Zoric starts to speak, but my threat-sense is flaring again. Not just for me, but for him.

‘Up!’ I shout.

He snaps his lascarbine upwards as another of the creatures folds its wings and drops towards him. He fires three times. Hits it centre-mass twice. The third round blasts one of the creature’s twisted horns from its skull. It should be enough to kill, but it isn’t. Not for something born of the warp. The creature lands hard, claws first, and knocks Zoric flat on his back. His las­carbine goes skittering across the deck, and I throw myself through the melee, but there are so many of the creatures between us. Too many for me to cut through. I hear Zoric’s pistol bark twice, and then he cries out, ragged and wordless, and I think that must be why I haven’t seen him in my dreams of Dimmamar. Because this is where he dies.

But then something whips past me. A small blade, about as big as the flat of my hand, attached to a length of Illithian killcord. It punches deeply into the creature directly in front of me. Straight through the eye. Yumia follows the dart and handsprings over the daemon even as it discorporates beneath her. She lands in a run, catching the loops of killcord as she does so, then she looses the dart a second time. It punches into the throat of the daemon crouched over Zoric. Instead of jumping on it, or cutting it with her other dart, Yumia leaps again, jumping over the top of the daemon and pulling the dart with her. It carves up and around the creature’s thick neck, separating its head from its shoulders. As she lands and rolls, it slumps and breaks apart, becoming nothing more than a thick fall of ash.

Yumia is back on her feet in an instant. She picks up Zoric’s rifle and makes it to his side as I cut down the last of the creatures between us. At first I think Zoric must be dead, but then he stirs. Swears.

‘Come on,’ Yumia says, as she puts his gun back in his hand and helps him to his feet. ‘This is not the time for rest.’

Zoric’s jacket and flexi-armour are a mess, blood oozing slowly from several ragged wounds across his chest and arms. He shakes his head and says something that neither of us catch.

‘What?’ Yumia asks.

‘I said I had it,’ he manages to say, and he laughs. It turns quickly into a cough.

Yumia snorts. ‘Of course,’ she says, unlooping her killcords again as the daemons circle closer, their maws wide and bloody. Zoric swears again as he braces his gun against his injured shoulder. I raise my swords, ready to cut them down. But then Sister Evangeline speaks, her voice so clear and melodious that it even cuts through the sound of the daemons screaming.