Around him, the Iron Hands of his assault squad dropped through the twisting thermals like boulders. Above them the Iron Eagle dwindled to a distant speck, as the Thunderhawk gunship powered away amidst a flurry of flak fired from the heretics' macro guns.

Veteran Sergeant Dagan focused again on the shape of the desert city of Antipax, which looked like the stain of a braise amid the blanched ochre of the desert wasteland. The city was roughly circular in form, a high curtain wall of yellow stone containing a labyrinthine network of shadowed streets on the mesa-top within. At its heart stood the similarly circular structure of the Citadel, which the cultists had held now for the last three weeks.

Cultist activity within the other desert towns and Administratum centres had prevented the Imperial overlords of the planet from mounting an effective defence against the uprising. Black-robed Shinarii had emerged from their bandit country hideaways and from within the ranks of the servants of the Administratum and Munitorum on Herod itself to seize control of Antipax, the capital of the equatorial desert cities.

So now Assault Squad Dagan was making its attack descent on the centre of the cultists' operations, although this was not why the Iron Hands had come to the heretic-held world of Herod to begin with; the real reason rested with their sinister and secretive patron, Magos Omega Thule.

'Activate thrusters,' Dagan ordered over the squad comm.

With a turbine scream of jet-wash, Dagan's jump pack thrusters activated. A second later Brothers Accin, Tyur, Gamen, Csarte and Sered activated theirs.

For a moment the desert vista blurred, streaking away in a distortion of speed as the Iron Hands' pixelated heads-up display took a moment to compensate for the dramatic increase in velocity.

Dagan's bird's-eye view of the sandstone city showed it to be a maze of twisting streets, like an unearthed fossil within the expanse of the parched wilderness, criss-crossed by only a few featureless desert roads that connected it to other mineral trading centres across the equatorial band. The crystals yielded from the desert mountain mesas were used in the manufacture of las-weapons across the Achilles subsector.

The city filled his entire field of vision. From here he could even see the heretic-raised crucifixions lining the roads leading into Antipax.

And now he could see tiny figures moving within the chasm-like streets, and, more importantly, on the ramparts of the Citadel. Targeting icons flitted from one ant-like figure to another, as Dagan's suit cogita-tor assessed the threat potential of each in turn, ready for the moment when he decided to fire. Dagan currently held his plasma pistol and deactivated chainsword close against his chestplate, for the duration of the descent, almost as if in an attitude of prayer. The rest of his squad were similarly armed although the other Space Marines bore bolt pistols.

This combination of powerful side arms and scything close-combat weapons gave the assault squad great flexibility. They could fire whilst still at a distance and yet also meet any opponent in close combat immediately upon entering the fray, dropping right into the heart of a conflict thanks to their jump packs, as they planned to do here.