A single report sounded and a las-flash, white-hot, speared through the air next to her. Aescarion glanced behind her in time to see one of her Seraphim fall, shot through the throat by a long-las shot.

Snipers.

Aescarion loosed off a few shots at the closest attackers and ran for the nearest cover. She couldn't get pinned down here. She had to get clear, then gather the Sisters and break out. If she paused for a moment they could be surrounded and bogged down, and not get out of here until the whole city was won. That was not an option.

The collapsed building offered sc.r.a.ps of cover, half-toppled walls and piles of rubble. Aescarion dived for cover as a volley of shots tore down from the other side of the street. Autogun and las-fire kicked up sprays of broken stone and wood around her as she hit the ground.

More fire followed, this time from directly above. Sister Mixu skidded in beside her, twin bolt pistols drawn, and both Sisters returned fire into the remains of the ceiling overhead.

They had taken cover directly beneath an enemy fire point. Through the ragged hole twisted faces leered down, rotten jawbones hanging, skeletal hands aiming their rusted guns down at the Sisters.

Shots rang off Aescarion's armour. She and Mixu returned fire, pumping bolt sh.e.l.ls through the ceil-ing into the attackers, sending showers of debris falling. Aescarion felt a shot crease her cheek. The fire fight drew more attackers in, sharpshooters picking shots through the swirling dust and more Septiams crawled through the ruined buildings to face this new threat. Mixu fired upwards with one hand and sideways with the other.

Aescarion drew her power axe but even her power armour could be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of fire coming at her if she were to stand up and charge.

A sheet of pure white flame tore through the building at head-height, then swung upwards to fill the building above with billowing flame. Burning skeletons fell down from above, and the gunfire was replaced with the strangled screams of burning men.

Aescarion looked up to see Sister Aspasia directing her Retributor squad's heavy flamers as they hosed the building around Aescarion's Seraphim with fire.

Aescarion saluted Sister Aspasia as the Retributors and Sister Rufilla's squad moved in to secure the ruins.

'Seraphim.' she yelled, 'with me! Forward!' Aescar-ion charged through the rubble, towards where the Sisters from Black Three were holed up. She and her Seraphim blasted the Septiams who rounded a ruined doorway in front of them at close range, shattering half-a-dozen diseased bodies before Aescarion lungedthrough the door and laid into the Septiams beyond. A sharpshooter, long-las still clutched in his gnarled hands, fell headless to the rubble. Aescarion's axe cut the arm off another Sep-tiam and her boot shattered his spine as he fell. One of her Seraphim vaulted over the wall beside her, grabbed the closest Septiam and hauled him off his feet, shooting two of his comrades through the man's stomach.

Aspasia's squad followed Aescarion through the ruins. 'Rufilla's secured a landing zone for Black Two,'

voxed the Sister Superior as she hurried over the rubble. Aspasia was a true veteran, older than Aescarion who was no young woman herself. Her power maul steamed with the caked blood burning in its power field, and her armour was pocked and smouldering with bullet scars.

'Casualties?' asked Aescarion.

'Three Sisters lost, commended to the Emperor. Tyndaria lost a hand. We can fight on.' replied Aspa-sia.

'Good.' Aescarion voxed all the Sisters within range. 'When Black Two is down the whole strike-force will advance southwards! This area is held by the Septiams and we will have to go through them first. Aspasia, I want you to the fore. With flame shall the unholy be cleansed.'

Aescarion switched her vox-receiver through the Guard frequencies, tapping into the tangle of trans-missions blaring from all over the city. It was a chaotic mess, with two major regiments in the city and a third, the Gathalamorians, trying to coordi-nate artillery strikes that more often than not killed as many Guardsmen as Septiams.

s.n.a.t.c.hes of battlefield communication filtered through static. The Stratix regiment were pushing hard, butchering their way through the ruins of the residential areas in a tide that swept towards the centre of the city, the senate-house and temples.

The Jouryans, Aescarion knew from the sketchy reports she had got from the Jouryan rear echelons, formed a ma.s.sive wedge thrust deep into the heart of the city as far as the Enforcement Division bar-racks. It was a wedge tipped by the s.p.a.ce Marines, who had arrived so suddenly n.o.body knew who they were or why they were here. To reach that posi-tion the Sisters had to get through the battle lines to the cl.u.s.ter of temples that cast a shadow onto the edge of the residential district, then through the heart of the Septiam defence to reach the Arbites precinct.

The roar of engines drowned out the transmis-sions as the shadow of Black Two pa.s.sed over the road. It turned and descended, back ramp dropping and squads Tathlaya and Serentes jumping into the edge of the ruins. The Valkyrie swivelled to bring its chin-mounted guns to bear and blasted hundreds of rounds into the buildings opposite, scouring the upper floors clean of the sharpshooters. Boltguns blasted at the few Septiams still in the area, the return fire scattered and feeble. The Sister carrying Squad Serentes's heavy bolter paused at the thresh-old of the ruins and sent a volley of shots across the road, and Aescarion spotted broken figures flailing in a ground-floor window.

'Move out!' ordered Aescarion. Squad Aspasia broke cover under Rufilla's fire, sending sheets of flame in front of them as they moved off through the ruins, aiming to flush waiting Septiams into the teeth of Rufilla's guns.

Black One and Black Two were gone, soaring up away from the vulnerable position over the road. The Sisters were alone - but that was when they always fought the best.

The upper floors of the barracks building were infested with the enemy, toting weapons stripped from the precinct's armoury, many wearing patchy ill-fitting armour over their hunched bodies. Sarpe-don didn't care about them. Everything he cared about was beneath the building.

Blue-white light flared in the confined bas.e.m.e.nt stairwell as Sergeant Luko's lightning claws leapt into life.

Squad Luko was in the front with Sarpedon, and Squad Hastis would form the rearguard to see off any Septiams coming down from the upper floors.

The door at the bottom of the stairwell was of ma.s.sive plasteel, with a huge mechanical lock. Sep-tiam City was like any other place in the galaxy, with its own criminals and petty heretics. This was where they were kept, and such people could not be allowed out.

'Mine.' said Luko with some relish. 'Back me up, men.' The sergeant lunged forward and punched both sets of claws into the metal of the lock, the talons sparking as they bored into the metal. He planted one foot against the base of the door and tore the whole locking mechanism out, ripping a ragged hole in the door, spitting with molten metal.

The door swung open and Squad Luko trained their guns into the darkness behind. Sarpedon hung back as they moved into the darkness beyond the doorway, keeping his force staff drawn. His autosenses peeled away the dark to reveal the grim grey plasticrete walls of the cell block beyond, glowstrips on the ceiling burned out, floor and walls stained with age and blood.

'We're in, no contacts.' came a vox from Squad Luko. Luko himself followed, his lightning claws castingflickering lights across the walls.

There was no sound from inside, just the rumble of battle from above. But the place stank: of sweat, decay, rotted filth. Sarpedon's engineered third lung kicked in to filter out the worst of it but it was still the stench of pure death.

The prison held two hundred inmates, mostly in solitary confinement, in cells fronted with tarnished steel bars. The first rows of cells were empty - they must have been released when the plague's mad-ness had first gripped Septiam City.

Karlu Grien was probably among them. But Sarpedon had known that before he had come to Septiam Torus, and he had come anyway. There was always hope, no matter how slim.

'Kitchens up ahead.' voxed one of the Marines from Squad Luko.

'Move in.' said Sarpedon. Nothing moved in the shadows. The Marines trained their guns over the insides of filth-spattered cells. Sergeant Luko pushed through the large double doors into the kitchens, with long benches and tables beneath a high ceiling. Lines from Imperial psalms were carved into the plasticrete of the walls and ceiling and a pulpit stood at one end of the room where the preacher of the Enforcement Division would inform the inmates of the gravity of their sins as they ate. Like the rest of the prison the place was empty, with the kitchens ransacked and pages of devotional texts torn up and lying around the pulpit.

Luko glanced at the auspex scanner he carried, checking the layout of the brig. The Enforcement Division barracks were based on a Standard Tem-plate, the same as thousands of similar buildings on frontier and low-population worlds. 'Cell 7-F.' he said. 'Through this room and to the left, in the moral criminal wing.'

Karlu Grien was a moral criminal, a tech-heretic, guilty of making forbidden technology. He had been stationed on Septiam Torus to oversee the refining of the Soulfire crop, but what he had seen on Stratix Luminae had driven him to dabble in dark things and the Enforcement Division had locked him up. If he was still down here, he would be in cell 7-F.

'We've got movement.' voxed Sergeant Hastis from outside the kitchens.

'Karraidin?' voxed Sarpedon to the squads on the plaza above. 'Do we have hostiles coming in behind us?'

'None, commander.' replied Captain Karraidin. 'We've got them pinned down.'

'Hastis, get your men into this-'

Sarpedon was interrupted by a terrible sound, a dozen voices screaming at once, and a hideous crack-ing like hundreds of breaking bones. Hastis yelled an order and bolter fire roared, but the screams grew louder in reply. Luko rushed up to the door into the area, ready to take on anything that came through the door that wasn't a member of Squad Hastis.

Three Marines burst through the door at once, running backwards and firing into the corridor on full auto.

They were followed by something Sarpe-don could only think of as a wave of flesh, a tide of melded human forms, dozens of bodies welded into a single wall of muscle and breaking bone that erupted through the door. Twisted faces leered from the ma.s.s, hands reached and organs pulsed through rips in the taut skin.

Every mouth was screaming, an atonal keening that cut through even the roar of gunfire. The stench it carried with it would have been enough to knock out a lesser man, and even Sarpedon felt it driving him back from the beast.

Sergeant Hastis was half-swallowed by the ma.s.s, too, bones snapping as the ma.s.s extruded limbs to drag him face-first into it. The Marines of his squad already swallowed were still fighting back, the flesh splitting and ripping as bolters and combat knives slashed at it from inside.

Bolt sh.e.l.ls pumped into the ma.s.s as Squad Luko and the remaining members of Squad Hastis fell back into the dining area. Sarpedon held his force staff tight and felt the force of his will flooding into its psychoactive nalwood, the wood hot and thrum-ming in his hands as it focused the psychic power flowing around his body.

The ma.s.s already filled half the room and there seemed no end to it. Bolt sh.e.l.ls seemed to have no effect.

'Mine again.' said Sergeant Luko. He spread his lightning claws and dived into the ma.s.s, the claws slashing deep scorched furrows in the flesh. Sarpe-don reared up on his hind legs and leapt across the room, following Luko into the mess of melded corpses. He clambered up the front of the roiling ma.s.s and tore deep gouges with his front legs, before plunging his force staff and letting all his psychic force rip through it and into the flesh. Skin and muscle boiled away leaving a huge scorched pit beneath Sarpedon, burned deep through layers of melded bodies, sending a shower of ash bursting from the wound.

Luko ripped the slabs of flesh apart and hauled Sergeant Hastis out of the gory ma.s.s - but the front of Hastis's head had been dissolved and a b.l.o.o.d.y skull's face stared blindly out, long service studs still embedded in the bone of the forehead. Luko threw Hastis's remains behind him and slashed away the tendrils of muscle trying to entwine his legs.The ma.s.s surged forward again and filled the room. Bolter fire poured into it and didn't seem to slow it down - tainted blood was ankle-deep in the room and chunks of shredded flesh were spattered across the walls and ceiling.

Sarpedon could feel the disease inside it, like a ball of white noise somewhere deep in the heart of the corpses. It was dense and evil, something he saw with the psychic eye inside him and felt through the skin of his mutated legs where they touched the unholy flesh. Here the supernatural disease that infected Septiam City had taken the prisoners in the cells and, in that confined s.p.a.ce, it had worked its corruption on them until they had gathered around the carrier into this ball of melded corpses.

The carrier - the first to be infected down here, now the host for the disease - lay in the very centre of the ma.s.s. Sarpedon felt this with his mind's eye, the seething knot of disease sending out a mindless psychic scream as it powered the exertions of two hundred bodies melted into one.

Sarpedon raised his force staff and cut down-wards, opening a three-metre slash in the skin. With his front legs he pulled the wound wide open, drew his bolter with his free hand, and with his hind legs powered himself into the wound. Sarpedon heard Luko yell something as he dived in. But the room would soon fill with the ma.s.s and only Sarpedon stood a chance of stopping it in time.

He couldn't see, but he could feel. Corruption flowed through the veins around him. Walls of flesh pressed against him and he held his breath to keep from inhaling the foulness of the beast's innards. He tore his way through towards the carrier, pulling himself forward with his front legs and free hand. The wound closed behind him, so he was encased in a coc.o.o.n of muscle. Bones snapped as limbs turned inward and reformed to grasp at him. The heat was intense and the darkness complete.

But he could feel the carrier, the still-human shape hunched and foetal in front of him. He gouged and clawed his way closer to it until its seething corruption was bright against his mind. With two legs he speared the body and dragged it closer to him. With one hand he grabbed it by the back of the neck, and with the other he put the bolter against the forehead and fired.

The body spasmed and the flesh surrounding it shuddered in unison as the monstrous intelligence inside was shattered. The ma.s.s released its grip on Sarpedon and he pushed himself backwards. The flesh liquefied behind him until he burst back out through the skin again, sliding to the floor on a wave of gore.

He still had the body of the carrier in one hand. It was mostly intact, save for the gaping bolter wound in its forehead and the severed arteries extruded through its skin where it had been connected to the other bodies. The prisoner's electoo was still on the back of the neck, with the prisoner's name, number, and bar code.

Somehow, it didn't come as a surprise that the car-rier had been Karlu Grien.

'Take the gene-seed of the fallen.' said Sarpedon, dropping the deformed body to the ground.

One of Squad Hastis - Brother Dvoran, the youngest - removed his helmet and drew his combat knife. He kneeled down by the ruined body of Hastis and began to cut out the gene-seed organs, the twin glands in the throat and chest that controlled all a s.p.a.ce Marine's other augmentations.

Sergeant Hastis had been at the forefront of the a.s.sault of Ve'Meth's fortress, one of the Marines who had joined Sarpedon after the catastrophe of the Lakonia mission and Sarpedon's defeat of Chapter Master Gorgoleon. He had been as loyal as any Marine, one of the solid veterans Sarpedon relied on as much as they relied on him. Now he was dead, and so went another man who could not be replaced. They would have to cut off Hastis's head when the gene-seed was taken, to stop him from turning into a walking corpse like those that infested Septiam City.

Of course, Hastis's gene-seed couldn't then be implanted into a novice, as the Chapter traditions required.

Not now. But it was still a powerful sym-bol, and it was symbols that held the Chapter together - so Dvoran cut the sacred organ from the sergeant's throat for transport back to the Chapter.

'It was always a long shot, commander,' said Luko, looking down at the body of Karlu Grien, the only man who could have told them the information they needed.

'Secure this area,' said Sarpedon, heading for the doors beyond the pulpit.

He tore the doors off their hinges and strode into the corridor beyond. This was where the prisoners had gathered as the madness first took them - deep gouges marked the walls where the prisoners had tried to claw their way out. Teeth and bone shards were embedded in the plasticrete and everything was stained brown-black. Bars on the cells were bent out of shape. Sarpedon could feel the madness imprinted on the walls. He could still hear the screams.

Cell 7-F was a pit of stained darkness, blood and filth crusted up the walls, the bars so corroded that they shattered as Sarpedon tore them aside. The pal-let Karlu Grien had used as a bed was a slab of decay and Sarpedon's talons sunk into the caked filth on the floor as he entered the cell.

It was barely two metres square and into that s.p.a.ce was packed so much malice and despair thatSarpe-don could taste it, acrid and metallic in his mouth. Karlu Grien had probably been insane before he ever came here - Stratix Luminae had seen to that. When the plague came it sought out the most recep-tive carrier and found the mind of a mad heretic.

Sarpedon reached up and sc.r.a.ped away the hard-ened gore. Beneath were deep scratches in the walls, like in-the corridors outside - but more ordered, forming patterns against the plasticrete. Sarpedon sc.r.a.ped the wall clean, revealing a pattern of straight lines and arcs that covered the whole back wall.

'They've taken Hastis's gene-seed.' said Luko. Sarpedon turned to see the sergeant standing in the corridor behind him. 'His was the only seed intact.'

'Good.' said Sarpedon. He pointed at the image gouged into the back wall. 'Record this on the aus-pex.

Then get ready to move out, there's nothing left for us here. Send the message to Lygris to bring us out.'

'Yes, commander.' said Luko, and headed back to join his squad.

Sarpedon stared for a moment at the image, carved by a madman using the b.l.o.o.d.y stumps of his fingers.

Techmarine Lygris would know if it meant anything. It was these tiny hopes that kept Sarpedon going, and the Chapter with him. They all looked to him for leadership, even born officers like Captain Karraidin or Chaplain Iktinos. If he gave in to despair then the Soul Drinkers would all give in, too - but they had followed him through the Chap-ter's greatest crisis and embarked with him on a mission which forced them to give up almost all they had - he owed them more than failure.

Aescarion suspected DeVayne wasn't a genuine offi-cer. Like almost all the Stratix troopers he didn't wear the jacket of his fatigues, the loaded ammo webbing taut over a bare torso covered with gang tat-toos. He wore several desiccated scalps on his belt and carried a pair of ivory-handled hunting laspis-tols that surely more properly belonged to a real -officer. But his platoon of near-savages evidently had enough faith in DeVayne's leadership and, on the ground, that was enough for Sister Aescarion.

'Storm 'em, you sons a' hrud-lovers!' yelled DeVayne as he directed the men of his platoon into the shattered temple grounds and towards Septiam City's forum, where public buildings cl.u.s.tered around a wide marble-tiled plaza broken by gilded statues of Imperial heroes. The forum had become the focus for a brutal Septiam counterattack against the foremost louryan forces - most of the statues lay toppled by explosions and the tiles had been hurled up by artillery strikes to fall back down in a lethal stone rain. Basilica and shrines were burning sh.e.l.ls, louryans and Septiams were dug in on either side, the blasted expanse of the forum a no-man's land for which thousands of men were dying.

The largest concentration of Septiams were in the grounds of the Macharian Temple, where a giant porphyry statue of Lord Solar Macharius looked out over ornamental gardens, now a mess of dug-in fire points and trenches swarming with corpse-like Sep-tiams. It was this position that the Stratix forces were a.s.saulting from the rear, with Aescarion's Sis-ters lending bolter and flame to the Stratix lasguns.

The Stratix broke cover from the tangle of minor devotionals and shrines behind the temple, head-ing for the rear wall of the temple grounds. They sported several exotic, salvaged guns - hunting rifles, h.e.l.lguns, well-worn shotguns with hive ganger kill-marks - alongside their standard issue lasguns, and they wore a patchwork of salvaged, stolen and patched-up fatigues and body armour.

They looked more like feral world savages than Guardsmen, but after Aescarion had linked up with DeVayne's men she had watched them carving their way through the Septiam defences with the added firepower of the Sisters. They ripped their way out of the slums at last and made a ma.s.sive push to link up with the Jouryans in the centre of the city. Now they were a.s.saulting the last strongpoint between the two forces.

'Seraphim, to the fore!' yelled Aescarion and fol-lowed the Stratix out of cover and up to the wall.

The Stratix were clambering over the sagging brick wall. Aescarion glanced back to ensure her squad was with her, then thumbed the inhibitor switch on her jump pack and let it propel her clean over the wall. She landed in a roll, crashing through the woody plants at the base of the wall. She glanced around her, trying to build up a rapid picture of her surroundings - a pair of ex-Enforcement Division field guns had been manhandled hurriedly into position leaving deep gouges in the turf, and a gang of Septiams were loading ma.s.sive sh.e.l.ls into the breaches.

Aescarion broke into a run, a round clunking home into the chamber of her bolt pistol, her Sis-ters landing and following her. The Seraphim were on the gun gang before they knew they were even under attack, Aescarion blowing holes through one before beheading another with her power axe, Sister Mixu unleashing a volley that st.i.tched b.l.o.o.d.y ruin through three more. The Sisters killed so quickly and efficiently that by the time the Stratix caught up with them the fire point was denuded of Septiams, bodies draped over the gun emplacement and the makeshift barricades.

DeVayne took one look and ordered a detail of his men to man the guns. Within minutes the field gunswere blasting at near point-blank range into the Sep-tiam trenches and dugouts. The sh.e.l.ls ripped huge plumes of pulverised earth out of the ground, rain-ing debris and bodies back onto the temple gardens.

'Nice work, Sisters.' called DeVayne as he led the rest of his men into the shattered Septiam lines.

Aescarion followed him, Sisters at her side, the air filling with lasblasts and autogun rounds as the Septiams tried to return fire.

Aescarion and DeVayne charged into a Septiam position that, facing fire from both directions, rapidly disintegrated into chaos.

Sarpedon leapt over the pedestal, which had once held a monumental statue of Ecclesiarch Pulis XXIXth, landing squarely in the middle of the Sep-tiams dug into a sh.e.l.l hole in the middle of the forum. He lashed his force staff into the midriff of one even as Tellos dived in beside him, twin chain-blades ripping arcs of gore from the Septiams. Rotted jaws dropped in horror as Tellos's a.s.sault Marines followed, bolt pistols and chainswords spattering the Septiams across the torn marble.

'Tellos!' yelled Sarpedon. 'Take the autocannon!' He pointed towards a quad-mounted autocannon dug in just inside a shattered basilica - it was pounding fire into the Jouryan positions, but it could easily be re-sighted to bring down any ship trying to land on the forum and that was why it had to go.

Tellos seemed not to hear, intent on butchering the Septiams he had beaten down to his feet.

Sarpedon grabbed Tellos's shoulder and picked him up, holding him level with his own face.

'Take the autocannon,' he snarled. 'Now!'

Tellos glared at him through a mask of Septiam blood and found his feet, sprinting through a hail of fire, taking sh.e.l.ls and lasblasts to his body as he ran for the autocannon mount. His a.s.sault squad followed, just as Squad Karraidin and the survivors of Squad Hastis vaulted into the sh.e.l.l hole.

'Karraidin, spread your men out and keep some heads down.'

'Can Lygris land here?'

'It's hotter than he'd like but he'll do it. Now get to it, Soul Drinker.'

Karraidin sprayed with his storm bolter at the source of the heaviest Septiam fire, and led his squad out of the sh.e.l.l hole to cut down the enemy crossfire as much as possible. Squad Luko had spread down one side of the forum and were exchanging fierce fire with the Septiams cowering in the law courts, and the Jouryans behind the Soul Drinkers were adding what fire they could to cover the s.p.a.ce Marines.

If the Guardsmen had known the s.p.a.ce Marines were securing a landing zone for extraction, they might not have been so enthusiastic about support-ing the Soul Drinkers' drive for the forum. But Sarpedon wasn't here to fight their battle for them -the success of his mission depended on what fate dealt to them, and getting off Septiam Torus was the only objective left.

A vicious gun battle erupted at the Septiam-held far end of the forum and spilled out onto the forum itself.