Gaius Tibon looked around his wounded lying body and saw dead tanks and their crew, smeared into the rockcrete and once-glistening pearl pillars. Beside him, his Squad Sergeant was sprawled out, a large portion of his head torn apart by a well-placed bolt shell. The stepping sounds of ceramite boots grew louder and louder, until one collided with his helm, sending him from his belly to his back, still thrown onto the floor. He was a soldier of the Ultramarines' 7th Great Company, under the command of Great Lieutenant Maximon Calgus.

His boltgun was beside him, but his arms stored no power and his twin hearts struggled to beat. His lungs were punctured, each breath one of his last. He tried to push himself up, to stand for the Lord Sicarius, but he was pushed back to the rockcrete and strewn ceramite of broken power armor by his foe's goliath leg. He was colored in the pattern of the Nova Legion, once trusted battle-brothers heralded as one of the sorely missed among the halls of Holy Macragge, now fought against in a war of survival. It was a tragedy, that if peace could be brokered they could reclaim the galaxy together.

"How does it feel, traitor?" the Nova Legionnaire asked. "To desecrate the ideals of our Primogenitor and live in the squalor of your actions?" Gaius looked into the sky and saw Nova Legion interceptors fly overhead, with their reinforcements raining from the sky in drop pods. He heard cheering, and the chants of their damned Legion. The rolling of tank treads and the marching of guardsmen platoons echoed through the canyons of steel and industry.

Through his near-broken helm Gaius stared the Legionnaire in the face as his fingers found the edge of a chainsword hilt. "Like victory," he replied simply, driving the chainsword into his brother's stomach, between the metal plates which would've saved his life. He revved its motors, and the adamantium teeth at at his intestines, ripping them out in a violent fashion as a fountain of blood and bile flowed from the corpse onto Gaius' scarred and half-ruined blue power armor. With a shout of anger and a scream of pain mixed in a single terrible two seconds, the other Astartes raised their bolters and fired, turning Gaius into yet another corpse, but not before he drove his chain weapon upwards, tearing apart the Nova Legionnaire's ribcage, lungs and hearts. The Legionnaire was dead, and Gaius died euphoric.

They had survived, for so long. A little colony, glimmering on the edge of nothingness. The greenskins were bogeymen now, and they thought that the God-Emperor ascended into heaven after his earthly duties were done, slaying the Four Devils and all their evils. They had reached so many heights, and even this one planet had amassed a history and a list of successes. They had four ships in orbit of their world, a Lunar Cruiser and three escort ships. They thought with their PDF and their small fleet that no horrors from the stilled galaxy would come for them. Oh no, the God-Emperor watched them, as he always had and always will.

Then came the great ship. It was far larger than even their entire fleet combined, and it had unleashed unholy fire on them. In but a single minute, their hopes of survival was crushed as the wreckage of two hundred years' work came crashing down into the planet below. After the catastrophic sea of dust and ash flooded the world, then came the void-devils. Dropships settled onto the world, and outstepped mechanical horrors and benign, inhuman terrors weaved of human flesh and metal. Their leaders, terrible messes of mechandentrites and the machine gone too far. Their mere presence corrupted the voxes of PDF soldiers and civilian vox-boxes. Interrupting the foreboding emergency broadcasts was a mockery of Low Gothic, ran through a dozen synthetic vocalizers. [LET GO OF YOUR UNWIEDLY FLESH, SHED YOUR EMOTIONS AND BONES AND JOIN US IN THE HEAVEN OF SYNETHIC IMMORTALITY.]

For ten days this hell descended upon the human colony. By the time the devils of metal and mechanization left, there were few humans left, a scattered dozen thousand out of the wreckage of ten million. Yet those left alive to fight, rebuild and build their numbers back up were luckier than those taken. For grueling months they would wait in their cells, kept alive by tubes of pure white paste and just enough water to keep their hearts beating and lungs moving. Measured to be so, like an emotionless machine planning the bare minimum diet for a human creature. They would wait their turn as bipedal machines walked by their cells, taking steps underneath their dirty and worn white cloaks, with an odd texture about them.

For antagonizing hours, days and weeks they wondered what xenos monsters they faced. How to escape their draconian cells. But no answers came. The people in the cells started as citizens, workers, administrators, soldiers. Now, by the turn of the second month, all were merely human shells. And then that was when they were taken from their cold grey boxes and dragged without resistance through the bleak hallways. Vague religious murals and sigils were stamped onto the industrial walls and were bumps against their feet and knees as they were dragged across grated flooring, their legs no longer wanting to walk. Such depictions of faith to the machine rekindled one man's faith.

"God-Emperor..." he rasped. "Protect me..." but the mechanized drones ignored their cries. Either they were too machine to care, or they had heard it so many times before. When the inmate had reached his destination, his looked in awe and horror at their surroundings. The room was great and large, the size of a large village. A swath of land was layers of skin growing white hair, there was a massive plasmatic generator with work servitors tied to the walls of it, the edges of their flesh burning and crisping with the heat, the heatsinks streamlined to accommodate steel but no flesh. Yet the true terror was that of the large machinery directly ahead. It seemed to be a sort of house, with a clear entryway, but everything beside it looked morbid and gothic, both slathered with the words of holy men and over-mechanized, like a shrine more than a piece of technology.

If one looked far enough, they could see repetitions of the place, exact replicas in a massive grid of ritualistic engineering. He did, and shuttered. The occasional scream echoed throughout the grid-structure, and the ever-present hum of industry whirred in the background. Suddenly, a being appeared from the shrine-machine, clad in the same odd white cloak as the guards. "[HUMAN]," it vocalized, none of its form truly human. It was a dark orgy of augmentations and cybernetic limbs, like a haphazard collage of robotic arms and claws. Yet it had a face, made from glass and steel. Half looked aesthetically female, and the other was skull and augmented eye. A halo of inert steel and small half-circle lights decorated its cloaked head. "[WELCOME TO FORGE WORLD METALICA. WELCOME TO HEAVEN.]"

The guards pushed him forward, their guns to his back. He resisted, of course, as another scream ripped through the world. But he failed. Into the chamber he went, and the machines went to work. Unit 0759-003-4850-X stepped out of the Biomechanization Chamber in Gridpoint 21. The unit turned its head without emote or shiver, and scanned its surroundings. It was once something else. It was once weak flesh. It was once human. Yet it was now immortal. It was now an angel in heaven. It thanked its god, the Machine God, and the Omnissiah, the Fabricator-General, for such blessings. Clad in its newly given cloak and armed with galvanic rifle, the unit left to report to its designated marshal for the next planet raid.