Chapter 235: The Planetfall War (Patreon)

The strike that crippled the Celestial Engine had drained the Immaterium dry across the entire system.

The once-roaring tides of the Warp had fallen silent, like a cosmic ocean suddenly robbed of its storm. The air itself felt wrong, heavy with a hollow quiet that unsettled even the most hardened psykers.

“It is done.”

On Cadia, Kairos Fateweaver tilted his twin avian heads toward the heavens. He could see spectral echoes of the futere, fragments of daemons writhed across Cadia’s surface, lifting their heads to the starless sky and wailing in despair.

The seething torrents of Warp-energy that once flooded Cadia were gone, devoured by the unnatural silence. The crystalline extension of the Tzeentchian warp-domain that sprawled across the Tyrok Fields was collapsing, its spires shattering and falling inward at an accelerating pace, their edges unraveling into glowing motes before vanishing.

Even before the war had properly begun, the Chaos Sorcerer and Abaddon the Despoiler had conducted the great ritual across the Segmentum Obscurus. The rites weakened the fabric of reality and tore open a gaping wound within the Cadian System.

That rift bled raw Warp-energy into realspace with every passing moment.

Kairos had marked Cadia under the sigil of the Changer of Ways, expanding his crystalline warp-realm upon the Tyrok Fields like a cancerous bloom. Through the protection of that warped domain, he had torn open a gate of flesh and crystal, wrought from the blood and bodies of psykers, to spew forth daemons and Warp-fire.

But Kairos had not enjoyed the full fruits of his schemes yet. He had been driven to distraction by the accursed Nulls, the soulless blanks who burned like acid upon his senses. They shattered his plans and harried his every move. Worse still, the raw energies meant to remake Cadia into a daemon world had been siphoned away, twisted into the designs of one of Tzeentch’s ancient rivals.

Kairos Fateweaver, the Oracle of Eternity, was forced to admit that the present situation had grown far beyond any design he had foreseen.

“Remain.”

Amidst his despair, a voice whispered within his thoughts. Then others followed, whispers and fragments of meaning crowding his mind. Not words, but impressions, commands. Kairos, practiced in deciphering the hidden will of the Architect of Fate, pieced the fragments together into a single order:

Remain upon Cadia. The Changer’s hand will intervene. Wait for His deliverance.

Without hesitation, he obeyed. With a gesture, he opened a shimmering warp-gate and vanished alone, abandoning his fellow sorcerers to their fates upon Cadia.

....

Meanwhile, the Chaos fleet pressed toward the Celestial Engine’s orbiting satellite where Abaddon himself directed the campaign. Their progress, however, was anything but smooth.

The Talon Navy’s battlegroups, dispatched earlier as part of the defensive schema, had already learned of the renewed assault upon Cadia and were returning at speed. Dimensional-flares heralded the arrival of more and more Talon ships, dropping out of the Dimensional Rifts in starbursts of light dangerously close to Cadia to intercept the foe.

At the head of the traitor fleet drifted a Blackstone Fortress, its cyclopean mass scarred and burning. Behind it sailed the heavily damaged Vengeful Spirit, with the Terminus Est and the Conqueror flanking on either side. Escorts and lesser warships swarmed around them in a defensive shell.

The goal of the Chaos fleet was clear: deliver their mass of transports to the satellite where the Warmaster held command. From there, the heretic legions would deploy, overwhelm the Celestial Engine, and then the core itself, until all three Iron Worlds were brought beneath the Eye of Terror.

Such a goal demanded sacrifice.

A dozen Chaos cruisers broke formation, slowing to form a sacrificial screen around the transports.

The Talon Navy skirted around the Blackstone Fortress, hammering at the flanks, but every strike was absorbed by those sacrificial cruisers. The transports continued to press forward, unscathed.

Soon several cruisers had their void shields stripped by Talon fire. With no defense left, they hurled themselves toward the nearest Talon battleships, engines burning white-hot. Their vox-chanting crews roared oaths to the Warmaster, swearing vengeance and eternal service as they rammed headlong, detonating in incandescent fury. Flesh and steel perished as one.

The gaps were immediately filled by fresh cruisers, and the fleet pushed inexorably forward.

By the time the Chaos fleet forced its way into orbit around the Celestial Engine, seven cruisers had already been lost. Yet the transports survived, and the Talon Navy had not yet fully redeployed.

Barely one hour had passed since the first volleys of war. The great battleships scattered at strategic points across the system were only just now charging their Dimensional Engines.

The skies above the Celestial Engine turned to fire. Thousands of drop-pods, assault craft, and bulk landers descended like a crimson storm.

On the satellite’s surface, the ground shook beneath the arrival of Chaos forces. Thousands of Chaos Space Marines disembarked, followed by millions of mortal cultists and thralls.

Then came the true engines of destruction.

Three massive landers descended to within fifty meters of the surface. Their maws split open, disgorging thirty Titans of the Dark Mechanicum of various classes, followed by corrupted Imperial Knights.

They were black and gold, their pauldrons marked with the profane eight-pointed star of damnation. The Legio Mortis, the Death’s Heads, dreaded Titan Legion of the Warmaster himself.

At their forefront strode the mighty Dies Irae or "Day of Wrath" in High Gothic, a Warlord Titan infamous across ten thousand years of heresy.

Beside it lumbered an ancient Knight, its lance crackling with empyric energy, pacing every ponderous step of the Warlord as though bound to it in eternal oath, a sworn bodyguard, a companion, and perhaps a slave. Together they were the heralds of annihilation.

....

High Command, Command Bunker, Cadia.

Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed glared at the hololithic projection before him.

The display showed both Cadia and the Celestial Engine satellite. On Cadia, the crystalline warp-zone had already collapsed, though daemonic incursions still flared across the planet. The Cadian regiments and their Talon allies were tasked with containing them.

There was no stable front. Their war was chaos incarnate; one moment Guardsmen traded fire with daemons across the plains, the next the same companies were dragged into bloody melees amidst polar ice.

But Cadia was not yet lost. The true threat now lay with the Celestial Engine, where Abaddon’s legions had landed in force.

The hololith rendered the enemy disposition in grim detail: Traitor Astartes, heretic mortals, and now, an entire Titan Legion.

The infantry could be matched. The Space Wolves and other loyalist Chapters were already mustering aboard their strike cruisers, preparing to make drop-assaults upon the satellite.

The Imperial Guard was also on the move. Eighty regiments of Cadian Shock Troops and Mordian Iron Guard had been pulled from their bastions and loaded aboard transports, ready to reinforce the fight. The Talon troops could simply translate by teleportarium.

But how to deal with the Titans?

No infantry regiment could hope to survive against god-machines. Not even Astartes were more than meat before their guns. Only Titans could fight Titans.

A Titan, however mighty, could be felled by the lance strikes of a battleship, but the Chaos fleet squatted in orbit above the Celestial Engine. The Cadian and Talon Navy had only just fully regrouped. Orbital strikes were impossible for now.

Cadia’s own Titan Legions existed, more than one, but they had only just concluded their last campaign. They were still resupplying, a process that took weeks. Even once rearmed, transport would take longer still. The Mechanicus alone required seven days simply to secure each Titan into its cradle for void transport.

Creed knew the logistics too well.

“Send us to fight upon the satellites of the Celestial Engine.”

The voice cut across the chamber. From the shadows knelt the Canoness of the Order of Our Martyred Lady, hands clasped in fervent prayer.

Since the briefing began, she had prayed ceaselessly to the Emperor. Creed had not intended to dispatch the Adepta Sororitas; the Canoness distrusted the Talon and their ways. Her zeal might disrupt the fragile coalition.

“You are certain?” Creed asked.

“The Emperor guides us,” the Canoness said firmly. “His light burns within us, and He commands that we strike at the Iron Planets. I shall find a way to bring down their Titans, even if it costs us every soul in my command.”

“Then you have my thanks.” Creed inclined his head.

The Sisters of Battle would fight, and that was no small boon. Their faith was welcome, their zeal unquestioned. Yet Creed knew, with the cold clarity of command, that faith alone could not stop a god-engine.

Infantry could fell Knights with sacrifice and faith. But a Titan? Against such god-engines, a regiment would last two hours at most. Only another Titan could match them.

A burst of static cut through the chamber.

"Zzzk–zzzk∼…"

The hololithic projector flared, conjuring the image of a armored figure.

“Grey…” Creed muttered.

“The Celestial Engine is under siege…” Grey’s words were calm, but Creed could hear the demand beneath them. He wanted the Talon regiments recalled to the Celestial Engine. Yet he, too, knew they were already locked in a war of shifting portals against daemons on Cadia.

“I have committed sufficient regiments to the Celestial Engine,” Creed replied evenly. “They are already en route. But without Titans, every soldier, every Space Marine, is nothing more than fodder.”

Grey’s expression did not waver. “There are Titans upon the Celestial Engine. Ready and waiting.”

Creed froze. He did not know how the Talon had secured such engines, nor why Grey claimed it so. But there was no time for questions.

The Castellan shifted his gaze from Cadia and fixed it upon the Celestial Engine. The battle there would decide the fate of them all.