was an assurance. My brothers did the same, as did the anathema psykana. There were more of them than us, and their weaponry was more varied. Whereas we carried guardian spears only, they bore flamers, greatblades, even chainswords.
A little over forty of us, then, to contest the conquest of a world. We could not be faulted for our ambition.
As the Chelandion accelerated I studied images of our inward attack run on the bridge-mounted image banks. Once past the Mandeville threshold, we powered swiftly towards the system-centre. For a long while, there was no sign of any other ship. This was not surprising – with the collapse of the Astronomican’s beacon, we assumed that warp travel had all but dried up across the Imperium, leaving our space-lanes empty.
Only when we came within visual range of the planet itself, a sapphire-and-pink orb of considerable beauty, did evidence of the enemy become apparent. There was a single battleship in low orbit, surrounded by shoals of lesser craft and a huge cloud of floating debris. I recognised the profile of the master vessel immediately – an Executor-class grand cruiser, looming in gigantic splendour, though twisted and changed by its time spent in the Eye. Its vast flanks were black, ridged with brass, bearing the octed on heavily oxidised ablative plating. Any Imperial craft had been reduced to components in that debris cloud. Aside from a phalanx of escorts, the remaining vessels looked to be landers descending on the world below in steady procession.
‘So you were right,’ I told Aleya, sitting opposite me in the lander’s crew bay.
We had no chance of engaging it directly and surviving. Even alone, an Executor was virtually a line battleship, built to survive voidwar encounters against whole squadrons of destroyers, and the Chelandion was both out-powered and outgunned. We had expected that, however, and our attack plan did not alter.
‘Signs of heavy assault on-world,’ came the clipped voice of my master of sensors, an indentured menial of our service with shaved head and eagle-sigil tabard. ‘Fighting detected across northern continental mass, considerable destruction, orbital defences in ruins. Seventy conflict sites identified by augur, more coming in.’
The escorts had already locked on to us. The Executor was beginning to turn, and I watched its forward lance begin to churn with a clot of blood-red energies.
‘Good,’ I said, studying the schematics of the ongoing invasion. ‘Less of them to encounter on board. Enact attack run, as outlined. Keep us alive for just a little while.’
We ramped up speed, and the plasma drives thundered. Across short distances I judged we had the advantage – our engines were far more advanced than the colossal power trains employed on those behemoths, even if that edge would likely only prove temporary. We took hits from the escorts – black-hulled close-attack craft with spiked ventral ridges and close-packed las-fire arrays. Macrocannon batteries began to flicker as the cruiser wallowed into closer range, sending hailstorms of shells fizzing past us.
I departed the command dais. Aleya came with me, and we joined the others on a heavy platform set back from the main arch of the bridge. The deck rocked beneath us as we were hit again, the impact stressing our forward void shielding and making the real-viewers crackle.
We ignored the lesser craft, speeding through their cordon and absorbing their punishment. The Chelandion powered straight towards the Executor, and soon I could begin to make out the detailing across the cruiser’s ancient lines. Everything had been mangled, tortured, flexed into colonnades of grotesquery. Every gun barrel was a gaping maw, every hull plate was disfigured with hammered-out eyes or claws or teeth. The black mass of its hide was mottled as though covered in a patina, the accumulation of centuries plying corrupted depths. Even its void-movements were sinister, as if crabbed by the laws of physics it suddenly and unwillingly had to obey.
The Black Legion, Aleya signed.
I looked at her. Her face was already twisted into hatred, an expression only part-hidden by her mask.
‘We will be among them soon enough,’ I said.
The volume of fire picked up. The Chelandion shuddered, hit again by a brace of well-aimed shots. I saw warnings flash up on the status of our void shields. For the time being we had evaded the great lance weapons, but the Executor itself now swelled hugely, filling up the forward augur lenses like a cliff-face of burnished metal.
We fired back. A single shot, concentrated on a single location, high up on the cruiser’s bridge level. The