An hour before the reinforcements arrived, the orbital bombardment over Kasr Kraf had ceased completely, and the Blackstone Fortress appeared to have shifted its primary batteries away from the plains.
At that moment, inside the highest watchtower of Kasr Kraf, Lord Castellan Creed was staring intently at the tactical hololith before him when the earth suddenly shuddered with a violent, unnatural force. He walked to the reinforced view-port.
"By the Emperor!" Creed hissed. His adjutant immediately moved to his side, asking for a status report.
Creed walked silently back to the map with a somber expression and drew a heavy red cross over a major fortress-city north of Kasr Kraf. That massive stronghold, which once housed tens of millions of souls, had been effectively erased. It did not burn; it simply vanished from the surface of reality. All matter had been atomized by a concentrated torrent of Warp energy, replaced now by a field of pulsating enemy airdrop silos.
"It seems only the shields of Kasr Kraf, reinforced by the Pylon Array, can withstand a direct manifestation from the Blackstone Fortress..." Creed murmured, studying the dwindling tactical icons. They could not afford to lose this position.
Across the theater, the lines were drawn. On the eastern plains, the Baroness of House Raven led her Knights in a desperate standoff alongside the Adeptus Mechanicus against the enemy's Legio Vulcanum.
To the south, the Fortress of the Martyrs was held by the Black Templars, several Cadian artillery regiments, and two armored companies. They braced for the imminent onslaught of the Word Bearers.
The Kraf Canyon to the west, a vital artery leading to the rear of the fortress, was held by the Cadian interior guard. Traitors who had fled from the defeat at Voscania were now hurling themselves at the defenses in a frenzied attempt to break through.
Creed continued to trace the landmarks. With the northern fortress gone, only the Dark Angels remained in that sector, stubbornly defending their grounded flagship, the Sword of Defiance. The main host of Chaos was preparing a frontal assault. Creed had already identified the heraldry on the descending drop-pods.
It was the cold, iron-grey mark of the Iron Warriors—the Despoiler's most proficient siege-masters, bringing with them a tide of heavy ordnance and armored vehicles designed to grind all resistance into the dust.
He set his pen down and looked at his adjutant. "Prepare every atmospheric wing within Kasr Kraf. Launch everything we have. We must intercept their vanguard!"
"At once, My Lord!"
Half an hour before the reinforcements arrived, the airfields within the Kasr Kraf complex were a hive of frantic activity.
Several wings of Valkyrie assault carriers were prepped for immediate sortie; their mission was to strike the northern plains and disrupt the enemy's landing zones.
Pilots Davis and Kezlar were conducting their final pre-flight checks. The vox-channel hummed with static before a deep, authoritative voice broke through.
"Attention all wings. T-minus ten minutes to operation start. This is Colonel Stracka, commanding the Northeastern Corridor. Be advised: this is the largest concentrated atmospheric deployment in the history of the Cadian Gate..."
Kezlar dialed the volume down to a minimum, but the Colonel's speech continued to drone in the background. "We are deploying eleven full wings, supplemented by six-and-a-half auxiliary squadrons. Once we engage, this will be the most significant aerial engagement in the history of this world..."
Kezlar cut the audio entirely, and a heavy, suffocating silence filled the cockpit. He turned to look at Davis, who sat with his eyes closed, taking slow, rhythmic breaths. "This is a one-way trip, isn't it?"
"Likely," Davis replied, opening his eyes.
Time crawled forward. Under the direction of the ground crews, the fighters and gunships began to lift off in a continuous stream of fire and thunder.
Kezlar piloted his Valkyrie through the shimmering perimeter of the Void Shield. As he crossed the threshold, his body vibrated with a nauseating psionic resonance. In the distance, a vast swarm of Imperial aircraft began to coalesce into a single, massive formation.
Davis looked out the side canopy to see a horizon filled with Valkyries. Above them, wings of Marauder bombers maintained a heavy altitude, while Lightning interceptors shrieked past on their flanks.
They flew in long, tiered columns—a formation designed to saturate enemy air defenses. Lasers began to stitch the sky on both sides, and Kezlar could hear the whip-crack sonic booms of heavy shells passing dangerously close to the hull.
Above them, enemy flak exploded in rhythmic bursts, creating an artificial canopy of black smoke that rained jagged shrapnel onto their wings as they pressed forward.
As they reached the northern sector, the site where the great fortress had once stood was now nothing more than a colossal, cauterized crater of black glass.
Suddenly, a Marauder bomber directly above them disintegrated into a ball of white-hot fire. "Contact! Breaking formation!" Kezlar fought the controls, banking hard to avoid the falling wreckage. Shrapnel the size of a fist clattered against the cockpit glass, screaming against the reinforced plating. The shattered bomber tumbled past them, snapping in two before hitting the wastes.
The vox-channel erupted with panicked cries: "Bats! Bats in the air!"
Davis kept shouting directions, urging Kezlar to evasive maneuvers. No one could see the attackers clearly; they were blurs of jagged black shadow—Heldrakes and specialized Chaos interceptors that tore through the Imperial wings like wolves through a flock.
Then, the main enemy fighter screen arrived. Kezlar gritted his teeth, white-knuckling the control stick. The Valkyrie shuddered under a hail of autocannon fire as the unknown shadowy figures continued their high-speed strafing runs.
The air became a chaotic tapestry of tracer fire and explosions. Within minutes, the Cadian wings were being systematically dismantled. Kezlar's Valkyrie was singled out by three Chaos fighters that clung to his tail like parasites.
"Burn in hell!" Kezlar growled, pushing the engines to their thermal limits as he rolled and dived to evade the incoming fire.
"Break right!!!" Davis screamed. A missile detonated mere meters away, accompanied by a deafening klaxon in the cabin. The Valkyrie lurched violently; they had been hit.
"Right wing is trailing smoke! We're losing lift!" Davis shouted, staring at the blackened, twisted metal of the stabilizer.
The pursuers began to walk their machine-gun fire across the Valkyrie's fuselage, while a flight of Heldrakes began to bank toward them from the horizon. Feeling the craft die beneath him, Kezlar began to whisper his final prayers to the Emperor.
At that moment, a roar louder than any engine he had ever heard descended from the upper atmosphere. Davis looked up and shouted, "Throne! Look at the sky! Unknown bogeys, high altitude and moving fast!"
Nearly a thousand sleek, alien-patterned warplanes hurtled through the clouds at speeds that defied the laws of physics, diving straight into the heart of the melee.
Suddenly, the encrypted Cadian channel was hijacked by a crisp, clear signal. A deep male voice resonated through the cockpit: "Hold your altitude, Cadians. The Hel-Angels are delivering their regards."
"Are those... reinforcements?" Creed shouted from his command post, his voice thick with disbelief. Through his magnoculars, he watched as a massive formation of unidentified fighters began to systematically annihilate the Chaos air cover.
At this critical juncture, a force had broken through the Black Fleet's blockade and punched into the atmosphere. His gaze drifted higher, to the thirty massive warships now descending through the clouds like vengeful gods.
His adjutant suddenly shouted over the din, "Sir! We are receiving an incoming transmission on an open Imperial frequency! The sender identifies as the 'Reinforcements from Aiur'!"
"I see them, I see them..." Creed murmured, mesmerized by the sight of the sky-filling transports and the colossal war machines beginning their descent into the fires of Cadia.