Keritt had once had many names.
In the hazy toxic mists of Barbarus, he had borne a mortal name that even he had forgotten.
After joining the Death Guard and being reborn, he had received a new name.
After becoming a Plague Marine favoured by Nurgle, that name had become stained with filth and blasphemy.
Now, he was nothing, only a designation—Penitent series Apt-734.
That cold serial number was stamped clearly on the right side of his breastplate.
They were sinners. The Men of Iron had stripped them of their names, leaving only designations.
After the influence of Chaos had been purged from him, he had thought the battlefields of Barbarus were hell, that turning his weapons on his former cousins at Isstvan was the abyss of despair, that ten thousand years of warfare in the Eye of Terror was eternal torment.
But now, he realised that all of it had merely been a warm-up.
True hell was the sight of the second defensive line in Segmentum Tempestus collapsing.
Apt-734 and his fifteen-man squad were cast directly onto the battlefield by the cold will of the Men of Iron. The dizziness of Warp teleportation had not yet fully faded when their sensors were overwhelmed by threat signals.
They had landed on the outer deck of a massive orbital defence platform designated "Anvil-7."
This had once been one of the anchorages of an Imperial Navy squadron, protected by powerful Void Shields and dense arrays of long-range laser cannons.
Now, it resembled the carcass of a great beast covered in ants, silently wailing in the vacuum.
The withdrawal of the main Imperial fleet had left an enormous void.
The warships of the Men of Iron and the Tomb Ships of the Necrons were powerful, but far too few to fill every gap.