Eden's eyes were full of anticipation. His need for Blackstone was urgent.
Not only would it fuel the construction of the Webway city; Blackstone and the technologies around it had uses across many domains—especially in instruments of war.
Blackstone could harness the energies of the warp—amplifying, luring, or suppressing them—and thus play a decisive role in warfare.
It was a one-of-a-kind precious material in the galaxy.
Long before Mankind uncovered Blackstone's mysteries, xenos had already employed it to raise palaces and span Webway routes; the lingering Blackstone Obelisks and Blackstone Fortresses still carried terrifying power.
Now Abaddon's Black Legion also grasped the secrets of Blackstone technology. Their research had far outstripped the Imperium's—perhaps even the Savior's own.
That was a dangerous trend.
"But where did Abaddon get so much Blackstone tech?" Eden did not believe those shabby, chaos-tainted Black Legion research cells could yield many cutting-edge breakthroughs on their own.
Previously they'd only managed crude Blackstone engines and Arks of Omen by allying with the demigod daemon-engineer Vashtorr.
But the demigod Arkifane had been torn apart by the Emperor over half a century ago.
The Black Legion, unlike Eden, had no Machine Goddess assisting them; there was no reason their Blackstone research should be advancing this fast.
"The only possibility is that Abaddon traded with the Chaos Gods again and obtained Vashtorr's legacy," Eden concluded.
When Vashtorr the Arkifane fell, the Ruinous Powers seized part of the might he left behind.
If the Changer of Ways tinkered with that legacy, he could well spawn a powerful successor to continue the arcane studies.
Judging by the situation, the Black Legion's Blackstone weapons were nearly ready—about to be unleashed.
Fortunately, Eden's sudden blame-shifting and aggro-drawing had disrupted the timetable. Otherwise, once they struck…
It would have been quite a problem.
Still, this looting frenzy would likely scatter Blackstone tech from the Legion into wider Chaos hands.
Whether that outcome was good or bad remained to be seen.
At that thought, a prickle of danger crept into Eden's heart.
The race for Blackstone technology had already begun; he had to keep an edge in this technical competition.
That demanded more Blackstone and more know-how to accelerate his current research.
In other words, he needed to seize the richest prizes in this raid—Abaddon's new-pattern Blackstone tech, weapons, and war-beasts—right into his own hands.
The opportunity was too rare to waste.
"How long until we reach Savadore?"
Eden's voice was tight with impatience.
He feared that by the time his fleet arrived, Savadore's pillage-and-plunder carnival would be over—that would be a loss among losses.
"Your Majesty, a minor eddy in the local warp lanes has delayed us a little. If nothing else goes wrong, we'll be a day later than planned,"
Tarko reported, eyes flicking over course numbers, pressure mounting.
He had assured the Savior they would make the timetable. Even on the optimal route inside the Eye of Terror, something had still gone awry.
"Accelerate as much as you can…"
Eden sighed and said no more. In the Eye of Terror, route hiccups were acts of God.
Not something mortals could control.
He muttered, "Hah, maybe we lingered around Old Roboute too long before departure and picked up his bad luck."
"Very possible."
The Khan folded his arms and smirked. "I once arranged an ambush with Guilliman—three hours' ride turned into an entire day.
And thanks to a sky-port collapse he never even reached the battlefield before it ended.
I must admit, the man's luck is downright uncanny."
"Come on—cathedral."
A thought struck Eden, and he strode out, heading toward the Urth Ecclesiarchy Grand Cathedral aboard the flagship.
That cathedral stood in the Dreamweaver's central sector, several hundred meters tall, lavish and gilt—a top-tier fit-out for a shipboard basilica.
A bishop-rank prelate kept watch there with a full complement of clergy—one of the more sanctified precincts of the Urth Ecclesiarchy.
"Uh, why are we going to the cathedral?" The Khan shot the Savior a side-eye, baffled, but lengthened his stride to follow.
"Things are getting dicey," Eden said without looking back. "We'll hold a blessing rite in the cathedral—change our luck.
Maybe it'll help us arrive faster."
???
The Khan was even more lost. "But… aren't all the statues in there of you?"
He'd poked around earlier out of curiosity.
There were no other living saints or statues of the Emperor there; almost everything had been replaced by holy images of the Savior in manifold aspects, plus sacred icons of the golden sun.
Even the concept of the Emperor had been abstracted into a golden sun.
This wing of the Urth Ecclesiarchy had gone all-in on religious reformation—faith in the Savior and the Golden Sun in place of the old Imperial Creed.
They would slowly push it through the wider Church as well.
The White Scars Primarch could not fathom why the Savior would go to church to pray… to himself.
How would that even work?
"What's wrong with praying to me?" Eden said with deadly earnestness, laying it on thick with mystic aphorisms. "Where there is faith, there is power; without faith, there is nothing. Sincerity makes miracles. Honestly? I'm quite efficacious.
Might even cancel out Old Roboute's aura."
Though the Savior advocated belief in science, he was not above dipping into a little mysticism on occasion.
If a practice worked and the outcome was good—then it was ancestral wisdom. If it didn't—well, that was feudal superstition.
Very flexible.
In idle hours he'd even had the Urth Ecclesiarchy tailor a complete luck-changing liturgy.
If nothing else, it soothed the soul.
And with the warp being what it was, who knew—perhaps such a rite did something.
As for praying to himself—so be it. Self-produced, self-consumed faith.
Before long—
The Grand Hall blazed with candlelight.
Half-dazed, the Khan knelt with the Savior before the statues of the Golden Sun and the Savior, submitting to the so-called luck-changing rite.
Little alb-robed cherubs with artificial white wings and soaring hymns surrounded them, and a deluge of holy water drenched his hair.
Strangely enough, once the rite ended, the raiding taskforce's passage smoothed out—eerily, perfectly smooth.
No more incidents at all.
Days later—
The fleet dropped into the outskirts of Savadore, the Black Legion anchorage.
"We're here…"
Eden thumped the Khan's shoulder, grinning. "Told you the luck-turning rite works. Next time you're in a bind, run the liturgy a bit yourself."
He peered through the viewports. "We've lost a day. What's the situation at Savadore?"
But the sight cooled his heart.
In the distant star-reaches: only a swathe of ash-grey dust; the naked-eye volume lay silent and calm.
No sign of void war at all.
"Are we late? Did the raiders finish already?"
Eden felt numb—and a little heartsick.
He'd rushed across half the galaxy just to miss the war, losing a mountain of Blackstone and the chance to get his hands on new Blackstone weapons and war-beasts.
Those Chaos factions—especially the Red Corsairs—would have the advantage with the latest toys.
Which would become tomorrow's headaches.
The Khan nudged the Savior and pointed the other way. "Brother, wrong direction. Their anchorage might be over there."
Eden turned—and found another dust reef. Between its veils, light flared and skeins of multicolored lances tangled.
Clearly, a vicious dog-pile was in progress.
He realized his mistake.
He'd been staring at the old Black Legion moorings—the remnants of a war best forgotten. After that debacle, they had shifted to another sector.
Eden gazed at the immense dust-cloud and finally exhaled.
At least he'd made it in time for the grand pillage.
His resource-recovery armadas were dropping in sector by sector, spreading out into three distinct task-forces:
The Terror Legion's flagship ark-beast—the Heart of Terror—leading a host of Chaos warships.
The Steelfang Ork Empire's Rok space megafortress, with a rabble of cobbled-together greenskin warships rallying in cheerful disorder.
The Redemption Elite Fleet formed up with far more discipline—an iron-tide battle array, glittering under the wash of warp-light.
Per the plan, the three would secretly coordinate from the shadows to grab the juiciest spoils.
Soon the Savior's fleets punched into the dust bank—other Chaos flotillas were also closing fast.
Among them were looters looking to fish in troubled voids—and Black Legion relief forces sprinting home.
Unlucky newcomers were intercepted in the margins, caught by the relief flotillas and blasted to scrap before they even reached the dust-cloud.
The Dreamweaver guided the Redemption Fleet through a belt of meteor rubble—then the view opened up.
"Throne—this messy?"
On the bridge, Eden stared at the flower-splashed void and gaped.
The battle was even more chaotic than he'd imagined.
It was like a pot of porridge burned to tar—and someone had dumped in unknown gunk for good measure.
Warships and fortresses of every species and faction clumped in lumps and streaks; shells, lances, and resonant waves turned the lanes into soup.
No coherent pattern. No proper defense. Mostly whoever got hit… got unlucky.
And that, perhaps, was how the melee had metastasized.
In the mix were Chaos reaver flotillas led by the Red Corsairs; Necrons, Aeldari, and Orks drawn by score-settling to avenge old insults; plus scattered Chaos warbands hoping to grab a bargain.
Also crashing the party: a Tyranid tendril-fleet—no one knew who had lured it here.
Across the void—
A Black Legion star-fortress sat within a void-shield shell, its orbital batteries vomiting chaotic light.
An Ork asteroid hulk—refitted into a wreck of a battleship—rammed a crystal-sailed Aeldari cruiser under spore-thrusters; the Aeldari replied at once, special rays rippling the fabric of space.
Crescent-winged Necron tomb-ships blinked in and out on phase translation, gathering a massive emerald beam to scythe a Black Legion bastion.
And the Red Corsairs' Blackstone Fortress single-handedly pinned a Black Legion main fleet, a hail of fire raising ripples across its shields.
Seen from high above, the void looked like a painter had hurled oil-colors across the canvas.
"Chaos—pure chaos!"
Eden had no idea who was fighting whom, or how he was supposed to insert his forces.
If he threw his fleets in now, they'd most likely swing blind haymakers in the scrum.
Luckily, Eden didn't need to helm the fleet or plot the macro-battle. When the key moment came, he'd board-jump with the Khan and punch out enemy leadership—that was all.
His superb admirals would handle the rest.
"Your Majesty, the latest operation plan."
Tarko bowed and pushed a packet across for the Savior to read.
Scouts had gathered enough intel; the Machine Goddess and the admirals had fused it into an emergency plan.
Per that plan:
Each task-force would take optimal routes and thrust hard into the Black Legion's forges and bastion districts—
Then strip them.
Avoid battle where possible; the focus was seize loot, then run.
The Dreamweaver and its guardians would hold in a safe pocket, watching for the moment—ready to strike or withdraw.
Eeden—no, Eden—skimmed the plan and nodded.
He wasn't the fleet marshal. This was mainly to keep him abreast. Read it or not, it changed little.
He and the Khan then watched the sandbox render of the battlespace and tracked the steady stream of frontline reports.
The arrival of human fleets drew little attention.
Or rather, no one had bandwidth to care.
But Eden knew well: his resource-recovery armadas were actually the largest single armed bloc in this war.
Only, no one else knew that.
From the reports, he pieced together the wider picture.
The Red Corsairs were hammering the forge district—apparently aiming to steal its engines of war and several Arks of Omen.
Other Chaos factions, chaos though they were, had each picked a Black Legion fortress to crack.
The xenos, for their part, were bent on vengeance and destruction—yet in the confusion they were blasting anything in reach.
The Black Legion had star-forts and station defenses on-site and had recalled large fleets to meet the threat.
They had also conjured hordes of daemons to assail enemy ships.
Eden's recovery armadas—three prongs—punched through toward the forge block, joining other reaver hosts to break the last bastion.
…
Black Legion Forges District.
BOOM—
The sector's last orbital bastion flared into fireworks. Fleets lunged for the forge platforms.
The Red Corsairs closed hard on the platforms.
Master of the Forges and alchemist Walterth stared at the titanic hulls on the platforms—twenty to thirty kilometers long—studying the ghost-flickers of Blackstone woven through their frames, eyes alight:
"These will be our springboard—magnificent creations!"
The Red Corsairs' flagship Blackstone Fortress pinned the Legion's main screening fleet, buying their spearhead time to tow away the prize from the forges.
And thus reap the greatest profit.
As Walterth exulted, the bridge bucked under a savage impact.
Enemy attack!
A giant ship—nearly the size of an Ark of Omen—knifed in from an evil angle and raked the Red Corsairs' spearhead.
"Have the Terror Legion gone mad?!"
Walterth seethed.
Why in the nine hells would those lunatics block him at the finish line instead of grabbing loot?
It was lose-lose.
They'd only let other Chaos forces—and even the humans—carry off more prize.
But there was no time to debate Terror Legion sanity.
Those skull-addled freaks were capable of anything—attacking anyone, doing anything absurd—even playing bodyguard for humans.
He just needed to shake them and take the prize.
On the platform sprawled a wealth of Blackstone constructs and weapons. The greatest prizes were the nine Blackstone Arks of Omen.
The Red Corsairs wanted those.
But the Terror Legion's obstruction slowed them—and the Imperium, xenos, and other Chaos packs got there first.
Fighting to break free, Walterth watched in fury as Imperial fleets towed away three Arks of Omen, other Chaos bands hauled off two more—
Two were destroyed in the struggle—
Two remained!
THUMP!
A vast ray from afar jolted the Terror Legion juggernaut; the Red Corsairs counter-attacked at once, shook the block, and broke through.
They scrambled to the platforms, latched onto the final two Arks of Omen—and fled without a backward glance.
"At last—those great creations are ours!"
As the Red Corsairs' spearhead dragged its prizes and left the Terror Legion fading astern, Walterth finally exhaled and smiled.
The Black Legion had been mauled, and the Red Corsairs had bagged brand-new war-beasts—surely their influence would surge.
They could swallow up much of the Legion's former strength.
If Lord Huron succeeded in slaying the Despoiler, so much the better.
And Walterth, by studying these creations, would claim yet more might and puissance.
"What… is that?"
Through the viewports at the titans in tow, Walterth glimpsed something green scuttling—his eyes bulged.
Then he understood. "Damn greenskins!"
Orks were crash-landing jury-rigged flyers onto the Arks' bare hulls and ripping out anything Blackstone-related—
Heaving it into the void to be scooped by other greenskins and carted off.
The Steelfang Orks ignored all fire, obsessed with hauling Blackstone.
And the Red Corsairs dared not rake the Ark hulls with heavy guns—the ships were unpowered, unscreened, naked.
By the time Corsair boarders had purged the greenskins, the two "prizes" had already been stripped of a good fraction of their Blackstone sheathing.
The Corsairs raged, to no avail.
They could only lash down the loot and run—before more chaos befell them in that madhouse battlespace.
…
Dreamweaver, Flag Bridge.
Eden read the incoming reports and practically purred. "Nothing beats zero-cost shopping; this haul is pure profit!"
In this raid the Redemption Elites had, under cover, towed away three Blackstone Arks of Omen; the Terror Legion had bagged a mountain of Blackstone weapons;
The Steelfang Ork fleet was industriously stripping Blackstone off ships, hulks, and structures—bringing home a bumper crop.
His Webway expansion's Blackstone shortfall would be filled—with surplus besides!
"Abaddon's going bankrupt again after this one…"
After the glow faded, Eden felt a twinge of reflection.
A question flickered: "All this fighting—where is the man himself?!"
The thought had scarcely formed when a scream split the air—raw, soul-skinning agony…
(End of Chapter)
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