'Crash-land in thirty seconds, commander.' replied the serf at the navigation helm.

'Do it.' Sarpedon switched to the channels for Squads Krydel and Luko in the fighter's pa.s.senger compartment. We're coming down hard, sergeants.'

Luko checked the restraints on his grav-couch, his hand dextrous in spite of the ma.s.sive lightning claw gauntlets he wore. 'You heard the man.' he shouted to his men over the din of wreckage slamming off the fighter's hull. 'Buckle up.'

Karvik and Sevras's fighter hit the ground too steeply, one wing catching in the frozen earth and flipping the fighter end over end. It came to rest upside-down within sight of the facility, spewing strange alien fuel onto the tundra.

Theirs was the first down, though not intention-ally. Even as the craft was still slewing to a stop the first elements of Teturact's army were picking them-selves from the fallen chunks of wreckage and piles of bodies, their flesh burned and frozen by the fall, bones broken, minds jelly. The will of their master demanded that they stand on broken legs and take up twisted shards of wreckage as weapons. Their master had shown them salvation, even holding back death itself - so what could they do but serve?

Their master, their G.o.d, demanded service in return for everything he had given them. There was no reason for them to resist as they shambled towards the fallen fighter and towards the landing spots of other silver craft now streaking towards the ground, nothing remaining in their ruined minds but the resonating order to kill.

Sergeant Luko's restraints only just held as the fighter slammed into the ground, the frozen surface c.r.a.ping agonisingly against the hull, the alien entrails of the craft shaking loose under the impact. He was thrown around in his restraints until he thought his reinforced ribcage would collapse.

He knew how important this mission was, and that to die during it was a more honourable death than any of the billions of Imperial citizens could hope for - but he did not want to die like this, out of sight of the enemy, the victim of chance and grav-ity.The howling stopped. In the moment of silence that followed Luko checked his autosenses and tested his muscle groups for injury. Bruises, strains: nothing he couldn't ignore.

'We're down.' came the vox from the bridge.

'Soul Drinkers, move out!' ordered Sergeant Kxy-del from the other side of the compartment. The metal of the hull flowed and peeled back from an iris that opened in the fighter's side. Freezing air flooded in.

Krydel was out of his restraints and already lead-ing his Marines out. Luko snapped off his own restraints and the power fields of his lightning claws were alive before he hit the ground.

'Look lively, men, it's not a happy welcome!' he voxed as he saw the first enemies scrambling towards him.

Bolter fire snapped and several of the living dead came apart.

Sergeant Krydel set off headlong to secure the fighter's landing site. Luko ran to the nearest cover - a gigantic fallen chunk of machinery - and sliced the first few corpses that crawled out of it to ribbons with his lightning claws.

Good. He was blooded. Now the real business could begin.

Debris was still falling. Some was recognisable, landing craft or jerry-built drop pods, more was just random chunks of the diseased flagship. Bodies were falling, too, and very few stayed lying down where they landed. Luko could see the facility, smaller than some of the fallen wreckage, a single-storey building pockmarked and scorched by small arms fire.

'Get me a fire point here! I want fire arcs covering the approach, Karraidin's coming in on our tail!' Luko's Marines scrambled onto the wreckage, form-ing a hard point where they could find cover and form a disciplined fire point to keep the approaches to the facility clear of enemies.

Luko glanced up and saw the sky dark as if a thun-derstorm was brewing. A bright streak of light was another fighter coming in and dark specks were more of Teturact's army coming down.

The first wave was just a harrying force to keep the Soul Drinkers from getting dug in. What followed would be the real test. Vermin like this had killed ;Dreo, they said, a man Luko had served alongside

Maybe even stop it from beating. But for the moment Luko had more immediate concerns.

'We're clear to thirty metres.' voxed Krydel over the chatter of bolter fire.'

'We've got you covered. Start the push on the facility.' replied Luko, barely flinching as a build-ing-sized chunk of engine crashed to the ground nearby.

Luko glanced round to see Sarpedon emerging from the craft, moving swiftly on his eight legs, beheading a corpse-mutant that loped towards him without breaking his stride.

'Karraidin, we're down. What's your position?' Sarpedon was voxing. Then a scream and the descending silver dart of a fighter cut through the air overhead in answer, the craft banking sharply and looping down into a perfect short landing between Sarpedon's position and the facility.

Sarpedon hurried into cover beside Luko, snap-ping off shots with his bolt pistol as he went. 'Hold this position, sergeant.' said Sarpedon. 'Cover Kry-del and Karraidin's force.'

'Where will you be, commander?'

'Everywhere. Same as the enemy.'

Luko nodded and clambered onto the smoulder-ing wreckage where he could direct his squad's fire.

Already, thick swarms of enemies were pouring from fallen landers, their numbers denuded by dis-ciplined fire from Luko and Krydel. But there were so many of them...

And there would be more. It was raining corpses, and not one of them would stay dead for long.

Even from the Crescent Moon's landing site the fall-out was clearly visible, a dark torrent pouring onto the horizon like a storm of black rain. The blurred black smudge in the sky that was the enemy battle-ship was fragmenting even as Thaddeus watched, sections of the hull peeling away to reveal the ship's skeleton.

The cargo ramp of the Crescent Moon touched the ground and Colonel Vinn, in the lead APC, gave the order to roll out. The column of vehicles - refitted Chimera transports with reinforced armour and overcharged engines, along with a couple of Sorori-tas Rhino APCs - roared out of the Crescent Moon and onto the surface of Stratix Luminae.

Thaddeus, from his Chimera towards the back of the column, looked out from the commander's hatch as the vehicle rolled down the ramp. The air was freezing and he was glad of the heavy blastcoat he wore - he could see his breath coiling in the air. Every planet, he had learned in his short Inquisito-rial career, had its own smell, and Stratix Luminae smelled empty and secretive like an abandoned house. The colourless landscape of endless tundra seemed to hold something more than just desola-tion, as if something had happened long ago, or was sleeping beneath the surface, that resonated through the air and the barren earth.'Rein in the front vehicles if you have to.' Thad-deus voxed to Colonel Vinn. 'I don't want us blundering into someone else's fire fight. Halt at the first contact and keep me posted.'

An acknowledgement signal was Vinn's only reply. He was a man of few words, perhaps because he knew that even if he survived he would probably be mind-wiped and unable to remember any con-versations he had had.

Thaddeus ducked back down into the body of the Chimera, where the Pilgrim sat in the darkness, fill-ing the pa.s.senger compartment with its aura of menace. Thaddeus would rather not have travelled with the creature but he didn't yet trust it to be out of his sight.

'We can kill them, inquisitor.' grated the Pilgrim. 'You know that, don't you? We are not just here to find them and report back. We are soldiers. We can kill them with our own hands.'

'I am not here for your revenge, Pilgrim.' said Thaddeus darkly. 'I have vowed to do my duty. I will bring the Soul Drinkers to justice but that doesn't mean I'm going to get this strikeforce destroyed in the attempt.

If it takes me decades then I will wait.'

There will not be another chance.'

'If I cannot finish it here then I will make another chance.' Thaddeus sat back in the juddering APC and checked the load in his autopistol. He had very few of his custom bullets left but if there was ever a time to use them it was on Stratix Luminae. If the Pilgrim was right then one of those fearsomely expensive sh.e.l.ls would be enough to kill Sarpedon and behead his Chapter. If the Pilgrim was wrong, and Thaddeus had to admit it tended to be right, then just getting close enough to take the shot would be enough to get Thaddeus killed and end 1 j any hope of the Inquisition ending the threat.

Vehicle on point reports small arms fire.' came a vox from Vinn.

'Any hostiles?'

'Not yet.'

Good. At least it seemed the strikeforce wouldn't be heading into a combined force of Teturact's fol-lowers and Sarpedon's Marines. Thaddeus suspected this would be the only good news he got J that day Karraidin's power fist ripped through two ene-mies, blasting their rotting bodies apart in showers of spoiled meat and bone. Bolters chattered and chewed through a dozen more as Sergeant Salk blew another apart.

What had been a barren waste-land minutes before was rapidly turning into a landscape of twisted, blackened metal, stinking smoke billowing off the fallen wreckage, enemies clawing their way towards Karraidin's spearhead from every angle. Bodies fell from the sky, thudding into the ground, and more often than not some-thing ragged and broken rose up to carry on fighting.

Salk couldn't even see the facility now, with tow-ering engine stacks and hull segments embedded in the ground in front of him.

'Salk! We need to split the force, get through any way we can and rendezvous at the blast doors!' bel-lowed Karraidin, storm bolter blazing away at a knot of creatures that had once been Guardsmen, some still holding lasguns and combat knives.

Salk nodded and waved his Marines forward, Trooper Krin blasting into the shadows with his plasma gun and being rewarded with a shower of broken bodies illuminated by the plasma flash. Small arms fire - lasguns, autoguns, stub pistols - was spat-tering against the wreckage around them. Salk knew they had to keep moving or the sheer numbers now being thrown against them would trap them.

'After me! Krin, pick your targets and go for clus-ters!' Salk drew his chainsword and jogged forward, slashing at the emaciated faces that loomed through the wreckage and smoke. The fight was getting closer by the second, limbs reaching out for him, bolter fire spattering from behind him into anything that moved. A lasgun shot speared past his head and another burst against the ceramite of his chest armour - he stamped down on a corpse-soldier crawling in front of him and rammed his chainblade through the abdomen of another who fell gibbering down at him from above.

A plasma blast roared overhead and incinerated half a unit of enemies, dressed in the tatters of Naval Security uniforms, emerging from a crashed lander. They were more intact than most of the enemies Salk had faced so far, the cold hatred still legible on their faces, a.s.sault shotguns in their hands. Salk snapped off bolter shots at them then dropped into the cover of a hull section as shotgun fire ripped back at him, filling the air with a storm of shrapnel.

Bolter counter-fire tore back and Trooper Karrick dived into the fray, charging into the security troop-ers followed by the rest of the squad. Salk clambered to his feet and joined the melee, behead-ing one enemy and crushing the ribcage of another with the pommel of his chainblade. Karrick, a tough veteran with more experience than Salk but who seemed to accept the younger man's authority without question, grabbed onetrooper by the wrist and hurled him against the hull plate with enough force to break his back.

The surviving troopers tried to fall back but Squad Salk never left the front foot, and in a final volley of bolter shots the Naval Security unit lay shredded and smoking on the ground.

'Keep going.' voxed Salk. 'There'll be more.'

Salk led the way through the labyrinth of wreck-age, heading towards where he knew the facility should be.

He checked the squad icons - a couple of battle-brothers were wounded but it was nothing they couldn't fight through.

Salk got his first glimpse of the facility building and it was nearly his last. The single-storey building was swarming with enemy troopers of higher qual-ity than the shambling corpses that had fallen so far.

They were not resurrected dead but fanatic troopers, scores of them manning the fire points on the roof and clambering up the walls. They fired from behind the makeshift barricades still remain-ing from the a.s.sault ten years ago. Heavy bolter sh.e.l.ls tore down from the roof and Salk ducked rapidly back into cover, hearing the too-familiar report of sh.e.l.ls through ceramite as one of his brothers lost a limb to the large calibre fire tearing through the wreckage.

They had to get out. The first line of defences would be a safer place to fight from than here, but the squad had to get there first.

'Grenades!' called Salk and the Marines who could do so pulled frag grenades from their belt pouches.

'Krin, give us a covering shot!'

Plasma fire erupted over the closest barricade, white-hot liquid fire rippling over the barbed wire and into the trench behind. Several Marines hurled grenades a split-second afterwards, multiple reports adding to the plasma shot and throwing plumes of pulverised earth into the air.

'Now!' ordered Salk and led the charge, sprinting the few metres over the ruined barricade and into the same trench that Captain Korvax had taken from the eldar a decade earlier. This time it was not xenos but corrupted heretics the Soul Drinkers were fighting, still wearing the uniforms of their original units, Imperial Guard and PDF troopers, even pri-vate militia - Salk recognised the emerald uniform of Cartel Polios before he cut the man wearing it in two. Teturact's army had come from all over his empire, and doubdess every world he had visited had provided a t.i.the of armed worshippers to their master.

Karrick was at Salk's side in the trench, hauling an ex-Elysian Guardsman towards him and cutting his throat with a combat knife.

Salk glanced down the trench and saw other Soul Drinkers doing what they did better than almost any other force in the galaxy - close-quarters battle, cold and fast, toe-to-toe with the enemy where they were safer than anywhere else in the battle.

Salk checked the icons again - it was Brother Vaeryn they had left behind, his life-icon flickering to show great blood loss and trauma.

Vaeryn, come in.' voxed Salk.

'Lost a leg, sergeant.' came the crackly reply.

'Can you fight?'

'Fight but not move. I'll have to do my bit from here.'

'Fates be with you, brother.'

The Emperor protects.'

Maybe they would be able to pick up the stricken Marine on their way back out of the facility, but Salk doubted it.

Heavy bolter fire was still streaming down, throw-ing up chains of explosions along the rear parapet of the trench. The sudden whine of a heavy weapon and a bright orange explosion on the roof of the facility told Salk that his was not the only Soul Drinkers squad moving on the facility. Salk took the brief respite in firing to look up over the parapet at the facility - one corner was down but there was still a dual heavy bolter mount facing them, along with the small arms fire streaking down from either end of the trench where heretics were trying to win back their defences by firing blindly down from both corners.

A plasma shot ripped down the trench on cue and blew another three men into the air at one end of the trench, Krin's shot freeing half the squad to fire up at the remaining weapon mount. Bolter shots spattered against the plasticrete of the build-ing and a gunner's shattered body tumbled off the roof.

Salk led the charge over the rear of the trench and into the next, vaulting over makeshift barricades to cut down the few cultists huddling for cover from the bolter fire. Salk could see the blast doors now, through the web of tracer fire and the gauze of falling earth from the explosions now bursting all around the facility.

The towering form of Karraidin appeared as the captain strode towards the facility, storm bolter fir-ing.

Small arms shots bounced off his thick armour as the Marines around him snapped off shots at the roof, bringing down more and more shooters. Salkran forward again and his squad met Karraidin's in the shadow of the facility as the last fire point was cracked open by a well-aimed frag grenade. Salk saw *that Apothecary Pallas and Techmarine Lygris were with Karraidin's squad - Lygris, Salk remembered, had suffered severe wounds early in his career and now wore a near-expressionless mask of synthetic flesh instead of a face.

'Well met, brother.' said Karraidin with a grin creasing his battered features.

Salk drew his squad up in cover around the blast doors. 'I'll get grenades. We'll blow the door.'

Karraidin just walked up to the doors and, the power field around his gaundet flickering to life, punched his power fist into the metal. Arcs of light jSpat as the field ripped through the metal and Kar-.'raidin tore great strips from the door until he had gouged a hole large enough for even him to walk through.

'Squad Graevus, where are you?' voxed Karraidin.

'Got tied down, we're on your heels. Solun's with us.'

Salk saw Squad Graevus heading through the wreckage of the defences, the white diamond of Graevus's power axe blade shining.

Karraidin switched to the vox for all the squads and specialists under his command. 'Spearhead, we've made the facility. We're going in.'

The captain ducked through the ragged hole and ^nto the facility Salk followed, chainsword drawn.

The first thing that hit him was the smell, a stench so awful that it almost made Salk reel. It would have been enough to drive back a normal man and even with a Marine's const.i.tution Salk felt his additional organs and filters kicking in to prevent the stench from leaving him nauseous and dizzy.

His autosenses rapidly adjusted to the darkness. The first floor was the security station he remem-bered from Korvax's pict-recording, the shattered automated defences spilling metal entrails onto the floor, stark plasticrete construction pocked with bullet scars.

Where the cargo elevator had been there was now a solid metal slab with a security console nearby, blocking the way down.

'Can you get through it?' asked Salk.

Karraidin shook his head. 'It's wired. Probably to blow if it's tampered with. Get a techmarine up here.'

Lygris came to the fore and began to work with the security console. 'Time to see what Adept Aris-teia taught us.'

Squad Graevus and Techmarine Solun were enter-ing through the breach. Solun hurried up to help Lygris input the complex code that Aristeia had pro-vided them with. Solun's mem-gear made quick work of the complicated algorithms that generated the entry code, but even so there was a painful delay as the techmarines worked on the interface.

The few minutes were agonising. Cultist counter-attacks came to the breach and were swept away by pin-sharp bolter fire from Squads Karraidin and Salk. Lasgun shots spattered in from ex-Guardsman cultists and Salk drew his men up in front of the console to shield its delicate working with their bodies from any stray shots. This could be it -Sarkia Aristeia could have been mistaken or lying and everything would end here, on this Emperor-forsaken s...o...b..ll of a planet which had nothing to give them.

A s.p.a.ce Marine never gave in to despair, but in those moments Salk felt the enormity of the task weighing on him - the Soul Drinkers were finally free after thousands of years of servitude to the Imperium, and now a tiny thing like Aristeia's memory would decide if they survived to use that new freedom.

'Done. Stand back!'

A spiral crack appeared in the slab and slowly it opened, segments fanning open like an iris. Half the Marines pointed their bolters into the growing hole in the floor as corroded motors strained to open a hatch that had been sealed for ten years. A thin, stinking fog coiled up from below and Karraidin held up a hand to fend it off while his sensors adjusted. Salk glanced at his squad's auspex to see what was beneath them, but there was just a ma.s.s of static swirling. They knew it was a four metre drop into the floor below, but that was it. There could be anything down there.

'Graevus, do you object to having the point?'

'It's what I'm here for.' replied Graevus. He hurried up to the opening with his squad. It was absolutely pitch black inside.

'Cold and fast, we get in and we secure whatever we find. Karraidin, get the specialists in afterwards, if there's anything in here I don't know how long we can hold it off. Squad, move!'