Of the one hundred and fifty Terminators that had arrived, a vast portion emerged from the silver lightning clad in Cataphractii-pattern Tactical Dreadnought Armour.
To the Emperor's Children, the sight was almost impossible to comprehend.
A wall of Cataphractii stood before them.
Massive pauldrons. Heavy plating. Broad, imposing silhouettes that seemed to belong to another age.
An age that many of the traitors had once known.
For those among them who had survived the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, the battlefield seemed to disappear for a moment.
They remembered the old days.
They remembered when the Legiones Astartes had marched beneath the banners of the Emperor, when Legion formations numbering in the thousands had crossed the battlefields of distant worlds. They remembered vast armouries filled with Tactical Dreadnought Armour, when Cataphractii Terminators had been a common sight among the elite formations of the Legions.
They remembered the Great Crusade.
They remembered a galaxy that had not yet been broken.
For a fleeting moment, some of the Emperor's Children found themselves staring at ghosts from their own past.
Then reality returned.
Something far larger stepped through the silver lightning.
The Emperor's Children looked up.
And up.
The Terminator that emerged towered over even the Cataphractii surrounding it.
Its armour was enormous, its silhouette unlike anything most of them had seen since the closing days of the Great Crusade.
The Emperor's Children captain stared at the warrior.
His expression was no longer one of amusement.
It was disbelief.
And beneath that disbelief was something dangerously close to excitement.
"I can't believe my eyes," the traitor captain said.
He slowly stepped forward, staring at the massive warrior.
"I can't believe that I can still see you in these dark and uncivilised times."
The Terminator stood silently.
The ancient armour carried a design that even the oldest among the Emperor's Children knew.
The Saturnine.
An armour pattern so rare that even veterans of the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy had seldom encountered it in the later years of the Imperium.
The traitor captain's smile slowly returned.
"We will have so much fun," he said, spreading his arms wide. "So, so much fun."
Suddenly, pinkish lightning erupted around the Emperor's Children.
Warp energy crackled across the square, twisting the air and bathing the battlefield in an unnatural glow.
Then came the laughter.
It echoed from every direction.
High-pitched.
Joyful.
And utterly wrong.
The Emperor's Children laughed with it.
From within the pink lightning, figures began to emerge.
Daemonettes.
Dozens of them.
Their unnatural forms materialised from the Warp, their clawed hands flexing eagerly as they looked upon the battlefield. Their arrival was accompanied by another chorus of laughter before they immediately surged forward.
The Daemonettes charged.
They rushed directly toward the Terminator line.
Storm bolters opened fire.
The first wave of Daemonettes disappeared beneath a storm of mass-reactive shells, their bodies torn apart by explosive rounds. Others leapt over their fallen kin, shrieking with unnatural delight as they closed the distance.
The Terminators held their ground.
Among the wall of ancient armour stood one warrior who towered even among the Cataphractii.
Caden.
He wore a suit of Saturnine-pattern Tactical Dreadnought Armour, its massive frame dwarfing the warriors around him. In his hands rested a Saturnine war axe, its enormous blade humming with restrained power.
Behind him stood his Saturnine Terminator squad.
Caden watched the Daemonettes rush toward them.
He calmly raised his axe.
His vox activated.
"Well..."
Gideon's voice answered through the private channel.
"What is it?"
Caden looked across the battlefield.
Hundreds of Daemonettes were now flooding toward the Terminator line, while the Emperor's Children advanced behind them.
He paused for a moment.
"It seems now we're the ones who are outnumbered."
There was a brief silence.
Then Gideon replied.
"Aren't we always?"
With those words, both the 1st and 2nd Companies launched their counterattack.
The Blackwings surged forward first.
Rather than engaging the Daemonettes individually, the Astartes immediately formed pairs, attacking the daemons in coordinated two-man teams. One warrior would force a Daemonette to evade while his partner moved into position, cutting off its escape and striking from the opposite direction.
It was a deliberate tactic.
The Daemonettes were faster than the Astartes, their unnatural movements allowing them to slip around individual attacks with ease. But speed became far less useful when every movement placed them directly into another blade.
Power swords swept through the air.
Chainswords roared.
The Blackwings moved together, covering one another's blind spots and using their superior strength and armour to absorb attacks that would have killed a lone warrior.
One Daemonette darted between two Blackwings, its claws flashing toward the neck of one warrior.
The Astartes ducked.
His partner immediately stepped forward and drove his chainsword through the daemon's torso.
Another pair fought back-to-back as three Daemonettes surrounded them.
One Blackwing raised his power sword to parry an incoming strike while the other fired his bolt pistol directly into the daemon's chest at point-blank range.
The creature screamed as its body was torn apart.
"Keep together!" one Blackwing shouted.
The formation advanced.
The Daemonettes attempted to overwhelm them with speed, but the Blackwings refused to give them the opportunity.
Every attack was answered by another.
Every opening was exploited.
The 2nd had already learned from their earlier engagement with the Emperor's Children.
Against an enemy faster than themselves, they would not fight faster.
They would fight smarter.
The 1st had a different task.
Instead of engaging the Daemonettes, the Terminators moved to intercept the advancing Emperor's Children.
Storm bolters opened fire.
The thunderous barrage swept across the square, mass-reactive shells hammering into the traitor Astartes. At the same time, plasma blasters discharged from among the Terminator formations, their incandescent bolts tearing through the Emperor's Children and forcing them to scatter.
The traitors attempted to advance through the barrage, but the 1st Company steadily cut into their formation.
The Cataphractii Terminators marched forward behind their storm of fire, each step deliberate and unwavering.
Then the Saturnine Terminators joined the advance.
Unlike the ancient Cataphractii, the Saturnine armour was a sight almost entirely unknown to the modern Imperium. Atharion and Nine had managed to reproduce the armour itself, but one critical piece of its original weapon systems remained beyond their understanding.
The twin-linked heavy disintegrators.
Neither Atharion nor Nine had yet discovered how the ancient weapon system had been constructed.
As a result, every Saturnine Terminator deployed by the Dark Knights carried a plasma blaster instead, mounted alongside a Saturnine Disruption Fist.
Yet the absence of the heavy disintegrators had done little to diminish their effectiveness.
The Saturnine's true strength lay in its extraordinary protection.
Thermal Diffraction Fields surrounded the massive suits, dispersing incoming energy while the thick layers of armour absorbed what remained. Weapons that would have staggered ordinary Astartes simply struck the Saturnines and failed to stop them.
Bolter rounds exploded against their armour.
Power swords struck their massive plates.
Chainswords screamed against their ceramite.
The Saturnines simply kept advancing.
With the massive Saturnine suits serving as the spearhead, the Terminators slowly pushed deeper into the square. The enormous warriors moved with deliberate, almost unstoppable momentum, crushing every Emperor's Child and Daemonette that stood in their path.
Plasma blasters fired at close range, reducing daemons to Warp energy and blasting chunks from corrupted power armour. Saturnine Disruption Fists followed, crushing traitors beneath their tremendous strength.
Despite the intensity of the fighting, the 1st suffered few casualties.
The Saturnines absorbed the worst of the enemy's attacks while the Cataphractii Terminators advanced behind them, providing additional firepower and cutting down anything that attempted to slip around their flanks.
The Blackwings followed close behind, fighting alongside the Terminators and eliminating whatever enemies survived the initial assault.
But their advance was beginning to slow.
Not because the Emperor's Children were successfully stopping them.
Something else was.
The Daemonettes kept coming.
Every time one of the daemons was banished, another appeared.
Pinkish lightning continued to crackle across the battlefield. The Warp tore open in brief flashes, and fresh Daemonettes stepped through before immediately rushing toward the Terminator lines.
Some manifested where their fallen kin had been destroyed.
Others appeared beside the corpses of slain Emperor's Children, joining the battle without pause.
For every daemon they banish, another seemed to take its place.
The battlefield had become an endless tide.
They crushed their way through one wave, only for another to rise before them.
Caden watched another group of Daemonettes emerge from the Warp, their shrill laughter cutting through the roar of weapons.
He understood the problem immediately.
If this continued, they would waste too much time fighting an enemy that simply refused to run out.
The objective was not to destroy every daemon.
It was to capture the Emperor's Children warband leader and kill the rest.
Caden's gaze remained fixed upon the traitor captain.
The enemy commander was still fighting near the center of the square, surrounded by his warriors and the endless tide of Daemonettes. Every moment the battle continued gave him another opportunity to realize what the Dark Knights were attempting.
And if he understood their objective, he might try to flee.
Caden would not allow that.
The warband leader had to be captured before he could escape.
"Enough."
Caden activated his vox and opened a direct channel to the flagship in orbit.
"Command, this is Caden. Deploy the Dreadnoughts."
There was a brief pause before the reply came.
"Confirmed."
Behind the 1st, the air suddenly erupted with brilliant silver lightning.
The arcs of energy spread across the ground, illuminating the battlefield as the teleportation field began to stabilize.
Then came a tremendous thump.
The ground shook.
Sand and dust were blasted outward as something enormous arrived within the teleportation field.
The surrounding Blackwings instinctively stepped aside as another thunderous impact followed.
Then the lightning dispersed.
Two enormous figures stood behind the Terminator line.
Saturnine Dreadnoughts.
Their massive armoured bodies towered over even the Terminators surrounding them, their ancient and imposing forms looking more like walking fortresses than conventional Dreadnoughts.
Mounted upon each arm were enormous Heavy Plasma Bombards.
The weapons slowly began to charge, coils and conduits glowing brighter as blue plasma light spilled from within their housings. The growing radiance illuminated the battlefield in an eerie blue glow, while the air around them shimmered beneath the immense heat being generated within.
At the same time, the Scimitars finally returned from their hunt.
The roar of their engines announced their arrival before the warriors themselves could be seen. The jetbikes swept over the battlefield at incredible speed, banking sharply between ruined buildings and above the heads of the Astartes below.
Their plasma cannons opened fire.
Blue-white bolts of superheated energy streaked across the battlefield, striking groups of Daemonettes and Emperor's Children alike. Bodies were torn apart or reduced to smoking remnants, while the explosions cleared narrow corridors through the mass of traitors.
Heavy bolters followed.
Mass-reactive shells hammered into the enemy ranks, ripping through daemonic flesh and corrupted power armour. The sudden barrage forced the traitors to scatter, creating openings that the Scimitars immediately exploited.
The jetbikes plunged through those openings.
Their riders lowered their power swords as they passed.
One Scimitar swept between two groups of Daemonettes, its rider swinging his blade in a wide arc. The power sword carved through the nearest daemon, its unnatural flesh offering little resistance before the creature sliced in half.
Another rider accelerated directly toward a group of Emperor's Children.
The traitors attempted to evade, their enhanced reflexes allowing several of them to avoid the first attack. But the Scimitar was already banking away, its rider twisting in the saddle before bringing his sword around for another strike.
The blade struck the back of one traitor's neck.
The Emperor's Child collapsed as his head was severed from his shoulders.
The Scimitar continued onward, its engine screaming as it accelerated through the battlefield.
More followed.
Caden and Gideon immediately understand what the Scimitars are doing.
They were dividing them.
The Scimitars darted between the traitors and Daemonettes at blinding speed, using their plasma cannons and heavy bolters to carve openings through the mass of the enemy. Each pass created another corridor, splitting groups of Emperor's Children and Daemonettes apart from one another.
The traitors attempted to close the gaps, only for another Scimitar to sweep through the formation and force them apart again.
Within moments, the once-continuous enemy line had been broken into numerous isolated groups.
"Now!" Gideon ordered.
The Blackwings surged into the openings.
They moved with practiced precision, rushing through the corridors created by the Scimitars before turning their weapons against the isolated groups on either side. Power swords flashed as they struck down Daemonettes, while bolt shells tore through traitor Astartes attempting to regroup.
The Scimitars continued to move around them, preventing the separated groups from reconnecting.
Behind the Blackwings came the Terminators.
Unlike the faster Blackwings, they did not rush blindly into the gaps.
They advanced steadily, filling the spaces that had been created and establishing a solid line behind the assault.
Storm bolters thundered.
Plasma blasters burned.
Power fists and chainfists crushed anything that attempted to break through.
The Terminators effectively transformed each corridor into a fortified position, stabilizing the advance while the Blackwings pushed deeper into the enemy formation.
Caden watched the battlefield through his helm display.
Ahead of him, Gideon was already deep within the largest concentration of the enemy, his power sword flashing as he fought four Daemonettes at once. Each creature moved with unnatural speed, their claws and blades striking from different directions, yet Gideon continued to advance while fighting them, forcing the daemons backward with every swing.
His helm display tracked dozens of moving targets before finally identifying the one he was looking for.
The traitor captain.
The Emperor's Children warlord was locked in combat with five Blackwings at once. His movements were impossibly fast, each strike calculated with almost effortless precision. His ornate blade flashed repeatedly as he parried power swords and redirected blows, never allowing the five Astartes to surround him completely.
Around him, his bodyguards were fighting even more Blackwings, desperately holding them back and preventing them from joining the attack on their captain.
Caden watched for several seconds.
Then he smiled beneath his helm.
He had longed for a worthy duel.
The last opponent who had truly given him that satisfaction had been an Ork Warboss, a monster whose strength had forced Caden to fight for every inch of ground.
Perhaps this one would prove worthy as well.
More importantly, capturing the captain was their objective.
The rest could die.
Caden lowered his Saturnine war axe.
"Let's go."
His five Saturnine Terminators immediately moved with him.
"Time to end this charade."