‘I am going to speak to her, now. If we are going to be killed by our own side I want to know why.’

Mersadie was banging on the cell door again. There was blood on her knuckles.

‘Listen to me!’ she shouted. ‘You need to listen to me!’

She roared; a pit of anger was opening in her now. She had accepted her fate long ago. She saw the consequences of her years spent with the XVI Legion and could not fault the judgement of the Imperium. It was the price for the truth of what had happened to Horus, what had happened to everything. Except now there was something more important, just as there had been all those years ago when she and the other survivors of the Eisenstein had brought Dorn the news of the Warmaster’s treachery. It felt so much the same. But this time, she was the only messenger.

‘That’s a blast wave vibration,’ said Nilus. He was crouched in the corner of the room, legs drawn up. His head was raised, eyes darting around the walls as sounds clanged from spot to spot. He was breathing hard, sweating. ‘Ships like this have no shields. If someone tries to shoot a hole in it, we are not going to last long.’

Mersadie raised her hand to strike the door again.

The locks disengaged with a clang, and the door swung outwards. The rotund man with the polished skin and opal-dotted forehead stood in the space beyond. A guard stood with him, hands twitching on a lasgun.

‘What have you brought down on us?’ said the man. There was fear in his eyes but anger in his voice. A booming shudder ran through the metal walls and floor. The guard flinched.

‘What is happening?’ asked Mersadie.

‘Someone is trying to kill us to get to you.’

Mersadie stared at a him.

‘I was a prisoner,’ she began.

‘People don’t kill ships to execute one prisoner,’ he growled, biting off the next words. ‘What have you done?’

‘I…’ she said, and then stopped, calm replacing confusion. She looked at him levelly. ‘It’s not what I did, it’s who I was, who I knew.’

‘Your name…’ he murmered, stepping back, looking at her with the light of realisation in his eyes. ‘Oliton. In the Great Crusade, before the war… I heard your name. Reports from the front. You… were a remembrancer.’

‘A remembrancer to the Sons of Horus,’ she said, simply. ‘To the armies of Horus.’

‘By the Throne’s grace…’ hissed the man, stepping back, eyes wide. Another rumble shook the hull. ‘They aren’t just trying to kill you. They are trying to kill us. They are trying to kill us because we have talked to you.’