‘This is a tertiary-grade system freighter. They… they are likely to outclass us in both speed and power output.’

‘Is there an alternative?’ she asked.

Chi-32-Beta paused.

‘No.’

‘Then we try to run hard and hope,’ she said. ‘Hold on, and get ready.’

The enginseer coughed what might have been an assent.

‘I… doubt we will survive, but… there is a probability that we might,’ Chi-32-Beta began. ‘You are… the prisoner, are you not?’

She nodded.

‘Yes, I am.’

The enginseer was silent for a moment.

‘Thank you.’

She blinked for a second, not certain how to reply. She stood.

‘Thank me if we live.’

Luna

The torpedo wave hit the edge of the assault fleet. Defence turrets opened fire. Las-beams and shells punched through warheads. Explosions bubbled out as the torpedoes detonated. Multicoloured spheres formed and burst in a foam of fire. Ordnance had loosed from launch platforms and the Luna picket fleets in a coordinated barrage lasting twenty-one minutes. It struck the hulls of Abaddon’s vanguard ships.

The armada had no advantage of surprise. Word had come from the White Scars Falcon fleets that had harried it all the way down the path of its descent. The Lunar defences were ready and primed. The old face of grey-silver, which had looked down on autumn harvest and winter snow, hid beneath the scars and growths of tens of thousands of years of human occupation. Girding Luna was the Ring, a great hoop of stone and metal spiked with docks and gun bastions. Ancient field generators and gravitic stabilisers held it steady and true. In its shadow lay the Circuit, a trench cut into the surface of the moon as though gouged by a god’s chisel. Towers and domes dotted its surface. These were the fortresses of the Silent Sisters, and the Naval dynasties founded after the Pacification of Luna.

The moon had once been the birthplace of the Legions. The gene-looms of the Selenar had taken the genius born in the Emperor’s laboratories and brought forth the armies of the Great Crusade. Millions of youths had entered its Halls of Making. Hundreds of thousands had emerged as the warriors of the new age. Space Marines. That time, though, had passed as the Crusade had progressed far beyond the bounds of Sol’s light.