Sanctioned Psyker Ruut was crouching in the angle of the trench. He kept his head low. The air above him sizzled with ozone. Las-bolts hissed as they hit the snow. The bark of bolters was constant. His pistol remained holstered. His fingers tensed and stretched. He felt the power ready within him. ‘Where is your faith?’ Ivann hissed. His mentor was just behind him.

‘In the Emperor,’ Ruut said. He could feel them coming towards him. Cadians were backing down the trench, their lasrifles at their shoulders, ready. Suddenly they flew backwards, mass-reactive shells jerking their bodies like marionettes. The ice walls dripped with gobbets of human flesh. There was wet on Ruut’s face. He wiped it off, saw blood on his sleeve. He had seen worse. ‘Ready?’ Ruut said. Ivann nodded. ‘Right,’ Ruut said. ‘Let’s go for it.’ The sanctioned psyker stepped forward. Down the stretch of the trench a black-and-white-armoured Space Marine was striding towards him. The trench reached only as high as his abdomen. In one fist he carried a massive bolter, a dripping chainaxe in the other. The blade buzzed as he came towards Ruut. The look of the enemy was like that of a lion on its prey, taking in all that it needs to know in an instant. It lifted its boltgun and pressed the trigger down long enough for three mass-reactive bolts to fire. The spent brass shells flew left, across the path of the Space Marine, as the bolter exploded. It had taken just a finger of Ruut’s psychic force to plug the barrel of the boltgun. It was a trick he’d used before. Surprise gave him a moment’s advantage.

The Space Marine kept striding forward. If he was at all perturbed he did not show it. He casually dropped his bolter, drew his bolt pistol, gunned his chainaxe to full, and accelerated into a run. Ruut braced his feet into the trampled ice. He envisaged a fist of steel in the air about him. He put up a hand, closed his eyes and sent that fist straight towards his foe. His power propelled it forward, as a breath of wind will lift a feather in the air and carry it along. It hit the Renegade full in the chest, went straight through power armour, bone and one of its hearts, came out the other side and buried itself thirty feet into the ice. Ruut felt its power. He opened his eyes, saw the chainaxe descend.

Ruut’s blood sprayed over Ivann’s face as the minder fell over himself in horror. The Space Marine turned and caught him by the foot. Ivann kicked and squirmed. He fired his laspistol and hit. He must have hit, but the thing seemed immune. Throne! It had a fist-shaped hole through its chest. Ivann thrashed as the Space Marine dragged him up to its helmet. It lifted him high enough to bring Ivann’s face right up to the Space Marine’s face plate. ‘Are you frightened, little man?’ the Renegade hissed in a voice that was chillingly quiet. Ivann lost control of his bowels.
‘How can you still live?’ he asked, staring at the gore that dripped from the hole in the thing’s chest.
‘Because I want vengeance,’ the Space Marine hissed, and with a sudden jerk of his power-armoured fist he snapped Ivann’s neck.

Justin D Hill. Cadia Stands (Kindle Locations 3992-4001).