Helsreach

His hands were what drew the knights' eyes more than any other aspect in this gathering of demigods. One was held to his chest, the fingertips joined to the cross there, frozen in mid-stroke. The other was held out in the direction Dorn stared, palm up and kindly, as if offering aid to one who would rise from the floor.

It was quite the most humble and exquisite rendition of their gene-father Grimaldus had ever laid eyes on. He fought the sudden burning urge to fall to his knees in reverent prayer.

'This is an omen,' Bastilan continued. Grimaldus could barely believe only a handful of seconds had passed since the sergeant last spoke.

'It is,' the Reclusiarch replied. 'We will purify this temple under the gaze of our forefather. Dorn watches us, brothers. Let us make him proud of the day he sired the first Templar.'

W

e

move without

hesitation, and without caution, through the cathedral.

The angled floor is an irritation that I've managed to blank from my mind by the time the third alien is dead. Room by room, we move in unison. The cathedral is a divided into a series of chambers ringing the courtyard, each one with its own stained glass windows now shattered and gaping like missing teeth, each room reaching high up with a pointed ceiling ending in the spire above.

The slaughter is easy, almost mindless. Priamus is like a wolf on the leash, eager to run ahead on his own.

My patience is wearing thin with him.

Each chamber also shows its own unique desecration. Tech-adepts and Ecclesiarchy priests lie dead and butchered, their bodies in pieces across the mosaic floors. Unarmed as they were, they offered little resistance to the rampaging invaders. Bookshelves are overturned, ceramic ornaments shattered… I would never put feral destruction past this xenos-breed, but it almost seems as if the greenskins sought something specific in their rabid assault.

'The articulation structures are sealed. My bones are defended by internal forces. My heart-core is cut off from the parasites.'

Ambush or not, it is disgusting that it took them even this long to achieve such basic necessities.

'We are retaking the Cathedral of Sanctuary,' I tell her. 'Resistance is minimal, Zarha. But you must stand. They are still coming. Bring the cathedral out of range of boarders, or we will be overwhelmed.'

'

I cannot stand,' she says.

What a sin it is, for such a majestic warrior to speak with such shameful defeat tainting her words. Were she one of my men, I would kill her for such dishonour. Slowly. By strangulation. Cowardice does not deserve the rush of a blade.

'I have tried,' she intones.

The emotion colouring her machine-voice brings my bile rising. For all I know, she could be weeping. My disgust is so powerful I must fight the need to vomit.

'Try

harder,'

I breathe into the vox, and sever the link.

We fight our way to the outer battlements at

Stormherald's

front, where the incline allows for easy boarding. An ork's fat hand slaps on the red metal of the battlement's edge, and the brute hauls itself up. My pistol meets its face, the heat exchanger vanes hissing against its skin. It has a moment to bawl its hatted at me before I pull the trigger. What remains of the alien falls from its handholds, tumbling to the ground, burning briefly on its way down as a living torch of white-hot fire.

The battlements resemble a true siege in all respects. The last remaining tech-adepts and priests defend the cathedral against boarding aliens, though no more than a small cluster remain. Few humans, augmented or otherwise, are a match for one of these beasts.

Priamus slips the leash of discipline. His charge carries him ahead, his sword flaring with light each time its power field saws into alien flesh. My brothers lay into the enemy along the besieged wall with bolter and blade. The few servitor-manned spire turrets that had been spitting solid shots into the mass of orks fall silent, not willing to risk striking any of us.

'You will do penance for this, Priamus.'

He doesn't answer. 'For the Emperor!' he cries into the vox. 'For Dorn!'

In the pockets of battle where none of us stand, the turrets open fire once again. At least their servitors are worth something, then. The orks turn from butchering the few priests still standing. Their bestial faces are afire with brutish, eager emotion as they come for us.

One of them… Throne of the Emperor… One of them dwarfs his piggish brethren. His armour makes him twice the size of us, looking like scrap metal and primitive, chugging power generators bolted onto an exoskeletal frame. His hands are industrial claws that look as if they could peel a tank apart without effort. He even kills his own kin as he strides towards us on the inclined floor. His claws swing, battering his lesser allies aside, hurling them against the cathedral wall or over the battlement's edge.

I raise my crozius in a two-handed grip. 'That one is mine,' I tell my brothers. 'Dorn is watching this.'

'You

asked

to

see me, sir?'

Tomaz didn't bother to straighten his crumpled work overalls as he stood at what could loosely be called attention. Around him, the command chamber was its usual bustling hive of activity. A junior staff officer bumped him as she passed.

Tomaz said nothing. He'd worked fifteen hours straight today, on a dock backed up with dozens and dozens of ships, with almost no room to unload. Fifteen hours of shouting, of broken vox-casters and no techs spare to fix them, of cargo being dumped wherever it could be dumped - which was inevitably the wrong place (and the most inconvenient one for someone else) - necessitating its removal minutes later when another worker's already fouled-up work was fouled-up even further.

Frankly, he didn't much care if he got shoved over onto the ground. Maybe he could curl up and get some damn sleep.

'Sir,' he prompted.

Sarren finally looked up from the hololithic table. The colonel had aged in the last week, Maghernus could see it clearly. He looked as tired and bone-achingly sick of it all as Tomaz felt.

'What?' Sarren asked, narrowing his bloodshot eyes. 'Oh. Yes. Dockmaster.' Sarren looked back down at the hololithic display. 'I need your crews to speed up. Is that understood?'

Maghernus blinked. 'I'm sorry, sir. I didn't quite hear you.'

'I need,' Sarren didn't look up, 'your crews to speed up their work. The reports I'm getting from the docks show they are at a standstill. We are talking about significant portions of the north and east perimeters of the city, dockmaster. I need to move troops. I need to store materiel. I need you to do your job.'

Maghernus looked around the room in disbelief, unsure how to respond.

'What would you have me do, colonel? What is there that I can possibly