-Blackstone Fortress Command bridge
The command bridge perimeter stank of blood, scorched metal, and something worse, a sour, sweet stink of rot and static-charged air.
The void outside was bad enough. In here, the air clung to the lungs like oil.
Lieutenant Darius Branek adjusted the strap of his rifle as he moved through the makeshift barricades his platoon had hastily reinforced.
The bulkheads sweated moisture and something darker. The deck thrummed now and then — not from battle, but from the slow, steady pulse of something vast and unnatural moving in the depths of the fortress.
The reinforcements from the 15th Raider Battalion had arrived an hour prior. Combined, they numbered around thirteen hundred strong.
Battle-weary men and women thrown into the defensive ring around the command bridge. Some bore cracked armor.
Others were carried in on stretchers. More than a few put their helmets strapped to their belts, faces distant, eyes reflecting horrors they could no longer speak of.
Branek noted the difference as he moved through the lines, a leering skull clenching a dagger between its teeth on the right pauldron of the raiders.
While his battalion is crossed lasrifles making an x symbol.
Their reinforcement was supposed to give hope, it doesn't.
The fleet voxnet never stopped.
[—Traitor cruisers breached Docking Sector Four. Vox silence on Cohort Tharsis—]
[—ship loss confirmed, Annerose is gone, no survivors—]
[—Black Legion boarding force spotted near Barracks C, six squads lost contact—]
Bad news piled on bad news. Disheartening news bled from the vox, cold and relentless.
Branek passed his platoon's fire positions. Las repeaters Tanaka and Vallerian was overseeing ammo resupply. Sergeant Khor coordinated overlapping fields of fire with the other platoons.
"Check those kill-zones, khor," Branek muttered, trying to say something to takes his mind of negative thoughts. Warp breaches start to affects him.
"Already on it, sir," Khor grunted. His eyes flicked to a Raider squad crouched by the barricade.
One of the raiders was rocking slightly, mumbling to herself.
Khor's face darkened. "Too many of them coming unglued after seeing the horror of chaos." The platoon second in command commented with frowns.
Branek didn't argue. He felt it too, the whispers, the promises, the enticement.
He is just better at fighting it.
The air hummed. The walls pulsed. Whispers licked the edges of his thoughts — promises of impossible things. Strength. Revenge. Knowledge.Resilience
He gritted his teeth and kept moving doing something…anything...to keep his mind focus and steady.
From the shadows between broken consoles, faces sometimes formed.
Pale, stretched visages pressed from within the bulkheads. Soldiers long dead, mouths agape in silent agony before vanishing like mist.
No one commented anymore. The sight is becoming common by now.
[9th Battalion Armor Company to Command Bridge Defense, enemy contact at Forward Service Corridor. Engaged Chaos Astartes. Multiple kills confirmed. Losses minimal.]
The vox voice was hard, clipped, a tone of a man drowning slowly in blood.
[This is Halvra.] The major's voice punched through seconds later, raw with exhaustion, brittle with resolve. [Defensive sectors report in. Final checks on all barricades. Daemon presence confirmed in lower hab sectors. It's coming for us.]
Branek acknowledged via vox-click. His men stiffened at the major's words.
Down the corridor, a Raider squad leader spoke in a cracked voice. "I've got men seeing things, Lieutenant. Heard one of the walls breathing."
Branek didn't correct him. The walls were breathing.
A trooper's scream rang out. He crouched behind a barricade, dropped his lasrifle and clutched his head.
"They're in my skull— I can feel 'em!" His voice cracked, a wet gurgle. "They're talking…ohh…they're beautiful…."
Khor was on him in a moment, slamming the butt of his rifle into the man's head, driving him unconscious.
"Get him out of sight," Khor muttered. "Before others crack."
Two soldiers dragged the trooper away, his body twitching.
The Blackstone itself shuddered. The deck plates rippled. Shadows deepened in impossible ways.
The voxnet chattered again. Report from other battalions coming in.
[New contacts. Word Bearers. Emperor's Children. North conduit breached. Heavy resistance.]
[Ambush positions holding. But only barely, we need immediate reinforcement!]
Another flicker of static.
Then Division Command vox'd in — and panic was in their voice.
[They're through! They're through! Hundreds of them, daemons…walls melting….. shields failing…]
A churning roar sounded behind the words — not static, but something vast howling in an ancient tongue.
Then silence.
Major Halvra's voice cut through the vox trying to shoo away the fog of fear.
"All units, stand firm. Our order is clear, to hold this position. Not one step back."
"There is no place to retreat." Tanaka comments as he keeps watch on his fire zone.
The platoon absentmindedly nodded.
Around Branek, soldiers from other units checked weapons, shoulders squared, teeth clenched. They could feel it coming.
A miasma of rot and ozone thickened. The walls oozed ichor. Muffled wails sounded from beneath the deck.
A Raider nearby muttered, "Damn, I am going to die in some cursed space station."
Branek snapped his helmet toward the man. "Shut it. Eyes forward."
Even his own voice sounded strained.
Sergeant Khor pulled close.
"Some of these bastards won't hold, sir." Looking at a soldier not wearing helmet. His body is shaking of fear.
"I know," Branek rasped. "Hold them anyway."
The daemonic whispers rose as the area is getting more saturated with warp.
Branek forced tune out those whispering.
Branek's boots clanged against the blood-slicked deck as he moved his men into the defensive line. The 15th Raider Battalion were already in place, or what was left of them.
Gaunt figures crouched behind improvised cover — faces pale, weapons unsteady. Some sported cracked armor, others bloodied bandages.
More than a few stared off into the distance, eyes unfocused.
Narek, passed a Raider fumbling with his charge pack for the third time in under a minute. The man's hands shook so badly he nearly dropped it.
"Guess we're the better battalion after all," Narek muttered with a crooked grin, keeping his voice low. The trooper feeling prideful.
Sergeant Khor shot him a hard look. "No. They just found worse nightmare. Keep your mouth shut."
The grin faded. Narek adjusted his weapon sling and moved on without another word.
Branek caught the exchange, saying nothing. He understood both sides of it.
The voxnet crackled with fresh reports.
A hum, high and thin, built in the distance. The lumens flickered. A heavy, chittering sound scraped at the edge of hearing.
Then something moved.
A shape in the dark. Tall, broad, clad in cracked, blasphemy-etched ceramite. Its helm was a snarling skull. Emerald fire bled from its joints.
The first of them.
A Word Bearer.
And behind it, the shadows writhed. Vast, formless horrors slithered and flexed, claws and teeth glimmering in the warp-choked dark.
Daemons of various shape and forms follows.
"Contact front!" a trooper screamed.
Branek raised his rifle.
And the battle for the command bridge began.