The smell of frying grox-sausage drifted through the observation post. Fat, herbs, and grease hung thick in the air, strangely comforting in a silent city.

Bill Brighteyes, BB to his mates, kept watch from the battered cathedral spire. One eye on the burnt-out street below, the other on his squad. 

Fatty leaned on the stock of his long rifle, idly rolling a cartridge the size of his forearm between thick fingers. An Aquila had been scratched into the rifle’s stock with a knife, the lines worn smooth by his hands.

The rest of the squad lay scattered across the rooftop beneath heavy scrim netting. The thick fabric provided shade and hid them from passing fighter-bombers. Some snoozed. Others played tarot. Someone had pinned a small paper saint to the netting where it fluttered weakly in the breeze.

BB looked up from the vox suite, leaning against a decapitated statue. The marble body stood headless beside him, armour pocked with old las-scars. The head had been taken clean away by what looked like plasma fire, leaving only a blackened collar of fused stone.

The vox unit blinked a complex series of messages.

Every blink meant something; his briefing did not tell him what.

He thumped the box.

The lights went dark.

‘Cooke, make sure you do some for the spook. Commissar said we’re to look after her.’

‘But, Sarge, these are the good stuff. It’ll be wasted on ‘er.’

‘She’s doing the Emperor’s work, same as us. So, we give ‘er lunch. Proper lunch.’

‘But, after this crate and the other two crates, we’ve only got three more!’

‘Make her a sandwich, Cooke.’

Grumbling, Cooke turned back to the pan. BB scanned the western streets and the cathedral square for movement.

Nothing.

A dead city.

A few minutes later, Cooke called out.

‘Spook’s sandwich is done. So’s Bruno’s. I’ve got everyone else to cook, so someone’ll have to take ‘em down.’

‘I’m not doing it. She freaks me out,’ came a voice from the far corner of the tower.

‘You tried to hit on a Battle Sister, Mario, and the spook freaks you out? Be consistent.’

‘I like ‘em angry. Not weird.’

BB pushed himself upright.

‘I’ll stretch my legs. And I should check on her. Freddie, you’re in charge. Shout if you see movement.’

‘Okay, Sarge,’ came a voice from a bundle of netting.

Cooke wrapped the sandwiches in greaseproof paper and handed them over. BB shouldered his rifle and climbed down the tube ladder, stepping over trip mines and sidestepping a bundle of claymores.

In the nave, he paused.

The pews were splintered. The roof had collapsed. Shafts of light cut through the dust.

A deep growl rolled through the darkness.

Ordinarily, it would have set his teeth on edge.

But not this one.

A wall of sandbags and broken masonry blocked the tower entrance below. The growl came from the shadows there.

‘Hey, Bruno. Lunch.’

The mastiff bounded forward, tail hammering the air. BB handed him the wrapped bundle.

‘Wait.’

Bruno sat, trembling with restraint.

‘Lady Tranjin. You there?’ BB asked, knowing she was.

She slid from the shadows. Tall, willowy, pale. Where BB was ruddy and bearded, she was bald and thin-skinned; purple veins traced her scalp.

‘I’m here, Sergeant BB. In my nest, with my protector to keep me safe.’

Bruno whined.

‘Bruno, eat,’ BB said with a gesture.

The dog tore into the sausage sandwich.

‘Are you comfortable, Lady? You’re welcome upstairs?’

‘But your fellow snipers would fear the freak,’ she said with a tired grin.

‘True.’

‘Yet you are here.’

‘Aye. Commissar says you’re vital.’

BB hesitated.

He had seen a psyker break once.

He’d seen what crawled out of a man’s skull when the warp pushed too hard.

BB had helped burn what remained.

‘Thank you for looking after me so well,’ she finished.

He handed over the greasy bundle.

‘Lunch.’

She reached and swayed.

Her hand missed the packet.

‘You okay, Ma’am?’

‘The ripples. They burn.’

‘Ripples?’

‘The mission. I am the listening post. I feel it when it moves.’

She sank into a battered armchair.

‘When it shifts, waves pass through the Immaterium. I feel them. I send the signal back to command.’

‘The flashy lights.’

‘Yes.’

Her eyes shifted. Amber bled across the iris.

Bruno froze. Hackles rising.

The vox relay on her wrist crackled.

Tranjin stiffened violently.

The air thickened. BB felt pressure in his ears, like diving too deep in the rivers back home.

‘It’s closer,’ she whispered.

The amber flared brighter.

Bruno growled. Low. Sustained. At nothing.

‘It gathers,’ she breathed. ‘Like a tide made of knives.’

Her nose began to bleed.

BB moved without thinking, one hand resting on his sidearm.

‘Where?’

She gasped.

‘North. Two kilometres. It swells?’

The vox link on her wrist blinked rapidly.

Then…

It stopped.

The amber drained from her eyes, leaving hazel rimmed with red.

She sagged into the chair.

Bruno whined and pressed against her leg.

‘It recedes,’ she said weakly. ‘For now.’

BB exhaled slowly. He hadn’t realised he’d been holding his breath.

‘It feels like a wave of glass,’ she murmured. ‘Pushing against my mind. Shredding.’

She wiped blood from her lip.

‘Sergeant? I don’t eat meat. But I’m sure Bruno will.’

She tore a sausage and fed the dog. Who ate it happily.

‘We’re due relief in eighteen hours,’ BB said quietly. ‘Can you last that long?’

She looked at him.

‘If not? You have your orders?’

He nodded.

‘Yes, Ma’am.’

BB rubbed the worn grip of his sidearm.

She closed her eyes and nodded.

Bruno’s heavy muzzle settled in her lap. A long tongue seeking more sausage.

BB climbed the ladders back to the tower.

Above, the sky was clear.

Empty.

From the spire, the city looked dead.

He looked north, where Mario watched.

BB knew better.

This city would not die quietly.

This one would scream first.