"Ferrix."
"Father."
"Conclude the current campaign as quickly as possible. Move with the Second and Fourth Chapters toward the border between the Halo Stars and the Ghoul Stars — push back against the Rangdan advance."
"Yes, Father."
"These xenos are dangerous. Don't be careless. Bring more of the fleet and the Titan Legions. Try not to split your forces — go in together."
"I'll be joining the battle myself later, but I need a little time. The Eldar Titan development is in its final stage. I'll bring them to the front when it's done."
"The main force this time belongs to the Dark Angels. If they haven't asked for your intervention in their sector of the front, simply strike from other directions and leave them to their own affairs. If necessary, you can detach some fleet elements and Titan Legions to support them."
"Yes."
Looking at the data Perturabo had sent regarding the Rangdan, Ferrix felt genuine surprise.
No wonder even the Dark Angels were struggling to hold. No wonder Father intended to come personally. These xenos were formidable — this was going to require careful planning.
He looked down at the Knight House world below, currently being screamed across by the Titan Legions.
He'd originally intended to spare some of the Knight House population to pilot those machines. That was looking increasingly difficult. At the latest, by the day after tomorrow — if they were still holding out — he'd let them all die.
"Patch me through to Berossus and Dantioch."
Ghoul Stars. The Sarn System.
Aboard the Unbroken Truth, First Legion flagship, Lion El'Jonson stood on the bridge, looking through the vast viewport at the unknown stars ahead.
He wore power armour that was plain but of exceptional quality — black, bearing the First Legion's black blade heraldry on the pauldrons. His features were cold and austere. Golden hair fell over his shoulders. Those jade-green eyes were like two drawn blades.
Right now, those eyes were deeply furrowed. His normally fear-inducing expression was dark enough to drip.
Countless warships were in mutual bombardment with the Rangdan fleet. This star system was beyond saving — all the humans had been converted into slave armies, turned against the Imperial fleet.
The Dark Angels were fighting on multiple fronts. In a little over a year they had lost upward of eight thousand Astartes. Some battle-brothers had also been fitted with slave collars and stripped of their identities.
Capital ship losses had exceeded a hundred, lesser vessels beyond count. Three Titan Legions had been fed into the fighting.
After paying this catastrophic price, the counter-offensive against the Rangdan had barely moved. If anything, the Rangdan had pushed the front line back into the Halo Stars.
The Lion felt as though his face had been slapped, loudly and repeatedly. A man who had always placed supreme value on honour and victory could not accept this outcome.
Especially because this was the First Legion — the founding Chapter, the sharpest blade in the Emperor's arsenal, equipped and supplied better than anyone else.
While most Legions had only a single Gloria Regina, the Dark Angels had three — and had possessed them even before their Primarch returned. The finest equipment the Imperium could offer, and this was the result.
The Lion found himself unable to look at it without shame.
He was struggling to accept this.
In most situations, the Lion's emotions were cold to the point of clinical. He could identify enemy vulnerabilities with sharp precision and strike without mercy or honour. But right now, he was agitated.
Because the Emperor had started pushing him for answers.
The Rangdan this time were genuinely formidable — even the First Legion was not their match.
With no other options, the Lion had finally taken his sons' advice and sent the call for support to the Emperor.
In response, the Emperor had dispatched a large number of Crusade fleets to begin converging on the Rangdan, and had redirected the Space Wolves and Iron Warriors from the Solar Segmentum and the Halo Stars.
Most Primarchs had quick tempers. Of all of them, the Lion was the worst.
He was more stubborn than even Perturabo, unable to take advice from anyone, and operated on the principle that the Emperor was first and he himself was second — he had never once changed his approach because someone else suggested he should.
For a Primarch, this was not unusual. There weren't many people who could intellectually match a Primarch in argument.
And the Lion had successfully proven his authority — the First Legion was disciplined to perfect obedience, his reputation spread across the Imperium. More precisely, his reputation spread as fear and wariness.
But stubbornness could also be a cage. Like now — with losses mounting to this degree, the Lion had delayed calling for support until it was unavoidable, rather than requesting it when he first measured the gap between what his forces and the enemy could field.
The First Rangdan War had been the same. With the other Legions' Primarchs returning, the Dark Angels had refused to be outdone — they had gone after that hardened target alone, and Legion Master Belath had been killed in action, the Gloria Regina Infidus Imperator brought down.
Sixteen war moons. Sixteen of them.
This was the most terrifying xenos empire the Lion had ever faced.
"Zabriel — has anything come back from the reconnaissance fleet?"
"Nothing yet. Communication silence. By the schedule, they should have sent their first report within forty-eight hours."
Zabriel answered.
"It's been seventy-three hours."
A faint exhaustion had crept into the Lion's eyes. The grinding attrition of these past months had made his mental state less stable than usual — but he showed none of it. In this moment, he absolutely could not become unsteady.
Seventy-three hours without contact.
For a reconnaissance fleet composed of Dark Angels Raven Wing veterans, the implications were clear.
"Prepare to resume the counter-attack. I will lead the Unbroken Truth in the van. Notify Koswain and Arahos to prepare to strike from the flanks."
"But Father, the enemy's—"
The Lion turned to look at Zabriel. That look alone was enough to make the man's heart clench.
"Yes."
Zabriel turned and departed.
The Lion stood there, continuing to look at the stars. His instincts told him the Rangdan had not shown their full strength — there was something more terrible underneath, still concealed.
The reconnaissance fleet had returned nothing. In that case, he would drive straight in. Clear the xenos from this system first and establish a foothold for the incoming reinforcements.
Halo Stars. Tarrasar Sub-sector.
The entire sub-sector had been nearly overrun. Dozens of star systems' worth of humans had been enslaved by the Rangdan. The rest were fighting desperate rearguard actions.
Some star systems the Imperium hadn't yet reached had their own xenos populations fighting to defend their worlds — but the Rangdan were simply too powerful.
In the invasion fleets and among the ground forces, the slave armies composed of enslaved humans and other species could always be found at the forefront of every charge.
Endless, expendable, and they made the enemy waste ammunition — making the Rangdan' victories come easier.
They were operating at the edge of the Halo Stars and Ghoul Stars, advancing this quickly partly because of the Scrannel Worm-Men who had infiltrated ahead and were controlling populations from within.
Galia System.
Three months ago, this had been a system hub with fourteen planets, three habitable worlds, and over twenty billion inhabitants.
Merchant vessels crossing orbital paths, agri-worlds feeding surrounding systems, mining worlds producing quality ore, hive workers grinding in factories.
Now it had fallen entirely.
Looking at the slave armies rampaging across the surface, and the desecrated technological constructs, Ferrix understood for the first time — truly understood — how terrifying the Rangdan actually were.
Any world this contaminated was almost certainly unrecoverable. Even after taking them back, Edict of Extermination sweeps would likely be necessary to ensure no Scrannel Worm-Men remained.
Ferrix stood on the bridge of the Iron Indomitable, looking through the viewport at the burning planet below.
"Planet" was generous.
The surface was covered in a dark red substance — something that looked alive, something that moved.
Those dark red chitinous structures spread like mould, consuming the hive cities, the factories, the farmland, turning everything into the same nauseating colour.
The Rangdan were assimilating these worlds, just as the Krathos xenos Queen had done at Solk — and the memory of that Queen's strength was still vivid in Ferrix's mind.
The xenos fleet they were facing here wasn't particularly strong — the Iron Warriors defeated them without much difficulty.
But there was no point sending ground forces down now. No planetary shields on most of these worlds. The contamination had gone too far — nothing worth preserving.
The one world that did have a planetary shield had its shields overloaded under concentrated fire, then eliminated with Cyclonic Torpedoes.
The Edict of Extermination consumed the system entirely.
What had been a thriving hub was dust in seven days.
"Commander."
The logic engine spoke.
"Based on Imperial census records, approximately thirty billion people in this system were converted into slaves. The remaining population was used as food and recreational material."
Ferrix's fist tightened slightly.
"And the entire sub-sector?"
"Insufficient data. Calculation not possible."
Ferrix said nothing.
He had read about the Rangdan's horrors in the data Perturabo had provided. Actually seeing it was something different.
The data had described the Rangdan's domestication capabilities — the ability to rewrite genetic sequences, turn humans into slaves, convert entire planetary populations into expendable assault forces, even reduce Space Marines to mindless puppet-slaves.
He had thought he understood. He clearly hadn't. Looking at these worlds, at the planets being consumed alive, he finally understood what actual horror was.
Even the Krathos xenos Queen could barely compare to this.
"Commander."
Berossus's voice came through the vox.
"Second Chapter has entered the engagement. Do we merge now?"
"Merge. We need to be careful this time — don't be rash. These enemies are not simple."
He forwarded the earlier footage to Berossus and to Dantioch currently en route, then ordered the advance to continue.
The losses the Imperium would sustain before this campaign was over were going to be devastating.
Ferrix could almost see how many systems would be burned before the end.
"Father — the Iron Warriors have begun their push from the Halo Stars. Projected timeline to breaking through the Rangdan lines and linking up with us is two months."
Koswain's voice — slightly rough. Even Astartes couldn't hide the exhaustion of this level of sustained combat.
"Commander Ferrix has also sent word — they are sweeping xenos from the systems along the way. Lord Perturabo will personally join the battle later as well. He says a newly developed weapon is ready for field use on the ground."
The Lion's eyebrow lifted.
Perturabo had something new again.
That brother was a genuinely extraordinary talent for weapons development — even the Martian Mechanicum's priests couldn't match him.
"Where is Perturabo now?"
"Still at Olympia, apparently."
"Tell Ferrix to push to Sarn as quickly as possible. We need Iron Warriors fleet support here."
He looked at the war moons ahead — their massive gravitational pull was distorting the orbital paths of surrounding celestial bodies, making it almost impossible for approaching warships to mount effective attacks.
Add to that the terrifying firepower, and the Rangdan warships that kept appearing from somewhere, and the Dark Angels simply could not break through.
Even Deathwing boarding parties rarely succeeded.
The Ravenwing fleet and ground forces couldn't compete against the Rangdan tide of bodies — there were simply too many. Whatever gaps a Titan's Volcano Cannon cleared were filled by slave-army waves in moments. The Rangdan commanders were hidden inside those slave forces — you couldn't even target them for decapitation strikes.
And in the naval engagement, the Rangdan had used some method to cut off inter-ship communications. Within a certain range, it simply stopped working.
The Lion had no idea how to counter it.
Imperial warships couldn't project their real power without closing to range — but the moment they closed to range, every communication channel was blanketed with interference, auguries couldn't function.
Close in and you were flying blind, blundering around, unable to coordinate — relying on the sheer armour and mass of Imperial vessels plus collision rams to achieve anything at all.
Which was essentially a suicide charge. Looking at the numbers — Imperial warships versus Rangdan warships — even exchanging at one-for-one was an atrocious trade.
The Lion was genuinely without answers.
The Rangdan's sheer scale and their desecrated technology were grinding the First Legion down in place.
Attack? They couldn't win.
Board and decapitate? Half the time you couldn't even locate the enemy commander.
Pull back to preserve strength? The Rangdan fleet would surge forward and another set of planets would fall — hundreds of billions more slave-army bodies added to their arsenal.
The Lion was trapped — unable to advance, unable to retreat — holding the line through Dark Angels special technology and their sheer weight of resources, grinding it out.
If conditions allowed, he would have already considered releasing the Vengeful Spirit — but there was no target to point it at, and releasing it blind would accomplish nothing.
The Lion's eyes were hollow. His hair was unkempt. A beard had grown across his face. He looked, right now, somewhat close to desperate.
"The Space Wolves — where are they? They should have been here by the plan long ago. Not a trace of them."
"The Emperor is still assembling fleets. The Sixth Legion took time to concentrate. Leman Russ is now advancing with the full Legion and fleet at maximum speed — but it will take at least three standard Terran weeks."
The Lion felt a familiar helplessness about the Imperium's bureaucratic sluggishness. He had sent the signal eight months ago. Nearly a year of fighting, and the Imperial fleet still hadn't arrived.
Thirty thousand Dark Angels dead. At least a third of the fleet gone. The Rangdan's losses were probably still within their acceptable range.
Looking at the Rangdan fleet blotting out the stars ahead, the Lion felt powerless for the first time.
Aboard the Iron Indomitable, Ferrix watched the dark red tide approaching on the holographic display. Three war moons floated within it.
Each one was thousands of kilometres across. Their surfaces were covered in that strange dark red chitin, catching the starlight in an uncanny sheen. Countless tentacle-like structural growths extended from their surfaces, writhing slowly in the vacuum.
Around them, tens of thousands of warships — those twisted, nauseating forms of fused biomass and alloy — held a loose formation, advancing slowly but steadily toward the Iron Warriors' defensive line.
Ferrix felt no fear. The Rangdan were powerful — but his fleet was more powerful still. Crushing this Rangdan fleet in a straight confrontation was entirely manageable.
What gave Ferrix the genuine headache was the planets behind that fleet.
Nearly identical contamination to what they'd already seen. Those worlds were already gone.
All of them fine resource planets. All wasted. All that human population.
Ferrix could barely imagine what those worlds might have contributed to Iron Warriors production capacity if they'd been under the Fourth Legion's control.
Now, none of that was possible.
He looked at the Rangdan fleet ahead, killing intent filling his eyes.
"Signal all vessels."
His voice was level.
"Full fleet — battle formation. Star Forts move forward, establish first-line forward pressure. Abyssal-class and Gloria Regina-class battleships to centre. Capital ships disperse to protect the flanks."
"Automata and Iron Circle units prepare for boarding defence. In case."
The moment the orders went out, the Iron Warriors' fleet began its coordinated movement.
Fifteen Star Forts pressed forward. Their combined fire discharged in an instant — lighting up the Rangdan fleet ahead for what seemed like kilometres in every direction.
Three Abyssal-class battleships, with firepower three times that of a Gloria Regina, opened fire as well. Plasma and electromagnetic Nova Cannons discharged without interruption, without concern for overloading.
Void shield layers stacked up — dense enough to blot out the star systems behind them. Looking up from the planet's surface, all you could see was endless light blazing across the sky, almost swallowing the light of the system's star.
The Rangdan fleet was nearly drowned in the Imperial fire. Nova Cannon beams and broadside salvoes punched into their formations.
The first wave of Rangdan warships was destroyed in moments — they hadn't even managed to raise shields before they were melted.
The shields that the rear elements managed to bring online were immediately blasted into overload by the glare and impact of fire they couldn't even look directly into.
The Iron Warriors' firepower exceeded anything they had accounted for.
The three war moons began to react. Countless gun batteries extended from their chitin.
Those batteries were biological in nature — writhing as they emerged from the war moons, then spraying luminescent biomass projectiles trailing dark red contrails.
But the near-blanket fire coverage of the Iron Warriors intercepted most of it before it reached its targets. Twenty-two layers of void shielding absorbed what wasn't intercepted.
The Star Forts and Abyssal-class battleships continued their salvoes, round after round. Gloria Regina Nova Cannons fired without pause. Capital ship broadside batteries rained like a monsoon. The star-space around them had developed several new colours worth of debris and dust.
The Rangdan fleet was beginning to break under such sustained pressure. Those strange warships detonated one after another. The surfaces of the three war moons were being cratered into ruin.
Their shields were meaningless. Against real fire coverage, every tactic they had taken pride in had no opportunity to function.
Cut communications? No opportunity even to try.
Slave body-wave tactics? Edict of Extermination sweeps from orbit — no ground engagement necessary.
Psychic attack? Setting aside the range issue, the blue crystal shields built into every warship had already formed a comprehensive barrier.
The Iron Warriors were not a natural counter to the Rangdan. In a close-engagement attrition fight they might even struggle to threaten Rangdan forces. But their fleet strength was sufficient to overcome those vulnerabilities by brute force alone.
Absolute power, absolute firepower. The raw strength approach.
No clever tricks, no finesse. Unless a Necron dynasty suddenly appeared and started deploying casualty weapons and Dolmen Gate-level technology, no fleet could frontally defeat one that could sustain full combat output for ten years without worrying about ammunition or energy reserves.
No fleet in the galaxy could match the fully-realised Iron Warriors fleet right now. Even a fleet personally commanded by the Emperor, without the Dragon of Mars, could not contend with the Iron Warriors.
Perturabo had, in a remarkably short time, forged the Fourth Legion into a genuinely invincible fleet.
This was the gift he had been preparing for the eventual awakening of the Necrons and the approaching Tyranid invasion.
And if Chaos still wanted to corrupt his brothers — he had the strength to suppress any rebellion.
He had thought through Nurgle's rust-plague long ago. Why else did the blue crystals exist? Even without them, Perturabo would have found functional alternatives.
With the Webway now being explored in the Halo Stars region, Chaos worried him even less in future.
He genuinely didn't believe Chaos could manufacture another rebellion capable of half-killing the Imperium.
Even if all the other Primarchs rebelled simultaneously, even if Guilliman produced five million Ultramarines, Perturabo was confident he could suppress it alone — and that absolute confidence was what the Malefic Discipline had given him.
You want him to fight — go trade blows with all four Chaos Gods? Maybe not. But if you want him to prepare a war that sweeps the galaxy — he could manage that with minimal effort.
And right now, the Fourth Legion was showing the Rangdan with live fire what genuine strength actually looked like.
Against firepower like this, every scheme and stratagem became pathetically fragile.
Never mind internal subversion — just attempting a boarding action required somehow punching through total-coverage fire.
Teleportation required somehow defeating the opposing psychic shields first.
The Rangdan War-Commander was close to weeping. It had only been ordered to delay this fleet's arrival as support. And it had heard this fleet was powerful — had even brought three war moons for the task. But nobody had told it they were this powerful.
The war moons were nearly wrecked. Retreat was no longer an option — turn your back and you'd have your drives targeted and destroyed.
"Commander, do you require increased fire output?"
Berossus's voice came through the vox.
"Increase. Finish them quickly. We need to push through to support the Dark Angels' line."
"Yes."
Immediately, even more concentrated fire descended on the Rangdan fleet.
The shockwaves were reaching the planets behind the battle. The sound of the bombardment was terrifying enough to drive the local populations into hiding.
In the centre war moon, the Rangdan War-Commander watched its moon being destroyed piece by piece, utterly unable to do anything against this level of firepower.
Return fire intercepted. Shields overloaded in moments. Not even a gap for a boarding action.
The War-Commander looked at the channel blown through its defences by plasma cannon fire, and sat in the command chamber, all light gone from its eyes.
Around it, xenos of the alliance species were howling and crying. The War-Commander had stopped thinking about escape.
How?
Watching the Nova Cannon beams drawing closer, the Rangdan War-Commander closed its eyes.
Power meant nothing here. Naval engagements didn't work like that. The strategy of pulling an enemy commander into single combat to neutralise one opponent at a time — no possibility of that.
A Rangdan War-Commander died. Silently, without any opportunity to demonstrate a single capability. A single electromagnetic Nova Cannon shot from a Star Fort, several kilometres across, erased the war moon's core.
With the War-Commander's death, the already-fragmenting Rangdan fleet shattered entirely.
A xenos fleet commanding three war moons and tens of thousands of warships was annihilated in under eighteen hours.
The Iron Warriors' fleet continued forward, grinding everything in its path.
"Captain — I think we're dying here."
Derian looked at Sevitus, who had lost his left arm, standing back to back with him.
Both of them held power swords. At their feet, the bodies had piled into small hills — slave corpses and a few large xenos forms. Xenos slaves and Rangdan Empire alien.
They had been part of a Deathwing squad. The fleet had been holding back the xenos assault on this system, but their ship had been destroyed and brought down on this moon. Their brothers were nearly all dead. Just the two of them left.
Sevitus was already missing one heart and two lungs. He was running on will alone. Looking at the familiar faces in the encircling slave armies — the battle-brothers they recognised, twisted into this — there was more blood in his eyes than before.
These filth. Desecrating their brothers' bodies. Warping them into this.
This system would fall to the xenos very soon. They couldn't stop it. And even their own bodies might be desecrated the same way.
Sevitus only regretted that his last melta bomb had been spent. Otherwise he'd have kept one for himself — to at least keep his remains from this.
"We are Dark Angels. The Emperor's wrath."
"And we shall know no fear."
Just as the two prepared to die, countless "meteors" fell from the sky, hammering through the slave army around them and carving a clear space in the chaos.
Drop pods. Ramps opening. Bolt fire sweeping through the surrounding slave force.
Iron Circles and automata forming iron walls, pushing the front line back.
Sevitus and Derian looked at the Resentment Intelligence units that had saved them, uncertain whether their duty was to the Emperor who had outlawed such technology, or to the reality that those same machines had just preserved their lives.
An Iron Circle approached them. Both men raised their weapons instinctively.
"My lords, please rest for a moment. When our ground forces arrive on the surface, we will tend to your wounds. Our Commander will explain everything."
Looking at the Resentment Intelligence unit — as tall as a Dreadnought — the two men had nothing to say. But looking at the front line being pushed back around them, they finally sat down.
There was nothing else they could do right now.
The "meteors" from above kept coming.
Sevitus and Derian watched Contemptor Dreadnoughts and Knight Households landing on the surface. Then Titan Legions descending onto the moon.
These war machines, rare enough to be legendary individually, appearing in numbers here.
They couldn't understand it. What on this moon was worth saving?
The yellow-and-black hazard markings on the Resentment Intelligence units told both men where these war machines came from.
They had heard the rumours about the Fourth Primarch's ambitions. They hadn't expected this — the man wasn't even pretending to conceal things anymore, Resentment Intelligence out in the open on a battlefield with friendly forces present.
The Dark Angels had actually developed contingency plans for dealing with the Fourth Legion. And in this short a time, it had come to this. What would fighting them even look like?
Their war machines were unmanned.
By their own doctrine, something like this should have been kept absolutely hidden — brought out at the decisive moment as a trump card, deployed against the enemy's most critical node.
How could something like this have been discovered?
Wait—
Sevitus and Derian both suddenly had the same thought at the same moment. Cold sweat broke out simultaneously. If that was the case — did they even have a chance of getting out of here alive?
"Father — the Fourth Legion has arrived at the outer edge of the Saxus System. They are sweeping the invading Rangdan forces. One of our Deathwing squads was rescued there."
Koswain reported.
"The Iron Warriors fleet is here?"
"Yes. Commander Ferrix has established contact with us. Three days at most and they'll be here."
"They're half a month ahead of schedule."
The Lion's gaze shifted and sharpened. The exhausted posture changed in a moment.
"The Iron Warriors are already here — and the Sixth Legion? The fleet elements the Emperor sent as support?"
"Warp transit — we can't reach those fleets. Possibly some minor storms, or navigational drift. Normal occurrence, Father."
"They had already wasted months before the Warp transit even started."
The Lion's control over his temper slipped for a moment — all the accumulated frustration of this campaign coming through.
Then he contained it, and the cold expression returned.
The current situation didn't permit impulsiveness.
"Captain Sevitus — I am Dantioch, Commander of the Iron Warriors' Fourth Fleet."
Sevitus stared at the figures in front of him — a full head taller and considerably broader than himself.
This is the Fourth Legion?
It didn't look much like the stocky, compact group he remembered from before.
Medical automata came forward. Dozens of compounds were injected into the two men — through the neck, through the wounds on their bodies.
Sevitus had wanted to refuse. Trusting Resentment Intelligence was simply beyond what he was willing to do — but the automata's strength was far beyond what he could resist.
Consciousness fading, both men collapsed. In the moments before it went entirely dark, they felt themselves being lifted onto something cold and metal.
Through the haze, they registered that mechanical arms had begun working on them — the sharp pain and discomfort made them groan before darkness took them completely.
The two severely wounded men were unconscious within moments.
Hearing over the vox that the Primcast surgery had begun on both of them, Ferrix gave a brief nod and returned his attention to the battle.
Good timing. This system had only just been breached — there was still something left to save.
"Dantioch — clear the xenos and the slave forces as quickly as possible. I'll handle the fleet elements ahead and then move to link up with Lord Lion. Follow once your sector is clear."
"Yes, Commander."
Dantioch closed the vox and looked at the charging forces ahead — black-armoured bodies, all of them twisted out of human shape, bristling with strange organs and weapons grafted onto them where none should be.
These filth.