Jupiter's shadow turned space to a cathedral. The great planet filled half the starscape, red storms swirling like a wound that refused to close. Lightning ran along the cloud tops, flickering against the armour of thousands of dead ships — wrecks left drifting after the first wave of traitor assaults.
The Watcher Above prowled through that graveyard like a patient predator, its hull silent, its engines purring just above the noise of thought. The ship had become an extension of Kael — responsive, poised, dangerous. It could feel him thinking through it.
The Silent Company was spread across four ships now — two smaller destroyers and a cruiser borrowed from the Sol defense line. They moved with the precision of a single heartbeat, their signatures masked by the planet's magnetic fury.
Kael stood at the bridge, unhelmed. His black eyes reflected every flash of red lightning from below.
"Report," he said, his tone steady.
"Enemy convoy inbound from Io," Joras replied. The sergeant's voice carried the rough growl of void static, his remaining arm resting on the hololith. "Two cruisers, a transport, and what looks like a Mechanicum tug. No escorts worth mentioning."
"Alpha pattern," Kael murmured. "They'll have more in the shadow."
Malchion's voice came from the lower tier, calm as always. "Intercept course plotted. We'll be inside their sensor range in seven minutes. Unless…"
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Unless?"
"Unless we use the storm."
Kael looked out the viewport again, feeling the flicker of prescience rise behind his eyes — a flash, a heartbeat, five seconds ahead. He saw lances firing through empty void, saw the shimmer of shadows, saw the brief moment where the enemy bridge's power dipped and their shields flickered.
"Plot us through the red storm," he ordered. "Shadow burn, minimum emissions. If they see us, they'll see their reflections."
"Aye, Captain," Malchion replied, already moving.
---
The Descent
The Watcher Above angled toward the storm wall, its hull gleaming with magnetized dust.
Veyra's absence was an ache behind every command. Kael still caught himself waiting for her voice — her precise numbers, her soft cough — but there was only the hum of engines and the discipline of men who had learned grief could not slow their hands.
"Ready batteries," Kael said.
The ship's intelligence whispered through the vox-net, aligning targeting matrices to Kael's biosignature. The firing algorithms anticipated his command before he spoke. He felt the ship breathe with him.
They broke through the upper layer of the storm, lightning turning their hull to molten gold and black. Kael's precognition sharpened into a knife-edge — the next few seconds unfolding with unbearable clarity.
The enemy fleet was there. Two cruisers turning broadside. The transport shielded between them. The Mechanicum tug already charging lances.
Kael's voice was a whisper, but the entire fleet heard it.
"Open the gate."
The Watcher Above flickered into full burn.
---
Lances screamed through space. Kael moved before the first impact, calling out firing solutions that no mortal augur could compute.
"Battery two, thirty degrees port — fire now."
A traitor cruiser's shield collapsed a moment before the beams struck. Its hull split open like a ribcage torn apart by invisible hands.
"Destroyers one and two, mark my vector and follow three seconds behind."
They did, perfectly. Kael's foresight turned chaos into choreography.
Enemy ships tried to flank — they didn't make it. Kael anticipated the ambush before it happened. Every time a boarding torpedo launched, he fired at its launch bay. Every time a lance primed, he rolled the Watcher Above out of its path with impossible precision.
The darkness moved with him.
Crewmen swore they saw shadows crawling along the bulkheads, racing ahead of Kael's commands. The ship itself seemed to anticipate him — vents closing, systems redirecting power, doors locking before stray munitions could detonate.
Joras grinned through the vox. "They can't touch us!"
"Not yet," Kael replied.
The Mechanicum tug's lances fired. Red beams cut through the storm and slammed into the destroyer Silent Thorn. The ship's prow disintegrated in a silent bloom of light.
"Thorn is gone," Malchion reported, steady even as the deck shook beneath them.
Kael didn't blink. "Mark their energy source. Cut the head."
The Watcher Above dove beneath the enemy's firing arc. Kael could feel the seconds roll forward — the moment the enemy captain realized his shields had overextended, the panic, the shift of power to the wrong quadrant.
He fired.
The Mechanicum tug imploded, its reactor flash swallowed by the storm.
Kael let the silence sit for a moment.
Then, softly, "Malchion. Send boarding pods to the transport."
"Intent?"
Kael looked at the data display. The transport's cargo registers were falsified. A loyalist shipyard signature buried under false Mechanicum runes. He didn't need foresight to know what they carried — prisoners, likely taken from the Jovian moons.
"Rescue," he said.
---
The Watcher Above drifted closer, locking the transport in a gravitic snare. Boarding pods launched — black streaks against the scarlet storm.
Malchion led the first squad. Joras followed, his one good arm steady as the rest.
The breach was clean — a controlled explosion, a rush of air, a roar of vacuum. Inside, the corridors were blood-lit and shaking.
Traitor Mechanicum servitors turned, limbs bladed, eyes burning red. Malchion's bolter barked once, twice, then he switched to his blade. Each shot, each cut — efficient. Purpose, not cruelty.
"Bridge ahead," Joras said, crushing a servitor's skull under his boot.
They reached the control deck in time to see the traitor overseer trying to vent the lower holds. Malchion didn't shout a warning. He threw his combat knife — straight through the man's throat.
"Hold secured," he reported.
Kael's reply came calm through the vox. "Good work. Release the lower hatches. Let them breathe."
They did. Hundreds of prisoners spilled out, choking, crying, alive.
Malchion watched them as his brothers formed a cordon. "These are civilians, Kael. They won't understand."
"They don't have to," Kael said. "They'll remember."
---
Hours later, the Watcher Above floated amid wreckage. The storm's outer edge burned red against the void.
"Losses?" Kael asked.
Malchion's tone was grave. "Thirty-two crew. Seventeen Astartes. Thorn is gone. We have the survivors, but…"
Kael nodded. "We honor them. We move forward."
Silence.
Then Joras's voice came quietly. "You saved those people, Captain. You made the traitors bleed for it."
Kael didn't answer right away. He was looking out at the void, at the lightning painting the wrecks gold, at the shapes drifting just beyond the light.
"They'll bleed for every step," he said finally. "And when they reach Terra, they'll find nothing left but ghosts."
The ship hummed low, like it approved.
Kael turned to Malchion. "Signal Fort Aeternum. Tell them Jupiter is secure — for now. We'll head for Saturn next."
"As you will."
Kael's black eyes reflected the storm below, and for a moment he thought he saw Veyra's face in the clouds — smiling, proud, gone.
He whispered to the void, too soft for any vox to catch.
"Keep counting."
Then the Watcher Above burned for the next war.