‘Lord!’ Mautus called. ‘There’s a breach in the empyrean ahead.’

Sanguinius fought his way to the reality of the bridge. He stared at the shadow on the tactical screen. The beast taunted his fleet and killed his sons. There was a flash of primal fury. He hungered for revenge, for the brutal satisfaction of the foe’s slaughter. He tore the anger from his heart, and embraced the salvation of reason. ‘Fleet master,’ he said to Carminus. ‘Take us out of the warp. All ships, abandon pursuit and transition. Now.’

‘So ordered.’

The trajectories on the screen changed infinitesimally. The reaction of the warp was immediate. The wake of the phantom seemed to sense the change of intent. The empyrean crashed against the fleet with renewed madness. The storm howled. The Red Tear’s Geller field buckled under the strain. Klaxons sounded warnings, and the air of the bridge shimmered, barely holding back the teeth of Chaos. The battleship’s hull groaned, giving voice to a choir of structural and machinic stress. Carminus pushed the ship’s integrity to the edge as he hurled the Red Tear towards the gap in the barrier between dream and reality.

At the edge of Sanguinius’ consciousness, the sliver of possibility gleamed and pulsed. Unless, unless, unless.

The Red Tear plunged through the wall of the storm.

The Word Bearers’ Navigators died from the strain of the jump, but they kept their vow. The Ultramarines emerged from the Mandeville point inside the Anesidorax System with all ships intact. Their Navigators were exhausted, and their sanity was strained. But they had followed the leads of Nekras and Yathinius, and they had survived. Guilliman was not pleased to learn Nekras had died with a smile on her face, but he was satisfied with the result. The vow had been kept, regardless of the reason.

He had used the enemy.

He ordered the corpses jettisoned from the Samothrace. He left the athames in his quarters. The thought of turning them against the foe grew more insistent, but he pushed it away for now.

Thrinos appeared in the primary oculus, its orbit shining darkly with the assembled might of the Dark Angels fleet.

Beside Guilliman’s pulpit, the screens lit up with the positions of the new ships emerging from the warp.

‘Identified,’ Lautenix said after a few seconds. ‘The Ninth Legion.’

Simultaneous arrivals? Guilliman thought. He ran through a dozen theoreticals to explain the phenomenon. None satisfied. Their common foundation was the denial of coincidence.

‘Hail the Red Tear,’ Guilliman ordered. ‘I will speak with my brother by hololith.’

He moved to a chamber at the rear of the strategium. The doors sealed behind him, and he climbed the plinth on which rested a hololith plate. The Samothrace’s lithocast system was not as powerful as the one in the Macragge’s Honour, but it would serve for ships at this proximity.