They called it Dagon Reach on the orders; the locals called it nothing at all. Names had a way of sliding off this place like rain off slate. Three worlds, one sick sun, and a chain of void-stations picked clean down to the ribs. The last Imperial signal from the main hab-world had been a single word, broadcast on every bandwidth from astropathic choir to shouted vox: Hold.
The strike cruiser that ferried Aurelius cut its engines in-system and drifted the final hours under cold thrusters, a courtesy to the Navy patrols that mistook silence for safety. As the shuttle burned toward atmosphere, the pilot recited landing codes into a storm of static. Someone on the ground returned something like permission. It would do.
The drop-ramp thumped. Heat, dust, and the iron-stink of old blood rolled in to meet him. The landing field had once been a proper port; now it was a slab of cracked ferrocrete spiderwebbed with trenches and studded with gun-nests that looked like scabs. Flags still flew—ragged, smoke-stained Aquilae with hand-stitched repairs—and that alone told Aurelius more about the garrison than any brief.
Two figures waited at the edge of the field. One wore a battered carapace plate scoured of unit heraldry and the expression of someone who had been outnumbered for so long he'd forgotten how to count. The other was crimson-robed, mechadendrites furled like sleeping adders, optics clicking as Aurelius approached.
"Custodian," the officer said, saluting with a tightness that admitted fatigue and refused pity. "Acting-Commander Larsa, Planetary Defence. This is Magos-Kohort Vexel." His eyes flicked once to the gleam of auramite, then held steady. "We're down to twelve thousand effectives, six serviceable Basilisks, two Marauder wings that spend more time in the dirt than the sky, and a vox net that sometimes remembers it was born to carry words. My apologies for the lack of ceremony."
"Ceremony wastes men," Aurelius said. "Show me the line."
They did. The command dugout was cut into the bones of an old factorum, its walls studded with prayer seals printed on ration paper. Maps were canvas over crates, ink blurred where rain had come through. Larsa gave his briefing without excuses. Vexel added numbers in a binharic whisper that tasted of oil and regret: auspex blind spots; a munitions feed that jammed every third belt; auspex return from orbit that refused to decide if the enemy was many ships, one ship wearing many masks, or the shadow of something larger.
"Enemy?" Aurelius asked.
Larsa rubbed at a scar that ran down his cheek like a misplaced line on a map. "On paper? Rebels who traded prayers for promises. In the field? Organized in a way I don't like. Traitor armor with new teeth, mortar teams who know our routines, and… the others." His voice flattened. "Astartes. Not many. Enough."
Vexel's optics clicked once. "Telemetry suggests patterns consistent with XVII Legion battlefield litanies. Word Bearers cells. Their presence correlates with increases in civilian… activation."
Cult risings. The word didn't need to be said.
Aurelius took the lay of the trenches with his eyes as he listened, the way a craftsman runs fingers along a beam to feel where nails had wandered. The front wasn't a neat arc; it was an old wound keloided on itself, jutting where it should have healed smooth, sunken where it should have stood. He watched where runners came and went without thinking, where medicae traffic clogged at hours when shells usually fell, where sergeants' hands tightened on rifles when certain sectors were named. Observation went out in pulses—steady, not showy—tasting intent, measuring where fear pooled and where it drained.
"Why is this theatre 'already lost' in Segmentum reports?" he asked finally.
Larsa's mouth twitched. "Because the people who decide these things stopped expecting answers from us."
"Then we will make them expect again," Aurelius said. He set the butt of his spear on the floor. "You are going to stop trying to win every hour. You are going to win the ones that matter."
The officer blinked. "Explain."
"Rotation by hours," Aurelius said. "Not days. The line breathes. You will rotate on the breath, not the calendar. The enemy's artillery will waste itself firing at men who have already stepped sideways. Magos—your Basilisks will not answer when they are asked. They will answer when they are needed. Pattern fires on coordinates I will provide."
Vexel's mechadendrites made a small, approving clatter.
"To the Navy liaison," Aurelius continued, "I will require auspex of the spaces between contacts. The blanks hide approaches, not ghosts. And Commander Larsa—your commissars are to observe, not execute. Men who fear their own officers do not hold."
Larsa studied him for a long two-count. "This isn't Caltrius," he said. Not defiance. A test.
"No," Aurelius agreed. "On Caltrius I had time to teach. Here I will impose until there is time to learn."
The officer's shoulders came down half an inch. "Impose away, lord."
By dusk, the mud had learned new names. Aurelius walked the forward trench with his helm unsealed so voices could find him. He took a timber from one man's grip and drove it home himself, the auramite gauntlet making the hammer a toy. He adjusted the angle on a heavy stubber just enough that the next jam did not occur. He took a steaming tin from a cook's hand and drank without flinch; men watched him swallow the same salt they were given and believed a little harder.
He spoke rarely. When he did, it was not poetry. Shift two to sap three. Diversion fire on pattern five. Keep your head or I'll keep it for you. He let Conqueror's leak in a narrow band behind each phrase—not the wide sheet that had covered Myrridian, but a calm poured directly into the men he was using like stones in an arch. They stiffened not with fear, but with purpose. A few blinked as if waking from a bad story.
The enemy tested them at midnight. Mortars fell in a pattern that tried to mimic randomness and failed under the taste of Aurelius's Observation. He had the reserve platoon step back one traverse three breaths before the first shell walked in; the second pattern chewed empty boards; the third fell on a decoy store he had had the sappers stack at dusk for this very purpose. The enemy learned nothing useful.
They learned anger instead.
At second bell, a whisper-cult blew a segment of the rear wire and rushed the medicae tents with knives and slogans. Aurelius was already moving. He hit the mob like nightfall—a quiet, cold No that made wrists sag and eyes forget what they'd planned to see. A handful tried to cleave free of it; those he broke fast and clean, spear a line that began and ended inside sternums.
He left a single man breathing, bound to a pallet. "You will tell your priest we are not a congregation," he said, and let Conqueror's brush the words so they sank like stones into a shallow mind.
By dawn, the bastions were still bastions, the trenches still trenches, and the men—somewhat to their own surprise—still men.
During the second day's light, the war found new teeth.
Teleport sigils flared bright enough to turn shadows white. Three squads of traitor Astartes cut into the comms-dugouts and the reserve ammo pits with the economy of men who had measured their own sins and found them adequate. The first squad met a wall of stubber fire that should not have been there; Aurelius had moved the team—not by order, but by placing his hand on a corporal's shoulder and letting intent transfer like heat.
The second squad found Aurelius himself.
He did not roar. The air was already overcrowded with noise. Armament climbed his arms in a glimmer only the faithful would have called a miracle. He stepped into the leader's arc and let the chainblade strike where his gauntlet had decided to be; teeth turned to filings; recoil became a pivot; the spearhead went home under a pauldron rim black with scripture. The return swing took a second traitor through the hip. The third tried distance and learned that distance is an etiquette weapon; it availed him nothing against a spear wielded by a man who understood civility's purpose.
At the relay spire, he found Vexel on his back, mechadendrites sparking, a knife grinding against his throat-plate. The assassin wore nothing but stains and prayers; his hand shook from the effort of believing enough to pierce sanctified iron. Aurelius put two fingers on the blade and refused. The steel forgot it was cutting. The man made a surprised sound that men make when the universe fails to keep a promise. Aurelius made sure he did not have to make another.
The Mechanicus rose on clattering limbs. "Acknowledgment: intervention saved vital command-and-control asset."
"Repair," Aurelius said.
"Affirmation," Vexel replied, and set his hands to work with a devotion anyone honest would recognize as prayer.
The assault blunted and reeled, but it did not break. Seventeen hours into the day, the real knife slid in.
They came under banners the color of old bruises—Word Bearers, with a chaplain whose crozius caged a hateful light. He preached as he walked, syllables stacked like bricks around a hole in the world. Men faltered with decent human fear; the ones who had hidden fear behind fury faltered worse.
Aurelius stepped up onto the parapet where everyone could see him and where every weapon could see him fall. He let Conqueror's rise—not as the wide pressure that makes knees confess, but as shape given to air. It hardened into something that did not look like a wall so much as the idea that walls are good. The chaplain's litany hit it and scattered into harmless phonemes. He blinked once. That was his mistake. The sniper in Tower K heard a memory of a lesson in his head about breathing and about not thinking about breathing and sent a dart through the litany's mouth.
The assault surged anyway. The chaplain's brothers came like a polite avalanche—they would crush you and afterward apologize with a sermon. Aurelius met the first with a low cut that took his stance rather than his life; the second he shouldered into a firing lane; the third he took by the elbow and introduced to gravity. Around him, he kept Observation pulsing in coarse sweeps—no fine-grain, not here, just the big moves, the ugly arcs. His body translated it into a series of rights he had no interest in being wrong about.
"Left bastion is thin," Larsa's voice barked over vox.
"Stiffen it," Aurelius said. He did not turn. He could feel the gap the way a man feels his tongue find a missing tooth. He pushed a band of Conqueror's along the trench like a brace under a beam; men who had thought they were inches from bending found an inch they had forgotten to use. The bastion did not fall.
The Word Bearers knew then that they would have to spend more than men. They spent time.
For nine hours they came in waves timed to the moment another man's courage would normally need relief. Aurelius did not give them that moment. He walked the parapet until the boards knew his weight and did not creak under it. He spoke in short knives: shoot there; wait now; spend these three; not the fourth. He did not once say brave or honor. He said work and made it sound like a thing you could hold in your hands.
Twilight burned like syrup poured over coals when the last push came. The traitor Astartes punched into the inner network—finally, inevitably—and the war turned close and ugly in communication trenches that smelled like old teeth.
Aurelius went down into it, where spears are awkward and honesty is compulsory. The warband commander waited for him there: a big man in baroque plate scuffed with fidelity to the wrong gods, his helm crowned with horns that had grown as if embarrassed to be metaphor. His axe-head hummed with a psalm.
They struck like men who knew which seconds counted. The commander's blows had the gravity of vows. Aurelius's answers had the inevitability of refusal. He could feel his own edges—Conqueror's draining in long, measured pulls; Observation brightening and dimming in painful flashes like a dying lumen. He had walked this road on Myrridian and come away standing. Here, the price ran higher.
So he paid more.
He took Observation and Conqueror's and dragged them together until they bit. The moment did a strange thing: it simplified. Every breath in the trench became a timing mark. Every choice in his enemy's shoulders declared itself. Every friendly heartbeat behind him found the same beat without being told.
The shockwave was not light or sound. It was decision shared. The commander's knee dipped a degree to adjust for a mistake he had not planned to make; Aurelius's spear was already there, turning that degree into an absence. Blackened edge took the gap under the arm; auramite gauntlet shoved; the man went down, angry at physics. Around them, cultists dropped their weapons because carrying seemed suddenly gauche; Guardsmen who had been buying seconds with change realized the coin in their pockets was worth more.
Aurelius straightened by will, not leverage. He planted the spear's butt and made the trench a place again. The press of bodies thinned. The last Word Bearer retreated facing him, like a man backing out of a shrine he had mistakenly entered with his hat on.
Silence came in layers, then fell apart into the human noises victory makes when it's uncertain of its welcome.
Aurelius took a breath. It felt like glass. He took another. He made it silk. He turned to climb out of the trench.
His legs stopped being interested.
He did not fall showy. He went to one knee the way a man does when checking a bootlace. Rilke was suddenly there with a hand under his elbow and a look on his face that would be a secret until he died. Aurelius let him think he was helping. He let himself be helped because work includes knowing when your load is a two-man lift.
"Flag still flying, lord," Rilke said, voice husked.
"Good," Aurelius said. The word took work. "Make sure it stays that way. Hot broth on the line. Count the dead with the right names. The living will walk the rows."
He stood—slow, absolute as sunrise. He walked three steps. Behind his visor, black crowded at the edges of his sight. He set the spear like a cane and allowed exactly one breath to sound like pain.
Above the bastion, the Aquila jerked and caught, fabric torn, pole scored, still up. Beyond the cloud, vox-waves ran like fish with knives in them, carrying words toward hubs and hands not present here. Emperor's Gift. Golden anchor. The one who made us stand.
Somewhere in the Palace of gold and marble and knives in robes, men and not-men would hear and have thoughts. The next summons would be heavier and softer, the way polite threats are.
Aurelius closed his eyes exactly as long as it takes to bow to a friend and not be misunderstood. Then he opened them and looked at the line he had just purchased with himself.
"Hold," he said, because the word had worked before and would again.
The theatre that had been already lost took a breath and decided, for tonight, to argue.