Book II: War for the Maelstrom

It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the God-Emperor of Mankind has ruled the embattled Imperium from the Imperial Palace on Terra. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the Gods, the conqueror of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. His armies are led by his Warmaster, Grim Perturabo of the Iron Warriors, first among equals in a revived Age of Legends.

He is the Golden Lord of Terra, in whose name billions die every day with a song on their lips. In his secretiveness the Emperor prepares new plans to repair the ravages of the Horus Heresy, manipulating the timeless aspects of the Warp to his aims. By his will the great Astronomican that guides humanity through the stars burns, and when the Emperor and his Warmaster direct their armies personally, the armies are unstoppable.

Greatest of all his soldiers is Warmaster Perturabo, whose Iron Warriors are the greatest among the Adeptes Astartes, rivaled only by the mighty Warlock-Warriors of the Grey Knights. Among their allies are the ever-vigilant Inquisition, the fanatical Adeptes Sororitas, and the Imperial Guard to name only a few. But all their strength is barely sufficient to hold against the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and of mutants corrupted by the foul powers of the dark gods.

To live in this time is to live in the time of ending, in the most cruel and barbarous terror imaginable, yet it is a time of mighty heroes, of bold deeds, and great courage. And as the Wolf-time draws ever nearer, the Imperium shall need its heroes as it has never needed them before. Science, reason, and technology, the greatest achievements of the human race, these have been forgotten in the Long War. Forget compassion and understanding, for there is only war in the grim dark future, but an eternity of slaughter and death and the thirst of laughing Gods.

THE IMPERIAL FLEET, STARSHIP LORD OF OLYMPIA

Andronikos was one of the elite among the Thoratikai. The most famous, or infamous, of the Imperial Guard outside the bare-chested Catchacans, they were armored akin to the mighty Adeptes Astartes they had pledged lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to. Behind the frontiers of its massive armies, the Emperor had allowed the Warmaster to do one of the greatest gambles of them all: building a future of freedom, of peace, of love, defying Old Night and the terrors of the Warp by sending into it thoughts that he hoped could if not poison the Dark Gods weaken them on their own soil, so to speak.

Hence the schizoid nature of the Imperium, the two-faced aspect. On the one hand the iron fist of the dreadful Inquisition and the half-mythical Grey Knights, the terrifying Adeptes Astartes and the iron-fisted corpse-grinding approach of the Warmaster. The face that burned continents and left worlds blackened rubble, that devoured oceans. That left the broken bodies of Astartes, Custodes, and countless humans in the martyrdom-obsessed theocracy the Imperium had become since the Battle of Terra and the Great Scouring across countless worlds and in endless and terrifying nightmarish clashes showed the dreadful might of the Imperium had but grown since the time of the Heresy.

Then there was that other face. Worlds of buildings of astonishing beauty, buildings that by their nature challenged the stark and austere barracks-like buildings of the sub-empire of Ultramar and its rulers, and the wilder and more morbid realms such as Nocturne and Fenris and Medusa, where the sons of the Lost Ones retained Death Worlds. Realms that encouraged hope, desires for peace instead of a grim darkness where there was only war. Realms freed as much as could be of plague and all manner of misery, realms where the schizoid face took two forms. In worlds purely loyal to the Emperor the zealous enforcement of the Imperial Creed existed, and there were shrine-worlds to all the Primarchs, even Perturabo himself in a grim irony. And the worlds of the (called purely internally amongst itself) Empire of Iron and even parts of Ultramar that pledged loyalty not to Roboute Guilliman's vision but Perturabo's. A world that in a revised variant of the Imperial Truth akin to the doctrines of the Interex worshiped no Gods, but warded against Chaos, worlds where not for lack of trying the Warp failed to break into.

These were strange and alien influences, and they had their moments of tension, including the darkness of the Age of Apostasy, where the Creed had fallen into corrupt handling and the Emperor, in pursuit of an undisclosed force was distracted for a time. A time of near-outbreak of another civil war only settled when the Warmaster turned the guns of the Iron Blood on the fortress of the self-proclaimed Master of Soldiers and this, combined with the landing of a large force of the Ten Thousand created the irony of the transformation of his 'Brides of the Emperor' into the Adeptes Sororitas.

Andronikos looked over to the nearby set of them on the ship. Women in armor, terrifying and austere in their own right. Soldier-fanatics of a God-Emperor who had no compunctions about unleashing these more dreadful successors of the Sisters of Silence due to their abilities to work strange miracles. The windows were shuttered and the Geller fields were active but he didn't need them to envision the vast fleets of the Lord of Iron around them.

The Iron Warriors were hard masters and cruel ones, perfectly content even with the Warmaster's grand dreams to put hapless mortals in positions to die to score tactical engagements or strategic ones. Indeed it was the strangest dichotomy of them all. The same mind who built the golden ratio into all things, a craftsman of proportions to rival the mythical Ferrus Manus and Vulkan, a cold and calculating and mercurial figure who waged war as a romance-less mathematics. The Iron Warriors were brutal and methodical planners who drowned enemies in blood and fire of overwhelming proportions. They also waged war with a savagery and frenzy that rivaled the rumored False Angels in the Maelstrom and the Eye of Terror, savagery that left some wondering what the Iron Warriors might have been had Perturabo, not Dorn, joined the Primarchs who'd reaved the Galaxy in the madness of the warlord Horus the Damned.

They were masters who'd raised the sons of Olympia in their image, men esteemed as craftsmen in peace, building glorious buildings of opulent and baroque fashions, going from bunkers to some of the most astonishing sights in the long and sordid history of the Galaxy. And men who casually ordered the PDF to walk over minefields to clear them, who had no hesitation to call artillery on their own positions to clear them. Men to whom war was no romantic lark, no clashing bell-clang of modernized knights waging war against daemons and dragons across the sure and silvery stars, but men to whom war was logistics, the overwhelming sound and roar of the guns and the sheets of flames and smoke from them. The animalistic growl of heavy bolters and the sound of Volkites, the firearms the Iron Warriors used to replace Lasguns. A precise and beautiful, after its fashion, blend of iron logic and raw and terrifying violence that left even the most calloused among the dreaded Sons of Sanguinius at times broken on their knees in terror, to say nothing of what it could do to the rank and file soldiers of the Imperial Guard.

Perturabo courted none of the glory-hounding his brothers had done, the loyal and the Fallen alike. But while he courted none, his Astartes and his Legion were given their due in Olympia and its murals and awe-inspiring monuments, not cyclopean in the fashion of Peeter Egon Momus but beauty to rival that of Ancient Hellas and Sindh. And the Imperial Guard was given its own monuments in conquered worlds, and in its recruiting grounds, monuments built by the Warsmiths of the Iron Warriors, at either the personal direction of the Warmaster himself or by his Triarchs. And these same men could be casually on the orders of the Warmaster or the Warsmiths sent to die for simple reasons of that beautiful mathematics, which was a lot less beautiful when the firepower mangled their bodies and the xenos or the filthy things of the Warp got their claws on them, of course.

It was with thoughts like this brooding in his mind that Andronikos, along with countless others headed to the great confrontation in the Maelstrom. Here was Huron Blackheart, one of the greatest renegades among the Astartes since Horus the Damned. His vast and monstrous armies of loyalists and Daemons. And here, too, was the notorious Kor Phaeron, one of the two leaders of the False Angels Legion known as the Word Bearers. Two great champions of the darkness raised against the Light.

Thinking, too, about the sheer might of the Imperator Somnium, the greatest of the Emperor's craft, and the deployment of no less than six Primarchs, and the strange and shadowy figures known as the Four Horsemen. He smiled. What possible chance did the Hordes of Chaos have?

THE MORIENDI, FLAGSHIP OF HORSEMAN DEATH:

The Master of Mankind had given each of His Four Horsemen titles and specialized pre-prepared suits of Artificier Armor wrought in Auramite. Each of the Horsemen in turn had channeled the psychic power of the Master of Mankind as He had been in the era of the Heresy into their roles. For the one known as Death on his white throne styled in the shape of a leering human skull, this meant that the psychic corona around his head that blinded the lesser around Him was coupled with an ability to absorb light into Himself.

Holding the vast scythe Harvester, he looked. Had the light-absorption effect around Him been parted for a moment his face would have danced akin to the Master of Mankind's himself. Instead, with the dark hood and cloak behind the carefully wrought black armor, He was a God, yes. A dreadful and nightmarish figure of Death itself made manifest, a monster in the image of Mortarion as he might have been absent the machination of the Warp.

He leaned forward. As the Imperial fleet paused within the Maelstrom, he spoke with a thunderclap of Psychic power.

++Opportunity has awakened itself. Lower the Void shields.++ Worshipful crewmen and servitors began to comply…

THE MAELSTROM:

Raised to his feet by one of the Unburdened who served him, Kor Phaeron growled and then lunged forward at the monstrous beast Verrteek. Again the creature smashed down its staff and this time instead of falling he knelt, the monstrous rodent chittering like the overgrown horned rat-man it was.

New-new power in the Warp-Warp we are-are, yes.

The cunning glowing green eyes of the monster seemed to leer somehow as it leaned forward, its breath making the elderly man gag within his armor. He wished he'd had his damned helmet.

Emperor-thing comes-comes on ships to burn-burn Maelstrom. Horned One desires first blow be struck-struck by us-us.

The ratman leered.

Time-time now-now to see-see might of superior Skaven race!

The staff collided again and Kor Phaeron and the Unburdened with him screamed along with the lesser Skaven disappearing in a flash.

THE MORIENDI:

The locus for teleportation appeared and then with the odor of timeless decay and malice that attended the greater manifestations of the Warp, the shocked Kor Phaeron and his servants found themselves on a new ship. He placed an armored gauntlet over his eyes as the lesser Skaven and the Unburdened hissed in pain. There was a white throne and He who sat upon it, a figure of dreadful darkness amidst light yet emanating a glow that withered as with heat, and pierced as with a deadly cold.

Pride, however, made Kor Phaeron squint and stand erect.

"Kor Phaeron of the Word Bearers, one of the twin Dark Apostles who rule them. True father to Lorgar Aurelian. Now, False Emperor, you know the name of your killer."

Then the figure on the Throne rose to His feet and Kor Phaeron gasped in awe and horror, and the Skaven instinctively cringed, save the Grey-Seer. The figure then intoned in a psychic voice akin to that of the Emperor but darker, tinged in blood and horror:

++Doom am I become, dealing death to the worlds, engaged in devouring daemonkind++

The figure raised his scythe and the figures of Chaos prepared to surge against the Dark Anathema, the better to score a blow at the start of the War…