Shadows flowed through the Phalanx. The darkness gathered at the edge of flame-light billowed out and up, spreading across walls, swallowing shape, dissolving brightness. The shadows roared as they spread and their voice was the sound of wind blowing through the teeth of skulls.

‘The end and the death…’

‘We are here…’

‘We are beside you…’

‘Death is beside you…’

‘The end is here…’

It flowed on, boiling with coalescing shapes. It passed through bulkheads and through the cracks around closed doors. Strange forms clawed across ceilings, and blizzards of shadows boiled down corridors. It was not one creature but many, a tide of murderous power poured into cold reality like ink into clear water.

Gunfire met the tide. There were over three thousand Imperial Fists on the ship. Ten thousand Jovian and Solar Auxilia elite, and every oath-bound crew member was a warrior.

In the decks beneath the Phalanx’s strategium fortress, twenty Huscarls in Indominatus Terminator plate met the daemon tide. Assault cannons spun up. Target displays flashed red with threat markers as the shadows became vast hounds and hunched figures dragging swords.

The Huscarls opened fire. Bolt-rounds and volkite beams punched into the wall of darkness. Brass cases rang on the granite floor. Bodies formed as shadow broke into muscle and sinew. One of the Huscarls brought his cannon around as a hound made of smoke and blood leapt for him, jaws wide. The deluge of shells shredded the creature. A second later, a figure of spindle limbs and bloody skin rammed a sword clean through the Huscarl’s flesh and armour.

In the primary signal-processing chamber, the darkness came as silence. Millions of cables and noospheric links all converged at this point. Men and woman sat wired into consoles, listening, filtering and diverting the flow of messages from across different regions of the Phalanx. Their mouths moved constantly, hissing echoes of the words and codes passing through them. Auto-scribes clattered. Data conduits beeped. It was never quiet and more than a day in the chamber would leave an unprotected human deaf.

One of the signal governor servitors began to twitch. The words coming from her mouth speaker stopped. She shook her head as though trying to clear it.

‘Samus…?’ she said, unsure, as though part of her lobotomised brain had heard the word once before but could not remember where.

‘Samus..?’ she said again. The servitors to either side of her twitched and went still. The lights on their consoles flashed amber. ‘Samus… Samus… Samus…’ More insistent now. One of the supervising tech-priests was moving towards her. Alarms were sounding, lights flashing.

‘Samus.’

A ten-metre bank of vox-consoles went silent. The servitors at their stations froze and then exploded.

‘Samus! Samus! Samus!’