Macks circled wide, gun raised to aim at the roof. Lussin reached the head of the stairs and switched around, sweeping with his gun. Drusher tried to get the auspex to clear.

Lussin screamed, and his gun went off. There was a heavy, splintering sound as he fell backwards down the steps, his weapon discharging a second time.

He was dead. The front of his skull was peeled off, and blood squirted into the air.

Macks howled, and fired her riotgun into the ceiling, pumping the grip and blasting the rotten floorboards in a blizzard of wood splinters with each successive shot. Every muzzle-flash lit the mill room for a millisecond

Exploding wood away before it, the Beast smashed through the deck and came down at them.

It was a blur. Just a blur, moving faster than anything had a right to. Macks’ riotgun boomed again. The creature moved like smoke in a draught. Drusher had a fleeting glimpse of deep purple body plates, a snapping tail of gristly bone, forearm claws like harvest scythes. Macks screamed.

Drusher dropped the auspex, and fired his pistol.

The recoil almost broke his wrist. He yelped in pain and frustration, stung hard by the kick. Use both hands, she’d told him.

It turned from Macks, chittering, and bounded across the floor right at him.

It was beautiful. Perfect. An organic engine designed for one sole task: murder. The muscular power of the body, the counterweight tail; the scythe limbs, like a pair of swords. The inhuman hatred.

It had no eyes, at least none that he could see.

Hold the gun with both hands and aim low. That’s what she’d said. Because of the kick.

Drusher fired. The recoil slammed up his arms. If he’d hit anything, it wasn’t obvious. He fired again.

The Beast opened its mouth. Fifty-three centimetres of bite radius, teeth like thorns. The blade-limbs jerking back to kill him.

He fired again. And again. He saw at least one round flick away, deflected by the Beast’s bio-armour.

It was right on him.

And then it was thrown sideways against the wall.

It dropped, writhed, and rose again.

Drusher shot it in the head.

It lunged at him. A riotgun roared and blew it back. Bleeding from the forehead, Macks stepped up and fired blast after blast. She fired until the gun was empty, then took the pistol out of Drusher’s hands and emptied that into it too.

Ichor covered the walls. Frothy goo dribbled out of the Beast’s fractured bone armour.

‘What is it?’ Macks asked.

‘I believe,’ Drusher replied, ‘it’s called a hormagaunt.’

But Macks had passed out.

It took the better part of an hour for the relief team of Arbites to reach them from Udar Town. Drusher had made Macks comfortable by then, and dressed her wounds.

Pistol in hand, he’d carefully examined the beast. The goad-control was easy to find, implanted in the back of the eyeless head.

When Macks came round again, he showed her.