Mizar still nagged at me, its cogitator registering something of interest. I ignored it, tired of indulging its incessant need for attention. On our return I would have to pick through its data-records, relive the whole horrible experience once again. I wanted a moment of respite. I wanted to remember the dead who had brought us this pyrrhic victory.

There was a beeping in my ear. I thought it was Mizar, but soon realised it was the vox, relayed through my void helm. Shard did not respond. Perhaps she had disengaged hers entirely.

I was reaching for her when the blast struck, knocking Hephaestus off balance and back into the planet’s gravity well. As Shard tried to stabilise the spiralling craft I synced with Mizar.

We were not alone in the void. The ork aircraft I had too eagerly dismissed had caught up with us. Though its engines had failed, it must have been equipped with some secondary propulsion system, for green lightning was arcing across its fuselage, the energy field somehow both propulsion and weapon.

‘Shard! Our pursuer. You see it?’

‘Can barely see anything,’ she bellowed. ‘Everything has gone haywire.’

‘It’s the Green Storm,’ I said. ‘It has to be! Just look at it!’

She grunted something, focused on the console. I shifted my view to the rear gunner, only to find the target lock hanging curiously to one side. I thought it a malfunction, until I heard Shard screaming through the vox for Leric to return fire.

No response. Perhaps the ork’s attack had ruptured his pressure suit, or the shockwave snapped his neck.

The craft shook again, sirens wailing. Shard had no choice but to turn our fall into a dive, the ork in pursuit. This was no controlled descent, and I felt the heat rising as we tore through the atmosphere.

‘Leric, return fire! What are you doing back there?’ Shard snarled through the vox.

She didn’t know.

I synced to the rear gunner, praying he had revived. But the target overlay still hung useless to one side.

I did not want to die, so I reached out through Mizar, who was intent on the pursuing craft. Teeth gritted, I forced the seer-skull’s machine-spirit into the rear gunner’s sensor. It was difficult, Mizar protesting all the way. But I secured it in the rear gunner’s console, banking on Mizar’s obsession to force it into repositioning the gunsights.