The dead had not died for nothing. She would never forget that, for every one died in the service of the immortal Emperor and that was an end in itself. But the Soul Drinkers would escape their justice, and their treachery would stay an open wound in the soul of the Imperium.
Squad Rufilla was pouring fire over the heads of the Sisters and storm troopers as they ran back towards the Rhinos and Chimeras. Several of the vehicles were out of action, tracks ripped apart by sharp ridges of wreckage or hulls dented by collisions. The strikeforce crammed into the surviving transports, small arms fire spattering against the hulls, the traitorous hordes taking the opportunity to press on through Rufilla's fire.
Aescarion was on the front lines with the Sisters around her rapidly falling back. She followed them, snapping shots into the shambling dead tumbling down the valleys of twisted metal around her. A hand reached out and she sliced it off with a slash of her power axe.
'We have you covered, Sister, get on board now!' Rufilla's bold voice sounded over the vox and Aescarion picked up her pace, the vehicle convoy beginning to roar off back towards the distant Crescent Moon.
'Sister!' someone yelled, not over the vox but out loud, out of breath and close by. Aescarion paused and looked back to see Inquisitor Thaddeus struggling across the blasted battlefield, firing with a bolt pistol he held with both hands, shooting his way through the living dead of Teturact's army. His face was streaked with blood and his flak-coat was torn and burned at the edges. He broke into a run when he saw Aescarion and she thought for a moment that there were troops with him lending him covering fire as he ran towards Aescarion and the convoy, but Squad Rufilla's fire was soon ripping over his head and into the living dead.
'Sister,' he said as he got close, 'we are done here.’
'I am pulling the troops out.’ she replied. "We thought you were lost.’
'I was.’ he replied. 'Teturact is dead, we have done enough here.’
'And the Soul Drinkers?'
Thaddeus reloaded his bolt pistol. Aescarion wondered where he had got it, and the ammunition for it. 'Teturact's wizards are still in command here?'
They are. I have seen them, they are foul things indeed.’
They command this army now. They are our target. Without Teturact they will have nowhere to flee to. If we can hunt them down quickly their armies will fall and the warzone will be cleansed.’
'But the Soul Drinkers will have to flee this planet too, inquisitor, surely we will never have a better opportunity to...'
Thaddeus blasted a volley of bolts into the closest few traitors as Rufilla's covering fire lanced down over his head and scoured a zone of safety around them. 'Aescarion, one day I will teach you about politics. But for now I must exercise my authority as an inquisitor and demand you do as I instruct. We can argue when it is all over.'
Rufilla yelled a final plea and Aescarion turned, leading Thaddeus back to the last Rhino where they clambered in beside Squad Rufilla and, still snatching shots at the enemy through the firing slits and hatches, roared bruisingly across the battlefield towards the Crescent Moon.
THE AIR WAS full of the stench of gunfire and rotting flesh, but Salk still gulped it down in relief as he led the bedraggled spearhead from the ruins of the facility. The sound of battle raged not far away and Salk knew that bitter close combat was waged just behind the facility, where the lives of Marines had bought the spearhead the time to snatch the Chapter's future. The facility smoked from thousands of small arms hits and the area around it was a dark twisted nightmare of wreckage and craters. Above, Salk could see the dark form of the battleship still ghosted against the sky, its skeletal frame disintegrating.
Behind Salk and the survivors of his squad was Graevus, supporting Karraidin with his mutated arm. One of Karraidin's legs was gone at the knee and his storm bolter hand was a gleaming red ruin, but he was alive, and his squad formed a cordon around him. Pallas and Lygris were with them - they had tried to find Techmarine Solun as they charged through the mutant-infested laboratory level, but he was gone.
'Soul Drinkers, this is Sergeant Salk. Mission fulfilled, get us out of here.'
Static. Then - 'Salk, stay in cover we're coming in.'
The seconds were agonising. Lygris and Pallas carried the only chance the Soul Drinkers had of genetic survival. A single well-timed assault or lucky impact could wipe out the future.
With a roar of engines and a flash of silver a fighter shot down from above, impossibly bright against the darkening sky. The lower portals yawned open and the fighter dipped so low its belly scraped the piles of wreckage.
Pallas and Lygris went first, dragged into the passenger compartment. Somehow, Graevus got Karraidin onto the top of a pile of wreckage and purple-armoured hands reached down to haul the wounded old captain aboard. Salk covered Graevus as he and his men went next, and finally Salk boarded, bolter chattering to the last. The portal began to bleed closed and the last Salk saw of Stratix Luminae was a blackened ruin, a twisted metal hell swarming with enemies that formed a writhing sea around an impossibly thin cordon of purple.
'Librarian Gresk to Commander Sarpedon.’ someone was voxing, and Salk realised it was one of the reserve fighters that had picked them up. Gresk - one of the Soul Drinkers' pyskers, a Marine who could throw fireballs with a look - must have dropped off most of the Marines with him already as only his retinue and the survivors of the spearhead were in the passenger compartment. %Ve have the spearhead. Mission concluded. Repeat, mission concluded.’
'Understood.’ came the reply vox, which Salk could just hear over the growing whine of the engines. 'All squads, fall back and extract. All squads...'
Salk fell back against the grav-couch. He ached all over and, as his metabolism came back down to near-normal, he would feel a dozen new injuries he didn't know he had.
He was alive, and somehow it hardly seemed right. He could see Solun, as if he were there in front of him, lying crippled on the floor. He could see Marines pounded to bits by the tide of mutant flesh. He could see Captain Dreo lying mortally wounded in the Mechanicus lab on Eumenix, and he remembered the account of how Hastis had died on Septiam Torus. How many of the Chapter had died? He didn't dare think. Only the Chapter's true leaders, like Sarpedon, Karraidin and Lygris, would dare to comprehend the price they had paid, and Salk knew that it would weigh them down like death itself.
If it was worth it, though, if the Chapter had a future, then there was hope. Sarpedon had not cursed them with hope until he had known they had a real chance, and now that hope was all the Chapter had left.
The Marines struggled into their grav-harnesses and Gresk gave the order to the bridge. The fighter's engines kicked in and it shot through the atmosphere, out into the hard vacuum and away from Stratix Luminae at last.
THREE OF THE fighters were lost, the one that had crashed in the first moments of the assault and two more that had been brought down by fire from the ground as they swooped low for extraction. The rest picked up the Soul Drinkers even as they fought. With the squads of the cordon gone, the traitorous, leaderless hordes poured over the facility like a tide of hungry vermin, there to fight against the mutated inhabitants until there was nothing left at the facility but death.
Iktinos was one of the last to be picked up. He and the squads with him were surrounded, and he was still battering traitors back from the lower hatch with his crozius as the fighter lifted off. The fighters broke formation and swooped out into space, weaving through the remnants of Teturact's flagship and leaving the Stratix system far behind. They evaded the Crescent Moon as they went, as its weapons shot down the transports trying to leave Stratix.