Chapter 302: We Will Fight!
8th Day, 8th Month, 768.M41
From the eternal wound in reality that was the Eye of Terror, the Blood God roared once more, a cry that tore at the fabric of the Materium. The roar washed over his followers, and the veil of sanity that had held them back from the taste of blood was torn asunder. The Master of War, the Lord of Skulls, overturned the fragile concept of reason with his fury and burned it to ash.
Canticles of binary code scrolling across data-slates became a simple tally of the slain.
War machines in their forge-shrines would no longer tolerate the indignity of daily maintenance; they grew fangs of sharpened steel.
The machine-spirits of warships fell into a berserk rage. They slew their weakling masters who sought to restrain the slaughter and turned their fleet's guns upon the worlds below.
The curtain had been raised. What followed would be swift and clean.
War!
Just as their master desired.
Reason had once held them back, made them hesitate, made them weak. Now, the reason that had shackled them was gone. They could advance once more, to ravage the next world, to kill and kill again. To brew a vintage of slaughter for their thirsting god.
When the followers of the Blood God saw their warships power up and open fire upon the living, they cheered in a babbling, incoherent ecstasy. They poured down onto the planet's surface like a flood, surging forward into the teeth of the guns. Most were so lost in their savage hunger that they had no concept of their objective. They knew not if it was a vital starport or a fortress that could grant them shelter, nor did they understand its strategic value.
Like the god that drove them to reap their bloody harvest, they did not care.
Come. Fight!
Nachmund Gauntlet Defence Perimeter, Planet Charr.
Upon a wasteland shrouded in endless dust, the resistance of humanity had brought the catastrophic invasion to a stalemate.
The Traitor Legion's ground forces formed a mobile front stretching for kilometers. They marched through shattered archways and over city ruins, a vengeful tide flowing toward the planet's broken hives. They infiltrated every street and climbed every hill of rubble, filling every crack and crevice in their path like a foul, viscous ooze. As they charged, the traitors chanted profane war-cries.
In a lull in the command chatter, Commissar Cain glanced at the tactical display. He saw towering figures moving amongst the traitor ranks. Giants clad in gunmetal-grey armour—fallen Astartes. From the smoke-choked rear lines, they blew warped and discordant notes on their war-horns, seeking to bend the rhythm of the battlefield to their will.
He saw other Astartes, clad in armour the colour of rotting flesh. Their pauldrons were trimmed with brass, and some had twisted, bull-like horns growing from their helms. The filth caked upon these monsters had formed a thick crust of dried blood.
The gunmetal-grey Astartes slowed their advance, like hunters who had just unleashed their hounds. At once, the crimson-armoured warriors surged forward. They flew into the fray like rabid dogs pumped full of combat stimms, unstoppable as genetically engineered grox. They bore almost no human features, appearing more like war machines sculpted from pure rage.
The few gunmetal-grey Astartes stood as still as statues, observing the battlefield with the cold calm of gladiatorial beast-masters. The crimson Astartes ran on all fours, their tortured howls threatening to shatter the comms frequency as they swung chainaxes and gore-slicked swords.
Behind them, on the wider plains, Chaos Knights advanced in concert with the traitor Astartes. And from the tear in reality's veil, a tide of crimson daemons poured forth, their twisted forms violating the laws of physics, their blasphemous shrieks echoing on the winds of the warp storm.
The casualty counter for the loyalists ticked ever upward, each new number a testament to a glorious sacrifice. One by one, their comrades were falling. The bombardment that had begun when the skies first caught fire had never ceased. The roar of macro-cannons shook the atmosphere, and the dust they churned up obscured the blood-reddened star.
The dim light still glinted on power armour. Lances of energy rained down from orbit. Astartes strike forces pushed for the ritual's epicentre to disrupt it, to halt the daemonic incursion, while the Astra Militarum launched wave after wave of assaults, giving the enemy no quarter. They fought a brutal, grinding war on the planet's surface. Every inch of soil was soaked in blood, every crater filled with the debris of blade and shell. The cries of charge and counter-charge never ceased, and the ashes of the dead carpeted the earth.
Alexei turned his gaze from the screen, back to the comrades who should have been retiring alongside him.
For ten thousand years, the desolate ruin of the Eye of Terror has been a festering wound upon the galaxy, spewing its horrors upon the Imperium of Man. But for every one of those ten thousand years, Cadia stood. Forged in a faith of blood and bone, the fortress was impregnable. The number of loyal souls who died defending the Cadian Gate is beyond counting. The tides of traitor, heretic, and daemon broke against the wall of their sacrifice.
By their example, ten thousand worlds knew that in this, the darkest of ages, peace was a fool's dream. The light of the Astronomican grew dim, guttering like a candle in a gale. Countless Navigators clawed at their mutated third eyes, lost in the fading starlight. The Eye of Terror pulsed, and the empyric storms twisted nearby star systems into nightmarish parodies of their former selves.
With a roar from the Blood God that echoed across the Veiled Region, the profane engines of the Dark Mechanicum belched sulfurous smoke. Faces twisted in agony appeared on the armour of Chaos Space Marines, and maniacal laughter echoed on the bridges of mutineer warships. The leash of reason on the massive fleet gathered in the sector had been severed.
Their blades were now pointed at the bulwark of the Imperium, their fury intent on burning the Veiled Region to cinders.
But the Veiled Region was ready. The great commander had foreseen this: another war sparked by the ambition of Chaos. And for the arrival of the great Primarchs, the sector was armed to the teeth. Romulus's strategic genius had drawn the lines across the galactic map, and the Shield of the Imperium, his Legion, executed his will to perfection.
The vast Imperial fleet patrolled the biting currents of the void. Outside the web woven by the hidden enemy, an equally mighty force was gathering. World after world answered the Primarchs' call, receiving reinforcements on an unprecedented scale. The magnificent banners of Knightly Houses flew alongside the honoured standards of the Adeptus Astartes. The war machines of the Adeptus Mechanicus stood beside the fervent warriors of the Adepta Sororitas. And the ubiquitous soldiers of the Astra Militarum, their long, hard training had been for this moment, and this moment alone.
To fight in a war that would rewrite the future of the galaxy.
"We are gathered here to fight! To fight in the name of Mankind! To fight for the vision of our Primarchs! To fight for every inch of ground beneath our feet!"
"Death will come for us all, but let us at least die on the battlefield! We need not dwell on our individual insignificance. Knowing the limits of our mortal flesh, we are gathered here for one purpose and one purpose only!"
"This is all they expect of us!"
"Let us fight!"
"Let us bring victory home to Cadia!"
Incense smoke hung thick in the air, obscuring vision. Unfinished data-slates swirled in the air like fallen leaves as monitors flickered erratically.
This was the office of the Master of the Administratum.
The ancient Lord Commander was strapped to his high-backed chair, his white hair stirred by the draft from a toppled stack of parchments. He stared at the message in his hand, sweat beading on his brow. It was an urgent report from the Veiled Region, transmitted directly from the Primarchs to Terra.
On 8.8.768.M41, forces of the Adeptus Mechanicus, led by the Forge World of Incaladion, in league with Chaos traitors, have launched a sector-wide assault originating from the Cadian Gate. The damage is incalculable. This slaughter and devastation continues.
The Dawnstar Sector government hereby formally declares a state of war against the traitors. It will assume leadership of all armed forces in the Veiled Region and all planetary defense forces therein, to conduct a war of extermination against the invading Chaos forces.
Any armed force entering the warzone must submit to the authority of the Dawnstar Sector command. Any act of non-compliance will be met with annihilation.
It was not a request. It was a notification.
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