The Veritas Ferrum fired. Lightning blacker than the void flashed from the spike and struck the stern of the Sthenelus. It cut the ship open. Warp flame erupted, a firestorm of night and green enveloping every deck of the rear third of the hull. The spine snapped. The frigate broke in two. A greater blast came. The material and the immaterial destroyed each other, and the explosion hurled the two portions of the ship away from one another. The blackened shell of the rear tumbled down, guttering and disintegrating, into the dark below the plane of the engagement. The blast sent the forwards section into a spin. Uncontrolled, helpless, the Sthenelus turned and turned, drifting, as the giant predator closed in.

The jaws of the Veritas Ferrum gaped wide.

Khalybus and Cruax yanked Kiriktas from the throne. The helmsman’s limbs spasmed. Neural feedback from the mortally wounded machine-spirit shook through his body. They pulled the mechadendrites from his spine. They made for the stairs to the main deck of the bridge, supporting him between them until he could walk again. Levannas was one step behind.

There was light on the bridge from the pict screens and emergency lumen strips. Some secondary generators were running yet. In its dying moments, the Sthenelus fought to remain on duty. Smoke poured into the bridge through the main doors. The wavering glow of flames came from the main hall.

‘Abandon ship,’ Khalybus ordered. His battle-brothers were already on the move. ‘We make for the gunships.’

‘We fight still,’ Cruax growled.

Or so we will tell ourselves, Khalybus thought. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We fight still.’

Levannas echoed him, and so did the legionaries of the 85th Clan-Company as they abandoned the bridge.

When three Thunderhawks left the only functioning launch bay, Khalybus muttered the words to himself again. He looked through the viewing block of the Karaashi’s Fire at the end of the Sthenelus, and the defiance felt hollow. The frigate turned and turned, a broken femur, as the Veritas Ferrum bore down on it. Ignited gases flickered at the edges of the stump of the hull. Minute flashes were larger chunks of wreckage. The bodies of lost legionaries and hundreds of serfs were falling through the void too. They were invisible. The Thunderhawks were specks in the void, beneath the notice of the daemon ship.

Khalybus waited for the jaws of the monster to crush the remains of the ship. The Veritas Ferrum snarled, closing in. Then it clamped its jaws above the frigate. It passed over the Sthenelus. The last of the frigate’s lights went out.