On the Lachrymae, Sigismund felt the rolling beat of the guns and his hearts rising in concert. He was not a creature of emotion. There were many who looked upon him with fear and awe, and some who thought him bellicose, driven by zeal: a warrior-fanatic of the Great Crusade. He was all those things in other eyes. But he was just a function, a necessity of time and need. He had been made one way by chance and time – the boy in the drift camps who was quick and fast, and took the beatings given by the other children but never let them break him, who survived for years after his father was lost to the dust-lung fever. He had been remade again, given strength and purpose, and an ideal to follow to the end of his life. And what he had been remade into was a weapon, a tool that shaped the world with its edge. That was his purpose, and he would follow it to the end of all things, until his edge was blunted and the strength in his arm unequal to his will. And that purpose did not require him to feel, only to go forwards. It was will, not fire, that moved his world: cold fire bound by chains. Even in shame, he had held to that. But this moment sung a chord in his soul that had been waiting within through every bitter defence and sacrifice.

Vengeance, righteous and pure, filled Sigismund as he watched ships become fire and atoms. It felt cold, burning like the touch of ice. He opened a vox-channel with a glance at an officer.

‘Burn them from the stars,’ he said.

And the blade of ships followed his command. Torpedoes were loosed almost blind into the traitor ships drifting amongst the debris. Bombers sped into the dark from battle-barges, spinning amongst the clouds of shredded metal and rock. They found the fleet carrier Synobarb tumbling through the wreckage of its escorts. Its prow ripped from its body, it was still trying to relight its engines. The bombers bored into it, flying into the exposed ribs of its superstructure to loose their payloads deep in its core. Melta bombs ripped the shielding from its reactors. Wild plasma poured out, burning through the carcass and sending tongues of flame breathing through the holes in its skin.

Some of the traitor craft still had the wit or the power to resist. Five swift-strike vessels in the black and yellow of the Templar elite penetrated the debris sphere left by Kerberos as they hunted a pair of Iron Warriors frigates. The grand cruiser Barb of Nostramo was waiting for them. It had fought its own war in the years since the first treachery, and its crew and masters had loyalty only to their own spite.