The target point was close by the needle’s dark heart. Gun batteries blinked red around the site. The pilot’s alternative flashed up, a domed garden extending on an elegant lever from the adjacent spire’s side. Further than Felix would have liked from the target point, but the only practical option in the circumstances.

‘Take us in,’ said Felix.

The craft responded immediately, banking sideways and down. The thunder of anti-aircraft fire intensified, becoming a constant rumble. Felix looked over his warriors again. There were forty of them in the craft, and a further eighty in two accompanying Overlords. The ships were similar to the Corvus Blackstars used by the Inquisition and the Deathwatch. Like the Blackstars, the Overlords possessed twin transport bays with their own assault doors, but they were bigger and even more blessed with advanced technologies. Anti-munitions cannons added a rolling burr to the noise from outside, slinging hypervelocity steel balls at incoming shells and missiles. Those enemy rounds that got through exploded on shimmering energy shields, whose hiccupping buzz as they recharged joined the furious chorus of the embattled ship’s systems.

The Primaris Space Marines aboard the ships were all Ultramarines. At least, they were now – six weeks ago they had been the Unnumbered Sons of Guilliman. They were destined to reinforce the founding Chapter, and the pale grey chevrons partially obscuring their ultimas had been reverently removed. They had temporary squad markings, and had adopted a light blue for their company colour.

This would be their first battle as Ultramarines, led by Felix, an eleventh captain where there should only be ten. They had not even met the Chapter Master. Indeed, Marneus Calgar was ignorant of their assignment to his Chapter, and of their current mission.

Felix pondered how Calgar might feel about the primarch’s unilateral altering of the Codex Astartes. The captain could not help but feel that, in his drive for victory and efficiency, Guilliman had been careless with the feelings of his existing sons. Increasingly, Guilliman looked to the Primaris Space Marines as his first solution. He made no attempt to hide the fact that the days of the older Space Marines were numbered.

Felix’s theorising took his mind away from the coming fight. He refocused his attention on the battle. A clock raced towards zero upon his helm display.

‘Standby for attack!’ he ordered.

‘Brace for impact,’ said the pilot, his voice voxed into every helmet on board.

The ship jinked violently from side to side, accelerating as it did so. Every one of its little voices rose in protest, blending into a raucous machine howl. Explosions boomed from all quarters.

Felix brought up an external vidfeed. A grainy image of a armourglass dome, full of dark shapes, grew rapidly in front of his eyes.