'Brother Braxus,' the Iron-Father said, addressing the sergeant commanding the Iron Hands' Devastator squad, 'give the blasphemers a taste of the Emperor's most righteous wrath.'

Hit first and hit hard - that was the only way to deal with the enemy in this situation.

Gol Braxus and the rest of his squad spread out along the ledge, taking aim at the Word Bearers now standing in front of the obelisk. Braxus's missile launcher was loaded and ready. He pressed his finger lightly to the runed activation stud on the barrel of the weapon.

'Omnissiah guide thy flight.’ he muttered to the missile resting inside the launcher.

'Stop!' Magos Thule screamed from the skull jerking fitfully next to Gdolkin. You must not damage the artefact!'

If it had not been for the chanting roar filling the chamber already the tech-priest's scream would have probably alerted all those present to the presence of the Iron Hands.

'Red Mars! Belay that order.’ Gdolkin said with a sigh of exasperation. The Iron-Father turned to his men. 'It looks like we are going to have to get our hands dirty.’

A buzzing hum passed by Gdolkin's head and he looked up for a moment to see the three servo-skulls flying towards the octahedral obelisk at the centre of the chamber.

'Warp damn that magos!' the Iron-Father hissed, his servo-arm snapping in irritation.

Either Magos Thule had not seen what the Iron Hands had, through the electronic sensor eyes of the servo-skulls, or he did not understand how dire it meant the situation had suddenly become. Or perhaps he simply didn't care, so driven was he to uncover the secrets of the Araken artefact.

In a moment their position would be given away, Gdolkin realised with mounting dread, anger rising within him. Better that they reveal themselves now while they at least still had the element of surprise on their side.

'Warriors of iron!' he yelled, leaping to his feet. 'In the names of the Emperor, the primarch and the Omnissiah, purge the evil from this place!'

With that, his bolt pistol hurling shells into the assembled crowd of cultists, and his power axe crackling with esoteric energies, Gdolkin hurled himself off the ledge and down into the startled throng below.

Gdolkin's bolt pistol coughed in his hand, the bionics in his wrist meaning that he barely even registered the recoil that could have broken a normal man's arm. The tattooed face of the ravening cultist burst like an overripe ripe watermelon. The black-swathed body crumpled and Gdolkin fired another volley of bolter shells into the line of cultists beyond.

But the cultists behind kept pushing forwards, knives, sabres and firearms produced from within the swathes of their robes, and in a moment the press of bodies was upon the Space Marines. Gdolkin had judged there to be somewhere around two hundred cultists present in the shrine, all madmen willing to die for their unholy masters, and eight daemon-souled creatures, against the Iron Hands' twenty-nine noble brothers and Gdolkin's two remaining servitor bodyguards.