The Prize Team

	Elder Santoru pivoted his Dreadnought’s chassis and fired his last storm bolter shells down the corridor behind him, which penetrated the windscreen of the hovertruck chasing him down the hallway.  The driver ripped apart, and the hovertruck smashed into one wall and rolled, blocking the return path.

	“Well done, Elder,” Koell said crisply.  His bolter was damaged, so all he had left was his melta and chainfist.  He and the Techmarine and Rapier were the center of the line now.  The two Terminators and Doreth ranged ahead, picking off everything that got in their path, while Santoru took the rear.

	They were running as fast as the Rapier would allow.  The timer on the melta bombs said that they had only four minutes before the whole Traverse Core exploded.

	When the boarding parties passed Fire Wasps, they took them back along with them if they had some ammunition, and left the others behind as diversions.  The loss of a few drones was a small price to pay for saving the system.  Doreth’s melta was smoking from use by the time the final stretch came into view.  Ahead, he saw two Techmarines with Rapier quad bolters and a Tarantula turret providing cover fire down the long corridor at a gaggle of aliens that were trying to repel the Caestus.

	“We are one minute out, brothers,” Doreth reported.

	One of the distant Techmarines waved a hand in a tight acknowledgement gesture, then had to duck behind the nearest Rapier as a Ruin Gun nearly took his head off.  He returned fire and blasted the heavy weapons Glasian to meat scraps.

	Santoru kept running backward, keeping one eye on his reverse optics to ensure he didn’t trample his brothers.  The Techmarine reloaded his own bolter and urged his mechanical charge to the highest speed it could manage.

	The point Terminator’s eyes widened behind his mask as he saw a crushed grav-car fly in from out of sight.  It slammed into the Tarantula and knocked it away; it slammed into an unseen wall with a massive explosion.  A monster of flesh and feather lumbered into view.  It was a daemonhost, one of the same Flesh-Stealers the reports had already placed at the Primus spaceport.  Those, however, had not looked like this.  This Flesh-Stealer was pulsing randomly with sick purple light.  Its wounds closed as fast as they opened, and as they did, they leaked black ichor.  It was growing, too, with each passing second, very slightly.

	The Daggers had encountered more Flesh-Stealers than any other Chapter in the galaxy, and none had ever witnessed one behave as such.  As one, Doreth and the two Terminators snapped all of their ranged weapons up and hosed it down with fire.

	The daemonhost lurched and staggered.  Clearly, it hadn’t anticipated being shot in the back.  The Prize Team heard the rattle behind them as the Rapier unfolded its four bolters, but it couldn’t get a shot over the heads of the front three lumbering suits of armor.

	The other two Rapiers opened fire from beside the ramp of the Assault Ram.  Under sudden fire from four bolters and a melta, the daemonhost roared in pain and defiance.  It turned and charged the Prize Team, even as the wave of bolter fire from the Ram guards continued.

	Doreth had never fought one in hand to hand before, but he knew how to kill them.  He raced ahead of the other two Terminators, raising his two ranged weapons overhead.  His servo harness grabbed them and continued firing and reloading as he sent the correct synaptic commands.  The blade popped free of his chainfist and revved up; he grabbed his combat knife with the other hand and slapped his flare gun into his third mechadendrite.

	Then the beast was on him and flailing with its corrupted feather-knives.  The material was sharper than obsidian and harder than steel, and each cut rent a crack in his Cataphractii armor.  Doreth dodged the monster’s many arms to the best of his abilities, firing relentlessly into its eyes and shoulders.  When he could, he would lean back a bit and let the largest servo-claw drive a punishing blow into the monster’s forehead, knocking its head back and denying it a clean sight of him.

	Santoru sensed the Rapier slowing and risked turning back to see.  When he saw Doreth fighting the Flesh-Stealer, the old Dreadnought felt something cold inside his amniote-suspended heart.  The Flesh-Stealer’s body was throbbing in the same way as the Traverse Core.  What that meant, he did not know, but it couldn’t possibly be good.  Santoru raised his Inferno Cannon arm high and fired his coaxial heavy stubber into the monster’s face, blinding it for a few moments while it healed.

	Doreth took advantage of the opportunity and started hacking the diseased meat over the beast’s heart with his Chainfist.  It rallied instantly, lashing out with four mutated arms and punching Doreth back several steps.  Doreth grimaced as it rammed its fifth arm into his upper chest plate and started trying to pull it apart.  He brought his combat knife up to slash the offending arm and fired his melta with his servo harness, burning it off.  His bile rose as the arm regrew in under a second.

	Techmarine Cowler scanned the monster with his suit’s inbuilt sensor packages as the others fought to dislodge it from their path.  The beast’s body fairly rang with strange energies, complete with the random spots of intense heat he usually associated with Warp exposure.  “Lord Doreth, it’s drawing its extra power from the Warp!” he said over the vox.  “I can’t tell how to keep it down long enough for us to get past it!”

	“Then we go around!” Santoru said.  He powered up his siege drills and started carving a wide hole through the adjacent wall.

	Doreth reeled from the intense blows the Flesh-Stealer rained down on him.  The razor-sharp feathers sticking from its extra arms were chipping away at even his Cataphractii armor.  Whatever this Warp power it had, it was fast, faster than a Terminator.  The Rapiers still doggedly blasting away at its back were hurting it, though, and the ground behind it was ankle deep in putrescent blue blood and ichor.

	Something clicked in Doreth’s mind when he saw that.  Doreth suddenly lurched forward, catching the beast by surprise.  He rammed the chainfist on his left hand into its lower stomach, ripping some of its mutating flesh open.  He abandoned firing his weapons with his mechadendrites and sent them the block command instead.  The beast roared in pain and flailed at the old Techmarine, but the servo arms managed to hold its spiked arms back for a bare moment.  Doreth let his combat knife fall to the blood-drenched deck beneath, and dropped his melta into his waiting right hand.  He fired one desperate shot at the monster’s right knee, just as he shoved with his servo harness and chainfist into its left side.

	The Flesh-Stealer tripped and fell, landing on its back in a revolting pile of its own discarded organs.  It was still blocking the corridor, but as it regrew the damage done to its back from the Rapier fire, its body swelled up off the ground, leaving its feet helplessly kicking in midair.

	Doreth blew out a shaky breath and stepped back.  “Elder, how’s that wall coming along?”

	“Almost done.  Time to detonation?” Santoru asked shortly.  The siege drill was almost done widening their path.

	“Two minutes, Elder.”  Doreth switched to his open grille.  “Brothers!  Two minutes until detonation!  Prepare the Ram!” he called to the two Terminators ahead.

	The two Terminators nodded.  “It’s ready for a hot dustoff the instant it’s asked for it, Master Doreth!  The Machine Spirits are willing.”

	A riotous crash announced the fall of the wall.  “Move, brothers!” Santoru roared.  The other Terminators and the Rapier charged through the gap with the Dreadnought in hot pursuit.

	The group found themselves in a machine shop of some sort, cast to bits by the impact of the Ram, Nova Cannon, and Santoru’s drill.  The whole room was aflame from the Siege Dreadnought’s flamer, not that that was any real threat to the Terminators.  However, the Glasians inside had clearly not failed to notice the flame-spewing drill coming through the wall.  The aliens alive inside the machine shop were all taking cover behind tables across the room, and opened fire the moment the Prize Team came through the burning gap.

	One of the Terminators reeled out of formation with the others as he caught one of their little purple tube rockets in the faceplate.  The other caught him and hauled him back into line firing his Storm Bolter at the gibbering aliens.  Santoru charged into the wall at the far side of the room and started drilling a new gap as the Terminators opened up with their own weapons.

	A wrathful bellow from the hall behind caught their ears even over the din of the adamantium siege drill.  “Master Koell!  The Flesh-Stealer is back on its feet and following you!” one of the Terminators by the Ram reported.

	Koell and Doreth exchanged a look.  “Damn it all,” Doreth muttered.

	“Acknowledged, Battle Brother.  Withdraw on the Ram,” Koell said heavily.

	No sooner had the words left his lips than the wall out into the room beyond started peeling aside under the abuse of the drill.  The first two Terminators and Cowler charged through, abandoning the Rapier.  Beyond, the other two Terminators were backing their own Rapiers onto the Ram, still sending desultory shots down the corridor the Prize Team had first used.

	“Move, brothers!” Koell roared.  He broke into the fastest run he could in his Indomitus suit, then staggered and fell to his knees as something impacted his back with the force of a speeding truck.

	He feebly rolled to his feet, but a fistful of razor-sharp feathers smashed into his faceplate, sending him back onto his ass.  The Flesh-Stealer, aflame and screaming, rammed its horrid dagger-like claws into Koell and started ripping.

	Doreth backpedaled and fired his multi-melta into the Flesh-Stealer’s head, but incredibly it began healing the missing tissue even while it ripped and tore at the hapless Apothecary.  Then, Santoru was on the daemonhost.  He kicked the Flesh-Stealer off with its hydraulic leg, then drove his mighty drill into the monster’s sternum.  Even a Warp-infused monstrosity couldn’t withstand such a force, and the monster dropped to its knees, wrapping its arms around the Dreadnought.

	Doreth grabbed Koell and hoisted him up, half-dragging him to the waiting Ram.  Cowler fired doggedly over Koell’s head as he limped up the ramp into the Caestus Ram.

	“LEAVE, BROTHERS!  FLY!” Santoru roared.  He fired his last few stubber shots into the back of a Glasian that was trying to fling itself into the Ram’s hold.

	Doreth screwed his eyes shut and slapped the close lever for the Caestus.  The hydraulics slammed the ramps shut, and a deathly silence overtook the interior of the Ram for a few moments as the inertial compensators kicked in at three hundred percent to offset the sudden thrust of the plasma engines.

	Koell managed to speak first.  “Time to detonation?”

	“Four seconds,” Doreth muttered.


	Ranult Arden opened one eye as a familiar ping broke the quiet of his Thunderhawk’s troop bay.  The dataslate he had hung on the wall peg beside his head flashed a four word code phrase at the top, one that he had seen five times before.  In red, then blue, then yellow, then green, EXIGENT, XENOCRAFT, IMPLOSIVES, COMPLETE.

	He smiled tiredly.  The Cylinder could no longer move under its own power.  Now the cleanup began.


	Jeremy Haskell watched his sensor arrays’ feed from his firing bay in the great Nova Cannon of the Gargantuan.  All of the ships that Lord Eiger had sent to intercept the Cylinder and peel away its escorts were backing off now, some heavily damaged, but that surely meant…

	“YES!” one of the repair serfs beside him crowed.  Jeremy raised a finger to admonish him, but couldn’t go through with it.  A great red sphere had suddenly appeared in the center of the wireframe that represented the Cylinder.  The Traverse Core was dead, and it had taken most of the Cylinder’s power plant coolant systems with it.  The Glasians would be forced into power-saving mode now, and its great Ruin Guns that could hull a Cruiser with two shots were nothing more than laser pointers.

	“That’s step one,” Haskell muttered.  “Lord Aarden, it’s all you.”

	Doreth walked slowly into the cockpit of the Casetus.  The little Assault Ram had flipped tail over prow in the shockwave as the ragged hole in the Cylinder from the Nova Cannon had suddenly vented megatons of metal and atmosphere from the detonation of the melta bombs.  Now that they had their course corrected, the engines were wide open.

	The co-pilot, an Astartes from the Fourth Company that Doreth didn’t recognize, took a moment to salute his battle-scarred superior.  “Your Lordship.”

	“Brother,” Doreth said tiredly.

	The co-pilot returned to his instruments.  The reassuring bulk of the Cry Of Hate, a Hunter frigate from their own fleet, loomed before them.  “My condolences on the loss of Elder Santoru.”

	“Survived three Migrations, killed by a daemonhost,” the pilot, another Fourth Company Marine, remarked.  “What a glorious end.”

	“Of course,” Doreth remarked diplomatically.  There would be no talk of his miraculous survival, naturally.  The corridor they had lodged the Ram in would have opened to the void when the Ram left, but that had a disturbing pattern of not killing daemonhosts.  No, Santoru was with the Emperor now.

	The pilot tapped a key on his brass control panel, and it blinked green three times a moment later.  “We have permission to dock on the Cry of Hate, Master Doreth,” the pilot said.  The Techpriest sitting at the sensor station turned to look at Doreth.

	“Lord, the debris from the Cylinder is not all settling into orbit or escaping into deep space,” she said.  “Some of it is falling towards Septiim Tertius.”

	“As anticipated,” Doreth said.  He turned to read the scanner.  “Indeed.  Lord Eiger knows what to do.”

	“Of course, sir.”