Cutting the vox-link with Karl, Fahn turned his gaze toward the Cadian commander standing before him.
"It seems Karl's assessment aligns with yours. If the opportunity arises, we will endeavor to recover a vessel of significant displacement. However, should fortune fail us, you may be forced to make some difficult choices."
"Regardless of these xenos, we shall fight to the bitter end," the commander replied, his voice ironclad. "If there is no other recourse, I ask only that you evacuate the young Cadians. It is they who will ultimately restore the glory of the Cadian Shock Troops. For the Emperor's light, Cadia Stands."
Fahn looked at the mortal commander, noting the unyielding resolve flickering in the man's eyes. The Space Marine gave a solemn nod, murmuring a low, resonant response.
"For the glory of the Allfather."
Even an Adeptus Astartes could not deny the absolute fidelity of such resilient mortals. Fahn had not arrived in time for the War for Vigilus, but he was well-aware of its aftermath. The world of Cadia had been shattered, its people's cradle lost to the Great Rift, yet the Cadians fought on across the galaxy as a bedrock of the Imperium. Among all the "stones" that formed the Emperor's bulwark, the Cadian regiments were perhaps the most brilliant.
Their valor rivaled that of even some lesser-known Space Marine Chapters. The Wolves respected strength, but they revered loyalty above all. Looking at these mortals, Fahn was momentarily reminded of another Imperial institution, one loathed by the entire Vlka Fenryka.
If only those vermin of the Inquisition possessed a fraction of the integrity found in these men, he thought bitterly.
With a heavy heart, Fahn turned and strode out of the field headquarters. Vaulting over the trench line, he began to signal the gathering of his battle-brothers scattered across the defensive perimeter.
Nearby, a massive crater belched the thick, black smoke of burning promethium. The ruin of a Strike Cruiser lay halved within the hollow, alongside the shattered remains of an Imperial Navy heavy transport cruiser, snapped into two jagged sections.
Originally, the Wolf Lord had been leading his Great Company, alongside two Astra Militarum regiments, to reinforce several Imperial worlds on the border of Segmentum Obscurus and the Eastern Fringe that were reeling under Ork assaults.
The catastrophe struck during a long-range transit through the Immaterium. A sudden, violent surge of warp-tides had swallowed the Space Wolves' Strike Cruiser and one of the heavy transports, severing them from the rest of the fleet.
When they were finally vomited back into realspace, they found themselves staring at the distant, bleeding scar of the Cicatrix Maledictum. As they attempted to re-establish their bearings, a fleet of strange, blocky vessels belonging to the "Squats" appeared.
As Adeptus Astartes, they possessed sufficient data-slates to recognize most of the galaxy's xenos species. However, when the Wolf Lord attempted to hail these self-proclaimed "Leagues of Votann," the response was immediate and hostile.
The Imperials were unaware that, prior to their arrival, these Kin had just concluded a grueling engagement with a sudden Chaos warband. While the warp-tainted vessels of the Archenemy were far more grotesque and blasphemous in silhouette than those of the Imperium, to certain stubborn, literal-minded Kin, the distinction was academic. To them, both were unwelcome interlopers.
Outnumbered and outgunned, the lone Strike Cruiser and the heavy transport were no match for the Kin fleet and its array of cruiser-sized combatants. Furthermore, the local celestial anomalies were severe; light itself seemed warped, and the Navigators were blinded, unable to plot a stable course.
When the Imperial ships accidentally blundered into the orbital path of the planet below, the pursuing Votann fleet unexpectedly ceased its fire, opting instead to blockade them. A harsh warning crackled over the vox, demanding they steer clear of the "Ancestral World" and claiming they would be permitted to leave.
But the Wolf Lord, his blood stirred to a cold fury, had no intention of retreating. If the xenos prized this world so highly, it was surely a site of profound significance. Before their descent, he commanded the Astropaths to scream a final distress signal into the void.
Then, both Imperial vessels burned their engines to full capacity, plunging headlong toward the planet's surface. In the void, the enemy held the advantage of numbers, but on the ground, the Wolf Lord was confident he could teach these stubborn xenos a lesson in lethality they would never forget.
Yet, the planetary anomalies caught even the veteran Navy captains off-guard. A massive electromagnetic pulse fried guidance systems at the critical moment of reentry. The ships did not make a controlled planetfall.
The Strike Cruiser struck the earth like a spear, nose-first. The violent deceleration snapped the gargantuan hull in two. The transport cruiser fared little better, slamming into a mountain of reinforced metallic ore before shearing in half at its midsection.
Of the forty thousand mortal troops aboard the heavy transport, nearly half were lost before the first shot was even fired. On the Strike Cruiser, where the crew was sparser, only two unfortunate scions of Fenris saw their souls return to the Golden Throne during the impact.
The transport cruiser was relatively lucky; it avoided a catastrophic secondary explosion, and much of the Munitorum tithe and wargear remained intact. However, rivers of promethium began to hemorrhage from its ruptured tanks, flowing directly into the deep impact trench carved out by the Strike Cruiser.
The Strike Cruiser was in a far more precarious state. When the hull buckled, the main fuel conduits severed, dousing the entire forward section in a deluge of promethium. Combined with the fuel leaking from the transport, the crash site became a powder keg.
The subsequent detonation was world-shaking. The explosion swept the remains of both ships together like chaff, leaving a searing, kilometer-wide crater over two hundred meters deep. It was only because the Strike Cruiser had buried its prow so deep into the earth that the majority of the blast force was directed downward and upward, rather than outward. Had it been otherwise, every survivor would have been reduced to ash in an instant.
Monitoring from orbit, the Votann fleet witnessed the inferno. Though enraged by the desecration of their Ancestral World, they doubted many could have survived such a cataclysm. They signaled their ground forces to mop up any lingering survivors and turned their prows away, departing the system.
However, when the Kin ground forces approached, they found the area engulfed in a literal sea of fire. The hills had become impassable. The nearest Kin stronghold was too distant for a rapid terrestrial assault, so the commanders decided to wait for the thousand-degree promethium fires to burn themselves out before returning to deal with the "unfortunate" survivors.
That window of time gave the Imperial forces the desperate breathing room they required.
The indomitable Cadians crawled from the wreckage, leaning on one another for support. They immediately fell into formation, organizing search-and-rescue parties and salvaging what wargear they could. Surviving Tech-Priests, trailed by cohorts of mortal artificers and servitors, began the ritualistic labor of repairing damaged equipment.
Meanwhile, the Wolf Lord led his brothers into the shattered aft-section of their ship. They successfully recovered every gene-seed flask from the cryo-vaults and secured several of the Great Company's most sacred relics. Though the bulk of their standard wargear had been incinerated in the forward hull, a secondary armory in the stern provided enough bolters and munitions to sustain their depleted strength, now numbering less than a full Great Company.