298.947.M30 – Eremus Gate
Less than eight hours after plotting intercept, the xenos revealed their true intent. They closed upon the Ashen Promise, utterly heedless of augurs or firepower. Their vessels were fast, brutal in profile, and nothing like ork hulls save for the aggression with which they charged. Orks scavenge, yes, but even scavengers show some cunning. These ships drove forward as if guided only by the urge to kill.
We met them at range. The Ashen’s batteries crippled one outright. The frigate’s superior turn of keel brought us across their bows, our starboard guns hammering until plating gave way. Boarding pods swarmed in response, but this time the ship was ready: interceptors cut them apart, and point-defense flayed anything that crossed the defensive cordon.
One enemy raider burned. The second was gutted, its drives dead. Sergeant Tyndrel ordered a drop-pod strike. I rode down with him, with Menalkos, Halcyd, and Daecrus—his new bionic arm twitching, eager to prove itself. The Wolves took the second pod. Together, we were to find navigational data.
The hull split beneath us, and we entered the dark.
First contact: malformed things, pale, gretchin-like things, but bent with augmetics. They died quickly under bolt and blade, leaving only questions. Not ork. Not human. Something in between.
The ship itself fought us. The very air was poision. Twisting corridors flooded with radiation, a trap waiting for the unwary. I saw the pattern in the walls, the lines where the blasts would come, and led us through without a brother falling. Luck? Instinct? Perhaps both.
Further on, we met the larger brutes—twisted, hulking things of pale flesh and crude augmetics. They fought savagely, yet without the joy of greenskins. Our chainswords sang, our bolters thundered. They fell, fighting to the bitter end, but their feeble xenos weapons could not breach our vestments.
The vessel was broken, corridors torn by fire and void. We slipped through wreckage and vacuum, advancing by stealth where battle would waste our strength. My brothers looked to me to take point, and I did.
At last, the Data Maw. The Wolves were already there. And so was the beast. A dreadnought-shape, but alien: augmetic limbs like piled scrap, one fist large enough to crush ceramite like wax. It did so—one Wolf obliterated, another decapitated before he could strike back. The survivors howled their grief, but fought on.
Its guns raked us, but with little effect. It was its fists that killed. Then I found my mark. Three perfect shots, blessed by the Emperor’s hand, drove through augmetic joints and into whatever pulsed within. The monster toppled, broken, and did not rise again. Another dispatch, no doubt. But I remember the Wolves’ dead, and the weight of their gene-seed lost to the void.
We tore what data we could from the Maw, then departed through a ragged breach. Floating free, we watched as the Ashen obliterated what remained of the vessel.
The Wolves grieved. Yet even in grief, they gave me respect, for I saved what I could of their brother’s legacy, shielding a second progenoid from radiation. Wolves do not easily give praise, but they gave it to me.
Back aboard, the Magos puzzled over the recovered data. It spoke of three routes through the storms—ways to leave the Gate without passing the ork gauntlet. Theoretically, we could leave. But honor does not turn its back on an enemy. And none can accept leaving the orks at our rear.
Meanwhile, the signals from Eremus II grow louder. Human voices, or the echo of them. The xenos—whatever they are—were bound there. That alone demands our attention.
In the midst of all this, I found time for the Navigatrix. Iskandra grows more confident by the day, and with the data recovered, she may plot courses beyond this trap. But her astralabe—the device by which she charts the void—is failing. The cause is unknown. Her new staff struggles, though Warrant Officer Jocasta of Bakka subtly guides them by sheer force of will. The others look up to her for guidance, and through her flows the virtues of efficiency and obedience. Truly an exemplary mortal. Indeed, I have myself taken her counsel on occasion. On mortal matters, of course, not matters of war.
Strange, though, that I linger so long in Iskandra’s company. Stranger still that she welcomes it. The 11th teaches Honor in life, above all else. Am I being honorable? Or self-indulgent? I tell myself it is for the good of the Legion, but in truth, I do not know.
Selene Orpheos, one of the Remembrancers, now serves me as helot. She pressed the matter, I suppose, and I relented. Her twin, Cassian, joined as well. Their Death World origins make them robust, and they are most eager to serve. They will do well, I think. And through them, I will glimpse humanity in ways no drill or duty could teach.
And then Calvien. I confronted him, for I saw what he carries: the Eye of Horus upon his chest. He told me truths I did not wish to hear. That he is banished from his Legion for the crime of loyalty—not to Fulgrim, but to the Imperium, and to Horus whom he calls exemplar and a better man than his own gene-father. That Erastes sought his death, and that others of his brethren may still seek it.
This is heresy of a kind I cannot name. To raise hand against brother. To honor another Primarch over one’s own. To murder instead of exile. It shakes me to the marrow.
But what can be done? Their Legion’s shame is their own, of course. But we are all brothers on this ship, with scant little to separate one Legion from another.
Stone endures. But even stone can crack under the hammerblows of treachery.
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