Sendek ministered to his auspex. Tactical plot shows heat sources comparable to jorgall hatchery constructs in this direction.' He pointed. 'That way The virtual compass is having difficulty assimilating the internal structure of the bottle-world.'

'How current is that data?' asked Hakur. 'The sense-servitors neglected to tell us we were landing in a chem-lake. I find myself wondering what else they may have missed.'

Sendek frowned. 'The readings are... contradictory.'

'Best we be ready for surprises, then/ noted Rahl, hefting the combi-bolter in his grip.

'Do NOT ALLOW yourself to be lulled into complacency by the name of your target, captain.' Mortarion had spoken the words without looking at him, as Garro stared into the hololith in Endurance's

assembly hall. This so-called hatchery is not only the creche for the jorgalli young, but also a place of modification. You will probably find eggs filled with armed adults as well as their larvae.'

Garro recalled the primarch's words as he looked up at the towering fibrous trees. Further into the 'forest' where the stalks were planted in dense, regular rows, the tree-things were heavy with great grey orbs that hung like monstrous fruits. Some showed signs of motion inside, things shifting about in lazy thrashes. Here and there were pools of watery fluid that Sendek immediately designated as 'yolk'. Voyen agreed with the description, pointing out dripping orbs up above that hung ragged, formless and clearly empty. 'The roots of the trees drink the liquid back in to the system/ noted Sendek. 'Quite efficient.'

Tm rapt with fascination/ Rahl said, in a tone that indicated the reverse.

Decius kept his bolter close. 'Where are the defences? Do these xenos care so little about their spawn that they leave them open to any predator that happens by?'

'Perhaps their children are the predators/ offered Hakur darkly.

One of the men from the veterans' squad halted and gestured ahead. 'Captain/ he asked, 'do you see this?'

'What is it?' asked Garro.

The Astartes bent and gathered up a shiny metallic object, roughly oval in shape. He turned it over in his hands. 'It's... sir, It's a helm, I think.' He held it up to show them, and Garro's blood chilled at the sight of a Silent Sister's wargear. Something shifted inside it and a severed head dropped from the helmet to the ground, trailing a plume of blonde hair.

'Clean cut/ noted the Astartes. Very fresh.'

Voyen's eyes narrowed. Where's the... the rest of her?'

Decius used his bolter to point towards different branches of the trees. 'Here, there and there. Over there as well, I think.' Wet rags of red and gold were visible on each.

'The Sisters came to the hatchery?' Hakur cast around, looking low. 'Why would witchseekers come here?'

Decius gave a dry chuckle. 'That, old man, would seem to be secondary to the question of what it was that killed her.'

From ahead of them where the trunks were thickest, there came a ripple of bolter fire. Garro spied the glitter of sporadic muzzle flashes even as a low rumble spread through the sandy dirt beneath his boots. Cracking sounds, sharp as snapping bone, reached him as trees in the middle distance shook and bent, the tops of them fluttering and falling as something large knocked them down.

'You're about to get your answer/ Rahl said, raising his bolter.

The Sisterhood came through the egg-trees, moving like dancers, harrying the jorgalli enhancile with their weapons. It was the largest of the xenos that Garro had encountered onboard the bottle-world, and of a design that had not been in Sendek's documentation. Outwardly it resembled the form of a jorgall in a basic sense, but it was perhaps ten times their mass. As high as the canopy of the trees, the thing appeared to be an agglomeration of scaled flesh and metals, a jorgall deformed by gigantism and then improved by technology to be larger still.

The battle-captain could make out fleshy matter inside a glass orb at the middle of the cyborg's mass,

perhaps, he reasoned, whatever remained of the jor-gall's original form. It had no arms. Instead there were writhing clusters of grey iron tentacles sprouting from each of its upper limb sockets. Some moved like striking serpents, snapping out at the Sisters, while others knotted around an unseen burden that the thing clasped desperately to its chest.

'Some sort of guardian?' offered Voyen.

'Some sort of target! retorted Decius and opened fire.

The Death Guard moved in to assist the Sisterhood, firing on the approach, adding their shots to the storm of bullets that haloed the cyborg. Garro had the fleeting impression that the machine-form was trying to escape, but then it turned around and threw any notion of fleeing aside. Perhaps it might have got away from the women, but with Garro's arrival it had no other choice but to stand and fight.

Metal feelers lashed out across the ground, keen-edged tips slicing furrows in the dirt. They flexed and moved, ripping up divots and roots. Hakur was caught off-guard as a tentacle lashed at him and threw the Astartes aside, rolling off the trunk of an egg-tree. Garro saw another rip the leg from one of the troopers and put him down in a welter of blood. The captain ducked away from the questing appendages as they hissed over his head.

A witchseeker, caught with her bolter breech open and magazine empty, met the tip of them through her breastbone. They stabbed through her torso and pinned her to a tree, then tore back out in a jet of spent vitae. Still trailing blood, the tentacles bent and whipped at the Emperor's warriors, clipping Rahl on the back swing and tearing the gold hood from another of Kendel's women. Without her helmet, a

severe Null Maiden with a red topknot and portcullis faceplate choked and stumbled, the rancid atmosphere of the jorgall vessel scouring her lungs. Voyen was already moving to assist her, and Garro's face soured. The cyborg was just too fast, too wild and uncontrolled in its motions. To kill it, they would need to take a more direct approach. He thumbed the selector switch on his bolter to fully automatic fire and charged the xenos hybrid.

The battle-captain unloaded an entire clip into the legs and thorax of the cyborg, gouts of oily fluid and flashing short-circuit arcs marking where each round hit home. The jorgall thing hooted and growled, turning to focus its attention on the figure in grey-white armour. Steel-sheathed whips shot out, extending and buzzing with effort, and Garro threw himself into a roll, dodging the places where they stabbed into the soil. The tips of the lashing feelers clattered over his ceramite armour, and Garro felt a sting of pain as they raked the place where the flyer's claws had cut him on the lakeside, reopening the wounds there. A chance flexion of the tentacle, a second of delay on his part, and suddenly the captain's bolter was spinning away from him through the air, the strap hanging ragged as the gun was snapped from his grip-

Garro turned into the force of the impact, rolled again and came up with Libertas in his hand. Stabbing lines of metal came at him and he batted them away with the sword blade, flares of sparks glaring orange-white in the sullen artificial daylight of the egg-tree groves. The others were pouring their fire on to the cyborg, but its attention was still split between Garro and the object it held tight, something swaddled in thin grey muslin. The battle-captain threw

himself at the jorgall mechanoid, chopping off the tips of tentacles and slashing at others. He spun as he felt iron limbs touch his legs and hacked at them, but he was close to its torso and the cyborg's appendages were thicker here, more muscular, more resilient. Powerful coils enveloped him and Garro felt the ground drop away. The machine-hybrid shook him violently, his sword-arm flailing against his side where he could not turn Libertas in his defence. His teeth rattled inside his skull and there was blood in his mouth.