As the Major lay immobile, he calmed himself and began to form a plan to rectify his mistake. Ferro and Leon were dealing with the snipers, and he couldn't contact them yet. Marcus looked into the top-right corner of his eyesight, glaring at a flashing signal from his neural uplink's retinal interface. Two words in yellow text flaring up and fading down over and over again.

'System rebooting.'

About fifty Sirthon still surrounded him – one in particular. Haraq was still standing in front of him, overseeing the kidnapping of the diplomats. And, just before the lorry drove away, the treacherous Sirthon turned to Marcus, looking him in the eyes.

"Behold our world for the last time, Major Winter, for this will be the last time you see it... or indeed, any world."

The Sirthon smirked. Marcus didn't reply. Another two of his soldiers were gunned down in front of him, the sight shearing at his soul. He clenched his fists, but kept his temper in check. Meanwhile, as he climbed into back of the lorry, Haraq called out a final command.

"Kill him."

He was then driven away, with Vidal and Taneera imprisoned in his keeping. Marcus looked on, gritting his teeth as he waited for his armour's systems to reboot...

The Sirthon kill-squads moved on through his men, leaving the corpses of murdered Orbital Commandos behind them. A single Sirthon, his eyes alight with vicious glee. approached the fallen Marcus...

Still rebooting...

... took aim...

Still rebooting...

... and fired.

In that instant, Marcus jetted upright and grabbed the Sirthon's rifle barrel, moving like a blur. Shoving the weapon upwards, the noise of point-blank gunfire smashed into Marcus' left eardrum, but the blaster shot passed harmlessly over his shoulder. Looking the Sirthon in the eye, Marcus gave him no time to react before delivering a jet-assisted, power-armoured punch right to the creature's skull.

In a shower of purple gore, the terrorist's head was thrust clean from his body. As this happened, Marcus's head flicked side to side, and he saw the rest of the Sirthon kill-teams take notice. As they pointed their rifles at him, Marcus activated his thrusters and launched himself up into the air. A volley of shots were fired, but they all missed... and before they could track the Horusan down, they soon found themselves accosted by the other Orbital Commandos, whose power armour had also rebooted.

Pulling their SMG's from where they lay, the SOSC 5th Company began to fight. Gazing down from above, Marcus surveyed the situation. The Xan-Klar knights were still pinned down by the tracking rockets, and every second they tarried, the ambassadors got further and further away. If the Orbital Commandos tried to fly after the dignitaries, there was every chance the Sirthon would blast them out of the sky with their missiles.

So the next thing to do was obvious.

"Commandos!" Marcus shouted into his comms. "Target the rocket launchers!" He then lifted his own SMG from his belt and swooped down like a falcon on his nearest target – one of the missile launchers. Squeezing the trigger, he fired from the hip, sending a long burst of glowing plasma projectiles hurtling down.

The terrorist holding the rocket launcher was blasted to pieces. However, another terrorist further up the street had noticed. Turning his massive homing weapon at Marcus, the Sirthon fired. Seeing this, Major Winter jetted backwards, moving at full speed as his organs shifted painfully inside him and 'Missile Locked' warnings flashed on his HUD.

But he didn't panic. Instead, as he put more distance between himself and the tracking rocket, Marcus lifted his gun to his face, taking aim. And when the missile's path moved over the crosshairs of his weapon, he fired. In that instant, a single shot of plasma sped forth, burned through the rocket's hull, and sent it up in an explosion of sound, fire and smoke.

The Sirthon who fired it watched as the explosion went off, and then cringed in terror as, through the crimson-coloured blaze, Marcus emerged, descending upon him like some terrible angel of death. The Orbital Commando landed beside him, caving in the alien's chest with a single punch. Then, as other Sirthon turned to fire at Marcus, the Horusan sprayed in a wide arc with his weapon, its high rate of fire casting a great field of blazing plasma before him.

Of the five Sirthon who turned to face him, three were cut down and two stumbled back in shock. However, as they did so, they fell into the waiting arms of the Orbital Commandos, who pounded them into the dust. Looking on, Marcus saw the remainder of the Sirthon terrorists dead or driven back. His troops had killed the targets he designated, the ones firing the rockets, along with any others who stood in their path. And while the Fireheart Wardens had gunned down several Sirthon from their stationary position, as the death of the missile launchers freed them to move, they easily targeted and slaughtered the remaining Sirthon with ease, either blasting them apart with their arm cannons or callously crushing them under their titanic metal feet.

Grim hope surged within Marcus' body. All they had to do now was rescue the ambassadors!

But then, over the brief eddy of silence that came with a victory, he heard a noise. More than that, he felt it. Great, heavy thuds sending tremors through the earth, their thunderous rhythm rising through his legs.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

They weren't coming from the Xan-Klar knights, who stood to Marcus' left, for they had not moved, and the sound was far louder. Created by something far heavier.

Marcus began to feel he was in terrible nightmare. And as he turned right and saw them lumber into view, a cold, vicious pain burst through his heart. He saw a trio of towering metal bodies, four metres high, stocky of form with powerful arms and legs adorning them. They were bristling with weapons as fresh and battle-ready as they were during the war.

Around the corner, blocking the path to the ambassadors, came three Sirthon War Mechs, who planted themselves in the path of Marcus men like a terrible metal phalanx. They then lifted their wrist-mounted guns, pointing them at the human Orbital Commandos and the Xan-Klar Fireheart Wardens...

Major Winter froze for half a second as he saw them, staring them down as he stood upon the tarmac of the street, now slippery with blood and corpses. Memories flashed before his eyes of fighting these things during the war. From the peaks of Horus to the streets of this very city, the Sirthon War Mech had always been part of the Republic's arsenal, and was even after its defeat, they remained ubiquitous to the planet Sirtha Prime.

The trio of machines stood between his men and the Ambassadors, and any attempt to fly past these engines of war would be futile and suicidal. This he knew from experience.

As Marcus looked on, he saw more Sirthon anti-tank teams emerge alongside the War Mechs, lifting even more mass-driver rocket launchers. Meanwhile, the mechs themselves, armed with a rotary blaster cannon on one hand and a repeating autocannon on the other, raised their weapons and took aim.

"Fall back! Get to cover!" Marcus yelled into the comms just before a deafening deluge of gunfire drowned out his voice. Jetting backwards with his armour's thrusters, Major Winter twisted about and flew at full speed away from the War Mechs. Looking ahead, he saw most of his troops do just as he did, pulling back and taking cover in alleyways and behind buildings. The Xan-Klar Knights did much the same, leaping out of the line of fire, the rockets that had locked onto them smashing into buildings and detonating in a shower of rubble and smoke.

Sadly, not everyone made it. Some of the Sirthon projectiles had hit Marcus' men. A few of them had their armour torn apart by heavy gunfire before they were brutally slaughtered, while eithers were instantly blown to pieces by rockets.

Wyvern power armour was strong, but not invincible. Every death brought screams of agony to the air, a city street transformed into a warzone within a matter of minutes.

Marcus saw this as he flew for cover himself, but every death affected him. Every time one of his troops died, every time their screams filled his ears, he felt a piece of himself torn out. Someone he knew, someone who trusted him to lead them and keep them alive, killed. Marcus had made a mistake, and it was they who paid the price for it.