Black Tallen was a trophy the Black Legion had seized from the Ultramarines' Second Company.
It had once been the Glory, a Nova-class frigate that the Ultramarines' Second Company had been so proud of.
Fitted with lance turrets taken from heavy cruisers, its firepower could instantly sink a light cruiser over four thousand meters long. Even with the enemy's void shields activated, only three or four lance turrets were needed to pierce their shields and deliver a devastating blow to an enemy cruiser.
The Glory's greatest advantage was its speed. Equipped with engines exceeding those of the Firestorm class, it could easily travel at twice the speed of an Imperial cruiser.
Yet it was merely a frigate.
Its sole purpose was to protect a cruiser's long-range firepower.
Above it was a Hunter-class medium cruiser seized from a Chaos Warband.
A heavy cruiser's firepower could reduce an entire planet to ruins after a single round of bombardment.
Yet even as a medium cruiser, the power of its lances could still sink a continent or evaporate an ocean. If deployed against Karamat, once it occupied a mid-to-high-altitude bombardment orbit, it would be enough to blast Karamat into ruins.
On the outside of the Glory, the markings of the Ultramarines Chapter had been replaced by the bodies of Space Marines and xenos skulls. Exaggerated tentacles had grown from both sides of the hull and the metal shell of its bridge fortress, swaying through the void.
Its hull and decks were a twisted fusion of machinery and flesh.
Its very existence displayed the Warp gods' blasphemous violation of the material universe.
In its most severely mutated areas, living gears could be seen, along with fanged gun barrels and cabin structures stuffed with warped masses of Chaos flesh.
The long steel corridors resembled grotesquely mutated