Chapter 2: Ultramar Endures
From his mighty fortress on Macragge the Primarch Roboute Guilliman gazed out on the war torn Imperium and knew the galaxy was already lost: he vowed to take it back.
Yet he knew that no single attack could change the course of the war. Theoretical: humanity was beset by a thousand different foes, there was no central leadership to target, no head to cut off the beast.
Practical: Guilliman embraced the unthinkable and split his legion into a hundred different splinters, sending each out to rescue key worlds from the darkness.
To guide them without his presence he gifted them with his new philosophy on tactics and warfare, his epic masterpiece: the Codex Astartes. The Space Marines had never bothered with such tactics before; since their inception their campaigns had always been based on pride and genetic superiority. Simply charging through their enemy's strongest bastions and daring them to even try to stand against the storm.
That had to change and the new philosophy was war unlike any the Astartes had ever fought before, using co-ordination and strategy to turn a small yet diverse force into a power beyond the sum of its parts.
If Guilliman was conservative in his selection of assets he was calculating in their disposal. Not for him the futile stand against unconquerable odds or bloody victory to no purpose. If a position could not be held Guilliman commanded his Marines to fall back to better ones, if a fortress could not be taken he simply bypassed it. He knew when to stand, when to withdraw and when to strike with every weapon at his command. Armed with the new philosophy and unprecedented levels of autonomy the Ultramarines commanders set out into the galaxy.
On countless worlds the XIIIth Legion fell upon their foes, lightning blitzkriegs assaults that tore out the heart of the foes. At the Higgara point they saved the armies of the Vostroyans from an overwhelming Ork Waaagh, on Kallax they gutted the manufactories of the Dark Mechanicum.
The pirate princes of the Eldar were smashed between the hammer of the Astartes Battlebarges and the anvil of Battlefleet solar, the captured Domjons of Perimunda were torn down in a single night of furious assault.
Amongst the stars of the Hyliopolis Arc the Pharaoh-Slaves were captured and executed in a stealth infiltration led by the Ultramarines Captain Aethon. Their last sight being the mysterious monoliths they worshipped destroyed by melta bombs and the supposedly invincible metal-men of their armies simply phasing away.
Planet after planet saw the tread of Ultramar's boot yet wherever they set foot the Marines would not stay long, as soon as the course of the war had been turned they would set off once more into the stars headed for the next crisis.
The Ultramarines were everywhere in this dark time but the tide of horror was beyond comprehension, too many worlds needed salvation and there were not enough Space Marines to save them all. So great was the demand for their skills that the Astartes abandoned their auxiliary human regiments to fight on alone, pressing on from war zone to war zone with break neck speed.
Guilliman responded in the most chillingly ruthless fashion, he personally calculated the strategic value of each world and those deemed unimportant were simply abandoned to their fate. Many Generals and Lords of the Imperium cried out against the harsh callousness of this policy but Guilliman was resolute. The Astartes could no longer be the sledgehammer of the Imperium he claimed, they must become more precise, more Tactical. The Space Marines were too valuable to waste fighting for unimportant worlds they must spend their skills where they were needed most and then move on.
Even then the Ultramarines could not keep pace with the sheer scope of the calamity set before them for every world they saved ten more would slide into darkness. In desperation Roboute Guilliman split his Ultramarines down further and further. From battalion strength they split down into mere chapters, then companies and finally in mere squads they sought to meet the enemy with fury and steel wherever they reared their foul heads.
It was not enough.