A/N: Nothing needs to be said, besides the usual thanks to readers and reviewers. Let's Jam!


Tailing the Titan was easy. Between the massive footprints it left behind, the distant thunder of its guns whenever it crossed paths with unfortunate ork outriders, and the sight of its metal frame looming out of the dust, it would have been very difficult to lose. Of course, we were confiding in that it knew where it was going, since we hadn't a clue, but as we progressed, we could only conclude that it was sure of its direction. The sound of its guns grew more and more frequent as run-ins with orks did, which signalled to us that we were drawing near the main mass of the Waaagh. The prospect of coming face-to-face with the horde once more made me nervous, but that was better than the alternative, which was to be as sanguine as Marrlë. If his optimism had been normal, I might have stayed jealous of him, but it quickly became apparent that it was something else. He always walked ahead of the others, tireless and unnervingly quiet. I walked close behind, feeling it was my duty to stand by him. Whenever I caught a glimpse of his face, it was always the same: twisted into a feral snarl, preternatural fury blazing from that single eye. I could see it now – the will of the Blood God, driving him on, doggedly seeking revenge. I wondered if it was even the memory of Thurion spurring him forwards anymore, or if it was simply such concentrated fury that any remaining doubts and worries had been erased. Either way, I was now fearing for his sanity as much as my own. The others certainly thought him insane, and while they had plenty of reason to, some part of me, in the face of all probability, was hoping I'd once again see the bright-eyed youth who had declared me his friend. Once this was all over, perhaps.

Nothing ever goes right in this wastebin of a galaxy.

Thurion's cynical words haunted me, weighing down my steps, and I fought a desperate battle within myself to quell my doubts, to believe that he was wrong. Of course, this flew in the face of all evidence – the person who had spoken that line was dead, our other two companions had absconded with our sole route of escape, and Marrlë was teetering on the edge of homicidal insanity. With a grimace, I pushed the gravity of these truths to the back of my mind, and forced myself to see the bright side of things: at least we weren't dead. Yet.

Here was none of the camaraderie that there had been when the traitor marines and Rosie had been our companions. We had been bound by fellowship, whereas this group walked together because of grim necessity. Whether it was Marrlë and I's presence that caused this atmosphere or if they were normally so aloof, I could not discern, but I found it darkly ironic that I had felt more at home among heretics and traitors than in the company of the Imperium's servants.

Eventually, Spiker called us to stop. Marrlë shifted impatiently, looking back at her. "What?" he growled, and her eyes narrowed, but she let it slide.

"Hear that? The sounds of orks and guns haven't died after a few seconds." Now that I was listening for it, so it hadn't. If anything, it was growing louder by the second, and as the implications of this sank in, I didn't have to see through the dust to know what was happening. At last, the Titan had encountered the main body of the Waaagh, and would now be unleashing all its ballistic fury upon them.

"I noticed," Marrlë hissed, the clawed fingers on his hand twitching. To keep them calm, he scraped them over the head of his axe, which rumbled hungrily. "Why'd you stop us?"

"To put your plan into action, genius," Spiker snapped, motioning to the psyker. "The field is yours. Can you find the warboss?"

"Not from here," he murmured, and I blinked upon hearing him speak for the first time. His voice was rich and mellow, and dishearteningly resigned. I wanted to cheer the poor bastard up, if only because his resignation was palpably spreading among us. Spiker frowned.

"Stop that and focus," she ordered, and with an apologetic nod, the psyker complied. The unnatural feeling of defeat that had started to gather inside me vanished, only to be replaced with an all-too-natural one.

"We'll have to get closer," he informed us. Of all of us, Marrlë was the only one who was at ease with this, but we had no choice. Even this Titan, unbelievably powerful and deadly as it was, couldn't stand forever against everything the orks could throw at it. Sooner or later, it would fall, and we would be next on the chopping block – that is, unless we managed to kill the Warboss before then. If that happened, the Waaagh would lose its cohesion, and while we still probably wouldn't escape with our lives, the ork threat on Armatura would be reduced significantly.

Like ghosts, we crept through the dust, trying to get the psyker within maximum range of the warboss. He remained intensely concentrated as we did, gauging how far he could extend his mind. There was the ever-present danger of simply being overwhelmed by the massed power of the Waaagh, but to the telepath's credit he did not succumb to it, or compromise our stealthy advance. The dust clouds obscuring our vision grew ever more infuriating, as the sound of the fighting raged on before us, but all we could see was the Titan's upper half, and the stormboys sailing towards it in suicidal attempts to dig their choppas into its impregnable metal body. Any closer, though, and we would have become visible to the orks through the dust. Fortunately, though, that was all our psyker needed. His eyes suddenly glowed with power, and we all shifted away from him a little, before he told us what was happening.

"I've found the warboss," he announced through gritted teeth.

"Excellent. Kill him, now," the Inquisitor commanded.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"He's surrounded himself with ork psykers. There's at least four of them, and if I engage one, the others will overwhelm me. There's something else, too – some incredible power, disrupting my concentration. Above us."

"Above?" As one, we raised our eyes, and saw the impossible. There, from the red heavens, were plummeting dozens of blue-painted pods. They hurtled earthwards as if cast from the limits of Armatura's orbit, and no more than a few seconds later, crashed into the earth with a noise that echoed even over the clamoring of the horde. The thundering of ork feet shifting to deal with this new threat filled the air, and while I didn't know what had occurred, the looks on the faces of Spiker and the Battle Sister told me they did. A moment later, I was enlightened.

"The Adeptus Astartes are here," the Sister breathed, and a slow smile spread over her face – the only one I had ever seen from her. "Of course – Armatura is part of the Realm of Ultramar. No doubt we're late to the conflict." The treacherous seed of hope blossomed in my chest, and with a smile just like hers, I sought to catch Marrlë's eye – only to find him with his back turned to us. His head was tilted back, as he perceived something from on high – something different from what we had seen. At the same time, the psyker spoke again.

"It's not the Ultramarines," he said, clutching at his skull and clenching his teeth. "They're not the ones exuding that… that power. I've never felt anything… anything like it!" I needed to hear no more, for I now saw what Marrlë was seeing: A distant object racing across the crimson sky with the speed only a ship could muster. For a moment, I thought it was a Valkyrie – or perhaps another Thunderhawk, seeing as the Astartes were here, but as it came closer and its distinctive shape became discernible, my eyes widened in shock, and my breath caught in my throat. With two impossibly fortuitous revelations having been discovered within seconds of each other, it seemed that perhaps, just this once, things might actually be working out for the best in this wastebin of a galaxy.

Beside me, Kalaina Spiker was staring with equal surprise. "That looks like my ship," she'd said suspiciously, watching it streak down towards the battlefield. When she realized the truth, her face lit up with complete disbelief. "That is my ship!" she shouted indignantly, jabbing a finger at the descending space shuttle.

"So it is," I said, feeling a shit-eating grin spring to my lips. Spiker turned to glare at me, a murderous look on her face.

"Just who is on that ship, Fenwick, and what are they doing to my psyker!?"

Suddenly trapped by the question – the answer to which would doubtless be emerging soon from the vessel – I was saved, if you could call it that, by Marrlë's sudden and seemingly random decision to charge forwards, directly into what we could only assume to be the massed centre of the ork horde. I took the opportunity to ignore the Inquisitor's inquisition and, pistols at the ready, darted after him, deciding that a near-certain death at the hands of the orks would be better than having her blow my head off with a plasma blast once I informed her that our companions had in fact been a Chaos sorcerer and a daemon. Perhaps they followed me at once, or maybe they waited, but for now, it was the two of us, Marrlë and me, leaping into the fray. If the orks had been aiming for us specifically, we would've been killed rather quickly, but they had bigger fish to focus on – namely, the Titan and the Space Marines laying into them from either side. We carved a tightly focused path towards some unseen location, and while all I could do was watch his back as he sheared all in his way to bloody ribbons and thus, could not see his face, I heard him laughing, laughing senselessly. Gorelady laughed too, in that soul-chilling way that only she could, and amidst that insanity of gore, bullets and fury, I heard a third laugh coming from my own lungs. I could not understand it, and in the heat of the moment there was no time for analysis, so I let it gust forth, even as I fired this way and that, uncaring that I would run out of ammunition soon, that we would be overwhelmed. To this day, I still don't know why I laughed, but I get the strange feeling that if I hadn't, I would now be dead.