Tsu’gan followed his eye-line. A pair of Immolator battle tanks spearheaded the Ecclesiarchy counter-assault. Their inferno cannons were short-ranged but deadly. Shooting gouts of intense fire ahead of them, they laid a path for the warrior-maidens behind. Some rode inside the Rhino APC that followed. Others hung on to its outer rails, holding their bolters one-handed.

Tsu’gan’s eyes narrowed. His occulobe filtered out smoke graining and sharpened the image despite the distance and the heat haze. Something was coming, heralded by a squall of blood-crazed cultists. What was left of the Havocs and the few Traitor Marines from the battle squads retreated to consolidate with it.

++Massive heat signature, brother-sergeant.++ Gathimu was calm, the blind sword of utter stillness to Tsu’gan’s font of reckless anger.

++I read++

Threat icons in Tsu’gan’s helmet array flashed insistently.

++Looks like some sort of machine. Dreadnought?++

Tsu’gan locked onto it with his targeter. His tac-display spooled down the metres rapidly.

It was speeding up, and no Dreadnought.

Ankar cranked fresh rounds into his storm bolter. ++An Adeptus Astartes?++

A dense but distant thunk of metal against metal arrested Praetor’s reply. A dark shape was crashing out of the sky towards the Firedrakes. It took Tsu’gan a few seconds to realise it was one of the Immolators.

They were already moving when Praetor bellowed. ++Disperse!++

A hunk of flaming tank landed between them, like so much burning shrapnel. It had literally been torn apart.

++Forwards on me, brothers!++ Praetor circled the wreck quickly, overcoming the weight of his armour with sheer strength.

Tsu’gan was first behind him, but Praetor already had a lead. ‘What is that thing?’

It resembled a suit of mechanised armour, a simulacrum of a man, something that might once have been part of the long defunct Legio Cybernetica. And though it had pistons and cogs, wheels and chains, and vented steam and oil like a mag-lev train, it was no robot. Something lived and drew breath in those dark iron confines. Tsu’gan felt it.

‘Unnatural…’ Gathimu sounded almost haunted. ‘It’s possessed.’

Tsu’gan’s teeth clenched. It was a daemon that had a hand in the death of his former captain, Ko’tan Kadai. His ire grew as he vowed this one would be banished back into the warp without taking anyone with it.

A short distance away, the Battle Sisters were levelling everything they had at it. Bolter fire, even melta blasts rolled off like they were nothing. Another Immolator crumpled like parchment when the daemon-engine shoulder-barged its hull. Fuel and ammunition exploded in a vast fireball that Tsu’gan felt in the resulting heat wash.

‘Emperor’s name… It’s strong.’

Praetor was swinging his thunder hammer in a slow but steady arc. ++We are stronger.++

The daemon-engine was relentless. It tossed Battle Sisters like limp marionettes. White-armoured bodies fell like rain, eviscerated by its blades and saws.