On the Asplenia Planum stood a towering pyramid, the Schiaparelli Repository, Mars's greatest repository of knowledge, containing the wisdom of ages from the dawn of science to the present.
From the pyramid's peak, the Guardian Magos looked out at the strange machines appearing on the horizon.
They were like enormous mechanical spiders, formed of grotesque metal and flesh, and of something the Magos could not comprehend.
Not a machine-spirit, not any recognizable program, not even an Abominable Intelligence.
"Blasphemous constructs!" the Guardian Magos cried out in disgust.
"Whatever they are, the Dusk Raiders will hold the line." Nathaniel Garro, former Captain of the 7th Great Company of the Death Guard, walked to his side.
"As we did when we repelled them before."
"All you need to do is back up all this knowledge as quickly as possible."
"I have reviewed the latest backup speed. It will take five days, twelve hours, and thirty-three minutes," the Guardian Magos replied.
"We will hold the line." Garro said and descended the pyramid's narrow passage.
His gaze swept over the corrupted Mechanicum army, locking onto a figure in a heavy, net-like robe, one of Kelbor-Hal's disciples.
Sota-Nul's optical sensors also detected Garro.
From beneath her heavy cowl, her head, encased in gilded circuitry, lifted.
Her drooping human jaw was like an attachment on a metal skull, the muscles of her dead flesh long atrophied, hanging loosely on her discarded face.
Her crooked mouth was connected to a corrugated pipe. Her metal lungs hissed through an air grille, a cold, serpentine sound.
"Nathaniel Garro. Your time and this pyramid's time have come."
She spat a seventy-two-bit scrapcode. The new generation of war engines, forged from the ancient knowledge of the Vaults of Moravec, began to move.
The massive Hunters fired volleys of laser beams at the Dusk Raiders' positions at the pyramid's base.
Crackle.
Most beams were deflected by the blue energy fields, but one carved a strange, rippling distortion.
The ripple spread, tearing a hole in the shield.
The Dusk Raider felt a slick tentacle coil around his gauntlet, spreading up his arm. His arm was frozen.
He dropped the fractured storm shield, its rim gnawed into uneven fragments, and took a spare from his attendant.
"Fire coverage!" Garro's voice echoed over the high-frequency channel.
Plasma beams lanced from the fire positions behind the shield wall, engulfing the front ranks of spider-like behemoths.
After one volley, they didn't stop. They lowered their steaming plasma guns, took up their second weapons, and fired another volley.
Each Dusk Raider had four plasma guns, a melta gun, and a portable missile launcher at their side.
The munitions from Tycho Brahe's depots had given them unprecedented firepower.
Volley after volley of bright suns rose over the mechanical spider lines, tearing apart their bloated metal shells, detonating the chaotic energies within.
The Hunter-spiders disintegrated from within, their barbed components shrieking as they scattered, like a thousand vengeful wraiths.
Sota-Nul raised one of her many mechanical hands, a defaced Magos's staff, radiating a sinister black light.
Her respirator spat a stream of blasphemous scrapcode. The Hunters beside her lunged into the wreckage like sharks scenting blood.
Their tails lashed out, trailing fleshy tongues, coiling around the debris.
Invisible psychic tendrils writhed, absorbing the screaming miasma.
The tongues, laden with their prey, retracted.
Their swollen bodies creaked. Their seemingly fixed mechanical abdomens swelled a little.
With every passing moment, a dozen Hunters were torn apart by plasma streams, while the Hunters' bodies grew larger.
Laser beams took on an ominous crimson glow, their diameter increasing, wreathed in supernatural howls, slamming into the Dusk Raiders' shield wall.
Boom!
Crimson beams overwhelmed the blue shield, tearing apart storm shields.
Fragments exploded. A Dusk Raider's arm was swallowed by a supernatural fissure.
Another's new Mark IV power armor was torn open, his chest ripped as if by claws.
Excited chewing sounds echoed in the Dusk Raiders' ears. Something was feasting.
"Indomitable Ones!" Garro's voice echoed from the front line. He wore new Cataphractii-pattern Terminator armor.
It lacked the green trim of the Death Guard. The armor was the pale white of old marble; its right arm and pauldrons painted a vivid crimson.
The emblem on his chest was not the Imperial Aquila, but a bronze, spread-winged, single-headed eagle.
Another eagle emerged from his back, from his pauldron, over his power pack.
"Indomitable Ones!" The Terran veterans were the first to answer their captain, shouting the name they had used before Mortarion's return, their eyes on the emblem.
They were the Emperor's crimson right hand. Relentless. Never broken.
Garro raised his serpent-headed missile launcher, aiming at a giant spider-mech.
His Cataphractii Terminator armor shuddered. The portable launcher fired a volley of four missiles, striking the spider's swollen abdomen.
Boom!
The spider construct crashed, its four mechanical legs scrabbling.
Garro drew his master-crafted power sword, Libertas, and pressed the activation rune.
His Honour Guard activated their power swords, their blue light reflecting off the Cataphractii armor as missiles streaked overhead.
The light shone on Garro, like dusk falling on the land.
His legs moved with swift, powerful strides, his bionic limbs fully integrated, as strong as flesh.
Crackle!
He swung Libertas over his head, the blue light carving a wide gash across the spider's belly.
The blade cleaved the swollen body, reaching its abdomen.
His left hand braced against his right gauntlet, and he drove the blade home.
Libertas, gleaming blue, sank deep into the swollen abdomen.
Boom!
A blast came. A thousand shrieks echoed in Garro's ears.
He wrenched the blade free, stepping away from the collapsing form, and charged the next abomination.
At the same moment Garro and his warriors held the line against the first Daemon Engines humanity had ever seen, in the Observatory on the northeast corner of the Imperial Palace.
Malcador, in a simple robe of the Administratum and a loose cloak, said to the man beside him.
"Magos Ipluvien Maximal contacted me every day for twelve days, detailing the atrocities on Mars."
"But in the last three days, his messages have grown fewer. I have received nothing for the last eleven hours."
"I have ordered all data links to Mars to be severed. The destroyers have wiped the data modules, killed the fallen Magi, and stopped the scrapcode's attempt to breach the Palace." Rogal Dorn, the Praetorian of Terra in his golden armor, asked.
"Is he loyal to the Emperor?"
"Maximal is prone to exaggeration, but he is loyal to the Emperor. That I am certain of." The Regent said.
"I thought Horus would never betray our father." Dorn said.
"I don't know how many of my brothers I can trust anymore."
"Nareth was feared by Horus; they were rivals. I believe he will not betray our father."
Malcador remembered his divination concerning Nareth and Necromunda, and nodded.
"He will not. Even though he was judged at Nikaea."
"Russ will not either, though he made a mistake."
"The Emperor and I did not order the destruction of Magnus. He should not have given the Codex Omega to Horus."
"Regent, you know Horus is the true architect of this." Dorn said.
"I have already sent one-third of the Legion's fleet as a punitive force. That has left me with insufficient strength to act."
"I must admit, I do not have enough strength to quell the civil war on Mars."
The Imperial Fists had always possessed one of the most powerful fleets of any Legion, with one thousand five hundred void-ships.
In both number and quality, only the Shadows of Order could compare.
Even one-third of the fleet was five hundred ships, more than many other Astartes Legions.
"We must act." Malcador urged.
"Yes. Clearly." Dorn's voice was like grinding rock, cold.
"We must consider the possibility that the punitive fleet may fail. Though I see no reason for that now, seven Legions should be enough to destroy four."
"But we must still plan for the war to go badly. We will need every weapon, every advantage, to preserve the Imperium we have built with our blood."
The Regent nodded. "I should tell you."
"Mondus Occulam and Mondus Gamma hold complete production lines for new power armor, intended for all front-line Astartes Legions."
"And Kane's forge temple on Mondus Occulam holds an unfinished prototype and its schematics."
"I understand." Dorn made his decision.
"To win this war, I will risk the security of the Sol System and the lives of the Imperial Fists."
"I will assemble four companies. I will also send orders to Jupiter and Saturn."
Malcador nodded. He knew this was the maximum force Dorn could muster. He was even forced to abandon parts of his carefully constructed defenses.
Dorn had already begun accelerated recruitment to replenish his Legion, but that would not help the current situation.
"I can provide you with thirty Custodes."
"The loyalists of the Death Guard and Emperor's Children are heading for Mars. They may be able to help us."
Dorn shook his head. "Fulgrim and Mortarion have betrayed the Imperium."
"Their sons are not to be trusted."
....
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