Lionel was the last of his chapter, and he had come to Gourdhollow to dig his brothers' seed from the dirt. The gene-seed held their line. Without it, no new marines would ever carry their name. He had crossed the void for one purpose: recover the seed from the ruins where his brothers fell to the xenos. But the ruins were many, and he did not know which one hid the vault. He stood in a trader's cramped tent, still in his battered ceramite armor. Metal spiders skittered along the ridgelines outside. The xenos claimed this whole region now. A blind search meant days lost in their hunting grounds. Lionel did not have days. His seals were cracking, and his rations ran thin. The man he had come to see sat behind a table of rolled charts. Corvus Hadley traded maps to the desperate, and Lionel was desperate. The old cartographer had a white beard and eyes that measured you like cargo. He did not stand for a space marine. "Big fellow," Corvus said. He tapped a chart with one gloved finger. "Everyone who comes here is looking for something they lost. Most don't come back to complain about my prices." "I need the ruins where the Adeptus Astartes died," Lionel said. "The battle three years past. My brothers." Corvus scratched his beard. He pulled a chart from the pile and spread it flat. Dozens of ruin sites dotted the paper. He set his finger on none of them. "I mapped every stone in this waste," Corvus said. "I know your battle site. But the xenos moved a radar beacon there. Big one, high on the tower. It sweeps for heat and metal." He looked at Lionel's armor. "You'd light up like a fire. They'd swarm you before you reached the vault." Lionel leaned close. "Then tell me where it is. I will deal with the machine." "Information's cheap," Corvus said. "Living long enough to use it isn't." He named his price. Lionel set his combat knife on the table, its blade worth more than the tent. Corvus weighed it, then nodded. He drew a slow line across the chart. He circled one ruin near a broken tower. "Here. Your brothers are here. The beacon sits on that tower." He tapped it twice. "Take it down first, or don't go at all." Lionel rolled the chart and pushed it into his belt. For the first time in weeks, he knew where to walk. The blind search was over. But he had traded his knife, and the map led straight to a machine built to find him. The vault held his chapter's future. The tower held the eyes of the xenos. To reach one, he would have to blind the other, and every step toward the ruins would announce him louder than a shout.

Lionel crouched behind a slab of broken stone and studied the tower. The map had led him true. High on the tower's peak sat the machine, its sensor dish sweeping in slow circles. Red and blue lights pulsed across its face. That machine would smell his armor from a mile off. He had traded his blade for these coordinates. Now he had nothing left to cut it down. He drew the only weapon on his belt. It was an old pistol, short and heavy, worn smooth by other hands. He weighed it in his palm. One shot might crack the machine's housing. But the report would echo across the whole waste. The xenos would hear it and come. Lionel picked his angle. He braced the pistol on the stone and lined the barrel on the sensor dish. He breathed out and fired. The round struck the machine dead center. Sparks burst from the dish. The lights flickered, then died. The slow sweep stopped. Smoke curled from the shattered housing. The eye that hunted him was blind. But the gunshot rolled across the ruins like thunder. For a moment nothing moved. Then Lionel heard it. A dry clicking, faint at first, growing fast. It came from the cracks in the stone all around him. They poured out of the rubble. Sleek metal bodies, each the size of a hound, ran on jointed legs. Their green and pink lights glowed in the dark. Dozens of them. The dead beacon had not saved him. His shot had rung the dinner bell. Lionel rose and put his back to the tower. The nearest spider leaped. He caught it in the air and smashed it against the stone. Its legs went still. Two more climbed his greaves. He tore one loose and crushed it under his boot. The other bit into a seam in his armor. He felt the cold pinch on his thigh. He fired the pistol into the swarm. One shell, two. Each blast threw a machine back in pieces. But the pistol held only so many rounds, and more spiders spilled from the ground. He could not kill them all. He could not stand here and win. Lionel looked past the tower. Beyond it, low against the hills, he saw the shape of the ruined vault. His brothers' seed lay under that stone. It was close now, closer than it had ever been. He fired his last shell and ran. Spiders chased at his heels. His seals leaked where the bite had opened them. But the beacon was dead. No new swarm would rise behind him. He had blinded the machine and bought himself a path. He reached the vault's broken door and threw himself inside. The spiders massed at the entrance but did not follow into the dark. Lionel pressed his back to the wall and counted his breaths. The tower was down. The seed lay somewhere below him now, in the black.

Lionel let his eyes adjust to the dark. The vault sank deep into the earth. Strange stone framed the passage, ridged and slick, more grown than carved. Purple veins glowed faintly in the walls. He moved down, one hand on the cold surface, listening for the click of metal legs. None came. But something else breathed in the black ahead. He found his brothers first. A cluster of dead marines lay heaped against the far wall. Their armor was cracked and burned. Faded chapter marks still showed on their shoulders. Lionel knelt among them. These were his kin. He had come for what they carried inside. Then a voice rasped from the shadows. "Stop there. I've been watching the door for three days." Lionel froze. A man sat propped against the stone, half hidden behind a fallen slab. Human, not a marine's size, but armored in scavenger plate. Dried blood streaked his face. A heavy pistol rested in his hand, aimed steady at Lionel's chest. "I heard the spiders come," the man said. "Then I heard them stop. That means you killed the beacon. Only a fool or a marine does that." Lionel did not move. He could not tell if the pistol was real threat or a xenos trick. The vault twisted the mind. Shapes crawled at its edges. "Lower the gun," Lionel said. "I came for my brothers' seed. Nothing else." The man laughed, dry and cracked. "Marcus Varro. I came for the same thing. Different masters." He nodded at the dead pile. "Been trapped down here since the fight. Leg's broken. The seed's still sealed. I couldn't carry it out alone." Lionel studied him. A trap would strike now, while he hesitated. But Varro only winced and shifted his weight off the bad leg. The pistol dipped. Real pain, real weakness. No xenos wore that. "Prove it," Lionel said. "Put the gun down." Varro looked at him a long moment. Then he set the pistol on the stone and slid it away. "There. Now help me, or leave me to rot. But you'll want my hands. The carrier takes two to unlock." Lionel crossed the floor and crouched beside him. Behind the dead marines sat a sealed case, white and clean against the filth. A sterile carrier, built to hold living seed. Inside lay the pod, green and veined, alive. His chapter's future in one small shell. "You're bleeding out," Lionel said. He pressed a seal on Varro's leg to slow it. Varro grunted but nodded. "Get me standing," Varro said. "I'll open the carrier. You carry it. We both walk out, or neither does." Lionel gripped the wounded man's arm and pulled him upright. The choice was made. He had found the seed and a living ally in the same dark. But the vault ran deeper than he'd thought. And somewhere below, he heard a new sound. Not spiders. Something larger, dragging itself toward the light.

The dragging sound grew louder. Lionel pulled Varro upright and turned toward the dark. His bolt pistol hung empty at his side. He had fired his last round in the swarm above. The creature came fast now, a xeno warrior twice his height. Ridged armor plated its long body. Claws scraped the stone. Small bugs poured ahead of it, sleek and segmented, their fine legs clicking across the floor. "Weapon," Lionel said. "I have nothing left." Varro's face went tight. He looked at the empty pistol in Lionel's grip, then at the pile of dead marines against the wall. "There," he said. "My brothers didn't come here unarmed." Lionel understood at once. He set Varro against the slab and lunged for the fallen marines. Their broken armor still cradled guns. He dug through cracked gauntlets and shattered plate. Rifles, pistols, a scattered cache scarred by the fight that killed them. He grabbed the nearest bolt pistol. Its old grip felt solid in his hand. He tore a magazine from a dead brother's belt and slammed it home. The small bugs reached him first. One climbed his boot. He crushed it under his heel. Another bit his damaged armor at the old wound. He fired down and blew it apart. The warrior charged. Lionel rose and met it. He raised the pistol and squeezed. The first round cracked its shoulder plate. It shrieked and swung a claw. He ducked and the claw raked stone above him. He fired again into its open jaw. The round punched through. The warrior staggered, then fell, sliding across the floor until it stopped at his feet. Lionel stood over it, breathing hard. The bugs scattered back into the dark. He turned the pistol on them but held his fire. Loud sounds drew the swarm. He had learned that lesson on the tower. He would not ring the dinner bell again. "You're armed now," Varro said. He almost smiled through the blood on his face. "Took you long enough." Lionel returned to the fallen marines. He filled his empty pouches with spare magazines. His brothers could not carry these weapons out. He would carry them instead. Among the guns lay a slab of ancient tech, blue-lit lines glowing under grime. He did not know its purpose. He left it. Only the seed mattered. He lifted the sealed carrier and slung it across his back. The pod inside pulsed faint and green. "Can you walk?" he asked. "With help." Varro reached up. Lionel pulled him standing. The two turned toward the passage up. But the gunshots had traveled far in the deep vault. From the dark below came new sounds. More claws. More dragging weight. The one warrior had not come alone. Lionel checked his loaded pistol and faced the tunnel. He had the seed and the means to fight now. What he did not have was a clear way out.

Lionel faced the tunnel with the seed on his back and Varro leaning on his arm. New claws scraped the dark below. He needed a way out before the creatures reached them. The main passage led up, but it was the loudest and most open route. Whatever came from below would meet them there. "Not that way," Varro said. His voice was thin. Blood soaked the dressing on his side. "Another path. Hidden. I found it before you came." Lionel had allied with this scavenger three days into his siege of the vault. Varro had killed a xeno with his bare hands to survive here. But an oath sat heavy on Lionel's back, and he trusted no route he could not see. "Show me," he said. Varro tried to stand alone and buckled. His knees folded. He caught himself on the slab and breathed hard. "Behind the fallen wall," he said. "West side. Narrow." He could not lead. He could barely point. Lionel would not walk his brothers' seed into a crack he had not checked. The creatures were still distant. He had a moment. He pulled a lantern from his belt, a polished servo-skull with a glowing core. He had taken it from the cache of dead marines. He twisted its base. Warm light spilled across the vault. He left Varro against the slab and moved to the west wall. Rubble blocked it. He shoved the broken stone aside and found the gap. He raised the lantern into the dark. The passage ran narrow and dry. No claw marks. No droppings. No fresh scent of the bugs. It climbed. He followed it ten paces and felt cool air move against his face. Air from outside. The path was real. But the lantern's light also showed him what waited at the far end. A shape filled the passage where it opened. Huge. Stone spikes jutted from its hide. Green veins glowed under cracked skin. It turned one bright eye toward the light and roared. A troll, twisted and wrong, wedged in the only clean way out. Lionel backed to Varro. The dragging sounds from below grew louder now. Behind them, the swarm. Ahead, the troll. "Your path is blocked," he said. "Something guards it." Varro coughed red. "Then we make it move." He nodded at the lantern, then at the guns piled by the dead. "It came for the light. Give it more." Lionel set the lantern deep in the narrow passage, its glow bright against the stone. The troll pushed toward it, jamming itself into the gap, chasing the light away from them. Its bulk sealed the crack behind it as it climbed. The hidden path was clear of creatures now, but the troll had taken it. Lionel hauled Varro up and turned back toward the main tunnel. The swarm was closer. He had traded one blocked route for another, and the seed still had no way out.

The swarm scraped closer up the main tunnel. Lionel turned to run and Varro sagged in his grip. The scavenger's legs dragged. Fresh blood soaked through the dressing on his side. His breath came shallow and wet. Lionel had allied with this man in the vault, and now the man could not carry his own weight. The seed rode heavy on Lionel's back. Two of them could not outrun the claws below. "Leave me," Varro said. He pressed one hand to the wall to stand. His knees shook. "You carry the seed. I slow you." Lionel said nothing. He measured the tunnel with his eyes. The swarm needed the wide route to reach them. The narrow crack behind the fallen wall was clear now. The troll had climbed into it, chasing the lantern toward the outside. If the troll had cleared a path, that path ended at open air. "No," Lionel said. He hauled Varro's arm over his shoulders. "The oath is mine. You come." He pushed into the narrow crack. Stone scraped his damaged armor. Cool air moved against his face. Ahead, the troll's roar echoed off the walls. Green light pulsed from cracks in its stone hide. It had jammed itself deeper, still swiping at the servo-skull lantern wedged past its reach. A cluster of glowing fungi grew along the passage floor. Their caps threw soft light across the stone. Lionel ripped a handful free and hurled them past the troll, toward the far mouth of the tunnel. The lights scattered and glowed brighter than the trapped lantern. The troll wrenched around toward the new glow. It clawed forward, tearing at the walls, chasing the brighter light out of the crack. The passage opened. Past the troll's heaving bulk, Lionel saw a wooden door set in the far wall. An outer gate, built to open from within. Daylight leaked around its frame. But the troll blocked the whole width. Its shoulders scraped both walls. Lionel could not pass it and could not fight it in this space with Varro on his arm. He set Varro against the stone. He drew the bolt pistol from a fallen brother's rig. He fired once into the troll's back leg. The shot cracked loud. The troll bellowed and lunged toward the outer gate, ramming the wood. Hinges tore. The door burst open and the troll spilled through into the daylight, still chasing the scattered glow across the ground outside. The way was clear. Lionel dragged Varro through the broken gate and into the light. But the gunshot had carried. Behind them, the scrape of claws swelled through the crack. The swarm had heard. It poured up the narrow passage now, following the sound into the open ground where Lionel stood with the seed and a man who could no longer walk.