Another bolt smacked into his breastplate, cracking the outer casing and fracturing the power cabling beneath. Smoke blew from the crack and his jump pack engines coughed. A lurching drop made his stomach flip. Icons blinked, alarms squealed. Justinian prepared to fall to his death while he sought a solution to his power failure. At his urging, the cogitator in his suit rerouted power. The jets roared again, and he surged on with renewed speed. Sealant foam bubbled up to plug the breach in his armour.

The enemy would have to try harder to stop him than that.

Justinian dropped down then burst upward and over the battlements, Aldred beside him. Half a dozen members of the Iron Warriors lined the parapet. Boltguns flashed, revealing horned helms and faceplates cast with daemonic visages. They were terrifying foes, made Adeptus Astartes by the Emperor and granted greater vigour by their Dark Gods. Once, they were the mightiest warriors in the galaxy.

They were the mightiest no longer.

‘Your death has been too long coming!’ Justinian roared, his voxed shout blasting from his helm as he descended on pillars of fiery smoke. ‘Prepare yourselves for the Emperor’s judgement!’

He came down with a bone-jarring thump hard enough to crack the ferrocrete of the tower, guns already blazing fire. Assault bolters were powerful weapons, but if used unwisely they would run through their ammunition stores in seconds. Justinian checked his fury. The resupply pods had yet to land.

Even utilised with care, the assault bolters fired at a terrifying rate. Flames blazed from the weapons’ exhaust slots. Explosions smashed the Iron Warriors from their feet, hurling them backwards with a force that a standard bolter could not hope to emulate.

Bjarni came over the side, howling joyously, his warriors following him. Then came Sergeant Rusticus’ squad, of which Solus was a part. The Primaris Space Marines looked almost as daemonic as their foes, with their varicoloured liveries scorched and smoking from the heat of their descent. Caught between the murderous crossfire of eight Primaris Inceptors, the Iron Warriors were cut to pieces. One of them came at Justinian through the fire storm, a chain axe raised. Justinian leapt back from him with a controlled burst of his jets, retargeting one of his guns on the warrior as he flew. He could not let the enemy get close.

The Inceptor load-out’s only real weakness was a lack of melee weaponry. The guns he held in his gauntlets, however, meant it wasn’t much of a weakness at all.

Justinian’s bolts hit the traitor square in the chest. The Iron Warrior’s antique armour burst apart, spraying his ancient innards in a red slick across the ramparts, and his chain axe fell to the ground. Its teeth bit on the ferrocrete, and it span madly before the motor cut out with a muted growl.