'Why is this happening now?' Librarian Melchor asked, his tone calm, but with gimlet eyes that looked like they could bore their way into a man's soul or through a planet's crust. 'And if you have known about the Araken artefacts for so long, why act now, when it would appear that it is already too late?'

'Because it was only with the destruction of the artefact on Hekla that I was at last able to make all the pieces mystery fit into place. And before that Warpstorm Araken was inaccessible. At the start of the Chaos forces' invasion, snowbound Hekla was attacked and the first of the Araken artefacts was annihilated. This then put me onto the trail of the second one on holy Fornax.'

‘Why now?' Thule repeated the Librarian's question. 'Who knows what whims of the Dark Gods dictate the actions of their corrupted servants?'

'You would have me steer the noble Ajax into a warpstorm?' Captain Strake said grimly, fixing the tech-priest with his one human eye.

'The warpstorm is dissipating, captain.' Thule's tone was becoming impatient, not unlike aboard the ordi-natus engine Gehenna, when the Iron-Father had first encountered the magos, Gdolkin thought.

'But a warpstorm nonetheless. I have to know more than you have so far told us to warrant sending my ship into a notorious spaceships' graveyard. The Ajax might be a strike cruiser of the Adeptus Astartes but it is no Emperor-class super heavy battlecruiser.’ the Iron-Captain said.

Strake was speaking for the side of reason at last, Gdolkin thought.

"We are wasting time.’ Thule fumed. ‘We must not delay. The foes ranged against the Imperium will not make the same mistake. The prize is there for the taking.'

'But the risks are great. Your prize could come at a great price, magos,' Gdolkin said, sounding the very voice of reason himself. He took a perverse pleasure in causing the tech-priest discomfort.

'If we do not claim it then it will be the enemy's for the taking!'

Gdolkin regarded Thule with a cold, steely gaze. The magos was tapping his fingers irritably on the console-desk.

‘You heard what my iron brothers have to say.’ Gdolkin declared. 'As far as our initial mission is concerned, as was stipulated by your honourable self, magos, we have completed it. We have fulfilled our obligation to you. Our homeworld possibly stands at the edge of doom itself. Our place is there, defending Medusa.’

Thule straightened his back, like a serpent ready to strike.

'I would remind you, Iron-Father, that you were put under my command until my mission came to fruition. It hasn't yet. Would you be the one to break the oaths sworn by the masters of your Chapter to the holy Cult Mechanicus?

The other Space Marines looked to their leader.

Deep in his heart Gdolkin felt great indignation that Thule was in charge of this ill-fated mission. But the great clan council has charged him to put himself and his men under the technomagos's command, and to go against the council's orders would be tantamount to treason. Treason was the ultimate weakness of character, and Iron-Father Gdolkin would never give in to such a thing.