Chapter 21
Lost and the Damned
"Learn about art, Captain. When you understand a species' art, you understand that species"
Grand Admiral Thrawn
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In the silence of space a massive fleet of over five thousand nightmarish warships floated lifelessly through space, with momentary flashes the many thousands of warships suddenly came to life, their running lights coming on in unison, one by one the ships righted themselves and got into formation by their squadrons.
Onboard the flagship, a Despoiler-class Battleship called the Eternal Agony; Daemon Prince Anubis stumbled back to his feet and surveyed the ruins of his bridge with warped eyes. Several of the consoles were sparking wrecks, set on fire, the cultists and traitor serfs who were stationed on them nothing more than unrecognisable charred husks, along the circumference of the dank bridge cultists, mutants and chaos marines were also picking themselves up from the deck.
"Where are we!!?" Anubis bellowed angrily, he picked up his massive, long staffed power axe and swung it towards the nearest unlucky cultist, connecting with his abdomen and slicing him in two.
At once the remaining traitor serfs rushed to the stations that weren't burning and started hitting runes and scanning data screens for any hints to their location, eventually one of the serfs turned to the daemon prince, his pale, nightmarish features contorted in fear.
"The sensors detect that we are not at our last recorded position my lord" he managed "The eye of terror has vanished, according to the charts we could be half way across the galaxy but several of the stars are out of alignment"
"So we could be in another galaxy for all you know" Anubis hissed, silencing the much smaller serf with a glare before stalking to his throne "Long range scans of the entire area, check for any life-signs, perhaps we can gain some information about this place"
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At the very edge of the Ssi-ruuk star cluster a group of ten egg-shaped Shree-class Battlecruisers of the Ssi-ruuvi Imperium soared through space on a routine patrol.
The Imperium was going through rough times, their second attempt to invade the bigger galaxy through the human world of Bakura had ended in failure again, the repercussions this time were far worse than before, their leader, the Keeramak was slain in that failed invasion, their enslaved brother race, the P'w'eck revolted leaving the entire Imperium much weaker and finally an invasion by the Yuuzhan Vong that destroyed their outer worlds and half of their war-fleet.
On the bridge of the lead 900m long warship Admiral Shirwunn scanned the area of space ahead of his fleet, his reptilian eyes darting back and forth for any sign of an enemy warship. He was a Ssi-ruuk, a 2m tall reptilian whose form was similar to the ancient raptors, he was of the warrior caste, the red-scales that covered his head, back and tail were the sign of his lineage.
"Admiral we have several thousand signals from the border" one of his warriors said from the scanning console "About two million kilometres from our location"
"Order the fleet to close in on that position" Shirwunn ordered, his mind sifting through the possibilities of what this mass of signals could be "Long range scanners, arm the weapon systems, send a message to the conclave. If this is another invasion we may need the entire fleet!"
It wasn't long before the source of the signals came into view on the long range screens and upon seeing them the Admiral instinctively emitted several piercing throat calls, warships, thousands of them in nightmarish designs he had never seen before.
He ordered his fleet to stay where they were until they got word back from their capital-world of Lwhekk, it wasn't long before they got a reply: Contact unknowns, if they prove hostile disengage and wait for reinforcements at Keerama.
"Take us in" the Admiral ordered as he sat down on his command chair "Open all channels, broadcast who we are and demand why they are in our space!"
At once the ten battlecruiserslurched forward towards the mass of ships that was arrayed before them, every communications channel open and broadcasting the same message over and over again. A few moments after the first message finished transmitting a response came through all of the channels, the voice rasping and vicious like an ancient, murderous ghost.
"We are the Black Legion of the forces of Chaos, and we are your doom!!!" the message in turn was repeated over and over again, echoing like a hundred ghostly voices were repeating it in unison sending a chill down the admirals spine. Several vessels broke away from the mass of ships and moved towards their location, there were ten of them, ranging in size from eight 1km long escort ships and two 5km long behemoths.
"Sir they are within weapons range!"
"Fire a concentrated volley on the nearest escort ship and sound a withdrawal!" the Ssi-ruuk admiral ordered, immediately the ten Battlecruisers opened fire on the approaching ships with their own version of turbolaser batteries, long lances of silver light flew through space and smashed into the lead escort, the combined firepower searing through the surprisingly thick hull plating and blasting it apart, in return the enemy vessels opened fire with long, thick lances of reddish light, the Admiral guessed that their range was half of the turbolasers but their ships were gaining fast.
"Jump to hyperspace now!!!" Shirwunn ordered, the lead behemoth was in range and fired with all its frontal weapons, the beams hit one of his ships head on and vaporised it, sending fire and debris flying in every possible direction, as the surviving vessels jumped to hyperspace the Admiral looked on in disbelief, a Shree Battlecruiser, one of the most powerful warships of the Ssi-ruuk war machine was destroyed in a single volley.
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Within the dank bridge of the Eternal Agony the Daemon Prince laughed maniacally showing his teeth, filed sharp and the colour of crimson. He swivelled his horned head towards the two Chaos sorcerers standing beside him, their spiked armour the dark colours of the black legion with black scrolls, blood red runes inscribed on the paper that hung from their suits, in their armoured hands they held ancient staff's imbued with the powers of the undivided dark gods.
"Where are they going?" he asked.
The sorcerers tapped their staff's against the steel decking of the bridge and began to mumble ancient, dark incantations to the chaos gods. Their voice steadily rising in tone, echoing through the bridge like a hundred ghostly beings were speaking at once, as suddenly as the voices started they stopped and the sorcerers turned to the prince, small specks of red light shining through the black eye visors of their helmets.
Suddenly the sorcerer to the left started to convulse, dropping his weapon he fell to his knees, his breathing coming up in ragged breaths and strangled cries, he fumbled at his helmet and pulled it off, blood trickling from his eyes and the corners of his mouth. The daemon prince rose from his throne and in a quick motion gripped a brown, clawed fist around the sorcerer's scrawny neck.
"You weak minded fool" Anubis said, his voice barely a whisper "What is the matter with you?"
"The warp" the sorcerer replied, his voice a panicked mumble "Its pure, it's pure!"
With a roar of anger Anubis backhanded the sorcerer sending him flying across the bridge and smashing into the black bulkhead at the other side with a bone shattering thud, as his lifeless form slumped to the already blood covered decking a pair of chaos daemons, their silhouettes barely visible in the darkness pulled the limp form into the shadows.
With a snarl of contempt Anubis turned to the second sorcerer who stood beside him, unflinching and apparently uncaring at his comrades demise, the higher daemons eyes came alive with barely contained warp fire as he asked the question again "Where are they going!?"
"They retreat to a world known to their tongue as Keerama" he said, his voice amplified by the helmets voice amplifier.
"Gather the fleet" Anubis said as he sat back on his skull throne, his clawed hands tapping off the arms in a controlled rhythm "Every ship prepare for warp jump to this Keerama, I assume that the sorcerers will guide us to the location?"
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Admiral Kermaac stood looking out of the view screen of his Shree-class Battlecruiser, the Blood of Lwhekk at the recently constructed orbital defences around the world of Keerama, a central planet within the Ssi-ruuvi Imperium. Dozens of large 500m long weapon stations, shaped like platforms and armed with six laser cannons surrounding a larger duelled Ssi-ruuk turbolaser battery surrounded the planet with hundreds of small picket ships, artillery frigates and light cruisers.
The Ssi-ruuk admiral's eyes narrowed at the sight, these defences were what finally stopped the small Yuuzhan Vong armada that invaded their space, his battle group didn't stand a chance against them head on so instead they executed hit and run raids as they tore through the empires outer planets, weakening them for the battle over Keerama where the Yuuzhan Vong where finally repelled. Now that the world's defences had been bolstered he was confident that they could hold against anything that this galaxy could throw at it.
"Sir we have an emergency hyperspace exit" one of his warriors said, taking the admiral's concentration away from the view "Its admiral Shirwunn's taskforce!"
He glared out away from the defence line at a small group of nine warships that jumped out of hyperspace and raced towards the planet an maximum impulse speed, the communications console came to life with the younger admirals voice "Prepare for battle, we have several thousand hostile vessels-"
The admiral's voice was swallowed up in static and was replaced by a ghostly whisper "We are the black legion of the forces of chaos, and we are your doom!"
A few moments later the space behind Shirwunn's force seemed to be torn open and through the multicoloured rips came thousands of warships that dwarfed the scouting squadrons ships, these thousands of vessels formed up into a wall of steel with the smaller ships taking up the vanguard, followed by larger cruisers and finally much larger battlecruisers and battleships taking up the rearguard. In unison they lurched forward, the escort ships firing long lances of thick, orange energy beams at the retreating vessels of Shirwunn's fleet and turned them all to blooms of red fire.
"All ships and platforms fire at will!!!"
As one the orbital defences came alive with long ranged weapons fire, the long silver beams streaked across space and collided with the front line of escort vessels tearing a few dozen of them apart through concentrated barrages. But once the strange nightmarish vessels were within range with their own weapons everything changed, long orange lances of pure power streaked back across the void and connected with the battle line tearing weapon platform and warship alike to burning pieces.
Ssi-ruuk drone fighters were annihilated before they could launch from their hangers, warships were turned into twisted, burning wrecks and what lance beams that passed through the defences and hit the planet turned hundreds of kilometres of forest into barren, charred craters.
From the hangers of the chaos warships came thousands of doomfire and switdeath fighters that flew across the rapidly shrinking void and engaged the few 2m long pyramid shaped Swarm starfighters that managed to launch before the deadly barrage.
These drones were products of the Ssi-ruuk's entechment technology, humanoids were captured, their life energies sucked from their bodies and transferred to fuel their technologies, becoming the minds of warships, starfighters, cities and weapon platforms among many other things. They were dispatched quickly, their life energies, which had lost the will to live long ago being no match for the chaos fighters.
As the first wave of chaos ships flew into the debris field that was once the planetary defence forces they destroyed the last few surviving warships including a Shree battlecruiser that stood its ground, firing continuously until the very end.
From the bridge of the Eternal Agony the daemon prince watched as the planet got bigger on his main view-screen, he smiled as he sensed a powerfully dark presence appear from the shadows of the dank command deck.
"Lord Fungan" Anubis said without turning "Gather your army, take that world, kill all who resist"
The moment the first wave of transports entered the planets atmosphere they were hit by a torrent of anti-air fire from the defences around the main city, long tracer lines of weapons salvoes lit up the sky destroying several of the transports before they finally hit the ground. Next to punch through the atmosphere were small clusters of atmospheric strike pods that dropped to the ground in key positions, the walls of the pods fell outwards spewing out full squads of chaos space marines.
The massive traitor marines were a truly intimidating sight to behold, their bulky armour was spiked and coloured black as night to symbolise their legion, their helmets were shaped like a daemons with long ram like horns and red eye visors, in their gauntlets were deadly bolters, heavy bolters and flamers.
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Around one of the main anti-air cannons Commander Streed beat his stiff tail against the ground kicking up a small cloud of dust as he cocked his heavy blaster rifle, all around him were fellow warriors, their red scales shimmering from the brilliant light of the discharging weapons fire and large enteched Battledroids, standing the same height as the Ssi-ruuk warriors they looked like humanoid skeletons with blasters and blades attached to their arms, three larger, tank sized Battledroids were also among his force, their main 8 inch long cannons scanning the area around their charge.
The first thing they heard were the sounds of inhuman battle cries "We are the black legion and we are your doom, we are the black legion and we are your doom, we are the black legion and we are your doom!"
In response Streed lead his warriors in roaring out short, challenging throat calls at the owners of the voices. Suddenly the flashes of weapons fire tore into his warriors and droids leaving gapping holes in their armoured forms, a barrage of missiles flew above him and smashed in to two of the tank droids causing them to explode.
The creatures firing at them were a truly terrifying sight but Streed didn't back down, instead he roared and returned fire with his high powered blaster but the laser beams only succeeded in charring their armour. The enemy's weapons were much more effective tearing through Ssi-ruuk and Battledroids alike. The commander fired a few more rounds before he was pummelled with bolter rounds, as he fell to the bloodied ground he saw several missiles fly through the air, spewing out black smoke in their wake as they smashed into the anti-air gun and tore it apart.
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Lord Fungan stood at the edge of the landing zone watching as a line of chaos predator tanks drove into position and fired in unison with their main guns, the massive barrels recoiling as they fired into the city smashing into buildings and kicking up debris. From the sky were beams of lance fire, leaving clear gaps of sky in their wake as they smashed into the city demolishing buildings and leaving great craters.
In the cratered, burning flat land between his landing zone and the city were droves of traitor guardsmen, their carapace armour black in colour, among them was a swarm of mutant cannon fodder, captured chimera fire tanks, squads of chaos jet-bikes, all lead by chaos black legion champions, charged forward, explosions burning all around them from the artillery that wasn't destroyed in the surgical strikes.
"My lord" his terminator honour guard said as he came forward "All strike squadrons report successes, the traitor guard and mutants are taking heavy losses but moving forward, its only a matter of time"
Fungan nodded as a sick smile crossed his pale, scarred face, Anubis had promised him this world if he took it and he planned to. Three chaos cruisers and ten escorts were left in orbit to support his invasion while the rest of the armada broke into battle groups and moved to take the other planets in this new star cluster, it was only a matter of time, the forces of chaos would be victorious here and create a foothold in a new galaxy.
Sorry it took so long everyone, I had a load of coursework to do last month, I still have a lot of coursework to do so updates may slow for a while, I've gotten several great ideas with Long Live Warhammer 40K and plan to move on with it, thanks for the help friend.