Down at the core sector gate, the defensive fortifications had been completely shredded.
The wrecked remains of automated turrets smoked heavily, and the energy shield generators had been blown to scrap metal.
At the end of the corridor, the massive blast doors sealing the core were on the verge of collapsing.
Gabriel Santar lowered his meltagun and let out a long breath.
He turned to look at his Iron Hands brethren, who were also taking a momentary breather.
Over three hundred silver-grey figures stood or crouched around the staging area, running diagnostics on their gear and slapping fresh magazines into their weapons.
Not a single word was spoken.
Small talk didn't exist in the Iron Hands' dictionary.
There was only the mission, the battle, and the victory.
Gabriel's gaze swept over the familiar faces.
Some were thirty-year veterans who had fought by his side across countless warzones; others were fresh blood, newly promoted to the elite ranks.
Yet every single face burned with a sheer, iron-clad will to wage war.
"Solid work," his voice was harsh, but carried a trace of genuine approval.
"Three minutes of downtime, then we push into the core sector alongside Lord Fulgrim."
"We take the bridge, execute the Diasporex commander."
"And this war is over."
He turned around, fully intending to regroup with Fulgrim.
But right at that moment...
An indescribable, bone-deep chill suddenly shot up his spine.
It was a sixth sense bought and paid for with blood across a thousand battlefields.
Gabriel's pupils shrank to pinpricks.
He spun back around instantly.
Countless muzzle flashes erupted simultaneously from the shadows three hundred meters away.
"Incoming!!!"
His roar tore through the corridor, but it was already too late.
The shriek of bolter rounds tore through the air.
Over a thousand .35 caliber rounds rained down on the Iron Hands' position like a torrential downpour.
The legionaries, who had just lowered their weapons to take a breather, had absolutely zero time to react.
Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom!!!
Mass-reactive rounds detonated against power armor.
The .35 caliber might only pack forty percent of the punch of a standard Astartes bolter, but they were still bolters.
They were still lethal weapons designed to penetrate and then detonate inside the target.
An Iron Hands veteran took five rounds directly to the back simultaneously.
His ceramite plating cracked and shattered under the continuous explosions. The sixth round found the breach, punching through and detonating inside his chest cavity.
He pitched forward, blood geysering from the joints of his armor, pooling rapidly across the freezing deck plates.
Another young warrior attempted a combat roll to evade the fire, but sixty-six rounds had already completely boxed him in.
He was blown off his feet, slamming hard against the wall behind him before sliding to the floor, completely motionless.
Agonized screams and furious roars erupted.
The deafening thunder of bolters.
Utter chaos broke out in a split second.
Gabriel and Karon Santos were the primary targets of the concentrated fire.
At least sixty-six rounds poured toward them at the exact same time.
Gabriel was already diving into a roll the moment his warning shout left his lips.
Like an enraged behemoth of iron, he frantically evaded the hailstorm of death.
Three rounds grazed his pauldron, detonating against the wall just behind him.
Two rounds caught him in the greaves, the explosions staggering him for a half-step.
One round landed dead center on his back.
The ceramite outer layer of his Gorgon Terminator armor blew outward, exposing the plasteel inner lining.
Gabriel grunted heavily but didn't stop moving.
He rolled behind a massive support pillar, gasping for breath.
Karon Santos was a fraction of a second slower.
The Fourth Captain's reflexes were just as razor-sharp, but the incoming fire was simply too dense.
He threw up his arm to shield his head and dove for a steel barricade, forced to just eat the impacts.
His pauldron was blown clean off.
His breastplate was spider-webbed with cracks.
His left arm hung at a grotesque, unnatural angle—blown completely useless by the blasts.
But he was still on his feet.
Those iron-hard eyes locked onto the figures firing wildly from the shadows three hundred meters away.
"Enemy ambush!!!"
His roar shattered the chaos in the corridor:
"Combat formations!!"
But it was too late.
The first volley. Over three hundred bolter rounds.
At least fifty Iron Hands were killed instantly.
Over a hundred more were critically wounded, completely combat-ineffective.
Of the survivors, almost every single one had taken a hit.
The once immaculate silver-grey formation was now a complete slaughterhouse.
Blood flooded the corridor, mixing with the still-wet gore of the The Diasporex soldiers.
Gabriel peeked out from behind the pillar.
He watched the retreating figures. He saw the tattered The Diasporex uniforms. He saw the smoking barrels of their bolters.
Deep within his pupils, an iron-forged fury ignited.
"The Diasporex..."
His voice was guttural, dripping with barely restrained murder:
"You... are dead!!"
Standing just a short distance away, Fulgrim witnessed the entire atrocity with his own eyes.
He stood completely frozen.
On his flawless face, shock rapidly melted into anger, and then anger mutated into...
Complete, psychotic rage.
His brother, Ferrus, had already lost a Strike Cruiser, the Ferrum, just to get him aboard this flagship.
The very same Strike Cruiser he had watched physically body-block for the Firebird, burning out its void shields to tank the enemy's concentrated fire.
And now...
Ferrus's own sons had been butchered, all to help him breach this final defense line.
Those silver-grey figures now lay broken in pools of blood, amidst bolter shrapnel, scattered across the freezing metal deck.
They had died because of him.
They had been ambushed solely because they came to support him.
Fulgrim's right hand violently clamped around the hilt of the Laer Blade at his waist.
The curved sword vibrated intensely within its scabbard, a sickening pinkish-purple light bleeding furiously from the seams.
The light writhed like a living thing, creeping up his arm and boring straight into his eyes.
A low, seductive whisper detonated inside his mind:
Look at this...
Look at how these xenos dare to insult you...
Your brother sacrificed so much for you...
And you couldn't even protect his sons...
Is this what you call perfection?
This is far from perfect...
Only blood can wash away this stain...
Only slaughter can forge true perfection...
Fulgrim's eyes bled completely into a toxic, pinkish-purple hue.
The light swirled madly in his irises, drowning out every last ounce of reason.
"ROAR!!!"
It wasn't a human scream.
It was the roar of something ancient and utterly unhinged.
Fulgrim vanished from where he stood.
A purple afterimage carved a lethal, blurred arc down the corridor.
[Slaanesh I'm Boutta Wreck You] had barely managed a fifty-meter sprint before he felt a horrifying, suffocating presence closing in on him.
His heart skipped a massive beat.
He instinctively glanced over his shoulder.
A blinding flash of purple light had already completely consumed his vision.
Fulgrim.
That famously perfect face was now twisted into a demonic mask of pure hatred.
Those pinkish-purple eyes were locked dead onto him.
The Primarch's voice was a rasping hiss of bone-chilling malice:
"All of you... will die!!"
The Laer Blade swept out.
[Slaanesh I'm Boutta Wreck You] didn't even have time to scream.
He registered a sudden, agonizing flare of pain at his waist, and then the world started spinning wildly.
He watched as his lower half remained standing on the deck while his torso went flying through the air.
His blood sprayed like a fountain, drenching Fulgrim in crimson.
In the absolute final second before his consciousness faded to black, he blew the very last of his energy to drop a message in the zone chat:
"Holy fuck... Mom... I finally made it... I got styled on by a Primarch..."
[Regional Channel (Wings of Freedom)]
[Slaanesh I'm Boutta Wreck You]'s ID grayed out.
Three seconds later, it lit up again.
[Slaanesh I'm Boutta Wreck You]: "Boys, I'm back up."
"How's the quest looking?"
The channel paused for exactly one second.
Then [Konnichiwa Slaanesh-chan] started spamming chat like a madman:
"Holy shit bro, your death was mega worth!!"
"Fulgrim has completely lost his goddamn mind! He's literally chasing us down and hacking us to pieces!!"
"He already turned like thirty of our guys into minced meat!!"
[I Just Love Sleeping In]: "But the Iron Hands got absolutely dumpstered!"
"At least fifty dead on the spot! Over a hundred critically injured! Every single one of the rest got tagged!"
"We took a massive W this play!!"
[Let the Galaxy Burn]: "Run for your lives, bros!! Don't let him catch you!!"
"Actually wait, getting sliced up by a Primarch is a flex!! Just respawn if you die!! We got enough Imperial Coins to cover it!!"
[Number One Handsome of the Soul Hall]: "Kehkehkeh!"
"This is how you play the fucking game!!"
"Now we get to brag to all the noobs."
"We're basically veterans who threw down with a Primarch."
"Even if it was just us running for our lives while he chopped us up!!"