Dak’ir entered quickly, his squad fanning out from his lead to cover potential avenues of attack.

They’d been travelling through the city for almost an hour, through three residential districts filled with debris, and still no contact with friend or foe. Regular reports networked through the Astartes’ comm-feeds in their helmets revealed the same from the other two assault groups.

Cirrion was dead.

Yet, there were signs of recent abandonment: lume-globes flickering in the blasted windows of tenements, sonophones playing grainy melodies in communal refectories, the slow-running engines of dormant grav-cars and the interior lamps of mag-trams come to an all-stop on the rails. Life here had ended abruptly and violently.

Numerous roads and more conventional routes were blocked by pitfalls or rubble. According to Brother Argos, the municipal temple was the most expedient way to penetrate deeper into the east sector. It was also postulated that it was a likely location for survivors to congregate. The Techmarine was back in Nimbaros with Colonel Tonnhauser, guiding the three assault groups via a hololithic schematic, adjusting the image as he was fed reports of blockades, street collapses or structural levelling by Salamanders in the field.

‘Brother Argos, this is Flame. We’ve reached the municipal temple and need a route through,’ said Dak’ir. Even through his power armour, he was aware of the dulcet hum of the plasma engines keeping the massive city aloft and reminding him of the precariousness of their battlefield.

Putting the thoughts out of his mind, he swept the luminator attached to his battle-helm around the vast hall. Within its glare a lozenge-shaped chamber with racks of desks on both flanking walls was revealed. Overhead, exterior light from the city’s lume-lamps spilled through a glass-domed ceiling in grainy shafts illuminating patches on the ground. Lightning flashes from Stratos’s high atmosphere outside augmented it.

Parchments and scraps of vellum set ablaze by Ba’ken’s flamer skittered soundlessly across a polished floor, or twisted like fireflies on an unseen breeze. More of the papers were fixed to pillars that supported the vaulted roof above, fluttering fitfully – some stuck with votive wax, others hammered fast with nails and stakes. The messages were doubtless pinned up by grieving families long since given in to despair.

‘These are death notices, prayers for the missing,’ intoned Brother Emek, using the muzzle of his bolter to hold one still so he could read it.

‘More here,’ added Brother Zo’tan. He panned the light from his luminator up a chrome-plated staircase at the back of the room to reveal the suited bodies of clerks and administrators entangled in the balustrade. Torn scrolls were pinned to the banister, and gathered over the corpses on the steps like a paper shroud.

‘There must be thousands…’ uttered Sergeant Lok, who had entered the lobby. The hard-faced veteran looked grimmer than ever as he surveyed the records of the dead with his bionic eye.

‘Advance to the north end of the hall,’ the Techmarine’s voice returned, cracked with interference as it called the Salamanders back. ‘A stairway leads to a second level. Proceed north through the next chamber then east across a gallery until you find a gate. That’s your exit.’