‘Loose,’ he said.

Torpedoes burned free of each of the White Scars ships, running straight and true towards the Fourfold Wolf.

‘They have range to us!’ called an officer.

‘Wheel,’ said Jubal. The Lance of Heaven and its escorts cut their engines for an instant, fired thrusters and flipped over. Their engines ignited again, blazing as they drained power from every other system.

The lights on the bridge of the Lance of Heaven dimmed. Jubal listened to the rhythm of voice and machine as the Fourfold Wolf realised what was about to happen and tried to turn aside from the torpedoes converging on it. It fired its thrusters, but it was going too fast. The torpedoes slid through its shields like iron arrows through cloth. Red fire blossomed, then grew. It pushed forwards for a moment, its momentum carrying it on even as the explosions sent it tumbling. The ships riding close to it tried to pull clear. Then its guts opened to the void, a red-and-orange flower of light.

‘The first cut,’ said Jubal to himself, still smiling.

Strike Frigate Lachrymae, Trans-Plutonian Gulf

Fire wrapped Pluto. When the enemy had come to the gates of Terra before, they had come hidden under a cloak of lies. The Alpha Legion had bloodied the orbits of Pluto through deception before they were turned black. This time the defences stood ready, and those that wanted to pull them down had come openly, and with overwhelming might.

Thousands of warships spun through the void around Pluto. Engagements of hundreds of vessels formed, coagulating in fire and then dissolving back into the dark. The Khthonic Gate itself had been lost to the invaders days before. In the end it had simply been a question of numbers. The attackers lost ships, but for every hull left as molten debris, many more came to replace it.

The waves of enemy vessels increasingly bore the mark of the warp and the wounds of old battles. Great troop carriers and gun-galleys, their hulls bleeding from the touch of daemons, their vox-transmitters droning unwords. Bit by bit they had enveloped the planet’s orbits. Sigismund’s First Sphere defences were now surrounded, the void on every side swimming with enemies. But the defences held. The Imperial Fists ships that remained moved and fought without cease as the space they cut through grew smaller and smaller.

The enemy had taken Nix and Charon, and since then the fortress-moons had been firing at each other as they turned around their parent. Battles both small and large had burned hot, lighting the defences with fire. Even as Horus’ forces overran the moons, they found their warrens of passages laced with traps. Key systems failed. On Nix, the plasma conduits running to a quarter of the surface batteries fused and ruptured. On Charon, a cohort of murder-servitors poured into the corridors from oubliettes in the walls and floors.