Helix-47 laid his metal fingertips against the Chimera’s inner bulkhead and listened through them.

  The transport’s machine-spirit thrummed tight and wary. Its auspex pings came in rapid, clipped pulses and the engine growled as it kept the multi-laser’s capacitors fat with charge. Every vibration carried a status report: track tension, heat bloom, the faint stutter of a misaligned idler wheel that would become a problem in exactly forty-three more kilometers if the Omnissiah did not feel charitable.

  Inside, adepts and enginseers sat shoulder-to-shoulder on fold-down benches, robes tucked away, cog-tooth icons flashing from their data-slates. Skitarii stood braced in the aisle, rifles angled up to avoid flagging anyone important. Servitors swayed with each jolt, restraint chains singing softly against their collars. Servo-skulls floated between bodies, their anti-grav emitters whining as they corrected for every pothole and crater. The compartment smelled of overheated coolant, incense oil burned too rich, and the metallic tang of charged coils.

  Outside, the street was a broken canyon of ferrocrete. Shattered hab-fronts leaned inward; windows blown out into blackened eyes. Ash drifted in slow sheets, catching on the Chimera’s hull and smearing into gray streaks. Distant impacts rolled through the city like tired thunder, and the warp storm above turned the sun’s light a sickly purple-pink.

  Behind the column, two Kastelans jogged in perfect, pitiless rhythm, their mass making the ground complain. Each footfall hit like a hammer on an anvil, steady as a metronome. They did not look left or right. Their sanctified data-wafers gave them only one concept of devotion: follow.

  Ahead, a single Rhino carried the six Astartes chosen for this run, one from each chapter still bleeding elsewhere across the front. The Rhino’s silhouette was a blunt promise in the dust, its rear ramp sealed, its engine note deeper than the Chimeras’ and calmer, like it expected the world to move out of the way.

  Eight Chimeras held formation behind it, and one Leman Russ rumbled as their shield, the only tank the line could spare without inviting a new disaster somewhere else. The convoy moved like a stitched-together organism: armored plates, tracked limbs, organs nobody wanted punctured.

  Helix heard his adepts murmuring binaric prayers through vox-filters and throat grills. The words were familiar, comforting in their repetition, and useless as a solution by themselves. He let them run. Faith was a stabilizer, and stability had value.

  His attention, however, stayed with the spire.

  A tactical map hovered in his vision, overlaid onto the world with a surgeon’s precision. The orbital spire’s outline rose as an emerald wireframe needle, its lower arteries branching into access corridors and choke points. Their current route threaded toward the thinnest section of the Chaos line between the convoy and the spire’s base, a weakness measured in patrol gaps, broken sightlines, and enemy arrogance.

  A frontal assault would make noise. Noise would pull eyes. Eyes would turn toward the decoy.

  And under that manufactured attention, under the bite of their jammers that turned vox into a field of coughing static, Helix intended to slide eighty souls across a killzone without the enemy noticing until it was too late to matter.

  The vox crackled as Lieutenant Caelis Venn of the Raptors took the channel. The mission’s operational commander, he spoke in a quiet, clipped tone. “Arrival in two minutes. Prep for disembarkation and establish perimeter.”

  Nothing more and the vox squelched off, Helix noting the efficiency in the back of his mind as he calculated the group's route up the spire.

  His adepts shuffled, the noosphere wiretight with stress indexes, thermal tolerances pinging warnings as internal reactors spun hot, mechadendrite weapon systems flooded with power.

  The next minutes passed faster than Helix realized, even as his chronometer pinged. The Chimera’s ramps lowered, dust and ash flooding the chamber as Skitarii, combat servitors and Guardsmen flooded out into a tight circle, rifles sweeping the area as the pair of Kastelans joined the cordon, heavy phosphor blasters lit with the internal flames.

  At the front the Rhino disgorged its Astartes contingent.

  Lieutenant Caelis Venn came first, muted Raptors urban-camo fading into the ruin with disturbing ease. His stalker bolt rifle stayed low and ready, and the camo cloak caught the wind. Servo-skulls drifted ahead of him in a loose picket, auspex lenses winking as they tasted the air for heat and movement.

  Beside him strode Sword Brother Rorik Volkmar, a Black Templar in stark plate, storm shield forward like a moving wall and combi-melta held with the patient certainty of a man who didn’t believe in second chances. A power sword hung ready at his waist, and the little pouches at his belt weren’t decoration. Breach charges, sanctified paste, chalk. Ways to open doors and ways to keep what came through them from following.

  Wolf Guard Skaldi clambered down next, Fenrisian grey and iron, the heavy flamer cradled like an old friend he’d trusted in dark places. Twin power axes rode his biceps, and the charm-clink of rune talismans made a sound that wasn’t quite prayer, not quite warning.

  Temur Saran, Khan’s Blade, was almost offensively bright in white and scarlet, until you noticed the practical insult of a camo-cloak thrown over it. The jump pack sat tight to his back, tether-line coiled at his hip, and his hands never stopped moving—checking the bolt carbine, patting the plasma pistol, tossing blades into the air, only to catch them without fail.

  Veteran Sergeant Otho Barachiel anchored the line without looking like he was trying. Gold-clad Imperial Fist plate, bolt rifle with an underslung launcher, and a quiet vox booster clipped where it could be reached blind. Fortification clamps hung from his kit, carrying the promise of walls where walls had died.

  Then came Ferrum Adept Malkor Drex of the Iron Hands—black and silver, heavier in the shoulders, all angles and cold purpose. A servo-arm folded tight behind him, its thunder-hammer head sleeping like a threat. His bolter was marked with warning sigils for EMP and ion payloads, and his auspex suite was already sniffing the air for scrapcode, spitting quiet machine-cant into a portable firewall cogitator.

  Helix waited for the all-clear ping to bloom across his augmetics, a clean little chirp of certainty beneath the storm-wracked sky. He stepped from the Chimera’s cover and his adepts followed without hesitation, robes gathered, cables tucked, voices lowered to a reverent hush.

  He fell into the marching order without fuss, mechadendrite tips tucked tight, auspex slate held low against his chest.

  Astartes at the front, the point of a spear. Around the mortal mass, an outer ring of Skitarii and combat servitors, weapons angled outward, optics flickering through smoke and dust. Inside that, Guardsmen tight and close, hands on rifles, eyes darting, cataloging the battlefield. Specialists held the center of both circles, the fragile heart of the whole machine. Behind them, two Kastelans brought up the rear, huge as walking altars, their footfalls steady enough to make loose rubble tremble.

  The meeting place loomed ahead. A smaller cathedral, bombed out and half-forgotten, sitting several miles from the Chaos lines in a pocket of ruin that held no clean strategic value. No ammo depots. No comms relay. No shrine worth desecrating for morale. Just a menial district’s old temple, built where the laborers once went to beg the Emperor for gentler shifts and fewer funerals.

  It was only a few hundred feet high, modest by Imperial standards, but still tall enough to feel like a judgment against the surrounding hab carcasses. Two bell towers still stood, cracked and hollow, the bells long gone. Statues of the Emperor and His Saints remained mostly intact, their faces powdered with soot, their hands chipped at the fingertips as if even stone had been forced to crawl. What stained glass remained clung to the frames in jagged pieces, colored shards catching twisted daylight; smoke threaded up from the collapsed roof in slow, lazy coils that smelled of wet ash.

  Venn’s clipped voice returned over the vox as he advanced toward the cathedral’s broken mouth. Saran drifted beside him, jump pack a patient thrum in the smoke. Otho anchored the center with Drex scanning, Skaldi ready to burn anything that tried to be clever. Rorik held the rear like a vow.

  Helix did not use the word war-gods in his private thoughtstream, but the feeling was similar. The mortals followed at distance, letting the giants take first contact with whatever the ruin had decided to hide.

  Venn raised a fist and the line slowed. Boots crunched glass and powdered stone. The cathedral’s doors had been torn away long ago, leaving a gaping archway that swallowed light. The nave beyond exhaled smoke and the ghost of incense turned to ash. Saran slid outward, his helm canting up toward the shattered rose window and the jagged choir loft beyond. His jump pack whispered, restrained but ready.

  Otho tightened spacing with two short hand signs, silent and absolute. Drex’s optics swept for wire-glint and machine-symmetry, for the little wrongnesses that meant trip mines, scrapcode relays, or corrupted servitors waiting like patient disease. Skaldi’s heavy flamer tracked the gaps between broken pillars, muzzle steady, heat bloom faint around the barrel. Rorik paused at the rear a heartbeat longer than the others, scanning the street behind them as if expecting the city itself to try something treacherous, then stepped in last, sealing the world outside with the finality of a prayer.

  Helix tracked their biosigns as they moved, reading the Astartes the way a priest reads auspex: heart rates stable, micro-spikes as angles opened, then smooth again. Efficient, smooth and decisive. Within five minutes they had swept the temple down to the cellar hidden beneath the altar, where cracked steps descended into a damp darkness that smelled of old candles and pooled rainwater.

  “All clear. No sign of enemy forces.” Venn’s voice again, ever calm. “Enter. Establish perimeter. Stand by for contact arrival.”

  The mortals filed in quickly, eager to trade open street for broken stone. Inside, the cathedral was as ruined as its shell suggested. Benches lay torn into splinters. Support columns had failed, leaving ribs of rebar and fractured plasteel jutting like exposed bone. Rubble carpeted the aisles, and above it all, banners fluttered in charred remnants, their devotional script half burned away so the words read like interrupted promises.

  Helix stepped over a fallen lectern and felt the place listening back, the way old buildings did when too much violence had happened beneath their roofs. His fingertips brushed the nearest wall as he passed, a brief touch of metal on stone, and he offered the machine-spirits of his own gear a quiet, steadying pulse.

  Fifteen minutes later, Helix was quietly watching as the Kastelans Datasmith performed minor rites over the massive automata, Ferrum Adapt Drex by the smith’s side as the two quietly conversed over the ancient machines.

  Around the temple perimeter, soldiers watched and waited. Others, not on active watch, distracted themselves with small things, maintenance rites, scratching down whatever thoughts passed through their heads, whatever filled the silence.

  Helix could sense the faint noospheric pulses that occasionally flickered across the Astartes vox-link as they spoke to one another, the mortal failings of chemical spikes far more subdued in their enhanced anatomy.

  Helix turned back to his dataslate, when the transmission came over the vox.

  “Afternoon everyone.” The same young, tired man's voice spoke. “Sorry for the wait, but I had to check and make sure none of you were going to try and capture or shoot me on sight.”

  Venn, his visor slowly scanning the area, spoke first. “The Vestige. Reveal yourself and continue this mission. I have little patience for theatrics.”

  A rough laugh came in reply. “And I wholeheartedly agree Lt. But it's not theatrics to study people who might decide to shoot you on sight.”

  Otho’s golden helm nodded, just a fraction. “Understandable. But if we are to work together, then trust must be given both ways. Do you expect us to follow a ghost?”

  “I don't expect you to follow me at all.” Koron replied, his voice still rising from every vox in the area. “I have no rank to command, no skill in it either, and I would put a lot of money down that every single one of you, and I'm including all the cogboys and guardsmen, have more combat experience than I. In short? You would still be under Venn’s command, not mine. I would simply point out the place I need to reach in order to build the communication lines, and let you figure out how to get there.”

  Helix felt the shift of his cohorts at the casual use of ‘cogboys’, but he discarded the emotional baggage as he stepped forward. “I am Archmagos Helix-47, the leader of the Adeptus Mechanicus attaché. You have occupied Mechanicus vox pathways without sanction. That is not discourtesy. That is intrusion.”

  Koron did not reply for a long moment before a sigh came over the speakers. “Okay, in the interests of getting this job done and not starting things off on a bad foot, I will refrain from my first response, and go with the politically nice one, which is this: I’m riding your relays, not rewriting them. Check your checksums.”

  Helix felt the confusion of his adepts mirroring his own as the strange phrase appeared on the noosphere. “...Our what?”

  Drex, flat as a bolter report, answered. “Integrity verification. He says you should run your purity rites on the vox stack.”

  Koron, an edge of amusement in his tone now, said “Thank you, what he said. The sacred ritual of verifying file hash-”

  A pause. A softer sigh.

  “Just run the rites.”

  Helix felt the Cybernetica adepts already at work, their hymns a distant choir in the noosphere as he focused on the conversation. “Rites are enacted. But the question remains: do you intend to remain hidden, or will you walk with us?”

  “I’ll walk with you,” came the answer, quick and sure. “Like I said. Just checking you out before I let you put targeting on my ass.”

  Otho spoke up, voice flat as ferrocrete. “The human posterior is a viable target. It is not preferred.”

  With a faint whir of actuators, Drex turned his helm a fraction toward Otho. “Preferred. It provides structural support.”

  Rorik’s vox rumbled, still scanning the shadows for a body that refused to be seen. “Support is optional. I have watched bisected men still pull pins and triggers. If you want certainty, take the head.”

  “What about somethin that doesn’t have one?” Skaldi called from the broken window, eyeing the street through smoke. “Fought more than a few bastards you couldn’t behead at all.”

  Venn cut through the banter. “Enough. Koron, reveal yourself.”

  A pause, then the same tired voice, calm as if it came from a kitchen rather than a cathedral full of guns and smoke. “Alright. Look up.”

  Every helm and optic snapped skyward, lenses catching the thin, ash-gray light leaking through shattered stained glass.

  High in the rafters, where the cathedral’s broken ribs crossed in shadow and soot clung like a second skin, a human shape waited, still as carved stone.

  Koron crouched on the balls of his feet, forearms resting across his knees. His helm hid his face, but nothing in him bothered with humility. He lifted two fingers in a small wave, casual as a late arrival slipping into a meeting. “Afternoon, everyone. Pleasure to meet you.”

  Then he shifted his weight and simply fell forward.

  He pitched off the beam, legs tucking as he rolled end over end through the smoke. For a heartbeat he fell like any other man, a dark silhouette dropping through ruin. Then, a few feet above the rubble, the air around him tightened. Dust lifted in a slow ring. A faint, controlled thrum pulsed once, more felt than heard.

  His descent bled away into nothing.

  Koron touched down atop a broken mound of masonry without a clatter, boots settling with the quiet certainty of practiced control. Knees flexed, then straightened.

  Helix noted the placement, the anti-grav technology, and the smooth, burnished metal that formed the man’s arms. Without thinking, he pinged the man, noospheric probes flung with the precise focus of an invading army seeking a beachhead.

  Helix’s probes struck and did not bite.

  The probes met an interface boundary that refused categorization. No howling spiritus machinae. No scrapcode bloom. The probes returned unaltered, cocooned in lattice seals of unknown provenance, so perfect they felt like mockery.

  A single line rode the return pulse, shaped with the cold clarity of a system that did not need prayer to be understood.

  +CAREFUL, PRIEST. YOU STAND AT THE EDGE OF DARK WATER, WHERE YOUR RITUALS DO NOT FLOAT+

  The words carried no inflection, yet Helix felt datum-corrosion bloom in his lower sub-processes; threat indexes reordered twice before he could lock them, and one of his mechadendrites twitched hard against his spine.

  The thing behind that boundary had not flinched.

  It felt less like a fortress than a depth.

  His adepts’ biosigns were already spiking toward redline. Overclocked cogitators vented heat-shimmer. Panic metastasized through the cohort link.

  He crushed the link with brutal binaric authority before hysteria could cascade.

  +Adepts. Manual purge. Rite of Blessed Severance+ His binharic pulse stayed level, a metronome over screaming augmetics. +Close your gates. Muzzle all uplinks. No further pings. Any probe without my sanction is heresy enacted and will be punished as such+

  The orders rippled downstream, the noosphere quieting as each member shuttered themselves behind walls of code and severed links, enacting the rite.

  Relief washed through Helix as the all-clear returned, one by one. With the immediate concern contained, he turned his attention back to the source of the trouble.

  The rumored Vestige had a face, and thank the Machine God for that. A man could be hated. A man could be bargained with. A man could be contained, in theory. The alternative, that the man carried more than just an STC in his neural storage, had no edges, no doctrine, no name that stayed still in the mind.

  The sealed packets hovered in his mind, immaculate as a joke, their seals too clean, too complete, too far outside liturgical inheritance to be comfortable.

  Careful, priest.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  Yes. The man spoke like that. If all intel was correct, he would call him priest, as a man speaking to a superstition he tolerated for the sake of everything else.

  Helix made himself look at the burnished arms. He did not look at the darkness behind the boundary those arms implied.

  He let himself believe. He needed this variable to remain human.

  ...

  Venn watched and listened.

  First lesson. First rule. The one drilled into him before he ever earned a helm.

  The battlefield told you truths no auspex could summarize.

  A street gone too still. Wind shifting through broken masonry and carrying the wrong smell with it. The faint creak of rebar under weight somewhere above eye level. Distant gunfire pausing, not because the fighting had ended, but because someone was waiting for something to move.

  Two hundred and forty-one years of service.

  Thousands of engagements. Tens of thousands of kills, xenos and heretic alike, each one sanding instinct down to a clean, sharp edge.

  And it still rankled.

  He had not detected the young man in the rafters until he told them where to look.

  Venn forced the irritation back down and put pride where it belonged, under his boot. His instructors had burned that lesson into him long before he wore chapter colors in the field: honor and glory.

  Fine words for memorial stones.

  Poor tools for finishing a mission.

  He glanced toward his cousins. Their armor stood out hard against the hive’s browns and greys, parade-bright plates in a city made of ash, soot, and broken concrete. Yellow, black, and iron-silver caught what little light filtered through the ruined cathedral and threw it back in clean, unapologetic blocks. Venn found himself, not for the first time, considering how to convince them to wear camo-cloaks for a covert insertion without starting a theological debate.

  “So, are you all going to be wearing your ‘hello we are right here, please shoot us’ armor, or what?” Koron asked from his perch on the rubble pile, pointing at Otho, Rorik, and Drex.

  Venn adjusted his opinion of the man upward by a single millimeter.

  Otho glanced down at his bright yellow plate and gave a small nod, lips parting to answer, but Rorik spoke first.

  “I did not bring a cloak with me. I do not often wage war by concealment.”

  Otho looked at his cousin, then lifted one broad shoulder in a slight, helpless shrug. “My brother’s words hold true for I as well.”

  Drex’s servo-arm clicked and retracted half an inch, metal fingers flexing as his optics narrowed on the nearby Chimera. “Chimera camo-netting may suffice as an ad-hoc measure.”

  Venn nodded once. He dropped to one knee beside a stretch of dust and powdered stone and began marking the route with his finger, scratching pale lines through ash and grit. “Scouts identified this as our best route to the spire without drawing notice.”

  A curving path appeared between collapsed hab-blocks and shell craters. He marked minefields with broad Xs, then tapped out the worst open stretches where rubble gave way to exposed ground and no cover worth naming.

  Around them, the cathedral breathed smoke through broken arches. Charred banners stirred overhead. Somewhere in the nave, a servo-skull drifted past a shattered saint’s face and its auspex beam swept briefly over the dirt map, then moved on.

  “Nightfall in two hours,” Venn said. “We use it to reach the edge of their perimeter. Once there, our cog-allies trigger auspex jamming, and we move fast and quiet. Inspect equipment. Gather what you need. We move at dusk. Any questions?”

  Koron raised a hand.

  Every helm turned toward him.

  “A minor note,” he said, voice still rough with fatigue. “I already entered and exited the spire. That’s how I figured out what was happening inside, and what I needed to do to fix it.”

  Venn looked at him for a beat, then gave a single nod for him to continue.

  “So.” Koron held out his hand. Pale blue light spilled from his palm and unfolded over Venn’s dirt map in a wireframe lattice, the hologram hovering just above the dust and stone. The glow painted the edges of nearby armor and turned the smoke thin and ghostlike. “These minefields here, here, and here.” Red circles bloomed over the marked zones. “I cleared lanes through them. If we go through instead of around—”

  “-We save nearly thirty minutes,” Saran cut him off.

  The White Scar had barely spoken since entering the cathedral. He sat on a cracked block of masonry off to one side, helm angled down, drawing a whetstone along the edge of a combat blade with slow, even strokes. Scrape. Pause. Scrape. He lifted the blade and pointed it at Koron, not threatening, just precise.

  “That said,” Saran continued, “you realize you will be leading us through those minefields.”

  Koron looked back at him and shrugged, easy as if they were discussing weather.

  “Fine by me.”

  Venn gave one sharp nod and called Helix and Lieutenant Marrick over, the Archmagos and the Guardsman liaison stepping into the loose ring around the dirt map.

  Helix moved with measured precision, robes whispering over broken stone, mechadendrites folding close so they would not snag on rubble. Marrick arrived a moment later, boots grinding ash and glass, fatigue hanging off him like wet cloth. Dust streaked his flak armor. His lasgun started to slide from his shoulder as he knelt, and he caught the strap with an absent, practiced tug before it clattered.

  Venn gave them the short version, voice clipped and even, one gauntleted finger tracing the route through the dust, over the X-marked minefields and the open lanes they could not afford to linger in. Smoke drifted through the broken nave behind him. Somewhere above, charred banner cloth fluttered against cracked stone.

  He finished with a single word. “Input?”

  Marrick, of the 87th Vigilus Guardsmen, leaned closer to the battle map, studying it with the flat, clinical focus of a man too tired to waste energy on panic. “Looks simple enough,” he said. “Assuming we get in, what’s our job?”

  Helix turned one metal hand toward Koron, the gesture precise, almost ceremonial. “I have an inkling, but I would hear what the Vestige says on the matter.”

  Once more, every eye turned toward the young man on the rubble pile, his features still hidden behind his helm.

  “Simple,” Koron said.

  The holo above Venn’s map shifted at once, the cathedral’s smoky air filling with pale blue wireframe geometry as the orbital spire’s internals unfolded in miniature. The light painted hard edges across armor and turned drifting dust into glowing motes. Helix’s spine clicked softly as he recoiled a fraction at the sight, a tiny motion, but Venn saw it.

  “I’ve marked the vox nodes we need to reach in the Girdle—” Koron began.

  The wireframe climbed the spire’s length, rising and rising until it settled on the Girdle, one hundred and eighty kilometers above them. Red points bloomed along the structure like wounds.

  “Short and ugly version,” Koron said, “the nodes are all corrupted with foreign code. It mangles the command executables so orders either never arrive, or come back flagged as false positives.”

  Helix gave a small nod and leaned in, one three-fingered mechadendrite extending to indicate a red marker without touching the holo. “You speak of scrapcode. Traitor forces employ a profane heresy of demonically empowered machine-language to twist the Omnissiah’s words toward foul machinations.”

  Koron shifted atop the rubble pile before replying, the masonry grinding faintly under his boots. “Right. That. So, anyway, the nodes are full of scrapcode. I can clear a node, but as soon as I move away from it, it fills back up with the malware.”

  Helix’s optics fixed on him, brighter and sharper than before. “Expand on that. How do you clear the node?”

  There was the slightest pause. Not long enough to be hesitation for most men. Long enough for Venn to mark it.

  “Various methods. Point is, I can clean a corrupted executable chain.” Koron replied. “What I don’t have is ten thousand years of your order’s research for keeping it clean. What’s your containment stack for this? Detection, quarantine, attestation, rollback, anything? Because right now? This looks like a self-healing malware nest.”

  The words settled over the group harder than the dust.

  Helix hunched by a degree, head canted as if listening to a private choir in the noosphere. Mechadendrites tightened and stilled. Across from him, Marrick had gone very quiet, his eyes flicking once between Archmagos and Vestige. The boy had asked a question Venn knew was not merely technical.

  It was political. Theological. Dangerous.

  After a moment, Helix straightened and met Koron’s gaze.

  “At the strategic level, yes,” he said. “We combat it through quarantine, command-path validation, and repeated sanctification of executable chains. At the doctrinal level, the methods are restricted.” His vox-grill crackled once, then steadied. “Speak only to what you require for the mission, Vestige.”

  Koron’s shoulders lifted in a small shrug, armor plates whispering as he moved. “Fine. I clear the nodes. You and yours perform your rites to keep them clean while we move up the tower. We build a chain of cleared nodes all the way to master control in the Girdle, send the message, get Guilliman down here to kick Angron’s ass, and hopefully use the spire to restore global comms. That's the general plan. Is that agreeable, or are you going to have-” He started to continue, then cut himself off, exhaling through his helm with an audible restraint. “Is that agreeable?”

  The pale blue holo painted the underside of his arms and the chipped edges of the rubble pile beneath him. Smoke drifted through the light in thin bands, turning the spire projection into something half-solid, half-haunting.

  Helix glanced back toward his adepts. His optics ticked from one red-robed figure to the next, mechadendrites shifting close to his spine as calculations ran behind his faceplate. When he turned back, his voice was measured and firm. “My people must remain with each node to maintain the ritual. They will require defenders.”

  Marrick straightened from his crouch with a low grunt, rubbing his palms together against dust and cold metal grit. His flak armor creaked. “Well,” he said, looking from Helix to Venn, “I assume that’s where my men and I come in.”

  Venn inclined his helm once. “Correct. Your men secure the rear. We clear the path.”

  Drex raised one hand toward the hovering spire schematic, servo-arm clicking as it stabilized beside him. “Our effective strength declines at each node secured. Bare minimum for ritual maintenance: one Adeptus Mechanicus. Bare defense: two Guardsmen and one combat servitor.” His optics tracked the red points climbing the projected shaft. “A total of ninety-one nodes are required to form a stable vox link. We do not possess sufficient manpower to defend that number properly.”

  Rorik, still adjusting the strap on his storm shield, answered without looking up. Leather and metal rasped beneath his gauntlet. “Spires like this have local control nexuses every ten kilometers. This one appears similarly built.” He lifted his chin toward the holo. “Can we focus manpower there instead, and force the sections within each control nexus into compliance?”

  For a moment, Helix, Drex, and Koron all turned toward him at once. Surprise showed in different ways: Helix’s head canting, Drex’s optics narrowing, Koron’s shoulders straightening slightly.

  Marrick was the one who picked it up first. He tipped his helmet back and squinted at the projection, one finger lifting toward the larger dots along the shaft. “If those are the control nexuses,” he said, tracing the line upward through the smoke-lit wireframe, “then what, eighteen positions to hold?”

  Otho looked up from checking his rifle. The action slid forward with a smooth clack that sounded loud in the cathedral’s broken nave. “Correct. However, as my brother in black has pointed out, this reduces our strength at the point of contact with the traitor's main force in the Girdle.” He settled the rifle, voice steady as poured stone. “At four personnel per control junction, we will have eight left in the strike element by the time we arrive. I advise the inverse. Advance to the Girdle first, strike the primary objective, then, optionally, clear downward to establish global communications once the Lord Commander is informed.”

  Venn studied the map in silence, one armored hand resting on his raised knee, the other hovering over the holo. Dust clung to the knuckles of his gauntlet. Outside, distant artillery rolled across the hive like slow thunder. “It puts us on the clock the moment we begin,” he said at last. “Forces from above and below will converge and compress us between them the moment we are discovered. Survival odds in a pincer are poor.”

  Drex tapped the holo to indicate the central route. The projection flickered but did not respond. He tapped again, harder. Nothing. His helm turned toward Koron. “Magnify the central shaft.”

  Venn saw it again: the tiny pause in Koron’s posture, the faint set of his shoulders as he swallowed a reply that would probably have been highly sarcastic. Then the holo obeyed, collapsing and refocusing into a larger cutaway of the spire’s core.

  Drex continued as if nothing had happened. “The central elevator shaft is difficult to guard conventionally by dint of its construction. We could use it for rapid descent.”

  Skaldi, who had been half-turned toward a broken window with one eye on the street, raised a hand without taking his gaze off the smoke outside. “What about the Guard? They’re not surviving two hundred kilometers of cable-burn and impact.”

  “I can handle that.”

  Koron held out his forearm, the plates folding and retracting away to reveal a small opening. A soft blue light kindled beneath the smooth metal, then spread in precise lines. From the housing, dozens of tiny tines unfolded and began assembling a square metal plate in the air just above his wrist, each piece locking into place with soft clicks. Faint blue tracery ran across its surface like veins catching light.

  “Single-use anti-grav plates,” he said, rotating the finished piece between two fingers before letting the holo catch its edges. “Carry it on your person. Slap it when you want it live. Thirty seconds of burn time, one use only, but that’s enough to land safely from any height we’re likely to drop.”

  The cathedral went quiet for a beat after that, broken only by the hiss of drifting smoke and the distant groan of stressed metal somewhere in the ruins overhead.

  Venn didn’t have to turn to feel Helix and Drex lock onto the device. The hunger in the room shifted all the same.

  To their credit, neither of them reached for it.

  “Can you make enough for all personnel?”

  Koron nodded once. “I can. Does that count servitors, or just the living?”

  “Just the living.”

  Drex spoke once more. “Wolf Guard Skaldi’s concern raises another. Human endurance curves do not favor this ascent. A one hundred and eighty kilometer climb will result in mass Guardsmen casualties before the strike force engages the Girdle. I suggest the following: Guardsmen climb to their limit, then remain behind to establish a rearguard picket. If our ascent is discovered, they hold the line for as long as possible before being overrun.”

  Venn studied the spire once more, before turning to Marrick. “Lieutenant, my cousin speaks the truth. Do you have any objections?”

  Marrick half turned, looking over his men for a moment before turning back to face Venn, and shook his head. “No sir. If the Emperor's Angels need us to hold, we’ll hold. To the last.”

  Standing, his cloak brushing the dust, Venn looked to the circle. “Then we strike for the Girdle. During the ascent, the Mechanicus will seed dormant sanctification rites at each node and control point, preparing a later global comm restoration, but priority is the main vox control room in the Girdle. Once the Guardsmen are unable to proceed, they shall secure the main movement corridors of the zone they are on and hold it as long as possible while we continue. Once we reach the Girdle, we claim it, hold it until the message is sent, then retreat down the main shaft, either by lift or by these devices. Questions or suggestions?”

  Helms shifted slightly as the circle glanced about, before they spoke their affirmations.

  “Good. Then begin preparations. We leave in one hour and thirty-four minutes.”

  ...

  High above, suspended in the glittering black of the void, Guilliman did what he had always done best.

  Supplies were allocated.

  Formations adjusted.

  Men placed precisely where they were needed.

  Orders flowed from him in a steady cadence, even as nothing truly changed.

  The traitor fleets continued their bombardments. His warriors bled for meters and stairwells within the orbital spire. Casualty figures rose, were accounted for, and absorbed into projections.

  He would join them soon, the Thunderhawk powering up, damage frantically being repaired by the Mechanicum to carry him to the battle of the spire.

  Angron’s presence demanded that he take the field.

  And still—there was calm.

  That quiet gnawed at him.

  It lingered at the edge of his thoughts, an irritation he could not quite dislodge as his mind worked through permutations and probabilities.

  Abaddon was no fool. He was waiting for something. Not merely for the storm to deepen, nor for supply lines and vox-links to fail. Those were tools, not objectives.

  There was more at play.

  Guilliman’s gaze drifted across the tactical hololith and settled on the Endurance, Mortarion’s flagship. Once, it had been a vessel of brutal efficiency.

  Now it was a swollen, diseased mockery of itself, its hull layered with grey flesh and pulsing growths, long tendrils drifting from its flanks like the roots of some obscene parasite. Every sensor sweep screamed contamination, every reading carrying the stink of the Plague God’s garden.

  It lodged in Guilliman’s thoughts like grit between teeth.

  Where are you?

  What are you doing?

  Such questions always followed his traitor brothers, but Mortarion was among the worst for it. The Plague Lord was many things.

  Egotistical.

  Self-pitying.

  Prideful.

  But he was not stupid.

  Nor would he tolerate standing beneath Abaddon’s shadow for long.

  And yet, he remained absent. No poison-laced provocations hurled across the void to bait Guilliman’s wrath.

  The restraint was ominous.

  A soft click sounded within his helm as the vox engaged. Macullus’s voice cut cleanly through his thoughts. “My lord. The Mistress of the Sensorium is on her way.”

  Guilliman blinked, refocusing on the bridge of the Macragge’s Honour. Consoles glowed in disciplined rows, servitors murmured data into the void, and officers moved with the controlled urgency of those long accustomed to crisis. From the periphery, a small, dark-skinned woman approached, pale hair drawn back into a practical braid that spoke of function over ceremony.

  He inclined his head slightly to Macullus before turning fully to her.

  Seraphine Dax. The name surfaced easily enough—though he recalled she disliked the use of her first name. “Mistress Dax,’ he said, his voice measured. “What brings you to my table?”

  She bowed deeply, then stepped forward to place a dataslate before him. The faint tremor in her hands caused it to rattle softly against the metal surface before she steadied it.

  “My lord,” she said, lowering her voice as she glanced around the bridge. “We have contact on the starboard edge of the fleet. A single vessel. Its IFF markers identify it as an ally, but… I have never seen its design before.”

  She activated the display. A blurred silhouette resolved on the slate, unmistakably Imperial in its architecture, yet distorted by the eddies of the Warp that clung to it like smoke.

  “Its displacement readings are significantly higher than expected for a ship of its size," she continued. “And I am detecting active cloaking measures. I believe we only found it at all due to interference from the Warp storm disrupting its systems.”

  Guilliman took the slate from her hands, studying the image in silence.

  Something tugged at the back of his mind.

  Recognition, half-formed.

  “I have seen this design before,” he said at last, more to himself than to her.

  Then his eyes lifted to Dax. “Estimated time to arrival?”

  “Six hours, my lord, if it maintains current velocity.”

  “And no word from the defensive forces at Sangua Terra?”

  She shook her head. “None, my lord.”

  Guilliman nodded and dismissed her with a gesture, his attention already drifting back to the image as he searched his memory. The shape, the proportions, the absence of expected signatures—

  He knew this ship.

  Turning on his heel, he left the bridge without another word, Dibus and Macullus falling into step behind him as the doors parted at his approach.

  Some answers were not found on hololiths.

  Some were kept elsewhere.

  His Victrix Guard followed with practiced precision as Guilliman turned from the bridge and made for his private chambers.

  Much of Koron’s tiny cityscape had been cleared away, its delicate spires and roadways carefully dismantled and catalogued. One small section of wall remained at his request, still clicking and clacking softly as tiny pulleys and levers cycled endlessly in their loop. A fragment of perpetual motion, preserved.

  He ignored the cogitator. Passed by the neatly stacked data-slates awaiting his seal of approval.

  Instead, he made his way to the far side of his rarely used bed, where a narrow cabinet stood. Plasteel glass caught the reflected gold of his armor as he leaned forward. A servo-skull drifted closer, its optic lingering on his face as it scanned his retina. A moment passed. The light shifted to green, and the cabinet unlocked with a soft chime.

  Within were books.

  Real parchment, bound in leather and worked metal, each volume carefully preserved across millennia by generations of devoted adepts. Guilliman reached to the top shelf and drew down a thick, leather-bound tome marked simply with the numeral II.

  Page after page of private thoughts slipped by beneath his fingers. The faint scent of aged parchment rose to meet him, carrying with it memories—of the Emperor, of Terra, of the earliest days, when the future had still seemed… hopeful.

  The Emperor does not explain himself, and I suspect he believes explanation unnecessary. Still, when he looks at me, I feel not judged, but measured—like a tool set against a task he has already decided must be done.

  Another page. Another passage that caught his eye.

  The Imperium grows faster than comprehension. Already there are worlds I will never see, wars I will never touch, decisions made in my name without my knowledge. This troubles me more than any enemy.

  How much I underestimated the truth, even then, Guilliman thought, his gaze drifting briefly to the galactic map mounted along the chamber wall.

  Several more pages passed—notations of campaigns, logistics, conquered systems—until his fingers slowed at one of the most enduring memories.

  Today I met my sons.

  They stood at attention as they had been taught, armor immaculate, eyes fixed forward. They were taller than any man, broader than any warrior Macragge has ever produced. Genhanced. Perfected. Ready.

  And yet every one of them looked at me the same way—waiting to be told what they were.

  That realization struck harder than any blow.

  They are weapons, yes. The Emperor is correct in this. But weapons do not ask questions. Weapons do not search a face for approval.

  Theirs did.

  When I spoke, their shoulders eased by a fraction. When I nodded, several smiled before they remembered discipline. One laughed, then stopped himself, as if joy were a breach of protocol.

  They had been taught how to fight.

  They had not been taught how to belong.

  I gave them a name today. Not a designation. A name.

  I do not know if it was the correct choice.

  But when I told them they were my sons, the sound they made was not a cheer.

  It was relief.

  Another annotation lay cramped in the margin, written far later. The ink darker. The hand steadier, but heavier.

  I did not understand then, that by calling them my sons, would one day mean burying them.

  Guilliman snapped the book shut.

  He paused, drawing in a slow, controlled breath, forcing down the surge that threatened to break past his composure. He held it, counted the measured beats of both hearts, waited as the heat in his chest gradually receded.

  No time. Not yet. Later.

  He had made that promise before. Many times.

  After duty.

  After everything.

  Then, he would allow himself to feel.

  But duty remained.

  He opened the book again, flipping pages rapidly now, denying the past its hold on him. He was no longer searching for memory.

  He was searching for detail.

  There.

  Observed today a vessel attached to the Custodes detachment. I saw it only once, briefly, while departing orbit. It did not transmit identification beyond the most basic clearance codes, nor did it maneuver in a way consistent with Imperial naval doctrine.

  The hull geometry was restrained. No unnecessary spines, no excessive iconography. Gold, yes—but muted, worked into the structure rather than applied atop it. The effect was not ostentation, but certainty.

  Its mass read incorrectly. Auspex returns disagreed with one another by measurable margins, as though the ship’s internal volume refused to settle on a single answer. I initially suspected error.

  I no longer believe that was the case.

  The vessel did not move through space so much as assert where it was permitted to be.

  There were no visible weapon batteries along the hull, yet every escort ship unconsciously adjusted formation around it, as if proximity alone imposed correction.

  I asked the Custodian Tribune about its designation. He replied only that it was sufficient.

  I find that answer unhelpful.

  Nevertheless, I have recorded what I could. Should I encounter the vessel again, I believe I would recognize it immediately—not by silhouette, but by absence. It leaves no wake, no presence that can be easily described.

  It felt less like a warship.

  More like a moving boundary.

  His hand-drawn sketch remained alongside the entry, immaculately preserved.

  It matched the grainy sensorium outline exactly.

  Guilliman felt his blood frost over.

  The Custodes were six hours away.