Marius Gage stood on the bridge of the Macragge's Honour as madness rolled back.

The ship's sensors clicked frantically as they began to detect comprehensible information. The viewports began to open as looking through them became a reasonable course of action. The Gellar fields became intangibly weaker as the outside clicked against them less and less.

And the Macragge's Honour, along with the rest of the embassy of Ultramar to the Outer Sphere, descended from the roil of the Warp into the realspace of the Osinnden System.

That system was a fairly standard set of worlds in the galactic west of the Outer Sphere. Osinnden II, a Hive World, was the only inhabited planet, though there were agricultural settlements on the moons of the Osinnden III gas giant. Osinnden I was a charred rock; Osinnden IV and V were iceballs in the outer reaches of the system. Osinnden II was mostly notable for being the second-most-populous planet of the Sphere; beyond that, it wasn't particularly special.

"Regent," Ximeodon pointed out, "the Iron Hands fleet has been detected."

Gage checked the sensor arrays; indeed, the Tenth Legion ships were in orbit around the Hive World. "Make full speed for Osinnden II," he announced. "Check theoreticals a final time. Vestates, send my congratulations to the Navigator for managing to track the Iron Hands- I'm given to understand this sort of task is quite difficult."

Vestates ran off. Gage, for his part, ran through the plan of battle one final time. It was relatively simple - the earlier engagement had left the Ultramarines with the firepower advantage, so it would suffice to corral the Iron Hands from escaping again (which the heading he was on would already do, stopping the Tenth Legion fleet from reaching either of the three jump points), then methodically eliminate their ships. Boarders were a concern, but there were as many Ultramarines under Gage's command as there were Iron Hands under Sorpot's.

The Ultramarines held the advantage, and they would eliminate the Iron Hands - no matter how much Gage hated to do so.

The Thirteenth Legion's ships lazily swarmed towards the shining dot of Osinnden II hanging in the void. The enemy fleet did not attempt to make a break for the jump point; it remained hanging around the Hive world, in orbit, waiting.

"What are they doing?" Tactical Sergeant Arsetheus inquired.

"I'd guess preparing for us," Ximeodon offered.

Gage plugged in the details of the inquiry into the sensors. A moment later, the answer came out.

"We're too far away to see clearly," the First Chapter Master offered, "but they appear to be active, and in geostationary orbit."

The Ultramarines glided ever-closer to the green and black sphere of Osinnden II like great eagles, collected but hungry. They were approaching the Iron Hands ships from two sides - one fleet on the straight line to the system's primary jump point, the other more or less blocking the escape route to the other two. The Iron Hands could, in principle, try evasive maneuvers; but Gage was good at countering evasive maneuvers.

"Humph," Taplon said, having taken Gage's place watching the sensors. "All of the Iron Hands are in geostationary orbit around Osinnden II, but above various Hives."

"Observing?" Ximeodon asked.

Taplon typed a few more commands into the sensor, and then the confusion in his expression turned to sadness, while the sadness turned to anger.

"No," Taplon stated after muttering a few curses under his breath. "Not observing. Bombing."

The image came up on the giant screen, filled with orange pain. A Hive City was crumpling under the methodical bombardment of the Iron Hands, titanic towers falling towards the distant ground. Its void-shields were by now completely gone, and though the Ultramarines were much too distant to see the individual people, the shuttles doing their best to dodge the falling debris made clear what the primary thought on the mind of this once-great Hive was.

"This is happening all over the planet," Taplon said.

Gage clenched his fists. He tried to let the anger out for a moment, but then concluded that it was unnecessary to do so; the fury would only lead him to fight more determinedly. He had wondered how to fight other Astartes. Well, this was the answer.

This, Gage knew, was the way of the Imperium now. The Iron Hands, his cousins, had exterminated an entire world, killed hundreds of billions of civilians. No, not his cousins - not anymore.

His enemies.

Sorpot's intentionally pixelated face appeared on a view screen, even as news of the massacre began to permeate the Ultramarines' fleet.

"This is what will happen to every one of your rebellious worlds," he taunted, though his expression was far from childish. "Death from the stars. No warning, no mercy. We will exterminate you!"

"No," Gage answered, hailing the Iron Hands fleet. "Ultramar will stand. And to seal Osinnden II's destruction, you sacrificed yourselves. Think on whether this was a worthy cause. Think about that now, for in twenty minutes you will be dead!"

Gage clenched his fists again, even as Sorpot cut the feed.

"Kill them now," the First Chapter Master ordered, on the verge of tears. "Kill them all."

He did not regret the need for the decision, because the accursed Iron Hands didn't deserve it. As the Ultramarines opened fire, Marius Gage directed them into more and more intricate patterns. There were slight deviations from the theoretical, but as black-painted fighters and frigates exploded, the Iron Hands recognized they were doomed. They fired back, mechanically, in great volleys of bleak light; they continued bombarding the Hive Cities on the surface; but through the maelstrom of void combat, Gage could trace the patterns that signaled the Iron Hands were behind.

The Ultramarine ships fired at maximum. A couple of fighters rammed into much larger Tenth Legion vessels, dragging them down into oblivion in directionless flame. The Iron Hand flagship headed towards the Macragge's Honour, and Gage knew the Ninth Company of the Thirteenth Legion could take it apart if it so desired; but he did not give the order to concentrate fire, because it would be completely contrary to his goal.

"Let them board," Marius Gage commanded. "I want to see them die."

Sorpot's vessel continued on its trajectory towards the Macragge's Honour, spinning like a torpedo as it hurtled toward its final destination. Even as it did so, it fired down, electronically switching guns every second to ensure that it caused the maximum destruction, to ensure that it entrenched its evil, to carve - as much as possible - the message that the Iron Hands within it were no longer anyone linked to Gage.

They were no longer even human. They were machines; dark machines. A legion of swords aimed at mankind's heart, at Ultramar's heart. It was Gage's duty, the Ultramarines' duty, to turn them aside.

"Remember!" Gage voxed. "This is what the Imperium is now! This is what the Iron Hands are now! They are no longer our cousins, brothers. They are malice in Astarte form. But they can still be killed - so do the favor to the great people they once were, and end these daemons of the Materium!" He was none too fond of the term, in its violation of the Imperial Truth, but it was fitting here.

Sorpot's ship was on the verge of impacting Gage's when the Regent gave the command to abruptly swerve. Sorpot had been expecting the maneuver, though - which, in turn, Gage had counted on - and shot already prepared boarding torpedoes towards the nearby surface of the Macragge's Honour.

"Boarders!" Ximeodon screamed through the vox, even though Gage already knew.

"About eighty Iron Hands," Gage commented. "Repel; theoretical null-zeta."

Null-zeta called for the Ultramarines to spread out and eliminate a foe of comparable strength to them gradually, with heavy use of the ship's defenses. It also called for the Astartes' leader to head the finishing blow, and it was almost as much for that as for its effectiveness that the Regent of Ultramar chose it.

Of course, that effectivenes s- being the plan which had seemed most promising against Astartes in the theoreticals - had played the leading role in Gage's choice. He did, after all, have to restrain himself from excessive battle-lust; that led to sloppiness. He did a few quick breathing exercises to calm his choler, recognizing that the Iron Hands' inhumanity only made it more vital for him to preserve his rationality. He did not want to become anything like these slaughterers.

Still, sometimes death was necessary, or even desirable. Marius Gage took out his weapons.

"What is the situation?" he asked Ximeodon.

The bodyguard looked at the ship's sensors for a moment, after which his expression became slightly worried. "Regent," he said, "they're approaching the bridge. Still… fifty-one Iron Hands remaining, of eighty-eight, and twenty Ultramarines lost in skirmishes."

"We will remember them," Gage said. He wondered for a moment whether his eagerness to fight personally had doomed them, but if Sorpot's flagship had been eliminated, the rest of the battle would have been much more difficult for the Ultramarines. As it was, the Tenth Legion's fleet was virtually destroyed. The best the Iron Hands could now do was hurt the Ultramarines dearly.

And they were doing that, because what did a sword care who it killed? What did a sword know of surrender? Of course, the Ultramarines would never accept it, not now. And the Iron Hands had once been great…

An explosion at the door put Gage out of his thoughts and onto his stomach. Sorpot of the Iron Hands strode in, a giant in black and silver plate. He wielded a titanic war hammer, even now thundering with the urge for devastation. His face was scarred, but the Iron Father had made decorations of the wounds, littering his face with silver lines.

It was pretentious.

With a roar, Vestates threw himself at the Iron Father, his rage even greater than Gage's own. Feeling the choler rising in him once more, the Regent breathed heavily once more, getting up and raising his weapon.

Some particularly enthusiastic Iron Hands had rushed ahead of the duel, and Gage bisected one of them as he hurtled past. Another swung at him, but Gage dodged before impaling the thing that had once been a Space Marine. He followed it up by deflecting a strike from yet another attacker. His powersword slid past, cutting into the enemy's power armor even as his bolter screamed the death, or at least wounding, of yet another in the distance.

Turning, he saw Sorpot, having outplayed Vestates, crushing the Ultramarine's head with his titanic hammer. With a cry of piercing loss, Gage launched his body towards the Iron Father, turning the hammer aside from another of his brothers' cerebrums.

"So you are the chief traitor!" Sorpot boomed, even as Ultramarine reinforcements rushed into the bridge. "Know this before you die: my hatred for you was well and true."

"My hatred for you," Gage said in response, even as a blow from the Iron Father's hammer shattered his left wrist, "is twisted by your evil!"

Sorpot cackled as pain suppressors flooded the hand. Gage could tell it would reknit itself together; still, he had to end this battle quickly. His sword rang against Sorpot's hammer once, twice, every time forcing the combat further and further right. As Sorpot's sonic hammer punched a hole through the floor, Gage brought up his left hand and, struggling to keep it together, fired.

The Iron Father's head exploded in a final scream. It was not one of pain, but of triumph, as his hammer shattered Gage's blade; but he was too dead to enjoy that victory for long.

Around him, the story was repeating itself. Iron Hands lay dead across the bridge. The remaining forces of the Tenth Legion continued to advance, and Gage allowed himself to be shoved to the back of the Ultramarines. He executed a wounded Iron Hand therein, before allowing an Apothecary to come to him.

As his wrist was worked on, Gage considered the battle's results. A few Ultramarines had died, Vestates among them, but overall casualties were less than he had expected. Perhaps the mood of utter annihilation, the pure hate for the Iron Hands, had led to a greater disregard for one's own life and a greater density of attacks. Perhaps that was the key to fighting Astartes - there was no way to defend oneself? Or perhaps, as for Gage, the solution had simply been the loss of any mercy or regret.

"That was risky," Taplon said as he walked up to his Chapter Master. "If you had hesitated…."

"I didn't," Gage said. "I couldn't have. Not against the Imperium, especially these cursed monsters."

Taplon nodded. He was quite intelligent - perhaps he would become a Champion one day. A Tetrarch, even. "You could have hesitated, but not then. The heat of battle rarely takes you, Regent, and you fight as if it were a theoretical; not here."

"Indeed," Gage said. "This was as far from a theoretical as one could get."

"Anything else?" Taplon asked as he prepared to walk back to his station, combat being over.

"Finish off their fleet and start the rescue mission," Gage said. "Oh, and have a new sword made."