‘No,’ said Guilliman. ‘Warp drives are functional, but the distortion of the materium and the empyrean is too great here. That structure has a gravitational pull in the warp as well as here.’

The Lion thought about demanding that Tuchulcha take the fleets back to the immaterium. He reminded himself about the futility of giving that order. Tuchulcha had warned him about the barrier. Tuchulcha could not cross it. ‘Then we have only one choice,’ he said. ‘We have to breach the wall. If we can’t go around, we must go through.’

‘Our options for making such an attempt are limited,’ said Guilliman.

‘If the options are few,’ Sanguinius said, ‘then each must be pursued with the greatest rigour.’

‘Do any of us think we can destroy it?’ the Lion asked.

‘We are all agreed that we must try,’ said Guilliman.

The greatest single naval barrage in human history occurred less than an hour later. Hulls vibrating from the strain of engines pushing back against the pull of the fortress, the formation closed to firing range with the construct. The wall filled the oculus of the Invincible Reason completely. The Lion could see nothing but the iron, the brass, the flames and the thorns resolving themselves into guns taller than Olympus Mons.

The weapons systems of the Imperium powered up. When they were ready, when the synchronisation of fire was arranged, when the speed of torpedoes was calculated against the immediacy of lances, so that every hit would strike the wall at the same moment, then the Lion, in concert with his brothers, said, ‘Fire.’

Fire.

The fire came to burn the void. More than a hundred ships opened up with every weapon. Macro-cannon batteries, ranks of lances, nova cannons, cyclonic torpedoes and more unleashed the anger of humanity against the obscenity before them. The raging of the Ruinstorm faded before the searing light of purest, purging destruction. It was an act of war on a scale that had never been witnessed before. If there had been remembrancers aboard any of the vessels, they would have felt compelled to record an event so monumental in song and in verse.

The barrage struck the fortress, and then it did not matter that there were no remembrancers. The action would not be remembered. There would be no songs. The immense became the insignificant. The explosions that erupted on the face of the battlements lit up the view in the Invincible Reason’s oculus. But the Lion made the mental adjustment, and understood how tiny the site of the impact was in relation to the wall as a whole. It might as well have been invisible, a momentary glint on the brass. We aren’t trying to destroy the barrier, he reminded himself. We need to pass through it. That is all.