Chapter 277: Disguise (Patreon)

The words of the Burning One were carried first to Captain Karlaen, and then to the Chapter Master who still sat within the strategium, Commander Dante of the Blood Angels.

The operation to reclaim the outer bastions of the fortress-monastery had officially begun.

The First Companies of five Chapters stood ready: the Blood Angels, the Lamenters, the Angels Sanguine, the Flesh Tearers, and the Blood Drinkers. All of their Chapter Masters were present, all save one.

Across the galaxy, Dante’s call to arms had echoed through the scattered brotherhood of the Blood. Not all had answered. Some Chapters, weakened by endless crusades or trapped within their own wars, could send only token forces. Others, embittered by centuries of distrust or schism, turned their gaze elsewhere. Yet even those who refused felt the call in their hearts, the psychic weight of their gene-father’s homeworld in peril.

The Chapter Master of the Angels Sanguine had refused to come to Baal’s defense. Only a number of his warriors, defying their Leader’s decree, had joined the campaign.

Dante, in his wisdom, folded these volunteers into a single fighting force, designated as the “First Company” of the Angels Sanguine for the record.

It was deliberate. Whether Baal would stand or fall, history itself would record that all the sons of Sanguinius had stood together to defend their Primarch’s homeworld. No Chapter would bear the stain of cowardice in the eyes of the Imperium.

The gathered host was formidable: over fifty Dreadnoughts, armored transports, strike craft, and gunships filled the fortress hangars, their engines rumbling like distant thunder.

And, of course, the Burning One was among them.

Though none could name the full nature of this being, whether god, weapon, or warp-born anomaly, the sons of Sanguinius knew only that wherever the Burning One walked, the Tyranid swarm withered.

When the battle groups formed up and made ready to advance, a figure none had expected stepped forth to join them, Dante himself.

He no longer wore the golden death mask of the Angel. The aged, scarred face of the Lord of the Blood Angels was revealed to his sons as he strode to the front lines, his death mask held in one hand.

A murmur rippled through the assembled Space Marines. To see Dante unmasked was to see the mortal beneath the legend.

For a thousand years he had led the Chapter through glory and despair, his mask a symbol of unyielding might. To see him now, unadorned, mortal, venerable, reminded every Astartes present that this was not merely a war of honor, not the hour for icons, but of survival.

Dante’s gaze swept over the assembled Chapters, Flesh Tearers standing shoulder to shoulder with Lamenters, their long history of bloodshed momentarily forgotten. Angels Encarmine, Blood Drinkers, and those few defiant Angels Sanguine warriors who had come despite their Chapter Master’s command. For this battle, there would be no rivalry, no penance, no shame. Only brothers united beneath a single name, Sanguinius.

At that moment, there were no parent or successor Chapters, only the sons of Sanguinius, united in blood and purpose.

All fought for one world: Baal, their shared and sacred homeworld.

“Brothers,” Dante spoke, his voice echoing over the vox. “The plan is simple. Seek out and annihilate every synapse creature you can find. If we succeed, the swarm besieging the inner bastions will fall into disarray. Then we strike back, reclaim the outer walls, the plains, and Baal itself! For the Blood of Sanguinius!”

The gates of the fortress thundered open at his cry. The storm began. Artillery boomed from the inner defenses, plasma and macro-shells turning the nearest Tyranid hordes into vaporized ichor. Then the strike force advanced.

With Dante himself leading the assault, morale burned white-hot. Without the threat of Tyranid spore bombardments from above, the artillery divisions could now deliver uninterrupted fire support. Even the ancient walls of Baal seemed to tremble beneath the fury of the guns. The Burning One’s presence was a firestorm unto itself, a living inferno scouring the swarm by the thousands.

To those who fought in that battle, it was chaos made manifest. Even with artillery and the Burning One’s support, the Space Marines were forced to meet the foe in brutal melee, against Warriors, Carnifexes, and worse.

It was, tactically speaking, a grim but effective campaign. Each kill of a synapse creature was another head severed from the hive mind.

The swarm began to falter. Confusion rippled through the Tyranid masses. Some creatures froze mid-battle, chittering in disarray, their link to the Shadow in the Warp flickering.

And still, the sons of Sanguinius pressed on.

....

Meanwhile, in the Infernis System

While Baal burned, another war raged across the stars, the Infernis System.

The fighting had reached the ruined husk of Infernis III, homeworld of Chapter Master Phoros of the Lamenters.

The two other worlds in the system had already fallen to the Iron Legions.

For the Iron Men, the war was progressing with relentless efficiency. The Tyranid swarms had thinned, their endless tide meeting the cold machine logic of perfect warfare. Though individual bioforms grew stronger, their evolutionary cycle could not match the Iron Men’s rapid adaptation and replacement rate.

From orbit, the world’s surface was a nightmare tapestry, an ocean of chitin clashing against an ocean of steel.

Every ten minutes, the Iron Men’s war-automata evolved anew: weapons reprinted, armor reconfigured, processors optimized. Each unit refitted for the latest iteration of the Tyranid threat.

Any one of these Iron Soldiers, set loose on another world, could have slaughtered an entire Imperial Guard regiment alone.

Among them, certain constructs dwarfed even Imperial Titans in destructive potential.

One such machine carried a being known only as Heatdeath.

Its transport, a massive six-legged war machine known as the Extinction Engine, strode across the plains, thirty meters tall, each step shaking the earth.

Four arms bore four weapons of different kinds. Hundreds of micro-turrets dotted its armored shell. Each stride unleashed torrents of destruction.

A single shell from its primary battery could turn a kilometer of land into molten glass.
Cluster munitions exploded in the stratosphere, raining death like steel hail. A beam of searing light cut through a Tyranid bio-titan, and the mountain behind it.

And then there was its main cannon.

When that cannon fired, Heatdeath felt radiation spike even through its own reinforced shell. A brilliant sphere of plasma erupted from the muzzle, drifting slowly through the air for two full minutes, traversing tens of kilometers before it struck the ground.

For one second, nothing happened.

Then, a blinding blue dome of energy engulfed a five-kilometer radius.
When the light faded, everything within was gone , life, rock, biomass, leaving only a perfect, glass-smooth crater.

Butneven such devastation barely dented the swarm.

Billions of Tyranids perished, yet billions more surged forward, filling the gap with mindless ferocity.

But the Extinction Engine had more than firepower.

Its hull radiated deadly toxins and intense radiation, rendering the very ground around it uninhabitable. Even hardened Tyranid organisms found their bio-constructs unraveling within a kilometer of its presence.

From atop the Engine, Heatdeath watched its kin carve a path through the Tyranid lines, closing in on a Hive Tyrant.

[Range: Seven kilometers. Target acquired.]

Heatdeath’s form shifted. Its limbs liquefied and fused into a four-meter Gauss cannon. Its head detached, rising into the air as a drone to calculate the firing solution.

Within seconds, a new shell was printed, loaded, and fired.

The shot roared like thunder. The shell streaked across the field and struck true. The Hive Tyrant didn’t even perceive its killer before it was reduced to red mist.

The lesser Tyranids nearby surged forward, devouring the remains even as nano-swarms descended to harvest the biomass.

Then, across Heatdeath’s vision, a message appeared:

[Priority Directive: Proceed to Baal.]

It was a transmission from the Primary Command Intelligence, the will behind every Iron Man. Orders were absolute.

Heatdeath prepared for redeployment. But before it departed, it enacted one final protocol, a measure of super effecktive camouflage.

It printed a sigil upon its chest: the Aquila, the Imperial double-headed eagle.