Chapter 21: Space Fortress and Infiltration
A month later, the Alpha Legion had devoured over a hundred warships from the xenos fleet. Pursuing the retreating Rangdan forces, they destroyed eighty more vessels, pushing the front line into orbit of the sixth planet.
The cost had been steep—nearly four hundred ships lost from their own fleet.
Facing the dense Rangdan armada ahead, Omega and Alpharius abandoned their aggressive flanking tactics. If the enemy concentrated their forces, the Alpha Legion risked total annihilation.
They adopted a new strategy: methodical advance, grinding down the enemy's strength, destroying ships only when opportunities presented themselves with acceptable risk.
The tactical shift produced unexpected results across the star system. With pressure significantly reduced on their front, the Dark Angels launched a fierce offensive against the Rangdan fleet.
After months of brutal combat, both the First Legion and the Rangdan had been reduced to barely a thousand warships each. The void between worlds had become a graveyard, with shattered hulls stretching for millions of kilometers, a monument to mutual slaughter.
Every planet in the system was a battlefield. What had been lifeless worlds were now warriors' graves.
"The Dark Angels have so many," Omega muttered, watching the First Legion's formation through the viewport. Even depleted, their numbers dwarfed his own.
The Twentieth Legion remained small, just over ten thousand Astartes. Without Alpharius publicly acknowledged as their Primarch, the Emperor had forbidden large-scale recruitment using their gene-seed.
The First Legion was different. With the Lion returned to the Imperium and full Imperial support, the Dark Angels had begun the Crusade with over a hundred thousand warriors.
Roboute Guilliman's Thirteenth Legion was even more overwhelming. The Ultramarines in their cobalt plate numbered over two hundred thousand.
Because of the sheer scale of his forces, few Primarchs wished to campaign alongside Guilliman, fighting beside the Thirteenth risked appearing as mere auxiliaries to the Lord of Ultramar.
The Luna Wolves and several other Legions had also begun with a hundred thousand Space Marines. There were clear reasons these Primarchs stood out among their brothers.
Despite the Alpha Legion's small size, Alpharius had distributed many of his sons across the Imperium, agents and operatives on classified missions. Some had already embedded themselves in other Legions.
Large-scale frontal warfare had never been the Alpha Legion's purpose. But as a Primarch, Alpharius would not miss this war.
A thousand warships and millions of troops had seemed substantial at the campaign's start. Measured against this apocalyptic conflict, it felt insignificant.
Other Legions also suffered from limited numbers. The Thousand Sons of the Fifteenth numbered barely a thousand warriors.
The Emperor's Children of the Third, only a few hundred. The Blood Angels of the Ninth were similarly constrained; defects and corruption in their gene-seed crippled recruitment.
In the void between the system's fourth rocky planet and fifth gas giant, the Alpha Legion fleet held the left flank while the Dark Angels anchored the right. Despite catastrophic losses, the Rangdan fleet in the inner system showed no sign of retreat.
Massive Rangdan structures covered both the third and fourth planets.
The Dark Angels had already shattered the fourth world's defensive shields. Tactical displays showed brutal ground combat raging across the surface. Close-air support and fighter engagements never ceased.
The savage fighting showed no signs of stopping. Omega and Alpharius decided to use the Dark Angels' main fleet as an anvil while the Alpha Legion became the hammer, executing another flanking strike.
The void war had raged for a full year. Finally, the Rangdan fleet had been compressed to four or five hundred ships.
The Alpha Legion had been reduced to nearly three hundred warships. The Dark Angels retained just over six hundred. Both sides had bled terribly.
But with Alpha Legion Space Marines deployed to the planetary campaigns, the Dark Angels had gradually gained the upper hand.
Human and xenos alike fought with desperate ferocity.
Countless derelict hulls drifted through the system. At last, through the Dark Angels' relentless assault, the Rangdan's massive flagship, a vessel tens of kilometers long, had been breached.
Imperial First Legion warriors had established a foothold aboard the enemy command ship.
The situation was ideal for Alpha Legion infiltration. Omega and Alpharius immediately began arguing over who would lead the operation.
"I will lead the infiltration; you just await my success," Omega said.
On another flagship, Alpharius remained silent, offering no further objection.
Soon after, a hundred-strong Alpha Legion strike force launched via boarding torpedo, crossing the void to land directly on the xenos fortress.
Before they even opened the hatch, heavy gunfire hammered the torpedo's hull. Energy readings spiked as shields drained rapidly.
Omega cracked the hatch just enough to return fire through the gap. Grenades and smoke canisters tumbled out, creating the opening they needed. He led his warriors into a storm of fire; hundreds of Rangdan warriors awaited them.
The Alpha Legionaries scattered, finding cover, eliminating targets with practiced efficiency.
By the time the company regrouped and cleared the immediate threat, another wave of xenos appeared.
In the chaos, Omega activated his peculiar gift, a psychic talent that suppressed his presence to imperceptible levels. He slipped through the Rangdan formation like a ghost, blending into their ranks as they surged forward to engage his brothers.
While battle raged behind him, Omega penetrated deeper into the fortress.
His Primarch abilities allowed him to move unseen through enemy territory. An hour later, he reached the massive organic doors of the fortress's reactor chamber.
The guards shocked him. Over a hundred Rangdan elite warriors and a monstrous bio-construct filled the corridor. The creature's gaping maw served as the entrance itself, its body fused with the walls and covered in writhing spiked tentacles.
A Rangdan warrior over three meters tall stood at the center, clad in cumbersome power armor covered in jagged spikes. Arcs of electricity flickered across its surface, radiating grim authority like a warden guarding the gates of hell.
In its right hand: a scepter-like psychic weapon. In its left: a crystal skull the size of a basketball, blue flames dancing from its eye sockets and nasal cavity.
A decade of warfare had taught Omega to assess threats accurately. This was a Rangdan warlord, equivalent in power to an Astartes company champion. The crystal skull could amplify psychic assaults capable of wounding even a Primarch's mind.
The skull possessed other abilities.
The Rangdan's most terrifying gift was their capacity to mimic biological patterns, behavioral rhythms, mental states, thought processes, and any signal produced by a living organism.
Through psychic power, they could replicate it all, then cloak themselves in mental illusions that made them appear perfectly human.
Unless their target possessed stronger willpower than the Rangdan itself, the xenos could walk among humans undetected, accepted as one of their own.
One function of the crystal skull is to amplify the alien's psychic intrusion into a victim's mind, extracting data and memories. It could also inject psychic corruption, shattering consciousness and reducing targets to mindless shells.
In some ways, the ability mirrored Omega's peculiar gift, both manipulating perception and presence.
But where Omega reduced his presence to nothing, becoming unnoticeable as he passed like a phantom, the Rangdan used mimicry and disguise to manipulate how they were perceived, deceiving targets into seeing what the xenos wanted them to see.
Omega's Primarch-grade discipline did not trigger the crystal skull's detection. Ten years of relentless mental conditioning had been worth every meditation, every exercise in control.
But as he crept closer down the corridor, approaching the guarded threshold, the Rangdan warlord holding the sacred skull sensed something amiss.
It shifted the skull slightly, amplifying its psychic awareness.
Suddenly, standing not far ahead in the corridor where nothing had been moments before, a human Space Marine appeared as if from nowhere.
[End of Chapter]