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Kaelen leaned against the sandbags, his gaze drifting to the enormous figure beside him.
Were the primarchs powerful? Of course they were.
The Emperor of Mankind had used forbidden biotechnology, combined with certain unspeakable essences of the soul, to forge these demigods born for war.
They were natural commanders. at grinders in close combat. In the entire galaxy, the creatures that could threaten them through sheer physical force alone could be counted on one hand.
But that wasn't absolute.
Kaelen raised his head, looking past the barbed wire beyond the trench toward the skyline being torn apart by violet lightning storms.
Individual valor, when set against grand forces of a certain magnitude, ran into a wall that no amount of flesh and bone could ever breach.
Throw a gene-primarch into the center of an Apocalypse-class battlefield, even one clad in Terminator plate, and his odds wouldn't be much better than any mortal's.
Against the void warships anchored in low orbit, or the God-Machine Titans about to be deployed, a primarch's body was still fragile enough that a single plasma annihilator shot could vaporize him completely.
Kaelen was more inclined to believe that if the Castellan of Cadia handed full command of the Cadian forces to Lupercal, the traitor armies would have been t head-on and bled far worse. But that simply couldn't happen. The Wolf Shepherd could not reveal himself. Not now.
At the edge of the sky, a gastructure so vast it blotted out the stars was slowly grinding through the cloud layers, revealing its lethal octagonal silhouette.
The Blackstone Fortress. The Will of Eternity.
Once this ancient engine of destruction completed its charging sequence above Cadia, the entire planet, its surface, and every Imperial defender on it would be reduced to drifting cosmic dust under Warp-ray fire.
Against a force capable of shattering a world, every tactic looked equally feeble.
Kaelen understood the situation clearly.
Cadia's planetary void shield generators had suffered a catastrophic malfunction. If they weren't repaired, everyone was just waiting to die where they stood.
A few hours ago, Wolf Lord Sven Bloodhowl of the Space Wolves had led his Wolf Cubs, the chanicus Secutarii, and the remnants of the Cadian 13th Regint into a joint strike force. They boarded the Firemane's Tooth, punched through the Chaos fleet's withering fire, and launched a boarding action against the Will of Eternity.
A mission with no return.
The objective was sabotage. Buy ti. Delay the fortress's main cannon from reaching full charge.
Half a day had passed.
Only harsh electromagnetic static remained on the comm channels. The boarding force had gone silent.
The situation was deteriorating at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Abaddon's Black Fleet, with its crushing nurical and firepower advantage, had shattered the Imperial Navy's defensive line in Cadia's orbit. Under the escort of massive Chaos battleships, the Will of Eternity settled into geosynchronous orbit without resistance.
Despair began spreading along thousands of kiloters of defense lines.
The Guardsn just stared upward, watching the death sentence hanging over their heads.
That ominous mass of deep black matter began to pulse with a piercing, eerie glow.
The Blackstone Fortress was siphoning energy from the Realm of Souls. The fabric of space before the cannon's muzzle warped and buckled.
A high-energy beam, so thick it defied any unit of asurent, blasted toward Cadia's surface without reservation.
Many soldiers closed their eyes. They clutched the aquila pendants at their chests and recited the last prayer they would ever speak.
Annihilation did not arrive.
A layer of azure, semi-transparent energy web materialized above the planet's surface without warning. It spread like an inverted do of indestructible light, holding back that world-ending bombardnt through sheer force. The beam churned across the shield's surface, throwing out vast distorted light-spots and energy ripples. The heat vaporized the high clouds in an instant.
The shield held.
Cadia's planetary void shield had blocked the killing blow.
Not only had it been repaired, but the power output it erupted with far exceeded any theoretical maximum in the chanicus's entire historical archive.
The stagnant air in the trenches ca alive.
The Imperial defenders erupted. The roar was loud enough to blow the top off your skull.
Officers and soldiers waved their banners. Commissars scread the Emperor's na into their comm-beads until their voices gave out.
No one knew that in the underground main control room of the void shield generator, no Tech-Priest had done this.
A Necron draped in a tallic robe was taking advantage of the chaos, unhurriedly retreating into a dark corner, concealing his rit and his na.
In low orbit, on the bridge of the flagship Vengeful Spirit, Abaddon stared at the stubborn shield network on the strategic hololith. His cold, hard face showed nothing. No irritation. No surprise.
One plan fails. Then you tear it down by force.
The Chaos Warmaster issued the attack order without hesitation.
The Blackstone Fortress's bombardnt ceased. In its place ca a sky-darkening rain of drop assaults.
Tens of thousands of Heldrakes, drop pods, and transport craft broke through the cloud layers like an overturned bottle of ink, slamming madly toward Cadia's surface.
The Imperial anti-air net ran at full capacity. Hydra flak cannons fired until their barrels glowed red. Surface-to-air missiles streaked upward on long white contrails. Laser arrays blazed without pause.
The sky caught fire. Chaos drop pods burst apart mid-air in a constant stream, tumbling down as fireballs.
But the density of the tal rain was too high. Hundreds of drop pods punched through the anti-air fire and slamd directly into the Astra Militarum's rear defense lines, executing brutal decapitation strikes.
The sonic boom of torn air ca from far away, then very close.
"Down!" Cullen's hand slamd onto Kaelen's shoulder and drove him face-first into the mud.
A massive shadow swept overhead. The earth exploded.
A heavy Dreadclaw drop pod, covered in blasphemous barbs, smashed directly into the command pit of the Phoenix Infantry Regint's 7th Company.
The old Commissar who had drawn his bolt pistol on Kaelen 3 months ago, rigid and severe in everything he did, never got the chance to reach for his weapon. The pod crushed him and his desk together into a thin sar of bloody mud.
Acrid coolant gushed from the ruptured hull. The hatch blew open under brute-force breaching charges.
Five massive figures stepped out.
Crimson power armor. Pauldrons bearing the insignia of a burning daemon's skull. Every surface carved dense with nauseating Chaos scripture.
Word Bearers. Terminator-clad Chaos Astartes.
"Skin the slaves of the False Emperor. Inscribe new truths."
The lead Word Bearer let out a roar that made your scalp crawl.
He raised his heavy bolter and pulled the trigger on the Guardsn still dazed from the impact.
Large-caliber bolt rounds detonated through the crowd. Severed limbs and mud sprayed in every direction.
A one-sided slaughter. Lasgun shots struck their ceramite plate and left nothing but harmless scorch marks.
In a trench not far away, Horus straightened.
The Wolf Shepherd had long since donned his classic pearl-white Terminator plate, a grayish-brown cloak draped over it.
He stared at those crimson figures. The calm in his eyes was gone. Sothing gathered there at a speed you could actually watch, a storm, dangerous and absolute.
Word Bearers.
If you had to na the chief culprits behind every tragedy of the Great Heresy, Lorgar and his band of zealots, spreading their corruption across the galaxy, would be first on the list.
Now, with his soul clean and unbroken, Horus looked at these forr "guides" and felt sothing rise in his chest. Old grudges and new hatred, wound together into a revulsion that hit the absolute limit.
"Looks like they chose the wrong landing zone today." His voice was low.
His right hand drew the power knife from his hip in a reverse grip. His left closed around a bolter.
Cullen moved to the primarch's left flank, master-crafted power sword in hand.
"Lord Lupercal." The old warrior's voice was flat. "The two Terminators on the left are mine."
"If you can't finish them quickly, I'll co help you after I'm done with mine, Knight."
The Wolf Shepherd's quiet laugh ca through the comm-bead. The old knight didn't budge.
"I'll finish them before you finish yours."
"We shall see. But first, we shout."
"For the Emperor of Mankind!"
"For the Emperor of Mankind! For the Lion!"
The words were barely out before two cloaked figures launched forward like black blades, crossing the distance to the five traitors in a single lightning strike.
➤ Next: Ground War on Cadia (2)
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