Dorn looked around the table and then at the Angel.

‘The same question that all of us have asked, but not spoken yet,’ said Dorn. He looked at the holo-projection and gestured so that it shrank to a sphere that he could rotate with his fingers. ‘Where is Horus?’

Silence answered. Dorn turned his gaze around the circle, slowly, meeting and holding each of their gazes.

‘Just so,’ said Dorn at last. ‘And there is no answer we can give, and no guesses that would give comfort.’ He looked back at the holo-sphere hanging between them, and keyed a control on the projector. The image folded into an image of Terra turning to show its face through day and night. Locations marked in a rainbow of colour spread across its surface. ‘There are other matters to be discussed,’ he said.

The conference ended an hour later, the gathered masters of the Imperium leaving without formality.

‘Admiral,’ said Malcador, as Su-Kassen made to go, ‘a moment of your time.’

Behind her, Andromeda-17 was just leaving. Su-Kassen caught the gene-witch’s eye, and saw that there was sorrow in her look – sorrow, or perhaps pity.

Then the door to the chamber closed, and it was just her and the old man who was the Regent of the Imperium, alone in a long moment of silence. A thin sheet of parchment sat on the table in front of him, she noticed. It was a spool from an auto-scribe, one of the types used for archive reports. A section of the words on its face had been underlined in red.

‘There is something that you should know,’ he said. ‘Please, sit down, admiral.’

Fortress Moon Kerberos, Pluto

‘Breaching charge,’ called Saduran, and one of his brothers charged forwards. Saduran came around the corner and fired up into the cluster of rotor cannons set in the ceiling above the blast doors. Target runes went red in his helm. His brother with the breaching charge was past him. Saduran fired. Bolt shells breathed from the barrel of his gun. Explosions burst amongst the rotor cannons.

The rest of his squad was with him now, firing up at the defence weapons. The cannons fired back. A deluge of hard rounds hit the warrior to Saduran’s right and punched him back off his feet. Ceramite splintered. The warrior with the breaching charge was halfway to the door. Ten paces, a second’s sprint. One of the rotor cannons spun around. Targeting beams reached through the smoke. The cowled statue beside the blast doors trembled. Hidden seams in the bronze split wide with a boom of pistons.

The ground shook again as a battle-automaton stepped out from where it had stood behind the shell of the statues. Fuel cables snapped free of gun pods and limbs. Weapons rose with a melody of gears and a chuckle of building energy.

Saduran felt the moment blur as his hearts kicked, and stimulants flooded his veins.