AN EXTRACT FROM THE GILDAR RIFT
by Sarah Cawkwell

The lingering trace of blood was everywhere.

It streaked up the walls of the ship’s inner corridors. It was smeared on the deck leaving virulent scarlet trails. Brother Temerus, one of Dasan’s squad had tried, without success, to link into the Wolf’s vox-net. All he had met in response to his hails thus far had been static.

With every step that they took, Ryarus’s sense of unease grew. Whatever had happened to the Wolf of Fenris had been devastating and worse; whatever it had been that had committed such relentless slaughter may well still be aboard.

During the flight across from the Dread Argent, one of Matteus’s many observations had been that a complement of more than twenty Space Marines had seemed excessive for a search and rescue operation. Ryarus had quietly agreed with the sentiment. Arrun was being over-careful.

Now, though, he mentally praised the captain’s unerring sense of caution.

So far, they had encountered nothing but signs of battle. No bodies, no injured... nothing. A report from Matteus had detailed a brief diversion into one of the other staging areas which had turned up vast quantities of discarded battle plate. It had been massed into haphazard piles rather than carefully displayed and maintained as was the expected behaviour of an Adeptus Astartes. That was all that either squad had encountered.

The Silver Skulls made their way up from the aft section towards midships. The silence was eerie. No sounds of Chapter serfs or servitors, no distant clash of swords in training cages... there was nothing to be heard except for the heavy, metallic footfalls of Space Marine boots as they moved slowly across the fine steel mesh floors of the dimly lit corridors. The Wolf of Fenris creaked around them, the groans of super-stressed metal clearly audible without the usual rumble of the engine.

Tayln, one of Dasan’s squad raised his head to listen to the sounds of the vessel. ‘She sounds wrong,’ he noted. As a promising Techmarine, he had not yet been despatched to Mars for his formal induction into the ways of the Mechanicus. As such, he had undergone his initial training at the hands of the existing Chapter Techmarines. He tipped his head to one side, listening. ‘I can hear… something.’