A large formation of transport aircraft carrying army troops tasked with establishing landing zones and deploying teleport beacons in complex combat environments flew toward the surface.
The soldiers standing in formation inside the transports shouted different pre-battle rallying cries. The Space Marines cried, "For the Primarch and the Emperor!" The Tyranids cried, "For the Lord of Tyran!" The Harlequins cried, "For Ynnead!" The soldiers from Talon's subordinate Savage Eldar worlds and Sal, who piloted the Titans, cried, "For Aisha!" The Kasa Dynasty naturally cried, "For the Forge God!"
At this moment, some of the beings of the Real Universe united to face a common threat, something Usulan had personally witnessed during the Golden Crusade.
Before those mortals could descend, more than a dozen meteors trailing paths through the void fell toward the surface, which was being bombarded by dense lance fire.
Those enormous military fortresses that even orbital bombardment could barely shake, their defensive weapons... everything the Sautekh Dynasty, a military dynasty, was thought to possess and not possess reinforced the defenses of Mandala, its capital Tomb World.
Defensive weapons capable of wiping out any enemy invading the surface in a short time could not intercept C'tan.
The C'tan plunged into the emptiness above the planet where an atmosphere should have been, landing separately. The power they unleashed merely by landing was enough to cause an ecological catastrophe on the surface—assuming Mandala, capital of the Sautekh Dynasty, still had such a thing as an ecology.
Star God fragments were naturally deployed as well, to deal with the invading C'tan.
Imotekh had not and could not return to provide support, so the task of holding Mandala fell upon Crowned General Zahedk, who had previously failed to break through the defenses of the Baron System.
Before this invasion officially began, Zahedk had