Helsreach

against the junk-tanks of the invading beasts.

The city walls were half-fallen, resembling some archaeological ruin. Half of the hive was surrendered, abandoned to defeat's lifeless silence. The other half, held by Imperial forces that diminished by the hour, burned in battle.

And so dawned the thirty-seventh day.

* * *

'H

ey, no sleep

for you.'

Andrej kicked at Maghernus's shin, jolting the dockmaster back to the waking world. 'We must move soon, I am thinking. No time for sleeping.'

Tomaz blinked the stickiness of exhaustion from his eyes. He'd not even realised he'd fallen asleep. The two of them were crouched behind a stack of crates in a warehouse with the remaining nine men of Maghernus's dock gang. He met their faces now, each in turn, barely recognising any of them. A day of war had aged them all, gifting them with sunken eyes and soot-blackened skin that brought out the lines in their middle-aged faces.

'Where are we going?' Maghernus whispered back. The storm-trooper had removed his goggles to wipe his own aching eyes. They'd not slept - they'd barely even stopped fighting - in over twenty hours.

'My captain wishes us to move west. There are civilian shelters above ground there.'

One of the men hawked and spat on the ground. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. Andrej didn't think any less of him for the fact he'd been weeping.

'West?' the man asked.

'West,' Andrej said again. 'That is my captain's order, and that is what we will do.'

'But the beasts are already there. We saw them.'

'I did not say the order was what I wished to do with my retirement years. I said it was an order, and obeying orders is what we are going to do.'

'But if the aliens are already there…' another worker piped up, snapping Andrej's patience.

'Then we will be behind enemy lines and see many dead civilians we were too late to save. Throne, you think I have good answers for you all? I do not. I have no good answers, not for you, not for anyone else. But my captain has ordered us to go there, and go there we most certainly shall. Yes? Yes.'

It did the trick. A ghost of focus returned to their slack, weary gazes.

'Let's do it, then,' Maghernus said, his knees clicking as he rose up. He was amazed he could still stand. 'Blood of the Emperor, I've never ached like this.'

'Why are you complaining, I wonder,' the storm-trooper refastened his goggles with a grin. 'You worked insane shifts on these docks. This is surely no more tiring, I think.'

'Yeah,' one of the others grunted, 'but we were getting paid then.'

With muted laughter, the team moved back out onto the docks.

C

olonel

S

arren's injured

arm was securely fastened in a makeshift sling. What annoyed him most was the loss of his right arm to gesture with to the hololithic display, but then, that was the price to pay for foolishly leaving the

Grey Warrior

in hostile territory. Shrapnel in the arm was a lucky break, all things considered. The enemy sniper team had killed four of his Baneblade's command crew as they surfaced from the bowels of their tank for much-needed fresh air after countless hours breathing the rank, recycled fumes of the internal filtration scrubbers.

Another sector cleared, only to be wormed through again by bestial scavengers mere hours later.

In the low-ceilinged confines of the tank's principal command chamber, Sarren sat on his well-worn throne, letting the tension ebb from him and trying to forget the column of pain that had been a perfectly normal arm only an hour before. The sawbones, Jerth, had already recommended amputation, citing the risk of infection from dirty shrapnel and the likelihood the limb would never return to - as he put it – ''full functionality''.

Bloody surgeons. Always so keen to graft on some cheap, jury-rigged bionic that would click every time he moved a muscle and seize up because of low-grade components. Sarren was no stranger to augmetics in the Guard, and they were a far cry from the modifications afforded to the rich and decadent.

He stared at the hololithic table now, watching the docks recede from Imperial control with agonising, desperate slowness. Seeing the flickering regiment runes and location sigils, it was hard to translate the skeletal vision to the fierce fighting that was truly taking place.

More and more Steel Legion infantry units were reaching the docks, but it was like holding the sea back with a bucket. The Guardsmen being sent in did little but bolster the general retreat. Reclaiming ground was a distant fiction.

'Sir?' the vox-officer called out. Sarren looked over to him, drawn from his reverie, not realising the man had been trying to get his attention for almost a minute.

'Yes?'

'Word from orbit. The Imperial fleet is reengaging again.'

Sarren made the sign of the aquila - at least, he tried to, and ended with a grunt of pain as his bound arm flared up in pained protest. One-handed, he made a single wing of the Imperial eagle instead.

'Acknowledged. May the Emperor be with them all.'

This scarce acknowledgement made, he lapsed back into watching the deployment of his forces throughout the city. Around him, the tank's crew worked at their stations.

So the Imperial fleet was reengaging. Again.

Every few days, the same story played out. The joint Astartes and Naval fleet would break from the warp close to the planet, and hurl themselves at the ork vessels ringing the embattled world. The engagement would hold for several hours as both sides inflicted horrendous losses on the other, but the Imperials would inevitably be hurled back into a fighting retreat by the immense opposition.

Once they'd fallen back to the safety of a nearby system, they'd regroup over time, under the command of Admiral Parol and High Marshal Helbrecht, and make ready for another assault. It was blunt, and crudely effective. In a void war of such magnitude, there was little place for finesse. Sarren wasn't blind to the tactics at play - lance strikes into the heart of the enemy fleet, bleed them for all that was possible before a retreat back to safety. It was a necessary grind, a war of attrition.

It was also hardly inspiring. The hive cities were on the edge now. Without reinforcements in the coming weeks, many would fall outright. The infrequent transmissions from Tartarus, Infernus and Acheron were all increasingly grim, as were Sarren's reports of Helsreach to them.

If there was no—

'Sir?'

Sarren glanced to his left, to where the vox-officer sat at his station. The man held his headphone receivers to his ear with one hand. He looked pale.

'Emergency signal from the

Serpentine

in orbit. She