The vanishing of the Warp storms, and the decline of Chaos energy, threw many of the forces inside the Maelstrom into panic.
Their barrier was gone.
The Warp turbulence that had swallowed Imperial expedition fleets again and again, and the chaotic energy that — the instant a Navigator loyal to the Imperium of Man set foot in the Maelstrom — afflicted him with an unbearable headache and rapidly corrupted even humans of the most unshakable loyalty: all of it had vanished.
It was as if the lot had been erased from the root of the universe's logic.
The event that would plunge them into still greater terror, however, was yet to come.
Immediately after the Warp storms and the chaotic energy dissipated, a great fleet of the Imperium of Man plunged into the Maelstrom. First, a vanguard reconnaissance squadron burst from the Mandeville Point. Engine exhaust left hundreds of straight, dazzling white streaks in the void, as if a pack of unleashed hounds were spreading into a search formation.
If military action were judged necessary, the main fleet would be deployed.
The gigantic hulls of Luna-class cruisers and Overlord-class battleships cast shadows kilometres long in the starlight. The turret clusters mounted on the prows released a warm yet terrible glow as they warmed.
Last came the mobile fortresses and void-fortresses the war-sages of the Mechanicum had summoned from Mars and the various forge worlds.
Countless turrets covering the outer shells rotated slowly in the void.
Each gun barrel was thick enough to hold an entire Astartes unit.
The light from the fleet's stern engines gathered into one blaze, spread through the void like a field of stars, covered the sky, and swallowed the faint yellowish starlight at the Maelstrom's outer edge.
By this terrible military power, the non-Imperial forces that had clung to the Maelstrom's frontier were blown away like autumn leaves. Small pirate strongholds that had lingered at the Maelstrom's edge for centuries; smugglers' stations hidden deep in asteroid belts; temporary docks deserters had built in secret on the far side of shattered moons; ancient, eerie cities raised by xenos — all of it became burning wreckage under the Imperial fleet's repeated bombardment.
Even facing this desperate situation, Huron resolved to throw his entire fortune into a counterattack.
The Red Corsairs had built a vast empire inside the Maelstrom. It was not a loose pirate alliance living on plunder, but a secessionist regime with a complete industrial base and a military system of its own.
They possessed the largest and finest flotilla in the Maelstrom basin.
That fleet included many capital ships seized from the Imperial Navy. Through blasphemous modification by the Dark Mechanicum, their firepower far surpassed that of the original vessels.
They did not live by plunder alone. They held many forge worlds loyal to them, and those worlds supplied their resources.
Many fallen sages, zealous for research into dark technology, served Huron under the Red Corsairs' protection and diligently turned results the orthodox Mechanicum regarded as "heresy" into every new war-machine.
Within Huron's sphere of influence there were numerous spaceports. So long as a force was not in a blood feud with the Red Corsairs, it could trade in the markets of those ports.
From prohibited weapons brought in by xenos smugglers to the cruel instruments of torture brought in by the Dark Eldar — so long as the price could be paid, nothing was forbidden.
Huron was an extremely powerful figure. The fleets and warbands he led could generally act as they pleased, yet they had to pay him tribute regularly to show loyalty.
Many traitors joined the Red Corsairs as well.
Generals of the Astra Militarum who had defected from the Imperium, psykers pursued by the Inquisition, veteran human soldiers disillusioned with the Emperor, and many others.
These defectors supplied Huron with the loyalists' latest movements. Some had even infiltrated the Imperium of Man, entered the middle ranks of the Imperial Navy and the Administratum under false names, stolen military secrets, and gone on leaking the equipment and strength of the expedition fleets. In Huron's eyes, the Imperial fleet had no secrets left.
Without five Primarchs taking command, the result would have been uncertain.
The Red Corsairs had also built fairly good relations with other xenos powers.
Huron often hired those xenos to carry out his orders, and thereby won the goodwill of many races and traitor Legions, and a reputation as the man who brings rain in a drought.
Huron exhausted every trump card. He sortied every warship still operational.
The leaders of the warbands who had sworn him loyalty were summoned as well.
He also sought out forces with which he had blood feuds, and negotiated with them. Among them were the green-skinned admirals known as the Sunbreakers; an Ork warlord famed for welding the wreckage of enemy fleets into his own flagship; Sazaar, self-proclaimed Pirate King and undying ruler, who had usurped the Sarnid dynasty; and a Dark Eldar governor deep in his own schemes. Under Huron's call, they gathered, together with representatives of races the Imperium of Man regarded as alien and unclean — the Hrud among them.
Before these representatives, Huron used his native eloquence and delivered the most powerful speech of his life.
His voice was translated in real time into each xenos tongue. He waved his hands and made exaggerated gestures.
"The Maelstrom is our common home. The Imperium of Man has the audacity to plot to dominate it completely. We can never stand by and hand our home over to the madmen who worship the Corpse-Emperor."
"We must unite, fight those accursed bastards, and drive them from our home."
With this extremely inflammatory rhetoric, Huron persuaded those forces, united them, and formed an exaggerated coalition.
These forces, however, soon realised the decision had been extremely foolish.
What they ought to have done was flee at once, not fantasise about reversing the situation.
Leaving aside the Nameless Ones, whom even the gods feared, an Imperial host commanded by five Primarchs was already a force of unimaginable strength.
The main forces of both sides at last plunged into a decisive battle in a nameless gulf.
The coalition Huron led fielded warships of many races.
For the first time in history, every kind of xenos warship appeared in the same stretch of space.
The swollen warships the green-skinned Orks had built out of wreckage gave off a different creak from every metal plate welded to the hull, each time they shuddered.
The thick smoke jetting from their engine nozzles became the most conspicuous bodies of light in the void. The Dark Eldar's streamlined spirit-ships drew elegant yet terrible arcs through the dim void. Faint laments of imprisoned souls flashed now and again across their surfaces.
Hrud warships were sheathed in space-time wave-fields. Each looked like a translucent crystal frozen on the boundary of reality and illusion, and its outline changed constantly under an observer's gaze.
Races still more socially excluded — the maggot-folk and the snake-folk among them — committed dark starships built with wicked technology to the battle.
"Let us all join forces, for our common home!"
Huron stood on the bridge of the flagship Nightmare Dawn and shouted a slogan he himself did not believe.
Yet for the sake of common interest, and to avoid annihilation at the hands of the Imperium of Man, the races of the coalition answered Huron's call. Many of the coalition's xenos raised roars of anger, made their battleship engines growl, and charged the Imperial fleet at full speed.
Chaotic flame jetted from the port stern and left frenzied trails of light in the void.
The Imperial fleet did not manoeuvre. It stayed quietly where it was.
The hulls of the Luna-class cruisers, lit by starlight, looked like an ancient chessboard laid out in a wedge.
Their spacing had been adjusted so precisely that the macro-turrets on each ship's flank covered exactly the blind spots in the fire of the ships beside them.
Just as Huron and the others stood confused by the Imperial fleet's inaction, a space-time storm suddenly arose.
It was not chaotic energy bursting from a Warp rift, but something emitted from a more primitive level.
Collapsed space formed a vortex inside the coalition fleet's formation.
It was as if someone had seized the centre of the real universe's smooth fabric, twisted it hard, then twisted it back the other way.
The folds spread radially from the centre. The peak of each fold pierced a coalition unit with exact aim.
Ships caught inside, regardless of race or tonnage, were drawn into the same gravitational distortion at the same moment.
The gigantic fleet that, a mere few seconds before, had been charging side by side was torn apart by this irresistible force.
The chaotic energy of each ship began to collapse at once, from the edges inward.
Stripped from the shields, fragments of energy in every colour were stretched through the warped space-time and turned into countless threads that struggled and snapped. Some warships were torn to pieces by the distortion and the storm.
A swollen, gigantic Ork wreck was torn in two. Thick black smoke rose from the broken metal.
Hrud crystal-ships were thrown into turbulent space-time that not even a space-time force-field could ward off.
It was the same for every other race's warships. Not a single ship escaped unharmed.
A great mass of wreckage was flung into space. Each piece, blown by the gravity vortex, spun at tens of times a safe speed, struck allied ships far off, and set off chain collisions and explosions.
To Imperial soldiers standing at the observation windows, the fiercely burning wreckage looked like twinkling stars. An incomparably beautiful, and fleeting, sight.
Those fleeting stars were the last brilliance left of a coalition fleet that, until a moment ago, had overflowed with pride and shouted "For the homeland!"
The reason so extreme a space-time storm had arisen was, of course, inseparable from Datch.
He had summoned his long-vanished favourite pet, the ancient great beast Yogg-Saron.
The ancient gigantic creature floated in the void. Its bulk made the coalition's burning wreckage, behind it, look insignificant.
From the instant it appeared, the spatial structure around it began to twist and deform of itself, like a heavy weight thrown into deep water. Visible ripples spread through the surrounding space.
Its very existence compressed and warped the space-time around it.
The gravitational field shifted from absolute stability to complete disorder in less time than a heartbeat takes to finish.
The coalition fleet, like a school of sardines thrown into a high-speed centrifuge, could not even hold the most basic attitude.
Before proper combat had even begun, the coalition Huron led suffered a catastrophic defeat. All that remained was the mopping-up.
Several Primarchs commanded the Imperial fleet in good order and swept the beaten coalition away.
Dorn held command of the frontal assault. Every order he issued drove the attack like a gear-train locked to a single shaft, and steadily pulverised the enemy line.
Jaghatai held command of the hunt. The White Scars hunting fleet he led stitched through the scattered coalition again and again, and broke through.
Every time they passed, an irreparable crack opened in the coalition's collapsed front.
Vulkan himself commanded Astra Militarum ground forces and struck devastating blows against every planet where the coalition tried to reorganise.
Leman Russ dispersed his wolves among the assault boats, targeted the remaining coalition flagships, and swept the enemy commanders who were trying to pull a formation back together.
The only ones still keeping their morale were the green-skinned fleet.
The Orks were not afraid of warships being overturned by the space-time storm. On the contrary, in their excitement the whole fleet played the same battle-song through the speakers of the wrecked ships, together with the Orks' repeated shouts.
Their large warships, however, were far too unwieldy. The firepower was strong, and the accuracy poor. They could not stand against an Imperial fleet that had been improved again and again.
Struck by precise fire from the Imperial gun-arrays, the crudely welded armour plates were like ancient pottery smashed head-on by a heavy hammer.
The collapse began at the first crack. In the end, the whole wreck became a mass of flame spreading through the void.
Countless green warships exploded in the void. Countless green soldiers were thrown out into it.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side, two Necron fleets confronted one another.
"How can you serve humans?" Sazaar, self-proclaimed Pirate King and undying ruler, shouted at the astromancer Orikan before his eyes.
Sazaar's flagship had been boarded by Orikan and his elite units. He was in a desperate predicament.
"Why are you helping them fight their own people?" Sazaar pressed.
"Those who oppose the Nameless Ones have no qualification to be counted among my people," Orikan said with anger.
"Traitor! Absolute traitor! You will be punished!" Sazaar said.
"You are the traitor." Orikan raised his staff and projected a vivid hologram.
The image showed many of the universe's dead restored by the Nameless Ones. Soul and flesh recovered, they were living once more.
They lived in a beautiful world richly overgrown with plants. Some drew water from a stream. Some looked up at the sky and felt the rain. It was like a fairy-tale world.
Sazaar's eyes widened. In a voice of disbelief, he said, "This cannot be! This is fake. It must be fake!"
"You are the true traitor. How dare you lay a hand on the Nameless One who can save us! Your sin cannot be forgiven." So saying, Orikan lightly struck the void with his staff and summoned Overlord Zarak.
Seeing this, Sazaar shouted at once.
"Still going to say you aren't a traitor? You were in league with the star-gods!"
The next instant an energy beam fired. It pierced Sazaar's body and the metal deck behind him, annihilated him completely, and robbed him of any chance of rising from a reanimation forge.
"This is not called betrayal. It is following the Nameless One's will," Orikan said calmly, staring at Sazaar's remains.
The decisive battle turned into a massacre. Everyone fled for their lives, trying to break out of the Imperial encirclement.
After fierce fighting, Huron led a band of remnants clear of that encirclement and fled into the abyss of the void.
His flagship Nightmare Dawn was badly damaged. Black smoke rose in many places.
The port side had been pierced in three places by plasma-cannon fire. The starboard void-shield generator was completely destroyed. A crack a boarding team had cut in the bridge bulkhead was not yet fully sealed, and cold air hissed from it.
Yet he had survived, and had escaped the encirclement of the Imperial main fleet commanded by five Primarchs.
"Hahaha." Huron wiped the blood from his face. An excitement he could not hide sat on his features, and with it his smugness.
"I laugh at those Primarchs' lack of intellect, and at the Nameless One's complete incompetence. Even after they used every means, in the end they let me escape."
"If they launched a surprise attack here, they would without doubt wipe us out in a single blow."
The instant he finished speaking, an alarm rang.
A servitor wired into the machine-control panel trembled violently. From the throat that remained — the vocal cords had been forcibly removed — ear-splitting screams, indistinguishable from a human voice, came one after another.
The floating image updated without pause. Against the starfield that until then had been still, countless red dots appeared at once.
Each one stood for an identified Imperial warship, the aquila drawn upon it.
The lead warship was the Gloriana-class battleship Macragge's Honour.
Behind it followed countless Imperial warships, each fitted with turret clusters. Macro-cannon barrels had already rotated into position. Plasma-torpedo ports stood open. Fire-control systems were laid on the Red Corsairs' wreckage.
The alarm sounding aboard Nightmare Dawn was torn apart by the loudspeakers and changed into a scream no one could identify.
The whole bridge fell at once into panic. Only alarms and sobbing rang there.
Huron, who a mere few minutes before had been laughing heartily, went deathly pale and sank into an abyss of despair. Again and again, unable to stop himself, he shouted, "The heavens mean to kill me!"
In his aides' eyes, despair and a speechless grief were mixed together.
Didn't you just laugh at people of low intelligence?
Now that you've actually been ambushed, you're dissatisfied again?
"Father!" Huron shouted into the vox. That voice held none of the dignity expected of a dark leader.
His only wish now was that Guilliman would spare his life, seeing that he too was Guilliman's son.
A man can bow and rise.
So long as he lives, there will be another chance.
On the main strategium of Macragge's Honour, Guilliman lifted a brow at the incoming communication.
This traitor is completely shameless!
To survive, he even shouted "Father."
Calling him father will no longer be of any use.
Those who betray the Imperium and turn to Chaos ought to take a severe punishment from the iron fist.
"Fire." Guilliman raised his hand and brought it down sharply, cold and without mercy.
Every macro-cannon on the broadside of Macragge's Honour jetted dazzling white flame in unison. A dense, concentrated barrage swallowed that whole stretch of space, every corner of Huron's flagship included.
In an instant, the void became as bright as day.
Despair and screams on the ruined comm-line were swallowed by endless flame and the icy void, and, together with the broken deck and the pirate flag, headed for ruin.
Thus the story of Huron — master of the great vortex, uncrowned king, and ruthless king — closed its curtain.
....