Night Lords had taken civilian ships fleeing Uranus. There were bulk haulers and shuttle transports, packed with people fleeing towards the hoped-for safety of Saturn or the interplanetary gulfs. They found no safety or mercy. Their holds bearing the dead and dying, their helms and engines locked on course, the ships drove at Saturn. The first warnings and hails from the planet’s defences triggered vox-recordings in each ship. Wails, screams and pleas filled the ears of the defenders as they fired, and tore the first slaughter ship from the void. More and more ships of the dead came to burn on the edge of the great planet’s rings. Blood poured into the void and froze; screams vanished into the vacuum. And just out of weapons range, the ships of the VIII Legion circled, watched and laughed.

In the light of the guns and in the sound of last pleas for mercy, thirsting things drank.

On the Grylor city-station death came from within.

The size of a hive city, the station had grown from old ships moored next to each other that had been bound by bridges and growths of welded metal. Tethered to an asteroid on a slow orbit of the sun, it was a layover for ships plying the outer system trade routes. But no ships had come for weeks. No signals from the Throneworld, no news or warnings – just the flashes of distant lights, and the dreams of red rivers flowing between forests of pale trees without leaves. On and on the quiet went.

The blight began with food. Starch paste grew green-and-yellow blooms. Tanks of nutrient base soured to black sludge. Bit by bit, Grylor’s food stores went bad. Some ate it anyway. They died screaming, voiding fluids, blood clogging their eyes. The water was next. Salts formed in reservoir tanks and pipes. Those that drank it wasted to nothing, unable to weep from thirst. After four days the whole of the city-station was deserted. Its atmosphere systems circulated air through corridors and rooms peopled only by corpses covered in forests of mould and pale fungus.

In the light of fizzing lumens, rotting things pupated and swelled as they breathed in the silence.

Strike Frigate Persephone, Inner System Gulf

Sigismund saw the dead ship fall back. Silence hung over the Persephone as the image of the vessel receded until it was marked only by the blink of a rune on the tactical display.

‘More names to mark on the walls of the fallen,’ said Rann, a growl edging his low voice. ‘The traitors will pay, my brother. We will ensure it.’