The Ferrous Malice let the remains of the Siege of Malebruk drift away. One side of the strike cruiser was gone completely, the rest hollowed out like a carca.s.s abandoned by scavengers. The Chaos ship had a bloated appearance, an insect gorged on blood, squatting in a haze of debris. Only a few silvery specks remained of the Siege's crew. The Ferrous Malice, sated for now, ignored the fleeing escape craft, and the escapees clung to life for a few hours more as their craft headed for the relative safety of the Endeavour of Will. Among them were the five members of the Imperial Fists First Company, seething with eagerness to get to grips with the enemy who had just handed them such a total defeat.

PART TWO.

Shon'tu stepped through the door of the Dreadclaw, and breathed in the ancient, stale air of a dying empire.

Behind him, a squad of Iron Warriors followed him out of the Dreadclaw's jaws and into the interior of the Endeavour of Will. The Dreadclaw was a make of hull-boring a.s.sault capsule that the Imperium had long since forgotten how to make, but which still hung in their dozens over the a.s.sault decks of the Ferrous Malice. Its bronze-cased beak had torn through the star fort's outer layers and come to rest in a maze of maintenance pa.s.sages and superstructure supports, into which the Iron Warriors emerged already prepared for a fight.

Shon'tu went helmetless, for even a sudden vacuum could do little harm to his artificial skin and bionic lungs. *Dust and desolation,' he said. *Like the inside of a tomb. Such a lifeless place.'

*And we shall make it literally so,' said Brother Ku'Van, one of the veterans accompanying Shon'tu.

*As we have done so many times before, my brethren,' replied the warsmith. *We shall leave this voidbound coffin as empty as the souls of those we kill. For they have no iron within!'

*Iron within!' shouted the squad in response. *Iron without!'

*Warsmith!' came a vox from somewhere nearby, among the webs of dark iron and cramped maintenance s.p.a.ces that soared in every direction. The rune on Shon'tu's retina told him it was Steelwatcher Mhul speaking. *My coven has made safe breach.'

*As has the Choir,' came another vox from Forge-Chaplain Koultus. Koultus's voice was unmistakable, a brash growl of amplified ba.s.s and churning sub-tones. It had to be, or the Choir couldn't have heard the prayers with which he drove them forwards.

*Then converge on me, brothers,' replied Shon'tu. *To you has been given the honour of accompanying me in this boarding action. Prove to me that you deserve my favour. Drive on, strike hard and without pause, and we will drive a spear of iron into the heart of this place!'

*Well met, captain,' said Brother-Sergeant Laocos, clapping a hand to the enormous ceramite barrel of his chest.

*Well met, my brother,' replied Lysander.

The star fort's archive, a high-ceilinged room lined with cases of books and scroll tubes, was one of the few places Lysander and the Imperial Fists of his command squad could gather without being cramped. Like Lysander, the five-strong squad wore Terminator armour, a mark of the esteem in which the Chapter held the First Company, and the rarest and most advanced piece of wargear in the Chapter's armouries. Each man was closer to a walking tank than a single soldier, close to three metres tall and not much less across. Most other suitable places on the Endeavour of Will were too small to accommodate them all comfortably. It was the first time Lysander had seen the men of his command squad since he had left the Siege of Malebruk to see to the star fort's situation in person.

*I so nearly lost you' continued Lysander. *The Emperor's shield was on you.'

*Perhaps' said Laocos. *But the Siege did not have such good fortune.'

*I saw only via the tactical sensors here,' said Lysander. *It looked bad enough from there.'

*It was a horror such as I have rarely witnessed,' replied Laocos. *All we knew of Shon'tu and the Ferrous Malice is but a fragment of the truth. We werea'

*We were caught out,' said Lysander grimly. *This is not an act of opportunism by the Iron Warriors. Scavengers they may be at heart, but Shon'tu knew the disposition of the star forts and the fact we could spare but few to defend them if their own weaponry failed. He had exactly the tools he needed to destroy them, and but for the valour of Techmarine Hestion he would have done just that. He made sure to bring a ship the equal of the best we could afford to spare from the front line. What we know a what I know a of Shon'tu is enough to tell me that he will have brought the means to destroy the Endeavour of Will now, even when his a.s.sault on the machine-spirit failed.'

*Then what will he do next?' said Brother-Scholar Demosthor. Demosthor, in training to attend the Reclusiam of the Chapter's Chaplains, had pa.s.sages of Dorn's philosophy pinned to his armour, and to the casing of the squad's a.s.sault cannon, which he carried.

*The Iron Warriors are creatures of directness,' said Lysander. *Not for Shon'tu another round of deceit and trickery. He will take the path that leads most clearly to victory, though it may be the hardest.' He looked from face to face, noting the features of men who had served their Chapter for the better part of centuries even before they had been a.s.signed to Lysander's own squad. *Shon'tu is going to board us. Against any other enemy, any other Chapter, he might pause. But not against us. He wants to fight us. He wants our blood on him, he wants to see us die.'

*If he wants battle,' said Laocos, *should we give it to him?'

His words were answered with an explosion from somewhere far off in the body of the star fort, and the equally distant blaring of alarms and klaxons. A cogitator console near the door of the archive lit up with warning icons.

*We will,' said Lysander. *To arms, Fists of Dorn.'

The star fort's six segments radiated around its core. The core, heavily armoured and covered by the defensive weapons the machine-spirit still controlled, housed the datamedia vault and other essential command systems, along with the power plant. The six segments housed all the other structures needed for a battle station a barracks, now almost completely empty, supplies and ammunition stores, fighter decks silent without crew to fly the fighters and bombers stored there, fuel tanks, sensorium stations and mountings for weapons now lost to the machine-spirit. Here could also be found the places of worship used by the station's crew, chapels to many faces of the Emperor and shrines to Rogal Dorn for the use of the Imperial Fists.

One of these sacred places was consecrated to the hero of the Chapter who was entombed there. In death, he still watched out on the void for the enemies of mankind, for his sarcophagus had been installed on the Endeavour of Will some two and a half thousand years before.

It was at the Tomb of Ionis that the Imperial Fists drew the battle lines.

Scout Sergeant Menander peered across the expanse of the Tomb of Ionis, his magnoculars sweeping past the fluted columns and scrollwork. It was a forest of stonework, as dense as a death world jungle. With little need to conserve s.p.a.ce on the huge star fort, the tomb had grown with successive generations of masons and artisans, so the sarcophagus sat at the centre of a labyrinth of statuary and decoration. The sarcophagus itself rose like a granite mesa in the centre of the tomb, crowned with an outsized carving of Ionis himself lying in state.

Menander's squad crouched around him among the coils of stone. Their cameleoline cloaks had turned speckled grey to match their surroundings, and they were adept at clinging to the shadows and breaking up lines of sight. Menander's four Imperial Fists Scouts carried sniper rifles, draped in cameleoline strips to diffuse the outlines of the weapons.

*Brother Moltos,' said Menander softly. *Bless us.'

Brother Moltos made the sign of the aquila, and clapped a hand silently to his chest in the salute of Dorn. *Emperor most high, and Omnissiah who knows all, bless this battle-gear that will so sorely be tested. Keep our lenses bright and focused, and fill them with the sight of the enemy. Let our bullets fly true. Let the armour of the enemy crumble before them. Let them find nothing but the hearts of traitors.'

*Amen,' said Menander, echoed by the other three Scouts. *Spread out. Intel pattern. Do not engage.'

The Scouts split up and moved quietly through the tomb, heading on different winding paths towards the sarcophagus. Menander glanced behind him and could see the glint of golden ceramite between the columns lining the near edge of the tomb. Captain Lysander and Sergeant Rigalto's squads were mustering there, ready to act.

And somewhere up ahead were the enemy.

*I have movement,' came a subvocalised vox message from Menander's right. Scout-Brother Tisiphon's rune winked. *Three hundred metres, approaching. Two of the clock.'

Menander looked in the direction Tisiphon had indicated. He thought he could see movement, black against black. He held up his magnoculars and could make out, clearly now, the dark shape advancing towards the Imperial Fists.

It moved without concern to stealth. Menander could even hear it now, crunching through granite carvings. It was taller than a s.p.a.ce Marine and far more broad, and the oily gunmetal of the Iron Warriors' armour was deformed by red, weeping bands of corded muscle.

*Captain,' voxed Menander. *I have sighted the enemy.'

*Is Shon'tu among them?' came Captain Lysander's reply.

*I cannot tell,' said Menander. *They have sent in the Obliterators.'

Shon'tu watched as the Obliterators forged ahead. The five sons of the Coven, marshalled by the relatively normal Steelwatcher Mhul. Each Obliterator had once been an Iron Warrior, just like Shon'tu or Mhul himself. But the fates had seen fit to infect them with a warp-born tech-virus that had melded their flesh and armour into one, and turned them into machines of Chaos.

The Obliterators were twice the size of a s.p.a.ce Marine, and crashed through the statuary towards the high ground of the sarcophagus. Their limbs, wrapped in clubbing ma.s.ses of muscle, opened up into dozens of orifices from which emerged gun barrels and chainblades. Each one was a walking a.r.s.enal, containing within him the firepower of a whole squad of s.p.a.ce Marines.

The rest of the strikeforce advanced in their wake. Shon'tu's own squad, alongside the Choir, swept the avenues of fire with bolter barrels, watching for the glint of Imperial Fists armour. Lysander's men had chosen to face them here, perhaps to force a decisive battle, perhaps because this was sacred ground.

*Brethren!' bellowed the amplified voice of Forge-Chaplain Koultus. Koultus's skull-shaped faceplate had a yawning mouth framing a speaker which boomed his voice in all directions. *Behold you all the enemy! They cower from us! They that pray death might come before their weak hearts compel them to flee! Grant their wishes, and by iron seal their fates!'

The Choir rushed forwards around him, leaping through the wreckage left by the Obliterators. Their gunmetal armour burned from the inside, blue and red flames flickering where the plasteel plates met. The fires were barely contained, for they formed the haloes of daemons caged within them, desperate to break free through the sacrament of combat.

The first of the Obliterators clambered into the lip of the sarcophagus. Its limbs reformed into twin a.s.sault cannons, bundles of revolving barrels which span as they hammered out a rain of fire towards the Imperial Fists at the other end of the tomb. A few return shots snapped up at it, but the Obliterator stood proud as its brothers of the Coven took up position beside it. Steelwatcher Mhul was directing their fire, crouched beside the huge sarcophagus, the enlarged lens of his bionic eye sending greenish light beams playing across the statuary ahead.

Shon'tu's own veteran squad were the backbone of this force, advancing patiently with bolters levelled. Soon their fire would chew through the few Imperial Fists that weathered the storm of the Obliterators. Shon'tu was a patient creature, but even his soul seemed to drag him forwards a pace, eager to kill.

Shon'tu backed against a half-collapsed statue that had once depicted one of the honour guard of the hero buried here. He peered through the dust kicked up by the gunfire and saw the shape of an Imperial Fist in Terminator armour, sheltering behind a pile of fallen rubble as he gave orders to the s.p.a.ce Marines around him. He was huge, shaven-headed, with a ma.s.sive storm shield in one hand. In the other was a weapon that Shon'tu recognised a a thunder hammer with its end forged into the shape of a fist. The Fist of Dorn.

Captain Lysander.

Shon'tu's spirit won the battle, and Shon'tu rushed forwards for the kill.

*Hold them at the sarcophagus!' yelled Lysander over the gunfire. *Advance! Imperial Fists, advance!'

Lysander could see one Scout fallen, a leg blown off by the storm of fire that had come from the Obliterators. Lysander knew of the Obliterators a he had fought them a and he knew well how deadly they could be. There was nothing in the Imperial Fists' armoury that could kill as swiftly, man for man, as those infected by the tech-virus.

Lysander held his shield in front of him as he led the way forwards. Gunfire hammered against it, jarring his arm. His command squad advanced behind him, with Squad Rigalto to the right. Lysander could hear Rigalto yelling his own orders and bolter fire was streaking up towards the sarcophagus in return now. The sound was deafening a literally so, for anyone other than a s.p.a.ce Marine, with his enhanced and protected senses, would have been robbed of hearing by the din.

Something screeched among the bedlam. Some old soldier's instinct took over in Lysander and he brought his shield down just in time to take the charge of an Iron Warrior who crashed through the statue forest right into him. Lysander kept his footing and slammed the shield down, trapping the leg of the Iron Warrior and pinning it to the ground.

The Iron Warrior was the colours of his Legion, oily gunmetal with yellow and black warning strips. But he was not a s.p.a.ce Marine. He had given up that label when he had allowed himself to be possessed by the thing squirming out of the eyepieces of his faceplate. Its twin wriggling psuedopods lashed from holes in his face and one of its gauntlets burst apart, more fleshy tendrils snaking out to wrap around the edges of Lysander's shield.

Lysander's stomachs turned at the sight of the possessed Iron Warrior. He raised the Fist of Dorn over his head and slammed the b.u.t.t end down, impaling the Iron Warrior through the chest. He ripped it free and lifted his shield, carrying the enemy up on it and slamming it into the pedestal of a statue. Lysander brought the Fist of Dorn down again, the head falling in an arc, crunching into the Iron Warrior's deformed face.

*Possessed!' yelled Sergeant Laocos. *Brothers, the enemy wears the face of his corruption!'

*Not for long!' came the voice of Brother-Scholar Demosthor. A volley of a.s.sault cannon fire blew one possessed's head open, revealing a ma.s.s of squirming muscle like the bloom of a fleshy flower. The screeching thing kept attacking, but now blind and without coordination. Demosthor drew back his power fist and punched the Iron Warrior with such strength he was thrown clear out of sight by the impact.

Lysander pushed on, throwing another Iron Warrior aside with a swing of his shield. The sarcophagus rose right ahead of him, the shape of the nearest Obliterator illuminated by the blaze of fire roaring from the weapons unfolded from its arms. Lysander planted a foot on the lower edge of the sarcophagus and powered up onto the top.

The Obliterator turned to face him. Its face was a ma.s.s of muscle and machinery, gun barrels emerging from its eye-sockets and its mouth lolling open, glowing with the fire of its internal forges. Smoke and steam rose from it, spurting from between the armour plates fused with its flesh. The multi-barrelled cannon on one of its arms folded back into the ma.s.s of muscle and steel, and iron-sheathed claws emerged in its place, forming a bunched fist crackling under a power field.

Lysander braced himself into a stance his body knew from decades sparring in the duelling rings of the Phalanx and the battlefields of the Imperium. His shoulder dropped, shield held low and firm to take the charge. The floor under his feet was uneven, for he was standing on the carved face of Ionis, whose body lay in the sarcophagus below.

The Obliterator roared a wordless war-cry, loud and braying, the sound of an angry machine. Its bulk loped forwards, fist drawn back to club down and crush.

Lysander sidestepped with speed that should have been impossible for his Terminator-armoured form. He spun, cracking the front of his shield into the side of the Obliterator, using its own momentum to knock it forwards off-balance. He swung the Fist of Dorn around into the Obliterator's back, smashing into its spine. Bone and iron cracked. The Obliterator slumped to one knee and Lysander slammed the lower edge of his shield down onto the back of its calf, splintering the stone beneath and trapping the Iron Warrior in place.

The second swipe of Lysander's hammer crunched through the Obliterator's upper back. The head of the hammer ripped right through the Iron Warrior's bulk, tearing its upper chest and head off in a fountain of shredded meat and gore. Sparks sprayed from its ruined body as it toppled over.

*Menander!' said Lysander into the vox-net as he turned to scan for more targets. *What is your situation?'

*Almost in position,' came the reply.

*We hold the sarcophagus,' said Lysander. *Act now!'

*It will be done,' said Menander.

Rigalto's squad were embattled at the other end of the sarcophagus, pinned down by volleys of bolter fire from the advancing Iron Warriors. The Imperial Fists were outnumbered and outgunned. They could not hold. Not for more than a few moments.

Lysander's thoughts were broken as he saw the black and yellow heraldry, like a warning sign. He saw the bra.s.s superstructure around the armour, the nightmare in clockwork striding through the wreckage.

This Iron Warrior's armour was bulkier and more elaborate, the ornate plates supported by a framework of bra.s.s struts and powered by a shuddering back-mounted generator with spinning cogs and pumping pistons, wreathing the traitor's form in greasy smoke. One hand was a monstrous claw, and the other was encased in a triple-barrelled bolt cannon from which hung chains of ammunition rattling as it blasted volleys of fire into Squad Rigalto.

The Iron Warrior's face was bare, but it was a face as much of steel as of flesh. Twin rebreathers were implanted in his throat and his mouth was articulated like a hunter's trap with teeth of iron. The eyes were human, and it seemed that into them was poured all the hatred and anger that had been replaced by steel throughout the rest of the traitor's body.

*Warsmith!' bellowed Lysander. *Shon'tu! I see you! Before the Emperor's sight shall you fall!'

Shon'tu looked up at Lysander and, somehow, that mechanical nightmare of a face smiled. *Commander Lysander!' he replied. *Such kind fates the warp has woven, to give your death to me!'

Shon'tu laughed and kicked through a ruined statue, where an Imperial Fist of Squad Rigalto lay trying to get back to his feet with a bolter sh.e.l.l through his thigh. Shon'tu's claw clamped around the Imperial Fists warrior's torso and he held him up for Lysander to see. The talons of the claws sheared closed, pneumatic pistons slamming shut, and the Imperial Fist's body was sliced into three. The parts flopped to the ground, blood already pumping from between the sheared ceramite. The blood spattered across Shon'tu and hissed as it touched the warsmith's hot armour, turning to black smoke.

*In position,' came Menander's vox.

*Fall back!' ordered Lysander, not taking his eyes from the sight of Shon'tu driving on through the gunfire. *Imperial Fists, stay tight and fall back!'

The sound that reached Lysander's hearing through the gunfire was Shon'tu laughing, an awful mechanical noise like tearing metal. One of the surviving Obliterators turned its guns on Lysander and he ducked back behind the plasteel slab of his shield. The weight of fire hitting it was like an avalanche, almost throwing Lysander onto his back.

Lysander jumped down from the sarcophagus. His command squad were back to back, surrounded by shattered statuary and the bodies of the possessed Iron Warriors who had charged into the range of their guns and power fists. Down at the base of the sarcophagus Lysander could see one of Menander's Scouts crouched down, attaching a large, thick metal disc to the stone. Lysander recognised it as a demolition charge Bolter fire slammed into the Scout. The Imperial Fist slumped against the sarcophagus, mouth gaping dumbly, eyes gla.s.sy.

The charge was set. His duty was done.

Lysander led the way back towards the edge of the tomb. The Terminators' storm bolters gave Rigalto's squad enough covering fire to make it out from under the guns of the Iron Warriors. Sergeant Rigalto himself was firing his bolter one-handed, his other hand a mess of torn skin and gore.

The Imperial Fists pa.s.sed through the corridors leading away from the tomb. Menander and the surviving three Scouts were last out, Menander slamming his hand against a control plate mounted on the wall. Pneumatic pistons hissed and warnings sounded, and reinforced twin blast doors slid down, closing off the tomb with a biological seal.

It wouldn't stand up to a concerted blast of fire from the Iron Warriors' Obliterators. It wouldn't have to.

Lysander focused on the detonator rune on his retina.

*The Imperial Fists do not retreat,' said Shon'tu, more to himself than to anyone else. The dead s.p.a.ce Marine lay just behind him, oozing vermilion blood, and even as they witnessed their battle-brother dying Lysander and his force were falling back.

Shon'tu opened up a vox-link to the Ferrous Malice. *Velthinar!' he demanded.

*Could the warsmith deign to speak with us?' came the reply from the daemon that squatted in the bowels of the Iron Warriors ship. *We who have failed him so?'

*I have not the time,' said Shon'tu. *Scour the memories taken from the Bastion Inviolate. Seek out knowledge of Ionis, a hero of the Imperial Fists, entombed on the Endeavour of Will. Now!'

The Iron Warriors around Shon'tu were pursuing the Imperial Fists squad in front of them through the ruins that remained of the tomb's decoration. Shon'tu could see Lysander and his Terminator-armoured cohorts also moving towards the exits.

They could be cut off and trapped like rats. The Choir, those Iron Warriors blessed enough to harbour daemons sent to possess them, could move rapidly, like hunting animals. The Obliterators could blast and melt through bulkhead walls. The Iron Warriors had superior numbers and firepower. Lysander would never commit his force to a retreat into the tangle of maintenance and crew decks, never. It was as wrong as could be.

*Warsmith,' came Velthinar's chittering buzz of a voice. *Ionis was a Castellan of the Phalanx, millennia ago. For three hundred years he served, until caught in the virus-bombing of Golgothix Superior and slain.'

*Virus-bombing,' spat Shon'tu. *Lysander! I owe you a betrayal! I owe you a death by deceit! Iron Warriors, retreat! Back to the Dreadclaws!'

The order did not have time to register in the minds of the Iron Warriors before the detonation charge mounted on the sarcophagus exploded. The detonation threw members of the possessed Choir off their feet, throwing chunks of statue everywhere. Normal troops would have been killed and thrown into disarray, but not the Iron Warriors. That wasn't the aim.

Shon'tu could see, through the billowing dust and smoke, the side of the sarcophagus blasted open. The grinning skull of Ionis, resting on a bed of golden silks now tattered and blackened, rolled onto its side as if fixing Shon'tu with its eye sockets. Super-cooled air misted and rolled from the ruptured sarcophagus.

One of the Choir was loping through the ruins, falling behind his fellow possessed. He slipped to one knee, faceplate breaking open into a tangle of gnarled mandibles like a fist opening and closing. The possessed's body convulsed and a yawning mouth opened up in its chest, a fat purple tongue lolling out and coughing out stringy red gore.

The Iron Warrior's joints were eroding, some corrosive substance finding purchase in the joints of the armour. One of his arms fell off, crumbling bone and flaking muscle pouring from the exposed socket. The ceramite was becoming pitted and discoloured, the exposed flesh drying and flaking off as if ageing centuries in a few moments. The possessed toppled to the ground and came apart, armour cracking like dropped pottery.

*Virus attack!' yelled Shon'tu. *Mhul! Koultus! Get them back to the Dreadclaws in good order! Move!'

One of the Obliterators had been caught in the invisible tide. The virus leaking from the ruptured sarcophagus had infected the thick bands of muscle wrapping around its deformed armour. The muscles contracted, the armour plates warping and splitting under the pressure, spiny growths bursting from exposed flesh. Malformed gun barrels cycled, lumps of fused ammunition thunking to the floor. The Obliterator's face burst into a clutch of eyeb.a.l.l.s, each one swelling and bursting to dribble red-white gore down the torn armour. It took a long few moments to die, its body deforming until it was turned almost completely inside out, metallic organs split into fans of b.l.o.o.d.y steel and loops of articulated entrails clattering around its feet.

The warning systems built into Shon'tu's cranial augmentations were sending pulses of alert hormones through him, and setting off microscopic klaxons and strobes in his ears and eyes. Every bio-alert was going off, his armour detecting the presence of pathogens, his augmetic organs fending off the voracious strains of virus which mutated into new forms with every moment.

Shon'tu made it to the rear of the tomb. Twin blast doors had descended, cutting off the Tomb of Ionis and turning it into a biological containment zone. Shon'tu ripped through the first door with his power claw, punching through the front and ripping the door off its mountings. The second lasted no longer, and he was through, the cavernous outer hull voids reaching ahead of him. Steelwatcher Mhul and the remaining possessed had made it through too, and Shon'tu could feel the impacts of the Obliterators stomping behind him.