The void.
Before Fulgrim's enormous floor-to-ceiling window lay nothing but a brilliant sea of stars.
The Pride of the Emperor.
Every minute joint and detail of this immense, magnificent Gloriana-class Battleship had been personally crafted with Fulgrim's painstaking devotion.
At last, after taking nearly twice as long to build as other warships of the same class, this vessel—perfect by any measure—officially entered service and joined the vast Great Crusade.
Expeditionary Fleet 28.
This was the designation of the Sons of the Emperor expeditionary fleet, perhaps a number that would follow them for the rest of their lives.
At yesterday's banquet, after the Lord of the Second Legion had been promoted to Warmaster, Fulgrim proposed that the Sons of the Emperor be allowed to command an army of their own.
Though they currently numbered fewer than a thousand, with the Sons of the Emperor's prowess in battle and their ability to fight a hundred foes alone, they were more than capable of reclaiming world after world for the Imperium of Man!
They should have believed in her.
But they did not.
Fulgrim still remembered the brothers and sisters who had opposed her, including the Lord of the Second Legion, who had once defeated a combined alien host with merely two thousand Astartes.
Even he had opposed her.
"What a case of the pot calling the kettle black!"
She indignantly repeated that Old Terra proverb about pots and kettles.
It was pity.
Pity from her brothers and sisters.
But Fulgrim did not need it.
In the end, proud as ever, she announced her expedition plan at the banquet.
She made a wager with the Wolf King, Leman Russ: to conquer 28-1—the first world assigned to Expeditionary Fleet 28—she would need only six people.
Six Astartes.
To conquer a world with her.
Naturally,