'Ferrus be with me.’ Gdolkin muttered, feeling the power source of his axe thrumming in his right hand. He unholstered his re-loaded bolt pistol and felt its reassuring weight in his left.

There was a throaty boom as the daemon-machine's main cannon fired, a few seconds' pause, and then somewhere behind the Space Marines' position Gdolkin heard the crump of an explosion accompanied by the shrill screams of men dying.

The denier paused and then, with the protesting grinding of metal, angled its helm towards the Space Marines before it in the trench. Then, with spider-like movements of its limbs, the defiler tried to clamber into the trench. One pincer foot crashed down, splintering duckboards and throwing up sprays of filthy brown water.

The Iron Hands opened fire. Bolter shells impacted against the armoured hull and plasma flame burst across it in a wash of molten fire. And yet, despite the corroded appearance of the defiler's armour, it was surprisingly durable. The accursed war engine seemed to shrug off the Iron Hands' assault. Nothing was slowing it down. It was like something from the nightmares that had circulated within those systems bordering on the Eye of Terror for over a thousand years.

The daemon-engine returned fire. Autocannon shells raked up the ground between it and the Space Marines as the defiler lurched towards them, its port-side legs inside the trench whilst its others continued to run across the ground above.

Much as he hated to admit it, Iron-Father Gdolkin realised he had to give the command to retreat. To do so was not weakness, however. They were too vulnerable in this position to the defiler's guns, drawn out as they were along the trench. To retreat and reposition was good battle-sense.

'Back!' Gdolkin shouted into his helmet mic. 'We'll reposition at the last junction and take this Chaos-cursed machine out from behind cover. By Ferrus, we'll send this blasphemy to the spirit of the Omnissiah back to the hell that spawned it!'

At the Iron-Father's command, the black-armoured Marines turned and made their way back along the trench, past the bodies of the fallen Death Guard, Zorian and Naltech covering their retreat, with Joab XIII automatically watching Gdolkin's back.

But no matter how fast the Iron Hands moved, the powerful muscles of their genetically enhanced physiques assisted by various pistoning augmetics and the servomotors of their power armour, the scuttling daemon-engine was faster. And then the defiler was above them, its shadow hanging over them like the spectral shroud of death itself.

Tentacles telescoped down into the pit of the trench and snared Brother Oved in their snaking metal coils. Then Oved was gone, yanked out of the trench, helpless in the clutches of the daemon-engine.

As it passed overhead Gdolkin saw how massive the defiler truly was. He also glimpsed a peculiar metal plate beneath its undercarriage that seemed to pulse with unnatural organic life. Although he only glimpsed it for a split-second, the automatic targeting system of his ocular implant fixed the image inside its cogitator core. Gdolkin raised his gun and launched a shell into the discoloured metal. It exploded satisfyingly, spraying the trench walls with black bile.