Segmentum Pacificus
Anastasia Sector
Vista System
Mycroft Asteroid City
7.086.058M40
High Magos Shirley Templor V9-Omega, Warden of the Middle Reaches
The situation was proceeding in accordance and within the boundaries of the projections, and the first wave of the Great Enemy’s assault would be dealt with without exposing any critical assets.
Seventy-two percent of the surviving invading forces had passed through the Outer Reaches, and those remaining there were expected to be cut by a third in a matter of minutes, given the admittedly cautious advancement of the Mechanicus armada and the resurgent navy squadrons.
The only canker in the feast was the utter invulnerability of the Pride of the Emperor, and the ease with which that damned leviathan of a starship swatted any starfighter, torpedo or warship that came close enough to threaten it. Its layered void shields were inviolate, the daemonic armor was completely unscarred.
The negative effect on morale was undeniable.
A brief consultation with the strategium and the order went out for a psyker sunfire strike, notably bigger than the previous, merely reactive one, against the Word Bearer scum. The choirs had had more than sufficient time to recover and there was no other target to use them on. Given the time-scales space warfare operated on, they’d be more than ready for round three.
In the meantime, the order went out not to enter the range of the fallen Gloriana within the next three hours. More than enough time to make toast.
Naturally, as the universe orders, that is when things went sideways.
With too many choirs focused on offensive preparations, the ritual could not be stopped.
Tens of thousands of Chaos slaves were sacrificed in a few minutes, the buildup of power flaring inwards rather than dissipating outwards against extant resistance, and the power was too thick and too concentrated to disrupt for the relatively few ready ritual-breakers, give its potency and the purplish-pink nauseating reinforcing power reaching down from beyond the veil.
The Dome of Serenity was pierced for a single minute, sufficient time and opportunity for the Pride of the Emperor, three damaged battle-barges and more than ten thousand Slaaneshi chaos-marines to escape into the Warp. It was a triumph of sorts, if a disappointing one, but before the clean-up could be rendered complete, the next surprise made its appearance.
Despite the severe battering they’d received from the welcoming party, the arriving Dark Mechanicum fleet was a bit more than twice the size of the previous rude visitors’ armada. Rather than two super-battleships, they had twenty-one Arks Mechanicus, thirteen obviously daemon-possessed, while the rest were likely full of even more unpleasant surprises, such as incomprehensible and unpredictable xenos-tech, or forbidden devices whose use even the frequently-murderous Mechanicus was not willing to countenance in war.
And then there were the Warpsmiths, augurs counting eleven bands of Iron Warriors, strategium and Logis estimates providing an averaged total number of fourteen thousand traitor-marines.
More tainted meat, plasteel and iron for the grinder.
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Segmentum Pacificus
Anastasia Sector
Vista System
672,500 kilometers outside Heliosphere
Protector-class Starfort Shiraz
7.072.058M40
Virtual Intelligence Interdictor 49189-Epsilon
The emergence of a second traitor fleet from the Webway had been predicted with one hundred percent certainty.
A seventh fleet was eighty-six point two-eight-five percent likely, given the galaxy-wide strategic ramifications of a complete STC database in imperial hands.
The second defensive echelon had chosen a different tactic for the active defense. Rather than taking the assault head-on, adding ambushes and minor reinforcements in waves, both active starforts and the first five active flotilla of Assassin-corvettes, whose utility in battle was time-limited by dint of their overpowered burnout weaponry and shield-emitters, were waiting behind the gateway, their attacks aimed at striking the rear of translating ships.
Another five flotilla remained under shroud behind each starfort, three were waiting to replace the initial attacker, and the last was lurking in ambush before the gate itself, awaiting the most opportune time to drive up their rear once the enemy fleet turned around.
The results were mixed.
The first few waves of raiders and escorts were turned into expanding highly-charged particles with predictable simplicity and ease.
The calculated reaction was swifter and more decisive than expected, the next ships to emerge, six hours and fifty-eight minutes later, were a trio of battle-barges, some of the most heavily armored starships known, even when the comparison was made amongst the ranks of other super-capitals.
The time required for the starforts to dispose of those allowed more capital and super-capitals to emerge, including five corrupted Arks Mechanicus. The tactical situation deteriorated shortly thereafter.
Overwhelming short-range assault by such ships provided a glaring display of the limitations of the Assassin-class corvettes, even their ramming attempts and explosive self-destruction proving to be of limited effectiveness.
It was the singular rear-shrouded flotilla that actually did the most damage, the sixty small ships taking down over three times their own number, well over a thousand time the tonnage, including three battleships and an Ark Mechanicus, while crippling dozens more with engines-shots.
Even the toughness of the starforts proved of limited use against the exotic and corrosive weapons deployed by the traitor-Arks Mechanicus, the Dark Mechanicum proving that their reputation for having no limits was well deserved. If only by destroying several of their own or allies’ starships with indiscriminate area-of-effect fire.
A final ‘fuck you’ was signaled eight hours after this ‘victory’, when the smaller, more vulnerable ships came through, several hundred of them combusting under a nova-grade minefield’s explosion.
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Segmentum Pacificus
Anastasia Sector
Vista System
Repulsive-class Grand Cruiser Protection Trade
7.108.058M40
Melrik ‘Lord Most High Admiral’ Sedorne, Pirate King
The ‘true believers’ would undoubtedly say that the Gods were with them.
Those crazy rapists, backstabbers, diseased and mutated pieces of grox-dung.
Melrik knew better. There were no gods around, only demons and the fools who fed them.
The alternatives were arguably nearly as bad.
He had no doubt the Emperor would instantly execute nine-in-ten of the scum who called upon his name as they purported to serve him, if he could. A cultist once offered him a data-chip with a copy of an old book proscribed by the paranoid planet-murderers, book-burners and truth-distorters of the Inquisition, the original ‘Imperial Truth’.
What remained of it was sacrilege rather than worship, it was a cruel ironic joke.
Getting framed for a case of bribery, rape and mass-murder had gotten him out of the Imperial Navy of bastard nobles, with a nice number of ships from one of the mothball fleet reserves. Siphoning the accounts of those corrupt navy officers and their noble interlocutors and offering actually generous bribes to people who were normally ignored got him a lot further than he’d dreamed of, and given his underhive, tech-guild and smuggler origins, he had the contacts to get a lot of bodies behind him, some of them even competent.
Press-ganging him and his crew against a predicted attack that failed to materialize had not ‘worked as intended’.
Since then he’d made many fortunes off the nobles and idiot priests, running circles around the hide-bound fools who commanded the slow, ponderous ships of the Imperial Navy.
Until very recently, when those crazy space-marines and even crazier than the ordinary sort tech-priests gathered up everyone who preyed on the Imperium’s bloated, stinking carcass, not taking any answer but ‘yes’. He’d actually hesitated on choosing a course of action, until the number of ships and fleets involved was ‘leaked’, and he verified that the rumors were actually on the low side… and a few examples of ‘heretic deserters’ were made.
It was enough weight of metal and plasteel to drown Terra itself, with the prize being legendary. The screaming souls imprisoned in dead bodies made an impression of their own.
Those ‘gods’ had certainly done their part. The passage to the initial fleet meet-up point, a barely defended system that provided for a lot of food and raw materials, not to mention sacrifice fodder for those blighted daemon engines, had actually taken them back in time, quite the rare occurrence.
The Warp-corridor leading to their target had done much the same, and offered a remarkably gentle flight, landing them on the best possible vector for a head-on collision with the back of the gathered Mechanicus defenders, who were busy picking off the last remnants of a shattered fleet, while another huge attacking fleet, intimidatingly larger than the one he was part of, made headway into the system on a divergent vector.
Despite those ridiculous minefields and incessant ambushes by improbably well-armed and impossibly fast starfighters and escorts, over eighty percent of the fleet made it through to collide with the reformed Mechanicus fleet formation.
The pirates and true-believers weren’t fools, well aware that their ramshackle fleet could not fight Mechanicus ships in the classic space combat ‘battle-line’ favored by navy tacticians, especially when their number advantage wasn’t truly overwhelming. Accordingly, the order of the day was boarding combat and the occasional ramming attempt.
It was not going as well as expected, alas, only those hulking, intimidating space-marines making any headway against the stiff, unrelenting resistance of skitarii, war-automata and fanatical tech-priests. Fortunately, ‘engine troubles’ meant that his ship was near the very rear of the ‘formation’.
“Battle-station decloaked, to the rear!” the panicked voice of one of the augur-watchers shouted. “World Eaters battle-barge Skullsail destroyed! Take eva…”
Light erupted.
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Planet Vista IV
Defense Redoubt Ullam Omega-19
Private Amar Suliyana, Jondril 76th Siege Infantry
The Mechanicus were kind enough to provide them with a pict-feed of the naval battle, with accompanying explanations on who was doing what and why.
Apparently, it was something provided to all the local tech-adepts and soldiers of the tech-guard, for information and entertainment purposes. They had some of both in this fortress, and the Mechanicus soldiers were uniformly way too tall.
The speculations that those crazy cogboys were making a discount version of the Holy Emperor’s Angels of Death ran rampart. The strange metal harness around them was alternatively touted as a foundation for chitin to grow on, external bones, lightning-eating conductor, heat dissipating fins, gardening trellis for fruit-bearing vines, or just the visible parts of otherwise invisible power armor.
Until the silence descended as the weight of armies coming right their way pressed on their cognizance. It took thirteen executions via commissar before the defeatist murmurs were silenced, and they took their places on the five-layered, twelve-sided fortification around one of the great passageway leading down into the Mechanicus underways, the great rail-station below receiving a constant flow of resources via space elevator from asteroid mines even in these tense times.
Another black tether leading up into the void and the great spaceport above served to raise the flow of finished goods to the waiting fleet and defensive stations revolving in orbit. He’d personally glimpsed a load of enormous torpedoes, each easily three times the size of a Marauder Bomber, towed on a flimsy looking bed that shouldn’t have held up under such enormous weight, heading towards the fighting above.
The lack of atmosphere outside and the need to use void-sealed armor had everyone on edge, quite understandably. The Jonril 76th might be a siege regiment, but it had exactly zero training or experience with void operations.
It was a reminder of all those nightmare rumors that never quite seemed to die down despite commissar threats, about the dubious competence of the Munitorum logistics and assignment capabilities. Regiments dying because they didn’t receive the right ammunition, heavy armor regiments sent to swamp worlds, light infantry into the graveyard of siege battles.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
There was also the tension and tedium, endless displays of space battles, hundreds of thousands of dead among the stars above, the occasional mind-bending ‘strategic analysis’ that was only a third comprehensible, with only drills, meals and sleep as a distraction from the tedium of waiting.
Waiting was always the biggest part of a guardsman’s life, Amar had already learned that much, but waiting for the hordes of evil normally fought by the God-Emperor and his Holy Angels of Death, while watching the battle slowly advancing your way as day after day passed, with the enemy fleets reinforced again and again... even the sermons of the new priest were something of a relief, and that worthy anointed was a bit too obviously more enthusiasm than brains.
When the alarms wailed he gaped in disbelief. The closest enemy force had yet to pass the invisible sphere denoted by the asteroid belt, let alone reached the orbit of the fourth planet of six. Still, practiced habit from over a score of drills took force, and he checked his void-sealed carapace armor (most especially the fit of the helmet) and the charge on his hellgun, both provided shortly after their arrival by one of those trains from below, the charge packs, the grenades, the combat knife, las-pistol, everything was in place.
Along with the rest of his squad and two others besides, Amar strode off at a fast pace towards their assigned position, an internal guard room and watchpost protecting an armory holding Chimera-sized shells for one of the planetary defense cannons.
The guard room had a large mirror-like pict screen that soon went active, showing the battle outside. Fast-flying tank-like vehicles and sharp-looking flyers had already passed through the first line, plasma and intensely-bright las-shots impacting the rippling void-shield of the second. Missiles from a smooth-limbed xenos titan-sized walker bypassed the shield and struck some of the local emitters, and hundreds of running xenos in strange armor, a few of them dressed like clowns in too-bright colors and patterns that were hurtful to the eyes, joined the too-fast machines in assaulting the wall.
Lances spitting brilliance, guardsmen losing limbs or being blown back by invisible strikes, defensive batteries blasted apart, the xenos were fast and deadly, but they still took casualties. A salvo of missiles shot down gaudy jetbikes and a grav tank, an explosion of plasma incinerated over forty of the attackers, an enemy titan’s middle disappear entirely after being struck by blazing-blue beams from quartet of magnum lascannons.
“Behind, beware Warp Spiders!” came the shout of the enginseer assigned to their position over the local vox-net through the bead in his left ear.
Turning swiftly, he saw the man twist on himself into a gory mess of flesh and metal as three of the twenty attackers were finished combusting from a plasma blast. Something struck him lightly, and his right arm fell off as he reached for the hellgun at his back, attached to its charge pack, and he fell, his left leg also mysteriously gone.
Three breathless seconds later, the two rearmost xenos reached him, and the plasma grenade he’d somehow managed to trigger went off.
Everything was blue light.
Two minutes later the entire side of the redoubt exploded, the orbital strike taking out the remaining half of the regiment, nine platoons of Tech-Guard and all the Eldar and Harlequin invaders.
On certain unpleasant occasions, friendly fire is.
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Vista System
Asteroid Belt
Starfire X-wing Pendulum Blade
Wing Commander Elspeth Valdenor, Rose-17 Strike Wing
It was an old, old practice that fighting wings of the aeronautica and starfighters, even in ancients times on old Terra before mankind left its cradle, that strike fighters and their equivalent fought in pairs, each pilot having his wingman. A lead pilot, and traditionally another which flies to the right and behind, ‘watching their six’.
The Imperial Navy’s interceptor and bomber squadrons and the atmosphere-focused Aeronautica Imperialis assisting the Astra Militarum generally conformed to this tradition, presumably out of inertia. Records did not contain any allusion as to the origins of such traditions, presumably yet another crime of the Men of Iron who ended humanity’s golden age, if it wasn’t the Inquisition in later days or the ravages of the Heresy.
Vista had some respect for traditions, for it was in many ways the past that defined what we were, it was the base upon which we built everything. Respecting traditions blindly, however, was never in the works. Every method, means and doctrine were tested to exhaustion, and military doctrine more so than most subjects of interest, second only to the usage and societal effects of technology to-be-released and general tech-research, most especially biological, energy, weapons and warp-related research.
It was found that there was no truly ‘most efficient’ structure for strike wings, with the ‘best’ formation always changing according to craft, armament, mission, opposition, terrain and miscellaneous circumstances. With the faster communications afforded by Mind-Machine pseudo-melding and advanced psy-tech based Vox, especially in the close ranges fighter squadrons remained in, after many years of simulations it was found that trios in a mutable formation worked better under most conditions, at least for the X-wings.
Of course, doctrine was constantly being tested, improved, honed and revised, in thousands of simulators across all Vista-forges and its client worlds, with ongoing input from innumerable battles across the Imperium as well the creativity of some particularly sadistic minds. She’d never forget the horror of ‘Squigs in Space’, the most infamous module released immediately following the second upgrade of her mindlink, to the MM-4 cortex adaptor. Jaws should not be able to open that wide, and those spine-volleys, urrgh…
Elspeth would also forever recall the first time she’d enjoyed flying in a simulator, finding it so much more fun than the tank battles or shooter games. She was six years old and studying hard to reach the initial ranking of Twelfth-grade Tech-Adept, mostly so as to play with more complicated and intricate mechanisms and puzzles, slowly digesting and growing accustomed to the few memory implantation sessions children her age were allowed.
The war-related games got more and more challenging, much more so than those related purely to tech, with everyone eventually reaching a plateau of skills, reaction-speed and tactical resourcefulness.
The few who pushed against and past that limit, as Elspeth did, and managed to achieve notable but incremental improvements rather than any true ‘breakthrough’, with augmentation accounted for, and kept on doing it once they received their first low-grade mental-interface to the Machine Spirits and eagerly upgraded to the next generation of considerably more realistic simulators, those were the seeds of Vista’s strike-fighter pilots.
The defense squadrons almost never experienced true battle, except for the veterans of the Kursis Crusade, but the best of them were recruited to accompany Explorator missions, transferred for the establishment of new forges, or sent on escort missions for mining or trade expeditions. Escort carriers were the most common vessels seconded to friendly Rogue Traders and Imperial Navy patrols, along with the Sting-class destroyers and the Lancer-class frigates, with the rare annihilation missions against hard targets, usually ork-type xenos or pirates.
The Imperial Navy habitually used twenty Fury Interceptors or ten Starhawk Bombers to denote ‘squadron’, with Vista-forges following the typical Mechanicus rule of twelve, divided into four trios for Starfire X-wings, with twelve squadrons making a flotilla or the wing carried by a standard Vista escort carrier, built on a medium-sized destroyer-hull, though notably fatter than the ordinary sort.
This was Elspeth’s first visit to Vista, as she’d made her wings in Forge Dalemark, mostly in support of the Fortress World of Argentium and in pin-point assaults against the closest ork-held systems, against Warbosses who were growing too large, war-walker workshops and space assets. Many veteran wings had been called back recently, for very obvious reasons. These visitors were rude and unfriendly, not to mention the sort of ugly that really needed some plasma-surgery.
The Dark Mechanicum had intuited that the asteroid belt held a great many strike fighters and starships in hidden ports, and they weren’t wrong. It was just that the small squadrons they’d sent in to squash this ‘ambush’ were lacking, since the scale they were thinking on was too small for the production capacity of Vista or the paranoia of its Fabricator.
The three Styx-class heavy cruisers and six Devastation-class cruisers releasing a small flood of Chaos-bombers and interceptors, along with a smattering of heldrakes, were staying just out of easy reach from the belt, covered by a single lance-heavy Hellfire heavy cruiser, two Murder-class cruisers, a Slaughter-class cruiser and twelve escorts.
They were her wing’s target, their strike craft having already been made to vanish between the asteroids by the defensive measures deployed around the deeply dug-in hangers atop the repair and rearmament depot inside Asteroid NVX-779-Penalty.
A quartet of decoy missiles sputtering signals similar to a leaking shroud had their augurs and weapons focusing on the exact worse possible vector, the ugly black and crimson city-sized ships already employing thrusters to change their heading for the best shot at the precisely most terrible angle for them.
Four hundred and thirty-two capital-grade torpedoes were a massive overkill for such a small enemy squadron, especially since none of the ship were of an exotic or unfamiliar configuration. Even the greenest co-pilot knew exactly where to place the torpedoes against Iconoclast-class heretic destroyers.
Each escort earned two torpedoes, the cruisers four, and five for each of the heavy cruisers. Launched at high velocity from gravi-magnetic ejectors, there was no time for the point-defense turrets and arrays to even begin to process incoming data, let alone orient on the approaching melta-plasma greeting packages.
Only a few imprecisions occurred, with a follow-up strike force remedying it with several precisely aimed gravitic cannon strikes, imploding the missed plasma reactors, singular bridge and cogitator-clusters.
The third wave was more than sufficient to end the sixty-eight heldrakes attempting to chase the second, focused starfire cannons and volcano-lances’ fire beyond even the daemon-borne resilience granted such abominations against the Omnissiah.
“Rose-17 reporting mission complete, no losses,” she sent together with the munition expenditure report.
“RTB, you’ll be having some fun with those poor gloomy remains of the pirates after rearming and refueling,” the response came.
The Mechanicus had dealt with that fleet quite harshly and considerably more successfully than the navy’s part had gone, but they’d also deliberately allowed a full third of it to pass without persecuting it with proper fervor. With an ambush by a few gathered wings, only a negligible force would reach the belt.
“If I manage this with no losses at all, will I get a promotion?” she wondered to herself, letting her experienced co-pilot do the work as she compiled the course and sent it out. Commanding meant a lot more plotting and giving orders and too little time having fun shooting orks or heretics.
Happy hunting.
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Segmentum Pacificus
Anastasia Sector
Vista System
7.132.058M40
The fourth fleet arriving to join the cauldron of explosions and maelstrom of death in Vista was not welcome anywhere.
In addition to large forces of related Dark Mechanicum, the core of the fleet was composed of the Death Guard traitor-legion, plague-marines and untiring bringers of doom, and their pox-ridden cultists and slaves. While the fallen Gloriana Endurance did not command the fleet, its leader was perhaps even more notorious, for the Death Guard had come with Typhon and the Terminus Est.
Learning from the debacle against the previous large Dark Mechanicum fleet, the two remaining Protector-class starforts were lurking behind the Webway gate, but most of the Assassin-flotillas were lurking at its front, waiting for the most opportune time for a shot up the rear ambush.
In fact, this last large-scale deployment of gateway sentinels was the most successful by far, cutting apart a full twenty-eight percent of a fleet that was nearly a match for the previous visitor, and had more than three times the number of traitor-marines.
The rapid fire of each of the second ambush’s Assassin corvette made an enormous impact on the vulnerable rear of multiple escorts and capital ships, before a calculated ramming-explosion was made against a super-capital, whenever and wherever possible.
It took the massive fleet many hours to reorient itself, make patch-work repairs, retrieve cultists and plague-marines from broken ships, assume formation and return its heading toward the system.
The predicted explosion of mines was somewhat reduced by area-effect fire of nova cannon and other armaments, but a significant number of escorts and a few capital ships were nonetheless enveloped and consumed by destructive forces their shielding, armor and frame could not sustain, and more damage was meted out.
It made no difference to the implacable fleet of plague and despair.
Grandfather expects.
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Segmentum Pacificus
Anastasia Sector
Vista System
7.168.058M40
The fifth chaos force, the fourth to translate through the Webway gate, was also the first to receive no greetings. A sizable fleet of the World Eaters, it was headed by the Gloriana Conqueror, Doombreed in command rather than Angron. Numerous Dark Mechanicum vessels were naturally there, as were the transports of traitor-knights and fallen titans.
The debris of past battles, rather than igniting any sense of caution in the minds of these berserkers, instead inflamed their hearts, and after a mere six hours taken to reform the hundreds of ships into something resembling a fleet formation, they set off at full speed.
Straight into the heart of a massive minefield that enveloped a significant portion of the entire armada, the nova explosions removing seventy-six percent of the raider and escorts-class ships and a good half of the transports from existence. While many capital ships took damage, none of the super-capitals even had their multi-layered shields brought down.
A proper strategist, after such a setback, would have regrouped, recouped some of the losses where possible, taken a less predictable route and perhaps sent scouts ahead.
The World Eaters and their remaining allies simply charged straight ahead, like a bull baited with a silken scarf of red. A small number of defensive stations bearing heavy lances and macro-cannons unmasked to bring ruin to a few dozen capital ships, but the stubbornness and support of daemonic energies brought the vast majority of the furious fleet into the fray.
The Vista system was almost crowded with starships and war-engines.
With the Serenity Dome holding strong and unbroken, the cries for blood and skulls went unheard.
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Segmentum Pacificus
Anastasia Sector
Vista System
7.232.058M40
The first inkling of despair seized the commanders of the Imperial Navy and the Mechanicus contingents. These augur-data were not transmitted to the Imperial Guard regiments, for that very same reason.
The traitor marines and the daemons leading them were one thing. Their fleets could be defeated, assuming Vista actually took them seriously, as their numbers were great but not overwhelmingly frightening.
The same could not be said for the sixth and seventh waves, the time interval allowing for the mustered Dark Mechanicum to bring in what seemed like every single starship and strike fighter in their arsenal. Even without the numerous Iron Warrior bands and other traitor-marines in their wings, the sheer number of starship in just these two fleets was enough to offer a serious threat to any of the four Segmentum Fortresses.
It was enough weight of numbers to make the Black Legion’s so-called ‘crusades’ into a mockery of mediocrity.
As the reports came in, the mechadendrites of Archmagi fell limp and admirals went pale, their age almost visible despite the rejuvenation treatments.
More than two hundred super-capitals, well over a thousand capital warships of the line.
The orbits of Dark Mechanicum Hell-forges might be empty throughout the entire galaxy.
It was utter madness, and there was nothing they could do to stop it, even by sacrificing their all to the God-Emperor and the Omnissiah.
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Ultima Segmentum
Ulmar Sector
Corellia System
7.398.058M40
Fabricator Danielle Ferrari Nokia-19
Victory tasted like ashes.
Two entire planets were no more, the ridiculous main energy cannon of the briefly-dubbed Planet-Killer breaking them apart. On the positive side, it made possible the future mining of the former planets’ interior, from the large remnant portions now stabilized by gravitic engines and macro-tugs, several of them moon-sized.
Losses of over half a billion, including a full eighty-six percent of their ships, reinforcements included, seventy-nine percent of the non-combatants, all but seven remaining choirs of battle-psykers, four Fabricators whose over-use of psyker powers had demanded such a toll even gene-designed and enhanced bodies could not withstand it, five titan legions, and so much more.
At least the Fabricators could be resurrected, along with a few dozen of the Alpha-ranks and the three Archmagos her Forge World had the honor of housing.
The Alpha Legion had come in force, and it hadn’t come alone.
Four massive fleets of the Dark Mechanicum, many of their ships recognizably sourced from the Maelstrom Warp-storm rather than the Eye of Terror, and the Black Legion with the Gloriana Harbinger of Doom and that ludicrous planet-destroying starship.
In total, the sum losses of every loyal life in the system stood at eighty-two percent. But they’d killed them all, every last attacker.
It was a pity Abbadon had not presented his ugly self with the Spirit of Vengeance, but for all that, it was worth it.
She was exhausted, completely spent. In a few decades, she might feel like bragging.
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Segmentum Pacificus
Anastasia Sector
Vista System
Mandeville Point
Retribution-class Battleship Emperor’s Hammer
7.274.058M40
Lord Admiral Kornal Naiphus
It was disheartening.
He had at his disposal the largest fleet he’d ever seen outside of Cypra-Mundi, a full five crusade fleets and nine more battle-groups besides, with a Mechanicus contingent that rivalled its might, and over four thousand Astartes with their own impressive fleet, sufficient by themselves to conquer or pacify several sectors.
Even attacking from behind, he wasn’t sure he had enough hulls and firepower to match two of the grand fleets scorching their way into the heart of the Vista System.
The equation of numbers, as his Magos liaison had commented so blithely, was somewhat unfavorable.
Right.
Hope was low, it was time for a rousing speech.