When Guilliman casts aside all restraint, he remains the most formidable Primarch in the galaxy. Leading the overwhelming military might of Holy Terra, his counter-offensive predictably forced the Skaven into a rhythmic, desperate retreat.
The situation escalated within the Imperial Palace itself. After discovering traces of the vermin within the Inner Sanctum, the Adeptus Custodes dispatched a century of their elite to assist Guilliman in the "vermin-cull." Even a Primarch lacks the formal authority to command the Golden Legion; Guilliman had to rely on his statesmanship to persuade these "Golden Corn-heads" to mobilize. With the Custodes afield, the task of reclamation became significantly more efficient.
Holy Terra is a labyrinth of hive-cities built upon layers of primordial ruins; relics so ancient and numerous that perhaps even the Emperor Himself has not cataloged them all. The absence of oceans provided the Skaven with a seamless subterranean highway, allowing them to surface anywhere on the planet. Guilliman was left with the grueling task of crushing the infestation quadrant by quadrant.
Yet, while Guilliman brooded over how to squeeze every rat from every sewer on Terra, deep in the lightless depths of the world-hive, Supreme Klaw-Marshal Whitesick of Clan Verminus was descending into a state of hysterical panic.
"NO! NO! I do not want… do not wish to hear these excuses, YES-YES! I only want the surface man-things dead! DIE! DIE!!" Whitesick shrieked, tearing through reports detailing the annihilation of clans and the loss of war-holes.
The Marshal was incensed. His original ambition was to seize the Throneworld of humanity as a grand sacrifice to the Great Horned Rat, thereby securing his own daemonhood. That dream was rapidly dissolving.
A Skaven lackey, draped in filth-stained but exorbitant silks, bowed with nauseating sycophancy. "My-my impetuous Master, the human iron-can things are big-heavy! The rat-pups cannot climb, cannot reach… YES-YES!"
Guilliman's Astartes were indeed a terror. When they plunged into the swarms, it was not a battle but a systematic slaughter. Furthermore, critical hives and strategic bastions were now garrisoned by the Imperial Fists and the Militarum Tempestus. Against a Legion specialized in siegecraft, even a hundredfold numerical advantage offered the Skaven no guarantee of victory.
Driven to a corner, Whitesick devised a final, desperate gambit: he would drown the Throneworld in a sea of fur.
To ensure the Skaven remained a cohesive threat within the Sanctum Imperialis, Lucius had granted Clan Verminus the authority to manifest Gnawholes. Through these shimmering, void-gnawed tunnels, Whitesick could siphon endless billions of Skaven from far-flung worlds to serve as fodder. This was the creed of Clan Verminus: victory through absolute, crushing attrition.
"Tell the surface-wastes to retreat! Retreat! Then-then the rats elsewhere must prepare! In one month… one month's time, summon all-every rat! Launch the Great Assault... against the entire Sol System! TOTAL ATTACK! TOTAL ATTACK!! I shall see-see where the human-things can stand-hold then!?"
"Yes, my impetuous Master!" The lackey scurried away, bobbing his head in frantic submission.
…
The Mariana Trench, now a twenty-thousand-meter abyss since the seas were bled dry millennia ago, served as the primary font of the Skaven incursion. After the Imperial forces pushed the main rat-hordes back from the Asian sectors, the Imperial Fists, from the 1st Company "Emperor's Shield" through to the 5th Company, took up positions here. They were supported by five million Astra Militarum and five hundred thousand Militarum Tempestus troopers, who had constructed a line of impenetrable fortress-trenches ringing the abyss.
Though the 1st Company felt a lingering unease at leaving the Palace walls, they recognized that the protection of Holy Terra was their ultimate charge. The Sons of Dorn unleashed their full stubbornness. The Pacific front was a layered hell of razor wire, bunkers, and interlocking fire zones, designed to maximize the tally of the dead.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!
Atop the ferrocrete works, Imperial Fists in their ochre-yellow power armor leveled their bolt rifles, firing with practiced precision into the churning carpet of fur. These high-caliber bolts reduced flak-armored Skaven to red mist, yet the swarm seemed bottomless.
"Reloading!" An Astartes slammed a fresh mag into his bolter and resumed the rhythm of death.
The Astra Militarum loaders behind them were a blur of frantic motion. Suddenly, a red flare streaked into the sky. The Astartes instantly dropped their rifles, drawing chainswords as they threw themselves forward.
The Skaven had used a "corpse-ramp" of their own dead to scale the fortifications. A phalanx of Clanrats surged over the lip, shields locked, firing Warp-pistols with poisoned bayonets. Despite the defenders' superior positioning, the sheer density of the warp-fire suppressed the bunkers for a critical heartbeat.
In that opening, the Slave Rats pounced, shieking in a drug-induced frenzy. Many held rusted knives between their teeth, coated in lethal Warp-venom. For a Skaven, this toxin acted as a hyper-stimulant rather than a poison, driving their brains into a murderous euphoria.
The Warp-venom numbed their nerves, making them faster and fearless of pain. They scrambled on all fours, dodging aimed shots with twitching, unnatural agility. Once a breach was formed, the Skaven poured through like a tsunami overtopping a levee.
The Imperial Fists met them with the roar of chainswords. Even rats can kill through sheer volume. The Skaven's rusted blades, slick with toxin, could corrode power armor on contact; they were glass cannons, fragile but deadly.
"For Rogal Dorn!" the warriors bellowed, their boots treading upon a floor of gore. One swing of a chainsword bisected a Skaven; a back-cut claimed three more. To the Astartes, the rats were like hailstones against a wall, shattering harmlessly but leaving a mounting pile of debris.
Yet, even among these demigods, some fell. Warriors were dragged down into the sea of fur, their helmets pierced by warp-blades. The Warp-venom was particularly insidious; once it entered the bloodstream, the Astartes' superhuman organs would fail, their flesh mutating into horrific, rat-headed Chaos Spawns. The Imperium had already adopted a grim protocol: any warrior wounded by such weapons was to be executed and cremated on the spot.
Soon, the trench line was cleared. The tide receded once more.
"Surely these xenos have run out of blood by now?" an Imperial Fist spat, crushing a rat's skull beneath his boot.
As if in answer to his hope, the Skaven assaults began to taper off across the globe. Hives were liberated; the pressure eased. But deep beneath the desolate ruins, at the nexus of a hundred Gnawholes, Whitesick was convening a dark council.
The table was surrounded by representatives of Clan Ratling, Clan Pestilens, Clan Skryre, Clan Moulder, and even a towering, enigmatic warrior of the Alpha Legion.
"Such a grand design. It is... pleasing," the Alpha Legionnaire chuckled, a sound like grinding stones.
The Skryre representative hissed, "Mars, yes-yes! Mars is ours! For Skryre!"
"The Moon is for us. Moulder will not… will not fail-disappoint," the Master Moulder added.
A pact was sealed. Ten clans, ten agendas, one goal: the total siege of the Sol System.
In the Warp, Lucius simply watched. Truly, this has nothing to do with me. I never told Clan Verminus to sacrifice Holy Terra in my name. They came up with that all on their own.