The roar of departing transports, desperately burning for orbit, barely drowned out the sussurating clamour of the ragged multitudes assaulting the spaceport, nor the unending bark of sustained bolter fire, hellish thunder of phosphex grenades, and banshee’s shriek of rad missiles as the 4th’s Destroyer cadre fought a losing battle to keep them at bay.

Sergeant Sveton watched the counters on the point defence turrets he had slaved to his Warhelm’s display, dwindling away to nothing from one heartbeat to the next, as the horde around them swelled to numbers beyond reckoning. The Rangda knew they could not breach the walls, but nonetheless expended thralls as an Imperial Army platoon might expend bullets when bringing down fire-for-effect.

The only viable way into the spaceport was the grand portico, its gates already brought down by treachery, as puppeted Imperial Army troopers detonated their own munitions, unable to keep out the unspeakable pressure of the Rangda’s psychic domination. Even now, it clawed at Sveton’s own, indomitable will as he blasted apart the puppet-warriors it drove forward, the Destroyers fighting atop mounds of dead to deny them entry. Though none made it passed, sheer weight of bodies was hemming the legionaries into smaller pockets of increasingly beleaguered resistance.

Tullus and his breachers had wanted to hold the gate with them, to stand beside them and stem the tide, but they had been needed elsewhere to shield the more vulnerable, non-Legion command assets as they evacuated. The bloodshield’s sergeant had roared curses into the wind even as they fell back in serried ranks into the final transport, his own men dragging him up the ramp. Sveton would have been honoured to fight and die at Tullus’ side, but knew that such glories were not the allotted fate of the legion’s black-clad sons.

The press of foes was becoming overwhelming, dead-eyed faces expressionless as they clawed at the Destroyers, many still wreathed in the deathly green-glow of the phosphex fire burning inside them, the dread will of the Rangda driving them on regardless.

“Ash-Maker, the Praetor is ordering his stormbird to return for us the moment the command cadre is disembarked upon the Eventide.” Sveton could feel the Moritat’s armour grinding against his own, as they fought back-to-back.

“No” hissed Vorr’s desiccated response, as the Moritat transmitted code-cyphers and overrides that even Temeter could not gainsay, “Are all our unsullied brothers clear?”

“Yes my lord, they are all outside the blast radius.”

“And the quarry?” wheezed the lord of the Destroyers.

“The augurs have detected an elite enemy mass approaching the portico from the East; a true Rangda, Warmaster-class. We have but moments.”

“Then it is time Sergeant…”

“As you wish my lord,” Sveton switched to open vox, his ears filling with the roar of the combat engulfing his squad, “Sons of ruin! My brothers, beloved and dissolute! The time has come at last: The long dark of our black crusade is over! I stand with you now, at this last hour together, to ask only how a man may die better, than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, upon the graves of all their Gods! LET THERE BE LIGHT!”

—

Temeter, his helm clattering to the deckplating of the Stormbird as it burned hard for the Eventide, shielded his eyes from the bright blossom of nucleonic fire that engulfed the spaceport of Thethros-Andor – The last, bitter triumph of the Sergeant Sveton and his kin.

“Damn you Ash-Maker…”