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Lysander held up a hand. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘These were the same voices that Siculus heard in his head as he wrestled with that decision.’

  ‘Then what is the answer?’ said Apeyo. ‘Was Siculus right or wrong?’

  Lysander smiled. He did not do this very often, especially in the presence of novices, and the unease that passed among them showed they were not sure what to make of it. ‘That question,’ he said, ‘will be answered with another.’

  Lysander adjusted the map table’s readout. Valacian Pass and its array of tactical markers disappeared. A holo appeared above it, hovering in the air. It was a banner bearing the image of an iron fist against a pair of crossed lightning bolts. Burning xenos skulls were embroidered around the base of the fist, and above it was the symbol of a planetary system with seven planets. The banner pole was topped with an enormous alien skull, taken from a species with a large brain case and complicated mandibles. One of its eye sockets was burned out by a plasma blast and the skull was scrimshawed with hundreds of names.

  ‘What,’ asked Lysander, ‘do you see?’

  For an uncomfortable moment, no novice answered.

  ‘The Standard of the Seventh,’ said Arnobius at last.

  ‘Where is it now?’ said Lysander.

  ‘The Chapel of Hamander.’

  ‘Why?’

  It was another novice, Dacio, who answered. His pallid skin and overlarge eyes were marks of his origin, on a long-night world where the population had evolved to a near-abhuman strain. ‘It was retired as a relic,’ said Dacio. ‘It is brought out only when the whole Seventh is assembled to fight as one, and when its captain deems it fitting.’

  ‘Partly true, Novice Dacio,’ said Lysander. ‘But not completely. A more accurate answer would be that this standard hangs in the Chapel because of Manufactorum Sigma. I trust that you have read of it, my novices. I am not here to educate you on what happened there. I wish to find out if you understand what Manufactorum Sigma truly means when it comes to leadership. To the status of an Imperial Fist. To your futures in the Chapter.’

  Lysander looked among the novices. They were uncertain. Their lessons until now had not been easy, but they had been simple – wargear rites, tactics, history, rote learning and muscle memory. Now they were being asked to think.

  Kogen spoke.

  ‘Hamander had a choice to make, too,’ he said.

  The Granite Sprawl was dying all around, and the Imperial Fists, like everything living there, were bleeding out of it. They were a part of its death throes – the last out, of course. The Imperial Guard had already fled on their seaborne transports and troop landers. The Naval airfields had been evacuated shortly before that. The Imperial Fists were the last out. When the last of them embarked on the Thunderhawk gunships waiting to take them back to orbit, there would be no humans in the Granite Sprawl.

  The industrial city was a great dark stain across half a continent, its manufactoria standing as titanic cathedrals to the Imperial hunger for munitions and war machines. Though Captain Hamander had no love for this bleak and inhuman place, it wrenched at him to know it would be taken by the xenos.

  Manufactorum Sigma had been the last glimmer of the front line. Now it was burning. The alien artillery had thrown beams of crimson light in through windows of shattered stained glass and set light to the very steel of its girders. The flames inside cast strange shadows from the blazing skeleton of the immense building.

  ‘Count off, brothers! We cannot wait for you!’ Hamander was in command of two companies’ worth of the Imperial Fists – the entirety of the Seventh and elements of the Fourth, Fifth and Ninth. His own captaincy of the Seventh made him the ranking officer but this was an army that could not be led by one man. Each unit operated independently in the withdrawal, brother watching over brother.

  The acknowledgement runes flickered against his retinas. Seventeen squads of Imperial Fists were already embarked. The Techmarines and their tech-novices were still on the ground, overseeing the launch of the strikeforce’s eight Thunderhawks.

  ‘We are not fleeing,’ voxed Hamander as he reached the rear ramp of his command Thunderhawk, the gunship painted in the gold and black of his company. ‘We will return and rain fire on this place! When the xenos are celebrating chasing us off, then we will drop into the heart of them and scatter them in the confusion of dread!’

  Hamander looked back at the manufactorum. The xenos were crawling through it. Light shimmered, fractured images shattering and reforming – a form of advanced force field that addled the eye and made them all but impossible to shoot down at range. The fire did not bother them, though the building was falling down around them. No doubt they had some protection from that, too.

  Thousands of them were advancing on a front wider than the Imperial commanders had ever imagined they would. Somehow, through cunning or witchcraft, the aliens had smuggled whole armies into the Granite Sprawl and were rolling across those areas they did not already control. They would take it in its entirety, much of it intact, as the Imperium fled before them.

  And then the Imperial Fists would return. Perhaps in hours, perhaps days. Whenever the xenos were most vulnerable. They would tear the heart out of the xenos command. All they needed was a good target.

  They would return. Hamander would swear it as soon as he was clear, and have his battle-brothers witness the oath.

  ‘We’re taking fire!’ came a vox from Techmarine Machaon. ‘Evading now!’

  Hamander looked back through the closing ramp of his Thunderhawk. Sprays of las-fire were spattering up from the burning manufactorum, and a bolt punched through the tail of the Thunderhawk Blood Star. Hamander’s own craft, theHymn to Dorn, lifted off, the final Thunderhawk to do so, and the Imperial Fists army was in the air.

  ‘The Star is wounded but aloft,’ voxed Machaon. ‘Devlan Wrath is hit. She’s going down.’

  Hamander ran to the gun port and saw the Devlan Wrath tipping to one side, shedding a hail of shrapnel from a destroyed engine. It dropped into a flat spin and crashed through a nest of antennae on the roof of Manufactorum Sigma.

  ‘That’s Squad Talthybius,’ said Hamander.

  ‘They have the standard,’ voxed Machaon in reply. ‘We must return.’

  ‘No,’ came a vox from Assault-Sergeant Lapithos. ‘Our orders are to withdraw. There is no gain in sending more battle-brothers to die down there.’

  Sergeant Talthybius’s icon was still illuminated against Hamander’s retinal display, but he was gone from the vox-net. ‘Talthybius is alive,’ said Hamander.

  ‘Then avenge him,’ said Lapithos. ‘Do not join him.’

  ‘And let the standard of the Seventh Company fall into xenos hands?’ retorted Machaon. ‘I will not return to the Phalanx with my head hung low, knowing I let aliens desecrate the symbol of our honour! Knowing I did nothing!’

  ‘And how many of your brothers’ lives,’ said Lapithos, ‘will you spend to say you did something?’

  ‘Silence!’ ordered Hamander. ‘The choice is mine alone.’

  ‘I will go with you,’ said Machaon. ‘Down there, to the cauldron of fire. I will go.’

  ‘You will stay with the fleet and get us off this world,’ replied Hamander.

  ‘Do not do this,’ said Lapithos. ‘Losing the standard is a lesser disgrace than throwing your battle-brothers’ lives away for nothing. You can atone for the one, but not the other. Let the xenos have it and return to avenge Talthybius.’

  ‘He yet lives,’ said Machaon. ‘He fights alone, his brothers faltering when they should bring all rage and fury to the enemy!’

  ‘I called for silence! I am your captain!’ Hamander gripped the edge of the gun port as he looked down at Manufactorum Sigma. He could just see the crash site of the Devlan Wrath, a tangle of wreckage that had plunged through the roof of the manufactorum and lodged in its upper floors. Sleek alien grav-tanks were emerging from the burning shell of the building, sweeping round to converge on the site.

  ‘I
need twenty brothers,’ said Hamander. He looked back to the Imperial Fists in his own Thunderhawk – the battle-brothers of Squad Sartan. They were covered in soot and mud from the gruelling journey through the burning manufactorum, and now he was asking them to go back there.

  ‘We go not for a chance of victory,’ he said to them, ‘but for the future. For the brothers who will take inspiration from our actions this day. It is much that I ask.’

  ‘Not too much,’ replied Sergeant Sartan. Sartan had lost his jaw in action two decades before and his voice was partially artificial, a metallic grating sound that suited him perfectly. ‘And any of my squad who will not stand beside you will have to face me in the afterlife.’

  ‘Assault Squad Martez are with me,’ said Machaon. ‘Martez has requested he join you.’

  ‘Then we are ready,’ said Hamander. ‘Take the Hymn down. Machaon, bring the Golden Dagger down with us.’

  ‘I cannot countermand your order,’ voxed Lapithos. ‘But I can ask you, not as an Imperial Fist, but as a friend. Good lives are not worth this gesture. Your life is not worth it.’

  ‘Recover my body, Lapithos,’ replied Hamander. ‘If it clutches not the standard of the Seventh in its fist, then do not mourn me too long.’

  The two Thunderhawks, the Hymn to Dorn and the Golden Dagger, broke away from the ascending Imperial Fists gunship fleet and weaved through the fire streaking up at them. They swooped down low into the streets in front of Manufactorum Sigma, cutting off the sight lines to the alien artillery tanks gathered around the manufactorum’s main gates. Those streets were half-ruined tumbles of fallen debris with the occasional corpse dotted around. Skirmishes had washed back and forth across the Granite Sprawl before the xenos armies had pushed forward in strength, like the overture to a bloody play. Perhaps that was what the aliens thought this was – a play, a work of art, the battlefield their canvas. Some said that war was a dance to them, and that whether they lived or died mattered less than the artistry with which they made their steps.

  The Hymn to Dorn slewed around, landing engines kicking skirls of dust up from the streets below. The main engines howled and the gunship shot forwards, covering the open ground before the manufactorum before the enemy tanks could get it in their sights.

  Hamander hung on as the gunship roared up through the main gateway of the manufactorum, ruddy gloom closing in as it passed into the burning building. Alarms were sounding as the gunship wove between rafters and fallen pillars. Fire was everywhere, rushing across the ceiling and pooling in great lakes around the factory floor. Enormous banks of machinery broke the surface like islands.

  The Golden Dagger shrieked by into the ceiling, clipping a wing against a pillar and spinning out of control. It smashed through the rafters and disappeared in a shower of debris.

  ‘Damn it, Machaon!’ yelled Hamander.

  The Hymn rose up through a great hole torn in the ceiling. The upper levels were a warren of offices, side chapels and adepts’ quarters, and everything was on fire. The Thunderhawk’s rear ramp opened up and superheated air slammed against Hamander as he leapt out, drawing his power axe from the scabbard along his back.

  His lungs burned, even through the filters of his power armour’s helmet. Without the auto-senses of his eyepieces and his ocular augmentations, he would have been blinded by the smoke. The fire was white blooms against the monochrome chaos, his vision sacrificing colour to pick out movement.

  Through the fire stumbled the battle-brothers of Squad Martez. Hamander saw Techmarine Machaon among them, obvious by the silhouette of his bulky forgemaster’s armour and servo-arm.

  ‘Machaon!’ yelled Hamander. ‘You were to drop off your brothers and withdraw!’

  ‘The Golden Dagger has fallen,’ replied Machaon. ‘Without my steed, I cannot ride! And so fate has decreed I must fight with you!’

  ‘Strange fortune that fate compels you to defy me.’

  ‘We can have an open discussion of it back on the Phalanx,’ said Machaon.

  Both squads were deployed. Sergeant Martez was rallying his brothers, who while battered and scorched looked like they had made it into the manufactorum’s upper floors at full strength. Hamander saw the last of Squad Sartan jumping from the Hymn to Dorn.

  ‘Get clear!’ Hamander voxed to the pilot. ‘Join the fleet!’

  The Hymn could do nothing here, with no lines of sight to bring its guns to bear. It rose up through the hole in the manufactorum roof, even as the rest of the Thunderhawks passed overhead, silvery sparks reaching the upper atmposphere.

  Gunfire spattered from their flank, shredding through carved wood partitions and mounds of flaming ledgers. A missile streaked past, bursting in a spray of fire against a wall.

  ‘Scatter and advance!’ yelled Hamander. ‘Keep eyes on all sectors!’

  ‘Do they seek us, or Talthybius?’ voxed Sergeant Sartan.

  ‘We will know soon enough,’ replied Hamander.

  He saw one of the aliens through the flames. It wore close-fitting armour of curved plates, coloured in reds and oranges with a red helmet inset with triangular green eyes. It carried a weapon of unmistakably alien design, a fat tapering barrel hooked up to an ovoid power pack wrapped around with thick cables and circuitry. A gemstone was set in its chestplate. These aliens all had such gemstones displayed on their armour.

  ‘Fire Dragons,’ growled Sergeant Martez.

  Imperial Fists were firing in all directions, aliens running at them through the flames, firing bursts of crimson power. Up close, here in this close-quarters firestorm, they were deadly. One of Squad Sartan – Brother Closs – fell as a blast melted right through his armour and out through his back, leaving a smoking hole straight through him.

  Hamander dived through a burning wall, wood splintering under him, and he crashed into the alien who was aiming a shot behind it. His weight drove the alien to its knees and Hamander hacked down with his axe, slicing off one of the alien’s arms.

  With his free hand he grabbed the alien by the faceplate, one thumb crunching through its eyepiece. He wrenched the helmet off its head, seals and cables popping as it came away.

  The aliens were like parodies of humans. Long, thin faces and large eyes, like those of some feline hunter which some thought beautiful. In the language of the Imperium they were called eldar, but to Hamander, they barely deserved a name at all. He pinned the eldar to the floor with the butt of his axe and wrapped his hand around its face, snapping its neck with a flick of his wrist.

  ‘I see him!’ came a vox from one of Squad Martez. ‘Talthybius! I see him! To our west!’

  Martez jumped up from the alien’s body. The Imperial Fists were already charging through the wreckage, bolter fire streaking through the ruination littered with the corpses of dead xenos. Two Space Marines lay there too, the fusion weapons of the Fire Dragon eldar having melted through their armour and cooked the flesh inside.

  Hamander could see Talthybius now. He held the standard of the Seventh as high as he could, but he was wounded, almost lying on his back as he fired seemingly at random around him.

  But it was not random. He was surrounded. Aliens darted from the flames, running almost too fast to see, lashing at Talthybius with silver blades. They moved with the spring of acrobats, their armour the colour of bone, and their tall masks were fringed with flowing red hair.

  Talthybius shot one down, sending it tumbling into the fire. But a dozen wounds were opened up in his armour. Members of his squad lay all around him, sliced open, armoured limbs and heads cut off and burning.

  Hamander had seen battle-brothers fall in combat before, but it seemed that each time, it got worse. Rogal Dorn had taught the first Imperial Fists to take that anger and focus it, only unleashing it when the only tactical option left was relentless, headlong attack.

  The battle-brothers of Squads Sartan and Martez were doing that now, sprinting through the flames to reach the enemy. Blades clashed on ceramite. Bolter shells chewed through the burning wa
lls. Aliens were thrown to the ground and a ceramite boot crunched down onto the neck of one of them. Sergeant Martez lanced one through the belly with his power sword.

  Machaon walked calmly, firing bursts of rounds from the storm bolter he had built himself in the forges of the Phalanx. Eldar ran at him and tumbled to the floor, blown open by the blessed ammunition.

  Hamander ran through the bedlam. He slid to the ground beside Talthybius. The sergeant was one of the biggest men in his command, and in all likelihood would have represented the Chapter at the next Feast of Blades. Now he was cut low. One wound had opened his face from forehead to lip. Another had ripped open his abdomen and his entrails glistened in the flame.

  Talthybius looked around, face full of the pain he was holding back.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘We are with you, brother,’ said Hamander. ‘We stand together.’

  ‘No, captain!’ said Talthybius. ‘You should have fled! You should have abandoned us! Only death remains for you here!’

  ‘Not so, Talthybius. No brother is given up for dead when he and a single Imperial Fist yet live.’

  ‘Damn it, Hamander! How many lives did you give up to these aliens, so you could die beside me?’

  ‘They will not take you, brother, and they will not take the standard.’

  ‘The standard? You throw away your lives for this? For a handful of silk? The battles you could have won, Hamander! The tides you could have turned! And now they are all lost, for you forsook them all for this gesture.’

  The Imperial Fists formed up around Talthybius and Hamander. The eldar were disappearing, flipping away through the flames, evading the bolter fire that rattled after them.

  ‘We will get you out of here,’ said Hamander. ‘You and the standard. And you will be hailed as a hero before your brothers.’

  ‘I am dead,’ said Talthybius. ‘Leave me. Take the standard. Die with it in your hand.’

  Hamander hauled Talthybius to his feet and dragged him behind him. ‘Brothers,’ he voxed. ‘Find a way down. Find us a landing site!’

  The whole manufactorum seemed to shudder. A beam of scarlet light ripped up through the floor, bathing everything in a momentary flare of bright red.