[Battlefleet Gothic] On the Art of Simulated Void Warfare | Part Two

+++ Archivist Praesidian, Personal Log
+++ 9520998.M41
+++ Phonosar-Nemesis warp transit
+++ Aboard strike cruiser Seawolf

Belis Corona is lost. I can barely bring myself to think the words, let alone utter them for vox dictation, and in fact I set them down by hand that I might not taint my lips with them. Yet how can they be tainted? They are true, and we cannot amend them with self-delusion.

In my last report to Lord Admiral Spire, I expressed a belief that attack on Sector Command was inevitable: privately, I believed the attack would come before the midway point of this standard year. I was almost right: it was the day before when we first detected the cursed anomaly, and two days later when Belis Corona's doom was sealed.

What I did not predict was the nature and intensity of the attack - the gamble which the Traitor fleetmasters would take to break our presence west of the Cadian Gate.

It began in the Menshiro Trench - that deep, dense region of unknown matter to the galactic south-east of Sector Command. The warp anomalies we detected indicated something vast had penetrated the materium - vast, and neither rock nor stone nor honest metal. The Cobra squadron we sent to confirm identified it as wholly organic: an immense chunk of horn and meat and void-frosted viscera, towed into place by the Seventeenth-Ninety-Sixth Traitor fleet.

Our patrol group did not return. The last transmission from their squadron leader's astropath informed us the Navigators had run mad, and had she not been soul-bound, she would have run mad with them. Before she committed exemplary suicide, it was vital she inform us of the truth: that it was the carcass of a vast xenoform, Tyrannus dominatus, and through their foul rites the Traitors had caused it to once more pulse with life.

Three days later, we knew they had succeeded. Menshiro, Subiaco Diablo, Phonosar: all drowning in a wave of chitin and fury. Had the Kraken come again, or was this Leviathan, roaring from beneath the galactic plane? Was this some new nightmare that had lain in dark stars beneath Menshiro, blind and ravenous, awaiting a call that dark artifice had sounded out of time?

The core system itself remained clear; in part, due to the Traitor fleets themselves, an armada of pirate vessels patrolling the Mandeville point and a corridor of realspace leading toward our parent star. So too did Belissimar, for the Traitors had other plans for that benighted world of lavish recreation. The Eighth-Thirteenth descended, and no civilian ship escaped the massacre they perpetrated. Only the death-cries of astropaths, besieged in their polar tower, the last Imperial redoubt to fall, mourned the millions whose blood stained those golden fields.

Yet we were not without aid. Phonosar burned, skies aflame with gore and chitin: from the depths of the unreal came the Space Wolves. Packs of Hunter destroyers, Vanguard scouts, and the noble vessel on whose crew decks I currently take my shelter, the strike cruiser Seawolf under its lord-captain Krakendoom. I have spoken with him twice since his arrival - both times in the aftermath of battle - in my proper capacity alone. I expected a transhuman warrior, an angel clad in ceramite: what I met was a wild and fierce sailor, with a throat that cried for ale and carnage with every day we spent with no shots fired.

My lord captain spoke not of Phonosar. He spoke instead of Menshiro, of interdiction and a ritual so nearly undone. To hear him tell of it, barely two percent of the Tyranid matter held together beneath his guns - mere minutes, another volley, another flight of Thunderhawks, and Belis Corona might have been saved. His failure, he told me, had been our doom, but all was not yet lost. He was but the vanguard of a greater fleet, holding open the way to Nemesis Tessera, to escape and to salvation. If we evacuated, there was still time.

I took refuge on his ship, not on the transports that set out from half a dozen worlds. I bought my place with the truth I had encrypted behind the highest clearance code I knew, in my report to Lord Admiral Spire. I told him of the treason and the heresy of Lord Admiral Drang: I had heard with my own ears that wretched man make contact with his masters in the Traitor fleet, inform them of the retreat, tell them where to strike.

They were on our heels even as we cleared the system's edge, coming at us out of the asteroid belt. They boarded the rearmost transports, and from my berth I gave thanks to the Emperor and prayed that I did not see them from my porthole, lunging and looming out of the dark. The scarlet and gold of the Twelfth, the teal and silver of the Twentieth, the deep crimson of the Seventeenth: I saw them with my own eyes, on the edge of vision and the void. The flare of lances, the silent shriek of assault boats, and the blinding radiance of their rituals. I saw it all.

We made them pay for every world they'd taken, every scrap of ground, every poor soul we had abandoned in our flight. Voldar's Glory itself, the Apocalypse class, the burning scourge of the Segmentum, led the Naval fleet that came to assist our ragged convoy, and through the sub-ether comms-chat I patchworked the tale of our deliverance. Two Traitor flagships perished beneath the Voldar's Glory's guns - the Twelfth-Seventh outlanced at last, bleeding daemonry into the void, and the Cult of Emptiness burned out with its captain, the Twentieth-Sixteenth broken and the Dark Angels avenged. Even the Litany of Damnation itself left limping and aflame, barely clearing battery range before it disengaged.

And yet, we were undone. Six vessels passed through the belt into the light of Belis' Star, and none returned. I heard their death-cries, and I heard my lord captain tell the tale as he had heard it from his throne aboard the Seawolf. I even saw the baleful light, far behind on the horizon of my vision, of the weapon that the Traitors had unleashed to seal our fate.

A Blackstone Fortress. They had brought forth a Blackstone Fortress, and sacrificed five capital ships against our guns until it reached the limits of its range. Then it spat death, and not one battleship of our Navy returned to join the Wolves of Fenris in our flight.

To hear my lord captain tell it, he was sure this was the reason for the Eighth-Thirteenth's atrocities at Belissimar, and their warmaking upon the Aeldari around far Scarus' darkest star: that their monumental cruelty had somehow waked the One Who Thirsts, and steeped in sacrifice as it was, that perfidious divinity had granted this Black Crusade its blessing.

We cleared the Cadian Gate two days ago, and Nemesis Tessera waits for us ahead. I must speak with my Lord Admiral. I must be sure he found the clearance code he needs to learn of Drang's treachery. I must pray that he believes me, that he does not deem my words seditious. And I must pray also that the remaining battlegroups of the Twelfth Legion are not unleashed against us here, before we have a chance to muster for the counterblow.

I am sorely pressed. In truth, I am terrified. The Traitors have bled for all they've done and all they've taken: one battlegroup lost, one decapitated, one reduced to a crippled flagship limping back to dock. Yet they have unleashed such horrors on this Sector that I fear there can be no final victory: no hope, unless it lies with the miraculous guile and daring of Lord Admiral Spire.