'Your orders.’ the other priest mocked, his tone derisive.

'Yes my orders, that come ultimately from the War-master himself! It is the will of the Omnissiah. It is the will of the Emperor.'

The two technomagi faced each other, augmetic eyes glowing a ferocious red, poised like two rutting bull grox.

'And it is my intention to carry those orders out, or do you forget who is in command here?'

The other said nothing for a moment, his breathing loud and laboured, huffing snorts coming from amidst the metal components of his face.

Schrodinger turned back to the green-glowing monitor of his lectern, the flickering screen overlaying his flesh and metal features with a network of fluorescent contour lines.

'Cannon batteries to full power!' Schrodinger commanded, righteous anger boiling in the blood and lubricating fluid running through his plastek-sheeted veins. 'Cogitator-targeters on-line. Align the apocalypse cannon.'

Adepts relayed the arch-magos's commands to a bank of servitor-drones, locked into their console positions. A hundred cogitator-melded minds calculated firing solutions. The bridge echoed with the rattle of digits inputting algorithms into console-lecterns accompanied by the whistles and hums of the praying tech-priests intoning their various incantations of operation, to appease and encourage the machine-spirits of the ancient ordi-natus.

'If you do this, you and all mankind will come to regret it.’ the interloper said in a dark whisper.

The arch-magos turned back on the other tech-priest as fast as a striking arco-flagellant.

'All mankind? Is this some kind of threat?'

'We could lose this war.’

'In the name of Red Mars is there more to this that you're not telling me?'

The thrumming of hydraulic pistons the size of hive-spires could be felt even here, on the command bridge, as the arch-magos's commands took effect.

'In the name of the holy Omnissiah, man! What is it? What aren't you telling me?'

Involuntarily a telescoping servo-limb shot out and grabbed hold of the cadaverously tall tech-priest by the rough crimson cloth of his robe.

There was a commotion beneath the jutting platform on which the arch-magos and the other tech-priest stood. A tech-guard captain had run onto the command bridge, the red of his uniform stained even darker by his own blood, a thick wound opened up across his forehead and a mirroring gash through the electronics of his targeter-sight. 'My lord arch-magos!' the captain called. Servo-limbs twitching in irritated agitation, Schro-dinger let go of his sparring partner and turned his attention to the new arrival. 'What is it, captain? Time is of the essence.' 'Our position is becoming untenable, my lord magos,' the captain said breathless, despairing panic and blood loss draining the colour from his cheeks. The traitors have taken decks Quintus, Sextus and Septus. And such horrors I have never seen. The foul spawn of disease and decay.'

'What about the generarium levels?' Schrodinger asked, locating those same areas of the ordinatus on his console monitor, tapping the wire-frame images dotted with flashing red and amber runes that appeared before him as a consequence of his adjustments of the knurled brass knobs and switches.