Behind Tor Tartarus the batteries of Margrat added supporting fire to defend the gatehouse. Puffs of white smoke speckled the air and tracer fire swung upwards in long bending lines. One of the lead Marauders – Black Rose – began to trail white smoke. It listed to the side like a sinking boat, and then the smoke turned black, and within the darkness they could make out the lick of flames. One after another, Marauders were blown out of the sky. Some disintegrated in the air, the shapes of crewmen spiralling out from the wreckage. Others caught fire and plunged down into the sea where they were shattered by the force of their impact.

Nose lascannon gunners pinpointed anti-aircraft emplacements. They managed to lessen the hailstorm of fire being directed towards them, but the amount of flak from Hydra platforms was blinding. The first flights dropped their payloads early. Water fountained up in lines before they banked up and away. But the following pilots pressed home right up to the lip of the escarpment. Their payloads exploded in the shallows and then up the cliff face in a necklace of explosions. As they banked away their rear gunners raked the bastions.

Flight after flight added their ordnance; the thousand-kilo col­ossus bombs seemed to fall in slow motion.

They hit the battlements of Tor Tartarus with a blast of low-spreading white smoke. Each hit the ground like a meteor flung with the gravitational force of a star. Whole segments of the bastion broke and plunged into the waters below. Glacier-sized landslides of rockcrete thundered down and set off tidal waves that lashed the rocky causeway or buried the attacking troops.

As the Marauders distracted the traitors, Bendikt had battalions of bombards brought inside the void shields of Tor Tartarus. The crews quickly dug into the rubble, and then they started to fire. The armour-smashing stubby barrels ripped into the massive defences. Huge cracks opened up while frag rounds kept the heads of the defenders down.

Hidden under the causeways were a series of parallel pipes through which troops could move forward to attack. Long files of weary penal legionnaires had waited in position, the pipes vibrat­ing with the tumult of the battle raging above them. On the landward side of the causeway, marshalling halls were filled with regiments of desperate reinforcements. As the Leviathans’ garrisons were exhausted, they were herded forward in a constant stream, shuffling through the pipes. The terrified troops were fed up into each Leviathan, commissars hustling them forward until they suddenly found themselves on the assault ramps in the face of the enemy.