The Furor lay canted and broken, a steel beast reeling upon the cursed earth of Abyssalhome, its hull groaning under the weight of its own ruin.

  Dust and ash swirled through the cargo bay, fouling the air alongside the profane stench of Hellspawn corpses and smoking machinery.

  The hull reverberated with clanks and thuds as the soulreapers' relentless barrage hammered the ship's armored hide, their scythe tips occasionally screeching through the sealed ramp like claws poking through a sarcophagus.

  Each strike shook the survivors, their battered forms strewn across the bay’s grated deck, knowing with certainty that the ramp or some other weak point would rupture at any moment, likely sooner rather than later, unleashing the unholy tide within.

  Vas clung to consciousness, fighting to stay alert, battling the fog that threatened to drag him under, his body a trove of blood, bruises, and pain.

  His armor was rent and cracked, corroded in spots, the wound in his back and arm constant agonies that throbbed with every breath or movement.

  He leaned on Marko, pinning the gunner’s twitching form to the deck, wary of the madness that could still linger. The dark whispers persisted, strong still, slithering through the mind like oil, urging surrender, promising peace.

  Vas ground his teeth, praying fervently, asking the Holy Trinity to shield him and his brothers from the darkness, to grant him the strength to resist, to die fighting, not lost to evil.

  Second Lieutenant Regalis stood as the sole officer among the wreckage, unbowed, fearless against the cacophony heralding their annihilation. His Armiger plate bore pits of corrosion, the sacred sigil of the Trey and Mother Mi all but obscured by rents, the flashing red lumen strips of the bay turning the armor black.

  Ignoring the relentless clanging, he barked orders with a voice that carried the full weight of command, unyielding despite their doom looming inevitable. “This company harbors no defeatists! Doc’s dead, so draw medkits and tend the wounded! The unholy filth shall breach soon, so move with a purpose and prepare for sacred slaughter and martyrdom.”

  His words cut through the malaise, rousing the survivors from their stupor.

  Vas fumbled at his belt, groping for a medkit. Once drawn and set beside him, his good hand shook as he hit his armor’s release in frantic haste.

  Still no System message, he thought worriedly.

  Injectors hissed as he jammed stims and coagulants into his bloodstream, the sting barely dulling the pain enough to keep him moving.

  Crawling fully out of his armor, leaving it restraining Marko, with trembling fingers, he tended his arm as best he could, trying not to slide down the canted deck.

  Sergeant Dilk dropped beside him. Vas twisted his back toward him as Dilk sprayed a serum and sealant foam into the gash with brutal speed, slapping healing patches over Vas’ back and arm wounds, then adding a thin, quick-hardening cast.

  They'd forged through the same orientation and brutal training as cherries, though fate had kept them apart until Dilk's transfer to Harbinger five years back as a team leader.

  He was a hard man, Dilk was, ever an anchor in a storm, ever ready for the fray. Devout as well, having tattooed a Trey on his forehead, another sprawling across his back.

  Vas opened his mouth to urge Dilk to shed his breached armor, but the ship’s pounding increased to a frenzied clangor of fury echoing through the bay.

  Their gazes locked in silent communion, acknowledging this as their shared grave, the final curtain for Harbinger Company.

  No way would the 11th make it in time.

  Each screech against the ramp promised a breach any second, spurring their hands to quickness, as death snapped at their heels, with many preparations still undone.

  The chaplain lay among the fallen. Without his exorcism rites, those lost to madness or the darkness were at risk of possession or worse, posing a threat, too dangerous to leave unrestrained.

  Vas and Dilk hectically patched what they could of Marko’s wounds, jabbing an incapacitant into his thrashing form before stripping away everything he could use to harm with desperate haste.

  Then the two hauled him to the stevedore cabin, a cramped hold off the bay’s starboard bulkhead where two other raving brothers were caged.

  As the clanks and thuds grew louder and more desperate, those fully claimed by the darkness were shoved into the fire control and storage room, a reinforced vault portside of the bay, sealing them behind its blast doors with quick prayers.

  The gravely wounded were dragged to the cargo control room in a frenzied rush, Vas relieved to escape their groans, the sight of wounds no one standing could treat well enough, not like Doc could, their lives bleeding away.

  As the ramp groaned under the barrage, Vas scrambled to rearm, scavenging an auto-blaster and spare cells from the cooling corpses of fallen brothers, relief flooding his chest at hefting the weapons weight.

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  He clipped grenades, a plasma charge, and a det charge to his belt, though he doubted they’d see use in the bay’s confines. Not unless he was the last standing.

  If his ears heard right, the rest of the horde had caught up to the downed ship. The hull shuddered louder under relentless assault of the swarming reapers, whining as if pleading for mercy.

  They seemed to have massed at the ramp too, their fell bolts searing the metal, their scythe tips piercing through every now and then.

  A breach was inevitable, and Vas prayed it would be small enough to funnel the horrors into a tight kill zone, where the company’s remnants could focus fire upon in concentrated wrath, lay the hate into them piecemeal.

  Only seven Knights of Harbinger Company stood hale enough to fight, all bearing injury, all bloodied, armor cracked and corroded. Only two Lay crew bolstered their rank, the rest needed at stations.

  Regalis had his men kneel, rushing them through the Litany of the Crusader. “By God’s decree, we wage Holy War. Our enemies swarm, and we stand unyielding, we grind their bones to dust, we drown their screams in torrents of blood, our lives but sparks to light Your cleansing flame.”

  Everyone replied in unison, reciting the refrain. “For God and Empire, we die. Amen.”

  Vas settled into his assigned position, wedging himself against a bulkhead, auto-blaster locked to his shoulder, the canted deck threatening to slide him toward the ramp’s glowing dents, standing fifteen meters aft, the only thing between them and their end.

  The waiting was a torture of its own, the drumming of scythes and the wails of soulreapers a constant reminder of their doom closing in.

  The usual hurry-up-and-wait right unto the end.

  He scanned around, looking at his brothers, crouched and silent, faces hidden behind cracked visors, everyone ready for shit to go hot, to give all they had right up to the bitter end, dying in a blaze of righteous fury and Holy wrath.

  Regalis took position forward, tucked near the barely used gangway door, a narrow forward hatch before and beside the ramp, its frame offering meager cover.

  His gauntleted hand touched his helm, a sign of incoming comms. Everyone froze, silent save for the unending pounding of the hull, as every eye bore into him.

  Vas held his breath, permitting himself a sliver of hope, and word of the 11th Templar, whose arrival might snatch them from the jaws of an inglorious end and the reaper’s scythes, weapons capable of stealing souls, a fate as bad as damnation.

  Regalis’ hand fell. He sat silent for a long moment. “We few!” he roared, his voice booming through the externals, defiant, like a challenge to the unholy tide beyond.

  Battered, bloodied, spent, the fighting remnants of Harbinger Company yelled back, “We few!” some adding, “For God and Empire!”

  That told Vas all he needed to know. No salvation was inbound, no reprieve near enough to matter.

  This was it. No hope. No avoiding it.

  He traced the sign of the trey and gave a final prayer, making peace with it, asking only that he die before his soul could be reaped.

  As he fought against the whispers, the banging grew frenetic, rising in fervor, as if the soulreapers sought to break his resolve before his body.

  The attacks outside were maddening, each strike rattling through his teeth. The ramp buckled somewhat, its surface pocked with dents and glowing with fell heat.

  He tried counting the blows on just the ramp alone, but there were too many.

  The wait ground on his nerves like the incessant whining of Layfolk as he stared at the ramp, ready to reap glory when the filth broke through.

  Then…

  Vas glanced around, wondering if anyone else was hearing what he was.

  Beyond, the unholy wails of the reapers rose, not in triumph as before, but in a ragged frenzy, like when they rushed Captain Torn.

  Abruptly, the assault ebbed. The clanging faded to sporadic thuds, the fell bolts ceasing their relentless barrage, no longer directed at the Furor but elsewhere, as if drawn to a new prey.

  He exchanged a glance with Dilk, the sergeant offering only a baffled shrug.

  Regalis raised a hand to his helm again, his body tensing, then he shrugged too. The operator’s drones were down if he didn’t know the soulreaper’s target.

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t the 11th Templar. Their arrival would have shaken the earth with the thunder of ship-mounted weapons, then the roar of blasters, the barking of turrets, the cracks of lancers, intermittent explosions mixed in.

  No one gave a shit about XP when death was the alternative, so vessels fought right alongside Templars often as not, same as mortar crews and support arty. Or so he'd heard.

  A minute passed, the slackening whispers and the silence that followed growing strange, becoming heavy, almost oppressive, nearly intolerable, broken only by distant sounds of the reaper’s battle.

  There was no doubt the Hellpsawn fought something, their screams of pain and rage spoke of that truth.

  Then System messages from Holy Theosis came, standard fare he dismissed to stay in war-mode.

  Two more minutes sloughed away, the survivors frozen in their positions, afraid to speak else they shatter this fragile respite, this unknown hope.

  The distant roar of blaster fire and detonations shattered the silence, faint but unmistakable sounds of war. And they were picking up, growing louder.

  The 11th had arrived.

  All eyes fixed on Regalis, hungering to hear his new orders.

  His gauntleted hand pressed to his helm. Half a minute ticked by before his voice cut through the stillness, clearly forcing his tone to remain calm. “The 11th’s sending a shuttle with their doc and chaplain aboard. We must secure an entrance. We few!”

  “We few!” the cry echoed.

  Vas staggered to his feet, hustling across the canted deck, heading toward the gangway door near the ramp as Regalis poked at the console.

  It groaned open, the gangway extending with a grinding whine, its mechanism fouled by the crash. It halted short, dangling above the churned earth, the Furor half-buried and askew in Abyssalhome’s blighted soil.

  Before even stepping out, he saw enough to know the area was clear, free of Hellspawn, his brothers’ silent weapons confirming that.

  Storming onto the gangway, wondering what caught his brothers’ attention, Vas turned his helm.

  He froze, his breath catching in his throat.

  The sight before him was insanity, a vision that made him question whether madness had claimed him after all.

  Westward, the 11th Templar tore into the soulreapers with righteous wrath, their weapons blaring, their ship’s armaments blazing forth with cleansing light.

  But it was not that war’s fury that held his gaze.

  Between the downed Furor and the distant roar of the 11th, a lone Knight stood against a writhing horde of soulreapers, defying death itself.

  Like a fool, he clashed with them up close, in brutal melee, swinging a massive hammer, wreathed in their draining auras, yet somehow unbowed.

  Vas couldn’t be certain, but the fool’s battered and breached armor looked first Realm, lacking the bulk and cut of the more ornate second-Realm suits of Saints.

  The madman disappeared, reappearing among another knot of reapers in the crackle of a lightning storm, closer to the Templars, his weapon and Abilities reaping a bloody toll.

  Lunacy.

  Pure insanity.

  A single warrior holding back a tide that had broken Harbinger Company.

  Somehow, though with each passing second, he was being overwhelmed and worn down.

  Vas stood transfixed, his scavenged auto-blaster forgotten in his hands.