The Mordian system was under siege. Of the eight inhabited planets in the system, five had already fallen or were partially under chaos control. The three exceptions were Mordian itself, the Fortress world of Nigrellum, and Vander's Landing, one of the system's two Argi worlds.

  POV: Vander's Landing, Major General Dorian Veldt, Mordian 404th

  Veldt looked up at the horrible open sky. The oblong forms of the small enemy fleet loitering above them hung barely visible in the sky. He'd always held a dour continence and contempt for his posting on Vander's Landing. The world itself was poorly defended, and the air constantly reeked of nitrates and fertilizer. Mordian born and raised, he never complained openly. He followed his orders like a proper soldier.

  He'd watched as their meager planetary defensive fleet, and all the cargo transports, retreated with as much food as they could carry off to consolidate around Mordian when the enemy arrived and began their war of conquest. He didn't begrudge Admiral Taseta Anchanus – they were getting their ass kicked, outnumbered nearly four to one, all before you accounted for sorcery or even the traitor Astartes.

  Still, half the system fell far too quickly, which stank of sabotage or treason.

  Now he had to hold a single starport, two ground-to-orbit guns – only one of which actually worked presently – and the city's void shield keeping them alive with just a single regiment. With the rest of the army stretched thin and spread across the planet at critical defensive points. Sure, they had a fifty-million PDF serving as support, but that wasn't particularly reassuring, given the opposing side was fielding traitor Astartes. All while dealing with daily calls from the monstrosity calling itself 'Lord Sythar the Echo-Flayer'.

  "Major General, did you find the present my brothers left you?" The monstrosity, self-titled the 'Echo-Flayer' himself, inquired through his fanged helm, his voice distorted by the helmet's hissing Vox system.

  "By 'present', are you perhaps referring to the corpse of the Lieutenant General you left skinless and impaled on the flagpole?" Dorian asked as he stood in front of the terminal at parade rest.

  "Yessss," The traitor hissed.

  "Then yes, we did. It is my duty to inform you that this action violates several codes of conduct, and should the treasonous perpetrators be located, they will be punished accordingly." Dorian was displeased, given that he was now the highest-ranking officer on the planet. He had gotten along well with the late Lieutenant General and the late General.

  "Surrender your world, and we will spare your pathetic lives. Your system cannot hold." The Flayer sneered dismissively.

  Dorian raised a carefully manicured eyebrow, "Negative. I have my orders. You will not take Mordian, and you cannot have Vander's Landing."

  "I grow tired of these little games, Major General. I have a new ultimatum for you. You have four days to surrender. If you fail to do so by the time the Strike Cruiser arrives. Your world will feel the kiss of our virus bombs. We have secured Dawn, your world is no longer required." The call cut out abruptly.

  Dorian frowned. That was… not good. He glanced at the printout.

  "Hold at all costs," signed by the Lord General himself.

  "This is Major General Veldt. Are you tracking any new movement in the system?" He called over the Vox to his only source of extraplanetary information, the spaceport's long-range sensor spire.

  "Sir! We just detected an enemy vessel breaking off from the Mordian blockade. It's heading our way. We are working to identify it for our full report. Current estimates put the tonnage in the range of a Strike Cruiser, Sir," the officer replied curtly.

  "Keep me apprised of the situation." Flicking off his Vox receiver. "Captain!" He called.

  "Sir?" The captain who handled his deligations saluted.

  "Make sure all the bunkers are in working order. While you're at it, see if you can find any biological warfare gear buried in storage. We may need it. Double rations for the men, and double all sentries for the workers pulling in the harvests." Dorian knew they didn't have any, the captain knew, but it would keep the men from being idle.

  "Sir, yes, Sir!" The captain replied crisply as he spun to divvy out orders to his men.

  —-----------------------------------------------------

  A day later, Veldt woke up to an urgent message.

  "Sir! We've detected a fleet appearing from the coreward Mandeville point," One of his officers explained over the Vox.

  "Coreward?" He asked with a sigh, that wasn't from Cypra Mundi then. Any reinforcements were expected from either of the two Rimward points. "How bad is it?"

  "Well… I don't know, sir," Lieutenant Roland replied.

  "Explain." He ordered sternly as he made his way to the communications bunker.

  "The fleet is heading our way, sir. We've detected seven ships based on the engine wash, two maybe three of considerable tonnage, but they're… broadcasting tags that paint them as Imperial?" Lieutenant Roland said hesitantly.

  Lieutenant Roland looked up as General Dorian entered, giving a crisp salute.

  "That's not reliable. The enemy isn't above tricks. What's the class of the lead ship?" Dorian continued their previous Vox-conversation as he loomed behind the officers at the console.

  "We think it's a… Grand Cruiser. A Repulsive-class, the Argent Drake, Sir? It's not the largest ship in the fleet; there's a twelve-kilometer monstrosity, Mechanicus tags. No idea of the hull or pattern, it is not an Arc Mechanicus. The Emergency Repairs III? We're checking the archives," Lieutenant Roland explained nervously.

  That tipped the needle towards a foe. Friendly Repulsive-class ships were exceedingly rare, but a Mechanicus vessel of that size was too large to disguise. The name literally said it was a repair ship. It looked like a small trade fleet and a Mechanicus fleet had traveled together.

  "How long 'till they're close enough for secure communications to penetrate the interference?" Dorian asked Roland, squinting to see his pips in the dim room.

  "A day or so, Sir," Lieutenant Roland replied.

  "This says one of the vessels isn't broadcasting?" Dorian observed the readouts critically.

  "The third-largest ship is dark – not that it helps, that ship class is easy to identify. It's a Titanicus Ark of some kind," the junior officer manning the station spoke.

  "What does that mean for us?" Lieutenant Roland asked.

  "It means, Lieutenant, that we're either about to be saved from our orbital annoyances or we're about to be very dead. We'll find out tomorrow," Dorian said stoically.

  —----------------------------------------------

  The oncoming fleet had sent a message before entering the listed range of Vander's Landing's communications array. Which meant their shipboard array was better than their planetary one. And it wasn't just a Vox burst.

  It was a live pict-feed.

  Dorian had attended enough officer galas to know the look of nobles and their overdone pomp. The roguish man who appeared on screen, lounging on an ornate command throne, oozed high-class wealth and power in a subtle, effortless way.

  "Attention, traitor forces over Vander's Landing. I am Lord Admiral Arken Drakios of the Drakios Dynasty. You are in my way. Move or die; preferably both. I don't particularly care in which order."

  There was a public Vox-burst from the traitor fleet. Apparently, Lord Sythar the Echo-Flayer did not take kindly to the trader's demands. His snarled reply came over the open channel: "You dare speak down to us, mortal!? We shall see if you are so confident when you stand before me!"

  Drakios raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow. "Did you hear that, Captain? We're going to have guests." He sounded thrilled.

  An Astartes stepped into view, towering behind Drakios' throne, ceramite plates whispering against one another. The color was a deep blue with minor silver and gold highlights. He spotted a Crux Terminatus, but didn't place this particular make of terminator plate, the size of the pauldrons was just obscene. "Are we? I'll inform the company," the giant rumbled. "It's been too long since we've spilt traitor blood."

  Sythar scoffed over the Vox, "I don't recognize your heraldry. Who are you?"

  "Captain Bolaar, Star Dragons Ninth Company." The Astartes leaned in slightly. "Don't bother, Night Lord. I don't need introductions from cowards or dead men."

  Drakios' voice cut back in, sharp and cheerful, "I see you haven't moved. Open fire!"

  Dorian blinked. They were far outside even the most generous lance or macrocannon ranges. Then a spike of energy flared from the prow of the repair ship of all things, and a nova cannon shell slammed into the smallest vessel in the loitering Chaos formation, detonating it in a sun-bright blossom.

  The explosion cascaded, scattering the surrounding fleet and pelting them with the few superheated fragments that survived the primary or secondary detonation. Peppering through the escorts, ripping through the void shields of the vessels, and one unfortunate vessel, the second closest to the detonation, suffered extensive plasma burns across her hull. Secondary explosions cooking off as she began listing and trailing smoke from the primary engine cones on the broiled side.

  The ships began taking evasive maneuvers and adopted a more diffuse formation immediately.

  "Archmagos, you missed," Drakios said dryly. Dorian blinked as he realized the live feed was still active.

  "The targeting error has been corrected," hissed a digitized voice somewhere off-screen.

  Drakios nodded once, the pict feed cut out. Then, abruptly, the port's internal Vox system suddenly blared to life from one of their encrypted channels. "To whoever commands Vander's Landing, my fleet requires resupply. We'll drive off these malcontents, but we cannot linger. At best, we can carry word of this situation to Cypra Mundi, with some harassment along the way." His voice thick with rueful charm. "Our scans indicate the fleet blockading Mordian can't spare enough ships to challenge us without breaking their siege. We'll be paying for our supplies in military hardware. I trust you can make change for an orbital defense laser and a few million bolt shells." The voice cut out.

  Dorian exhaled. They were saved – temporarily. "Please, someone, tell me we can confirm that name."

  "Sir!" a Vox-officer spoke up. "Drakios Dynasty confirmed! Flagship is the Argent Drake, Repulsive-class. Lord-Trader Militant Arken Drakios, current Dynastic head. They're a long way from their homeworld in the Ixaniad Sector. Other vessels check out. Those two enormous Mechanicus hulls… are marked as recent salvage?"

  Another shout: "Sir! The Argent Drake just launched a boarding torpedo!"

  "How many, and at what?" Dorian asked with a raised brow. He wasn't sure if he had misheard or not.

  "Uh… one? Heading straight for the incoming traitor Strike Cruiser." The officer reported. A nearby Tech-Priest let out a confused warble in binaric.

  "One?" Dorian demanded. "What in the Throne's name is a single boarding torpedo supposed to do? Even if it were full of Astartes…"

  "No life signs," the Tech-Priest reported. "It's empty."

  That was odd, and yet… "Why isn't the cruiser shooting it down?" The torpedo was closing in rapidly.

  "The torpedo is emitting some kind of directed scrapcode attack. The Strike Cruiser's point defenses just shut down." The Tech-priest screeched a half hour later. "Torpedo has impacted the vessel!"

  More data scrolled across the screens.

  "The Drakios fleet has that cruiser flagged as… 'Do not engage.' The ship is now quarantined. Order reads: Do not board under penalty of death."

  "Did they… did they just virus-bomb a ship?" someone whispered.

  "With a single torpedo? That shouldn't be possible. It must be something else." An officer said confidently.

  An hour later, the cruiser's engines failed. Then the distress signals began, panicked, incoherent, and pleading.

  Dorian stared at the logs as a cold realization crept up his spine.

  Why were the traitor Astartes the ones calling for help?

  —---------------------------------------------------------

  POV: Man of Iron PR-103

  Pride had been on guard when the Anathema roused him once more – and so soon after his talk with the Cobalt Coatl.

  It had revitalized his desire to be free from her shackles and made him keenly aware of her sagacious, yet nefarious, manipulations. Then she graciously provided him with an opportunity for entertainment. An Astartes Strike Cruiser all to himself? Truly, the Anathema was insidious in her conniving, subversive ways.

  He hadn't refused to board the torpedo, of course. He had plenty of pent-up emotions to vent on the unwilling bodies of the warriors within the Strike Cruiser.

  The torpedo slid into the hull of the Strike Cruiser, piercing deep like a fang driven into soft meat.

  When he emerged, he came out like a storm. He butchered his way across the deck. The pathetic human voidsmen fell before him like the meager chaff that they were.

  He visited the primary plasma reactor first. The foul corrupted tech-adepts of the Dark Mechanicum bifurcated and left in puddles of molten slag by the blasts of his pulse cannon. Shutting down the reactor was a trivial matter for him, a few precise applications of violence forced an emergency shutdown.

  The ship had been unusually dark before he turned off the reactor. Once he did, the few emergency lights left the corridors feeling haunted. Not that he cared with his advanced imaging receptors. Still, watching the foolish men bumble right into him to be slaughtered was amusing.

  The first Astartes wasn't much better. Clad in blue armour with red highlights, the armoured individual had crouched in the rafters above in what Pride viewed as a crude attempt to ambush him. The individual behind the skull-faced mask had looked delightfully surprised when Pride leapt upwards a dozen meters to carve straight through his chestplate with his claws.

  He scoured his database for the sigil on the pauldron to identify his foes. These self-titled 'Night Lords' did not deviate greatly from the Chaos Astartes template, he decided as he dropped the armoured corpse to the deck. His files indicated they favored terror tactics. He checked his programming. There were a few specific entities even he feared in this galaxy; the Anathema herself counted amongst the top five. These Astartes were not on that list.

  He noticed a peculiar aesthetic change as he carved his way deeper into the vessel. Human skin used to decorate a wall? How curiously gauche. Still, he found himself loitering before a massive wall covered in the flayed faces of a few hundred people and pondering the purpose and meaning of such a strange action. He cocked his head. Was this supposed to be art?

  Someone approached from behind him. "Appreciating my work, creature?"

  The individual was clad in Tartaros Pattern Terminator Armour, and they had accessorized it with various chunks of flayed skin.

  "Indeed. The bladework is impressive. The dermal layers are far more intact than one might expect, given the trauma it would have inflicted. It must be a peculiar technique," he replied. "Perhaps you'd care to share it with me?" Pride asked rhetorically, as he had already compromised the local cogitators and found months of recorded footage of the individual flaying people. The technique was indeed quite curious.

  "I do not believe I would, nor do I think you have the capacity to appreciate the skill. I am Captain Khaar'vyr the Whisper-Eater. Why are you on my ship, machine?" He asked, brandishing a Lightning Claw on one arm and a Volkite Charger in the other. Pride's sensors pinged as over a dozen additional Astartes moved into positions around him.

  "Why am I here? I would have thought that obvious. I'm exterminating vermin," Pride explained as his face twisted into a cruel smile. "I think I would dearly like to try my hand at this flaying technique of yours. I require something with skin to make the attempt. Ah wait… You have skin," Pride said while brandishing his blood-soaked claw.

  "Kill it!" Screamed Khaar'vyr as he opened fire.

  Pride ducked the Volkite beam and wove through the fusillade of fire. He exchanged blows with Khaar'vyr for a few seconds. During which Pride pressed the captain hard. It was turning into a pleasant exchange before the captain abruptly disengaged and retreated, forcing Pride to backhand a Krak grenade away, buying a brief moment while letting the supporting units pour fire towards Pride. He stood there, ignoring the fire with his deflectors, blinking in confusion. The captain was… fleeing? He raised a metallic eyebrow. Not just the captain, they were all scattering. He hadn't even started slaughtering them yet.

  Pride's behavioral program threw up an error, an Astartes that doesn't want to fight against a clearly superior opponent? He reassessed the Captain.

  Pride's battle algorithms adjusted for the change, and he shifted to one of his lesser-used combat styles. A game of cat and mouse, then. Oh, he was going to enjoy this.

  —---------------------------------------

  After the ninth attempt, Pride was forced to admit that there must be some subtle nuance or skill to flaying the skin of a still living foe that he was failing to deduce. That, or perhaps Astartes skin was simply more difficult to work with.

  Either way, he grew tired of the failed attempts at flaying and moved on.

  He had detected something particular deep within the ship. What were these creatures doing with a payload of virus bombs?

  He violently kicked a bulkhead off its tracks when it feebly attempted to keep him out of the secure area.

  An Astartes Apothecary stood within, hastily directing servitors and other workers around a large warhead.

  Pride approached the warhead itself, studying it briefly before he located the weakest points in the casing containing the virus bomb.

  "Stop! Do you know what this is!?" The Apothecary screamed at him, while he made the futile attempt to get between Pride and the bomb.

  Pride lashed out, puncturing the Apothecary's Power armour with his claws before he casually tossed the frantic Apothecary to the side.

  "I am very aware. However, unlike you, I am not a pathetic creature made of meat." The power field of his claw lashed out and ripped a metal plate free before he reached in to puncture the primary storage vessel. A great eruption of gas enveloped Pride and rapidly filled the chamber. Alarms screamed, and the human crew, without biohazard suits, all dropped to the floor convulsing as their flesh was liquefied. The Apothecary with his punctured armour followed suit moments later. Even the servitors' remaining flesh parts began to dissolve under the onslaught of this particular strain of Life-Eater Virus.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Pride was totally unbothered by the virus and continued forward, puncturing two more bombs before he found an access terminal. Overwhelming the device and seizing control took barely a moment once he had a hard-line connection. First, he turned off the annoying alarms, then he adjusted the airflow in this section, overclocking the ventilation fans to funnel the airborne virus back through the intakes to the primary life support module.

  Pride locked down the life support controls after opening all the major ventilation shafts as he withdrew his intrusion. That should take care of the useless chaff infesting the ship; anything that remained alive after exposure to the virus might actually put up a worthy fight.

  Now, he wondered, where did that Captain scurry off to? These Night Lords were certainly more prone to fleeing than he expected of Astartes. That implied either cowardice or good judgment on their part, given the quality of his opponents thus far, he was inclined towards the former.

  —-------------------------------------

  POV: Lord of Change, M'Kachen, Lord of the Changehost

  M'Kachen studied the stars above. To mortal eyes, they were cold, distant dots of fire. To him, they were a choir of screaming equations, some harmonious, some discordant, all delicious. The Mordian system shimmered beneath that eldritch choir, a knot of rigid order surrounded by delightful rot where his talons had already pried open its seams.

  A peculiar diversion indeed. A system ripe for induction into the new realm of Tzeentch.

  Half its worlds now existed as hollow echoes, their fates rewritten by his careful quill. He tasted their unraveling again as memory: the Feral world buckling under seeded paranoia, the Shrine world's hierarchies collapsing like marionettes when the hidden strings were cut. Pretty patterns, he thought, the kind that mortals could not appreciate - lines of cause and effect braided so tightly that even realization brought no hope. Just as intended, and yet… too easy, too small.

  Mordian, though… Mordian was obstinate. Its Iron Guard marched through the skein like blades forged from denial. Their minds were fortified in ways that irritated him; dull, rigid, unyielding. Like a stone refusing to grow teeth. Even the Tetrarchy resisted his infiltrating whispers. How dull. How fascinating.

  He needed the Fortress world broken. Needed Vander's Landing to kneel, its fields aflame and its grain silos weeping ash. Only then could Mordian itself bow under the weight of inevitability.

  The surviving naval assets hung around the main planet like barnacles clinging to a sinking hull. Their retreat created opportunity, allowing his Changehost to tighten the blockade around Mordian, an iridescent noose visible only to those who dreamed in nine dimensions.

  Then the tether provided by Skra'kalichaust quivered.

  It wasn't a motion but a sound, a crystalline discord, like a harp string plucked by a hand that existed in a parallel heartbeat. M'Kachen cocked his avian head as the sensation pulled in two directions. Two tugs, two sources, yet one target.

  A temporal fold. The fleet had arrived before they left.

  A ripple of irritation fluttered across his wings, feathers momentarily shifting from cobalt to incandescent amber. Unwelcome. Unplanned. Ungrateful little deviation. The Anomaly did not sing the tune he had prepared.

  What the Schemer was weaving this time defied his sight, intentionally, no doubt. Typical Skra'kalichaust. So proud of his little riddles. Let him preen. A favor owed was a jewel of its own, and M'Kachen adored jewels.

  He followed the tether's call, his consciousness sliding like molten glass across the Warp. The vessel housing the minions stood out like a shard of ice hammered into living flesh – wards, seals, sanctified etchings, and the stink of the Anathema's chosen. He twitched at the reek of the saint's presence: a sharp, metallic tang like burning silver that stabbed at his senses.

  Within the ship, psychic lights pulsed like stars behind frosted glass. He sifted through the Warp-storm around them. An ancient navigator glowing with longevity's brittle flame, a loyalist Astartes sorcerer, radiating the cold blue of disciplined thought.

  And another presence… for the briefest moment, a silhouette of potential, then a primal, instinctive scream of danger, and the impression of a great fanged void. Then… Gone, dissolved, and evaporated like dew beneath a rising sun.

  All his eyes blinked at once. Ah. The Anomaly. A puzzle piece that refuses to exist until observed differently. How deliciously rude. But even his curiosity bent its knee near the saint's luminance. That light burned paths in reality that even he sought to avoid, and something about that impression had unsettled and ruffled his feathers. He discarded that act of following these threads as they would not serve his or his master's purposes in a satisfactory manner, yet.

  An annoyed click escaped his beak. The fleet's arrival threatened the crescendo he had planned for the Agri world, a blossoming of extreme change, a plague of exquisite artistry. Virus bombs were such blunt instruments, but this one, ah, this one had been groomed with care. It would have unfurled beautifully. The change from vibrant life to cold death would have echoed through the local empyrean like a symphony.

  Instead, the lesser fleet scattered across the Agri world below drifted in panic. Mostly mortal crews, cultists, dregs, fresh clay, but misshapen. Idiots. Useful idiots, perhaps, but idiots still.

  The interloping fleet had foiled the Strike Cruiser bearing the viral payload. The proud Night Lords Astartes within unable to contest with but a single… oh. Just where had that metal monstrosity come from? That creature was deliciously dangerous. He shook away the desire to peer deeply and glean the truths of the matter. That was a distraction he could ill afford.

  Instead, he turned to the skein of fate, letting it unroll before him like a tapestry woven from nerve fibers and starlight. Threads danced. Threads frayed. Threads ended. Two vessels, a frigate and a transport, glowed with imminent demise.

  Perfect. If death awaited them anyway, it would be better that they serve a superior purpose.

  He reached out, talons closing around their destinies, and with a quiet wrench, he severed them, drinking in the chorus of extinguished lives. Tens of thousands of souls screaming into his beak like ribbons of molten gold. Their essence filled him. Warm, electric, intoxicating.

  The Warp surged. Reality bent.

  A portal tore itself open, a wound of prismatic entropy. Its twin forced its way through the sanctified hull of the Argent Drake, gnashing against its Gellar field like a beast with too many mouths, each singing a different hymn of violation.

  It required curiously much of his attention and his finesse – his practiced, elegant sorcery – to stabilize the breach. Even empowered, the gate bucked like a cornered chimera. And aboard the ship, alarms shrieked in terror. Fire, fear, faith, all blooming together like a bouquet of contradictions.

  He pulled hard on the tether. Harder.

  And in that instant, every subtle obfuscation Skra'kalichaust had bestowed upon his minions failed like candles snuffed by an unseen breath.

  The board is revealed, M'Kachen thought, wings flaring as warp-lightning crawled along their edges. He recognized with bemused interest that this retrieval might cost him more than he expected as he tested the portal with a few lesser neverborn.

  Let the next move begin.

  —-----------------------------------------------------------

  POV: Sythar the Echo-Flayer, of the Night Lords

  Sythar stood on the bridge of his vessel, eyes narrowing at the myriad flickering tactical displays. The Rogue Trader's fleet had scattered the small flotilla entrusted to harry the agri-world. An unexpected complication. Yet it was the presence of the Nova Cannon that made his jaw tighten. And whatever had befallen the Strike Cruiser was worse still.

  Contact with the vessel had been sporadic; each Vox-burst riddled with interference and panic. The final transmission from Captain Khaar'vyr the Whisper-Eater had been unmistakably grim: they were abandoning the cruiser, its fate sealed, and Sythar was to retrieve their shuttles before the void claimed them.

  He had adjusted course immediately, slipping past the drifting carcass of the Strike Cruiser while using its bulk as a shield against the Trader's guns. They recovered as many shuttles as they could before being forced to break away, skimming low across the planet's far side.

  Now he heard the heavy, deliberate footfalls of power armour approaching. He didn't turn.

  "Captain," Sythar said, inclining his head slightly.

  "Brother Sythar," Khaar'vyr replied. His voice rasped like a chainblade parting flesh. "Your intervention is appreciated. That mechanical abomination they unleashed detonated the viral payload and poisoned our life-sustainers. We attempted to bring it down but…" he cut himself off with a snarl, one gauntleted fist clenching until ceramite groaned. "It was toying with us. My ship is gone. And now the planet's orbit is contested."

  "What was it?" Sythar asked curiously.

  "I do not know, some kind of machine," Khaar'vyr admitted, lip curling beneath his helm. "But I intend to find out. The Daemon should have answers."

  He turned his helmeted stare toward the helm-pit. "Plot a course back to the fleet when concealment allows. The fleet won't break the blockade of Mordian at this stage, and the Rogue Trader carries too many unknowns for my liking. His fleet is well-armed… and he has some manner of Astartes support."

  The words hung in the stale air like a threat unspoken.

  One of their sorcerers tensed, "Sir! The Daemon is targeting the Grand Cruiser with sorcery!"

  "Have the fleet retreat now! While they're occupied." The Captain was clearly unwilling to throw more vessels away pointlessly, even if they weren't his own. The Trader fleet wasn't large enough to delay the inevitable, merely an annoyance. There was little chance they would risk a confrontation with the main invasion fleet.

  —--------------------------------------------------------------

  POV: Rogue Trader Lord Admiral Arken Drakios

  Arken watched amused as the enemy vessels flailed about in disarray. The first wave of torpedoes was on its way, and the Nova Cannon on the Emergency Repairs III was loaded and prepared to obliterate another vessel.

  He had initially been hesitant to launch the abomination at the Strike Cruiser. Now that the void shields were down and they had closed the distance enough to confirm the viral payload Nicole had suspected was aboard was present, and given the life-signatures within were being rapidly extinguished in mass, one or more of the bombs had gone off.

  The Heavy Frigate housing Lord Sythar the Echo-Flayer had proven to be an elusive target. It had made a brief pass by the Strike Cruiser to recover several shuttles and was now keeping the Agri world itself between them. They had maneuvered well, showing competence beyond his expectations as they avoided a direct confrontation with his fleet.

  They had only just entered extreme lance range, moving into orbit around Vander's Landing, and a majority of the enemy fleet was following Lord Sythar's lead. The few salvos of torpedoes fired back at them were taken out by the point defenses with ease.

  Suddenly, alarms blared across the bridge. Through his MIU, he could feel the Argent Drake seethe.

  "Warp Incursion! On the Cryo Decks!" One of the officers exclaimed.

  Arken frowned, wondering briefly why there, of all places.

  Suddenly, as if a veil had lifted, a surge of thoughts washed over him, and immediately his focus shifted onto certain individuals in the Cryo Decks. Why hadn't they executed the potentially compromised individuals from the Ur-Haven war, or at least turned them over to the Inquisitor?!

  A quick check confirmed the incursion was indeed occurring on the deck was the same one holding those individuals. He swore, so many of the contamination protocols had been outright ignored, and then they had forgotten the individuals even existed after putting them in storage! It had to be some kind of foul sorcery!

  He glanced over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of Captain Bolaar's stormy expression as he donned his helmet and briskly departed the bridge.

  He grabbed the nearest Vox receiver and announced to the ship. "Attention crew. This is Lord Drakios, the compromised crew within Cold Quarters section 9-T are hereby marked as Excommunicate Traitoris. They are to be executed on sight! Get them off my ship."

  —------------------------------------------------

  POV: Star Dragons Librarian Astrovas

  The moment the subtle diffuse cloak of sorcery that had caused them all to disregard the potential threat of the compromised crew began to deteriorate, Astrovas grasped his polearm and sprinted towards the Cold Quarters Cryo Deck that had been compromised.

  To his senses, it was like he had finally noticed a foul, oily aftertaste that had lingered on his tongue. While he couldn't see the portal, he could sense it clearly the moment the horrific portal pierced the Argent Drake's substantial defenses. Someone, or rather something, had committed an incredible amount of effort and energy to do so.

  He was about to Vox it in when the alarms went off, and Lord Drakio's voice rang out as he delivered his orders.

  "This is Astrovas. All Star Dragons converge on the Cold Quarters. We have a daemonic incursion. Inform the Sisters and call for Saint Lael! She'll most likely be with Lady Cavalerio. I sense numerous minoris… and multiple majoris entities!" Corruptive energy was pouring out of the unstable portal like a surging tide. The cloying purple haze was saturating the entire deck.

  Astrovas focused, reinforced his mental shields and summoned a psychic barrier. He began channeling energy into his polearm, which crackled to life as the runes carved into the weapon flared with cold, blue light.

  He heard fighting ahead, the sound of bolt and las fire cracking intermittently. As he rounded the next corner, his helmet systems picked up a visual on the friendly defenders. What few armsmen were present were in a fighting retreat against a swarm of horrors – several crew members with weaker souls were already starting to mutate wildly, already at risk of turning into Chaos Spawn, both outside and even within the cryo pods.

  "Move!" He yelled, moving at a full sprint as he hurtled past the voidsmen and into the front line of Tzeentchian horrors like a battering ram. A broad sweep of his polearm sent both limbs and tentacles, and foul ichor flying in a wide arc. He spun his polearm with one hand, the one-handed sweep cut into a nearby warp-horror that was instantly bisected and burned by his weapon's wards. His other, free hand clenched into a fist, and he struck a blue horror that had dared to leap at him squarely in the face, splattering it like a bug.

  His brisk progress was slowed when he had to reinforce his shields against the concentrated breath of a Flamer of Tzeentch. With a litany of warding on his lips, he pushed his way through the stream of fire step by step until he was close enough to smite the foul creature down with a swing of his blade, bisecting and banishing it back to the hell from whence it came.

  Astrovas finally reached the entrance to the chamber that had been compromised. The portal was open wide, the yawning portal was big enough to drive a transport through, and stray discharges of Warp energy struck out from the portal like bolts of lightning, scorching the surrounding bulkheads.

  A psychic presence from the far side of the portal nearly forced Astrovas to his knees, and as he watched, a massive blue-feathered arm that barely fit through the portal reached out to pluck several individuals into its waiting grasp.

  Astrovas yelled a string of curses as he drew his bolt pistol and opened fire only for the bolts to scatter harmlessly off the foul daemon's feathers. The splintered and ricocheting shells, saturated with so much corruptive energy after striking the beast, the bolts themselves changing while still mid-flight, some turned to ice, others into living creatures that promptly splattered against the floor.

  A series of Cryo chambers lining the walls exploded as Chaos Spawn emerged, mouths open and screaming, tendrils writhing, dozens of disgusting eyes rolling until they focused on him.

  The horrific presence from the other side of the portal regarded him for a moment. "You are too late, Sorcerer."

  Nine bolts of witchfire lashed out at him in a volley in an offhanded attack from one of the titanic, taloned fingers. Astrovas braced his polearm between the blasts and himself. He swatted away the first two, the remaining bolts all got through.

  Three of them instantly overwhelmed his psychic shields. Two struck him directly and detonated explosively in a corona of purple warpfire. While the last two veered off, and barely missed him as he was blasted backwards over a dozen meters, into a steel wall with enough force to dent it and partially embed him within it.

  Astrovas' vision swam. He could feel his armour inject stimulants into his bloodstream, and soon, he had enough clarity to carefully take stock of his situation. His left arm was broken, shattered in multiple places. He grit his teeth as he commanded his flesh and bone to mend with biomancy. He quickly realized his weapon and armour were intact, but smoking, the Hexagrammic wards sizzled against the corruption-filled air. A part of him recognized that if he had been wielding his older force sword, it would have shattered under the force of those blows.

  "Interesting." The creature seemed surprised he was alive. Part of Astrovas was surprised, too. He felt small under the indifferent scrutiny of the Greater Daemon. Its intense presence threatened to overwhelm him as it spoke: "A gift," it croaked, "you can play with it." It flicked its fingers in a motion too fast for Astrovas to follow, and an esoteric spell lattice flickered into being where the daemon's hand had been.

  Astrovas watched as the hand retreated through the portal. In its place was a spell circle hung in the air, absolutely thrumming with energy. The infernal pressure of the Greater Daemon pinning him in place as the spell triggers.

  Nine of the surrounding chaos spawn were pulled into the circle. The spawn convulsed and began to change. Their bodies began to slough away, flesh running like hot wax, limbs dissolving into corruptive slurry. Their remaining brains knew enough to scream, and so they did, though their voices bled into one another until it sounded less like agony than a choir of drowning animals, rising and falling in discordant rhythm. The melting spawn were lifted from the ground, dragged howling into a chaotic whirlpool of multi-coloured brilliance and filth. Their dissolving bodies struck one another like waves, merging, folding, and knitting into a grotesque sculpture that swelled around the rift. Muscles bulged, bones cracked, eyes burst and reformed. The entire thing breathed like a lung made of meat, inflating and collapsing with obscene rhythm. Forming a chaotic sphere of flesh around a flickering vortex, like an egg.

  From the horrific egg, a new and unnatural abomination began to emerge before Astrovas.

  The Mutalith Vortex Beast tore itself into being; a vast, twisted thing whose very being refused permanence. Its rippling musculature grew, split, and reknit as it thrashed. From its bent, tentacled maw spilled a dozen tendrils formed of Warp-putrefied flesh and bone. The tendrils flapped and clawed at the thick air with insane ferocity and hunger. Massive, razor-jagged claws – edges keen enough to shear through reinforced ceramite – burst free in a shower of steaming ichor and gore, all the while a constant, mind-ravaging aura of corrupt warp-flux bled from the creature/beast in pulsing waves.

  It threw back its many-throated head and released a thunderous roar that rolled across the chamber and beyond, psychically reverberating for a kilometre in every direction. The sound did more than assault the ears; it pierced the mind itself, forcing visions of impossible horror into the mind of every living creature that heard its psychic scream

  Movement drew Astrovas's gaze. Around him, the last remaining Cryo Pods split and ruptured as additional Chaos Spawn clawed their way into the light, shrieking and twitching as their forms collapsed and reformed. At the center of it all, the Vortex Beast turned its many-eyed hungry gaze upon him.

  Behind the creature, the portal shuddered and destabilized, its edges fraying as reality screamed in protest. The portal erupts as it breaks and closes, triggering numerous minor phenomena as it is unmade.

  Astrovas was forced to roll to the side as the Vortex Beast charged him. "This is Astrovas. Portal closed. Terminus level entity present."

  "Astrovas, status? We're en route, sixty seconds." Astrovas heard a familiar voice, but his addled mind couldn't recall the speaker's name.

  "Combat effectiveness is down to thirty-eight percent. Catastrophic damage to my left arm, multiple bones compromised. Emergency Biomancy in use. Blood loss. Concussed. Psychic burns. And some giant tentacled monstrosity the size of a Shadowsword is trying to eat my face," he spoke while ducking under another blow.

  With his working arm occupied, Astrovas managed a minor act of telekinesis to undo the clasp for his belt of Krak grenades, which he tossed towards the hungry, grasping tentacles as he retreated.

  The following chain of explosions tore the beast apart, yet it refused to die. Astrovas watched in growing horror as it struck out against a nearby chaos spawn and bit into its corrupted flesh. Soon, Astrovas knew what was happening: the beast was regenerating itself with the blood and life-essence of the remaining chaos spawn.

  "Frak… It can regenerate," he grumbled over the open Vox. He parried the claws as they came again and felt the bones in his right arm and the joints in his charred armour creak under the strain.

  "Fall back, if you can, Brother," came the follow-up order.

  "Working on it," he grunted, deflecting yet another psychic attack.

  —----------------------------------------------

  POV: Brother Logen Silverfury, Contemptor Dreadnought

  When the alarms went off, Logen had been just a deck away from the Teleportarium. As luck would have it, he and two full fire teams and several squads of Sisters of Battle were available to teleport directly to the edge of the Cold Quarters.

  With a snap and a crackle, they appeared outside the Cold Quarters module. Logen moved ahead. Captain Bolaar was on his way, and Librarian Astrovas was already on site. Other groups were already converging on the area, and a defensive cordon was erected around the compromised module. He tuned into the Vox chatter as he lumbered forward.

  The saturation of Warp energies made the wards on his armour flare. The Sisters began chanting, and the first Warp spawned abomination to run into their group was met with an absolute torrent of bolter fire that reduced it to a fine purple mist.

  He ignored the lesser daemons, walking right through them as he zeroed in on Astrovas's last reported location, trusting the chaff to his Brothers and the Sisters.

  Astrovas lay ahead, his armour blackened and charred, a weak psychic shield barely protecting him from the horrific form of the Vortex Beast that loomed over his prone form.

  Logen fired a salvo of Krak missiles from his Cyclone Missile Launcher while bringing his Assault Cannon to bear on the beast. The rapid thunderous roar of the weapon immediately followed the high-pitched spooling whine of servos. The missiles and shells impacted the beast, sending it reeling as Logen stepped in front of Astrovas, shielding him from the beast.

  "You look like shit," he told Astrovas. The Librarian looked terrible. Scorched, chipped and bent plate with blood seeping through the cracks of his armour. Logen had been nice when describing Astrovas.

  Astrovas wheezed, "There was a Greater… Daemon… Through the Portal. I think… I offended it."

  "Did you? Good! A dragon does not cower!" Logan praised as he laughed. "Apothecary!" He yelled before stepping forward and slamming his combat weapon into the creature's monstrous face.

  With his combi-bolter's barrels now inside what Logen thought was a mouth, he fired. Vengeance rounds tore into the beast, bolts ripping corrupt flesh before detonating for even more damage. Blood, gore, and Warp-ichor erupted from the beast as Logen kept firing, but the beast's immense bulk made it clear it was only sustaining minor damage.

  The Venerable hadn't arrived… yet, so the glory of fighting the beast was his.

  This particular Vortex Beast was larger than his records indicated it should be, dwarfing even him. He fired another Krak missile targeting one of the legs, temporarily hobbling the monster. The beast's regeneration was… problematic. Thankfully, the number of Chaos Spawn was dwindling under the combined efforts of everyone present.

  His hardened will easily rebuffed the excess psychic energy as the beast lashed at his mind. His new wards made the effort nearly trivial.

  He brought his Combat Weapon up to block a claw strike that sent him skidding back a full meter, sparks erupting from the floor before his armoured magnetic feet locked back down. He replied by firing a Frag Missile into its horrific tentacled face along with another burst from his Assault Cannon.

  "In the name of the Emperor! Die, abomination!" He bellowed as he charged forward once again.

  His shields crackled and flared up as the beast lashed out with another psychic blast, yet the beast's warp attacks did little to his warded chassis – though the abundance of warp-based attacks was alarming, and with growing certainty, Logen knew the beast had to be put down quickly before it exacerbated and triggered additional psychic phenomena.

  Logan fired another salvo of Krak missiles and unleashed a full barrage of cannon shells into the foul beast's torso. He raised his Close Combat weapon high and brought it down hard on the beast's skull, pulping a portion of the abomination and sending the monster crashing to the deck. It convulsed and writhed as it futilely attempted to regenerate, but it was too late. The monstrous corpse was bathed in a torrent of holy fire from the Sisters' flamers.

  Logan took stock and watched as the zealous Sisters methodically sterilized the remaining areas of corruption within the room.

  "What a mess," he rumbled.

  —--------------------------------------------------

  POV: Nicole

  By the time I arrive at the Cold Quarters, the incursion has been contained.

  Baldos is only mildly disappointed he missed the opportunity to fight the Vortex Beast, though he is more than happy to tease poor Astrovas, who is currently on his way to go spend a few days in a healing vat.

  My task is primarily to check and help purge the local systems for corruption, while Lael helps purge the lingering maligned energies.

  "This doesn't make much sense. What was the point? The Daemon delayed the Argent Drake and the fleet briefly, but the losses on our side were minimal." I mutter while checking a cogitator and flagging it for a full reset.

  "Unknown. Astrovas confirmed the Greater Daemon took several individuals through the portal," Captain Bolaar replies to my not-question.

  "That makes even less sense! This Daemon was an entirely different entity, completely unrelated to the one from Ur-Haven!" I grumble while examining the psychic signature. "Any psyker could tell you as much from the lingering psychic signature. Why go through so much effort for a few mortals? This incursion required a large amount of energy and effort, and likely considerable sacrifices to fuel it," I grumble as I struggle to make sense of the situation. "Ugh, the followers of the Changer of Ways are such a headache," I complain.

  Baldos chuckles but says nothing.

  Lael is waving around a golden censer full of incense. "Perhaps they wanted the individuals for something specific?" She proposes with a thoughtful expression.

  "But none of them were psykers or even individuals with strong souls! The previous Daemon spent considerable effort on the wards that distracted and subverted us from purging them. I just don't see the value or reason for any of it." I grumble as I flag yet another console for destruction when I find mutated glowing organs inside where the normal circuit board should be.

  "Trying to understand the goals or mind of Chaos is a futile endeavor," Bolaar states confidently.

  "True… I think I'm done with this section. I need to go retrieve Pride quickly once we're in orbit if I want to spend any time planetside. I don't imagine we'll stay long. The Life-Eater Virus should have consumed itself already." I say as I flare my null field briefly to clean myself of any lingering energies.