"Shadow Team in place, my lord. Visual perimeter established. We've marked a path for you. Clear to follow us in whenever you're ready."

"Understood, Shadow One. Moving up now. Keep me apprised of movement."

Drakken is solid, thought Mishina. His is a name with more than a few legends attached. He's not prone to careless mistakes, I know that much. But even so, I have the damnedest feeling, like a mental itch. There's something I don't like about this. Perhaps it just seems too easy.

Or perhaps it's something else.

Trying to move silently in MkVII power armour, Drakken knew, was like trying to reload a bolter with just your teeth-damned near impossible and usually not worth the bother. Sooner or later, the orks would wake up to 3rd Company's presence here, and when they did, the real work, the righteous work he lived for, would begin proper.

He led his Astartes through the breach in the curtain wall that Mishina and his Scouts had marked out for them. Orks wouldn't see those marks. The Scouts left little splashes of a liquid that was only visible in infrared. The helmet visors of the Crimson Fists picked up those splashes as if they were blazing neon lights, and the Space Marines followed them into the town of Krugerport, knowing that the path they followed had been cleared for them.

Once Drakken and his men were beyond the outer walls, the captain opened a channel to Sergeant Werner, who was about twenty metres to the rear, preparing to lead his own group in through the breach. Drakken had assigned him command of three ten-man squads. "This is where we part, Leo. Follow the Scouts' markings, and may the Emperor watch over you."

"As he watches over you, my lord," replied Werner, then he and his men split off from the main group, disappearing into the inky shadows of a narrow avenue to the right.

Drakken watched the last of Werner's Astartes disappear, then gave the signal to his own squads to move out in single file.

The streets of Krugerport were, in the main, too tight for heavy vehicles to negotiate. In some settlements, this would have been a strategy to prevent enemy armour making headway during an assault. In Krugerport, however, Drakken had the feeling it merely represented the human tendency to seek closeness with others when in hostile places. This planet was a merciless rock, its winds choking everything with corrosive dust, its chemical seas capable of eating the flesh from a man's bones in moments.

So why had men settled here at all? It was no great mystery. There were two things in Badlanding's favour. First, the atmosphere was breathable, which made it a relatively rare and valuable find among the millions of worlds man had discovered since the first days of his expansion into space. Despite the vast size of the Imperium, the ratio of naturally habitable worlds to non-habitable was far below one per cent. The second reason Badlanding had been colonised was just as simple: the Scratch Mountains, towards which Commissar Baldur had claimed he would lead his survivors, were rich in seams of adamantium and proteocite, the latter a compound used in the production of rare ceramite, the material from which much of the Astartes battle-plate was made.

Thinking of the Scratch Mountains made Drakken scowl. He had brought eighty-three Space Marines with him on this operation, not to mention numerous serfs, pilots, technicians, communications specialists and the like, all of which were absolutely essential to the smooth operation of the Crimson Fists' fleet. Of the eighty-four Astartes, he personally led a detachment of thirty, Werner led another thirty. Four Crimson Fists from 10th Company were acting as advance scouts. Eight more battle-brothers had been assigned landing-zone patrol duties on the perimeter of the broad wadi in which the Thunderhawks rested well out of sight, and another ten had been sent in an arcing path well out from the town, skimming over the dust dunes in Land Speeders, racing to the last known location of the Imperial Guard forces.

What that latter force had already reported made for grim news. The cave complex to which Baldur had retreated was now nothing but a mass grave. Desiccated corpses, most with their heads taken for trophies, lay in heaps at the back of the tunnels. There were a number of ork dead, too, but not enough by half. It was clear that Baldur and the remnants of his forces had been backed into a corner and slaughtered to a man. They had been completely overwhelmed. How the orks must have revelled in all that killing!

Only the fact that he wore his helmet stopped Drakken from spitting on the ground in disgust. He hated the greenskins with a lethal passion. Throughout much of his life as a battle-brother, he had fought to purge Imperial outposts and trade routes of their savage kind, but year after year they would come back, making fresh incursions from frontier worlds on the periphery of the Loki Sector. It seemed an endless task. No matter how many one killed, no real headway was ever truly made. Success was measured in distance, in how far the alien hordes were kept from civilised space.

In two millennia, Rynn's World itself had known the footsteps of aliens only once, and not at all since the Crimson Fists had taken up residence there. In the subsequent years, a number of potentially devastating Waaaghs had been averted, defused by surgical strikes which had been masterfully conceived by Pedro Kantor. Drakken had earned great honours for his part in these, but the real glory belonged to the Chapter Master.

No wonder they call him the second coming of Pollux, Drakken thought as he scanned the shadows up ahead for traces of ork.

He had a deep and abiding respect for Kantor, though the bond of brotherhood was more tenuous between them than it was between the Chapter Master and Alessio Cortez. This wasn't something that bothered Drakken much. Friendship meant little to him, certainly far less than good solid leadership, as it should to any Astartes worth his salt.

He had no strong love of Cortez, that was for sure. The man was arrogant, opinionated, noisy and boorish, and his status as some kind of invincible hero of the Chapter consistently got under Drakken's skin.

It is the Blackwater thing, he thought to himself as he moved out from the corner of a sandstone hab and signalled his men to follow. The way they all stick-Scout-Sergeant Mishina's voice cut him off mid-thought.

"Brother-captain," said the Scout over the link. "This is Shadow One. I have movement at the objective."

Drakken's hand went up immediately, motioning for his men to move back into cover. "Details, Mishina."

"A convoy of ork light armour, brother-captain. It's moving along the main road towards the communications tower. The lead machines have already pulled up in the plaza out in front."

"Numbers?"

Mishina went quiet for a few seconds, then replied, "At least thirty vehicles that I can see, and dust clouds from more at the rear. If they wake up to our presence prematurely, my lord, we're going to have trouble. A lot of it."

Sergeant Werner and his party moved east at the base of the curtain wall, following the infrared splashes left by Scouts Vermian and Rogar, both of whom had been tasked with reconnoitring the route from the wall breach to the water purification plant.

So far, not a single bolt had been fired.

On a surgical strike like this, thought Werner, the longer it stays that way, the better.

He had to admire his 10th Company kinsmen. Every few blocks, with his visor's night-vision mode turning inky night into murky day, he would spot the crumpled bodies of ork sentries hidden in burned out doorways or stuffed between bullet-riddled barrels and crates.

In the shadows, nothing beat the quiet goodnight of a knife in the neck.

The Scouts were good. If they kept this up, Werner and his squads would get all the way to the purification plant without any of the alien filth raising the alarm. Once there, of course, any pretence at stealth would have to be abandoned. Things would become more overt. The melta charges would see to that. Once they were detonated, the whole damned planet would know that the Crimson Fists had come calling to dispense death and destruction in the Emperor's name. Werner expected a fierce firefight on the way out. The streets would fill up quickly with the bestial scum. But, once the Fists were beyond the wall again, it would be a simple matter of calling in the Thunderhawks for pickup and holding a defensive perimeter until they arrived.

Whatever happened after that was for pilots, gunners and Navigators to worry about. Werner didn't concern himself with things he couldn't influence. It wasn't his way.

He heard Drakken hailing him on the comm-link.

"Leo, respond."

"Here, my lord. Go ahead."

"Status?"

"About one kilometre out from our objective now. Scouts moving into sniping positions. Ork presence minimal so far, but I don't think it'll stay that way for long."

"You're not wrong," said Drakken. "The comms tower is crawling with greenskin filth. I'm afraid we have to alter the plan as a result."

Werner called his men to an immediate halt, and they went into overwatch, their bolter muzzles swinging up and around to cover every street corner, door and alleyway.

"I'm listening, brother-captain," said Werner.

"We've got ork light armour that just came in from the north. I've checked with Sergeant Solari. He is adamant that his speeders weren't spotted and neither were any of his men. They're back aboard their Thunderhawk now, waiting to offer us close support should we need it. Listen closely, Leo, I know we discussed a simultaneous strike, but our best hope of knocking out that communications tower now depends on you drawing some of the defenders away. I need your team to strike first, and to make as much damned noise as you can."

Inwardly, Werner cursed. The captain's logic was sound, of course, the reasoning faultless, but it meant dropping his men right in the heat of things. Ork light armour might look like worthless junk, but it could move fast, and, when they functioned properly, the greenskins' heavy weapons packed as hard a punch as anything in the Imperial arsenal. The narrow streets would protect his men for the most part, but they would have to cross several wide roads on their way back to the rendezvous point. That meant a dash over open ground, probably under intense fire.

It couldn't be helped. Orders from a brother-captain might just as well be orders from the Emperor Himself. They were to be obeyed no matter what. Werner was a Space Marine; he would walk straight into certain death if his superiors ordered it. How he died didn't bother him at all. It was how he lived that counted. "Leave it to us, my lord," he said. "I'll light the facility up so bright the damned orks will think the sun's come up early."

"Good. Make it happen, Leo," said Drakken. "I want to know the minute you're in position. Command, out."

Werner waved his Astartes on, and, with righteous murder on their minds, they closed in on their target.

Mishina was about as close as he wanted to get. There was little more he could do for Captain Drakken's party now, save cover them with sniper fire and keep them apprised of enemy movements. There was no more quiet clearance work to be done. That phase of the operation was over. After muttering a short prayer of gratitude to his deadly blade, he sheathed it for what he supposed would be the last time tonight. It had claimed the lives of sixteen of the oversized alien abominations.

Not a bad tally for a night's work, he told himself.

He wondered how many xenos his sniper rifle would claim once the shooting started. More than sixteen, he hoped.

The other Scout assigned to provide forward eyes and sniper cover for Drakken's team was a fairly fresh initiate by the name of Janus Kennon.

Brother Kennon was young, and Mishina had expressed concerns to Captain Icario that the inexperienced Scout needed more training before a critical deployment like this. But Kennon's innate skills had apparently marked him out for great things. In over a hundred years, no other initiate had come close to matching his scores on the practice range, even in thick simulated fog. Kennon's accuracy and targeting abilities bordered on the preternatural, and Mishina got the impression that Captain Icario saw a potential protege in the young Space Marine.

Kennon was currently crouching on the corner of a dust-covered rooftop about eight hundred metres to the north-west of Mishina's current spot, covering the ork defensive post on top of the comms tower from a western flanking position.

At least, that was where Mishina had told Kennon to go. Had it been anyone else, Mishina would have assumed his orders were being followed to the letter, but not so with Kennon. The boy was far too sure of himself. The captain's praise had gone to his head.

Mishina couldn't help himself. For a brief moment, he turned his goggles north-west and increased magnification.

He soon detected Kennon's heat signature... exactly where it was supposed to be.

Mishina felt the briefest flash of shame for doubting a fellow Crimson Fist.

Jealous, Ezra, he asked himself? Jealous of the boy's talent? You've no reason to doubt him. He went through the same psycho-indoctrination programmes you did. Trust in Captain Icario's choice.

These thoughts had barely filtered through to the front of Mishina's mind when Kennon's voice addressed him over the comm-link.

"Shadow Four to Shadow One. Can you hear me, sergeant?"

"I hear you, brother," said Mishina. "Speak."

"Sergeant, I'm not sure whether you can see this or not, but a monster of an ork just dismounted from some kind of truck in the middle of the plaza. He's climbing a stair on the west side of the building. It must be the greenskin leader. The beast is as broad as Brother Ulis!"

Mishina doubted that. Ulis was a Dreadnought, one of the Chapter's revered Old Ones, and about four metres across from shoulder to shoulder. The largest ork Mishina had ever seen in person had been almost three metres across. It had taken a direct hit from a Predator tank to slay that bastard.

Mishina squinted up ahead, but, from this angle, he couldn't see the creature Kennon was talking about. He was about to move to a neighbouring rooftop for a better angle when Kennon reported, "He's going up to the rooftop of the bunker. I have his ugly face right in the centre of my crosshairs, sergeant. Requesting immediate permission to take the shot."

"Request denied, brother," said Mishina. "Hold position while I-"

"I can take him out, sergeant," Kennon insisted. "He must be the leader. One kill-shot could put their entire force in disarray. Again, I strongly request permission to fire."

Mishina's words were as hard as bolts themselves. "You will not take the shot until Captain Drakken gives the order. Is that understood?"

Kennon was silent.

"I said is that understood, brother?"

Reluctantly, not bothering to mask the contempt and disappointment in his voice, the young Scout replied that it was. Mishina immediately contacted Captain Drakken and said, "Shadow Four reports that he has what he believes to be the ork leader in his crosshairs, captain. He is requesting permission to take the shot."

Drakken barely needed time to think about it.

"Negative, Shadow One. Authorisation denied. Sergeant Werner and his squads are preparing to assault the water purification facility as we speak. I want those orks drawn off before we strike the comms bunker. Is that absolutely clear?"

It was. If Brother Kennon took the shot-hit or miss-the orks at the comms bunker would deploy all their light armour against the most local, most immediate threat.

Mishina could understand Kennon's eagerness well enough. It was a shot he would like to take himself, a single squeeze of the trigger, one muffled cough from his weapon's muzzle that would garner the kind of glory and honour few brothers in 10th Company would ever have a chance to claim. To think that a single shot might defuse, or at the very least, greatly delay a potential Waaagh...

Not just a triumph for Kennon, thought Mishina, but something the entire company could be proud of. There would be decorations for everyone deployed here.

At the very back of his mind, a tiny voice said: Results come first. Let Kennon take the shot.

Mishina had heard that dangerous voice before. He expected to hear it again many times throughout his life. He responded to it now as he always did. He crushed it to nothing, just as he had been trained, just as his mind had been rigorously conditioned to do. He drowned it out with a silent litany of obligation.

Think of the Chapter, he told himself. Think of the primarch, of the Emperor and Terra.

None of these were best served by indulging one's sense of personal pride. A true Astartes was better than that.

There was a sudden brief transmission on the comm-link's mission channel. "Sergeant Werner's force is about to light up Objective Two," Drakken barked. "Brace yourselves!"

A sudden clap of thunder shook the rooftop under Mishina's feet, and a great flash of white light, supernova bright, lit the whole town from the direction of the south-eastern precinct. It was followed by three more in rapid succession, each shaking the entire town like the footfalls of a mighty Titan.

Mishina screwed his eyes shut and turned his head away from the direction of the blasts, anxious not to be temporarily blinded by the glare. Sergeant Werner's party had launched their attack on the water purification plant in spectacular style. Stealth protocols were no longer in effect.

When the sound of the melta explosions had dropped to a ringing in his ears, Mishina opened his eyes. From the buildings all around the comms bunker, a great cacophony of orkish grunts and roars could be heard, merging together with the revving of powerful, fume-spewing engines.

The sound of distant gunfire echoed from between the streets and alleys around the water purification plant. Mishina's supremely honed ears recognised the distinctive bark of bolters being fired from about ten kilometres away. There was an awful lot of fire being traded. He muttered a prayer to the Emperor for the safety of Sergeant Werner and his men. From the plaza in front of the comms bunker, the first of the ork bikes and buggies began to move off in the general direction of the gunfight, their engines growling and sputtering like mad animals.

That's it, you brainless muck-eaters, thought Mishina. Keep moving. Go and see what it's all about.

It was happening exactly as Captain Drakken had anticipated, and, for the first time since the ork vehicles had shown up, Mishina started to feel truly confident that everything would go according to plan.

That was when he heard Kennon on the comm-link again.

"The warlord is moving, sergeant. I can't wait any longer. I'm taking the shot!"

Mishina almost forgot himself. Scouts were habitually quiet individuals. Shouting tended to give one's position away. Even so, he almost yelled over the comm-link, "Hold your damned fire! That's a direct order. If you take that shot, upstart, I'll see you flayed alive, by Throne! Do I make myself cl-"

There was a brief burst of blue-green light from the direction of the comms bunker. Mishina felt his primary heart skip a beat. He knew instinctively what the flash meant. Kennon had taken the shot anyway. His magnified vision confirmed it when Kennon fired a second time, then a third. All of Kennon's rounds had been right on target, but they had detonated with brief, bright, harmless flashes on some kind of invisible energy shield.

Zooming in further, Mishina could see the shield-generating apparatus strapped to the monster's back. Ho sniper was going to fell that beast. Kennon had just given himself away for nothing.

The ork boss spun in Kennon's direction, took a great lungful of air, and bellowed out a battle cry that seemed to vibrate the foundations of the entire town.

Absently, Mishina registered that Kennon hadn't been exaggerating greatly about the creature's size. It was a formidable looking thing, the great bulk of its blocky apparatus only adding to the effect.

A half-second after this thought ran through his mind, bright light stabbed into Mishina's eyes. The orks on the roof had turned searchlights out into the night, and the Scout-Sergeant's night vision goggles hadn't been able to adjust to the sudden brightness quickly enough. Mishina threw a hand up over his face. Stubber and heavy weapons fire begin spitting out in all directions. Countless alien throats began calling out threats and challenges in what passed for their rough alien tongue.

Any chance of splitting up the greenskin force at the comms tower was now lost.

"Shadow One to Captain Drakken," said Mishina urgently.

"Don't bother, sergeant," snapped Captain Drakken on the other end of the link. The ink-dark streets where the ork searchlights couldn't penetrate now began to strobe with muzzle flashes as the battle-brothers of 3rd Company moved up, claiming the first of their kills early in the exchange. "If we live through this," continued a furious Drakken, "you can explain to the Chapter Council what in damnation just happened."

Mishina loosed a bitter curse and promised he would see Kennon strung up for this. Then he knocked his bolt-rifle's safety off, checked that there was a live round in the chamber, and scanned the streets below his position, sector by sector, eyes alert for anything that threatened to flank Drakken's men as they stormed towards their objective.

Gunfire from both sides rang out for hours on end.

The dry, dust-caked streets of Krugerport soon ran red.

"Astartes, fall back!" bellowed Drakken.

He wasn't sure they could hear him, wasn't sure the micro-vox circuitry in his gorget was sending them his voice. His helmet had been struck by some kind of greenskin plasma round that burned right through, crisping the flesh of his left cheek.

His visor had gone dead. He'd had to strip the ruined helm from his head in a hurry, enemy rounds rattling like hail on his armour while he was temporarily blinded. Now, with ork stubber-fire blazing all around him, shells ripping onto the hab walls on either side of the street, he had to shout his orders.