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  ‘You assume their lives are equally valued. No, brother,’ Cyrion said. ‘He will send Vraal.’

  Both warriors turned as the great doors rumbled open again. Cyrion was already voxing to Talos.

  ‘My brother, it’s beginning.’

  The reply was terse. ‘First Claw. At any sign of aggression, you will engage and slay the target. Ave Dominus Nox.’

  ‘Cyrion,’ Xarl racked his bolter as one of the Atramentar entered the Hall of Remembrance, ‘I hate it when you are right.’

  Malek shared the lift to the lower levels with Talos and Adhemar.

  ‘You cannot afford to be this naïve,’ he said, his face as grim and set as white granite.

  ‘I am not being naïve,’ Talos said. Despite his respect for Malek, the Atramentar’s tone fired his blood. He couldn’t keep the edge of defiance from his voice. ‘I am acting in 10th Company’s best interests.’

  ‘You are acting like a blind child.’ Malek’s voice was iron-stern now, and his black eyes glared. ‘You talk of 10th Company’s best interests? That is exactly my point. 10th Company is dead, Talos. Sometimes preservation of the past is a step backwards. I do not advocate change for change’s sake. We are talking about the reality of our war.’

  ‘The Night Haunter would never–’

  ‘Do not dare speak of our father as if you know him better than I.’ Malek’s eyes narrowed, and his voice became an animalistic growl. ‘Do not dare assume you were the only one he held private counsel with in his final nights. Many of us ranked among his chosen. Not you alone.’

  ‘I know this. I am speaking of the legacy he wished for us.’

  ‘He wished us to survive, and to defy the Imperium. That is all. Do you think he cared about the ranks we marched in and the titles we wore while we did our duty? We are barely over thirty Astartes. Squad unity is destroyed. Leadership is weak. Resources are stretched to the limit. We are not 10th Company of the VIII Legion. We haven’t been for almost a century of our own time… and ten millennia of the galaxy’s span.

  ‘Do you truly remain blind to what you are doing?’ Malek finished. He shook his head, as if the mere thought was impossible to fathom.

  ‘I am willing to concede–’

  ‘The question was rhetorical,’ Malek grunted. ‘Anyone can see it. You chance upon a hundred servitors just as our resources are almost bled dry. You walk the surface of our shattered home world, and anyone with their eyes open saw that as an omen. Then you steal a Navigator, of all the things to discover! Now a Titan princeps. You rail against the Exalted and speak of awakening the war-sage…’

  Adhemar cut in. ‘Talos, my brother. You are rebuilding the company to your vision. The Navigator was the boldest step. If the Covenant somehow lost Etrigius, the entire company would depend upon you, upon the Navigator you control. We couldn’t even break into the warp without your… permission.’

  ‘Etrigius is in fine health,’ Talos said. But they were words he couldn’t back up. Navigators may enjoy inhuman longevity because of their mutations, but Etrigius – who forever kept himself shrouded in his personal observation chambers close to the ship’s prow – had barely been seen by anyone except the Exalted in decades. Octavia had access to his section of the ship, but her meagre reports through Septimus had mentioned nothing of Etrigius’s mental or physical state. He seemed unchanged.

  ‘I am of the Atramentar,’ Malek said, the tones heavy with import. Talos understood immediately. Malek would never break an oath to reveal the secrets of his liege lord, even if he despised the Exalted. But he was free to let Talos know he had obviously accompanied the Exalted into Etrigius’s presence.

  Perhaps the discovery of Octavia on Nostramo’s surface was a more direct threat to the Exalted than Talos had realised.

  She would need to be guarded. Guarded vehemently. And Malcharion’s reawakening…

  ‘Mercutian, Cyrion and Xarl stand watch in the Hall of Remembrance,’ he said to Malek. The robed warrior nodded, his statuesque face resigned.

  ‘That is probably wise. How long has the ritual been taking place?’

  ‘Four hours. The Dreadnought’s chassis was being powered up and consecrated when I left. They had not yet begun to wake the sleeper.’

  ‘The odds are not in our favour,’ Adhemar said. ‘He has never awoken, even once.’

  ‘And he did not go into that sarcophagus willingly,’ Malek added.

  Talos’s vox crackled live, interrupting further discussion.

  ‘My brother,’ said Cyrion. ‘It is beginning.’

  Vraal strode into the Hall of Remembrance.

  The roaring lion’s head of his right shoulder guard, marking him as one of the Atramentar, sported a pattern of random gashes and cuts, the marks of infrequent repairs after countless battles. The rest of his Terminator war-plate followed suit. Scars marred the midnight surface, the lips of these carved chasms gunmetal grey where repainting was in order.

  Old blood still flaked his gauntlets. Although any matter on his lightning claws was burned away each time he activated them, gore would streak his gauntlets for weeks after he bloodied himself in battle.

  The others misunderstood this as irreverence. As disrespect. It was almost laughable.

  What greater honour to the machine-spirit of his armour was there than to display the wounds it had won in battle? What nobler reverence could be paid than revealing with pride all the scars that had failed to see him slain?

  Thrusting from his armour’s hunched back were trophy racks made from bronze spikes, each with Astartes helms and their oversized skulls clattering together with every step he took.

  Vraal licked his teeth as his red-tinted displays locked onto every living being in the chamber. There, the servitors tending the silent Dreadnought, like mindless worshippers. There, the tech-adept Deltrian working over a console of arcane lights and switches and levers. There, the new blood of First Claw, dour Mercutian, standing in the shadows of the great doors to Vraal’s left. There, Cyrion and Xarl, bolters held to chests.

  The Atramentar noticed a warning rune flicker briefly. He was being scanned by an auspex. Deltrian, surely. Vraal gave the watching tech-priest an acknowledging nod as he stalked further into the room. The spindly machine-creature bowed back in respect. Hateful thing. A curse on the Mechanicum, that such filth was necessary to the Legion’s operation.

  Vraal was under no illusions about his presence here. The Exalted was playing its game with care, for to oppose Talos openly might incite full-blooded rebellion. What remained of the 10th would be broken, some following the Exalted, others joining the prophet. For Vraal, the choice was no choice at all. The past or the future. Talos represented the former. What was there in the past but failure and shame?

  It would be a relief when the prophet was finally killed. Well did Vraal remember his disappointment when the Exalted’s plan to whore Talos off to the Ruinous Powers failed so completely. The Despoiler had allowed the prophet to escape with no resistance – Abaddon had even failed to kill the two slaves Talos evidently treasured – and 10th Company was burdened with the prophet’s irritating anachronistic meddling once again.

  Maddening. Like an unscratchable itch.

  No, Vraal was under no illusions at all. Open conflict was out of the question. It would galvanise Talos’s emergent faction. One of the favoured Atramentar could never be used. It would be undeniable proof the Exalted was acting against the prophet. But not wild, unpredictable Vraal. Oh, no. Vraal would be mourned for his ‘vicious temper’ and ‘choleric humours’, while the Exalted waxed lyrical about how he deeply regretted Vraal’s terrible disruption of the resurrection ritual.

  His bitterness left him uncontrollable, the Exalted would say. Vraal’s actions bring shame upon us all. Such disunity…

  Yes, Vraal could almost hear his eulogy spoken now. The Exalted had sent him here to die, spending his life for the good of the warband. So be it.

  Of course, this new plan to awaken Malcharion had to be
put down with tact.

  With nuance.

  With subtlety.

  Vraal’s claws slid from the sheaths on his gauntlets. They sparked and crackled, wreathed in killing lightning.

  ‘Brothers!’ he called joyously into the vox. ‘Everyone in this room is going to die!’

  A moment later, he was wading into bolter fire, laughing through the speakers on his tusked helm.

  Chunks broke away from his trophy racks, the shattered pieces thrown behind. A tusk from his own helm splintered. His chestplate cracked. His knee guard split, spraying ceramite debris to the ground. A storm of bolter fire hacked and chipped at his Terminator war-plate.

  This was almost fun.

  The three weaklings from First Claw were falling back, presenting unified fire that was doing nothing to suppress the Atramentar’s advance. Vraal heard Deltrian’s mechanical voice bleating over his vox.

  ‘Why would you do this! This is blasphemy! This chamber is consecrated to the Machine-God!’

  Ugh. Would that Vraal’s armour had any ranged weapons… He could silence the wailing tech-priest once and for all. As it was, his lightning claws flared as if in response to his anger.

  The three Astartes opposing him were backing away, edging towards the still form of Malcharion and unrelenting in their fire. This was irritatingly tactical. Vraal knew killing them was only a secondary concern, no matter how pleasurable it would be. He needed to end Malcharion’s resurrection, once and for all. They stood in the most obvious way of that: simply tearing the Dreadnought’s form apart with his claws.

  Ah, well.

  Vraal broke into what approximated a run for an Astartes encumbered by the near-invulnerable shell of Terminator armour. Not making for the defiant Astartes. No, that would be suicide without doing his duty.

  ‘Tech-priest!’ Vraal staggered as the withering hail of bolter fire shattered his lower leg plating and interrupted the workings of the servos. ‘Come! We must talk, you and I!’

  His stumbling, limping run had a sickening speed all its own. The reaper-like tech-priest did not leave his control console, even as Vraal slammed his right claw through the sacred machinery. Disappointingly, nothing exploded.

  A particularly well-aimed bolt threw his head to the side for a moment. Most likely from Xarl. That bastard was known for being a wicked shot.

  But the Astartes held back now. Vraal stood among the control consoles, thudding closer step by step to Deltrian. They wouldn’t risk exploding bolts damaging the machinery. He raked both claws out to the sides, lacerating more blessed Mechanicum technology.

  How curious. The defilement made the tech-priest weep. He was weeping what looked like oil, running down his skullish silver cheeks in dark tracks. Vraal took in this intriguing fact in the span of half a second. He used the rest of the second to ram the four curved knuckle-blades – each a metre in length – straight through Deltrian’s torso.

  ‘Hnnkhssssssshhhh–’ the tech-priest wheezed, cutting off in a blurted babble of static.

  ‘Very wise,’ Vraal chuckled, pulling the blades back. The resistance within the adept’s body had felt unpleasant and inhuman. There was little joy in rending apart false machine-life. Deltrian fell back, his black robe clutched closed even as he fell to the marble floor.

  A proximity warning rune flickered a moment too late. One of First Claw was on him.

  Spinning, claws up to guard, Vraal faced the other Astartes.

  Xarl’s bolter kicked at close range, snapping one of Vraal’s claws off in a shower of bolt shell debris. His chainsword howled down a heartbeat later.

  ‘Just… die…’ Xarl breathed over the vox. His grinding chainsword blade skidded across the Atramentar’s hulking armour, biting into surface metal without penetrating deeper.

  Vraal disengaged with a shrug of his shoulders. His Terminator war-plate boosted his already inhuman strength far beyond standard Astartes armour. And as to the odds of a chainsword piercing it… Well, at least Xarl was keen. It made things all the more amusing.

  Vraal raised his right gauntlet – now missing a talon – and caught the chainsword between crackling sword-claws on its second descent. The revving blade immediately started eating its way through the softer joint armour and servo fibres of Vraal’s gauntlets. With a grunt of effort, the Atramentar twisted his arm. The claws sparked with a flare of power as they met the trapped chainblade, and severed it with a wrenching snap.

  Disarmed, Xarl leapt back, casting his ruined sword hilt aside as it coughed into death, and bringing his bolter to bear again.

  He didn’t fire. A warning rune told Vraal why, and he spun to meet the threat of Cyrion and Mercutian behind.

  They came at him together, leaping with gladius blades drawn and reversed like plunging daggers in the hands of assassins. Cyrion’s stab clattered aside from the dense war-plate, and Vraal smashed the Astartes aside with a slash of his claw that tore through Cyrion’s armour.

  Mercutian’s thrust bit, and bit deep. It was a moment of shocking, sickening intimacy – a wrath-inspiring violation – when the two Astartes met one another’s gaze through their crimson eye lenses. The gladius was a cold, hateful heaviness in Vraal’s stomach, and even as his enhanced physiology coped with the wound by sealing the haemorrhage, he felt it being torn open again with Mercutian yanking the blade upwards.

  He’d breached a soft joint in the armour. And this… this was pain…

  Vraal hadn’t quite remembered how much it hurt, it had been so long since he’d felt it.

  Impacts struck him from behind in a staccato burst. The rhythm was utterly familiar. A bolter on full auto. Xarl was… firing… and he needed to…

  Free himself… from the blade…

  Vraal lifted his claw. The suit answered slowly, sluggish with the damage it was sustaining. Mercutian kept pulling the blade up, carving through Vraal’s innards even though the blade was blocked from moving too far by the Atramentar’s dense chestplate.

  He spat blood into his helm and backhanded Mercutian away. The other Astartes snapped back like a puppet with its strings tugged too hard, and smashed into the ruined control console.

  Mercutian was down. Cyrion was… Ha! His blow to Cyrion had severed the wretch’s arm at the elbow. He was still picking himself up, shouting his hate through the vox as he looked for his bolter.

  Xarl. He had to deal with Xarl. Xarl was always the dangerous one.

  Blinking blood and sweat from his eyes, Vraal turned to do exactly that. He launched forward, claws powering towards Xarl like seven short lances.

  Xarl cursed even as he moved, throwing himself to the side, muscles aflame, faster than he had ever moved in his gene-extended life.

  The tips of Vraal’s right claws caught him. Xarl clenched his teeth as the three blades sliced and penetrated his armour. A moment of agony pulsed through his left thigh, and he crashed to the ground on dead legs.

  Vraal’s estimation of the situation changed. Deltrian, that spindly machine-freak, was crawling away towards another wall-mounted console. He looked injured. Was that right? Did machine-men suffer injury? Damage, perhaps.

  Cyrion was advancing again, one-armed and gripping his gladius, the pain of his wound doubtlessly swallowed whole by his armour’s injection of stimulants and nerve-killers directly into the bloodstream and brain. Mercutian was back up as well, unarmed. His blade had broken in the fall, and he must have expended all of his bolter ammunition. Xarl, ever defiant, had drawn his bolt pistol and was aiming it from where he lay on the ground, unable to stand with his leg half-severed.

  That was the moment Vraal realised he was probably going to win.

  ‘Brothers, brothers,’ he laughed. ‘Who dies first?’

  ‘Do your worst,’ Xarl barked, opening fire again. Flashing runes blinked across Vraal’s display as the bolts hammered into his head and chestplate. Aiming for the neck joint, Vraal knew. He was still laughing, still advancing, when Xarl’s pistol clicked empty.

  But…
that sound…

  …wwrrrrRRRRRRRRRR

  Vraal’s bloody face contorted as he scowled at the rising noise. What the hell?

  It was the sound of a Reaper-pattern double-barrelled autocannon powering up. It was followed by the throaty mechanical clunk-clunk-clunk of autoloaders cycling into life.

  Vraal turned in time to see it open fire. When it did, the Hall of Remembrance shook with the sheer volume of the weapon’s discharge. Storms ferocious enough to bring down hive towers had done their destructive work with less volume and rage. Servitors too mindwiped to cover their ears suffered ruptured eardrums. The helms of First Claw filtered the sounds to tolerable levels, but every one of them had teeth clenched against the noise.

  Vraal heard it all, with damning clarity, because it was happening to him.

  Six mass-reactive explosive shells – each one capable of killing a Rhino transport on its own – smashed into the Atramentar in the space of three seconds. The first destroyed his chestplate and would have seen him dead in moments through the horrendous blood loss from his mangled insides. He was spared this death as the second shell killed him instantly, exploding against his tusked helm and annihilating his head and right shoulder.

  The other four shells impacted and tore the remains to pieces. In three seconds, nothing remained of Vraal of the Atramentar beyond shards of broken armour and the wounds carried by First Claw.

  The storm passed.

  The thunder faded.

  On ancient servos, the massive form of a bronze-edged, blue-armoured Dreadnought stepped forward. It was heavy enough to shake the room. The cannonfire had been nothing compared to its howling servo joints and cacophonous tread.

  ‘L-lord?’ Mercutian whispered.

  ‘You’re awake…’ Cyrion breathed. ‘How…’

  In a guttural, vox-altered boom, the Dreadnought spoke from speakers wrought into its ornate chassis.