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With the last vestiges of himself, he lifted the pistol from the commissar's hand and raised it to his head. Emperor, save me, he thought. Before the unrelenting rage descended upon him once again and he was completely lost, he pulled the trigger.

At last he had found release from the sound of Chaos in his mind.

'Those damned explosives set! We ain't got much time!' shouted Laron as he hunkered down behind the Valkyrie. His storm troopers were firing on the incoming enemies, but they would be on them in a moment. Bolter rounds impacted against the aircraft, and the crewman operating the heavy bolter flew backwards as a bolt shell detonated in his skull, splattering Laron with blood. He swore and took the man's position, swinging the heavy weapon towards the enemy. A missile slammed into one of the other Valkyries, which detonated explosively, throwing flaming debris in all directions.

Laron pressed the twin thumb triggers of the pivot mounted heavy bolter and fired a spray of heavy calibre rounds towards the incoming foe, dropping several of them. Rhinos could be seen cutting towards the storm troopers from further off, and Laron swore.

'Set the damned timers! Move it!' he roared in between bursts of fire.

'Sir, we have incoming hostiles from the east,' said a wounded storm trooper as he pulled a piece of metal from his shoulder.

'Just great,' muttered Laron as he gunned down another enemy.

'All set.' Captain Elias shouted.

A sudden scream from the base of the tower made Laron glance around and he did a double take as he saw the scene unfolding. A long, spined arm had reached out of the stone of the tower, grabbed one his men around the throat and was dragging him towards the wall. Another storm trooper was hacking at the arm with his knife, and hissing ichor dripped from the wound. Fleshy, hooked claws burst from the wall and latched onto another man. He was pulled off balance and tumbled into the wall. He half disappeared into the surface of the stone, and tentacles and claws gripped his armour and hauled him fully inside as he screamed.

The storm troopers backed away from the wall and began firing at the things materialising out of the stone surface. Hissing, fanged faces pushed out, bulbous, mutated eyes opened up all over the stone. A flickering figure of a huge, horned daemon with a twisting blade of fire in its hand strained to escape the stone, and hellguns blasted as the soldiers targeted the emerging monster.

'Back! Get back to the Valkyries!' shouted Laron, ducking down behind the heavy bolter as rounds of incoming fire peppered the aircraft.

One of the storm troopers shot their comrade who was still being pulled into the tower. It was a mercy killing, to end whatever cruel fate had awaited him.

A heavily muscled humanoid figure pulled free of the wall and ran at the storm troopers, hefting a heavy, archaic broadsword in its muscular red arms. With one sweep of the blade it carved a man in half from shoulder to waist, and it roared, flames spilling from its eyes and throat.

Laron swung his heavy bolter around and unleashed a long burst of fire into the daemon's chest. It was driven back several steps by the impacts, though it appeared unharmed. It turned its snarling head towards Colonel Laron and began to advance through the barrage.

'Go!' he shouted to the pilot as the surviving storm troopers scrambled aboard, and the Valkyrie lifted straight up into the air, its powerful vertical thrusters roaring. Boltgun fire ripped through the undercarriage of the aircraft as it lifted and several men were killed, their blood spraying the roof.

'The charges blow in ten, sir!' shouted one of his men, and Laron nodded as he fired upon the Chaos Marines below. More things were emerging from the walls of the tower.

The Valkyrie turned steeply, and a missile destined to smash into its side flew through the open doorway, screaming over Laron's head and miraculously passing straight out of the other open doorway, filling the interior with the smoke of its propulsion.

Open-mouthed, Laron turned.

'The Emperor protects!' shouted Elias, laughing at the sheer improbability of the occurrence.

'It certainly seems that way,' agreed Laron, shaking his head in utter disbelief.

He didn't see the hulking, winged daemon pushing out of the wall behind the turning Valkyrie. Nor did he see it leap towards the aircraft, nor hear the power of its roar over the screaming engines. But he felt the impact as it struck.

The tail of the Valkyrie tipped earthwards with the sudden additional weight, and the pilot struggled to keep it airborne. The head of a giant axe slammed through the raised rear assault ramp, smashing it asunder. The ramp was ripped from the aircraft as the axe was pulled free, and it tumbled end over end to the ground below.