The command strategium at the heart of Kasr Myrak had been designed to coordinate a planetary war. It had not been designed to watch Cadia's defenses disappear faster than its officers could record the losses.
Cogitator banks clicked behind armored casings. Vox-speakers spat overlapping reports through curtains of static. Warning runes crowded the hololithic display, each one marking a fleet formation, defense platform, or augur station that had stopped responding. Beneath it all came the distant recoil of Cadia's guns, transmitted through kilometers of ferrocrete as a slow vibration underfoot.
At the center of the chamber, Ursarkar E. Creed stood over the tactical projection with a cigar between his teeth. He had spent the last twenty minutes changing reserve assignments, issuing fallback orders, authorizing local commanders to act without confirmation, and trying to reconstruct the void battle from reports already several minutes out of date.
To Klein, it still looked like brooding.
"Enough with the brooding!" he snapped. "Do something, Lord Castellan!"
Several officers turned toward him. Kell, standing beside Creed, frowned but otherwise remained silent.
Creed took a measured drag from his cigar. Smoke drifted across his face, concealing the brief tightening around his eyes. Klein had seen him angry before. He had seen Creed fight his way through the Volscani betrayal while issuing orders as calmly as another man might read a supply ledger. This was not indifference. It was the discipline required to prevent one man's fear from infecting an entire command staff.
Klein understood that somewhere beneath his panic. At that moment, understanding did not make Creed's composure any easier to endure.
Creed turned back to the void-war display.
"Seven battleships," he said. "Thirteen heavy cruisers. Twenty-three cruiser squadrons. Thirty escort squadrons."
The numbers silenced the room. Creed indicated each concentration of hostile contacts as he spoke. Blood-red formations filled the outer system, crowded the normal approach routes, and spread inward through gaps torn open in Cadia's orbital defenses.
"That is the confirmed minimum," Creed continued. "It does not include troop carriers, supply vessels, raiders operating beyond sensor range, or contacts too distorted by the breach for our augurs to classify. More are still emerging."
Klein stared at the swollen rupture near the Mandeville boundary.
It was no longer a normal Warp translation point. A conventional fleet entered realspace through brief, violent translation flares that closed behind it. This breach remained open. Purple and crimson light boiled along its edges while empyric energy poured into the system in continuous waves.
Whatever battle Cadia had prepared to fight, the enemy had changed it before the first broadside.
"So tell me, what exactly do you expect me to do?"
The question caught Klein with his anger exposed. He looked across the strategium for an answer that had not already become a red casualty rune.
"Deploy more of the Planetary Defense Forces," he said at last. "Reinforce the threatened bastions before the landings begin."
"That plan was finalized a week ago," Creed replied. "More than six hundred regiments are already assigned across Cadia's defense network. They are holding kasrs, shield installations, airfields, artillery zones, ammunition depots, and the roads connecting them. Every mobile reserve has an objective and a release condition."
"Then the orbital defense platforms—"
"The last northern platform stopped transmitting twelve minutes ago. The southern ring is gone. Three equatorial stations may still be firing under local control, but we have lost contact with them."
"Order the fleet to fall back beneath the planetary guns."
"The surviving ships are already attempting that." Creed tapped the display. "The enemy emerged inside their assigned engagement zones. Several squadrons began the battle with hostile vessels between them and Cadia. They are not conducting an organized withdrawal. They are trying to keep the troopships away from the planet while they still have guns."
Klein looked at the hollow spaces where Imperial fleet markers had been. Cadia's ships had not been absent through negligence. They had been scattered across the Gate, reinforcing threatened worlds, escorting troop convoys, hunting raiders, and fighting the preliminary campaigns of the invasion. Recall orders had been issued, but Warp travel did not become reliable merely because Cadia needed its defenders home.
Some reinforcements were days away. Others might arrive months late. A few could already be lost in the Immaterium.
The Chaos armada had not waited for Cadia's strength to gather. The Warp rift had allowed the armada to translate directly into the system, overwhelming each defensive layer before the next could support it.
"Then…" Klein's anger collapsed into helplessness. "Then there is nothing more to be done."
"There is always more to be done," Creed said. "There may be nothing left that can change the shape of the battle. That is not the same thing."
Creed turned back to his officers.
"Redirect all surviving orbital telemetry to surface fire control. Any ship still transmitting is to prioritize troop carriers, bombardment vessels, and the largest Warp signatures. Damaged vessels that cannot withdraw are authorized to ram. Ground commands are to assume the enemy will achieve atmospheric entry."
The orders spread outward through the remaining vox-net.
Creed could no longer prevent the invasion. He could still shape where the invaders landed, which formations met them, and how much they lost on the way down. Strategy had narrowed into execution, but execution still mattered.
Then Klein's gaze settled on the command glyph representing Kasr Myrak.
"Your safety." He stepped toward the hololith and pointed at the fortress complex. "Consolidate forces here. If Supreme Command falls, if you fall, Cadia loses its central command."
Kell's frown deepened. Creed merely looked tired.
"You were a colonel in the Talon PDF," Creed said. "You should know the difference between your army and mine. Cadian regiments cannot teleport from the polar bastions to the equatorial kasrs. They require carriers, fuel, and time."
The planetary map expanded. Transit routes appeared across Cadia's surface. Several already flickered under projected bombardment zones or communications failures.
"The nearest uncommitted regiment would need four hours to reach Kasr Myrak under ideal conditions," Creed continued. "The formations at the poles would need far longer. The enemy could begin landing before half of them receive the order. Every unit pulled toward this headquarters would leave a shield generator, gun line, supply depot, or landing field less protected."
Klein lowered his hand. Talon doctrine had trained him to regard distance as an engineering problem. On Cadia, it remained a matter of roads, fuel, traffic capacity, and soldiers exposed while moving between fortifications. He knew that. Panic had made him forget it.
"The headquarters reserve is already deployed," Creed said. "The approaches are fortified. If another regiment could be placed here without opening a gap somewhere more important, it would already be here."
Creed watched the realization settle across Klein's face.
"You are panicking," he said, without contempt. "Settle your mind before you offer me another plan."
Kell retrieved a steel campaign chair from beside a plotting station and placed it behind Klein. Klein sat without objecting. The chair's legs scraped against the deck.
He rubbed both hands over his face, then stared at the Warp rift.
"How did they do it?" he asked. "A rupture that large should be unstable. The energy required to hold it open—"
"Is a question for someone who has the luxury of studying it," Creed replied. "For now, treat it as an enemy-controlled transit route."
"It is more than that." Klein's eyes remained fixed on the pulsing breach. "It is bleeding Warp energy into the system. The instruments aboard my ship registered the surge before the first vessels emerged. It resembles the Eye of Terror."
Creed grunted and returned to the writing desk beside the hololith. Parchment had been fixed beneath a brass weight, its surface already crowded with lines of High Gothic. A data-slate beside it contained cipher codes for surviving Imperial relays and an authentication sequence intended for a very different network.
Officers entered and left in a continuous procession. Each brought another fragment of the battle. There was no time for ceremonial introductions. Reports had been reduced to loss, remaining capability, time, and the decision required from command.
A Navy liaison officer approached first. His uniform was scorched along one shoulder, and dried blood surrounded the augmetic socket at his temple.
"Lord Castellan, organized fleet command in Cadia orbit has collapsed. Admiral Quarren's formation is gone. Several escorts and at least two cruisers may still be operating independently, but we cannot establish contact."
A silence followed. The Cadian fleet had not withdrawn. It had fought until it ceased to exist.
Creed signed the acknowledgment.
"Any surviving captain retains independent command authority. Their priorities are troop carriers, bombardment vessels, and relaying enemy positions. Do not order them to die merely so a report can say every ship was lost."
"Yes, Lord Castellan."
The liaison departed. A red-robed Mechanicus adept replaced him, mechadendrites twitching with bursts of binharic data.
"The planetary defense shield is fully charged and synchronized. All primary emitters report operational readiness. Secondary reactors are connected and awaiting draw. The shield will hold until the last sanctified reactor fails and the final machine spirit falls silent."
The adept withdrew. An auspex lieutenant entered next, carrying a slate clutched against his breastplate. His face had gone pale beneath the violet light of the strategium.
"Two strategic-class enemy assets have now been identified. Eight-pointed void structures. They fired upon an outer-system world." The lieutenant swallowed. "The planet is gone, my lord."
No one asked whether he was certain. Two planet-killing weapons, supported by a fleet already larger than the one Cadia's strategists had expected.
Creed enlarged the two contacts.
"Mark them as extermination-level assets. Send their profiles to every anti-orbital battery still receiving. If any weapon acquires a firing solution, it is to engage without waiting for confirmation."
The lieutenant saluted and left. Another officer was already waiting.
"Orbital augur control has been destroyed. Surface arrays retain atmospheric coverage, but we cannot reliably monitor anything beyond near orbit."
"Switch remaining ground arrays to passive operation," Creed ordered. "Disperse aircraft spotters and renew recognition ciphers before descent signatures begin. Every kasr may engage unidentified landers without authorization from Supreme Command."
"At once, Lord Castellan."
Reports continued. Ammunition depots requested revised distribution priorities. Airfields asked whether their interceptors should launch now or shelter beneath hardened revetments. Regional commanders demanded information Creed did not possess. One bastion reported that its astropathic choir had begun screaming in unison when the rift widened. Another had lost every unshielded psyker in less than three minutes.
Creed listened, decided, signed, and moved on.
He could not close the rift. He could ensure that every minute bought by the dying fleet became ammunition in a bunker, aircraft in the sky, or another regiment ready when the first landers descended.
At last, Creed finished the document on the desk. He checked the final clauses himself, sanded the ink, and turned the parchment toward Klein. A quill stylus followed.
Klein read the heading. His exhaustion gave way to professional concentration.
It was not Cadia's first appeal for Imperial reinforcements. Those requests had gone out after Tyrok, carried by astropathic choirs and courier vessels to every authority capable of dispatching soldiers or ships. Forces had answered. Many were already traveling toward Cadia. Whether they arrived before the battle ended depended upon the tides of the Warp.
This document invoked a different agreement.
Creed and Qin Mo had made a compact while Qin Mo was still consolidating control over Talon I. If Cadia faced an invasion it could not contain, the Lord Castellan could formally request Talon intervention. Klein's presence as an accredited liaison allowed the appeal to be authenticated without waiting for Imperial bureaucracy to recognize that the crisis had already begun.
Creed had deliberately left that option until last.
Talon's position within the Imperium was politically dangerous. Its technology attracted equal measures of greed, suspicion, and fear. Its military answered to Qin Mo rather than to the Departmento Munitorum, Battlefleet Obscurus, or any neighboring sector lord. Formally inviting Talon forces into the Cadian Gate would give Qin Mo the authority to intervene and the political standing to demand recognition afterward.
Some Imperial officials would call that necessity. Others would call it a concession to an overmighty governor. A few would call it heresy no matter how many Cadian lives Talon saved.
The consequences would fall upon both Cadia and Talon if they survived. Creed had therefore called upon every conventional Imperial ally first. Only now, with the local fleet broken and a miniature Eye of Terror spilling an armada directly into the Cadian system, had political caution become more dangerous than the alternative.
As Talon's liaison, Klein's countersign confirmed that the invocation had been delivered through a recognized representative. It did not permit him to commit Talon's armies. That decision still belonged to Qin Mo.
Creed watched Klein reach for the quill.
"Your communicator is operational?" he asked.
Klein touched the palm-sized unit secured inside his coat. "Yes. The dimensional relay remains reachable."
"How long?"
"Under normal conditions, approximately forty minutes from Cadia to Talon. With the spatial distortion from that rift, the device estimates closer to an hour."
Klein lowered the stylus. Before its tip touched the parchment, Creed placed a firm hand over his wrist.
"Think this through," Creed said quietly. "Once you authenticate this request, it cannot be recalled. Your people are already in a difficult position. Entering this war may worsen it. The Imperium may accept Talon's ships while Cadia is burning and condemn their presence once the fire is out."
His eyes remained fixed on Klein.
"Cadia is my world. This war is not yours."
Klein remembered the Tyrok Fields, the Volscani betrayal, remaining beside Creed when he had been offered evacuation. Fear had made him speak foolishly earlier, but it did not make this decision difficult.
He drew his wrist free and signed beneath Creed's seal.
"I follow orders. The decision isn't mine to make."
Creed examined the countersign and pressed his signet into the sealant. Authentication runes changed from red to black. The completed writ was copied into Klein's communicator.
Creed took the document and sealed it in an adamantium-locked reliquary box. He looked at Klein and spoke simply:
"All you need to transmit is this: 'Cadia calls for aid.'"
Klein nodded.
There were longer messages Creed could have sent. None would have carried more meaning than the agreed phrase.
It was a request, an invocation of the compact, and an admission that Cadia had exhausted every other answer.
Klein opened the communicator's armored cover. Its compact display illuminated his face with cold blue light. He attached Creed's authentication sequence and recorded the message.
"This is Klein, appointed liaison of the Talon Sector, transmitting under the emergency cipher of the Lord Castellan of Cadia."
He paused, then spoke the words exactly as Creed had given them.
"Cadia calls for aid."
He sent the transmission. It would take nearly an hour for Talon to receive the call, faster than any conventional Imperial message could cross the distance, yet long enough for hundreds of thousands of people to die if the invasion began immediately.
Creed rose and walked toward the armored observation window. Beyond the thick panes stood the towers, bastions, gun emplacements, and crenellated walls of Kasr Myrak. Above them stretched Cadia's violet sky, stained by the Eye of Terror and now pulsing in time with the new rift inside the system.
A blue shimmer appeared over the kasr.
At first it resembled a line of reflected light. Then it spread. Luminous bands raced across the heavens from emitter to emitter, linking shield stations across continents. Gaps closed in rapid sequence until the entire visible sky had taken on a blue, glass-like sheen.
The planetary void shield had activated.
No one in the strategium needed an explanation. The shield had not been raised for ordinary lance fire, bombers, or orbital bombardment. Local fortress shields, deep bunkers, and armored silos had been built to endure those. The planetary barrier existed for weapons intended to break worlds.
The observation windows darkened automatically. A point of white-violet light appeared beyond the shield and expanded with terrifying speed. It was not a projectile. It was a concentrated discharge of Warp-charged energy, wide enough to paint half the horizon in burning color.
The beam struck.
Blue light flooded the sky. The shield flexed inward, distributing the attack across its planetary lattice. Energy raced along the barrier in branching sheets, carried from the impact zone toward thousands of linked emitters and buried power stations.
The foundations of Kasr Myrak trembled as the shield network transferred the load through its anchor systems. Loose dust fell from the ceiling. Data-slates shifted across desks. Several officers caught themselves against consoles, but no walls cracked and no projectors failed.
On the Mechanicus displays, charge indicators descended in a controlled sweep. Secondary reactors entered the network. Heat climbed through the emitter housings but remained within operational limits. One by one, diagnostic runes returned green.
The attack faded.
The planetary shield remained whole. The diagnostics showed no cascading damage spreading through the network. It had performed the task for which Cadia's defenders had prepared it. The cost was power and heat, both recoverable if the enemy allowed enough time between strikes.
Creed stared through the glass as blue light continued to ripple across the sky.
"The Blackstone structures," he murmured.
The shot had likely come from the Will of Eternity or its unnamed counterpart. They had already demonstrated what happened to a world without Cadia's protection.
As long as the shield remained charged, Cadia could not be annihilated from orbit. The enemy would have to drain it, destroy its ground installations, or land troops and take the fortress world by force.
That converted immediate destruction into a siege. Creed knew how to fight sieges.
Then pressure gathered behind his eyes.
It began as a dull ache, then tightened with every pulse from the rift. His vision blurred at the edges. Fine red vessels spread across the whites of his eyes, and the violet sky beyond the shield seemed to darken.
He was not the only one affected. Vox-speakers hissed with a low undertone that did not belong to any transmission. Several officers pressed hands to their temples. A scribe began bleeding from the nose without noticing. Near the rear of the strategium, an astropathic aide dropped to one knee and whispered a warding prayer through clenched teeth.
Cadia's people had lived beneath the Eye of Terror for generations. Its light had stained their sky, shaped their culture, and taught every child that the Warp was an enemy as real as any army.
This was different.
Kell moved closer, watching Creed carefully. Creed gripped the window frame until the pain in his hand gave him something physical to measure.
"Damn that Warp rift," Creed growled.
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