Barricades were being hastily built in the passage behind Victor. The mortals piled up everything at hand to make a half-height wall capable of stopping an explosion.
Several mortals carried Power Picks, nothing more than tools used for mining.
Three wounded Nemesis warriors shifted their bodies, finding comfortable positions as though choosing their own graves.
A warrior who had lost both legs sat behind a low wall, counting his remaining magazines. A ragged man struggled toward him with a Bolter magazine in his arms. Carrying one was hardly beyond a mortal's strength, but he was too hungry. The Iron Warriors had contaminated their food stores, and he had not eaten in a long time.
The veteran gripped his Combat Knife. He did not trust the mortal before him.
How long had it been since the Nemesis Chapter last carried out a mission to rescue mortals? He did not know. As far as he could recall, there had been no such operation since he entered service.
Without Victor's orders, no one from the planet below would have boarded their warship. There would never have been refugees aboard the sacred Gloriana-class Battleship.
"Put the magazine down, then leave. Go back where you belong."
The man struggled to set the magazine down, swaying on his feet. "As you command, my lord," he said.
He turned, took a few steps, and collapsed face-first onto the metal deck.
The veteran spared that dying body no further attention. Given the choice, he would even have preferred to shoot it in the head first.
Saving people was easy. Determining whether the thing you saved was actually human was much harder.
The Nemesis Chapter had never cared about such matters. They cared only whether they had successfully destroyed the enemy.
Victor appeared at the mouth of the passage,