"YES-YES! Forward, quick-fast!"
The command screeched through the vox-grilles of rat-shaped helmets, forged from scavenged Astra Militarum flak-plate. Their armor was a patchwork of ballistic shards bound by rusted wire and unidentified fibers. While their wargear appeared as crude as an Ork Boy's kit, these Clanrats, the backbone of the clans, maintained a lethal, if erratic, proficiency with their firearms.
The Skaven tide was a literal sea of black fur, surging behind modified Leman Rust and Rat-blade tanks. They shoved their kin forward, using them as living shields while they crouched behind the hulls to fire their warp-tainted weapons. Every rat sought to hide behind another, yet they were driven onward by the ceaseless, murderous glares of the Skaven Chieftains and Warlords at their rear.
BOOOM!
The thunder of Basilisk Earthshaker cannons roared, and shells slammed into the dense mass, instantly vaporizing pockets of the swarm. Yet, in the blink of an eye, the smoking craters were filled by fresh bodies.
"In the Emperor's name, do not retreat! HOLD THE LINE!!"
Across the front, the Imperial armored regiments formed an unbreakable wall of steel. Thousands of Leman Russ and Baneblade tanks stood in a jagged, smoking line, their Commissars screaming oaths of eternal loyalty to the Golden Throne.
The battle had begun. A massive armored clash spanning the East China seabed to the scorched plains of the East Asian continent.
"Damn it! How did these xenos secure this much heavy armor on Holy Terra?" an armored regiment colonel roared, teeth gritted as he watched the endless line of xenos tanks through his magnoculars.
Had Lucius been there, he would have pointed out the bitter irony: Imperial intelligence was a shambles. Belisarius Cawl had hidden hundreds of thousands of Primaris Space Marines and their supporting vehicles on Mars for ten millennia without the Adeptus Terra knowing a damn thing.
The roar of engines reached a crescendo as the two iron tides collided.
The Imperial Baneblade super-heavy tanks fired first. Their primary cannons spoke with the voice of gods, instantly turning a Skaven tank into a funeral pyre. But the Skaven answered in kind. Beams of emerald energy, Warp-lightning Cannons, erupted from the xenos line, sniping at targets from kilometers away.
The once-perfect Imperial line began to fray under heavy casualties. Exploding tanks became stationary torches, marking the graves of their crews. At their tracks, Skaven scavengers immediately began picking through the wreckage for scrap, only to be beaten back into the advance by their overseers' whips.
The distance closed until the tanks literally ground against one another, followed by the brutal cacophony of infantry engagement.
Guardsmen and Clanrats charged with piercing screams. They fired wildly, never daring to stop; in a firestorm of this density, to halt was to die. The Astra Militarum, usually the masters of the defensive, had been forced into a desperate offensive to drive the Skaven from the East Asian continental plate. The ratmen, driven by a mad lust for the throneworld, fought with a suicidal ferocity.
Simultaneously, massive Skaven offensives erupted across six separate sectors of Holy Terra, grinding the Imperial counter-offensive to a halt. On a battlefield involving billions of combatants, even the Adeptus Astartes were merely elite cogs in a gargantuan machine. Land Speeders and Rhino APCs were often picked off before they could even deploy their passengers, leaving Space Marines and Battle Sisters to die in the burning husks of their transports.
"YES-YES, do not stop! Send Clanrats through the side-gates, keep the fire-support coming!"
As the infantry traded hundreds of thousands of lives for every trench and kilometer of ground, the artillery never ceased.
A massive battery of tens of thousands of Basilisks triggered a continuous earthquake, the sound of their shells falling like a torrential rain of iron. On the other side, the Clan Verminus forces unleashed their own hell. They deployed Warp-lightning Cannons gifted by Clan Skryre, alongside captured Imperial artillery modified to fire warpstone-laced shells.
The relentless bombardment had literally shorn fifteen meters of topsoil off the earth. In the brief seconds between volleys, both sides would hurl themselves into the meat grinder once more, desperate to reclaim even an inch of the blighted soil.
…
"Order Mars to deploy the Collegia Titanica immediately!" Roboute Guilliman roared. Seeing the theater of war devolving into such ruinous attrition, he commanded the Mechanicus on Mars to send reinforcements to Holy Terra.
In truth, he was ordering Cawl.
However, Cawl's response was immediate and regretful.
"Deepest apologies, Lord of Ultramar. The Martian Synod is currently unable to provide the requested assistance." On the holoscreen, Cawl spread his mechanical hands in a gesture of helpless frustration.
"I need an explanation, Cawl," Guilliman demanded, his tone measured but straining with impatience. "To my knowledge, the xenos infestation on Mars was negligible. My calculations show you should have more than enough strength to support Terra."
"It was so, Lord of Ultramar... until three days ago." Cawl shifted the feed to the visual sensors of an Onager Dunecrawler on the Martian front.
Guilliman watched as the Dunecrawler fired its Eradication Beamer alongside ranks of red-robed Skitarii. They were fighting monsters. Stormfiends, hulking rat-beasts half-fused with machinery, their limbs replaced with warpfire throwers, gatling cannons, and poison-wind mortars. The Skitarii crushed some into pulp with gravity weaponry, only to be riddled with green-glowing projectiles in return.
In the distance, three Warlord-class Titans were locked in a desperate duel with a xenos titan-construct as large as a small frigate. It was a spindly, mosquito-like monstrosity of terrifying proportions.
The feed didn't last long. A massive Hell-Pit Abomination, its body a mountain of stitched limbs and grafted weapons, fired a lance of warp-energy that reduced the Dunecrawler to scrap. The screen went black.
"As you can see, my Lord, the Martian Sovereignty has come under massive attack. We are rallying for a counter-strike. By the Omnissiah, the Cult Mechanicus shall not fall!" Cawl offered a final cog-toothed salute and severed the link to return to his calculations.
Guilliman closed the channel, his face grim. He reached out to the various Legions and Chapters throughout the Sol System, but with few exceptions, the reports were the same: massive Skaven infestations were pinning them down. They could spare no one.
Guilliman's transhuman mind whirred. How had so many xenos remained hidden on so many worlds for so long?
He did not know that deep beneath Holy Terra, endless legions of Skaven were pouring through massive Warp-gates. They were arriving from every corner of the galaxy, funneling into the Sol System to saturate the heart of the Imperium with their filth.
Finally, as if the Emperor Himself took pity on His son's struggle, a psychic vision flashed before Guilliman's eyes.
He saw the pitch-black depths of the subterranean world. He saw the ratmen of the galaxy stepping through giant, malevolent green gateways to strike at the heart of Sol.
"This is…" Guilliman gasped, turning his gaze toward the Sanctum Imperialis and the Golden Throne. "Father... thank you."
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