Sanguinius stood on the bridge of the Red Tear.
A holographic star chart was projected before him, the model of Aurelian IV slowly rotating.
"Tobias," Sanguinius spoke. "Fleet deployment."
Captain Tobias Fane of the Second Company stepped forward, the servo-motors of his artificer armor whining faintly in the silence.
"Father, our fleet currently fields eight thousand two hundred Legionnaires, organized into two Grand Companies. The entirety of the Second Company—four thousand warriors—has completed all pre-combat checks and is ready for drop deployment within ten minutes. Excluding the eight hundred Legionnaires garrisoning the Warp rift repair site in the Aru Industrial Zone, the remaining three thousand one hundred warriors of the Fifth Company are also fully prepared for combat. This includes twenty Dreadnoughts and one hundred Terminators."
Tobias paused momentarily.
"Our accompanying Solar Auxilia numbers five hundred thousand effectives, comprising standard lasrifle brigades, storm veteran battalions, armored mechanized regiments, heavy artillery support brigades, and abhuman auxiliary detachments."
He raised his head, looking through his visor at the Primarch's profile. "All units have entered Condition Red. We await only your command to purge the Warp heresy and cleanse the Emperor's domain."
Sanguinius slowly closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the Great Angel's compassion within those amber-gold slit pupils had been replaced by something far purer.
It was the absolute, ultimate loathing for Warp, a hatred forged into the very being of a demigod created by the Emperor's own hand to be a weapon of human survival.
"Deploy a tactical strike force of five thousand Legionnaires," Sanguinius's voice resonated across the bridge. "Two thousand seven hundred and twenty from the Second Company, and two thousand two hundred and eighty drawn from the Fifth Company. They will form the first wave of the assault spearhead."
"The five hundred thousand Solar Auxilia will deploy according to standard urban warfare doctrines in three waves. The first wave of one hundred thousand will establish landing zones and a perimeter defense. The second wave of two hundred thousand will advance in support of the Astartes. The final wave of two hundred thousand will execute occupation and cleansing operations."
He turned to face the assembled officers.
"Target: the City of the Holy Anthem. I intend to deliver absolute salvation to that hive."
Sanguinius's gaze swept over every officer on the bridge, then over the cold digits on the tactical displays representing billions of hive citizens.
"Every heretic who defies the Imperial Truth, and every abomination that taints the glory of humanity... shall face absolute judgment."
Tobias slammed his right fist against his chest plate, the heavy ceramite ringing with a deep thud. "For the Emperor and Sanguinius!"
Every officer on the bridge roared in unison, the sheer volume threatening to shatter the dome above:
"For the Emperor and Sanguinius!"
The instant the command was given, the entire fleet awakened like a slumbering leviathan.
–
The Red Tear, the flagship of the Blood Angels Legion, was a colossal behemoth over ten kilometers long.
At this moment, the macro-cannon batteries lining its hull began to adjust their trajectories. The massive gun-ports hissed open on hydraulic lifters, revealing the titanic armor-piercing shells already loaded in the breeches.
The thirty-nine vessels of the escort fleet—including eight strike cruisers, twelve frigates, and nineteen transport barques—ignited their plasma drives simultaneously, carving blinding blue-white trails through the void.
Deep within the armories of the warships, five thousand Blood Angels Astartes were making their final preparations.
This was not their first hive purification campaign.
Every veteran's mnemonic engrams contained the tactical data of at least three similar operations.
Tobias's pre-combat briefing had detailed the mission parameters explicitly:
"The enemy achieved mass corruption prior to our arrival. The entire hive city may have already fallen and been transformed into a heretical hunting ground. Expect high-intensity psychic resistance and an unknown number of Warp entities. The Librarius's preliminary auguries indicate the contamination source is at least Mu-class. This means we are highly likely to face terrifying adversaries. But to the Blood Angels, this is nothing more than pathetic, laughable resistance."
For the Emperor and Sanguinius!
Countless Blood Angels recited the oath silently in their hearts.
–
In the center of the armory, Tobias was personally inspecting his power armor.
It was a master-crafted suit of Mark IV plate. Etched onto the pauldron was an honor badge he had earned during the Ullanor Crusade: the severed head of an Ork Warlord impaled on a chainsword.
He picked up his bolter from the arming bench, expertly checking the magazine, the firing pin, and the power cell, before mag-locking it to his thigh plate.
"Captain," a warrior clad in the blue robes of the Librarius approached. He carried his helmet under his arm, revealing a weather-beaten face.
It was Cassius Varro, Chief Librarian of the Fifth Company, a Gamma-tier psyker specializing in divination and counter-psychic fields.
"Do we have results from the Librarius's collective augury?" Tobias asked without looking up, continuing to calibrate the servo-sensitivity of his armor joints.
"We do. But something is wrong."
Cassius's brow was tightly furrowed, psychic energy flickering faintly deep within his pupils. "The contamination signal from the City of the Holy Anthem has indeed reached Mu-class, with peak readings briefly brushing the Nu-class threshold... But strangely, the area of contamination seems deliberately restricted to the interior of the hive city."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning that with a Warp rift of this magnitude and this many corrupted psykers, the corruption should have already bled across the entire continental plate." Cassius pulled up a psychic waveform chart on his wrist-mounted data-slate. "Look here. The boundary of the contamination is abnormally sharp. It's almost as if... there's an invisible wall trapping the Chaos energy entirely within the City of the Holy Anthem."
Tobias stopped what he was doing.
His veteran instincts caused his nerves to pull taut instantly. In the Warhammer universe, whenever anything appeared abnormally "clean" or "sharp," it usually meant a far deeper conspiracy was at play.
"A trick by the Warp?"
"I don't know," Cassius shook his head. He paused, lowering his voice. "It looks as if someone, or something, is deliberately controlling the rate at which the corruption spreads."
The two men locked eyes.
They both read the exact same word in each other's gaze.
Trap.
But the orders were given, the fleet was in motion, and five thousand Astartes alongside five hundred thousand Solar Auxilia were already boarding the drop-ships.
At this point, even if the jaws of the most lethal trap in the galaxy were gaping wide before them, the Blood Angels had no choice but to plunge straight in.
Because that was their duty.
To fight for the Emperor. To die for humanity.
"Notify all warriors," Tobias donned his helmet, the eye-lenses blazing with a sudden, bloody crimson light. "The threat level for this operation has been upgraded to Exterminatus-class. Authorization granted for the use of all non-restricted weaponry, including melta-charges, plasma overcharges, and... the Psychic Detonation Protocol."
Cassius's pupils contracted.
The Psychic Detonation Protocol was the ultimate, final resort, initiated by the Librarius only in the most desperate of situations. It involved using one's own soul as fuel to ignite every last drop of psychic power within them, triggering a localized Warp detonation devastating enough to cripple the enemy.
The cost was the absolute, irreversible annihilation of the caster. Not even a fragment of their soul would remain.
"Understood."
The Chief Librarian took a deep breath and secured his own helmet.
"For the Emperor.."
--
At the same time, in the hangar bays of the transport ships, five hundred thousand Solar Auxilia troops were forming up to board.
The vast majority of these mortal soldiers hailed from the recruiting worlds surrounding Baal, the homeworld of the Blood Angels. They had survived brutal selection processes and grueling training to earn the right to wear that grey-blue uniform and fight alongside the Primarch.
But right now, none of them looked particularly well.
Hive purification operations had always boasted the highest casualty rates of any campaign type. Cramped corridors, complex vertical terrain, and endless ambush points.
And this time, they were facing Warp entities and corrupted psykers on top of it all...
"I heard the City of the Holy Anthem has a population in the billions," a young grenadier whispered to his squadmate, his fingers unconsciously tracing the cooling fins of his lasrifle. "If they're all corrupted..."
"Then we kill them all."
The response came from his squad leader—a grizzled veteran with three jagged claw scars across his face, a survivor of at least five major campaigns. "Remember what they taught you in training. In a Warp contamination zone, anything that still moves is the enemy."
"But what if there are civilians?"
"There are no 'what-ifs,'" the veteran cut him off, his voice as cold as ice. "A person corrupted by the Warp is no longer a person. They are the tentacles of the Warp reaching into reality."
He swept his gaze over the ten young faces in his squad, enunciating every word. "Your job is to pull the trigger and put a las-bolt through their skulls. And then you keep moving until everything that can move stops moving. Mercy is reserved for the living, and down there..."
The veteran pointed at the bulkhead of the transport ship, as if he could see through the hull to the blue-tainted region of the planet below. "...there is nothing living left."
The piercing wail of the embarkation sirens echoed through the hangar.
Countless mortal soldiers in grey-blue uniforms surged like a tidal wave toward the massive drop-ships.
Thunderhawk gunships, Stormbird assault craft, and even Land Speeder squadrons roared to life, the deafening thunder of their engines shaking the deck plates.
On the bridge of the flagship, Sanguinius watched it all in silence.
His psychic perception blanketed the entire fleet, allowing him to clearly sense the emotional fluctuations of every single warrior.
The battle-lust of the Astartes was soaring and pure—the killing instinct honed over a century of continuous warfare.
The fear and anxiety of the mortal soldiers were palpable, but it was heavily suppressed by their training and their absolute, unwavering faith.
Sanguinius turned his head and looked through the observation port at the planet's surface, his gaze landing on a tiny speck of light on the far side of the continent.
Kent Hive.
The hive city that had somehow blossomed from decay into order in just a single month. The hive that, under the administration of Crimson Dawn, had somehow nurtured the emotion of hope.
That Governor who claimed to be an archeotech excavator. Those administrators operating with unnatural efficiency. Those slogans, those reforms, those...
"...and the inexplicably sudden Warp contamination."
Ever since entering the Aurelian System, the Primarch's precognitive abilities had been constantly jammed, as if shrouded by a thick fog.
At this moment, he felt a sliver of confusion—an emotion he hadn't experienced in untold years.
Sanguinius retracted his gaze, his long, elegant fingers lightly tapping the tactical console.
Aurelian IV was a mining world, its annual yield accounting for seven percent of the entire sector's budget.
Theoretically, if the Warp contamination in the City of the Holy Anthem could not be contained, the most rational course of action was clear.
Initiate Exterminatus.
Deploy cyclonic torpedoes or virus bombs to wipe the entire planet—along with its thirty billion inhabitants—from the star charts forever.
This was the Imperium's standard operating procedure when facing massive Warp contamination. It was the Purge Edict, personally approved by the Emperor Himself.
When contamination reached Mu-class and its spread could not be halted, orbital annihilation was the only option.
Sanguinius knew exactly what he was supposed to do.
He was a Primarch. He was a Legion Master. He was a commander who had fought in countless brutal campaigns throughout the Unification Wars and the Great Crusade.
Logic dictated that if the ground purge met heavy resistance, if casualties exceeded acceptable parameters, and if the contamination began spreading to other hive cities...
He had to push that button.
To stop the Warp rift from expanding further. To ensure the safety of the entire sector, and indeed, the entire Segmentum.
Yet, just as he was about to harden his heart to that icy resolve, images from Kent Hive flashed through his mind once more.
The smiles on the workers' faces as they received their wages.
The children running on the playground of the newly built public school.
That handwritten slogan on the wall: "So that everyone who struggles to live, may live with dignity."
And... that fleeting glimmer he had caught in the eyes of the Governor named Cage Lawrence during the report...
It was something he had never seen in an Imperial bureaucrat before.
It wasn't a lust for power. It wasn't a greed for wealth.
It was something more akin to duty. To responsibility.
Sanguinius slowly exhaled, the feathers on his wings folding back unconsciously.
"I will give you one chance."
He whispered softly into the void, speaking to that tiny speck of light on the planet's surface.
"Prove to me that this 'hope' of yours is not just a beautifully crafted lie."