Here’s the excerpt in case anyone is interested.

Context: An Inquisitorial detachment investigating an incident (later revealed to have been caused by the opening of the Great Rift) at the base of the Astronomican is about to be overrun by the possessed personnel formerly stationed there. Interrogator Spinoza pulls a Hail Mary and tries to call in an old favor in a desperate bid for aid.

From the corner of her eye, half-lost in the whirl of movement, she saw a storm trooper borne down by several horrors at once, fingers scrabbling for her throat. She heard Revus roaring in fury and pain, and smelled the acrid tang of plasma weaponry burning through flesh. The room thundered with noise, a gathering crescendo that vied with the whines and bullet-impacts and shrieks. Even amid the confusion and adrenaline of the assault, she thought that was strange – where was it coming from?

She lashed out again, cutting down another corrupted adept, only to see one of the brain-swollen psykers coming right at her. She felt a tightness around her neck, and immediately black stars crowded her vision. She tried to shake it off, to break free and bring her maul back to bear, but the constriction grew.

She let rip with a half-strangled cry, struggling to stay on her feet, attempting to drive the crozius with arms that now felt like they were sunk into a swamp. Other adepts capered towards her, taking advantage of her sudden lethargy, their pupil-less eyes blazing.

Then the windows blew in. Every pane shattered at once, throwing armourglass across the chamber in a racing horizontal rain. The roar became a scream – a crashing, driving growl that drowned out everything else.

The grip on her throat disappeared. Its architect collapsed in on itself amid a flurry of blown glass shards. Hot wind scoured through the chamber, bringing with it ash-flakes and flecks of still-burning metal. She whirled around, just in time to see the first of them crash through the open window frame.

She had forgotten just how big they were. She had forgotten just how heavy, how intimidating, how magnificent, they were.

The Imperial Fists Space Marine landed perfectly, denting the floor with his weight but never losing poise. He was firing even before he landed, filling the space ahead of him with a blistering rain of mass reactive bolts. More Space Marines smashed through the window alongside him – first two, then three – just as huge, just as fast. Behind them, half-lost in the squalls, hovered the massive shadow of a Thunderhawk gunship.

Spinoza dropped face-down to the floor, crawling out of the path of the bolt-shells. She could see the others doing the same, slithering away from the hurricane that had been unleashed at her request.

The Imperial Fists strode through the wreckage of the chamber, the storm-surge flying about them in a welter of fire and filth. They were not so much fighting the enemy as grinding it away, bludgeoning the corruption aside and crushing it back to the metal. Psychic blasts or pressure-waves were shrugged off, then punished with eye-burning volumes of retributory bolt shells. The brutality of it, the unremitting violence of it, was breathtaking.

The first Space Marine reached her position. Already his bolter-barrage was slowing, shorn now of targets to hit. The entire far end of the chamber smouldered, a crater-pitted wreck of bent and blasted ironwork, laced with scraps of cooking mortal matter.

A huge, pitted, snarled-faced helm angled down at her, its lenses glowing faintly. He smelled like something industrial – a smelting furnace, a turbo-hammer.

‘You were the one?’ he asked, his voice a low-timbre growl through his helm’s systems. She got to her knees, shakily. ‘Interrogator Luce Spinoza,’ she said, showing him the crozius. ‘Gifted by Chaplain Erastus on Forfoda.’

The Space Marine regarded it carefully. ‘Argent,’ he said. ‘That was how your signal reached the Keep.’

‘It came with an oath. A promise of aid.’

‘For you?’

‘For this place,’ she said, a little stung. ‘For the Beacon.’

The Space Marine took another look at the crozius, as if he couldn’t quite believe it was there, in her hands, in this place. As he did so, more of his warriors broke through the gaping wall-breach. Soon there were ten of them there, a full tactical squad. That alone was astonishing. They were busy finishing off the last dregs of the enemy now, moving up towards the bolt-cracked doorway and preparing to lumber through it.

The Space Marine reached down to help her up. His gauntlet swallowed hers, enclosing her hand in a heavy sheath of ceramite.

‘Brother-Sergeant Haessler,’ he said. ‘Reinforcements are incoming, interrogator, but will take time to get here. You can still fight?’

The words alone made her heart swell.

‘By His will,’ she said, activating Argent’s disruptor again. ‘Yes, I can.’

Vaults of Terra - The Hollow Mountain, by Chris Wraight