After Zhang Ge's words fell, the openings of the landing pods across the Transport Ship yawned open, revealing the blurry cloud layer below.
But what met their eyes was not only heavy mist—there were huge gaps torn into the clouds by the accompanying armed ships' ground strikes.
Beneath those gaps, the surface burned in places.
At this moment the Transport Ship was maneuvering to avoid several large-calibre weapons, so the view through the openings shifted slowly; amid countless tongues of flame, the ground below seemed to flow like rivulets of bright orange lava.
Zhang Ge showed no trace of fear. After one last signal with his sword, he turned and leapt.
Yet, unlike what one might expect, the vehicles behind Zhang Ge did not lazily drive themselves to the bay openings and then fall away—the timing would be too slow and the impact point too imprecise.
With mechanical whines, the floors of the landing pods carrying armoured vehicles opened further until the bay was completely exposed, the original metal decking forming a headless great blade that pointed straight at the ground.
The next instant, countless vehicles were flung out behind Zhang Ge at far greater speed.
If they had been lowered at normal velocity, even leaving control of drop points aside, they would have been easy prey for the las-based anti-air defences on the surface... so the solution was simple.
Use the mag-rail launch system to fire the vehicles like shells.
To a shipboard electromagnetic system, the heavy armoured vehicles of the surface forces were negligible; the troops inside were supported by inward-to-outward gravitic fields during the acceleration phase to resist overload... and so, in that instant, rank after rank of vehicles were launched at hypersonic speeds, slamming toward the ground.
During descent, air friction heated the outer skins past two thousand degrees Celsius—well above the melting point of steel.
Without protection, while military ceramite might survive, the interiors would become steam ovens... Fortunately, that had been accounted for: each vehicle's nose was wrapped in disposable, cheap thermal insulation that made the prow streamlined while providing heat shielding—this was the very cause of the Fire Rain.
As the vehicles ploughed through the sky, that material burned and peeled away; while passing through the cloud layer it still clung, like countless meteors falling from the heavens, like a rain of fire burning opposite the ground.
And yet, even so, they were not the fastest.
While everyone still waited inside their landing pods, a figure had already slowly taken position at the very prow of the Transport Ship.
It was Perveti.
Her golden hair whipped in the high-altitude gale; despite her head being exposed she showed no change of expression.
Of course she had not come here to contemplate life—she had come to reduce, as much as possible, the damage to the Transport Ship beneath her feet.
To ordinary folk such an act might seem like an ant trying to shake a tree—laughable. But this was Perveti.
Magnetic grips beneath her soles let her advance until she stood at the lower edge of the ram, her head facing the planet.
She bent, coiled, and drove.
Bang.
The sonic boom tore outward; the ram's tip, which she had used to brace herself, fractured with a thunderous crack under the terrible recoil.
Had that break occurred in a primary structural element, it would have been no different from the Transport Ship being struck by an artillery shell.
The recoil was not merely the fact of Perveti breaking the sound barrier.
Sonic shock and thermal barrier—her further acceleration alone caused air friction, compression and expansion to form a blinding white radiance that wrapped her whole body.
When she burst through the cloud layer, she carved a shell-like void between the dark masses, and the next instant she slammed down amid the world-rending crash.
Following the scent of the enemy, Perveti struck down at the densest cluster of foes; the impact alone sent countless Daemons, Cultists and Chaos Space Marines either dead from the shock or pulverised into meat under flying debris.
Then, under the gaze of even more enemies, she slowly drew her spear.
The situation was obvious—the multitude of foes were surrounded by Perveti, alone.
After the slaughter had gone on for a time, the Fire Rain that had lit the sky finally began to fall.
But just as the ground forces thought they were about to face a symmetrical adversary, the clouds began to churn.
Any soldier who had taken part in the previous drop would have known the sight.
The next moment, a Warlord Titan and four Warhound Titans appeared on the horizon amidst the Warp-turbulent tidal swell.
Five Titans descended like giants cast from the sky; the Chaos Knights preparing anti-air interception across the surface suddenly met their patriarch.
With jetpacks roaring, Olivia landed first; the gargantuan frame smashed down, crushing one Chaos Knight beneath a ruptured street, then swung the Axe of the Omnissiah to cleave another apart with ease.
Ion shields, armour, structure, flesh.
Defences that could usually shrug off shells did not matter a whit; they were brushed aside as if they were air.
Olivia—seemingly ponderous—became a moving engine of annihilation; turbo-lasers and Volcano Cannons swept away small units attempting to approach the Titan, while larger formations that did close were cleft to pieces by the Axe of the Omnissiah.
Chaos, death, collapse.
All of it reached its apex as the Fire Rain struck the ground.
Before touching down, countless Grav-Chutes opened, countering gravity while the Grav-Chute-mounted Thruster Packs rapidly bled off terminal velocity; by precise calculation, when tracks met earth the fall velocity was essentially zero.
Armies of Leman Russ Battle Tanks and Chimeras charged through enemy positions, while large numbers of well-armed Astra Militarum and Frateris Militia finally disembarked from their transports to utterly rout foes who no longer knew how to respond.
Astartes in Power Armour, Titan Guard, Sisters of Battle...
Under Amilia's lead, these elites moved into the most dangerous zones of the battlefield; when they linked up with the predeployed Redeemed Angels and Oathbreakers Chapter, this combined spear was now able to face Chaos Space Marines head-on.
Of course, finding a Chaos Space Marine now was hard—finding an intact corpse even harder. Being struck head-on by Perveti usually left them in fragments; any whole corpses were only those grazed by a spear's edge, not primary targets.
Although Zhang Ge had been the first to jump from the Transport Ship, the delivery of other forces was so rapid that he ended up landing in the last waves alongside the PDFs ferried in by the shuttlecraft.
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