On the Frontlines
"Disperse! By the Golden Throne, spread out!"
"Prepare for teleportarium extraction! Destroy all fixed weapon emplacements and get ready to move!"
Across the ravaged trench network and the broken forward fortifications, officers of the First Legion barked orders through the vox-net. Their voices cut through shellfire, static, and the constant rattle of small arms with practiced urgency. No one sounded calm, but no one sounded confused either. Every squad knew its task. Every second had already been accounted for.
The air stank of scorched promethium, burning ceramite, hot metal, and blood. Smoke rolled low across the trenches, turning lumen-beams and targeting lasers into thin red lines inside the haze. Around the firing steps, disciplined squads held the line just long enough for demolition teams to finish their work.
The soldiers moved with sharp, economical precision. Heavy weapon crews stripped targeting cogitators from autocannon nests before planting melta-charges in the mounts. Combat engineers wired demolition packs to missile silos, macro-artillery platforms, ammunition elevators, and power junctions. Servo-skulls drifted through the smoke, marking cleared positions with cold blue runes.
"Charge set!"
"Turret junction primed!"
"Fall back from emplacement three!"
One after another, controlled detonations tore through the defense line. Fire punched upward from gun pits. Autocannon barrels bent like soft wax. Ammunition stores burst in chained explosions that hurled fragments of ferrocrete and twisted steel into the polluted sky. What could not be carried away was broken, burned, or fused into useless slag.
Within moments, the once-formidable forward line had become a field of smoking wreckage. It would not serve the enemy. It would not even shelter them properly.
Only then did the soldiers begin to spread out. Infantry squads stepped away from one another with drilled caution, leaving precise gaps between men, vehicles, drones, and supply pallets. Officers shouted spacing corrections through the vox. Medicae teams dragged the last wounded into marked extraction zones. Tank commanders sealed hatches on their Leman Russes and confirmed their crews were locked in place.
No one joked about the danger. Everyone knew what a failed mass teleportation could do. One misplaced coordinate, one overlapping field, one soldier standing too close to a tank's armored flank, and the result would not be death so much as an engineering accident made from meat.
A cold synthetic voice entered every command channel at once.
["Teleportation sequence initiated."]
The battlefield seemed to hold its breath.
[3.]
[2.]
[1.]
White light swallowed the trenches.
For an instant, every soldier, tank, artillery tractor, drone, ammunition crate, and command relay shone like a ghost beneath the smoke. Then the light collapsed inward with a sharp crack of displaced air.
The entire First Legion vanished.
Only ozone remained. Ozone, scorched earth, cooling metal, and the faint afterimage of thousands of soldiers who had been there one heartbeat earlier and gone the next.
The enemy forces kept advancing.
They fired into the abandoned fortifications for nearly two minutes. Autoguns chattered. Heavy stubbers chewed through empty sandbags. Tank shells slammed into firing pits where no one remained to die. The heretics screamed victory hymns into the smoke, their officers urging them forward, until the lack of return fire finally became impossible to ignore.
One by one, their guns fell silent.
The assaulting troops entered the trenches with rifles raised and bayonets fixed. They found ruined emplacements, destroyed guns, cooling blast marks, and not a single living defender.
They had taken the line without a fight.
It should have felt like triumph.
Instead, unease spread through the ranks faster than any order. Men glanced at empty bunkers. Mutants sniffed the air and recoiled from the lingering tang of the teleportation field. Officers searched for traps and found only absence.
The First Legion had not been broken.
It had simply chosen not to be there anymore.
And every enemy soldier standing in those empty trenches understood the same thing.
Somewhere beyond their sight, the Legion was already preparing to strike again.
....
Talon Hive Spire
At the summit of Talon Hive, within the Governor's inner sanctum, the old seat of planetary authority had been remade into a shrine of treason. Imperial banners had been torn down and replaced with skins, chains, and sigils painted in blood-black pigment. The marble floor was cracked beneath ritual circles. The air smelled of incense, old ashes, and something sweeter that no loyal servant of the Emperor would willingly name.
Marshal Stinger, once a commander of men and now known in fearful whispers as Cultist Venomfang, sat at the center of the chamber in meditation. Around him lay stacks of heretical tomes, bone-carved idols, warp-stained relics, and grotesque artifacts whose surfaces crawled with symbols that shifted whenever the eye tried to focus on them.
He breathed slowly. His warpfire-blue eyes were closed, the pupils beneath the lids slit like a serpent's. His hands rested on his knees, clawed fingertips twitching as his mind sank beneath the veil of realspace and dipped into the Great Ocean.
The vision came like a blade.
Not a possibility. Not a distant omen. A warning sharp enough to make his breath catch.
He saw a counterattack erupt from nowhere.
Legions of soldiers. Columns of Leman Russ battle tanks. Armored infantry wreathed in pale energy fields. Artillery pieces appearing already loaded and aimed. Drones unfolding in midair, their weapons turning before their engines had fully stabilized.
They did not emerge from the trenches his forces had taken.
They appeared behind his own defensive lines.
Rifts of light opened across supply roads, artillery parks, command posts, and reserve staging grounds. His officers turned too late. Vox-operators screamed warnings that never reached the units that needed them. Gun crews died before they could rotate their weapons. Tanks were struck from the rear at point-blank range. Infantry formations that had been advancing with confidence became trapped between vanished front lines and new enemies materializing in their wake.
He saw slaughter.
He saw his formations break in minutes.
Thousands died before understanding where the attack had come from. Others fled into routes already blocked by Imperial armor. Command collapsed. Panic spread. The battle was lost before it properly began.
Venomfang's eyes snapped open.
Sweat ran down his face despite the chill of the chamber. His sharpened teeth ground together hard enough to draw blood from his gums.
"Accursed technology…" he hissed.
He had faced teleportarium assaults before. He had disrupted Astartes boarding actions, poisoned beacon coordinates, and fed false signals into Imperial extraction patterns. Even daemons respected the terror of a precise strike delivered without warning. But this was different. Too clean. Too wide. Too immediate.
Venomfang reached outward with his mind, forcing his will through prepared links and sacrificial conduits. His command struck the thoughts of distant field commanders like a hooked chain.
〈Withdraw. Cover each other's retreat. Do not hold the forward line.〉
His frontline armies were already dead men walking. He knew that now. There was no saving them. At best, they could die slowly enough to preserve something behind them.
He would not waste reserves on a battle already decided.
A robed sycophant waited near the shrine's edge, trembling so hard that the brass charms sewn into his sleeves clicked against one another. Venomfang turned his gaze upon him.
"Prepare the ritual. Gather the necessary offerings."
The servant swallowed. "My lord… what if their teleportation is not warp-based? What if it cannot be disrupted through the usual rites?"
Venomfang rose from his seat. The chamber's candles guttered as if a cold wind had passed through them.
"I have broken the teleportariums of the Imperium's finest Astartes," he said. "I have seen warriors in relic plate torn apart by errors smaller than a fingernail. No matter what machine or miracle protects this Legion, I will find the point where it can be made to fail."
He pointed toward the door. His eyes burned brighter.
"Get. To. Work. Now."
The servant fled.
Behind him, Venomfang turned back toward the ritual circle. His vision had shown him defeat.
He intended to make the next vision belong to someone else.
....
Underhive
Back at New Kato Stronghold, the First Legion reappeared inside prepared receiving zones beneath layers of reinforced alloy, null-shielded partitions, and gravitic stabilizers. The air cracked with residual energy as soldiers, tanks, drones, artillery platforms, and supply pallets returned from the front in staggered waves.
There was no celebration.
The moment their boots touched metal, troops moved. Weapons were checked. Armor seals were inspected for phase distortion damage. Tank crews reported engine status and ammunition levels. Logistics drones glided between formations, scanning for injuries, power fluctuations, damaged targeting links, and men whose hands shook too badly to reload without help.
The withdrawal had worked.
Now came the strike.
Inside the command chamber, Qin Mo stood before a hololithic battlefield map that stretched from New Kato to the enemy's captured forward zones. Enemy movements pulsed in red. Imperial forces glowed blue. Empty trenches flickered as dead ground, no longer worth holding. Power draw projections ran along the side of the display, updating every second as the teleportarium network prepared for repeated mass deployment.
Qin Mo opened a secured vox-channel to the Thunderborn of the First Legion. His voice entered their helms without ceremony.
"You will be teleported into separate zones behind enemy lines. Your priority is to establish teleportation beacons for the main force. Do not waste time hunting trophies. Do not pursue scattered survivors unless they threaten the beacon. If you encounter a psyker, do not engage directly. Mark the position and report immediately. Yoan will handle them."
The order was simple, precise, and absolute.
Across the deployment bays, the Thunderborn acknowledged. Their armor systems locked into combat mode. Jump packs cycled. Gravitic shields warmed. Beacon units were mag-locked to their belts and checked twice by attending drones.
Qin Mo watched the status runes turn green one by one.
"Deploy."
Teleportation fields rose around the Thunderborn like translucent shells.
Then they vanished.
....
Behind Enemy Lines
Grey materialized in an abandoned industrial zone outside Lower Hive District One.
His boots struck cracked ferrocrete. His armor compensated before his knees felt the impact. The teleportation aftershock faded around him in thin coils of pale light, leaving the smell of ozone and burned dust in the air.
He moved at once.
His HUD swept the district in layered scans. Broken hab-stacks leaned over a dead transit avenue. Smoke drifted from wrecked manufactorum vents. Far ahead, enemy signals clustered in a broad formation: an entire regiment moving to consolidate control over the district. Infantry, light armor, ammunition carriers, command elements, and rear-guard units.
They were advancing with their attention fixed forward.
Unaware.
Vulnerable.
Grey crouched behind the burned shell of a cargo hauler and drove the teleportation beacon into the ground. The device unfolded with a mechanical snap, anchoring itself into the ferrocrete. Blue light pulsed once, then steadied.
"Beacon active," Grey voxed. "Enemy regiment in sight. Beginning disruption."
He did not wait for permission.
His jump pack ignited.
A sonic crack rolled across the street as Grey launched forward, clearing a row of collapsed hab-walls and descending toward the enemy like a falling shell. His heavy bolter came up before he landed.
The first burst tore through the rear of the enemy column. Explosive rounds punched into bodies, flak armor, ammunition packs, and light vehicles. Men vanished in sprays of blood and fire. A fuel carrier erupted, throwing burning promethium across the street and turning the neat marching column into a screaming knot of confusion.
Grey landed on the roof of a ruined transit kiosk, braced one knee against the cracked plasteel, and fired again.
The enemy tried to respond. Officers shouted. Mutants shrieked. Heavy weapons teams swung their guns toward him. Some soldiers dove for cover. Others fired wildly into the air.
They made one fatal mistake.
They kept looking at Grey.
Behind them, the 87th Regiment arrived.
The active beacon flared. Teleportation fields opened in disciplined rows across the enemy's rear. Armored shock troops materialized with weapons already raised. Leman Russ battle tanks appeared in staggered formation, engines growling as their treads bit into the street. Artillery support drones rose above the roofs and locked onto marked targets.
Duncan emerged from the command hatch of his Leman Russ, chainblade raised high. Smoke rolled around him. His voice thundered through the regiment-wide vox and external speakers alike.
"Forward! In the Emperor's name, cleanse this filth!"
The enemy turned.
They saw gun barrels.
Then the 87th opened fire.
Bolter rounds tore through infantry at close range. Plasma blasts turned clustered command squads into ash. Leman Russ battle cannons fired down the street, each shell flattening barricades, vehicles, and whole groups of soldiers who had not yet understood that the rear was now the front. Heavy stubbers stitched red lines through fleeing men. Grenade launchers walked explosions across the formation's center.
Within two minutes, more than half the enemy regiment was dead.
The rest broke.
Some ran. Some threw down weapons. Some dropped among the bodies and tried to play dead, shaking beneath the corpses of their comrades. A few fanatics charged, screaming praise to their false masters, and died before crossing ten meters.
The First Legion did not pause to sort surrender from deception.
This was not a policing action. It was not a trial. These were enemy combatants behind active lines, and mercy had no place in the doctrine Qin Mo had given them. Survivors were hunted down, scanned, disarmed if useful, executed if corrupted, and bypassed only when they were no longer a threat.
Grey watched the battle stabilize, then disengaged.
"87th has control," he voxed. "Moving to next beacon point."
He launched again before Duncan could answer.
Across the battlefield, the same pattern unfolded again and again. Thunderborn appeared in abandoned corridors, ruined plazas, freight tunnels, broken factorums, and half-collapsed hab-sectors. Beacons came online. Main forces followed.
Enemy artillery positions died before their crews could traverse their guns. Supply convoys found Imperial armor waiting at both ends of their route. Reserve companies marched toward the front and discovered the front had moved behind them. Retreat corridors became kill zones. Command posts vanished beneath sudden fire from soldiers who had not existed there a moment before.
Even unmanned artillery platforms joined the assault.
They teleported from prepared firing positions to newly activated beacon sites, stabilized, fired calculated barrages, then vanished again before counter-battery fire could answer. Shells fell with cruel precision. One enemy bunker received three rounds through the same ventilation shaft. A tank park was turned into a field of burning wrecks before its crews reached their hatches.
The enemy tried to adapt.
They formed defensive squares. They placed guns in all directions. They ordered units to hold position rather than advance. It did not matter. The First Legion chose the angles of engagement, the timing of contact, and the place where each fight began.
Faced with an enemy that struck from nowhere, ignored conventional lines, and withdrew before counterattacks could form, the heretic command structure began to collapse.
Vox traffic filled with contradictions. Field officers screamed for orders from commanders already dead. Infantry abandoned formations. Vehicle crews reversed into their own troops. Mutants howled at shadows, lashing out at allies whenever teleportation light flickered nearby.
This was no longer a battle of lines.
It was dissection.
Back in New Kato, Qin Mo watched the red enemy markers fragment across the map. One cluster after another dimmed, broke apart, or vanished entirely under blue kill confirmations. Reports streamed in faster than human officers could read them, so the AI core sorted them by priority and fed Qin Mo only what mattered.
[Beacon stability: acceptable.]
[Power draw: rising, but sustainable.]
[Enemy counter-sorcery: not yet active.]
[Casualties: light.]
[Projected control of lower levels: imminent.]
Qin Mo stepped back from the command console and exhaled once through his nose. Around him, officers and technicians kept working, but the tension in the chamber had shifted. It had not disappeared. War never allowed that. But the shape of the battle was now obvious to everyone watching the map.
The lower levels were already lost to the enemy.
All that remained was maintaining the teleportarium network long enough to finish the work. Power had to be regulated. Beacon chains had to be protected. Psyker interference had to be identified before it touched the transmission fields.
Qin Mo looked toward the energy reserves displayed along the chamber wall.
Victory was no longer a question of courage.
It was a question of power supply.
And for the first time that day, the answer looked sufficient.