The hunter held course. Targeting systems locked firing solutions. Gun turrets swung. It had been following this prey since the first hours after the destruction of the prison ship off Uranus. It had tracked it through the fires of battle and across the dark gulfs between the outer planets. For all those days it had been silent, almost every system cycled down so that it ran cold and dark, without heed to anything besides its prey. As it closed for the final kill, it reached out across the dark to the ships and stations of Jupiter. It knew that the first of the enemy was not far behind and that Jupiter’s defenders could not risk waiting to see if ships coming from the void were friend or foe. Clearance codes flew out to silence the guns that would be turning to greet them. It would make its kill and then burn on past Jupiter, its duty done.

It closed the final few thousand kilometres, its course spiralling to match the Antius’. Larger pieces of drift-debris rattled from them. Chunks of rock and old shards of dead ships puffed to dust on the hunter’s shields. On the Antius’ bridge, the hull was singing with the plink-ring of impacts. People were weeping. Gade had slumped over the controls. His hands were charred black by electro-discharge, but somehow he was still breathing, still holding course.

‘Hold,’ she heard a voice call, clear and strong. It took her a second to realise that it was hers. ‘Have faith…’

The hunter slid into its final firing position. The lights of the Jovian Caul were brighter than the stars now. It locked its guns to firing solutions.

The Antius’ engines sputtered.

The hunter loosed its execution shot.

A destroyer came out of the dark and tore the hunter from the night in a volley of macro-cannon fire. Rings of plasma erupted from its hull, sending the pieces of its corpse shooting out as they melted.

The destroyer slammed through the debris of its kill. Screams and cacophonous sounds rolled out from it on every vox- and signal-channel. It had once been a ship of war and conquest, but the years of its betrayal had stripped it of that divinity. It had come to the Solar System in answer to the carrion promise of war and had soared ahead of the ships of the Iron Warriors as they broke the orbits of Uranus. Hunger, caprice and the will of the power that had created it had pulled it on and on towards Jupiter.