"Great master, everything proceeds according to your plan. Mortarion thinks he can suppress you—and the lady as well!" Tartarus said.
During the last Terran Crusade, Rhodes had intended to take Magnus alive and hold a public trial, executing a renegade primarch before the masses.
Now Rhodes finally had his chance.
"Let's go. We head to the battlefield as well," Rhodes said.
"My lord, whom should we bring this time?" Tartarus bowed and asked.
"You're giving Mortarion too much credit. To deal with him, I don't need an entourage. You and I are plenty," Rhodes smiled.
Mortarion was a triviality. Rhodes figured that even if he didn't go in person, his stand-in Barbarue might be able to handle the job. This trip was simply to bag Mortarion and bring him back.
"I understand, great master. We depart," Tartarus nodded, opened a golden portal, and stepped through with Rhodes.
…
Time rolled back to several hours earlier.
In a pitch-black gulf of deep space, the First Fleet of the Indomitus Crusade encountered the plague legions under Mortarion's command.
Upon contact, the Chaos fleet launched an assault. Countless corrupted daemon-wrought weapons roared, bombarding the Imperial line.
Seated on the bridge, Barbarue issued orders in Rhodes's name: bring up the void shields to maximum and hold the energy screens firm.
"Warriors of the Imperium, the enemy of Chaos is upon us! Fight bravely—do not betray the Emperor's trust!" Barbarue bellowed on the command deck, posing as Rhodes.
"For the Imperium! For the Emperor!"
"Exterminate the Chaos traitors—open fire!"
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Imperial destroyers and cruisers formed a firing line and poured counter-battery fire into the Chaos host. Macro-cannons and lances screamed; torpedoes knifed into the void toward enemy hulls.
Thunder rolled across the Chaos fleet's void-shields in pulsing light.
Meanwhile, the Adeptus Astartes—Rhodes's gene-sons—obeyed their primarch's orders, boarded assault craft, and began massed boarding actions.
They were joined by Imperial storm troops and squads of Battle Sisters. Flashes of blue teleport light arced as Rhodes's gene-sons used teleport bracelets to jump straight into the traitor marines' ships.
Space Marines stormed the enemy holds, chainblades and powered weapons howling, and fell upon the daemons.
Chaos hellbeasts and daemon-engines. Ranks of traitor marines, sorcerers, and cultists counterattacked the boarding parties.
Warp-sorcery shrieked wild. Bolters thundered in the cramped innards of ships.
Chaos Astartes also attempted boarding, but their craft smashed against Rhodes's fleet's energy screens before they could reach their targets.
From Rhodes's flagship launched a wave of King Joe automatons—Titan-class units capable of fighting in vacuum. Working with Imperial aircraft, they savaged the enemy boarding craft.
Once clear of their bays, the King Joe split into four independent forms and ripped into the Chaos cutters, blasting them into drifting scrap.
Even Astartes, exposed to open space, could do little—they died quickly to cold vacuum or under a torrent of fire.
"Order the Chaos sorcerers to use psychic rites—teleport directly into their compartments," Mortarion commanded from his flagship.
At his word, a new boarding wave began, Chaos troops using sorcery to jump onto Imperial vessels.
Imperial Space Marines, Sisters of Battle, and mortal troops left to garrison fought them savagely.
"Purge the traitors! Purge the heretics!"
"Sisters, the Gene-Mother watches us! Hail the Daughter of Ice!" A towering Sister raised her chainblade and roared.
Having implanted genetic seed from Elena, the Sisters could wield the power of frost; cold radiated from their armor.
Daemons and warp-spawned filth who dared close were frozen into statues—then shattered.
"Kill! Slay the False Emperor's dogs!" traitor marines bellowed, clashing with these unfamiliar, terrifying Sisters.
Augmented like Astartes with gene-seed, these Sisters were no weaker—and far more devout. They were, in a sense, the upgraded, unhinged variant of madwomen.
"The new Imperial primarch will die by my hand," Mortarion laughed.
He had to win this war. He had to fulfill Grandfather Nurgle's task. Otherwise, he could not wash away his shame—the colossal humiliation Typhus had dealt him.
"For Nurgle's loving grace!" Rotting Death Guard smashed open a pressure door, spraying corridors with stinking pus.
The lead Plague Marine raised his bolter—only to have three icicles spear through his skull. The Sisters' ice-warded armor glimmered cold blue in the dim companionways.
A hellbeast charged, roaring. Several Sisters combined their power, flash-freezing it into a sculpture.
"Pathetic counterfeit—you face a true Astartes. I grant you the mercy of death," croaked a Death Guard champion, his plague-scythe slashing at the Sister superior holding her chainblade aloft.
Clang!
The weapons collided.
Ice and virulent toxins clashed, a visible shockwave bursting from the point of impact.
The Sister superior staggered back several steps, but her eyes burned with fanatical will. "Heretic… you will be purged! For the Gene-Mother."
She growled, chainblade roaring; razor ice crystals formed along the teeth, blessed by the Gene-Mother's frigid bloodline.
The Chaos champion chuckled hoarsely; pus seeped beneath his rotten faceplate. "Foolish Imperial dog—you do not comprehend Grandfather's gifts!"
He whipped the scythe; a toxic miasma belched out, corroding the metal bulkheads.
"By the Gene-Mother's pure blood—Judgment of Ice!" The Sister superior raised her blade; a polar storm erupted, freezing the onrushing plague cloud into blue shards.
Cracks raced across the champion's bloated frame. He stared in shock as Grandfather's blessing was overruled by some older law of frost. The chainblade split his skull.
…
Elsewhere, Titus, leading the Astartes boarding operation, confronted a Daemon Prince.
"Dogs of the False Emperor—you seek your own deaths." The Nurgle prince sneered.
"For Lord Rhodes! Brothers, purge the heretic!" Titus led the charge, great power sword in hand.
Steel met warp-wrought flesh, and the Daemon Prince was hurled backwards.
"Impossible—how do you wield such strength?" the prince gasped. He had been blessed by Grandfather and sacrificed tens of billions of mortals to ascend.
"Foolish traitor—you're not fit to live. Death is your only grace," Titus roared, blade swinging.
"Behold Grandfather's gift! See the gulf between you mortals and me!" the Daemon Prince bellowed.
Corruption surged within him; warp energies swelled him to a 60-meter monstrosity with an 80-meter wingspan.
"This is Grandfather's true blessing. Mortals—witness my power!" he crowed.
"You're not the only one who can grow," Titus snorted, triggered his Ultra-Beast form, and swelled to over 60 meters, roaring as he charged. For the great Gene-Father, he would tear the foe apart.
Under the warp's rot, the prince swelled further, skin sloughing pus and maggots, carrion wings shadowing the field.
His laughter came like a plague gale, carrying the wails of souls: "Behold, servants of the False Emperor! Grandfather's benediction! Your flesh will rot, your souls return to the Garden!"
"Not today." Titus's sword fell.
The giants battled among shipwrecks; each clash made the warp shudder. The prince's blighted scythe hacked down—Titus slipped aside, the blade cleaving a battleship's flank.
Titus struck—his power sword rammed into the prince's gut; a cataract of pus sprayed forth.
"Pitiful mortal! You cannot kill me! Grandfather's gift makes me eternal!"
The prince grinned; his wound closed at sight-speed, maggots weaving flesh anew.
Titus wasted no words. His sword's disintegration field screamed and chopped into the prince's head.
"Let's see if Grandfather can save you twice."
The head burst like a rotten gourd—yet a flood of maggots rose from the neck, reforming a twisted face.
Holy fire wreathed Titus's blade; one stroke split the body from crown to crotch, unquenchable purifying flame devouring the gash.
Not long ago, Titus had merged with a cosmic phantasm-beast gaining sanctified flame that scorched daemonic souls. Rhodes had blessed him with the Emperor's psychic might.
What others could not kill, Titus could, borrowing the Emperor-avatar's power.
Rhodes indulged his most formidable commander greatly—even Titus's power armor was forged of extradimensional metal.
That metal had been stripped from an Emperor avatar, suffused with the Master's psychic benediction—a holy panoply.
"No! Impossible! Great Grandfather—save me!!"
The Daemon Prince's wail echoed in the warp, but Nurgle's rot was utterly consumed. Flesh carbonized in the flames and fell to ash.
Titus stood amid wreckage, his body shrinking to normal as he came down. His armor dripped daemon ichor. He raised his sword and roared to the surviving Astartes: "Victory to the Emperor! Victory to Lord Rhodes! Forward—slay the traitors!"
"For the Gene-Father!!" the marines answered, chainblades snarling, bolters roaring as they pushed deeper into the Chaos fleet.
They cut down everything before them.
"…"
Mortarion, on his command throne, witnessed the warrior's might.
He saw the slaying of a Daemon Prince—not an ordinary one, but an upgraded, giant-form prince.
Strength no less than his own.
Could he truly win? Regardless—he had to go.
Mortarion gripped his great scythe, Silence, and strode toward Titus.
At least Grandfather had blessed him again; he was stronger than a few months prior.
His steps echoed across rotten decks, his rebreather venting toxic fog, his withered staff dragging a trail of decayed warp residue.
"A dog of the False Emperor dares butcher Grandfather's favored?"
His voice was a charnel chorus, and Terminators of the Death Guard followed in silence, their corroded armor crawling with nurglings.
Titus looked up. Warnings flared in his helm as the death primarch's psychic pressure rolled over him. A corrupted primarch stood before him.
He did not flinch. Holy flame still burned along his blade.
"Mortarion—your time is over, traitor," Titus said, voice low and adamant through the vox.
Though facing a primarch, he felt no fear. For the Gene-Father, he would defeat Mortarion here and now.