Acting instinctively, Gdolkin made a lunge for the rabid tech-priest and hauled him back, locking his arms under and around Thule's shoulders. The ensnared magos spat and kicked, his mechadendrite limbs writhing in fury, mere centimetres from the arch-magos. Schrodinger's cherub-familiar had taken to the air again in fearful anxiety.

One who did not understand the level of cybernetic enhancement the Adeptus Mechanicus had mastered, as Gdolkin did, might have been surprised at the strength the stick-thin tech-priest demonstrated. But

it was nothing compared to the musculature and power armour-assisted might of a Space Marine. There was nothing Magos Thule could do as long as he remained in Gdolkin's grasp.

'The target must be destroyed!' Schrodinger reiterated. 'In the name of the Omnissiah, fire!'

A deep, subsonic thrumming seized the command bridge. A column of caged glow-globes set inside the carved visage of the Machina Opus lit one after another until almost all of them were glowing brightly, indicating that cannon levels were at maximum.

The throbbing vibrations increased. Gdolkin could feel them pulsing right to his very core. He wondered whether the noise would have been causing him pain if it wasn't for his Lyman's Ear.

Suddenly a high-pitched whine began to reverberate throughout the bridge, the pitch descending rapidly as the glow-globe monitor of the apocalypse cannon's readiness began to dim, the scale dropping as it did so. There was no earth-shaking roar of the apocalypse cannon firing, no quaking as the massive ordinatus subsequently suffered the tremors initiated by the doomsday weapon, just the steady descending pitch of generator batteries losing power.

'What in the name of Mars is going on?' the arch-magos shrieked, almost hysterically.

There was a flurry of activity amongst the tech-adepts. The arch-magos's cherubim shot anxious darting glances between each other, making a cluttering whistling sound as they did so.

'Power to the apocalypse cannon has been cut.’ a black-robed adept piped up at last.

Gdolkin realised that Magos Thule had ceased his struggling.

'Why? What has happened?' Schrodinger was beside himself. His guardianship of this ancient war engine had brought the ordinatus to the very brink of destruction.

'What is going on?' the Iron-Father added his own angry enquiry to the fray.

'Augurs report that Generarium Primus is under heretic control, my lords,' another machine-acolyte said, the anxiety clear in his voice. As long as it remains so we cannot fire the cannon.'

'Then our moment has passed. We are too late. The foe will be victorious here.'

'What?' Gdolkin roared turning on the arch-magos, releasing his grip on Thule and casting him aside. 'You would admit defeat already? You who command one of the legendary ancients of the ordinatus legions?'

The Iron-Father was face-to-face with Schrodinger now: his voice rang from his helmet speakers, echoing through the vaulted space of the bridge deck.

'You should be ashamed of yourself, an arch-magos of the vaunted Adeptus Mechanicus giving in to the Emperor's enemies so readily! Such weakness! Your behaviour makes my blood boil!'