The Andronius is a Strike Cruiser of the Emperor's Children Legion since the start of the Great Crusade and has been used as a second flagship after the Pride of the Emperor. The Pride of the Emperor, ironically named, is a Gloriana-class battleship and the Flagship of Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor's Children.
Currently, it was quiet and tense, with grand rooms casting long, dark shadows, and echoing corridors empty of all but servants.
The ship's engines pulsed faintly in the stern, with only the rumble of directional thrusters vibrating through the vessel. Every station was manned, every blast door sealed, and Tarvitz recognised a battle alert when he saw one.
Captain Saul Tarvitz of the 10th Company embodied the virtues of honour and nobility that defined his Legion. He earned the respect of the troops under his command and was content with his role within the Legion, seeking only the opportunity to bring glory to his Primarch and the Emperor.
However, he was not well-liked by some of the more traditional members of the Legion's command staff, precisely because of his stance of being 'content' with what he could do, unlike most in the 3rd Legion, who followed after their Primarch's example to reach perfection.
Tarvitz was supposed to have been on Isstvaan III right now, fighting alongside his brothers and cousins against the rebel Planetargy Governor. But he wasn't. He had informed Rylanor that he didn't want the prestigious position at the spear tip of the attack and had taken over as Eidolon's senior staff officer, replacing Captain Odovocar.
He planned to relay the commander's orders to the surface, but he knew it was only a matter of time before his deception would be uncovered.
Something was going on. Something was wrong.
What confused him about the campaign below was the fact that the Isstvanians had no fleet to fight. What were four entire legions doing here?
The hull groaned, and Tarvitz felt a deep rumbling through the metal deck, sensing the ship's motion even before the artificial gravity adjusted. Ever since the first wave of the spear tip assault had launched, the vessel had been in motion, and Tarvitz knew that his suspicions about something being wrong were well-founded.
According to the mission briefings he had read earlier, Fulgrim's flagship was supposed to launch the second wave only after the palace and the Sirenhold had been taken. There was no reason for the ship to be moving.
So why was it moving?
The only reason to move a vessel after a launch was to move it into low orbit in preparation for a planetary bombardment. Though he told himself he was being paranoid, something pushed Tarvitz to see for himself what was going on.
He made his way swiftly through the Andronius towards the
gun decks, keeping clear of grand chambers and the columned grandeur of the Monument Hall. He kept to the areas of the ship where his presence would not be strange or anything special during this time, and where those who might recognise him were unlikely to see him.
Tarvitz descended into the lower reaches of the ship, far from
where the Emperor's Children lived in the most magnificent
parts of the Andronius. The rest of the ship was populated by servitors
and servants. It was more functional, and Tarvitz knew he would
pass without being challenged or questioned here.
Tarvitz made his way into the darkness of the engine structures, which opened out many hundreds of metres below the gantry on which he stood.
Above the engine spaces were the foul-smelling gun decks, where powerful cannons, capable of levelling cities, were stored in massive, armoured mountings.
"Stand by for ordnance," spoke an automated, metallic voice.
Tarvitz felt the ship shift again, and this time he heard the hull creak as the planet's upper atmosphere raised the outer hull's temperature.
He descended an iron staircase at the end of the dark gantry, revealing the vast expanse of the gun deck that sprawled before him. It was a titanic vault stretching the length of the vessel. Huge, hissing cranes fed the guns, lifting tank-sized shells from the magazine decks through blast-proof doors.
Gunners and loaders toiled alongside their riggers, with each gun being serviced by a hundred men who pulled on thick chains and levers in preparation for firing. And that's what it was: preparation for firing.
Servitors distributed water to the gun crews, while Mechanicum Adepts maintained watch over the weapons to ensure they were properly calibrated.
Tarvitz felt his resolve to find out what was truly going on grow stronger, and his anger rose at the sight of the guns being readied for action.
Who were they planning to target?
With thousands of Astartes on the planet's surface, bombarding the Choral City seemed absurd and dangerous. Were they truly for this battle? Yet here were the guns, loaded and ready to unleash destruction. What was there not to understand...?
Everything, he told himself. It was as if his brain had the answer, but his mind wasn't responding, wasn't willing to truly believe what he was seeing.
He doubted that the gunmen operating these weapons understood which planet they were orbiting or even whom they were about to strike. One had to remember the size of the second flagship and realise that entire communities thrived beneath the decks of the starship, with some not seeing the light of day for years, if not decades. So it was entirely possible that these men might have had no idea who they were about to destroy.
He reached the end of the staircase and set foot on the deck, finally revealing himself. Tarvitz heard footsteps approaching and turned to see a red-robed adept of the Mechanicum.
"Captain," the adept asked, "is there something amiss?"
"No," said Tarvitz, revealing a beautiful and disarming smile. "I am just here to ensure that everything is proceeding normally."
That action alone was hard for Tarvitz, as the anger he felt grew by the second. But he still gave a performance to play his part.
"I can assure you, lord, that preparations for the bombardment
are proceeding exactly as planned. The warheads will be
launched prior to the deployment of the second wave as ordered."
"Warheads?" asked Tarvitz.
"Yes, captain," said the adept. "All bombardment cannons are loaded with air-bursting warheads containing virus bombs as specified in our order of battle."
The adept looked at Tarvitz questioningly, wondering why he didn't know that. But he didn't know much about anything, so he didn't question it further right now.
"Virus bombs," said Tarvitz, fighting to hold back his revulsion on his face at what the adept was telling him.
"Is everything all right, captain?" asked the adept, finally noticing the change in his expression, as he couldn't keep it under control any longer.
"I'm fine," Tarvitz lied, feeling as if his legs would give way any second. "You can return to your duties."
The adept nodded and set off towards one of the guns.
Virus bombs…
Weapons so terrible and forbidden that only the Warmaster
himself, and the Emperor before him, could ever sanction their
use. Virus bombs are powerful weapons of mass destruction commonly used to carry out Exterminatus.
Each warhead would unleash the life eater virus into the air above a planet, which destroyed life in all its forms and wiped out every shred of organic matter on the surface of a planet within hours. That was usually the way it went, but there was an additional step after waiting a few hours.
The magnitude of this new knowledge and its implications left Tarvitz truly and utterly shocked. He felt his breath coming in short, painful gasps as he tried to reconcile what he knew with what he had just learned. His bioengineered superhuman body was having trouble, and if he were a normal human, he would probably have entered shock by now.
The virus bomb was an exterminatus-level weapon.
His Legion was preparing to annihilate the planet below, and he suddenly realised that it couldn't be the only one involved in this operation. To saturate a planet with enough virus warheads to eradicate all life would require many ships.
What's more, Travitz understood that such an order could only have come from the Warmaster.
Finally, Travitz's mind and brain reached the same conclusion. For whatever reason, the Warmaster Horus Lupercal has chosen to betray a third of his warriors who were currently fighting on the planet, eradicating them all in one fell swoop.
"I have to warn them," he said in a hurry.
He turned around and started running at his fastest speed for the embarkation deck.
.
The bolt round had torn a cavernous, smoking crater through the mortal's midsection, spilling shattered organs and black, boiling fluids into the grey mud. By all the laws of biology, the civilian was dead.
Yet, as the Death Guard Space Marine stood over him, his massive bolter still smoking, the creature had raised a shaky, blood and mud-stained hand and flipped him the middle finger.
"Arrogant mortal filth," the marine grunted, his voice sounded like a mechanical rasp through his vox-grill.
He didn't waste another shell. He simply turned his massive body away, stepping over the crumpled body to rejoin his squad's advance through the rebel trenches.
He didn't notice the infinitesimal, vaporised mist of Alexei's blood that had sprayed across his armour joints when the body exploded. He didn't know it at that moment, but he would soon realise that the Life-Eater virus and the betrayal weren't going to be the worst things on Isstvan III today.
By killing Alexei, he hadn't just eliminated an annoying rebel. He had cracked open a literal cooking pot of reality-defying and, most importantly, endless viruses. And the moment the marine breathed in the atomised spray through his helmet's atmospheric intake filters, his fate was sealed.
The purifying mechanisms didn't matter. The virus was not a normal one.
The symptoms started small.
For a Space Marine of the Death Guard, sickness was an alien concept. They were especially durable and resistant, thanks to the gene-seed of Mortarion. They were the sons of Barbarus, used to toxic fumes and hardened by a legion culture that treated absolute resilience as a religion.
Their gene-seed-enhanced immune systems could neutralise arsenic, digest radioactive fallout, and shrug off alien bioweapons.
But several minutes after stepping over Alexei's body, already having forgotten about him, the space marine felt a sudden, sharp spike of ice-cold pressure behind his eyes.
"Brother-Sergeant," he grunted over the local squad vox, his voice catching slightly. "My auto-senses are displaying a minor calibration error. Ambient thermal readings are fluctuating."
"Adjust your intake valves, Brother," the sergeant replied, not breaking stride as his power scythe reaped through a pocket of surviving Isstvanian rebels. "The Choral City is ours. Stay focused."
The marine nodded, but inside his armour, his superhuman immune system was secretly descending into absolute panic.
The Meta Essence of the Virus wasn't just a disease inside Alexei; it was an intelligent, aggressive 'thing' that now literally was Alexei. Any virus he wanted could be created. So when he realised in the moment of his death what would happen, he naturally created a particular virus that would help him in this situation.
Alexei's soul didn't die when his human meat-suit blew up. He had created the virus among all viruses, translating his entire existence, his soul and his memories into a virus that then found a much better, much larger host.
Inside the marine's bloodstream, the Larraman cells, the genetic wonder designed to instantly clot an Astartes' wounds that could attach to white blood cells, were given misinformation and attempted to seal a wound that wasn't really there, creating a clot. They were instantly rewritten.
The Oolitic Kidney, the master organ responsible for filtering toxins, began to seize, its cellular walls dissolving into a thick, black oil as the viral colony hijacked its functions and temporarily altered its primary function.
From filtering toxins to creating more virus-infected cells.
"Cough."
The marine stumbled, his heavy boot slipping in the mud. A wet, tearing cough rattled his chest plate. Inside his helmet, a thick smear of dark, synthetic fluid splattered against his visual display screen.
'What is this?' the marine thought, a rare spike of transhuman panic piercing his cold discipline. 'I am Death Guard. I do not bleed from the lungs. I do not tire. What is happening?'
He raised his bolter to fire at a retreating group of Warsinger cultists, but his muscle-twitch response failed him. His fingers felt heavy, uncoordinated, as if the nerves were no longer entirely his own.
The armour's internal bio-monitors began to scream into his ear, flashing red warnings across his retinas:
[CRITICAL WARNING: MULTI-ORGAN FAILURE DETECTED]
[PREOMORIDIAL SYSTEM CORRUPTION]
[SYNAPTIC DEGRADATION IN PROGRESS]
[APPLYING EMERGENCY FUNcti...]
[SysTemIc ov...]
"No," the marine hissed, forcing his leg forward through sheer, stubborn willpower. "For the Emperor. For Mortarion."
He managed to pull the trigger. The bolter barked once, twice, blowing a rebel apart, but the recoil nearly dislocated his shoulder. That was supposed to be impossible. The muscles in his arm felt as though they were liquefying beneath the white ceramite Power Armour, being systematically broken down.
He tried to alert someone, but he couldn't. His voice wasn't working; his body was not responding to him. The virus was now spreading through his neurons.
Then, the virus reached the Holy of Holies: the Progenoid Glands.
These glands are crucial to the Chapter's future because they are the only means of producing new gene-seed. Their sole purpose is to reproduce gene-seed within the bodies of the Marines themselves. The glands absorb genetic material from the other implanted organs. As they mature, each gland develops a single gene-seed that corresponds to each of the zygotes implanted in the Marine.
The moment Alexei's viral strain flooded the Progenoids, a profound, esoteric synthesis occurred. The virus didn't just destroy the gene-seed; it settled inside it, taking over fully. It mapped out the transhuman DNA, memorised the gene-seed's biological architecture, and permanently wove its own absolute loyalty matrix into the organ. For generations to come, any marine created from this harvested material would carry Alexei's mind and virus in their blood.
Finally, the pathogen slammed into the base of the brain, severing the marine's consciousness from his central nervous system and making him pass out.
The Death Guard Marine stopped dead in the middle of the trench. His bolter slipped from his numb, armoured hands, falling in the mud.
His vision went completely black. The transhuman soul of the nameless Death Guard warrior disappeared and was consumed, completely wiped clean.
A second later, his eyes snapped open behind the red lenses of his helmet.
"Bloody hell!" Alexei gasped.
He looked down at his new hands. They were no longer the frail, pale fingers of a baseline human civilian. They were massive, iron-hard gauntlets clad in thick, bone-white ceramite. He flexed his fingers, feeling the terrifying power of an Astartes running through his newly claimed muscles.
He took a deep breath. The internal suit filters were dead, but it didn't matter. His new body tasted the air, and through the viral network rewriting his brain, he could see the biological signatures of every living thing within a five-kilometre radius.
The viruses he had created before that were still alive and active in the air. He had literally just transferred from one body to another.
"Brother?" a voice rasped from the front.
Alexei turned his helmeted head. The Brother-Sergeant of his squad had walked back down the trench line, his power scythe resting on his shoulder, his visored gaze scanning the marine's dishevelled posture.
"Why did you drop your weapon? Stand to your post. The compliance is wrapping up."
Alexei looked at him. He had all the memories of the Space Marine. For all intents and purposes, he was him. They were now the same. Alexei had taken over and absorbed all of the Astartes there were.
"The compliance isn't wrapping up, Sergeant," Alexei said. "The real battle is just about to begin."