Outskirts of Agrelan Hive.
Smoke and fire filled the air from one end of the horizon to the other. Tau ion weapon beams punched through the haze in long blue lines, hammering the crumbling Imperial bunkers in sustained, precise salvoes. Manta gunships swept the battlefield at low altitude in alternating attack runs, and where their fire met the ground, Leman Russ tanks burned in scattered clusters across the forward positions, some still intact enough to show their hull markings, most reduced to blackened wreckage.
Through that wreckage, Devilfish transports were moving. Each one carried a Fire Caste boarding element pushing toward the broken Imperial perimeter, and the defense line holding the approaches to the hive was coming apart.
Inside the bunkers that had already been overrun, the Kroot were doing what they did best. Squads of the broad-shouldered mercenaries led cohorts of Gue'vesa auxiliaries through the narrow alleys between blast walls, fighting with the brutal, grinding efficiency of a species that had been sharpening its instincts against harder prey than this for generations. The Gue'vesa came in behind them with improvised weapons and surplus kit, filling the gaps where numbers mattered more than precision.
Most of the Imperial Guard regiments on the outer perimeter had broken. Command had failed them, and when command fails, morale follows. Two-thirds of the line had dissolved into a rout. But not all of it. Scattered through the bunker network, individual sections and platoons were holding their ground without orders, running on discipline alone. Hellguns cracked steadily in the half-dark of the interior passages, hot-shot beams punching through the Kroot at close range where the mercenaries' physical advantages counted for less and the Guard's fire discipline counted for more. For every advance the Gue'vesa column made, the Guardsmen who chose to stand pushed it back a little.
The bunkers fell anyway. One by one, the outer positions went under. A few sections managed real counterattacks, buying ground back from the Kroot through sheer bloody-mindedness, but when the Fire Warriors broke through the perimeter and the Tau drones rose above the alleys to acquire targets, those last positions collapsed too.
Agrelan Hive was going to fall, and everyone on the battlefield knew it.
Dong dong dong.
From a flank position that had been invisible a moment before, a group of Astartes in black and white Terminator armor came out of concealment at a dead run. Their grenade launchers fired in continuous overlapping bursts, the detonations walking through the nearest Fire Warrior formations in rapid sequence. The charge hit the Tau line like a thrown weight, the Terminators' mass and momentum punching a hole through the assault element before the Fire Warriors could fully reorient.
A second group, robed in the black cross of the Black Templars, poured into the lost bunker network behind the first, setting themselves at the choke points where the Gue'vesa advance was funneling through. They were not trying to hold the line. They were buying time for the defenders to move.
Then the Ten Rings sang, and something rose from the Imperial position like a fired round.
Pale gold power armor caught the smoke-filtered light as Nolan climbed vertically on the armor's propulsion thrust, accelerating through the low-altitude combat envelope where the Mantas were operating. He hit the nearest gunship before its pilot had processed what it was looking at, the Starfire Glory's vibranium frame driving through the hull plating as if it were not there. The ship came apart in a rolling fireball. Nolan was already through it and climbing toward the next one, his flight path a sharp curve through the smoke, the falling debris from the first gunship scattering fire across the battlefield below.
He hit two more Mantas in quick succession, the same way each time: a direct pass, the armor absorbing the impact, the gunship dying around him. The air above the perimeter was becoming a great deal less crowded.
He came to a halt in the air, hovering, and turned his skull helmet slowly across the full width of the battle below.
The defense line was gone. The Lamenters and the Black Templars were the only coherent force still operating on the outer perimeter, and they were holding because of what they were, not because the position was defensible. That would not last against the next weight of fire the Tau brought forward. And below the hive itself, through the smoke, he could see Militarum evacuation transports coming in low through the Tau battlesuit formations, dodging and banking as they dropped toward landing zones inside the hive walls.
The hive's own commanders had already made their decision.
"All units, listen. Mission objective has changed: shift from defensive posture to covering the withdrawal. Move toward the hive entrance. Now."
He did not wait to confirm acknowledgment. He folded his wings, cut the propulsion to a controlled descent, and left the burning air above the Mantas behind him.
The landing was heavy, magnetic boots cratering the dust at the hive entrance in a single sharp impact. Nolan straightened from the crouch of impact and found himself looking at a row of Guardsmen who had their lasguns extended from behind their fortifications, muzzles pointed at his chest. They held that position for a fraction of a second, not quite firing, not quite lowering their weapons.
Then the shadows around the entrance moved, and the Raven Guard came out of them.
They had been there all along, invisible until they chose not to be. Black-armored Astartes emerged from behind pillars and in the gaps between blast barriers, moving quickly toward Nolan's position. The Guardsmen with the lasguns went very still.
The Raven Guard knelt.
One knee down, heads bowed, in a single practiced motion that suggested no deliberation had been required.
"All Astartes of the Raven Guard welcome the return of Lord Corax." The voice from inside the nearest helmet was quiet, almost reverent. "We have never abandoned the ideals you left us. Not once."
Nolan let the skull helmet retract. It folded back into the collar of the Starfire Glory with a smooth click, and his bronze face looked out at them in the colourless light outside the hive.
"I am not the Raven King," he said, in a voice that carried across the gathered warriors without effort. "I am one of his Primarch brothers. Who commands the Raven Guard in this theatre? I need that person in front of me immediately."
The Raven Guard looked up. The gene-bond told them something was there that had to be obeyed, but their eyes were processing something that didn't match the name they had spoken. The confusion lasted a few seconds. Then they rose, without any further discussion, and led him inside.
The commander arrived quickly.
He was tall, even for an Astartes, and pale in the way that Raven Guard often were, and he was frowning when he cleared the crowd of retreating mortal troops with long, rapid strides and came to a stop in front of Nolan.
"Raven Guard Chapter Master Severax." He pressed a fist to his chest. "I greet this... Primarch."
The pause was brief and honest rather than disrespectful.
Nolan met his gaze and did not waste time on ceremony. He asked about the evacuation plan and what came next.
Severax had plainly been fighting the urge to treat Nolan as Corax, and plainly found it difficult, but he kept himself controlled and delivered a clear account. He had already dispatched his Shadow Captains to lead ambush detachments across the Tau's major offensive axes, buying time for the mortal forces to complete their extraction. The situation was as straightforward as it was grim: with the command structure above battalion level functionally gone and the Guard's morale broken, there was no viable option for holding Agrelan. The Raven Guard could keep the Tau occupied in the approaches and the bunker network long enough to get the survivors out. What they could not do was reverse the outcome of a battle that had already been decided by factors outside their control.
Pull the survivors. Regroup. Fight again from a position of some coherence rather than none.
That was the plan. Severax had laid it out with the flat precision of a commander who had already accepted the cost and was now focused entirely on paying the minimum of it.