'h.e.l.l-kite!' Two more sh.e.l.ls put down the invisible aggressor still lodged below, trying to emerge; a swing of the chainblade ripped open the cabling and servos around the other necron's torso. It fell back, stunned, but was self-repairing.

'Brother!'

Largo had his own problems. Three more flayed ones had pulled themselves free of the ground, like corpses come back to life to revenge themselves on the living. Largo sent tightly controlled bolter bursts into their ranks in an attempt to slow them but ammo was low and any damage caused wasn't severe enough to take out the necrons permanently.

The fight in the gorge was fading too. The intensity of fire from Retiarii Retiarii was lessening, which Scipio took to be a bad sign. Brakkius could be dead. When the raiders reached the edge of the gorge, he surely would be. was lessening, which Scipio took to be a bad sign. Brakkius could be dead. When the raiders reached the edge of the gorge, he surely would be.

Time was slowing. Fate had caught up with Scipio Vorola.n.u.s. It had witnessed his reckless abandon, his selfish fatalism that had grown like a cancer in the years since Orad's death and decided to make him pay for it.

Scipio railed. 'This is not the end!'

The flayed one he'd maimed was getting up. He swung the bolt pistol around to finish it but the trigger chanked chanked empty. Powerless to intervene, still half buried under the ice where his spare clips were pinned against his belt, he watched. empty. Powerless to intervene, still half buried under the ice where his spare clips were pinned against his belt, he watched.

Metal flowed like oil, running on the surface of the tundra. Wires and cables reattached themselves, weaving viperously across the ground, re-establishing function to vital systems. The spinal column severed by Scipio's blow caterpillared towards the half-wrecked torso, dragging abdomen and legs with it. Metallic fusion occurred quickly and vigorously only the necron's cape of skin showed any lasting damage.

'Breath of Guilliman,' he spat through clenched teeth, looking heavenwards for divine intervention. 'Can't they just stay dead?'

Largo had run out of room and ammunition. He hauled Scipio from the ambush-pit and onto his feet. Back-to-back, they faced six flayed ones, a match for any warrior of the Second. The raiders had their own mission and closed on whatever was left of Brakkius and Retiarii Retiarii.

Scipio slammed his last clip into his bolt pistol; Largo let his spent bolter sag on its strap and drew a combat blade.

'If I had known, Largo...'

'We would have still followed you, brother-sergeant. Only in death.'

Scipio nodded grimly. 'Only in death.'

A smoke contrail foomed foomed across the Ultramarines' eye-line, making them turn. It lit up the closest flayed one in an incendiary burst, tearing the creature into fragments. A pair of grenades followed in its wake. They emitted a low hum before attaching magnetically to a second necron. The explosion was hot and deafening. Frag showered the s.p.a.ce Marines' armour. Disregarding this new element to the skirmish for now, Scipio and Largo broke apart and were about to engage the enemy when a bola whipped around a mechanoid's neck and took off its head in the resulting firestorm. across the Ultramarines' eye-line, making them turn. It lit up the closest flayed one in an incendiary burst, tearing the creature into fragments. A pair of grenades followed in its wake. They emitted a low hum before attaching magnetically to a second necron. The explosion was hot and deafening. Frag showered the s.p.a.ce Marines' armour. Disregarding this new element to the skirmish for now, Scipio and Largo broke apart and were about to engage the enemy when a bola whipped around a mechanoid's neck and took off its head in the resulting firestorm.

Three necrons phased out in under a minute. The raiders were turning, reacting to the change in engagement dynamics. Three las-beams pinned one, shredding leg joints and the chamber on its gauss-flayer; a thrown axe embedded in a second. Laced with explosives, it was blasted apart like the flayed ones.

Sensing the swing in their favour, Scipio cut down another mechanoid with Largo applying the killing stroke with his combat blade. The two raiders and flayed ones that remained, their forces so brutally punished, phased out.

In their wake, Scipio observed their saviours. His enhanced eyesight picked out their shadows in the snow-kissed crags above. They wore ice camouflage and had powder beneath their eyes. Even their guns were swathed in bleached-white rags and painted to blend in with their surroundings.

'Show yourselves,' Scipio addressed the half-darkness. 'In the name of the Emperor's Adeptus Astartes.'

Slowly, the hunters, or whoever they were, came down from their vantage points. They were well-armed. Scipio saw a tube launcher, heavy-gauge lascarbines, grenade lanyards and several improvised explosives amongst their battlegear. Every one of them carried an ice-pick too. It was this, and not an axe, that been utilised earlier.

As they emerged into the light at last, though it was a fuliginous twilight that shadowed the gorge and the plateau at its summit now, a band of grizzled men were revealed standing amongst the Ultramarines. Scarred and as hard as the permafrost beneath their feet, Scipio knew guerrilla fighters when he saw them.

He nodded to the one who looked like their leader. A thick beard covered the lower half of his face and there were strange tattoos marking his cheeks and forehead. He wore several ragged scarves and his nose, ears and around the eyes were red with overexposure to the cold. Bandages, several layers thick, served as gloves. A tattered cloak that might once have been a storm coat fluttered on a solemn breeze.

Though Scipio towered over the man, he didn't flinch or appear intimidated.

He looked down, extending a hand. 'We are in your debt.'

Besides taking a firmer grip on his lascarbine, the man didn't respond.

'The trap wasn't meant for you,' said a confident voice from higher up in the crags. It was a woman, moving slowly but expertly through the rocks. She was attired like the others but Scipio noticed a ribbed bodyglove beneath her scarves and cloaks. It reminded him of some kind of environment suit, albeit non-functional. Reddish hair, dried out and rough with the cold, peeked from beneath a furred hat. A pair of goggles, their lenses tinged a pinkish hue, hung around her neck.

Piercing jade eyes appraised the Ultramarine, taking in the curves of his armour, his sheer size and power, as she approached him.

'They're after me.' Stopping a few metres away from Scipio, she spread her arms wide. 'All of us.'

Pointing to the obelisk, she added, 'Communication tower, Emperor knows how it works. The Herald uses it to speak to us.'

Scipio frowned. 'Herald?' He recalled Tigurius's traumatic connection with a creature of the same name.

'He is their voice,' she explained. 'Don't see many towers this far out. Must be expanding.' The woman came closer, deciding she could trust the warrior, and held out her hand. 'Jynn Evvers.'

Scipio took it out of politeness, being careful not to crush her delicate fingers, and was surprised to feel some iron there. 'You're hunting them.'

'Why do you think they want to catch us? Got close too until you Angels arrived from on high.' She turned in profile, revealing a string of the self-same tattoos down her neck as on the bearded man. They weaved like a strand of chromosomes. 'This is my crew: Densk, Farge, Makker...'

The names were unimportant to Scipio, though this Jynn related all eighteen of them. Each man and woman nodded, smiled or returned grim indifference to the Ultramarine sergeant. Densk was the bearded one. He later discovered the man had no tongue he'd lost it due to frostbite. He also later found out that there had once been more of them... lots more.

'We should move,' she concluded at the end of the introductions. 'The metal-heads will be back soon.'

Scipio exchanged a glance with Largo this must be the guerrilla's term for the necrons. Out the corner of his eye, he noticed Brakkius emerging from the gorge. He was limping. Herdantes cradled a wounded arm. Between them they dragged Renatus.

Largo went to go to them when Scipio placed a hand on his shoulder. 'Find Ortus,' he murmured.

'Captain Evvers!' One of the guerrillas, a woman called Sia, was watching the perimeter. Her warning was met by the priming of lascarbines and an immediate dispersal of the human forces amongst the crags.

Scipio was mildly impressed he'd seen squads of storm troopers that were only a little better disciplined. He didn't move, though. An auspex chime revealed the ident.i.ty of the new arrivals to him.

'Stand down,' he said, seeing Venetores Venetores led by Cator run into view. 'They're with me.' led by Cator run into view. 'They're with me.'

The guerrilla fighters eased off but only when Evvers gave the signal. Scipio's opinion of them improved further. He surrept.i.tiously battle-signed to Cator that the humans were allies. Venetores Venetores were back amongst the others in short order after that. were back amongst the others in short order after that.

'I'm sorry, brother-sergeant,' said Cator, speaking for his combat squad. 'Doubling back cost us a lot of time.'

Scipio waved away his contrition. 'I should have waited, brother. And now...' He gestured to the carnage that had hurt the Thunderbolts.

'What happened?'

Brakkius and the rest of Retiarii Retiarii joined them. joined them.

'We were ambushed,' said Scipio. 'In the gorge and up here.'

Largo returned but shook his head when he met his sergeant's gaze. Ortus was gone.

'Venatio is back with Captain Sicarius. His legacy is lost to us,' he said.

Scipio gritted his teeth, not liking the options. 'We can't get him back across the mountains.'

Largo was shaking his head again. 'It doesn't matter. There's nothing left of him.'

Now Scipio made a fist. He was trying hard to rein in his anger. He turned to the woman, Evvers.

'How close is your camp to here?'

'Not far.'

'Do you have medical supplies?'

'Some.' She looked worried, as perturbed about unfolding events as Scipio was.

'Take us there.'

Largo put a hand on Scipio's vambrace. His eyes counselled caution.

'What choice do we have? What else would you have me do, Largo?'

He let it go, but wasn't quite done. 'What about the mission?'

'Without a way through the mountains, there is no mission. Ortus is dead already, so too Naceon.' Scipio looked to Brakkius and his men. 'I won't lose another. Not senselessly, not like this.'

Largo nodded.

'So, your camp.' Scipio asked Evvers. 'Where is it?'

In the end, Jynn had no choice. She didn't want to bring the s.p.a.ce Marines to the encampment, for one thing their presence would attract the metal-heads, but how could she refuse? It had been a close call whether to intervene on the Ultramarines' behalf, and as they wended through the mountains a part of her had begun to regret that decision.

Of course, the superhuman warriors would make excellent protectors but the humans had survived so far without them and Jynn had no desire to change that, plus she couldn't be sure that protection was the s.p.a.ce Marines' primary objective. They were death incarnate and being close to such beings would only invite the very spectre of mortality into their ranks.

As they climbed higher, up the steep ice-daggered slopes and brittle crags thick with snow, she wondered about their leader. From listening in on the s.p.a.ce Marines' hushed exchanges, she gathered his name was Scipio and he was a sergeant. Jynn knew about as much as most Imperial citizens did about s.p.a.ce Marines, which was precious little. To her, they were warriors of myth, Angels sent on wings of fire and wielding fists of thunder and lightning.

Such impressions were romanticised, of course, little more than cultural extrapolations from tapestries, statues and galleria. The truth was there before her. These were super-men, for sure, but they were fallible and could be killed; they weren't the untouchable immortals that some claimed them to be. Jynn would have been in awe of them, she felt, if her spirit had not been so embittered by the war.

The memory of Korve, her long-dead husband, came into her mind as they crested another high and the drifts thickened. What started out as a light dappling of snow upon her shoulder and head became a deluge that swathed Jynn's entire body. She slipped on a patch of ice and nearly fell. Reaching out, she braced herself on a rocky spur that felt smooth to the touch and realised it was Scipio.

'Be careful, Captain Evvers,' he warned, setting her upright again.

She nodded a curt thanks. 'It's Jynn,' she said. 'My name, I mean. It doesn't seem right that an Angel of the Emperor should call me "captain". It doesn't seem right that anyone should.'

'You carry the rank well... Jynn Jynn.'

She prodded the Ultramarine's plastron. 'And you are Scipio?'

Scipio looked down at her pointing finger, debating what to do about it. In the end he merely answered the question. 'I am Brother-Sergeant Vorola.n.u.s, yes, but you may call me Scipio. You very probably saved my life and that of my squad, so you've earned the right.'

She snorted derisively, echoing, 'Earned the right, eh? Come on,' she turned and moved on. 'We're close.'

They reached the encampment in a few more minutes. It was high up and well shielded from the necrons' attention. The guerrillas must have had engineers and technicians amongst their group, for they'd erected bafflers to thwart the mechanoids' sensors.

Scipio counted six more men at the camp; one was a medic, the other looked like the individual responsible for the sensor jamming array.

Largo appeared at his sergeant's shoulder and spoke in a low voice, 'Our comm-feed is down, should we...?' he indicated the bafflers; slim, f.l.a.n.g.ed antennae jabbed into the ground like a spear. Looking at them, Scipio realised the entire encampment, even its rough tents and boxy generators, was portable. He wondered how many times the guerrillas had been forced to move since the occupation and how long it had taken them to realise they needed to.

'No,' he held up his hand, flat with the palm down, 'leave it. The comm-feed is no use to us out here, anyway.'

They followed Jynn Evvers, the guerrillas bleeding off from the main group to talk with their comrades and help explain why cobalt-blue Angels were in their midst. Scipio ignored their awed glances. Only the medic seemed unmoved.

'Medical tent,' Jynn supplied as they pa.s.sed it.

Scipio gestured for Brakkius and the injured to peel off and get some attention. He held Brakkius's forearm as he was leaving and looked to Renatus. 'How bad is he?'

'Sus-an membrane coma. Only Venatio can bring him out of it.'

'Get him inside and see what can be done for his wounds.'

Brakkius tried to mask his shock. 'We're leaving him?'

'Better that than drag him through the mountains. He's safer with the humans. We come back for him, brother.'

Satisfied that Brakkius understood, Scipio let him go and caught up to Largo who was waiting a little way ahead. Cator, Garrik and Auris had stayed behind to watch the entrance. The humans had sentries but they were not s.p.a.ce Marines and Scipio trusted his Thunderbolts above all others.

Defensively, the guerrilla camp left a lot to be desired, amounting to little more than a few cl.u.s.tered tents, some razor-wire barricades and a handful of tripod-mounted heavy stubbers. Not enough to seriously deter a necron attack but then he supposed that was why they had the bafflers. It was meant as a place of shelter, somewhere to regroup and rest, not a fortress.

'In here,' said Jynn, without looking back.

Scipio left Largo outside. He was alone with the female guerrilla leader in what he a.s.sumed was her operational base. There were hanging charts and maps, a simple sleeping bag in one corner and a butane lamp kit turned off in the centre of the s.p.a.ce. Low burning lumen rods dangled from the tent's internal guy ropes and provided the only light source. The lowing breeze that had started to pick up nudged the rods. As the shadows moved, more makeshift bomb and grenade combinations were revealed here and there. Someone had set up an improvised table and there were more maps and charts on it.

'Found a lot of patrols on our forays inland,' Jynn explained. She turned on the lamp kit and rubbed her hands next to the warmth. She looked over her shoulder at Scipio. 'You generate a lot of heat, don't you?'

The Ultramarine shrugged, as much as he could whilst wearing full power armour. He knew she was right but heat or cold was of no concern to one such as him.

'We could have used some of your generators in the early days.' She started to unbuckle her kit and peel off the bodyglove. 'Certainly makes doing this a lot easier.'

Jynn had her naked back to him as she changed out of the sodden kit into something dry. 'Good thing about having fewer mouths to feed,' she said ruefully. 'It means there's plenty of extra rags to go around too.'

The tattoos on her neck went down her shoulder and across her back, all the way to the base of her spine. Despite her nakedness, Scipio didn't avert his gaze. Jynn seemed unconcerned about it.

She called. 'Densk!'

The bearded one from earlier came in, silent on account of his missing tongue. He stalled a little when he saw the s.p.a.ce Marine but moved around him to Jynn's side.

'Lamp's hot,' she said. 'Three marks.'

There was a metal p.r.o.ng next to the lamp. Densk took it and proceeded to burn the three marks Jynn had requested. To her credit, she barely flinched.

When he was done, Densk dabbed some gauze with counter-septic on the wounds and left the tent just as he'd arrived.

'Those scars,' Scipio ventured when Densk had gone. 'What do they represent?'

She arched her neck to look, touching one of the higher tattoos. 'Kill-marks,' she said. 'One for each metal-head I've ganked. Everyone alive in this camp has them.'