My vox-link chimed in my ear. It was Betancore. I could barely hear him over the noise of the cryogenerator as he made a quick report in Glossia.
'Aegis, heavens uplift, thrice-sevenfold, a crown with stars. Infamous angel without title, to Thorn by eight. Pattern?'
I considered. I was in no mood to take any more chances. 'Thorn, pattern hawk/
'Pattern hawk acknowledged,' he said with relish.
I saw movement from the corner of my eye about a half-second after I broke the link with Betancore: another of Eyclone's black-eyed men, running in through the main hatch with an old-model laspistol raised in his hand.
His first shot, a twinkling ball of pink light, snapped the metal handrail of the platform I stood on with an explosive ping. His second and third passed over me as I dived down, and ricocheted off the cast-iron side of the cryogenerator with scorching crackles.
I returned fire, prone, but the angle was bad. Two more las-shots came my way, one cutting sideways into the edge of the platform deck and cutting a gouge through the grille. The gunman was nearly at the foot of the ladder-frame.
Now a second gunman entered the chamber, calling out after the first, a powerful autorifle in his hands. He saw me, and began to raise the weapon, but I had a cleaner angle on him, and dropped him quickly with two rounds through the upper torso.
The other was almost below me now, and fired a shot that punched dean through the grille just next to my right foot.
I didn't hesitate. I went up and over the rail and directly down onto him. We crashed onto the chamber floor, the powerful impact throwing the Sci-pio out of my grasp despite my efforts to hold onto it. The man was jabbering some insane nonsense into my face and had a good grip on the front of my tunic. I had him by the throat and by the wrist of his gun-hand, forcing the laspistol away. He fired it twice into the ceiling space above.
'Enough!' I commanded, modulating my tone to emphasise my will as I drove it into his mind. 'Drop it!'
He did, meekly, as if surprised. Psyker tricks of will often baffle those who find themselves compelled by them. As he faltered, I threw a punch that connected well and left him unconscious on the floor.
As I bent to recover the Scipio, Betancore voxed me again. Aegis, pattern hawk, infamous angel cast down.'
'Thorn acknowledged. Resume pattern crucible.'
I pushed on after my quarry.
Eyclone made it into the upper vaults and out onto a landing platform built into the sloping side of Processional Two-Twelve. The wind was fierce. Eyclone had eight of his cult with him and they were expecting an orbital pinnace that would carry them away to safety.
They had no way of knowing that, thanks to Betancore, their means of escape was now burning in a deep impact gouge in the permafrost about eight kilometres north.
What rose above the landing platform out of the blizzard night, its down thrusters wailing, was my gun-cutter. Four hundred and fifty tonnes of armoured alloy, eighty metres from barbed nose to raked stern, landing gear still lowered like spider-legs, it rose on the blue-hot downwash of angled jets. Banks of floodlights under its beak-nose cut on and bathed the deck and the cultists in fierce white light.
Panicking, some of them fired up at it.
That was all the cue Betancore needed. His temper was hot, his mind void of anything except the fact that Vibben was dead.
The gun-turrets in the ends of the stubby wings rotated and washed the platform with withering heavy fire. Stone splintered. Bodies were reduced to sprays of liquid.
Eyclone, more intelligent than his men, had sprinted off the platform to the hatch as the gun-cutter rose into view.
And that's where he ran into me.
He opened his mouth in shock and I pushed the muzzle of Vibben's gun into it. I'm sure he wanted to say something important. I didn't care what it was.
I punched the gun so hard into his mouth the trigger guard broke his lower teeth. He tried to reach for something on his belt.
I fired.
Having emptied his brain-case and shattered it into the bargain, the round still had so much force it crossed the deck and pinked off the
