‘A desperate, pointless tactic,’ said Marneus Calgar of the smoke. It obscured nothing. His bionic eye saw through it as easily if it were not there. The walls of the museum were no greater obstacle to his augmetic sight. False-colour thermal silhouettes flashed every time he passed his eye over the position of an insurgent. They skulked behind the walls next to windows, stolen weapons held ready to fire. They hid themselves in the balconies between the overlapping roofs. All the obvious places.

He shook his head in disbelief.

‘Julio,’ he voxed. ‘I have seen enough. It is time to put an end to this.’

He stepped down off the front of the Land Raider and jumped to the ground. If the rebels had any marksmen worthy of the name, they could feasibly have hit him there. Having seen what he had, Calgar judged himself perfectly safe.

He landed as surely as a man a hundred years younger, unimpeded by his battleplate or by the massive Gauntlets of Ultramar that formed part of it, and walked around the back of the tank. The engine muttered low, trembling the space around the vehicle’s rear with heat and noise, and adding blue exhaust to the thin smoke. By the engine block, Sergeant Julio of the Fourth Squad, First Company stood with Calgar’s honour guard and the Chapter Ancient, a hulking Primaris Space Marine by the name of Andron Ney. Ney had been among the first of the Primaris recruits sent to the Ultramarines decades ago, and he had served with distinction. Back then, the new influx of warriors had called themselves the Three Hundred. They were new, different and apart. Now, they were just another valued element of the Ultramarines Chapter.

The warriors stood to attention and saluted Calgar with their hands over their hearts.

‘Then you will not speak with them, my lord?’ asked Julio.

‘I will not speak with them,’ said Calgar.

‘How many do you count, my lord?’ asked Julio. He wore his Terminator plate, and the rest of his squad waited back with the Rhinos. Calgar had selected them to clear the museum. It was ridiculous overkill for the situation, but statements had to be made.

‘One hundred and thirty-two. There will be more. You will have no trouble. There could be a thousand. Look at their disposition,’ said Calgar. ‘Can these men truly be sons of Macragge?’

‘They will have had little training, my lord,’ said Julio. ‘Levels of dissent within the auxilia are practically zero, and most are shipped out as soon as they are trained. The men within are the unsuitable. The weak. The failures.’