The command bridge of the venerable battle barge "Punishing Nemesis" now looked more like a disturbed anthill. New reports kept coming in about damage and casualties; orders were being barked in command tones; servitors tried to restore malfunctioning equipment.
In the midst of all this turmoil sat a huge man, as if hewn from stone, encased in Mark X Gravis power armour lavishly adorned with heraldry and purity seals. In his appearance, the angel of death reflected the wisdom of centuries spent in constant battle and the inexpressible grandeur of the Emperor of Mankind's creation.
The bustle of mere mortals did little to concern Dionysus Burton, Chapter Master of the Adeptus Astartes Chapter known as the Sons of Anathema. Seated upon the command throne, he had handed all matters concerning the "Punishing Nemesis" over to the fragile shoulders of its captain, while a stream of endless data about the Chapter fleet's status fed into his own helm. That status, it had to be said, left much to be desired. To lose a strike cruiser and several escort ships for no reason at all…
For three centuries, Burton had led his Chapter on an unending crusade against the enemies of mankind. Three long centuries filled with bloody battles, sweet victories, and bitter defeats—fortunately, there had been far more of the first and second than the third. Three long centuries in the service of the Emperor of Mankind. Before his eyes, the borders of humanity's domains had come under assault by Tyranid hive fleets; Abaddon the Despoiler's accursed Thirteenth Black Crusade had swept across the stars; and the galaxy had been split in two by the bleeding wound of a sluggish rift.
Of all possible enemies of mankind, the spawn of the warp held a special place in the Chapter Master's heart. Dionysus was an excellent warrior, one without equal in the entire Chapter. Clad in his Terminator armour and armed with relic lightning claws, he was like a god of war upon the battlefield. He had been among the first Chapter Masters to dare to cross the Rubicon Primaris… Throughout his service to mankind, not a single scar had ever touched his face; yet it was a recent duel against a Daemon Prince—fought on board the "Punishing Nemesis" itself—that had turned the light straw colour of his hair to silver.
As soon as Dionysus recalled the Emperor-cursed heretics, cold fury began to boil within him. Though not a single muscle in the Chapter Master's face betrayed his true thoughts, he swore to himself that one day he would bring the flames of righteous vengeance down upon the heads of the traitors of the Word Bearers Legion, who had caused the horrific warp storm that consumed the ships of the Imperium's defenders. For now, however, any such plans were matters for a distant, glorious future. Here and now, the Space Marine lord had to resolve many far more pressing problems.
"My lord, we have managed to establish contact with the rest of the fleet and receive their reports on damage and losses," Jenavieve Permilot, captain of the "Punishing Nemesis," reported, speaking with a slight burr.
The captain and fleet master's appearance readily marked the woman as a noble-born combat officer of thirty to thirty-five years of age. Rejuvenat treatments had done their work, concealing her true age from the outside world. Her naval uniform fit perfectly over the emphasised slender figure of the mistress of a multi-kilometre monster assembled from ferrocrete and adamantium. A gold-adorned bionic arm had replaced the one she had lost fifteen years ago, when the warp-things broke onto the bridge. Her thick, fiery red mane had not dulled even after a hundred standard Terran years.
"You may speak, Captain," Dionysus said, nodding imperiously. "How are matters with the fleets of our allies?"
A grim premonition took hold of the Chapter Master. The Permilots were a hereditary naval dynasty that had, since time immemorial, faithfully served the Sons of Anathema Chapter, often attaining captaincy positions on its ships. Jenavieve—a distinctive, strong-willed woman—was no exception to the family tradition. Over the past hundred years, Dionysus had studied one of his most valuable mortal servants well enough to judge the seriousness of a problem by the slightest movement of her face and the subtlest vibrations in her voice.
"Overall, the fleet's condition is satisfactory," Jenavieve began her report. "We have lost about fifteen percent of the entire fleet; however, given the circumstances, such losses can be considered acceptable."
Though the captain did not say it aloud, without the warning from the Aeldari witch their losses might have been far more severe. The warships simply would not have raised their Geller fields in time and would inevitably have been torn apart by the creatures of the Immaterium. Hah… if someone had told Burton earlier that his entire Chapter would owe their lives to a xenos, the Chapter Master would have ordered that heretic turned into a servitor without another word! Still, at least there was some use to these xenos. After all, it hadn't been for nothing that he had soured his relations with the agents of the Golden Throne over these pointy-eared ones.
"Some ships were scattered across the systems of this sector, but most of them successfully emerged into realspace with varying degrees of damage." Up to now, things had been going relatively well, and Jenavieve always saved the worst news for the end. "However, none of our allies managed to avoid… ahem." The captain hesitated slightly, choosing the right phrasing. "An unpleasant incident."
By "unpleasant incident," Permilot, of course, meant the navigator's premature death from a traumatic brain injury incompatible with life. About a month after the fleet was struck by the warp storm conjured by the Word Bearers heretics, the navigator suddenly went into hysterics, screaming that he could no longer see the Astronomican, mixed with delirious rambling about the End Times.
Brother Aquilius reacted first, using his fist to drive the three-eyed mutant's nose closer to the back of his skull. The brains of the crazed wretch still hadn't been scraped off the console. However, when similar messages began to be relayed by astropaths across the fleet, Dionysus had to enter the game himself. The order was given to isolate the madmen, but under threat of execution they were not to be killed under any circumstances. It didn't matter if possession had taken these mutants—let Khorne's bloodthirsters crawl out of them for all it mattered—in such an hour, leaving the fleet without navigators would be suicide, pure and simple.
"How many?" the Chapter Master asked his captain dryly.
"By our most conservative estimates…" Permilot's ashen face spoke for itself. "About half, my lord." The woman's words fell upon Burton like a guillotine.
To lose half the navigator cadre for no reason at all… A brutal reality he could only accept through gritted teeth and keep moving forward.
"The situation is worst among the Imperial Navy elements," Jenavieve snorted with uncharacteristic contempt, making it clear that the flame of hostility between Imperial fleet officers and her family had never even thought of going out. "It seems the fleet commissars' fingers were itching on the triggers…"
Leaving a mental note to conduct organisational-educational measures by means of executions and disciplinary punishments (seconding the guilty to a penal legion), the Chapter Master decided to turn to more pressing matters.
"Magos Tector, were you able to determine our position?" Dionysus asked in a commanding tone.
Hidden beneath characteristic red robes, the priest of Mars squeaked something in binharic before answering in Low Gothic:
"I fear not, milord." The sparse mimicry of the machine-thing was perfectly complemented by his mechadendrites. "I have completed a scan of the stars around us, but I swear by the Omnissiah, none of them match the star charts known to Mars."
Magos Dominus Ultor Tector was a Martian tech-priest who had replaced his predecessor, who had been torn to pieces by a twisted daemonic engine shortly after the rift's appearance. He was one of Belisarius Cawl's loyal supporters and had arrived on the Sons of Anathema's home world alongside the Torchbearers who delivered reinforcements to the Chapter in the form of the "Primaris miracle." Dionysus had accepted the gift of his gene-father with a warmth worthy of an Ultramarines heir, but that did not mean he would be equally warm to the spies of the Martian archmagos.
"Taking into account the navigators' words, the reports from other ships," the tech-priest began to list obvious things as though everyone around him were unreasonable children, "with an 89.7% probability I assume that our fleet has emerged into an entirely new galaxy, unknown to mankind."
Even so, this priest pleased Burton far more than that suspicious type from the forge world of Stygies VIII who had latched onto them on their crusade.
"What is the probability that you have erred in your calculations, priest?" the Chapter Master asked, for the sake of propriety.
"Extremely negligible," the techno-adept replied without hesitation. "We may also have shifted in time to before or after some cataclysm on a galactic scale."
Dionysus listened to the priest's further lamentations only half an ear. One answer had raised so many new questions and, at the same time, presented so many new problems that could not be shelved. If only it concerned his Chapter alone—but the Emperor had set his champion a far more difficult task.
"Secure me a link to the entire fleet," the Chapter Master cut the priest off mid-sentence without ceremony.
Some things simply could not be left for later.
***
The forty-second millennium. Across the galaxy of the Milky Way, the Indomitus Crusade sweeps with the flame of righteous wrath, called to drive mankind's enemies back into the darkness from which they crawled. A saving crusade the like of which had not been seen since the Great Crusade of the Emperor Himself, it was led personally by the miraculously returned primarch of the Ultramarines—the Avenging Son, Roboute Guilliman.
Of course, no one would drive such a vast force forward as a single mighty torrent, for that would be excessive and крайне inefficient. Instead, the decision was made to divide the available strength into twenty autonomous fleets capable of carrying out the primarch's tasks independently. Guilliman personally selected the leadership, on whose abilities and personal qualities the fate of thousands of worlds and the lives of countless billions of the Imperium's subjects depended.
After some time, Fleet Tertius (the fourth organised by Guilliman) of the Indomitus Crusade encountered a threat never seen before, emanating from the ancient race of the Necrons. The region known as the Pariah Nexus formed in the midst of mankind's realm. Several Imperial sectors were completely cut off from the warp, and the people inhabiting the planets there were deprived of their souls, leaving behind only empty shells.
Regrettably, the Emperor's servants were no exception. Regiments of mortal Guardsmen began to fall into a ruinous apathy until their bodies were stripped of all signs of life. Only the superhuman Space Marines and the Sisters of Battle, blessed by the Emperor Himself, could offer the Necrons proper resistance under the strange influence of that monstrous xenotech. Yet that proved utterly insufficient. No one knew what other surprises could be expected from the warp-cursed xenos, or how far the Necrons might be able to extend their soul-freezing reaping engine.
Never before had the Imperium faced anything like it. The so-called Shadow in the Warp brought by a Tyranid hive fleet could produce a similar effect, but it had a clear organic nature rather than an unknown technical origin. Alarming reports recorded the incursion of ever more Necron dynasty forces into the Pariah Nexus zone, and malicious tongues whispered of the Silent King's return to the galaxy—the ancient ruler of the Necrons.
Confronted with a threat of unbearable scale, Fleet Tertius's leadership was forced to acknowledge the bitter truth. Alone, the Emperor's servants could not withstand so formidable an opponent. Moreover, representatives of the Ordo Xenos, swallowing their pride instead of offering comfort, grimly stated that their own knowledge of the Necrons' capabilities was insufficient. In such unfavourable conditions, rash actions could easily lead to the collapse of the entire mission entrusted to the fleet's leadership by Guilliman himself.
As a solution, Lord Inquisitor Valtor Mef of the Ordo Xenos proposed an extremely scandalous—if not outright heretical—way out of the situation. To make use of the fruits of the alliance concluded by Lord Guilliman between the forces of the Imperium and a new, rising Aeldari faction: the followers of the god of death, the Ynnari. The Aeldari were ancient enemies of the Necrons, having warred against them long before the first cave-man gained a mind more than animal. But far more important… the Silent King's return threatened the pointy-eared people with doom no less than the dark god of pleasure, Slaanesh.
***
"This is Chapter Master Dionysus Burton of the Sons of Anathema, and supreme commander of Fleet Tertius's composite battlegroup!" Perhaps cold-blooded Dionysus lacked the fire that blazes in the speeches of Reclusiarchs and Chaplains, but now these people needed his words—and so Dionysus's duty to the Emperor was to carry them to the ears, souls, and hearts of all personnel. "As many of you have likely already heard, our fleet has successfully emerged into realspace."
The brief prelude came to an end, and it was time for risk.
"However, the place we have found ourselves in is unknown to us! Our stars are not here! The blessed light of the Astronomican does not reach this place! All around lies a new, uncharted, and unconquered galaxy!" With each next word, the Chapter Master's voice continued to gain strength. "Some of you may decide that this is punishment falling upon our heads as retribution for our failures.
As long as Dionysus could remember himself, the Ecclesiarchy's cult had never been to his taste—but as the doctrines of the Sons of Anathema taught, any means capable of helping achieve the desired victory over the enemy is worthy of use. Even if, in this case, the enemy was human nature itself.
"No!" Burton's voice rolled like a clap of thunder. "The Emperor was the one who preserved the lives of His champions from the furious rampage of the unstable Immaterium! Now He has sent us His final, most difficult trial." It was time to drive the last nail into the coffin of this new world. "We will find a path back, no matter the cost, and if for that we must conquer this galaxy… so be it!"
Of course, in this speech—meant to ignite and bind the hearts and souls of the people—the Chapter Master prudently left out certain details. For instance, the fact that for saving their lives they ought first to thank an Aeldari witch, and only then the Master of Mankind…