for a moment, then uncrossed his legs and stood.
The time for contemplation was over. The reaping time had arrived.
The sub-guild quota hall was in an uproar. Every guildmaster and guildmistress present was speaking at once. It took Thornvyl
slamming his augmetic left fist – the result of a mining accident almost a century before – against the flank of the hall’s lexme-
chanic podium to bring some semblance of order.
‘Panic achieves nothing,’ he snapped. ‘There may be another explanation.’
‘Another explanation for an Adeptus Astartes ship arriving unannounced in our system?’ Elinara of the Freehold Prospector
Guild demanded. ‘A more probable explanation than the Imperium finally coming to investigate the disappearance of the Prae-
torian?’
The arched vault of the quota hall descended once more into wild chatter. The guildmasters, leaders of the mining colony of
Zartak, had come together for an emergency session after the augur masts had detected an unidentified vessel breaking in-sys-
tem. When the logisticators had identified it as a Space Marine warship, the meeting had descended into chaos.
‘They are the Emperor’s servants,’ Thornvyl, Guildmaster of Chronotech Inc., snapped. ‘As are we. And we shall greet them
as such.’
‘Are you insane?’ demanded Maron of Broken Hill Industrials.
‘Unless you wish to call out the Guard, the local defence force and the mine-militia?’ Thornvyl responded. ‘Tell me, which
course of action sounds more insane?’
The other guildmasters quietened, realising the truth of Thornvyl’s words. He pressed on.
‘There has been a misunderstanding. We will resolve it, quickly and quietly. Trust me, Guild Brethren, these god-warriors will
be gone by tomorrow.’
It was raining hard when the Space Marines arrived. The downpour made the surrounding jungle canopy hiss, and seethed off
the rockcrete surface of sink shaft 1’s primary landing plate, sited just beyond the edge of the great burrow-mine habitat.
A behemoth descended from the near-black skies, water cascading from its broad flanks, the white oceanic predator embla-
zoned on its grey hull glistening. The assembled guildmasters huddled closer together as the mighty gunship screamed overhead,
shivering in their drenched finery. The flier’s afterburning turbofans whipped at the embroidered hems of their robes and sent
one matriarch’s shawl twisting away through the rain. The engine’s painful howl finally dropped to an idling snarl as the trans-
port settled itself atop the plate. The dark muzzles of its many weapons systems gleamed in the rain.
For a moment, nothing stirred. The guilders looked on, fretting. Eventually there was a thump, loud enough to make them
jump. The gunship’s prow hatch began to lower, venting gouts of hydraulic steam. Through it, their armoured footfalls ringing
rhythmically off the plasteel plates, came seven primeval giants.
Each one towered head and shoulders above the tallest guilder, and all were clad in grey battleplate of different shades. Their
eye lenses were black, glittering in the harsh light of the landing zone’s jury-rigged lumen strips. Around their wrists and gorgets
were bands hung with vicious fangs, claws and incisors, while many parts of their armour were inscribed with flowing line-
markings that formed stylised maws or darting fins. They carried weapons in their gauntlets, mighty boltguns and chainaxes,
their rotors thankfully inactive.
The seven stepped out onto the landing plate two abreast, forming a line in front of the guildmasters. With a crash of ceramite
they came to a halt, the rain pattering from their armour.
For a moment they remained still and silent. Then one, his armour a whiter shade and embossed with numerous brass molecular
bonding studs, took one step forward. The guilders cringed.
‘Who rules this world in the Void Father’s name?’ the white-plated giant demanded, his voice crackling up through the arched
grille of his helm’s vocaliser as though from some great depth. The words were delivered in High Gothic, stilted and unnatu-
rally formal. The guilders didn’t respond. The giant said nothing more. Eventually, unable to stand it any more, Fargo Tork of
BorerCorp Mining summoned up the few words of High Gothic he recalled from his scholam days.
‘We rule as a collective council, sire. We have no one leader, bar Him on Earth.’
For a moment the giant did not respond. The guilders detected a series of low clicking noises. Some recognised it as the sound
of an internal vox conversation, held in private over the Space Marines’ helmet comms. Eventually, the giant spoke again.
‘Well met. I am Master Akia, of the Third Battle Company. We are the Carcharodons Astra, and we have come for you.’
The viewscreen monitor flickered and died. The sub-guild quota hall descended once more into furious recriminations, until
Thornvyl snapped for quiet. After a moment’s pregnant silence the viewscreen blinked back into being again, the grainy image
of Vasil Krane’s body double reappearing.
‘Repeat yourself,’ Thornvyl ordered. ‘We lost you.’
‘They are demanding to see our records,’ the Krane double said, pausing to glance back over his shoulder. He was muttering
into a handheld vidcam, squeezed into the entrance tunnel of one of the tiny ratholes that wormed its way through the mineworks
of Lower Six-Sixteen.
‘Records?’
‘Imperial data. Reports on psyker levels, Guard recruitment rates, xenos and heretic activity.’
‘And tithes?’
