The Pride of the Emperor, Heliopolis.
Fulgrim stood before the holographic star map, his long white hair drifting without a breeze.
He wore his magnificent purple power armor. The power sword at his waist, Fireblade, remained sheathed.
But the ruby embedded in its pommel was already pulsing with an ominous light.
Before him stood several Lord Commanders and over thirty Captains of the Emperor's Children, arrayed in solemn silence.
"My sons,"
Fulgrim spoke, his voice clear, ringing with an ironclad resolve.
"The Laer have rejected the Imperium's glory. They have rejected my mercy."
"Therefore, they are left with only one path..."
He raised a hand, pointing at the azure sphere hovering in the star map.
"Annihilation."
…
"The First Fleet cluster is in position."
Lucius, Captain of the 13th Company... who was still the proud master swordsman, not yet twisted by Slaanesh's gifts... stepped forward.
"Thirty strike cruisers and fifteen frigates have established bombardment firing solutions."
"The forty-seven advanced orbital defense vessels deployed by the Laer will be reduced to dust within minutes."
"Excellent." Fulgrim smiled—a smile as flawless as a marble sculpture. "Let them bear witness to the meaning of perfect firepower."
Fulgrim's order was given.
A mere thirty seconds later, the 28th Expeditionary Fleet opened fire.
The massive Imperial fleet engaged in a display of precision targeting that was nothing short of terrifying.
Every macro-cannon beam and every torpedo was calculated millions of times over by shipboard cogitators, zeroing in on the weakest structural nodes of the Laer warships.
From the observation ports, silent fireworks bloomed across the distant void.
The Laer vessels attempted to return fire. Their sleek, silver hulls discharged emerald energy beams, only for them to splash harmlessly against the Imperial void shields like ripples on a pond.
Their tactics were fluid and adaptive, their ships maneuvering as if swimming through an ocean, but in the face of absolute fire superiority and ironclad tactical discipline, their struggles were pitiful.
The advanced Laer fleet lasted exactly six minutes before their orbital defense grid was utterly obliterated.
The wreckage, caught in the planet's gravity well, began to fall slowly, dragging long tails of fire through the atmosphere.
It was a funeral pyre burning for an entire civilization.
"Orbital superiority achieved," Fulgrim stated calmly, as if he had just squashed a nest of insignificant insects. "Commence planetfall."
"For the Emperor!!"
The Captains roared in unison, slamming their right fists against their left breastplates.
As the first wave of drop pods detached from the hulls, Vance was standing by the deployment ramp of the Thunderhawk gunship Amethyst Wing.
Through the viewport, he watched hundreds upon thousands of metallic meteors tear through the atmosphere, plummeting toward the surface of Laeran.
Each meteor represented a drop pod packed with Emperor's Children, driving like nails into the Laer's floating cities.
"Spectacular, isn't it?" Darius stepped up beside him.
"The cost is heavy, too," Vance replied softly.
He knew the lore...
In this campaign, the Emperor's Children would suffer casualties exceeding seven companies—roughly seven hundred Astartes dead, with six times that number wounded. The Imperial Army auxiliaries would lose hundreds of thousands.
However, thanks to the Emperor's Children's unusually large contingent of Apothecaries, the mortality rate would be kept within acceptable margins.
And all of this was simply to satisfy Fulgrim's perfectionist vow to end the campaign within a single standard month.
"War always demands a price." Darius patted his shoulder. "Our job is to ensure the price paid is worth it."
The Thunderhawk gunship began to shudder.
Engines igniting, the gunship cleared the Pride of the Emperor's hangar bay and entered a steep dive toward the azure planet below.
Outside the viewport, atmospheric friction painted their field of vision a blazing orange-red.
Vance tightened his grip on his lasgun.0
The weapon had cost him 108 Imperial Coins. It was a modified pattern exchanged from the system store, boasting a 15% increase in both range and stopping power compared to the standard issue, while maintaining the exact visual profile of an auxiliary weapon.0
He had also invested in baseline physical enhancement (63%) and neurological reflex enhancement (22%).
The total cost had been 308 Imperial Coins, effectively wiping out everything he had managed to hoard by scavenging materials over the past few days.
But right now, it didn't feel like enough. Through the internal comms channel, he could hear the fragmented, desperate battle reports flooding in from the vanguard.
"5th Company, 3rd Squad reporting... encountering extreme resistance... The Laer weapons are penetrating our power armor!"
"8th Company requesting immediate support! We are pinned down in the Spiral Spire sector! I repeat, pinned down!"
"Solar Auxilia 447th Regiment, 3rd Battalion has sustained over 40% casualties... We need an extraction corridor!"
The chaos, the casualties, and the sheer ferocity of the pushback were entirely outside of command expectations.
The Laer, a species genetically engineered for war, demonstrated terrifying resilience after losing orbital supremacy.
Their warriors surged from the shadows of the coral reefs, launched themselves from the boiling oceans, and dove from the towering spires.
Each of their four arms wielded a different weapon: emerald energy gauntlets, crackling power blades, long-barreled sniper rifles, and even biological projectors that spat globs of highly acidic, viscous slime.
The vaunted, flawless battle lines of the Emperor's Children fractured for the very first time.
"Amethyst Wing, touching down in thirty seconds." The pilot's voice crackled over the vox. "LZ: Sky Coral Platform, East Sector, Drop Zone 7... Emperor willing, it's still in our hands."
Vance took a deep breath, racked the slide on his weapon, and snapped his helmet visor down.
Through the golden tint of his tactical lenses, the scene outside the viewport rushed into sharp relief...
The massive coral platform sprawled beneath them. Its grey-blue crystalline surface was a labyrinth of tangled streets and spiraling towers.
Explosions blossomed everywhere, while las-beams and plasma bolts wove a deadly web across the sky.
In the distance, the twelve monolithic energy pillars continued to belch fire into the heavens.
The gunship hit the deck hard.
The landing gear skidded across the platform's surface, decelerated violently, and finally locked into place.
The instant the assault ramp dropped, the salty tang of ocean spray—mixed with the acrid stench of ozone, blood, and the distinct charred smell of energy discharges—flooded the troop compartment.
"Escort squad, move out!" Stanton bellowed.
Vance was the first one down the ramp.
His boots hit the coral-crystalline deck... The texture was bizarre, feeling simultaneously like solid rock and biological carapace.
Looking around, the floating city was even more... alien than he had imagined.
The streets were barely wide enough for three men to walk abreast. The walls on either side stretched ten meters high, their surfaces pitted with honeycomb-like indentations.
Grey-blue Laer heads protruded from many of these holes, their four eyes glaring coldly at the invaders.
The high-pitched whine of clashing power swords and the deafening roar of bolters echoed from the distance, intermingled with the raspy, serpentine hissing of the Laer.
"Establish a defensive perimeter!"
Vance shouted to the twelve guards behind him.
These escorts were hardened elites of the Solar Auxilia. They immediately fanned out, establishing a 360-degree defensive perimeter with the Thunderhawk gunship at its center.
Their movements were crisp and their eyes sharp. Nobody who lived this long was a greenhorn.
Rookies died on their first drop. They didn't stick around long enough to become elites.
Darius crouched by the gunship's assault ramp, booting up his portable cogitator to map their immediate surroundings.
The device emitted a low hum as holographic beams swept across the streets and structures.
"Topographical complexity is thirty-seven percent higher than projected."
Darius frowned. "These honeycomb structures act as rapid transit networks for the Laer. They can—"
His words caught in his throat.
Three silhouettes had just slithered out of the shadows at the far end of the street.
--
Goal = 600 Powerstones.
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