Secondary auspex and pict screens lit up with green confirmations, even as the primary screens were flashing red with warnings. The cogitators of the Sthenelus had recognised the Veritas too. Its trans­ponder signatures were beyond doubt. The outline of the ship was familiar. Enough remained for the mockery to be apparent. This was the strike cruiser of Captain Durun Atticus. It had survived Isstvan V, exacting a steep price from the traitors as it made good its escape. It had destroyed the Emperor’s Children battle-barge Callidora and its escorts. Khalybus had followed the traces of the Veritas Ferrum’s heroic war. He had searched for years to find it and its captain again.

He had found it. He hoped no remnant of Atticus was aboard the abomination.

‘Magnify,’ Khalybus ordered. Swallowing his disgust, he studied the vid screen displays in the strategium, taking what he could to learn the nature of the foe. Levannas and Cruax joined him.

The Veritas Ferrum had grown many times its original size. Colossal spikes of iron and brass jutted from its hull. Its flanks bubbled with pustules and sores a hundred yards wide. They swelled, burst and grew again.

Levannas said, ‘That disease might be a weakness.’

‘Yes,’ Khalybus began. He looked more closely. ‘No,’ he corrected. He pointed to a blister that had just burst a quarter of the way down from the prow. ‘Look. That did not leave a crater. The plates are thicker now.’ As he spoke, another sore split open. Molten fluid spread outwards, then solidified. The ship was growing stronger.

The Veritas Ferrum’s statuary had turned into gnarled gargoyles. They moved, jaws snapping and claws raking the void for prey. They were huge, each of them the size of a frigate, though against the colossal scale of the swollen Veritas, they were comparable to the statues, battered by the years of war, that still stood proudly the length of the Sthenelus. The gargoyles of the Veritas were in the mould of its figurehead. The prow was a horned skull. Jaws that could snap an escort in half opened and closed, hungry, raging, laughing.

The guns of the ship had grown too. They looked like jagged, broken bones forged from brass. Flames licked up from their barrels. Acidic blood ran down their length, in defiance of absent gravity, scoring the guns with lines of strange, shifting meanings.

Khalybus exchanged a look with Cruax. The Iron Father nodded. ‘Our struggle has been a long and honourable one,’ Cruax said. ‘I am proud of what we have done.’

‘As am I,’ said Levannas.

‘What are your orders, captain?’ Cruax asked. He spoke with grim acceptance of what was coming.

‘They are what they must be,’ Khalybus said. ‘We attack.’