This is the bonus chapter for reaching 300 Powerstones.
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Planet Dal, the landing pad at the very top of the Royal Court Pyramid.
Five hundred Astartes were already formed up in neat ranks on the tarmac. They wore uniform power armor painted in the colors of the Iron Hands—a silver-gray base coat with the black iron gauntlet insignia stamped onto their left pauldrons.
Three hundred of these players had their Iron Hands paint jobs rushed out overnight by the Tech-Priests. They used quick-dry power armor modification kits bought straight from the system shop, which fully cured in under six hours.
Sure, the quality wasn't anywhere near the genuine article. It just looked the part and mimicked the mechanical augmentations well enough. As for actual combat effectiveness... well, as long as they had bolters, it'd be fine.
Paul stood at the very front of the formation. He wasn't wearing his Golden Aquilon Terminator Armor. Instead, he had swapped it out for a standard-issue suit of Gorgon Terminator Armor, the exact kind worn by the Iron Hands' Morlock Terminator elite guard.
It featured the same silver-gray paint job, with the Iron Hands insignia and the Crimson Dawn emblem resting on the pauldrons.
His nearly thirteen-foot stature had shrunk down to just under eight feet. His facial structure had also shifted, morphing perfectly into the likeness of Gabriel Santar—First Captain of the Iron Hands and commander of the Primarch's honor guard.
With the Hope and Compassion traits at his disposal, temporarily manipulating his physical mass and bone structure wasn't difficult. It just required a constant drain of psychic energy to maintain and slightly nerfed his overall combat output.
The three hundred Assassin units had already boarded the ship. They were split across six Thunderhawk gunships currently hovering in mid-air along the eastern face of the pyramid, the hum of their engines vibrating right through the deck plating.
"Loyal Bro," Paul called out.
[Have You Been Loyal Today?] stepped out of the ranks. The Astartes player, who usually rocked Sons of Horus colors, was now suited up in Iron Hands Captain-pattern power armor.
"These five hundred are in your hands," Paul said calmly. "While I'm gone, you're their Chapter Master."
"Understood." He kept his answer brief.
Paul turned around. His gaze swept over everyone gathered on the landing pad. Tax Bro, White Scars, Schrodinger Bro, Blood Angel, G Bro, and all the Dawn Defense Force officers hustling around the lower levels of the pyramid.
"Dal is in your hands," Paul said. "Within a month, I don't want to see a single living Dal xenos on this planet. As for the rescued humans... Give them time, give them back their dignity, and teach them how to be human again."
Tax Bro opened his mouth to say something, but ultimately just nodded.
Paul turned and stepped onto the final Thunderhawk gunship. The hydraulic hiss of the boarding ramp sealing shut echoed across the tarmac. Dozens of Thunderhawks throttled up their engines in unison. The blue exhaust from their thrusters carved sharp trails through the morning light as they climbed toward the Light of Dawn hanging in orbit.
"Honestly, I'm a little jealous," Tax Bro muttered.
"Jealous of what?" Schrodinger Bro's voice drifted over. "Jealous that they get to face down a pre-heresy Primarch, or jealous that they might catch the eye of a Slaaneshi Greater Daemon?"
"I'm jealous that Paul didn't take me with him." Tax Bro rolled his eyes. "This is a literal chance to witness history. Imagine seeing Fulgrim with your own two eyes... Fuck, it's the Phoenician. Sure, I've already seen Sanguinius, Guilliman, and Ferrus, but every single Primarch is a once-in-a-lifetime sight!"
Tax Bro stared up at the shrinking points of light in the sky and suddenly spoke again. "The thing about Paul..."
"Yeah?" White Scars glanced at him.
"When he acts like an arrogant badass, he looks pretty fucking cool."
"..."
"I'm being serious."
"I never said you were lying."
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Up in orbit, the docking bays on the Light of Dawn slowly sealed shut.
Three minutes later, the Olympia-class Cruiser's main engines ignited. Bathed in the light of Dal's local sun, the dark red hull slowly rotated, angling its bow toward the edge of the system.
On the bridge, Paul stood at the observation window, watching the deep blue planet slowly shrink into the distance.
Down on the surface, the eastern hemisphere was rolling into nightfall. Down there, seventeen Dal cities were being systematically chewed up by the Dawn Defense Force. Every street was bleeding. Every building was burning. Down there were fifty million rescued humans. Down there were hundreds of thousands of Crimson Dawn soldiers, using xenos blood to build a monument for the brethren who had been repeatedly harvested in those pens for three hundred years.
"Archmagos Paul." The comms officer's voice rang out behind him. "Navigation is set. Estimated time of arrival at the edge of the L-245 system is thirty-seven hours."
"L-245?"
"The system housing the planet Laeran. If the 28th Expeditionary Fleet is actually conducting active combat operations in that system right now, standard Imperial Navy engagement protocols dictate they'll establish a security cordon on the perimeter. All civilian craft, merchant vessels, and even other Imperial Navy units are strictly barred from entering without explicit authorization. We can't get in through normal channels."
Paul didn't turn around. He just stared out at the thinning starlight, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"We can't get in through normal channels," he repeated softly. "Then we'll use abnormal ones."
At the rear of the bridge, the two hundred Astartes players who were wearing genuine Iron Hands power armor were running through a final identity verification check under the supervision of the Tech-Priests.
Forged gene-seed identification codes had been hardwired into their armor's cogitators. Serial numbers from the Medusa forges were etched right into the receivers of their bolters. Their personal identity chips were loaded with entirely fabricated service records for the Iron Hands 11th Company.
Every single byte of data was generated using Imperial Navy encryption protocols bought straight out of the system shop. On paper, it was more than enough to completely fool the vast majority of automated scanning arrays.
For the almighty system shop, cracking this wasn't even considered expensive—as long as you had the Imperial Coins to foot the bill. Honestly, this omnipotent storefront was the true foundational pillar of Crimson Dawn's entire rise to power.
"Paul is totally trying to exploit a bug," one of the players typed into the chat channel.
"What bug?"
"The Imperial Navy's IFF system has an automatic clearance protocol for allied vessels. As long as we cosplay as an Iron Hands reinforcement fleet, they won't scrutinize us too hard."
"And if they do check us?"
"Then we just bullshit a reason. Something like... 'By the direct order of Primarch Ferrus Manus, we have arrived to reinforce Primarch Fulgrim's annihilation campaign.' Are they seriously going to block an order from a Primarch?"
"Holy shit, good point."
--
On the bridge of the Light of Dawn.
The image of that deep blue planet floated back to the surface of Paul's mind. Laeran. The temple. The Laer Blade. And that purple figure standing on the bridge, staring at the casualty reports with a violently dark expression.
"Just give me a little more time," Paul whispered. "Wait for me to get there. I'm not trying to save you for the sake of the Imperium. I'm doing this for the dawn of humanity. Fulgrim, when humanity finally reaches its true dawn, you are going to have to atone for your sins, too."
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Planet Dal, the Royal Court Plaza.
Three hours after the Light of Dawn vanished into the sea of stars, Helovia convened the very first operational briefing.
The attendees included the representatives of every superhuman unit from Crimson Dawn stationed on Dal, division-level-and-above officers from the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Corps of the Dawn Defense Force, and battalion-level-and-above commanders from the Dawn Guard. The meeting lasted exactly seventeen minutes. The agenda: Absolute Purification.
"The orbital fleet has completely blockaded the planet," Helovia's voice rang out through the temporary command post, her long silver hair drifting softly in the psychic resonance. "Not a single aircraft is escaping Dal. Ground forces will be split into three army groups. The first group, commanded by Tax Bro, will handle the siege of the remaining thirteen cities on the eastern continent. The second group, commanded by White Scars, will hunt down the fleeing xenos on the western continent. The third group, under my direct command, will be responsible for... processing the xenos civilian population within our currently secured zones."
When she said the word "processing," her tone was chillingly flat.
Not a single person raised an objection.
Four hours after the briefing concluded, the first combat report filtered back to the temporary command post. The city of Cassar on the eastern continent had been secured. Out of the two hundred and thirty-seven thousand Dal garrison troops, none survived. The Dawn Defense Force suffered two thousand, one hundred and nineteen casualties. As for the Dal xenos population: zero survivors.
Then came the second report. The third. The tenth.
Crimson Dawn's gray tide pushed aggressively southward from the northern hemisphere where the Royal Court was located, swallowing three to five cities a day.
With every city that fell, three specific events unfolded. First, any Dal xenos caught wearing armor or holding a weapon was immediately shot dead. Second, all Dal civilians—regardless of age or gender—were rounded up in the central plazas, identified, and executed by firing squad on the spot. Third, the heavy blast doors to the livestock pens were blown wide open, freeing the emaciated human cattle inside to be loaded onto transport shuttles and sent to the temporary resettlement camps in the rear.
That third part was infinitely harder than the first two.
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Next Bonus at 400 Powerstones.
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