Chapter 258: The Infernis System (Patreon)

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The Red Scar Cluster.

Compared to most sectors within the Imperium, its environment was a crucible of nightmares, hellish to the extreme. Unstable warp currents and rift storms licked the edges of the void, while cosmic radiation storms saturated entire star systems without mercy.

Every planetary surface burned a deep crimson under their influence, as though the very cluster itself bled eternally in defiance of all who dared to claim it.

It was within this accursed cluster that the Ninth Primarch, Sanguinius, was raised upon the irradiated moon of Baal. Though its skies were poisoned and its ground treacherous, that moon became the crucible in which one of the Emperor’s most beloved sons was forged.

To the Blood Angels and all of their successor Chapters, Baal would forever be revered as their sacred homeworld.

Baal’s system was the heart of the cluster, but to Phoros, Chapter Master of the Lamenters, a different system held greater meaning, the Infernis System, and more specifically its third planet.

It was upon that world that Phoros had lived before he was taken up into the ranks of the Emperor’s Angels of Death centuries ago.

Infernis was etched into his very soul. Its storms had baptized him in struggle, its oceans had taught him the rhythm of survival. Where Baal was holy to the sons of Sanguinius, Infernis was home, a memory that no war, no tragedy, no curse of bad fortune could erase.

Thus, when the Daughter of Tempests, flagship of the Lamenters, tore free from the Dimensional rift, its course was not set for Baal, but for Infernis.

On the bridge, Phoros and his company captains gazed upon the system with grave silence. Tessa, who had just arrived from the engine decks, followed their gaze.

Wishing not to provoke any surviving defense flotillas, she had wisely set their translation point at the edge of the system. To enter the system proper, they would first have to cross a dense asteroid belt.

“Do not attempt a direct passage,” Phoros ordered. “The temperature within those fields is deathly low. Any vessel unshielded would be frozen solid.”

In truth, the void was never warm, but these particular asteroids radiated entropy, drawing heat away from all that passed too near. Ships that failed to shield their cores would not merely freeze, they would calcify, their reactor hearts turning brittle as glass, until the void shattered them like toys.

“Yes, my lord.” Tessa nodded, her eyes fixed upon the asteroid field glittering in the void. She whispered almost reverently, “This… this must be the Luminous Aegis, you once spoke of?”

Phoros was taken aback by her memory, then gave a slow nod. Long ago, before she and her sister were placed within an orphanage on Talon, he had cared for them briefly after their rescue from a plague world. Each night he told Tessa tales of his home, of the strange shield of frozen stone and ice that defended Infernis.

The Luminous Aegis was more than a natural hazard; it was the system’s first line of defense. Enemies who could not navigate it were doomed and could never reach its inner worlds. For the people of Infernis, it was not merely a celestial barrier but a symbol of resilience, nature’s fortress wall against the terrors of the void.

“Our Energie shields will hold. We can force a passage,” Tessa reported after her calculations.

Phoros did not answer. His gaze drifted out of the viewport, lost in memories. The Daughter of Tempests, forged in shipyards under the patronage of the Lord of Talon, could breach the shield with ease, but the vessels of his youth could not.

He remembered the clumsy bulk haulers and crawling fortress-ships of his people, struggling endlessly against the cosmos.

“Proceed,” one of the captains ordered in his stead, unwilling to disturb their lord’s reverie.

The flagship surged forward.

Frost bloomed across its shields as it entered the Aegis. The ice illuminated the void, outlining the entire defensive barrier as the vessel pressed through. Asteroids cracked and scattered off the energy fields, until at last the view cleared, revealing the system beyond.

What awaited them was a vision of damnation.

The Infernis System crawled with titanic xenos organisms, each vast as an Imperial cruiser. Chitinous leviathans floated through the void like living mountains, their hulls slick with ichor and studded with biocannons that oozed malevolence. A swarm of shadow blotted the stars, countless specks in constant motion between world and beast.

The twin suns of Infernis still burned, but all else had been defiled. Planets hung like corpses, their atmospheres torn away, their crusts chewed to marrow. Whole moons had been cracked open like eggs and hollowed by bio-organisms whose hunger knew no limit.

The system that once sang with storms and seas now whispered only with silence and ruin. Infernis was not conquered, it was consumed.

Tessa’s eyes turned anxiously to her lord’s back. Phoros trembled.

The ship’s augurs completed their sweep, data cascading into the hololithic display.

[Bio-forms detected: Hive Fleet sub-splinter]
[Tyranid bio-ships: 39,782]
[Tyranid organisms: numberless]
[Human life signatures: zero]
[System-wide assessment: all planetary bodies consumed or scoured. Cause: confirmed Tyranid predation. Human habitation: none. Strategic value: none.]

“Chapter Master!” one of the captains pressed forward urgently. “We must withdraw at once!”

Already, some of the great bio-ships had noted the intruder emerging from the Aegis. Black clouds of lesser organisms, living swarms, rushed towards them. The void itself seemed to darken, as though the Tyranid shadow-in-the-warp thickened in rage at their intrusion.

“Two more kilometers,” Phoros whispered, voice trembling. His voice was more plea than command. “Just close enough… I must see the seas of Infernis III once more.”

The captains exchanged grim looks. Orders to prepare for battle were already spreading through the vox. Seven hundred Lamenters, alongside mortal serfs, took up defensive stations. Boarding drills were enacted, though none believed the Tyranids could breach their battle-barge’s energy shields.

The flagship’s lances fired, burning gashes into chitinous hulls, setting xeno-flesh aflame in the cold void. But the swarm pressed on.

“On my world,” Phoros spoke again, voice distant, as if speaking to himself, or to Tessa alone, “the oceans were never still. Tides and floods could drown entire cities. So we lived in vast machines, crawling fortresses that roamed the sea-floor like land-barges. We fought the ocean’s wrath, the radiation’s poison… yet we endured. We endured.”

The flagship rammed forward through the swarm. Energy shields flared under the assault of countless creatures hurling themselves against it.

Through the maelstrom, Phoros at last beheld the world of his birth.

It was barren. No oceans. No storms. Nothing. A husk, stripped by the Hive Fleets until not even a sea remained. The crawling fortress-barges were gone, reduced to dust. The tides that once howled like gods were silent. The last song of his homeworld had been devoured.

“The dimensional engines are primed, my lord,” came the report from the engine decks.

“Lord Phoros…” Tessa’s voice was soft, almost breaking.

Phoros stared at the dead world for a long moment. At last, he nodded. “Set course for Baal.”

In a flash, the Daughter of Tempests plunged back into the dimensional rift, fleeing damnation. The crew exhaled as one, as though the weight of hell itself had lifted.

None aboard saw what followed.

For within the dead silence of Infernis, something else stirred.

A colossal black sphere materialized within the system, lurking at the edge of realspace, half in void, half in another dimension. Vast tendrils reached through the fabric of space into Infernis’ worlds, ripping their mineral veins straight from the bedrock.

The sphere pulsed faintly, as though something within was awakening, something that did not hunger as the Tyranids did, but consumed with cold, deliberate purpose.