Its angles were harsh, its lines sleek. It was a hunter of the stars and a killer of ships.

As it cleared the flaring tear in reality, scores of other fighting vessels jostled for position behind it, golden craft, black craft and a host of predatory vessels in identical livery to the fleet’s leader.

Lemuel had seen this ship before, in the heavens above Shrike in the Ark Reach Cluster.

“Is that…?” gasped Lemuel.

“Unfortunately, yes,” said Mahavastu. “I rather think it is.”

“You know that ship?” asked Camille. “What is it?”

“It is the Hrafnkel,” said Mahavastu, “the flagship of Leman Russ.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Thunder from Fenris/So Much Will Be Lost/Canis Vertex

THE FIRST BOMBS from the Space Wolf fleet struck Prospero just before dawn. The orbital defence platforms had been caught completely unawares. One minute their augurs had been silent, the next a vast fleet of ships had appeared, a buckshot spread of torpedoes already arcing towards the orbital batteries and missile defences. Most were knocked out before they were able to launch a single weapon or power up a single gun. The lucky few that managed a snap shot were bracketed and obliterated moments later.

With no response from the ground, the armada moved into high anchor above Prospero and assumed a geostationary assault pattern. Thousands of weapons were trained on the planet below: energy weapons, mass-drivers and bombardment cannons. The ships drifted sedately like grand liners in a regatta among the stars. The Hrafnkelopened the assault, its massive weapon systems blinking as etched lines of icy light stabbed down.

Moments later, the rest of the fleet opened fire.

THOUGH MAGNUS HAD kept his Legion blind to the approach of the Emperor’s vengeance, the Raptora cult maintained a constant kine-barrier over the city of Tizca. Not even Magnus the Red could undo that protection without someone noticing.

The first warning anyone had of the imminent attack was a hot wind that seemed to come straight from the sky, pressing down on the city like the pressure before a storm. It tasted of metal and burnt oil. Static leapt from the pyramids’ tops, sparking from silver tower to silver tower as if between the equipment in the laboratory of an insane Magos.

The sour grey of pre-dawn erupted in light as the lowered clouds were lit with inner radiance. This was swiftly followed by the tremendous crash of atmospheric discharge, like thunder without the lightning. Multiple sonic booms from hypersonic projectiles shattered the graveyard silence, and those citizens of Tizca who still slept were shaken from their beds by the echoes as percussive blasts rolled through the city.

Like a stabbing finger of raw light, the first energy lance struck Prospero a kilometre north-east of Tizca. It impacted in the wide ocean bay of the port and flashed a five-hundred metre column of seawater to superheated steam. A series of follow-on blasts seared into existence within seconds, marching vertical striations of incandescent brightness that sent up towering geysers of saltwater.

Banks of scalding fog rolled in from the ocean, boiling the flesh from the bones of early-morning dockworkers. Projectiles streaked through the lower atmosphere on trails of fire as shockwave fists pummelled the sea and sent foaming breakers crashing to shore.

Whole swathes of mountains simply vanished in towering mushroom clouds, magma bombs levelling entire peaks and filling the valleys with rubble. The earth shook with man-made thunder, the relentless pounding of the planet’s surface like pile-driving hammers repeatedly slamming down. In orbit, more and more warships added the weight of their fire to the bombardment, hurling building-sized ordnance towards the planet below. The total saturation of the target area ensured that the city was completely engulfed, enough to level a continent’s worth of metropolises.

Yet Tizca endured. The kine-shields of the Raptora were the strongest defences any city in the Imperium could boast. Harder than the thickest adamantium and more unyielding than layer upon layer of voids, the invisible umbrella of protection soaked up the violence of the bombardment, though at fearsome cost to the warriors who maintained it.

The entire populace of Tizca was awake now, moving onto the streets of their beloved city and looking up in confusion and wonder. There was little fear, for the destruction had not yet breached their protected environment. They watched, open-mouthed, as blinding energy weapons burned searing traceries in the sky above, while smudges of black smoke and fire painted the clouds as steel-jacketed shells flattened on the shield. Hastily-mustered Spireguard regiments poured onto the city streets and tried to usher people indoors, but the incredible spectacle was too entrancing to be ignored.

Magnus the Red watched as the lightstorm blistered and burst over his city. The sky was stained a bloody orange as airbursting incendiary rounds burned the clouds away, and a tear fell from his eye as he watched the land around Tizca die. The forests were burning to ash and the wild grasslands blazed with secondary fires, reducing the unspoiled countryside to a wasteland in a matter of minutes.

The Desolation of Prospero was complete.

“Now I know how you felt, father,” he whispered, sensing aetheric energy build in his fists, aching to be released. Magnus fought for calm, reciting the secret names of the Enumerations known only to him. This was his fate; this was what he had accepted as his punishment. He could not cast off his noble intent to pay for his mistakes.

No matter how much he ached to.

He watched the thunder batter itself uselessly against the shields of the Raptora.

“I am here,” he whispered to the heavens. “Do what you will.”

THE APEX CHAMBER at the summit of the Corvidae pyramid was wreathed in smoke, aromatic fumes oozing from the stone, sweet and tinged with camphire and cedar. Veils hanging from the angled walls twisted in the warm winds billowing from outside, and Ahriman fought to hold onto the high Enumerations as the constant thunder tried to unseat him.

He sat before the Icon of the Corvidae, a wide crystal boulder shaped like a flat oval with a chunk of black spinel at its centre like the dilated pupil of an eye. The boulder had been hewn from the Reflecting Caves by the First Magister Templi of the Corvidae, and had been used as a focus for prognostication by the cult’s devotees since its earliest days. It floated above a reflecting pool, its waters shimmer-dark and still despite the pounding of the earth.

Ahriman blinked as he caught a phantom image of a new moon in its depths.

Always capricious in its revelations, the Icon had been silent for weeks, with not even the most gifted of the Corvidae able to divine so much as a hint of the future. Ankhu Anen and Ahriman had both attempted to see beyond Prospero, but their visions had revealed nothing. Their subtle bodies had been unable to enter the Great Ocean at all, as though something was actively preventing them from venturing beyond Prospero’s horizons.

Then the bombardment had fallen in a rain of thunder and steel.

Within moments of the first bombs landing, the warriors of the Corvidae mustered for war in the lower reaches of the Pyramid. Prospero was dying around them, though Tizca remained untouched. That wouldn’t last long. The unseen attackers would soon realise they would need to come down and dig the Thousand Sons out the hard way.

Who were these mysterious enemies? Who would be insane enough to attack an Astartes Legion on its home planet? More importantly, how had they been able to bring such enormous firepower to bear without anyone being aware of it?

Ahriman needed answers before he issued a deployment order, and thus he attuned his mind to the crystal and went straight to the source of all knowledge on Prospero: Magnus the Red.