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.

Yelling catechisms from the Scriptorium of Iron, the Space Marines sprayed the usurping Citadel-defenders with bolt pistol fire. The Shinarii died screaming.

There was a brief respite from the clamour of battle during which Dagan became aware of the conflict now raging on the streets of the city below as the rest of Iron-Father Gdolkin's rescue force delivered the Emperor's justice to the Chaos rebels.

Dagan looked around him, taking in the battle-mented roof of the Citadel. Cultists lay dead all around him, the flapping of their wind-worried robes making their corpses look like carrion birds. A dark portal invited him inside the Citadel, to the very heart of the Shinarii cult's operation on the planet. The darkness promised to be a haven of cool compared to the harsh brilliance of the unforgiving suns-light. He did not need to be invited twice.

Revving the blade of his gore-wetted chainsword, Veteran Sergeant Dagan led the other Iron Hands of the assault squad into the darkness.

Pistols firing and chain-blades whirling, the Assault Marines burst into what Sergeant Dagan guessed must once have been the Governor's apartments. The walls of the once lavishly decorated chambers were covered in blasphemous graffiti, daubed in a liquid that had dried the colour of rust, and all the opulent furnishings, marble statuary and mosaic floors had been defaced by the iconoclastic actions of the Shinarii.

The fools, Dagan thought, to have no respect for the Imperium that had given them so much. It would be a pleasure purging their presence from this place.