Vane rapidly unlocked a massive catalog of tech recipes, casually hand-crafting a few tanks and gunships using the materials currently in his inventory.
Since he was officially bearing the title of “Forefather,” he figured he had to hand out a few gifts to the younger generation.
How else was he supposed to earn their genuine respect?
In this day and age, a Forefather without deep pockets is just a broke old man.
Having successfully retreated to the spaceport, the tech-priests responsible for maintaining the facility’s equipment had witnessed the entire crafting process.
Every single one of them was shrieking in sheer ecstasy, absolutely convinced the Omnissiah was real.
“Praise be to you, Living Saint of the Omnissiah!
The true Avatar of the Machine God!” A horde of fanatical tech-priests scrambled forward, dropping to their knees to render the sign of the cog, aggressively puckering up in an attempt to kiss Vane’s feet.
Vane barely managed to dodge the mechanical smooches.
These damned Cogboys!
It’s bad enough they have a machine fetish, but why do they have a foot fetish too?!
Vane instantly triggered the Ring of the Guardian from his magic modpack, projecting a localized forcefield that violently repelled the fanatical gearheads.
“Calm yourselves, all of you!
This is merely a microscopic reflection of the God-Emperor’s supreme power.
I am nothing more than His humble executor.” “Your praise belongs exclusively to the Emperor.
Do not misdirect your sacred devotion onto me!” His stern reprimand managed to somewhat cool the tech-priests’ boiling fervor.
Luckily, General Dhrost arrived right on cue, formally putting an end to the bizarre idol-mobbing scene.
“Forefather, are…
are these truly for us?” Learning that the brand-new tanks and gunships were gifts specifically for the Astra Militarum, Dhrost was vibrating with excitement.
His entire armored division and aerial support wings had been utterly annihilated by the Tyranid swarm.
The gear Vane just handed over was enough to outfit an entirely fresh, mechanized strike force.
“Yeah.
You guys are severely under-strength right now.
If you’re going to fight a swarm, you need the firepower to back it up.” “Honestly, looking at you all is genuinely depressing.
I never could have imagined humanity falling this far.” “Back when we first conquered the stars, even standard infantrymen deployed in full power armor, flanked by entire auxiliary cohorts of Men of Iron.” “Now look at you.
Forget power armor, you don’t even have standard carapace suits!
Just a lasgun and a flak vest that’s little more than moral support.” “I’ll issue you guys these and a small batch of carapace armor for now.
We’ll start a full gear overhaul later.” While criticizing the state of the Imperium, Vane casually dumped a massive pile of Kasrkin-pattern Stormtrooper Carapace Armor onto the ground.
This heavy, high-yield armor was exclusively reserved for elite Tempestus Scions.
It completely enclosed the wearer and featured a fully sealed respiratory system, encrypted vox-links, integrated combat auspex arrays, and a localized energy pack to power it all.
In the Imperial Guard, this was the absolute peak of infantry protection.
Staring at the literal mountain of elite wargear casually dumped on the floor, Dhrost felt an overwhelming urge to drop to his knees and kiss Vane’s feet himself.
It wasn’t that he lacked a spine; it was just that the sheer volume of the gift was so astronomically valuable he felt guilty taking it while standing up.
— At the very edge of the Cryptus System, reality warped and violently tore open, violently bleeding eerie, kaleidoscopic Warp-light into realspace.
A crimson fleet breached the tear, sliding seamlessly into the material universe.
Emblazoned across their broadsides was the iconic winged blood-drop: the Blood Angels Fleet from Baal.
The absolute second they had received the Cryptus System’s distress signal, they had mustered their forces and translated into the Warp.
Standing on the bridge of the flagship, the Blade of Vengeance, Chapter Master Dante analyzed the augur scans flooding in, quickly grasping the dire reality of the Cryptus System.
The entire system’s defense grid had collapsed.
Hive Fleet Leviathan was currently in the process of aggressively, insatiably chewing through the planets to strip-mine biomass for its brood.
“Chapter Master, we are still detecting faint Imperial vox-signals.
Elements of the defending forces are still fighting,” Mephiston, the Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels, reported as he approached Dante.
“Summon the senior officers for a strategic council.
We must formulate a viable extraction protocol.” Dante stared at the tactical hololith, his fists clenching as he took in the overwhelming cluster of red icons marking the Leviathan swarm.
“We cannot halt the fall of the Cryptus System, but we can bleed this Hive Fleet.
We will cripple it as much as possible and extract every poor soul still holding the line.” During the war council, Dante and his senior officers analyzed the tactical data and made the grim decision to completely abandon rescue operations for the Castellan Belt, the Death Worlds, and the void-mining installations.
The environments were far too hostile; even if by some miracle pockets of resistance had survived being eaten, they would never hold out long enough for extraction.
After intense deliberation, Dante ordered the fleet to split into three separate strike forces to extract survivors from the most viable planets.
He would personally lead the drop onto the capital world—Phodia.
As the fleet closed the distance to Phodia, the Blood Angels managed to establish a heavily degraded vox-link with the Imperial forces entrenched at the spaceport.
Though the Tyranid Shadow in the Warp severely scrambled the signal, the Astartes managed to pull vital intel.
They confirmed that the surviving civilian and military elements had successfully retreated into the spaceport, and that Governor Flax and his sycophants were currently locked in the holding cells.
While the fleet actively engaged the Tyranid bio-ships in the void to clear a drop zone, Chief Sanguinary Priest Corbulo summoned First Captain Karlaen.
He ordered him to lead a vanguard force of elite Terminators and the Death Company for an immediate planetfall.
Their mission: reinforce the spaceport’s defenses and secure Governor Flax alive.
Through extensive, highly classified research, Corbulo had uncovered faint clues suggesting that the specific genetic sequence of the Flax bloodline might hold the key to curing the Flaw—the horrific Black Rage and Red Thirst that cursed the sons of Sanguinius.
Karlaen’s orders were absolute: hold the spaceport at all costs, and ensure the physical safety of Governor Flax.
With a blinding flash of teleportation energy, Karlaen and his Blood Angels materialized onto the primary landing pads of Helios Spaceport.
But before they could even exchange a greeting with the Imperial defenders, deafening sirens blared across the facility.
The Tyranid swarm had launched another massive assault.
“Reinforce the defenders.
Hold the line!” Karlaen ordered without hesitation, immediately committing his vanguard to the defense of the spaceport.
The vanguard force Karlaen brought consisted entirely of Terminators and an ancient Furioso Dreadnought.
Their sudden, overwhelming firepower instantly relieved the crushing pressure on the Imperial defenders.
However, the sheer intensity of the combat quickly proved too much for the Death Company.
The threadbare shreds of sanity they still clung to snapped, violently overwhelmed by the maddening agony of the Black Rage and the Red Thirst.
Within minutes, a Death Company Marine completely lost himself to the Flaw.
He threw his head back and unleashed an agonizing, throat-shredding roar, his mind devolving entirely into that of a rabid, unthinking beast.
“Horus!
Tell me!
Why…
why did you betray us?!” It was the tragic, echoing question the Great Angel Sanguinius had screamed at Horus during their final duel aboard the Vengeful Spirit during the Siege of Terra.
Ten thousand years later, the sons of the Angel were still screaming the exact same question, and they were still met with nothing but silence.
Completely consumed by the Black Rage, the Death Company Marine charged headlong into the Tyranid swarm, hacking, slashing, and howling like a madman, tearing apart everything in his path.
He was entirely submerged in his own blinding fury, intentionally burning away his own life force until he was either ripped to pieces or burnt to ash.
Karlaen and the other Blood Angels made no move to stop him.
Dying a glorious death in the heat of battle was the absolute best fate a Death Company Marine could hope for.
Just as the Astartes were bowing their heads in silent mourning, preparing for their lost brother to return to the embrace of Sanguinius…
A massive, pixelated wooden boat suddenly spawned out of thin air directly in the Death Company Marine’s path, violently sucking him right into the passenger seat.
The Marine continued to scream his lungs out, wildly hacking at the empty air with his chainsword, yet he remained completely, fundamentally glued to the wooden seat, utterly incapable of stepping out of the dinghy.
The Blood Angels completely froze, their jaws practically hitting the floor.
Where the hell did this wooden boat come from, and how is it completely paralyzing a rampaging Death Company Marine?!
“Poor kid.
Looks like you got completely swallowed by the Black Rage and Red Thirst.
Good thing you ran into your Forefather today.” Vane, who had chugged an Invisibility Potion ages ago to secretly watch the Astartes drop in, finally dropped his cloak.
Under the absolutely dumbfounded gazes of the Blood Angels, he casually strolled up to the Death Company Marine currently trapped in Minecraft’s ultimate sealing jutsu.
He reached into his inventory and pulled out a Potion of Weakness and an Enchanted Golden Apple, fully prepared to cure the Astartes’ debuffs.
— We have reached 15k words so I will end the mass release here.
From now on,