403.947.M30 – Eremus Gate
With the orks gone, attention turned to Eremus II. Two landing parties were organized to investigate the radio transmissions. Sergeant Kallin himself made me acting squad leader, allowing me to choose my own team and landing zone. I took Malchior, Oskyr and another merry Wolf, and Karyth of the Alpha Legion. My chosen site was the River Confluence—Site D.
The planet was a grave. Swamps and jungle had reclaimed the ruins of habitation. The air was heavy, the water poisonous. Yet there were traces of the men who had once lived here: hab-blocks half-swallowed by vines, rusted vehicles, collapsed towers. The Auxilia worked diligently under my supervision, establishing a perimeter and beginning to scavenge.
The signal came from a makeshift radio mast in the heart of the settlement. Its transmission was garbled, but it repeated one message: a warning to stay away, invoking something called the Patron, or maybe warning against it.
When the perimeter was secure, I allowed Iskandra to leave the Rhino. She stepped out into the swamp air and laughed aloud—it was the first time she had ever stood upon a planet’s surface. For a moment, watching her turn her face toward the alien sun, I felt something I cannot name.
In one of the crumbling structures, we found a functioning terminal—astonishing, after so long. I interfaced with it, and a voice answered. Cold, mechanical, ancient. It called itself the Patron, and it told us to leave. When one of the junior tech-priests attempted to commune with it, his implants burned out from within. He died screaming, his circuitry liquefying in his skull. The Magos later confirmed what I suspected: this “Patron” bore the same digital signature as the corrupted code aboard the Myrmidion. A machine intelligence. An Abominable Intelligence.
Rhadamanthine forbade further contact. None of the Mechanicus are to interface with any system planet-side. I do not argue.
The other landing team at Site A found similar ruins, but their signal called to the Patron, begging aid for something named Krypteria. One beacon warns intruders away; another prays for rescue. This world is fractured in more ways than one.
We moved next to Site C, the Southeastern Ridge. Scans suggested structures below ground. When we arrived, beasts burst from the tunnels—pale, ogrish things. We burned them, then collapsed the entrances with grenades. The ground gave way beneath us, and we fell into a vast subterranean facility. Clone vats, laboratories, all long dead, yet not silent. The creatures we fought had been born here.
We cleared the place at last, though the last beast—a thing of tentacles and bone—proved a tougher match than most. Still, we endured, each man doing his duty regardless of Legion.
After regrouping, we moved to Site E, the Eastern Heights, an observatory still half-intact. The jungle there was burned away by some kind of thermal field. Inside, we restored partial power, though at the expense of the field that had kept the jungle and its denizens at bay. The telescope’s last alignment pointed toward a yellow star far beyond the Ashveil Reach—perhaps Krypteria itself, the mother world of this dead colony.
Reports from the other team were mixed. Site B was a ruin, a last stand of men armed with spears. Site F was worse—or better, depending on your view. A manufactorum still labored in the dark, some forges still spitting out weapons and armor with no one to wield them, though most had stopped working or run out of materials long ago. Tanks slept in their cradles, untouched by war. Why the colonists never used them, we cannot guess.
Then the creatures came. Bigger, hungrier, unending. They poured from the jungle toward our encampments. We called for orbital support.
The Ashen Promise answered. Plasma warheads fell first, a rain of fire that erased forests in moments. Then the lance batteries struck, scouring the land in sheets of jagged lightning. Macro fire followed, fragments of molten iron falling like meteor storms. Finally, the ship’s small craft descended, their guns stitching the earth. The night burned brighter than the day.
When it was done, silence. Smoke and ruin. The jungle reduced to glass.
Over the following weeks, we built. Auxilia, servitors, and what few specialists remain established a colony upon this reclaimed world. They call it Patron now, in grim humor. It will never be a paradise, but perhaps it will serve the Imperium’s needs.
I walked its burned soil and felt pride, but also unease. The orks are dead, the monsters scattered, yet the Patron’s voice still lingers in the data we brought back. It is watching, somewhere beyond our reach.
Still, the banners of the Imperium now fly here. Humanity not only endures, it reclaims, it conquers.
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