Bolter fire drowned out the screams of slaves and soldiers who desperately tried to defend the planet. The deafening sound of shots echoed off scorched walls and metal structures, like a symphony of hell. The air was thick and heavy, saturated with the smell of scorched earth, blood, excrement, hot grease, and melted plastic. Each breath felt like inhaling glowing embers, causing even those who had seen too much to retch.
The Marines didn't stop. They moved forward, step by step, destroying everything in their path as if the planet itself were guilty and needed to be punished. Blood still dripped from their armor, and their helmet visors reflected the burning sky. Each of them was a statue of death.
For several hours, I watched as life was torn from the planet.
"Captain, interference. Someone is emerging from the Immaterium. It's the Ultramarines."
"Get ready!"
In the black void of space, the gates of the Immaterium tore open. Reality ripped apart with a bang, and dozens of blue Ultramarines Legion ships began to pour through the resulting rifts. Their hulls gleamed in the darkness, the white Ultima symbol clearly visible on each vessel. The formation was tight and well-organized. The discipline and experience they had amassed were evident. The ships arranged themselves into a battle formation in a matter of minutes, ready to attack. At the very center of the fleet was Roboute's flagship.
On the other side of space, the heretical fleet was waiting. Ships belonging to the Word Bearers, supported by allied World Eaters vessels. The heretical ships charged forward in a disorganized manner. Some opened fire from a distance, trying to force the Ultramarines to scatter. The first minutes of the battle were brutal. Ships on both sides began to burn and explode. Wrecks drifted in the void, and communications were filled with screams.
When the scattered traitor ships began to circle the Ultramarines, it was the perfect time to attack. Emerging from hiding, the Arcadia's cannons tore through space, slicing through the void and beginning to destroy the heretics' ships one after another. I destroyed all the ships I encountered, allowing the Smurf fleet to pass freely.
A skull with two crossed bones was the last sight the traitors saw before death. I turned the helm, feeling my starboard side being bombarded. This was different. The Arcadia had to use a lot of Dark Matter to regenerate and defend itself, much more than usual.
"Lord Cornelius! What is the enemy attacking us with?!" I asked, making a sharp turn.
"Data indicates demolition rounds!" he replied, seeing the indicators jump from yellow to red at times. These were the shield indicators.
No. That's not it. Ordinary demolition rounds wouldn't tear at the Arcadia like this. Feeling how quickly the energy was dropping, I decided to make a short jump. Suddenly, it was as if the whole world stretched, the effect of spaghettification suddenly reached everyone and everything. And in the next moment, we appeared a good distance from the enemy fleet.
For a moment, I stared into the void, thinking about what they were shooting at us with. Before I started the engines and headed back into the combat zone. Suddenly, I was intensely focused. I felt my whole being enter a state it had never been in before.
Entering visual contact with the enemy, we began long-range combat. The Black Matter doesn't regenerate so quickly, and we don't have time. Warp storms are getting more and more violent, so much so that they've started to affect the real world. The Riunstorm ritual is beginning. And with its completion, the entire Ultima Segmentum sector will be separated from the Imperium.
The fight dragged on. I saw Guilliman's fleet being destroyed by three Gloriana-class ships. Two of them were flagships: the Conqueror and the Fidelitas Lex. I had to destroy them. I will tear them into pieces, so small they won't be able to repair them.
The Arcadia felt my anger. It belched black mist and flew forward, accelerating and accelerating. On the prow, the ram's eyes lit up a bloody red. The Fidelitas Lex, seeing the approaching ship, tried to maneuver. But its dreams were in vain. No ship can match the Arcadia in a 1-on-1 fight. We rammed right into its middle, bending the entire ship. The 20km vessel bent, forming a gentle "V" shape.
"FULL POWER!" I yelled to Silent.
"AYE, AYE!"
All the cannons turned almost simultaneously. With a metallic hiss, the rotating mechanisms aimed the barrels straight ahead. There was no warning; from a distance of just a few meters, they opened fire.
From the muzzles, a series of fiery projectiles and plasma shot out, filling the space in front of the ship with a dense barrage. The bang was deafening; a shockwave went through the decks. Flames from explosions flashed constantly, mixing with the thick black mist that instantly began to obscure the view. The air was filled with smoke, sparks, and glowing fragments of the hit ships.
The Fidelitas Lex only held together in space because the Arcadia was embedded in it. The Arcadia's salvo gutted all its systems; nothing worked. The Arcadia, still firing, began to pull back. The Conqueror, seeing its allies already dead, didn't hesitate and began to shell the Arcadia, hitting the allied ship multiple times.
On the bridge, alarms wailed; red lights flashed in rhythm with the shelling, and the tactical screen began to blink warnings from every system. Streaks of Black Matter started to seep through the ship's walls, escaping through the cracks in the structure.
With each passing second, the situation became worse and worse. The Arcadia trembled under successive hits, as if trying to tear itself from invisible claws. Finally, the ship's prow broke free from the impasse and got out of the gravitational zone. The bridge shook, but everyone stood at their stations.
"Maximum power to engines!" I snarled menacingly.
"That's impossible," Cornelius muttered. "These hits... it must be the power of Gloriana-class ships. Or... or their ammunition is modified with something. Something we don't have in our database!"
"That's not important now!"
While the Arcadia fought for survival, the situation on the surface was no better. The Ultramarines were completely cut off. The two traitor legions, the Word Bearers and the World Eaters, closed the ring around Roboute's forces. Every communication line was severed, and there was no support, nor would there be.
Guilliman already knew he couldn't win this battle. There were too many enemies. The Ultramarines were caught in a pincer movement. He watched as his veterans fell under the berserker rage of the World Eaters, or were devoured by the blasphemous powers of the XVII Legion's Chaos worshippers.
The XIII Legion's Primarch charged. In his hand, his sword gleamed, a weapon he had wielded continuously through decades of campaigns, wars, and slaughters. Now, that same sword was aimed at his treacherous brother's throat.
With fury in his eyes, he rushed forward, ignoring the chaos around him. His blows were fast, precise, and each could have cut a man in half. His power armor worked at full throttle, the mechanical actuators hissing as his arms delivered successive cuts.
Lorgar took his brother's blows one after another. The actuators in his armor were getting hotter and hotter, but, aided by the power of Chaos, he refused to give in, parrying and then countering.
The Ultramarines issued orders in the chaos, trying to establish some stronghold where they could station themselves to organize their forces, but they couldn't. Angron's Berserkers broke through makeshift outposts and caused confusion, aided by the fire of the Word Bearers.
Kharn, bearing the mark of Khorne, ravaged the enemy forces in a one-sided slaughter. He was a one-man army that just needed to be unleashed. And that leash had been broken. Few managed to survive a duel with him.
As the battle raged, brothers dueled to the death, and cousins murdered each other, the sky was swallowed by a shadow. A shadow covered the heavens. Soldiers who still had the strength to look up saw a falling wreck, a colossus twenty kilometers long. It was the Word Bearers' flagship, pulled in by the planet's gravity.
It was falling directly onto the Ultramarines' positions. A few moments later, a massive crash ripped through the battlefield. The shockwave destroyed everything in its path. Whatever formations the blues had maintained were shattered. Now, it was just a one-on-one fight.
Guilliman, breaking through successive buildings, chased Lorgar. He shot at his brother's back, hoping one of the rounds would penetrate the ceramite armor.
"IS THAT ALL YOU CAN DO, TRAITOR?!" Guilliman yelled.
"PRIDE OBSCURES YOUR SANITY!" he shouted back, clashing with Guilliman's sword in close combat.
"TRAITORS TALKING ABOUT SANITY! YOU'VE DESTROYED EVERYTHING THE EMPEROR BUILT!!!"
With a swift move, Guilliman knocked off Lorgar's helmet. Lorgar, not to be outdone, quickly counterattacked and destroyed Roboute's helmet. The fight was evenly matched until Angron joined in. The XIII's Primarch, despite being a son of the Emperor, was not as skilled a warrior as Angron.
Above Nuceria, hell broke loose, in the literal sense of the word. Warp storms began to engulf the sky, the ground, and everything in between. The atmosphere thickened with Immaterium energy, and the air was saturated with the metallic smell of blood.
Khorne, the Lord of Skulls, watched as his champion was slowly born from suffering, anger, and violence. Seeing the potential, he waited no longer. He sent his servants. Daemons began to materialize. Where ruins of a city had stood just moments before, now appeared the gaping maws of hellish beasts. Bloody rain poured from the sky as everything headed for the end.