The central cogitator is a vast, cathedral-like space with marble pillars and a domed ceiling, intricately painted with techno-arcane rites, god machines, and other grand artifice. Massive racks of data looms are distributed around the room like pews, each a master work of Mechanicus art, woven with filigree from multiple precious alloys. A disturbing number of real human skulls are embedded in every rack, their red eyes gleaming as they watch over the same machines in death as they did in life.

The racks go all the way to the ceiling and are interspersed with the occasional crane and mechadendrite. There are no walkways for ease of passage between the racks at greater heights, only sixty metre tall sliding ladders, that look far too thin to hold a bulky, augmented Human. Maintaining this vast machine must be a horrendously dangerous test of faith!

In the centre of the room, beneath the primary dome lies a huge altar to the Machine-God, overwatched by his brass and porcelain mechanical angels. Most of the altar has been removed, with only the top slab remaining. The angels have been recarved and the dubious knowledge of Tzeentch daubed upon their wings with warp infused paints. The paints shift and bore through the angels like worms, never staying still enough to comprehend their meaning, no matter how fast one reads, even when examining the runes from the still frame of a pict-recorder.

Upon the altar is a red stone statue of a seven horned demon with seven topaz eyes upon his chest. The statue is bound to the altar with nine chains, covered with blue runes.

Beneath the slab is a twisted mix of flesh and metal above a pit of biosludge. The Cultists, numbering in the hundreds and sporting crescent moon symbols on their robes, toss their dead into the pit. The bodies slip into the liquid without a ripple or splash, sinking instantly. Other bodies are also chucked in, mostly Tyranid Gaunts, but I also see them dragging a marine towards the pit as well as several Wulfen.

Above the pit are eighty-one vitae wombs, though I hesitate to call them such as they are more biological than mechanical, with long purple tendrils holding the wombs aloft and drinking deep from the pit in the mockery of a mangrove forest.

For every handful of bodies discarded into the biosludge, a new hybrid is gestated and ejected from the exo-womb at speed, comically tossed over the sludge with a furious, flailing screech. Most land on their feet and are corralled with cattle prods towards the ongoing fight with the Space Marines.

Through the pict feeds, I detect that the hybrids have glowing purple eyes, and I finally realise how the sorcerers are compelling the hybrids to fight. They’re almost certainly demon hosts, which likely explains the need for the abhuman Hull Ghast base as Tyranids, as far as I know, cannot be possessed. The ritual spread through the ship is likely the primary way of directing the demons.

Of the thirty marines who entered the prime cogitator, only one squad remains after two hours of fighting. They have their backs against the slowly opening door as they fight atop thousands of bodies, stacked several metres thick, most of whom are the Ghast-Tyranid hybrids.

A few Cultists are firing at the marines to little effect, though most remain focused on their work around the altar. The marines’ armour shrugs off the stubber and las fire as if it were little more inconvenient than rain. The hybrids aren’t much more effective, but the sheer number of them keeps the marines contained within a small area, the occasional claw slipping into joints, or further fracturing the armourglass protecting the eyes of the marines.

Despite the ineffective claws and weapons, the marines are not entirely immune. Their armour is battered and the marines are gradually having blood and oil squeeze from them with all the begrudging grace of a stone. Verlin is the only marine who still has his weapon, his power sword still going strong. The other marines have been reduced to fists and the body parts of their enemies, their blades and chainswords long since lost or broken within the vicious melee and their ammo a distant dream.

As the doors creep open, I see Verlin’s dog shaped helmet retract over his mouth, not something I thought Space Marine helmets could do. He grabs and restrains a hybrid. His canines lengthen rapidly and he bites the neck of the hybrid, then pins it to the floor with his boot and keeps fighting.

Over the next minute, the hybrid grows in mass and fur, its head becoming dog-like with long, pointed ears and an elongated nose and jaw. Once the change is complete, the demon within seemingly breaks free of whatever was controlling it and goes absolutely ape shit, lashing out with its limbs, trying to break free.

Verlin kicks the hybrid Wulfen in the head, briefly stunning it, then stops restraining it and hooks his boot beneath its chest. He flips the Wulfen towards the Cultists shooting at him. They scatter, but the Wulfen chases them down one by one, ripping them apart, killing fourteen of them before the Cultists bring it down with a burst of heavy stubber fire.

For a moment I wonder why they’re not turning their heavier weapons on the marines, then realise that the cultists are probably trying to conserve ammunition for this exact scenario.

As the door opens, bodies tumble into the corridor beyond, blocking off the reinforcing marines who quickly assign their auxiliary forces to clear the way. The corridor and the rooms either side quickly fill with bodies. Verlin and his surviving marines struggle to keep their footing on the shifting bodies, but they do not retreat, maintaining their breach long enough for the way to be cleared and their brothers to leap and clamber up the dead.

With me holding the door open, the forty-five reinforcing marines are quick to gain the advantage, especially with their auxiliary forces feeding them fresh ammunition and killing any hybrid that gets close enough to interrupt the marines' torrent of bolter fire.

Balor, with my assistance and that of the War Forged with him, gains local access to the door so that even if I get kicked out of the noosphere, the marines can secure their retreat if necessary. This finally frees me to start clearing the way to the nova cannon, but as I predicted, I am too slow.

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Dying Light fills with a distinct hum and for a brief moment, all the grav plates turn off so as to not be overwhelmed by the titanic pull leaking from the nova cannon. Many ill-maintained and delicate systems within the vessel are pulled apart by the sudden change in gravity, disconnecting rusting lights, loose panels, and feeble sensors. I feel like I am falling towards the prow, though my magboots keep me steady. At the peak of the distortion I detect six gravities acting upon me.

The nova cannon fires and rips through the side of the crater hiding Dying Light. The shell covers the same distance it took us three days to travel in a handful of seconds, then ploughs into the Receiving Yards, shattering the barely powered void shield, and detonates right in the centre of the thirty kilometre structure.

A ring of debris and lightning shoots out of the structure, slicing it in half and spreading over fifteen thousand kilometres before it dissipates. Shrapnel, from tiny shards to great chunks the size of a Sword-Class frigate streak and tumble out into the void where they are swept up in the strange gravity of the system, disrupting traffic and damaging several vessels.

I regret being unable to warn the Receiving Yards and have their void shields brought up to combat status, but the vox message would have arrived after the shell and sending telepathic messages to individuals far less warded than my daughter and lieutenant while I am beset by demons might cause an even greater tragedy. Even if I had warned them, it would have taken them at least thirty minutes to charge their void shields. They don’t have emergency capacitors like the Stellar Fleet.

I doubt anyone is going to be understanding about my limitations and choices though.

The sudden change in gravity sends the corpse pile flying into the prime cogitator and many of the marines with it. At least the marines are expecting it, having been warned by Balor, and land feet first, smashing the racks. They then half walk, half slide down the racks, as if they were repelling, their mag boots barely able to keep them from falling to the deck as standard gravity is restored.

The Cultists try to take advantage of the separated marines, but they have been thrown about far more by the side effects of the nova cannon than the marines and the Cultists are far too preoccupied picking themselves off the floor.

Not a single drop of bio-sludge has escaped the pit. It was both satisfying and wince inducing seeing so many cultists tumble into it.

The Space Marines are quick to regroup and move between the racks in squads of five as they surround, clear, and close in on the central altar. Hundreds of Cultists are slain in less than a minute, leaving only a core cadre near the sludge pit, though they too, are rather diminished.

With their last moments upon them, the Cultists scramble across the web of tendrils holding the vitae wombs aloft and stand in a circle upon the altar, with one chap in particularly gaudy robes standing in the middle of the circle. It’s obvious to both the marines and I what they’re about to do, but that doesn’t mean any of them are quick enough to stop it.

The Cultists draw their knives and stab the man in the middle while yelling “For Marabas!”

The marines finish close in on them and gun down the remaining Cultists. Blood is drawn from the surrounding bodies to the corpse in the middle. First it flows just from the bodies on the altar, then it rises in tiny drops from all the bodies in the room, swirling and gathering into streams that wind around the stacks and plunge into the central body.

The body rises and is suspended in the air above the altar. The marines fire absolutely everything they have into it to no effect, their fire absorbed by the whirlwind of blood being funnelled into the corpse.

To my surprise, the altar, the statue, and its machinery is absorbed next, followed by the vitae wombs, the bio-sludge pit, and then the data looms and bodies.

Surrounded by a storm of debris and blood, the marines continue to fire at the mass gathering in the centre of the room, every bolt, flame and plasma blast chipping away at the steaming blood and sparking metals.

They quickly run out of ammunition. Gun dogs and auxiliaries brave the flying metals to aid them, but are forced back, their armour unable to withstand the might of the ritual.

It takes an hour for the rituals to fade and the fifty-one Marines stand there the whole time, their blades and chainswords drawn, waiting in a perfect circle ready to rush whatever abomination is born within.

The metal and blood fades revealing a twelve metre Chaos Knight, three nine metre Chaos Knights, eighteen traitor marines, and eighty-one Chaos Hounds.

Without hesitation, half of the Space Marines charge the enemy, while the other half retreat towards their auxiliary forces, who rush to meet them, pouring their own fire towards the enemy as they do so.

The Chaos Hounds move to intercept the retreating Space Marines as the Chaos Marines cluster around the smaller Chaos Knights, who fire upon the Space Marines. The larger Chaos Knight remains immobile, seemingly still booting up.

The Space Marines are incredibly quick, and cover twenty metres in under two seconds, far too fast for the tracking of smaller Chaos Knights to catch them with their melta weapons, but not so fast that the traitor marines can’t shoot them with their bolt pistols, or toss grenades at their feet.

My internal search completes and identifies the smaller Chaos Knights as an Armiger variant called War Dog Huntsmen, armed with Daemonbreath Spears and Ripper Chain Talons, demonic knight variants of melta weapons and chain swords.

They don’t look all that different from standard Armiger Knights save for the eight pointed star on their armoured shoulders and the crescent moon replacing their heads.

I had thought the Space Marines had held nothing in reserve, but they too have plenty of grenades and are happy to toss them into the shallow, empty pit. The exchange is brutal, wounding all the marines on both sides.

All but three of the Chaos Marines are killed, their bodies ripped apart by over twenty krak and frag grenades. The Huntsmen are mostly unaffected, their Ion Shields holding firm and causing significant extra damage to the Chaos Marines as the blasts reflect off their shields and slam into the backs of their infantry guards.

The Huntsmen also hold off the fire from the auxiliary forces as well, as if a hundred and fifty extra guns from the Imperium’s finest forges is worthless against their despoiled machine spirits and arcano-tech defences.

Of the twenty six Space Marines who charge, eighteen are killed by bolts and blasts, or so I assume, their bodies crashing to the ground, riddled with fist sized wounds. The Barghests howl their grief and fury, their vox casters amplifying the noise to devastating levels for an unprotected Human.

Their foes, however, have long since left their humanity behind and as the two sides rip into each other with fists and blades, the massive Chaos Knight stirs.