sleep or rest. They would simply work until they rotted apart.
In a way, Barsabbas was awed by the simple logic. It was almost impossible for Hauts Bassiq to host a living workforce – this was the primary reason behind the Imperial exodus.
Bassiq lacked water or arable land. The climate could not sustain a proper agriculture.
Despite his post‐human fortitude, Barsabbas felt the sting of the heat and the fogginess of extreme dehydration – he could not imagine what the conditions were like for natural‐born men. In the end, the Adeptus Mechanicus left their great earthmovers and machines to rust and the rich mineral seams unclaimed. It had simply been unworkable.
A standard healthy human forced to toil in the mines or above‐ground refineries would not last long. Extreme surface temperatures combined with a lack of available water was a simple yet logistically impossible obstacle. Barsabbas calculated a normal human 64
constitution could withstand no more than an eighteen‐hour work shift before death –
unless heat stroke, dehydration or muscular contractions put them out of commission first.
‘A long time ago, when I was still young, Gammadin had once considered harvesting Bassiq for more than just genestock,’ Sargaul said, even as he studied the corpse ranks below them. ‘There are enough resources and repairable facilities to equip and power a naval armada, buried just beneath the sand.’
Barsabbas shook his head. ‘And Gammadin…’
‘And Gammadin was wise enough not to attempt anything so foolish. This world is borderline uninhabitable. Nothing living can really thrive here,’ Sargaul said, gesturing at the dead to emphasise his point.
Below them, the dead shuffled on the spot, moaning and occasionally expelling a bellow of bloat gas. There was something developing on a much grander scale, much more than a mere outbreak of pestilence. Of this, Barsabbas was sure.
THE HOODED MEN thought they had the intruders isolated. These were, after all, their mines and their domain. Slinking within the shadows, they had hunted Cython and Hadius quietly, waiting until they were trapped within the gantry‐maze of a bauxite cavern.
But when the fighting erupted in the old mines, the Blood Gorgons did not fall as expected. Instead, the intruders seemed to enjoy the game.
Cython and Hadius, whooping with glee, sprinted down a gantry frame, gunning as they went. They were an old pair, a veteran bond who genuinely enjoyed the business of execution. There was a flippant creativity to their murdercraft and it came as easily to them as walking or sleeping.
Hooded silhouettes rose from the numberless tiers of rock shelves and walkways. The Blood Gorgons blasted them back down, calling out targets to each other in perfect rhythm.
Suddenly Cython barked in laughter. In the upper tiers of the gantry he saw the reflective glint of a gun scope. He turned to warn Hadius, but his bond was already aware.
They fired and a grey‐clad body plummeted down, bouncing off gantry spurs twice.
‘This is bad. I’ll wager Sica and Bael are carving up a hellstorm and we’re missing out on all the kills,’ Hadius said, breathing through his vox‐grille.
‘They’re too afraid to engage!’ laughed Cython. He spotted movement to his left and fired on instinct. He worked on drill‐conditioned reflex, aiming and shooting before he thought to. Another hooded man died, the bolt‐round punching through the metal drum he was cowering behind.
Cython was still laughing when Hadius’s helmet exploded in a plume of blood and metal wreckage. It was a definitive kill, the only injury that could truly put down a Traitor Marine.
Hadius’s body continued to move on muscle memory. He fired twice in a random direction, reloaded his bolter clip in one fluid motion, sank to his knees and died.
Cython stopped running, suddenly mute with shock. He felt the death keenly, as if something had been severed from his physical self. He stood still for one whole second, a momentary lapse in his surgically‐enhanced combat discipline, as he looked at his blood bond. It was one whole second he could not afford.
Cython tried to move but he realised something hot was pulsing down his throat and soaking the front of his chest. He put a hand to his throat, trying to stem the flow of blood.
Even in the darkness, he could see the arterial sprays spit between his fingers. He aimed his bolter with his free hand but by then he was already falling, the entire left side of his torso, 65
abdomen and arm disintegrating in a blizzard of superheated ash. He hit the bottom after a forty‐metre drop and died wordlessly.