Chapter Seven

	Darren Atongwë stared at the report on his desk in despair.  “Are you serious?  Looted Glasian guns?”

	“Yes, Lord,” one of his aides said nervously.  “The scout teams were quite clear on this.”

	Atongwë rose unsteadily to his feet.  “Thank you.  You are dismissed.”

	The aide blinked.  “Er, Lord,” he started.

	“OUT!” Atongwë roared.  The aides scampered out, and Atongwë was alone.

	He slowly tottered to one window and stared out it, unmoving.  He had a million thoughts in his head.  He was terrified, remorseful, exhausted, a bit hungry, embarrassed.  There was simply no way the Inquisition would let him live after this.  Why wait?

	He wondered if Halwart would be able to protect the world without him.  He could hardly do a worse job than Atongwë had!  Would the Blue Daggers send more help?  Had they won in Septiim?  Would-


	Mimic chambered a new round out of sheer habit, although he had known the first would have done the job the second he fired it.  Pieces of Darren Atongwë now decorated a light fixture in his office.  Mimic could see him through the hole he had just blasted in the man’s office window.  One Exitus Overpressure slug from an awning on a rooftop three miles away, that was all it had taken.

	Mimic was no psyker, but he guessed that the Subsector Overlord had seen it coming.  His execution, anyway, not the bullet.  He had just stood there, staring sadly out the window, not even trying to maintain any sort of security.  He had even sent his bodyguards and nephew away that morning.

	Well, that just meant less collateral damage.  Mimic rose to his feet and grabbed his kitbag.  Time to go back to shooting Orks from a range that made retaliation impossible.  There were days he enjoyed his work.  Mimic slid down the gutter drain to the next rooftop in line on the block, already focused on his next task: killing Big Chief Squiggothrider.


Chapter Eight


	The command chamber of the Watch Fortress Dascomb rang with every conceivable alert message as a fleet of eleven hundred contacts closed in on it.  A Ramilies was no pushover, especially one with extensive defensive combat upgrades like Dascomb, but Domack could count as well as any other Space Marine.  If they had been eleven hundred Cobras, it would still be too many.  If it had been eleven hundred ore haulers, it would have been too many.

	Lerica let out a slow breath.  “Well.  Battle stations, for what it’s worth?”  Somebody overheard her, as the proximity alarm gave way to a shrieking battle klaxon.

	Domack narrowed his eyes at one of the sensor screens displaying the profiles of the newcomer ships.  “The vessel in the middle… I do not recognize it.”

	“Does Watch Fortress Dascomb not have one of the largest archives of ship profiles in the galaxy?” Lerica asked.

	“It does, and I still do not recognize it.”  Domack leaned over one of his consoles and began calling up ship image capture dataspirits.  After a few moments of churning, it produced one result.

	Lerica blinked.  “That… that is a Gloriana Battleship?”

	Domack sighed heavily.  “So it is.  There are only six known to still exist in the galaxy: the Conqueror, Endurance, Vengeful Spirit, Lex Talonis, Eternal Crusade, and the Harbinger of Doom.”  He gestured to the sensor screens.  “This looks somewhat larger than something either the Nemesis or Black Templar Chapters can muster,” he said drily.

	Lerica crossed her arms over her chest.  “Then… Abbadon?  Typhus?”

	“I do not believe Abbadon would bother flying all the way here if he could park a fleet like that over Terra instead,” Domack said.  He leaned closer to the sensor feed screens and stared intently.  The ship hull analyzer spirit was still doing its work in the background, and popped up new ship classifications as they watched.  “Hmm.  Sword Frigates are the most common class in the flotilla.  Then Cobras, then Lunas, then Gothic.  Then Strike Cruisers?”  He leaned back in surprise as Lerica came to the same conclusion as he.  “Are those… Imperial ships?” he demanded.  “There is no fleet in Imperial space that large!”

	The vox panel operator surged to his feet.  “Lord Domack!  We have a maximum priority message from the inbound ships!” he all but shouted over the alerts.  The Operations officer discreetly lowered the volume of the alarms as Domack reached for the vox-cup.

	“Attention, Watch Fortress Dascomb, respond at once,” an authoritatiive voice commanded.  “This is Exigent Task Fleet Indomitus, hailing Watch Fortress Dascomb.  Respond.”

	Domack glanced at Lerica and pressed the button on the vox cup.  “This is Watch Commander Domack of the Imperial Fists, resident commander of the Watch Fortress Dascomb.  We hear you.  State your purpose.”

	As he spoke, a Techmarine stepped into his line of view with a data slate in writing mode.  On it, the Techmarine had written ‘There will be a two-minute delay while the signal travels to them.  All but two of their IFFs are current Imperial.’

	The hails continued for two more minutes of tense waiting as the message sped to them, then two more minutes as the reply made its way back.  Just as Domack was growing impatient, the constant demands for reply went quiet.  A few more minutes passed, then a new voice responded.  “Lord Commander Domack, this is Tribune Primus Maldovar Colquan.”  Domack and Lerica felt the floor drop out from beneath their feet as they both recognized the rank of an Adept Custodian.  The voice continued.  “By direct order of Lord Commander of the Imperium and Lord Regent Imperium Roboute Guilliman, stand down your defenses and prepare to receive His Lordship for conference.  Acknowledge.”

	Domack pressed the button on the cup again.  “As ordered, Custodian.  We shall make ready a berth for His Lordship.  What vessel shall he use, that we may choose the correct dock?”  As soon as he released the button, he waved the Operations officer to action, but he was already frantically recalling the Defense Monitors he had scrambled, as if it would have made a difference.”

	While they awaited a response, Lerica quickly departed for the docking levels, while Domack quickly took stock of his options.  A Primarch?  The Primarch?  On his Fortress, no less!  He felt an incongruous urge to fidget as he awaited the Custodes’ reply.

	When four minutes had passed, the message returned.  “We shall arrive via the Stormbird Konor’s Wisdom, Watch Fortress.”

	Domack snapped his armored fingers, and the Techmarine departed at once.  “Acknowledged, with my welcome, honored Custodian.  We shall prepare Berth Two in Dock Fourteen on the double.”

	Four agonizing minutes later, the sensor web reported that the vast fleet was moving.  “Naturally, Watch Fortress.  Estimated time of arrival, three hours.  Macragge’s Honor out.”

	Domack added the ship to his hull profile registry and replied.  “Duly noted, Triune.  We await your arrival.  Dascomb out.”


	Lord Arden wiped a bit of Glasian bone off his pauldron and withdrew his Power Bastard from the guts of the one behind it.  The Lord Chapter Master felt better than he had since the Space Hulk had arrived.  The Glasians were finally breaking.

	He had not enjoyed the extra delay in having to kill each target twice.  His Marines had acted as the ultimate force multiplier for the Imperial Guard and PDF in the warzone, slashing across the Glasian numbers and pinning them for the mortal soldiery to slaughter.  The rising dead attacked the Glasians as readily as the people, however, so it had not been as bad as he had feared it would.

	That phrase described the entire campaign, in truth.  The Sixth Migration had been harder to head off.  Then, the Sixth Migration had spread its forces out over far fewer worlds.  Hapster had had more xenos attack it than Septiim had this time.

	Not that things had gone perfectly.  Arden glared at the sky behind his helmet.  The Warp Storm was still there.  If anything, it was growing larger.  He sighed and looked around.  His Battle Brothers had finished souring the latest building of aliens.  A few PDF troopers and a medic from the local surface navy jogged past, pistols out, ready to secure the rooftops.

	So it was going.  The Glasians had landed almost two hundred thousand troops here, another hundred thousand outside the city, another hundred fifteen thousand on the mountains nearby, and another eighty thousand in the equatorial shipyards to the southwest.  With the crippling of the enemy Control Cylinder overhead, the enemies left aboard the stricken giant were now scrambling off, pouring down the surface in total panic and confusion.

	That didn’t mean their numbers were inconsequential.  Their drops had actually slowed slightly before the Traverse Core’s destruction, but now other ships in orbit were landing their own forces.  Perhaps they were bowing to the inevitable, and simply striking at the innocents of the Septiim system out pure, alien spite.

	Arden could understand that.  Their formation had been chillingly powerful, but it had also depended on the immense firepower of a Control Cylinder at its heart.  Now that the Cylinder was a paperweight, their formation essentially had a giant hole in the middle.  Bad enough in a surface engagement, lethal in a three-dimensional space battle.

	The Chapter Master reloaded his combi-pistol and edged up next to a window, looking for another target for his Command Squad.  None caught his eyes.  He opened a vox link with a flick of his eyes.  “This is Arden.  Building secure.  Requesting new targets.  Over.”

	A voice replied on the command override channel.  “Lord, this is Master Moand.  There is a landed Glasian transport ship, roughly one hundred sixty yard keel, in a parking lot north of your position.  They are withstanding all PDF efforts to breach and destroy with a set of mounted rotary cannons.  Several enemy savior pods from the Cylinder are landing nearby.  PDF troops report being overrun soon.  Over.”

	“Affirmitive.  On it.  Arden out.”  The Chapter Master turned to the blue and gold-clad master killers that accompanied him.  Not a one had let him step out of sight since the teleporter accident had separated him from them and stranded him in the forests of Septiim Primus, and now they would accompany him into whatever came.  “Brothers.  The Glasians that rain from above are landing nearby, reinforcing a beachhead.  We shall relieve the PDF there.”

	“As ordered, Master,” one of the Honor Guard said.  He tapped the custom stock of his combi-bolter and led the group out into the loading dock, sweeping every corner and shadow for threats.

	Arden followed, pistol at the ready.  The Honor Guard of the Blue Daggers never used Terminator armor unless forced into a boarding action, preferring the various late-series conventional Power Armor models.  Each had artificed their armor above the baseline standard in some way.  Such was the hallmark of the Blue Daggers: stuck out on the fringes of Imperial space, they took what they were given and made it better.

	A pair of Rhinos rumbled past as the Honor Guard emerged from the building, still advancing in urban defense formation.  Both came to a halt next to a large hotel building, and two squads of Daggers from the Fourth and Fifth Companies rushed out.  The Rhinos were moving again before the Daggers had even all hit the ground, as they should.  Overhead, a flight of Storm Ravens chased a lumbering Glasian transport, daubed with paint in runes that hurt his eyes.

	Arden watched as four PDF squads in their Chimaeras rolled up behind the Daggers and spilled out, following the Space Marines in to secure the building.  The whole structure erupted in muffled gunfire and alien screaming.

	No, Arden thought to himself, this situation was not ideal, nor did he have as many conditions under his control as he wanted, but that was war in a nutshell.  This, the haze and tension of urban war, this was what his Chapter was built for.  They were fighting aliens on their home ground with immense support from the PDF and a mighty fleet overhead.  This was the kind of war into which he knew he could throw his Chapter in confidence.

	Arden hefted his pistol and jogged to the next piece of cover.  A sniper bullet flattened against the helm of one of his honor guards, who whipped his combi-bolter up and fired a grenade into the darkened window from which the flash had shone before the echoes faded of the impact noise.  The room exploded, and a broken Glasian corkscrew rifle clattered out onto the ground at their feet.

	“That one was uncharacteristically patient,” the Honor Guard remarked.  “I didn’t sense any movement in there until he trained the gun on me.”

	“Birds are getting desperate,” another suggested.

	“Can the chatter.”  The Chapter Flag Ensign, Tomas Coleville, said.  He wasn’t fool enough to try to wear the flag indoors, of course, but now that they were inside again, he had clipped it back up on his backpack.  The sight of the Chapter’s colors heartened all the Daggers who could see it.  “Beware enemy armor.  Their tanks are damnably quiet.”

	The sounds of mortar fire and the distinct double buzz of a rotary cannon reached their ears as they approached the parking lot.  The Honor Guard pointman took a quick look around a corner and held up a fist.  “There the bastards are.  They’ve dragged masonry up to form a barricade.  They have the rotary cannons, two of them, on tripods stuck in the masonry.  Looks like they have a few portable Ruin Guns and a mortar of their own.”

	A few Marines in the back of the formation looked up as shadows crossed over them.  It was growing quite dark now; the only lights they could see overhead were flares and the occasional streetlight, plus the engines of a few fighters.  However, the engines of two descending savior pods in Glasian purple cast harsh glows over every surface nearby.

	“Estimated twenty seconds before those land,” Arden said curtly.

	“Roger.  Recommended approach: behind that,” the pointman said, jerking an armored thumb at a row of concrete dividers down a nearby road.  They were nearly four feet high, just high enough for a squad to lie prone in cover even with their Power Armor.

	“Agreed.  Move out,” Arden said.  He was the first one over, sweeping the road for targets.  The Honor Guard advanced quickly towards the landing pods.  The first one touched down not fifteen feet away when the Guard came to a halt.  The point man dropped to one knee and sighed the main hatch while Arden and the other five Daggers quickly dropped into cover.

	The hatch slowly started swinging open on the first pod as the second landed.  The point man let the hatch open only a few inches before moving.  He fired a frag grenade from his combi-attachment into the pod, and a jet of flame belched out of the crack, propelling a cloud of Glasian organs and feathers.