Halbract’s ships had tried to cripple the two behemoths before they reached the star fort, but Iron Warriors warships cut them off. By the time the pair had reached the Phuran, they had lost ten thousand of their human cargo. More than enough remained. I-D-I and I-V-II docked at the Iron Warriors’ beachhead points, and opened their internal doors. Passages designed to drain billions of tonnes of grain now became exits for over a hundred thousand drug-fuelled killers. The troops defending the star fort held for six hours. After it was done, the Iron Warriors opened the station to the void and let the vacuum deal with the gangers.

On and on, the brutal pragmatism of Perturabo had pushed the defenders back and back again. Now the remainder of the Second Sphere fleet was battered and wounded, circling the moon of Oberon. A hundred warships from three times that number, facing twenty times that strength – those were odds that made for stories to echo through the ages. But this would be no last stand, no final rest in death found in fire. The burning of Pluto’s moons was a ploy that could only be used once. Halbract had seen the enemy forces alter their tactics. There were no hidden charges or annihilating data-jinns laid before the Elysian Gate, but Perturabo did not know that.

Machine adepts scoured the moons and stations the traitors had already taken. Already careful, the enemy became even more cautious. Large ship strengths were held back from recently taken ground. Anything that held no worth was destroyed by distant bombardment. It slowed them, and in that it proved as effective a weapon as a fresh battlefleet. In the buzzing half-silence as the Monarch of Fire passed through its power cycle, Halbract reflected that, measured on the axis of time, this battle had gone in their favour. It was just on every other count that it tasted bitter on his tongue.

‘Begin to divert power to engines and shields,’ he said softly. ‘Give us one more cycle of the guns. Send the withdrawal signal to all other ships.’

The command crew answered with silent action. They all knew this moment was coming. They could not remain where they were. Ships closed on them from every plane of orbit, and soon the path out to the sunward gulf would close. But they would not fall back to the long night without claiming a final price from the traitors.

Power blinked back through the bridge. Holo-displays snapped into clarity. The red gleams of enemy craft lit across targeting consoles.

‘Fire,’ said Halbract, and the Monarch of Fire roared his word into the dark. Three warships died in a stuttering blink of destruction. Plasma bored through unshielded hulls. Reactors and munitions detonated in their bellies. They burst, showering brilliant light and gas out and out.