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and snatched off his helmet, flinging it to one side. He would not accept the blinking rune that told him of Meyoran’s demise. He could not.
    ‘Prognosticator!’ His voice bellowed across the smouldering battlefield. ‘Prognosticator, I need to speak to you right now!’
    ‘Gileas…’ Reuben, Gileas’s oldest friend and his brother-in-arms since the days they had been novitiates, laid a gauntlet on his sergeant’s arm. He could feel Gileas’s fury and grief. ‘Now is not the time.’
    The sergeant shook his arm free from Reuben’s grip and turned furious hazel eyes on him. ‘You are wrong, Reuben. Now is the time. There are rituals to observe. And, damn it, I will observe them. Prognosticator!’
    ‘Sergeant Ur’ten.’
    The Prognosticator’s whispering voice came from behind him, channelled through the vox-bead in his ear.
    ‘Confirm Meyoran’s death.’
    ‘You saw the explosion yourself, sergeant. Surely–’
    ‘I said confirm his death.’ Gileas took a step towards the psyker, who held his ground serenely.
    ‘As you command, brother-sergeant.’ The Prognosticator drew his concentration in once again. Gileas felt the brief touch of the psyker’s mind on his own as Bast allowed his attention to drift around the battlefield.
    ‘Nothing, brother-sergeant.’ Bast’s helmeted head lowered in respect and Gileas was temporarily thrown off his raging stride by the genuine sorrow he heard in the other’s voice. ‘The captain is gone.’
    Gileas ran a hand across his stubble-shadowed jawline and stared at the Prognosticator. The words were there, but the meaning would not connect with his synapses. Bast took a step closer, leaning in to whisper so that only the stunned sergeant could hear him.
    ‘Meyoran is gone, Gileas,’ he said, quietly. ‘Control your inner beast for once in your life and do your duty.’
    Duty . There it was again. That word.
    Born into a nomadic tribe which had struggled just to survive, reborn into a tribe of warriors upon whom the very fate of the Imperium depended, the word had always had a profound effect on Gileas. He was a Space Marine. He was a Silver Skull.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, his shoulders automatically straightening. ‘Yes, of course.’ Bast inclined his head and stepped back.
    The battle was over. There was nothing more they could do here other than to recover the legacies of their fallen brothers and take back however many of the aspirants remained. The recovery of the hive would fall to the local troops and emergency aid would be sent in due course.
    Gileas cast a glance at the smouldering portal. The eldar might return, but it would undoubtedly take time for them to assimilate any galactic coordinates they might have been able to glean from their brief time on Cartan.
    ‘Silver Skulls,’ Gileas said, over the vox, bending to retrieve his helmet. ‘Withdraw.’
    The chapel aboard the Silver Arrow once more wrapped Gileas in its cocoon of calm. This time, however, he was not hardening his core, grounding himself in battle doctrine and preparing for a fight. This time he was there for a different reason.
    Keile Meyoran .
    The captain’s name had been painstakingly written letter by agonising letter onto the company’s war banner, along with the names of other brothers who had fallen. As his position dictated, the job of adding Meyoran’s name had been his right.
    It was an honour, but one that he had not wanted ever to fulfil.
    ‘He should not have died,’ Gileas said softly to the Prognosticator who stood by his side, staring up at the banner. Out of his battle plate, the Prognosticator’s years were more evident in the slight stoop of his shoulders, as though he held the weight of his centuries on them.
    ‘It was his destiny. It was predetermined before we even left the ship. For every action, Gileas Ur’ten, there has to be a consequence. By leaving the ship to come down to the surface with the company, Meyoran set an irreversible chain of events in