A flashing red light accompanied the rattling of a decompression shutter behind him. Only one other had permission to enter this place of forgotten wonders and miracles, and Babu Dhakal turned as Ghota entered with a downcast expression on his face. Even his eyes, so red with blood, were hooded with failure.

‘You return in defeat,’ said Babu Dhakal, the word ashen and alien on his tongue.

‘Yes, my subedar,’ said Ghota, dropping to his knees and lifting his head to expose the cabled veins of his neck. ‘My life is yours to end. My blood is yours to spill.’

Babu Dhakal stepped down from the platform upon which he had been working and drew a long dagger with a serrated blade from a thigh scabbard. He rested the killing edge on the pulsing artery in Ghota’s neck, and toyed with the idea of driving it home just to feel the warm wetness of the man’s blood.

‘Back in the day I would have taken your head without a thought.’

‘And I would have welcomed it.’

Babu Dhakal sheathed his dagger and said, ‘This is a new age, Ghota, and there are few enough of us left alive to continue the old ways,’ he said. ‘For now, I have need of your heart remaining within your chest.

Ghota stood and balled his fist upon his chest, a salute that had now fallen out of favour, but which still held meaning for warriors born in a forgotten time.

‘Subedar,’ said Ghota. ‘Command me.’

‘The men you took with you?’

‘All dead.’

‘No matter,’ replied Babu Dhakal. ‘They were but failed experiments. Tell me of these “Space Marines”. What are they like?’

Ghota sneered and squared his shoulders, though he had no right to do so. ‘They are not our equal, but they are warriors fit to bear the eagle.’

‘And so they should be,’ said Babu Dhakal. ‘They stand on our shoulders to achieve greatness. Without us, they would not exist.’

‘They are but pale shadows of what we were,’ said Ghota.

‘No, they are the next step in the evolution of the superwarrior, it is we who are pale shadows of what they are. Yes, we are stronger and hardier than them, but our genetic legacy was never meant to last. Old Night may be over, but for us a new night is falling. We were not built to live beyond Unity, did you know that?’

‘No, my subedar.’

‘Our genes were always flawed but I cannot decide whether that was deliberate or simply ignorance. I hope for the latter, but I suspect the former. This world’s master is careless with his creations, and I wonder if his primarchs know that when their task is done they will be cast aside in favour of the mortals in whose name they fight. Like the angels of old, I fear they will not take the idea of such rejection well.’

Ghota said nothing, the reference to the ancient text lost on him.

‘How many warriors did you face?’ asked Babu Dhakal.

‘Seven, but two of them are now dead, my subedar,’ said Ghota. ‘Only five remain.’

‘You killed those two yourself?’

‘One of them, the other was dying anyway.’

‘Then we must find them, Ghota,’ said Babu Dhakal, lifting a metal device from a nearby bench and affixing it to the upper face of his gauntlet. A whirring series of needles, blades and surgical tools snapped from the mountings with a hiss of cryo-cooled air, and Babu Dhakal smiled.

‘We are dying every day, but with their genetic material I may yet find a way to reverse the slow decay of our bodies. You understand the significance of this?’

‘I do, my subedar,’ said Ghota.

Babu Dhakal nodded, and asked, ‘Where are these five warriors now?’

Ghota said, ‘In the east. I have men watching them. Word will be sent.’

‘Good,’ said Babu Dhakal. ‘We will do this ourselves, my jamadar. You and I. We will rip the bleeding progenoids from their living flesh and we will have that which the Emperor has denied us.’

‘Life,’ said Ghota, savouring the feel of the word.

MOONLIGHT POOLS IN the open square, bleaching it of colour, but no light from the night sky can dull the vivid redness of the blood splashed around its haphazard mix of cobbles, flagstones and bare earth. Nagasena scans the rooflines for any lingering threat, though he does not expect meet any real resistance here. At least not from their prey. Ironwork crows festoon the eaves and ridges of the buildings, and refuse piles at the edges of the square.

Debris from a daytime market, he thinks.

Tossed in with the rest of the day’s refuse are a host of dead bodies, at least twenty-five, maybe more. Each one has been killed without mercy, shot or eviscerated with guns, blades and bare hands.

‘This is Space Marine killing,’ he says, and Saturnalia nods in agreement.

Hiriko and Athena stare in open-mouthed horror at the damage wrought upon these men, amazed how disastrously a human body could be broken into pieces. They are not used to physical violence, and to see the sheer visceral capabilities of the Legiones Astartes has shocked them to their core.

‘It is hard to see is it not?’ asks Nagasena, not unkindly.

Adept Hiriko looks up, her face pale and her lips dry.

She nods and says, ‘I know what the Space Marines are, but to see just how thoroughly they can dismantle another man’s body is…’

‘Terrible,’ finishes Athena Diyos. ‘But is what they were created to do.’

‘That and so much more,’ says Nagasena.

Hiriko looks at him in puzzlement, but says nothing.

Athena Diyos has led them to this square, following the fading, intangible thread of Kai Zulane’s agony, and though it is hard for her to aid his hunters, her loyalty is first and foremost to the Imperium. She trusts Nagasena’s vow of honesty, though he is having a harder time in justifying this hunt to himself.

He already knows the Choirmaster’s explanation of why Kai Zulane needed to be found was a lie, but that does not offer him any comfort. Especially in light of what Nagasena heard Atharva tell his fellow escapees through the optic feed. Saturnalia and Golovko dismiss the words of traitors, but Nagasena knows that just because a man is labelled a traitor does not make him a liar.

If Kai Zulane doesknow the truth, has Nagasena any right to suppress it?

He rebuilt his life on the basis of truth being the rock upon which all things stood, and he had vowed on the ashes of his old ways never to hide from the truth or allow others to obscure it. Nagasena wonders how that will go at the end of this hunt…

‘The bodies are still warm,’ notes Saturnalia. ‘We are close.’

‘Who do you think they were?’ asks Athena, grimacing in distaste as Kartono eases past her, making sure he does not touch her. Nagasena’s bondsman pulls a dismembered arm from the wet pile of torn meat and wipes blood from a bicep that still twitches with residual electrical activity. A tattoo of crossed lightning bolts has been added to with an artful representation of a bull’s head. Nagasena knows that bovine animals were once sacred to the people that lived in this region, but his knowledge of the symbol’s significance ends there.

‘This is Babu Dhakal’s clan marking,’ says Kartono.

‘Is that supposed to mean something to us?’ snaps Hiriko. Her hostility is borne of nothing Kartono has done, but simply of his very nature. He has long grown used to the unreasoning hatred of telepaths, and lets her anger wash over him.

‘He is a criminal,’ says Kartono. ‘The clan master of a gang that runs most of the Petitioner’s City. Whores, food, drugs, weapons, you name it, none of it moves without the Babu’s say so.’

‘So how did these men fall foul of our prey?’ wonders Nagasena.

‘Who cares?’ states Maxim Golovko. ‘They’re traitors to the Imperium and if they want to kill some crime lord’s men then so much the better.’

‘Look at these men, Maxim,’ Nagasena urges him. ‘These are not normal men.’

‘They’re dead men,’ says Golovko, as though that is the end to the matter.