Traitors deserved no sympathy. Sevatar closed Santhral's eyes anyway.
Santhral had replaced many parts of his own body with augmetics — Sevatar had noticed this during the fight.
But judging from everything Sevatar and his brothers had cut through on the way here, even steel could be corrupted into something beyond description. Which meant Santhral must have been excising his own corrupted tissue and replacing it with prosthetics.
Why? Was it Slaanesh's demand, or something else?
"Kent — burn them."
"Yes, Commander."
Sevatar didn't know why these "brothers" had defected. He didn't know why they had still refused to accept physical mutation. But this was the last thing he could do for them.
It didn't take long. Within seconds, melta fire had consumed the bodies on the ground. The flames burned over these warriors who had, at least, kept their dignity.
He gave a quiet aquila salute. Then Sevatar led the Black Guard and continued their advance.
The Abominable Intelligence cohort had successfully completed the boarding. The Emperor's Children and Iron Hands could not resist the automata at all.
Corruption was useless against them. Psychic attacks were blocked. Sense-altering drugs had no effect on a collection of machines.
The engagement was one-sided from the start. No Legion could match the Abominable Intelligence cohort in a direct confrontation — not even the Custodians.
The true backbone of the Imperium's war effort was no longer the mortal Auxilia. Without anyone quite noticing, the Abominable Intelligence had taken over that role entirely.
This had always sat uncomfortably with the Emperor. But there was nothing to be done about it — Perturabo had established an overwhelming dominance in this domain. The Primarchs had grown into their independence. Even Horus and Lion had accepted the existence of the Abominable Intelligence. And Dorn — the man who had been running Terra's administration all this time — had quietly acquiesced to Perturabo's unilateral proliferation of it.
The Emperor had no recourse. Charm alone could never govern an empire — especially once people had tasted the benefits.
In short: Abominable Intelligence, while nowhere near as uncontrolled as in the Dark Age of Technology, had now absolutely made itself indispensable to humanity once more. Even the Mechanicus had reached the point where a tech-priest who didn't have several dedicated Castellax or Thanatar units at their side couldn't hold their head up in a technical exchange conference.
This was Perturabo's baseline contingency — built in advance against the possibility of future rebellion, Tyranid invasion, or Necron awakening.
Abominable Intelligence could theoretically be corrupted — there were precedents. But corrupting it in front of Perturabo himself was a fantasy.
That was why Perturabo had always been so comfortable expanding it so aggressively.
Now its advantages were on full display.
The traitors' fleet and their ground forces were being completely dismantled by the Imperial side.
Even Dorn, after engaging the Imperial fleet directly, had said the same thing to Lion — if they were truly committed to a decisive engagement against the Imperium right now, they would lose. Without question.
This had never been a fair contest. Chaos had helped them close some of the gap — but it hadn't changed their fundamental position.
They still didn't dare reveal their location. Relying on the abilities they had drawn from Chaos, they remained concealed in the Warp.
Their movements were too erratic. Their original plan had been to extinguish the Astronomican, tear open the Eye of Terror, cause massive disruption, and then shatter the Imperium in the chaos that followed. That plan had collapsed.
Right now they didn't look like a rebel force. They looked like a cluster of rats — hiding from Imperial pursuit while remaining capable of delivering a lethal strike at any moment.
This was the contradiction. And it was exactly what drove Ferrus and Dorn to the edge of sanity.
The traitors' refusal to commit to open battle — their constant use of shadow tactics — made them difficult to pin down and destroy. The Imperium couldn't afford to commit its full strength to a sweep without leaving critical points exposed — but it also couldn't afford to do nothing.
And these traitors were not bluffing. Left unchecked, they would genuinely issue Exterminatus orders across worlds wholesale.
People who had abandoned all moral limits long ago were capable of anything.
"So what finally made you into this? What reason did you have to defect, traitor?"
Aboard the Blade of Caliban, Lion looked at Konrad, bound in heavy auramite chains.
The Dark Angels' Company Masters and Champions were assembled. They looked at the traitors imprisoned in the cells around them with genuine curiosity — why had these Night Lords thought it a good idea to pick a fight with them?
They hadn't even bothered with deception. They had just sailed directly toward them.
Did they not see the disparity in strength? All those Gloriana-class ships and star-fortresses — were those invisible?
But the Night Lords had done exactly that — charged directly, not even attempting to disguise their approach, launching a boarding assault against the Dark Angels without ceremony.
And now they were here.
Kosswain could still recall the moment a month ago when these traitors had first approached them.
The Dark Angels had had no idea what was happening — they knew nothing of the Great Betrayal at that point.
Then the Night Lords appeared. The Dark Angels were bewildered — until the scale and markings of the enemy fleet raised their suspicions.
Lion had reacted with characteristic decisiveness. Almost instantly he had assessed the situation, issued his orders, and authorised lethal force if necessary.
The Dark Angels hadn't been soft about it either. Against a brother Legion — they had still committed fully. The Abominable Intelligence cohort was positioned. The Astartes were at full readiness. If the Night Lords boarded, they would be walking into a slaughter.
The outcome Lion and the Dark Angels least wanted still happened — but not because the Night Lords had won. The Dark Angels had held back from opening fire only because they had the absolute confidence to take them down — but that didn't mean they had any intention of accepting a brother Legion's betrayal.
Boarding pods came in from every direction into the Dark Angels' enormous fleet. But the fleet the Night Lords and Konrad were familiar with no longer existed.
The Castellax and Thanatar units reduced their so-called rapid assault to a joke.
Precognitive ability was completely negated against Abominable Intelligence.
The Dark Angels' raw strength exceeded anything the Night Lords had accounted for. These much larger, much more powerfully built versions of the brothers they remembered were dramatically stronger than the ones in their memories.
Sevatar and Shen and the others could not break through the combined containment line held by the Abominable Intelligence and Dark Angels. In the end they were captured by Kosswain, Astelan, and Araklion together, and placed in custody.
When Konrad appeared before Lion, he had still been expecting to leverage his past experience and find some advantage against this elder brother.
But this Lion, for reasons he couldn't account for, was not only significantly more skilled in combat — the black sword in his hand had shattered Konrad's lightning claws entirely.
Konrad genuinely couldn't understand it. He could still feel his precognitive ability functioning. He could still see this brother's next moves before they came.
But Lion was too fast. Too strong. Fast enough that Konrad couldn't dodge and couldn't make decisions fast enough to respond. Lion's physical force was also at a level Konrad had never been built to sustain in prolonged combat — the kind of exchange he was designed to end quickly. Being forced into a war of attrition at this power level had cost him badly from the first exchange.
In barely more than a dozen rounds, Konrad — who had still been planning to get some mocking commentary in — was hit hard enough by that terrifying force that he couldn't produce words at all.
In the end, Lion caught Konrad in a gap in his guard, drove a boot into him and put him flat on the deck, then brought the black sword down hard into his spine and turned it.
Konrad's scream of pain punctuated the end of a battle that was never equal — over in under two hours.
The Night Lords lost close to ninety percent of their number. Everyone else was taken prisoner.
They had never expected to survive this. They had come as a sacrifice unit — to delay the First Legion, just as they had done before.
This time they had miscalculated.
"So what happened? Tell me, traitor."
Lion sat and questioned this "brother." The Dark Angels had spent this entire period interrogating these "cousins" — and had already determined that this group of Astartes were definitively not the real Night Lords.
They had established that fact shortly after the boarding.
These "cousins" were too small. After the universal rollout of the Primarch enhancement surgery, Legion Astartes had grown considerably in scale. But this group hadn't — which was immediately suspicious.
And in the course of the fighting, the Dark Angels had noticed that these "cousins" were not just familiar with Dark Angels tactics — they had developed specific counter-tactics for them. If not for the Abominable Intelligence cohort and their own enhanced strength, they might have genuinely been caught off-guard.
"Darkness has come, brother. You cannot escape it. Everyone who worships the False Emperor will die. Including you."
Konrad was still refusing to yield. Lion had extracted nothing useful from him directly. But the Dark Angels had gotten a great deal out of the Night Lords during interrogation.
These individuals — untouched by the kind of ideological correction that might have given them a spine — had eventually broken under the Dark Angels' extraordinarily refined interrogation techniques and produced substantial information.
When Lion learned that Terra was very likely already under siege, he immediately began the return journey. Armed with the Webway access the Emperor had quietly given him, he was back in the Solar System within half a month.
Throughout the journey he continued questioning Konrad. No progress came.
Lion was a deeply intimidating figure — by the Imperium's reputation or by his brothers' reckoning, the assessment of the First Legion's master was never flattering.
He was decisive and cold. But he also had one significant flaw: he was confident. Or rather — arrogant.
Konrad had originally planned to exploit that quality and take down the entire First Legion in one move. But this Lion's power had caught him completely off-guard — and now he was here with a broken spine, chained to a wall.
The chains were not just auramite either. Konrad could feel it — because he could not break free of them.
"Give me a reason. For the defection."
Lion's arrogance hadn't changed — but his temper had improved considerably. The conversations with his brothers during the Great Crusade, and Angron's situation in particular, had done a great deal to soften what had been years of accumulated severity.
In the end it came down to the fact that the Great Crusade's later stages had gone increasingly well. The light of human hope had spread to the Primarchs — and their mental states had improved as a result.
Something both the Emperor and Perturabo were glad to see.
This was the aspect Konrad found most deeply enviable. He had noticed the difference in this Imperium as well. The near-perfect way the Great Crusade had concluded had sent every defected brother into a moment of genuine disorientation.
But clearly, whatever had initially driven their defections — by the point they had reached now, their own private motivations had also played a role.
Konrad, for instance. He had destroyed a considerable number of worlds along his path. The Nightfall's supply of human skin had been cycled through ship after ship — a practice that had eventually led even Sevatar and Shen to try to dissuade their father.
This was not justice by any stretch. He knew that himself. But the practice had reached a degree of depravity that made it genuinely difficult for even Sevatar to make any argument in his defence.
Sevatar had largely given up — on the Legion, on his father, treating them as effectively beyond salvage and emotionally withdrawing from both.
After even his most trusted son had begun to abandon him, Konrad had become more savage still. In his view, it was probably better that way — at least they wouldn't be dragged down into the same filth.
He knew it was wrong. But he had been unable to stop — and he had chosen to keep indulging, because he had discovered it effectively numbed his psychological burden.
He had fallen entirely. Not by pledging himself to Chaos — but by becoming, psychologically and morally, a complete wreck of a person.
His sense of justice made him despise what he had become with genuine intensity. But the profound psychic pain and the dark desire found something irreplaceable in inflicting suffering on others.
Not joining Chaos was his final line. The last thread of humanity left in a brutal and broken mind kept him from crossing it.
Coming to attack the Dark Angels had also been done with the same resignation to death. It didn't take a Primarch to kill a Primarch — he had wanted to take the Dark Angels down with him. But that plan, it turned out, had been naive.
"Are you pitying me, brother? Looking for a reason to let me keep living?"
Konrad watched this drastically changed Lion with a sardonic expression.
He could feel it — this brother genuinely wanted to save him. That didn't fit the profile at all.
Compassion. Or — the reluctance to act. This emotion appearing in this particular person. He really had lived long enough to see everything.
"When did you become this irresolute? Shouldn't you have just taken my head the moment you knew I was a traitor?"
"I'm asking for your reasons. Not offering to spare your life. That said — if you confess your crimes honestly, perhaps the Emperor and the Warmaster will consider leniency."
Lion was already showing something close to his hand. The most feared executioner in the Imperium had lost some of his former edge.
"The master of the First Legion, going soft. The other brothers would say my mind has finally gone completely if they heard me say that."
Konrad's tone remained sardonic. Lion paid it no attention.
"I don't believe what your sons said. The Night Lords who have always stood for justice — they wouldn't defect over a reason that absurd."
"I can't see what the Imperium ever gave you reason to betray."
Lion wanted to know what had actually driven Konrad to this.
Konrad still said nothing in response. But tears moved in his eyes.
"The False Emperor gave me no reason to follow him. So I followed the Warmaster and defected. And I slaughtered the brothers in my Legion who remained loyal to him."
"You haven't seen that Imperium, brother. You can't imagine what it looked like. How dark the darkness there actually was. After our Great Crusade ended, the False Emperor would have settled scores with us."
"I did it for self-preservation. And for—"
Konrad trailed off. The tears were running freely now.
"So here — in this universe — why did you still defect? Why slaughter so many worlds' worth of human lives?"
Lion sat down across from Konrad. He looked at this "brother's" pure black eyes — large tears on a savage face, making it look almost pitiable.
"Because I was envious."
"And so you tortured and killed that many people."
"Yes."
"You had better choices available. You chose the least forgivable one."
"I can't go back. The weight of what I've done is beyond accounting. You can't save me, brother. The Emperor can't redeem me either."
"Save those words for the Emperor and the Warmaster. Perhaps you still have a chance to earn some redemption through what follows."
Lion stood. Whatever became of this brother in the end — let the Emperor and Perturabo decide. By rights he should simply have killed this traitor. He found he was unwilling to do that.
"If someone like me can be forgiven, then justice no longer exists, brother."
Konrad produced one more sentence. It stopped Lion's footsteps.
"If this rebellion had never happened — and Father had done exactly what my precognition showed — begun settling scores with the Legions, and with us, and eventually came for you personally — would you still have chosen loyalty?"
"Loyalty needs no reward. Because loyalty itself is the reward."
Lion left the room. Konrad remained locked in his chains, withdrawn into silence.
"Clearly you've changed a great deal. I don't remember Konrad ever being this capable."
Fulgrim held a longsword in each of his four arms. Ferrus stood nearby, and the Iron Snakes around him prevented Konrad from fully committing to any attack — that war hammer had come close to connecting several times.
"I don't remember when — or why — the proud Emperor's Children became what I'm looking at right now. Look at yourself, Fulgrim."
Konrad's lightning claws severed several of the Iron Snakes' heads. But both opponents were forcing him steadily back. He didn't have the strength to take on two brothers simultaneously.
"I love what I am now. No more concealment. I can pursue pleasure without limit — and I can spend every single moment with Gorgon. Every moment."
"Seems like your new master enjoys a good pet. A deviant of your specific variety is rare in the entire galaxy — I suppose you earn your keep."
"That insult has no teeth. Are you complimenting me?"
Fulgrim's purple tongue ran along the blade's edge. Blood trickled down the steel — which only made Fulgrim more excited.
"I'll keep your body near me. With Gorgon. We'll—"
A green flash of light cut him off.
Phase lightning claws struck from above. Corax's sudden appearance caught both Fulgrim and Ferrus completely off-guard.
Three of Fulgrim's arms were severed in an instant. The lightning claws raked across the left ribs — but having long since lost the capacity for pain, Fulgrim registered the wound as nothing. The dopamine hit made him more excited instead.
Konrad seized the gap Corax had opened. He produced a grenade and drove Ferrus back, then poured gauss ray fire into both opponents simultaneously — the energy began eroding their armour.
"I didn't expect you two to work together. That's a novelty."
Fulgrim swung his remaining arm's sword, looking at the two master assassins standing side by side.
"Traitor!"
Corax had considerably less patience for this than Konrad — he showed no mercy toward traitors and had no tolerance for theatrics.
His silhouette vanished. A moment later he appeared directly behind Fulgrim. The lightning claws were already moving toward the traitor — but the Iron Snakes forced him to abort.
Konrad maintained sustained gauss fire on Ferrus from the side. The energy capable of reducing matter to atoms was something even a Primarch body found difficult to endure indefinitely.
This was what Konrad had established through extended observation: Ferrus had almost no remaining autonomous consciousness. He was running entirely on instinct.
Still powerful — but against assassination specialists like Konrad and Corax, in this environment, with a safe engagement distance maintained, he was essentially a high-durability target that couldn't apply pressure effectively.
In the end, Corax took Fulgrim's head — sending the traitor's essence back into the Warp. Ferrus was subsequently broken down entirely by sustained gauss fire.
"How is the overall situation?"
"Essentially finished. Some Iron Hands were taken prisoner. Your son believes some of them might still be salvageable."
Konrad frowned.
"Sev said that?"
"Yes. A few hundred of them. No Chaos corruption detectable. They'd even excised their own mutated tissue — apparently among the very few in the Legion willing to do that."
"And what do you think?"
"Traitors are traitors. I was going to kill them outright — but your son stopped me. He wants to bring them to Terra and have the Emperor judge them."
Corax didn't like this. His position was straightforward: all traitors should die.
"I support Sev's decision. If he says these traitors should face the Emperor's judgment, then let them face it."
"We should move. Both traitor Legions are essentially finished — the destruction of two Legions at once, however weak, will leave them badly weakened. We can look for whatever openings they expose and push to eliminate more of them."
"Since when did you develop this kind of strategic thinking? I thought you'd go back to the ship and spiral again, leaving Sevatar to make all the decisions for you."
"Can't I have my own thoughts?"
Konrad was mildly offended. He was a Primarch — surely he could manage that much. He had simply chosen not to engage before. That didn't mean he had no capacity for it.
Corax didn't bother continuing the exchange. He vanished. Arguing was pointless — killing more traitors was the priority.
"Father — are you unharmed?"
Cassius looked at Perturabo, who appeared completely intact.
"Fine. How long has it been?"
"Two months since you sealed the Eye of Terror."
"Only two months?"
"Yes."
So Chaos's four entities really were that depleted.
Perturabo could guarantee it — what had been done to the four Chaos Gods this time meant that for at least ten thousand years, Chaos would have absolutely no capacity to reach into realspace again.
Now — time to finish the traitors.
"Pass my orders. Assemble the warbands. Leave half the Abominable Intelligence cohort. The rest come with me through the Webway back to Terra. The time to cleanse these traitors has come."
"Yes, Father."
"Do you feel it? Something is wrong."
Dorn had the strange and unwelcome sensation that his own strength was slowly draining. The loss was gradual — but unmistakable.
He looked at Lion.
Lion had noticed the same bodily anomaly.
"Chaos lost. Perturabo must have won — otherwise our power wouldn't be draining like this."
"Then we need to accelerate. If Perturabo returns and we haven't finished, our Legions won't be able to match them."
"All we need to do is deal with them before he gets back."
"Wars aren't decided by the two of us alone. I think you understand that."
Dorn was already worried. The Abominable Intelligence cohort was an enemy nobody wanted to face directly.
And in recent days — inexplicably — the Imperial pursuit had become more aggressive and better coordinated. Fulgrim and Ferrus were dead. They hadn't expected much from that direction — but losing them this quickly, and losing two nearly full-strength Legions in the process, was still a blow.
As expected — Legions that had fallen to Slaanesh were useless. A collection of addicts was never going to produce good battlefield performance.
"Konrad has been out of contact for a long time. Probably dealt with by the Dark Angels. Do you think the other-you is still alive?"
"Almost certainly. And probably already hunting us. With the Abominable Intelligence cohort behind him, our version of Konrad wouldn't have a chance."
Lion had confidence in himself — particularly in a version of himself who still had access to the Abominable Intelligence.
"The Alpha Legion reports: the operatives who infiltrated Terra have gone to ground successfully. They haven't been detected."
"The Emperor's side has probably already noticed. Don't forget — Angron is still there. They can't hide from him."
"We could scatter some disinformation. Might create enough confusion to buy time."
Lion shook his head. With Angron present, that kind of effort would be pointless.
"So where does that leave us? Mortarion and Horus have stopped volunteering to be cannon fodder. Abaddon has been pushing for withdrawal and keeps insisting we can't win this war — and I don't know what's gotten into him."
"I can't believe this is the same person who was demanding I push forward every single day. I thought he was something — turns out one serious setback and he completely folds."
Dorn had deep contempt for this kind of cowardice. If Abaddon were his own son, he would use him as a banner ornament.
"He takes after his useless father. The fool's mental state is getting more unstable by the day. We might as well go to Robert at this point — this group can't be relied on. Better to offer him something to keep him engaged."
"Then after we take Terra — the two of us eliminate him and Horus together. We discuss dividing the Imperium afterward."
Lion had reached the end of his patience with the deteriorating situation. Not a single one of these people was reliable.
The drug-addled had burned their own minds out. The infantile ones were essentially fully grown infants. Several of the others had genuine psychological deterioration.
By Lion's count, the forces he could actually command didn't reach six full Legions.
That was fewer soldiers than Robert's Ultramarines alone.
Dorn considered this carefully. There was nothing else to do — the dead weight was catastrophic. Orders went unexecuted routinely. The entire campaign against the Imperium had been persistently derailed.
And this was during a period when they were already losing ground badly — which meant the already-divided group was now pursuing entirely individual agendas on top of everything else.
Sometimes both Lion and Dorn genuinely wondered whether these people had any awareness of what they were actually doing.
This is treason. You fools. Do you think this is a game?
Neither side had committed to the decisive battle yet — and both Lion and Dorn already felt like they were losing.
How do you run a rebellion with these people?
Only the fact that both Dorn and Lion had histories of nearly successful treason — and the psychological hardness that came with it — kept them from simply cutting their way through the lot of them. Any other people, facing this particular assortment of catastrophic liabilities, would have long since broken.
"Let's wait. Our best window to bring Robert in was at the very beginning of the rebellion. Approaching him now — there's no telling how many new complications that introduces."
"Until the very last moment, I'd rather not bring him in."
Dorn had reservations too. Robert's ambitions and objectives had always been clear. He wanted to conquer the Imperium.
And the two of them were obviously within his intended scope.
"And don't forget — Robert genuinely doesn't care about the Emperor. When the time comes, whether the Emperor survives will be an open question."
"Ha. With or without Robert, I'll kill the False Emperor with my own hands."
But Lion let that thread of conversation drop.
"So what now? Continue destroying worlds? Our rate of progress has been badly disrupted. If we keep going like this, by the time Perturabo gets back, we'll be retreating outside the galaxy."
"Then we attack Terra directly. This time we commit fully — you and I, together, we breach Terra's defence lines."
Dorn's expression had gone wild. There was no point in continuing to hide and skulk.
"We race Perturabo's clock. Twenty days. Take Terra and the Emperor. If we fail — then we contact Robert or we withdraw beyond the galaxy."
"You're certain?"
"Yes."
"And if someone returns to reinforce during that window?"
"First we raise a Warp storm in the Warp itself. One month — that's all we need. No more. The area around Terra isn't large. The sacrifices needed aren't excessive."
"Where are we going to find spare people for that?"
Dorn looked at Lion.
Spare people?
There were plenty of sacrifices available.