The engine drone forced his shout into a bellow. The captain's retainers voiced a reverberant war cry as one. It was a sound to stir Sicarius's Tala.s.sari blood.

None would ever eclipse the Second, they were preeminent amongst the Ultramarines. Even Agemman's First were looking over their heavy-armoured shoulders.

His wide eyes flashed like stars as he roared again. 'Victoris Ultra!'

The reply was in mid-repeat when the gauss-beam clipped them, shearing away a portion of drop pod. Part of Brother Argonan went with it, most of his right shoulder and a chunk of torso. The blood vacating his body in the high-velocity pressure release of the pod vented like red streamers through the breach.

'Apothecary,' said Sicarius, donning his helmet and nodding to the only one of the squad armoured in white.

Brother Venatio leaned over to the stricken Argonan, unclasping one of his grav restraints to do so. Situated alongside him, Veteran-Sergeant Daceus instinctively seized the Apothecary's cuira.s.s to steady him.

Punching a hole through Brother Argonan's gorget and chestplate with his reductor drill, Venatio quickly removed the sacred progenoids within and secured them in an ampoule-chamber mag-locked to his belt.

'Remember him,' Sicarius told his warriors. The wind had built to a shriek inside the compromised drop pod. Outside, visible only through the ragged trench in the hull, the world blurred like smeared paint. 'Avenge him,' the captain concluded.

His gaze flicked to a series of read-outs on the control console. Their trajectory was still sound. The metres to planetfall clicked past on electronic tumblers at a fearsome rate.

'Twenty-eight seconds and counting, High Suzerain,' Veteran-Sergeant Daceus announced, using one of Sicarius's many honorifics.

The physical testament to his many deeds was plain for all to see in the medals and laurels that bedecked his armour. Sicarius was a warrior born but he was also not one to shy from ostentation.

'Bolters and blades ready, sergeant,' he growled, gripping the hilt of the sword of Tala.s.sar. Tempest Blade was its name. Even Sicarius's weapons had laudations.

'Hot hands and ready swords!' barked Daceus to the rest.

Snap-slides from bolters being primed filled the noisy drop pod interior. Flames were tearing off the point where the gauss-beam had glanced them and ended Argonan's life. None aboard gave them notice. All eyes were on the embarkation hatch.

LIKE THE THUNDER-SMITE of a storm G.o.d, the drop pod touched down and sent impact cracks webbing across the surface of d.a.m.nos. It was one wound amongst many the planet had suffered. of a storm G.o.d, the drop pod touched down and sent impact cracks webbing across the surface of d.a.m.nos. It was one wound amongst many the planet had suffered.

A pneumatic pressure hiss preceded the exit ramp slamming down. Seconds later Sicarius was bounding through it, cape flaring, Guilliman's name on his lips.

He speared a necron warrior, half-cooked by the drop pod's incendiary flare. Another nearby had rapidly self-repaired and was advancing with automaton-like implacability. Sicarius pummelled its torso with a blast from his plasma pistol. Breaking into a run, he got close enough to behead it. The green bale-fires in its eyes guttered and died.

Behind him, the hard chank-rattle chank-rattle of bolters sounded as Daceus and the others opened up. Energy beams, viperous and emerald green, streaked through the smoke before Sicarius's retinal scanners could resolve a better view. A gauss-beam scudded over his pauldron, stripping it back to naked ceramite with the barest touch. of bolters sounded as Daceus and the others opened up. Energy beams, viperous and emerald green, streaked through the smoke before Sicarius's retinal scanners could resolve a better view. A gauss-beam scudded over his pauldron, stripping it back to naked ceramite with the barest touch.

The necrons' bale-fire eyes appeared in the gloom like dead stars. The few they'd destroyed around the drop pod were just part of the vanguard.

More were coming.

The Thanatos foothills loomed in the distance like bad omens. The drop pods had got them as close as they could.

The ground running up to the snow-crested mounds was over three kilometres of debris-choked mire. Fanged by ice shards and dotted with arctic sink-holes, it was treacherous.

Scipio Vorola.n.u.s ate up the metres eagerly, his 'Thunderbolts' keeping pace alongside him and in spread formation. He checked the dispersal on his retinal display. A series of ident-runes showed good separation and fire-arc discipline.

'Move!' he said into the comm-feed, spurring his warriors as one.

Through the smoke-fog and the dust palls from the sundered refinery complex, shapes were moving ahead of them. They strode, slow and purposeful. Whickering emerald gauss-beams preceded them.

A grunt of pain, an armoured silhouette crumpling to Scipio's extreme right signalled a hit. Brother Largo's rune went to amber as the tac-display in Scipio's helmet registered a serious injury.

Just a few more metres...

A long line of silver-grey, flecked with pieces of ceramic, opposed them. The necron fire was a relentless barrage now. Another Ultramarine battle-brother fell to its fury.

+Halt!+ Scipio was stunned into obedience by the figure running just ahead of him. The word resolved in his mind rather than his comm-feed, a psychic impulsion that could only be defied by one with sufficient will.

Varro Tigurius dropped into a crouch, gauss-beams flashing against a kine-shield the Chief Librarian had raised around him.

'Get to cover. Hunker down!' Scipio ordered, slamming behind a shattered wall in the gutted remains of the half-destroyed refinery.

The place was a grim mortuary, littered with the bodies of d.a.m.nosian labourers and indentured Imperial Guard troopers. There'd been a battle here, a hard-fought one that had ended badly for the human natives.

Scipio barely gave them a second glance. It had not always been so. Black Reach and the many hard years that followed had changed him.

Fifty metres of spar-studded, wire-drenched courtyard stood between the Ultramarines and the necron firing line. Tigurius had brought the s.p.a.ce Marines to a sudden stop behind a ragged barricade before the final charge.

Peering through the gauss-laced haze, Scipio engaged the comm-feed. 'Specialists to point, on Vorola.n.u.s.'

Brothers Cator and Brakkius moved up, crouch-running, a few seconds later. Scipio clapped Cator on his shoulder guard. 'Plasma and meltagun at either end, brothers.' Both nodded as one, taking position at the edges of the wall.

Chips of rockcrete and semi-flayed plasteel slivers forced Scipio to duck.

'What are we waiting for, brother-sergeant?' asked Naceon.

Scipio had his eyes on the courtyard there was more than merely war-churned earth beneath its shattered flagstones and didn't look back.

'For thunder and lightning.'

Telion had taught him when to wait and when to strike; the Master Scout's expert tutelage and influence, presently engaged in other war zones, would be missed on d.a.m.nos. Scipio gestured towards Tigurius, a couple of metres ahead of them. 'Watch and be ready.'

A coruscation of electricity suddenly wreathed the Librarian's ornate battle armour and he pressed one gauntleted palm to the ground. Instantly, the azure energy banding him leapt into the earth and ripples of psychic force went searching through the no-man's-land.

Like gruesome marionettes jerking to horrific un-life, the necron 'flayed ones' sprang from their ambuscade. They'd been buried just beneath the surface of the earth, poised to attack the Ultramarines as they charged. A minefield of sorts, but one littered with an animate and deadly enemy rather than merely explosives.

Two of the ghoulish creatures juddered and expired from Tigurius's lightning arcs, the flayed human skin draped across them like cloaks and cowls burning off in a noisome flesh-smoke. Several more came on, having lost the element of surprise, but slashing with razored finger-talons anyway.

Scipio roared, 's.p.a.ce Marines unleash death!' The flare of his bolt pistol framed the hard edges of his crimson battle helm in jagged monochrome.

A plasma bolt took one of the flayed ones in the chest, annihilating mechanical organs and processors. The necron collapsed in a heap, quivered and then phased from existence as if it had never even been there.

Another sloughed away under the beam of Cator's meltagun. Despite the rapid self-repair engines of the necron's advanced mechorganics, the damage was critical and it too was teleported away.

Naceon had leapt the barricade, full-auto adding thrust to his battle cry. 'Ultramar and the Thunderbolts!'

Impact sparks riddled the onrushing necron, jarring but not stopping it. Naceon saw the danger, bringing his bolter's combat-bayonet low to block, but was too late. Finding the weak points of Naceon's armour joints, the flayed one punched several fatal wounds into the Ultramarine before slicing open his gorget.

Naceon's head rolled like a dud-grenade into the dirt.

'Guilliman and the Temple of Hera!' Scipio invoked a blessing as he cut into the metal clavicle of Naceon's killer. The chainsword bit deep and jammed.

An expressionless silver rictus, stained with blood, reared towards the sergeant. A bolt pistol burst took off the necron's left claw-hand before it could slash him. Scipio then b.u.t.ted it, snapping the creature's neck so its head lolled at an unnatural angle. He thumped his chainsword's activation stud again, muttering a quick litany to the machine-spirit within, and it churned to life. Dropping his pistol, Scipio drove the blade two-handed clean through the flayed one's body and out the other side. As he stepped back, ready to strike again, the two mechanical halves slid diagonally and fell in opposite directions.

Scipio had barely recovered when a second necron was advancing upon him. Without his bolt pistol, he adopted a rapid defensive stance.

The flayed one exploded before it could engage, sparks and machine-parts flying like frag.

A pair of hard eyes, glowing with power and set in an ice-carved face, regarded him.

+Take up your arms+ Scipio gave a curt nod of thanks to Tigurius, his soul ever so slightly chilled by the Librarian's gaze, and retrieved his bolt pistol.

There was little time. The flayed ones were vanquished, Brakkius and Cator were finishing the wounded at close range, but the line of gauss-flayers remained.

Scipio waved his squad forwards after Tigurius. Catching the Librarian's battle-signal on his retinal display, he opened up the comm-feed again.

'Squad Strabo. Bring fire from heaven.'

Hidden behind the wreckage of a refinery tower, ten bulky figures arrowed into the air on plumes of fire. The roar of their ascent jets made the necrons look skywards. Half of the creatures switched their aim, but the gauss-stream was too late and not nearly enough.

Hit from the front by Tigurius and Squad Vorola.n.u.s, and from above by a.s.sault Squad Strabo, the necron firing line disintegrated leaving the Ultramarines the victors.

In the aftermath, Tigurius eyed the distant Thanatos foothills. The forbidding arc of necron pylons and the long noses of gauss siege cannon blighted the horizon line. Sustained particle whips and focussed energy beams bombarded the city of Kellenport relentlessly.

'They will be well guarded,' counselled the Librarian, without acknowledging Scipio's presence but answering his question before he'd even asked it.

'We'll need a way to breach their defences,' Scipio replied. Behind him, his squad and that of Sergeant Strabo secured the battle-site.

'A dagger rather than a hammer,' said Tigurius. 'But not one wielded by the hand of a s.p.a.ce Marine,' he added cryptically, turning his attention onto the sergeant. 'Does something trouble you, Brother Vorola.n.u.s?'

Scipio shifted uncomfortably in his armour, wishing he hadn't removed his battle helm.

'No, my lord,' he answered, truthfully. Nothing, except your psyker's interrogation. Nothing, except your psyker's interrogation.

Tigurius smiled and it was, at once, a deeply incongruous and unsettling gesture.

'Perhaps it should be,' he said, and left Scipio to plan the next stage of the a.s.sault.

Brother Orin was at the sergeant's shoulder before he could reply.

'We've secured the battle-site, my lord.'

Scipio re-donned his helmet. 'Retrieve Naceon's body and replenish ammo. We advance,' he replied, left to wonder at Tigurius's meaning.

They saw it as a star-fall from the heavens. All who manned the Kellenport walls, their tired bodies and weary souls crying out for succour, knew it for what it was. No mere meteor shower, although celestially that was how it first appeared.

No, it was salvation. Or so they all hoped.

Adanar Sonne surveyed the dispositions of his troops on the city battlements. They'd lost much of the outer ground beyond the core. Several of the defensive walls had fallen, those ringing the heart of the city. Ferrocrete, armaplas and adamant.i.te had been made a mockery of by the necron flayer technology. The horrors it could inflict upon flesh and blood were even worse to behold.

The necrons had some kind of device, a phasic-generator the tech-priests had postulated. It had allowed the bulk of their awakened troops to teleport directly behind the Ark Guard's defensive positions. Fortified walls, bunkers, fields of razor-wire they were no impediment to the mechanised advance of the necrontyr. Isolated pockets of resistance in these outer zones, 'the wasteland' as it had come to be known, fought still. Their lasgun reports diminished to the same ratio that the emerald flash of gauss-flayers increased. Soon they'd be silent and the metal host would come for the survivors cowering within the city's core.

Adanar could make out the remains of the lord governor's Proteus bunker in the snow-choked battlefield. How they had managed to extract him was unknown, but he was rumoured to be alive, albeit comatose and in critical condition. The body of Tarn, the former commander of the Ark Guard, lay amongst the corpse-tide. Their icy graves were barely settled when the necrons had begun marching over them. Tarn had been a brave man, and honourable. His rearguard action had allowed Adanar to lead the bulk of the troops behind the inner walls of Kellenport, all the way back to the western gate and the Courtyard of Thor. It was only delaying the inevitable but it gave them all a few more hours to contemplate their fate.

A sea of metal horrors extended all the way to the horizon line, their bale-fire eyes adding to the chill colonising the hearts of the men. In the distance, arcane pyramids, newly unearthed, hove into position. Every burst of infernal light from their cores seemed to bring fresh monsters into the fray. This legion of death would not be denied, but despite his fatalism Adanar would not yield without making a fight of it.

Behind him, the dense thud of uber uber-mortars and long-cannons could be heard. Their reports, though loud and earth-shaking, had started to pale in comparison to the necron barrage. Slowly, they were being drowned out.

We are all drowning... in our fear. Death, slow and terrible, has come to my world and there is no escaping it.

Adanar flinched reflexively as another of the artillery stations was sundered. A vast cloud of smoke belched across the Ark Guard platoons waiting in the Courtyard of Thor to fill the inevitable breaches in the wall.

Lasgun fire rained from the battlements, a steady shriek of energy that the necrons waded through as if it were nothing but an insect swarm. Shielded by bunkers, hunched below plascrete bulwarks or hastily erected barricades, the Ark Guard were holding out. For now, at least.

Rotational guns las and autocannon, heavy stubber and bolter slaved to a rail network, spat muzzle flashes into an alien darkness. Not only had the necrontyr brought a comms shroud to blanket the regions before them, they had summoned an unnatural shadow too. Running hot on its tracks, Adanar watched a team wheel an autocannon in position only for it to be vaporised by necron heavy fire before it could shoot. Ammo buckets attached to the platform went up in a fiery cascade, shredding the crew and several more Ark Guard nearby. Below, platoon sergeants saw the hole and ordered more men into the gap.

'Sir.'

Adanar was dimly aware of someone addressing him.

The voice became insistent. 'Commander Sonne.'

He glared at Besseque, his aide. The man was shorter by a head than Adanar and had his cold-coat buckled all the way to his chin. His goggles were perched on his hooded head and covered in rime-frost. Shivering, Besseque saluted before going on.

'Acting-Governor Rancourt has just been on the vox. He wants a battalion sent to the capitolis administratum. He says if the area outside the walls can be cleared then an extraction from the Crastia Shipyards will be possible.'

Adanar fought the urge to strike Besseque, but it wasn't the messenger's fault. He cursed the day that Rancourt returned from the ice wastes alive.

'Request denied,' he answered flatly.

The capitolis administratum was an isolated bastion out in the wasteland. From his vantage point on the wall Adanar could discern its troops fighting hard against necron aggressors. Somewhere inside, Zeph Rancourt had secreted himself, deep within the governmental chambers. Perhaps that was where they'd moved Arxis to, as well.

Mercifully, only the lesser necron constructs were harrying the bastion's high walls. Wave after wave of scarab creatures a.s.sailed the Ark Guard platoon and the capitolis storm troopers charged with its defence, but they were holding. The necron war cell diverting its attention in the bastion's direction suggested that situation was about to change.

'It's a suicide mission,' Adanar muttered, and brought his attention back to the broader killing-fields.

'What should I tell the acting governor, sir, he won't'

'Tell him to feg off for all I care, Besseque! There are no more men, no spare battalions. It's ov' Adanar caught himself before he went too far. He lowered his voice, just for the aide. 'It's over, Corporal Besseque. This world is our tomb.'

Slowly, Besseque nodded and backed away. The hollow anger in Adanar's eyes was reflected in the corporal's fearful pupils.

Adanar didn't watch him go. He returned to observe the a.s.sault. Hard to see, as a sudden snowfall shawled the more distant defensive walls, but a line of shattered tanks punctuated the outer marker of the city where they'd first tried to meet the necrons. The enemy had annihilated the armour columns with perfunctory ease and then used their swarm creatures to gut the machine innards of the Imperial tanks and convert them into more necron warrior constructs. How foolish the humans had been to think anything other than hiding behind the walls of the capital would extend their lives, albeit fractionally.

'How much of a fool,' whispered Adanar. He rubbed his figure over a locket-charm chained to his wrist. There were two picts nestled inside, memories of the wife and child now slumbering beneath the d.a.m.nos earth like so many others.

'I'm sorry,' he said, ghosting the air with his breath, the din of the battle all around him receding. He felt the scar on his face, the ache in his shoulder and back from when he'd tried to save them. When the hab had collapsed and... and...

Adanar shut his eyes.