The bulbous nose of the Arvus dipped into a shallow descent. Melancthon handled the craft gingerly. He babied the thrusters as the craft wove its way through a tangled web of piping, catwalks, and power lines.

  “Any response?” He asked Miles.

  The young man simply shook his head, saying nothing. He still seemed shellshocked by the events at the hab. Miles had seen mangled bodies at the palace, but they had been too profoundly altered to think of as human. It must have been difficult for him, seeing the all-too-human corpses left at the hab in Melancthon’s wake.

  The Space Marine had immediately given the boy a task. He wanted to keep him occupied. And so, Miles had spent the better part of an hour sending messages in Children battlecode via the ship’s comm array.

  The messages went out on narrow frequency bands and had to be targeted at specific locations where Miles knew the Children kept relay units. It was an ingenious system. Signals pinged between units so rapidly that a direct trace was effectively impossible. No wonder Derrida had failed to track the dissidents down.

  Unfortunately, Melancthon needed to track down the Children. He could make a valiant last stand on his own. If he wanted to do something more, he needed help. All war depends upon supply, the Codex Astartes decreed. Manpower, information, weapons—these were all resources the Children might supply. In return, he would give them a general. Guerilla fighters and saboteurs, the Children could never hope to overthrow a power such as Marius on their own.

  But with a Space Marine to guide them? That was a different story.

  A chime sounded from the console. Miles paled as he stared down at the screen.

  “What is it?” Melancthon asked.

  The boy’s voice trembled as he replied, “It’s a Lucean fighter craft, a Lightning. It says we’re off the scheduled route. It wants us to set down.”

  Melancthon grimaced. His stolen Arvus carried no armaments whatsoever and offered little in the way of maneuverability. The Lightning, by contrast, was a lean and sinewy warbird, ideally designed for narrow turns and dogfighting.

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  “What do we do?” Miles’s voice was thick with panic.

  “Signal compliance.”

  “But—”

  Melancthon turned his ruined face towards the boy. “Now, Miles.” The young man hastily complied.

  Identifying an abandoned manufactorum landing pad, Melancthon piloted the craft downwards. He could see the Lightning in the lighter’s rear picters now. The lean craft’s nose had been painted to resemble a shimmer eel in flight.

  As the Arvus’s landing gear kissed the duracrete pad, Melancthon rose and donned his helm. He checked his ammunition. He still had his grenades, though he had expended more than half his bolt rounds. Lasrifles lay piled on the floor, but those would not help him versus an aircraft, particularly one that carried enough heavy ordinance to melt ceramite. Both his hearts sank.

  “What do we do?”

  “You will remain put for four-minutes,” said Melancthon, vox rasping. “Then you will run, get away from this place, particularly the ship.”

  Miles blinked. “You’re…you’re leaving me?”

  “I will draw them away, if I can.”

  Miles shook his head, standing angrily. “You’re crazy! Listen, there must be some way out of this…can’t you shoot it down or something?”

  “I…I will do what I can. Thank you, Miles. You are a loyal servant of the Emperor.” It seemed a hollow farewell. Well, words had never been Melancthon’s forte.

  He left Miles behind. The man was still protesting as Melancthon strode towards the hatch. The Space Marine thumbed a panel switch. The ramp descended, gears grinding. Melancthon took a deep breath and ran.

  He burst out onto the landing pad, sprinting pell-mell for the shelter of the manufactorum loading bay. Overhead, the Lightning’s engines roared. The fighter’s wings sliced through the air. By any measure, it was a heavy vehicle, its raptor wings dwarfing even the Space Marine, but it seemed weightless. It dived, driving in towards Melancthon, guns firing.

  Melancthon skidded to a halt as lascannon beams shredded the ground in front of him. He was inhumanely strong and fast. Even so, he could not outrun this machine. He threw himself to the floor, wishing for cover that did not exist. He looked up, expecting to see fire blossom from the fighter’s weapons a second time. It did not.

  The angel snatched his bolter from his thigh. He took aim, his helm’s targeting array seeking out weak spots in the vehicle’s armored hull. He never got the chance to fire. The Lightning looped sideways in an ascending spiral, stopping to hover just beyond the bolter’s effective range.

  “Elezar!” Miles stumbled down the ship ramp. His eyes were red with tears. “Elezar! It’s them, it’s one of the Children!”