Greavus walks over to them. He is carrying his helm under his arm. There is chalky dust on his face and in his hair. Greavus’s close-cropped fair hair is red, like dirty gold. The dust makes him look as though he is prematurely aging.
‘Report from the server, sir,’ he says, addressing Ventanus not Sullus. ‘They’ve found the vox-caster system. There are some power issues, but they hope to make a test broadcast within the hour.’
‘Good. The data-engine?’
‘Nothing on that yet, sir,’ replies Greavus.
Arook suddenly moves, raising his main weapon limb.
‘Contact,’ he reports. ‘Two kilometres from the north gate, coming this way out of the fog.’
‘Identity?’ asks Ventanus.
‘Concealed.’
Ventanus picks up the standard.
‘Selaton, cover the south line. Colonel Sparzi, the north-east. The rest of you with me.’
They head for the gate, crossing once-ornamental lawns. Fireteams of Army troopers are setting up in hastily dug foxholes. Ventanus notes good practical distribution of the few crew-served weapons and mortars. Sparzi has read a manual or two. Probably some of Guilliman’s.
They pass the field guns and reach the gate. Outside, the approach bridge spans the earthwork ditch. Beyond two obelisk mile marks, the road stretches off across scrub, the beginnings of the famous and majestic Plains of Dera. Fog and murk spoil the view.
‘We’ve got heat-sources,’ reports Arook. ‘Warm bodies.’
‘Confirming that,’ says Greavus, using a hand-held auspex.
‘They’re using the fog as cover,’ says Sullus dourly. ‘That can’t be good.’
‘If I was leading reinforcements here from Erud Station,’ says Ventanus, ‘I’d be using the fog as cover too.’
He looks at the skitarii master.
‘Vox signals?’
Arook shakes his head. The light in his damaged red eye is fading slowly in and out.
‘You mentioned a code term,’ says Arook.
‘Yes,’ says Ventanus. ‘Wait.’
A slight breeze stirs. Leaf litter rattles amongst the rubble at their feet.
‘A signal,’ says Arook. They can all hear the muted background binarics. ‘Attention palace,’ he translates. ‘Identify occupation.’
‘Is that Mechanicum?’ asks Ventanus.
‘I can confirm the signal code source is Mechanicum,’ says Arook. ‘Not that it proves anything. If it’s Gargoz, he’s being circumspect.’
‘Again,’ says Ventanus, ‘I would be if I were approaching this location hoping to find friends and fearing I was about to find enemies.’
‘The signal has repeated twice,’ says Arook.
‘Answer it,’ says Ventanus. ‘Request identity.’
Arook makes a quick blurt.
‘Reply reads,’ he relays. ‘Support elements from Erud muster, seeking shelter.’
Ventanus sticks his standard point in the earth so he can clamp on his helm.
‘Too easy,’ he says. ‘No one from my company would expose himself that readily. Not on a day like today. No one from my company, or any other company. Ask them the question.’
‘The number of the painted eldar?’ asks Arook.
‘That’s the one.’
They wait for a second.
‘No response. They repeat the claim that they are support elements from Erud muster.’
‘Ask again,’ says Ventanus. He glances at Sparzi. ‘Get your boys up,’ he says.
The colonel nods and hurries off.
‘Response,’ says Arook. ‘A request for confirmation of xenos activity in this zone. Confirm, eldar forces?’
‘They don’t understand the question,’ says Ventanus.
‘I don’t understand the question,’ remarks Arook.
‘The point is, Sydance would,’ replies Ventanus. ‘And so would any other officer of the 4th Company. Ask them to verify their response. Tell them we will stand by.’
Arook does so.
After a long pause, he says, ‘They ask us to confirm xenos activity in this zone.’
Ventanus lifts the standard. ‘Arook, have your skitarii paint heat-source targets in that fog bank for the benefit of the artillery crews. Tell Colonel Sparzi we will open fire in sixty seconds.’
‘You’re going to open fire?’ Sullus barks. ‘Are you mad? If it’s our own kind–’
‘It isn’t. And I’m not going to allow it to get any closer.’
‘But if they are XIII!’ Sullus insists. ‘If they are of Ultramar!’
‘They are not, captain,’ says Ventanus firmly.
Beyond the ditch, at the very edge of the miserable fog, the first figures begin to loom. The feeble sunlight catches the dull sheen of crimson armour.
‘Fire!’ says Ventanus.
‘Let me go back.’ cries Bale Rane. ‘Let me go the fug back!’
Krank punches him in the gut and winds him badly, just to get him to stop fussing.
‘Sorry,’ Krank says. ‘Sorry, Rane. Sorry, kid. I can’t let you.’
Rane gasps out words, doubled up.
‘I did not shoot at your bloody wife, Bale,’ says Krank. ‘I did not do that. I opened up full auto on something and it definitely weren’t your wife. It most surely weren’t.’
‘It was Neve. She was calling to me!’
‘Rane, shut up. Just shut up. Thank me, why don’t you? You showed me picts of your wife. She was pretty. That thing calling to you, it wasn’t pretty.’
Krank sighs. He sinks down beside Rane.
‘It weren’t your wife, kid. Even if you hadn’t shown me picts, I’d have known. Your wife, she’s got eyes, right? And she ain’t got horns. I don’t know what it was, Rane, but it wasn’t good. It was some xenos thing. Some bloody daemon.’
The foul wind stirs the fog on the blown-out street. Out in the distance, a city hab explodes in a gout of flames, and the rumble of it falling lasts three or four minutes. Artillery thumps. Things boom above, in orbit.
Bale Rane murmurs his wife’s name, tears in his eyes, snot on his lip.
Krank hears running.
‘Get up, get up!’ he says, pulling Rane up by the sleeves. He bundles him into cover.
Two men, Army, run past them, down the street, and then a third. They are tattered and dirty, and they’re running from something. One of them is sobbing like a child.
They’re fleeing. That’s what they’re doing.
Krank pushes Rane up against the wall as the pursuers run into view. They’re Army too, but not the same Army. They’re ragged, wrapped in black, brotherhood cultists like the ones who slaughtered Krank’s unit. There are two of them. One laughs, raises his autorifle, and brings down the lagging trooper with a spine shot.
The other two fugitives skid up, halting. Two more cultists have appeared in their path.
The hounded men back up. The cultists stroll towards them out of the fog. The ones who were chasing drop to an amble, closing in behind.
‘Please!’ Krank hears one of the men beg. ‘Please!’
He gets a headshot for asking nicely. He goes down like a commercia mannequin.
The other tries to run, but the cultists grab him. They pin him between the four of them, drag his head back by the hair, and cross his exposed throat with a ritual knife. His blood makes a dark red mirror in the gutter under his body.
Rane makes a noise. An involuntary sob.
The four knife brothers turn from their kill. Their eyes are sunken shadows. In the half-light, their faces look like death’s-heads.