Martyrdom. Another word for suicide, for slaughter in the name of empty ideals.

‘Sub-spears, begin your assault runs,’ Abaddon said.

Hundred-ship-strong formations cleaved from the armada’s bulk in blade-shaped configurations. They curved out and began to unleash their own payloads of torpedoes and bomber wings.

The defence batteries of the Luna Ring and defence shoal fired in a coordinated volley. The first of the attackers’ munitions exploded in the void.

The sub-spear fleets were moving to try to stab through the edge of the defending fleet. They fired their second volley. Boarding torpedoes flew free of tubes. Clouds of escort wings formed around them. The defenders assessed the manoeuvre and opened fire with macro-cannons. The volumes in the path of the boarding torpedo waves boiled with explosions.

Alarms filled the inside of the torpedoes and bombers as they plunged into the blaze. Shrapnel ripped into armour panels. Torpedoes tore in two. Figures in sea-green armour tumbled into the fire and night.

The bulk of the armada was still holding around the War Oath, a column formation of a thousand ships. The ships of the defenders spread before it in a convex disc. Fire cut into the armada’s flanks. Shields flared, and the flash of cannons shone around the waning sickle of the moon in the night skies of Terra.

Battle-barge Fortress of Eternity, Mars high orbit

The Guardians of Mars had watched the light of the attackers grow in the sky for days. First had come word from the Falcon fleets, winding their paths above and below the disc of the Solar System. The eyes of the Fourth Sphere fleet had turned to the abyss above them. Ocular and sensor arrays peered into the dark, sifting starlight and the dance of asteroids for the signs of the enemy. The first light of engines glimmered in the dark, fresh stars igniting beside those that had formed the patterns of heroes and monsters in ages long past.

On the surface of the planet beneath, silence had fallen, and stillness settled across the red plains. For over half a decade, rocket launches and beams of energy had criss-crossed the thin atmosphere as the disciples of Kelbor-Hal’s New Mechanicum threw fire at the blockade fleet. Mars had blistered with explosions and swum with the dust of fallout as the factions on the surface tore at each other. Now, silence and stillness spread across its surface, as though the planet of war was holding an inhaled breath.