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The Anchor of Vaul
745.M32
The fleet of the Forsaken Sons exited the Webway and returned into reality far from the Warp routes the ships of Humanity sailed. When last the Nightmare Fleet had haunted the galaxy, the Eldars had been unable to meet it in open combat, and had instead resorted to deception. They had built the Anchor of Vaul in secret, in a place accessible only through a single Webway Gate, and not even told their own about its true purpose. Instead, the other Eldars who fought the Nightmare Fleet had been told that a great weapon was being constructed, one that would wipe out entire Sectors in order to extinguish the threat of the Nightmare Fleet. Entire star systems had been destroyed as 'tests' to sell the deception, entire life-bearing worlds annihilated for that purpose.
When these Eldars had been taken prisoners and brought to the pain-engines of the Nightmare Fleet, their knowledge had been extracted, and the sentient machines had moved to neutralize that threat, inadvertently walking directly into their enemies' trap. The greatest Eldar fleet still in the region had engaged the Nightmare Fleet, holding it in place long enough for the Anchor to activate and trap them all in a dimensional oubliette. The Anchor had then been abandoned, entrusted to automated maintenance mechanisms, while the Eldars continued their headlong descent into hedonism, some of whom eventually becoming the creatures that would be reborn as the Sha'eilat.
Arken knew this, for he had ripped the knowledge from daemons that had taken part in that apocalyptic battle, when their bodies of iron and mutated flesh had been destroyed by the Eldars and their spirits hurled back into the Empyrean in a shameful defeat that had still spared them from the imprisonment that had befallen their comrades. Parsing the truth from their lies had been a challenge, but Arken was nothing if not determined.
And there, in the void, light-years away from the nearest star system, was the Anchor of Vaul. It was vast, bigger than any space-faring construct any of the Forsaken Sons had ever seen – except for those few who had encountered Eldar Craftworlds during the Great Crusade. It was made of a black metal and shaped like a multifaceted diamond. At its point rested a singularity, where time and space were bent by the entire machinery of the Anchor, forever maintaining the dimensional oubliette where the Nightmare Fleet and the ships of the Eldar Empire had been banished to. Not even the Dark Tech auspexes of the Hand of Ruin could make sense of the readings the singularity gave off – several of the servitors on the bridge simply blew up in the attempt.
Beneath the Anchor hung a solitary star, stolen from its rightful place by ancient Eldars and placed here to serve as a power source for the Anchor. Filaments of liquid fire, each weighing trillions of kilograms, rose from its surface and plunged into the Anchor's base, where a great hole led into the mechanisms that turned raw starfire into energy. The star was being slowly murdered to fuel the great engine, though at this rate it would take millions of years before the effects became evident.
Given how long the Eldar Empire had supposedly stood for, this was remarkably short-sighted of its builders, and spoke of either the desperation they had been in or of how they had already begun their descent into decadence by that point.
A great, translucent sphere surrounded the Anchor. Ancient Eldar runes were inscribed on its surface, and the daemonic intelligences of the fleet shuddered in displeasure at the sight, but their masters drove them onward.
The Hand of Ruin sailed at the head of the armada, an alpha predator leading its pack. In his chamber, Arken watched the Anchor of Vaul grow through the window as they approached. The ever-present whispers of the Gods had grown into a chorus of voices since they had left the Webway, and it took a constant effort of will for his mind to remain focused on the material reality around him. One that he knew he wouldn't be able to keep up forever. He was running out of time, in more ways than one, but it would all be worth it when he succeeded here.
The shield was more than a defense against physical attacks, he saw with senses that couldn't be put into words. It was also a ward, designed to keep daemons from the Anchor. It had been powerful, enough so to keep the Anchor safe throughout the millennia since, but it was also old, and called upon the names of gods that had died when Slaanesh had been born.
"Shipmaster Koldak," he called out over the vox.
"Yes, my lord ?"
"Take down this fragile veil, if you would. The techno-sorcery of dead xenos will not keep me from my prize."
"As you command, my lord."
As the Hand of Ruin fired, Arken brought down his claws, infusing the attack with a portion of the awful might that churned within his soul. The lance-beam slammed into the shield, and with a sound that echoed through the Immaterium like a tired sigh, it broke apart and vanished. A series of explosions were reported on the megastructure's surface as the shield generators were overloaded by the backlash, but such was its scale they were barely visible as more than brief pinpricks of light.
The Anchor of Vaul was open to the Forsaken Sons. Of course, they couldn't just fire at it until it broke apart. Arken had considered it during his planning, but the sheer mass of the engine, combined with the unknown materials used in its construction, made such an approach non viable – especially with the Imperials and Eldars on their heels. No, they would have to sabotage the Anchor from within.
There were vast bays opened to the void near the middle of the Anchor, where the crafts of the Eldars had landed to bring the considerable resources and personnel that had gone into building this station. They were immense, each one vast enough to fit an entire city of tens of thousands of souls inside, yet they barely occupied a fraction of the floor of the Anchor on which they were located.
Several gunships were sent as scouts, carrying squads of Forsaken Sons in full armor. They reported that there was gravity inside the Anchor, pointing down to the star and the larger end of the station, as well as a breathable atmosphere, maintained by aeons-old life support systems that had endured through thousands of years with only automated maintenance. Some kind of energy field prevented the atmosphere from venting into the void, but was no obstacle to their transports. No defensive mechanisms had been found so far, though the scouts had only explored the outermost region of the Anchor.
Satisfied with this preliminary inspection, Arken ordered his forces to disembark on the Anchor. The ships drew near the Anchor, and a flow of transports began going back and forth, delivering thousands and thousands of damned souls aboard the ancient station, directed by the remaining Chosen and sub-commanders of the warband. Daemon Engines, Chaos Knights, and other, more esoteric assets were also brought aboard, while the Forsaken Sons explored deeper, searching for defensive positions as well as ways up the megastructure and command centers.
Before long, however, the transmission came from the rest of the fleet : the enemy had arrived.
The battle began the instant the Imperials and Eldars exited the Webway.
The Forsaken Sons had left hundreds of mines behind them, some of them hastily built from plundered explosives, others crafted in the hell-forges of the Wailing Storm. Their detonations brought down the shields of the ships that had been sent in the first wave – Imperial and Eldar vessels both, due to the conditions in the Webway having forced the xenos to seek shelter in the Imperials' Geller envelope.
Before the allies could recover, they came under attack. Having delivered their troops to the Anchor of Vaul, the ships of the Forsaken Sons had prepared an ambush right at the Gate, knowing their enemies had no other way to enter the artificial system. The Hand of Ruin, its holds empty of all but her necessary crew and a bare-bone complement of Astartes – each of whom had sworn an oath to die before they retreated, so consumed with the desire to bleed the Imperium that they cared naught for their survival – descended upon the fleet at a perpendicular plane, seeming to plunge on them from above. At its side were the daemonships and other vessels, all of them unleashing their firepower in a synchronized, devastating volley.
The allied commanders weren't fools, and their fleet had emerged through the Gate with their shields raised at maximum, fully expecting an ambush. Even so, they had known the first ships to pass through were at the most risk, with only seconds to focus their shields in the direction of the foe before they were hit. Between the mines and the first volley, tens of thousands perished in the first moments of the void battle, with several ships being completely destroyed before reinforcements arrived and the allied fleet began to manoeuvre to face the Chaos armada.
On the bridge of the Blade of Terror, Morkoth watched it all unfold on screens made of living crystal and projections that were windows into the nightmarish mind of the daemonship. The Unbound could read the truth of the daemonic display in front of him without difficulty, and he didn't like what it told him. On their own, the Imperial or Eldar fleet would have been defeated easily enough. Together, they formed a force powerful enough to defeat what was present of the scattered armada of the Forsaken Sons. Of course, if the fleet hadn't been dispersed across Azarok, then they would be facing a much greater foe, and the odds would be even worse.
They were throwing everything at the Imperial and Eldar fleets – well, everything except for one. The Eidolon of Regret, aboard which the Lamentation waited for the arrival of the Nightmare Fleet, had been sent far from the Gate and the Anchor. It would've made for a powerful force in the void battle, but the Lamentation couldn't be risked, and bringing it aboard the Anchor would have left it dangerously exposed : given its size, there was no way to bring the machine deeper than the vast landing bays, where it would've been hopelessly vulnerable.
If they were to have any chance of controlling the Nightmare Fleet, they needed the Lamentation, which meant the Eidolon of Regret had to stay safe. At least the forge-barge's three escorts, the nameless 'Dagger' cruisers, had been willing to leave their flagship to participate in the battle.
The kill counts kept increasing, showing an exact tally of how many had died. The Blade of Terror didn't rely on auspexes for those, instead pulling the information straight out of the Warp, where the souls of the dead were sent. Only the Eldar casualty count was an estimate, since their souls were protected inside those spirit-stones, which could sometimes survive even the destruction of the ship around them. The number kept ticking up and up, as more succumbed to fires, wounds, and void exposure.
The arrival of the rest of the fleet through the Gate, including their command ships, prevented the battle from turning into a complete rout. Eldar cruisers and frigates moved among the comparatively slow and clumsy Imperial vessels, finally able to use their full mobility after so long forced to cling to the Imperials' Geller Fields. Wings of fighters were deployed to intercept the Forsaken Sons' torpedoes and missiles, while formations reformed to close the holes that had been opened in them.
The mines and the ambush had already dealt many casualties to the allied forces, yet they were but one of the prongs of the Forsaken Sons' plan.
The third trap the Forsaken Sons had laid for their pursuers rested in the Webway, on the other side of the Gate. At the end of the Path to Nightmares, the allied commanders had realized the likelihood that an ambush was waiting for them on the other side, and ordered that their troop transports – slow, ponderous ships with few weapons – to stay behind while the warships cleared the way. They had left a few escort ships behind to protect the transports from the horrors of the Path to Nightmares, but they had made the mistake of assuming that not even the Forsaken Sons could survive in the Warp-tainted Webway without the protection of a Geller Field.
They were wrong. Directed by a Warpsmith aboard a heavily-modified and warded fighter, a flock of horrors had hidden in the folds of the corrupted Webway, their energy signatures and darkling souls hidden by the madness surrounding them. For several hours, the Warpsmith had endured the ceaseless whispers of immaterial Warp spirits, his gaze fixed on the Gate, waiting for the perfect moment.
Now the signal had been given, and a tide of flying nightmares descended upon the troop transports.
In that flock were four-winged, four-limbed cybernetic horrors with razor-sharp claws and heavy cannons protruding from the shoulders of limbless torsos. They were those of the Unkindness who had survived the battle of Berrenos and taken refuge in the Eidolon of Regret, now unleashed without any restraint whatsoever. They flew far faster than the swarms of Furies and other winged daemons that had hurled themselves at the Imperials during their journey, dodging enemy fire and going straight for the transports, all but ignoring their escorts. Among them was the creature that thought of itself as the Alpha, who had once been an Unbound before being transformed into a Dark Tech cyborg as part of the pact Mahlone had made with the creatures.
The Unkindness made up most of the flock, but they weren't alone. Most fighters of the Forsaken Sons fleet couldn't survive in the Path to Nightmares, but those that could had been left behind to bulk up their numbers. Winged Argentian Daemon Engines flew as well, though none were greater than the leader of the onslaught, whose metal chassis had first been assembled in the hallowed forges of Mars itself.
The creature that had once been Perseus Kilaiz, personal pilot of the Awakened One and his Terminator bodyguards, flew on wings of metal and warp-fire, blatantly defying the laws of physics that asserted that wings were useless in the airless tunnels of the Warp-tainted Webway.
It had been many years since Perseus had become unable to leave the gunship he had piloted for the warband's master, his flesh fusing to the pilot seat. His proximity to the Awakened One had drawn the attention of the Ruinous Powers, and they had rewarded his faithful service to their champion – though, as was often the case, their gifts had been unasked for. Slowly, more and more of Perseus' body and soul had been subsumed in the gunship, which was equally warped by its time in the Wailing Storm. Eventually, Arken had been forced to stop using it as a transport, as Perseus completed his transformation into something that, in another time and place, would come to be called a Helldrake.
Damarion's squad had adopted the Daemon Engine as a pet, feeding it captives and letting it loose during their battles of conquest. The sight of a black and gold dragon flying through the skies, delivering fiery death through its immolating breath, did wonders to break the morale of populations that had regressed to feudal levels. Despite the hideous transformation, something of Perseus remained, for only the Forsaken Sons' Terminator elite could approach the Helldrake safely – not even the hereteks and maintenance servitors were safe from its violent temper.
Perseus passed through the Geller Field of one of the bigger transports, hissing in pain as its touch, but his metal body was proof against the Field's repelling effect. With claws that had once been landing gear, he tore through the metal plating that stood between him and his prey. On the other side of the barrier, the air trembled with the sound of metal tearing apart, until Perseus had made enough of a hole to pass through, forcing his body of metal and hatred across the opening.
Meat-things ran about in all directions, filling the aether with the tantalizing scent of their terror. The inside of the hangar was full of Imperial Guardsmen : their officers had made them ready to depart on a moment's notice so that they could join the final battle against the Forsaken Sons, though few knew anything about what manner of battle it would be.
That preparedness, that determination to be ready to do their Emperor-given duty, would be their doom. Perseus opened his maw and unleashed a torrent of Warp-fire upon them as they shouted and took aim at him, their las-bolts smashing uselessly against his armored body.
Their defiant shouts turned to agonized screams as their flesh was bathed in Warp-fire, their flak armor offering no protection against its ravenous hunger. Perseus moved his neck left and right, filling the hangar with fire, before climbing down the wall and engaging the closest of the tanks that had survived the inferno with his claws. Behind him, more Chaos fighters were pouring through the opening he had made.
Elsewhere, the same scene played as the Unkindness tore the nigh-defenceless transports apart. Some went inside and culled the troops, while others targeted the ships' vital components, condemning thousands to death by suffocation or freezing as life-support systems went down – or were simply obliterated as reactors went critical.
As transport after transport was lost, the survivors began an emergency exit, fleeing out of the Webway and into the void battle outside, their captains determining that their chances of survival were higher with the protection of the rest of the fleet.
Morkoth saw the Imperial transports pass through the Gate at full speed, and knew that the ambush must have unfolded as planned. There were still many of the troop carriers left, and they lacked proper intelligence on the strength their foes had been able to pull from the burning Azarok Sector, but Morkoth had seen the Unkindness at work, and he didn't doubt thousands of souls had been sent screaming to the Dark Gods on the other side of the Gate.
Not that the slaughter was over. The Chaos fighters were following their prey across, visible on the Blade of Terror's screens as a swarm of wriggling black dots. Transport gunships fled from damaged troop carriers, saving as many soldiers as possible, while Space Marines were sent to kill the Dark Tech constructs that had boarded others and fighters were redirected to deal with this new threat. Morkoth felt more than saw the shift in the balance of the void battle, and the opening it provided. So did Koldak, the shipmaster of the Hand of Ruin.
Since the beginning of the void battle, the Hand of Ruin had been targeting the battle-barge at the center of the enemy formation, a massive silver vessel that made the daemonship's infernal consciousness screech in discomfort even worse than the wards around the Anchor had, before they had been brought down. The ship didn't broadcast identifiers, but it clearly belonged to the Grey Knights, those mysterious daemonhunters that had destroyed Jereb's Black Temple on Berrenos and killed almost every Chosen of Arken in the Azarok Sector.
That ship wouldn't go down easily, that much was clear. But there were other priority targets, and across the Forsaken Sons' fleet, efforts were underway to identify them.
Data-savants who had peered into the infinite madness of Chaos scanned the Imperial communications, identifying the ships carrying the enemy commanders. To Morkoth's mild surprise, one of them appeared to be a simple frigate, though a closer inspection of the ship showed additions to the standard Imperial pattern as well as the symbol of the Inquisition. Even as he directed the Blade of Terror through the fight, the Unbound saw the assault rams leave from another of the rebel ships, the Keening Wail, aimed at the frigate Judgement's Will. Gods, the Imperials could be such self-righteous pompous bastards, and that was from someone captaining a daemonship called the Blade of Terror.
Turning his gaze away from the Inquisitorial frigate, Morkoth felt a vicious smile creep on his face as he focused on killing as many enemies as possible.
Once again, the corridors of the Judgment's Will echoed with gunfire as the ship's defenders fought against invaders serving the Ruinous Powers.
This time, however, the intruders had guns of their own, rather than claws, teeth, and unnatural powers. A squad of Forsaken Sons had boarded the frigate, their boarding torpedo having slammed into the ship's side. It had dug through the plating and unleashed its lethal cargo into the upper decks.
Alphon and Terion's squad were running toward the sounds of battle, passing by the mutilated corpses of slain crew members. Their kill-team had been the nearest to the boarding point, but 'nearest' was a relative term in a city-sized ship. They had been running for twenty minutes, and already hundreds had perished to the rampaging Chaos Marines.
"They are moving towards the enginarium," said Terion. Despite the exertion, he didn't sound tired, merely in pain. His wounds were acting up again, and there was only so much he could do to ignore them.
"I know," replied Alphon over the short-range vox-network.
The enginarium was well-defended, of course. The tech-priests who worked inside made damn sure this was the best fortified section of the ship, and Elydeos had increased those protections further when he had taken ownership of the frigate. But these defenses wouldn't keep a determined pack of boarders at bay forever, and if the Forsaken Sons got the enginarium they could destroy the entire ship, or at the very least cripple it and leave it defenceless in the ongoing void battle.
The closer to the enginarium they got, the higher the quality of the corpses they passed. Crew, servitors, and Guardsmen who had been hastily redeployed to the Judgement's Will to replenish its defenders after the casualties taken at Nerel : all of them had been cut through like chaff by the invaders. Some were still alive, thrown aside by the Forsaken Sons and slowly bleeding to death. Alphon's kill-team couldn't afford the time to aid them, and they ran past them even as they weakly begged for assistance.
The sealed gates of the enginarium had already been breached by the time they arrived, burned through with demolition charges whose explosion they had felt several hundred meters away. Beyond the entrance, the enginarium was still full of the deafening noises of the great engines that kept the frigate alive, so loud that the sounds of battle barely could be heard.
The battle-servitors and their tech-priests overseers were still fighting against the intruders, but it was clear they were losing the fight. Knowing that each of the surviving tech-priests was more important to the ongoing survival of the ship than their own, Alphon's kill-team bellowed a belligerent war-cry as they struck, drawing the attention of the renegades on them and away from the tech-priests. The Inquisitor and Heir of Sanguinius charged ahead of the group, with the Stormtroopers providing covering fire.
There were only three of the traitors still standing, with two more laying on the floor dead. Their armor was black and gold, and bore the image of the chained daemonhead upon their shoulder or chest. Unlike loyal Space Marines, who could be difficult to tell apart to the untrained eye, each of the Chaos Marine was an utterly unique blend of mutation and equipment customization.
The Chaos Marines were hideously mutated, the evidence of their corruption on display for all to see as if daring the universe to strike them down for their many sins. They had horns and claws, blasphemous runes that burned with fell power, and helmets warped into terrifying infernal visages. In the moment before battle was joined, Alphon took in some of the weirder details : a tail that ended with an eight-pointed metal star, a plasma pistol with a muzzle shaped like a weeping human face, a helmet with nine glowing red eyes.
Then he was fighting for his life, and there was no time to observe, no time for anything except stabbing, shooting, and dodging. His power armor could protect him from bolt shells, chainswords and power weapons, but Alphon had learned early in his life that just because you could tank an attack head-one, it didn't mean you shouldn't get the hell out of the way whenever you could.
You didn't realize just how fast Astartes moved until you fought them. Even watching them fight wasn't the same : then you didn't put your own reflexes and speed against theirs, knowing full well a single mistake could mean your death. Power armor helped, but it wasn't enough : Space Marines had power armor of their own, after all, and they were just better at killing than any human could ever hope to be.
But there was more to fighting than the baseline abilities of one's flesh, and while this Forsaken Son was a veteran of years of dark conquests, Alphon was no neophyte himself. He read the minute motion of the warrior's armor, reacting to his next moves before he had made them and deflecting or dodging out of the way of every blow.
"You fight well, mortal," said the Forsaken Son after a flurry of exchanges that barely lasted five seconds. The surprise in his voice was evident, and frankly a little insulting.
Alphon didn't answer. What would be the point ? There wasn't any time to gain by engaging the traitor in discussion, and he didn't think the Chaos Marine would be distracted by anything he said. For all his experience in killing heretics, Alphon wasn't particularly well-versed in combat taunts; silence was his best shot at needling the Forsaken Son's pride.
Judging by the annoyed growl of his enemy and his renewed aggression, that was working. Great.
He dodged under a blow from a scimitar covered in a power field that passed close enough to his head it briefly blinded him as it interfered with the optics of his helmet, and plunged his sword into the waist of the Chaos Marine, burying it through the nest of cables and ripping it free in one single motion. You didn't impale a Space Marine, not if you didn't want him to rip you apart before his body registered that it was dead.
Tainted blood poured out of the wound, and the traitor groaned in pain, but didn't otherwise appear hindered by what would have been a crippling blow on a human. Alphon moved out of the way of of a kick, moving backward and – now.
He threw himself to the side, leaving himself entirely exposed to a strike by the Forsaken Son, but also opening the line of fire of the Stormtroopers. The highly-trained warriors didn't miss their cue, and unleashed a concentrated volley from their Hellguns, cutting through the Chaos Marine's armor and incinerating half of his torso. For one horrifying moment, he remained standing, and Alphon thought he was about to die – then he fell, a life that had endured through the Great Crusade, the Horus Heresy, the Scouring and all the centuries since brought to an unceremonious end by weapons wielded by mortals.
There was, Alphon briefly reflected as he hurried back to his feet and to where the last Forsaken Son fought – the second one had been slain by Terion, though the Captain hadn't gone through that duel intact – a certain poetic justice in that.
Names had power in the Warp, and the Dark Gods had a wicked sense of humor. For decades, Koldak had always been called 'Shipmaster', by everyone from the lowliest slave to the Awakened One himself. As was tradition on board Astartes vessels, the mortal commander of the ship didn't bear the title of 'Captain', to avoid confusion with the other officers bearing that rank among the Legionaries. The Forsaken Sons had abandoned the titles they had borne before the Siege of Terra, embracing a more fluid hierarchy with Arken at the top, his various Chosen beneath him, and the pack leaders underneath them. But the title of shipmaster had remained attached to Koldak.
The Ruinous Powers had heard that name, and decided to make it more literal. Following a particularly difficult crossing in the Wailing Storm, Koldak had found that he could no longer leave his command throne on the bridge of the Hand of Ruin. His limbs had been swallowed in his throne, his body permanently fused to his station. Yet despite the horror of his condition, Koldak hadn't been that bothered by it. It didn't stop him from doing his duty, and it came with advantages.
He no longer needed to eat, drink or sleep : the Hand of Ruin itself sustained him. He could feel what happened to the ship as if it were his own flesh, and speak his orders across the entire vessel without needing to ask for a vox-officer's assistance. Such a degree of union between flesh and machine was the dream of the Mechanicum, and the hereteks of the warband fought for the right to attend to him and the warband's flagship.
Of course, a human mind couldn't possibly manage something the size of the Hand of Ruin alone, so he still needed the help of his bridge crew, but all in all, he was rather satisfied with his condition. It could have been much, much worse after all : at least he had retained all of his intellectual faculties, something that was never guaranteed when it came to the gifts of the Gods.
So it was that Shipmaster Koldak saw the ongoing battle through the auspexes of the Hand of Ruin as well as through the occulus with his own mortal eyes. He had a hundred windows into the fight, and each one showed him only violence. He had thrown the Hand of Ruin in the middle of the foe like a spear, and they had inflicted great casualties to the unnatural alliance they faced, but it wasn't enough. He had been given a task by the Awakened One, before the Lord of the Forsaken Sons had departed to join his forces aboard the antediluvian Eldar construct, and he would fulfill it.
There, in the middle of the enemy fleet. The Fire of Dawn. He recognized it from Arken's descriptions, though it could hardly be mistaken for any other ship. Powerful technologies surrounded it, masking it from all but the most heretical of auspexes, but the Hand of Ruin was old, and had seen through more elaborate deceits in its time. Koldak felt that these veils weren't meant to hide the battle-barge from its foes, however, but its own allies. For some reason, the Grey Knights were obsessed with secrecy, and certainly the movements of the Imperial ships made more sense if they didn't know of this powerful ally's presence.
The Hand of Ruin despised the Fire of Dawn like nothing else. Koldak could feel the ship's fury and disgust, curdled into white-hot hatred. Like Koldak, the Hand of Ruin had been reshaped by the Warp, altered to suit the temper of its unsleeping master, to reflect the dark passions and desires of the Awakened One. Aboard the Fire of Dawn was everything Arken and his warband fought against, everything about the Imperium they despised and had sworn to bring down.
Every weapon along the Hand of Ruin's eleven-kilometers length fired, again and again, whether automated or reloaded by slave crews whipped into action by black-masked overseers. The battleship plunged deeper and deeper into the enemy formation, leaving a trail of broken and burning wrecks in its wake, but taking wounds of its own in return as the Imperial and Eldar ships recognized it as the flagship of the warband and sought to destroy it.
Eventually, the shields failed, but the Hand of Ruin continued on its path. It was too massive to be brought low so easily. Koldak forced the engines to burn hotter, propelling the Hand of Ruin toward its prey. The Fire of Dawn was mighty, but it was still only a battle-barge. The Hand of Ruin could kill it, even if Koldak had to ram it -
There was a flash of burning light that blinded Koldak's mortal eyes, and Space Marine Terminators in silver armor manifested out of the aether, immediately setting to work killing everyone on the bridge. They moved with merciless efficiency, unhindered by doubt or mercy. The Forsaken Sons guarding the bridge tried to stop them, only to be cut down in turn, their centuries-long crusade against the Imperium coming to an unceremonious end at the hand of silver-clad killers.
Koldak roared his defiance and his hatred at them. Responding to his fury, the armrests of his throne grew into heavy machine guns and opened fire, letting loose volleys of Warp-infused shells that tore one of the boarders to shreds before he could react. The others responded quickly, focusing the fire of their combi-bolters on the shipmaster. Within seconds, all that was left of Koldak was a pile of charred meat and sparkling cables.
Killing a ship's commanding officer was always a crippling blow, but in the Hand of Ruin's case it was even worse due to Koldak's unholy union with the vessel. With Koldak's death and the devastation of the bridge, the twisted machine-spirit of the flagship lost the equivalent of its frontal lobe, the part of its composite mind that had handled the coordination of its many functions.
The Grey Knights had cut off the head of the Hand of Ruin. Without leadership, the great void-ship was little more than a floating mass of metal and mutated flesh. Repair teams of hereteks and servitors ran without knowing how to prior ize their work, while engines overheated and ammunition depots detonated. Things that had dwelled in the lower holds of the ship for centuries rose from their territories in feeding frenzies, and the last moments of crew whose ancestors had known only the insides of the ship for generations were filled with terror and pain.
Seeing its weakness, the allied fleet redoubled its onslaught, slamming lance after lance and broadside after broadside into the Hand of Ruin – until, at last, it was too much. To the very end, the malign intelligence of the ship continued to lash out, trying to take its prey down with it, but it couldn't. The Fire of Dawn suffered many injuries, its shields falling under the strain of the final bombardment and its hull pockmarked with impacts, but it endured, even as the Hand of Ruin finally died.
Morkoth cursed as he saw the flagship of the Forsaken Sons come apart. His soul had long grown hard and cold, but even he felt a twinge of … something, he wasn't sure what, at the sight. The Hand of Ruin had been the symbol of the warband for so long : it was where Morkoth had been remade into an Unbound, where he had received command of the Blade of Terror, where he had become someone who actually mattered rather than just another orphaned child who was only prey on a world of monsters.
Now was not the time for sentiment, however. With the destruction of the Hand of Ruin, this battle had just gone from barely winnable to desperate.
"Run," he hissed, speaking both to the slaves bound to their stations and to the ship itself. "Run ! Get us away from here. The void battle is lost. We can do nothing more here but die."
For once, the Blade of Terror didn't fight him as he ordered the retreat. The daemonship was afraid, truly afraid, scared by the sight of its greater sibling's corpse. It had seen many ships die before, of course, but none of the size of the Hand of Ruin. It felt like a pack animal who had just watched its alpha torn to pieces by the jaws of inferior predators, and was now fleeing to avoid sharing the same fate.
Morkoth sensed its desire to escape the system entirely. It was tempting, but pointless. This star was far from all Warp routes, and they had no Navigator or Sorcerer onboard to guide them – the bestial intellect of the Blade of Terror might be sufficient to sail existing paths so long as its master knew where they were going, but it would only drown them in the Sea of Souls if they tried to leave from here without a clear heading. Besides, the argument Mahlone had made at Berrenos was still valid : if Morkoth fled and Arken won, the rage of the Awakened One would find him no matter where he ran. And though it had cost them greatly, the void engagement had still wounded the foe, bleeding them of the troops they would need to stop the Forsaken Sons from achieving their goals.
The void battle may be over, but the greater fight for the Anchor of Vaul and the Azarok Sector was yet to be decided.
It would be wrong to say that the Anchor of Vaul had a mind, for its creators knew better than anyone the perils of gifting sentience to machines. But it was infused with the purpose for which they had built it, with their determination which tasted just a little like despair. Furthermore, it was an engine of incredible complexity, built to last until the star upon which it fed died : there was no way the ancient smiths could have crafted it without making it awake, if only slightly.
This awareness had been shackled, however, bound within restraints lain down within its original programming and which it could never defy. It sought only to fulfill its purpose : to keep the gates closed, and the horrors trapped on the other side.
This purpose was now in peril.
Even through the barriers of bent space-time, the horrors could still speak. They were timeless and eternal, false-minds of Aetheric energies wrought into bodies of iron and flesh, and the oubliette didn't fully restrain them. They spoke in languages that echoed beyond eternity, and though their words couldn't affect their jailer, others could hear them, and listen.
Those who had listened were here now. They had broken the walls that its makers had erected around it and walked inside it, seeking to unmake the Anchor's purpose. It could not allow this to happen, anymore than a man could will their brain to stop functioning, or their heart to cease beating. It moved its walls to obstruct the path of the intruders; it opened its veins to drown them in burning plasma; it turned the automata tasked with maintenance to cut open their metal shells and soft insides. Yet still, they pressed on.
It must stop them. And it would. It couldn't conceive of any other outcome.
Its purpose wouldn't allow anything else.
AN : Third chapter in three weeks. Hopefully the quality doesn't go down too much with the increased speed.
As usual, thanks for your support, and please tell me what you thought of the chapter as well as any questions you might have.
Zahariel out.