As the fleet entered the Odesol System, every crew member fell silent.
The entire system felt as though some unknown force had swallowed it whole, nothing remained but endless desolation and void.
Lorgar pulled up the system records and read through them carefully.
Odesol System Primary Star: Sios Classification: Red Giant Status: Mechanicum expeditionary fleets have observed Sios to be in the terminal stage of its life cycle.
The star has exhausted the hydrogen fuel in its core, expanding and cooling.
It radiates vast quantities of dim, reddish light, visible output is low, but infrared radiation is abnormally intense.
First Planet: Kanos A molten rock world whose atmosphere has been completely stripped away by the stellar winds of Sios.
Its surface is blanketed in solidified lava flows and massive impact craters, subjected to relentless violent radiation from the star.
The Mechanicum has determined this planet to be of no value.
It remains uncolonized.
Second Planet: Otheros Type: A hot, humid greenhouse world.
Gravity approximately 1.2 times standard.
Classification: Colonizable The planet’s atmosphere is extraordinarily dense, saturated with methane, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and the organic spores and aerosols unique to its biosphere.
……
After a quick review, Lorgar confirmed that the distress signal had originated from the Otheros Colony.
At that exact moment, a Tech-priest reported that an enormous unidentified wreck had appeared off the port side of the warship.
“It’s the Sacred Vanguard!” Cross-referencing the vessel’s exterior markings against ship registries, the Mechanicum personnel confirmed it immediately: the battle barge Sacred Vanguard, belonging to the Ultramarines Legion.
The warship looked as though it had been eaten alive by acid.
Armor plating had peeled away and drifted into the void.
The golden Aquila was smothered beneath a layer of unknown organic flesh.
“Commander!
That warship is bearing down on us!” a tech-officer shouted.
“Impossible — it looks like it can’t possibly move anymore!” Sebastian strode toward the officer, ready to bark a reprimand, then stopped.
The augur array was right there on the screen, showing the vessel closing the distance at an unnatural angle.
“That warship…
looks like it’s alive.” The words had barely left one officer’s mouth when red alert lights blazed across the entire Bridge.
“Commander!
Life signs on the warship!” an officer shouted, voice cracking with excitement.
That excitement curdled into shock almost immediately.
On the screen, life-sign readings glowed red and multiplied at terrifying speed, one after another, like freshly erupting pustules spreading across the display.
Blinding red light flooded the Bridge.
Millions of life signals wrapped around the battle barge entirely.
“Open fire!” Lorgar gave the order.
The Emperor-class battleship Fearless Word, closest to the Sacred Vanguard, fired first.
The Emperor-class is a slow, ponderous capital ship, operated by both the Imperial Navy and Mechanicum fleets alike.
It sits somewhere between a command flagship and a carrier, and ranks among the oldest designs still in Imperial service.
Its prow carries no traditional armored ram, instead, it bristles with sensor arrays and forward-facing gun turrets.
“Great Machine-God, great Omnissiah!
We beseech you to cast your merciful gaze upon this warship: the Fearless Word.” “Let your burning power boil within its engines.
Let your immortal protection rest upon its shield generators and armored bulkheads.” “Let your mighty wrath be spat forth as destruction and vengeance through the sacred mysteries of las-fire, plasma, and missile.” “Breathe your spirit into this mighty armored hull, and breathe life into its power conduits and pipes.” The Magos’s prayer was still echoing when the first salvo struck.
Shells like falling mountains obliterated the Sacred Vanguard’s bridge in an instant.
The entire command section was blasted away.
The forward end of the ship vanished into the explosion.
“Open fire!” Lance weapons blazed across the darkness, scything between the stars like divine punishment.
The Sacred Vanguard’s armor shattered under the heat in an instant.
“Target destroyed!
Repeat — target destroyed!” The blinding explosions stood out sharp against the silent system, like a stone dropped into a pool of dead water.
The shockwave from the detonation swept the system in moments.
Lorgar sat composed in the command throne and turned it all over in his mind.
This type of enemy, he had never heard of anything like it.
The life-sign readings had just shown millions of responses aboard that battle barge.
Either the enemy had compromised his ship’s systems and fed them false data, or the enemy’s power originated from somewhere entirely unknown.
An enemy that could take a warship showing zero life signs and flood it with biological signals within the span of a few breaths, did that confirm they possessed some ability to feign death?
To go dormant, then surge back the moment detection passed?
He had barely begun to work through the thought when he glanced out the viewport and stopped.
He had found the missing colonial fleet.
Dozens of Imperial Navy Cobra destroyers, Rogue Trader cargo vessels, Armed Merchantmen, all drifting in grotesque postures in the orbital space above Otheros.
Just like the Sacred Vanguard, every one of them was saturated with tens of thousands of life signals or more.
Without exception, the armor plating or engine housings of each vessel were covered in what appeared to be skin-like organic flesh.
The only way to describe it: as though someone had stripped the skin from millions of people, stitched it all together into one vast sheet, and draped it over each warship until the vessel was wrapped completely inside it.
“Emperor above.” Some of the mortal crew trembled at the sight.
Nearby officers silenced them immediately.
“There are still personnel fighting on the surface — likely survivors from the Ultramarines Legion.” Lorgar’s superhuman vision picked out the faint flickers of explosive fire through the planet’s haze below.
“Deploy a company as the advance force to join the battle quickly.
Have the transport crews on standby.
No extended engagements, once the Legion warriors on the ground are recovered, withdraw immediately.” Lorgar continued.
“Understood!” Paulus’s company took the assignment.
Under covering fire from a dozen battleships, Stormbird gunships and Fire Raptors punched hard toward the surface of Otheros.
On the surface, amid the ruins of shattered structures, a bloody battle was already underway.
Captain Sabrach stood atop a barricade with the company standard in one hand and a bolt pistol in the other.
On both flanks, Ultramarines laid down covering fire with their bolters.
Their enemies were a horde of flesh-warped monsters.
➤ Next: The Ultramarines’ Bloody Battle