The Cadians' view of the road junction beyond was obscured by a large masonry block that had once formed the corner of a maintenance shed.

With his men covering his back, Vessig approached the junction cautiously, laying each booted foot down carefully, so as not to attract the attention of whatever waited around the corner of the ruin.

There was a sharp squeal and a creature the size of a Cadian wolfhound scurried out into the road. But this was no dog. Once, it might have been a rat, but now it was something else entirely, mutated almost beyond recognition into a vile, oversized scavenger. Long spines protruded from the vertebrae of the creature's back whilst its mouth was malformed by tusk-like fangs. Green tinged fur clung to its lean form in wet clumps but in places patches of bare, scabrous skin were also visible. The long hairless, white tail that lashed behind it ended in a cruel-looking sting.

Before he was really aware of what he was looking at, Sergeant Vessig fired. The creature's sudden movement and the sharp sound of its squeal had been enough to trigger instinctive reactions born of a lifetime of rifle training.

The shot rang out through the ruins only to be muffled by the enveloping fog. The silence that came after it was worse that the lonely crack of the lasgun.

The mutant rat dropped, smoke rising from a large, cauterised wound that had opened up one whole side of its lank body.

Vessig's heart pounded and his breathing was shallow. Me shouldn't be reacting like this. Me was a sergeant of the Cadian 108th Wyverns! He had obviously been feeling more tense about the situation than he had consciously realised. Vessig offered a prayer of thanks to the Emperor following it with a supplication for the guidance of Him on Earth, then signalled his squad forward again.

The large frame of Trooper Closs moved past him, followed by Katsulas.

Vessig heard a sharp hiss, like the sound a sewer snake would make, a split second before Katsulas raised his lasgun as he shouldered the larger, slower Closs out of the way. Something else was emerging from the shadows and smoke around the corner of the road junction.

The shambling figure was clad in the overalls of an indentured worker. It dragged its feet clumsily as if it was unused to making such a manoeuvre. Then, in a movement that was more reminiscent of a snake, the worker lashed out at the Guardsmen with filthy hands that clasped like claws. Katsulas fired, putting a las-bolt through the front of the worker's skull and blowing out the back of his head in a puff of blood and bone shrapnel.

The worker fell forward, the talons of its dead hands tearing the rubber mask of Katsulas's rebreather from his face. The Guardsman took a sudden shocked breath, which caught in his throat and became a strangled cough.

Sergeant Vessig took all this in at a glance. Ignoring Katsulas, he took the corner at a run as Closs, his flamer unslung from his shoulder, hosed whatever waited along the service-way with burning prome-thium. The sound of the flamer was like the throaty roar of some leviathan fire-breathing reptile, and it drowned out the background booms of the Imperial artillery for the Guardsmen close to Closs. It was better to leave a man down and deal with the still active threat, than to stop to help one man and lose others, or your own life, in the process. You could always come back to help him once the threat had been neutralised.