Ave Imperium, Darling

My life is to fight in service of the Emperor and His Imperium, and I got my first taste of action during the invasion of the Tyranids. The fact that I'm still alive means that He still has a purpose for me, and I'll gladly go wherever help is needed. A few hours ago, that chance came. As I bade goodbye to Tallarn, I was told we were to help defend Cadia. This was the 'big one', as Lord Admiral Justinian Forst put it. We would get our action, but for now, as we travelled there, training would have to suffice in keeping us on our toes.

- Excerpt of a journal of an unnamed Tallarn Desert Raider (999 M41)

Prologue

"Something's not right. The light of the Astronomicon…" Navigator Kohl's grip on his throne tightened. "A storm…no…many great storms in the Warp."

It made Captain Frelia worried, and she knew exactly what would happen. It was odd that only a few minutes ago, everything was fine. According to Kohl, they were close to reaching Cadia. She doubted Justinian would have them drop out of he Warp in these conditions, but if they stayed ay longer, the Gellar Fields might be overwhelmed and they became prey for daemons. What made her worry the most was the fact that the Astropathic Choir had begun receiving very disturbing and dissonant messages. They spoke of the fall of a planet, thousands of years of bloodshed, and the Emperor having His soul broken by the Chaos gods. Such heretical statements only made her pull the trigger on one of the astropaths.

"Are you mad?!" the chief astropath exclaimed while forcing Frelia's lasgun down after she killed one of them.

"I will not hear of such heresies, Silus. Nobody sings of damnation unless they're being possessed," Frelia argued.

"It is worrying but they are not possessed," Silus countered angrily. "The messages must be tampered by daemons."

"That shouldn't happen."

"No, it normally shouldn't, but something's giving them strength to mess with them."

Frelia gritted her teeth and turned to Kohl. He was silent, but the glow from his Warp eye seemed to have brightened slightly. "Navigator, what's going on?"

"The storms are not abating. It's getting harder to see through all the chaos," Kohl replied in an unusually calm tone, but his grip on the throne did not loosen. "At this rate, we'll most likely be travelling off course."

"Perhaps we should ask the Lord Admiral for his opinion. The longer we stay in here –" the helmsman began to offer a suggestion but was quickly cut off by Frelia.

"No, if he wanted something done, he would've said so a long time ago," Frelia said.

She heard a surprised gasp come from the navigator. Turning to look at Kohl, she found him moving his head in a bewildered fashion. This was the first time she saw him being caught off guard by something, and it did not inspire any confidence at all. Her hand hovered over her chainsword for some reassurance, but even the feel of her weapon did little to calm her uneasiness. For a moment, she thought he might have been stressed out, and that she may be overthinking things. Frelia was about to take a deep breath to calm herself, when Silus made a rather grim announcement.

"The Emperor Ascendent…it's gone," he whispered darkly.

A chill ran down Frelia's spine. "What do you mean 'gone'?"

"I've lost all psychic communication with her chief astropath. By the Emperor…"

"Open a channel with Admiral Stryker at once!" Frelia yelled both out of anger and agitation.

Silus had directed the choir to connect with the Sword of Annihilation, but immediately, they reported that they were not receiving any psychic signals and handshakes from her as well. This revelation served only to make Frelia's hand shudder. Her legs felt weak all of a sudden, and her right hand had balled into a fist. She began coughing profusely and was unable to stand properly, having to lean against her command throne. A medicae administered some medicine to her and helped her up. Swallowing the pills and giving some time for it to take effect, the captain finally steeled herself and relaxed her hand. Curse the condition she was born with, she thought angrily.

Her eyes fell upon the helmsman. Tarvol Han was a brilliant man, and were he of noble bloodline, Frelia had no doubts he would have been captain of the ship instead. Even during the heat of battle, Tarvol was calm and calculated, and he had been a great help during the invasion of Hive Fleet Leviathan. He seemed to have little ambition and never made a fuss when he was passed up for promotion. Despite that, the Calthian continued to serve her with unwavering loyalty and acting as a counter-balance to her occasional fiery personality. Right now, he was looking at her for orders. For a moment, she felt her heart race.

"There's nothing much we can do at this point," Frelia said softly and weakly. "We should drop out of the Warp."

"We should consult the other captains. The last thing we need is a disagreement," Torval added while he monitored the going-ons in the enginarium.

Frelia nodded. "Silus, can you contact the other ships?"

"Yes ma'am, I'll –"

Before he could finish his sentence, Kohl gave a cry of surprise which was followed by a deafening bang and a powerful shudder enough to rival a strong earthquake. Her ship had run into an unknown object, and the first thing that came into her mind was that the Gellar Field had failed and a titanic daemon was attacking them. However, Torval had recovered quickly enough to hail the tech-priest in charge of the enginarium. He had confirmed that the Gellar Field was still operational.

But if it was not a daemon…

"Kohl, what was that?!" she called out as she struggled to sit on her command throne.

"A voidship, it appeared right in front of us," he replied.

The loud grinding sound that reverberated throughout the ship confirmed what the navigator had said. Ship-on-ship contact within the Warp was uncommon, but there were enough recorded incidences over the millennia that books were written about it. However, nobody seemed to have any idea on how to deal with the issue mainly because the Warp could never be predicted. So, when occurrences like this do happen, captains tend to just ignore the issue. However, Frelia had no such luxury because the impact seemed to agitated the Machine Spirit. The tech-priest had just reported that the Gellar Field was weakening and that he was busy pacifying it.

"Emperor forgive me for faltering, but we can't stay any longer. Disengage from the Warp now," Frelia said with finality in her voice.

"There's no guarantee we'll come out alive in these conditions," Kohl remarked. "If we disengage in a storm, there's no telling where we'll end up."

"But staying here while the field fails is a guaranteed death sentence. No, I'd rather we take the risk," Frelia said. She turned to Silas and said, "Notify the other ships that we're dropping out."

Silas hesitated for a moment before nodding his head. He directed the choir to send the message while she checked the chronometer. Kohl was told to look for a calm spot to increase the odds of a safe transition, but so far, none had showed up. The Warp was roiling like a boiling cauldron and the daemons were far more active than usual. They scratched at the failing Gellar Field, anticipating a feast of souls. There were millions in there waiting to be turned into playthings, a price to pay for intruding upon their realm.

What felt like an agonising eternity ended when Kohl announced he saw a calm spot within the sea of storms. Seizing upon the opportunity, Frelia ordered the Warp drive to be disengaged immediately. The ship that they had impacted earlier was still stuck to the bow, and she had no choice but to push them out of the Warp too. Silus confirmed that the astropathic choir onboard was still alive and they too confirmed that many of the guardsmen were still alive despite suffering some casualties caused by the impact. However, they also reported that the integrity of their ship was failing fast.

An Ark Mechanicus that had been part of the fleet had agreed to drop out of transition out of necessity rather than taking orders from her, but they did agree to drop at the same time as the Verangia. Frelia did not like the fact that aside from the ship they had crashed into and the Ark Mechanicus responded, no one else did. They were either too busy being to proud to admit they were in trouble, or all of them were lost to the Warp. Either way, there was no time to contemplate and speculate. At the moment Frelia gave the signal, the tech-priest had the drive tear a hole that would lead into realspace. However, the surrounding stormy environment was quick to destabilise the wormhole as the Verangia went through it.

It was during this time that they lost contact with the Ark Mechanicus, but that could not be helped. Being unable to contact other ships during a transition was normal, but Frelia prayed to the Emperor that they came out safe too. The transition was an unusually rocky one most likely caused by the fact they had no idea if the safe spot was a Mandeville Point or not. For all they knew, they could be exiting into a planet's gravity well, or worse yet, the heart of a star or blackhole. Still, any fate was better than being tortured by the forsaken. The daemons that had been trailing them were repelled as they exited into realspace, but that was only one problem solved.

"Brace for transition!" Frelia shouted through the vox channel.

She held onto her command throne and took a deep breath. When the ship exited into realspace, it shuddered even more violently. For a fleeting moment, she caught a glimpse of the ship that the Verangia had impacted as it was pushed forward by the exit momentum. It was a battlecruiser, but that was all Frelia could make out before her ship jerked forward with such a force that she was thrown out of her seat and slammed into a console.

The sounds around her died out and everything went black in an instant.

Papa watched intently at the video recording that one of the Plantations managed to capture. It was best described as a falling star, but no star ever left a trail of debris behind it. They glistened like aluminium sprinkles under the afternoon sun, though many of them were unevenly sized. What caught his interest was the fireball. A closer inspection of it showed what looked like a ship of some kind, an ornate and grand one reduced to a burning wreck. It looked small from afar, but a quick calculation revealed that its size rivalled that of gigantic klaxosaurs.

He steepled his fingers with interest as a second fireball appeared as well, this one larger than the first ship yet equally sorry in condition. It shot through the cloud layer and tore a hole through it like an armoured missile. Then, the video paused. The recording had stopped, and all that was left on display were two ships plummeting towards the earth. Papa turned to look at the other members of APE, each having formulated on what to say on the matter.

"This is an interesting turn of events," Marmoset remarked. "The ancient civilisation spoke of aliens, and I never thought we'd see one in our lifetime."

"Conspiracies and cover-ups, as many came to call it. We may know better now, but I don't see how this may benefit us in any way," Gorilla added.

"Technology to beat the klaxosaurs perhaps, or maybe a perfected genetic therapy. I think this is worth scavenging," Tarsier said while looking at Gorilla.

Papa hummed for a bit before leaning forward slightly. "Extrapolate point of impact," he said.

The computer immediately displayed a wireframe map of the general area where the impact would most likely happen. Two crosses were marked on a particular piece of barren land where there were no signs of magma extractors. Zooming out further, it showed Plantation 13 to be the closest to the impact zone.

"An opportunity indeed. Send word to Plantation 13, I want those wrecks scouted and scavenged," Papa ordered.

A/N: I'm pretty sure there will be mistakes so do point out any discrepancies or whatever that is that needs improving. Or, if you have ideas, feel free to share. I'm always up for writing some interesting plot points. Quick question: would you prefer if the world that DitF takes place in an alternate dimension where the Warp is calm, or the current dimension where the world is actually an unregistered and undiscovered world?

P.S.: One of the ships is carrying guardsmen of the 85th Vendoland.