the same individual. He also saw a sanctum-marshal’s garb in a bundle nearby to the shooter’s position. The rifle was custom – it looked almost ceramic. That’s how he’d avoided detection. Nine marshals entered; now, only eight took up their positions. It was so dark, slipping away would’ve been easy.

‘You overextend yourself,’ said the Salamander, slowing to a walk, filling the balcony walkway with his onyx-black bulk. ‘I saw your rifle tip from below. I saw it earlier too, I think. You were the one that shot down our ship.’

The landman stood and nodded. Evidently, the rifle was spent. He’d discarded it and drew a long blade from his side instead – literallyfrom his side. Heka’tan’s eyes widened when he saw it snuckout of the assassin’s flesh.

‘You should’ve hit the fuel tanks and not the wing,’ the Salamander went on, creeping closer, allowing Arcadese time to catch up and support him. It looked like a man before him, but the Space Marine’s instincts told him otherwise. This was something else. ‘Your aim was off if you were planning on killing everyone on board.’

‘Was it?’ The assassin flashed a smile and his eyes changed colour, even the hue of his skin seemed to shift.

Heka’tan lunged just as the blade was flung at him. He dodged, reacting to the sudden move, but cried out as it shaved his skin. He missed the assassin by a hand span, grasping air as he leapt off the balcony and to the floor below.

VII

ARCADESE SWUNG AT the assassin’s leaping form with a flash-sabre from one of the dead guards but missed. He about-faced but couldn’t stop two more marshals dying to the assassin’s finger-blades. A third fell to what looked like a barbed tongue, lashing from the man’s mouth.

The Ultramarine gave chase, but his bionics slowed him down. The assassin had reached the shadows and led into the corridors beyond. Even on the upper level, the auditorium space was a honeycomb of passageways and conduits.

Heka’tan was right behind him.

‘You’re bleeding,’ he remarked, noting the bullet graze along the Ultramarine’s shoulder.

‘So are you.’

Heka’tan dabbed at his flank with a finger and felt the blade wound. ‘Then we owe him two cuts, one each,’ he promised and followed the assassin into the darkness. Behind them, the remaining marshals were trying not to panic. They’d also foregone pursuit to secure the clave-nobles. The high-marshal was vociferous above the clamour, bellowing frantic orders.

Vorkellen was screeching at his lackeys, in obvious pain. It drew a smile to Arcadese’s lips, smothered by the shadows that engulfed him.

With the darkness the sound died away and the Legionaries slowed.

Heka’tan hissed, ‘You were right, brother.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Arcadese, staying as low as he could and watching the deeper shadows.

‘I found another of Horus’s emissaries below, an Iron Warrior.’

That piqued the Ultramarine’s interest.

‘I killed him but he was doing something below, something that the garrison here has been working on. He was monitoring the nuclear hubs too. I don’t know why. Answers may come from our assassin. Either way, word must reach the rest of the Imperium.’

‘And we are sealed in,’ Arcadese remarked ruefully.

Heka’tan’s eyes blazed belligerently.

‘But so is he.’

Hunters

I

THE ATTACK WAS swift. The red-eyed one was easy to spot; the broken one it could hear fifty metres away. They were not stealthy targets, either of them.

A shallow cry of pain felt satisfying as it plunged a blade into red-eyes’s shoulder. A heavy punch into the broken one’s ribs made an audible crack. So much for the dense bone-plate – the surgeries must have weakened it.

It dodged a reply, then a second. Rolling up to its full height, it disengaged the holofield trapping it in the landman’s form.

II

ARCADESE SWUNG WILDLY, but met only air with his borrowed flash-sabre. Next to him, Heka’tan grunted and he assumed the Salamander had failed to make contact too.

The assassin was fast – faster than them. Faster than him. Not for the first time, he cursed at his bionics.

He was rolling and Arcadese was turning, Heka’tan too. What met them both as the darkness parted before the flash-sabre’s magnesium flare was not what the Ultramarine expected.

He was not a man at all, at least not one that adhered to the normal conventions of size. He was massive, taller than either Arcadese or Heka’tan, and he was fierce. Tattoos around the attacker’s neck described a long chain of words, a name, or several fractions of a name, recounted on his body, disappearing beneath a loose-fitting bodyglove of red leather. The armour looked gladiatorial. There was something Terran about it. When Arcadese saw the marking on the warrior’s fist as he swung the spatha around in a lazy rotational arc, he knew.