Even a warrior as formidable as Malum Caedo soon found himself pushed to the brink.
The Iron Warriors were, in truth, unlike any other traitors the Imperium had faced. This bunker complex, serving as a primary ammunition depot, was teeming with foes of overwhelming firepower. Some of the Iron Warriors in terminator plate had undergone such extensive bionics that three-quarters of their anatomy had been replaced by augmetic machinery. Not even a melta-blast could fully eradicate them in a single strike.
Bolstered by a grim cycle of scavenging enemy weapons and ammunition, Caedo lived up to his battle-oath: as long as he drew breath, he would fight. That was, until a Warsmith, clad in bespoke, reinforced terminator armour, caught him with a power fist, leaving the veteran critically wounded. These deranged Warsmiths had developed a wealth of forbidden, profane technologies since their defection, their bodies bloated with cybernetic excess. Their reaction speeds and raw strength far exceeded the limits of a standard Astartes.
Caedo, drifting toward the veil of unconsciousness, had managed to detonate a melta-bomb, obliterating the Warsmith's torso, before staggering through the labyrinthine corridors. His power armour's life-support systems chimed with incessant, irritating warnings. He knew he could not stop; to cease moving now would be to make death a luxury he could no longer afford.
In a haze of waning consciousness, he stumbled into a vast, cavernous hall. At the far end stood a gargantuan throne, occupied by a hulking silhouette. The suffocating pressure radiating from the figure nearly dropped him to his knees.
Thud. Thud.
Heavy, rhythmic footfalls echoed through the hall. Caedo's own breathing was ragged, his respirator rattling within his helm. Even as his vision swam, he forced his head upward, desperate to locate the source of the sound.
Skree-tch.
The ear-splitting shriek of grinding metal tore through the air. Caedo felt his breastplate seized by a massive grip, his boots lifted clear of the floor. Instinctively, he reached for his combat knife and slashed blindly at the figure before him.
CRACK!
A blinding jolt of agony flared, only for his secondary heart and artificial neuro-membranes to dump a cocktail of combat stims into his bloodstream, muting the pain. In that same heartbeat, Caedo realized his arm had been torn away. He fought on, kicking out, but his strength failed him as the severity of his wounds triggered a forced medical stasis, and he slipped into unconsciousness.
"Perhaps I should have studied Guilliman's methods of tutelage."
"Why are his scions so extraordinary, while mine cannot even hold a gate?"
The icy, resonant voice caused the Iron Warriors who had pursued Caedo into the hall to collapse to their knees. Perturabo stood in the centre of the chamber, his augmetic fingers having left deep indentations in Caedo's ceramite chest-plate as he held the Ultramarine aloft. His gaze, cold as a scalpel, swept over his kneeling sons.
A single Ultramarine had slaughtered over a dozen Rubric Marines, banished a Lord of Change, cut down scores of cultists and a thousand slaves, and decimated nearly an entire company of Iron Warriors. Such a tally would have been impressive to anyone, but to Perturabo, it was a source of deep, boiling rage.
Were his own sons nothing but pathetic failures? Or had their iron resolve been so thoroughly corrupted by Chaos that they had become as rotting and sluggish as the filth of the Death Guard? They were veterans, clad in terminator plate, augmented with superior implants and bionics… why, then, did they prove so agonizingly fragile?
With a disdainful flick, he hurled the unconscious Caedo aside and crushed the dropped combat knife under his heel. Perturabo then uttered a command that curdled the blood of all present:
"He is indeed a warrior of valour. Stuff him into a Helbrute, perhaps that will compensate for your own frailty."
"Check for any other surviving wretches among the enemy. Toss them in as well."
A tremor ran through the assembled traitors. Even to the servants of Chaos, the Helbrute was a device of utter horror. This was not due to its combat efficacy, but to its nature: a corrupted, degraded imitation of the Imperial Dreadnought. Those interred within suffered unimaginable agony, their bodies and souls fused into the metal shell, trapped in an eternal torment that only ended with the machine's destruction. Whether loyalist or traitor, the pilot was consumed by the machine's dark power, reduced to a hollow slave of rage and madness.
For the Iron Warriors, deploying a Helbrute was a calculated risk. These 'Dreadnoughts' were utterly insane, posing as much of a threat to their own side as to the enemy. None relished the prospect of being torn apart by 'friendly fire' mid-battle.
Since Perturabo's capture by the Iron Men, and his subsequent near-annihilation, his psyche had grown increasingly twisted. His returning sons noted the change in their Primarch, though they were ignorant of the fact that this was but a small, lingering 'gift' left behind by the Great Schemer after a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch had intervened to save his life. Perturabo, already a Daemon Primarch, deluded himself into believing he was merely utilizing the Warp, refusing to admit that his mind had long since succumbed to its madness. He was as stubborn as the Mortarion he so loathed.
As Perturabo departed, the Iron Warriors rose cautiously, recovering the semi-dead, armless Malum Caedo. To satisfy their Primarch's decree, they threw the Ultramarine into a holding cell, prioritizing the stabilization of their own severely wounded brothers. While they possessed the knowledge to craft Helbrutes, the Iron Warriors generally preferred the stability of standard Dreadnoughts; only those traitors who relied heavily on Dark Mechanicum soul-smiths kept such 'torture devices' in reserve. They had to ensure their own wounded were interred into sarcophagi first, awaiting the construction of the Helbrute chassis, a process that would take time they did not have.
For outside the Prospero system, the massive warp-routes were being torn wide open.
…
The Crusade of Retribution fleet breached the veil of reality. The moment they exited the Warp, the Void Sword re-established its link to the quantum network, synchronizing time-data and coordinate telemetry, and broadcasting updated data-packets to the surrounding White Scars and Space Wolves vessels.
Jaghatai Khan stared at the information in disbelief. The ships' logs indicated that no more than five days had passed since they entered the Warp. In truth, months had elapsed in the realspace. After destroying the grotesque xenos fortress, their transit had been smooth, meeting almost no resistance, but they were blind to the chaotic temporal distortions they had navigated.
When they arrived at the coordinates of the planet Sortiarius, they found only a massive, roiling spatial vortex. The planet was gone.
Determined to uncover the world's fate, Axion led the fleet directly into the vast rift. In an instant, they were violently ejected from the deep Warp back into the shallows. Unable to regain a lock on their position, the fleet was forced to attempt a return to realspace; without the navigational certainty of a coherent warp-path, the 'offline' charts of the shallow Empyrean left them hopelessly adrift.
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