The range marker was slipping closer to the centre of his display, and Requer looked down as he saw a flash of silver against the black rock of the mountains. The cutter was jinking left and right, hugging the side of the mountain in the false hope that such manoeuvres would keep it safe from a hunting Firelance. The pilot had skill, weaving in and out of natural rock formations at high speed to keep his pursuer from obtaining missile lock, but it would take more than that to evade Ptelos Requer.

He checked his scopes one last time. The direction was right, and the returns were solid. He craned his neck, twisting left and right to make sure there was nothing else in the air with them. The last thing he needed was an accidental shoot down of some civilian craft straying too close to an engagement zone.

Satisfied this craft below him was the Cargo 9he had been ordered to kill, Ptelos Requer armed the weapons systems and almost immediately his helmet was filled with the harsh buzzing of a missile lock.

He eased the stick forward, pushing Eastern Lightinto a shallow attack dive.

‘Target acquired,’ said Requer, flipping up the trigger guard on his control column.

KAI LOOKED UP at Atharva, feeling a build up of psychic power that filled the air with an actinic chill and the bilious taste of metal. The nunciowas nothing compared to this, and even the vaticand the eremployed no abilities of this magnitude. Atharva was a battle psychic, a warrior-mystic who wielded his powers for destruction and violence, and Kai had tasted its like only once before, in the mindhall of Choir Primus.

Without thinking, Kai opened himself a fraction to that power, feeling himself dragged along with Atharva’s abilities, seeing the mountainside flash past as though he were a bird flying at impossible speed through the air. He saw the majesty of the palace below them, ten thousand towers and domes, a multitude of grand colonnades and the palatial demesnes that housed the billions of loyal servants of the Administratum.

Kai was a comet, a shooting star of thought and purpose. Incandescent, he raced through the sky until he saw three bat-winged specks that arced over the mountains towards them. The shapes grew larger until Kai saw the fighter aircraft clearly, the Firelances Asubha had spoken of: graceful war machines that could jink and spin through the air like dancers.

Their combined essence entered the mind of the lead pilot, and Kai’s thoughts were immediately filled with trajectories, approach vectors and deflection values. It meant nothing to him, but the dominating presence of Atharva absorbed it in a second.

Kai looked through the pilot’s eyes, seeing the ghostly green of a projected display and feeling the constricting grip of his pressurised flight suit. He felt the heaviness of his helm and the exhilaration of making an enemy kill. A warbling tone in his ear told him the missile pods slung beneath the wings had a target lock, and his thumb hovered over the firing trigger.

Before the pilot could fire, a conflicting impulse arose in his mind.

PTELOS REQUER FELT a sudden conviction that the aircraft on which he was about to fire was not an enemy craft at all, but an Imperial one. His thumb slid away from the trigger and he re-engaged the safeties on his missiles.

He blinked in confusion, pulling out of his attack dive and flying over the target. His breathing was laboured and his flight suit hissed as it compensated for his elevated heart rate and increased blood pressure.

‘Requer? What happened?’ asked Moshar. ‘Do you have a weapons failure?’

He tried to answer, but he couldn’t remember what had happened, only that he had an undeniable urge not to fire. A grey fog filled his head, making it impossible to think clearly. Flickering images of things he didn’t understand flashed in his mind, painful and intrusive.

‘Ptelos?’ said Falk. ‘Talk to me, what happened?’

Requer shook his head, trying to push the cacophony of thoughts from his head. He banged the side of his helmet in an attempt to clear his head, but the images kept coming.

‘I’m fine,’ he said, but the fug of confusion pressed even deeper into his thoughts. ‘I had a fire control glitch. Coming around for another pass. Hold station.’

He rolled his Firelance and pulled into a wide turn that brought him in behind the Cargo 9once more. Promethean Arkand Twilight’s Fadefollowed the cutter, their blue hot engines burning like bright pulsars in the early evening sky. Their light was so bright he had trouble focusing, and his mouth dropped open as the blood drained from his head.

Requer checked his scopes again, and let out a breath two threat icons appeared on his scope, enemy aircraft right in front of him. He was right on top of the enemy and they hadn’t seen him! His wingmen were gone, shot down in all likelihood, and he had the drop on the enemy aircraft that had blown them from the sky.

With calm, methodical precision, Requer tagged all three contacts in front of him – the two new ones and the Cargo 9– and once again armed his missiles.

‘Requer! What are you doing?’ yelled a garbled voice that sounded familiar yet completely alien to him. An enemy trick, no doubt.

‘I have good tone,’ he said as the trill of a target lock sounded in his helmet.

‘Ptelos, your weapons are glitching again!’ shouted Moshar, pulling away and climbing.

‘Requer, stand down!’ shouted another voice that was unknown to him.

Three missiles leapt from the rails in a bloom of smoke and peeled off in search of their targets. The first sliced up on a perfect trajectory and flew right into the engine of Promethean Ark. The warhead exploded deep in the guts of the Firelance and blew it apart in a spinning fireball of orange flame and silver wreckage. The remains of the blazing fuselage spun down towards the mountain, trailing thick black smoke and blisteringly bright flares of exploding munitions.

The second enemy pilot cut in his afterburners, but against missiles launched at such close range, he had no chance to evade. Every jink and roll was met and countered by the missile’s seeker head until the aircraft could run no more. The pilot cut his burners and threw out the air brakes in an attempt to cause an overshoot, but the missile was already too close and its proximity fuse detonated less than ten metres from its yawning air intakes.

Flames and thousands of razor-sharp pieces of spinning shrapnel were sucked into the aircraft’s engines, tearing them apart in a thunderous, chugging explosion that ripped the aircraft in two. The sight of an enemy craft so comprehensively destroyed would normally have sent a surging thrill of adrenaline through Requer’s body, but he felt nothing as he watched the burning remains of his victim plummeting downwards.

Requer released his control column as he searched his scope for the third contact. Had his missile downed it already? He couldn’t see it, but it had been close to where his second kill had gone down. Requer knew he should make a visual check for the third target, but it was all he could do to keep his eyes focused on the landscape around him. The idea that an enemy craft might be lining up a shot on him concerned him not at all, and a vacant smile spread across his face. The grey fog that filled his mind soothed him and kept any thoughts of the aircraft he had shot down at bay.

That contented smile never left Ptelos Requer’s face as he flew his Firelance into the side of the mountain.

FIRE AND SMOKE filled the crew compartment, and Kai gagged, his consciousness returning to his body with a violent jolt. His flesh felt suddenly heavy, and he let out a cold breath as he looked up into Atharva’s eyes. Flecks of winter white danced in his pupils, fading like a dream as their natural colours restored themselves.