Screeching, the Warhound took a lumbering step forwards, the two immense mega-bolters on its left arm whirring with horrible power. It swung its right arm forwards, a powerfist the size of a Dreadnought buzzing with enough energy to cut a tank in half. We were rooted on the spot, ignoring Root's screams for us to-

'Run, you pestilent sons of meatsacks' was probably the politest thing I said. I get irritable when I'm afraid. And yes, I am capable of being afraid.

It stumbled. The Assassin wasn't down yet. With an enraged howl, the Warhound stomp its foot, trying to crush the other machine. It didn't work. The Eldar construct slipped away between stomps, making a beeline for a distant hill. The Titan followed it, momentarily ignoring us in favour of a far more interesting target. We ran.

Irohov, panting wildly, pointed at the horizon.

"There! Rayvin's HQ!"

I could see something metallic over a nearby building. As we rounded it, we came to a wide cleared space, evenly set with long strands of barbed wire. In the center of the clearing was a large square fort, enclosed with tall, pointed walls. At each corner was an immense rocket launcher turret, mounted on a conical base. The wall was regularly painted with the rocket-and-halo symbol I'd come to associate with Katyushans. The main gate was hanging off its hinges, dented by the forces the Assassin had directed against it.

I always wondered why it didn't just jump over the wall.

Warily, we wlaked through the gate. The base was, as expected, deserted. It was scattered with low, conical buildings, all apparently leading to an elaborate underground tunnel network. The ground was criss-crossed with partially buried fuel lines, all of them leading to several concrete disks which I took to be the tops of the fuel tanks.

"Irohov, why the fuel lines? Don't you have buried power lines?"

Irohov stopped for a few seconds, shading his eyes against the bright sun. It was late afternoon, and the sun was still bright in the clear sky.

"All of these buildings are rockets. Katyushan bases are orbital-dropped. With enough time, you blow the tunnels, seal off each building, and launch everything back to your orbital support ship. Now… the command ship is… ah. There."

He pointed at a wide, low, metal dome, in roughly the center of the base.

"That doesn't really look like a ship."

"It's buried. Come on!"

We jogged over to the dome. It was composed of overlapping strips of metal, surrounded by a low rim of concrete. Irohov fiddled with a small hatch in the concrete, and it popped open, revealing a thoroughly-fried control panel.

"Apoli. The A.I.N's burned out all the cogitator systems. The manual backup should work, though. Azul, could you pry this panel away?"

She attacked the panel with vigour, the two trench knives tearing away the upper layer of electronics. Below, nestled in the electrical ruins of the panel, lay a thick metal lever. Irohov pulled it, and it flipped with a hiss of escaping gas. The ground shook as the dome slid apart, revealing a smaller dome underneath. It rose upwards in a cloud of smoke, the tortured hydraulics forcing the Ragtime free of its underground hangar. As the smoke cleared, we got the first glimpse of our escape vehicle. It was shaped like a stretched diamond, the bottom covered with huge rocket exhausts. The top rose past four large exposed rocket turrets, dividing into five large pillars, arranged in a quincunx shape.

That's four points in a square with a fifth in the center, to those who are not geometrically inclined. And/or bloody stupid.

The pillars supported a spherical metallic circle, covered in the same overlapping metal plates as the hangar dome. Near the base, directly below the brilliant red letters spelling out Ragtime, was a smallish hatch, dented and covered with bloodstains. We headed towards it. Irohov swiped a card-key, but the door obstinately refused to open.

"Azul? If you would oblige?"

Taking a deep, and frankly unnerving, sniff of the blood on the door, she wrenched its circular handle around with a crunch, and it popped open, letting out a puff of cool, musty air. We trooped in in silence, Mordakka re-stowing the Siyantz gun and the Morta to prevent it getting caught on the ceiling. Even with him almost on all fours, he still cracked his skull on the entranceway.

"Zoggit. You Humies is too small!"

We came out of the cramped hallway into a wide cargo bay, packed with machine tools and a partially dismantled Soyuz. Irohov moved towards a wide spiral staircase leading up on one side.

"Each Triarch's command ship is deisgned to be easily modified. The Ragtime, as you can see, is modified to support Rayvin's vehicle assaults. This staircase leads to the command bubble."

We climbed up the eight stories of ship, eventually arriving inside the metal bubble we'd seen from outside. It was larger than it had looked from outside, almost three stories tall, and lined with ladders leading up to consoles suspended from the ceiling. Irohov took the command chair in the center of the room, tapping the arm-mounted console and sitting back in disgust when it failed to do anything. Then, something seemed to occur to him. He pulled a lever next to the chair, and, clattering, the overlapping metal plates surrounding the bubble collapsed downwards, folding into the outer four supports. We were left standing in a transparent sphere, with an excellent view in all directions.

"You guys sure no how to travel in style."

Irohov looked grim.

"It's travelling that's the problem. The reactor is self-regulating, and obviously the A.I.N didn't manage to destabilize it, otherwise the Ragtime wouldn't be here. The cogitators, on the other hand… without them, we have no power, no flight, nothing. The command I just tapped in should have activated the flight systems, but… nothing."

"You don't have backups?"

He settled back in his chair.

"The computers can theoretically be completely reactivated from a hard-disk backup, but not on the Ragtime. Rayvin insisted that only the internal cogitators should have data-storage capacity, and they've been fried. Unless we can find a compu-

[Seriously. Seriously? I AM AN ORGANIC COMPUTER, SIMPLETON. I fail to understand your… dim wittedness! The primary computer relay is… Here.]

Picking a seemingly random panel on one of the consoles, he tore it open, yanking out reams of wiring and clipping the leads onto various bolts across his body. For a few seconds, the smoke inside him surged with energy, and his makeshift cloak stuck straight out from the static. Then, with a rumble, the ship sprang to life. The consoles reactivated, their readouts flickering with data faster than the eye could follow. The ventilation system came back on, fresh air whirling away some of the dust.

[Docking cables… disengaged. Weapons systems… powered on. If someone would please man those defence consoles…]

He indicated four consoles, spread evenly around the room. Mordakka and Shootnik took two, the latter quickly dismantling his, muttering about "Mody-fee-cayshins". I took the third, and Azul settled into the final one, grinning and humming insanely to herself.

"Are you all right?"

There was a vein pulsing in her forehead.

"Fine, heretic. Shut up, Nnoitra."

[Irohov, we are prepared to launch on your command.]

"Good. Launch in f- Apoli!"

The Warhound titan's head burst through the outer wall of the fort, trailing a stream of ichor and mechanical fluids.

"Threetwoonegetusoutofhere!"

[Ignition.]

There was a brief moment of silence, followed by mind-blowing noise. The hangar exploded in a blaze of light and smoke as we rose ponderously in the air.

[We have liftoff. Engaging atmospheric escape engines in 3... Brace yourselves.]

The roaring grew even louder, and we were pressed back in the seats, waves of pressure rolling over us as the Ragtime accelerated to several times the speed of sound in a few seconds. My vision flickered, and dimly, out of the corner of my eye, I could see a silvery shape, striding through the smoke of the fort. It quickly vanished as we passed through a low bank of cloud, rolling slightly to get us into orbital trajectory.

[We have achieved stable speed. External sensors indicate the A.I.N. is not pursuing. Entering orbit... now.]

We left the clouds, and I could see the barren planet of Namaskar spread before me. For a few seconds my gut was wrenched by the sensation of free-fall, but the artificial gravity kicked in, pulling me firmly into my seat. Irohov gave a whoop of satisfaction.

"We made it! Hahah! We actually made it! Bog moy! We're still alive!"

"We still have to get past the fleet. There's a few dozen Khornate ships out there, and they'll have noticed our launch."

He pointed through the bubble, indicating the dim reddish specks in the difference. My vision flared, and suddenly it was as if I was standing next to the ships. They were turning, noticing the brightly burning speck that was still burning through orbit.

"Root's right. They've noticed us. Tkhiss, get us out of orbit. Speed is of the essence."

"Sebell, that's not how spaceships work! You can't just leave orbit! You need to be able to slingshot yourself properly-"

Several of the consoles lit up with warning lights.

[We have multiple long-range torpedo lock. Jamming is ineffective.]

A klaxon whooped.

[Seven torpedoes launched. We're leaving. I will slow the enemy down.]

"How? All we've got is four rocket launchers and a multilaser turret!"

[I continue to marvel at your stupidity. Before the Tau left, they transferred control of the satellite defence network to me. We have left the static jamming field the A.I.N generated. I am in complete control. Connecting... Confirmed. Auto-targetting set. Markerlights engaged. Deactivate stealth fields.]

Suddenly, as far as the eye could see, thousands of tiny beige shapes shimmered into view, their weapons pulsing with blue energies. As one, they swung towards the approaching fleet.

[Fire.]

The sky filled with a literal grid of interlocking blue lines, the waste-gas trail of the railguns bright in the vacuum. Several of the Khornate warships were outright destroyed, but the lead ship, an immense machine that defied any kind of classification, pushed forwards, its cannons tearing a shredded line through the Tau defence grid.

[Torpedoes successfully deflected. Sectors 0079 through 0085 Alpha have been compromised. Enemy threat level greatly underestimated. We cannot fight that machine. Commencing emergency command bubble separation.]

Irohov rose to his feet, shocked.

"What!? You can't be serious! That will take away our shielding, our Warp drives, most of the weaponry... we'll be fast enough, sure... but we won't be able to leave the system!"

"Don't you worry about Warp jumps, Triarch. You have Chaos on your side, too."

"That's not very reassuring. All right. We'll need some firepower, at least. Mordakka, Shootnik. Cud yez take dat multi-laza, 'an make it blastier? We needz ta be as shooty as we can!"

"Done, Humie! If dere's anyfing I'ze good at, it's gunz!"

The two Orks abandoned the rocket turrets, moving to the multilaser control which Irohov indicated. Within a second, they had dismantled the entire panel, and were rewiring the power feeds behind it, muttering back and forth.

[Commencing separation.]

There was a crunch and the ship shuddered, the main engines cutting out. Rings of explosive bolts around the base of the cockpit pylons exploded, and a thick hatch slammed across the center pylon, sealing it away from the rest of the ship. The body of the Ragtime slowly decelerated, its forwards thrusters pulling it away. The pylons pulled out from the shafts they fitted into, clusters of thrusters unfurling. The multilaser slid from its bay at the bottom of the sphere, running on track mounted along the edge of the dome. It assumed a position roughly at the top of the sphere. With the body detached, we were left in what was essentially a sphere, with four long rocket pylons trailing off one end.

[Ragtime is now in Sputnik mode. Fuel mix is optimal, plasma flow at 500 Celsius. Red Promethium burn on your command, Triarch.]

"Everyone, we're activating a Red Promethium burn. For a few seconds, the engines will be firing semi-explosive plasma instead of waste gas. Start the burn."

Rojo, Mordakka and I were thrown to the floor by the burst of power, while Azul, Irohov and Tkhiss were pressed deeply into their seats. Behind us, the engine pylons were literally glowing cherry red, and instead of flames they shot an immense streamer of incandescent sparks. Within seconds, we had left Namaskar behind, and were lined up on an arrow-straight path out of the system.

[Cutting engines... done. Cycling for future burns. Thermocouple electrical generation at 110 percent. All readouts nominal.]

"So we're safe!"

[Essentially, yes. We have accelerated to a speed which none of the enemy ships can hope to match.]

Azul gave an enraged growl, her frame shaking wildly.

"B-but we ran away! We fled our foe like cowardly heretics!"

It's worth pointing out that the person raving about heretics was, herself, a heretic. Chaos tends to do that to Imperials.

I removed my helmet, scratching my head. Then I grinned, with all the Chaotic malice and insanity that I could muster.

"We ran, yes. But we still won."

"We didn't kill that... that assassin!"

"Hate to change the topic, but why are you sane? What did you do to that Bloodthirster to subdue it?"

It was her turn to smile, and for the first time I noticed that her teeth were almost wolf-like, viciously pointed.

"Simple. I told Nnoitra what I did to Corporal Raikov when he tried to kiss me."

Rojo stiffened, his hands trembling. Irohov blanched, then turned a pale shade of green. Azul grinned even wider, the pointed teeth making her look more threatening than ever.

"It's amazing what you can accomplish with a stim-pack and some barbed wire."

"Oh Tzeentch. Please please PLEASE can we go back to talking about the machine?"

"Ah yes... you were saying, heretic, that we won? How so?"

I grinned again.

"Tkhiss, give me a magnified image of Namaskar's surface."

Several of the larger screens flashed to a rear camera view. The planet looked normal... until it suddenly darkened, becoming an inky black sphere that was almost invisible against the stars.

"I realised that my orders included no restrictions on what spells I could and could not use. Root and I guessed correctly that the A.I.N would resist our strongest weaponry, so we hit it with something nothing can resist. I give you... the El-Rhyk Carbonic Transmuter."

"We can't unnerstan yez, Humie! Wot iz you sayin?"

"The Transmuter is a basic alchemical transmutation spell. It sucks nine carbon atoms from any point in time and space, dragging them through the warp until their fundamental nature is permanently altered. Once they reach the location of the spell, they convert everything they touch into an equivalent mass of carbon. The conversion never stops, and the rate of conversion constantly accelerates. Any matter that touches what's left of Namaskar will be irrevocably converted into carbon, including the Assassin."

"I don' get it!"

"Big killy machine is now a rock."

"WAAAGH! We win, boyz!"

[Impressive. But what about the- Warning! Major realspace distortions detected around the ejected remains of the ship!]

The monitor shifted, becoming a grainy closeup of the body of the Ragtime. It was surrounded by a cloud of crystalline particles. Suddenly, it winked out of existence.

"What in the hell happened to it?! That had to be magic!"

"Relax, Triacrh. That was the Bureau of Time. They're a subset of our organisation. We're going to ask them to come back and recover the Ragtime. We won't want to have wasted resources."

"Oh... so that's a good thing?"

"Yes."

"All right then... how do we get out of here? Lord Vivat?"

I snapped my fingers. The starfield vanished, replaced by what looked like a pleasant meadow on any agri-world, a bright sun shining down on the fields of tall grasses.

"Welcome to Headquarters... or rather, one of the outer storage dimensions. This is where we get off."

With a wave of my hand, the rear hatch opened, apparently onto a tunnel that stretched off into infinity.

"Walk down there, and you'll be taken to where you will be safe. We will provide any and all resources and services to cover your identities. We believe in helping those who help us, so you'll have nothing to fear from the Inquisition. Or the Tau for that matter."

Wearily, the group got to their feet. Irohov shook my hand, a sad smile on his face.

"You may have ruined my military career, and tainted me with Chaos, you disgusting heretic you, but thanks anyways. It was... fun."

I nodded.

"Any time, Triach Ivan Zulonovich Irohov. We will meet again."

He nodded, then turned to the rest of the group.

"Everyone... we fought well. Goodbye. Rojo, make sure your sister doesn't murder anyone, you here."

"With pleasure, Comrade Triarch sir!"

Without another word, he walked down the hallway and disappeared. Azul and Rojo were next.

"Heretic, I swear to you that the next time you see me you will not recognize me! I will turn the power of Chaos against itself! The Emperor protects. Come on, Rojo."

Her brother gave a sheepish shrug, followed by a precise salute.

"Da svidanya, Comrade."

"Any time, Rojo."

They left, Azul marching haughtily, her brother trudging along behind her in his ruined armour.

[Lord Vivat... The knowledge I have gained from this will keep my people in though for millennia. Consider the entire race of the Nntocka permanently in your debt.]

"Good luck, you airhead."

[I'll take that as a complement, meatsack. Mordakka, Shootnik.]

The wires connecting him to the ship popped off, and he left, the improvised cape billowing in some unseen breeze.

"Well, Mordakka, you're the last one. Good luck out there."

He slapped me on the back, an act which set off several cursh-damage warnings in my armour's sensors.

"Fanks, Humie. Youse fought like an Ork! Now, dere's a liddle Freebooterz ship wot is jus waitin fer me ta steal it down in Charradon. Come on, Shootnik! We'ze goin on anudder Waaagh!"

He sprinted down the tunnel, the grot dangling off the mechanisms of his pack.

I collapsed in the command chair, wiping my brow.

"Whew..."

"You said it."

"Debriefing?"

"Yep."

I got to my feet, and walked into the light.

The End.

In the more densely-populated side of the western spiral arm of our galaxy is a smallish, brownish world, covered in buildings. In the largest of these building is a room, a room the size of a small city. At its center is a machine, one of unrivalled technological brilliance. Deep within its massive bulk is a single strand of carbon nanofibre tubing, the individual carbon atoms of its lattice perfectly arranged to transport tremendous amounts of energy.

Something is happening. There is a minute ripple of energy, and an incredibly small pentagram of light, only nine atoms wide, flickers to life on the surface of the tube, then disappears just as fast, taking nine carbon atoms with it. The tube collapses, its structure permanently altered.

Magos Shimon Pegk sips his mug of steaming lubricant, enjoying the feel of the hydrocarbons filtering through his nasal fans. He is sitting in a comfortable bucket seat high up on the machine, half-asleep. While his duty is theoretically of the utmost importance, the machine is so advanced it fixes all of its problems even before they become problems. Pegk takes a long sip, sighing contentedly. Then the light catches his eye. It's a tiny red indicator rune, flashing on and off slowly. He leans forwards. An error? Odd. It's not one he's familiar with. Still, the rest of the board is reading green, so-

Every single other light turns read at the same time, and the indicator screen begins to repeat the line 'Critical Error' over and over again. Then the entire board goes dark, and fully half of the Machine with it. Pegk's mug falls from his nerveless fingers as he looks up at the horribly failing bulk of the Golden Throne. It is the nine-hundred and ninety-ninth year of the 41st millennium.

"Oh, shit."