Bror's pack was at the back of the gunnery deck. Other torpedoes bored their way in closer to the still firing macrocannons, sending sheets of molten metal and ignited insulation showering onto the luckless mortals. Burning men ran screaming from their stations. A rising hail of boltgun fire cut down hundreds. One torpedo came straight in through the atmospheric shielding that warded the deck from space. It bounced hard through the mass of slaves, smearing them to paste, burst through a pile of stacked shell pallets and came to a rest near a maintenance crane. The ramp bolts blew, and the occupants dashed out into the thick of the mortals, the rise and fall of their weapons causing a red rain.

Bror slew the wretches, though it brought him no pleasure. He barged them over the railing of the runnel where shell sleds raced back and forth, he cut them down with his sword. The mass-reactives from his bolt pistol blew them into bloody scraps. Better-equipped armsmen poured in from entrances at both ends of the gallery, led by wailing priests. They came at the Space Wolves with admirable courage, but their shotguns could not penetrate Legiones Astartes battleplate. Bror turned to face the new threat. High-velocity pellets pinked off ceramite like handfuls of cast stones. He blasted three armsmen down, their carapace suits cracked easily by his bolt pistol. When Bror atomised the skull of their cult leader, they wavered. Tyrfingr howled, ran into the group and cut four more down with his chainsword, driving them back. They could not stand before him, and the last few fled back the way they had come. Blind Ragner brought a couple down with improbably accurate shots. The rest vanished into the warren of connected tunnels joining the gun deck to deeper parts of the ship.

Across the gun deck the situation was repeated. Packs of Vlka Fenryka scoured the gallery free of life, gunning or cutting down whoever they found.

There were six left from Bror's pack. Ragner, Himmlik, Enrir the Fat, Chattering Flokr, Gren the Happy and himself. The rest had died while he had been on Terra with Malcador, slain in this traitor's war.

Bror took a moment to catch his bearings. The open mouth of their torpedo poked at a steep angle through the ceiling. Rivulets of cooling metal ran down the plating. Acoustic baffling smouldered around the edge of the breach. They had come in well, right on target. Icons flashed on the cartolith displayed on his helmplate: the locator signals of more torpedoes arriving around the main gun decks.

He looked around. He grinned to himself. Up on the wall near the head of an iron stair leading to the gun deck was a fiitharc inscription, carefully hidden behind a bunch of dangling cables. Somewhere nearby would be the locator beacon, planted even beyond his capacity to see by Rama Karayan or Iacton Qruze. Both were dead, but their deeds were bearing fruit.