Its reactor signature masked by the death-echo of the moon, the Barb of Nostramo had slid into the shroud of asteroids and waited. It met the five Imperial Fists strike vessels with a cloud of assault craft. Warriors in midnight armour poured into the Imperial Fists ships. Two escaped. The remainder died by inches, their decks flooded with the screams of those who had already fallen, their chambers and passages darkening one by one as power was cut. The few Imperial Fists on each fought to the last as the screams became silence, and the night surrounding them lit with red eyes and laughing voices.

The two dozen frigates of the Saturnine Void Cohort curved deep into the space between Pluto and the Khthonic gate. They began to unleash barrages of torpedoes, some blind, others aimed.

And amongst the slaughter, the Three Sisters moved and killed, splitting to thread the battle sphere in search of prey. They could not linger, but for this moment this was their kingdom, and its rule was slaughter.

Horus Aximand heard the hull of the Throne of the Underworld groan as it made its turn. Steam and fluid vented from the pipes above as forces sheared and tugged at rivets and welds. The void shields were collapsing and sparking back to life as the outwash of debris from the moons’ detonations struck them.

‘Select and coordinate targets,’ he growled into the vox as he crossed the threshold into the teleportation chamber. ‘We will tear them from the dark.’

The Throne of the Underworld and its fleet had been burning hard in pursuit of the fleeing Imperial Fists ships when the moons had detonated. The loyalist ships had turned about and arced back to the sphere of the outermost planet. Some had turned to meet Aximand’s vessels, but their only purpose was to delay, to allow Sigismund’s force to strike into the chaos around Pluto. It had worked. It had cost the Imperial Fists those ships they had sent as a distraction, but it had worked. Pluto was a death ground, the ruin of Aximand’s assault ash and wreckage in its orbits.

But it would end now. He would take a blood price from the sons of Dorn, and he would do it with his own hand.

‘Find their command ship,’ he ordered over the vox. Around him, a cohort of his company veterans stood ready as the machines set into the teleportation chamber’s ceiling and floor began to sweat arcs of light. ‘Find Sigismund.’