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The Chaos fleet did not slow, alter course, or display any sign of strategy other than a brutal directness. They were approaching Avalus from the nightside, which, by accident or design, allowed them to head straight for Xerxe. The capital was protected by two Gaugamela-class star forts locked in geostationary orbit above it, but they were in no way sufficient to fight off a force of that magnitude. Crude though the assault was, it gave us two bleak options: to hold position and meet their force head-on; or to evade their superior strength, but thereby let them have a free run at the capital city.

I had taken part in such planetary assaults before, as of course had the Lion. We both knew the devastation that would ensue if the traitors were allowed to make it that far. They might not be a Space Marine Legion, with the discipline and equipment we had at the height of the Great Crusade, but the foul powers they worshipped could make them just as destructive, and even more indiscriminate. Our options were an illusion; there was only one choice the Lion could make.

The fleet drew up into a battle order of three spheres, each one centred around two of our capital ships, with the planet and the star forts at our backs. The Lunar Knightwas central, along with the Dominator class Adamantine Will; the starboard wing was taken by the two Lunar classes Lady Varinand Peregrine, and the port wing anchored by the Dictator class Righteous Wrathand the Gothic class Traitor’s Bane. We were spread out across a wider front than the close-knit Chaos fleet, with our wings advanced, in order to do as much damage as we could from both sides, but had sacrificed height for width. The traitors, in contrast, were a loosely spherical block, smaller escorts surrounding the capital ships in an ugly fist which could easily punch through our middle

‘Captain Seryan,’ the Lion said into the vox. ‘Make your presence known.’

Void combat can take place over huge distances. Ships fire torpedoes to disrupt their enemies’ movements as much as they seek to land significant strikes with them. Weapons batteries fire over hundreds of miles, and even the supra-focused energy blasts of lances can be unleashed when an enemy ship is a mere speck that must be targeted by auspex. However, some armaments stretched the ranges still farther.

The nova cannon on the Adamantine Willpulsed into action, and the distant spark of an explosion flowered instantaneously in the midst of the ?enemy fleet. Nova cannons fired their enormous projectiles at almost ?the speed of light, and far outranged any other conventional weapon. It?

‘Adamantine Will, continue firing!’ the Lion ordered. ‘Priority targets. I want as much damage to their largest vessels as possible before we start exchanging in earnest. All other ships, let us corral them ?– concentrate torpedo fire on these vectors.’ He highlighted sections of the hololith to be broadcast to the other captains, although I heard a muffled curse from him as the display refused to obey him momentarily. The Lion had accepted that the technology on a planet recly unequipped with such munitions, focusing instead on a higher concentration of weapons batteries and lances. Of course, we could not cover all areas with our barrages, but even that meant our enemies’ next movements were more predictable. We could squeeze them into certain lanes of fire that would concentrate them for our other weapons, and leave ourselves less vulnerable to theirs.

‘Fire from the Furious class, reading as Lord of Dominion,’ I reported, as alerts flashed up.

‘We are surely still too distant!’ Admiral Derrigan said, although I could hear the uncertainty in his voice. However, this was not the fear of a weak-willed man, but the understandable alarm of a warrior who well knew that the forces of the Ruinous Powers could produce horrendous surprises.

‘They appear to be firing at their own ships,’ I said, our sensors picking up the telltale flares and debris showers. It was tempting to find such infighting reassuring, but much like the admiral, I dise. A navigation plan appeared on the bridge of every capital ship and escort aside from the Adamantine Will, plunging into the gaps in what passed for our enemy’s formation.

It was aggressive and direct, and unpredictable. Faced with a larger force intent on closing with us, most of our capital ships should have presented their flanks to the enemy and prepared broadsides. We would have suffered more hits, thanks to our side-on profile, but when the enemy closed we would, if we had sufficient craft left, have been able to match them gun for gun; at least until they drew abeam, at which point their flank weapons would have come into play.

Instead, the Lion had us advance. I must admit that I switched my glances between the auspex and the viewing ports frequently, expecting at any moment to see the flare of our void shields failing, followed immediately by the rapidly expanding shape of a warhead or the instantaneous brightness of a lance beam which would spell my death, but it appeared that our tactic had caught the enemy off guard. Having previously been faced with a passive defence that kept its distance, they were unprepared for this new response, and their guns were overshooting us.

‘All crew, brace!’ Admiral Derrigan bellowed, as the Lunar Knight’s powerful engines began to carry us abeam of the first Chaos vessels. ‘Batteries and lances fire at will, dorsal lance concentrate fire to starboard!’

The high and low torpedo volleys the Lion had ordered had flattened the shape of the Chaos fleet, forcing their ships to bunch up to avoid the munitions’ flight paths. Now we thrust ourselves into their midst, and while we had targets on both sides, most enemy ships would only be able to use their weapons on one flank lest they hit an ally, which was now confounding their firing solutions. In fact, some would be unable to draw a bead on our ships at all. In terms of minimising what was never going to have been less than an extremely punishing exchange for us, it was the best we could hope for.

‘Righteous Wrathreports Starhawk bombers are away!’ the vox-officer called. Those tiny attack craft punched above their weight when delivering their payloads to capital ships, and would menace any enemy cruiser unable to defend itself properly. Now, however, we were coming into the angle to fire upon our enemies, which meant, of course, that they could fire upon us in turn.

The Lunar Knightshuddered and slowed as it opened fire. The Lion had instructed us to move directly between two Slaughter-class vessels, the Mercilessand the Fearless, which if anything outgunned us, and the darkness of the void lit up as their brutal armaments began to test our shields. In turn, I saw explosions from our weapons along their flanks, and the pulsing brightness of our lances attempting to pierce their shields and cut deep into their hulls.

Warning klaxons blared as the ship’s systems registered the punishment it was taking, an electronic hooting ruthlessly silenced by Admiral Derrigan as he continued barking orders and receiving a stream of updates from the bridge crew: power levels, shield levels, remaining armaments…

‘Shields failing!’ someone shouted.

‘Dive!’ the Lion bellowed.

A battle cruiser the size of the Lunar Knightis not built for quick manoeuvring, but the crew was spurredto new efforts by the presence of the Lion, and our prow began to tilt downwards. The Slaughters were slow to react, and as we began to sink beneath the plane of our previous exchange, some of their fire flew above our dorsal spine and hit each other. The Merciless, to our starboard, had taken the brunt of our fire thanks to the contribution of our dorsal lance, and these shots from its sister ship knocked out its last void shields.

‘Roll to port, maintain starboard fire!’ the Lion ordered. The vessel began to obey him, and our starboard weapons raked the belly of the Merciless, but in doing so we took our port weapons beyond the angle of elevation at which they could hit the Fearless, which was now starting to roll in turn in order to pursue us with its batteries before we passed to aft and the exchange was over. I held my breath, waiting to see if the Lion’s gambit had worked.

A trio of Dauntless-class light cruisers swept in to take advantage of the now unshielded Merciless, and cut it to pieces with their disproportionately powerful forward lance armaments, although the Mercilesstook one of them with it. However, that was not the true gamble. That came up when, just as its guns began to clip us once more, the Fearlesswas torn apart in an eruption of sheared metal and oxygen fire.

?

‘There he is,’ the Lion said, a predator’s smile on his face.

Beyond the wreckage of the Slaughter-class cruiser was the hulking shape of the Lord of Dominion, its port weapons blazing. Its captain, caught up in bloodlust and infuriated by the fact that his own ships on either side were preventing him from engaging any of ours thanks to the Lion’s carefully planned attack routes, had taken matters into his own hands and simply elim-inated what his violence-obsessed brain viewed to be a problem.

‘My lord, how could you know the traitor would turn on his own forces?’ Admiral Derrigan demanded.

‘You never met Angron, did you?’ the Lion murmured absent-mindedly. I expected Derrigan to blanch, or make the sign of the aquila and call on the Emperor for deliverance, but he simply looked blank. Even four centuries after returning to the galaxy, I still sometimes forgot how little the Imperium’s citizens knew of their own history, let alone those forces that sought to destroy them.

However, now we had a new problem. The sheer weight of fire from the Lord of Dominionwas punching through the remains of the Fearless, and beginning to rake us. We had barely survived our exchanges with the two Slaughter-class vessels; the Furious-class grand cruiser would annihilate us in a straight fight.

‘Engines to full!’ the Lion ordered, and the Lunar Knightresponded, accelerating away from the engagement. However, it was not quick enough.

‘Shields down!’ came the shout, just as a new and more insistent alarm began wailing. A moment later I felt thunder roll through the Knight’s superstructure, and our forward momentum juddered.

‘Engines hit!’

‘Hull breaches in sections Delta and Epsilon, decks three and four…’

The Lion said nothing, but simply watched the sputtering hololith. After another moment, the icon of the Lunar Knightpassed out of the cone of ?the Lord of Dominion’s projected firing arcs. We had escaped that fate, for the ?moment at least, and were passing through the rear of the Chaos fleet.

‘Carnage class dead ahead!’ I reported, frowning at it even as I did so. This ship was showing no intention of engaging, despite being under power; it was almost as though it was simply observing the battle.

‘Torpedoes!’ Admiral Derrigan responded. ‘Clear the way!’

The rest of our task force was emerging along with us, or at least what remained of it. We had lost the Peregrineand the Righteous Wrath, leaving no refuge for the latter’s squadrons of fighters and bombers, currently duelling with traitor craft of similar size, design, and function. The Traitor’s Banewas limping, too, although the read-outs suggested that its lances had done murderous work close-in. We had lost perhaps half of our light cruisers and escorts, but we had punched above our weight: nearly half of the Chaos fleet was on fire too, or cut apart, or floating without power or weaponry.

‘Come about,’ the Lion ordered. ‘And target that Carnage class as we do so.’

The Chaos fleet had taken a mauling, but it had, in theory at least, achieved its objective: it was past us now, and it could commence planetfall if it so wished. Even with the Lion’s leadership, we would never have been able to stop it through force of arms. The Adamantine Will, still gamely firing away at point-blank range with its nova cannon and destroying a pair of Idolator-class raiders even as it was savaged from both sides by larger warships, was the only ship left between the traitors and the planet. The twin star forts opened up with their lance batteries as the first heretic vessels came into range, but even the greatly reduced Chaos fleet would be able to bring them down.

However, the Chaos fleet did not press on; or at least, not all of it did. The two Hellbringers were advancing into range to duel with the star forts, but most of their companions did not support them. Instead, led by the Lord of Dominion, they began to turn.

The Lion nodded. ‘He cannot ignore our bloodying of his nose. Only our total destruction will satisfy him now. He will seek to kill every ship, and in doing so will allow the star forts to engage his landers piecemeal.’

Sure enough, the Hellbringers had the vessels and landing craft to rain havoc on the planet once established in orbit, but they seemed to have only just realised that they were going to be taking the Gaugamelas on more or less alone. That was a fight they could not win, and I saw the Chaos fleet’s best methods of effecting a quick landing start to come apart under relentless fire from the star forts.

‘Prepare remaining torpedoes,’ the Lion ordered all ships. ‘Form up on the Lunar Knight, and–’

A glyph flashed up an alert on the auspex, and I drew my bolt pistols even as I shouted my warning.

‘Teleport flare from the Lord of Dominion!’

We were at extreme range for effective teleporting, at least as I understood it, which admittedly was not well. However, that did not necessarily mean anything. The forces of Chaos were often adept at using the warp in ways the Imperium could not predict; and besides, given the bloodthirsty nature we had already seen demonstrated by their commander, it was not out of the question that they might try such a tactic even if there was a low chance of success.

‘Emergence flare location?’ the Lion snapped, drawing Fealty from its scabbard and activating it with one hand, and locking his helm into place with the other, but the air in the main crew well of the Lunar Knight’s bridge was already shimmering with telltale distortion.

I aimed my pistols and activated my vox to speak two words. ‘Bridge! Now!’

Then the shimmering resolved into dark shapes, and between one breath and the next the distortion cleared entirely to be replaced by six huge warriors in armour of blood red and brass.

Terminators.

‘Seraphax can burn! If the Lion’s here, I want his head!’ roars the apparent leader of the new arrivals. He is a monster, bloated by the foul powers of Chaos in his Terminator armour so that he near rivals a primarch in size, and is surrounded by other warriors nearly as massive, each one armed with a brutal collection of close-combat weapons. The Lion sees chainaxes there, and lightning claws, and power fists. The leader clutches a power sword in his right hand, while his left is enveloped in a huge powered glove from which the toothed tongue of a chainfist protrudes, already powering up to speed with a bone-jarring whine that is nearly a weapon in its own right.

‘Then come and take it, if you can!’ the Lion shouts, striding to the rail and looking down at them. His challenge is not mere theatricality; the bridge crew are scattering away from the Terminators, and with good reason, since they could no more fight them than they could a supernova. The Lion can see the minuscule twitches in the warriors’ limbs as their instincts press them to pursue and butcher the fleeing humans. He has to keep their attention on him.

He raises his sidearm, and opens fire.

Marshal Haraj presented it to the Lion as a gift: the Arma Luminis,a plasma weapon of ancient and unknown origin, which local myth has that the Emperor left on Avalus at some unspecified point in the past. There is no other evidence that the Master of Mankind ever visited the planet, but the Avalusians are so convinced of this divine legacy that the weapon has been stored in a stasis chamber in the governor’s palace for as long as any records of it exist. One thing that is undeniably true is that it does not appear to be sized for a mortal, for it fits the Lion’s hand like a pistol.

The other undeniably true thing about it is that it still works.

The Arma Luminis spits a bolt of energy as bright as the sun straight at the Chaos lord. However, instead of vaporising ceramite and punching into the flesh and bone beneath, the shot is enveloped and consumed by a crackling darkness that disappears as quickly as it materialises. The sigil emblazoned on the Chaos lord’s chest, a crude and blocky thing that weeps??ushering other crew members ahead of him. There is bravery, and then there is foolishness, and the admiral is no fool.

‘Zabriel, hold the door!’ the Lion orders as he moves towards the stairs and holsters the Arma Luminis. Zabriel says something in response, but the Lion does not hear the words. He is filled with revulsion and fury at the sight of the interlopers, and with a mighty leap he launches himself clean across the guard rails, over the crew well beneath, and into the foremost Terminator before it is halfway up the stairs.

Strong though a Space Marine is, and enhanced in both power and mass by the bulk of Terminator armour though these warriors are, the sheer weight and speed and fury of a primarch is too much. The impact sends them sprawling back downwards, and the Lion with them. He recovers his feet with a roar of rage and seizes Fealty in a double-handed grip, then drives it into the neck joint of the nearest Terminator, who is still on his back. The energised blade, propelled by a primarch’s muscles, slides through the weak armour like a serpent through wet grass and bites into the Terminator’s throat, and on into the spinal column. The heretic first stiffens, then goes limp, and his blood flash-burns into ash as it tries to ooze out around the wound that Fealty has inflicted.

A power fist thunders into the Lion’s side with a crackling discharge of energy that splinters ceramite. The Lion is sent stumbling by the blow, leaving Fealty wedged in the neck of the fallen heretic, and the sudden stab of agony informs him that his armour is not the only thing to be damaged; some of his ribs are surely cracked, if not outright broken. The sharp clar-ity of his pain washes away the rage which grips him, and he turns to face the traitors with grim understanding. The foul deity they worship hungers for blood, and the aura they project managed to taint even his perceptions for a moment.

The Terminators thunder forwards with weapons raised, their battle cries turned into bloodcurdling hymns of slaughter by the distortion of their vox-grilles. The Lion’s instinct is to spring to meet them and then plough through them, breaking them apart with nothing but his hands, but he restrains the impulse. He might have been able to do that in times past, even against foes like these, but this is a different age, and he is already wounded. He was never careless, but now more than ever he cannot afford to trust to his strength and vitality alone. His victory, and indeed perhaps his survival, will come down to one thing.

Focus

Roboute Guilliman was able to focus on dozens of things at once and give them attention in excess of what most mortal minds could achieve dealing with just one such subject. It was what made him such a good logistician, and while the Lion might not have a great many compliments ready for his brother, the Lord of Ultramar’s organisational skills could not be denied: many of the Ultramarines’ successes came down to simply never encountering a situation for which they were not prepared. Guilliman himself had only ever been an adequate combatant in person, however; at least so far as their brotherhood went. The Lion has sometimes wondered if that was because Roboute was never able to properly give his full attention to anything

In contrast, the Lion has always viewed that extraneous details are what subordinates are for. A single focus, a task from which his mind will not deviate until it is resolved to his satisfaction: this is second nature to him. He is aware that this has made him seem cold and detached to others, at times, but that too is an extraneous detail.

Whatever else the Emperor made His sons, He made them resilient. The Lion banishes the pain in his side with an effort of will, and flows into battle.

He already knows that the Terminators can wound him if they land a blow, but they are slow and cumbersome, and their momentum can be used against them. The Lion kicks out at the first one, armed with twin chainaxes; not at the face or the chest, but at the right knee. The impact jars the Chaos worshipper’s leg backwards just as he is about to plant on it, and even the auto-balancers built into the weighty suit are unable to properly compensate. The Terminator stumbles over onto his front, the Lion sidesteps to his left to avoid the mass of clattering ceramite, and the second, wielding a chainaxe of his own as well as the power fist which has splintered thter blow would have been a thrust with his power sword, since the Lion is moving towards that side of him. Instead, the chainfist strike is chasing the Lion, and the Lord of the First is already reacting to it.

The Chaos lord’s swing appears to be caught in a grav-field, given how slowly it is moving to the Lion’s vision. He catches the inside of the traitor’s left arm at the elbow with his right hand and slams his left into the Chaos lord’s chest, then uses this leverage and his enemy’s unbalanced attack to hoist him off his feet and spin him around, dumping him into a command terminal that crumples as the heretic hits it. He will be unharmed within his armour, and only out of the fight for a matter of seconds while he recovers his feet, but seconds are crucial.

Another Terminator attacks, this one with a diagonal downward slash of his chainaxe. The Lion catches the weapon by the haft, just above where the Terminator’s hand grips it, and wrenches it out of the warrior’s grasp in the same motion. He uses it to knock aside a lightning claw thrust from the last attacker, backhands the butt of the haft into the original wielder’s faceplate, cracking an eye-lens, then steps aside as the lightning-claw-armed traitor lunges again with both weapons extended. The energised talons bite deep into the body of the Chaos worshipper from whom the Lion wrested the chainaxe, who bellows in pain.

Chainaxes are brutally effective against flesh and light armour, but almost useless at piercing Tactical Dreadnought armour. Instead, the Lion hurls his stolen weapon end over end at the Chaos lord, who is still extricating himself from the command terminal, and the impact on the traitor’s pauldron tips his balance just enough to send him slumping down again with a roar of rage and frustration. The heretic who has just been impaled by his fellow’s lightning claws reacts as those in the grip of the Blood God’s frenzy are prone to: he lashes out with his power fist at the source of his pain, knocking the other traitor back with a thunderclap as the weapon’s disruption field pulverises some of the ancient ceramite it strikes. The lightning claws are wrenched out of his body, and blood spills from the eight wounds left in their wake.

The Lion reaches behind him and his fingers close on the grip of Fealty, still embedded in the neck of the Terminator he killed. He wrests it out, and moves back into the attack. Thisis a weapon which can make a mockery of even Tactical Dreadnought plate.

He kicks the bleeding Terminator in the back, sending him staggering forward into the one with the lightning claws. Lost in pain and bloodlust, the injured traitor no longer seems to care whom his original target was, and he lashes out at the warrior in front of him, who, for his part, has no compunction in finishing his fellow off if it means his own survival. The Lion leaves them to it, and moves to meet the Chaos lord and his other two warriors, all of whom have finally extricated themselves from their respective predicaments.

The Lion half expects his enemies to show some caution now, to encircle ?him and for one or two of them to feint at him to draw him out and leave him exposed to a strike from a third direction, but he immediately realises that such subtleties are not the way of Khorne. The Blood God has no patience to wait for blood to be spilled, and so all three warriors charge the Lion at once. In doing so, they almost succeed, for even the Lion takes a moment to adjust to such relentless berserk savagery. Only his focus saves him.

He ignores the chainaxes for now: their teeth can scrabble and shatter against his armour, almost as ineffective as they would be against Terminator plate. He concentrates on the power fist, the power sword, and the chainfist, because these are the weapons that can most readily hurt him. Of those three, the power fist has the least reach, and so it is the Chaos lord who is the centre of the Lion’s attention. However, even a warrior steeped in the power of the Taker of Skulls can only swing one of those weapons at a time, and so the Lion backs away parrying, catching chainaxe blows on pauldrons or the sturdy, solid plates of his vambraces instead of in vulner-able joints, his defences a whirling shroud of empowered silver metal while he looks for his opportunity.

It comes when the warrior to his right, infuriated by his inability to draw blood with his twin chainaxes, loses any semblance of composure and hurls himself bodily at the Lion with both of his weapons raised. The Lion ducks for a moment, allowing the traitor to collide with him, then straightens and raises his right shoulder as he does so. The Terminator is thrown head over heels into his opposite number, knocking them both to the floor again.

The Chaos lord thrusts with his powerblade, a blow aimed straight for the Lion’s chest. The Lion cannot avoid it, but he turns and leans into it with his left pauldron, on which the image of a hooded spectre stands proud. The heretic’s powerblade drives deep into the thick ceramite, and sticks fast for a moment.

And a moment is long enough for the Lion to bring Fealtyup and around in a two-handed grip, and shear through his enThe Chaos lord, caught up in his rage, barely pauses to register the loss of his hand and weapon. He bellows in fury and swings wildly with his chainfist, a scything blow from which the Lion steps back. The traitor lashes out again on the backswing, but although a chainfist is a powerful weapon, it is not a subtle one. They were designed for cutting through bulkheads and jammed doors when clearing bunker complexes and space hulks, and they confer little ability to alter the direction of the blade. The Lion waits for the backswing to pass him, then pivots like a fencer and extends Fealty straight through his enemy’s faceplate.

The enemy commander staggers backwards, and falls. The Lion wrenches Fealty out as he does so, then turns and draws the Arma Luminis to put a blazing-hot shot into the heads of the other two Terminators. Each one dies with their brains flash-boiling within what remains of their skull.

The Lion uses Fealty to knock loose the power sword still embedded in his pauldron, then turns. The Terminator armed with lightning claws has finished butchering his former comrade, but he has suffered for it. One arm hangs limply, and his faceplate has been smashed away to reveal the damaged visage beneath. Spurs of bone jut from the Chaos worshipper’s cheeks and chin, to the point where his helmet would surely not have fitted for much longer in any case, and his skin is an unhealthy maggot-pallor traced with thick, dark veins that pulse in time with his laboured breathing. He staggers forwards, drooling corrosive spittle over torn lips, reaching out with the arm over which he still has control as though his shuffling gait will be enough to impale the Lion on his bloodied talons.

The Arma Luminis cannot be fired again yet lest it overheat, so the Lion brings Fealty up into a guard position, for he will not make the mistake of underestimating this enemy. However, before either one of them advances into range of the other, there is a distinctive double roar of bolter fire and the traitor’s head explodes. He slumps sideways, and the Lion looks up at the command deck to see Zabriel standing there with both his bolt pistols aimed at the heretic’s corpse.

‘Forgive me, lord, I did not wish to interrupt,’ Zabriel says. ‘But now I actually had a target I might stand a chance of damaging–’

‘I take no issue with expediency,’ the Lion assures him, and lowers his blade. ‘I am not the Wolf King, to growl and defend my kill.’ A strange wave of regret washes over him at the thought that he will never see that obnoxious savage’s face again, but there is no time to examine his thoughts. ‘What of the rest of the battle?’

‘The fleets have not yet begun to engage again,’ Zabriel assures him. ‘You killed the intruders remarkably quickly, my lord.’

The former Destroyer is correct: less than a minute has passed since the Terminators teleported onto the bridge according to the chrono in the Lion’s helm read-out, although he was lost in his battle-focus and could not have said how much time had elapsed. Ceramite footfalls announce the arrival of Kai, his own power sword drawn. He comes to a halt next to Zabriel and looks down at the slaughter with a disappointment that is communicated even through the impassive faceplate of his helmet.

‘Oh. I thought you meant there was actually a problem, Zabriel, not a mild workout for the Lord of the First.’

‘We have a damaged bridge that is now polluted by corrupted corpses, and a void battle yet to win,’ the Lion snaps, his tone made slightly more acerbic by the returning pain in his side, which is now reminding him that he just fought six Terminators with broken ribs. A couple of crew members are creeping back out of alcoves where they secreted themselves while the combat took place, but most fled the bridge completely. The Lion points at the nearest. ‘Get on the vox and order everyone to return to their stations immediately, or we will have repelled boarders only to be blown apart while we sit inert.’

Zabriel taps keys at the auspex, and administers a ritual blow with the gentle ring of ceramite on metal. The tactical hololith sputters back into life above them, and the Lion assesses how the battle has altered.

‘What is that cruiser doing?’ he demands, pointing to a single hostile-flagged icon on their flank.

‘Nothing, lord,’ Zabriel reports, turning a dial. ‘Sensor scan says they have drive power, and I have nothing to suggest that their weapons are inoper-ative, but they are not engaging.’

‘I do not like an enemy who holds his fire,’ Kai remarks.

‘Under the current situation, I prefer him to one who does not, and we have plenty of those inbound,’ the Lion says. The tactical situation does not look promising, at least in terms of Avalus maintaining a navy. The Chaos fleet has been mauled, but so have the Imperials, and for all that the Avalus-ians have punched above their weight so far, the best outcome the Lion can see is for mutual annihilation.

He does not regret this outcome. He is certain, without undue arrogance, that no other commander present could have achieved anything close to even this level of success. The ability to defend Avalus against future attacks is inconsequential if this one is not defeated first. Perhaps more ships will come to Avalus before the traitors send another fleet. If they do not, there is nothing he can do about it. He ascends the stairs back to the command deck, and moves to the hololith.

‘Vox! General broadcast to all, including the enemy!’

‘Ready, my lord!’ shouts back the crewer who has taken over the vox-station at his order.

‘This is Lion El’Jonson,’ the Lion growls. ‘My ship was boarded by teleportation slightly over one minute ago. The attackers, including your lord, are now all dead. You may expect the same fate if you remain.’ He signals to the crewer to cut the transmission.

‘Most of our ships are reporting low ammunition stocks, Lord Lion!’ the crewer informs him a few seconds later. ‘However, they have taken heart from your message, and are expressing their eagerness to take the fight to the enemy again!’

‘The majority of the enemy are pursuing us away from the planet, though,’ Kai says. ‘Should we retreat, and draw them out further?’

‘We would have to present our sterns to them, leaving us with little abil-ity to engage,’ the Lion says with a sigh, ‘a(chǎn)nd to try to turn now would almost certainly leave us still in the middle of manoeuvres when their guns came into range. No, we will have to see this through to–’

‘New contacts!’ Zabriel shouts. ‘New contacts coming in fast, from above the orbital plane!’

‘Heading?’ the Lion snaps, as the new icons blink into existence. Behind him, the bridge doors open and begin to admit the crew who had fled from the Terminators, the men and women rushing back to their respective stations.

‘How did we not see them until now?’ Kai asks. He has removed his helmet, and is peering up at the contacts with a mix of trepidation and distrust.

‘The fog of war applies in void battles as well,’ Admiral Derrigan says, joining them at the hololith. ‘Once engaged in combat and surrounded by explosions, gas vents, debris, fighters, and so forth, even the best auspexes can fail to register things. I suspect these ships were running dark, using only minimal thrust and power in order to remain hidden. The question is, why?’

‘Their heading?an mutters, reading off the display.

‘They have a ship named after a saint?’ the Lion queries. ‘Surely that is a good sign?’ He finds the canonisation of mortals in his father’s name just as unappealing as the Emperor’s deification, but at least it displays an allegiance to the same broad goals.

‘If only that were true,’ Derrigan says grimly. He points at the foremost icon. ‘That is the Honour’s Edge, a Nova-class frigate. It’s a ship-killer, and this is her pirate fleet. They have been harassing shipping across half a dozen systems for the last few decades, and defied all attempts to capture or destroy them even before the Great Rift opened. They have no love for the Imperium.’

‘A Nova class?’ Zabriel asks. ‘That is a… Space Marine vessel, is it not?’ The Lion hears the hesitation in his voice where he was about to say ‘modern Space Marine vessel’. None of them have seen any point in explaining to the Avalusians the exact age of the Dark Angels who are accompanying their primarch, or exactly how they came to be here.

‘It is,’ Derrigan agrees. ‘Hence my concern. I can only assume that its captain and crew are allies to the foul monstrosities currently attacking us.’ His eyes wander towards the guard rail at the edge of the command deck, but he does not move towards it to look down into the main crew well: it appears that his curiosity does not outweigh his fear over what he might see.

The Lion nods. Irregular though the new flotilla might be, they have numbers and firepower enough to be a significant factor in this engagement where both sides are already battered. Even a stalemate of extinction may now be unachievable. In which case, the question becomes one of priori-tising the damage they can still deal.

‘Signal all ships,’ he orders. ‘Prepare to concentrate fire on the Lord of Dominion. Capital ships of that size can carry a battle, so we shall at the very least leave them with one fewer.’

‘My lord!’ Zabriel says. ‘The enemy fleet is pitching and rolling. They appear to be seeking firing solutions on those approaching from above.’

The Lion frowns at the hololith again. ‘Admiral, I understand your logic with regard to these ships’ character, but surely you must agree that their approach vector gives the appearance not of a rendezvous, but of an attack run?’

Admiral Derrigan bites his lip. ‘I cannot bring myself to hope, my lord Lion, but–’

His hesitation ends as the hololith sparkles with simulated weapons fire.

‘Target?’ the Lion snaps. The pirates appear to be on the wrong heading to attack the Avalusians at present, but he is not prepared to take anything on trust.

‘The Lord of Dominion!’ Zabriel shouts joyfully. ‘They are giving it everything they have!’

‘All ships are to advance at full speed and engage!’ the Lion orders. ‘Hurry! Our unlooked-for allies will not last long against that fleet alone, but together we can eliminate this threat entirely!’

‘We’re being hailed!’ the vox-officer shouts. ‘Signal origin is Honour’s Edge!’

‘Patch it through,’ the Lion orders. A small part of the tactical hololith, closest to the generator, fizzles with static for a moment as the signal is established. The Lion tenses, waiting. Will this be more traitors, corrupted by the power of Chaos and simply taking the opportunity to strike at an internecine rival? Or could they be genuine allies, pirates who will nonetheless stand and fight alongside those upon whom they have preyed when presented with a greater and far fouler enemy?

He is not prepared for the visage which appears. It is grizzled, and scarred, and one eye socket is obscured by a solid metal patch since it appears no bionic replacement has been available, but the nature of it is unmistakeable.

It is a member of the Legiones Astartes, and what can be seen of his scuffed and battered battleplate is the night-black of the First Legion.

The legionary’s remaining eye widens. ‘My… my lord Lion? I knew that the astropaths of Avalus had not lied when I heard your voice on the vox, but–’

‘I am somewhat altered, it is true,’ the Lion says. He fights down the emotion that swells up inside him at the sight of another of his sons; he cannot be taken off guard by sentimentality now. ‘As are you. The admiral alongside me informs me that your vessel is a pirate. State your name and purpose, legionary.’

‘Knight-Captain Borz, Twelfth Company, my lord,’the one-eyed legionary declares instantly. ‘I will make no excuses for our predation upon this so-called Imperium, although they are far from the only faction from whom we have made ?our living. However, now you are returned, our vessels and the warriors under our command are yours.’

The Lion frowns. ‘There are others with you?’

‘Indeed so, my lord. Knight-Sergeant Perziel, and Knights Rufarel, Cadaran and Breunan. Each has a ship ?– the rest are allocated to mortal commanders we trust.’

‘And do you stand against the forces of Chaos, knight-captain?’

‘My lord, we have harried them wherever we have found them,’Borz declares forcefully. ‘We came here merely to ascertain the truth of your return, but when we saw this filth had arrived and were attacking the planet, and we heard your voice–’

‘Then let us finish them,’ the Lion cuts him off. The Lunar Knightis opening fire, as are the rest of its fleet. The traitors, now attacked on two fronts and lacking any true leadership, are foundering; they are still many, and will not die easily, but die they shall. ‘Kai! Get down to the vox and disseminate my instructions to Knight-Captain Borz using the Legion’s battle code.’

‘As you command, my lord,’ Kai replies, and vaults down into the crew well. ‘No, young man,’ the Lion hears him add, ‘I am perfectly capable of operating this device myself, thank you…’

The Lion regards the hololith once more, then reaches out and begins to highlight attack routes, insertion points, which of the enemy should be isolated from which, and in what order. A mortal commander would still struggle to achieve anything from this combat beyond a glorious and probably spectacular death, but the Lion is not mortal.

He is a son of the Emperor.

On the Eye of Malevolence, Baelor turned to Dimora. ‘Return us to Lord Seraphax.’

‘You are not going to order me to engage?’ the Canticallax asked. There was no judgement in her mechanical tone, but Baelor heard it anyway.

‘The fleet is doomed, and our participation will not change that,’ he snapped.

‘And what of your orders? Are you satisfied that the primarch genuinely lives?’

Baelor took one last look at the death claiming those with whom he had made common cause. He would not mourn the loss of Varkan the Red, but those ships, and the troops they contained, were hard-won assets. They were not irreplaceable, but neither were the Ten Thousand Eyes’ resources inexhaustible

‘I will report what I have witnessed to Seraphax. He can make his own decision based on the evidence.’

It is hard for a member of the New Mechanicum to sound tentative. Dimora managed it nonetheless, and her words appeared to be uttered despite her better judgement rather than because of it.

‘The level of tactical ability demonstrated by the Imperial commander suggests a ninety-eight point two per cent likelihood that they are not a baseline human, and only a sixteen point five seven per cent probability that they are transhuman Astartes–’

‘Enough!’ Baelor thundered. ‘Get us into the warp and back to the rest of the fleet, before that commander decides we are more of a threat than we have given him reason to believe!’

‘Compliance.’

The Eye of Malevolenceturned and began to burn towards the Mandeville point. They did not need to reach it in order to translate ?– having a daemon bound into the ship gave advantages beyond those of simply navigating the warp once in it ?– but they would need to drop the void shields first, and Dimora had no intention of taking any form of damage just as they entered the immaterium.

Baelor stare could not. There were other Fallen out there, and they knew how the Lion had sounded; how he had looked, for that matter. It must be a ruse, a desperate ploy by those fools still loyal to the Imperium to rally some last few pockets of resistance by use of a symbol which might pass examination even from those in this age with some knowledge of history. Their mummery would undoubtedly be unconvincing in person to anyone who had ever actually laid eyes on a primarch.

And yet, as the stars were replaced by the swirling vistas of the warp, which were to colours what a chainsword was to a flint knife, Baelor could not get that damned voice out of his head.

我故意的呢