512.947 – Droskael
The Ashen Promise drifted silently through the Droskael system, her augurs fanning wide like the feelers of some cautious beast. For the first time since we entered the Reach, there was no clear path forward. The bridge had become a debating chamber: whether to risk a landing on Droskael Majoris, whether to press deeper toward the Ashveil Reach, or whether to turn for home with what knowledge we had gathered.
Captain Varenius argued for caution; the Magos and Kallin for knowledge and glory. I spoke only once, to remind them that knowledge means nothing if none survive to deliver it. A third of our astropaths were dead from the strain of our temporal misadventure; another third barely clung to sanity. Messages now cost lives. Every word we sent home was paid in blood.
Kallin listened in silence, and perhaps he would have chosen prudence over valor for once—but the void had other plans.
A ship tore out of the warp at the edge of the system. Cruiser-class, Imperial pattern. Even before the cogitators named her, I knew the silhouette: Ashen Daughter. The ship I had glimpsed in the warp, the very vessel I had begged the Legion to send when time itself came undone. She had arrived exactly when I knew she would. Destiny, or the echo of an old paradox.
Others saw her too. Three ork kill-kroozers broke orbit from Malis, lumbering toward the newcomer, while two of the 44-R—what the squats call the Thrax, what the voidsmen from the Black Comet call “Ghouls”—sped from the Hadranis Belt. Each was far larger than the Promise, and either squadron could have crushed us alone. We moved to intercept.
The 44-R ships ran hot, radiation plumes bright as suns. I noticed how they blinded their own sensors, the afterglow of their drives smothering their augur returns. A blind spot, vast and fatal. I requested temporary command from Kallin—he granted it without hesitation, the glimmer of a test in his eyes—and ordered the Promise to arm torpedo tubes. Six volleys, staggered, timed to converge behind the enemy.
The torpedoes slid toward the alien hulls like shadows. No evasive maneuvers, no counter-fire. Then contact. The first ship simply folded in upon itself, a blossom of white fire. The second lurched, engines flaring, then died in silence. We finished it with lances.
When the glare faded, two xenos cruisers were gone, and the Ashen Promise still lived. I'm sure even Kallin smiled at that inside his yellow helmet.
But victory breeds its own doom. The orks were closing—three hulks, each the size of a mountain, their holds vomiting attack craft. The Daughter was still silent, drifting, answering no hail. Something was wrong aboard her.
We fought as we must. The Promise wheeled and fired on the lead kroozer, using its bulk to shield us from the others. We hurt it, but the swarm of boarding craft kept coming. Then the void itself changed.
Eight ships appeared without warning: vast silver daggers arranged in a perfect star, each gleaming like red quicksilver beneath the sun. They hung in absolute formation, motionless.
The orks saw them—and fled. I have never seen orks flee. They broke formation, drives flaring, clawing for the edge of the system. Whatever the silver ships were, the orks remembered them, and their memory was terror.
We struck at the retreating kroozers, crippling one before it could escape. Another improbable victory. The silver vessels remained inscrutable for a time, and then they split apart, moving in silence, without any visible thrust. Four angled toward Droskael Majoris; the rest scattered into the void. They made no attempt at contact.
We reached the Ashen Daughter hours later. She drifted cold but lit, power systems stable, vox silent. Our boarding party found only death.
Forty thousand crew lay at their stations, dried husks, uniforms intact. No signs of struggle or violence—just sudden, impossible age. The ship’s internal chronometers reported a paradox: lost in the Immaterium for “an indeterminate infinity.” Her hull was barely a decade old, gifted by the 2nd Legion to the 11th, for they know we much desire more strike cruisers of this make.
The Astartes contingent—two hundred and fifty in total, half of the Second Legion and the rest of my own—were sealed in their armor, positioned as if ready to repel boarders. They too were dead. I remember their faces through cracked helms: some frozen in confusion, others twisted in something like fear. Astartes do not fear; whatever took them reached deeper than flesh.
Keeper Andropolous of the Second was found in the strategium, a data-scroll still clutched in his gauntlet. Orders from the 11th: my own promotion, a commission to Second Lieutenant, carried across the void in answer to a message I had sent from the past. The ship meant to deliver my future had perished before it could reach me.
It is a hard thing to look upon your own salvation and find only corpses.
For a time, I considered the unthinkable—using what I had learned to step backward again, to prevent this tragedy. But time is a liar. Each correction births another flaw. Better to leave the dead where they lie.
Now there are three ships: the Promise, the Daughter, and the Black Comet—and far too few souls to crew them. Command fell to Kallin by the will of the Lord of the 813th, but he looked to me. “Do you seek command, Lieutenant?” he asked, using the title as if testing its weight.
I said that I did. He smiled, and for the first time since I met him, I saw peace in his eyes. “Then it’s yours.” He turned away as though a great burden had lifted from his shoulders.
We turned for home.
Iskandra calculated the passage aboard the Ashen Promise, transmitting the coordinates to Fran Khel aboard the Comet and me aboard the Daughter. But the warp was calm. No storms, no distortions, no voices. Perhaps it remembered us and was sated.
We tested the route by jumping to Eremus Gate, then on to Port Helikos. Smooth, almost gentle. For the first time since coming to this cursed place, the Immaterium felt like a sea at peace.
666.947.M30 – Port Helikos
The Magos oversaw the repairs, ever efficient—his mechanical heart burns with the desire to get back to Expanse, back to the techno-horrors that wait for us there. We scoured every ship in orbit for volunteers and pressed every able body into service. The quality of the crews will shame us later, but numbers will suffice for now.
Astartes reinforcements were also present. Another squad of the Emperor’s Children, a Warden of the Second and her bodyguard, two squads of Iron Hands, a squad of Word Bearers, and half a company of Ultramarines. Why the latter two were here, none could say, for none had requested them. But when offered a chance to fight both the Hounds and the Ultras, they readily agreed.
We depart again now. Three ships, one purpose. The storms have lifted. The Reach lies open.
The Navigatrix says the warp feels almost welcoming.
That alone should terrify me.
But it was, long before my birth, decided we shall know no fear.
Draco Vult.
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