Bad news travels fast, but it would seem that the Vlyka Fenryka travel faster. A small detachment of Thousand Sons under the direction of Ogred Lysimachus had been searching for the fabled Dreadfire Dias for eight Terran equivalent years now. Lysimachus had first heard of the site during a joint operation with the Blood Angels a decade ago but commitments to the campaign had only freed him after two years.
It had become his life's work since that time to find it. He searching had revealed its location on this unnamed planet.
Evidence of a human civilization was abundant. It only took them a month of searching the planet before they were able to track down the unique energy signature. Upon landing they moved to investigate but a warning from their ship reached them just before Lysimachus saw the heavens ignite in all-out void warfare.
It had reported that they were under attack by the Rout.
And soon there were aircraft moving down to the planets surface. Grey aircraft, black aircraft and gold aircraft.
Attempts to contact their fellow Imperialists failed. Lysimachus prepared for the worst.
He was not disappointed. The Rout were moving towards him from one direction and he could see the gold-armoured forms of the Adeptus Custodes coming from the opposite direction.
The Cult Athenean Captain reached out his mind and could only see naked aggression directed towards him from the minds he could read.
"Prepare to fire," he said to his men, "Shoot when they come into view."
He wasn't sure whether he had sent the message out over vox or if he had just thought it but the men formed up and bolters were trained to where they expected the enemy to arrive.
Vlyka Fenryka terminators were the first enemy in site and the second squad opened up on them. The sheer volume of fire as the marines emptied their weapons into the oncoming enemy was astonishing and when the smoke cleared from the explosions ripping through the enemy ranks four of the Rout terminators were down.
The last was taken out by a shot from the multimelta of the lone dreadnought with the expedition.
His own bodyguard of Terminators moved in the opposite direction of the Space Wolves firing their bolters as they went. It seemed so wrong. The Custodes were the Emperor's personal guard but though the minds of these elite solders were carefully guarded the intent in them was so direct, so strong, that even the weakest mind among the Thousand Sons force could pick up on the desire to engage and kill.
The bulky power armour worn by the Custodes didn't slow them in the slightest.
As they moved up the leaped from side to side, swinging their glaives in defensive arcs around them. Those rounds not completely dodged, or deflected by the glaives just glanced off of their armour scouring the ancient plate but leaving the post human inside unharmed.
Then they were upon the Terminators and even the thick tactical dreadnought armour was not proof against the savage assault, in fewer seconds that combatants involved the Terminators lay splayed out on the ground, most with limbs or body parts in relation to the rest of their body in a way that was incompatible with life.
Their blades still carving and swinging the Custodes slaughtered the tactical marines next.
Lysimachus moved to intercept them. The Great Ocean was not heading his calls but then as he tried to shatter the advance of his former allies it came, but it was too much.
The Thousand Sons Captain fell to his knees as his body shook and he shivered after the initial convulsions left him, his now multifaceted eyes catching glimpses of himself in the gold armour of the halberd spinning warriors.
But just as quickly as the warp flooded over him, through him and out of him it was cut off from him completely. He recognized the source of the disruption and moved towards the Silent Sisters now firing at him from the woods. The Captain and the Custodes passed each other in their desire to get to grips with a more pressing foe.
Things were not going any better against the Space Wolves. Despite the initial success of their first massed volleys, the Thousand Sons were on the defensive, their contemptor blasted down as two squads of Veteran soldiers sprang from their flanks. Bolters smashed into face plates as the two groups of marines allowed fury to take the place of science in a swirling melee where quarter was neither asked nor given.
But it was only delaying the inevitable.
The Custodes quickly cut down the last of the Thousand Sons not engaged by the Rout and sprang into the midst of the melee, ending it as quickly as they had each previous group.
The force turned inside to see the twisted form of Lysimachus disappear beyond the bodies of the Sister of Silence.
ponders the woes of a heavy base.
