He should have been on the bridge. Should have been commanding the fleet as it chased after the Black Legion’s ships.

  The bastards had turned tail and run to the outermost limits of weapons range, attempting to draw his forces apart, likely to allow some third segment of the traitor forces to slip in behind either of the two loyalist fleets, and carve them apart.

  Guilliman was not going to allow that possibility to occur.

  Thus, the three fleets were at a bit of standoff. Guillimans forces coul wait for their orbit to bring the other landmasses into range for insertion, but in doing so would leave his men on the ground dangerously exposed to the traitors bombardments.

  So, for now, they waited, each eyeing the other, blade in hand, watchful for the first mistake.

  Which left him here, watching the pict-captures from the Salamanders ground battle.

  The debriefing room was, for the moment, quiet.

  No guards. No aides. Just the hum of cogitators and the soft flicker of lumen-globes casting their sterile glow over armored walls. The hololith in the center of the chamber shimmered with captured data—three-dimensional combat logs, drone telemetry, threat markers, casualty reports…except…

  There were no casualty reports.

  Guilliman stood still, the curve of his armor catching the blue-white light of the projection. His face was stone. But his eyes...

  His eyes were moving. Analyzing. Watching.

  Prometheus-class drones ghosted through corridors, their adaptive camouflage flowing like ink across their polyalloy hides. Viper units uncoiled from ceilings and shadows, single precision lances firing with absolute mechanical indifference. Sentinel teams ran predator patterns along catwalks and tunnels, sweeping every blind spot before anything could react. Bastions liquified armor and hardened bunkers with plasma lances that never missed.

  He watched a cultist raise a weapon—just one. A rusted las-lock. Before the trigger twitched, a Sentinel unit dropped from above, drove its claws into the spine, and was gone. No pause. No threat. No noise.

  The central chaos lines were shredded in five hours, thirty-one minutes and six seconds.

  From first contact to last heartbeat.

  Guilliman didn’t speak.

  He replayed it. Slower.

  Faster.

  Sensor overlays. Heat signatures. Vital sign data.

  And then—again—from an Astartes’ perspective.

  Helmet cams. Squad comms. The march through the ash clouds. The absence of fire. The slow realization spreading across vox-channels that there was no one left to fight.

  No enemies.

  No battle.

  Just... victory.

  He paused the feed.

  Stood there for a long moment.

  The silence was hollow.

  Eventually, he stepped closer to the projection. He raised one hand and scrolled back to the opening move of the assault. A burst of movement. Twelve targets dead in under three seconds. No warning. No screams. Just statistics.

  He exhaled through his nose. A soundless thing.

  At first, his mind weighed it as a general would. Strategically. Logistically.

  Incredible. No losses. No fatigue. Every objective met. Entire resistance cells erased before they could organize. No friendly fire. No confusion. No panic.

  The dream of every battlefield commander since the dawn of blades.

  A perfect engagement.

  Flawless.

  Clinical.

  And yet—

  And yet, something in him recoiled.

  He couldn’t name it at first. It was too subtle. Too alien to be immediate. But as he watched the drone movements—again and again—it began to take shape.

  They do not hesitate.

  They do not hate.

  They do not understand why the enemy must die.

  He narrowed his eyes.

  Was that the problem?

  That the machines didn’t believe?

  Astartes did not fight because they could. They fought because they must. Because humanity—however debased, however broken—needed them. And in that need, in that struggle, there was identity. Purpose.

  These machines did not fight.

  They executed.

  And execution was not war.

  Execution was the end of meaning.

  He watched again. A Salamander squad moved into a captured trench. Their weapons were ready. Their formations precise.

  But their eyes were searching.

  Seeking foes.

  They found none.

  Their shoulders slumped, ever so slightly. Their hearts slowed. Their voices were quiet. Not in reverence nor in caution.

  In confusion.

  Guilliman shut the footage off.

  Silence flooded the room again, but now it felt louder.

  He turned slowly, walking to the side of the chamber where a line of small statues representing his brothers stood—one of Vulkan, cast in iron, half-scorched. A relic of Nocturne. A gift from the Chapter during the Crusade’s earliest days.

  He picked it up.

  “You built them to protect,” he murmured, not to the statue, but to the idea of Koron. “You built them to save lives. And you did.”

  He glanced over his shoulder toward the darkened hololith.

  “But at what cost?” Setting the statue back down, he returned to the table. Pressed one gauntlet to the surface, fingertips flexing.

  “I could win a thousand wars with them,” he said aloud, voice low. “Secure worlds with no losses. No mourning. No graves.”

  A long pause.

  “But what would be left behind?”

  The words hung in the air.

  He thought of Tavos, standing between the mortals and the Inquisition. Of the Salamanders’ doctrine. Of fire shared. Of wounds endured. Of the sacred act of presence on the battlefield. Of the moment a warrior bled not for victory, but for kin.

  What did it mean, when even that was engineered away?

  He looked down at his gauntlet. At the scars that no repair could erase. He remembered fighting alone at the edge of the galaxy. Holding the Imperium together with grit and decree.

  And he realized—

  The drones offered peace.

  But not purpose.

  And that terrified him more than the enemy ever could.

  ...

  The chamber’s door sealed behind him with the hush of maglocks, shutting out the silence like a closing wound.

  Guilliman stood alone no longer.

  Chaplain Helios waited inside, stripped of his usual martial grandeur. No crozius. No bone-white skull helm. Just a worn black cassock beneath his chestplate and a rebreather mask hanging loose around his neck.

  He lit a brazier.

  Coals glowed low and red within the iron bowl, scenting the air with scorched oils and embered incense. Not a ritual, not quite. Not formal. But… grounding.

  Helios inclined his head, the scars given by the Leviathan Fleet gleaming. “Lord Primarch.”

  Guilliman’s reply was soft. “Chaplain.”

  He moved slowly into the room, drawn to the flame like a moth carved from cobalt and history.

  For a moment, neither spoke.

  Then Helios said, “You watched it.”

  Guilliman didn’t ask what it was.

  He only nodded. “Yes.”

  Another pause.

  “And?”

  Guilliman’s eyes were locked on the flame. “I cannot fault the results. No losses. No pain. The objectives were taken before we’d finished plotting secondary routes.”

  Helios grunted. “Victory, then.”

  “Yes,” Guilliman murmured. “But it feels like defeat.”

  The Chaplain’s scarred face creased with understanding. Not surprise. Not disagreement.

  “Because we were not needed,” he said.

  Guilliman turned to him. “Worse. Because we were present—but superfluous.”

  Helios knelt by the brazier, feeding in a twist of blessed rope. The flames hissed and flared.

  “You remember when the Salamanders fought beneath the vaults of Baraddan’s Reach?” he asked.

  Guilliman nodded once. “Vulkan’s Fourth. Four hundred brothers. Held against the Harrowed for six weeks.”

  “Thirty-seven survivors,” Helios said. “Every one of them had to cauterize their own wounds. Every one of them carried children from the civilian habs through fire and shrapnel.”

  The Chaplain looked up, eyes hard, voice low.

  “They broke in places. Bled. Lost limbs. Raised their voices in relief when the Thunderhawk finally came.”

  Guilliman watched the fire again. “And they speak of it with pride,” he said.

  “Yes,” Helios replied. “Because in those moments… they were more than weapons.”

  He rose to his feet.

  “They found worth.”

  Guilliman exhaled slowly. “Koron’s drones do not allow that. They do not ask for valor. They erase the need.”

  “And in doing so,” Helios said softly, “they erase the part of the soul that knows why we fight.”

  The silence stretched.

  Guilliman moved to the edge of the flame, watching it coil around the fresh fuel.

  “Is that arrogance?” he asked. “To want our pain to matter? To want meaning to be given to my son’s deaths? To their suffering?”

  Helios shook his head. “It’s not arrogance. It’s faith.”

  He stepped forward, placing one hand over his chest.

  “To suffer with meaning. To bleed for those who cannot. To know that in the darkest hour, your life was not wasted—it was given. That is what makes a warrior human.”

  Guilliman turned to face him.

  “I want my sons to live, Chaplain.”

  “So do I,” Helios gently replied.

  “But not at the cost of who they are.”

  Helios’s voice was quieter now as he stared into the flames for a long moment. “What would Vulkan have said?”

  Guilliman’s eyes stayed on the flames. His son, beside him.

  “He’d have thanked Koron for the gift,” he said quietly. “Then asked him to join him at the fire. Not take its place.”

  He didn’t speak again. He didn’t need to.

  Helios said nothing more.

  He only watched the brazier burn.

  And for the first time in hours, the silence did not feel hollow.

  It felt true.

  ...

  The Strategium was dimly lit, a deliberate choice that gave the obsidian table at its center a mirror-like sheen. Hololithic projectors waited idle, their faint whines a mechanical whisper against the low thrum of the ship’s core. In the silence, every motion felt amplified.

  Captain Orvek sat rigid, arms folded across his chest, his gaze fixed on the drone standing beside the table. The Sentinel model—sleek, armored, vaguely canine in profile—stood perfectly still save for its tail, which swayed with a slow, almost idle rhythm. It didn’t blink. It didn’t breathe. It simply watched.

  Koron had asked a handful of quiet questions when they first arrived—most of them technical, clinical curiosities. Orvek, polite but firm, had asked him to hold those until Guilliman arrived.

  Koron had merely nodded. And then the silence had taken root.

  Five minutes passed.

  Orvek tried not to fidget. The quiet wasn’t hostile. But it wasn’t comfortable either.

  Then, at last—salvation.

  The heavy, echoing thud of armored boots down the corridor. A hiss of pressurized seals. The great doors opened, and in stepped the Primarch.

  Roboute Guilliman filled the doorway like a force of gravity. His armor caught the glow of the lumen-strips overhead, blue and gold refracted into the depths of his polished plating. There was no ceremony. No entourage. Only purpose.

  Orvek stood immediately and saluted, stiff as a parade ground.

  Guilliman raised one hand in a practiced gesture of dismissal. “At ease, Captain. Let us not waste time on formalities.”

  “Of course, my lord,” Orvek said, voice clipped. “Shall I begin?”

  Guilliman gave a single nod, but his eyes were already on the Sentinel. His expression shifted subtly—recognition, and something colder. Calculation.

  Koron didn’t wait. The drone beside him straightened its posture slightly, preparing for whatever was coming. “So this is about something I did,” Koron said evenly. “What happened?”

  Orvek turned to face him fully. His voice was steady, but not unkind. “Nothing went wrong,” he said. “To be clear—your machines performed exceptionally.”

  Koron inclined his head. “Then I’m glad they were of use.”

  “They were. They are.” Orvek inhaled deeply, the triple rasp of his Astartes lungs filling the quiet. He let the breath out slowly. “But I will be speaking with my brothers. We’re considering whether we will continue to deploy them.”

  Koron’s eyes widened—just a flicker, but it was there.

  “…I’m sorry. What?”

  The Sentinel’s tail went still. Its head tilted ever so slightly, adjusting its gaze to Orvek like a predator analyzing prey.

  “The drones disturb us,” Orvek said. “They disturb me.”

  “How so?” Koron asked. Not defensive. Not confrontational. Just… puzzled. An engineer diagnosing an anomaly in human behavior.

  The drone shifted again—subtle, silent. Guilliman watched it closely, his expression unreadable.

  Orvek met the machine’s gaze without flinching.

  “They don’t fight,” he said. “They execute.”

  The blue optics narrowed. “I… fail to see the difference. One results in the death of your foe through combat. The other does the same, without offering them the chance to retaliate. That’s exactly what was requested, isn’t it? The enemy destroyed. Your brothers unharmed. Objectives secured.”

  His tone wasn’t smug, rather confused. A formula had been written, and it had worked flawlessly.

  And now he was being told that it was wrong.

  Orvek’s jaw tightened.

  Guilliman remained silent.

  Orvek didn’t speak for a moment. His hands remained at his sides, but the tension had climbed into his shoulders, subtle and slow.

  “It was what we asked for,” he admitted. “It was. But I don’t think we understood what we were asking.”

  He took a step closer to the table, as if it grounded him.

  “The Prometheus units didn’t assault enemy positions. They bypassed them. The Sentinels didn’t outfight sentries—they silenced them before their hearts could spike. The Vipers…” He shook his head slightly. “I watched one put a round through a traitor’s eye the moment he opened his mouth to shout a warning. There wasn’t a second shot. There wasn’t a scream.”

  He looked at Koron, eyes sharp—but not accusatory.

  “You didn’t give us weapons of war. You gave us tools of removal.”

  Koron was still. His eyes flicked to the table beside him, then back. “They fulfilled the parameters. You gave me a goal: reduce risk, eliminate resistance, secure territory with minimal casualties. That is what they did.”

  “Yes,” Orvek said quietly. “Perfectly.”

  He let out a slow breath.

  “But we didn’t land on that battlefield like warriors. There was no heat, no roar of battle. Just bodies. Just bloody silence and command posts turned graveyards.”

  He paused.

  “Do you know what it feels like to walk through the aftermath of your own war without ever having lifted your bolter?”

  Koron didn’t answer.

  “Like being a shadow,” Orvek said. “Like we weren’t needed. Like we weren’t part of it.”

  Guilliman shifted slightly, his arms crossed now, silent as a monument.

  The optics narrowed.

  He said nothing.

  “We are Salamanders,” Orvek said, voice firmer. “We do not relish violence. But we stand for those who cannot. We bear pain in their place. That’s what tempers us. That’s how we forge the strength to endure this broken galaxy.”

  He gestured to the drone telemetry.

  “Your machines don’t understand that. They can’t. And that absence... that inhuman efficiency... it left something behind. In us.”

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  He took a moment, searching for the right word.

  “Emptiness.”

  The room was quiet in the wake of Orvek’s admission. A soft hum of lumens echoed faintly from the overhead vaults. The drone stood at attention, its optics dimmed, systems idle save for the slow rotation of its optical rings.

  Koron’s voice came softly, barely louder than the drone’s idle servos.

  “I thought I was helping you.”

  Orvek nodded once, his expression solemn.

  “You were,” he said. “And we thank you for it.”

  He took a breath—not the kind drawn for war, but one pulled from somewhere deeper. From meaning.

  “But protection without purpose becomes a cage. And a cage, even one forged from good intentions… is still something we were never meant to wear.”

  Koron tilted his head slightly. It wasn’t a tic—it was a calibration, a signal of deeper processing.

  “So…what do you want from me, then? Because I gave you what you asked for.” he said. “If this is about purpose and victory, then what does that mean? What are you asking for?”

  Orvek’s gaze fell to the polished marble floor. His armored fingers flexed against his side as he searched for something that would fit into words.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I don’t want to discard what you’ve given us. But I can’t take away what my brothers are. Their hands, their hearts… need to be part of the fire. Not shielded from it completely.”

  The quiet tap of armored fingers on metal broke the moment.

  Guilliman raised a hand, his presence like tectonic weight—still, but inescapable.

  “Then allow me to offer a compromise.”

  Both men turned toward him.

  “The Salamanders will continue to field the shield and recon drones. Let them guard your brothers’ lives with your gift, Koron. Let them intercept the mortal blows. But do not rob the Salamanders of what they see as sacred—their right to stand between death and the innocent.”

  He glanced at Orvek, one brow rising.

  “Would that be acceptable, nephew?”

  Orvek considered it only briefly before nodding.

  “I believe that would be acceptable to my brothers.”

  Guilliman’s gaze shifted.

  “Koron?”

  The drone was silent for a beat, then two. Its optics flicked downward, then rose again with deliberate intent.

  “Very well. I… agree.”

  A pause, then more softly:

  “That said, I suggest the Bastion units as well. In support roles only. No weapons. Resupply and emergency medical assistance. Nothing more.”

  Guilliman didn’t reply immediately—he simply turned to Orvek, a silent request in his eyes. Orvek gave a small shrug and a nod.

  “That seems reasonable,” he said.

  “Then I’ll begin retrofitting and redeployment protocols now,” Koron replied. “All units will be re-tasked and operational in two hours.”

  Something shifted in Orvek’s stance—not relaxation, exactly, but gratitude. Something less armored. He stepped forward and clapped a broad gauntlet gently on the drone’s shoulder. A warrior’s gesture.

  “Thank you, Koron. Truly. I believe this… we can work with.”

  His hand lingered on the drone’s armor for half a second too long—then he let go and walked out, spine too straight to be relaxed, the door hissing shut behind him with a hydraulic sigh.

  Guilliman remained.

  The silence between them lingered, not hostile, but heavy with shared contradiction. The Primarch tilted his head, the faintest suggestion of a frown that didn’t reach his eyes.

  “You’re angry,” he said. Not a question.

  The drone’s optics snapped up to meet his, whirring faintly as they dilated.

  For a long moment, no answer came.

  Then:

  “Yes,” Koron said. “No. Just… confused.”

  The voice was steady. Too steady.

  “But I will respect their choice. Even if I don’t understand it.”

  Guilliman arched an eyebrow, his arms crossing with quiet contemplation.

  “Not angry, hmm?” he murmured. “My backside.”

  Koron tilted his head again but didn’t answer. Instead, he turned away toward the nearby console.

  “If there’s nothing else, I have other matters to attend to,” he said briskly. “Plenty of disarmament to handle.”

  The drone’s posture simplified—less expressive now. More mechanical. The lights along its spine dimmed, and its focus shifted inward, like a curtain being drawn across a window.

  Guilliman watched him for a few seconds longer, eyes narrowing with something that wasn’t quite concern… but might have been its sibling.

  Then, without another word, the Primarch turned and walked away.

  ...

  Koron passed through the undercity levels of the Indomitable in silence, the corridors echoing with the faint clatter of families and distant power relays. When he reached his quarters, the door slid shut behind him with a whispering hiss—more exhale than mechanism.

  The room was austere to the point of denial.

  A narrow mattress was folded neatly against the left-hand wall, secured with simple mag-locks. No blanket. No extra pillows. Just function compressed into form. On the opposite wall, a chair and a workbench stretched beneath a shelf, cluttered in surgical chaos. Tools from a dozen centuries lay scattered—simple hammers beside plasma drills, a half-built nanocarbon-tube printer balanced on an old ration carton. Parts and projects mingled in quiet disorder: a cracked servo-skull propped next to a dormant micro-reactor, a las-calibrator held gently by a gravity clamp.

  Two doors flanked the back wall. One tall and narrow that lead to the restroom. The other, short and wide, a drawer for what few clothes he had bothered to make for himself.

  “Sasha. Sound dampeners, please.”

  She took a moment. Then, softly: ‘…Alright. Dampeners active.’

  He stared into the middle distance, eyes unfocused. “Could you… give me a minute here?”

  ‘…Yeah. I’ll run diagnostics. Should keep me busy for five.’

  “Thank you.”

  He felt her retreat—slipping down into his systems, withdrawing like breath into lungs. Her presence dimmed from the upper threads of his neural weave, receding into background computation.

  It was the closest he could come to being truly alone.

  He approached the workbench, reaching out automatically. A hammer. Turned it once in his palm. Set it down. A wrench next. Replaced without a word. A electric saw. A flathead. A hydraulic press. His fingers moved without purpose, selecting and discarding—grasping, pausing, rejecting.

  Then his hand closed on the back of the chair.

  Fingers curled. Thumbs pressed.

  The frame groaned. Then—

  The back ripped clean in half, peeled like tinfoil in his grip.

  For a heartbeat, silence lingered.

  Then the dam broke.

  His fists came down hard, crushing the seat beneath.

  “Of all the—!”

  Another strike sent one leg twisting sideways.

  “—stupid—asinine—!”

  Slam after slam, the chair warped beneath him.

  “—utterly retarded reasons!”

  He booted the crumpled wreck across the room. It bounced with a hollow ping off the far wall, rebounded off the other wall with a clang, and shot back toward him like an insult. He batted it aside, sending it cartwheeling into the shadows.

  With a snarl, he tore off his helmet and flung it across the room—it clattered into the corner, lifeless.

  “Who cares if you didn’t feel their blood on your fingers, if they’re dead?!”

  His voice echoed against sound dampened walls.

  “Who the hell gives a damn if there’s no glory, no grit, no ashes in your mouth—if the war is over?!”

  He stood there, chest heaving, surrounded by ruin.

  Not shaking. Not weeping.

  Just standing there, breath ragged, fury leaking into the air.

  He catalogued the broken chair: torsion damage, metal fatigue, ineffective stress tolerances.

  “And I’m the crazy one?”

  With a flick of his wrist, the mag-lock disengaged, the bed flopping down with a squeak of springs. Taking a seat, head in hands, he tried to breathe out the roiling sentiments. Running through his hair, he lay back, staring up at the roof.

  That familiar sensation of warm honey sliding over his frayed nerves returned a few minutes later. ‘…Hey.’

  “Hey.”

  ‘Whatcha thinking?’

  He didn’t answer. Not with words.

  Instead, he rolled onto his side, reaching toward the helmet he’d thrown across the room. A thought pulsed through his arm, and gravity obeyed. The helm lifted, weightless, snapping into his outstretched hand.

  He turned it, thumb flicking the visor open. A glow spilled out—cool blue, then soft gold, then color blooming into motion. He placed the helm carefully on the floor, angled toward the far wall. The projection expanded outward, washing across the metal bulkhead like a dream too delicate to touch.

  Not a battlefield. Not some training cove or prefabricated bunker-sand.

  A real beach. Earth.

  The waves lapped at pale sand, grey-blue under an overcast sky. Clouds moved slowly, graceful veils shifting across a sun that shone only in glimmers. The breeze stirred long grass at the dune’s edge. Far in the distance, his parents and sisters played at the water’s edge—laughter muted by distance, joy unscripted, the starfish clutched in his hands dripping water as he raced to show what he had found.

  Koron didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

  Just… watched.

  The feed looped every twelve minutes.

  Seamless. But he always knew when it reset.

  The wind shifted.

  The grass danced.

  The family laughed again.

  “I misunderstood,” he said at last, voice barely audible. “I thought it was just… environments. Social collapse. Historical loss. Technological defilement. Things you could trace through code. Pin to a flaw in the blueprint. Reverse-engineer into sense.”

  His eyes stayed fixed on the projection.

  “But it’s not.”

  She said nothing, letting him process.

  Then:

  ‘What do you think it is?’

  Koron didn’t answer at first.

  He just watched the wave wash up over his families’ feet—foam curling around toes that had once kicked sand in his direction, giggling like they had struck a titan.

  Finally, he said it.

  “…Their world isn’t just broken.”

  He swallowed hard.

  “It’s insane.”

  The next breath trembled. Just a fraction.

  “And every one of them is just as mad.”

  ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘But I’m still glad you’re here.’

  The loop reset. The wind changed again.

  But it wasn’t the same.

  Not anymore.

  ...

  He woke up to the dull glow of standby lumen-strips and the hum of the Indomitable’s systems purring through the walls.

  It took him a second to realize where he was.

  His back ached slightly from the mattress—half-unfolded and poorly aligned—but not enough to matter. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sat up with a groan, bare toes curling against the cold deck.

  “…When did I take my boots off?”

  “I had a drone do it after you passed out.”

  Sasha’s voice was soft, amused.

  “Ah. Thanks.” He yawned. “That explains the lack of bruised toes.”

  “Your biometrics are steadier. Neural activity is more symmetrical. Breath rate normalized.”

  “Yeah. Turns out sleep helps.”

  He could feel her roll her metaphorical eyes somewhere in the back of his skull.

  “Incredible. Who could’ve guessed? Surely not the incredibly intelligent and refined lady in the room.”

  A faint grin tugged at his lips. “What, no. Past me is just a genius.”

  “Past you is an idiot.”

  The grin deepened.

  “Shower?”

  “Yeah. Had an idea.”

  “Do tell?”

  “In a bit. Let me not smell like wire grease and hull sealant first. What’s the local time aboard the Honour?”

  “Adjusting for fleet-duty rosters… approximately 0700 hours.”

  “Perfect. Knowing Roboute, he hasn’t slept either.”

  Fifteen minutes later, steam still coiling faintly from his shoulders, Koron wiped the last droplets of water from his metal arms. His hand swept through his shaggy hair with all the precision of a data purge, the closest thing to a comb his hair ever saw.

  He keyed the comms, fingers dancing through command lines with casual familiarity. Six reroutes. Two ghost nodes. One piggybacked signal through Ferox’s personal slate—she really shouldn’t have let me hold her dataslate—A heartbeat later, the message pinged its destination.

  The vox-line clicked.

  “Guilliman. Report.”

  Koron smiled faintly. “Morning, Roboute.”

  A pause. Then, dry as ash:

  “Do I even want to know how you got this frequency?”

  “I can tell you it was one of thirty-six possible approaches.”

  The sigh that followed wasn’t just weary—it carried the ancient weight of a man who once rewrote the stars with logistics and now had to deal with this. “Not enough recaf in the sector for this...”

  Koron chuckled. “What can I say? I’m a morning person. But—if it helps—I’m also calling with something useful.”

  “Then speak,” came the flat reply, ironed clean of indulgence.

  “I want Hyperia Hive.”

  A pause. Tighter. Sharper.

  “…You have my attention.”

  Koron brought up a holoschematic, washing his HUD in light. Red dust corridors. Staging zones flickering green. The sickly yellow of plague markers—crawling like mold across the map’s heart.

  “The Salamanders don’t want my combat drones involved anymore. That’s fine. I won’t force them. But I’m not shelving these assets while people die. You’ve got your main pushes concentrated on Storvhal, Megaborealis, and Oteck—power, orbital lift, water. All sound choices. But Hyperia’s still festering, a Death Guard sinkhole right in the center of your operations.”

  Guilliman’s voice came slower now. Careful. “Koron… the Death Guard—”

  “—Are perfect targets for synthetic forces. My drones don’t eat, don’t sleep, don’t breathe. No infection vectors. No attrition curves. Their poisons are useless. Their terror tactics irrelevant. I don’t need to hold the Hive—I just need to bleed it.”

  He leaned forward as if the vox-link could feel his posture.

  “This isn’t about glory. It’s logistics. You need bodies to secure your flanks. I’m offering you machines that can strike where those bodies can’t be spared. Let me contain the contagion. No overlapping doctrines. No clashing egos. Just function.”

  There was a silence. Not hesitation—calculation. Koron could feel the mind behind Guilliman’s eyes spinning through scenarios, the Primarch rifling through options at a pace nearly matching his own.

  Then: “Very well. You are granted provisional authority to engage and degrade enemy forces within Hyperia Hive. You’ll be unsupported until we conclude operations in the other sectors.”

  “I understand,” Koron nodded. “I’ll limit the initial phase to recon and raiding. Cut their supply chains. Avoid provoking a full counteroffensive.”

  Guilliman raised a hand before he could sign off. “Send me data as you collect it. I may not offer troops—but I can offer analysis. And should the situation shift, I’ll be better prepared to act if I know your ground picture.”

  Koron grinned. “Fair trade. Sasha and I can return the favor—parse your battlefronts, flag vulnerabilities. We got ourselves a solid predictive net now. We’ll feed each other and get better for it.”

  Guilliman exhaled, one long breath of burden and trust. “Then Emperor protect you, Koron.”

  A sigh slipped out.

  “...And try not to break Hyperia more than it already is.”

  “Hey,” Koron smirked. “No promises.”

  ...

  The dropship was a predator in profile—low, sleek, and knife-edged in every contour. Its hull was a dark, brushed alloy with hints of emerald sheen where the light caught the curves just right, as though it had been carved from obsidian and polished by centuries of wind.

  Twin sponsons extended like outstretched talons, each armored and inset with modular housings for weaponry or shielding—depending on the mission. Between them, the prow pushed forward into a reinforced ram-point, blunt yet purposeful, as if daring any obstacle to stand in its path.

  From above, the craft’s lines swept back in a broad chevron, with recessed engine arrays forming glowing concentric circles—gravity-defying rings of pulse-blue energy that hummed softly, even when idle. The underside bristled with heat exchangers and retractable landing vanes, its spine traced by layered armor plating broken only by maintenance hatches and modular hardpoints.

  Turrets nestled into sockets, flush with the hull until needed. They rotated silently, bearing weapons meant not just to clear a landing zone—but to seize it.

  Along the flanks, segmented conduits ran like muscles beneath transparent shielding, glowing faintly with data-pulse and coolant flow. They gave the sense of something alive beneath the armor—a beast that remembered how to breathe even when submerged in void.

  Inside, it was all tight corridors and soft lumens, materials that absorbed noise and kinetic shock alike. Not luxurious. Not ceremonial. This was not a ship meant to impress. It was a tool. A dagger where the Imperium used hammers.

  And it was fast.

  Not the roaring, wrath-born speed of an Astartes Thunderhawk—no trail of fire, no thundercrack in its wake. This was different. Quieter. Meaner. The kind of speed that didn’t announce itself until it was already overhead, already falling.

  A relic of the Golden Age.

  Or perhaps just its ghost.

  And from its silent belly, the Prometheus drones fell upon Hyperia Hive.

  Four deployment ramps hissed open—one on each quadrant of the ship—and two thousand drones slipped into the world like rain. No jets. No flares. Just gravitational descent and programmed grace. They scattered across the hive, a storm of machine shadows cascading down the upper reaches of the void shield without ever touching it.

  From there, they flowed outward, down into the rubble, finding chinks in the fields coverage.

  Around collapsed hab-blocks and shattered curtain walls. Between rust-choked ducts and sunken arterial roadways. Through maintenance tunnels, fractured sewer lines, abandoned metro shafts. Cracks too narrow for a human were no barrier. This was their element.

  Their mission was simple: Map the city, find the enemy.

  Every spire, every sublevel.

  Every air duct, vent crawl, cistern, and corpse-choked street.

  Every kill zone. Every fallback point. Every breathless tomb disguised as shelter.

  What they found… was a necropolis.

  Shambling herds of corpse-people wandered the streets, groaning beneath fungal growths and bone-colored boils. Some were guided by monstrous shepherds—coagulated mounds of meat and horn and hunger, trailing tendrils and swollen teeth that clicked in places teeth were never meant to be.

  There were still survivors. Pockets of life, stubbornly holding on in the fetid dark. Koron tagged each group with an observer drone—silent shadows to monitor, to judge. Not to intervene. Not yet. He needed to know for sure the infections characteristics.

  But it was the Plague Marines that made the recon truly difficult.

  Their presence distorted the world around them. Within ten meters, even the best cloaking skins began to degrade—optics fouled, machine-harmony warped. Their rot was not just biological; it was metaphysical, a decay that unwound precision. Wires corroded. Lenses wept lubricant. Steel grew brittle in their wake.

  Still, from beyond that toxic aura… they could be studied.

  And so, Koron watched.

  He read archived battle reports from the Death Guard’s many atrocities. Mortarion’s philosophies. Their tactics. Their thresholds for physical response. Their cycles of advance and retraction.

  A flicker of thought closed the Salamanders’ armory manifest. Koron rose from his bench, metal fingers flexing until his knuckles cracked like distant artillery.

  “Well,” he murmured, to no one in particular, “I think it’s time for some retrofits.”

  Sasha’s voice filtered in, dry and amused. ‘Fire?’

  He nodded, his lips tight.

  “Yup. And a whole lot of it.”

  He moved across the room, bare feet silent on cold metal decking. The workbench lit up at his approach, recognizing his biosignature. Diagrams bloomed in the air, outlines of Sentinel drone rotating slowly in amber and cobalt.

  “Let’s start with the cloaks,” he muttered, selecting the adaptive camouflage suite schematic. “Swap out the stealth mesh with ablative thermoceramic plates. Fireproof, acid-resistant, purge-capable.”

  ‘You’re sacrificing stealth for armor,’ Sasha warned. ‘No better defense than not being targetable.’

  “I’m adapting,” he countered, dragging a projection of a Plague Marine into the display. “They passively bleed corruption. I want my units to shrug it off.”

  Next came the containment canisters—he doubled their size, then split the delivery system into three nozzles instead of one. “Triple dispersal pattern. Jet, mist, and arc-sweep. Variable pressure, atmospheric-sensitive. I want them able to drown a hallway or lace the air with ignition vapor.”

  Sasha’s voice lowered, cautious. ‘What kind of accelerant?’

  Koron smiled without humor. “Old but simple one. Dextrohex napthium blend. Stable until agitated. Burns on contact with air and screams like a god when it does.”

  He rotated the drone schematic again, unfolding the forelimbs. Monomolecular claws were folded back as something… meaner unfurled in their place. “Flame spike projectors. Needle-thin jets that hit six thousand kelvin in under half a second. For when they need to put something down up close. Armor doesn’t matter. These’ll carve through it like pudding.”

  ‘You're going full anti-matter cleanser mode,’ Sasha noted. ‘Reminds me of the quarantine drones we used during the Verdant Collapse.’

  “Exactly. No half-measures. If I’m sending them into the fat guys lungs, they’re going in with flares and a gas-tank in both hands.”

  He paused, dragging over another schematic—this one labeled: PHOENIX CORE: Emergency Incineration Suite. A failsafe. One-shot burnout. The nuclear option.

  “Just in case one of them gets corrupted,” he said quietly. “Failsafe on every chassis. Auto-triggers on infiltration, data breach, or signal loss. It won’t save the drone, but it’ll deny the enemy whatever it tried to touch.”

  Sasha hesitated. Then: ‘You’re really building them like soldiers now.’

  Koron didn’t answer for a moment. His eyes lingered on a flickering image of a drone perched on a hive spire, watching a pack of infected children being led by something with too many limbs.

  “No. Their janitors. The fat bastard’s worst nightmare.”

  Koron tapped through diagnostic overlays, watching simulated footage of the Sentinel drones run-in with the Death Guard. The corrupted Astartes moved like rusted tanks, their presence eating away at sensor fidelity, their aura of decay a chemical war in miniature. His drones had held, but only just.

  From the sideband of his mind, Sasha spoke up, thoughtful.

  ‘You know, if flechettes are falling short… what about the blend we talked about last month? Dextrohex base, but stabilized with promethium suspension. Call it... D-P mix?’

  He paused. “You think it’ll stick to ceramite?”

  ‘Stick? It’ll cling like a tax collector in a debt crisis. Dextrohex eats organics, promethium cooks the residue. Even if it doesn’t breach the armor, the thermal load and pressure will pop seals and corrode the joints. Plus—flames. Lots of flames.’

  Koron chuckled, low and sharp. “You’re in a mood.”

  ‘I watched seventeen hours of Death Guard footage. I want to hurt something.’

  Koron didn’t laugh. His eyes narrowed, jaw set as he slowly nodded. “Alright,” he muttered. “No more flechettes. Reconfigure the grenade banks. Sentinel units get D-P canisters on rotation.”

  With a flick of thought, the Sentinel hologram expanded—its flanks blooming into schematic overlays. Grenade racks unfolded, old ammo flagged red, new reservoirs locked into place. The volatile mix of dextrohex accelerant and promethium rendered on-screen as a pulsing amber fluid, igniting in a firestorm simulation that washed across the mock street like holy napalm.

  “…Hm. I just had an idea.”

  He twisted, sweeping the projection aside with a fluid gesture. The Viper appeared next—sleek, insectile, cold. He zoomed in, fingers pulling apart its forward casing. The Whisper Lance module gleamed within, compact and humming with precision lethality.

  Too clean.

  Too focused.

  Koron wrenched the module out of the frame and tossed it into the corner of the holo-display. It tumbled into transparency.

  “Plague Marines are tough bastards,” he muttered. “Precision doesn’t cut it anymore. I need impact. I need fire.”

  ‘Kinetics instead of energy?’

  “Exactly.” His voice sharpened, energized. “We reframe the attack profile. High kinetic spike, backed by reactor-overload power. Big hit, fast exit.”

  The drone schematic shuddered as he began tearing into it. He duplicated the primary reactor, slotted a second core beside it, smaller but denser. Internal systems reoriented in real-time, compartments shifting rearward to accommodate a physical barrel, a reinforced coil assembly.

  “Secondary reactor’s just for the railgun. Single shot. Bam—”

  The coils pulsed blue, the charge visual spiraling upward to a thunderclap of data.

  ‘Primary still runs mobility and systems. Could dump into the secondary to speed recharge if needed?’

  Koron grinned, feral. “Exactly.”

  He leaned forward, hands resting on the edge of the table, eyes flickering with subdermal light as he mentally spliced the payload. “We wrap the spike in a D-P gel coat. Thin, reactive layer. Shears off on impact, ignites after penetration. Burns the wound closed—prevents regrowth.”

  ‘Regeneration denial. Cruel and efficient. I like it.’

  Then Sasha added, almost casually:

  ‘If we go that route, we should requisition a barrel of holy oil from the Hammer. Dunk the spike ammo before launch.’

  Koron raised an eyebrow. “…Faith-based effects?”

  ‘Worst case, it’s inert. Best case, we get some saintly side effects. Might not make them more dead, but it could make them stay dead.’

  He snorted. “As long as it doesn’t sing hymns mid-flight.”

  ‘I’ll mirror their singing off of your musical capability. Psychological warfare.’

  He chuckled. Then nodded, the weight of focus settling on his shoulders again.

  “…Alright. Let’s make a holy fire-spitting bug.”

  The new variant of the Viper spun in place, Sasha quietly giving it a title, a name.

  Version 1.4a. Codename : Torchling.

  Yet in the back of his mind, a part of Koron couldn’t help but hear those same damned words, Guilliman’s voice clear.

  Execution was the end of meaning.

  Koro’s eyes never left the wireframe as he retrofit the drones. Tell that to the children being dragged into sewers by bloated freaks.

  His hand tapped the schematic.

  If I can’t give them meaning, I’ll give them victory they can’t deny

  ...

  The Vengeful Spirit’s auspex screamed in corrupted binaric, a dissonant litany of machine-heresy that filled the chamber like static-infused whispers. Magos Vhorkas listened.

  More steel than flesh, Vhorkas stood crooked and gleaming—a skeletal tower of chrome, blackened brass, and sagging meat. His limbs were stretched unnaturally wide by torque-driven augmetics, a puppet under tension. The remnants of his face were a grotesque mosaic: lacquered skin grafts fused with chrome plating, cybernetic lenses embedded deep in craters of bruised, bloated flesh. His optics, each a different size and hue, blinked independently. One hummed as it zoomed, casting a pale red dot across the chamber’s fractured floor tiles.

  Around him, a halo of mechadendrites writhed. Some ended in scalpel-fingers, others in wriggling sensory barbs or scrap-metal reliquaries. One clutched a rusted dataslate that bled oil. The glyphs etched upon it pulsed with twisted energies.

  Across the chamber, wreathed in half-light and the stink of ozone, stood Malichor—sorcerer of the Black Legion, and ever the predator among jackals. His baroque armor bore layered scripts of warpsteel, each rune alive with a spiteful shimmer. The sickly glow of the chamber’s failing lumen strips revealed slivers of his gauntlets as he flexed his fingers, twitching unconsciously, tugging on the tension of powers not yet summoned.

  His voice cracked the silence.

  "Nearly a dozen of my brothers. Dead. And what do we have?” His armored fist slammed into the hololith. A wet, unpleasant squelch followed—the rupturing of some blighted growth beneath the skin. Warp-static licked the air around his bracers, ghost-light tendrils crawling across the table’s surface. “Pict-captures of lights. Lights!”

  He jabbed a sparking finger toward Vhorkas, helm tilted in disdain.

  “The Despoiler is not pleased. First our auguries collapse, then two Arkships arrive, and now the Second’s southern line has folded like wet parchment! An entire Chosen squad—gone. Vox-lines severed. Records erased. And you—you—stand there muttering binaric nonsense.”

  The sorcerer began to pace, boots clanking against the deck’s flesh-metal composite. Behind him, his warp-staff floated like a shadowed sentinel, runes spinning around its shaft with whispered hunger.

  “Well?” Malichor snapped. “Do you have anything useful to add, scrap-mage?”

  Vhorkas didn't look up. His lenses continued to twitch and dilate, tracking threads of data no sane mind would follow.

  “Data indicates anomalous combat variables,” he said, each word dragged from his vocalizer like a groan through static. “Opposition: primarily standard-pattern loyalists. Defensive measures. Hit-and-run precision. Predictable.”

  He paused, mechadendrites curling midair like the legs of a patient spider.

  “The Eighteenth has engaged using anomalous patterns. Third party likely cause. Unknown actor. Non-Imperial signature.”

  Malichor bared his teeth beneath the helm. “Of course they’re getting help. The question is—who? How?”

  “…If software corrupted, use hardware,” Vhorkas replied.

  Malichor blinked slowly. “Speak Gothic.”

  The vox-grille buzzed. “Bodies,” Vhorkas said. “Scouts. Demons. Survivors hold answers that deleted data cannot.”

  Malichor exhaled through his nose, lips twitching. “And if the scouts die?”

  “Then summon their souls.” The tech-priest offered a shrug that clanked with casual nihilism.

  “I suggest—”

  He was cut off as the chamber’s doors exploded inward, shredded from their hinges in a detonation of bone-rivets and broken servitors.

  Threxos Hellbreed entered like a thunderclap.

  His Terminator plate hissed with gore-vented pressure, crimson-streaked and etched with the iconography of the Hounds of Abaddon. Twin chainaxes clattered at his sides like hungry hounds on leashes. Each step sent tremors through the deck, which responded with a wet, fleshy groan.

  His helm scanned the room, vox-grille steaming.

  “Sorcerer,” Threxos growled. “Where is the Warmaster?”

  Malichor didn’t even flinch. “He is in communion with the Gods,” he said, tone flat and bored, like a junior aide dismissing a complaint at a bureaucrat’s temple. “You can interrupt him if you like. I’m sure they will understand.”

  Threxos took a half-step forward, gauntlet tightening into a crackling fist—then held himself in check. The fury burned hot, but the leash of fear still held.

  Instead, he pointed one massive, armored finger at the war-table.

  “I’m taking the Hounds to Storvhal,” he said. “I will crush the lizards. Khorne has demanded it.”

  Malichor tilted his head, voice silk-smooth. “How bold of you.”

  Threxos bristled, uncertain if he’d been insulted.

  But the sorcerer only nodded once, slow and deliberate. “The Hounds will find blood. That much is certain. And perhaps—if the Salamanders are being shielded by some unseen hand—your… enthusiasm will flush it into the open.”

  From behind the hololith, Vhorkas gave a low mechanical hum—either agreement or indigestion. “Khorne’s rage may succeed where logic has failed.”

  Malichor smiled behind his helm. Not kindly.

  “Go, then,” he said. “Let your axes scream the truth out of them.”

  Threxos turned with a snort of contempt and stormed from the chamber, the deck groaning beneath his retreat. One of his chainaxes revved with impatience as if it too was hungry for the hearts of his foes.

  The silence that followed was long, pulsing.

  Vhorkas broke it first.

  “He will die.”

  “Eventually,” Malichor murmured. “But not before ripping the veil wide open.”

  He leaned over the table, gesturing toward the blip of Storvhal.

  “Let the dogs run. The prey will show itself soon enough.”