On the deck of the Macragge's Honour, the atmosphere was grim and solemn.
The air was thick with the scent of ionized ozone, the acrid sting of lubricants, and the faint fragrance of burning sanctified incense.
Efficiently uniformed Chapter serfs and red-robed Tech-Priests moved swiftly among the assembled Astartes about to depart for battle.
They silently and efficiently distributed weapons and ammunition, performing final checks and blessings on the power armor.
A chaplain, adorned with an iron halo, wore a skull mask, his black armor inscribed with prayers and covered in blessed scrolls. He strode through the ranks, reciting litanies in praise of the Emperor. His booming voice drowned out all mechanical noise.
The Ultramarines handed over their personal oaths, written on parchment, to the serfs. The chaplain sealed them onto their shoulder or leg armor with molten red wax.
Chapter Master Calgar, though only recently recovered from grave wounds and still pale, stood as tall and resolute as the mountains of Ultramar.
He stood on a makeshift command platform, gazing at his warriors about to embark, and addressed them.
"Battle-brothers!"
Calgar's voice carried across the deck, filled with undeniable authority.
"At this very moment, those damned heretics are clamoring to taste the sweetness of victory, dreaming of sullying the glory of Ultramar with their filth!"
He paused, letting righteous fury simmer in every warrior's heart.
"But we will not let them succeed! Just as we have thwarted their vile schemes countless times before."
"We are sons of Ultramar, guardians of five hundred worlds! We are the Emperor's most loyal servants, the shield and sword of humanity in the darkness. We never compromise, never surrender!"
"Today, those who dare invade our home shall pay for their crimes in blood and agony!"
Raising his massive powerfist, Calgar shouted, his voice like thunder.
"For the Emperor! For Lord Guilliman!"
The Ultramarines, preparing for their boarding assault, roared in unison.
"For the Emperor! For Lord Guilliman!"
Datch, too, was swept up in this fervent, game-like atmosphere, raising his arm and shouting along.
Nothing beats VR games—the immersion is just like the real thing.
The moment the shouting died down, Datch selected the "Sadako Videotape" item.
A translucent minimap, visible only to him, unfolded, clearly marking every playback device aboard both friendly and enemy warships in the void.
"Let's pick the enemy flagship."
As soon as the target was confirmed, Datch vanished in plain sight with a "whoosh".
The deck's rousing atmosphere was instantly shattered by astonished confusion.
"Huh? Where did he go??"
"How did he just disappear??"
"Some kind of new teleportation tech? Or..."
The Ultramarines looked around in shock.
Calgar's pupils narrowed. He strode to where Datch had just been.
There was no trace of lingering energy, nor any sign of physical displacement.
The man had simply vanished before the eyes of scores of battle-brothers, without warning.
"How... did he do that?" Calgar muttered.
This Chapter Master, who had battled across the galaxy for millennia and faced countless Chaos traitors and xenos, prided himself on his experience...
But now, he was utterly shocked by something beyond words. He had never seen anything like this.
This nameless Astartes was becoming more and more inscrutable.
…
Meanwhile, deep within the Chaos fleet's flagship, the Echo of Agony,
The scene inside the warship was a hellish contrast to the order aboard the Macragge's Honour.
The interior resembled the innards of some colossal beast. The walls were a forced fusion of writhing, mucus-slick flesh and rusted metal.
Thick blood vessels and twisted nerve bundles pulsed under membranes, casting a dark red glow.
A nauseating stench filled the air—a mix of rotting blood, sickly-sweet decaying flesh, ozone-charred residue, and a metallic, rusty tang.
Malzak, a Dark Mechanicus magos devoted to the gods, stood before a monitoring terminal, entwined with fleshy cables and hissing metal pipes.
Most of his body had been replaced with a blend of organic and mechanical parts.
Only one biological eye remained, cloudy and sunk deep in a twisted metal socket.
Three mechanical eyes rotated irregularly on his skull, flashing ominous red lights for system checks and data scans.
Chaotic data scrolled across the screen—blasphemous code of the Warp.
Around him, flesh-slave servitors, grotesquely fused with the ship's systems, moaned endlessly.
Demonic, writhing flesh, like living parasites, bound devices together, channeling dark energy that powered these blasphemous creations.
Suddenly, the main terminal screen blinked inexplicably, as if the signal had been forcibly severed.
The previous display of engine parameters, weapon status, and Imperial fleet data vanished,
Replaced by a disturbing black-and-white image filled with static.
"Hmm?" Malzak uttered a puzzled grunt, crackling with electronic static and mucus.
His logic core instantly diagnosed a device malfunction or Imperial EM interference.
Barbed neural tendrils stabbed into ports beside the console, but diagnostics showed the system was normal—no sign of external intrusion or internal malfunction.
"No problems detected. There's not even a data signal for this video!"
The terminal's image flickered amid the static.
Finally, the camera locked onto the mossy, ancient stone rim of a well, surrounded by a desolate, ruined courtyard.
Then, a blurry figure in Cataphractii terminator armor slowly crawled from the well.
"Low-level psychological intimidation. Must be some clumsy Imperial trickery."
Malzak snorted disdainfully, his vox-grille screeching with rust.
He deployed more scan units, analyzing every byte of data to find signs of Imperial hacking and counterattack.
But there was no sign of any Warp data fluctuation or intrusion.
All systems were normal.
This black-and-white image seemed to override the terminal on a level beyond physical logic or mechanics.
"What the hell is this??"
"Since when did the Imperium have this kind of tech?"
Malzak's logic core issued an overheating warning; fans belched out hot, oily air.
He abandoned all secondary tasks, focusing all processing power on constructing a data model, trying to understand this violation of physics and machine logic.
But before his logic core, steeped in dark lore, could deduce a reasonable answer, something even more shocking happened!
The terminator in the video, like a magician, produced a frag grenade, casually lobbed it—straight at the camera.
The grenade arced beautifully, broke the 2D boundary, and landed on the deck with a metallic clatter.
Malzak's one biological eye bulged, the pupil shrinking to a pinprick.
No warp intervention.
A hand grenade... thrown out of a screen?
This made zero scientific sense—not even Chaos sense!
…
Bonus chapter at 300 PS