At a great distance, the vessel would have resembled the head of a mace, filigreed with gold and black iron. At close range, a city's worth of spires and gantries reached out, many of them glowing with the light of thousands of windows, others concealing nests of weapons capable of killing a continent. Ships like the Eisenstein were carried in fanged docks around the circumference of the colossus, and as it drifted closer the sheer mass of its gravity gently tugged at the frigate, altering her course. Autonomous weapons drones deployed in hornet swarms, staging around the drifting craft. As one, they turned powerful searchlights on the ruined hull and pinned the frigate to the black of the void, drenching her in blinding white beams.

Eisenstein's name, still clearly visible atop the emerald sweep of her bow planes, shone brightly with the reflected glow. Inside, a handful of souls waited for their fate to be decided.

HAKUR STEPPED IN from the corridor, a loaded and cocked combi-bolter looped over his shoulder on a thick strap. 'Outermost decks are all but empty now, captain,' he told Garro, Vought has re-routed the

atmosphere to storage tanks or down here. Less than a third of the ship has life-support, but we won't lack for breathing.'

'Good.' He accepted the sergeant's report. 'The men on the promenade decks, they have been withdrawn?'

The veteran nodded. 'Aye, lord. I left them there as long as I thought I could, but I've pulled them all back now. I had them spying out through the ports. What with the scrying being out of action and all, I thought that eyeballs were better than no watch at all.'

'Quick thinking. What did they see?'

Hakur shifted uncomfortably, as he always did when he had no concrete answer for his commander. Garro knew this behaviour of old. Andus Hakur prided himself on providing accurate intelligence to his battle-brothers and he disliked having only half the facts about anything. 'Sir, there were a lot of ships and they seemed to be of Imperial lines.'

Nathaniel's lip curled. After Isstvan, that information only makes me more wary, not less. What else?'

'The fleet orbits a large construct, easily the size of a star fort, or larger. The brother who laid eyes upon it told me he had never seen such a thing before. He compared it to an ork monstrosity, but not so crude.'

Something pushed at the back of Garro's mind, a half-remembered comment that chimed with the description. Anything on the vox?'

Hakur shook his head. We are maintaining communications silence, as you ordered. If whatever is out there is close enough to broadcast on our battle frequencies, they are choosing not to.'

Garro dismissed him with a nod. 'Carry on. We'll wait, then.' The battle-captain crossed back into the wide space of the armoury chamber. Partition walls had been hastily opened along the length to allow the

ship's complement of survivors to find purchase here, and from where he stood Garro saw a sea of figures huddled in the dim glow of emergency biolume lanterns. Many on the edges of the group were armed, and they had the air of desperation upon them. With deliberate care, Garro went in and walked among them, making eye contact with each of the crewmen just as he would do with his fellow Astartes. Some of the men trembled as he passed them by, others stood a little taller after the nods he gave them.

In all his years of service, Garro had always thought of the ordinary men of the army as warriors in the same cause as the Astartes, but it wasn't until this moment that he felt anything like kinship with them. Today we are all united in our mission, he mused. There were no barriers of rank or Legion here.

He came across Carya, the dark-skinned officer cradling a heavy plasma pistol. 'Lord captain,' he said thickly. The shipmaster's face was swollen with his injuries from the escape.

'Esteemed master/ Garro returned. 'I feel I owe you an apology.'

'Oh?'

Garro gestured at the hull walls around them. 'You presented me with a fine ship, and I have made such a mess of it.'

'You need not comment, my lord,' Carya laughed. 'I have served under your kind in the Great Crusade for decades and still I think I will never understand you. In some ways you are so superior to men like me, and in others...' His voice trailed off.

'Go on/ Garro said. 'Speak your mind, Baryk. I think our experiences together allow us to be candid.'

The shipmaster tapped him on the arm. 'In some ways you are like wanton siblings who yearn for a

place, for fraternity, but also spark against one another with your rivalries. Like all men, you strive to escape from the shadow of your father, but also to seek his pride. Sometimes I wonder what would happen to you brave, noble lads if you had no wars to fight.' When Garro didn't reply, Carya's face fell. 'I am sorry, captain. I didn't mean to offend you.'

'You did not/ Garro replied. 'Your insight is... challenging, that is all.' He thought for a moment. 'As to your question, I do not know the answer. If there were no wars, what use would weapons be?' He pointed to Carya's pistol, and then himself. 'Perhaps we would make a new war, or turn upon each other.'

'As Horus did?'

A chill washed through Garro's soul. 'Perhaps.' The thought lay heavy upon him, and he turned, forcing it away.

Garro found Sendek and Hakur scrutinising an aus-pex unit. With the aid of Vought, Sendek had been able to connect the device to some of the Eisenstein's external sensory mechanisms. 'Captain! A reading...'

Garro dismissed Carya's words from his mind and snapped back to battle focus. 'Report.'

'Energy build-up/ said Hakur. 'For a second I thought it might have been a deep scan of the hull, but then it changed.'

A complex wave-form writhed across the auspex screen.

'A scan?' He glanced at Sendek. 'Could we be detected in here, through this much iron and steel?'

'It is possible/ replied the Astartes. A vessel with enough power behind her sensors could burn through any amount of shielding.'

A ship, or something like a star fort/ added Hakur.

Cold realisation seized Garro's chest and he snatched the auspex from Sendek's grip. The pattern; he knew what it was. 'To arms!' he bellowed, his voice echoing around the chamber. 'To arms! They're coming in!'

The auspex forgotten, Hakur and Sendek brought up their weapons and panned them around the compartment. At Garro's words, the crew surged with panic. He saw Carya snap out commands and the men brought their guns to the ready.

'Sir, what is it?' Sendek asked.

'There!' Garro pointed into the centre of the chamber, to an open area just inside the doors where Hakur had arranged a staggered barricade. A low humming, like electric motors deep beneath the earth, was issuing from the air, and static prickled at the battle-captain's skin.

Embers of emerald radiance danced and flickered across the deck, for one moment recalling the strange warp-things that had come to the ship in the depths of the empyrean; but this was something different. This time, Garro knew exactly what to expect. 'No man opens fire until I give the word!' he shouted.

And then they came. With a thundering roar of splitting air molecules, a searing flash of jade lightning exploded across the middle of the armoury chamber floor, the backwash of colour throwing stark, hard-edged shadows over the walls and ceiling. Garro raised his hand to shield his eyes from the brilliance before it could dazzle him into temporary blindness. Then the light and noise were gone with a flat crack of displaced atmosphere, and the teleporta-tion cycle was complete.

Where there had been bare deck and scatterings of discarded equipment, now there was a cohort of

stocky, armoured figures in a perfect combat wheel deployment. A ring of eight Astartes, resplendent in battle gear that shimmered in the light of the biol-umes, stood with their bolters ranged at their shoulders, with none of the chamber unguarded.