The Iron Warriors saw them when they were still distant. They began to run calculations estimating strength and risk. They did not slow or break formation. They could not. They did not have time to spare.

The first of the nova shells reached its detonation zone and exploded. The blast wave stripped void shields from five warships. Another struck, and another and another, until the Iron Warriors fleet was strobing with fire.

The Monarch of Fire was the first ship to engage as it entered range. Plasma poured from it. Three ships vanished in curtains of light. The fleet behind it split, lancing into the Iron Warriors. Macro shells flew from batteries to meet them, and the night vanished in the flash of explosions.

Outer Solar System

Terror grew at the edge of the light of the sun.

On Neptune’s moon Laomedia, the quiet followers of a sect called the Paths of Revelation pumped kalma gas into the habitats sunk into the satellite’s skin.

The Paths of Revelation had grown from old seeds planted in Old Night. Laomedia was not a kind home. Fuel reservoirs and processing plants ate its people. The wars between xenos, pirates and empire builders had seen it change hands many times. Its population had been slaves and citizens and the meat fed into the machine of its industries. The Unity of the Imperium had changed some of that, but not all. And in the uncertainty of that life, the Paths of Revelation had found generations of followers. They were patient, waiting for their time to come, knowing that one day the spirits of truth would come, and both they and all those that had preceded them would ascend as one to a realm without want, or hunger, or limit of delight.

And now that time had come. They had heard the call crooned into their ears as they slept. So after they sent the habitats to sleep, they overrode the mag-locks of every fourth hab-unit. They went between the unlocked doors, clothed in tattered rags bleached white or stained red. They took something from those who slept inside each door they opened. A trinket, a hand, a face. And when Laomedia woke again, it woke screaming.

In the warp, the tides of delight and spite heard the screams and sang in chorus.

On Saturn, the dead came as terror’s heralds.