Blue Daggers 2

In The Grim Dark Future
Unexpected Complications

	The Septiim system was ablaze.  Glasian ships darted back and forth across the atmospheres of two planets, firing their corkscrew bullets and plasma streamers at their Imperial counterparts.  On Septiim Secundus, hordes of alien hovertanks and troop transports raced over low walls and rubble, disgorging howling monsters from their innards.  On Septiim Primus, whole fleets of transports and fighters crisscrossed the cities and forests, following inscrutable patterns.

	Its defenders reaped a tally of alien flesh and metal with their anti-air weapons, but there seemed to be no end to the Chaos-tainted filth.  Tens of thousands of Guardsmen, millions of PDF, and half the Blue Daggers Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes had taken to the field and dug in their heels.

	Lord Chapter Master Ranult Arden had other concerns.  He held a vox-caster cup in his hand and listened to the bestial roar from the tiny speaker.

	“WAAAGH!

	Arden’s other hand twitched, once.  None of the Guardsmen in the loose circle around him noticed, though all the Marines did.  “I see,” he said darkly.  “Orks.”

	“An entire Hulk full of them,” his third in command, Lord Gwinnet Eiger, said over the vox.  “The Hulk is broadcasting nonsense in Orkish.”

	The old Blue Dagger gritted his teeth.  An Ork Space Hulk, on top of the Glasian Centennial Migration?  “How long before the Hulk gets close enough to land anything on the planets of the system?” he asked flatly.

	“Seven months,” Eiger said, surprising Arden.

	“The Hulk is moving that slowly?” Arden asked.  “I was under the impression it was moving far faster.”

	“It isn’t, Lord.  It’s moving in the wake of the Glasian Cylinder,” Eiger told him.  “It may have been drawn through the Immaterium in the wake of the Warp taint in the minds of the Glasians.”

	Arden closed his eyes.  “And our promised reinforcements?”

	“No sign.”

	Fire Drake Sergeant Ly’tren of the Salamanders hefted his damaged multi-melta and stared up at the sky.  The local PDF had managed to clear the eight Glasian transports from the air, with help from the newly arrived company of Blue Daggers.  The savage Glasians had put up a ferocious if undirected attack, and the new arrivals weren’t exhausted by hours of life or death battle before.  The Deathwatch gunship was on its way back to its home frigate, the Imperium Avowed, to resupply.

	Chaplain Gregorius of the Dark Angels – though he was now in his nineteenth year on the Long Vigil – scowled at the vox-caster’s antenna as if it were at fault for the Ork arrivals.  “The Imperial Navy and Inquisition have more ships on the way,” he said curtly.  “The Orks are not insurmountable.”

	Arden fixed the younger Chaplain with his frigid stare.  “And does this relief force contain a Hulkbreaker unit?  If not, we have no means of stopping the Orks.”

	Wolf Scout Holgein shouldered his massive rifle and looked over his Kill-team.  “Brothers, let us worry about distant problems when the one overrunning us is solved,” he put in.  His deep, gravelly voice was easy to hear over the sound of the fires and aircraft overhead.  “Lord Arden, what is the status of the Colony Cylinder?”

	“Lord Eiger?” Arden asked the vox cup.

	“Entering a holding pattern in the orbit of Septiim Secundus,” Eiger replied at once.  “We are detecting no further launches.  No craft it has deployed is returning, however.”

	Arden frowned.  The Glasians were all but defined by their inability to behave with self-preservation instincts.  It was the first thing Tzeentch burned out of them.  “And its escorts?”

	A long pause.  Holgein wrinkled his nose as the smell of burning Chaos-tainted flesh wafted past him.  The Septiimi Conservator Guardsmen were hosing down a pile of corpses with napalm.  “Shifting to a close-in defensive pattern,” Eiger finally replied.

	Lord Covum, his Chief Librarian, leaned forward, tapping his temple in pain.  “Lord… Arden, a maximum-priority Astropathic message is arriving,” he said with some effort.  “I am not attuned to it.”

	Further conversation halted when the strip of concrete beside the assembled Marines exploded, scattering dust and debris over the group.  Arden quickly handed the vox-cup back to the radioman, who promptly flung himself beside an overturned luggage cart.

	Arden sighted an incoming Glasian fighter, spewing their corkscrew rockets from ports on either side of the cockpit.  He started to leap out of the way when a hailstorm of heavy bolts slammed into the low-flying aircraft, and it crumpled.  Arden shielded his eyes with one hand as the airframe crumpled around the rapid impacts.  The bolts burrowed into the metal curves of the alien ship and detonated, scattering burning shrapnel around.  The engines shorted, and the ungainly ship slammed into a blessedly bare tarmac, where it promptly exploded.

	Brother Calrus of the Marines Malevolent grinned to himself and lowered his heavy bolter.  That had been quite satisfying.  He tapped his helm to the Chapter Master and returned to watching the skies.

	“How did that get so close?” Arden rumbled once the clatter of falling debris ended.

	“Sir!” one of the Guards taking cover behind the luggage cart yelled.  “Message from the Hydra battery!  There’s a wave of fighters inbound from the north!  Over a hundred!”

	“And how did this one get past them?” Arden asked coldly.

	“It de-orbited overhead!”

	Brother-Apothecary Asvar looked up.  “The orbital battle is changing quickly,” he observed.  The other Marines looked up too, but only his eyes could see through the haze well enough to pick out individual ships.  “Several Glasian ships are aflame, and their launches are heading here.  Shuttles… a few escape pods… perhaps a few more fighters after that one.”

	“Sir!  The enemy wing numbers one hundred fifty seven!” the Guardsman said urgently.  “Estimated time of arrival, eighty four seconds!”

	“Divert every AA weapon we have to intercept and destroy!” Arden snapped.  “Get all surviving troops indoors if they can’t contribute!”

	“We have over ten thousand men on the tarmacs and launch pads alone!” the Guardsman replied.  Calrus bared his teeth at the sight of a mere mortal talking back to an Astartes officer, but Arden spoke first.

	“Then get them to cover!  What do you drill for?  Las weapons don’t suffer bullet drop!” Arden retorted.

	“Yes sir!” the Guardsman said at once, and began urgently relaying officers.

	“We’re not here to hold their hands,” Calrus muttered.  “They’re ablative armor for the real soldiers.”

	“Zip it, Malevolent,” one of the still-helmed Daggers beside him riposted instantly, surprising him.  “This is our home and our Guardsmen defend it, the same as we.”

	“If they defended it the same as we do, Astartes would be superfluous,” Calrus shot back.

	“Kill-team!” Gregorius barked.  “Get to cover at once!”

	Wolf Scout Holgein leaped back up into a roost in a crushed stone tower beside the tarmac the group had assembled upon, while the other five Marines ceased their bickering and followed Arden’s Command Squad into the lee of a large starport building.  The last of them had barely reached the shadow of the structure – some kind of gantry, if Ly’tren was any judge – when the first Hydras opened fire.  Several Imperial fighters of three different models joined in the fusillade, and for ten, fifteen, twenty long seconds, no Dagger saw the enemy.

	Abruptly, one of the Hydras exploded, and its killer raced out of its shadow.  An ugly thing of soft curves and plastic, the once-intimidating Glasian fighter was now a warped, Chaos-touched chunk of blasphemy against the Machine God.  Where once it had normal airfoils and wing surfaces, it now had pulsing, living things, not quite flesh, but clearly no longer metal.  Its Ruin Guns were still glowing hot from killing the Hydra.

	A missile streaked up from below the aircraft, followed immediately by seven more from Guardsmen on the rooftop of the control tower.  Norman Carache, Master of the Devastators and a member of the Council of Masters, watched with disapproval as five missiles slammed into the aircraft, and the other three went soaring off into the air.  He would have voiced his disapproval, but mortal men had to be forgiven for missing with their MANPADS.  They were far more primitive than his Astartes missile launchers, after all, and the aircraft had been moving rather fast.

	He didn’t turn around as the three remaining Devastator squads in the system opened fire as one, sending a veritable sheet of bolter shells and missiles into the thick of the Glasian swarm.  He just leveled his own heavy bolter and held the trigger down.

	The Glasian fighter swarm scattered, followed by cones of fire from the surface guns.  A Glasian bomber broke free of the cloud of debris and ships, angling directly for the largest hanger.

	Carache’s eyes widened.  The aircraft was a mere few meters over the perimeter fences.  There was no way it could release its payload and be able to pull up… so it simply wouldn’t.  “All guns, fire upon the bomber!” he snapped.  His native Terran accent showed through his Septiimi drawl in times of stress.  A few lascannon blasts lit up its hull, while a few more tore through the air in front of it, but it was too late.  The bomber angled down and tore through the roof.

	The entire starport seemed to list as the bomber detonated.  The contents of the hanger were nothing more than civilian aircraft, but they were just as destructible as any other.  The Septiimi weren’t foolish enough to keep inactive aircraft fueled, but the hangar walls kept the blast contained, resulting in a towering mushroom cloud that ripped the few remaining rafters aside and sent debris spiraling high into the sky.  Sick, blue-tinged waves of plasma fire blasted out the windows as the intense heat melted the walls and hangar gates aside.  Carache winced as several Guardsmen squads that had taken shelter in the building simply disintegrated.


	Cesper Clerc, the Chapter Champion, was immobile.  An Apothecary hunched over him with probes and needles, trying to prevent the venerable Dagger from dying, but it was hard going.  He was in a Sus-An Membrane coma, and would remain that way until he had been repaired.  Porter Chandline, another of the Masters of the Chapter, crouched on one knee, cradling his ruined left hand.  A surgeon may well have been able to reconstruct it, but the flechette had nearly ripped his wrist off, and the storm bolter on the Terminator joint had fouled beyond repair.  He had a plasma pistol in his free hand, and he was covering the Apothecary as best he could.  He saw the colossal fireball erupt from the roof of the hanger and sighed through his teeth.  “Damn it,” he growled softly.  “That’s going to make things one hell of a lot harder…”

	Black-armored boots landed beside him, and he started.  Creeping up on an Astartes was no mean feat.  He looked up to see a Marine he didn’t recognize in the black and silver of the Deathwatch and the shoulder insignia of the White Scars moving in near-silence.  He had a large array of mechadendrites on his back – a Techmarine, then.  He had a damaged-looking combi-plasma bolt rifle in his hands, and a small bolt pistol affixed to one mechadendrite.

	“Blue Dagger,” he said tonelessly.  “Are you wounded as well?”

	Chandline wordlessly showed him his wrist.  “Noted,” Unskul Jergal said.  “Another Apothecary is on the way.”  He pivoted one shoulder and sent a bolt through the skull of a Glasian infantryman who had broken free of the shrinking cordon around their beachhead.  “Their numbers drop precipitously,” he observed.  “Their airstrike arrived late.  Had they timed it better, when their numbers on the ground were at their highest, they may have driven us out of the east end of the port.”  It was more words than any of his Kill-team mates would have ever heard him say.  In his exhaustion, his Techbrother’s stoicism faded, and his older verbosity peeked through.

	Chandline, of course, did not know that, so he simply nodded.  “I concur.  Their behavior is as chaotic as ever.”  He eased back against the destroyed Praetor Assault Launcher beside which the three of them had taken shelter when Clerc had taken his hit.  “Porter Chandline, Master of Veterans.  How long have you Deathwatch Brothers been here?”

	“An hour, forty seven minutes,” Jergal said at once.  “We are tasked with the Lady Inquisitrix Cloudburst with ensuring that the system’s Glasian invaders have their leadership destroyed.”

	Chandline held back a derisive snort.  “Very well.  Your numbers?”

	“Six Kill-brothers, plus a few units that have not yet arrived,” Jergal said.  He crouched beside Chandline.  “I cannot speak for the wrist, but the storm bolter is not reparable,” he said.  He began to say more, then abruptly snapped his rifle up to his shoulder and squeezed both triggers.  Chandline did the same with his pistol as something huge and blue followed the first Glasian out of the smoke.

	A great, shambling monster of flesh and feather lurched towards them at impossible speed.  Jergal’s face grew taut behind the mask as he recognized it as another Flesh Stealer.  Gregorius and he had barely stopped one, and it had taken a Thunder Hammer blow to the spine to put finally it down.  He and Chandline couldn’t handle it by themselves.

	“This is Jergal; I need immediate assistance at my location!  Flesh Stealer!” he said into the vox.  His secondary heart and enhanced hormone regulator kicked into overdrive as the monster drew closer, ignoring the storm of shots impacting its body and burning holes in its pulsing sacs.

	“Acknowledged,” a voice said, but Jergal didn’t have time to identify it before the monster was upon him.

	Jergal immediately threw himself forward, directly past the monster, dragging the white-hot tip of his plasma combi-attachment across its flank as he did so.  The Flesh Stealer hadn’t anticipated it, and staggered, bellowing incoherently.  The White Scar rolled to his feet and shot it in the knee, sending it down, but it was back up immediately on its ruined stub.

	Chandline’s throat tightened.  He had never seen such a thing in previous waves of Glasians, merely heard them described.  He hefted his pistol again and fired, to no noticeable effect.

	Jergal ducked a meaty claw and fired a single bolt into the daemonhost’s midsection, but he may as well have been firing spitballs for the gains he was earning.  He opened his mouth to repeat his call for help when something blue and lightning fast slammed into the monster from the side.

	Master of Arms Gallus Forrent, the premier hand-to-hand combatant in the Chapter and possibly the sector, found the monster to be almost painfully slow.  His unique punch shield folded down over his fingers as he swung the grip of his left hand in against the beast’s flank.  As soon as the impact registered in the punch shield’s circuitry, it unfolded, allowing him to sweep the gladius he had gripped in the same hand to cut laterally across the dented, bone-hard feather.  His right hand wielded a Power Sword with a grace that defied its five-foot length.  He hewed an arm off, slicing deep into tainted meat.  With an eye blink, his belt’s magnetic clamps reversed along one segment, launching a combat knife up into the air between him and his target.  For a bare instant, it hung there at the top of its arc, but Forrent released the gladius for the moment he needed to palm-strike the knife on the pommel, driving it over two feet into the monster’s sternum.  The gladius clapped back into his grip and ripped a vertical line in the Flesh Stealer, which scattered ichor everywhere as it lurched away.

	Jergal watched, stunned.  He felt like he was in the way.  Gregorius had been all brute strikes and speed, but this new Marine was reflexes and sheer timing… he had never seen the like.  Forrent pivoted on one foot like a dancer, despite the nine hundred pounds of armor and gear he was wearing, and took the beast’s head clean off as it staggered under the relentless assault.  Unlike Gregorius, however, Forrent knew not to let it regenerate.  He hurtled the gladius high up in the air and grabbed the Power Sword in both hands, then rotated it between his palms so the blade aimed straight down.  “DIE!” Forrent roared with a voice like a bag of gravel in a blender, and rammed the blade straight through its heart.

	The Flesh Stealer exploded, casting hundreds of bits of ichor across the battlefield.  Forrent staggered back, staring at the steaming pile of guts, then effortlessly caught the gladius on the way down, wiping it clean on a corner of his tabard.  “Filth,” he growled to nobody.

	Jergal opened his vox.  “Request cancelled,” he said.  “The locals have this in hand.”

Aftermath


	The air was still crackling with ozone in the Teleportorium, fully six minutes after the last of the Terminators had returned.  The forty Dagger Terminators left in the Septiim system, accompanied by Ly’tren and Arden with his Teleport Homer, had teleported directly back to the Gargantuan after the last dregs of the Glasian invasion force were gone from the starport.  Thunderhawks had instead flown the casualties to a Daggers outpost on the surface.  Shuttles and lifters ferried the Marines without Teleporters to the orbital station that carried the mauled Sharp Edge.

	Arden stomped down the corridor that led from the teleport hub to the garrison.  Ly’tren heard the telltale sounds of autocannons and flamers spooling down behind false wall panels and took note.  The Daggers took no chances with the Warp.

	The Lord Chapter Master was in no shape to be welcoming guests.  Fire filled his skin as his genhanced metabolism healed his hundred small wounds.  The procession of armored warriors behind him ranged from unhurt to ravaged.  The Master of the Apothecarion, Embri Koell, had not accompanied them, despite his Terminator Suit possessing a Homer.  He had accompanied the wounded instead.

	Brilliant lights drove shadows out of the corners, and concealed electronic scanners and auspexes wired into the walls.  Ly’tren peaked an eyebrow behind his mask as he spotted a six-barrel rotary assault cannon tucked into the ceiling, hidden by the dark spots between two floodlights.  Three Blue Daggers in Reserve Companies colors with combi-meltas at the ready took a moment to nod to their Lord, before returning their aim down the corridor.  As soon as the last of the Marines emerged from the corridor, a two-foot block of ceramite settled from the ceiling above.

	“Any activity in the Hulk?” Arden asked wearily.

	A Techpriest drew up beside him as they walked through the station together.  “Lord, the Hulk is still ballistic,” she said quickly.  “The files we have here identify it as the Forlorn Sight, last observed in the Oromet system, in M41.467.  No known passengers at that time, but the Inquisitorial conclave of Cloudburst did not manage to dispatch boarders.”

	“And the Chapter did not exist yet,” Arden sighed, “so, of course, we couldn’t do it.”

	“Correct, Lord,” the Techpriest said.  “We all await your orders.”

	“Does this pile of scrap have any Roks?” Arden asked.  Those were the asteroid chunks Orks used to get around, lacking shuttles.  Usually, they served as landing platforms, and could be outfitted with retro-rockets and atmosphere bubbles to allow them to be used as mobile fortresses in space and land battles.

	“Only a few that can be seen at such range, your Lordship… but we have identified one of the ships in the Hulk aggregate as the Greenpath, unfortunately,” the Techpriest said flatly.  “That is a Heresy-era warship, keel displacement of eight kilometers.  It is a carrier.”

	Arden stopped dead and turned to face the Techpriest with lines of ruddy anger appearing under the grime and weariness of his last few days.  “A carrier?” he demanded.

	“Unfortunately,” the Techpriest repeated.  “There is no sign that the hold carries Roks.”

	“If they have a carrier, they won’t have Roks,” Arden bit off.  “They’ll have Emperor-damned shuttles.  Hundreds, able to carry whole armies of Orks.”  He resumed stomping off towards the Apothecarion as individual Terminators peeled towards their own destinations.  “And we still have the Glasians to deal with, of course,” he added bitterly.  “What is the status of the other systems the monsters have hit?” he asked the air.

	“Holding with remarkable vigor and determination,” Ly’tren put in.  “We got an Astropathic message from Delving immediately before arrival.”

	“Good.”  Arden entered the Apothecarion and turned to face Ly’tren.  “Brother-Sergeant Ly’tren, thank you, but I must ask that you see to your Kill-team,” he said bluntly.  “Unless you are so badly hurt that you need the direct aid of our medicae?”

	“No, I’m already healing,” Ly’tren said.  “However, I have accompanied you for a reason, Lord Chapter Master.”

	“That being?”

	“The presence of the Orks, however troubling, is not our primary concern,” Ly’tren said carefully.  “Yes, they are a colossal problem, there is no mistaking that, but our orders from the Lady Inquisitrix are to ensure that the Glasians do not overrun your system.  Kill-team Steadfast must prioritize the destruction of the Colony Cylinder.”

	“You don’t say,” Arden said flatly.

	“Which is why my Kill-team can, at the behest of myself and Chaplain Gregorius, make ourselves available for an assault against the Cylinder,” Ly’tren said.

	Arden squinted through days of exhaustion.  “Duly noted, Deathwatch Brother.  Now, if you will excuse me?”

	“Of course.  Emperor be with you,” Ly’tren said, bowing his head as much as the Terminator suit allowed.


	The Imperium Avowed swung through the equatorial orbit of Septiim Primus at sixty times the speed of sound, firing its Bombardment Cannons at any Glasian that came too close.  The crippled Sharp Edge, the flagship and sole Battle Barge of the Blue Daggers, was long since sealed in the dry-dock on the primary orbital platform below.  Swarms of servitors and Techpriests scrambled over it, sealing deck plates and hull blocks into place.

	On the surface of the platform, its many laser batteries fired off at the few remaining Glasian ships nearby.  The vessels of the main fleets in the system, consisting of the Navy, SDF, and Daggers, flew towards the moon in the trail of the attack ships.  The Cylinder itself had slowed to a halt some many hundreds of thousands of miles from the inner orbits, and hung in space just beyond the orbit of Secundus.

	Chaplain Gregorius stood at the heat-lock of the small forge room of the Imperium Avowed, watching Ly’tren go to work.  He and Tech-brother Jergal were repairing the damaged equipment of Kill-team Steadfast, and were doing so with a speed and efficiency that impressed him.  He had seen Iron Priests and Iron Fathers of the Wolves and Iron Hands before, and even seen them work miracles of technology and armory, but Ly’tren was clearly a master of the simple, pragmatic ways of metal, and his work was devoid of hesitation or ritual.

	Jergal was different.  The Scars’ homeworld accommodated little proper mining, so nearly all of their complex wargear was imported.  Instead, they focused their crafting expertise into the small details of their work, with embossings and designs.  As a Techmarine, of course, Jergal was a master of technotheology and crafting, far beyond what would be expected from a Chapter of nomads and hunters.

	Ly’tren gradually twisted the threaded screw at the top of his punch press.  The titanium and ceramite alloy rivet he was driving into the side of Asvar’s cracked breastplate rose and fell by millimeters as he guided it to the proper height for the autohydraulics to press it into the thread he had repaired.  Beside him, Jergal delicately carved a sigil of warding into the second plate of Asvar’s layered armor, and then sealed it under the third plate.  He slid it over for Ly’tren to bolt into place, which he did.

	“A coat of paint, and then it’s as good as new,” Ly’tren said.

	“Better,” Jergal said.  He turned to Gregorius.  “Chaplain?”

	“Do not let me disturb you, brothers,” Gregorius said.  “I simply wished to see what you were doing.”

	Jergal’s servo harness twitched, and a mechadendrite lifted a small soldering iron.  “The facilities aboard the Avowed are the best I’ve seen in a ship of its displacement class,” he stated.

	“You should come to see the Chalice of Fire, sometime,” Ly’tren chuckled.  “There’s nothing like it left in the Galaxy.”

	“The forge ship?”

	“Correct, though it has other functions,” Ly’tren said.  “It serves also as a repository of all blueprints and Templates we have ever acquired.”

	“Oh?” Jergal asked as Gregorius closed the door behind him.  “Can you make Legion-era gear?  Volkites, Conversion Beamers?”

	“Only in limited amounts.  Having the specifications doesn’t mean we have the material or training to actually construct them,” Ly’tren admitted, “but we could, if we had to.  We still do, sometimes,” he said.  He set the finished breastplate down and tapped the controls for the painter to add in a coat of matte-black Deathwatch paint.  “There.  All done.”

	“Indeed, brother.”  Jergal crossed his arms over his chest and nodded to the workbench.  “Now.  What next?”

	“This,” Ly’tren said, lifted his crushed multi-melta.  “It took a nasty hit.”

	“It did,” Jergal agreed.  A piece of shrapnel visibly protruded from the weapon.  “Reparable.”

	Ly’tren set it down and began working it with his tongs.  “Let us begin.”


Council


	“Where did the Orks come from?” Arden demanded.  “The nearest Orkhold larger than fifteen square kilometers is over a sector away, unless you count Gorkypark.”

	“Lord, we have seen nothing to indicate their origin, not even markings on the exterior of the Hulk,” a voice from the crowd said.  Arden recognized it as one of his elder Techmarines.  “This suggests that they are recent migrants, rather than pirates using this as a permanent base.”

	“They almost certainly do not recognize the sheer value of the Hulks to the Imperium, at least,” Eiger said flatly.  “Though, obviously, taking it intact is at best, a tertiary concern.”

	Arden turned to face the Chief Sensorium Officer of the Gargantuan. “How many hulls have you identified?”

	“Nine,” the officer reported.  “Two are Sword frigates, one is a truly archaic Galaxy transport ship, a very old Eldar ship of unknown model, a crippled Ork Krooza, the carrier we identified earlier, an Imperial colony ship, and a Promethium tanker ship.  The other one took more doing, but we believe it to be a pre-Apostasy Travails-class long freighter, a ship designed to travel from one Segmentum to another without exiting the Immaterium.  The last few hulls have not yet entered our sensor range, but at least one is of Imperial make.”

	“Three warships,” Arden said grimly.  “Guns hot, I imagine.”

	“Oddly not,” the Sensorium officer said.  “Again, indicative of a recent occupation by the Orks.  It is also unguided, and a headed directly for Septiim itself.  The star, of course, not any one planet.  In all honesty, sir, if we’re lucky, and His Majesty’s grace is with us, it may be a non-issue.”

	“The Glasian trash are actually turning to face it, and leaving us a chance to regroup and catch our breath,” Master Carache observed.  “In a perverse way, they are actually helping us.”

	“A situation as tenuous as it is unexpected, and therefore to be accommodated by our plan, but not relied upon.”  Arden leaned forward and rested his hands on the table.  The simple tabard he wore on his scarred torso hid his more recent wounds well.  His artificer armor was off undergoing repairs in the armory.  “This xeno swine may not be controlling the Hulk, but their timing couldn’t be much worse.  The presence of the Glasians, and the general disarray in which we find the Imperium, have stretched us thin.  Were our full Chapter present, then this would pose little threat.  As it stands, though…”  He let the silence stand for a moment, and then noticed the agitation of his primary Astropath.  “Sieur Astropath?”

	The blank-eyed psyker at the head of the table stood.  “Our forces throughout the sector have reported that the aliens are advancing slowly, and with more hesitation than they traditionally display,” he said.  He had an unexpectedly deep and forceful voice, for such a cadaverous frame.  “This sudden hesitation is concurrent, and has held true regardless of their tactical circumstances.”

	“So maybe the Orks aren’t the new concern of the enemy,” Tech-brother Peter Alling-Durant said.  As the Master of the Tech Brotherhood, all Techmarines answered to him, though of course he felt the need to exert his authority only on the rarest of occasions.  “Has the Librarium detected any unusual activity in the Warp?”

	Lord Covum leaned into the circle at the center of the Council of Masters.  “There is very little ‘usual’ activity in the Warp, Tech-brother, let us be clear on that.”  He straightened up in his chair and sat back against the bare metal.  “However, we do now believe that a catastrophic Warp storm has begun to brew in the heart of the Eye of Terror.  Only this morning, we felt, all of us, a surge of Chaotic force ripple out from the rough location of Cadia.”

	The room erupted in whispered, prayers, and more than a few curses.  Arden held up his hands and motioned for silence.  “Lord Covum, are you insinuating that we may be on the verge of a new Black Crusade?” he asked.

	“That is impossible to know, but at this point, I think we are,” Covum said quietly.

	The volume of the room rose again.  Present were all the Masters still active in the system, as well as all available Company Captains and Lieutenants.  The Deathwatch brothers were off on the Imperium Avowed, learning the same.  Dozens of smaller ships and shuttles were sheltering in the gravity wells of the moon of Primus, under the umbrella of its many defensive satellites.  The Guard of the system was easily holding back the few aliens still present on Secundus and Primus.

	“A Black Crusade,” Arden said gravely.  He leaned back in his throne behind the large, circular table in the center of the room.  A larger table with a gap in it allowed people beside the eighteen Masters to enter.  Now, every seat had a Marine in it, and the Astropath and Gargantuan command crew sat in wooden chairs beside Jeremy Haskell, the Master of the Gargantuan.

	“Suffice it to say, no other people in this system are aware,” Eiger said.  “My crew on the Avenged have been monitoring all communications in the Septiim system since before the Cylinder arrived.”

	“How long can we maintain a lockdown?” asked a new voice.  Master of the Ancients Percival Langhard rarely spoke at Council meetings, but when he did, it was to keep tempers cool.  “Martial law can’t block audio waves, nor psychic emanations.  There is a point beyond which it is impossible to conceal a Black Crusade.”

	“Then why conceal it?” Alling-Durant asked.  “The people of Septiim are strong enough to withstand centennial horrors.  They can withstand the knowledge that the Eye is active once more.”

	“The avoidance of panic is reason enough,” Arden said firmly, and that was the end of the conversation.

	“What of the Guard?” Trennat asked.  “How do they fare?”

	“So far, they have sustained minimal losses.”  Langhard brought up a hologram of the system, with military readiness icons overlaid on the command units of each readied formation.  Most had not yet engaged, including the entire Sororitas and Skitarii force.  The massive Cylinder and its escorts hung in the void, millions of kilometers from the Daggers’ asteroid base.

	“The Guard will have to be informed eventually.  When will that time come?”  Trennat asked.

	“As soon as we have a plan.  Admitting that we have fresh enemies and no means to stop them is something I simply will not allow,” Arden said.

	“Understood.”

	Before anyone could say more, a small Inquisitorial symbol appeared over the center of the table.  Alling-Durant leaned forward and examined the small data stream beside it.  “Lord Arden, the ship that bore the Deathwatch Kill-team is hailing us directly.”

	Arden grimaced.  “Put them through.”

	At once, the symbol faded, replaced by a floating blue cube, with a wire-frame image of a speaking Astartes face.  “Lord Arden, this is Chaplain Gregorius,” a harsh voice said.  “Our Navigator reports that he can feel a massive surge of unknown Warp energies coming from within the Hulk.”

	Arden looked around.  The various psychics in the room were exchanging glances.  “I see.  We have detected no such thing,” he said.

	“You will, I’m told, Lord Arden, beginning in a mere few moments,” Gregorius said flatly.  “The Navigator reports that the Hulk is being attacked from within by something, perhaps related to the Glasians.”

	Abruptly, Covum winced, setting one un-gloved hand on his Psychic Hood.  It was a treasure of the Dark Age of Technology, and was borne only by the Chief Librarian, though that was a mere theoretical, since the seat had only ever been Covum’s.  “Ah, yes,” he said unevenly.  “Yes, I concur.  What a force, that I can feel it from here!”  He looked up at Arden.  “The Deathwatch is right.  Something is attacking the Hulk, and if I were to stake a wager, I would say it was not the Glasians.  They bear the taint of Dark Change, of Tzeentch, but this feels more bestial.  More like… the Khornates, I would hazard.”

	“A rare moment of distraction,” Gregorius put in.  “Shall your Gargantuan attack one enemy while the other is distracted?”

	Arden thought it over.  “Yes… but we must be methodical.  It is common for daemons to haunt ships in the Warp, and enter Hulks when they breach into the Immaterium on their currents, correct?”

	“It is rare, but by no means unheard-of,” Covum said, while Gregorius nodded.  “Ships with Gellar Fields are immune to daemonic boarding, unless their Navigator dies in mid-flight, which can short out the shield with the psychic backlash.”

	“Perhaps the Ork trash dragged a daemon out with them somehow,” Arden muttered.  “Then we shall strike the Cylinder while we have the time.”

	Eiger eyed the floating head of Gregorius, and then decided to speak his mind anyway.  “My Lord, how can we do this?  It’s nowhere near the Gargantuan.”

	“It needn’t be.”  Jeremy Haskell spoke up again, quieting the disturbance that had followed Arden’s proposal.  “The Nova Cannon is not like the ones aboard cruisers, or even grand cruisers, my brothers,” he reminded them.  “Its stabilizer is the size of a city.  Its barrel could fit a heavy frigate inside.  With up-to-the second telemetry, and an exact measurement of its speed, I can hit a target up to three hundred eighty thousand kilometers away.”

	“That’s over a full light-second,” Trennat said, impressed.  “Remarkable.  Can it destroy a Hulk?”

	“Again, it needn’t.  All we need to do is hit the Cylinder.”  Haskell leaned forward and gestured towards the massive holomap on the far wall.  “It’s well out of range now, but it will be within range for a sustained bombardment in under a month.”

	“I fear we do not have that much time, Brother Jeremy,” Master Alling-Durant said evenly.  “Lesser Cylinders and ships are attacking four other systems we know of in this sector.  If we had the full strength of the Battlefleet Cloudburst, the Subsector Fleet Delving, and Lord Eiger’s ships present, we could stall this Cylinder indefinitely, but we do not.”

	“Then perhaps we shall destroy it as we did the last two,” Arden said heavily.  He felt no need to guard his words in front of the Chaplain.  If he didn’t let his disappointment show, it would be more of a slight against him.  “We shall teleport a team of Terminators inside and plant a warhead in its heart, after hitting it only once.”

	Nobody present needed to say a word.  That was one of the most dangerous mission types in all of Astartes warfare.  Teleporting into a Space Hulk, where at least thermal scans and hull-penetrating radar allowed you to detect possible ambush sites, was already absurdly dangerous.  Teleporting into a ship that was moving under power was actually worse.

	“Perhaps a simple boarding action instead, with boarding torpedoes?” one of the other Captains proposed.

	“On a ship the size of a moon?” Arden asked.  “No.  The smaller Cylinders in other systems can be disabled by such means, but not this monstrosity.  No, we shall teleport our Terminators in, and then follow with the Prize Team in a boarding ram.”

	“How close do we need to be to affect a mass teleportation into a ship that size?” Gregorius asked.

	Alling-Durant answered.  “Eight hundred kilometers, perhaps.  Closer, if their shields are down, though that is not as much of a problem as it is with Imperial shields.”

	“What is the maximum range of the Cylinder’s Ruin Guns?” Gregorius asked, his voice fizzing with static.

	“One thousand kilometers, but they cannot pierce shields at such range,” Alling-Durant said.  “They can break shields at a range of one hundred kilometers.”

	“Not such a large margin for a ship the size of the Sharp Edge,” Eiger grunted.

	“The Sharp Edge is out of commission, for now,” Arden said.  “It will take years to repair.”

	The Astropath suddenly twitched.  “Oh, blast, of all the times,” he said.  “I… have to go do this,” he managed, rising unsteadily to his feet.

	Arden recognized the sight of an incoming message.  “Go, Sieur Astropath.  Someone aid him.”

	One of the attending Marines helped the Astropath out of the room while the rest of the Chapter’s leadership debated.  Only that Marine was close enough to hear the psychic’s whisper.  “It can’t be… it can’t be…”

	The Dagger looked oddly down on the shorter man, but said nothing.  Who could know the minds of the Warp-touched?


That Was Unexpected


	The Council dissolved minutes later, with a tentative plan in place.  Forrent and the other Masters who could leave the Gargantuan would spearhead an assault on the Glasian assets remaining in the Inner Worlds.  The full force of the system’s fleets would advance to the orbit of Septiim Secundus, just out of the maximum range of the Cylinder’s weapons, and try to bait the aliens into breaking their holding patterns.  A small group of Chapter specialists and parts of the motor pool would fly on fast Thunderhawks to the surface of Secundus, to re-establish the defenses against further landing attempts.

	The Sharp Edge was out of commission, and would remain so for years, but the Mars Battlecruiser of the non-Astartes forces was intact, with its teleporters.  As soon as the fleet had reached position, they would mass their teleporters and transport all available Terminators aboard the cylinder, with the intent of planting a destructive device in the heart of the thing.

	The idea of destroying the Cylinder so close to an inhabited world sat uneasily in the minds of the Marines, since it was all too likely that the debris could fall to the surface, but the orbital network of satellites and the ships beside them could intercept the worst of it.

	The key to it all was Solstice, the larger moon of Tertius.  The surface of that moon had a vast Marauder bomber factory, as well as a subterranean Skitarii logistics and staging hub.  Both were shielded from casual scans by thermal sensors by the combination of no atmosphere to carry the heat and two hundred feet of solid quartz above them; they were the secret weapon of the system’s defenders.  Dozens of Skitarii Cohorts, each containing a full maniple of Skitarii troops and vehicles, waited there, ready to be whisked to the sites of xenotech activation.  Some of the Inquisitorial presence in Cloudburst disliked the idea of the forces of the Machine God being so directly involved in affairs of mass xenotech.  The Techmarines of the Blue Daggers, however, assured them that they understood the Machine Cult found the presence of machines tainted by the Warp to be beyond disgusting, and could generally be trusted to dispose of it without sticky fingers.

	Skitarii preferred to march to battle without airlifts, but in a hangar underground on an airless moon, that was not an option.  Flights of Valkyries, refitted for spaceflight, waited in ambush.  If the Hulk started disgorging thousands of Orks onto the surfaces of Septiim’s worlds, the steel claws of the Mechanicus would be ready to stop them.


	Lord Ranult Arden was in no shape to fight.  His artificer armor and custom weapons sat in a cradle in the repair bay of the Gargantuan’s vast Mechanicus temple.  Hundreds of Techpriests, Techmarines, and Enginseers clambered over the damaged gear of the Chapter and their serfs.

	Lord Tech-brother Peter Alling-Durant walked up beside his Chapter Master and stared through the ten-inch armorglass window to the repair bay below.  “Your Lordship,” he said.  “Your equipment is all reparable.”

	“Good to know,” Arden said.  “However, my concern is Cesper.”

	Alling-Durant looked down.  Chapter Champion Cesper Clerc was unconscious in a small cybernetic repair bay below, with an Apothecary and Techmarine examining his savaged bionics.  His bionic eye was all but gone, and though the Techmarine assured him that it would be replaced with a new one, better than ever, the worry that it may have taken part of his optic nerve was a well-founded one.  His wrist bones on the left side and two of his ribs were gone, thanks to plasma blasts, and his left arm was literally hanging by a thread.

	“Indeed,” Alling-Durant said.  “I suspect he shall recover.”

	“One hopes,” Arden said sourly.  “How many of our Terminator Suits will be ready for the attack?”

	“Thirty nine,” Alling-Durant replied at once.  “Master Doreth has asked to lead an assault in person.”  Lord Techmarine Doreth was master of the Armory, and shared responsibility for maintaining and using the most advanced and ancient weapons of the Chapter.

	“He’s more than earned it,” Arden agreed.  “Chandline?”

	“Out of it until the surgery ends,” Alling-Durant said.  “As is his suit.”

	“Damn.”

	“The Terminator from the Deathwatch has offered his help,” Alling-Durant pointed out.  “A Deathwatch Fire Drake Sergeant is a great asset in a boarding.  He may be assigned to fight on the ground instead, of course.”

	Arden nodded.  “Of course.”  They stared in silence for a few minutes longer before Alling-Durant nodded his farewell and walked off to the chapel to help with the repairs.  The Chapter Master kept staring down into the chapel for a while longer, cataloguing the options available to him.

	As he stared, he heard footsteps behind him.  He recognized the unsteady gait of an Astropath, the same from the meeting.

	“Sieur Astropath,” Arden said.  “Have you something for me?”

	“The end of an Age,” the Astropath whispered.

	Arden turned.  The Astropath’s face was sheened with sweat, and his cheeks were stained by tears from his empty eyes.  “Master Arden, lord, news from Ultramar, from Macragge,” he managed.

	Arden felt his heart pick up.  Macragge was the ancestral home of his Chapter by dint of their descent from the Novamarines.  “Is something wrong?” he demanded.

	“Macragge is besieged,” the Astropath said simply.  “Abbadon strikes its throat.  Cadia is gone.  He destroyed it.”

	Arden leaned against the armored glass for support.  Cadia?  The one obstacle to a Chaos invasion of realspace on the scale of the Heresy itself?  “How?” he asked faintly.

	“Abbadon slammed a Blackstone Fortress into it,” the Astropath said.  “He landed it on an ancient Necron artifact that forced stability into the local Warp.  Cadia is destroyed, and Fenris is next.”

	“Fenris?  The Wolves?”

	“Yes.  The Thousand Sons burned it, and only the Dark Angels and the Wolves working together prevented its total destruction,” the Astropath said.

	The ancient Dagger reeled.  “…How?  How did nobody see this happening?” he demanded, sudden rage swarming in to fill the void of horror.  “This is like the Doombreed Crusade all over again!”

	“Doombreed has been sighted amongst the enemy,” the Astropath reported unhappily.  “But Abbadon has declared this the Thirteenth Black Crusade, and seeks to expand the Eye of Terror to swallow Terra itself.”

	Arden clenched a fist.  There was literally no higher heresy in all of Imperial law than to suggest the destruction of Terra.  Disgraced Inquisitors had been tortured to death for saying it.  “I… what is their order?  Do we fly to the side of Lord Calgar?” Arden asked.

	“No, Lord.  We are given no orders,” the Astropath said.  “We are instead given news.”

	The Chapter Master scowled.  “What could possibly come after the loss of the one thing stopping Abbadon from assaulting the Imperium at will?”

	“Lord Primarch Roboute Guilliman has arisen from the Throne of Corrections, with the aid of an Eldar god, and has personally assumed command of Ultramar.”

	Arden opened his mouth, froze for a second, closed it.  He started to gesture towards the Astropath, abandoned the attempt, re-opened his mouth.  “How?” he finally managed.

	“The message did not say,” the Astropath admitted, “but now, I think you see why I weep.”

	The Chapter Master slowly nodded his head.  “Yes.  Yes, I do.”

	“What shall we do now, Lord?” the Astropath asked.

	Arden slowly turned to the vast chapel below.  “Spread the news,” he said, “but leave out the part about the Eldar.”

	“Yes, Lord.”

	“This will… impact morale, to say the least,” Arden said slowly.  His mind whirled in a thousand directions at once.  How would the convent of the Battle Sisters in his territory react?  The Machine Temple?  How would the Arbites respond to knowing that there was now a man who could freely rewrite any Imperial law without oversight?  Would the Navy fear their autonomy?  Would he re-instate Ultramar and call the Primogenitors to his side?  How would the Custodes behave with a restored gene-son of the Emperor to protect?  What of the Inquisition?  What of the Eldar?  Would he purge the Senate?  Would he re-awaken the Emperor himself?

	The Astropath walked back to his chamber to prepare his message, while Arden rested one hand on the armorglass and stared a thousand lightyears away.  What would happen next, he wondered.  What now?


Epiphany


	Master of Sanctity Dunvraith knelt with his forehead pressed to the floor of the Gargantuan chapel.  Both of his hearts were pounding.  He was not alone.  Every one of the Chaplains left in the system joined him, dressed in a tabard and a blue jumpsuit in Ultramarine colors.  Though his Reclusiarch was not present, dozens of Chapter serfs – and a few refugees – were present.  Normally, mundane humans would not be permitted in the chapel, but these were not normal times.

	“Lord Primarch Guilliman, we remain your eternal servants,” Dunvraith murmured, and the microphone clipped to his collar carried his words to the room.  “We have waited through flame, through terror, though loss and gain, through the darkness and the loss of all hope, and now our faith has been rewarded.”  He rose and angled his hands to the statue of Guilliman before him.  It was the Primarch in full armor, looking thoughtfully out over a far-distant expanse that was, instead, the pews and kneelers of the chapel.  “Call to us, and we shall answer.”

	From the back of the chapel, Gregorius watched in silence.  He had been allowed the honor of attending the ceremonial reaffirmation of the Daggers’ allegiance to Guilliman, though he had nothing to add to the occasion.  Still, even he could feel the enormity of the moment.

	A Primarch.  A living Primarch.  Guilliman, no less, the logistician par excellence of the Crusade.  One of only three who could have ever turned around the collapse of the Imperium now, beside his own Lion El’Johnson, and perhaps Sanguinius.  And if he was bearing witness to the miraculous return of Guilliman, why, perhaps he could hope for two more.

	But no.  Hope was a poison, if a delicious one.  He had to remain pragmatic.

	What was practical now?  Morale.  The Chaplain’s task seemed superfluous in the eyes of unenlightened mortals.  The morale of Space Marines never seemed to break, so why did they need Chaplains?  The Marines themselves knew the truth.  The whispers of Chaos, of egalitarianism, of hope, were pernicious and ubiquitous.  They needed a stern guard of faith to dispel them, and Gregorious was that stern guard.  Plus, of course, somebody needed to keep an eye out for mutancy or latent psyker genes amongst the brothers.

	Still, there was no particular harm in letting these Ultramarines enjoy the moment, was there?


	Aboard the Imperium Avowed, Fire Drake Ly’tren and Wolf Guard Holgein were sharing a rare moment of quiet.  Their wargear was restored and waiting for use.  Their Thunderhawk was rearmed, and the whole group had healed and rested.

	The campaign against the Glasians and Orks had ground to a screeching halt.  The fleet flew towards the distant Cylinder, but they had over a day’s flight left.  With the Ork Hulk ballistic, it was little threat, and the Cylinder was still all but immobile in its orbit over Secundus.

	Holgein rested by doing what he did best: working quietly and thinking, when he wasn’t talking.  Ly’tren rested by exerting himself, testing his enhanced muscles to their absolute limit.  Both Marines, and the Keeper of the Ship, were working out in the small gym of the Strike Cruiser.

	The Keeper, an Angel Vermillion who kept his own council, was working a lift machine in the corner.  A small knob shifted the approximate resistance of the hydraulics to simulate weight.  Holgein was working a dummy over, while Ly’tren used a leg press.

	“Do you think it true?” Holgein asked.

	Ly’tren sighed.  “I suspect so, yes.”

	“Yet you are displeased,” the old Wolf observed.

	“No, just disconcerted.  There are prophecies in abundance about the return of the Sons of the Emperor.  Do our own Primarchs Russ and Vulkan not continue their crusades against the Great Enemy?”  Ly’tren added another four kilos to his leg press and resumed his seat.  “I rejoice for my Ultramarine bretheren, and I know that this is a great blow against the forces of Ruin.  I just don’t know what will happen after the prophesied return.”

	Holgein chuckled.  The dummy was a bag of reassembling putty that roughly resembled an Ork.  After enough blows, it would reset, repair its deformations, and be ready for further pummeling.  “I admit, despite the acrimony of old between the Sons of Russ and Ultramarines, I am quite intrigued.  The old tales say Guilliman was the best numeric strategist in human history after the Emperor Himself.  What will he make of an Imperium that is both far larger and far more imperiled than it was when he left it?”

	“Time will tell.  The aliens will not wait forever.”  Ly’tren pushed against the leg panel, and it moved with a groan.  “Nor should we.”

	“The aliens do so rarely surrender initiative like this,” Holgein agreed.  “What gains Tzeentch if his slaves suddenly stop their advance?”

	“He doesn’t control them directly,” the Vermillion suddenly said.  The others looked over to see him set down the weight bar and crick his neck.  He had a gaunt look about him, as if he didn’t have quite enough blood.  “They’re toys to play with.  If he diverted even a fraction of his true power to guide them, they’d be too much for one Chapter to handle.”

	“Keeper Rengris, have you faced them before?” Holgein asked.  He popped his knuckles and settled down to fight the Ork dummy once more.

	“Once.  I was in a Rogue Trader’s retinue,” Rengris said.  “We were tasked with intercepting them beyond the Astronomican’s light, since they take the same course each time.”  He shook his head grimly.  “Waste of time.  They only drop out of FTL long enough to do a nav check, then jump right back in.  We only had a shot at them for a few minutes.”

	“I see.”  Holgein began beating the dummy with a vigor that precluded further conversation.  Ly’tren turned away from the spectacle to add a few more kilos to the machine, then frowned when it informed him on its little screen that he had met its load limit.

	“Hmph.  Not designed for Astartes, it seems.”

	Rengris rolled his black and red eyes.  “Not designed for Fire Drakes, perhaps.”  He walked over and watched the other two.  “Did Captain Al-Hasat tell you of the Sanction option?”

	That caught Holgein’s attention.  He whipped his head around to stare at the Vermillion Marine.  “Say that again.”

	“I suppose not, then,” Rengris said curtly.  “We are empowered to declare Exterminatus if this system is lost to the forces of Chaos entirely,” he said.  “By the order of Lady Inquisitrix Lerica.  We are carrying eighty five kilograms of antimatter in a magnolock.”

	Ly’tren carefully eased the lift plate down to stare at the other man.  “Did I hear you correctly?  Eighty five?”

	“Yes.”

	Holgein reeled.  “That… is sufficient to disrupt the crust of a planet,” he said disbelievingly.  “Are you mad?  If the ship is destroyed, and that antimatter annihilates with the matter of the vessel…”

	“It will consume all within several kilometers, even within the void of space, and destroy any nearby atmosphere,” Rengris said calmly.  “I know.  Is that so different from a Warp Drive’s core?  One Battleship’s Warp Core was enough to suck most of Hive Fleet Behemoth into the Warp.  At least antimatter annihilates, and does not corrupt.”  He grabbed a towel and dried off his sweat.  “I thought you should know.”

	“Does Arden?” Holgein asked pointedly.

	Rengris scoffed.  “Of course he knows.  Why else would he view our arrival with such mixed feelings?  He knows Lady Lerica thinks he may fail.  We were here last time, too, with the same Sanction option.  My predecessor was able to avoid its use.”

	“Septiim has three Garden Worlds,” Ly’tren pointed out.  “Eighty five kilos of antimatter would not destroy all three.”

	Rengris’ lips tightened.  “No, it would not.  It would give even a Chaos God a moment’s pause, however.  Time could be bought with its use, perhaps enough for the Daggers to destroy the other two with Nova Cannon fire.”

	“Madness,” Holgein grunted.  He returned to beating the Ork dummy.  “Pure madness.”

	“That’s what Chaos brings,” Rengris shot back.  “Aren’t Wolves rather used to being the Sanction?”

	Holgein shot him a cold glare.  “Once.  It brings us no joy today.”

	“Good.  It shouldn’t.”  Rengris nodded himself out.  “Gentlemen.”

	“Keeper.”  Ly’tren watched him go.  “Antimatter.  Under our feet,” he muttered.  “What times.”

	Holgein went back to beating the dummy.  “The Chaotic trash assaulted my home.”

	“Fenris was a warzone, yes,” Ly’tren said.  “I am sorry.”

	Holgein sighed under his breath.  “Yes.  Thank you.”  Both men fell silent.


Invasion


	An alert klaxon blared through the halls of the Imperium Avowed.  One by one, the Deathwatch Marines arrived in the briefing room as the noise continued overhead.

	Once all six members of the Kill-team Steadfast had arrived, Gregorius turned down the volume on the chamber’s PA system.  “Brothers, the enemy has resumed activity,” he said.  “Our sensor augers have detected over a hundred small launches from the interior of the Cylinder.”

	Calrus clenched a fist.  “What displacement?  Fighters?”

	“All sorts, from transports the size of a fuel barge to barely the size of a single-person saviour pod,” Gregorius said.  “They are heading for Secundus, with numbers greater than they had had in the first wave.  The Cylinder itself is also accelerating, moving into a higher orbital slot.”

	“Is it trying to escape Secundus’ gravity well?” Asvar asked.

	Gregorius’ hood dipped.  “We believe so.  Why, we do not know.  Its launches have slowed, but it is not stopping.  It is also making no attempt to retrieve spent transports.”

	“This is their occupation attempt, then,” Ly’tren mused.  He swept the system holomap with his glowing eyes.  “Where is the fleet?”

	“All fleet assets are coordinating around the higher orbit, trying to bait the Cylinder into following,” Gregorius said, “right on schedule.  The problem is that not all vessels have arrived on time.  A sweep force of bombers and combat-variant Thunderhawks is preparing to attack the Cylinder, now that part of its defense is gone, but they will not be able to sortie in sufficient numbers for another nine hours at most.”

	Holgein bared his fangs.  “What is our prey, then, Chaplain?”

	Gregorius stabbed the map with his mace, and it curled around its electric field. “Here, Brother Holgein.  Astia Grand Port.  It is a vast shipping, travel, and storage facility, built by a joint venture of the Astra Militarum, Merchant Marine of the world’s oceans, and Administratum.  It is at once a starport, airport, water ship port, hovercraft port, and local military base.  Contained within its perimeter is a recycling plant, a Mechanicus shrine, a hybrid power plant, a wastewater treatment facility, and a full Arbites Courthouse, as well as various local law enforcement offices and a prison.”

	Calrus’ eyes widened as the map zoomed in.  “It’s a city,” he breathed.  “You could fit the footprint of a small Hive in that place!”

	“It has its own schools, its own planetary legislature representative, and two surface-to-space Defense Lasers, as well as five conventional rocket silos for atmospheric defense,” Gregorius continued.  “Finally, it possesses a Shrine of the Emperor of the Penitent, an Ecclesiarchial punitive work camp.  There are four hundred Sisters of Battle on-site already, hardening the defenses, but they are going to be rather badly outgunned by the invaders.”

	“Local Guard?” Jergal asked, in his typically minimal speaking style.

	“None, but there are three full divisions of PDF based out of there, and another division inbound by sea,” the Chaplain said.  “They total two hundred thousand.  There is also a half-company of the Blue Daggers.  Squads six through nine of their Eighth Company, joined by one squad each of Scouts and Devastators.  More are on the way.”

	Ly’tren raised one finger.  “The next question becomes, then: does this vast port contain a teleporter, either a receiver or a dispatcher?”

	“It does not.”

	“Then perhaps we should all go by Thunderhawk.”

	“It is already being prepared.  The Lady Inquisitrix has made it clear that our remit is to secure the system against the Glasians, and holding this port is crucial to this.”  Gregrorius clipped his mace to his bet and set on his helmet.  “The flight is one hour.  We shall need to depart soon.  I shall explain more on the way.”


	Arden sat down in on his control throne and watched in silence as the tiny screens around him unfolded into place.  The thin flatscreens showed copies of the same output as the larger status screens of the Operations station on the CIC of the Gargantuan.  The few Marines remaining on the massive void platform were nearly all Techmarines or Initiates, and all but two were present in the CIC.  The Techmarines plugged themselves into the stations of the chamber, allowing them direct access to the machine spirits in a way the mortal operators could never mimic, while the Initiates stood around and watched.  Someday, it could be their turn.

	The Chapter Master spread his hands over the light scanners set into his armrests.  Theoretically, he could override the commands of the Master of the Gargantuan; in practice, he imagined he would never need to.  From here, he could direct the ground war by swapping out the feeds from the Operations board for the sensor and communications feeds from his ships and relays on Secundus.

	“Lord Chapter Master, the Gellar Funnel is active, and the Teleporters are prepared for use,” a Techmarine reported over the slowly-expanding shell of monitors all around Arden.

	The grizzled old Marine nodded.  “Understood.”  He would have preferred to fight, but his wrecked armor and unhealed shoulder wounds prevented it.  Here, at least, he could still help.  “Where is the Hulk?”

	“Still ballistic and still unresponsive,” the Sensor station operator called.

	“Then we shall direct our principal attention to the Secundus theater,” Arden said.  At such a distance, there would be a significant time delay between the troops on the ground sending him signals, and his responses arriving back, so he saw little reason to shift the views from the status screens to the Secundus terrain maps.  Instead, he switched his feeds to the orbital forces’ readiness reports, since space war tended to be so much slower.  He saw the formation they had taken was one that would allow them to focus all their firepower on two parallel lines, on either side of the Cylinder.  A reasonable tactic, given the size of the Cylinder.  Given its bulk, the stress of movement would be enormous, but distributed across the entire superstructure.  If two lines could be carved down its full length, there was a chance the entire vessel would simply crumple down the midline.


	On the heavily modified Thunderhawk that Steadfast was using to enter the fray, the Kill-team checked the dataslates that Gregorius had brought with him.  Normally, a Deathwatch Kill-team would employ a Corvus Death Gunship, but the Avowed was not set up to support them.

	“Every time I flip to the next page, I see more things built into this damn complex,” Calrus grunted.  “Ocean Desalinator and Temperature Controller.  Mechanicus server farm.  A solar outlier for the Hybrid plant.  A car factory.  A Temple… what in the world is this?  Templar Psykologis?”

	“Anti-propaganda,” Holgein remarked.  “They look for evidence that Imperial citizens are being exposed to alien or heretic propaganda attacks.  They work for the Adeptus Arbites.  It’s their only military branch.”

	“Well, they have a recruitment office here,” Calrus observed.  “A subterranean zero-light hydroponic farm, an office building for the Administratum… why is this place not the planetary capital?  It’s a self-sufficient Imperial colony!”

	“No idea,” Holgein grunted.

	“I’ve seen Fortress-Monasteries with lighter defenses,” Ly’trena said.  He was reading the same briefing, but while Calrus and Holgein focused on the civilian structures, he was looking over the military ones.  “Two Hullhunters, impressive.  Super long-range defense lasers.  They can crack a Viper in half with two hits.  Staggerfire can shatter a frigate with a few minutes’ bombardment.”

	Jergal and Asvar read the troop dispositions in silence.  Gregorius was in the chamber behind the pilot’s cabin, speaking with the crew in hushed tones.  “And the Keeper said to bring this to the base?” he asked.

	The Techpriest that sat behind the comms station nodded gravely.  “The Astia Grand cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of Tainted aliens,” he intoned.  “He said you would know when to use this.”

	Gregorius looked at the innocuous signal device in his hands.  “A double deadman switch,” he observed.  “It needs two operators.”

	“Correct.”

	“And it will call down the flames?”

	“A full Lance battery strike from the Imperium Avowed, directed at the device itself.  Let us pray to His Holy Circuits that you do not need it.”

	Gregorius pocketed the little machine.  “Indeed.”  He turned and walked back to the troop compartment.

	Inside, Ly’tren was just affixing the power feed of his multimelta and Chainfist when the Chaplain walked in.  “The aliens are landing,” Asvar said quietly.  “The slates are showing mandatory evacuation orders for all humans within two hundred miles of the port.”

	“Little late for that,” Holgein noted.

	“Their destination only became certain some few hours ago,” Asvar said.  “They’ve been evacuating the whole time.”

	“Good thing it’s a port, then.”

	“They’re crashing their vehicles in panic and getting in the way,” Calrus said.  He knew his opinion on the ultimately expendable nature of the humans was in the minority, but this was a tactical fact, damn it.  “With the aliens doing flybys in their blasted fighters, it’ll be carnage.  They should have just stayed in the buildings, out of the way.”

	“He’s not wrong,” Ly’tren observed, shocking Calrus.  “These orbital picts of the exit roads look like snake hide with all these overlapping traffic patterns.”

	“The main exit road is a seven-kilometer-long, divided, ground level highway, with five lanes going each way, a two lane service road, and retractable dividers,” Jergal recited.

	“If you manage to crash on that, you deserve to be stuck,” Calrus said.

	“Not if you’re being strafed!” Ly’tren said hotly.

	“Enough,” Gregorius said firmly.  “If the civilians survive and escape, good.  If not, we fight for their avenging.  Either way, we have our work to do.  We are to identify any leadership the enemy may have, and if they have brought daemons, kill them quickly.”

	That started a new line of thought in Holgein’s mind.  “Why does the Ordo Malleus never take an interest in this place?” he asked.  “These alien trash bear the Taint of the Great Enemy, do they not?”

	“They do.”

	“Then why no Daemonhunters?  This seems to be their jurisdiction,” Holgein observed.

	Gregorius sneered.  “They deem the far greater threat to be that of the alien, not their Dark Master.”

	“We found a daemonhost in this wave already.  Two,” Jergal remembered.

	“Amongst the vast hordes, yes.  If we fail, the Grey Knights will be next.”

	Calrus frowned.  “The what?”

	“A specialist Chapter of daemonhunters,” Holgein said laconically.  Gregorius winced.  True, the Knights were technically no longer bound to prevent others from knowing of their existence, but the Wolves’ history with them made it a touchy subject at best.  Fortunately, Holgein seemed no more inclined to open his mouth.

	Asvar looked up from his slate.  “Chaplain, what is this?  The Astia Clusam?  Is that High Gothic for something?”

	“No.  It is the name of the Blue Dagger recruiting office in the Astia Grand Port,” Gregorius said.  “I have seen it once.  Utilitarian, but defensible.”

	Asvar brought up a warning notice on his slate.  “The intelligence report says the aliens are trying to flatten it with plasma bombs.”

	Gregorius gritted his teeth.  Tzeentch was trying to send them a message.  “Gird yourselves for battle, brothers,” he said darkly.  “We’re almost there.”


	At that moment, the surface resembled Vraks on a good day.  Buildings collapsed, the sky darkened with smoke and aircraft, and the Astia Grand burned.

	PDF troopers in their thousands fired out of windows and from rooftops into the teeming horde of aliens.  Barricades made mazes out of wide avenues.  Great statues of Power Armored angels of the Emperor exploded as Glasians fired on them with their Ruin Guns, and their stony chunks became firing braces for Septiimi riflemen.

	Crack sharpshooters of the Secundus PDF picked off Glasian troops at ranges of over a mile, while hordes of mindless, deformed Glasian beasts, their souls shriveled away by failure to properly channel their Warp-taint, charged into buildings and ate the screaming civilians trapped inside.

	Space Marines of the Blue Daggers arrived by Drop Pods and shuttles and ripped through the fragile bird-like aliens, but for every Marine, there were eighteen thousand Glasians, and that proportion shifted constantly.  Dozens of bulldozers and snowplows flipped wrecked cars out of the way on the egress roads, allowing civilians to scatter into the mountains outside the equatorial islands, but Glasian fighters soared lazily overhead, burning random vehicles for sport.

	A full maniple of Legio Cybernetica robots marched implacably across the rockcrete and metal of the city-sized hub of industry, swapping weapon sets and targets faster than the human eye could see.  A small group of armored Techpriests walked in their midst, protected by two thousand year old killing machines, selecting targets with precision and dispassion.

	An overhead view of the Grand Astia showed pristine blocks beside smoking craters, as Glasian bombers exploded in midair before making their runs, while others from the same formation arrived and dropped their payloads.  An aircraft carrier in the harbor detonated with the force of a kiloton of nitro as a Glasian bomb touched off its fusion reactor.  The other five had already departed to sea to avoid similar fates, and sortied a never-ending stream of light combat aircraft and evacuation ornithopters to the growing battle in the port.

	It was absolute madness, random destruction and horror.  Invisible to the eye, daemons on the other side of the veil cackled and squealed in delight as the souls of aliens and humans alike fell into the Warp to feed them.

	Captain Trennat of the Fourth Company of the Blue Daggers saw only targets.  Targets to shoot, targets to secure, targets to evacuate or eviscerate.  He hefted his Thunder Hammer high and brought it pommel-first on the head of a chortling Glasian, which pulped instantly from the force of the blow.  “SMITE THEM TO THE GROUND!” he roared at the top of his lungs, and his vox-amplifier boomed from the sides of the nearby buildings.  “GIVE NOT ONE METER TO THE FILTH!”

	A Devastator sighted down the barrel of his Volkite Culverin, one of only two left in the Chapter, and promptly melted a Glasian hovertank to slag.  It slammed into an upturned hot dog stand, and both detonated as the Glasian’s power cell ruptured.  Carache’s own Honor Guard, the most experienced Devastators in the sector, crouched in a dispersed circle around a statue of the Emperor in His aspect as The Great Explorer, and hosed down each of the four approach roads with heavy weapons fire.  Overhead, a glowing orange blob sailed by, splashing against a small formation of Glasian infantry and turning them into chalky outlines on a nearby building.

	Carache spotted the weapon at the other end of one road, behind some sandbags – a Ballista-class energy artillery piece.  A primitive relic of the pre-Earthshaker days, it was one of the few energy weapons the Imperium no longer made, not because it was irreproducible, but because it was simply obsolete.  It did nothing the Basilisk didn’t do better.  Still, he appreciated the cover, and at such range, even they could make a difference.

	The PDF team beside him, standing in the shadow of the Emperor statue, fed a shell into the 77 millimeter field gun they had dragged to the spot.  They covered their ears as the gunner fired.  A squad of Glasian infantry to the north flew out of a window in pieces, and the gunner pumped a fist in self-congratulation.

	Captain Trennat waved a sharp salute to Carache as he jogged out of one access road.  “Master Carache,” he said crisply.  “We have arrived.”  His words were temporarily drowned out as the Thunderhawk they had used flew off to join the air battle.  “Where am I needed, sir?”

	“Overhead,” Carache said.  “Get on the third floor of that warehouse and fire down on anything that passes you by,” he said, gesturing at a building just visible from the statue.

	Trennat saluted with his hammer and took off at the head of his squad.  Carache was just turning to survey the other roads when his gorget vox beeped.  He looked down at the holographic controls on the inside of the metal ring and blinked twice to open the channel.  “Carache.”

	“Master Carache, this is Chaplain Gregorius of the Deathwatch,” the vox said.  “We are one minute from a hot landing, half a klick north of your position.  Have you observed a leader among the enemy?”

	“They rarely show themselves,” Carache said disgustedly.  “They keep to their damn Cylinders.”

	“Then we shall seek to disrupt their landings.  Our gunship shall provide overhead fire support.”  The vox message crackled a bit, and Carache saw a bright beam of light pass overhead to strike a Glasian tank.  “Like that.  May the unfailing light of His Eternal Majesty guide your shells, Carache.”

	“Likewise, Chaplain.  Carache out.”  The veteran sharpshooter lowered his custom heavy bolter and held the trigger down for half a second, cutting two Glasians in bright blue checker patterns clean in half as they crept up to the edge of a nearby roof.  “Mortar six, we have possible hostile contact on the roof of… building eighty nine,” he said into his other vox.  “Confirm, neutralize if hostile.”

	“Mortar six, we have a Glasian spotter team there.  They’re down two, regrouping.  Drawing solution.”

	A new voice cut in.  “Mortar six, belay.  This is Broadlight three.  I have them.  Neutralizing.”

	A flickering beam of silver and red whipped past overhead, and the street below filled with smoldering alien parts.  “Broadlight three, spotter team destroyed.”

	A less experienced field officer would have ordered the Lightning pilot disciplined for belaying an order from a superior, but this way the building was still up, at least, so he held back his reprimand.  Carache looked up instead, and spotted a flight of four Lightnings soar by, chased by a single Glasian fighter.  Abruptly, one of the Lightnings slammed hard on the brakes.  Two chunks of silver dislodged from the front of the aircraft as it did, and as the Glasian skidded past them, trying to bank, they ignited and changed direction to slam into its engines.  The Glasian detonated into a thousand pieces as the Hellwave aspect-tracer rockets detonated inside it.


	“A post office, a relay post, a subterranean hab block… I give up,” Calrus said.  “I assume this place was built specifically to withstand planetary sieges?  It’s outfitted like one.”

	“No, though I suspect hardening it to be like one is on their list of priorities now,” Gregorius said.  “New orders, brothers.  We are to seek out their landing sites and deny them.  Prepare for deployment.  fifty seconds.”

	Ly’tren finished his silent prayer of preparedness and clipped his multimelta to the arm of his Terminator.  He had mounted his master-crafted storm bolter to his other arm, just behind the Chainfist.  It prevented him from gaining the full mobility of the left arm, but he could detach the storm bolter with a few clamps, and he felt the need to bring extra ranged power in anticipation of the enemy’s sheer numbers.  He had debated leaving the Terminator armor behind, in case the boarding of the Cylinder took place during the ground battle, and he needed to change quickly back to help in the boarding attack, but no, the people on the ground needed his power today.  He was loaded down with every weapon he carried, with his multimelta, his bolt pistol, his chainfist, storm bolter, and combat shield all either equipped or affixed to mag-locks on his back.  His combi-bolter with its single-shot grenade launcher and combat knife were in a kitbox he had slung over his shoulder under his Fire Drake mantle and cape.  Grenades hung from a bandolier on his belt beside a flare launcher.

	Calrus hefted his heavy bolter and finished settling its advanced sight.  His Chapter could hardly spare it, but he had wanted to show his readiness to the Inquisition.  He had his bolt pistol and chainsword at his belt, in case he had to defend himself up close, like he had in the starport on Primus.  He had a pair of krak grenades in case he found himself up against something with more armor than his heavy bolter could handle.

	Holgein had his absurdly heavy Ultima rifle, as well as his twin combat knives and his pistol.  He had painted them all in urban camo patterns, and added a bit of grey paint to his face, just in case he had to blend into shadows.  He had a bag of smoke grenades and a white phosphorous capsule, but he hadn’t needed them before, and he suspected he wouldn’t today.

	Jergal had his same combi-rifle, with its primary bolter and secondary plasma attachment.  He had swapped his servo-harness out for maximum field repair capability, since he anticipated the need to help the Daggers or the PDF with their vehicles or turrets, but he had kept his Power Axe and flashbangs for up close.

	Asvar had his plasma pistol and assault pack ready, as well as his usual array of medical gear.  He had added a combat knife to his usual Power Sword, just in case, but forsook grenades in favor of extra painkillers and synthflesh.  There would be many wounded today, he knew.

	Gregorius had his stave and his master-crafted bolt pistol, as well as his Rosarius for protection.  He carried nothing else but his hate, and his well-concealed orbital strike beacon.

	The six Marines swayed as the Turbolaser Destructor and the flank lascannons began firing continuously, and Ly’tren looked up at the ceiling of their compartment.  “Are we strafing something?”

	“We must be,” Asvar noted.  “How far out are we?”

	“thirty seconds,” Gregorius said.  He walked back up to the front cabin and opened it, staring in silence through the front viewport.

	It was total anarchy.  Streams of both Glasian and Imperial craft soared towards a massive dogfight ahead.  Gregorius’ eyebrows rose as he saw a few tiny streaks of light from the ground enter the battle and disappear – those were Hunter missiles from AA below.  To seem so small, they would have to be over four kilometers away.  The dogfight was colossal, larger in size than a small city all by itself.

	“Lord Chaplain, we arrive in thirty seconds,” the Techpriest said.  “I suggest you prepare.”

	“We are as ready as we-”

	“Elsewhere,” the Techpriest cut him off.  “We need our focus.  Understandably.”  He had his mechadendrites plugged into the console before him.  A large object appeared above the dogfight and started drifting down past it, firing a few shots into the mess and hitting nothing.

	“Another transport sighted,” the copilot remarked.  He tapped a key, and the turbolaser aimed upward before firing again.  The side of the transport flared and darkened as the mighty gun lit it up.  “Hardy, this one.”

	Gregorius gave the fight another look.  “How can we reach our landing zone like this?”

	“Undistracted,” the pilot said without turning around.  Gregorius sneered but backed out.  He supposed he really didn’t want to distract the crew on the verge of flying through such a mess.


	Arden watched as his fleet formed up and began to approach the Cylinder.  Maximum-range Nova Cannon blasts and torpedoes soared out towards the distant target.  The Nova blasts arrived first, given their relativistic speeds, and smashed against the layered shields of the Cylinder with the force of fusing Tritium.  Shockwaves of evaporating metal gasses and energy rippled across the surface of the Cylinder like water over metal.  The torpedoes arrived next, and they detonated atoms away from the energy skein.  Electromagnetic payloads made lights on the Cylinder flicker at random, but the blasts didn’t quite penetrate the shield yet.  Other torpedoes released hailstorms of radioactive metal at relativistic speeds to crumple shields or blast armor apart.

	“Their Void Shields are hard to interpret, being an alien technology,” a sensorium scanner operator reported, “but they are definitely suffering intense damage.”

	“Sir, we are detecting flickers of Warp energies from inside the Cylinder’s approximate center,” another operator called out.  “They are growing more frequent.”

	Arden frowned.  “Teleporters?”

	“Nothing coming or going that we can see,” his Operations officer reported.

	“I meant in the Cylinder,” Arden growled.

	“Nothing, Lord,” a sensor operator quickly called out.

	The ancient Marine glared at the scanner screens that surrounded his throne.  “What are you planning?” he whispered to the xenos.  “Operations, engage the Void Shields of the Gargantuan at maximum power,” he called out.  “And bring the Interdictorus barrier up.  Nothing gets in our out.”

	The Operations board lit up with new lights as the crew leaped to respond.  The massive rock in space glowed blue for an instant as the vacuum around it parted, impossibly, behind a shield.

	“Power drain is now at seventy percent, sir,” his Operations man reported.  “Levelling off.”

	“Lord!” a Techmarine at the security panel shouted.  “Something is attacking the Interdictorus from within the Warp!”

	“I knew it,” Arden said darkly.  “The Glasians are trying to teleport a daemon through our Interdictorus.  Activate the defense guns around the Teleporters.  Nothing gets through.”

	“Suddenly, the expense of the Interdictorus on a void platform is quite justified,” the Techmarine observed.  “The field is holding steady.”

	A ship on the sensor board lit up and vanished as the Ruin Guns of the Cylinder opened fire.  A plasma beam cleaved through its outer shell and cored out its reactor, as if its shields hadn’t even been there.  “God Emperor,” a sensor crewer said gravely.  “The Cylinder is in range.”

	A Battlecruiser in the fleet opened fire with its long range guns.  The Nova Cannon and lances fired off as fast as they cooled, and the Cylinder’s shields wobbled under the barrage.  The Novas of the other ships in the fleet were next.  The Cylinders were supposed to be colony ships, not warships; their shields couldn’t withstand much direct fire.  They buckled and started to fold as the fleet kept up its fire.  The squadron of Starhawks stationed on the Winterbreath swept across its bow, unloading their massive payloads.  Their fighter escorts swooped in to clash with their opposite number.  More ships from the Navy station in orbit over Secundus, the Waterscale, flew up towards the Cylinder.  The alien fighter screen shifted in response.  Trying to predict how much of one asset type or another the aliens had preserved for their command vessel was an exercise in frustration, but the Imperium could no longer afford to hold back.  Arden watched in cold satisfaction as an alien transport cracked in half and exploded, not eighty meters past the edge of the shield.  Waterscale had scored a clean hit with its Turbolaser battery.  “Stay right where I can see you, vermin,” Arden said softly.

	A building overhead shattered as Kill-team Steadfast raced through the streets below.  Ly’tren ignored the cinderblocks as they fell, and held up the Combat Shield on his left arm to shield Asvar.  The Apothecary popped off a shot from his pistol that took a hooting Glasian in the neck, then caught a falling brick.

	“The aliens certainly aren’t trying to take this place intact,” he observed.

	Jergal deflected two more falling bricks with his mechadendrites.  “This is a purge,” he said tonelessly.  He had donned his helmet this time, as had the others.  He preferred to fight with the wind in his hair, as most White Scars did, but the necessity of coordinating so many Imperial forces concurrently had forced him to wear it.  He could monitor a hundred data-feeds on the many screens and holos in his Artificer helmet.  “They are here to kill all humans, not enslave them.”

	Ly’tren fired off a multi-melta blast that caved a hole in the side of a fallen column.  He reached through and cut through the remaining stone with his chainfist, then tapped his chest to reassure the huddling civilians on the other side.  “Off, citizens.  Get yourselves to a basement,” he commanded through the grille on his helmet.

	They boggled at the black-armored giant, but nodded, and scampered off with prayers of thanks on their lips.  Ly’tren watched them go for a moment, then stepped up onto the column.  “Here, brothers,” he said.  “This will do.”

	The other Marines followed, and Gregorius nodded at the Terminator’s selection of battlegrounds.  It was an elevated, small, thick stone floor, with tables and chairs and umbrellas on it, with a large staircase at the back, down into a restaurant at street level.  Behind the stairs were service and cargo elevators in a covered, metal structure with ample high-voltage power sockets, presumably for the complex speakers that lay toppled from the diners’ haste to run.  The floor was elevated twelve feet off the solid rock below, with another layer of tables and chairs on the ground level.  The building itself was plaster over stone, with reinforced concrete columns for support and decoration.

	“A good place to make a stand,” Gregorius noted.  “The aliens are landing at random, with no pattern, so we can set up on the upper level and keep the immediate area clear.”

	Holgein gathered his legs and leaped from the toppled column up onto the higher level in one spring.  A moment later, he called back down over the vox.  “Hostile contact.  There’s Glasians up here.”  Three sharp pistol cracks.  “Neutralized.  They didn’t see me.”

	Ly’tren trundled up the concrete stairs, gouging chunks out of them with every step.  Jergal followed, with a servitor in tow carrying his heavier gear.  Gregorius came fourth, reading tactical feeds with one eye.  Asvar and Calrus stayed below, Asvar to set up a bivouac for wounded, Calrus to cover him with his Heavy Bolter.

	Holgein grabbed one plastic speaker case and drove the spikes on the bipod of his rifle into it.  They punctured and locked in place.  Holgein rotated the case on the smooth floor and nodded.  “As good a perch as any.”  He sighted down the scope and grinned a lupine grin.  “Glasian contacts, approaching down the north road.”  The restaurant’s upper level overlooked a north-south road, flanked either side with towering industrial buildings, and some sort of water purifier on the west side, across a large concrete barrier down the road’s center.  “Count fifteen infantry and two… unclear.  Possibly robots, they’re mostly metal.”

	“Glasians use robots?” Jergal asked.

	“No,” Asvar said, “but they do have cybernetic warriors.  Like Skitarii.”

	“Take them, brother,” Ly’tren said.  He turned back to the elevator once he had burned the dead bodies away with his multi-melta.  “Help will be along in a moment.”

	Holgein sighted the lead Glasian without his scope – at such a range, the scope was more detriment than aid – and fired.  Its head exploded into blue and red mist, and the advancing squad stumbled.  The Wolf fired twice more, and two more aliens exploded from the massive bolts.  They scrambled for cover, losing three more troops to three more shots, and dove into whatever protection they could find.  One popped right back to fire its Ruin Gun, and detonated at the waist.  Five more leaped up at once, and Holgein only got one before he had to duck back into cover.

	The old Marine gritted his teeth and chambered the last round in his magazine, then ejected it and slotted in a new one.  It clicked into place, then he heard screams.  He peeked out of cover as something black and fast appeared in the aliens’ packed mass.  Asvar had succesfully crept up unseen, and was hewing and cutting with his two blades.  He didn’t need a gun against such foes; a single adult human man could easily kill a Glasian in hand-to-hand, and he was no mere man.  The former Assault Sergeant ducked easily under a cybernetic punch and casually removed the attacker’s ribs, then reached through a narrow hole in the barricade and pulled another squawking alien through it.  Holgein took another in the head, then Ly’tren arrived.  With chainfist whirring, he and Asvar made quick work of the last cyborg, then their unarmored number.

	Silence fell, broken only by the rumbling of falling masonry from the collapsed office building.  “A clean fight,” Asvar noted.  “These things are no threat one at a time.”

	“Indeed not, but they attack in the force of millions,” Ly’tren observed.  Both Marines looked up and saw yet another transport, this one a long, blocky affair like the one Arden had destroyed in the forest, coming in to land.  “The fleet had better get to intercepting these accursed landers,” Ly’tren said hotly.  “We can’t expect the PDF to hold forever.”

	The vox crackled.  “Kill-team!  This is Brother-Lieutenant Perrier!  Come in!”

	Ly’tren looked around, but saw nobody.  He and Gregorius tapped their voxes open with eyeblinks.  “This is Chaplain Gregorius,” the Dark Angel said.

	“Thank the Emperor.  The Glasians are landing a small ship due south of your position, and making north with hovertanks.  About a dozen.  Three are approaching your position on the road you’re using.  I had a half-squad on the way to intercept, but you got there first.”  The vox broke up as somebody on the other end fired off a missile launcher.  “Do you require assistance?  Should I call back my Marines?”

	Ly’tren snorted.  Gregorius understood.  “Negative, Brother-Lieutenant.  We can handle three tanks.”

	“They are escorted by forty five cybernetic assault troops,” a new voice cut in.  “This is Scout Corporal Grendel of the Secundus PDF Rangers.  The cyborgs are following on foot, plus another seven riding desant on the outer hulls of the tanks.”

	Ly’tren tilted his head as he spotted the tanks, half a klick out on the long, straight road.  “I can handle it,” he said flatly.  Gregorius heard it, but asked the obvious question.

	“Where are they going?  What are they doing?”

	“Destination is unclear,” Grendel said, “but they are moving directly for the site of the battle I just observed you win.”

	“You conceal yourself well, Corporal, for I cannot see you,” Gregorius said.  Ly’tren and Asvar walked back to the restaurant as he spoke.  “We will intercept and destroy them.”

	“Emperor’s light protect you,” Grendel said, and the line went dead.

	Ly’tren crouched behind the decorative column that had blocked their entry to the eatery and set his multi-melta down on it. “Fifty two infantry.  Three tanks.  No problem.”

	“Don’t grow incautious, Ly’tren,” Calrus warned.  He fed Kraken rounds into his heavy bolter and chambered the first.  “Numbers can be telling.”

	“Perhaps,” Ly’tren admitted.  They fell quiet as the first tank hovered into view.

	Holgein looked away from the scope and ducked back behind the metal mesh half-wall at the edge of the upper floor.  Jergal did not look up from whatever he was doing with his machines at the back of the upper level as Asvar readied a krak grenade.

	Ly’tren let the first tank pass before firing his multi-melta.  The blast of white-hot, energized air ripped through the hoverplate of the front tank, crumpling its undercarriage.  It fell like a stone, and landed with a massive *crunch* of shattering electronics.  He fired again, taking the turret off.  Asvar hurled his grenade, and it rolled under the second, detonating and breaking its hoverplate too.

	The third tank was not yet in range, but now it couldn’t be.  The restaurant had a wide sidewalk between it and the road, and the third tank couldn’t edge past the second tank to fire into the small building.  Instead, a horrid, bestial roar went up from just out of sight to the south, and the cybernetic infantry charged in.

	Calrus held the trigger down.  The muzzle-tip of his heavy bolter glowed as he hosed down the Glasians with a sheet of Kraken bolts.  Long predating the Hive Fleet of the same name, Kraken rounds were specifically designed to punch through armor before detonating, and made a mess of the Glasian cyborgs.  They screeched in noises their anatomy should not have allowed in their Chaos-tainted voices, and charged, firing their powder and laser rifles.

	Jergal stood.  “I have it,” he said, and pressed a button on his console.  The machine he had been assembling popped to life, and a small pair of armored treads emerged underneath it.  The Rapier quad-bolter machine sprang to attention, and Jergal patted its black metal flank with one hand before bringing its target acquisition system online.  “We have the Rapier, brothers,” he informed them.  “I will maneuver it up to the edge of the railing.”

	Calrus broke his stream of fire to pivot the gun.  He turned it hard right and raked a team of cyborgs that leaped down from the hull of the second tank.  The bolts detonated on meat and metal, but in the second he took to adjust his aim, twenty more rounded the corner, firing lasers and – more worryingly – bursts of blue plasma.

	Ly’tren grimaced as he saw a Ruin Gun beam pass clean through a support column of the restaurant.  The upper floor held, but it wouldn’t forever, if that kept up.  He shot the Ruin Gunner with his pistol, and then fired the beam of his multi-melta into the hull of the first tank, detonating its fuel cell.

	Th shockwave scattered some frail Glasian bodies, but their cybernetic resilience kept most alive.  Gregorius popped up and shot two with his postil, then ducked back as Asvar shot three more from below.

	Down to less than half their number, the group of warbling aliens reached the barricade.  Ly’tren simply crushed the first to the floor with a stomp, then grabbed another and flung him into a wall with such force that he liquefied.  Calrus stuck one with his chainsword and flinched back from the sparks that rose form the metal plate over its heart.  The chewing teeth of the sword pulped its wriggling organ, and Calrus let the body clump back.  “Asvar, need help here,” he grunted; the enemy was now too close to use the multimelta or heavy bolter.

	Before Asvar could react, the rearmost few Glasians detonated.  The Marines looked on their helmet displays and saw Jergal’s Rapier appear in the wireframe overlay on their internal visors.  The few surviving Glasians in the rear scattered, straight into Asvar’s plasma fire.  The Raven leaped an upturned table and landed among the cyborgs, smashing one aside with the body of another, then cleaving another with his Power Sword.  The remainder fell to pieces under sustained fire from Ly’tren and Calrus’ pistols.

	“Nice job, brother Raven,” Ly’tren said.  “I must now question our locale, though.”

	“You picked it,” Calrus pointed out.

	Ly’tren rolled his eyes behind his mask.  “The enemy is now landing at random.  Should we be mobile instead?  This place makes a good strongpoint, but the tides of battle are drawing away from-”

	“Killteam!  Soft contact, troop movement, south!” the Corporal’s voice broke in.  “The third tank is reversing towards a horde of Glasian infantry that just rounded the corner!  You have thirty seconds before they meet the tank, another forty before they hit you!  Estimated strength is two hundred infantry!”

	Holgein’s eyebrow twitched.  Ly’tren closed his mouth and reloaded the pistol at once.  Gregorius spoke up.  “Corporal, call down any available artillery on their location at once,” he snapped.  “They must not be allowed to move in such numbers.”

	A long pause.  Jergal lowered the Rapier to its tracks and tilted it towards the corner.  “Whirlwind Nine is preparing a bombardment, but its ammunition is freshly spent,” Grendel said.  “Time until it activates is two minutes.”  The sound of footfalls was getting louder.  The beasts were running, as fast as they could.

	Asvar took a deep breath and ducked down behind the metal counter of the restaurant.  Perhaps he would be able to retrieve one of the others if they fell, he thought bleakly, but not if that horde did not slow.

	“Acknowledged, Corporal Grendel,” Gregorius said.  “Either we will need that support fire, or we will not.”

	“The Emperor be with you,” Grendel said, and the Marines heard the distant *crack* of a sniper rifle as the Scout started firing on the horde, as if it would make a difference.  Holgein chambered a Dragonfire bolt in his own weapon.  Unlike the primitive jellied fire rounds of ancient Dragonfire weapons, Astartes Dragonfire ammo only ignited after leaving the barrel, and was thus safe to use without warping the weapon.  Calrus snugged his weapon flush with a fallen block of masonry from the office building and sighted down the 2X scope, as if he needed it at that range.

	Jergal simply waited.  Gregorius began chanting an ancient litany of hate, perhaps for the last time.  They all responded.  They all knew it by rote.

	“When the enemy approaches…”

	“Detest the alien!”

	“When the mind falters…”

	“Deny the witch!”

	“When the darkness whispers…”

	“Scourge the daemon!”

	“When the Imperium calls…”

	“Slay the mutant!”

	“When the Emperor beckons…”

	“Burn the heretic!”

	“When Old Night falls…”

	“Abhor the thinking machine!”

	“We bear the Emperor in our souls, our minds, and our hearts, and He strengthens our bodies and grants us our weapons!” the hooded Chaplain said hotly.  “We slay His foes!  We guard His charges!  We shield His borders!”

	“Unto the anvil,” Ly’tren whispered, and then the beasts were upon them.


	Three Predators rumbled down the ten-lane highway that ran through the center of the Astia Grand starport.  Behind them were nearly a dozen Rhinos and a pair of Whirlwinds, all packed with as many pintle and sponson bolters as they could mount.  Small teams of PDF troops ran along the roadside, peeling off into buildings every so often.  The tanks brushed aside flaming wreckage like it wasn’t there.  Behind the Whirlwinds, two Dreadnoughts stomped along, carrying two of the Chapter’s few Ancients.

	The Rhinos groaned under the weight of their troops.  A full Company’s worth of Marines rode among them, with a few more crouching on top, riding desant.  Normally, Marines would never use such a ludicrously dangerous tactic to enter battle, preferring their own Power Armor or Drop Pods, but they weren’t going far.

	Captain Simard of the Seventh Company rode up behind the Dreadnoughts as his own Rhino caught up with the rest of his force.  Until the leaders of the other Companies contributing troops to this combined force arrived, he would assume command.  Three other Captains and five Lieutenants were already on site, but this detachment was his.

	He opened a voc channel to the Rhinos ahead.  “All squads, disperse by Rhino and break by squad,” he ordered.  “Take up sustainable positions and be ready to move.  Individual enemy units are attacking completely at random across the entire Starport.”

	He heard a chorus of acknowledgements.  The Rhinos tore off through side streets, save his own and one other with two Devastators kneeling on top, covering the air with their heavy bolters.  The Whirlwinds and Dreadnoughts followed him into a nearby groundcar parking lot, next to a burning fabric store.  He leaped from the back of his Rhino and swept the area with his combi-rifle, scanning for movement.  He saw a human wave at him from the ruined building and paused his sweep.  They were beckoning for help.  He tapped the side of his helm once and pointed at the human, and one of his squad sprinted off towards the human as the others covered him.  The other Rhino backed up until its left flank was parallel with the cinderblock wall at the edge of the car park, just a few meters away.  The pintle bolters of both Rhinos were abandoned as all the troops inside disembarked.  They twitched as their drivers turned on the primitive Machine Spirits of the transports, though they were pale imitators of a true Marine gunner.

	The running Marine arrived beside the human.  Her skin was blackened in places by the fire, but her true trouble was the rebar chunk pinning her leg.  He effortlessly lifted it and a piece of the human came with.  She screamed and went limp, but she was merely unconscious.  The Marine gingerly lifted her and carried her back to the Rhino, then deposited her where somebody else could attend to her later, if shock didn’t kill her.  Her death would be unfortunate, but stopping the Glasians was priority one.

	Simard finished sweeping the parking lot and saw no more movement.  “Skulls, get on it,” he ordered, and six servo skulls of differing loadouts zipped off to work.  The heads of honored Chapter Serfs in life, they now served as spotters for the Chapter.

	The Whirlwinds settled on their treads as they prepared to fire their artillery payloads.  One was loaded with incendiaries, the other with high explosives.  Space Marines generally avoid stationary artillery batteries, but the defensive role of the Blue Daggers rendered that impossible.

	A Techmarine dismounted from the Company Rhino and set a small signaler box on the ground beside the second Whirlwind, connecting it to the defense grid of the starport.  The air around them crackled as some Mechanicus techno-arcana cannon fired in the distance.  The Techmarine didn’t even look up.

	The Marines scattered in teams of five through the surrounding buildings, cracking off individual bolts at any aliens they encountered, as they awaited the next step of the plan.  The brilliant beams of distant Ruin and lance fire overhead cast weird shadows over the Marines as they ran through the streets of the port.

	The Techmarine looked back down as a panel on the signaler lit up.  The Whirlwinds’ turrets whipped around to face north and unleashed their full salvos.

	“A clean hit,” the Techmarine said in satisfaction, patting the artillery like a favored pet.


The Port Campaign


	The distinct *crack* of Earthshaker shells landing on targets drowned out all other sounds on the streets of the Astia Grand.  Hundreds of thousands of PDF troops advanced through the city, fighting off the randomly-landing alien forces.

	Fireteams of five dragged pallets of sandbags, or hefted them high on Sentinels, setting them down at intersections.  Stubbers and autoguns appeared at firing slits in ad hoc bunkers across the huge city.  Fighting in such a vertical city was never easy, but the defensive advantage conferred to the Imperium was significant.  Sniper teams crouched on rooftops and stood inside dark rooms around the city, firing individually at any aliens that entered view.

	Streaks of smoke erupted from missile tubes as troops on the ground fired on the massive landers and smaller fighters of the Glasian force.  A few alien ships splashed red as the missiles broke through whatever defenses they had and destroyed them, but most simply endured the hits or slammed into the ground.

	Transports that landed promptly took off again, returning to the Cylinder for more.  The far-off vessel was too distant to accept any, and the Imperium intercepted most, but that didn’t stop them from trying.

	Brigadier Deslauriers of the Septiim Secundus 19th Planetary Defense Force Brigade watched as a Glasian fighter spiralled down from the sky and landed on a vacant tool shed behind a residential tower.  He silently thanked the Emperor that it hadn’t landed on the apartment building instead; hardened though it was, it was best to avoid damage altogether.

	“Status of the reinforcement units?” he asked.

	A Lieutenant behind him raised a data-slate.  “Sir, the remaining PDF assets en route are attempting to fly in over the ocean, wave-top, to avoid Glasian interceptors.  It’s not the fastest route, but the aircraft carriers are dispatching every aircraft they can to screen them.”

	“ETA?”

	“Nineteen minutes.  Perhaps as much as twenty-one.”

	Deslauriers sighed.  “Acknowledged.”  He planted his fists on his hips in the shadow of his command Chimaera and looked around his temporary command center.  The interior of a large warehouse at the extreme southern edge of the vast Imperial complex served as his command post, for the time being.  Ringed by wooden watchtowers and pre-fab concrete firepoints, it was not suited for defense, but enough transports were present to evacuate everybody if needed.

	The warehouse roof was turning into a castle.  Flakboard and sandbags popped up to cover sharpshooters and spotters with hotshot long-las rifles and autocannons on steel tripods.  Below, Deslauriers had an array of tactical cogitators and sensor screens trailing cables across the floor haphazardly.

	In short, it was an Imperial temporary command post, exactly as tens of millions of others had been across the Imperium for over ten thousand years.  The air overhead shuddered as a flight of shuttles ripped past at subsonic speed, rattling the glass in the warehouse windows.

	A large roadway led out of the warehouse’s lot into the complex proper, and a constant stream of vehicles sped off towards the fighting from there.  Salamanders and Chimeras, Leman Russes and Tauroses rolled into the city.  The Brigadier allowed himself to wonder for a moment how many men he was about to lose, then forced it back.  No.  He had to remain detached.

	The screens beside him on their wood stands showed a flurry of completely intermixed blips and dots.  Blue for Astartes, Red for Glasians, Green for conventional Imperial human forces, and White for Mechanicus.  The Sororitas had Fleurs-de-lis behind their unit designations.  He zoomed in on a large blob of mixed colors, and it resolved as the desalination plant on the ocean shore.  Over eight hundred Glasian contact icons swam into focus, from individual beasts to a Super-heavy Grav Tank.  Some sixty Imperial PDF platoons were dug in and engaged in the fiercest fighting, all around the plant.  Arrowhead shapes zipped past the perspective of the overhead view: Lightning fighters chasing an alien ship.

	“It’s a madhouse,” Deslauriers growled.  “They’re moving completely at random, killing without a plan.”

	“As they do, sir,” the Lieutenant agreed.

	The Brigadier frowned harder.  Was he missing something?  The armies of Chaos could be wholly random – it was called Chaos for a reason – but the Glasians were slaves to Tzeentch, and nobody liked plans more than Tzeentch.  What was their goal?

	The screen flickered white as something large exploded outside.  Deslauriers looked over his shoulder – a Glasian bomber had slammed into the warehouse’s point defense line and exploded – and looked back to his screens.  A small wedge of green rectangles – Leman Russ Punishers, outfitted with three Heavy Bolters, a Storm Bolter, and a Missile Launcher each – were rumbling in, scything through the Glasian infantry.  As he watched, though, twenty more red icons appeared – Glasian hover-APCs.

	He felt his tiny icon necklace bump against his carapace armor as he leaned over the display.  It was a symbol of Macragge, made of silver, and an icon of the Ultramarines Chapter from which the Blue Daggers ultimately descended.  He wore it as a good luck charm most of the time, but now he wore it as a reminder: Guilliman was back.

	Guilliman was back.  Roboute Guilliman had returned.  He lived.

	It felt unreal.

	It also felt judgmental.  Would his actions reach Guilliman’s ears?  Would his strategy and tactics meet the great man’s approval?

	He blinked his distraction away.  Guilliman was not here.  He zoomed out slightly and watched as a trio of Leman Russ Vanquishers arrived behind the Punishers and began laying waste to the hover-APCs.  Four Salamander Scouts followed through the gap and started hosing down the enemy infantry with bolters and flamers.

	“Sir?  Your equipment is ready,” a voice behind him said.

	Brigadier Deslauriers nodded and turned away from the screen.  An Enginseer was standing there, with a human-form armor rack.  The rack had his three weapons on them: a glove with a mounted bolter, a glove with a mounted Lightning Claw, and a ceremonial las-pistol.  He held out his hands and let the Engineseer mount the weapons on his arms.  The pistol clipped to his belt holster, magazines slapped into grips, and he was ready.

	A circle of eight men sat in the back of the Chimera.  Consisting of a group of specialists and advisers of the brigade, they often followed him into battle, on those rare times when he was needed.  “Gentlemen,” he said as he walked in and shut the hatch.  “Let us travel.”

	“Unto the breach, General,” the War Cleric sitting near the crew compartment said.  “We are prepared.”  The motley assortment of Veterans, Specialists, and clergy nodded along, with several making the sign of the Aquila.

	Deslauriers sat down and strapped in, settling his data-slate in his lap.  “Then we go.  While Lieutenant General Glenn leads from afar, we lead from the front.”  He tapped a destination on his slate, and the Command Chimera rolled out.  The light outside flickered as the Waterscale Navy platform in orbit fired its defense Lances into a passing Glasian ship.


Cauldron


	Gregorius hissed psalms of hatred as he killed.  He sent shots from his master-crafted bolt pistol into the onrushing mass of cyborg aliens.  Calrus finished one belt of ammunition and swapped out for another as Ly’tren held both his triggers down.  The master-crafted storm bolter and multi-melta discharged as fast as they could chamber, cooking lines through the aliens.  The Rapier above would fire sixteen shots in rapid succession, then twitch to the side and do it again, multiple times per second, as Jergal dispassionately fired individual shells into the crowd, collecting heads.

	Holgein wasn’t carrying his rifle.  He had his pistol in a double grip, firing at the aliens closest to the corner of the building to the left of the restaurant, trying to force them to move farther from the edge before turning, the better for Jergal to sight them.  Asvar was pinned in place by streams of lead and lasers from the charging horde, slowly eroding the hard stone of the column.  An alien in the crowd exploded and was promptly trampled as the Scout somewhere up the road shot him.  It made no difference.

	“I’ve never seen such numbers,” Asvar muttered to himself.

	“Caedem bestias!” Gregorius snarled.  “Murder the beasts!”

	Asvar ducked out for a snap shot and caught a shotgun blast in the face for his efforts.  Some of the aliens were clearly so far gone that they could do little more than run in a straight line and die, but some remembered their guns, and were focusing their fire on the Apothecary.  Asvar crouched behind the column, presenting the smallest possible profile, and shielded his head as a ceiling tile fell on him.

	“Accursed monsters,” Ly’tren roared.  “Break on our anvil!  You are no match for Imperial armor!”

	The aliens laughed as one.  Ly’tren’s skin crawled.  It sounded utterly alien, and shakingly human.

	Calrus slapped the bolt feed shut and raised his bolter back into position.  He started firing the second he had the weapon braced, with Dragonfire this time.  Exploding waves of chemical fire raked the aliens’ packed ranks.

	One rolled sideways out of the column.  She whipped a pistol up to shoulder level and fired at Holgein.  The Wolf lurched back as the shot took him in the forehead.  He glared at her and blew her head off with his last shot.  “I’m out,” he grunted as he ejected the mag.

	Jergal nodded and passed him a magazine without looking.  Holgein took it with a nod of thanks the Techmarine couldn’t see.  “The Rapier has enough ammunition for two more minutes of burst fire,” he reported.  “After that, I will have to signal for the Thunderhawk.”

	Holgein slapped the new mag in and dropped back into firing position.  “Right.  How about it, Gregorius?  Time to call in air support?”

	The Chaplain quickly gauged the numbers of the foe.  They were not slowing.  “Yes.”

	As soon as Holgein opened his mouth, a wave of Whirlwind shells slammed into the ground before them.  Ly’tren and Calrus tumbled away in their heavy armor, and Asvar fell to his knees, as a wave of Whirlwind frag shells detonated a mere few meters away, instantly reducing the wave of charging aliens to powder.

	The dazed Malevolent gradually stood back up.  He looked in stunned confusion at the wall of carnage.  Holgein slowly rose to one knee and lowered his pistol.  “That was fast,” he remarked.

	“I didn’t do that,” Gregorius said.  “Lieutenant Perrier, was that entirely necessary?”

	“Clarify, Kill-team,” Perrier said.

	“A Whirlwind strike twelve meters from us?” Gregorius snapped.

	“I ordered no such strike,” Perrier insisted.  “Wait one.”

	Calrus sat on the column of shattered stone, checking his weapon by rote.  Ly’tren struggled to his feet and did the same.  The others kept to cover and simply reloaded.

	Perrier’s voice came back.  “The strike was carried out because the port’s defense congitators do not detect your presence.  Your Deathwatch Kill-team IFF codes are invisible to our grid.”

	Gregorius sighed.  “Log us in, then, as friendlies of an unknown designation.”

	Calrus’ head snapped up as he heard the distinct buzz of a grav-plate.  A Glasian hovertank, listing badly, rolled into view and past them, aflame.  A hatch opened, and a Glasian wobbled out, its feathers on fire.  Gregorius shot it through the head.

	“If I may, Chaplain, we may not be in the best position here,” Jergal observed.  “We are at our best as a rapidly-mobile strike unit.  Guarding a building is not the most efficient use of our skills.”

	“And the alternative is what?” Gregorius asked flatly.  They paused to allow the firey explosion of the tank to conclude.  “Their landings are purely random.”

	“We can always try staying mobile,” Calrus said.  “Strike and fade tactics.”

	“Works for me,” Asvar grunted.

	“If nothing else, it may keep us from having to fight an entire company by ourselves again,” Jergal said.

	Gregorius looked up at the dark sky and felt his hearts pick up.  Fifteen more Glasian ships sank through the misty air.  Each was twice the size of a Stormbird, at least.  One was five times that size.  “…Perhaps so, Brothers,” he said.  The others saw the shadows and reacted in silence.  “Very well.  We shall push through to the desalination plant and aid the Daggers there.”  He tapped the beacon for the Thunderhawk, and it blipped twice in response.

	Jergal knelt by the Rapier and brushed stone dust from the splintered concrete away.  Abruptly, though, his armored hand cast two shadows.  All six Marines snapped their attention back upwards as the side of the distant Cylider shone a brilliant light, throwing shadow all around them.


A Good Omen


	Lord Gwinnet Eiger watched as a spread of bright blue torpedoes soared through the darkness of space.  In seconds, they were just heat blips on his screens.  The dots suddenly expanded into blooms of energy as they impacted against a cruiser's flank.

	“Three confirmed hits, one intercepted partial hit, enemy cruiser's flank is dark,” a voice called from the sensorium.  “Cruiser's power relay is damaged.”

	The cruiser Eiger had commandeered, the Great Frontier, shuddered as its main lasers fired.  “Clean hit, enemy fighter bay, we have secondaries,” the voice continued.  A pair of Hunter frigates swooped in and fired their Lances, skewering the cruiser amidships, and the superstructure visibly warped as they hit something volatile.

	“Clean hit.  Enemy reactor is discharging,” the voice said.  Eiger watched with a cruel satisfaction as the alien vessel cracked down the middle, spewing orange debris towards the great Cylinder.  The Glasian colony ship's great shields didn't break, of course, as the pieces of its insignificant companion slammed into its barrier.

	Its engines flared and glowed bright blue as it ponderously heaved across the orbital path of Septiim Tertius, firing its absurdly overlarge Ruin Gun into the Imperial defenders.  Eiger winced as he saw two smaller vessels pop out of focus on his screen as the hideous streamers of blue plasma washed over his sensor return.  One remained when the plasma cleared.

	Eiger wanted to order the gun crews of his ships to focus their fire on the gun ports of the Ruin Guns, but they were already doing that, in every place that the enemy's defensive screens parted long enough to allow them to do so.  The great Nova Cannon of the Gargantuan was nearly ready.

	Eiger watched as a squadron of Lightning fighters from a nearby cruiser engaged a small wedge of Glasian bombers.  The corkscrewing rockets and thin lasers of the bombers' defense turrets splashed and skidded off the fighters' hulls or into the darkness between them, but it wasn't enough.  Three bombers evaporated under the concentrated fire of the fighters before the squadron was past, and the bomber that remained spun off into the darkness, engine cold.

	“The attack screen of fighters is doing well against the enemy defense screen, but they can't get much closer to the cylinder without risking more PD fire than they can survive,” the tactical station's techpriest reported.  Her monotone voice cut through the background chatter from her cogitator post on the other side of the room – the only one without a monitor.  She simply plugged into the terminal directly.  “The enemy escorts are focusing their fire on our own heavier ships to draw fire from the Cylinder.”

	“And the Gargantuan?” Eiger demanded.

	“They should be firing any second now,” the Operations officer reported from his station.


	Aboard the massive rock, the crew was rushing from their stations around the insanely powerful gun.  The low whine of the capacitors that fed the Nova cannon filled the room, higher and higher in volume.  The crew scurried out of range, stuffing earplugs into their ears to protect themselves from the resonance.  If the sound weren't muffled, it could even crack bones and deafen nearby unaugmented humans; even with heavy shielding and earplugs, it was uncomfortable.

	Two Techmarines with their helmets on and silenced stood by the main firing station.  Jeremy Haskell stood at the weapon controls at the heart of the command deck to watch the progress bar fill.

	“Come to me, alien trash,” he growled.  “Let the Imperium reach out and grab you.”

	“Eighty nine percent charged,” a servitor droned from the internal comm speaker of his armor.  “Ninety one.”

	“Firing solution plotted for striking the Cylinder, sir,” another Techmarine called over.  “We have a ninety nine point lock.”

	“Excellent.”

	“Ninety seven percent charged,” the servitor said.  “Ninety nine… one hundred percent charge.”

	The shell, easily one hundred meters wide and made of solid alloy, was not a conventional Nova Cannon shell.  Those tended to be plasma bombs.  They were inaccurate because of the volatility of their method of discharge, and were not armed until after launch, to prevent disaster.  The Gargantuan did not need to rely on such means.  Its shells were simply absurdly heavy, and had fins of tungsten and ceramite at the rear of the slug to impart stability, though they were of minimal help in space.

	The slug chambered into the cannon as the whine of the capacitors rose higher, until even the Techmarines were uncomfortable.  The Gargantuan didn't rotate quickly, and several more seconds passed as the great motors that turned the barrel locked into place.

	Haskell grinned coldly as the Cylinder – or rather, the spot at which the Cylinder would be in several seconds – came into view on his targetting screen.

	“We have you now,” he said darkly, and pushed the firing button.


	In the thick of the battle, Eiger's hand was poised over the fleet-wide vox command switch.  He knew the plan to attack the Cylinder was contingent on the Gargantuan hitting its mark.  If the shot missed, and kept flying, it would eventually hit Septiim, and cause some minor problems… but if Haskell had truly missed his mark, it could hit one of his own ships.

	If it hit its target, though… oh, if it hit…

	Abruptly, the side of the Cylinder lurched.  Eiger slapped the button and nearly broke the panel as the ugly tube of Glasian corruption lurched away from its orbit, engines firing fitfully.  Its shields vanished instantly, and it started spinning on its Z-axis.

	“The Cylinder is hit!  The Gargantuan strikes true!” Eiger snapped.  “All Terminators, engage!”


	Deep in the ships the fleet had mustered, teleporters flared to life.  Pre-determined patterns of assault deployments suddenly dispersed Terminators across the huge Cylinder as its defenses lay in temporary, but total disruption.

	Not all of the thirty nine Terminators arrived correctly.  Veteran Brother Rodam winced as he saw his partner Veteran Brother Fisher arrive with part of his foot lodged in a nearby bulkhead.  Fisher screamed, the most agonized noise Rodam had ever heard – and who could blame him?  Materializing inside a solid object was the most painful thing a mortal could feel short of damnation.  Rodam reached down and activated his chainfist, slicing Fisher's foot off just past the wall, and Fisher's scream diminished.  The auto-sealing armor and his own Lamarran cells clotted the wound almost instantly.  Fisher took a long moment to lock his teeth around his tongue. “…Th-th-th-thank you, b-brother,” he managed.  “That… did not work well.”

	Elsewhere, another pair of Terminators floated off into space as they materialized inside the massive hole ripped in the side of the Cylinder.  One nearly exploded as a point defense cannon locked onto him by pure foul luck, and drifted off unmoving as his partner took vengeance with a Cyclone barrage against the offending PD blister.  Both of their armor suits' IFF tags activated, and Eiger detailed a shuttle to retrieve them.

	The other thirty five Veterans, the nine Techmarines, and the Siege Dreadnought arrived with less trouble and more immediate use.  The interior of the Cylinder lit up with a wave of Imperial fire as the Blue Daggers stabbed deep into their enemy.  Eiger tracked their movements on his scanners.  The other ships in the fleet fed telemetry to the Master of the Ships from their own auspex and sensorium suites.

	Fighters tore through stunned Glasian defenses and unloaded their lascannons and autoguns on the Cylinder.  Point Defense and missile pods blew to shrapnel as the power relays of the ship tried to come back online and power the guns.  A few fighters took glancing hits from the unpowered automatic stubbers on the Cylinder's hull, but the vessel was nowhere near stable yet.


	The interior was not a place most people would call stable, anyway, even at the best of times.  More than once, the Terminators and other boarders would enter rooms that had been given over wholly to the worship of Tzeentch.  The Techmarines, with their Artificer helmets and careful centuries of training, were barely affected, and the bolstering of their spirits by the mantras of the Machine God helped, but the Terminators could feel the creeping evil of the Change God coming from the bulkheads and the decks.

	Piles of bird bones, or perhaps even Glasian bones, decorated random spots in the halls, with each lump separated from their neighbor by a prime number of meters.  Graven symbols and the Points of Invitation were carved into flat surfaces, while slightly curved surfaces were left unmarked.  In the next cabin, every bulkhead would be disturbed, but the rug kept obsessively clean.

	The Daggers forced their way through the Chaos taint.  They found whole decks empty, cleared of personnel to invade the surface.  Locks and seals blocked other decks, and those were reluctantly bypassed.  Speed was the issue now, despite the pleasures to be found in crushing aliens.  What few Glasians they encountered in any number were blown away with Storm Bolters at maximum range.

	Packs of ammo and explosives covered each Terminator's armor.  The Techmarines dragged more in their servo-harnesses or levitated them with servo-skulls.  Two Techmarines rode Rapier platforms.  One mounted a graviton cannon, while the other carried a quad-melta.  They trailed a pair of Terminators each, as the teams fought their way into the core of the ship.

	Assault rams flew in behind the Terminators, as the pairs of Marines destroyed point defense guns and cracked power conduits.  They slammed into the unarmored guts of the Cylinder, disgorging teams of Dreadnoughts and Techmarines.  Master Apothecary Embri Koell led one team.  He followed the stomping steps of the Siege Dreadnought that had accompanied them.  The Dreadnought bore a large metal box on its back, filled with parts needed for the Daggers' plan.  His was the Prize Team, carrying the equipment the Daggers would use to finish the job on the accursed Cylinder.  Long-range fire from the Nova Cannon was simply not adequate to destroy a ship the size of the Cylinder without knocking it down to the planet below.

	Behind them, another Terminator and the Techmarine with the graviton Rapier kept up the rear.  The Siege Dreadnought, Brother Santoru, spun several degrees to the right as the team hustled across a wide arterial corridor.  One of the two Hunter-Killer missiles on its shoulders fired, and a Glasian transport that had been moving up to engage them suddenly spun out and slammed into a bulkhead, detonating with a furious shockwave.

	“Aliens neutralized,” Santoru reported, returning his attention to the fore.  His Siege Drill spun up and casually ripped a falling blast door in half.  A quick blast from his Heavy Flamer set the room on the other side ablaze, and after a few seconds of waiting, he simply walked through the sagging metal like it wasn’t there.  The graviton cannon fired, turning a pursuing squad of Glasians to slurry as their atoms suddenly compressed.

	Master Koell kept one eye on his brothers and one on the unique display built into his helmet.  With the twitch of an eye, he could call up a holofield that showed him the medical status of his entire attack team.  The squares were Terminators, the circles were Techmarines, and the triangle was Santoru.  He saw one square briefly flicker as the Veteran Sergeant – Bonnegart, his sensor said – took a plasma hit, then turned green.  No permanent injury.  Another pulsed red, and Koell’s teeth clenched, but it turned green after a moment.  Veteran Vanguard Brother March had taken a savage hit, but it had only damaged his datalink, not his actual flesh.

	It was like a game with no winner.  Koell was wearing the only Terminator suit assigned to the Apothecarion. It would be his duty to teleport to any Terminator who had taken life-threatening injury and retrieve his gene-seed before Santoru – or whomever else got to their destination first, but he wasn’t going to bet against the old Dreadnought within earshot – got to the Traverse Core, the hideous xenotech machine that propelled the Cylinder between galaxies, and blew the whole ship to scrap.

	The Terminator’s Storm Bolter barked twice, and a Glasian swordswoman exploded from the mass-reactive shells.  Koell switched to a pistol in his off-hand and fired once more, putting a crater in another alien.  Had he been fighting Orks, or other beings of greater physical durability or danger – Hrud, Eldar, even trained and sane humans – he would have been fighting more carefully, but the old Apothecary knew the only real threat from Glasians was numbers.

	One Terminator abruptly pivoted and leveled both weapon arms.  A trio of Glasians with rocket launchers had spilled out of a side chamber, but before they could fire, the Terminator blew them to meat scraps.

	“Well spotted, Sergeant Eli,” Koell said.  He reviewed the bio-tracker again – no fresh casualties – and returned his attention to the hallway.  “Venerable Santoru, how close are we to the core?”

	“We are but half a kilometer from the Traverse Core,” Santoru replied.  The group halted as a rumbling from the floor started jarring items on tables and decking.  “Contact, a vehicle of some kind,” Santoru said over the vox.

	“There,” the Techmarine manning the Rapier said.  He rotated the gun on its tracks.  Seconds later, an entire wall panel started to drop into the deck, nearly thirty meters wide.

	“To cover!” Koell snapped.  The Terminators hunkered down as best they could beside a ruined grav-cart, while Santoru simply braced his two flamers.  The Rapier powered up its graviton weapon as the metal slab dropped.

	Koell's throat tightened as he saw a moving object behind the lowering metal block.  “Fire!” he said as soon as he saw the grav-tank.  The graviton gun's beam smashed into the machine's front armor and peeled a slab of alien alloys away.  Santoru fired his Incinerator on one side and Heavy Flamer on the other, forcing back the herd of Glasians on either side of the vehicle.

	The Terminators opened fire with their own weapons.  One had a standard Storm Bolter, which was of little help against the tank, but the other had an Assault Cannon, far better suited for anti-vehicle work.  A line of thick holes blew through the front of the tank's now-unprotected front.  Something inside died, and the tank suddenly slewed down to ram its front into the deck.  The turret traversed to fire at the Terminator with the Cannon, and Koell snarled as he saw the Terminator's bio-sign flash amber – unconscious.  Koell whipped his own bolter up to fire into the holes, and the interior glowed red for a moment from the detonations.

	The tank dropped, and slammed into the ground like a hammer on an anvil.  The few surviving Glasians tumbled from the shockwave, and the Techmarine neatly picked them off with his pistol.

	Koell was already at the side of the fallen Terminator.  He extended probes from his gauntlet into the ports on the Terminator armor, collecting what data he could.  Santoru backed up to cover him, but the Glasians nearby were dead.

	“The xeno trap has failed, it seems, Master Koell,” Santoru observed.  “How fares Eli?”

	“He shall live, but not comfortably,” Koell said darkly.  “Eli sleeps in the Sus-An coma.”  Koell pressed the button on Sergeant Eli's Teleport Homer-Recaller, and the Tactical Dreadnought disappeared with a stink of ozone, leaving only drops of acid blood on the deck behind.

	“This corridor may be a more direct route,” the Techmarine observed.  He had sidled up to look down the tunnel from which the aliens had attacked.  “I have some moving contacts ahead, but few, and the corridor is well-lit.”

	“Distance to targets?”

	The Techmarine checked.  “Forty meters.  More at one hundred.”

	“Contact,” Santoru barked.  He pivoted and reduced a hooting Glasian to a pile of meat with two quick shots.  Fire from the other targets ahead raked over his armor, but a blast from his Storm Bolter put one down.  The other popped up to fire again and melted from the waist up when the Techmarine fired back.

	“We’re clear out to two hundred meters,” the Techmarine said.  “We should move, quickly.”

	The group sped up, moving as fast as the Terminators allowed.  The long corridor warped underfoot, whether from the planet-shaking impact of the Nova or the influence of Chaos, but the tracks of the Rapier handled it well enough.

	Koell’s vox buzzed.  “Master Apothecary, this is Lord Doreth,” the Master of the Armoury said.  “We have you on proximity sensors.  My team is converging on yours.  Acknowledge.”

	“Koell here.  We read you, Doreth,” Koell said.  “Time to contact?”

	“Two minutes.  My team encountered resistance.”

	“Likewise.  Brother Eli is already back on the ship.”  Koell hustled his team down the long corridor, pausing only long enough to kill a few overzealous Glasians who tumbled from a side corridor, waving knives.  Before long, a hatch swung down and clanked onto the floor ahead of the team.  A Techmarine in Cataphractii armor, trailed by a pair of Terminators with Chainfists and Storm Bolters, emerged from the hatchway.

	“Master Koell,” Doreth said with a respectful nod.  “The aliens reel from the Gargantuan.”

	“Indeed, Jeremy strikes true,” the Master Apothecary said.  He hefted his bolter and gestured down the hall.  “We press on, then.  Have you encountered anything unusual?”

	“Not yet.  By Chaotic standards, anyway,” Doreth said.  He swept the corridor with his multimelta and gestured for the other two Terminators to advance before him.  “Onwards.”  Santoru’s Cognomen-pattern Siege Dreadnought led the way, hosing down aliens with fire and bullets.

	Abruptly, the deck shook under the marching Marines’ feet.  Santoru wobbled for a moment before his automatic gyros stabilized him.  All of the Blue Daggers looked around, but nothing had changed.

	“What was that?  Did Haskell fire again?” Koell demanded.

	“Master Koell!  We’re getting a maximum-priority message blast from the Gargantuan!” one of the Terminators broke in.  “They have detected an astronomical anomaly beyond the edge of the system!”

	Koell looked over at the Terminator.  “It’s… massive, whatever it is,” the Terminator said quietly.  “It is yet unknown.”


	Chaplain Gregorius brought the pommel of his Crozius up into the chin of a screeching alien.  He pulped it, then sidestepped the toxic substance that spewed from the gap.  A burst of bolts from a Blue Dagger Centurion shredded the next two in line.

	“I begin to see the difficulty in putting such beings down for good,” Jergal remarked impassively.  The Techmarine was down to his pistol now, and both his Rapier and his plasma-combi bolter were dry.  The Thunderhawk was on its way with more ammunition again, but the sky battle was actually growing worse.  There was no estimated time of arrival.

	The desalination plant’s upper levels were aflame.  Glasian ships had hit it hard, and the Septiim Defender PDF were reeling.

	Holgein had set his massive rifle aside.  At this range, it was a waste.  The old Wolf was a whirlwind of knives and pistol shots.  He and Ly’tren were holding the shattered front door of the building.  Thousands of alien corpses lay sprawled over the ferrocrete all around them, and a few hundred humans beside them.  Holgein howled in rage as he grabbed one Glasian and simply ripped it apart.  He flung the remains into the pressing herd and fired his pistol into another.  Ly’tren had slung his multimelta, and his two bolters now did the work.  Despite the endurance his gene-line bestowed upon him, he could feel the faint sting of lactic acid buildup in his muscles – he was tired.

	Apparently Asvar wasn’t.  The dexterous Raven Apothecary was darting around the defense lines of the PDF, tending to the wounded Blue Daggers who had joined the desperate battle.  Dozens of Glasian ships, mostly fighters, but with a few transports among them, were still descending towards the atmosphere.  The Glasians were using their landed transports as firebases now, and there were nearly a hundred scattered around the city.  The Septiim Defender PDF were holding, but if the Glasians in orbit weren’t broken soon, things would run out of hand.

	Asvar hauled back a punch and drove it into the stomach of one Glasian trooper that had vaulted the sandbags.  The Glasian broke at the middle, showering the sandbags with tainted gore.  Asvar shoved his Power Sword into the next one over, and it fell back aflame.

	“There’s no end to them!” one Guardsman wailed.  He scrambled to his knees, covered in the remains of a squadmate.  “They’ll not stop til all men are dead!”

	His Commissar slapped the offending solder across the eyes, and the faintheart fell back, stunned.  “On your feet, soldier!” the Commissar snarled.  “We’re not dead yet!”

	Calrus ignored the melodrama and loaded his last belt of heavy shells into his bolter.  He had… two hundred fifty six bolts left, of a mixture of ammo types, including High Explosive.  If he didn’t get his reload soon, it wouldn’t matter which type he was using.

	Another transport soared by underhead.  The paint and metal of its belly warped as PDF troops on nearby rooftops fired up into its undercarriage, but it stil made it down.  Side hatches clanged down, and hundreds more Glasians charged madly into the fray.

	Two Leman Russ Conquerors rumbled out of a side alley to engage.  The tanks had the typical Septiim loadout of three heavy bolters and two storm bolters, plus their cannon.  Both vehicles opened up on the landed transport’s troops, laying down a thick curtain of bolts.  The Glasiasn infantry’s first wave dissolved in the storm of bolts, but two laser blasts from the transport slagged one tank, which splashed fuel on the other, setting it aflame.  A pair of Guardsmen emerged from one hatch and began hurriedly extinguishing the flames.

	A Blue Dagger Tactical Marine beside Jergal sighted the weapons blister with his missile launcher and fired.  The lascannon blister blackened from the impact and detonation, but remained intact.  It pivoted its gun and impaled the Dagger with a laser blast, and Jergal looked away from the sight of the Marine being vaporized from the waist up.  Asvar saw the Tactical brother fall and cursed.  “The damn transports are armed like a Stormbird,” he said grimly.

	“I know, but just keep holding the line, brother, the rest of the Daggers and the Guard are on the way,” Ly’tren said.  He fired the last few Kraken rounds from his bolter into the regrouping Glasians, and the gun clanked empty.  He lumbered back to the PDF line as Holgein covered his withdrawal.

	Gregorius twisted an alien’s head off and threw it like a ball at the Glasian herd.  As one, they charged the Chaplain where he stood defiant beyond the sandbagged line, his Conversion Field sparking.  “Come, beasts,” he hissed.  He leveled his pistol and started shooting into the mass of blue aliens.

	Jergal finished loading the last few shells he had into the Rapier and pivoted it.  At the last moment, his eyes widened as he saw the laser on the transport jerk over to point at him.  He threw himself aside as a beam cooked past where he had been standing.  He heard the rattling explosion of detonating ammunition as the beam hit his precious Rapier.

	“Accursed xeno scum!” he snarled as he crawled away under the sandbags.  “Gregorius, they got the Rapier.”

	The Chaplain’s jaw tightened.  “Move to better cover.  Daggers, one of you kindly destroy that damn laser!”

	“Working on it,” a new voice put in.  A moment later, two more missiles streaked out from the burning desalination plant to smear the lascannon blister into scrap.  “Target neutralized.  Reloading.”

	A Glasian hovertank suddenly dropped ballistic to the ground and exploded.  Gregorius watched arcs of lightning spew from the hands of an Electro-Priest by the Guard lines and catch another, singeing its grav-plates.

	The glittering red and grey of an incoming Imperial aircraft emerged from the roiling battle overhead.  Gregorius saw it blink black twice on his helmet display – a Deathwatch ship.  Two more darts followed in its wake, the same color.

	A column of light transfixed the Glasian transport, followed by a precision strike from six Hellstrikes.  The transport exploded down the middle, scattering debris and burning aliens everywhere.  A Thunderhawk gunship dropped past the smoke and dove down towards the fight on the ground.  Its turbolaser fired again, skewering a Glasian tank and sending it into the water.  The Thunderhawk soared down behind the Imperial lines and rotated to face the enemy.

	Jergal was at the ramp before it finished lowering.  Four serfs with slung SMGs charged out, each pulling a lead on a grav-sled.  Jergal reached out and pushed his wrecked Rapier into the Thunderhawk, where a Techpriest was waiting.  “We did not hear that your machine had been desecrated, Techmarine,” the Techpriest droned.

	“It just happened,” Jergal said angrily.  He grabbed fresh magazines off the grav-sled and dropped empty ones back on.  “I’m loaded.  Go.”  He leaped back as the serfs pushed the grav-sled back into the gunship and swung the door closed.

	Asvar hurled a grenade at the charging bird beasts.  It went off in the middle of a pack, scattering them and killing most.  A burst of explosive shells from a Storm Bolter somewhere overhead finished off the rest.  He took a quick look over the killing field as he moved back to the line.  Things were not clearing, but the covering fire from the main building was intensifying quickly.  More Guard must have arrived.

	As he registered that, however, something caught his ear.  The buzz of Glasian hovertanks was not lessening, but the weapons fire of their corkscrew guns and Ruin weaponry had.  Asvar risked a quick look over at them as he ran, and his eyes widened.  They had stopped shooting.  All of them.  The Guard had abruptly stopped, too, he couldn’t hear the distinctive *click-buzz* of lasrifles.

	Asvar slowed to a halt and looked around.  Everybody was looking up.  The Guard, Jergal, even Gregorius, whose hood had fallen back.  Asvar looked upwards too.

	Overhead, with no ceremony or sound at all, the sky was turning bright red.  Far beyond the sky, in the depths of space, a line was appearing.  It was an ugly line, ragged and glowing with malevolent un-light.  It spread and spread and spread until it wrapped around the sky from one side to the other, swallowing the horizons.  In seconds, there was a crack in the world above, where previously there had been nothing at all.

	“What is this?” Ly’tren whispered.  His hearts were hammering in his chest.

	“I… do not know,” Gregorius said softly.

	Behind them, the screaming started.

To Be Continued