The retreat was a desperate, thundering sprint through a world of fire and ghosts. The corridors of the Honour of Calth, once paragons of order, were now a twisted labyrinth of shredded bulkheads, sparking conduits, and the lingering, spectral dust of the fallen xenos. Eighteen Ultramarines, their blue armor now scorched and blood-spattered, formed a moving fortress around the precious cargo that was Magos Varnus, their bolters barking a steady rhythm of defiance.
This was a new kind of war, a chaotic, flowing battle that defied the neat diagrams of the Codex Astartes. And in the heart of this chaos, a new doctrine of warfare was being forged in blood and fire.
"Line formation, delta pattern!" Sergeant Lycomedes roared, his voice a gravelly anchor in the storm. "Sectors Alpha through Gamma, suppressing fire! Reload on my mark!"
The Delta Pattern takes shape: a spearhead of vengeance, the tip driving into the heart of the enemy, the flanks braced to absorb the counterstrike.
The Ultramarines moved with the flawless precision of a single organism. They became the Anvil. Two ranks formed a mobile firebase, their bolter fire not a panicked spray but a methodical, overlapping deluge of mass-reactive shells. They created corridors of death, kill-zones where the air was thick with shrapnel and righteous fury. They covered every angle, every shadow, their discipline a bulwark against the fluid insanity of the enemy. When one warrior's bolter ran dry, another's was already covering his sector, the reload executed with a speed and efficiency that was a work of art.
But the xenos were like water; they flowed through the cracks. They danced on the bulkheads, their slender forms blurring, their shuriken catapults spitting clouds of monomolecular death that could flay a man in a heartbeat. They were too fast, too agile for bolter fire alone.
And that was when the Hammer fell.
Thaddeus was the spearhead, a crimson whirlwind at the vanguard. In his left hand, he wielded a bolter scavenged from a fallen Ultramarine, its blue casing a stark contrast to his gauntlet. He fired it in single, precise shots, picking off targets of opportunity, his aim unnervingly accurate even while moving at a dead sprint. In his right hand, his power sword hummed, its blue energy field a beacon in the crimson gloom.
When a pack of the lithe xenos warriors breached the bolter-lines, their witch-blades shimmering, Thaddeus was there to meet them.
"Blades out! Engage at will!" Thaddeus roared, not a command from a textbook, but a primal cry for glorious, close-quarters bloodshed.
His own charge was a symphony of destruction. He was not the immovable object of Ultramarine doctrine, but an irresistible force. He spun, parried a shimmering blade, and cleaved an alien warrior in two with a single, brutal backhand. He ducked under a wild swing and impaled another, lifting the dissolving creature from the deck before kicking it from his blade.
Inspired by his feral grace, a handful of Ultramarines, their own blood running hot, roared in feral agreement. They dropped their empty bolters, drew their combat knives and chainswords, and charged forward to support their crimson commander, their disciplined fury channeled into a raw, visceral counter-assault. They were not as fast as Thaddeus, but their raw power and disciplined bladework turned the tide in the melee, their chainswords chewing through wraithbone and flesh with savage satisfaction.
Sergeant Lycomedes watched it all, his bionic eye whirring, processing the beautiful, terrifying chaos. He saw the logic in the madness. Thaddeus was not an unstable element; he was a force of nature, the perfect weapon for this specific, insane war. A new understanding dawned on the veteran sergeant, a realization that the Codex was not a cage but a foundation upon which new strategies could be built.
His orders began to change, to adapt, to fuse with the Blood Angel's fury.
"Squad Beta, tighten formation! Concentrate fire on the Warden's left flank! Force them into his blade!" Lycomedes commanded. His voice was still the terse bark of an Ultramarine NCO, but his commands now used Thaddeus as a living, breathing part of their tactical formation.
"Hold the line!" he ordered. Then, a command he never thought he would give: "Close-assault specialists, advance! Support the Warden! No mercy!"
The Anvil now moved to serve the Hammer. The disciplined fire of the many was channeled to create opportunities for the focused fury of the few. It was a perfect, bloody synthesis of two Legions' philosophies, a doctrine born of desperation and mutual respect.
They punched through another nest of xenos, losing two more good men but leaving a dozen shimmering corpses in their wake. And then they saw it. Through the smoke and flickering lights, a vast opening loomed ahead—the main hangar bay. The steady, defiant roar of a heavy bolter grew louder, a familiar and welcome sound.
"Vorn!" Thaddeus bellowed into his vox.
The sound of Vorn's defensive stand, the defiant thunder of the few against the many, was the most beautiful sound they had ever heard. They had taken grievous losses. Only twelve of the original escort remained. But the objective was in sight. Their escape, their last, desperate hope, was just ahead.
---
While Thaddeus fought his desperate retreat, Captain Ortan Cassius carved his own path of cold, calculated fury toward the ship's heart. He was not retreating. He was advancing. With him were his Invictarus Suzerains, the elite of his honor guard, their artificer armor gleaming blue and gold, their Praetorian power blades humming with lethal energy. They were five, a wedge of pure, unadulterated order against the flowing chaos of the invaders.
The Invictarus Suzerains were the mailed fist of Ultramar — elite warriors chosen not just for their skill. Where they stood, order reigned. Where they struck, rebellion died.
While Thaddeus fought his desperate retreat, Captain Ortan Cassius carved his own path of cold, calculated fury toward the ship's heart. He was not retreating. He was advancing. With him were his Invictarus Suzerains, the elite of his honor guard, their artificer armor gleaming blue and gold, their Praetorian power blades humming with lethal energy. They were five, a wedge of pure, unadulterated order against the flowing chaos of the invaders.
They reached the Reliquary. The great adamantium doors were torn from their hinges, twisted like scrap. Inside, the chamber of polished marble and gold inlay was a ruin. The stasis fields that held priceless relics were shattered, their contents scattered and broken. And in the center of the room, where a beam of pure light once held it in secure stasis, the Scepter of Zarathul now floated, suspended in a shimmering, sickly psychic bubble.
A single, regal figure stood before it, observing it not as a weapon, but as a curiosity. Its armor was the colour of ancient, polished ivory, intricately filigreed with veins of silver and studded with pulsing gemstones. A cloak of what looked like solidified light cascaded from its shoulders, and its tall, crested helmet was a mask of aristocratic disdain. It was flanked by two silent, menacing warriors in scorpion-green armor, their posture a perfect embodiment of coiled, predatory stillness.
"In the name of the Emperor of Mankind," Cassius boomed, his voice the very sound of authority as his Suzerains fanned out, their blades raised. "Surrender this artifact and this vessel. Your trespass ends now."
The xenos leader turned its head slowly. The air shimmered, and its voice slid directly into Cassius's mind—not a sound, but a stream of ancient, perfect Gothic, laced with a contempt so profound it was almost a physical force.
«'Surrender' is a concept for equals, mon-keigh. We are not here to conquer your crude iron barge. We are here on a matter of pest control.»
The two scorpion-like guards shifted, their segmented blades rasping softly.
"Identify yourself, xenos," Cassius demanded, his power sword held in a perfect Codex-prescribed guard.
«I am Autarch Iryllith,» the voice sneered with weary arrogance. «And we are the Asuryani. We were ancient when your species was still huddled in mud huts, trying to master fire. We have come for the Key.» He gestured a slender, three-fingered hand toward the floating scepter. «The Key to the Great Silence. A device of cosmic termination that your infant race waves about like a child's rattle.»
A cold dread, colder than the void itself, settled in Cassius's gut. "How did you know of it?"
«It screamed,» Iryllith replied simply. «When your rabid berserker activated it on that doomed little world, its song echoed through the skeins of fate. It is a key to a lock that must never be turned. You cannot be allowed to tamper with mechanisms that could unmake reality itself.»
In that moment, Cassius understood. He saw the cold, inescapable logic of his situation. He and his five Suzerains against a being of mythic power and its deadly guard. They could not win. They could not even survive. But they could act.
"Suzerains," Cassius commanded, his voice utterly calm. "Your final objective. Buy me time." To Iryllith, he gave his final, defiant answer. "The works of man are his own. You will have nothing from this ship but death."
"For the Primarch!" his guards roared as one, and charged.
The battle was a whirlwind of violence. The two Striking Scorpions met the charge, their mandibles snapping, their chainswords a blur of whirring teeth. They were death incarnate, but the Suzerains were the chosen of Guilliman, masters of combat. The chamber rang with the clash of power blade on chainsword, the crackle of energy fields, and the defiant war cries of the XIII Legion.
While his men bought him seconds with their lives, Cassius charged not the Autarch, but the master control conduit for the Reliquary's containment field. If he could not have the scepter, he would bury it.
But Iryllith was faster. He moved like a zephyr, a blur of ivory and silver, and intercepted Cassius halfway across the chamber. "A noble, futile gesture," the Autarch's voice whispered in his mind as their blades met.
Cassius was a master of the blade, his every move a perfect execution of the combat doctrines that had conquered worlds. He was a fortress of strength and precision. But he was fighting a razor wind. Iryllith did not block; he flowed. He deflected Cassius's powerful, direct strikes with effortless ease, his own blade, a singing spear of impossible lightness, flickering in to leave a dozen shallow cuts across Cassius's armor.
A Suzerain screamed as a Scorpion's blade bit through his neck guard. Another fell, his chest armor shattered by a vicious pincer-like strike from the alien's helmet.
Seeing his men fall, Cassius abandoned finesse for pure, overwhelming power. He roared, channeling all his strength into a single, devastating overhead blow meant to shatter the Autarch's guard. Iryllith simply sidestepped, the motion as natural as breathing. As Cassius's blade smashed into the marble floor, the Autarch's spear flashed out in a silver arc.
Cassius felt a searing, white-hot pain. He looked down and saw his right arm, the one holding his sword, lying on the floor a few feet away, severed cleanly at the elbow.
He did not scream. He did not falter. With blood pouring from the stump of his arm, he drew his bolt pistol with his left hand and fired, the shot going wide as Iryllith danced away. He was dying. He knew it. But the mission was not over.
One of his Suzerains, his armor rent and smoking, managed to impale a Scorpion, only to be cut down from behind by the second. The last Suzerain, fighting two-on-one, was overwhelmed in a flurry of blows.
Iryllith stood before the kneeling, one-armed Captain, his spear leveled. «Your tenacity is admirable, for a creature of your kind. But it ends now.»
Cassius looked up, not at the Autarch, but past him, at the sparking, overloaded power conduit. With the last of his strength, he lunged. Not to attack, but to complete his duty.
He smashed his remaining gauntlet into the exposed plasma feed.
"For Calth!" he roared, his final word a prayer of defiance.
It wasn't the contained overload he had planned. It was a raw, uncontrolled feedback loop. With a silent, blinding flash, a wave of pure, white-hot energy erupted from the conduit. It wasn't enough to vaporize the scepter, but it was enough to engulf the chamber in a miniature sun.
Autarch Iryllith was thrown back, a shield of psychic energy flaring around him just in time, but the sheer force of the blast sent him tumbling. The two surviving Suzerains, thrown clear by the initial charge, were hurled into the corridor like dolls, their armor saving them from the worst of the blast.
Captain Ortan Cassius, master of the 4th Company, son of Guilliman, was consumed. His last thought was not of pain or failure, but of cold, grim satisfaction. He had bought them time. He had upheld the logic of sacrifice. He had done his duty.
The wave of plasma washed over the Reliquary, its roar a final, defiant war cry from a dying captain. In its wake, an unnatural silence fell, broken only by the crackle of dying fires and the hiss of superheated metal. Through the shimmering haze, two figures of blue and gold heaved themselves from the wreckage-strewn corridor. Praxus and Gallian, the last of the Invictarus Suzerains, rose to their feet, their artificer armor blackened and pitted, their bodies a symphony of pain. Before them, the remnants of their Captain's armor lay fused to the deck, a molten, unrecognizable testament to his sacrifice.
Across the chamber, Autarch Iryllith staggered upright. His psychic shield had saved him, but at a tremendous cost. His ivory armor was cracked, weeping a strange, violet ichor. The cloak of light that had cascaded from his shoulders was gone, shredded by the raw force of the blast. The two scorpion-like bodyguards were nothing more than scorched, melted lumps of wraithbone and ceramite. The Autarch's perfect, ancient composure was shattered, replaced by a mask of incandescent fury. He moved with a stiff, pained grace toward the scepter, which still floated placidly in its psychic bubble.
He reached for it, his intent clear: to take his prize and flee this ship of brutes.
"For the Captain!" Praxus roared, grief and rage overriding all pain. He charged, a two-hundred-and-fifty-kilo missile of pure vengeance, his Praetorian blade held high.
Iryllith didn't even turn his head. He flicked a wrist, and a wave of invisible force slammed into the charging Suzerain. Praxus stopped dead, his forward momentum halted so abruptly that the deck plates beneath his boots buckled. He was suspended mid-stride, his blade inches from the Autarch's head, held fast by an unseen hand. His muscles strained against the psychic grip, the servos in his armor screaming in protest, but he was as helpless as an insect in amber.
The Autarch's mocking thought slid into their minds. «Foolish child. Your strength is an illusion.»
But as Iryllith focused his will on holding Praxus, Gallian acted. He did not roar. He did not charge blindly. He saw the tactical opening Cassius's sacrifice had bought and Praxus's rage had created. His grief was channeled into a single point of cold, lethal logic.
"FOR ULTRAMAR!" he bellowed, the words a promise and a prayer.
He lunged, not at the Autarch's front, but at his flank. Iryllith, his concentration split, was forced to release Praxus to defend himself. The psychic cage vanished, and Praxus stumbled forward, his momentum spent.
It was all the time Gallian needed. His power blade, humming with the wrath of a betrayed legion, scythed across the Autarch's back, carving a deep, gouging furrow in the cracked ivory plate.
Iryllith shrieked—a thin, needle-like sound of pure pain that echoed in their very souls. He spun, his spear a silver blur, and the duel began. But this was no longer a graceful dance. This was a brawl. The Suzerains, freed from their perfect formations, fought with a berserk, coordinated ferocity that was terrifying to behold. They were the chosen of Guilliman, masters of paired combat, and even broken and bleeding, they were magnificent.
Praxus pressed the attack, his blade a flurry of powerful, hammering blows meant to shatter and break. Gallian flowed around him, his own sword a rapier seeking chinks and weaknesses, forcing the Autarch to constantly shift his footing. They fought as one, a storm of blue and gold, their every move complementing the other's.
Iryllith, wounded and enraged, was no longer toying with them. He was fighting for his life. He parried a blow from Praxus that would have shattered a lesser being, only to hiss as Gallian's blade darted in to slice across his thigh. He retaliated with a short-range psychic blast, a wave of kinetic force that sent both Astartes stumbling back, sparks flying from their armor as their machine spirits recoiled.
But they came on again. Their bodies were failing, their armor screaming with proximity alerts and damage warnings. They ignored it all. They saw only their fallen Captain and the xenos abomination that had killed him.
"You will not leave this ship!" Praxus roared, batting aside the Autarch's spear and smashing his gauntleted fist into the alien's helmeted face. The blow landed with a sickening crunch of wraithbone, staggering the xenos leader.
Seeing his opening, Iryllith unleashed his full power. He dropped his spear and thrust both hands forward, his mind a weapon of pure, empyrean spite. A wave of shimmering, violet energy, a lance of pure will, slammed into Praxus. The Suzerain's armor flared brightly as its protective fields overloaded. He cried out, not in pain, but in defiance, as arcs of psychic lightning danced across his body. For a moment, he stood, a beacon of defiance, before his armor's reactor went critical and he collapsed, a smoking, lifeless husk.
"Praxus!" Gallian screamed, a sound of pure anguish.
He saw the Autarch, panting and bleeding, turning to him. In that moment of loss, Gallian's purpose became diamond-hard. He would not survive. But he would leave a scar.
With a final, desperate roar, he charged, ignoring the spear Iryllith retrieved from the floor. He sidestepped the thrust, letting the energy blade graze his pauldron, and drove his own power sword deep into the Autarch's side with all his remaining strength.
The blade bit deep, shearing through armor and flesh. Iryllith let out a strangled cry, a sound of agony and disbelief. He had won, but the cost was grievous. With a final surge of psychic might, he tore his spear free and thrust it through Gallian's chest, lifting the mighty Ultramarine from his feet.
Gallian hung there, impaled, his lifeblood pouring onto the deck. He looked down at the spear, then up at the hateful, alien mask. He did not curse. He did not beg. With his last breath, he spat a glob of bloody saliva onto the Autarch's faceplate.
Iryllith roared in fury and disgust, casting the dead hero aside. He stood victorious in the silent, ruined chamber, over the bodies of five of the finest warriors of the XIII Legion. But he was no proud conqueror. He was limping heavily, his side a gaping wound, his armor a wreck.
Clutching the bubble containing the scepter, the bleeding, battered Autarch Iryllith stumbled from the Reliquary, a victor who looked every bit the vanquished, leaving behind a legacy of sacrifice and a silence filled with the ghosts of heroes.
---
The main hangar bay was a maelstrom of disciplined defense. Vorn had become a living bastion, his plasma pistol glowing with the fury of a captive star as he vented volley after volley into the flowing, ghost-like shapes of the attackers. He stood atop a barricade of overturned munitions crates and shattered deck plating, a crimson giant against a backdrop of fire. Around him, the Ultramarines who had remained behind held their ground with grim determination, their bolter fire a steady, percussive roar that formed a pocket of defiance in the chaos.
But they were besieged. The xenos attackers were relentless, their numbers seemingly endless. The Harbinger's Wing was taking a beating, its azure hull pockmarked by shuriken-fire and scarred by near-misses from energy weapons. Smoke, thick and acrid, billowed from a gash in its port engine. It was wounded, but it was still their ark, their last hope.
"Hold the line!" Vorn roared, blasting a xenos warrior from the gantry above. "The Warden is coming!"
As if summoned by his cry, the blast doors at the far end of the hangar were torn open, and Thaddeus's battered squad spilled through, forming a firing line as they entered. They were a vision of hell—twelve Astartes, a frantic Tech-priest, and a trail of dissolving alien corpses in their wake. Hope, fragile and fierce, flared in the embattled hangar.
It lasted for precisely four seconds.
The air in the center of the hangar shimmered, wavered, and then tore open. A vehicle of impossible design, a sleek, falcon-headed grav-tank, phased partially into existence, its hull seeming to flicker between the material and the ethereal. A great, crystalline cannon on its turret gathered a point of blinding, multifaceted light.
"By the Throne!" Lycomedes screamed, his disciplined mind recoiling from the sheer wrongness of it.
The cannon fired.
It was not a blast; it was a single, concentrated needle of pure, white-hot energy. It crossed the hangar in less than a heartbeat and struck the Harbinger's Wing dead-center, right in its armored spine where the primary reactor was housed.
There was a moment of absolute silence as the beam penetrated the ceramite. Then, the Thunderhawk's reactor went critical.
The explosion was immense, a blossoming fireball of incandescent plasma and atomized metal that lit up the hangar like a new sun. The shockwave hit like a physical blow, vaporizing half a dozen nearby Ultramarines instantly. The assault ramp, their gateway to salvation, was engulfed, twisted into a molten ruin before being blasted into a thousand pieces. The hope they had clung to, fought and bled for, was annihilated in a flash of light.
Their ark was a pyre. Their only way out was gone.
The blast threw a knot of figures who had been taking cover behind a line of cargo containers into the open. Colonel Voss and a handful of his last surviving Ironbacks were sent tumbling across the deck, their bodies frail and unprotected amidst the storm of shrapnel.
Thaddeus, his mind already moving past the catastrophic loss, saw the immediate threat. "Shield wall! NOW!" he roared, his voice cutting through the ringing in their ears.
Without hesitation, the remaining Astartes, both blue and crimson, slammed together. They formed a living bulwark of ceramite, locking their pauldrons, their bodies a shield to protect the dazed and wounded mortals. They pulled Voss and his men back from the roaring flames of the burning gunship, their armor taking the brunt of the ongoing xenos fire.
The hangar was a burning ruin, a tomb of shattered hope. The air was thick with the stench of burning promethium and roasted flesh. The light from the pyre cast long, dancing shadows, turning the battle into a fever dream.
They were trapped.
Thaddeus took a quick, desperate count, his tactical display flickering with red icons. Vorn, Lycomedes, his own depleted squad, and the defenders of the hangar. Thirty-seven Astartes, all that remained of the two full companies that had been aboard the Honour of Calth. Magos Varnus, clutching his precious dataslate like a holy text. Colonel Voss, his face a mask of grim shock, and a dozen of his Guardsmen, armed with little more than lasguns and sheer, bloody-minded terror.
They were on a dying ship, their exit destroyed, surrounded by an overwhelming, incomprehensible foe. For a moment, despair, a cold and heavy blanket, threatened to settle over them.
Thaddeus looked at Vorn, whose face was a mask of incandescent fury. He met Lycomedes's gaze, seeing not despair, but a cold, burning resolve. He saw the terrified faces of the mortals they had just saved, and a fire ignited in his soul, burning away all doubt.
He keyed the command vox, his voice raw with grit and smoke, but utterly, terrifyingly unbroken.
"All units, this is Warden! To me! We are not dying in this cage!"
His voice rose to a roar that echoed through the burning hangar, a sound of pure, unyielding defiance against a universe determined to kill them.
"Find another transport! A Stormbird, a shuttle, even a damn cargo hauler! Find us a way out! MOVE!"