Perturabo had figured something out long ago: in the material universe, unless you were a powerful psyker, there was a hard limit to how strong a carbon-based lifeform could become.
Even a Primarch, mighty as they were, could be stomped flat by a Titan.
A single Nova Cannon shot was enough to banish a Greater Daemon straight back to the Warp.
The power of pure will counted for precious little. If you genuinely believed that raw passion or screaming a battle cry at the right moment would grant you strength beyond imagining — you'd come to the wrong universe.
That kind of willpower does exist in Warhammer, but it would never manifest in some fool running on wishful thinking.
There are prerequisites for it.
Absolute, unshakeable faith, or absolute, overwhelming power — you need at least one of the two.
Charging at the enemy with nothing but incoherent howling and the sort of "courage" that makes onlookers cringe will earn you nothing but a face full of bolter rounds and a chainsaw sword reducing you to paste.
The Warp reads people. And a staggering number of fools never grasp this.
It won't spare a glance for you just because you charged into a hail of gunfire, or bravely stood up to a terrifying enemy for the sake of your so-called friends and family.
Nor will it favour you because you surrounded yourself with beautiful wives, or engaged in some colourful bedroom antics, or — even more absurdly — threw open the gates of some grand pleasure palace.
What are you even thinking?
Who do you think you are? Did you honestly believe the gaze and blessings of the Chaos Gods came so cheaply?
If it were that easy, then the countless loyal servants of the Imperium across the ten thousand years of the 40K era should all have received the Emperor's divine blessing by now — so why did humanity end up in that state?
The truth is, Chaos is selective. At least before the proper rituals are established, the barrier of the material universe is remarkably effective.
So then — in an age like the 30K era, where individual strength cannot sway the fate of a war, and even the walls between reality and the Warp stand thick and firm, what is the optimal course of action?
Develop technology, obviously.
With the power to drag humanity back to the heights of the Dark Age of Technology, even if the Necrons rose again tomorrow, mankind could slap them across the face twice and call it Tuesday.
A shame, then, that not even the Emperor could replicate the absolute peak of that golden era. At present, they couldn't even construct a single Phalanx.
Whenever Perturabo thought about this, a pang of genuine regret crept over him.
A group of immortals who had lived since the ancient days of Terra — and what did they have to show for it? No stockpiles, no accumulated knowledge, and for most of them, nothing remarkable in the way of strength either. One had to wonder what they'd been doing with all that time.
The Age of Gold had collapsed. The Age of Darkness had descended. Humanity had torn itself apart in civil war. Technology had fractured. The accumulated wisdom of ages had been lost. Even the xenos had grown bold enough to relieve themselves on humanity's head.
Even Terra itself had nearly been shattered — and not one of those worthless immortals stepped forward. In the end it fell to a wretch like the Emperor to save humanity, and even he had to be dragged out by Malcador.
Perturabo had concluded that those immortals were utterly, comprehensively useless. When there was work to be done, you never saw them. When there was a mess to be made, they were first in the queue.
Working from the schematics Calliphone had provided for the Phalanx, Perturabo had produced a near-perfect design for a Star Fort of his own.
He hadn't built it yet — he didn't yet know where the difficulties might lie.
But in Perturabo's estimation, there would be none. He was supremely confident in that particular domain.
Even if it fell short of the Phalanx itself, he refused to believe his Star Fort would trail it by much.
A pity that the Warp defied all rational modelling — otherwise the Iron Warriors would have swept the galaxy by now and reclaimed every last inch of humanity's lost territory.
Perturabo was genuinely gifted — at the very least, in the forging of weapons, unquestionably so. In other respects, he had to admit, he was rather lacking. He sometimes couldn't even explain to himself why he had managed to claim a seat among the eight points of the Chaos Star.
But it was precisely because of this that, when he did truly claim his corner of the eight-pointed star in the Warp, he had confirmed one thing with absolute certainty.
The so-called Chaos Star of Eight was, in the end, nothing special.
Could anything born from the Warp ever be genuinely impressive? If it were capable of real reason and logic, the Emperor and Malcador would have unified the Warp long ago — they wouldn't need to toil away patching together that wretched Webway.
This was the chief reason Perturabo had always looked down on those four bloated monstrosities of the Warp, and on the Emperor and his ilk alike.
When it came down to it, their squabbles were contained to a single galaxy. That was the sum total of their ambitions.
Perturabo's attention shifted back to his sons.
He had to keep his focus on things that mattered. Letting himself spiral into pointless emotional chaos accomplished nothing except draining him from the inside out.
Perturabo had truly made his peace with things — even if he now found himself wading through a particularly foul cesspit.
Two years had passed.
Solk-Prime had been developed with remarkable efficiency. Across the eleven star systems, warships and equipment were now rolling off production lines at a steady and accelerating pace.
The Iron Warriors had swelled to a total strength of two hundred and twenty thousand souls.
This, in under five years since Perturabo's return.
Ferrix and the others had never imagined the Legion's expansion could proceed so swiftly.
Looking out at these warriors — the shortest of them standing at least two point six metres tall, every face weathered, hard-edged, carrying the weight of long campaigns — Ferrix felt something complex move through him.
Only a few years ago, he had been grinding his teeth over the catastrophic losses suffered at the Battle of Ikaranthos.
Thankfully, after his father's return, not only had the existing warriors been dramatically enhanced, but the Legion had grown to a scale Ferrix would not have dared imagine before.
And yet, standing before these brothers now, he found himself burdened by new anxieties.
The weight on his shoulders had grown heavier.
His frame had grown larger too — but with it had come a creeping sense of inadequacy.
The mental and emotional cost a responsible commander paid in every engagement was something ordinary men could barely conceive of. Right now, he was merely responsible for keeping the Legion operational — but a fleet comprising twenty-two Star Forts, thirteen Gloria Regina-class warships, nearly four thousand capital ships, and a countless number of vessels of every other size and description was a crushing burden to rest on anyone's shoulders.
Ferrix felt no joy. No pride. Because no matter how vast a fleet might be, war meant casualties, and war meant loss.
He had no intention of ever accepting losses like those of the old Fourth Legion — not the casualty ratios of the past, not a repeat of what Solk had cost them.
The Iron Warriors had re-launched the Great Crusade and were now making for their next objective.
The space around Olympia and the Solk System cluster had been largely cleared. Perturabo deployed his Resentment Intelligence armies to scour the surrounding areas of all threats, folding every conquered territory steadily into the growing domain.
To fuel the Legion's manpower requirements, Perturabo had spent the past five years siphoning the best graduates out of every academy in the Olympia system until there was virtually nothing left — it would be years before new recruits would be flowing in again.
The harder targets would be earmarked directly for the Iron Warriors. The Fourth Legion, now equipped with weapons even more powerful than before, would grind those so-called "immovable stones" into dust.
Thirteen Grand Battalions — the Iron Warriors' structure had expanded considerably.
Add to this the Mechanicum's open and covert material "assistance" to Olympia, and the Iron Warriors' heavy firepower had reached a formidable level. The Nova Cannons and Macro-cannons alone were enough to plow a star sector over twice.
The fleet moved through the Warp like a lighthouse — daemons spotted it from a distance and fled immediately, because not far from the fleet lurked an enormous daemonic forge, belching rolling black smoke. Endless mechanical tentacles extended from its body, and the slightest moment of carelessness meant a daemon — Undivided or otherwise — would be snatched up and dragged into the "Daemon Processing Zone" that the creatures of the Warp had come to dread like nothing else.
That cursed Lord of Iron!
Daemons cursed and reviled the "slave-master" with every expletive accumulated across countless ages of existence. But no daemon cared, and no Chaos God was coming to "champion their cause."
The Iron Warriors' true fleet strength had, of course, never been reported to the Imperium.
The Imperial officials on Olympia were held in an iron grip by Perturabo. Even the Mechanicum answered to him.
Who could possibly have known the true state of the Fourth Legion?
Faced with their father's actions, the Iron Warriors tacitly refrained from ever raising the question of what Perturabo's manoeuvring might ultimately be aimed at. Loyalty, written into the very depths of their gene-code, made them follow his orders without question.
For now, at least, there's still the Great Crusade, was the quiet thought shared by many of the Terran veterans among their number. They had long since made their peace with where this might be heading.
As for the new recruits: The Imperium? Olympia conquered it — that makes it the Imperium. Father's word is law. The Emperor? Who? Never met him.
This was the reality of the Iron Warriors — and nobody wanted to change it. Nobody could.
The Emperor didn't know. The other Primarchs didn't know. No one ever would. Not even the full truth of the Legion's fleet strength would ever reach a brother Legion. It would remain hidden.
From Berossus and the other Warsmith-commanders, to Tolaramino, the Battalion Captains — down to the most junior Void-Born rating on the lowest deck of the most obscure vessel — all of them could confirm one thing: Perturabo's ambitions were considerable.
No one had expected it. A father who had only just returned, who had kept such a low profile — and yet he harboured such sweeping designs.
Ferrix and the others sometimes couldn't stop their thoughts from wandering: were those "rebel" forces Perturabo had incorporated into training exercises really there purely for training, and for contingency planning?
But every time they followed that line of thinking to its logical conclusion, a chill crept down their spines.
"Commander, the fleet has arrived at its destination. Preparing to translate out of the Mandeville point."
The voice of the logic engine broke through Ferrix's thoughts. He gave a short nod.
The vast fleet translated out of the Mandeville point. This was the Legion's third engagement following the establishment of the Solk System cluster.
After the Battle of Solk, they had encountered two more xenos pocket empires along the way. But clearly, not every xenos civilization was home to an aberration like Krathos' xenos Brood-Queen.
The Iron Warriors had dealt with both swiftly, leaving behind occupation forces to begin reconstruction while Perturabo dispatched follow-up detachments to assist in development.
Olympia's domain was expanding at a blistering pace — it had perhaps already eclipsed even the Firstborn's holdings.
Ferrix stood on the bridge of the Iron Indomitable, gazing out through the viewports at an unfamiliar stretch of stars. On the holographic display, the logic engine was already running rapid scans of the system's data.
The Taros System cluster.
According to intelligence gathered through Olympia's network, this region was dominated by a xenos civilization calling itself the Taros Combine — a political entity formed from multiple xenos species, which had conquered this area around 27K and proceeded to slaughter or enslave every human inhabitant.
Twelve star systems. All of them occupied.
The Taros Combine's technological level was at least two tiers below Solk's.
Even so, for Olympia's expansion, it represented a significant obstacle.
And besides — xenos deserved the Edict of Extermination without exception.
The Battle of Solk had left every Iron Warrior burning with hatred for the alien.
The timing suited both the Imperium and Perturabo perfectly. Ferrix was more than eager to issue the order.
A pity that these worlds couldn't simply be annihilated wholesale. For a civilization to have grown to this scale, the home world's resources had to be exceptional. Even virus bombs couldn't be deployed carelessly — destroying perfectly viable resource worlds and habitable planets would be a terrible waste.
Before long, the unmanned scout fleet dispatched by the logic engine had relayed its findings.
Orbital observation data indicated that the capital system alone hosted over twenty thousand warships — most of them old and cobbled together, quality ranging wildly across the board.
Ferrix could tell at a single glance that more than half of those vessels had once been human in origin, taken and warped by the xenos into something barely recognisable.
Looking at that oversized fleet, Ferrix felt nothing particularly remarkable — this was a matter of a few rounds of broadside fire, nothing more.
What did ignite his fury was the sight of those once-human vessels, so thoroughly desecrated by the alien.
Ferrix could feel his power fist beginning to charge of its own accord.
He had learned restraint since becoming a commander — but even so, some part of him still wanted to lead the charge himself and reduce these creatures to pulp with his power fist, which hit roughly as hard as an assault ram.
His frame had grown massively since those days, and armoured in his custom-fitted Cataphractii plate, he was no longer far removed from an unarmoured Primarch in sheer presence.
Then the logic engine relayed a segment of footage that drew his brows together.
It was ground-level footage.
The frame rate was terrible — clearly captured in emergency conditions by a surface reconnaissance team.
The image shook violently. Explosions and gunfire roared in the background.
A Space Marine in crimson power armour appeared on screen. His helmet was gone. His face was smeared with blood and ash.
The handsome features were now crossed with several jagged cuts. His eyes were blood-red. The fangs at the corners of his mouth had elongated grotesquely, making him look more like a predatory beast than a man.
"...Ninth Company, Third Assault Squad. We are pinned down in the ruins at thirty-seven degrees north, one hundred and forty-two degrees east, in the capital of Taros."
"Our naval vanguard was ambushed. We were forced to board the xenos flagship directly. We are now surrounded—"
The feed cut in and out. But the situation was clearly critical.
"Commander, the Blood Angels are requesting support."
Ferrix's gaze fixed on the holographic display.
He recognised that face. Captain Alvareth of the Blood Angels, Ninth Company.
They had served together under Horus once — cannon fodder on the same front lines.
And judging by how Alvareth and his men looked, the Red Thirst had taken hold. Ferrix had seen these sons of the Revenant Angel in that state before — once it came on, they lost all distinction between friend and foe, and cut into everything in reach. Their situation was dire.
The Taros capital — a standard habitable world, its surface dominated by several enormous hive cities.
In orbit: twenty-three thousand xenos warships maintaining a loose defensive web.
"Begin the assault."
"First and Third Fleets: concentrate fire on the orbital space above the capital. No need to conserve energy. I want every xenos warship reduced to scrap within two hours."
"Second Fleet: flank and cut off the xenos fleet's reinforcement and escape routes. Let none of them run."
"Remaining fleets: begin the assault on the other systems. Every last xenos is to be eliminated within two months."
"Yes, Commander."
The Iron Warriors' fleet surged forward. The Taros xenos navy hadn't so much as consulted their augury arrays when the Gloria Reginas and the Star Forts opened fire, sweeping through the outermost echelon of their fleet in a single devastating salvo.
Blue-white Nova Cannon beams tore through the void. Crossing tens of thousands of kilometres in an instant, they slammed into the xenos fleet formation.
Xenos warships crumpled before the Nova Cannons like wet parchment — pierced clean through from bow to stern, blasted in two; some were sheared apart amidships and broke into three tumbling sections drifting through vacuum.
More ships became fireballs and debris, raining down toward the surface or scattering into the endless dark.
The xenos response was frantic. Clearly they had not anticipated an enemy that would open fire before even entering detection range — let alone one with firepower this overwhelming.
"Signal the Third Fleet: prepare to drop Iron Circles and automata forces to establish a surface front. Relieve the Blood Angels as quickly as possible."
The Iron Warriors' fleet advanced quickly. Twenty-two layers of void shields meant they could largely ignore whatever return fire the Taros xenos managed to send their way.
The Star Forts' terrible guns left the enemy unable to mount any meaningful resistance — they couldn't even form a coherent defensive formation. Some ships attempted suicide runs, but before they could produce so much as a spark, they were swallowed by the barrage.
The xenos fleet finally woke up. Their commanders tried to mass their forces and press a counter-attack on the Third Fleet.
But they were too slow. Their reactions too dull. They hadn't even managed to form a proper counter-formation before they became brilliant, fleeting fire.
The offensive proceeded smoothly — as all naval engagements had since this campaign began. No enemy had yet managed to withstand the Iron Warriors' guns.
"Commander."
Berossus's voice came through the vox.
"Should we confirm the Blood Angels' mission parameters? If that is their vanguard, the Ninth Legion's main force will arrive in time. Do we need to... conceal certain things?"
There was a note of unease in Berossus's voice. Their fleet was formidable — and while both were Legions of the Imperium, concealing their true strength while showing so little interest in the progress of the Great Crusade was precisely the kind of behaviour that invited Imperial suspicion.
Ferrix said nothing. He knew Berossus was right.
If the Imperium learned what they truly had — the sheer scale of their forces — the reaction would not be one of gratitude. Add to that the open use of Resentment Intelligence, and even if the Emperor had privately approved the practice, it was not something that could be displayed openly.
Why else had his father locked down all information about Olympia?
Perturabo doubtless had his own calculations. But avoiding scrutiny was certainly part of the reason.
"Saving our brothers comes first. Everything else can wait. We'll keep a lower profile when the time comes."
"Should we inform Father?"
Berossus asked.
"That is a Primarch. It will be difficult to hide things from him."
"I'll report it myself. Don't worry."
After closing the vox channel, Ferrix issued a separate order to Dantioch.
"Dantioch — make certain this rescue operation moves fast. There are things we can't afford to let our cousins see just yet."
"Understood, Commander."
Ferrix's gaze drifted to the drop pods the Third Fleet was launching toward the surface, and something uneasy moved behind his eyes.
The Blood Angels' Primarch was surely already on his way. He wondered what the Angel would make of the Iron Warriors' fleet when he arrived.
Ferrix had heard of this Primarch — perfect, powerful, a being who had taken a Legion of disgraced Revenant-blooded killers and forged them into something disciplined, cultured, and worthy of admiration.
He had sometimes allowed himself to wonder, in quieter moments, what it might have been like if his own gene-father had been someone as magnificent as the Angel.
But what occupied his thoughts now was a different concern entirely. He was not certain whether this flawless Primarch would report the Fourth Legion's true strength to the Emperor.
This was not a problem he could resolve. It was a serious political matter — one wrong move and the consequences could be catastrophic.
He'd heard that even the Thirteenth Primarch had recently fallen out of Imperial favour. And what his father was doing now made the Thirteenth's offences look minor by comparison.
Ferrix wasn't certain the Emperor would continue to tolerate his father's increasingly brazen conduct.
But even as Ferrix was relaying the situation at Taros to Perturabo, another fleet was translating out of the Mandeville point.
"Commander."
Dantioch's voice came over the vox.
"Fourth Battalion requests permission to participate in the surface rescue operation."
"Granted. Have the armoured companies and the Terminator squads accompany the action. Keep the Legio Cybernetica ready to deploy at a moment's notice."
"Understood."
Alvareth leaned against a shattered boulder, breathing in ragged gasps.
His left arm was gone. His pupils had turned blood red. His elongated fangs were still slicked with the dark green ichor and torn remains of xenos flesh.
The xenos outside were steadily tightening the encirclement. There was no way out.
One hundred and forty-three warriors remained. An entire company had numbered two thousand three hundred and forty-two — and now it had come to this.
Most had died in the naval engagement. They had fought desperately to break one vessel free and transmit an emergency distress signal.
Three days had passed. Help wasn't coming.
Alvareth's breathing was laboured. Both his hearts and three of his lungs had been damaged. Survival was, rationally speaking, no longer possible.
His surviving brothers were in similar condition, Red Thirst riding them hard. The xenos blood was foul — impossible to drink, useless for slaking the thirst — and their remaining strength was ebbing away.
Alvareth could feel his life running out. His vision was beginning to blur at the edges.
"Captain — they're coming again."
Alvareth said nothing. He struggled to rise, but blood loss and lethal injury sent him staggering.
He gripped his chainsword in both hands — or tried to; the blade was badly damaged, the chains clogged solid with xenos flesh and viscera, most of the teeth already gone.
He set his jaw and hauled himself upright. Even the blood in his mouth had stopped flowing.
Looking at the hundred-odd brothers around him — every one of them holding on through sheer stubbornness — Alvareth's breathing grew even more difficult.
"Brothers... it seems... we die here. It has been... my honour... to serve as your captain."
His words were barely intelligible. But his brothers heard every one.
The xenos were close now. This would be their last stand — fought at the very bottom of their strength.
"For the Angel!"
Alvareth poured every last shred of strength into those three words, and began his final charge. If death was coming, he would meet it fighting. He would not dishonour the Blood Angels — not here, not ever.
"For the Angel!"
One hundred and forty-three Blood Angels roared in answer and charged.
And then — something happened in Alvareth's mind. A sound like distant thunder, like a furious voice crying out, and the pain in his wounds receded, just slightly. One last flare of borrowed time.
Then — from above — a shrieking, tearing howl split the sky.
The sound was enormous. Overwhelming. It drowned out even the roaring in his skull.
A familiar sound. Alvareth looked up instinctively.
Countless points of light were falling from the sky.
The xenos noticed too. Their advance stuttered and stopped. Every soldier raised its head, staring blankly at the descending lights.
Drop pods slammed into the xenos formation like artillery shells, spraying great gouts of foul green ichor.
Iron Circles and automata troops poured out and began clearing the Taros xenos with bolters and melta weapons.
The Iron Circles' heavy bolters swept the xenos down in rows. The automata's plasma cannons blasted apart entire clusters with each shot.
The formations they held were tight, precise, and devastatingly efficient. The same xenos that had inflicted such terrible losses on the Blood Angels were now being butchered at speed.
The xenos were stunned. Their lines crumbled and fell back.
The Iron Circles and automata surged out of their drop pods like a tide, rolling across the xenos line.
Their fire was too dense, their advance too fast — the xenos couldn't respond before they were being mown down in swaths.
More drop pods came down, more and more of them, their impact throwing up rolling clouds of smoke that made Alvareth's already-laboured breathing worse.
He didn't care.
Hope had returned.
They came.
Alvareth collapsed. His life was nearly spent — what had carried him this far was already a dying ember.
His adjutant Andrel stood motionless, watching those metal figures tear through the xenos formation, his mind a perfect blank.
What are these things? Resentment Intelligence?
Technology the Imperium had declared anathema — and yet here they were, saving Blood Angels, harvesting xenos like a field of grain.
More drop pods. More Iron Circles, more automata, and then Contemptor Dreadnoughts, stalking out of their pods with measured, terrible purpose.
Thunderhawks and Stormbirds descended through the upper atmosphere. Auxilia troops and armoured companies disembarked.
From the markings on the vehicles — IV — Andrel recognised the Legion.
He had heard the rumours. The recently returned Fourth Primarch, eccentric, unpredictable. But he hadn't imagined the Fourth Legion's methods had become quite this unorthodox.
Back when we were all being used as frontline fodder together, I never picked up on this from those stubborn, stocky bastards.
A dozen Thunderhawks and Stormbirds set down nearby.
The ramp descended. Terminators in dark grey armour with yellow-and-black hazard markings on their pauldrons stepped out.
Andrel's eyes went wide.
Terminators were always large. But why were these ones — in his memory, a Legion of compact, stocky warriors — so absurdly tall?
The leading Terminators stood at three point three metres. Their sheer scale almost made Andrel's mistake them for Primarchs approaching.
The one at the front removed his helmet, revealing a young, hard-jawed face.
"Brother. I am Dantioch, Warsmith of the Fourth Battalion, Iron Warriors. Our Commander received your distress signal."
"The battlefield is ours now. You've done enough."
Andrel's tried to speak. His parched throat and failing body produced nothing.
"You need medical attention."
Tolaramino led the Terminator squads to follow the armoured companies into the fighting, leaving Dantioch to manage the conversation.
Leave external communications to Dantioch, he had reasoned. A rough type like me isn't suited for this sort of thing.
Medical automata walked out of the Stormbirds toward the Blood Angels. The survivors resisted instinctively — until the automata's considerable strength made resistance irrelevant. Injectors pressed to necks and dispensed unknown compounds that pushed back, just enough, against the encroaching weakness.
"No need to resist, brothers. These are medical units — they don't rise to the level of Resentment Intelligence."
"Your captain is critically wounded and requires surgery immediately. Let us get you aboard. The Commander will explain everything."
Before Andrel could form a response, an Iron Circle had already hoisted him off the ground. Another collected Alvareth and carried him toward the waiting Stormbird.
Dantioch knew perfectly well that trying to reason with this stubborn lot right now was pointless. Better to save them first and have the argument later.
With the Iron Circles watching over them, there was little mischief they could manage. The Commander — and Father — could deal with the fallout. Dantioch was not gifted at diplomacy, but as Battalion Warsmith, he had to be the one to step forward.
He watched the hundred-odd survivors be firmly guided aboard the Stormbirds and Thunderhawks, then sealed his helmet and followed his brothers back to the front. The ground war still needed directing, and he had no time for anything else.
"Have they made contact with Alvareth and his men?"
Sanguinius stood on the bridge of the Crimson Tear, his perfect face drawn tight with worry.
His sons had been ambushed. Just as the Ninth Legion was truly finding its footing — just as things had finally begun to right themselves — this.
The Angel's composure was intact. But beneath it, the red gleam in his eyes flickered in warning.
Raldoron could feel his father's agitation, and could do nothing to help. All he could do was wait.
"We need to go faster. Alvareth's men won't last much longer."
"Father — the fleet is already at maximum speed."
The Angel's unease deepened, though his expression remained still.
Hold on, Alvareth.
The Great Angel looked toward the Taros system, fury and dread both pressing at the edges of his vast composure.