THE VOLUME OF fire was deafening. Bolter rounds exploded into the surrounding walls, shredding them into dust. Heavier weapons were being brought to bear, too. A missile screamed overhead, crashing into a stone balustrade less than five metres from Kalliston’s position.

The Thousand Sons captain was hunkered down in an old blast crater somewhere deep in the centre of the city. Two of his squad were with him, crouched against the lip of the torn-up earth, their shoulders juddering as they loosed streams of shells into the night. The quantity of incoming fire was far greater than anything they could match, and the warm night air was streaked with tracer fire heading in their direction. A fourth body lay, immobile, at the bottom of the crater.

‘Prepare to fall back,’ announced Kalliston, watching his magazine empty. He was running out of choices. It was difficult to make out numbers in the dark and at such range, but there must have been more than thirty Space Marines closing in on them. Those numbers made holding ground impossible.

‘Where to, brother-captain?’ asked Leot, one of the two surviving Thousand Sons. There was no fear in his deliberate voice, but there was an undertone of reproach. He knew how slim the options were.

‘To the lander,’ replied Kalliston, ejecting the magazine and slamming home a replacement. ‘But not direct. We’ll break back towards the colonnade, and then cut round.’

He gauged the likely location of the closest enemy targets by the pattern of fire, threw himself onto the edge of the crater and let fly with a controlled salvo before dropping back again. As he landed out of harm’s way, the thick crust of earth, glass and rubble exploded in a plume of fire. Then there were more bolt impacts, and the second whine of a missile launch.

‘Now,’ Kalliston ordered, beckoning his men to go ahead while he covered the retreat.

The two Space Marines fell back quickly, keeping in the lee of the crater shadow and moving to the far side of the bowl. As they reached the ridge, they broke out quickly. Kalliston stood up, releasing a final burst before racing to join them. He ran quickly up the uneven slope, feeling the thud of the incoming shells as they landed only metres short.

Then he was out, back onto the street level, running behind his battle-brothers, searching out fresh cover.

Too late, Kalliston realised that there were more attackers closing in from the very point they were heading towards.

‘Incom–’ he started, seeing the missile contrail too late.

The shoulder-launched missile slammed into the ground just ahead of him, throwing him into a roaring confusion of pain and tumbling movement. Kalliston felt several further heavy impacts, including one that exploded against his chest. His body cartwheeled through the air, buffeted by the backwash of the multiple blasts, before slamming into something unyielding. His spine compressed agonisingly, and he felt the bones of his right leg fracture. His vision went cloudy, and the world reeled around him in a blur of lurid colour.

Dimly, he heard treads rushing towards him in the dust, and the ragged bark of bolter-fire. A muzzle was pressed against his temple, clinking sharply against the smooth curve of his helm.

‘No,’ came a voice from close by, bestial in character and alive with a barely suppressed pleasure in the kill. ‘Alive.’

Then agony surged through Kalliston’s body, forking through his frame like storm-lightning. There was a numb falling away. Then there was nothing.

I HAD ALWAYS considered it a gift to be able to peer inside the veils of a man’s mind. I had always valued my ability to tell whether my interlocutor was lying or telling the truth, just as an ungifted mortal might make imperfect use of pulse-rates, sweating, or evasive gazes. Such a capability seemed to me one of the most precious of possessions, just one more piece of evidence for the ineluctable progress of mankind towards mortal godhood.

Now I recognise the price for such perspicuity. I cannot doubt the things I have been told. I cannot reassure myself that Khârn is concealing the truth from me, because his mind is like a translucent vial and there is no concealment possible.

So I must believe. I must believe what he says about the ruin of the Great Crusade and the turning of the primarchs to darkness, and the gathering storm that even now extends its pinions towards Terra. I must believe that my gene-father, whom I had revered along with the rest of my brothers, was guilty of the most terrible miscalculation, and has passed beyond the confines of the physical universe with the remnants of our Legion. I must believe that my survival is a pointless thing, a piece of unresolved business from a war that I have been denied any meaningful part in.

As he speaks, my recovery accelerates, and my ability to make use of my powers returns more quickly. My body embarks on the astonishing process of repair that it has been able to conduct ever since the implant of my enhanced organs. I am preparing to extend my life again, to resist whatever fresh assault comes my way.

That is what I have been turned into, a vehicle for survival. Even in the face of such overwhelming trauma, my blood still clots, my sinews pull back into shape and my bones repair the cracks in their structure. By telling me these things, in such agonising detail, he has given me the space to become myself again. I have weapons. I have the ability to hurt him, perhaps even the ability to kill him. Does he know this? Is my degradation so complete that he no longer sees me as any kind of threat?

He may be right. My spirit, my certainty is gone. The actions of Magnus are either incomprehensible or evil. In either case, I cannot focus my thoughts on anything but the betrayal.

Why did he send us away? He must have known we’d seek to return, or that the vengeful forces that destroyed this world would come after us in the void. He was the mightiest of us all, the magus, the one who saw the snaking paths of the Ocean most clearly of all. So I cannot put it down to simple omission. There are patterns here to be read. There are always patterns.

‘So, Thousand Son,’ asks my tormentor. ‘What do you make of that?’

He delights in my misery. It draws his attention from his own discontent. It is a cliché as old as the universe, the bully inflicting pain in order to send it away from himself.

It won’t work. The pain will catch up with him in the end, even if he has to kill every other sentient life-form in the galaxy first.

‘You allied yourself with the traitor,’ I say, and I hear the hollow ring to my words.

‘You call him traitor. History will call him redeemer.’

‘And you tell me the Wolves of Fenris did this to punish our treachery. Then why do you hunt us?’

‘They came for you because they believed you had turned. We come for you because we know that you didn’t. Not truly. Not reliably. Our cause demands commitment.’

‘So you never did believe in Unification? It was always a sham for you?’

Khârn grimaces. He is like a child, and his emotions play across his face nakedly. My mind-sight is overkill here – the rawest practicus could read him now.

‘We believed in it completely,’ he growls, and the raw emotion rises to just below the surface. ‘None believed in it more than we did. None laid their bodies on the line to the extent that we did.’

He comes closer. His eyes stare at me, glistening in the bright light.

‘We are fighters,’ he says. ‘We are made in the image of our primarch, just as you are made in the image of yours, and he has been betrayed and cast aside, even as the rule of the galaxy passes from the warriors to the slavemasters.’

I do not understand the reference to slavemasters, but it scarcely matters, for Khârn is no longer talking to me.

‘They will use us again to fight their battles while they remain in the audience, laughing. They are the audience, who watch as we come for them in their stalls. We will do to them what Angron should have done in Desh’ea. We will fulfill the potential within us.’