With the orders given, the mass teleportation began.
The ten defensive regiments deployed first. Duncan's 87th led the transfer, their command codes flashing green across the tactical network one after another.
They materialized just outside their assigned defensive zones, arriving in staggered pulses of violet-edged light that cracked through the smoke-choked streets.For a heartbeat, thousands of soldiers stood as ghostly outlines beneath the glow of the teleportation field. Then the light collapsed, and the war returned.
No one waited for ceremony. Boots thundered over broken roads. Squad leaders barked spacing orders. Engineers dragged portable barricade anchors from supply frames while vox-operators confirmed coordinates. Medicae teams and infantry details immediately began pulling civilians away from exposed streets, dragging the panicked, wounded, and shell-shocked into basements, transit tunnels, and reinforced hab cores.
The remaining seven regiments, along with Grey and his strike team, stayed near the command building. They stood ready in full battle order, waiting for Qin Mo's next command and watching the first wave disappear into the ruined city.
....
The Defensive Line
Duncan's Leman Russ Command Tank roared through the ruined streets at full throttle. Its engine growled like an industrial furnace being forced beyond safe limits, tracks grinding over shattered masonry, spent casings, and the bones of old barricades.
The tank smashed through the front of a decrepit hab-block. Ferrocrete burst inward. Rusted support beams screamed as they bent. The ruined facade collapsed in a thunderous curtain of dust and broken stone, swallowing the street behind the vehicle in gray smoke.
With a sharp pivot, the Leman Russ rotated to face the main road. Its hull settled low, suspension locking, turret servos whining as the main gun aligned with the long avenue ahead.
Then the engine powered down to a low, controlled rumble.
The tank had stopped being a vehicle. It had become a bunker made of steel and adamantium.
Inside, Duncan monitored the battlefield from the command compartment. The interior smelled of oil, hot metal, recycled air, and the faint chemical bite of overworked cogitator banks. Red lumen strips painted every face in the crew bay with the same hard, blood-colored light.
"Colonel," his gunner asked, voice tight over the internal vox, "why aren't we attacking immediately like before?"
Duncan did not look away from the display.
"No idea."
The answer was blunt enough to make the gunner fall silent.
Duncan's orders had been simple. Teleport. Move into position. Fortify. Hold.
That was all.
As for the larger strategic intent, Lord Commander Qin Mo had not explained it. Duncan had served long enough to know that commanders did not always share their whole plan with the men ordered to execute it. Sometimes that was arrogance. Sometimes necessity. Sometimes the plan depended on the enemy not understanding it until too late.
Duncan did not need to know which case this was.
His duty was not to pry open his commander's mind. His duty was to make the given order real.
He looked down at the holo-display inside his modified Leman Russ Vanquisher. The vehicle had sacrificed part of its usual battlefield role for command capability, turning the tank into a mobile coordination node.
Its upgrades were not decorative relics or priest-blessed indulgences. They were practical tools: real-time holographic battlefield overlays, advanced vox-transceivers, biometric scanners, terrain-mapping auspex, encrypted data-link systems, and command relay suites hardened against jamming and shock.
Everything a field commander needed to wage war with clarity instead of guesswork.
The tactical map flickered to life. A glowing web of ruined streets, collapsed hab-blocks, shattered manufactorums, transit lanes, buried service tunnels, and potential kill zones spread across a two-kilometer radius.
Green markers represented Duncan's companies. Amber symbols marked uncertain structural integrity. Red outlines suggested likely enemy approach routes. Thin blue lines identified fallback paths, civilian evacuation corridors, and areas where armored units could still maneuver without becoming trapped.
Duncan studied it for less than ten seconds before lifting the vox-transceiver.
"First Company, occupy the church structure. Use the upper nave, bell tower, and side galleries as firing positions. Do not trust the roof."
A confirmation rune blinked green.
"Second Company, deploy to the seventh tower from the left. Fortify floors three through nine. Cut the stairwells below you once the civilians are out."
Another confirmation.
"Third and Fourth Companies, lock down the western intersection. I want mines, barricades, and overlapping fields of fire. Fifth Company, hold reserve behind the manufactorum wall. If anything breaks through the road, you countercharge only on my order."
He shifted the map, marking a row of old structures with a gloved finger.
"All other companies, control the intersections and barricade the chokepoints. Use the strongest buildings for cover. Anything pre-Imperial, you dig in like it was built by a paranoid dead genius and treat it as a fortress until it proves otherwise."
His orders traveled through the regiment with the precision of long practice.
The 87th moved. Infantry squads vanished into broken buildings. Heavy weapon teams dragged lascannons into upper floors and braced them against window frames. Engineers cut murder holes into interior walls and reinforced stairwells with cargo plating. Tank crews hid their vehicles inside gutted habs, ruined shrine fronts, and manufactorum loading bays, leaving only firing lanes exposed.
Across the wider front, the other defensive regiments followed similar doctrine. Streets were measured, blocked, and turned into traps. Ruins became bastions. Open plazas became killing grounds. Every regiment created overlapping fields of fire, prepared fallback routes, and dug in with the grim efficiency of soldiers who understood that a defensive line was only as strong as its least disciplined squad.
....
Three hours later, the biometric scanners pulsed.
[Enemy forces detected.]
Crimson glyphs appeared on the holo-map, spreading across the outer edge of Duncan's sector like blood seeping through cloth. One formation became three. Three became seven. Heat signatures multiplied behind the first wave. Armor returns flickered in and out of the interference haze.
Duncan's eyes narrowed.
Now he understood.
The traitors had adapted.
Their regiments were moving closer together than before, not as a loose mob or scattered assault columns, but as mutually supporting formations. Infantry screened armor. Armor covered infantry. Reserve units stayed close enough to reinforce any point struck by a teleport assault. If one unit came under sudden attack, another could turn and encircle the attackers before they withdrew.
If the First Legion had teleported directly into them as before, the result would have been ugly. Isolated strike groups would have appeared inside prepared pockets, been surrounded from multiple directions, and crushed beneath converging fire.
Teleportation had not become useless.
It had become a weapon that required the enemy to be shaken first.
Chaos. Disruption. Psychological fragmentation.
The more confused the battlefield became, the more lethal Qin Mo's teleport tactics would be.
Duncan keyed the vox-network.
"Enemy approaching. All squads, prepare for contact. No one fires until I give the order."
Inside the fortified ruins, First Legion troops settled into position. Weapons rested on reinforced ledges. Auspex sights adjusted for smoke, heat, and dust. In the church tower, a marksman slowed his breathing and tracked the first enemy officer through a cracked scope lens. He did not fire.
More hostiles moved behind the visible line.
The soldiers' HUDs filled with hostile outlines. Heat signatures glowed through walls, smoke, and broken masonry. Even men positioned deep inside buildings, with no direct view of the street, could see the enemy advance as red silhouettes moving across their visor displays.
The traitors came cautiously at first. They expected ambush. Their vanguard moved from cover to cover, rifles raised, officers forcing them forward with shouted threats and icons held high. Behind them, heavier formations advanced in disciplined blocks.
Duncan waited.
The first wave entered the kill zone.
Then the second.
Then the armor support behind them crossed the marker he had set on the map.
Duncan's voice cut across the vox.
"Fire at will."
The First Legion line erupted.
Lascannon beams punched through the smoke in white-hot spears, boring through armor, bodies, and the stonework behind them. Bolter volleys detonated inside tightly packed infantry formations, ripping men apart in bursts of meat, armor fragments, and pulverized bone. Hidden tanks fired from within ruined buildings, their cannon blasts collapsing entire stretches of street into flame and shrapnel.
Artillery coordinates uploaded from the forward observers in real time. Mortar rounds and precision shells screamed overhead, striking behind the lead formations to trap survivors inside the kill zone.
The first wave of traitors was shredded.
They had expected resistance. They had expected ambush. They had not expected every window, ruin, tower, and broken shrine to become a coordinated firing point at the same instant.
Only after suffering crippling losses did the enemy begin to fall back, dragging wounded officers and shattered standards toward the outer perimeter. Some made it. Many did not. The retreat bunched them together, and Duncan's hidden armor punished the mistake with another volley.
Then the rear artillery opened fire.
Explosions erupted among the traitor regiments before they could properly regroup. Bodies vanished beneath rolling pillars of fire. A tank slewed sideways, tracks blown apart, turret spinning uselessly before a second shell punched through its engine deck. Infantry trying to spread out found themselves driven into lanes already covered by First Legion guns.
Duncan's sector had fired the first shot.
Now the rest of the defensive zones joined the battle. Across the front, regiments lit up one after another, turning whole districts into interlocking fields of controlled slaughter.
And while the traitors were forced to react to the defensive line, the remaining seven First Legion regiments finally moved.
They teleported into the enemy's flanks and rear in smaller, cleaner strikes. Not reckless deep assaults, but surgical cuts. Supply teams died beside ammunition haulers. Vox relays vanished in violet flashes. Reserve officers found themselves under attack from behind. Units turned to reinforce one threat only to expose themselves to another.
The enemy formation did not collapse.
Not yet.
But cracks had begun to appear.
....
The Spire, Enemy Command Center.
Atop the Governor's Throne, Venomfang sat cross-legged, observing the battlefield through his psychic sight.
A lowly aide approached, careful not to step across the ritual lines carved into the floor.
"We've engaged the enemy," the aide reported.
Venomfang did not open his eyes.
"Do you think I'm blind?"
The aide flinched.
Venomfang dismissed him with a lazy wave, but his attention remained fixed on the battlefield.
Through the Blessing of the Lord of Wisdom, he could see through the eyes of his soldiers. Thousands of viewpoints braided into his mind: men advancing through smoke, officers shouting orders, wounded traitors clawing through rubble, tank crews struggling to identify targets, psyker-thralls whispering warnings that came too late.
It should have given him mastery of the battlefield.
Instead, it showed him something that did not make sense.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Venomfang had assumed Qin Mo was a brute. A powerful one, yes. Dangerous, certainly. But still a brute. A man who relied on overwhelming firepower, impossible weapons, and the crude advantage of teleportation rather than true tactical finesse.
Who needed subtlety, Venomfang had thought, when one possessed teleportation and an army armored beyond reason?
He had expected another shock assault. Another arrogant plunge into the heart of his formations. Another opportunity to surround isolated attackers and bleed them until even miracles ran dry.
That was not happening.
The First Legion had fortified the advance routes instead.
They were forcing his troops into prepared kill zones, punishing movement, probing his flanks, striking his rear, and refusing to overcommit. Every attack served the next. Every defensive position existed to shape his choices. They were not trying to impress him. They were trying to make him make mistakes.
This was not flashy.
This was not theatrical deception.
This was simply the correct way to fight.
And that unsettled him more than bravado would have.
The aide hesitated near the edge of the chamber. "Do we still advance?"
Venomfang's patience snapped. His eyes opened, burning with warpfire-blue light.
"Do not distract me."
The chamber fell silent.
Venomfang's mind raced.
His own adaptation had been correct in principle. Tight formations reduced the effectiveness of teleport shock tactics. Mutual support prevented isolated regiments from being picked apart. Units could reinforce one another quickly. Officers could maintain control.
But the same answer created another problem. Tight formations made better targets. They slowed maneuver. They increased the cost of hesitation. Worst of all, they made morale contagious.
Fear could spread through clustered troops as quickly as orders.
If Qin Mo's teleportation had been unstable, Venomfang could have used rituals to corrupt coordinates, poison transmission vectors, or tear apart the arrival point. He had done such things before to lesser teleportarium systems. A slight deviation. A body fused into a wall. A squad scattered across a battlefield in pieces.
But Qin Mo's method did not behave like Imperial teleportation.
Too little instability. Too little for Venomfang to grasp.
He hated that.
"Of course we continue advancing," he said at last. "Each regiment supports the next. No panic. No disorder. No isolated heroics. If anyone breaks ranks, I will burn their entire bloodline alive and let the survivors hear them scream."
The aide bowed until his forehead nearly touched the floor.
"Understood."
He withdrew quickly.
Venomfang returned to his thoughts.
He prided himself on cunning. Manipulation. Pressure. The elegant placement of fear at exactly the point where discipline became brittle. Yet Qin Mo's advantages had forced him into tactics he despised: mass, mutual reinforcement, blunt pressure, and threats enough to keep frightened men moving forward.
So be it.
For now, he had no choice but to keep his forces close enough to reinforce one another.
He also understood the greatest weakness of that method.
Not artillery.
Not siege fire.
Not even teleportation.
Morale.
One regiment faltering at the wrong moment. One commander ordering an unauthorized withdrawal. One cluster of troops breaking under pressure and colliding with the formations behind them. That would be enough. Panic would jam roads, block armor, disrupt firing lanes, and turn disciplined proximity into a trap.
One crack in the line, and his entire offensive could unravel.
And once it unraveled, the battle would be lost.
Venomfang's expression darkened.
"Send a message to the 20th Regiment commander."
The aide, who had barely reached the doorway, stopped at once. "Shall I offer reinforcements?"
Venomfang smiled. It was a thin, unpleasant expression.
"No."
He leaned back upon the stolen throne.
"Give him a warning."
His voice dropped to a whisper, but the chamber carried every word.
"If he dares retreat under enemy fire, he had better die before I reach him. Because if he survives, I will skin him alive myself, hang his hide from the spire, and use his spine as a banner pole."