There was no name for the dread that preceded Horus' arrival at the Heotaligon. It was a primeval feeling that predated language. Human concepts were too restrictive to properly describe it. Long before his ship was visible to human sight or machine moderated auspex, fear came like a wall of fog rolling in from a calm ocean. The infosphere throbbed with foreboding. Every patch of skin gleamed with fear sweat.

The dread spiked a moment before Horus' craft flew into the orb. Pieters and augur eyes focused on it, displaying magnified views on the screens. This ship was a Stormbird, common to all the Legions, in the sea-green of the Sons of Horus, ordinary enough - though decorated in the ostentatious manner of Imperial warlords. The double-headed eagle of the Imperium had been removed, replaced by the icon of a glaring eye transfixed by a stylised spear-point.

Cawl expected more ships to follow, but it came in solitary flight. His unease grew as it flew to the centre of the orb and landed upon the platform. Only a potentate utterly sure of his power would come into potentially hostile territory so lightly protected.

'Now we go,' said Aspertia. Grav-engines purred, pushing the dais up towards the landing platform. Cawl lightly gripped the rail and leaned out a little. In Aspertia's wake came the daises of the other traitor adepts. Their reasons for throwing their lot in with Horus were their own. Cawl doubted they would be the same as Aspertia's. She rode proudly amid her acolytes, silver metal face held high.

Cawl looked back to the others, deferentially hanging back from her. He had a very bad feeling about all of this.

The daises gathered around the landing platform in a bobbing crowd. Hololight bathed the occupants' faces. Servo-skulls swooped in to orbit them.

The Stormbird sat ominously upon the platform, venting waste gases from its exhausts. Servitors dumbly went about their tasks around it, ignorant of the terror those who could still call their minds their own felt from the craft. The cockpit windows were dark. The navigation lights were out. Cawl opened his augmetics to its digital emanations, and found the machine-spirits within silent. From where their simple souls should have run on tracks of light and metal, something else watched. It was unclean, and he hastily severed his connection.

Aspertia guided her dais around the craft. The Stormbird was a blunt thing, as brutal as the warriors it was designed to convey, and bristling with weapons. Her subsidiary limbs waved with confusion. She, like Cawl and every other Mechanicum adept with a modicum of courage, was scanning the craft, and registering only that ominous watchfulness.

A blaring klaxon scattered the daises. Spinning beacon lumens flashed around the back of the ship as, with a hiss of equalising atmosphere, the large rear access ramp descended.