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  Cartan V was rich in mineral deposits, and it had been this more than anything else that had made it a desirable place for settlement. The Silver Skulls themselves had overseen the relocation of the beleaguered citizens of a largely destroyed hive world – on the agreement that they could return at any point in the future to acquire new recruits.

  Kyaerus continued. ‘During my conversations with the governor, we received a report. A group of engineers were planning a detonation in order to construct a new minehead. They uncovered something else.’ Kyaerus’s mutilated face contorted in barely concealed rage. It was a look that Meyoran had come to know all too well in recent years. ‘And less than an hour after it was uncovered, the first attack was upon them.’

  Meyoran scowled. ‘Eldar.’ A blunt statement of fact, not a question. The sheer depth of hatred in Kyaerus’s face engendered by the captain’s words spoke more than his reply did.

  ‘Aye, sir. Obviously my squad and I took a stand with the local military force out at the blast site. We found out very quickly what it was that they had uncovered.’ His hand clenched into a fist. ‘Only uncovering it wasn’t where they stopped. In their curiosity, they had raised it. The local militia were quickly depleted. They just weren’t prepared to deal with an incursion of this scale. And the eldar sent through a massed force. They have made several raids on the garrison, as you see.’ Kyaerus gestured around the ruined barracks before continuing.

  ‘They hit hard and fast. They’ve practically destroyed the hive. A large percentage of the population have made their way to the sub-levels and are seeking sanctuary there. Those people the raiders have found…’ He hesitated, made both angry and deeply regretful by the next bit of information.

  ‘Prisoners.’ The Adeptus Astartes standing just beside Meyoran, dressed in armour of cobalt-blue that marked him apart from most of the others, stepped forwards and spoke, filling in the pause. Prognosticator Bast’s voice was whisper-soft, and whenever his eyes passed over anybody, they got the feeling that they were being scrutinised very closely. ‘The xenos have rounded up living souls and have imprisoned them. Including our aspirants, yes, sergeant?’

  Kyaerus nodded, his face darkening with anger. Meyoran felt a hollow form in the base of his stomach. For the Silver Skulls, recruits were a precious commodity. To lose a batch to the hands of the eldar…

  ‘Your thoughts, Prognosticator?’ Meyoran finally shifted his gaze from the sergeant to the psyker. The two men had served side by side for decades and he deferred without question to the other’s judgement.

  ‘The artefact was presumably a webway portal?’ Bast directed the question at Kyaerus, who nodded. ‘It would be a reasonable hypothesis to presume that raiders probably attacked this planet at some point in its past. Uncovering the portal may have alerted them to an opportunity to do so again.’ The psyker shrugged his giant shoulders. ‘None of us truly understand the heathen technology of the webway.’

  The Prognosticator reached up to remove his own helmet. The face that emerged was so lost in tattoos and tribal markings that it was hard to make out any specific features. Dark hair worn in tight braids was shot through with silver, but beyond that, it was impossible to approximate the Prognosticator’s age.

  Cold eyes, so pale a shade of blue that they were almost entirely colourless, fixed on the sergeant, who held the gaze with cool confidence for a few moments before he wavered and looked away. A flicker of a smile played around the Prognosticator’s face and he enjoyed the moment of startled uncertainty that he lifted from the sergeant’s mind.

  ‘Whereabouts is the portal?’ Meyoran asked, snapping his helmet back on. ‘If that is the heart of the enemy, then that is where we will strike.’

  ‘To the south-west.’

  The words came from the Prognosticator rather than the sergeant as Bast almost lazily took the answer from his mind. He was not a particularly cruel man, but he had always taken a cynical delight in reminding others of his psychic capabilities. He treated the sergeant to a slow smile before he hid his face once again behind the helmet. In the legends of Old Terra, Bast was the name the great people of Gypta had associated with cats – and Meyoran had always felt there was something faintly feline in Bast’s methods. He liked to play with his enemies before killing them, too.

  ‘The south-west,’ Kyaerus acknowledged. He tapped a data-slate. ‘All the coordinates and information I’ve gathered are there.’

  ‘Good work. Then we move out.’ Meyoran waved a hand and the Silver Skulls fell into practiced formation. Kyaerus also gestured, making signs with his fingers, and four hitherto unnoticed Scouts, young neophytes in carapace armour and armed with sniper rifles, appeared from various locations around the compound. Meyoran grinned his approval.

  ‘You’re training them well, sergeant. You will make a superb captain some day soon.’ Next to him, Bast turned slightly, considering Meyoran’s words.

  Kyaerus inclined his head, accepting the compliment with a slight twist of his lips.

  ‘Let’s go and get our boys back.’

  The thunderous report of the Dreadnought’s assault cannon filled the air as Brother Diomedes fired on the attacking reavers. The long, lean armoured bikes moved utilising the anti-grav technology that belonged to their race. Each one was piloted by a single rider armed with pistols that they fired with unerring accuracy at the Silver Skulls. Viciously sharp blades lined the vehicles and it was one of these that had taken Brother Lemuel’s arm from his body.

  It took far more than losing a limb to stop a Space Marine though. His body was already working to close over the neat amputation. Lemuel had borne the worst of the pain with little more than a brief yell. He had lost his chainsword when the limb had been severed, but he merely levelled his bolt pistol and fired at the enemy instead.

  Gileas blink-clicked through the runes scrolling in front of his eyes until it brought up Lemuel’s data. His systems were coping with the injury well, but he was far from optimal. There were so many combat narcotics and analgesics now coursing round his veins that his reaction time was gravely compromised.

  ‘Lemuel,’ he voxed. ‘Take a step back, brother. Leave this to us.’

  ‘I can still fight, brother-sergeant.’ Lemuel continued to fire on the bikes. which were presently turning for another attack. Diomedes paused briefly, scanning the half-dozen or so vehicles and determining vulnerable points. The massive assault cannon tracked the leading bike. Then the Dreadnought acted, concentrating his fire.

  In a burst of blue flame, the bike detonated, throwing its eldar rider free and sending pieces of armour plate and blades in all directions. The burning xenos was thrown to the ground with an audible crump, the body twisted at an unnatural angle. The other bikes veered erratically, thrown off from their planned attack run by the sudden loss of the leader.

  ‘Squad Ur’ten, on me.’ Lemuel and his obstinate behaviour was not an issue. Lemuel was an Adeptus Astartes. He was bred and trained to purge the galaxy of all that was wrong, and to the Silver Skulls there was little that met the criteria so much as the eldar – particularly these pirates. Lemuel would either survive to fight another day with an augmetic limb, or he would die fighting in the Emperor’s service. Either outcome was ultimately satisfactory.

  With a single burst of his assault cannon, Diomedes had already countered the surprise attack and Gileas would lead his squad as he led every mission he had commanded so far in his career. From the front.

  The venerable ancient pounded forwards, his massive Dreadnought body shaking the ground under the Space Marines’ feet and cracking the ferrocrete. At one time, this blistered area would have seen the comings and goings of Imperial vessels, bringing supplies to the planet for the building of the hive, delivering people and resources and shipping out whatever had been mined. Now it was a ruin, a place that seemed far older and scarred than something so new had any right to be.

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��For the Emperor and Argentius!’ the war machine bellowed in his thunderous voice. ‘Do not suffer these abominations to live, brothers. We are Silver Skulls. We will prevail!’

  ‘We will prevail,’ the squad chorused, eager to engage the enemy.

  For the tiniest fraction of time, a pause so brief that even Theoderyk could not have captured it on his exquisitely forged chronometer, there was silence. Anticipation. The calm before the storm.

  And then the storm broke.

  Complete pandemonium descended for several minutes. To the unfortunate xenos attackers, the rapid discipline and fearsome strength that their prey demonstrated meant that those few minutes seemed to stretch out beyond reason. Any advantage they may have had in altitude was reduced by the fact that they had underestimated the fighting prowess of nearly half an Assault company. Even as Gileas fired his jump pack into life, all around him other Silver Skulls were rising to meet their enemies in mid-air.

  With Diomedes present, the cleansing of this filth was a matter of course for the Silver Skulls. They entered the fray with customary enthusiasm. Their reputation as a barbaric fighting force was not without reason. They were brutal, efficient warriors who were not adverse to using whatever tactics were necessary to win a fight. This was said of the entire Chapter, but bore particular relevance to the Eighth Company.

  Three more eldar riders were unseated by the sudden momentum of fully armoured Silver Skulls launching past them and grabbing them from the bikes. Without riders, the machines careened haphazardly. One struck the ground and exploded in a burst of whickering shrapnel. The others collided in mid-air and similarly detonated. More heat and smoke billowed out in plumes. The remaining two riders turned their bikes into the smog, leaving nothing but contrails in their wake. The warriors who had felled the eldar plummeted downwards with their victims, driving them to the floor with a satisfying crack of vertebrae.

  Gileas cast a brief glance at the rune on the bottom left of his display, blinking rapidly to cycle the lenses in his helmet, enabling him to see more effectively through the smoke. The fires from the destroyed jetbikes raged on, continuing to spew ash and cinders into the air.

  The cacophony of the past few minutes ebbed back to the soft thrum of chainswords on low power. There were still two reavers out there and the destruction of their compatriots meant that they were temporarily masked in the resultant smoke.

  ‘Sergeant Ur’ten, report,’ Meyoran voxed. Gileas glanced around. Of the twenty-four warriors who had exited the drop-pods, there were still twenty-two standing. One was dead, the other injured.

  ‘Eldar raiders, sir,’ he responded. ‘On jetbikes. They struck without warning.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Job almost complete, sir. Two left out there. I’m almost certain that–’

  With a sudden, screaming whine, one of the remaining jetbikes burst out of the smoke, heading straight for Gileas’s broad-shouldered back. Without so much as turning around, the Assault Marine thumbed his chainsword back into life, sidestepped lazily and brought his weapon around in a murderous arc. The serrated, whirring blade chewed through the pilot from just below its right ear, down through the thorax and severed the body diagonally. The head and left arm fell away in a shower of gore, leaving an out-of-control jetbike, a still-twitching eldar gripping the controls with a lifeless hand.

  With a single burst from his cannon, Brother Diomedes finished it.

  ‘Correction. One left, sir.’

  Gileas’s tone had not changed at all.

  ‘Good work, sergeant. Transmitting coordinates. Sergeant Kyaerus has found us.’ Gileas smiled. Not, he noted, the other way around. ‘Meet us as soon as you can. Stay alert for that rogue rider. Try to get here in one piece.’

  ‘Aye, captain.’ Gileas grinned beneath his helmet. ‘On our way.’

  They encountered nothing as they traversed the largely obliterated compound. All the Silver Skulls remained alert, aware that there was a reaver close by. The intelligence that had been broadcast with the emergency transmission had suggested a reasonably sized force in-situ on this planet. It was the reason the decision had been taken to deploy a large proportion of the company.

  During the meeting in the strategium, Gileas had queried the necessity for Captain Meyoran to come down to the surface at all. The captain had laughed dismissively, clasping Gileas’s shoulder.

  ‘Brother-Sergeant Ur’ten, I hope that you don’t plan to let this promotion turn you into my keeper,’ he had said. ‘Prognosticator Bast has communed with the Emperor. It is His will that I lead this expedition. Besides, why should I let you have all the glory? You will take command in my place soon enough.’ The words had sounded ominous; prophetic, even.

  Gileas had begun to protest, which had earned an indulgent grin from the captain. ‘I jest, brother,’ he had said with a gruff laugh. ‘By the Throne, Gileas, learn to be less literal.’

  Bast, assigned directly from the psyker-led prognosticatum, had nodded solemnly. ‘The omens are most auspicious for the battle to come, Brother-Sergeant Ur’ten,’ he had pronounced in his soft whisper. ‘It is vital that the captain is present.’

  Unsettled by the Prognosticator’s words without quite knowing why, Gileas had put his worries to the back of his mind and they had instead concentrated on the importance of eliminating the eldar forces.

  Over the centuries the Silver Skulls had repeatedly encountered the eldar in their many and varied forms. Whilst the justifiable detestation of all alien races was the right of the Adeptus Astartes, the Silver Skulls reserved an especial hatred for the eldar. Many good battle-brothers had been lost at the Battle of Oram Pass. Many good battle-brothers who had yet to be replaced. The Chapter was dipping well below its normal numbers and the recruitment process was slow for many reasons.

  As a result, the prospect of visiting righteous retribution on the eldar was one that Eighth Company relished with grim enthusiasm. Fifty warriors had been deployed, more than half the company’s current complement.

  By the time they reached the rendezvous point, Meyoran and his warriors were already gathered. Prognosticator Bast and the only other psychic battle-brother present stood to one side, conspicuous by the colour of their armour. The prognosticatum had suffered more losses at the hands of the eldar at Oram Pass than any other. For a Chapter whose home world was sparsely populated with psykers, it had been a harsh toll. The prognosticatum had more reason than most to hate the foul eldar pirates.

  ‘You took your time,’ greeted Meyoran, his tone light, but his voice slightly strained with the tension of what he had established of the situation thus far.

  ‘Apologies, sir.’ Gileas joined his captain and removed his helmet. ‘Undisciplined xenos taking an attack of opportunity. We made short work of them thanks to Brother Diomedes.’ The sergeant nodded reverently in the Dreadnought’s direction.

  ‘You know what it is that we face here, then?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ Gileas’s hand closed into a fist. ‘Eldar raiders.’

  ‘Mostly correct. Eldar raiders, yes. Eldar raiders with access to a webway portal.’

  Gileas faltered only slightly. That changed things. With access to a portal, he knew well from experience that it would be impossible to plan any sort of attack based on numbers. More could arrive at any given moment. Their priority was clear. He nodded his understanding and Meyoran continued.

  ‘I will lead the attack on the portal with the majority of our fighting force – and Diomedes,’ he said. ‘You will take the Reckoners and command the rescue mission.’ He indicated a young Scout Gileas recognised. One of Kyaerus’s squad, the callow youth was looking eager to get the battle under way. ‘Tyr took the liberty of going ahead to assess the situation as best he could under the circumstances. The eldar have a considerable number of human captives, including our aspirants. As of a few minutes ago, they were in holding pens, presumably awaiti
ng loading into one of their ships. Time is of the essence.’

  Meyoran tweaked his long plaited beard. ‘Priorities are to destroy the portal, eliminate the xenos threat and ensure as many citizens as possible survive the ordeal. This may present difficulties given that the raiders have arranged the cages around their central position. Those are our objectives. In that order.’

  ‘Slaves?’ Gileas was aware on an unconscious level that Meyoran was assessing his reaction to being denied the honour of leading the attack, and kept his face as neutral as he could. Despite his best efforts, disappointment stirred in the pit of his belly.

  ‘Possibly.’ Meyoran’s tattooed face twisted into a scowl, the black ink contorting grotesquely. ‘Or worse. Either way, expediency is critical.’

  Gileas set his jaw angrily. ‘So they are utilising human shields?’

  ‘Aye. There may well be Imperial casualties during this operation, Gileas, but do what you can to minimise risk.’ Meyoran waited a moment as though expecting an argument. Gileas was far more suited to the task of taking the portal than he was of search and rescue, and they both knew it.

  The serpent of rebellion that had woken at Meyoran’s orders writhed in Gileas’s stomach again, threatening to rise its hooded head and strike. But Gileas quelled it. He would question the captain’s orders when they were back on the Silver Arrow, not whilst they were in the field. He knew he was being tested and he would be damned before he failed.

  ‘As my captain orders,’ he replied, snapping his helmet back on again. ‘Reckoners, on me.’

  Meyoran glanced at Bast as Gileas turned to walk away. The Prognosticator inclined his head almost graciously.

  ‘Sergeant.’ Meyoran called after Gileas’s retreating back.

  ‘Brother-captain?’ Gileas turned slightly.

  ‘Endure, brother.’ There was a passion in Meyoran’s voice that poked the seed of uncertainty that had been planted in Gileas’s mind during the meeting in the strategium. His doubts and misgivings burst into bloom, and he almost turned to consider the captain fully. But there was no time to dwell on thoughts and feelings. He had promised Meyoran back in the chapel that he would maintain his focus. He had his orders and he would carry them out to the best of his ability.