The Iron-Father pulled back from the quaking Schrodinger. Thule watched from the edge of the platform, something mantis-like and predatory about his posture and his gaze. The two other Iron Hands, and the accompanying weapons-servitor automata, stood motionless as statues behind him.

'This is not over yet. If it is the will of the Omnissiah that Ordinatus Gehenna completes its preordained task then, by the Light-Bringer, so it shall!'

Thule made a hissing noise, but said nothing.

'Gdolkin to all units,' the Iron-Father intoned into his helmet mic, turning and descending the stairs from the elevated command platform. 'Converge on generarium level alpha. There is a canker aboard this ancient god-engine that has to be purged.'

Gdolkin cut down the traitor Guardsman with one sweep of his axe, bisecting the hollow-eyed madman's body from neck to groin. The insurrectionist Chaos-lover collapsed in a slurry of intestines and other internal organs. And then the Iron Hands and their tech-guard allies were through into the vaulted chamber of Generarium Primus.

After battling the Death Guard on the acid-scorched battlefield to get on board the ordinatus, the Iron Hand squads had reconvened again. There had been losses amongst Melchor's squad as well. Initiate Gob-ard had been cut down by a Death Guard Terminator and Brother Betorin's bionic right leg had been severely damaged by a mine. Librarian Melchor appeared to have come out the battle unscathed so far, unlike Gdolkin, although his cyber-cherub was showing signs of light shrapnel wounding.

Gdolkin's encounter with the defiler had left him and his armour bruised and battered. He had noticed a two point six-zero-one per cent drop in his power armour's servos' operational effectiveness.

Upon leaving the presence of the arguing tech-priests the Sons of Ferrus had fought their way through the barricades being erected outside the command deck of the Gehenna, through the shell-holed outer hull corridors that led to the main access shafts, down through the cultist-held turbine chambers to the apocalypse cannon's generator decks. Here they were meting out the Emperor's justice to traitor Guardsmen, heretic techs and indentured workers, all of whom fought bitterly with whatever weapons they could find.

Deep inside the bowels of the ordinatus, a full four hundred metres from the command bridge, the adamantium-pillared hall containing the archeo-machinery of Generarium Primus was as large as an Ecclesiarchy world's major shrine. Across the floor of the echoing chamber, amidst the forest of columns, Gdolkin could see yet more of the enemy clearing out the last pockets of resistance still holding out against them. The snap of las-fire and the rattle of autoguns rang from columns and buttresses. But such matters were academic now, for the heretics already held the main control tower. As long as that was the case, there was no hope of Arch-Magos Schrodinger and the Gehenna completing their mission.

'Onward, warriors of iron!' Iron-Father Gdolkin bellowed into the comm. His men didn't need to be told twice.

The Iron Hands waded into the fray, the traitorous Guardsmen, forge workers and tech-adepts, believing they had as good as won here, suddenly finding the tables turned on them. There was little they could do against the determined Space Marines, warriors who had been bio-engineered to be superhuman. For all their efforts, the attacks of the heretic cultists had no effect at all.