AN :

At least, it is finished !

This one chapter took me a little longer than the other. I had originally planned to make it a lot longer, then finally settled for making it into several parts.

I have been a little slow with this one ... and I have no other excuses that this one : this site itself is at fault. I must have spent hours this last week reading other fics without noticing the ticking of the clock. Worst is, I was reading things completely unrelated to Warhammer, filled with silly things like love, comedy, and friendship. All things that, I think you will agree, have no place in the grim darkness of the thirty-first millenium.

So, sorry for the delay. I would say that this won't happen again, but we all know how this kind of promises end ...

Anyway, before we get to the story, I would first like to thank all of you who take time to read and review this story.

Death's Watcher : yeah, the Alpha Legion doesn't have much screen time after the Horus Heresy. Perhaps when the serie is over and we know more about what in the Warp happened, authors will feel more free to include them in their own stories.

Khorne : BLOOD ! SKULLS ! SOULS ! ... but the recruits will have to wait a bit. They are still, well, mere humans, and the process of transformation takes a while.

A Person : thanks for your compliments. And I have heeded your advice for this chapter - though it won't appear obvious at first. While many authors get away with introducing loads and loads of characters, I don't think I have the skill to pull that out for now. The problem is, this is a story about a warband with a LOT of Astartes in it, and if I want to give each Legion screentime, I will have no choice but to introduce more in future chapters. Still, I will be careful.

I do not own the WH40K franchise or any of the things related to it. All of them belong to Games Workshop.

And now, to the story. I will see you again at the end.

+++ IMPERIAL RECORD 248Z9-4EZAB666 +++

+++ PARECXIS SYSTEM +++

+++ WORLDS : PARECXIS ALPHA – HIVE WORLD, PARECXIS BETA – GARRISON WORLD, PARECXIS GAMMA – PENAL WORLD +++

+++ POPULATION : APPROXIMATELY 14,000,000,000 – RECORDS FROM THE LOCAL ADEPTUS ADMINISTRATUM, ADRESS EVENTUAL COMPLAINTS ACCORDINGLY +++

+++ NOTABLE ASSETS : DEFENSIVE ORBITAL PLATFORMS AROUND PARECXIS BETA, ORBITAL CONSTRUCTION DOCKS AROUND PARECXIS ALPHA, TERRAFORMED MOON OF PARECXIS ALPHA FOR THE HIGHEST MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY'S RECREATION +++

+++ DEFENCES : ACCESS REFUSED. REFER TO DIRECTIVE MLA-212871647 FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT DATA QUARANTINEMENT +++

+++ ACCESS TO THIS REPORT IS RESERVED IS RESERVED TO THOSE WITH A MAGENTA-LEVEL CLEARANCE ONLY +++

+++ THE EMPEROR PROTECTS +++

Captain and acting Fleet Admiral Oswald Von Libestat was a man of great calm and temperance. For the entirety of the seventy years he had spent in the Imperial Navy, he had been a model officer, rising from his position as mere lieutenant to the command of his own ship, the Maleficence's Reward. He had fought in dozens of void engagements, including the pacification of the Parecxis system, and earned his own command in that battle – and no small command either : an Apocalypse-Class Battleship, produced by the newly build orbital docks of the recently freed system.

The battle of Parecxis, he remembered fondly even in these dark times, had been a good war. For weeks, the Imperial Fleet had battled the ships of the Parecxsisian xenos overlords, until boarding actions by the Ultramarines had taken down the enemy's admiral ship.

By that single action, the Astartes had tipped the scales of the campaign in the Imperium's favor. The rest of the xenos fleet had tried to flee, and less than ten ships out of a fleet that had once counted close to a hundred had succeeded. It had been a glorious victory for the Imperial Navy, though Oswald knew that many of his colleagues regretted that they had needed the help of the Space Marines.

Foolishness, Oswald had thought. The Adeptus Astartes was the arm of the Emperor, the instrument of His will across the galaxy just as surely as the Navy itself, or the Imperial Guard – perhaps even more so. Were the Space Marines not the children of His own sons, the Primarchs ? Did they hearts not pump through their enhanced bodies His sacred blood ? That the progeny of the Divine Emperor had fought side by side with mere mortal like them had been an honor. As a believer of the Lectitio Divinatus – albeit he had kept his faith a secret until he had thought the men and women under his command could benefit from it – Oswald Von Libestat had considered himself blessed to be able to watch such peerless warriors in action.

Then the Heresy had come, and the galaxy had screamed while hope and the future burned in the flames of betrayal. The best and brightest son of Him on Earth had turned from his father, pushed to this unthinkable act by the darkest powers of the galaxy : the arch-daemons of the Warp, the abominations that those they had enslaved called the Dark Gods of Chaos.

Horus Lupercal, some said, had destroyed the Imperium even in his ultimate defeat. The Emperor wasn't dead – may He live forever – but he had been crippled by his corrupted son. The Traitor Legions were defeated – but they weren't destroyed. The war was over …

But there had been no victor. Of that, Oswald was bitterly certain. They had all lost. And now, in the darkness of a uncertain future, only his faith in the Emperor prevented him from simply crying himself to death over all that had been lost. His faith that the Lord of Mankind had a plan that could save them all, even in this disaster that was the aftermath of the Horus Heresy.

The other thing that had kept him alive – literally : he had seen dozens of men and women, all competent and solid members of his crew, simply wasting away after the Warmaster's death, despair finally overwhelming them at the magnitude of the destruction – had been his duty. Duty to the Emperor, to the Imperium, and, he was not afraid to admit it, to those under his command. They had all fought with him during the war, in engagements that wouldn't be remembered against traitorous elements of the Navy – and while part of him was sad that their heroism wouldn't be remembered, another was glad that there would be no trace of these stains upon the institution's honor.

He had a duty to them : to lead them. To give them purpose. That was his duty, the task that the Emperor had intended for him in His great wisdom. Oswald had shared his faith with his crew, and it had spread to the rest of the fleet. It had given hope – it had given strength.

When word of the rebellion had first reached them, it had been under the form of the betrayal of half the fleet, suddenly opening fire on the ships whose commanders they knew wouldn't join the Warmaster. The Fleet Admiral had died in the first moments of the battle, his Emperor-Class Battleship Loyalty's Due lost to the traitors' combined fire as he bought time for the rest of the loyalists to escape. Oswald, as the highest ranked surviving officer, had taken command of the remnants of the fleet. At the time, he had two dozen ships under his command, in various state of damage. He had led them into battle, fighting short, bloody raids against the traitors' supply lines or isolated ships, joining other pockets of loyalist forces en route to other zones of the war for brief contact, exchanges of news and information, and the occasional battle together. He had fought in more battle during the years of the Heresy that he had had in the rest of his life, all across the Trebedius Sector.

When the news of Horus' death had arrived, his fleet had been down to twelve ships. Wounded, tired, and victorious by some far-stretched definition of the word, he had returned to the Parecxis system. Thankfully, the system had remained loyal – a fact that, Oswald suspected, had much to do with the fact that it had been freed by the Thirteenth Legion. It had also gone relatively unscathed, and the orbital docks, once they had established their identity and loyalty to the Throne, had welcomed them for repairs.

At the beginning of the war, proving their loyalty would have been quite a conundrum. But now … now, things were different. The traitor ships had been changed by those who commanded them. In hindsight, it was obviously the touch of Chaos, spreading from the souls of those who had sided with the Arch-Traitor to the very metal. All the fleet had had to do to prove its loyalty had been to allow envoys to come aboard and examine the ships.

Then, just as it had seemed that calm and order were finally settling back into the galaxy, with the loyal Legions purging the Imperium from the Traitors' presence, a Warp Storm had engulfed them. He had lost four more ships in the first moments of it, the psykers aboard going mad and bursting from within, unleashing beasts from the Immaterium, before ordering all remaining ships to keep their Geller Fields on at all times.

From what their astropaths and Navigators could see, the Warp Storm had taken all of the Trebedius Sector within it. They were cut off from the rest of the Imperium, and even within the Strom communication and warp-travel were all but impossible.

Fortunately, the Parecxis system was self-sustained, with the ships of the fleet to ensure that the different production from each world was brought to the others – promethium from the penal labour camps on Parecxis Gamma, manufactured goods and food rations from the recycling industries of Parecxis Alpha, and the forces needed to preserve order from Parecxis Beta. They had fought back the riots that had broken out in the streets, crushed the rebellion in Parecxis Gamma, and hunted down the cults of Chaos that had sprung out like bad weeds.

They would endure this storm, Oswald had promised to the fleet and the other responsibles of the system. As commander of the only way to travel and carry messages to other worlds – astropaths were no longer reliable, most of them had been put down and the rest were isolated – Oswald had effectively become the military governor of the Parecxis system in all but name. His name and face had been broadcast throughout the system, his voice and words used to calm down a population that, now that it seemed the Emperor couldn't reach them anymore, was starting to panic.

He had told them that it wasn't true, that the Emperor had provided them with all they needed to weather the storm – the only thing he hadn't given them was courage, for it was something they had to find within themselves.

Those had been fine words, and he had even believed in them. Now, however, despite how blasphemous the thought was, even he was beginning to doubt that the Emperor had foreseen what would befell them. He had lost another ship to the daemons, and most of the psykers that had been on board were dead. They had been rebellions on three other vessels, thankfully put down before anything important could be damaged, but they had still lost thousand of crewmembers. And now, this.

'Are you certain ?' he asked to the holopict transmitting the image and words of the last astropath alive he had aboard his ship. The blind, deseccated man nodded once, before starting to ramble again :

'The Storm pushes them toward us, and those who guide them ride it as we would ride the void ! Powerful presences dwell within the beast : one bearing a thirst of blood that would destroy the stars, one who is prisoner yet whose words go freely, and another … oh, the other … different, yet so much more dangerous … so much hatred, so much evil ! He comes ! Death has come for us all !'

'Get a hold of yourself, Mathus !' ordered Oslaw, focusing every ounce of command he possessed into his words. He couldn't afford to lose the astropath now.

The veil between reality and the Immaterium was thin in a Warp Storm, but it was still here. An astropath could feel when it was about to be pierced, and that information had been priceless in repulsing several daemonic incursions in the last months.

Throne. Daemonic. How easily even he had fallen back into such superstitious terms and beliefs when the galaxy had stopped to correspond to his views.

' … Yes. Forgive me, my lord. It is simply … too much. The Storm … It recognises them, Oslaw. It knows them, and it has … affection ? No, this isn't the right word … Gratitude ? No, no, it isn't either … Jealousy, envy, hatred, hunger, thirst, protection, partnership – there is no word in Gothic for what it feels …'

'Feels ? Mathus, are you implying that the Warp Storm is … sentient, somehow ?'

The image of the astropath smiled in response, an ugly thing born of utter terror and forming madness.

'Of course it is ! So much emotion, in the Warp, gains a life of its own ! The souls of the dead were used in its birth, gathered by the sons of the First Heretic and sacrificed by the hand of he who never sleeps, and it hates all things … But it hates us even more, oh yes it does … Ah ah … ah ah ah ah ah ah ah aaaaaaahh AAAAAAAAAAAAH - '

The link cut off abruptly, and Oslaw let out a stream of curses before shouting at his aids :

'Contact the guards of the astropathic chamber ! Possible contamination ! Get in and prepare to purge it if needed !'

The men guarding the room were the most competent and ruthless he had under his command. Members of the Navy's own troops, they had fought back boarding from xenos and traitors alike, and they had never failed him. Yet even them, he knew, would have a hard time dealing with a daemon – if such a thing was possible at all. So, for the sake of the soldiers as well as the old astropath's, he hoped that Mathus was simply having a fit of dementia.

However, before he received any report on what had happened to the blinded psyker, alarms rose from almost every console on the deck. It appeared Mathus' warning, as confused as it may have been, was nonetheless correct.

In a maneuver that they had performed a lot of times during the war, all operators on deck cut off the alarms and focused on whatever their screens were telling them. A few seconds later, just before Oswald ordered a full report to be given to him, Saeger, his second-in-command rose and delivered it :

'A single ship has just emerged from the Warp, sir. It is still at the border of the system. At its current speed, it should reach engaging distance in two hours.'

'Identification ?'

'The Hand of Ruin of the Legione Astartes … Sixteenth Legion, sir,' finished the man before Oswald could ask. 'A model that I have never seen before, but it's twice as big as us and probably filled with traitors.'

'The bastard progeny of Horus himself,' spat the admiral. 'Is there any problem with the rest of the fleet ?'

'No, sir.'

'Then bring every ship in formation to intercept, and patch me through this treacherous dogs' vox. I want to speak with whoever is at its command.'

An image of the enemy ship appeared on the hololith before Oswald. It was a dreadful thing indeed. It had clearly just been repaired – the steel of its side was unevenly damaged by time and battle. Countless weapons pointed out of its frame, from short-range turrets to take down enemy fighters to giant canons the size of a building that could spat plasma or send oversized ordnance through the void. The ship looked like a lone predator, akin to a tiger or a shark – but it lacked the inner nobility of these beasts in Oswald's eyes, instead looking … twisted, somehow. The old man didn't know what it must feel to be connected to the machine-spirit of such a vessel, but he doubted it was an agreeable experience. The name of the ship – Hand of Ruin, as Saeger had said – was engraved on its side in gold letters a hundred meters high, and beneath it was depicted the image of a horned skull surrounded by a circle of unbroken chain. Whatever foul imagerie was at work here, Oswald didn't want to know.

He was drawn away from his examination – after only a few seconds had passed – by Saeger's voice :

'They are already hailing us, sir. Audio transmission.'

'Open it, then. Standard protocol.'

The 'standard protocol was something the fleet's officers had devised after losing an entire ship to one of the enemy's most vile sorceries. When the captain of the Purity of Will had tried to contact a traitor Adeptus Mechanicus' craft to convince it to surrender – a noble gesture, but a foolish one – they had sent in reply sounds that had somehow driven his entire command crew, himself included, mad. Now, when attempting communication with traitor ships, only the captain himself could hear whatever passed through the channel, and the second-in-command had a gun pointed at his or her superior's head during all that time. Paranoid, probably. But in the aftermath of the Horus Heresy, those who weren't paranoid were dead.

'This is Admiral Oswald Von Libestat, commander of the Maleficence's Reward. In the name of the Emperor, identify yourself, traitor !'

There was a moment of static-filled silence, then the reply came, delivered in the low tones of an Astartes, yet sounding utterly devoid of emotion and feeling. This was the voice of a corpse, thought Oswald for a moment, before suddenly detecting the hatred beneath the apparent calmness. At that moment, the pious captain knew that he was speaking to the third entity Mathus had referred to.

'This is Commander Arken, former Commander of the Sons of Horus, now master of the Forsaken Sons. I will give you one chance to surrender, admiral. Turn off your ships' engines, drop your shields, and let my men come aboard. Do all this, and you and your crew may live. You may even fight yet another battle, though it would be after you had the lies of the False Emperor exposed to you.'

Oswald snarled. Did that heretic thought that he would accept his offer ? Most probably not, he decided. This was a taunt, nothing more, made to drive him to make mistakes due to anger. Well, two could play that game, and Oswald had sharpened his skills. Officers who had sided with the Warmaster, he had noticed, tended to have short tempers and big egos. It was probably those traits that had made them vulnerable to the Arch-Traitor's whispers in the first place, and they had only grown worse after their betrayal.

'I will make you another offer, traitor : drop your shields and I will grant that hideous piece of garbage that you call a ship and all those who dwell within its putrid bowels a quick death.'

'You cannot prevail, Admiral. This is the Hand of Ruin. We have fought against the warp-born and the forces of Terra themselves, and we have survived. What make you think that you will succeed where they failed ?'

'My faith in the Emperor is all I need to prevail, heretic.'

For the first time, Oswald heard a bit of emotion creep into the Traitor Marine's voice, anger threatening to break the illusion of calm as he spoke :

'Faith ?! What do you know of faith, old man ? The one whose name you so foolishly invokes isn't a god. He is nothing but a liar and a deceiver, a traitor who sacrificed his own blood-sons to fight and die in his stance while he plotted his ascension, ready to leave us alone in a galaxy that hate us ! We are not traitor, mortal ! We are the only ones who have seen the truth : that there are true gods in this galaxy, and that only by embracing them can Mankind survive ! Cling to the false hope of your so-called faith for as long as you can … We will see if it endures when I toss your souls to the daemons ! I will take your ships as my own, and your men will bow before the Octed. The priests of the Pantheon will turn them to the Primordial Truth, and those who are too blind to see it will feed the Dark Gods' appetite !'

The communication cut off on these last, ominous words. For a moment, Oswald looked into empty air, before turning toward Saeger. Pleased to see that the man was still targeting him, he simply said :

'Contact all ships. Tell them to be prepared to repel boarders. And tell the Oblivion's Keeper ... you know what to tell them.'

I hear the whisper of the daemon in my blood. I stand at the center of a circle traced in blood, the scent of which makes my thirst grows. Those of the Coven watch over me, feeling the power I possess and afraid I will use it against them. There are right to be scared : Heker'Arn wants me to kill them. But Arken is here, too. His presence forces the beast down – it is scared of him, of what he can do to it with the knowledge he possess.

There are several more circles – seven more of them. A total of eight circles have been drawn, and me and the daemon can feel the approval of the Blood God at such an auspicious number. Each circle is occupied by warriors of the Forsaken Sons, half a hundred for every arcane device.

In a moment, the Sorcerers will begin the ritual. They will tear open the Empyrean, and forge a way through reality and madness to our destinations : the vessels of those who dare to oppose our lord. Each of the groups of warriors has been given specific battle-orders by Arken as to how capture the ship, and a small token of sorcery to use if they need to be dragged back to the Hand of Ruin. I know that most of them wouldn't use it, preferring death to the shame of failure, but Arken has been clear : he wants his warriors to come back, if only so that he can punish them himself should they have been truly incompetent. He has warned that he will ask the Coven to capture and torture the souls of any who would choose death over facing him.

I haven't received a token, for my nature makes it simple for the Sorcerers to home their magicks on my position – simple, but not easy, as I am also resistant to their tricks. My mission is simple, for the ship I will be sent to is one that has been condemned to death : find the commander of the ship – and of the entire fleet – kill him and all the command crew, then call for the Coven to pull back me and the rest of my assault group so that the Hand of Ruin can tear apart the ship freely. At least, that is the plan. Even one such as I knows that no plan ever survive contact with the enemy.

My finger-claws itch with the desire to plunge them into flesh, but I contain it, for now. There is no enemy here … Or is there ?

With me in the one circle I occupy are those I once called brothers, warriors of the Twelfth Legion. Now I have no more brothers, and the daemon has shown me my Legion's fate – broken, scattered across the stars by the most unthinkable betrayal.

I am tainted, twisted, a parody of what I once was. So are they. They admire me for my strength, for the power I wield. They are wrong. I am damned. And so are they. But at least they don't know it. They know so little these days. How to fight – that they will never forget. That Arken is their lord – that I wonder when they will forget. That the Imperium is their enemy – that … I think some have already forgotten.

That they are sons of Angron. That, they wish they could forget.

The presence of the other Astartes irritates me. It makes me want to kill them. I see some of them wearing the purple and gold of the Third Legion, and it makes the daemon screams in anger and disgust. I share both of these emotions, did even before we became one. The Emperor's Children are pathetic, they always were, but now … Now they are monstrous even by the standards of what we have become. Strong, yes, but they waste their might on the pursuit of petty satisfactions and pleasures, ignoring the higher call, the call for blood ...

Ah … here it is again.

I no longer feel the Butcher's Nails in my head. The daemon has removed the pain. Now, it and I thirst. We thirst for blood, for the sensation of splitting skulls and rending flesh. It has been too long since we last fought, and the thirst has grown. It is painful … but it is not like the Nails. It isn't driving me insane. I am in control. That is the worst part, I think : regardless of what I do to slake the thirst, it is I that do it. Not the Nails. Not the rage. Not the daemon. I.

My name is Hektor. I cling to that name. It is all that prevent despair from overcoming me, and if that happens then the daemon will take me wholly. I am Hektor. I am Hektor. I am …

You are my host. You are my brother. You are the Blood God's servant.

… Yes. I am that as well.

To many, a battle in space is a thing of beauty. To others, it is the business of cowards lacking the guts to face their foes on a blood-soaked battlefield, a weapon in their hand. Regardless of these biased points of view, one thing remains undeniably true : space battle is huge. The ships trading volleys are often tens of thousand of kilometers away from each other, and even with the speed and maneuverability that Mankind's greatest minds conferred to the vessels, aiming and placing is a matter of cold calculus and anticipation. Reflexes and quick thinking are useless when shots can take up to an hour to cross the determined course of their target. It was, in many ways, war at its most civilized, most clean and most totally unforgiving. One shot reaching its target means hundreds of lives lost, not just in the impact but as the cold of the void penetrates the hull of the victim. A single mistake from one of the thousands of crew involved could have catastrophic consequences. It was for a reason that the Imperial Navy only recruited the best of the best – except for the poor souls that dwelled in the ships' depths, and were sentenced to carry on repeating but necessary tasks for the engines to keep working.

At the battle for Parecxis, the Imperial ships had the advantages of a combined superior firepower, efficient crew, and an ability to work together honed by all the battles they had fought under Admiral Von Libestat.

The enemy had Astartes. Never before had they faced that, but they knew what the Legionaries were capable of, having seen them in action during the bygone days of the Great Crusade. And what the mortals commanding the loyalist ships knew was enough to make them doubt that victory was even possible. Space Marines were the ultimate boarding forces, their natural talent for spearheading an assault magnified in the confines of a ship. Analysis of the enemy ship's design revealed it had been made from the earlier model of the Adeptus Astartes' mighty battle-barges that composed the core of the Legions' fleets, but bigger, capable of hosting thousands of surhuman warriors. Oswald doubted that it was full – after all, every Legion, traitor or loyalist, had sustained terrible losses during the Heresy. Some more than the rest, it was true. Oswald's heart still bled whenever he thought of the fate of the noble Salamanders, Iron Hands and Raven Guards. These had been arguably the most humane of the Legions … and now, weak as they were, they would be unable to weight on the future of the Imperium. Dark times were ahead, that was for certain.

'All ships, be prepared to repel boarders,' he repeated his order. He trusted the other crews, but he needed to make sure they had received the message. 'Even if we haven't detected any boarding craft being launched, it doesn't mean that there isn't any we failed to see.'

The Hand of Ruin advanced fearlessly toward the Imperial fleet, its weapons ready to fire the moment it reached their maximum range. On the deck of the Astartes vessel, Shipmaster Koldak was smiling. He loved void war. He had seen many battles during his service to the Sixteenth Legion, and he had come to seek the perfect battle, the one where every participant would play his part flawlessly so that only pure, unaltered strategy would determinate the victor. The Siege of Terra had been a wonder of tactical prowess, until the impossible to understand decision of the Warmaster to lower the Vengeful Spirit's shields and allow the False Emperor to teleport aboard. Now, facing a fleet that had so clearly fought many battles together, Koldak reveled in the opportunity to test his mettle against such worthy opponents. Oh, sure the battle would actually be concluded by the Astartes about to be sent to the enemy ships by the Coven's unknowable sorcery, but until the warriors finished their tasks, it would be up to Koldak and his crew to keep the Hand of Ruin intact and close enough to all ships for the Coven to be able to pull back the boarders if the ship they were on was deemed lost. Such a challenge was unprecedented in all of his career, and in fact, possibly in all the history of space navigation. It made his blood boil with anticipation. The enemy commander – Admiral Von Libestat, if he remembered correctly – had sounded like a courageous man in his talk with the Awakened One – although a foolish one. No one could stand against lord Arken. He had dragged the entire ship through Hell, captured and enslaved a lord of the daemons, and unleashed a power beyond the imagining of mortals across an entire sector. Who could challenge such a being ? He reminded Koldak of the Warmaster – after all, he too had united Astartes from different Legions toward one purpose. And that loyalist had dared to insult him … he would soon understand his error, of that Koldak was certain. Too bad it would probably means his death. The Blood Champion, as he had come to be called in frightened whispers, was not a subtle weapon, if a powerful one.

'How long until we reach the teleporting range ?' he asked, already knowing the answer – but it never hurt to confirm his own estimations with the arguably more precise cogitators of the ship.

'Five minutes and twenty-six seconds, sir,' answered one of the officers. Hmm. A hundred and fifteen seconds sooner than he had anticipated. Good.

The deck of the Hand of Ruin had changed more than a bit since its change of allegiance, and even more so since the Exodus. They had been reached by warp-born a total of three times during their run through the Empyrean, and the damage the daemons had done had just be repaired. The tech-priests had incorporated some of the new designs thought by Merchurion, and the result had been a lot more of bio-technology being used, combined with some downright creepy things like mutated servitors and organic screens. But it worked, and that was all that mattered, whether it was powered by the blessings of the Omnissiah or the wonders of the Dark Gods.

'Any word from the estimed Awakened One ?'

'None, sir.'

Perfect. That meant Lord Arken had finished his briefings of the assault groups and was ready to see them off to battle without any delay. Koldak was still a bit doubtful about the new method of boarding they would use – it seemed to him that the Coven's craft was too much alike the horrors they had faced during the Exodus. But if Lord Arken thought it best … Still, unlike most of his crew, the Shipmaster wasn't quite a devout of the True Pantheon. He knew the gods the Word Bearers spoke of were real, of course – he wasn't a fool. And he also admitted that, in their circumstances, they had to take help wherever it came from. And yet, it was true that some of the changes the Ruinous Powers had wrought were … unnerving. The Blood Champion was terrifying, of course, but the warriors who had once been battle-brothers of the Emperor's Children were the ones who truly disturbed him.

He knew that some of their members aboard the Hand of Ruin were about to be sent to the Imperial ships. In spite of himself, he felt a tingle of pity for those who were about to face them.

Ah … foolishness. He had to banish such thoughts, and focus on the incoming battle. Failure from his part would mean that the Hand of Ruin would take more damage that was absolutely unavoidable, and it could also mean the needless death of valuable Astartes. He didn't know how the Awakened One would balance the lives of Space Marines and damage to the ship, and he would rather not discover it. Lord Arken had been a comprehensive and reasonable commander so far, unlike many he had heard about in the rest of the Legions – apparently, those who had cast off the yoke of the False Emperor had a tendency to be more … liberal with the lives of the mortals under their command – but it was safer not to push the limits of his tolerance.

'Thirty seconds to teleport,' announced one of the servitors, transmitting the message from the chamber where Lord Arken couldn't communicate by vox without risk of perturbing the ritual.

'Well, ladies and gentlemen,' said Koldak to his crew with a wild grin, 'this is it. Let's give them hell until the Astartes finish their part of the job, shall we ?'

His words were received with a mix of cheer and salute, and the crew focused on their duties once more, ready to fight yet another battle in a war that would never end, against a foe just as dedicated to their task as they were. This was why he had sided with the Warmaster when the time had come for every human in the galaxy to pick a choice. The Emperor had forsaken the men who had fought and died to conquer the stars in His name, leaving what they had built in the hands of weaklings and bureaucrats that squandered the sacrifices that had been made. How could men and women who had never even seen a battlefield lead Mankind ? The galaxy was filled with xenos who only wished to do it harm, and other horrors lurked amidst the stars that they couldn't even begin to imagine. The Warmaster had seen that, and he had even managed to forge an alliance with the greatest of these horrors : the Dark Gods of Chaos. He may have failed at the ultimate moment, but Koldak knew that Horus Lupercal had been in the right when he had called all those who were loyal to him to rebellion against the Throne.

Those who stood against them were blind to that truth. They thought the False Emperor was protecting them – but how, when He had abandoned the Great Crusade ? When He had conspired to leave Mankind alone so that He could focus on planning His ascension to godhood ?

And now some of these fools even worshipped Him ! That was beyond his understanding. The False Emperor wasn't a god ! There were true gods in the galaxy, and yet they would cling to a false idol rather than embrace them ?

Foolishness. And for that foolishness, they would die. Well, the lucky ones anyway.

The sensation of having one's very being torn apart by the mighty energies of the Warp, decided Tacitus, was a definitely new experience, and thus one that had to be savored. The sounds he was sure he had heard during the transition had been truly marvelous – the symphony of the Empyrean, singing with the pleas of the damned and the dirge of the lost. Nevertheless, even for a devoted of the Dark Prince such as him, being teleported across thousands of kilometers by means that had not been tested still hurt.

Looking around him with eyes which could never be closed, thanks to the eyelids having been removed by the scalpels of the Third Legion's Apothecaries, Tacitus saw the rest of the assault group materialize as well. Other members of the Emperor's Children appeared. All of them were wielding the sonic-blasters they had fabricated from the bones and sinew of men and women sacrificed to the Lord of Pleasure and weapons that had once been bolters now transformed beyond the imagination of most humans. Two packs of Tacitus' brothers took part in the boarding – eighteen warriors of the only Legion who had reached perfection in the Dark Prince's embrace. Of all of them, only Tacitus didn't carry one of the sonic-blasters. His own approach to battle, and passion, was different – and, he firmly believed, superior.

The other part of the assault group, three packs of former Word Bearers, emerged as well. To Tacitus surprise and delight, one of the crude, boring warrior-monks was unfortunate enough to appear in the middle of a steel wall, his body cut apart as it manifested. The blood of the Legionary erupted in a geyser that covered the armor of his brothers, combining with the crimson color of their heraldry in a way Tacitus found exquisite. He could smell the rich, coppery scent of Astartes' blood, and wanted to taste it on his tongue. He could feel the same impulse in the rest of his pack, their minds feeling a pick of anticipated pleasure at the simple thought. But he held back, and they followed his example. Turning on their allies so soon in their mission would be foolish. It could lead to failure, and failure would end into death. And while Tacitus and his brothers didn't fear death – it was, after all, the ultimate experience – they would rather only meet it after enjoying the galaxy's worth of sensations all they could. So, still suppressing the wonderful impulse, Tacitus greeted his allies.

'Brothers ! It seems the Coven succeeded in the task our lord assigned it … though not without cost.'

Tacitus' vocal cords had been modified too, in a way such as to make the pitch of his voice shift randomly, sending pulses of sensations into his brain and that of his brethren with each unexpected change. It seemed the Word Bearers didn't enjoy such a refined pleasure, though, for they looked back at him all at once, safe for the one who was retrieving the dead warrior's gene-seed. The former Emperor's Children could feel the contempt in their gaze.

'Get silent, freak,' growled back one of the warriors in crimson ceramite. 'We have a mission to complete.'

For a moment, the desire to plunge his blade – a magnificent weapon crafted from the bones of Legionaries fallen on Istvan V and metal plundered from their tanks – into the fanatic's head to punish him for his insult was almost impossible to suppress, but Tacitus simply nodded, and turned to lead his brothers toward their objective. The Awakened One had assigned different targets to the two groups – probably in order to avoid precisely what had almost happened. Tacitus would have admired Arken's insight if it hadn't deprived him of the chance to kill one of the Word Bearers by 'accident'.

They ran through the corridors of the ship, empty of all life. The fleet they were engaging had taken heavy losses in the war, that much was obvious, and the crew that remained was doubtlessly concentrated to the areas of utmost necessity. It was the same procedure that had been applied on the Hand of Ruin.

This ship, however, was … different. Tacitus couldn't tell what exactly, but there was a fundamental difference between this ship – the Oblivion's Keeper , if he remembered correctly – and the Hand of Ruin. Was it something as simple as the fact that this one had never turned side ? Did the loyalty of those aboard, misguided and foolish as it was, have the power to cause such an … unsettling air ?

No, it was something else. Something deeper, more primal. This ship was simply … plain. It lacked the marvellous taint that had infected the Hand of Ruin during the Exodus, the palpable sense of power and corruption that had penetrated the vessel. It was, in a word, boring. And nothing was more anathema to a devotee of the Dark Prince that boredom.

When the ship was theirs, Tacitus decided, they would have to change that. Perhaps he could ask the Awakened One to give them some of the people of this system's worlds to be used as the material for the ship's redecorating ? The Emperor's Children had made such wonders of the people of Terra, who knew what they could achieve with more time that they had had there …

But that would have to wait. For now, there was killing to enjoy. His group was directed toward the engineering while the sons of Lorgar were to take control of the command deck. There was a lot more personnel working on the engines, and no doubt the Awakened One would understand if some of them were to be killed in the confusion of the assault, despite their potential value if they could be turned.

'Machine-spirit, once more we call upon Your blessing. Please, grant us speed, so that we may face the enemies of Man. Please, grant us strength, that we may destroy them. Please, grant us resilience, that we may endure in Your service.'

The prayer was older than Leximus – indeed, older than his entire flesh-line. It came from the first techno-masters from Holy Mars itself, when they had embraced the truth of the Machine-God after the horrors of the Dark Age of Technology. It was effective, though : the engines of the Oblivion's Keeper roared in answer to the tech-priest's supplication, the cough that had been impairing them forgotten.

The engines of the ship were massive, surrounding a power generator that used the Litanies of Plasma Fusion's secrets to feed the titanic machineries all the way to the propulsors on the ship's exterior. Orders were transmitted from the command deck, received and put into the engines under the form of pulses of binary code. Complex maneuvers were translated in combinations of more power to some parts of the ship and less to others by the cogitators implanted within the servitors dedicated to the task. Leximus and the other tech-priests listened to the commands with distract ears, their processors filtrating them so that they could anticipate which parts of the engines were going to need maintenance next.

'Warning : intrusion detected,' warned one of the servitors in its monotonous voice. 'Warning : time esteemed before intruders break through defenses : … three point zero zero four sec …'

The servitor was interrupted by an explosion, and a splinter of metal cut it in two, spilling its fluids, blackened blood and oil alike, all around its station. Leximus and his brethren turned to face whatever had dared to intrude in their sanctuary, the weapons that were as much part of them as the other, more conventional implants, raised in preparation. There had been no guards on the door's other side – because anything that could pierce the three-meters deep obstacle would have been more than capable of dealing with them.

The tech-priests, however, had prepared for battle for years, testing their most recent innovations in the many battles that had occurred aboard the ship during the Horus Heresy. Leximus had led them in the process, indeed, he had been the first to suggest that they modify their own bodies, even though they didn't have permission from Mars to elevate themselves into the holy order of the Mechanicus. The Omnissiah, he had argued, would forgive such a minor violation of His creed if it was to better fight His enemies. He had been heard, and the seventeen tech-priests remaining in the engine room were each true killing machines, looking more like skitarii than engineers, but still able to fulfill their original duties.

In the end, it had been decided that they would have to defend themselves, and the human soldiers used to defend more critical sections of the ship. It had been a temporary measure, to be ended as soon as they could get reinforcements from the rest of the system, but the transports that had been supposed to bring the new crewmembers aboard were still on the orbital docks. They would have to wait until the battle was over, obviously.

The assailants poured through the broken door – and Leximus distractedly noted that the defense had been destroyed by the use of melta bombs and … something which he couldn't identify. Then the tech-priest saw what exactly the enemies were, and he felt something he took several milliseconds to identify : disgust.

The creatures had the size of Astartes, and seemed to wear the colors of the traitorous Third Legion – though some of them had covered the shoulder symbol of their allegiance in black paint for reasons Leximus didn't even want to fathom – but all resemblance ended here. These were not Space Marines, though they had obviously been at some point.

Their armor was covered in glyphs that offended Leximus' very core, as if they were against everything he had ever believed in. Most of the warriors went unhelmed, and their faces …

By the Omnissiah's holy name, Leximus had seen some horrors during the Heresy, but this … If anything, the fact that the changes had obviously been voluntary made them all the more unbearable to look at.

The flesh of the things was distorted, the skin stretched and kept in place by crude sutures and needles. Some had had their ears removed, all had their eyes fixed open through various means, and despite Leximus' removal from the flesh, he could still see that they were all insane. Their mouths were forced open by metallic structures built into their jaws, and endless screams rose from their throat. His sensors detected a potent smell of chemicals of unidentifiable provenance running through the intruders' bloodstream, most of them which would have been enough to kill a mortal man on their own – and there were dozens of them. Even the Astartes' superior resilience had to be fighting a hard battle to keep the Emperor's Children functionning, and it somehow offended Leximus. To see the extent of the Omnissiah's genius, only for it to be so crudely debased … it struck him as wrong. It was heretical. Blasphemous.

The weapons carried by the creatures were just as bizarre. Most of them carried things that looked like musical instruments, but as if they had been crafted by a lunatic having only access to an abattoir for his materials. It was only when they turned it toward one of the few combat servitors the tech-priests still had that Leximus even accepted the things could do any damage beyond their ugly appearance.

The mechanised minion was crushed to pulp by soundwaves that made even Leximus' augmented hearing organs screech with feedback. Some part of him still refused to accept that the strange devices could have any effect, but in front of evidence, he shut them down for the moment. He felt that his brethren were facing the same dilemma, and shared his decision with them in a binary pulse, convincing them to wait until they had dealt with the intruders before attending to this technological aberration.

The renegades charged them, and the tech-priests opened fire as one. The first salvo took three of the eighteen assailants down, and the rest scattered, seeking cover behind the wonders of the Omnissiah. Immediately, Leximus and his colleagues went down the elevated position they had been occupying and started moving, their cogitators tracing the best patterns through the labyrinth of machines to reach their foes before their foul presence could desacrate this place any further. Not the most optimal move tactical-wise, but there were things even the relatively open-minded tech-priests aboard the Oblivion's Keeper weren't willing to forsake in the name of efficiency. Besides, there were other command panels across the room, and if one of the heretics were to be possessed of some skill, there was no telling the damage he could cause to the ship.

Leximus himself rushed toward one of these panels, where his sensors indicated that an heretic would soon reach. He had to protect the ship, and if that meant fighting an Astartes, however corrupted, alone, then so be it.

Just as he had predicted, the second he entered the section of the room, the warrior in desecrated armor entered it from the opposite side.

Unlike its brothers, the thing carried only a contact weapon – at least, that was what Leximus estimated it was. It looked like a chainsword, but it wasn't following any of the templates of the weapon that Leximus knew.

It was … strangely beautiful, in fact. The handle was finely crafted in the whitest bone, the teeth on the blade caught the dancing light of the electric bulbs quite beautifully, and …

Something withing Leximus screamed, and he tore his attention away from the blade, feeling as if his inner circuits had been attacked by a malign program – which was, he realized, the sensation the unblessed referred to as nausea. Now that whatever forbidden technology had enabled it had failed, the glamour that had surrounded the sword was gone, and it looked exactly as it was : a monstrosity, crafted from an unholy combination of bones and metal. There was also something more to it, something he couldn't identify yet knew, somehow, was what the crew of the ship called 'witchcraft'. Unscientific, perhaps … but the word fit, and 'phenomena Warp-related capable of circumventing the laws of physics' was a little too long, even for the Adeptus Mechanicum.

The warrior in purple and gold launched himself toward Leximus, and the tech-priest opened fire. His auto-cannon pierced the armor of the Astartes in several points, sending goblets of tainted blood all around, yet the warrior didn't drop dead as Leximus' calculus had told him he should have. Instead, he continued to charge, and before Leximus' puzzled mind could react, he had already reached him and begun to slash his sword to cut him apart.

With reflexes that were just as augmented as the rest of his person, the tech-priest jumped out of harm's way, but failed to dodge the attack completely. And when dealing with Astartes, even a glancing blow is enough to cripple.

The blade rammed through his chest, severing six vital cables and destroying five augmentic organs at the same time that Leximus fired again. This time, it was enough.

As the corrupted Marine fell down, Leximus' inner vox picked up a transmission from the command deck of the ship. It was garbled with interference and the poor state of his own systems, but the message was still clear enough :

'This is … command deck lost … initiate … destruct procedure … The Emperor protects.'

So. It had come to this, in the end. They had fought as hard as they could, but the ship was lost. Better to destroy it that to let it fall into the hands of the traitors. With the Omnissiah's grace, perhaps the rest of the fleet had fared better than them.

Blood and oil dripping from his many wounds, Leximus forced his broken body to crawl toward the control panel. All it would take would be one single signal, and the reaction of the plasma reactor would cascade until the Oblivion's Keeper vanished into a burst of fire like the birth of a small star. In other ships, such a thing was normally made impossible by protections and safeties, but these had been long removed on the Keeper, as the crew had long known that a time could come in their service to the Imperium when death would be the better outcome.

Leximus forced himself up, clinging to the console, and raised his hand, the one at the end of the only arm he had left. It was made of flesh, not yet replaced by an augmentic. It seemed strange, heretical even, and yet appropriate to him, that flesh would have endured when the metal in him had failed to the traitor's onslaught.

Warnings flashed before his eyes as his systems neared absolute shutdown. Pain, that he thought he had long left behind, forced its way to his awareness. Blackness began to overcome him, but still he moved his hand …

Then something pierced him from behind, and the pain finally overwhelmed him. His hand hung over the one button that would send the Oblivion's Keeper into nothingness, but he couldn't lower it.

Looking down, he saw that he had been pierced with the blasphemous weapon that the traitor had wielded. He realized that he could hear the heavy, difficult breathing of the heretic behind him.

With the cold certainty of absolute knowledge, Leximus knew that he was dead, and that he had failed in his ultimate duty. But that was impossible. How could the Emperor's Children's warrior have endured such degree of corporal damage ? Leximus knew about the Astartes' surhuman resilience, but this went even beyond such things ! And the warrior was still going to die ! What could possibly push him to do such a thing when his body laid torn and destroyed, his blood almost entirely spilled ?

'Why ?' asked the tech-priest, his vox-speaker barely managing to spat the words. 'Why do you go this far ?' Emotion, that he thought he had been released from so long ago, crept into his voice, despite the fact that the speakers weren't supposed to be able to express it. ' What keeps you going, traitor ?! What do you want ?!'

Just before the life-signal of the Astartes shut down completely in Leximus' sensors, immediately followed by the tech-priest's own blip, Leximus heard the answer, a whispered word that sent shivers down to his very soul :

'More.'

'The Oblivion's Keeper is under our control, Awakened One,' said Koldak through the vox. 'We have just received reports from the packs aboard that they have secured both objectives.'

'Casualties ?' came the reply. Lord Arken was still in the room where the Coven had cast their spells, waiting for his warriors' return while directing the rest of the battle by vox.

'Several, but I have no exact number at the moment. The former Word Bearers report three killed and two wounded, only one of them heavily, and those of the Third Legion …' Koldak hesitated.' ... Well, their reports are less than perfectly clear.'

'I see,' answered Lord Arken. 'Don't let them know you said that, though. They take perfection a little too seriously, even though I cannot understand why, considering what they have become. Something to do with the philosophy of the Prince of Excess, apparently, but that is something you and I both would do well to stay away from.'

'Of course, my Lord.'

'What is the statut of the other groups ?'

Koldak quickly brought up the data demanded by his Lord. The other ships were still fighting – the Blood Champion especially was encountering difficulties, if Koldak's interpretations of the screams transmitted by the creature's packs was reliable. But in the end, all would either submit, or die. The Hand of Ruin was simply too powerful, its crew too experienced, to let them destroy it before the boarders could do their job.

Of course, as with all forms of war, it could still go wrong. If the boarders failed, then the battle would become protracted, and things could turn against the traitor ship, but there was nothing Koldak could do about it apart from listening to the reports from the packs teleported onto the enemy fleet, and pray the True Pantheon for victory.

'The ships are still resisting. It appears they have more troops aboard that the Oblivion's Keeper did.'

'And how is the Hand of Ruin ?'

'We are fine, sir. Our shields are holding what we cannot dodge, and we are still within teleporting range of the seven remaining enemy vessels. Is there any problem on your side of things ?'

'No. Keep up the good work, captain. We will need these ships to be ours soon.'

Koldak hesitated for a moment, then, seeing as the battle didn't need his intervention for another few seconds, asked the question he had been meaning to ask ever since they had emerged into the Parecxis system :

'Sir, if may ask, how do you plan to use these ships ? The Warp Storm is still raging, and even our own Navigators have difficulty driving one ship through it. The few we captured at Mulor still aren't trained to sail the currents of the Sea of Souls according to their methods. Even if we take them, how could we bring them through the Warp ?'

'Come on, Koldak. You of all people should know that battleships are useful for more than mere travel.'

AN :

So, how did you like that ?

This is the first chapter of an entire arc. The Parecxis system is not going to be conquered as easily as Mulor. Expect several chapters filled with more action that usual coming - the next one, as usual, in a week or two, and I think I am really going to stick to these announcements now instead of trying to rush things.

Writing the Emperor's Children, to be honest, is difficult. They are monsters in a way sane people can try to understand, and I had to read the Angel Exterminatus for inspiration. And while it is a very good book, it is still something that can give nightmares.

While I have your attention, I would like to tell you about something I found while surfing on the Web for ideas : the Dornian Heresy. It is, in my opinion, one of the ultimate exemples of fanfiction. It tells the story of an alternate universe where, basically, traitor and loyalist are inversed, with Rogal Dorn cast as the Arch-Traitor instead of Horus. It is very well made, with backgrounds for a lot of Legions and even its own goddamn codex in PDF available. Unfortunately, it isn't completed, as several Legions are lacking a description and the author hasn't been heard of in years.

It made me want to try my hands at something (very) similar : the Roboutian Heresy. While the pitch shouldn't be hard to guess, it wouldn't be a mere copy of the Dornian Heresy, but something entirely new except for the idea of inverting loyalists and traitors. If you are interested, tell me so in your reviews ( though could I post something like that on that site ? I am not sure. I mean, it wouldn't be a story, more something of 'One AU Legion described by chapter, following the model of the Index Astartes').

And with this, I tell you all goodbye. I will see you again (I hope) for the next chapter of the Forsaken Sons' dark deeds.

EDIT : corriged the Hand of Ruin's shipmaster name that I had mispelled.