But the craters vanished, filled in by the flowing excrescences of disease. New pillars of brass and bone shot up around the superstructure, reinforcing it, rebuilding the massive fortress of clustered, jagged towers. It weathered the barrage and drove on towards the fleet, its speed undiminished, its hunger growing with its wrath.

The daemon fleet returned fire. A storm of warp energy scythed through the Legions. The barrage took the form of entwined lightning and flame. The void tore open at the passage of the blasts, filling the space between the closing formations with clouds of blood. The storm hammered void shields and triggered emergency activations of Geller fields. Where the defences fell, metal burst into unnatural fire and hulls warped into carnivorous life. The huge jaws of the Veritas Ferrum vomited black flame against the Samothrace. The Ultramarines battleship ploughed into a burning maelstrom that swept over the entire hull. The void shields shrieked with strain, flaring like suns. A chain-reaction collapse began as the Samothrace came out of the fire. Its prow turned up gradually, and the ship, trailing smoke and burning gas, began to rise above the direct line of fire of the skull.

The flagships took the brunt of the first daemonic salvo. There were losses in the fleets, mostly frigates, a first culling of the smaller ships. But the numbers of the Legions were vast. The ships of the Imperium outnumbered the daemonic several times over. The formations were undiminished. They tightened up as the moment of collision approached. Unscathed vessels drew up beside the damaged ones, ready to draw fire and support their comrades.

The Veritas Ferrum appeared to lunge forwards. It came at the Legions with the speed of nightmare. Its path was a straight line, as if the ship was too massive to manoeuvre, or too powerful to divert. It battered through the lance beams and cannon fire. Wounds opened and closed on its hull. The mouths on its flanks chanted a psychic chorus that came ahead of the ship like a bow wave. The choir shouted in triumphant wrath as the Veritas plunged into the heart of the Ultramarines wedge, its guns firing to port and starboard.

The Samothrace, already rising, narrowly avoided a collision. The behemoth passed just below its stern. The barrage of warp fire had the effect of a supernova in the heart of the fleets. Multiple beams burned through the Glory of Fire and the Legendary Son. The ships seemed to freeze in their forwards motion, transfixed by a hundred spears of night. Their atmospheres vented in moments, gales blowing out of multiple killing breaches in their hulls. The Glory of Fire’s engines went critical. The shockwave from the plasma detonation crashed against the void shields of a dozen ships, breaking open their defences, leaving them vulnerable to a new deluge of enemy fire. The Glory of Fire vanished in its self-immolation. The Legendary Son went dark. Tears half a mile long raked its hull. Its engines were silent. Its decks had collapsed and fused with one another. Tens of thousands of crew were crushed to a thin slick of pulp in fused ruin.