“That will be all for today, Chancellor.
I shall take my leave now,” Vice Chancellor Mas Amedda said with a slight nod, hurrying toward the exit of Sheev Palpatine’s office.
After several hours spent finalising the agenda for the upcoming Senate session, the first citizen of the state that spanned an entire galaxy could finally afford to stretch his old bones.
Much to his regret, the Chancellor’s chair not only vested a man with power but also burdened him with an outright indecent amount of routine bureaucracy… Sheev Palpatine rose from his seat and took a few steps toward the panoramic window of his office.
Outside, life was teeming.
The menacing silhouettes of the capital fleet’s cruisers loomed in the skies; countless starships entered the planet’s atmosphere and departed it.
Civilian traffic flowed in a turbulent stream, like a circulatory system, feeding the very life of the galactic capital.
The realisation that all these lives, all this power, lay in his hands warmed the Chancellor’s soul.
The Sith of the past had always striven for power, and here he, Sheev Palpatine, could give them a considerable run for their money.
No, of course, the Dark Lord had no intention of stopping at what he had achieved.
The Chancellor’s chair had never been the end goal for Darth Plagueis’s apprentice.
Merely a means to an end.
There was still so much to do, so much to accomplish… The Sith Lord’s ambitions extended far beyond the office of Chancellor of the Republic.
The bloody galactic civil war was now in its third year.
For three years, supporters and opponents of the old order of the Great Republic had been tearing at each other’s throats in a bitter struggle for their ideals.
Adherents of democratic principles fought against the malcontents, whose cruelty and inhumanity trampled the humane foundations thanks to which the stars of this galaxy had known no truly great war for an entire millennium.
The Separatists, who had considerably swelled their ranks, had their own opinion on the matter.
The Republic was rotten from within and mired in corruption.
The Galactic Senate had become a tool for corporations to advance their own commercial interests.
Senators who completely forgot about the people who voted for them the moment they set foot on Coruscant.
In their eyes, the Republic was a regime that could no longer be tolerated.
As Chancellor of the Republic, Palpatine, of course, condemned such a point of view.
His speeches dripped with calls for patriotism and faith in the ideals upon which the state that extended its power across an entire galaxy was founded.
As a Dark Lord of the Sith and the root cause of all recent historical events, the subtle irony of the war he had orchestrated was not lost on Darth Sidious.
Proclaiming their opposition to the insidious enemy, the Republic and the CIS were indecently similar to each other.
Neither side hesitated to vilify the opponent, turning them into a veritable fiend from hell.
Both sides, loudly declaring their commitment to ideals, a sense of duty, and patriotism, in reality, sent droids and an artificially grown army of clones to fight in their stead.
Both sides were led by the nose, like blind kittens, by those they revered as their leaders… Events were unfolding according to the script he had written, but that was no reason to let his guard down.
The old enemy, the defenders of peace and order in the Republic, the hated Jedi Order, having lost public support and bleeding, though significantly weakened, still posed a serious threat to the old Sith.
These fools could not sense the Dark Lord even when he was right under their noses.
It was no wonder they had lost their way.
True, the Jedi were arrogant, blind, and lost.
They had already lost when they decided to act as generals in this war.
All that remained was to take the final step in the plan, a decisive role in which his new apprentice would inevitably play.
The old world would fall, and on its ruins, the Dark Lord would build a new one… Now Sheev Palpatine only had to prepare the stage for the final act and wait a little.
Truly, the old Sith was but one step away from his inevitable triumph.
Lost in his thoughts, the Sith Lord did not notice how the outlines of the metropolis before his eyes blurred, merging into a single spot.
His entire body was overtaken by an unfamiliar and rather painful sensation.
The Force… The Force screamed in pain, as if something terrible was tearing it apart from within.
“Ssss,” the Chancellor hissed, biting his lip, hastening to lean against the cool surface of the stained-glass window.
Something had just happened, the consequences of which Sheev Palpatine himself could not yet fully comprehend.
All his life, the Dark Lord had relied on the Force, learned to listen to it and make it serve him.
The cry of pain it had emitted boded no good, and now the framework of his perfectly laid plan could be engulfed by a storm of new, unforeseen variables… Guests from a Galaxy Far, Far Away.
Lost in the Empyrean… The captain’s bridge of the honoured battle barge “Nemesis the Punisher” now resembled a stirred-up anthill.
New reports of damage and personnel losses came in constantly; orders were given in commanding tones; servitors tried to fix faulty equipment.
In the midst of all this commotion sat a huge man, as if carved from stone, clad in richly decorated power armour Mark X “Gravis,” adorned with heraldry and purity seals.
In his appearance, the Angel of Death reflected the wisdom of centuries spent in constant battle and the inexpressible grandeur of the creation of the Emperor of Mankind.
The bustle of mere mortals now concerned the Chapter Master of the Space Marine Chapter “Sons of the Anathema,” Dionysus Burton, very little.
Seated on the command throne, he had delegated all matters related to the “Nemesis the Punisher” to the fragile shoulders of its captain, while a stream of endless data about the state of the Chapter’s fleet poured into his own helmet.
The state, it must be said, left much to be desired.
To lose a strike cruiser and several escort ships out of the blue… For three centuries, Burton had led the Chapter in an endless crusade against the enemies of mankind.
Three long centuries, filled with bloody battles, sweet victories, and bitter defeats.
Three long centuries in the service of the Emperor of Mankind.
Before his eyes, the borders of human domains began to suffer invasions from the Tyranid fleets, the Thirteenth Black Crusade of Abaddon the Despoiler swept through, and the galaxy was split in two by a bleeding rift of raw chaos.
Among all possible enemies of mankind, the spawn of the Warp held a special place in the Chapter Master’s heart.
Dionysus was an excellent warrior, with no equal in the entire Chapter.
Clad in his Terminator armour, armed with relic power claws, he was like a god of war on the battlefield.
Among the first Chapter Masters, he risked crossing the Rubicon Primaris… Throughout his entire service to humanity, not a single scar had managed to touch his face, yet it was a recent duel against a Daemon Prince right aboard the “Nemesis the Punisher” that had turned his light-straw-coloured hair to silver.
The moment Dionysus recalled the heretics cursed by the Emperor, a cold rage boiled inside him.
Though not a single muscle on the Chapter Master’s face betrayed his lord’s true thoughts, he vowed to himself that one day he would bring down the flame of righteous vengeance upon the heads of the traitors from the Word Bearers Legion, who had caused the terrible Warp Storm that swallowed the ships of the Imperium’s defenders.
However, for now, any such plans were matters for a distant, glorious future.
Here and now, the Space Marine Lord had to solve many far more pressing problems.
“My lord, we have managed to contact the remaining ships of the fleet and receive their reports on damage and losses,” reported Genevieve Permilot, captain of the “Nemesis the Punisher,” with a slight lisp.
The captain’s and fleet master’s appearance easily revealed a combat officer of noble birth, aged thirty to thirty-five.
Juvenat procedures had done their job, hiding her real age from the outside world.
The captain’s uniform fit perfectly on the emphatically slender figure of the mistress of the multi-kilometre monster assembled from ferracrite and adamantium.
A gold-adorned bionic arm replaced the one lost fifteen years ago when Warp creatures broke onto the bridge.
Her thick, fiery red mane had not faded even after a hundred standard Terran years.
“You may speak, Captain,” Dionysus nodded commandingly.
“What is the state of our allies’ fleets?” A grim foreboding seized the Chapter Master.
The Permilots were a hereditary naval dynasty that had faithfully served the Chapter of the Sons of the Anathema for centuries, often attaining captaincy positions on its fleet’s ships.
Genevieve, a strong-willed woman of character, was no exception to the family tradition.
Over the past hundred years, Dionysus had come to know one of his most valuable mortal servants well enough to accurately judge the seriousness of a problem by the slightest movements of her face and the finest vibrations in her voice.
“Overall, the fleet’s condition is satisfactory,” Genevieve began her report.
“We have lost about 15% of the entire fleet, but given the circumstances, such losses can be considered acceptable.” Though the captain did not say it aloud, without the warning from the Eldar witch, their losses could have been far more severe.
The warships simply would not have had time to raise their Geller Fields and would have been inevitably torn apart by the creatures of the Immaterium.
Ahh… if someone had told Burton earlier that his entire Chapter would owe its lives to a xenos, the Chapter Master would have ordered that heretic turned into a servitor without a second thought!
Still, at least some use from these xenos.
After all, it wasn’t for nothing that he had spoiled his relations with agents of the Golden Throne because of these pointy-eared ones.
“Some ships have been scattered across the systems of this sector, but the majority have successfully emerged into realspace with varying degrees of damage.” So far, everything was going relatively well, and Genevieve always saved the most unpleasant news for last.
“However, none of our allies managed to avoid… ahem.” The captain hesitated slightly, choosing the right expression.
“An unpleasant incident.” By “unpleasant incident,” Permilon, of course, meant the premature demise of the ship’s Navigator from a traumatic brain injury incompatible with life.
About a month after the fleet was caught in the Warp Storm caused by the heretics of the Word Bearers, the Navigator suddenly went into hysterics, screaming that he could no longer see the Astronomican, interspersed with semi-delirious talk about the End Times.
Brother Aquilius reacted first, driving his fist into the three-eyed mutant’s nose, pushing it closer to the back of his head.
The poor madman’s brains still hadn’t been scraped off the instrument panel.
However, when similar reports began coming in from Astropaths across the fleet, Dionysus had to step in.
An order was given to isolate the madmen, but under threat of execution, they were by no means to be killed.
Never mind if these mutants were possessed; even if Khorne’s Bloodthirsters started crawling out of them — in such an hour, leaving the fleet without Navigators was pure suicide.
“How many?” the Chapter Master asked his captain dryly.
“By our most conservative estimates…” Permilon’s grey face spoke for itself.
“About half, my lord.” The woman’s words fell on Burton like a guillotine.
To lose half the Navigator corps out of the blue… A harsh reality that he had to grit his teeth, accept, and continue moving forward.
“The worst situation is with the Imperial Navy contingents.” Genevieve snorted contemptuously in a manner uncharacteristic of her, making it clear that the flame of enmity between the Imperial Navy commanders and her family had not even thought of dying out.
“Apparently, the Navy Commissars’ fingers were itching on the triggers…” Making a mental note to conduct organisational and educational measures through executions and disciplinary sanctions (secondment of the guilty to a penal legion), the Chapter Master decided to switch to more pressing matters.
“Magos Tector, have you been able to determine our location?” Dionysus asked in a commanding tone.
Hidden under the characteristic red robes, the priest of Mars squeaked something in Binary before answering in Low Gothic: “I fear not, my lord.” The meagre facial expressions of the tin can were perfectly complemented by its mechadendrites.
“I have completed scanning the surrounding stars, but I am ready to swear by the Omnissiah that none of them match the star charts known to Mars.” Magos-Dominus Ultor Tector was a Martian Tech-Priest who had replaced his predecessor, who had been torn to pieces by a perverse daemonic machine shortly after the Great Rift appeared.
He was one of the devoted supporters of Belisarius Cawl and had arrived on the home world of the Sons of the Anathema along with the torchbearers who delivered the Chapter reinforcements in the form of the “Primaris miracle.” Dionysus, with a hospitality worthy of a son of Ultramar, accepted the gift of his genetic father into the Chapter, but that did not mean he would be equally hospitable to the spies of the Martian Archmagos.
“Taking into account the words of the Navigators and reports from other ships,” the Tech-Priest began listing the obvious, as if everyone around him were unreasonable children, “I will assume with a probability of 89.7% that our fleet has emerged in a completely new galaxy, unknown to humanity.” Still, even so, this priest was far more to Burton’s liking than that suspicious type from the forge world of Stygies 8 who had foisted himself upon their crusade.
“What is the probability that you are mistaken in your calculations, priest?” the Chapter Master of the Order lost in the Empyrean clarified, for the sake of order.
“Extremely insignificant,” the Techno-Adept replied without hesitation.
“We could also have moved in time, to before or after some cataclysm of galactic proportions.” Dionysus only half-listened to the priest’s further lamentations.
One answer received had generated so many new questions and, at the same time, posed so many new problems that could not be put off.
If only it concerned his Chapter alone, but the Emperor had set a far more difficult task before his Champion.
“Get me a connection to the entire fleet,” the Chapter Master cut off the priest mid-sentence without ceremony.
Some things simply cannot be left for later.
* * * The forty-second millennium.
Across the galaxy of the Milky Way, the Indomitus Crusade rages like a flame of righteous wrath, designed to throw back the enemies of mankind into the darkness from which they crawled.
The crusade of salvation, unparalleled since the Emperor’s own Great Crusade, was led personally by the miraculously resurrected Primarch of the Ultramarines, the Avenging Son, Roboute Guilliman.
Of course, no one led such a vast force as one mighty stream, for that would have been excessive and extremely inefficient.
Instead, it was decided to divide the available forces into twenty autonomous fleets, capable of independently carrying out the tasks set by the Primarch.
Guilliman personally selected the command staff, on whose abilities and personal qualities directly depended thousands of worlds and the lives of countless billions of the Imperium’s subjects.
After some time, Fleet Tertius (the fourth organised by Guilliman) of the Indomitus Crusade encountered an unprecedented threat emanating from the ancient Necron race.
A zone known as the Pariah Nexus formed in the midst of the human realm.
Several sectors of the Imperium were completely cut off from the Warp, and the people inhabiting the planets in that place lost their souls, leaving behind only empty shells.
Unfortunately, the servants of the Emperor were no exception.
Regiments of mortal Guardsmen began to fall into a destructive apathy until their bodies showed no signs of life.
Only the superhuman Space Marines and the Sisters of Battle, blessed by the Emperor himself, could offer worthy resistance to the Necrons under the influence of the mysterious effect of the heretical xeno-tech.
However, this proved decidedly insufficient.
No one knew what other surprises the Warp-cursed xenos had in store, or how far the Necrons could extend their soul-chilling weapon.
The Chapter Master of the Sons of the Anathema, Dionysus Burton, had no intention of becoming another victim of the xenos’ machinations.
He had already lost too many brothers in that cursed war.
The memory of the fallen burned in his heart with a cold, unquenchable flame, demanding vengeance.
But for now, survival and consolidation of the scattered fleet were the priority.
A new galaxy, unknown dangers, and the complete absence of the Astronomican’s guiding light… The task before him was daunting, but the Angel of Death was not accustomed to retreating.
“Captain Permilot,” Burton’s voice rang out, firm and clear, cutting through the noise of the bridge.
“Prepare a full status report on all ships.
I want to know the exact number of battle-ready vessels, the state of their supplies, and the morale of the crews.
We have a long and difficult road ahead of us.” “Yes, my lord,” Genevieve replied, her voice regaining its usual steeliness.
She turned to her command console, her bionic fingers flying across the controls.
Dionysus leaned back in his throne, his gaze fixed on the swirling colours of the Warp visible through the armoured viewports.
The Immaterium was calm now, but he knew it was a deceptive calm.
The storm that had brought them here was no accident.
The Word Bearers had paid a heavy price for their treachery, but the damage was done.
Now, they were adrift in an unknown sea, far from the light of the Emperor.
“Magos Tector,” the Chapter Master called out, his voice echoing in the vast chamber.
The Tech-Priest turned, his mechadendrites twitching.
“My lord?” “Begin a comprehensive survey of this sector.
I want to know everything there is to know about the star systems within range.
Look for any signs of human habitation, xenos activity, or resources we can exploit.
We need a foothold.” “By the Omnissiah’s will, it shall be done,” Tector intoned, his voice a monotone buzz.
He immediately began issuing a stream of Binary commands to his servitors and cogitators.
The bridge fell into a rhythm of controlled chaos as the crew worked to stabilise the fleet and assess their situation.
Burton watched them, his mind already racing through the possibilities.
They were alone, cut off from the Imperium, but they were still the Emperor’s Angels of Death.
They would endure.
They would adapt.
And they would find a way to continue their crusade, even in this strange new galaxy.
A flicker on the auspex display caught his attention.
A small, unidentified contact, barely registering on the sensors.
It was moving erratically, as if damaged or adrift.
“Captain, what is that?” Burton asked, pointing to the display.
Genevieve squinted at the readings.
“Unknown, my lord.
It appears to be a small vessel, possibly a shuttle or a fighter.
Its power signature is weak.
It might be a survivor from one of our lost ships.” “Or a trap,” Burton added, his voice flat.
“Prepare a boarding party.
I want that vessel secured and its occupants brought to me.
If they are loyal servants of the Emperor, they will be welcomed.
If not…” He let the threat hang in the air.
“As you command, my lord,” Genevieve said, already issuing the orders.
The hunt for answers had begun.
In a galaxy far from home, the Sons of the Anathema would write a new chapter in their eternal war against the darkness.
And Dionysus Burton, their Chapter Master, would ensure that the light of the Emperor would never be extinguished, no matter where the Warp took them.
Never before had the Imperium encountered anything like this.
The so-called shadow in the Warp, caused by a Tyranid hive fleet, could produce a similar effect, but that had a perfectly clear organic nature beneath it, rather than an unknown technical origin.
Alarming reports recorded the penetration of ever-new forces of Necron dynasties into the Pariah Nexus zone, and malicious tongues whispered of the return to the galaxy of the Silent King, the ancient ruler of the Necrons.
Faced with a threat of an insurmountable scale, the command of the Tertius fleet was forced to acknowledge the bitter truth.
Alone, such a formidable enemy was beyond the servants of the Emperor.
Moreover, the representatives of the Ordo Xenos, instead of offering comfort, swallowed their pride and grimly stated their own lack of knowledge about the capabilities of the Necrons.
In such unfavorable conditions, reckless actions could easily lead to the collapse of the entire mission entrusted to the fleet command by Guilliman himself.
As a solution, Lord Inquisitor Valthor Meph of the Ordo Xenos proposed an extremely scandalous, if not heretical, way out of the situation: to use the fruits of the alliance concluded by Lord Guilliman between the forces of the Imperium and the new, rising Eldar faction — the followers of the god of death, the Ynnari.
The Eldar were ancient enemies of the Necrons, having warred with them long before the first caveman gained a mind distinct from an animal’s.
But what was far more important… The return of the Silent King threatened the pointy-eared people with destruction no less terrible than the dark god of pleasure, Slaanesh.