The taller, thinner Navigator exploded forwards and slammed her open hand into his chest as soon as he came within her considerable reach, knocking him from his feet and sending him flying backwards into the gauze surrounding the couch. The curtains ripped out of their anchors in the ceiling and collapsed on him, entangling him for a moment before he fought his way free of them.

By the Changer! Of all the damnable luck! At least one of these two was nowhere near as fragile as she’d appeared; the gifts of the warp were fickle, indeed, and the taller Navigator must have been blessed with muscles of rockcrete and tendons like adamantium hawsers beneath her skin. Radimir felt like he’d taken a thunder hammer to the chest, and dark spots that even he couldn’t penetrate swam in front of his eyes for a moment.

‘Help!’ the shorter one called desperately. ‘Nansi! Nansi!’ She was clinging to her taller companion, and in doing so was hindering her in pressing the slender advantage she’d gained with her surprising strength.

Radimir sucked in air. He didn’t dare go for her with his knife again; she was too quick and too strong to be sure of it, and her reach was too great. If she got her fingers on his wrist he’d lose his blade, and if she got her hands around his throat…

There were no shadows nearby deep enough to fall into and emerge again behind her, as he’d have preferred. The prey was already shouting. His initial plan of doing this quietly had been ruined, so he might as well adapt to it.

He grabbed the bodyguard, rolled the man over and pulled his auto­pistol free, then thumbed it to full auto and fired a burst at each of his quarries. Dark wounds opened on their torsos as the small-calibre shells found their mark, and the acrid tang of chemical propellant abruptly filled the air. Whatever blessings the Great Powers had given either of them, they didn’t extend to invulnerable skin or near-immediate powers of healing. Both wavered and fell, making breathy, bloody noises through punctured lungs.

Time. Time was key now. Radimir scrambled to the first one, the shorter and stockier of the two, and opened her throat with his knife. Then, as light faded from her human eyes, he tore off the half-mask that still covered her forehead and plunged his blade into her skull.

The electro-sheathed knife made as short work of bone as it had of body armour, and it was the work of a few moments to prise her warp eye free. Radimir averted his gaze from it, working by touch, for his was a dangerous harvest. It was hard between his fingers, toughened through years of staring into the immaterium, and he dropped it into his belt pouch, heedless of the blood that stained it. Then he reached for her companion.