The wind rushed past Dagan, the comms system in his helmet relaying the sound to him as clearly as if he were not wearing his helmet at all. The whiz-crack of shellfire detonated in the air around him, and whistled over the roar of the rushing wind. They had

been spotted. The Shinarii on the roof of the Citadel had opened fire upon them.

'Brothers.’ Dagan said, 'in the name of the Light-Bringer, Ferrus Manus, prepare to purge the weak and the unclean from this palace of the Emperor's servants.'

Each man took aim with his pistol and activated his chainsword. As Dagan thumbed the activation stud on his own sword he cast up a prayer to the Omnissiah and the spirits of his wargear, that they might not withdraw their favour from him at this time of battle.

Tanned faces, with blasphemous passages of anti-Imperial creed tattooed onto their exposed skin, looked up with a mixture of anger and horror, as the Space Marines twisted in the air, preparing to land feet first.

Thirty seconds after disembarking from the Thun-derhawk, two thousand metres above Antipax, Assault Squad Dagan touched down on the battlements of the Citadel - within the very heart of the Shinarii cult's operations - in a furious outpouring of the Emperor's divine retribution.

Dagan landed directly on top of a black-swathed cultist who was taking poorly aimed pot shots at the Iron Hands' sergeant with a lasgun of antiquated design. As he crushed the insurrectionist's skull Dagan was already firing into the feral pack of fanatical Shinarii hurrying to repel the assault squad's siege-breaking insertion attack. The chest of another cultist exploded in a red spray even as Dagan gutted a charging scimitar-wielding maniac from neck to groin with one chewing swipe of his chainsword.

The veteran sergeant heard a shrill ululating cry rise above the cacophonous roar of the battle raging on the ramparts. Another of the black-clothed Shinarii was charging towards him out of the tumult. The desert wind that was also assaulting the Citadel's battlements whipped at the cultist's flapping robes. Suddenly Dagan saw that the madman was carrying an antique-looking grenade. As the sergeant watched, the cultist screamed an oath of defiance and ripped out the cord, arming the grenade. But instead of throwing the bomb, the cultist continued to race forward towards the Space Marines' position.

If Dagan fired now the blast would detonate grenade and like as not blow him, his squad, as well as the rest of the cultists, into oblivion. If he did nothing the same thing would happen anyway: it would be as the cultist's ruinous masters demanded, no doubt.

Sergeant Dagan leapt forward through the throng on the battlements and grabbed the screaming Shinarii. With one deft, effortless movement, the Iron Hand hurled the man over the precipice of the battlements. A second later the grenade detonated, as the cultist plummeted down the side of the Citadel, the resulting explosion taking out a gun emplacement as well as vaporising the suicidal Chaos-lover. The explosion shook the battlements but the assault squad stood firm as their enemy stumbled and fell.