The moment was one of pure, distilled purpose. The golden light of the Harbinger's Wing spilled down the assault ramp, a pathway to duty. Thaddeus planted his boot on the metal incline, the first step on a mission to save a legion. The cadenced march of forty-two Astartes behind him was a promise of steel and thunder. Hope, for the first time in a very long time, felt real.
Then, that hope was violently, utterly shattered.
A klaxon, not the measured chime of a standard alert but a violent, gut-wrenching shriek, tore through the ship. It was the sound of a fortress screaming as its walls were breached. The steady, white lumens of the hangar bay instantly died, replaced by the hellish, pulsating twilight of crimson emergency strobes. The disciplined hum of the ship's engines was drowned out by the shriek of tearing metal and the deep, resonant groans of a dying leviathan.
On the bridge, Captain Ortan Cassius had been watching the tactical hololith, a flicker of professional satisfaction on his face as the strike force embarked. The alert hit the bridge like a physical blow.
"Report!" Cassius snapped, his voice a blade of pure command cutting through the rising chaos.
"Multiple contacts, Captain!" a sensorum officer cried out, his voice tight with disbelief. "Appearing from nowhere! No warp signature! No realspace translation! They're just… here!"
The main viewscreen shimmered, then resolved into an impossible image. Against the black void, a fleet of ghosts had materialized. They were not the brutal, pragmatic shapes of Imperial warships. These were ships of impossible elegance, sleek, bone-white shapes that curved like a predator's tooth, their hulls seeming to shift and flow. Great, gossamer sails, like the wings of a cosmic insect, unfurled to catch the light of a distant star.
They were beautiful. And they were death.
"Void shields to maximum refraction!" Cassius commanded, his mind already cycling through tactical responses. "All batteries, acquire firing solutions!"
But there was no time. The attack was not an assault; it was a vivisection.
A blinding web of multicoloured light, a hundred lances of pure energy, erupted from the lead enemy vessel. It did not fly toward the Honour of Calth; it simply arrived. The ship's shields, the pride of the XIII Legion's artifice, flared for a nanosecond and then vanished, not broken, but bypassed, as if they were a suggestion the enemy had simply ignored. The energy lances struck the ship's dorsal spine. There was no grand explosion. Where the light touched, ceramite and plasteel simply ceased to exist, erased from reality, leaving gaping, glowing wounds venting atmosphere and crew into the void.
Simultaneously, swarms of plasma torpedoes, shimmering like tears of molten starlight, phased through the non-functional shields. They detonated not in fiery blasts, but in silent, surgical detonations deep within the ship's structure, severing primary power conduits and munitions elevators with unnatural precision.
The bridge of the Honour of Calth bucked violently. Consoles exploded in showers of sparks, and crewmen were thrown from their stations. The disciplined order dissolved into controlled chaos.
"Negative lock, Captain!" the weapons officer yelled, wrestling with his console. "Their energy signatures are incoherent! We can't target them!"
"Lance strike, decks 12 through 20!" another reported. "Main engine room is venting plasma! We are losing motive power!"
"Launch all fighter wings!" Cassius roared, his face a grim mask of fury as he gripped the command rail to stay upright.
But as the hangar bay doors on the opposite side of the ship tried to cycle open, a flicker of light from one of the smaller enemy craft erased the entire launch bay from existence. The Honour of Calth, the pride of Macragge, a fortress built to fight gods and daemons, was being dismantled piece by piece by an enemy whose technology was so advanced it bordered on magic.
Back in the embarkation hangar, the universe had become a maelstrom of red light and shaking steel. The Ultramarines, their discipline absolute, had instantly broken formation, forming a defensive perimeter around the Thunderhawk.
"Warden, what are your orders?" Sergeant Lycomedes yelled over the din, his bolter already raised.
Before Thaddeus could answer, a tremendous explosion ripped through the hangar ceiling. A stray pulsar beam, impossibly fast, had struck the deck above. The deck plate didn't buckle; it vanished in a flash of rainbow light, leaving a glowing, twenty-meter crater. Shrapnel from the surrounding structure scythed through the air. Three of the Ultramarines were cut down instantly, their new armor offering no resistance. The Thunderhawk itself was rocked by the shockwave, its port wing twisted and smoking.
Thaddeus's mind, honed by seven years of constant crisis, worked with lightning speed. The mission was dead. The Harbinger's Wing was crippled. The ship was dying around them. But the attack was too precise. It wasn't a random blitz. They were being targeted. Hunted.
The scepter, a cold voice whispered in his mind. The key.
He drew his new power sword, its blade humming to life, a beacon of blue light in the crimson chaos.
"They're not just attacking the ship," he roared, his voice cutting through the alarms. "They're hunting something inside it! The Reliquary! Where they took the Necron artifact!"
Lycomedes's bionic eye whirred as he processed the new, terrifying logic. It made no sense, but it fit the surgical nature of the attack.
"Vorn!" Thaddeus commanded, pointing to the assault ramp. "Hold this position! Defend the gunship! It's our only way out if the ship falls!"
He then turned to the grizzled Ultramarine Sergeant. "Lycomedes, you're with me! We're not escaping! We are fighting our way to the Reliquary! Now!"
They were no longer departing on a mission of vigilance. They were the ship's last, most desperate line of defense, plunging from the relative safety of the hangar into the heart of their dying, besieged fortress.
---
The invasion was not a blunt instrument; it was a thousand poisoned needles. Breaches opened simultaneously across the Honour of Calth as the xenos attackers phased through the hull, their forms shimmering into reality within the ship's corridors. They were specters of war, clad in flowing, bone-white armor that seemed more grown than forged. Their elongated helmets were impassive and cruel, their movements a horrifying blend of balletic grace and lethal speed.
In the grand corridors that were once a testament to order, the Ultramarines fought with the brutal, disciplined fury of their Legion. They set up interlocking fields of fire, their bolters roaring a defiant hymn of faith and steel. But the enemy did not fight like men. They flowed around cover, their slender forms a blur of motion. They did not charge into the hail of bolter fire; they danced between the explosive shells, a storm of razor-edged discs erupting from their elegant weapons, shredding ceramite and flesh into bloody ribbons. An Ultramarine would be hit not with a single, solid impact, but with a thousand tiny cuts that flayed him alive in a fraction of a second.
From the last functioning launch bay, a handful of Starhawk fighter pilots, their faces grim masks of suicidal determination, managed to launch. "For Calth and the Five Hundred Worlds!" their squadron leader voxed, his voice cold fury. They punched out into the void, beasts of iron and fire charging at ghosts of moonlight and starlight. Their cannons blazed, but the enemy fighters danced away on impossible trajectories, their pulsar lances flashing in reply. One by one, the Starhawks vanished in silent, blossoming fireballs, their heroic last stand lasting less than thirty seconds.
On the bridge, Captain Cassius watched his fortress die. Reports flooded his console—breaches on every deck, catastrophic damage, entire squads going silent. It was illogical. It was impossible. His ship, his command, his world of perfect order was being unmade by an enemy that defied every tenet of warfare he had ever known. A low, guttural sound escaped his lips, a word he had not uttered since his brutal trials as an aspirant on Macragge.
"Fuck."
It was a curse born of utter disbelief. He slammed his fist on the console. "They're not trying to destroy us," he breathed, the tactical mind reasserting itself through the shock. "This is surgical. They are cutting us apart. They want something..."
As if in answer, his vox crackled to life, overlaid with the sounds of battle. "Captain, this is Valen!" Thaddeus's voice was a roar over the scream of alien weaponry. "The attack is too precise! They're bypassing strategic targets! They want the xenos artifact! The scepter from the Reliquary!"
The final piece of the puzzle slotted into place with sickening clarity. A cold, terrifying logic bloomed in the heart of the chaos.
Cassius's fist opened. His authority returned in a tidal wave. "All bridge crew, listen up!" he commanded, his voice cutting through the panic. "All units, consolidate defensive positions around primary command nodes and the engine room! They want something aboard, they will not destroy the ship entirely! Hold the line!"
He keyed his private channel to Thaddeus. "Warden, abort your assault! Abort! Return to the Harbinger's Wing! Get that gunship in the air! Depart! NOW!"
The reply came instantly, laced with incredulity and the roar of a chainsword. "But Captain! The scepter! We cannot let them have it! We can hold them here!"
"FOLLOW ORDERS, WARDEN!" Cassius roared, his voice an iron command that could brook no argument. The impassive Captain was gone, replaced by a commander making an impossible choice in a battle that was already lost. "I will see the scepter destroyed myself! Your mission has changed!"
He paused, the fate of the future resting on his next words. "Magos Varnus! Your new priority is to save Magos Varnus! He has the dataslates—all of them! The Necron intelligence, our combat logs against this new foe! That knowledge is more important than this ship, more important than the scepter! That intelligence CANNOT be lost!"
The line was silent for a half-second, filled only with the sounds of slaughter.
"Save the Magos!" Cassius commanded, his voice raw. "Get him to the Thunderhawk and get out of my ship! That is an order!"
---
The Captain's order was a thunderclap, a command that shattered Thaddeus's own instincts. To retreat? To abandon the ship, to leave a holy relic to these xenos abominations? It was anathema. It was cowardice.
"But Captain—" he started, a protest burning on his lips.
"That is an order!" Cassius's final roar over the vox was not a suggestion; it was a psychic hammer blow, a Primarch's will channeled through a mortal man. The line went dead.
For a single, agonizing moment, Thaddeus was frozen. The battle raged around him. An Ultramarine to his left was immolated by a silent blast of star-bright energy, his armor sloughing off him like melting wax. The scent of ozone and cooked meat filled the air. Thaddeus's every fiber screamed at him to charge forward, to find the heart of the enemy and tear it out. The Red Thirst whispered seductively in his soul, promising glory in a tide of righteous slaughter.
But a deeper instinct, the ingrained discipline of an Astartes Sergeant, took hold. The mission had changed. The logic, however painful, was sound.
"You heard the Captain!" he bellowed, turning to Lycomedes, his voice cutting through the din. The Ultramarine Sergeant was a rock in the storm, his bolter spitting controlled, disciplined bursts at the flowing shapes down the corridor. "The mission is the Magos! We get the dataslates and we get out! Where is Varnus?"
"The Omnissian Conclave, deck 32, sub-sector Gamma!" Lycomedes yelled back, reloading his bolter with practiced, desperate speed. "The main cogitator shrine! He would be trying to save the ship's Machine Spirit!"
"Go!" Thaddeus commanded, pointing two squads of Ultramarines down a secondary corridor. "Secure a path back to the hangar! Kill anything that moves! Lycomedes, with me!"
They plunged into the heart of the dying ship. The pristine, logical corridors of the Honour of Calth were now a charnel house, a Boschian nightmare of fire, shadow, and blood. Bodies of Ultramarines, their blue armor blackened and torn, lay amidst the shimmering, ethereal corpses of the xenos, which dissolved into glittering dust a few moments after death.
They found the entrance to the Omnissian Conclave blocked. A towering, elegant xenos walker, a wraithbone construct that moved with the silent grace of a hunting cat, was systematically tearing apart the adamantium blast door. Its twin cannons spat torrents of shuriken-like projectiles that shredded the metal, while a great, ghostly blade of energy pulsed in its other hand.
"By the Throne!" Lycomedes breathed, the sight so alien it defied tactical analysis.
Thaddeus didn't hesitate. "For the Angel!" he roared, a battle cry from another legion, another war. He charged.
His speed was breathtaking. Lycomedes and his men, trained in the steady, inexorable advance of the Ultramarines, were left standing as Thaddeus became a crimson blur. He was not running; he was flowing, the restored Veil billowing behind him, his every movement a perfect economy of lethal grace. He closed the fifty-meter distance in seconds, a feat that should have been impossible.
The wraithbone walker turned its impassive head, its cannons swinging towards him. But Thaddeus was too fast. He ducked under the cone of fire, the storm of monomolecular discs shredding the air where he had been a nanosecond before. He slid across the deck, his new power sword humming, and swung low, an upward arc of crackling blue energy. The blade bit deep into the construct's leg, shearing through the wraithbone with a sound like screaming crystal.
The walker staggered, its ghost-glaive swinging down in a vast, silent arc. Thaddeus was already moving, flowing inside the creature's guard. His second swing was a brutal, overhand chop aimed at the 'waist' of the construct. The power field flared, and the sword bit deep. His third and fourth swings were a blur of motion, a flurry of precise, savage cuts that severed power conduits and shattered crystalline joints. The construct shuddered, its energy blade flickering out, and then toppled, crashing to the deck with a final, echoing screech of tortured wraithbone.
Thaddeus stood over the twitching remains, his chest heaving, the blue light of his sword casting his crimson armor in an ethereal glow. Sergeant Lycomedes and the other Ultramarines stared, their bolters half-lowered in sheer, unadulterated shock. They had seen Astartes fight. They had never seen anything like this. This was not the measured application of force. This was the speed and fury that surpassed others Astartes.
They breached the ruined doorway and entered the Conclave. The chamber was a cathedral of humming machinery, now flickering and dying. At the central altar-cogitator, Magos Varnus was a whirlwind of frantic activity, his dozens of mechadendrites flying across control panels, trying to download millennia of data onto a single, shielded databank.
A lone xenos warrior stood over him. It was taller and more ornate than the others, its armor adorned with flowing robes and intricate gems. It raised a long, slender rifle, its tip glowing with malevolent energy.
Thaddeus saw it. "Magos!" he roared.
He threw himself forward, covering the last ten meters in a single, gravity-defying leap. He crashed into the xenos warrior just as its weapon fired, the beam of energy searing a black line across the ceiling. The impact sent both of them tumbling across the deck. Thaddeus was up first, his sword a blur. The xenos was fast, impossibly so, parrying with a blade that seemed to be made of solidified light. But Thaddeus was faster. Stronger. More savage. His crimson armor was a stark contrast to the xenos's bone-white, his blue helmet a strange anomaly in the dance of death. He feinted, parried, then spun, his power sword screaming as it sheared through the xenos's guard and cleaved it from shoulder to hip.
The alien warrior dissolved into a shower of glittering dust and fading light.
Thaddeus turned to Magos Varnus. The tech-priest was clutching a heavy, adamantium-cased databank to his chest, his optical sensors glowing with alarm.
"The Reliquary," Varnus rasped, his synthesized voice cracking with static. "The scepter... its quantum signature is a key... we cannot let them possess it! It is an affront to the Omnissiah's divine order!"
"The mission has changed, Magos," Thaddeus said, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "We are leaving. Now."
"Negative!" Varnus shrieked, his mechadendrites flailing. "My directive is to analyze and contain the xenos artifact! My logic dictates—"
Thaddeus strode forward, grabbing the front of the Magos's robes with his gauntleted hand, lifting the amalgam of flesh and steel off the deck. The blue helmet tilted, its impassive faceplate inches from the Magos's own.
"YOUR LOGIC IS IRRELEVANT!" Thaddeus roared, his voice amplified by his helmet's vox-grille into a sound of pure, unrestrained command. "THE CAPTAIN'S ORDERS ARE ALL THAT MATTER! YOU HAVE THE DATA! WE ARE LEAVING THIS SHIP! YOU WILL LISTEN TO ME!"
The raw, primal fury in his voice, the sheer physical power of his grip, and the burning intensity in his unseen eyes were enough to override even the Magos's rigid programming. The whirring and clicking of Varnus's augmentations ceased.
"A-affirmative, Warden," the Magos stammered, his logic rebooting under the sheer force of Thaddeus's will. "New... new directive... accepted."
"Good," Thaddeus growled, dropping him. He turned to Lycomedes. "Form a perimeter around the Magos. We are fighting our way back to the hangar. No matter the cost."