"Can you teleport me onto one of the Talismans of Vaul?" Saal asked. "Either fortress will do."
His voice remained level, but his fingers had tightened around the edge of the tactical console. On the hololith, the twin Blackstone Fortresses revolved around the Celestial Engine like two immense, eight-pointed predators. Every firing cycle sent new distortions through the surrounding void.
Saal had spent long enough observing the battle from safety. The Farseer had sent him to help Talon neutralize the ancient weapons, not to stand on a command deck while humans decided whether boarding one was worth the risk.
"Yes," Qin Mo said. "Go ahead."
Saal's brow furrowed. He had expected questions, objections, or at least an argument over the dangers of placing him inside an awakened Blackstone Fortress. Instead, Qin Mo had granted permission without even looking away from the hololith.
Saal glanced toward the two Thunderborn standing nearby.
Grey met Saal's gaze for less than a second before resuming his study of the tactical display. Yoan did the same, though the corner of his mouth had begun to rise. Neither activated a teleport beacon or reached for a weapon.
An unpleasant suspicion settled over Saal.
The Imperium's hatred of aliens required no explanation, and the Lord of Talon treated most psychic mechanisms as unexploded ordnance with opinions. Sending an Aeldari guide into the fortress alone, allowing him to draw its defenses, and studying the results from a safe distance would have been a ruthlessly practical use of an expendable ally.
Qin Mo finally looked at him. A quiet chuckle escaped the living-metal avatar, carrying a faint metallic resonance that did little to conceal the genuine amusement behind it. Yoan stopped trying to hide his grin. Even Grey's stern expression shifted by a fraction.
"Relax." Qin Mo rested one hand briefly on Saal's shoulder plate. "You came here to help us. I'm not going to feed you to an awakened superweapon for sport."
Saal looked pointedly at the hand until Qin Mo removed it.
"Before I assign an escort," Qin Mo continued, "tell me exactly what you intend to do once you're inside."
"Reach the central nexus and disrupt the fortress's consciousness," Saal replied. "If I can break its connections to the outside world, I can cripple it from within."
Grey turned slightly. "You believe the fortress is conscious?"
"Not as you are," Saal said. "It possesses no single mind, no soul that can be reasoned with. Its systems form a patterned will: target recognition, self-preservation, aggression, and memories impressed into its structure before your species had learned to shape metal."
He indicated the two Blackstone Fortresses on the hololith.
"That will is awake, wounded, and enraged. Abaddon and Huron are not truly commanding these weapons. Their crews can steer them, open corridors, and encourage their aggression, but the Talismans selected their own target."
The reason was obvious. The Celestial Engine carried the signatures of the Nightbringer fragments bound within its power systems and the necrodermis shell of another C'tan. To the Talismans, those signatures belonged to the ancient enemy they had been created to destroy.
Chaos had merely brought the fortresses into the system and pointed them in the correct direction. Without the Celestial Engine's presence, Abaddon and Huron could have awakened only a fraction of their systems. Now they were passengers aboard weapons whose hatred might prove stronger than any restraint their crews could impose.
"And how do you intend to reach this central nexus?" Qin Mo asked.
Saal reached beneath his robes and removed two fist-sized wraithbone mechanisms. Their ivory surfaces had been worn smooth along the edges by generations of careful handling. Narrow grooves divided each object into interlocking branches, and a muted blue light moved beneath the material whenever Saal's fingers shifted.
"I do not know the route," he admitted. "These Talismans were already ancient when many of the paths through the Webway still had names. Their internal passages may no longer match any surviving record."
He held the devices above the console. Both turned fractionally toward the nearer fortress without his moving them.
"These relics will respond to the psychic current running through the structure. They should guide me toward its core. Once there, they can impose a pacification pattern upon the fortress's higher functions."
"Should?" Yoan asked.
Saal gave him a cool look. "If you possess a more precise operating manual for a weapon built during the War in Heaven, I would be pleased to consult it."
Yoan raised both hands. "Should is fine."
To an Imperial eye, the objects were ritual charms. Qin Mo recognized them as psycho-reactive access keys. Though much of the Old Ones' technology had been lost, the Aeldari retained the ability to manipulate remnants of it. Saal did not need to understand every mechanism inside the fortress. He only needed to speak to it in a language its builders had expected.
Qin Mo turned toward Grey. "You're going with him."
Grey was already sealing his helmet. "Understood."
"The Lamenters will provide the boarding force." Qin Mo expanded the fleet display. "They arrived at an excellent time."
A dimensional aperture was closing beside the Celestial Engine as the Daughter of Tempests slid into formation. The Lamenters' new flagship had arrived at exactly the right moment, and its company-scale teleportation matrix made Qin Mo's choice of boarding force obvious.
Saal studied the immense vessel's icon and nodded. "A Thunderborn and a company of your yellow-armored giants should be sufficient. But the fortress is vast. Even if these relics function perfectly, merely reaching the central nexus may require hours, perhaps even days."
"Then take whatever time you need," Qin Mo said. "The fleet will buy you that time."
Disabling the Talismans might require a prolonged fleet engagement. Qin Mo had already accepted the cost, if it meant securing the fate of Cadia.
Grey transmitted the assault package to the Daughter of Tempests. Chapter Master Phoros acknowledged the orders within seconds.
Grey stepped beside Saal as teleport fields gathered around them. The wraithbone relics brightened, reacting to the dimensional targeting solution and the psychic pressure radiating from the selected fortress.
The Blackstone Fortress distorted conventional teleport locks, but Talon's system did not touch the Warp. Once the Men of Stone resolved the destination's material coordinates, a sequence of green confirmations appeared in Qin Mo's noospheric interface.
On the Daughter of Tempests, the first Lamenters entered their transmission envelopes. Blue-white light folded around Saal and Grey, and both vanished without heat, smoke, or displaced air. At the same instant, a cluster of Lamenter identification runes disappeared from the flagship and reappeared inside the fortress.
Yoan looked down at his chestplate. His own beacon remained dark.
Qin Mo had already removed him from the transfer manifest through the noospheric link.
"I'm not going?" Yoan asked.
"You're staying here."
Disappointment crossed Yoan's face before discipline suppressed it. He searched for a tactical explanation and found only the familiar fear that he had failed some test no one had told him he was taking.
Qin Mo noticed.
"You did well," he said. "On Agripinaa, you entered a daemonic summoning ritual and disrupted it before the enemy could finish. That was the correct decision."
Yoan's eyes brightened. Praise from Qin Mo was rare enough that it struck harder than a decoration pinned on by some distant general.
"I'm keeping you here because Chaos will use any means necessary to destroy Cadia," Qin Mo continued. "If they attempt anything against Cadia or the Celestial Engine, I want you here and ready to respond."
The explanation drove the last of the doubt from Yoan's face. He straightened, opened his mouth to offer one of his usual clever replies, and discovered that none seemed appropriate.
"Understood," he said instead.
Qin Mo returned his attention to the tactical hololith.
The conventional fleets reached engagement range beneath the continuing duel of the superweapons.
Warp-cannon pulses from the Talismans deformed the Celestial Engine's shields while its satellite structures answered with particle lances. The exchange flattened defensive fields, tore at armor, and drove torrents of power through redundant systems, but neither side had gained a decisive advantage.
No captain dared enter the firing axes between them. Any cruiser caught there would be trapped between weapons designed to wound worlds. Beyond that exclusion zone, the Talon and Chaos fleets formed opposing battle lines. Escorts screened the capital ships while attack craft and torpedo waves spread through the intervening void, forcing both formations to commit their point defenses before the main batteries reached ideal range.
Talon's ships followed firing corridors supplied directly by the Celestial Engine. The Chaos commanders had no equivalent advantage. They saw the immense construct occupied by the Blackstone Fortresses and assumed its weapons, shields, and attention were fully committed.
They did not know that the arc-discharge array beneath the Engine's armored mantle had been charged before the fleets closed. Its emitters were distributed across thousands of kilometers of hull, requiring neither a visible turret nor a final charging cycle. Nothing revealed where the attack would originate.
As the Chaos battle line advanced, its left flank drifted deeper into the array's effective range.
At the center of the engagement, the Vengeful Spirit and Talon's Wrath exchanged their first full broadsides. Talon's Wrath concentrated its particle lances against the same shield sectors before sending torpedoes after the weakened envelope.
The Vengeful Spirit answered with macro-cannon salvos and lance batteries. Shells large enough to destroy cities crossed thousands of kilometers and burst against Talon's layered shields. Lance beams raked the battleship's forward quarter, turning the defensive field white but failing to reach the armor beneath.
Aboard the Vengeful Spirit, Abaddon watched the battle from his throne at the center of the command deck. Tactical projections crowded the air before him. The Celestial Engine burned at the edge of the display, bracketed by the two Blackstone Fortresses, while the conventional fleets converged beyond it.
Abaddon was not foolish enough to believe the Talon fleet would be easy to defeat. Its ships were too advanced, its coordination too precise, and its ability to disengage through dimensional translation made complete encirclement nearly impossible.
He did, however, believe the Celestial Engine had been temporarily contained.
Fighting the Blackstone Fortresses demanded the Engine's main batteries, defensive power, and satellite support. Turning those resources against the Chaos fleet would expose it to weapons designed to kill gods. So long as the Blackstone Fortresses continued firing, Abaddon considered the construct strategically occupied.
That left the fleet battle.
He expected an attritional deadlock rather than a decisive victory. If he could cripple several of Talon's capital ships, break apart their center, and force them to withdraw, the result would be sufficient to reach Cadia.
A communication hololith ignited beside his throne. Typhus appeared within it, his swollen face mottled by decay and half-obscured by the intermittent movement of flies.
"How long do you intend to trade meaningless volleys with that battleship?" Typhus asked.
"Long enough for its captain to believe I'm losing," Abaddon replied. "I'll reduce our rate of fire and simulate damage to the maneuvering drives. When their flagship closes to finish us, the Terminus Est will engage off it's starboard quarter."
Typhus's ruined mouth tightened into something resembling approval.
"Draw it across my guns," he said. "I will do the rest."
"Between your ship and mine, we should be more than enough to cripple it."
Talon's Wrath anchored the enemy center. Crippling it would force its escorts to cover the gap, deprive nearby cruisers of coordinated shield support, and give Abaddon a fracture against which he could concentrate his fleet.
The plan was limited but achievable.
Abaddon issued the orders. Several batteries aboard the Vengeful Spirit fell silent. Auxiliary plasma was vented through selected exhaust channels to mimic ruptured power conduits. The battleship's acceleration became uneven as its helm deliberately staggered output from the maneuvering thrusters.
Talon's Wrath continued firing.
Then it accelerated.
The Terminus Est dropped below the primary engagement plane, aligning its broadside with Talon's Wrath's projected advance. A vessel of its size could not hide in open space, and the overlapping firing lane it formed with the Vengeful Spirit was plain on Talon's sensors.
Talon's Wrath advanced anyway, seemingly indifferent to the looming ambush.
Abaddon leaned forward on his throne.
"An inexperienced captain," he said with a sneer. "Unfit to command a battleship."
"High-energy spike off the port flank!" a sensor officer shouted.
Abaddon's expression changed. A bad feeling crawled up his spine.
The Celestial Engine's arc array fired.
Thousands of concealed emitters discharged in the same instant, seeding the void with magnetically confined streams of ionized matter. Blue-white lightning spread across space along those streams, every branch guided toward the electromagnetic gradients of active shields, power cores, and armored hulls. By the time the Vengeful Spirit detected the energy spike, the discharge had already crossed the distance to the Chaos line.
The first branches struck the exposed escorts. Their void shields flared white and collapsed in a heartbeat. Generators tried to isolate themselves, but the surge outran both protection rites and safety systems. Relays burst, control stations exploded, and induced current tore through internal power grids.
The space storm propagated across the formation, using every active shield envelope as another point of contact. Bolts divided around cruisers and struck several shield sectors at once. Ships on the far flank lost their defenses; those nearer the Celestial Engine suffered arcs through armor joints and weapons galleries as auspex masts burst and maneuvering thrusters failed.
The capital ships endured only milliseconds longer. Their layered shields collapsed one bank at a time, each failure driving another shock through the vessel beneath.
The Vengeful Spirit's shields had already been strained by the repeated particle-lance impacts from Talon's Wrath. When the arc storm reached it, the remaining port-side generators overloaded almost simultaneously. The protective field vanished without the usual rolling collapse, leaving the ancient battleship's armor directly exposed to space.
Talon's Wrath was ready.
Its acceleration had never been a reckless attempt to finish a wounded enemy. Its fire-control systems had been synchronized with the Celestial Engine's attack, and its forward particle lance had reached full charge before the first Chaos shield failed.
It fired the instant the Vengeful Spirit became exposed.
The beam struck the port broadside without a shield flare to announce contact. Armor flashed into vapor as the particle lance tore through gun decks, a transit spine, and an auxiliary plasma conduit before punching from the opposite side in a storm of molten wreckage.
Compartments along its path ceased to exist. Thousands died before alarms reached their stations. Others were dragged into the void as atmosphere, bodies, and shattered machinery poured from the wound. Plasma fires spread through ruptured conduits while damage-control teams fought to isolate what remained.
The Vengeful Spirit heeled beneath the impact.
On the command deck, the impact jolted the floor hard enough to throw serfs from their stations. Abaddon locked one gauntlet around the arm of his throne while red damage indicators spread across the hololith before him.
Only then did he understand why Talon's Wrath had accelerated into an obvious trap. The Talon fleet had known exactly where the Chaos ships would be when the Celestial Engine fired.
Abaddon tightened his grip on the throne.
He had miscalculated.
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