The charges on the bridge doors detonated. Melta waves bored white-hot holes through the armour slabs a second before breaching charges cleaved through the warping metal. A squad of Terminators went through first, ramming through the cooling debris, firing as they advanced. Servitors and serf crew became shreds of meat under the hail of rounds. Abaddon followed in their wake, his helm display showing a scattering of threat runes that vanished as bolt-rounds and volkite beams found their marks. He reached the centre of the bridge as silence fell.

‘Where is he?’ asked Layak, following Abaddon, ghost and shade-light spiralling over him. His blade slaves flanked him, their swords drawn, their bodies bloated, shedding cinders and ashes with every step. ‘Where are any of them?’

Abaddon turned, his mind shifting between possibilities. The bridge was silent, the few serf and servitor crew just those needed to keep the Lance of Heaven on course… No: to keep it on a trajectory that the War Oath could intercept. Hung out before them like a lure on a snare…

‘Brother!’ shouted Ralkor. Abaddon had time to turn and to see a spinning mote of light beyond the viewports streaking towards them. The armourglass imploded in a wave of fire as the assault rams hit the Lance of Heaven’s bridge. There were two of them, chisel-shaped blocks of armour and engines that carried five warriors in each tine of their forked hulls. Each mounted melta weapons powerful enough to punch a hole in the skin of a warship. Striking the unshielded bridge, those weapons reduced half the chamber to glowing slag.

The blast wave struck Abaddon and staggered him. Shards of wreckage and blobs of molten metal ricocheted from his battleplate. Tybar and his squad took the force of the hit and became fire and ash. The assault rams ripped through the bridge, embedding their prows deep in the deck. Sheets of metal scattered into the air. The assault rams’ front hatches blew open. Warriors in white leaped to the glowing deck. Bolter and plasma fire lashed out. Sons of Horus fell. Gunfire blazed back. Layak and his blade slaves stood amongst the ruin, the pale fire and shadow that wreathed them shredding bullets and debris to burning dust. Another assault ram ploughed through the hole left by the first two.

Abaddon rose. Gouges and pits marked his Terminator plate. The black lacquer of the Justaerin had burned away, replaced by the red of cooling ceramite and black of soot. Urskar and Gedephron stood with him. Air rushed past them into the void. Inside Abaddon’s helm the noise of battle reached him as a vibration through his feet. He saw his enemy then, a warrior running amongst the white-armoured figures charging across the deck: plumed helm, Chogorian hunt marks running across the plates of his armour, guandao spinning in his hands like the flash of lightning, like a bark of laughter as the rain fell.