‘Will you serve me, Abaddon?’ Horus had asked, the coin held out in his open palm.

‘I will,’ he had replied, and taken the coin.

‘All ships,’ he said, hearing his voice echo as it reached across the void through the vox. ‘By my word, and the word of the Warmaster. The blade falls.’

One by one, the ships lit their engines and slid down towards the waiting sun.

Admiral Niora Su-Kassen.

Three

Wake and remember
Son of Horus
Blood and luck

Prison ship Aeacus, Uranus high orbit

Sleep came for Mersadie like a thief stealing the light, closing her eyelids and pulling her down into the dark. She had tried to stay awake. Even though she knew that she would never be able to outrun it, she had stared at the caged lamp in the ceiling of her cell, stood up and paced a tiny circle between the walls when she felt her eyes fluttering shut.

She wanted very much not to sleep. The dream of the night before had left a shiver of fear in her. Loken, the Vengeful Spirit… It had seemed so… vital, and she knew that you could not dismiss what happened in dreams as insignificant simply because they were not real. She had spent years living her memories again and again, trying to recall and hold on to every detail she could. Now it was all she could do not to smell the blood and hear the screams. So, she had fought back sleep, and tried to think through what was happening as she walked the scant metres of her cell and stared at the light.

She tried to keep her mind filled with questions about the present: why had she been moved from the prison around Titan to a ship? Was that Loken’s doing? Or was there another reason?

She shook her head as she felt herself contemplate stopping for a moment and sitting down. There was no night in this box of metal, but it must have been almost a day’s worth of hours since she had slept. She had to stay awake.

She was on a ship and guarded. Was she alone or were there others with her? An instinct told her that there would be more prisoners on the ship, but she could not be certain. If there were others, where were they going? It would not make sense to move prisoners that were a threat to the Imperium. Unless…

She blinked up at the caged lamp, swaying. She had to stay awake. She had to…

Unless…