A shape pushed through the firelit dust and haze. At first it looked like a pitted asteroid or a wreck. Then the bulk behind its prow burst through the swirl. The dead of millennia of war amongst the stars were its mass – mangled carcasses of starships, asteroids, towers and broken star fortresses, all crushed together by the immaterium. It was a macro-agglomeration of debris and dead things secreted by storm tides, a pearl of sorrow, a space hulk. The New Mechanicum had dragged it from the tides of the warp and remade it. Launch bays had been cut into its mass, reactors lit in its heart and shield generators bound to its surface. Pushing and hauling it through the warp had cost a dozen ships, and once pushed back into reality, it would never move again. That, though, was not its purpose. The size of one of Uranus’ moons, it was made to be a besieger’s redoubt at the gate of a greater fortress. Daughter of Woe, it had been named.

The ships that had already exited the immaterium slewed aside as the hulk grew and grew. Its bulk was breaking through the cloud on all sides of the gate, now. Hundred-kilometre arcs of warp lightning writhed from the tearing edge of the vast hole it was boring in space.

The dust of the Elysian Gate streamed down its face like water falling from a leviathan breaking from the depths of a dark sea. The wreckage of already-dead ships impacted on its surface. Torpedoes and battery fire slammed into it. Chunks of rock and metal tore from it. And it kept coming. Assault craft began to launch from it in clouds. Small frigates that had made the journey bound to its skin broke their tethers and slid into the void.

Lord Castellan Halbract watched as the Daughter of Woe lit with fire from the rings of defences. This had not been anticipated, but it changed little. His orders and oaths still stood. The only question was how much they could make the enemy pay, and the price his forces paid in turn.

‘Light our guns,’ he said, and the Monarch of Fire shook to his order.

Battle-barge War Oath, Supra-Solar Gulf