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Estrith threw herself hard against the wreckage of a burnt out dozer, bullets thudding into the engine block. She grimaced as pain washed over her from the twisted metal digging into the flesh of her shoulder. She gritted her teeth and shook the pain away, waiting for a lull in the oncoming fire as bullets and lasbolts streaked past her.

“Is it really worth all this for a storage bay?” she thought to herself. “Whatever they’ve got here must be pretty good to give up this many men for”. She thought about her own losses for a moment; she was probably the only Viper left of the nine that started the raid. She thought for a moment about making a break for it, about cutting her losses and making for the nearest door, but Vipers never skip from a fight. Gangers fight hard, Vipers fight harder.

She stole a peek over the engine block as the gunfire suddenly ceased and she heard bellowing from down the bay. A ganger walked towards her, his arms oustretched and booming in a harsh voice that did not seem his own. His bare arms and torso were covered in old ritual scars, and a great eight-pointed star had been carved fresh into his pectorals. He strode towards her, trailing blood in his wake. Another ganger leapt from cover and ran past him, and his autogun started going wild in his hands. Estrith ducked away again, and took a deep breath. She stood from the cover and squeezed her triggers, pistols barking as lasbolts flew down the hall. She watched as the gunner dropped dead as his left eye exploded. The other was knocked backward a half step as lasbolts blew smoking craters into his shoulders, but he kept on coming, a terrible grin emerging on his face.

“What the feth kind of chems is this guy on?”

Suddenly his eyes and the wounds on his chest began to glow a bright green, and he vomited a stream of emerald flame towards her. Estrith ducked back behind cover just in time as flames roared either side of the engine block, and flecks of molten metal began burning her face and shoulders. She quickly wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, but it was replaced instantly from the intense heat. She readied herself to break from cover, to give it one last shot before she met her end.

Once more she stood from the cover of the engine block, pistols booming in her hands before she could even see her target, screaming at the top of her lungs. As she turned, a hand wrapped itself around her throat and cut her screams short. She stared into the eyes of the ganger as his grip tightened, and she saw nothing but hate. The muscles in his forearm bulged and Estrith felt her feet coming away from the floor. She dropped her pistols and began clawing at his fingers. She could feel herself slipping away, growing weak as she got light headed. Her nails dug deep into the flesh of his thumb, blood dribbling from either side of her fingers, but if he felt any pain he did not show it. The ganger’s eyes began to glow green once more, and she slipped into an inky blackness as she lost consciousness.

Estrith suddenly gasped for air, and precious oxygen flooded her lungs. As her eyes opened she saw the bay floor, and blood. More blood than she had ever seen before. As her senses returned she could hear screaming, and the roaring of an engine. She looked up and saw the ganger, hand still outstretched towards her, and a chainblade erupting from his chest. Gore and bone spattered from his chest, and the chainblade kicked and bucked, before carving its way down through him and exploding out of his pelvis.

The ganger’s eyes went dull, and his organs spilled out from his abdomen. He dropped to his floor with a wet thud and was replaced by Estrid, still screaming as she drew her laspistol and fired six bolts quickly into the back of the ganger’s head. Estrid’s weapons clattered to the floor and she embraced Estrith and began bawling at the near loss of her dearest sister, as the rival gangers fled after the loss of their apparent leader.

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Estrith awoke suddenly to a great clanging in her hab-chamber. Estrid leapt from her bunk and made for her chainblade as Estrith grabbed a pistol and made for the door. Estrith shouldered into the wall hard, still aching from the fight a few days prior. She stole a glance through the spy hole and saw a visored face. “Who the feth is this?” she thought to herself, “Too geared up for an arbite”.

She opened the door, pistols raised and ready. As the door opened she was stopped short as a rifle butt slammed into her nose, shattering the cartilage and sending her sprawling. A second figure stepped into their hab-chamber and raised his shotgun at Estrid, who was still tightening the leather straps on her chainblade. She went for her laspistol, but stopped when she saw the laser-sight of a longlas trained on her sister’s head from down the hall.

“Lower your weapons, all of you. That includes you Weisz. We’re not here to shoot these people. We're not savages.”

A figure stepped into the room, dressed in ornate plated armour, his footsteps joined by a skull-capped walking cane clanging against the plasteel floor. A myriad of cables embedded deep into the pale flesh of his skull led to a huge cybernetic eye glowing a cold green against the fluorescent lights of the hab-chamber; while a small servo-skull floated behind, chittering away in his ear as it billowed foul smelling smoke from a dangling censer. A tattered and torn book bolted to his chest plate fluttered as the torn pages caught the breeze of the filter unit. She saw an intricate, baroque "I" standing alone on one of the pages, and the letter filled her with dread for reasons she did not understand. The figure walked towards Estrith and offered out a gauntleted hand. She tentatively took his hand and he pulled Estrith to her feet with a groan. A hulking grey figure appeared in the doorway of the hab-chamber, a mountain of muscle and cybernetics chomping at a ceramite bit between his teeth. The combat servitor lurched forward and pistons in its arm began hissing as a pneumatic saw on its fist slowly came to life, and a pilot light on the other fist flickered excitedly.

“Stop it Lug, I was picking her up. Don’t be so foolish” said the armoured figure. The servitor groaned and the pistons ground to a halt. “My sincerest apologies citizen, please forgive the rudeness of my associates. Now, please allow me to introduce myself. I am Acastus Proxsimus of the Ordo Hereticus, and I have an offer for the pair of you.”

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