Sarpedon reeled. For a moment he was open and vulnerable, and a quick blade would have taken his head off. But instinct took over and he jabbed forward and down with one of his powerful hind legs. The axe blade whistled past his face, blistering the skin of one cheek with its power field, as he fell backwards. One hand planted on the ground to support him as the talon of his hind leg sheared through the Sister's armour and impaled her through the muscle of her thigh.
Two more legs stabbed into the ground to give him leverage and he flung the Sister across the forum, the talon ripping out of her leg as she flew through the air trailing an arc of blood.
'Sarpedon! Karraidin!' came Lygris's urgent voice over the vox. 'We've got Guardsmen coming your way, you need to get on board now!'
Sarpedon looked away from the Sister's prone body and saw the troopers - Stratix XXIII, tattooed hive-scum to a man - pouring through the Septiam lines and over the ruined forum. There were hundreds of them, and in Sarpedon they saw a mutant who had just defeated one of their Sororitas allies.
Lasgun fire ripped towards Sarpedon and Karraidin, whose squad was taking cover in ruins a hundred metres away. Sarpedon vaulted over the closest statue plinth but fire was coming from everywhere, scoring deep scars in his armour, several lasbursts burning through the chitin of his legs. One Stratix followed him into cover, combat knife clutched in his hand. Sarpedon punched him hard in the face - his head snapped back and he flopped brokenly to the ground. Sarpedon fired twice with his bolter, blowing the torso of one Guardsman apart, before impaling another on his force staff as he fell.
'Damn it, taking fire! Get us some support!' voxed Karraidin over the chatter of his storm bolter, but Lygris's fighter was yawing upwards as Stratix antitank teams got into position and started sending lascannon blasts up into the gleaming hull.
Without warning there was a titanic flash and a searing wave of heat. Sarpedon saw charging Stratix reduced to ashen skeletons as his own autosenses forced his pupils almost shut against the glare. The blistering wave of energy washed over him, scalding the skin of his legs and peeling the paint from the edges of his armour.
He glanced behind him and a saw the source of the blast - a Leman Russ Executioner tank, huge plasma blastgun glowing from the sudden discharge of power, white smoke billowing from the energy coils.
For a moment there was silence as the glare on Sarpedon's retinas died to reveal a huge hole blown in the Stratix attack, dozens of charred bodies filling a massive scorch mark across the stone.
A huge Jouryan attack filled the vacuum, grey-fatigued troops rushing to blunt the Stratix charge. Guardsmen or no, they had seen the Soul Drinkers as allies and the Stratix as the enemies of their friends. Many of them could probably not tell the difference between a Septiam and a Stratix in the heat of battle anyway, and though some saw Sarpedon's deformities and faltered in their charge most hurtled into the fray.
A brutal close-quarters fight erupted in the forum, Stratix against Jouryan, looted knives against bayonets. Heavy weapons teams opened up against the Executioner but other front-line tanks, Exterminators and Leman Russ battle tanks, rolled through the rabble to support the infantry.
Lygris saw his opening and the fighter lurched downwards again, hull opening up to let Karraidin drag his massive armoured frame on board followed by his squad. The fighter turned and dipped low enough for Sarpedon to leap up on his powerful legs. He grabbed the edge of the opening and pulled himself up into the passenger compartment. The fighter aimed its nose upwards and Sarpedon could see the huge swirling melee filling the forum, Stratix and Jouryan Guardsmen killing each other, the surviving Septiams caught up in the butchery.
Something flared below the fighter and Sarpedon looked over the edge of the doorway to see the Sister he had beaten, rocketing upwards on her Seraphim jump pack. She came up just short and grasped the edge with one hand, the other holding her power axe.
Sarpedon saw she was was streaked with grime and blood, her face set with faith and zeal.
He had to admire her determination.
'For the Emperor, Sister.’ he said, and with a flick of his powerful bionic foreleg he kicked her off the edge of the ship to fall helplessly into the heart of the battle.
'Get us out of her, Lygris.’ he voxed, and felt the fighter tip back as the metal flowed back over the opening. The last impression he had of Septiam Torus was the mingled cries of thousands of men as they fought, killed and died. Just as it had been for thousands of years the Imperium was destroying its own, although Sarpedon had rarely seen the idea so vividly come to life.
'Did you see the image we sent you from the aus-pex?' voxed Sarpedon as the engines kicked in and he strapped himself back into the grav-restraints. He looked around the passenger compartment and saw that the Marine force on Septiam Torus had lost over a quarter of its number, with almost all of Squad Hastis gone. Had it been worth it? Was anything?
'Received intact.’ replied Lygris from the cockpit.
'Do you know what it is?'
'Looks like a cogitator circuit, something to recall information from a mem-bank. Probably the key for a security system.'
The main engines took over and the sound of the atmosphere rippling on the hull dropped away as the fighter passed out into space.
It had been worth it, Sarpedon told himself. It had to have been. Otherwise, not one of them would survive Stratix Luminae.
TEN
FOR THADDEUS, SPACE travel was the most frustrating part of his work. The time spent between the stars was time wasted, and even when the warp meant a century's worth of travel took only days those were still days he wouldn't get back. Patience was perhaps his greatest strength but space travel, more than anything, made it wear thin.
He knew the Crescent Moon was fast, that was one of the reasons he used it. But he had no way of knowing how quickly the Soul Drinkers could move. Presumably the alien fighters Aescarion had reported were warp-capable, since they would be the perfect way to sneak past the warzone's blockades with the minimum of risk - perhaps they were already on Stratix Luminae, and Thaddeus was already too late. Perhaps they had to enact some other part of their plan before they could reach the planet. Perhaps Stratix Luminae was already lost -Stratix, after all, was in the same solar system and Teturact could have decided to despoil and garrison the planets bordering his homeworld.
At least Thaddeus had some idea of what the place looked like. He had Captain Korvax's pict-recording playing on a personal holo-servitor. The image was paused as Korvax looked across the defences towards the outpost - a simple, low plasti-crete building with massive blast doors and fire points on the roof. It didn't look like much but, for whatever reason, Sarpedon had risked his own life and the lives of his Chapter to get there.
Lord Inquisitor Kolgo had released Thaddeus without actually admitting he had ever been held prisoner, simply docking his ship for refuelling and maintenance and letting Thaddeus walk out. It was just the next stage in the game, a favour done to secure a favour in the future when Thaddeus might be worth something. However, Kolgo and Thaddeus would never be allies, because Thaddeus would destroy the Soul Drinkers or die trying. Neither option would endear him much to Kolgo.
Thaddeus had used the time he had spent waiting to meet up with the Crescent Moon researching Stratix Luminae, but there hadn't been much to find out. It was an Adeptus Mechanicus Genetor facility, where biological experiments had been carried out by adepts seeking to delve further into the secrets of genetics and mutation. Such outposts were usually isolated and Stratix Luminae was no exception, being a world of frozen tundra with no population aside from the outpost staff. Ten years ago eldar pirates, who had plagued the Stratix system intermittently, were fought off by a force of Space Marines who responded to the Adeptus Mechanicus's distress call. There was, of course, no record of who the Chapter involved might have been, which led Thaddeus to conclude that it had been the Soul Drinkers well before their break with the Imperium.