‘Brother?’ called one of his squad mates, but he ignored the word. Silent dark filled the space beyond. He stopped on the threshold, paused and removed his helm. The air smelled of burnt plastek and hot wiring. He could see small lights winking on banks of machines now, blue, red and green, stuttering in time with the pulse of the machines. The chamber was vast. He could feel it in the air even though his eyes could not reach to the edge of the shadows. He took another step, gun low but ready. Nothing moved.

A stutter of lightning split the dark, rolling up the side of a vast metal sphere at the heart of the chamber.

Saduran paused again. There was another note in the air, a high vibration that ached in his teeth. The vox chopped between the voices of Iron Warriors and Sons of Horus legionaries. The moon had gone dead, as though something vital had been cut…

Another arc of lightning flashed up the side of the metal sphere ahead. The ache in his teeth was a shrill call in his ears now.

He took another step.

Another flash, and he saw the servitors hanging from their cable links. He nudged one with the barrel of his bolter. It swung slackly. Its weapons clinked. As though something vital had been cut…

Three flashes of lightning, and in the white glare he could see the tech-priests lying on control gantries high up on the sides of a forest of smaller metal spheres. Red lights were winking on control consoles.

Something cut… or something drawn back, like the backdraught of a fire, or the inhalation of a beast…

Cold lanced into his core. He turned and began to run for the doors that were open to the rest of the moon, the moon they had spent blood and time taking, the moon that now was ringed with warships and filled with troops. His squad mates shouted at him, but he was calling into the vox, shouting through the chop and hiss that was rising in time with the buzzing in his ears.

Behind him, lightning bolts flashed and flashed, bleaching the reactor chamber blinding white. And he knew it was too late, that these were the last stretched moments of his life, and that this war that had remade him had now come to claim him.

A flash…

Brighter than lightning, and a sound beyond hearing that filled him for the endless instant before there was nothing.

Strike Frigate Lachrymae, Pluto

Sigismund opened his eyes. The blade of his sword was cool against his forehead. He had waited in silence, his thoughts turned inwards. But now he needed to return to his purpose. The murmur of oath-words filled the bridge of the Lachrymae. He lowered the sword, but did not sheathe it. Boreas and Rann’s holo-projections met his gaze.

‘The moment is here, brother,’ said Rann.