His turbid eyes stared fixedly at the burning Imperial warships on his display, the features beneath his respirator twisted into a hideous grimace. He could feel his relied-upon domain of putrefaction rapidly dissipating, and the warship's self-healing capabilities had ground to an absolute halt, dragging down the surrounding subordinate vessels in its wake.
"Major General, sir! The enemy flagship's signal is fracturing, and its putrefaction domain energy profiles are plummeting! It has lost operational mobility!"
The observation officer's voice was filled with pure exhilaration.
Dominic stepped forward, his gaze firmly locking onto the massive dark-green silhouette struggling within the golden inferno on the screen. He delivered his directive with absolute, razor-sharp finality:
"Main lance arrays, charge! Target: the enemy flagship's core command compartment!"
"Charging countdown: three minutes!"
The atmosphere inside the bridge tightened once more. Everyone stared at the lance array charging progress bar, their breathing growing shallow and hurried.
Dominic stood before the viewport with his hands clasped behind his back, his uniform immaculately sharp, yet the fingers hidden at his side tightened imperceptibly. He did not share the relaxed expressions of the ratings around him; instead, his brow knit even deeper.
The memory of Lagnar's feigned death remained vividly etched in his mind. That Ork Warlord had also appeared to be blown to absolute smithereens, only to burst forth completely unscathed from the heart of the explosion moments later, severing Dominic's arm in the process. The sheer vitality of the Grandfather's disciples was structurally no inferior to that of the greenskins. Until the dust had completely settled, he could not afford even a fraction of a percent of complacency.
He refused to avert his gaze for even a single second, watching the progress bar incrementally notch toward maximum capacity. Even as the Pale Rose grew increasingly dim within the holy fires, the mental chord inside his consciousness remained pulled taut.
"Charge complete!"
"Fire!"
Three azure columns of light, magnitudes thicker than any previous discharge, violently erupted from the prow of the Gemstone. The beams pierced heaven and earth, carrying absolute apocalyptic energy as they instantly crossed the hundred-kilometer expanse, striking the midship section of the Pale Rose with flawless precision.
The first lance ripped apart the scorched, blackened flesh armor and the remnants of the corrupted shielding. The second lance punched through layer upon layer of fleshy compartments, driving straight into the engine core. The third lance completely skewered the entire capital ship from prow to stern, engulfing the bridge and the core compartments holding Phelps in a blinding flash.
Violent secondary explosions detonated sequentially deep within the hull as dark-green warp energies collided and fused with the golden holy fire, ultimately expanding into a multicolored orbital fireball kilometers wide. The massive heavy cruiser snapped completely in half at its midsection before fracturing into a thousand pieces, its wreckage spraying across the sector.
The foul stench of putrefaction, previously too thick to dissipate, thinned and vanished into the vacuum at terminal velocity, rapidly dropping far below warning thresholds.
"Confirmed! The enemy flagship's signature has completely vanished from the augurs! Warpspace anomaly readings have flattened to zero!"
The observation officer's voice trembled with irrepressible emotion.
The bridge fell into a brief, dead silence before erupting into a long-suppressed torrent of cheers. First Officer Karen discharged a massive sigh of relief, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead as he turned toward Dominic with a smile:
"Major General, it is finally resolved! Those damned traitors..."
Dominic's tense shoulders relaxed slightly by reflex, the heavy weight hanging over his heart finally dropping an inch. He opened his mouth to command the systematic mopping-up of the remaining stragglers, but a sudden flash of silver-crimson light caught the absolute periphery of his vision in the shadowed corner to the right of the bridge.
The luminescence was exceptionally faint, blending seamlessly into the rhythmic red pulsing of the auxiliary warning lights like fine stardust. Anyone else would have completely missed its passage, yet Dominic's heart skipped a violent beat.
That silver-crimson hue was something he had never forgotten.
On the day of Lagnar's boarding action, following Ralfa's death in the line of duty, Dominic had effectively lost all will to fight. If not for the sudden intervention of that Inquisitor—who had physically preserved him from the business end of a Blood Axe commando's firearm and psychologically rallied his spirits—he would never have endured until reinforcements arrived. Post-engagement, he had meticulously combed through every personnel log and combat recording across the entire vessel and found zero trace of the operative, ultimately chalking it up to a near-death hallucination.
Yet now, that exact light had manifested again.
He scanned the immediate surroundings without betraying a single emotion. Everyone remained clustered around the main display, either celebrating the victory or compiling combat telemetry; not a single soul noticed the anomaly in the corner.
Dominic cleared his throat, maintaining a flawlessly level register as he instructed his second-in-command:
"Karen, I am heading down to the lower cathedral to check on Bishop Venca and personally verify our remaining inventory of relic-modified munitions."
"You hold command of the bridge for the interim. Report any anomalies immediately."
"Understood, sir," Karen replied without the slightest suspicion, rendering a nod.
Dominic stepped out of the bridge, tracking the faint, trailing crumbs of silver-crimson light along the corridors. The illumination drifted through the air like a living firefly, guiding him past two distinct junctions before arriving at the corner of an infrequently traversed maintenance access tunnel.
This sector was perpetually cluttered with backup conduits and component crates, cast in deep shadows. Ordinarily, only the servitors and lay-mechanics of the Adeptus Mechanicus ventured down here to service equipment; it was entirely devoid of standard foot traffic.
And there, standing quietly within the deep shadows of the junction, was a slender silhouette.
She wore the matte-black uniform of the Inquisition, her hood pulled exceptionally low to conceal the vast majority of her features, exposing only the cold, sharp lines of her jaw and pale-pink lips. A ribbon of silver-crimson psychic energy coiled gracefully around her fingertips, casting fractured patterns of light and shadow across the dim access tunnel. It was Solin.
Dominic's pulse quickened by an unaccountable margin, his boots freezing to the deck by reflex. He had replayed that saving grace in his mind a thousand times, yet actually standing face-to-face with her across the shadow, the mountain of unspoken words locked up in his throat. Ultimately, they dissolved into the disciplined register characteristic of a career military officer:
"You... what do you require of me?"
Duty and the imperious needs of the state always held precedence; personal affections remained buried deep within the subconscious. Even if the individual standing before him was the sole focus of his waking thoughts, he would never compromise his military composure.
Solin did not turn around, nor did she grant him eye contact. She remained stationary within the gloom, her voice as chillingly clear as an arctic gale, entirely stripped of superfluous emotion:
"The core of the Pale Hand did not perish with the flagship."
Dominic's pupils contracted violently, his newly relaxed nerves snapping taut instantly: "What did you say?"
"In the exact microsecond preceding the detonation, the cognitive core of the Pale Hand translated its consciousness through a warpspace fissure."
Her register remained completely flat, as if she were detailing an entirely mundane logistical entry:
"It has seeded itself directly aboard the Gemstone, within the vicinity of Cargo Bay Seven on the lower decks."
"My scanning arrays have flagged residual signatures of corruption."
Her tone offered zero room for debate: "Whether you choose to credit this assessment resides entirely with you."
The exact millisecond the final syllable dropped, Dominic took a step forward to press for intelligence, yet the silver-crimson light had already vanished. By the time his boots cleared the corner, the shadow was entirely vacant, leaving behind nothing but a vanishing trace of a crisp, cold fragrance to validate that his senses had not played him false.
Dominic stood alone in the vacant maintenance tunnel, his brow heavily knit. There was no material evidence, no corroborating witnesses—merely a fragmented, highly abrupt warning. Under conventional circumstances, he would have discarded it as an heretical ruse or an hallucination born of localized warpspace fluctuations.
Yet his mind reeled back to that specific greenskin warlord's ambush.
Once was a statistical anomaly; twice constituted a definitive pattern.
He raised a hand to his chest, the cool metal of his ancestral relic badge registering clearly through the fabric of his uniform. A faithful child of the Emperor never ignored a warning delivered from the unseen margins of reality. Perhaps this individual truly operated as an emissary sent by the Divine Majesty, offering guidance at the absolute zero-hour of the crisis.
Dominic took a deep, measuring breath, suppressing the turbulent emotions churning within his chest before pivoting to stride rapidly back toward the bridge.
Regardless of whether the warning rang true or false, absolute caution remained the prime strategic mandate. The remnants of the Pale Hand would absolutely not find soil to take root aboard his flagship.