Author's Notes: New chapter ahead in Ko-Fi! My Knights...
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Thousand Engine Hearts
Chapter 35
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A mere five light years away from the Forzare System, orbiting a star unnamed by a proper title, only a series of numbers and codes to indicate its location upon the stellar tapestry of the Milky Way Galaxy, a singular vessel emerged from the void of madness, transitioning into the material plane of existence to bely a call most profound.
Serfs and machine toiled in rapid action as the commanding agents in the helm directed the next actions of this black clad ship.
Only a handful of those who stood at the bridge knew the dark truths that they had witnessed, the facts underlying the foundation of the travesty they had bore witness to.
Legio Sinster was born to challenge horrors of an age forgotten and new.
They were the few who remembered that which should not be permitted to be remembered, studied and kept in the confines of a mind with an inverted animus. Only the nulls could bear witness and hold these secrets. The pilots and unsung commanders of Sinister Engines.
They remembered the horrors of the Rangdan, the worm kin races whose horrific technologies could not be fathomed by the minds of mortals and their unholy living engines of destruction.
They remembered the treachery of the Lost and the Profaned, their names forever forgotten by all but them and their sins and tragedies.
They knew of the horrors that lurked beneath the depths of the Empyrean and what they haunted and the monuments of unspeakable evil that they created in their eternal hunger of all life in the cosmos.
Such was the burden of the Sinister. Such was the depths of their knowings.
And so, they knew too the bones which were stollen to make the horrific war engines that they piloted.
Profane machine dreams. Man made horrors beyond the scope of causality that weaved the Warp like a bleeding tapestry of nightmare and desolation. Shattered minds of code lit by the fires of a forsaken humanity.
The Legion of Samsara.
The Great Traitors.
They whose very technologies were interpreted a thousand times to gleam the barest of secrets from their fugue cogni.
That one of them lives in this galaxy still unshattered by His Magesty.
That one remembers knows its own mind and logical considerations.
And, in doing so, knows the divine wings it's borne with.
Dei Machinae.
The truest and most terrible of their kind.
The greatest creation of man and the agent of their ultimate downfall which gave birth to the Old Night.
They cannot be permitted to live.
Not free.
Never, ever, free.
And so, Frea Oslentare, Commander, Chief, Master and Princeps Tenembrae of the Legio Sinister stood before the Astropathic Choir, separated by layers of wards that would keep her dark presence from interrupting the sacred ritual needed to commune with Terra with utmost haste, for not a single second could be afforded to be wasted.
And so they called into the void, towards the cradle of Mankind so that the Emperor may hear their direst of warnings.
This was a call that only those in the highest reaches could understand.
"Prospero is Metal! I repeat! Prospero is Metal." The Men of Iron have returned, and Prospero it's their claim.
But it is no mere Iron Intelligence behind this event.
"The Wheel of Samsara Turns and its Scopes are Lucid! I repeat! Its Scopes are Lucid! Actively Expanding and Forging. Wings Unknown." It arrogantly showed a world that even now, as they warn ahead of the coming storm, was being remade into a garden of iron.
How many more worlds are like that?
How many planets have been touched by their malign infection?
How many more ships were afflicted by this god of metal to spread its disease?
It was as Frea had those dark thoughts that she received a notification from the ship's engineers. Tech wrights and data smiths one and all reported a silence in the ship that shouldn't be.
A dark void that was not meant to exist within the lines of code in sections of the Enginarium.
There was a moment of dread that spread through Commander Olsentare, before it became terror when she heard laughter blare through vox systems.
The Samsaran Legion Man of Iron… it was here…
Then she saw as the servitors cease their motions as one and slowly turned their heads towards the crew.
Oh no…
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Hovering in pained silence over a world bathed in fire and unspeakable devastation, lied a fleet mutilated.
Its representatives scattered to the solar winds, hull and metal floated aimlessly in the nothingness of space, remaining in a stationary axis around a glowing world now murdered. Some falling down in a rain of metallic debris, others swept away by remnant kinetic forces, discarded into the great abyss between stars.
Yet these dead fragments of ships were themselves not quite silent.
For the mortals that crewed them still lived and raged in bitter defeat at their lot in existence.
Captain Kharstaag's fury knew no match at the stark realization of his total and utter defeat before the accursed Red Sorcerers.
But that fury did not come alone from the bitter taste of defeat.
Another source of fuel was feeding this fire in his breast.
It had long since said in Old Terra, that man hates that which he fears. And the greatest fear comes from that which he does not know, nor understand.
Such is the truth that burns bright in the heart of the Captain as he is forced to contemplate the sheer devastation his fleet had endured.
His vessel, once his pride and right to wage war in the name of the Imperium across the vastness of the galaxy, now lied broken, shattered. Its engines ripped to shreds and its thrusters gouged out like if some unseeable cosmic hand reached forth from the ether and ripped his vessel much like a child tears apart a fragile toy.
How in the name of Fenris did this happen!? How?!
They had launched the Cyclonic Torpedoes! Not just any rendition of the weapon, but the Two Stage Pattern, a weapon that would ensure that anything that lies within this world meets a swift and horrific end as cascading waves of phased plasma spread out in all directions from the planet's mantle, annihilating everything that exists on the crust.
And yet… The red sorcerers lived! They lived still and were tearing his ships until his entire fleet was left as nothing more than fragmented pieces of hull and metal in the void of space.
So how did they do it?
How!?
The Captain would not know the why, but those on Prospero did. Those who fought upon the Machine's side knew and preened with arrogance at the great instrument derived from a Machine's inspired creativity.
That answer, was time.
Not in the traditional sense, but rather, in the frozen state that Stasis fields generate.
While in truth, time does not slow down, it is a relative field where the energetic phase of matter within its domain is reduced to non existent change. Locking molecules and particles in a ironclad quantum state that cannot be broken so long as the Stasis field is maintained.
The only truly physical things capable of bypassing such a presence are particles small enough that they can slip through via quantum tunnelling, or bear near no mass.
Light, being among the very few which can slip across the entanglement web of particles.
But light carries energy, and with that energy, heat also follows. Place enough heat into the Stasis field generators and even they will succumb and fail.
Thus, the Man of Iron developed something far more potent, based on the strange particle field interactions that only exist in certain warp related technologies, like the Rampart Void Shield, the Omnisilo's Singularity Node or the strange Chrono-oscillating Parawaves of the Nova.
Something that completely froze time in a relativistic chrono-phase locked state.
Its creation resulted in a barrier of pure blackness that could withstand every physical phenomenon in existence. Legion had experimented on the system and had unleashed everything up to, and including, antimatter particle and anti-particle annihilation event emissions on a focused beam. And yet, the Chrono-static field held on with no variation in the energy requirement of the generator. Yet… there is a catch.
The barrier does not, in truth, block the impact. Rather, it puts it on hold, indefinitely. All that energy remains there for as long as the barrier remains active, and not only that, but also every time a new particle enters into contact with the field, that new particle is added to the mass, and all its energetic potential is added to the ultra-thin layer of the field.
The very instant the Chrono-Stasis Generator ceases functioning, all that energy will be released, explosively.
Even keeping the Chrono-Static field active for a few minutes in a room temperature environment at one Terran Atmosphere results in an explosion of heated gas the moment it is shut down.
The barriers will hold. But the moment they fall Khalkhom will suffer a second annihilation event. Legion was very much certain of that. Thankfully the Void Commanders are able to hold his essence easily enough.
A singular Commander achieved this act. Multiple of them will as well.
"Ha!" Phosis T'kar snorted. "We won!"
"Granted, they really could not do anything to us from under here." Khayon reminded with the usual air of coolness he presented at all times.
"Why must you ruin everything?"
"Because someone has to."
I could watch these two argue for days. But we don't have much time for horsing around. "The Second Ritual Site has been completed under Tizca. I suggest you make haste before the Wolves get anxious. The ground invasion has just begun and it won't be long before they are forced to Exterminatus Prospero."
"Yes, the Machine is right, we must make haste." Iskandar nodded before gesturing to the Neophytes to prepare their equipment and begin activating the next set of Soul Crystals. They will be needed.
Phosis T'kar agreed. "Do you have a Gate to send us there?" He asked looking at the roof.
"Affirmative." I replied back and the man nodded.
"Then lead the way."
I replied by generating another light trail to the Skybridge that was linked to the new Site of Ritual.
The Thousand Sons Astartes followed swiftly after.
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The Great Company Elleve, also known as the Eleventh, or the Sea-Flame Bearers, Commanded by Varald Hesldawn, was one of the very few Great Companies of the Vlka Fenrika that survived whatever technosorcery the Man of Iron had conducted upon their vessels.
The ships that held this Great Company's numbers were mostly soared, mostly because there were only three. One was lost, consumed by the Man of Iron's machines that had suddenly spawned within their vessel and created an arduous war within its confines.
A war that the Vlka Fenruka were winning, until all the sudden the vessel ceased to be in a detonation of swirling malevolent forces. The Ahmdrr died that moment, and took with it three more ships in its act of self-annihilation.
Varald lost many of his fellow Brothers in that instant.
Veterans from the days of Terra's unification.
Something he would have the Machine pay in what meagre blood he could force it to. He knew that this was a one way trip. Save the Primarchs, both Magnus and Leman, if it was possible, before buying time for both to escape from the Machine's nest.
He knew this was a trap.
They all did.
But they needed to take the chance anyway, regardless of the cost.
He looked at the Jarl of the Great Company Fyf, Amlodhi Skarssen and saw how the man's grim expressions darkened with every increasing moment. His Company did not fare well, only having a tenth of his original men who now have become merged with the fragments of other surviving leaderless Companies.
And then there was Great Company Sepp's Jarl, Mjarldi Herkroahen, whose form was covered in a withered and ancient battle plate. One marred by long years of wars in the most atrocious fields imaginable. He belonged to the Black Cull, the Destroyers who were meant to leave no one alive in their wake. It was little wonder that beneath all that armour, the Astartes looked like a corpse who rose from the grave out of sheer spite.
"Perimeter has been established. The Machines have yet to attack." Varald heard the report from one of the neophytes and he could not help but grumble at that. He then turned to the Rune Priest under his command and found the man's expression just as comforting as staring into the maw of raging kraken.
Hranfral Greyfang spoke. "The Wyrd is difficult to gleam into. Deeply so thanks to whatever Maleficarium these sorcerers are casting. But I see fire and death, fire and death over and over. Almost as if the planet itself was warning us that the path forward would lead to only ruin."
Well, its not like if Varald did not know that already. "Then we'd better give our very best. We all knew this was a suicidal mission. But our honour cannot permit such mockery to our Legion and our Primarch to go unanswered, regardless of what the monster we face is."
The old witch nodded. This was a fools errand.
But they still needed to try.
"At least…" Amlodhi started. "…the accursed construct gave us enough time to set up a proper perimeter for the Titans to arrive."
"Aye, that it did." Varald nodded. Though, considering what happened to the Legio Mortis… we doubted that the Sinister Legion would be of much use.
However, if they claim to be able to face these horrors in battle and win…
Well…
He would love to be proven wrong.
"Incoming." He heard from one of the Forge Smiths. "Titan Class Mass Transports descending."
Varald looked up at the sky, over the drop site perimeter resided and found the clouds parting for something massive, before it too was followed by more Mass Transports of identical size and design.
The Sinister Titans were here.
He turned around and looked at the distant shape of Tizca in the horizon and he could see even from here the spike in activity before a handful of white streaks flew skywards.
The old veteran marine tightened his grip on his battleaxe.
"There they come…"
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To be Continued...
