Alarm klaxons blared as the flesh-infested walls of the Terminus Est buckled and groaned. A series of explosions rippled through the hull, nearly knocking Leman off of his feet.
It seems they've resorted to more drastic measures. Leman thought. I have to get to the hangar as soon as possible and escape this revolting junk heap.
Panicked cultists and mutants ran through the grime-encrusted corridors in disorganized mobs, which Leman cut down swiftly whenever he encountered them. The daemonically-possessed components of the ship seemed to writhe hysterically in response to their impending doom. Leman barreled down howling hallways of toothy maws and greasy pustules, slicing through doors and bulkheads with his weapons as he made his way towards the hangar. At last he burst through a wall and found himself in a large, empty room full of corrupted voidcraft. The nurglite crew were scrambling across the decks like rats fleeing a sinking ship, looking for anything which could allow them to escape their damned fate. The primarch scanned the room for a suitable vessel, his eyes landing upon a surprisingly welcome sight. It was a Stormbird assault lander, a massive and ancient voidcraft which had been used during the era of the Great Crusade, often as personal transports for the primarchs of their respective legions. It was predictably weathered by both time and the products of Nurgle's chaotic corruption and was incapable of warp travel, but for the time being it would suit his needs. He carved through crowds of psychotic mutants and cultists jostling their way into the fleeing voidcrafts, scything them down like a hot blade through ice. He latched onto one of the emergency exits of the stormbird, wrenching it open and climbing inside.
After dispatching a handful of cultists who had made their way inside and sealing the entrances, he made his way to the cockpit which was luckily just large enough to accommodate his height. He flipped the necessary switches to activate the craft's engines, remembering what little of piloting he had learned during his early days with the Vlka Fenryka, however he was then met with a sinister groaning that rocked through the ship. As he should have guessed, the ship's machine spirits had long since been hollowed out and replaced by daemonic wraiths, who were clearly enraged and uncooperative at their new pilot. The console hissed and sparked maliciously at his touch, not allowing him to so much as get near the controls without threatening to short-circuit completely. As he wracked his mind trying to think of a solution, a familiar crackling shot up his left side. He looked down at his axe, which had begun to vibrate and arc with bright green electricity. He unsheathed the axe, which immediately flew out of his hand and embedded itself into the cockpit's control systems. Rather than destroy it, the weapon sent tendrils of lightning shooting all throughout the Stormbird's hull, burrowing into its wires and cables like a plant taking root in a patch of soil. The aircraft rocked and shook violently, the air filled with electronic screams and screeching until suddenly the shaking and screaming stopped. The aircraft's thrusters engaged abruptly, nearly knocking Leman off of his feet. The voidcraft plowed through the mobs of mutated chaos-worshippers below, hurtling towards the closed void-shields of the hangar bay. Leman leaped into the pilot's seat, locating the shuttle's heavy weapons and blasting a gaping hole in the hangar door. The stormbird rocketed through the smoke and into the vacuum of space, taking crowds of the hapless cultists along with it.
Before he could breathe a sigh of relief, a huge projectile screamed past the Stormbird, striking the now-detached section of the Terminus Est and blowing off a large chunk of it. Leman swerved and banked to avoid the incoming fire, with assistance from the now-compliant machine spirits. The ship targeting them appeared to be Imperial in design, though with a markedly more gaudy and opulent appearance. Leman wasn't sure whether he should be relieved or even more concerned than before.
"The Terminus Est is taking damage; however, its escort ships are moving in to try and block our fire while it attempts to escape." A naval officer aboard the Emperor's Righteousness said. "We shou-" The officer bent over and vomited, clutching his stomach and breathing heavily. "A-apologies sir, the Inquisition's databanks did state that observing the Terminus Est directly for too long is likely to cause sickness." the officer said, wiping vomit and sweat from his face.
"Assign double crews to the targeting equipment in case of any more… incidents." Inquisitor Guillaume said. "...and someone please get the ensign here a towel to clean himself up with."
Guillaume rubbed his sharp chin and pencil-thin mustache with his long, bony fingers, his angular brow and hawkish nose furrowed in a look of contemplation as he planned his next move. As much as he wished to take down the Terminus Est here and now, the ship was simply so massive that it was unlikely they would be able to disable it with the amount of firepower they currently had, even with the enemy's shields disabled. Guillaume leaned to his left, looking into the computer console affixed to his throne. He pressed a button to open communications with the Tempestus Scions landing forces that were currently en-route to the planet's surface.
"Commander Kodiak, have the scouts reached the planet's surface?" the inquisitor said.
"Yes sir, they reported back a few minutes ago. No sign of the plague marines anywhere, looks like they up and left. Few patches of minor corruption but they appear to be dwindling fast. Liberal application of prometheum should hasten the process." the commander said.
Guillaume leaned back into his seat with a pleased look.
"Excellent… what of the remaining populace? Have you encountered any resistance?" Guillaume said.
"It seems the surviving Imperial Guard regiments are based out of a heavily fortified city center to the north, it's likely they've got the civilians held up there with them. Seems like the Death Guard never managed to break their defenses." Kodiak said.
Guillaume bit his lip.
"This will make things a bit more difficult…" he said, fiddling with the jewel-encrusted rings on his bony fingers. "Ensign! Get me a direct broadcast to all local channels. Perhaps these guardsmen will listen to reason…"
Far below the bridge of the Emperor's Righteousness, in a dim, hazy room lit by candlelight and filled with wafting clouds of incense, holy warriors were consecrating their equipment in preparation for their next assignment.
"Will we be joining the inquisitor planetside, Justicar Mattias?" Brother Nathaniel said, pressing a wax seal into the casing of his stormbolter.
"Judging by the most recent reports, daemonic activity on the planet appears to have ceased entirely. The inquisitor can do what he likes with the populace, but we are not here to fight partisans. One does not hunt rabbits with an autocannon." Justicar Mattias said, sharpening the edge of his Nemesis force sword with a run-covered whetstone coated in holy oils. "However, we must remain on alert. The great enemy feeds upon complacency."
"Understood, brother-justicar." Nathaniel said.
Leman turned a myriad of knobs and dials on the stormbird's voxcaster, attempting to find an open channel to determine if the approaching forces were imperial. With any luck, he would be able to link up with them and have them bring him to Fenris at last. He flipped through a number of low-power signals, and through the static he could hear chatter coming from the planet below. It was mostly barking orders interspersed with crude and highly colorful profanity, causing Leman to chuckle.
Imperial army grunts. Good to know the Imperium's hammer is as blunt and rough as ever. He thought, a feeling of endearment swelling in his chest knowing humanity had not changed too much in his absence.
He heard them speaking about equipment shortages, supply depots, and general logistical jargon, however he also heard them sharing stories of a mysterious 'saint' that had appeared on the battlefield and single-handedly destroyed the attacking plague marines.
They must be referring to Admu… Leman thought, unsure how to feel about Admu's first encounter with ordinary humans. At the very least they aren't trying to kill her.
He continued flipping through the channels, until he landed upon a particularly powerful signal that appeared to be broadcasting from the large capital ship in orbit. Over the voxcaster, he could hear a rough and authoritative voice clear his throat, then address anyone who was listening.
"Citizens and defenders of the Imperial world of Leprus… I am Inquisitor Guillaume, lead of the 5th detachment of the Hansen subsector Imperial reclamation fleet." he said.
Inquisitor…? Leman thought.
"Our faith in the God-Emperor has been tested in these dark times, our worlds beset by corruption and heresy. It is only through the divine will of the Emperor that this planet has been spared the fate of damnation, a fate shared by countless worlds that have succumbed to blasphemy and chaos in the wake of the Great Rift. But fear not! By the might of the God-Emperor, sent forth by his Avenging Son and Imperial Regent, Lord Commander Roboute Guilliman, your salvation is at hand."
Leman's face was frozen in an expression of shock.
"Your valiant effort in defending this world will not be forgotten, for its foundation will form the roots of a mighty and prosperous imperial colony. However, your exposure to the corruption you have so courageously fought has made your return… impermissible. If you submit peacefully, you will be administered the Emperor's Peace in the most… 'humane' manner possible. Should you continue to resist, I will have no other choice but to declare you Excommunicate Traitoris… and unleash the full might of the Holy Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition upon you. I trust that you will make the… sensible decision. As it is said in the holy texts of the Lectitio Divinitatus: Submit to the will of the one true God-Emperor… and thy salvation will be at hand!"
The line went silent. The chatter from the Guardsmen below fell silent as well. Leman sat in the cockpit of the Stormbird, his shaky hand stuck to the dial of the voxcaster as the low hum of background static played from its speakers. His jaw was clenched, and the muscles in his neck were strained tight.
No. He thought. It's… it's not possible.
Every word that spewed from the inquisitor's vile mouth was like a knife stuck into Leman's back. The fanatic zealousness with which he glorified the Emperor as a god… going against all that his father had believed, all that he still believed… twisting his father's vision using the writings of a traitor who turned his back on Leman and his father, who embraced the Ruinous Powers and led half of his brothers into damnation and plunged the galaxy into darkness… the way in which he used this twisted faith to justify slaughtering loyal soldiers of the Imperium on naught but mere superstition… and quite possibly the worst of all, the fact that his brother, Roboute Guilliman, the most rational and sensible of all of his brothers was not just alive… but he was complicit in this madness.
It was too much for him to bear. Sweat dripped from his face and his breathing was heavy, as if his body was physically rejecting the horrific reality he was being faced with. His mind sunk into the darkest recesses of his memory.
Is this… all just an illusion? An elaborate torture labyrinth devised by the Ruinous Powers to break me? Has anything up until now even been truly real? He thought.
While Leman was in the throes of an existential crisis, an alert began to blink on the craft's radar. Two small dots approached from the left and right, converging behind him in an attack formation. As the two dots got closer and closer, closing the several kilometer distance in a matter of minutes, the alert grew louder and louder until it pierced through Leman's mental anguish. In the instant his mind finally returned to reality, a single thought shot through his mind:
"Admu!" he shouted. She was still on the planet, and judging by the words of the inquisitor, in grave danger. Before he had time to contemplate further, a bright red beam grazed the right wing of the stormbird. A missile alert blared as the two fury interceptors on his tail began to target him. Leman attempted to contact them with the voxcaster, however soon realized that while the receiver was functional, the transmitter was not.
Damn this whole sector to Morkai! He thought.
He gripped the controls of the stormbird and banked hard to the right, just barely avoiding a missile that shot off in the other direction and burst into a halo of fire and plasma.
Admu awoke with a start, lifting herself out of the dirt and breathing heavily. She winced as she immediately felt the soreness all throughout her body again, particularly her mid-section where the dreadnought had given her some kind of nasty burn.
I must have been more tired than I thought… enough to fall asleep without even realizing it. she thought.
She wiped the grime and blood from her face and trudged through the ruins left by her rampage. Her mind, too tired to have racing thoughts, was merely dwelling on what she had witnessed… and done. She knew from what Leman had told her that the… 'things' she had killed were evil, and once she had seen it for herself there was no doubt in her mind. It was merely the brutality of it, the scale of such cruelty… was this all the galaxy had to offer? Why was Leman so eager to return here if it was so miserable?
Because he… we can make it better. She reassured herself.
She didn't want to dwell on the thought of just how many lives it would take to accomplish that.
I'm a newcomer here… just like Leman was back home. I shouldn't make any more hasty decisions before I find Mister Russ again. She thought.
The last thing she wanted was to cause even more problems for him. Then her mind returned to the little guardsmen she had first met when she first arrived here.
To think they were enduring this sort of thing before I even got here… humans are really incredible. She thought.
Then in the distance she heard a loud boom rumbling through the earth. Her eyes widened and her heart sank as she wondered if any of the plague marines might have survived and continued their attack on the poor guardsmen. She pushed aside the fatigue burning all throughout her body, readying herself for yet more fighting. She snuck through the ruined buildings and hab-blocks, hiding from the strafing valkyries flying above that were unloading streams of bullets onto unseen targets. Anti-air batteries cut through the air, occasionally striking one of the aircraft. The sound of artillery and heavy weapons fire grew louder as Admu approached the city-turned-fortress that the Imperial Guard and the few remaining citizens had been holding out in. She trudged through the dust-choked, crater-filled no man's land, the heavy clouds hiding her approach. The dust clouds dissipated, and soon Admu could see the outline of the towering hab-blocks and spires of the fortified city emerging from the haze. When the dust cleared completely, she was shocked by what she saw.
The haze was not, as she had first assumed, dust blown from the barren earth or the faint residue of chemical bombardments. It was a layer of smoke, hanging in the air like a black gauze. Small fires and embers burned everywhere, black soot and white ash covering the earth beneath the blackened remains of houses and buildings. She walked slowly through the haunting ruins which had not been here when she first arrived. Hundreds of smoldering pyres bearing the charred corpses of guardsmen and unarmed civilians lined the streets, the contorted figures' flesh branded with the sign of an "I". Her eyes widened and her heart raced. She thought she had seen the worst that this world had to offer when she tore through the vile ranks of the Death Guard, but now she felt as though she had just stepped out of one hell and into another. She balled her hands into fists, her arms shaking as she clenched her teeth tight in anguish. Her physical appearance wavered, the faint image of her savage avatar flickering in and out of realspace as her rage threatened to overcome her once again. Before she lost control, she heard rustling coming from behind her. Admu spun around, scanning the burnt ruins for the source of the noise with a savage look. She saw movement in one of the burnt buildings, charred beams and heaps of slag shifting and moving as if something were underneath. A large burnt metal sheet flipped over, revealing a small guardsman with a lasgun slung to his shoulder crawling out of a hole in the earth. He looked at Admu with a startled expression.
"Admu?" Colonel Ramirez said.
Inquisitor Guillaume was not an experienced military commander. He was initially meant to lead only a detachment of a much larger force which was yet to arrive, a fully-fledged Imperial reclamation fleet sent by Lord Guilliman himself as a part of the ongoing Indomitus Crusade. However, having caught the infamous Terminus Est virtually defenseless along with the Death Guard's best troops nowhere to be seen, Guillaume had become convinced that the God-Emperor himself had handed him this victory. The world of Leprus was a throne-sent gift to him, a reward for his unwavering faith and unquenchable zealotry.
As such, he predicted the pacification of the remaining populace, alive but no doubt tainted beyond salvation, to go just as easily. It was true that the Imperial Guard and the remaining civilians had endured hellish conditions for months, surviving on the barest of supplies and holding out against a seemingly insurmountable foe, their only salvation being the hope that when they die their souls would not be consumed by their demonic assailants. Had this been the state of the survivors when the inquisitor broadcasted his demands for the remaining defenders on the planet to submit to the Emperor's will, perhaps they would have even accepted his offer simply to end their suffering.
However, this was not the state of the Imperial Guardsmen on Leprus. The roughly 50 thousand guardsmen remaining on the planet, survivors of a force of over 10 million, had endured much in the past months. Their command structure had all but completely deteriorated, forcing them to construct an ad-hoc, decentralized network of communication that allowed them to preserve some semblance of organization in their defense of the fortified fortress-city. Had any officers of a significant rank actually remained, they would likely have been horrified by the idea of rank-and-file guardsmen communicating directly with one another without restriction on the grounds that it would create a dangerous breeding ground for dissent or even heresy. Luckily, all of them had already been killed or simply fled. It was through this network that, when the guns of the Death Guard mysteriously fell silent, rumors began to spread. Rumors of a mysterious, saintly figure that had appeared on the planet.
The information percolated through the guardsmen in piecemeal, with only a handful of them having actually seen this "Saint Admus" as the garbled communications had agreed upon calling her. According to them, she had appeared as a giant clad in white, surrounded by an aura of light that denoted her as a servant of the Emperor. She then strode across the battlefield, walking through no man's land without hesitation, and descending upon the attacking chaos forces. From there the reports were even more scattered, with artillery spotters and long-range scouts reporting that they saw the living saint survive artillery blasts, throw terminators like krakk grenades, and decimate the plague marines one by one. One artilleryman even reported that he "Saw 'er tear a bloody dreadnought in 'alf with 'er bare 'ands." While many didn't quite believe that particular story, it was clear to them that the Death Guard had been sent running. The sight of the dreaded Terminus Est, having loomed over their heads for months now, miraculously breaking apart and fleeing, only proved to them beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had been rescued from certain damnation by the God-Emperor himself.
As such, when Inquisitor Guillaume made his broadcast demanding the Imperial Guardsmen stand down and submit to certain death, they responded with a defiant silence. The Emperor had blessed them with a living saint, saving the lives of every man, woman, and child left on the planet, and they weren't going to let some power-tripping inquisitor deny them that salvation. As far as they were concerned, he was the heretic, not them. Rallying behind the name of Saint Admus, the guardsmen were prepared to make the Inquisition's forces bleed for every inch of the city they intended to take, fighting to the last to preserve their miracle. The fortified city contained most of the munitions left on the planet, sporting a dense network of anti-air, anti-armor, and anti-personnel defenses. Gun emplacements lined the streets, networks of tunnels were dug beneath the earth, and the guardsmen had developed a robust and flexible method of avoiding enemy fire by dispersing their troops and supplies as well as keeping them mobile across the front through the underground networks.
In short, when inquisitor Guillaume ordered the Tempestus Scions to attack the city, he was sending them into a heavily fortified meat grinder. They had managed to catch many of the guardsmen on the outskirts of the city off-guard, savagely dragging them into the streets alongside a handful of civilians who didn't manage to flee in time and torching them with promethium flamers. They had hoped this savage display would intimidate the remaining guardsmen into losing their nerve. It didn't. Instead, the Tempestus Scions were forced to begin attacking the city itself, advancing with heavily armored Tauroxes and supported by Valkyrie air support. They met stiff resistance, barely managing to penetrate the outskirts of the city before being forced to retreat and re-group. These unrenowned guardsmen from backwater worlds of the Imperium were going to force the elite forces of the Tempestus Scions to earn their victory.
Inquisitor Guillaume stepped out of the landed Valkyrie and onto the surface of Leprus, escorted through the Scions' encampment by his personal guard. His red cloak billowed in the wind created by the landing craft's vertical engines, and he tightened his leather gloves as he walked. His bony face was contorted into a frustrated and confused scowl, as he paced through the makeshift headquarters. He entered the Scion's command center, finding their commander barking orders through a complex network of voxcasters.
"Commander Kodiak." Inquisitor Guillaume said.
"Yes, inquisitor sir?" Kodiak said with a salute.
"The guardsmen are… resisting?" he said, with equal amounts of disdain and disappointment.
"Yes, sir. We've picked up some of their communications and they seem to be rallying behind some kind of self-professed saint named 'Admus'. Says she was the one who killed all the Death Guard." Kodiak said.
"Hmmm…. no doubt some heretic that's corrupted them all into worshiping the Ruinous Powers. They must be put down at once before their heresy takes root!" he said, spittle flying from his mouth.
"The Emperor's Righteousness has more than enough firepower to flatten their defenses to rubble from orbit. It would be far less costly than a frontal assaul-"
"Are you mad, commander!? The God-Emperor presented us this city and delivered it from the hands of those foul traitor marines. It is practically a holy relic! Those heretical guardsmen are squatting on holy ground, defiling it with their blasphemy. I want that city taken intact, no matter how many men it takes!" Guillaume said.
"...Affirmative, sir." Kodiak said, with a hint of resignation.