The White Scars plunged back in, but as they struck, a flock of hundreds of smaller ships broke from the divided armada. They were the fastest of the invaders’ ships, crewed by rogue traders and renegade privateers. They had flocked to Horus’ call and been given this task in exchange for promises of wealth and power. They were the crows of war that had followed the Great Crusade out to the edge of the dark, and now came back to feast on the corpses of their masters. They scattered outwards from the armada, spiralling out to meet the Falcon fleets. Hundreds of small battles spread across the dark, tumbling in the wake of the main mass of the armada.

And the shape of the armada continued to change. With the skin of smaller craft gone, the main force was revealed. Many vessels bore the livery of the Sons of Horus, blooded war crones like the Last Light, the Oath of Moment and the Spear Wolf. The legionaries on board were veterans, born in the time before the betrayal, breakers of their oaths to the Emperor and keepers of their bonds to their primarch. Beside them rode vessels of such different lines that they seemed less a fleet and more a collection of creations formed of mankind’s ingenuity in ship-craft fused with insanity. Galleons of black metal, their skins dotted with chrome pyramids; sleek needles of serrated bronze five kilometres long; slabs of red stone the size of mountain ranges hoisted into space and made into city-ships, their insides filled with ever-turning machines – these were the craft of the disciples of Kelbor-Hal and his New Mechanicum. No two were alike, their size and shape reflections of the magi who commanded them.

One by one the Legion and Mechanicum ships began to separate, pulling into twin spear blades. For a few hours the two formations continued to descend towards the disc of the Solar System together, leaving the Falcon fleets and the privateer carrion feeders behind to spin in battle. Hour by hour, the two fleets moved further and further apart, until each of them could see the light of the other’s engines only as a single dot of starlight.