[The entire Chapter fleet finally tore free from the Warp's churning madness and translated successfully into the Valf system's cold reality.]
[According to astrographic intelligence transmitted by Imperial forces, you altered the fleet's course immediately. Your destination: a frozen world, the seventh planet from the system's central star, a desolate sphere composed entirely of solid ammonia. Its surface glitters with toxic frost that has never known warmth.]
[This rarely visited frozen planet has now become the gathering point for the fleets of multiple Chapters, a staging ground chosen for its strategic position and lack of civilian population.]
[The scene that greets you is overwhelming in scale. The planet's orbital space is choked with vessels. Two nearby mining satellites, normally host to perhaps a dozen ore haulers, are surrounded by massive warships belonging to other Chapters and the Imperial Navy. The void around the frozen world has become a steel constellation.]
[Symbolic flagships bearing the honors of centuries cruise in careful holding patterns. Battle barges loaded with xenos-derived technology, their hulls covered in purity seals to ward against corruption, maintain station alongside maneuverable cruisers and powerful battleships. The number of frigates and auxiliary vessels defies easy counting, their running lights creating constellations against the darkness.]
[As the only rescue Chapter whose Master has come personally to lead his warriors, the responsibility for hosting the coordination meeting falls to you. The Tempestus battle barge becomes the gathering place, its halls prepared for commanders and their retinues.]
[You stand at the primary airlock, power armor gleaming under the harsh white light, and personally receive each arriving captain. They come one by one, some via Thunderhawk transport, others by armored shuttles bearing their Chapter's colors. With them comes Imperial Navy Lord High Admiral Cruz, the supreme commander tasked with coordinating this desperate battle.]
[After the priests from various Chapters carry their incense through the Tempestus's upper decks, chanting prayers in High Gothic that echo through vaulted corridors, they establish their Chapter shrines in the Hall of Hate. Each altar is unique: candles, relics, images of their Primarchs or Emperor, arranged with reverent care.]
[Finally, with shrines established and benedictions completed, you gather everyone together for a pre-war council on how to stop the World Engine.]
[The meeting does not go well.]
[In the period that follows, the assembled commanders erupt into fierce quarreling over who should have the honor of launching the first attack on the World Engine. What begins as tactical debate quickly devolves into personal attacks targeting each other's Chapters, old grudges and rivalries surfacing with vicious speed.]
[The Aurora Chapter and the Invaders, whose power armor both features predominantly green coloring, take the lead in verbal warfare. Their captains lean forward across the tactical table, voices rising as they trade barbed insults about each other's combat records and gene-seed purity.]
[A captain from the Blood Angels stands slightly apart, his face shadowed and gloomy. He subconsciously licks his elongated fangs with a serpentine tongue, and his blood-red eyes flick toward anyone who passes too close to him. There's hunger in that gaze, barely controlled.]
[The Crimson Fists captain, his expression solemn and weathered, moves to stand beside the Ultramarines' Seventh Captain. They speak in low voices, heads close together, discussing something with obvious concern. Even Admiral Cruz edges closer to listen to their quieter conversation, his augmetic eye whirring as it focuses.]
[Just as captains from several other Chapters begin shouting about settling matters through ritual duels, their hands moving toward weapons, you've had enough.]
[You maintain your silence but draw your bolter in one smooth motion. The weapon clears its holster with a mechanical rasp. You raise it toward the vaulted ceiling of the Hall of Hate and pull the trigger.]
[The explosive roar of mass-reactive rounds detonating against reinforced ceramite drowns out every quarrel and heated discussion. The sound crashes through the hall like thunder, leaving ears ringing in its wake. Stone dust and the acrid smell of propellant drift down from the impact points above.]
[Every head turns toward you. Silence falls like a hammer.]
[You sweep your gaze across these Astartes captains you've never met before, your expression carved from stone and utterly serious. Your voice, when it comes, is steady and cutting.]
["Everyone must admit that each Chapter has its own fighting style and tactical doctrines. Even in the extreme, our weapon and ship loadouts differ significantly." You let that sink in for a moment. "These differences have served us well in our separate campaigns."]
[You lower the bolter but don't holster it, keeping the weapon visible as a reminder.]
["But the situation we face now demands something different. We must set aside these differences and disputes. We must unite to form a single, overwhelming force capable of saving the Vidar Sector and stopping the World Engine's rampage."]
[You don't hesitate then. You begin describing, in clinical detail, the near-miraculous technological capabilities of the Necrons that you know from fragments of memory and battlefield reports. Their ability to phase out of reality. Their self-repairing living metal. Their weapons that strip matter to its base components. Their absolute mastery over physical laws.]
[You want to awaken proper vigilance in these commanders, to shatter their stubbornness and arrogance with harsh reality.]
[Unfortunately, the result is disappointing.]
[Only the Crimson Fists captain and the Ultramarines' Seventh Captain seem to truly absorb your warnings, their expressions growing more thoughtful and concerned. Admiral Cruz nods slowly, his human face showing genuine consideration of the threat assessment.]
[The other Chapter captains offer only superficial respect to your words. They nod at appropriate moments, make acknowledging sounds, but you can read their true thoughts easily enough.]
[You see it in their expressionless faces and deep within their eyes: a trace of sarcasm and contempt. The Astral Knights are not one of the famous Chapters. Your warnings are dismissed as the anxious bleating of an unknown, possibly cowardly, commander.]
[You take a deep breath, pulling air through clenched teeth. You force down the anger gradually rising in your chest, hot and bitter. These fools will learn soon enough, and their arrogance may cost thousands of lives.]
[You step aside slowly, letting the pre-war meeting return to its normal flow without your interference.]
[Eventually, everyone agrees to support Imperial Navy Admiral Cruz as the supreme commander of this battle, granting him actual authority rather than making him a mere figurehead of the joint fleet.]
[After the meeting concludes and the other captains depart for their vessels, you speak privately with Admiral Cruz. The older man, his face lined with decades of void warfare, chooses to listen carefully to some of your tactical suggestions. His augmetic eye focuses on you with mechanical precision as you outline contingencies and fallback positions.]
[The massive joint rescue fleet completes its reorganization and deployment with surprising efficiency. Admiral Cruz's forces form the main battle line, while the fleet masters of each Chapter serve as auxiliary commanders responsible for their own tactical spheres.]
[You officially launch a probing attack on the Necrons' World Engine.]
[The target is currently rampaging along the void route toward the ninth planet from the star, a life-bearing world whose surface supports Imperial industry. If you cannot stop its advance, that industrial planet will be completely annihilated. Tens of millions of Imperial citizens who lack the time or means to evacuate will become casualties, their lives measured only as statistics.]
[Soon after the fleet assumes attack formation, the vanguard ships make their first collision and exchange fire with the World Engine.]
[The sight steals your breath.]
[The World Engine is so impossibly vast that it nearly blots out the distant stars, a planetoid transformed into a weapon of extinction. Its scale defies easy comprehension, dwarfing even the largest Imperial battleships like toys beside a cathedral.]
[Countless laser arrays from dozens of ships lance across the cold void, ruby-red beams cutting through the darkness. Macro-cannon batteries fire in thunderous sequence, their deadly projectiles accelerating to relativistic speeds. The combined barrage is enough to crack continents, to boil oceans.]
[It's the first time you've clearly seen the World Engine on the flagship's viewing screens, and the sight is terrible in its majesty.]
[The planetary weapon appears perpetually shrouded in thick dark clouds that roil and churn across its surface. Lightning, vast and terrible, rolls through those clouds in endless storms that would dwarf hurricanes. The bolts arc between towering structures that might be weapons or engines or monuments to dead Necron gods.]
[Most striking is the shield. The entire surface of this alien technological creation seems covered by an unknown barrier that shimmers with silver light, like mercury flowing across impossible distances. The shield pulses faintly with each passing moment, a heartbeat of pure energy.]
[The vanguard fleet's terrifying assault impacts that barrier with focused fury.]
[Dense laser beams, so numerous they almost create a solid wall of crimson light across the void, slam against the silver shimmer. Macro-cannon shells the size of tanks detonate with atomic fury. Countless missiles and torpedoes streak in from every angle, their warheads designed to crack fortress walls and vaporize city blocks.]
[The shield doesn't even flicker. Not a single ripple of energy disturbance mars its perfect surface. The attacks might as well be raindrops falling against adamantium.]
[This is one manifestation of the Necrons' technological supremacy, you think grimly, arms crossed as you stare at the tactical display. The extreme expression of materialism: shields so perfect they render conventional weapons meaningless.]
[The vanguard fleet, recognizing the futility of their current approach, begins executing a coordinated turn. Ships bank in formation, their plasma drives flaring bright as they prepare to regroup. The plan is clearly to concentrate fire, to bring even more devastating bombardment to bear on a single point.]
[They never get the chance.]
[In the next second, silver spears of light suddenly lance out from within the World Engine.]
[They flash like lightning, impossibly fast, threads of pure annihilation that cross the void in eyeblinks. In that terrible instant, they penetrate the vanguard fleet's void shields as if those defensive barriers simply don't exist. The silver spears slice through the shields without resistance, then continue through the metal hulls of massive warships.]
[Ships that have weathered centuries of warfare, that have survived broadsides from pirate fleets and xenos raiders, are cut apart like flesh beneath a surgeon's scalpel.]