I 'I sometimes wonder,' said Ragner. He shot down two more foes, Bror grinned. He missed the combat banter of the wolf pack, The Knights Errant squabbled as much as the Rout, but without the humour, or the friendliness, come to think of it. The gulfs between the Legions, and the pain of betrayal many of them suffered, made them bitter. He missed this comradeship.

They reached a crossway that was not on Broils map, and their I problems began in earnest.

A group of tech thralls milled about on the far side. The thralls were I not as dangerous as the skitarii, being not so highly augmented and I stripped entirely of free will. On each, one arm had been replaced I with a laslock that the thrall cradled with its remaining hand.

'I'll deal with this,' said Flokr. 'Easy meat.'

But as soon as Flokr moved into their response range, they reacted with unexpected alacrity and he was cut down by enfilading las-fire coming from both sides of the junction.

'Flokr!' shouted Himmlik.

'He is silenced for good in this world,' said Ragner. 'May the warriors of the Golden Halls accept his dourness better than we.'

Bror put out his head and looked round the corner. A strobing hail of las-bolts drove him back. 'Skjitna!' snarled Bror. 'A damn trap. There's enemy down every corridor.'

Free from the attentions of the Vlka's blades, the thralls opposite fired with impunity, and the Space Wolves sought cover in recesses in the walls as las-beams lit up all of the junction's four corridors.

'I could have sworn we came through here, and this junction was not like this!' shouted Ragner, leaning out from his hiding space. In the time it took for him to lean out and duck back, he placed three rounds perfectly into the heads of three tech thralls. The force of the explosions flipped them into their comrades, spoiling their aim and allowing Himmlik to gun down several more with an indiscriminate spray of bolts. 'This junction wasn't here before,' said Bror. 'And it's not on the cartolith.'

'How by the iciest level of Hel can a starship rearrange itself?' said Enrir.

'Never mind how,' said Gren, shouting up the corridor to his comrades.

'We have to retreat, try another way,' said Bror.

'Too late!' shouted Gren. 'There are skitarii coming up from the rear.' His bolter barked five times.

Radioactive bullets fizzed down the corridor. None of them hit the Space Wolves, and a lot of them ended up buried in the mechanisms of the tech thralls facing them. Nevertheless, the wolf pack was trapped.

'Damn it all!' growled Bror. 'Forward it is, then.' He tugged a frag grenade from his bandolier, flicked out the pin and rolled it across the junction.