They took off two hours later.
It took that long to reach the landing pads and prep the lifter, a big, old, cumbersome RE-45 shuttle based on a long-obsolete Militarum design.
They went with a minimal entourage, just twenty guards from Tieron's own retinue, plus a Naval liaison officer and some of his signals officers.
The wait for lift-off was torturous, though Luna gave them precious little substantive information. All they clearly knew was that an enemy force somehow broke through their impeccably organised cordon and landed on the satellite, that their defences responded immediately, and that all hell was unleashed.
The forces at play seemed to mess with their scanners and shake the Mechanicum. It was, apparently, physically impossible.
Anything more than that was lost in the general confusion or clamped down on by the military authorities. In crises like this, Tieron's office wasn't in the first tier of communication, and he guessed the Adeptus Custodes themselves, or perhaps even the Imperial Fists, reserved detailed information for their own use.
So by the time they finally walked into the lifter's crew hold, they still knew almost nothing about what they were heading into. And as they would soon find out, going in blind wasn't the best idea, not this time.
They pulled clear of the Senatorum Imperialis' forest of towers and parapets and soon powered steadily up into Terra's high atmosphere. Tieron felt the thrusters roar just meters below them as they sat in their restraint harnesses, and he cursed his reckless decision. He wasn't a natural voidfarer, and nausea rose almost immediately in his tightly secured environment suit.
"Try using the real-viewers," Jek suggested, knowing about his weakness.
He did as she said, but it didn't help.
Through the heavily fortified slats, all he saw was a wildly spinning disc, marked by great streaks of fire. He noted how different Terra's face looked from before, its uniform cloud of sludgy grey now transformed by the flames raging in its upper atmosphere.
Tieron tried, foolishly, to glimpse the Fortress of the Astronomican, hoping against hope it would ignite again and banish the swaths of destruction that now ceaselessly circled the globe.
Soon, though, even those details disappeared as his home world shrank back, blurring as the lifter slowly progressed into the void. The atmosphere's howl ripped away, leaving only the roar of their engines.
Challenge-bursts assailed them from the hundreds of Naval installations along their route, all of them now watching the approaches to Luna like hawks. He saw approaching void-fighter wings and guessed how jumpy those pilots must have been.
[Boost broadcasts of our exempted status,] he voxed to the pilot. [Any trouble, route them direct to my audex and I'll explain precisely how fast I can have a kill-team locate their families.]
The RE-45 was a blunt instrument, but a fast one once it got going. The dense network of defence stations flew past them, turning slowly under the flickering lights of Luna's distorted reflective face.
Space itself seemed to be alive, lit with strands of witch-light and purplish-blue lightning that zapped across the void. It was unbelievable, at the very least. As they moved closer, Tieron and the others felt a grim weight press them down, and invisible shockwaves travelled through their bodies and souls.
It was a different kind of dread than the one they had felt during the past 20 days of darkness.
[There it is,] murmured Jek, peering into one of the vid-feeds linked to the forward augur banks.
Tieron had seen Luna many times and was always somewhat impressed by its faded grandeur. Unlike Terra, it was a quiet, dark realm, dominated by vast docks extending out from its equator. It was colder, and it always felt somehow purer to him, too, if one ignored the huge volume of contraband passing through it every hour.
As they observed, much of the scene remained the same as always, except for a sector high above their bow. Light from that area shone like sunlight reflecting off a lens. Although the effect seemed less intense than it truly was, it was still astonishing that something so powerful could form so quickly.
In intervals, booms and sparks of lightning, and even something that looked like blue and purple fire rose into the void.
[Take us down as close as you can,] he told the pilot, swallowing the bile that clogged his throat. [Immediate visual range, unless we come under fire.]
[Impossible, Lord. If we move any closer, we'll crash. The controls are no longer listening clearly, and the shockwaves are disrupting the feeds we are getting. Nothing seems to work properly anymore. And if we feel this way inside, then I dread to say what it's like outside, or Throne, any closer.]
He was right, of course. It would be suicide to go closer.
By then Tieron already saw other voidcraft ahead, twelve Naval monitors with their guns ranged on the terrain below, a strike cruiser in the faded yellow of the Imperial Fists, two larger craft in silver-grey livery, and even a grand gold-and-black cruiser bearing the eagle-head device of the Adeptus Custodes.
Luna was not short on its own defences, but Terra's response was still significant. Or so he hoped. He had no idea what was happening.
They powered on through the perimeter, their status and credentials enough to run the gauntlet of challenges from the bigger vessels. But after a while, they were no longer allowed through, and even the threat of a Chancellarius wasn't enough to grant them passage.
Before they could get angry, though, the ship shuddered, lost all power, and every passenger felt dread unlike anything they had ever imagined. It was like plunging into ice-cold water and having their bodies turned inside out.
Every one of them felt like they had died multiple times during that time, and they decided to take a long detour far away from the massive battlefield.
Luna's eerie dark grey landscape filled the forward view, swelling first into a great curve of spires and manufactoria, then racing toward them as a new horizon of ancient towers.
They touched down in a cloud of kicked-up dust. Fearful that his nausea might overwhelm him completely, Tieron pulled the restraints from his chest and staggered down the lowering ramp first. He was trembling like a leaf, and despite the vomit and the existential dread, he refused to turn back. He was going to find out what was going on or die trying.
The pilot did well, taking them as close as he dared to the edge of a huge crater set in the wastelands of Luna's ship graveyards. But they still had a long way to travel. Thankfully, the battle that had nearly driven them mad and warped reality seemed to be coming to a close.
They walked among the carcasses of ancient voidcraft, beached long ago and still being pored over for scrap. The hulls were titanic, swelling hundreds of metres into the air. Above them all, far away from them on a dark horizon, rose the colossal plates of the docks, huge black bars drawn vertically across the sky.
The air was charged, the product of a fight that affected the electromagnetic force. Gravity was never quite equalised to Terran-normal there, and after whatever had happened, it was even worse. So they stumbled uneasily as they moved, pushing through gravity that was either far higher or far lower.
Hours passed.
Tieron already heard the muffled thud of many boots marching and the vox-grind cries of orders, but nothing yet of the inferno he feared. The sorcerous light seemed to disappear, but in its place he saw lumen beams swaying and flashing, all originating beyond the ridge ahead.
Jek drew alongside him, and their guards jogged out on either side, guns trained on the summit. As if that would do anything to whatever had caused those phenomena, which had even affected Terra.
"What do you expect to find here?" Jak asked.
"Something worth the trouble. Or our death," he muttered, beginning the long slog up the ridge.
"How comforting."
That path alone nearly ended him. The climb was more than a hundred metres in thin air, and by the time Tieron and the others neared the summit, he panted and sweated under his suit.
He felt ludicrous. He had no reason to be there. He was an official, not a warrior. Perhaps he went mad, he thought. Perhaps the rancid air of the Throneworld crushed his sanity entirely, and now he marched to a long-overdue death.
At last, they reached the peak of the dusty slope. Dizzy, Tieron hauled in deep breaths and knelt before he could stand again.
He looked out.
Jek stood beside him and looked out as well. The guards and officials, all in thick suits of protective armour, looked out too. Not one of them made a sound. For once, Tieron was entirely at a loss for words.
Perhaps none could fully grasp what they saw. They stayed like that for a long time, feeling only the heavy beats of their hearts and hearing the wind boom in their earpieces.
Conveying the scene from a normal human's point of view must have been daunting. They stared down a shallow incline, the curving inner face of a wide 'bowl'. It was huge, perhaps 20 or 30 kilometres across, and they could barely make out the far side amid the dust and drifting smoke.
More ship cadavers marked the far edge of the great crater, as massive as the ones they marched past, rising like megaliths from the depression.
The landscape was a smouldering, magma-fied, cursed zone, filled with bodies and choked with the ruins of war machines, all part-hazed by the drift of ash and smoke.
Some of the slain were human troops, clad in the grey of the Luna defence forces, but most were far larger and more ornate, the Space Marines drawn from a dozen Chapters. They saw cobalt and ebony, gold and crimson, all mixed in a vast chequerboard of uniform.
Amid the sea of dead stood those still alive, battered and dirty, but moving with the ponderous fluidity that always defined the Adeptus Astartes.
Tieron, or Jek, had never seen so many gathered together. There must be thousands, a war host bigger than anything he'd dreamed of. Most wore the defining colours of Ultramar, that kingdom on the other side of the galaxy, Tieron had read so much about but never travelled to, even with his prestigious position.
Others walked among them as well: the Imperial Fists, who until that day had been stationed on Terra, and Black Templars, Novamarines, Mortifactors… The list went on and on, testing the heraldry they had once learned and mostly forgotten, and the thought that it wouldn't matter.
"This is impossible. How are they here?" Jek asked.
"I don't know."
They chronicled and listed every last defender on Terra for months, knowing most Astartes Chapters fought far off in the galaxy. The Warp was blocked and burning since the Great Rift opened, or so they were told. So how were they here?
But they were not the only ones.
They saw bizarre creatures they had no name for, arcane Mechanicus creations, some even larger than the Space Marines who stalked beside them. They saw living saints, like those in the Ecclesiarchy frescoes, standing close to someone they couldn't make out.
Custodians, taller than the rest, stood among the vast host, surrounded by the second-highest heaps of corpses.
"Throne... what happened here?"
The slain far outnumbered those who still walked, but these were no ordinary corpses. Even looking at them burned their eyes; many wore high serpent helms and armour of lapis lazuli and copper, finer than any luxury he had seen in the Palace itself.
In the centre of the crater was a mighty gate shaped into a high arch. There was nothing human about its construction, high enough for a Warhound Titan to walk through.
The group might have stood dumbfounded before the sight, drinking in the spectacle, but these marvels soon left little impression on them all. The Custodians, whose presence had so cowed Tieron on Terra, inspired none of the same awe. The thousands of Space Marines, their Imperium's great defenders, gave him only a passing sense of majesty.
It had nothing to do with them; it had everything to do with the largest figure, standing at the heart of it all.
"Is that..." Jek couldn't say anything else.
Tieron started moving again, stumbling down the far slope like a man possessed.
"Tieron!" he heard Jek calling out, trying to hold him back, but he didn't listen.
He barely registered anything around him, and only dimly noticed the blurred outlines of the giant warriors as they laboured. He didn't even feel the oppressive feeling growing stronger as he advanced.
The large Astartes paid him no attention. He was nothing. If he had enjoyed some of the most power and prestige on Terra just earlier that day, now, among these warriors, he was just one of many functionaries and technicians now descending on the site to study it and secure it.
They had no conception of whom he served, that he sat among the High Lords of Terra, who ruled the galaxy and even if they did, he guessed they would pay it little attention.
He was finally confronted with the truth. While the Administratum and the Ecclesiarchy held power in people's minds and controlled resource distribution, nothing really mattered on a battlefield but power. And he had none.
Tieron and the others didn't know how long it took them to reach the centre. Probably a long time, dragged out by stumbling and the increasing, oppressive weight on them. Eventually, though, the group saw the Webway portal rising before them; the stars under its arch blurred and trembled, and Tieron knew he was close.
He was there, waiting.
Tieron had no idea how far he had come, or what perils he had faced to reach Luna, but he was there. He was surrounded by his great and plain counsellors and champions, none of whom even looked at Tieron.
They talked among themselves, glancing at their weapons, every movement still tense after a long, arduous battle and journey.
Tieron knew who he was. Jek knew it too, or so she thought.
They recognised the pictures from the devotional tracts. They were served with those images from childhood, told to meditate on them incessantly, even to pray to them, instructed never to let them out of their mind.
Quadrillions of people saw those templates of heroism and reflected on the glory they showed, using them as examples of the human spirit and hoping, perhaps even heretically, that they would return one day.
...
None of them really thought it would happen. Tieron did not believe it possible. He thought the masses were ignorant and weak, and that salvation could come only from the powers they still had, not from the legends of a half-remembered 'glorious' past.
A Primarch.
He alone noticed Tieron limping among the giants. He looked past the Custodians who stood there, with their spears still drenched with blood. He looked past the Space Marine captains and the grotesque lords of Mars, and fixed Tieron with cold blue eyes.
Tieron felt his heart racing out of control. The whole place was like an intoxicated dream, a ghost sent to drain the last sanity from their tortured bodies, and yet he could not deny its reality.
Tieron's gaze suddenly shifted to the side, to someone standing beside the gigantic figure and staring at him. A human, a normal, if tall and well-built, human, stood there among the giants and powerful men and women, looking so small by comparison.
And yet...
It was only a brief moment, and all he saw was a golden light from the 'human's' left eye. But when he did, he suddenly felt his mind and soul being crushed, his deepest secrets revealed, and his mind go blank.
Tieron suddenly lost his sight, and tears streamed down his cheeks as he fell to the ground, a weeping mess.
'Alexei Lev Tieron. Welcome to Luna.'
"Gerhard," Roboute said.
Gerhard stepped forward and touched the group's heads one after another.
[Burning Spirit Principle]
Jek gasped as she suddenly returned from the depths of insanity. She didn't know what had just happened, as Gerhard had removed those memories from their minds to keep them from slipping back into that catatonic state.
"Hello there."
She looked up and saw Gerhard standing before her.
"You alright down there?"
Before she could answer, though, the Primarch spoke.
When they heard Guilliman speak, they thought his voice was strangely accented, almost unintelligible, as if it came from another age, which it did.
Despite Tieron's attire, Roboute instantly recognised the old man from the sigils of office on his environmental suit and addressed him as such.
"Cancellarius Senatorum Imperialis," he said.
Tieron and the others were already on their knees, but if they weren't, they would have fallen after hearing him speak.
"The Lord Guilliman," Tieron whispered, using both the given name and the ceremonial one.
"You speak for the High Lords?" Guilliman asked.
Tieron nodded. He could hardly bear to look into Guilliman's face. There was something both beautiful and horrific about it, an almost obscene abundance of power. That was Guilliman's mere presence as a Primarch, and in terms of psychic might, Gerhards currently overshadowed him by light-years, holding it all back.
With just a passing glance, he had turned them into vegetables. In his normal state, when he wasn't using [Psyker], it was still immense. Needless to say, what would happen if Gerhard switched to [Blank].
"Then it is good you are here, Chancellor," Roboute Guilliman said. "I have been away a long time. Perhaps, if your offices still extend to such things, you would be good enough to show me to your masters."
At the side, Gerhard grinned knowingly. He was finally going to see Roboute, the G-Man, do what he did best: logistics.
The poor sod didn't realise he wouldn't be smiling after Roboute told him what his future work would be.