'Whatever you do, ensure that you close off any escape route,' Boreas responded. He glanced at the tactical dis­play that was illuminated on the main screen. 'We will be within attack range soon.'

'Very well, Lord Boreas, we shall engage her for as long as possible,' Stehr said. 'We shall target her engines when we are able and attempt to board her.'

'No!' Boreas bellowed, causing everyone on the bridge to stop in shock. 'My orders are clear, you are not to board the Saint Carthen.'

'We risk getting cut to pieces here,' Stehr protested. 'Closing the range and boarding is the only chance we have.'

Boreas started to signal back, before realising that the Thor Fifteen had broken contact.

'Keep signalling Captain Stehr to stand off the Saint Carthen,' Boreas ordered the comms officer. 'Tell him that if he attempts to do so, we shall be forced to intervene.'

Sen Neziel walked from the weapons command posi­tion with a data-slate in his hand and gave it to Boreas. He shared a smile with the old officer as he looked at the tactical information it contained. Readings from the Blade of Caliban's sensor arrays, combined with a steady stream of technical reports from the Thor Fifteen indi­cated that the Saint Carthen's weapons systems were broadside only. She had yet to fire to the fore during the engagement. It was perfect for Boreas's purposes - they could attack from the front, launch an assault boat and fly in without facing a hail of fire. Of course, it was an assumption, and would be very dangerous if it proved wrong, but Boreas could see no other course of action if he wanted to take the enemy vessel without a protracted fight.

'Capturing the vessel is our primary goal,' Boreas told Neziel. 'She must not escape, ram her if you have to.'

The weapons officer reported that they were nearly within firing range.

'Sound full battle alert!' shouted Boreas and the klax­ons began to beat the crew to quarters as they prepared to open fire. The bridge buzzed into frantic activity as the orders were relayed to the stations across the ship.

'Drop to combat speed, divert power to void shields,' Neziel ordered after a nod from Boreas. 'Load torpedo tubes two and four, plot firing solution to target.'

'Torpedoes targeted.'

'Shields at ninety per cent power.'

'Engines at fifty per cent thrust, manoeuvring transferred from navigational to helm position.'

'Gun batteries powered, crews mustering.'

'Blast doors sealed, fires extinguished.'

'Switch display to enhanced visual,' Neziel concluded and the tactical display blinked out and reappeared on a sub screen, replaced by a view of the Saint Carthen. She was an elegant ship, with a raked cross-section and two clusters of plasma engines flanking her hull. Her metallic skin glinted with hundreds of yellow flashes as pulses of laser fire erupted from the cannons concealed within her belly. A flicker of blue and violet shimmered around her aft section as her shields absorbed a blast from the Thor Fifteen.

'Lord Boreas, the Thor Fifteen is closing fast with the tar­get, it looks as if she's going to board,' one of the surveyor officers reported. Boreas strode to the comms console and jabbed at the transmit rune.

'Thor Fifteen,' he demanded. 'Abort your attempt to board or I will be forced to fire upon you.'

It took a few seconds for the reply to come through.

'Emperor's teeth, man!' Stehr cursed over the speakers. 'We're on the same side! You can't be serious.'

'Torpedo controls, retarget trajectory on vector one-five-six,' Boreas called to the weapons officer.

'Confirm, new trajectory one-five-six,' The officer replied after a moment at his panel.

'Launch torpedoes,' Boreas ordered, glancing at Neziel.

'Are you sure, my lord?' Neziel asked, checking his own tactical display. 'At that course, we would be firing on the Thor Fifteen.'

'Launch torpedoes!' roared Boreas, causing Neziel and the other officers to flinch. 'Question my orders again and I'll have the tech-priests render you into servitors!'

'Aye, my lord,' Neziel said uncertainly. 'Launch torpe­does, target vector one-five-six.'

'Torpedoes away!' the weapons officer called out.

Boreas activated the comms rune once more.

'Thor Fifteen, cut speed by thirty per cent and alter course forty degrees to port,' he said, darting an angry look at Neziel. 'Failure to do so will result in impact with our torpedoes.'

'You launched torpedoes at us?' Stehr's voice sounded hoarse over the link. 'Whose side are you on, Emperor damn you!'

'I repeat, alter course by forty degrees to port and reduce speed by thirty per cent,' Boreas replied. 'Break off your closing course and you will be safe.'

The Interrogator-Chaplain looked over at the surveyor officer's station. He was watching his reticule intently.

'Thor Fifteen reducing speed,' he said, confirming what Boreas was reading on his own tac-panel. 'She's veering to port and rising.'

'Good,' Boreas grunted. 'Prepare for assault boat launch, and power up the starboard batteries. I want the target's prow raked as we close.'

'Confirm target, please,' Neziel said pointedly.

'The Saint Carthen,' Boreas said with a scowl. 'Another remark like that, Neziel, and I will have you executed for insubordination. Am I understood?

'Forgive me, Lord Boreas,' Neziel said, hanging his head. 'I have never fired upon an allied vessel before.'

'Neither have I,' Boreas replied heavily. 'Signal the docking bay to prepare for my arrival. Neziel, I trust you will follow any subsequent orders to keep the Thor Fifteen from boarding. If she puts troops onto that vessel, they will be killed along with the enemy crew.'

'I am sorry, my lord,' Neziel said, wiping the sweat from his eyes. 'I understand now. The Thor Fifteen will be prevented from closing.'

'Good,' Boreas said, striding towards the doorway. He lifted his helmet from a stand next to the door and hooked it onto his belt.

'One other thing, my lord,' Neziel called after him. Boreas turned, a questioning look on his face. 'May the Emperor watch over you and guide your hand.'

'Thank you, Neziel,' Boreas said after a moment. 'The Emperor's blessing on you and our other subjects while we are gone. Keep the ship safe for me, Neziel.'

'I will, Lord Boreas, I will,' Neziel said with a smile and a nod.

With a roar and a judder, the assault boat launched explosively from the Blade of Caliban's hull. A modified drop pod, the assault boat was much like an armoured teardrop, with daw-like grappling damps at its base and a ring of melta-burners set into the hull to cut through even the thickest armour of an enemy ship. Small manoeuvring thrusters burned sporadically along its length as Hephaestus steered the craft on an intercept course with the Saint Carthen. Satisfied that their trajec­tory was correct, he unlatched his harness and stood, his magnetic boots clamping him to the hull in the zero gravity. As he thudded down the hull towards Boreas, the Chaplain signalled for the others to rise.

'Time to impact?' The Interrogator-Chaplain asked, checking the chronometer display in his auto-senses.

'Approximately twenty-seven Terran minutes, Brother Boreas,' Hephaestus told him.

'Display chronometer countdown, twenty-seven minutes,' Boreas told his suit, and a readout flickered into life in the lower left of his field of vision, reeling down through the minutes and seconds. Though much could happen in half an hour in a space battle, Boreas trusted to the speed and small size of the assault boat to see them through to their objective. The augurs and scanners of a large vessel were immensely powerful, built to peer into the vast depths of space. However, an object as small as the assault boat was unlikely to reg­ister at all until within close range of the enemy's low level scanners, and even if they were picked up, they would most likely appear as an errant asteroid or piece of debris.

'Weapons check,' he ordered, testing the activation stud of his crozius and clicking off the safety of his bolt pistol with his other hand. He made a count of the equipment on his belt, though they had all done so three times already in their pre-combat checks. Along with the powerfield-enclosed crozius and his bolt pistol, Boreas had five spare magazines, each carrying fifteen rounds; four fragmentation grenades; two blind grenades; two melta-bombs; five proximity-triggered anti-personnel mines; an auspex scanning array; a monomolecular-edged combat knife; a spare power cell for his crozius, and another for his rosarius conversion field generator.

Battle-brothers Zaul and Thumiel had their standard-issue boltguns and combat knives, as well as the same quantity of grenades and mines. Damas wore a massive powerfist on his right hand to complement his bolt pistol, and a chainsword hung at his belt next to his knife. Hephaestus carried a hefty power axe and a plasma pistol, both of them crafted by his own hand. Nestor also had a bolt pistol and chainsword, and the cabin filled with the throaty whirring of the spinning blades as he tested the motor. Satisfied that the weapons check was complete, Boreas bowed his head and the others fol­lowed suit.

'What is it that gives us purpose?' he intoned.

'War,' the others replied.

'What is it that gives war purpose?'

'To vanquish the foes of the Emperor.'

'What is the foe of the Emperor?'

'The heretic, the alien and the mutant.'

'What is it to be an enemy of the Emperor?'

'It is to be damned.'

'What is the instrument of the Emperor's damnation?'

'We, the Space Marines, the angels of death.'

'What is it to be a Space Marine?'

'It is to be pure, to be strong, to show no pity, nor mercy, nor remorse.'

'What is it to be pure?'

'To never know fear, to never waver in the fight.'

'What is it to be strong?'

'To fight on when others flee. To stand and die in the knowl­edge that death brings ultimate reward.'

'What is the ultimate reward?'

'To serve the Emperor.'

'Who do we serve?'

'We serve the Emperor and the Lion, and through them we serve mankind.'

'What is it to be Dark Angels?'

'It is to be the first, the honoured, the sons of the Lion.'

'What is our quest?'

'To purge our shame through the death of those who turned from the Lion.'

'What is our victory?'

'To remake that which was broken, to earn the trust of the Emperor once more!'

'And what is the fate of the Fallen we hunt?'

'Retribution and death!'

The last intonation was roared across the comm-link, a vocal thunder filled with anger and hatred.

Silence followed for a moment, and then Boreas took a small phial from a pouch at his belt. He walked along the line of Space Marines and dripped a little of the fluid within the phial onto the bowed helmet of each warrior.

'With the blessed waters of Caliban, I sanctify your souls to the Emperor and the Lion,' chanted Boreas as he performed the ritual. 'Be pure in mind, body and spirit. As the water flows over you, let your hate flow through you. As the lost water is spilt, let us spill the blood of our foes. As the water dries, let us harden our hearts to fear. We are the Dark Angels, the chosen of the Emperor, the holy knights of Caliban. The blood of the Lion flows through our veins. His strength beats in our hearts. His spirit resides within us.'

'Praise to the Lion,' the Dark Angels chorused, straight­ening up.

Boreas led them down the craft to stand at the exit port. Glancing at the countdown display, he saw that they were a little under ten minutes from impact.

Looking through the viewing plate, he could clearly see the Saint Carthen. The ship had haunted his nightmares for years, and now he looked upon it for real for the first dme. Barrages of high-powered laser blasts from the Blade of Caliban lanced overhead into the enemy ship. An explosion of purple and green waves of energy signalled a void shield being overloaded, and the next salvo crashed into the hull of the ship itself, spewing gouts of igniting air and tangles of wreckage.

'Lord Boreas!' suddenly the comm crackled into life with the urgent voice of Sen Neziel. 'We have detected power build-ups in the lower prow of the Saint Carthen. I believe she possesses forward batteries and is about to open fire.'

'Close in, brace for impact and draw her fire!' Boreas spat back. 'Launch torpedoes to mask our signal!'

Despite the perilous situation of the assault boat, Boreas couldn't help but admire the cunning of the Saint Carthen's captain. During the fight with the Thor Fifteen he had been presented with plenty of opportunities to conclude the fight if he had launched an attack with his prow batteries, but instead he had prolonged the duel to tempt the Blade of Caliban into a vulnerable position. His assumption might yet prove dangerous, but he was still confident that they would reach their target. The chances of a main gun being able to lock on to something as small and fast as the assault boat were slim, but there was also a chance that the Dark Angels would unintention­ally get caught in the fire from the enemy.

'Hephaestus, get back to the piloting chair and steer us upwards, I want to get above the battery's elevation of fire,' he ordered, staring intently through the armoured port. His augmented eyes picked out the flaring trails of a missile salvo, disappearing below the assault boat as the Techmarine clambered back to the controls and set the boosters to push the craft out of the Saint Carthen's line of fire.

It was then that the pirate vessel's anti-boarding turrets opened fire. A lattice of laser beams erupted from six point-defence emplacements scattered across her prow. Far too small to worry a starship, they were still more than powerful enough to blast the assault boat into shrapnel with a direct hit. Flickering beams of blue energy enclosed the assault boat, and Boreas's helmet automatically dropped a filter over his eye-lenses to stop him being blinded by the glare.

He checked the countdown again. Two minutes until impact.

'Scan for possible location of command chamber,' Boreas told Hephaestus. From here, the forecasde of the Saint Carthen was a mass of turrets, armoured plating and observation galleries. One of them had to be the bridge though, and Boreas wanted to punch into the ship as close as possible to the nerve centre. His plan was hinged on a swift, decisive strike. Even in close confines and with far superior armour and armaments, they would not be able to hold out against an entire ship's crew. They had to take the bridge and cut the life support within min­utes, or else they would be trapped and killed. Or worse, Boreas realised with a start, they might be captured. The thought repelled him, and he resolved that he would take his own life rather than fall into the hands of the Lutherites.

'I've located a communications array,' Hephaestus reported, breaking Boreas's morbid thoughts. 'Guidance systems locked on.'

The hull shook as a las-beam scored along the outside, melting partway through the armoured shielding of the assault boat. An instant later, they took another hit, which caused the lights to short out and explode.

'Terrorsight,' Boreas barked to his armour and his vision instantly cleared as the sophisticated lens array creating an artificial view from powerful emitted radiation waves rather than ordinary light.

'Stand-by for impact,' Boreas warned as the hull of the Saint Carthen rushed towards him through the window. Retro-jets fired at the last moment, slowing their pace slightly.

It was still a tremendous impact when the assault boat hit home. The servos and muscle bundles in Boreas's armour whined and creaked to keep him upright as the ablative nosecone of the craft was crushed and the docking clamps lashed out, tearing into metal and pulling the assault boat tight against the enemy ship. With a white-hot flare, the melta-cutters burst into life, searing through ceramite and metal in a few seconds, before pneumatic rams punched out, hurling the severed section into the enemy vessel and leaving a serrated circular opening into the metres-thick armour plates. Boreas hit the button for the assault ramp and it swung down with a clang.

Instantly, a storm of las-fire filled the opening. A beam struck Boreas's helmet, knocking his head back. The roar of Zaul's bolter filled his ears and drowned out the zip of lasguns. Recovering quickly, Boreas leapt down the ramp, taking in the four bloody bodies strewn across the metal mesh of the passageway they had cut into, great holes ripped into them by the explosive bolts. More of the enemy crouched behind pillars and buttresses, firing wildly at the attacking Space Marines.

Zaul and Hephaestus flanked Boreas as he levelled his bolt pistol at the nearest target, a man with a visored hel­met who had paused to change the energy cell on his lasgun. An aiming reticule sprang up in Boreas's sight as the bolt pistol's targeter linked into his helmet. He squeezed the trigger softly as it changed to red, and a moment later a flickering trail of fire marked the bolt's passage. It tore through the man's padded vest without slowing before its mass-reactive warhead detonated, rip­ping his chest open from the inside. Boreas and the others advanced steadily down the corridor, each step punctuated by the bark of a bolter or pistol and the scream of a dying man.

'Forward for the Emperor!' Boreas bellowed.