The Imperial Fists fleet plunged back into the orbits of Pluto while they were still aflame. Drifts of cooling debris spread from the death points of the planet’s five moons. Ships still coming from the warp at the Khthonic Gate ploughed into a wall of wreckage travelling fast enough to shred their hulls. Brief stars flashed as ship reactors overloaded. Of the thousands that had come to take the outermost planet and its gate, hundreds remained, clawing for space in the burning dark.

Into this crucible the ships of Sigismund’s fleet cut and began to kill. They came in a long diamond. The fastest ships led at the fore, their heavier sisters following. It was a formation that would have led to their destruction in most battles, but now they came to a battle sphere of scattered and wounded prey. The Three Sisters of Spite were the first to engage. They each carried a commander of the First Sphere: the Persephone was Fafnir Rann’s, and carried his Assault Cadre, while the Ophelia was the ship of Boreas, First Templar and Sigismund’s lieutenant. The Lachrymae remained Sigismund’s steed of war, as it had been since he had taken command of the outer system defences. Faster than all their kin, the three ships took the wounded battle cruiser Fire Gorgon first. Its engines damaged, its failing shields broken under the guns of the Ophelia and Persephone, it tried to bring its batteries to bear on its killers. The Lachrymae loosed its payload of torpedoes at point-blank range. The Fire Gorgon became a blink of light. The Three Sisters burned past the debris of their kill, already firing at their next victim.

Behind them the Imperial Fists fleet followed, every gun firing without cease. There were targets enough and they were there not for battle, but for reaping.