‘Rejoin the line! Rejoin the line!’ But Nu’mean’s imploring was for nothing.

Gun’dar fell moments later. Surrounded, he could not hope to hold out for long. His storm bolter lit up the corridor for another six seconds before it fell silent.

Nu’mean held on to his anger, prevented it from sending him crashing into the onrushing ’stealers to his doom and vainglory.

‘Brother Kohlogh…’

The Firedrake took a step forwards to brandish his heavy flamer.

Nu’mean’s voice was hollow. ‘Burn it.’

Hrydor had been hacked apart. Chain-toothed weapons left scars across his armour. The cuts were heaviest at the weaker joints. His Terminator suit was badly rent and scorch marks suggested close-ranged plasma. Sections of partially dissolved ceramite, which left gaping crevices in Hrydor’s sundered flesh, had been made by a melta gun. His assailants had set upon him from all sides and took him apart, piece by piece. Blood painted a grisly scene that glowed a deep, visceral red in the starkness of the halo-lamps.

A solitary figure stood mockingly at the end of the next corridor, poised at the junction. It was clad in archaic power armour, dark like twilight or deeper; it was hard to tell precisely. A battle-helm, morphed into the graven visage of some howling daemon, its crude mouth grille locked in a silent scream, looked stretched, almost avian, as did its clawed feet and gauntlets. Tilting its head on one side, the hideous thing clicked. The motion was strange, slightly syncopated, and its clawed foot grated the metal in time.

Tsu’gan’s mouth curled into a snarl behind his helm. ‘Raptor…’

Then he barrelled headlong down the corridor, storm bolter crashing.

Screeching in bird-like, mechanised monotone, the Raptor leapt into the air, the densely throated thrusters on its back coughing out plumes of smoke and fire to lift it.

Tsu’gan cursed. He missed.

Above them, the chains and pipes clanked noisily. Tsu’gan fired into the darkness of the vaulted ceiling where he thought he’d detected movement.

Cruel laughter, like a vulture’s cawing and impossible to pinpoint, greeted his failure. Then came another blast of bird-like screeching, synthesised through a vox-grille mouth.

‘Chaos Traitors!’ he snarled to Praetor, scything chain links with another salvo and sending them cascading like iron rain onto his armour.

His sergeant’s reply was cut off by the bulkhead door slamming down between them. He’d been caught. Tsu’gan spat another curse as several armoured figures, the first Raptor’s kin, descended from above on bladed wings. Freefalling, they seemed to melt out of the shadows, and only engaged their jump packs to arrest their flight at the last moment.

Ozone from the melta stink and the reek of blood-laced, oiled chainteeth filled the air. The blades were buzzing already, growling for prey.

‘You’ll not kill me so easily, hellspawn,’ he vowed, trying to shut off the other sensations pressing at the edge of conscious thought, the copper stink, the veil of sulphur…