Chapter 2
Invasion of the Chief Forge-World
"We mourn the dead when the battle is done, come my sons, our enemy waits!!"
The Emperor
--
Shoals of starships moved along the space lanes of the system, moving in their thousands like long ribbons of steel and fire. The traders, transports, yachts and personal shuttles numbered in the millions and refused to stem. In the distance were the familiar shapes of Imperial navy Cruisers and Frigates, keeping the starship swarms in order.
No one would suspect that an army was using these space ways to move to their objectives undetected. Among the fleeting vessels were requisitioned transports, each one ranging from a kilometre to five and carrying companies or battalions of troops in their holds. Within several of these vessels were the Adeptus Custodes, the full force of ten thousand battle ready immortals, as well as the Emperor himself and the Terran based contingents of Silver Spears, Imperial Fists and Salamander Space Marines.
Several Cruisers and Battlecruisers of the Imperial navy had been chosen and filled with Imperial Guardsmen. Already they were landing their forces as discretely as possible on the red planet of Mars to prepare for the arrival of the Space Marines and Custodians. The Emperor had full confidence in them. They were the best, drafted from Cadia, Armageddon, the Sabbat worlds, even from Terra herself. All together numbering one hundred thousand warriors and tanks, their objective was basically to cause a commotion, to assault the planet in full force and provoke the Star-God's forces into a fight. According to early reports it was working.
While this battle was taking place the Emperor and his forces would land quietly away from the battle and split into two groups, one to take and hold the Titan bays, wait for the loyalists of the Mechanicus to arrive with the needed crews while the other half were too enter the catacombs, find the Star-God, and eliminate him. With him gone the Necron army was sure to disappear as they did countless times before.
The Emperor sat on one of the chairs with his warriors, his massive form tied down by crash webbing, his sword held in his hands. He watched the sword, sheathed in its scabbard in his hands and stopped himself from remembering that he hadn't wielded it in ten millennia. None of the Custodes spoke, they didn't need too. They all knew what had to be done. They all knew what their objectives were. All eager to prove themselves in front of the man they had been serving for most of their lives.
The Emperor considered the hard fighting ahead, how for many here this would be their last battle, he shook the thoughts away. Such was the fate of those who gave their life to war. Eventually their luck and skill would fail them and they would die on the field, he sighed, in many ways he was no different. He tasted death once already, lived as a shell for ten thousand years. He would not make such a mistake ever again.
The Emperor of humanity, the lord of mankind pushed the thoughts to the farthest reaches of his mind and focused on the battle to come. His breath became steady. He closed his eyes and felt every jolt and shudder of the vessel around him, every breath and heartbeat of the men who surrounded him. He felt the anxiety, the fear, and the excitement. The Custodian Guards, who had not seen true battle since the Heresy were about to take up arms once again, and may their enemies fear.
--
As the streams of starships passed by the orbit of Mars a small cluster of transports and freighters broke away, passing by the formidable orbital defences as if they weren't even there. Far off at the other side of the planet a fleet of Imperial Cruisers sat, their gapping hanger maws open and allowing groups of troop transports to descend down too the planet. Clusters of missiles were being launched from gun ports across the capital-ships armoured prows, punching through the atmosphere and flying down towards their targets, which were christened by blossoms of fire and dust.
As the freighters came down to orbit their sides opened up, revealing them not too be freighters at all but carriers containing dozens of seed shaped drop pods, held in their compartments by titanium clamps. One by one the clamps released their pods, allowing them to drop like stones through the atmosphere towards the shimmering red surface of the chief forge-world.
They punctured the atmosphere and entered the stratosphere as hundreds of fiery comets with fifty meter tails of reddish orange fire. As they came within two hundred meters of the surface their lower sections lit up as thrusters came on line, lighting up the lower compartments with ghostly blue light, stopping their descent and allowing them to punch the surface of the red planet. Over a hundred pods descended from the atmosphere and smashed into the ground amidst a defensive perimeter of turned Mechanicus troopers. Mostly low level Tech-Guard and a few silver cloaked Tech-Priests.
One priest approached the pods and tapped one with his staff several times before turning to the Hypaspists and conveying a set of orders to them through a series of screeches and mechanical noises. As one the troopers raised their lasguns and released a torrent of lasfire upon the drop pod, peppering its hull with the ruby bolts before another series of electronic screeches from the silver cloaked Tech-Priest stopped them. The outer walls of the pod detached with a hiss of steam and fell forwards to the ground, only darkness seemed to lie within. The Tech-Priest approached the opening, holding its long staff tightly in its hands. It surveyed the interior with its augmented vision.
The long blade of the Guardian spear stabbed through the priests chest with the screech of metal, digging deep into the tech-priests chest, the cyborg let out a screech of pain before the spear was wrenched free and the dead husk of flesh and metal fell backwards to the ground. The Hypaspists raised their lasguns as the massive armored form of the warrior responsible stalked into the dull red light, its golden armor tinted by the light, its long mane and cloak of crimson flickering in the wind.
The tech-guard opened fire, but the ruby las bolts ricocheted harmlessly off its armor. Shrugging off the assault the Custode lowered his guardian spear with one hand, bringing the bolter attached to its shaft to bear, sweeping the spear back and forth as he assaulted the enemy with two second bursts. Three Hypaspists fell to the opening barrage, their forms turned from solid matter to puffs of metallic pink mist at such close range.
Three more Custodes appeared from the shadows of the pods interior and joined their comrade, opening fire with their own guardian spears. The tech-guard infantry did not run, their programming knew no such function. They stood where they were, firing their lasguns and got slaughtered as more and more royal Custodes exited their drop pods and laid waste to the enemy positions with streams of bolter fire.
Arkon Lathorise exited his drop pod and jumped with supernatural speed, landed in a crouch and impaling a Tech-Priest with his Guardian Spear. Quickly he drew his bolt pistol and put a round into three Tech-Guards as he spun around the prone body, wrenching his spear free. He then leveled his spear and fired the bolter at its end, putting several gapping holes into another two guards.
He continued his advance to the entrance of the catacombs, a massive set of thick titanium steel doors built into the brownish red bedrock, wide enough to allow five guards to march in side by side. Twelve Custodes joined him in the advance, guardian spears lowered and releasing quick bursts of bolter fire, the blades attached to their lugs dripping crimson blood from the dozens of once loyal soldiers they had slain.
The Emperor was ahead of them, ignoring the battle taking place around him as he came to the titanium doors. He gripped the hilt of his sword with both of his hands and raised it over his head, he struck down. A blade of warp energy left the blade and dug into the thick titanium of the doors, slicing through the strong material like a knife through butter. For a moment nothing happened, then a thin crack appeared in the doors from the top of the left side diagonally down to the right side, the doors collapsed.
By then the last few traitors had been disposed off by his Custodians and they gathered behind him, a small force of two hundred warriors and three gold plated Hellfire Dreadnoughts. Reports streamed in from their ear communicators, the other five positions had been taken with next to no casualties. Enemy forces defending the positions consisted of low level Tech-Guardsmen and a few Priests. It was all easy, perhaps too easy.
--
Xavier Winters was considered young to be in the admiralty. In fact most men of his age were officers on escort ships. Yet by the time he was twenty five years old he was made an admiral of the 22nd Imperial Squadron, from captain of a Cobra-class destroyer to admiral of a fleet made of two Armageddon-class Battlecruisers, six Firestorm-class Frigates and twelve Cobra-class Destroyers.
To many people Xavier Winters was a spoilt man from a rich family, who became an admiral because of their rich pockets. But Xavier Winters was chosen because of his actions against Dark Eldar raiders, he and his destroyer defeated three enemy starships, saving the small colony through sheer strategic brilliance. Winters was eager to prove his critics wrong, he wanted a major battle where he could put his mind to good use.
His chance had come, and he didn't even notice until the Necron Tombship appeared right in front of the shipyards of Jupiter. His fleet was in dry dock there, rearming and refueling for a long jump to the Trojan system. The Tombship appeared like a ghost from the warp at first and the admiral rubbed his eyes, thinking that they were playing tricks on him.
When the arc lightning hit one of his docked destroyers, the resulting explosion destroyed the Lady Basalt, damaging the docking bay she had landed on, a second lance of arc lightning cut into the armored hull of one of the shipyards hubs, causing several internal explosions and severing two connection bridges. This was followed by a volley of green lightning which destroyed several more hubs and the starships they were docked onto.
"Order the fleet to perform an emergency launch" Winters yelled to his vox-officers.
"Yes admiral!"
A storm of heavy weapons fire blazed from the hundreds of defense platforms and battle stations, like the very sun itself exploded into thousands of shards of incandescent death. Nova cannons, batteries of lances, rail guns, clouds of torpedoes. The pure mass of firepower reduced the Tombship to a dead corpse by the end of the first salvo.
As the Tombship's corpse fell across the dark skies, jets of flame and smoke streaming from its many wounds Winters heard the snap of the massive clamps as they disengaged from the adamantium hull. The decks creaked and shook as the mighty nuclear sublight engines of his battlecruiser began to cold start with a numbing growl. All around the monolithic vessel the smaller destroyers and frigates were already rising from their docks like clusters of specks in the starlight.
The larger vessels were still heating up their main engines, small vessels like destroyers had small enough engines that they could launch almost immediately but the larger the ship the bigger the engines and the more nacelles to start up. It took a vessel the size of an eight kilometer battlecruiser nearly an hour to properly launch, but while it took their engines time their weapon batteries were more than ready to fire.
Alarm claxons began to wail as another set of contacts appeared across the Jupiter defense grid, eight more Tombships appeared defended by dozens of Harvest Ships and Raiders. Thousands of small attack craft and fighters exited their motherships, diving straight into the centre of the defensive lines. Rail-guns, plasma cannons and heavy laser batteries flared streams of bright explosive light upon the enemy forces but the fighters were fast, just blurs of motion to the guns targeting sensors, the gun crews found themselves firing blindly, hoping to hit a target that wasn't a friendly unit.
"Long range weapons systems fire" Winters yelled "All anti-fighter guns open up, launch fighter units!"
--
There was no marching in columns down the first corridor of the Martian underground. Instead the two hundred Custodes went in carefully, hands tensed on guardian spears, power swords and bolter weapons as the first teams slowly descended down the way. For several minutes there was nothing but the hiss of static on the helm receivers, then the static crackled and a voice could just be heard.
"Scout team to…all…" the transmission was garbled by static and snow, whatever was down there they had technology sufficient enough to make even short range communication difficult, not that it should be surprising, they were dealing with a splinter faction of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
"Say again sergeant, I repeat say again" Captain Lathorise replied, his left gauntlet holding the left side of his helm to try and gain better reception.
"…clear, all…"
"All clear" the Emperor said as he stalked down the dark corridor, his hand resting on the hilt of his power sword. Ten members of his specialist Companions following him as he walked towards the first cave network while the others hesitated for a moment before continuing.
The Emperor stood out from the others, bedecked in space marine armour which was obviously grafted for his body. A mask covered his face showing the Custodes a visage of an ancient and stern warrior. Slanted slits, covered over by black eye visors gave the Emperor the same advantages as his guards. But he didn't need them, his eyes could adapt to the darkness the moment he stepped into a world devoid of light, he could see everything as if it were the middle of a sunny day.
The Emperors mind was always creating strategies to deal with any enemy force they came across, his eyes darting too and fro across the corridors, taking in every stack of munitions or equipment crates, every conduit nestled and every groove in the walls, anything that could be used as a barricade against enemy fire. There were very few if any places to take cover. If the enemy attacked them here they would have the advantage and he would have to use up a portion of his power to defeat them and move on, thus making himself weaker when he finally confronted the C'tan.
He couldn't sense the Necrons through the warp. They could not be sensed by the warp. This made his early warning warp powers near useless. He would have to fight without them, instead relying on his supernatural strength and speed to get the job done. But he could sense them, instead on trying to sense a living creature or machine he had to stretch out and look for voids in the warps fabric, small patches of nothingness in a universe of darkness and despair.
When he did try this new strategy he found with near horrifying realisation that it worked, there was a patchwork of voids in the warp, a patchwork so dense that it made it difficult for him to reach out and touch the warp. They were all around them, but where?
"The walls" he muttered, looking around them and feeling wriggling voids just a few feet within the bedrock, in one quick motion he drew his power sword and pointed it towards the wall. In a blur he stabbed the sword into the bedrock, cutting through the stone all the way to the shaft where the blade met the guard. There was a spark. Then a tiny internal explosion as whatever was beyond the bedrock died. He pulled the sword forward, using his telekinesis to keep whatever he had run through on the blade. The rock cracked and broke away revealing the skeletal remains of a Necron warrior limply hanging, pierced straight through its chest cavity by his power sword.
"The walls, they're in the walls!" he shouted, his Custodes lowering their spears and releasing bursts of bolter fire into the bedrock, chipping and creating craters in the smooth rock surface "Fire at will, break these walls, reveal our enemy!!"
The continuous bolter fire exposed dozens of Necrons, just coming to life and trying to claw their way from their earthy tombs before the Custodes peppered them with bolter shells, causing metal heads, chest carapaces and limps to explode into hundreds of metallic shards and torn wiring. Further down the corridor more Necron warriors were crawling from the walls, hefting their gauss cannons and aiming them for the Imperials, several Custodes saw them and rotated their spears to begin firing upon them.
A blast of eerie green energy exploded from the Necrons gauss weapons, striking a Custodes chest plate and burning through the armour, then the fatigues, then flesh, blood and bone. The Custode screamed as he was flailed alive from the Necrons weapon, these guns didn't just kill you. They made it as slow and painful as a single shot could. Enraged the Emperor reached out with his free hand, concentrated a mass of warp energy into his palm and clenched his fist, a dozen Necron warriors just imploded, their metal bodies shrieking as they crumpled like paper. He lengthened his range and repeated the psychic attack, another two dozen warriors crumpled and imploded with a tortured shriek of overstressed metal.
"Scout unit report" he heard Captain Lathorise call over his ear piece, when nothing came through but static he repeated his statement. All he could hear was the rapid miniature explosions of bolters going off and the ghostly whipping sounds of Necron gauss cannons before the connection was lost once again.
"Push forward" the Emperor commanded with conviction "In the name of the Emperor, the Companions, the Custodian fething Guards!!" even with the seriousness of the situation the Captain heard sniggering over the vox-channels at their lords sudden cursing.
A Necron, different from the others broke through the wall, its form stooped over and a midnight blue cloak draped over its shoulders and back, which were covered in long razor edged spikes, a staff was held in its hands, a creation of liquid silver with the insignia of its master, a snake dragon curled around its grip.
The Emperor roared. A terrifying sound before throwing his power sword at the Necron Lord, the blade spun in midair as it flew, the tip striking the lords chest plate and exiting through its back. It screeched as it fell backwards, arms outstretched like it was being crucified on an invisible cross. The Emperor stalked forward, drawing a stormbolter from its huge holster at his waist and spraying the awakening Necron with bolter shells, ripping metallic skulls, chests and waists apart, not a single shot was wasted, not a single warrior got back up. When the Emperor reached the downed lord he saw that it was already stirring, so he lifted one of his booted feet and slammed it on the creature's skull, flattening it in a single stomp which created a crater in the floor below the lord's head. He then wrenched the sword from the corpse and began walking forward again, his stormbolter spitting out bolter shells, destroying three more Necrons beyond repair.
With the death of their lord the surviving Necrons became transparent and vanished into the darkness of the corridors, the voids vanished from the warp, leaving behind a vile taint. The opening battle went to them but at a cost of five Custodes and another twelve injured from grazes, all were willing to continue. As he thought this several Custodes were pulling their fallen brethren into a line at the side of the corridor, the Emperor approached a Custode who was receiving rites from a chaplain. The gauss burn had struck the chest plate of his power armour, melting it away and continuing to burn through his fatigues and flesh, the battle-brother was barely breathing, his eyes glazed over, the pain forgotten. The Emperor knelt beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder, eyes closed and recounting the last rites in place of the chaplain. For the last few moments of his life the Battle-brothers eyes shone with pride before the light faded and he went limp. Silently the Emperor closed his fallen guard's eyes and rose. Starring at the surviving Custodes who were ready and waiting for his orders.
The static suddenly gone Captain Lathorise tried hailing the scout unit again, what greeted him was more explosions of bolter fire and yet more whipping zaps of gauss weapons.
"We mourn the dead when this battle is done" the Emperor said before turning and continuing through the corridor "Come my sons, our enemy waits!!"
--
Eyes as black as night starred into the abyss, seeing the thousands dying around him, as the armies and fleets who swore their allegiances to him fought through the living and their defences. The void-dragon's eyes were nothing but black pits which saw all, knew all and hungered for more.
A single bright light flickered among the many, its power greater than anything it had felt in a long time. The only ones who even came close to this were the Old Ones he had fought and destroyed at the beginning of time, but they were long dead. This man, this Emperor of the vast human empire was supposed to be a half dead corpse, withering away in a life supporting throne of gold. Yet he was leading an army of golden warriors through the catacombs to him.
The void-dragon had quenched his hunger on thousands of living souls thus far. From the hundreds of fools who had sworn allegiances to him and from the thousands of pathetic humans they had kidnapped for him, but his hunger was not sated, it could never be sated until all life in this galaxy was dead and only a cold, lifeless silence swallowed up all the worlds once again.
He rose from his glistening black throne and stalked down the steps, his long tattered black cloak dragging across the floor behind him. On the floor, imprisoned in rusted chains were dozens of humans, men and women who were moaning, sobbing, even screaming in terror and fear. He stalked through the floor of bodies, men and women he passed had their lives sucked from their bodies, turning them into mummified corpses, their cries for help suddenly silenced.
"He is here" the dragon rasped as he stopped and slammed his staff into the ground, stabbing through a middle aged man with a sickening crunch as his ribs and spine were shattered and the spurting of his blood onto the dragons black armoured robes. The star-god paid it no mind. He stood solidly in place, his black eyes seeing through the walls and countless chambers between the Emperor and himself.
"He is here" the dragon spoke again, a rasping voice which drove everyone of his victims insane just from the sound of it, several around him suddenly went into spasms, his presence sucking the life from their bodies and turning them to ash "Come to me bastard child of the warp, you will be my first prey"