‘Hold,’ called Sigismund, his voice passing through the ships of his command via crackling vox-link. ‘For our oaths, we hold true.’

The Lachrymae sliced on while its mortal crew screamed as ghosts and nightmares flooded their sight. Reality in the battle sphere was now little more than tattered scraps blowing in the night. The Lachrymae rolled, her guns finding enemy after enemy. But for each one that died, another three came from the warp.

Deadfall torpedoes set in the void triggered and speared forwards. Carcasses of ships split and burned. Pluto’s fortress-moons found their range to the first of the invaders and spoke. Newly lit void shields flashed as they collapsed. Volleys answered. The reserve fleets holding close to the moons powered forwards and began to kill and die. The light of battle swelled, blurring with the glow of thousands of warp transitions, until which side was firing and which was burning was lost in a rippling blaze tens of thousands of kilometres across. Hours later, the light of that fire would glimmer in the night above the battlements of the Imperial Palace as the sirens called and alarums rang to tell that Horus had, at last, brought his war to the birth system of humanity.

Two

Silence’s shadow
Ash and iron
Daggers drawn

Bhab Bastion, The Imperial Palace, Terra

Silence flowed across Terra under the sound of sirens. It fell in the water markets of Albia as the shouting of buyer and seller faded and became looks held between strangers. It crept into the room where the cries of an hours-old child echoed as words of comfort died in a father’s mouth. It followed the smoke carrying the smell of the burning refuse from the spoil ranges. On the towers watching the highways that ran to the feet of the Damocles Space Port, the soldiers ceased their pacing and looked up at the night sky. In cave shelters, billions of conscripts glanced at the roofs of rock before looking back down to the guns in their hands. They sat in loose groups – families, hab-block neighbours, manufactory shifts – saying nothing.

Waiting.

In the administrative strata of the record-hives, scribes moved between parchment spools and auto-quills, following routine as though it would make a lie of the warning alarms. On the walls of the Imperial Palace, warriors watched the sun rise over the teeth of the eastern wall and heard only the sound of the wind and the shrill of warning. Terra was a world waiting for the first blow to fall. And in the last inch of waiting, panic had found stillness.