Arriving at the distant Mandeville points of outlying systems, thousands of vessels converged upon Ullanor, their engines blazing at attack speed. The Imperial Navy had deployed the last of its battleships and grand cruisers, leading patchwork armadas of scrambled vessels made up of system squadrons, patrol groups, flotillas and sector fleets. Legendary capital ships had even been hastily refitted and brought out of retirement: the Emperor Ascendant, and the Astra Glorianus that had been serving as a prison hulk amongst the rings of Tetra-Bithia. Flanked by cruisers, heavy frigates and destroyers they escorted the great ark ships of the Adeptus Mechanicus and bulk freighters transporting the apocalyptic war machines of the Adeptus Titanicus. Fat troop ships carrying Astra Militarum regiments travelled alongside ark freighters transporting skitarii legions to war and Navy carriers primed with interceptors, strike fighters, bombers and gunships. Other institutions had contributed what they could. The Ecclesiarchy had sent along Ministorum transports, overladen with hastily recruited frateris militias. The Adeptus Arbites had despatched a small number of precinct ships and counter-insurgency craft while Drakan Vangorich had contributed several cladeships, carrying some of the deadliest killers in the Imperium.
Thane and his attack force were prepared to give the orks no quarter and no respite from catastrophic destruction. As the monsters staggered through the ruins of their own world, the Chapter Master would visit on them doom upon doom before baptising the newly formed Imperial Fists in dust, blood and battle.
Scraping the golden yellow of his Terminator plate against the rocky wall, Thane pushed out across the cavernous gloom of the asteroid’s central chamber. Hollowed out at the heart of 44 Thoosa, it had been nicknamed the Nexus. Adamantium frameworking and field generators had reinforced the chamber for the rough landing to come. Artisan Van Auken had crafted the rocky body to be an asteroid within an asteroid, the inner core benefiting from anti-gravitational technologies shielding it from the worst of the planetary impact, and the outer core designed to absorb the worst of the contact destruction.
It was here in the Nexus — pressurised and supplied with a basic atmosphere — that the Space Marines, Sisters of Silence and alien prisoners would ride out a planetary impact. It was here, amongst the hurried adaptations of the Adeptus Mechanicus and by the good grace of their technological invention, that they would attempt to survive the unsurvivable.
Above him, the cavern ceiling housed a small cluster of cages. The three monstrous orks from Luna, hardy beyond understanding, clawed their way around their cages in the zero-gravity. Their eyes and mouths blazed with ethereal power, while arcs of psychic energy sizzled across green flesh and the bars of their prison. Their fang-filled maws were open and their ugly faces contorted about ferocious roars.
Lady Kavalanera Brassanas drifted down from the cavern ceiling in her crimson plate, accompanied by the Sister in silver that Thane had encountered in the lunar caverns. They stopped gracefully before the Chapter Master.
‘Status, Sister?’ Thane said, looking up at the monstrosities above. Ethereal light blazed within the cages and crackled across the bars.
The prisoners grow in power and agitation, Brassanas signed back, the closer we get to Ullanor.
Thane nodded gravely. ‘Can they be contained?’
The outer systems are swarming with the enemy, Brassanas told him, each creature a psychic reservoir from which these monsters draw their power.
‘This is a good thing, yes?’ Thane put to her. ‘The longer the charge and greater the number of orks, the greater the power. The greater the power, the greater the destruction to be wrought upon the greenskins.’
To a point, Brassanas signed.
Thane sensed her caution. ‘Can they be contained, Sister?’ he repeated.
The Sisters of Silence will not fail, Chapter Master, Brassanas assured him.
‘My lord,’ Honoured Brother Tychor said as he approached Thane, moving around the equipment with the Chapter’s new battle standard clutched in his gauntlet. The banner was tall and proud. While the fabric glinted with gold thread, the shaft and crossbar of the standard were crafted from silvered adamantium, each of the four ends terminating in a sculpted fist.
In recognition of his bravery in the Feast of Blades, Thane had appointed Dathan Tychor both Chapter standard bearer and his personal champion. Leading an honour guard of former Excoriators, hand-picked by Tychor himself, he had responsibility for the Chapter Master’s person on the field of battle. While Tychor’s plate gleamed newly golden yellow, his bionic arm still held the battle-scarred sheen of age and bloody employment.
‘Epistolary Zoldt and the Chief Librarian have word for you from Attack Group Sisyphax,’ Tychor reported now.
‘My lady,’ Thane said to Brassanas, nodding in farewell, before following the standard bearer.
In the zero-gravity of the cavernous chamber, Tychor and the Chapter Master made swift progress. They glided across ranks of Imperial Fists, each standing to attention in transportation cradles. They waited in silence. Hungry for battle. Ready for the havoc to come.
They found Epistolary Zoldt at a communications station. Zoldt was prevented from using his psychic powers in the presence of the Sisters of Silence, and Thane could only imagine what agony it was for the Librarians to be in the presence of a null like Kavalanera Brassanas. Even without the use of his powers, however, Thane had found a duty for the Epistolary, nominating Zoldt his chief communications officer.
Along with installing the transportation cradles, chamber reinforcements and tethers, Artisan Van Auken and the Adeptus Mechanicus priests at Abythica Prime had ensured that Thane could coordinate the colossal forces at his command. A hololithic vox-station relayed directly to the monstrous Phalanx, similarly closing on Ullanor. With most of the Chapter deployed for battle on board 44 Thoosa, the Imperial Fists Space Marines left aboard the mobile fortress-monastery were Captain Decarion and his Tenth Company, two further demi-companies, a skeleton complement of Techmarines, and Chief Librarian Azmachai and his Epistolaries. Decarion was charged with the defence of the fortress-monastery and leading Attack Group Sisyphax. He commanded one hundred Space Marine Scouts made up of a mixture of neophytes taken from all six Successor Chapters of the Imperial Fists and one hundred battle-brothers, with two thousand battle-ready serfs and servitors.
Azmachai and his Epistolaries, meanwhile, had the responsibility of astropathically communicating the Chapter Master’s orders to all under his command. Away from the nullifying influence of the Silent Sisterhood, the Chief Librarian could relay orders to astropaths aboard Lord Admiral Napier’s flagship, the Apocalypse-class battleship Master of Mankind, and the Ark Mechanicus Buenaventura, commanded by Dominus Gerg Zhokuv. At much greater distances, Azmachai also sent and received astropathic messages from choirs aboard the flagships of the other attack groups converging upon Ullanor, each leading fleets that trailed their own tumbling asteroids.
‘Brother Zoldt?’
‘The Chief Librarian for you, Chapter Master,’ Zoldt said, his voice strained with the burden of being surrounded by the Silent Sisterhood.
The warping hololithic representation of Azmachai suddenly crackled into focus. The Chief Librarian stood encased in a hooded suit of blue Terminator armour, swathed in golden robes. He jabbed his force staff at deck serfs that Thane could not see, giving them a haughty scowl. As he moved, the lines on his haggard face ran to deep shadow, while a milky eye blinked with constant agitation.