‘What is that?’ Rarity breathed. Fluttershy cowered behind her, peeking fearfully out at the sight in the sky.
The crippled Repulsive-Class Grand Cruiser, rudderless, had fallen into the atmosphere. The fires of atmospheric entry engulfed it, turning it into a fiery comet. Not designed to enter atmosphere, the ship was breaking up and burning. It had no ablative heat shield to protect it. Ponies all across Equestria watched in horror, only a few of them comprehending what they were seeing.
The ship, four miles long, speared towards the planet below. Caught by the flames, the damaged rear section began to disintegrate, spraying molten fragments out across the sky, like a trail of glowing snowflakes.
Shedding parts of itself, the Grand Cruiser blazed across the sky. The heat of its passage acted like a giant blowtorch, heating the air around and below it. Entire cloud banks evaporated in the blink of an eye. Had the whole cruiser smashed into the ground, it would have been a global catastrophe- four miles of steel and ceramite would be as good as any asteroid at bringing death and destruction. But it was burning inside from battle damage and the heat of entry, and the fires found its main ammunition magazines.
A stunning flash lit the sky. Ponies gasped and turned their heads away, momentarily blinded. In the palace gardens, Princess Celestia looked on in shock as the pulse of light drowned out her sun, flashing brighter than anything she had ever seen before fading slowly, leaving after images dancing across her eyes. The falling cruiser had gone, replaced by a storm of countless thousands of shooting stars, each but a fragment of the former whole. They filled the southern horizon. As they fell to earth, Princess Celestia saw her student and Shining Armour looking at her with horrified expressions on their faces. She spoke to her military commander.
‘Bring me the humans,’ she said. ‘Now.’
The torpedoes struck the Emperor’s Judgement amidships. The warheads detonated with silent fury, atomising bulkheads and buckling armour. Hundreds of crewmen were lost to the void, tumbling helplessly out of shattered compartments. Hundreds more were simply vaporised by the blasts.
On the bridge, Admiral Marcos knew his ship was in trouble. The angry moan of the decompression sirens echoed along every deck. There were still a few starboard gun batteries operational, and they flashed defiantly at the Chaos escort ships, knocking several out of the fight.
In orbit below them, the fleet of transport ships were coming under fire. The Chaos warships had passed through their line and were dealing out heavy blows. The Imperial escort craft raced back from their positions to defend them. There were still a dozen Imperial capital ships in the fight, and the Malleo Mortis was setting the example for the rest, its lances picking off half a dozen Chaos frigates and pounding one of the Grand Cruisers to a broken wreck tumbling off into space. Behind the Chaos spearhead, tucked in among the destroyer squadrons and ringed by the surviving cruisers, came their own transports, bloated, multi-mile long ships that hauled themselves along with underpowered engines, barely keeping up with their faster escorts. A Nova cannon blast from the Crusade’s remaining Mars-Class battlecruiser detonated in their midst, the cataclysmic blast annihilating four of the thinly armoured transports entirely. But the rest kept coming, passing through the Imperial fleet’s broken cordon and beginning their manoeuvres to take them into orbit around the planet.
‘Message to all ships,’ said the Admiral. ‘Focus fire on those warships. Protect our transports!’
‘Aye, sir, passing message,’ the vox-officer replied. Having burst through the Imperial line, the Chaos capital ships were braking and swinging round to bring their broadsides to bear, allowing them to fire at both the warships above them and the transports below. The panicked transports scattered and tried to flee. Fireballs blazed brightly as three of the largest bulk transports were blown apart, the funeral pyres of an entire Guard regiment being snuffed out instantly by the vacuum of space.
The Chaos battleships opened up with their lances, returning the fire of the Malleo Mortis. Explosions blossomed on the hulls of all three vessels, their shields long gone in the maelstrom of battle. The energy being exchanged could shatter mountains in a single volley, but against the feet-thick ceramite hulls even a lance would take more than one hit to burn through. The surviving Grand Cruiser was in a lance duel of its own, with the last Imperial battlecruiser. Individual battles were taking place, between the cruisers and escorts of both sides. Space above the planet was strewn with debris; the burning husks of destroyed warships, shattered metal, twisted bodies. A second sun blazed brightly as one of the Imperial Dauntless-Class light cruisers went up, its reactor breached.
The only thing the Emperor’s Judgement could now engage with its limited surviving armament was the stream of transports that were running the gauntlet between it and the Malleo Mortis, still engaged in its titanic lance duel with its Chaos counterparts. The guns of the flagship roared into life, smashing the paper-thin armour of two of the transports. The prow batteries of the Malleo Mortis joined in, and between them the two battleships destroyed six of the transports, killing tens of thousands of Chaos troops who had not had a chance to see their destination, let alone fight for it.
‘Message from the Indefatigable, my Lord,’ the vox-officer said, referring to the surviving Mars-Class battlecruiser. ‘They can no longer continue the fight. They are breaking off their attack, sir.’ Lord-Admiral Marcos swore loudly, drawing surprised glances from the nervous bridge crew.
‘Damn them! Damn them!’ he roared. ‘These heretics think they can drive us from our prize? Show them what fools they are! Bring us about!’
‘But Admiral…’ Captain Bormann began, knowing the state of his flagship and knowing it could not survive in a close-range fight.
‘But nothing! These dogs want a fight, then by the Emperor they shall have it! Bring us about, starboard batteries to stand by. I want those Despoilers dead!’
‘Yes, my Lord,’ Bormann relented. He knew the Admiral would not abandon the planet or the transports, even if faced with the loss of his flagship.
As the Emperor’s Judgement came about, Lord-Admiral Marcos could see on the holo-map that the situation had reversed itself. Now it was the Chaos fleet that lay between them and the planet, not the other way around. The surviving transports had fled to a higher orbit, placing themselves between the Imperial warships and the Chaos guns. Both sides had suffered heavy losses, but Marcos knew that, with a dozen capital ships and plenty of escorts still fighting, he had the advantage in numbers and firepower.
But the Chaos fleet had the advantage in another way. As the Imperial fleet regrouped, their sensors picked up strange readings coming from the Chaos flagship. if they had been looking out a viewport, the bridge crew of the Emperor’s Judgement would have been able to see the Soul Harvest start to shimmer, as if reality were distorting around it. Purple-red tendrils started to creep out of the void above it, between the two fleets, flickering and pulsing with unnatural energies. Dark lightning began to flash as if from nowhere.
‘Warp storm forming, sir!’ shouted the Emperor’s Judgement’s survey officer. ‘Between us and the planet, my Lord. It seems to be originating from near their fleet, but it is rapidly spreading around the entire planet.’ Lord-Admiral Marcos roared in anger.
‘Scum! Damn them and their witchcraft! They are trying to cut us off from the planet! It is that accursed Sorcerer Lord’s doing! Vox! Send a message to the fleet. Focus all fire on the Soul Harvest. We have to put a stop to this!’
The Imperial fleet sprang to obey his order, their thrusters glowing red as they manoeuvred onto the target, gun barrels swivelling and tracking. They unleashed hell across the void, but it did nothing. Torpedoes and missiles exploded prematurely as devilish black lightning flashed through the skein of reality and detonated their warheads. Energy weapon fire was simply absorbed by the roiling clouds of warp energy that were forming around the planet, like unholy nebulae floating in the void.
‘No effect on target, sir,’ the tactical officer relayed. Captain Bormann shook his head.
‘It is too late, my Lord. Our weapons cannot penetrate the storm.’
‘It is not too late until I say it is too late, Captain!’ the Lord-Admiral bellowed. ‘Fire again!’ The fleet complied, but again it was a waste of ammunition.
‘My Lord, the storms are spreading. I must urge you to retreat,’ Captain Bormann said.
‘Damn you, Captain! We are not retreating!’ Marcos roared.
‘Sir, please!’ his flag-Captain begged. ‘We can do nothing, and the fleet is in danger from the storm if we stay any longer. If you do not order the retreat, my Lord, then…I will have no choice but to exercise my prerogative as Captain of this vessel and order its retreat myself.’ The Lord-Admiral knew this was no empty threat, for, no matter who may be on board a ship or in charge of the fleet of which it formed part, it was the ship’s Captain who retained ultimate authority over any decision made that affected his vessel, though relatively few Captains would ever defy a Lord-Admiral even so. Being defied shook him from his anger at the Chaos trick and he came to his senses. To remain would be to invite the destruction of the remains of his fleet and the death of any chance of retaking this world.
‘You…you are correct, Captain. Sound the retreat!’ he said, his voice thick with bitterness. ‘Captain, take us to the outer system. The day is lost to us.’
The humans were led out into the palace gardens as the last of the fragments from the destroyed cruiser were thundering to the earth. The sound waves from the first impacts were just reaching Canterlot, a rumbling, crackling bass that made the ground beneath them tremble slightly. Although the cruiser had broken up, some of the larger fragments were still several hundred yards long, and they were smashing deep craters into the mercifully sparsely inhabited coastal plain of Equestria.
Captain Soren noticed the assembled ponies before he looked up at the fire raining from the distant sky. They had seen the falling ship from the window of the room in the palace where they had been waiting, and they had heard the blast wave reach them as they were hurried outside by the guards. Fearfully he gazed upward, wondering what catastrophe might have befallen the fleet, before he heard Princess Celestia speak.
‘Captain, is there something you wish to tell us?’ Caught by surprise, Soren hesitated. He had received no word over the vox of any developments in space.
‘I…I do not know any more than you, Your Highness,’ he stuttered, aware of the dozen pairs of pony eyes on him. ‘I have received no word from my superiors. I…do not know what has happened.’
‘Your best guess?’ the Princess eyed him with suspicion.
‘Well, Your Highness…I would think…well, it would appear that…one of our ships seems to have broken up in the atmosphere. Why, I cannot say.’ Possible scenarios raced through his mind. Navigation error, sabotage, attack, malfunction?
‘If you will permit me Captain, Your Highness,’ the Magos interrupted. Soren nodded and saw Celestia do the same.
‘Judging by my preliminary calculations on mass and length of the falling craft, I would suggest that it was a either a bulk transport, a heavy cruiser or a battlecruiser, though I obviously cannot identify the specific ship. Judging by the detonation that occurred I would suggest it was likely a warship, as the characteristics of the detonation match that of catastrophic ammunition explosions I have on file. From the descent trajectory and velocity, I would suggest that the most likely cause of its descent was some kind of malfunction or damage. Its velocity suggested that little or no attempt had been made to slow the descent.’
Princess Celestia shared a glance with Shining Armour, and with a midnight-blue pony with both a horn and wings that Soren had not seen before. He noticed that one of the multicoloured ponies he had seen on the airship and in the palace, a purple one, was staring at the Magos in astonishment.
‘Would you not expect your superiors to have informed you as to what was happening?’ Celestia said, nodding towards the vox-set on Hanlon’s back.
‘I would, Your Highness,’ he said.
‘Then the fact that they have not must tell you something.’ She glanced skyward. Soren had been thinking the same thing. He had a feeling something was very wrong up there.
‘If you will allow me, Your Highness,’ he said, ‘I will attempt to contact our landing site and see if they have received word from the fleet.’ Celestia gave her approval, and Soren took the handset from Hanlon.
‘Landing party, landing party, do you read? This is Captain Soren,’ he began. ‘Come in landing party, over.’ The vox was still crackly with static.
‘Go ahead, Captain,’ Lieutenant Jonas replied. Soren saw the small, purple pony staring at the vox with undisguised inquisitiveness.
‘Lieutenant, I trust you just saw that in the sky?’
‘We did, sir, but we have received no messages from the fleet.’ The feeling in Soren’s gut strengthened. Something was definitely wrong.
The three bulk landers swept down through the atmosphere, their undersides glowing white hot from the friction. They had been caught by surprise when the Chaos fleet struck. They had just launched from their transport mothership, their holds filled with Guardsmen, their vehicles and equipment, when they had been ordered over the vox to get down to the planet as quickly as possible. Their pilots had complied, swinging the landers away from the transport and setting them up for atmospheric entry. As they descended, the fleet above them had become embroiled in the battle, though they had heard no further news due to the communications blackout as they entered the atmosphere.
As they passed through the worst of it and began to slow, the pilots caught sight of a brilliant white flash off to their starboard side. Their passengers, however, saw nothing, for there were no windows in the troop compartments. In the bays of the landers, the men of the 1st Brigade, 4th Hydraxian Regiment waited, eager to set foot on solid ground again after months of space travel. There were three thousand men on board each one. Below them in the cargo space were several hundred vehicles; mostly tanks and Chimera APCs. There were similar numbers aboard the two other landers, and there were already dozens of other such craft that had made planetfall or were still in the process of doing so. An army was falling upon the Griffon Kingdom, but, with word of the fleet action taking place above them filtering down, some of the landers and dropships had been ordered to set down as soon as possible, rather than risk making the atmospheric flight to the northern regions of the continent. The three landers carrying the 1st Brigade were among them.
In the cockpit of the lead lander, Senior Commissar Van Meegen stood behind the pilot’s seat, holding onto its back as the craft rocked gently in a patch of turbulence. Resplendent in the Hydraxian Commissarial uniform, the braid of his peaked cap polished to perfection, his chainsword and las-pistol hanging from his waist, Van Meegen was the epitome of what the average Guardsman pictured in their minds when they heard the word Commissar. His face was stern and weathered from years of service in the field. His eyes had that quality all but required of a Commissar- they held a man’s attention, and they burned with his inner emotions, often saying more than his words ever could. His hair, once a rich, dark brown was beginning to turn grey around the temples, though physically he was fitter than many of the younger men in his Regiment.
As Senior Commissar, Van Meegen was answerable directly to the Regiment’s commander, Colonel Haas. Depending on the situation, however, he had full authority to relieve the Colonel of his command for a variety of offenses, the punishment of which the Commissariat had long specialised in.
But, Van Meegen mused, I have never had any cause to think that I would have to remove Colonel Haas from command. He is, after all, a fine officer, almost as experienced as I am.
The lander shook and rattled as it hit a more severe patch of turbulence, and Van Meegen swayed with it, keeping his balance. The servitor co-pilot emotionlessly rattled off a string of flight data as the pilot controlled the craft’s descent. They were over the southern edge of the main continental mass. Their original flight plan would have taken them north along the spine of the continent, a range of mountains nearly a thousand miles long, before turning and descending over the northern tundra to their landing point, to join thousands of other Guardsmen fighting the strange Griffon-like creatures. With new orders from the fleet, however, the three landers were now instructed to land as soon as they could and set up defensive positions to prepare for a possible invasion. They had received a signal from the first-contact party, who had picked up the inbound craft on their shuttle’s Auspex. They reported having received no news from the fleet.
Must have forgotten they were down here in all the confusion, Van Meegen thought grimly. The landing party had reported a large, flat plain to the south of their location that could be used for landing. They had marked it with infra-red strobes, and the pilot checked the lander’s navigation computer periodically, waiting to see them appear on the scope. They had been ordered to land as soon as possible, and that was just what he intended to do.
‘There, I see the beacons,’ the pilot said. ‘Twelve miles ahead. Commissar, you’d better take a seat.’ He gestured to the empty jumpseat behind the co-pilot. Van Meegen sat, observing the clouds float lazily past the cockpit windscreen. The landers descended slowly, floating down like giant metal whales. Their braking jets blazed, slowing them as they lined up for their landing.
The grassy plain below them was more than large enough to accommodate them all. At the northern edge stood men from the first contact party, ready to meet the reinforcements. The landers came down slowly, tentatively, probing beneath them with their braking jets. Their landing gear came down and they gently settled onto the ground, their enormous bulk compressing the ground beneath them and their jets scorching and burning the grass.
As the whine of the jets died away, Commissar Van Meegen stood and walked back into the troop compartment. The men were preparing to disembark, collecting their equipment, forming up as ordered by their sergeants. The Commissar was the senior officer on board the lead craft, and he addressed the troops from the top of the steps that lead to the cockpit.
‘Men of the first Brigade!’ he shouted, drawing their attention. ‘We have landed on an alien world,’ he began, ‘but the inhabitants that you are going to meet are not hostile to us.’ He noticed men exchanging confused glances with each other.
‘These creatures are, for the present at least, in a state of truce with us. Therefore, any man who engages or attempts to engage the horse-aliens in battle will be shot.’ That had the desired effect. The men were definitely listening now.
‘Our orders are to take up defensive positions, if possible around the alien population centres, and dig in to await a possible invasion by the forces of Chaos,’ he continued. ‘The fleet has been forced away from the planet by warp storms, which means we are on our own down here. All we have are the troops that are on the ground now. Therefore we must, out of necessity if nothing else, maintain our alliance with these horse-aliens.
I need not explain that, when fighting the accursed heretics, any advantage we can gain is one we must seek out. I know some of you will regard fighting alongside these Xenos as treasonous. May I remind you that the forces of Chaos are our one, true enemy. I know also that some of you have fought against them before standing side by side with the Eldar. This is no different. We will make use of these aliens now, and, if the Emperor wills it, exterminate them later.’ The front ramp of the lander began to open with a hiss of hydraulics.
‘First Brigade!’ he roared. ‘Move out!’