I nodded, picturing the grim-faced surgeon who confronted me at the medi-unit’s entrance. He had refused admission at first, and I had been required to remind him whose interests I served. He relented, but I wondered how many more times I could play that card. If the situation continued to deteriorate, would anyone care whether I was under a distant noble’s supposed protection?

‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.

‘Not too bad, sir,’ Plient replied. ‘Well, except my arm of course. Not that it hurts, just… itches. Where my fingers should be. Odd, that.’

He looked crestfallen for a moment, but quickly rallied.

‘Did my modifications to Hephaestus work?’

‘Yes. You excelled beyond my expectations.’

‘Thank you, sir… though perhaps you should not mention what I did too widely. I’m starting to wonder if I should be messing around with sacred technology. Maybe I offended the God-Emperor. That might explain… well…’ He lapsed into silence.

‘What happened out there?’ I asked. ‘They said you were the only survivor.’

‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘What I saw… I don’t know. It didn’t make much sense.’

‘You must have been in a hell of a firefight. I saw the damage to your craft. They had to scrap it. The outer hull was too riddled with bullets to salvage.’

‘It rained.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The bullets. They fell like rain. I couldn’t avoid them because they were all there was. That and the clouds and the lightning. It was all I could see.’

He spoke very quietly, I had to strain to hear him over the hiss of ventilators and groans from wounded souls.

‘Lightning?’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Except… it was green.’

‘This was from the storm? How did you get caught in it?’

‘I was to escort the new fighters back to the château. We had just dropped in from Orbital Station Salus when the storm rolled in beneath us. It moved so quickly, our momentum was too great to avoid it. We decided to go full power, blast through it as quickly as possible to minimise risk. But once we were in there, navigation stopped making sense. It was like everything was overcharged. My hair stood on end. I felt it tingle in my teeth. I still thought it was the storm but… there was something in there.’

‘Ork fighters?’

‘I don’t know. I never saw any. Just the gunfire. And the lightning. It struck one of the Thunderbolts. The surge just… It was like the rear of the vessel was gone. In an instant. No wreckage. It just… wasn’t there any more.’

He faltered, voice fading even as he spoke, the jovial tone that once warmed his words departed. It was like conversing with a machine.

With a gesture I urged Iwazar closer. The seer-skull bobbed forward.

‘Replay file designated “Duel”, minimal scaling, last thirty seconds,’ I whispered.