Shell craters covered the ground, and fragments lay everywhere.
A Sword Brother lay fallen in the mud. The Apothecary did not rashly go forward to retrieve his Gene-seed. The Iron Warriors' Havoc squads were watching every corner of the battlefield, and their super-heavy sniper cannons, capable of piercing Leman Russ armor, were slowly killing the Black Templars trapped here.
The scale of the Chaos Legions' invasion had far exceeded everyone's expectations. Those Degraded Ones had powerfully reinforced the Chaos Legions' mid-level forces.
These Degraded Ones, who could slaughter Astra Militarum below and hold back Space Marines above, gave the commanders on every Cadia front line a terrible headache. Send too few troops, and the Degraded Ones would wipe them out completely. Send too many, and the other fronts would fall into a shortage of manpower.
At times, Cadia's generals wished they were Orks or Tyranids, so they could replenish their troops quickly and endlessly. Now, they had to urgently mobilize the soldiers and civilians within the fortresses, while also guarding against the risk of those soldiers and civilians being swayed into betrayal by the winds of Chaos.
What should they say while trapped here? Question Marshal Amana's incompetence? Condemn the Iron Warriors' cunning? None of that mattered anymore. The most pressing issue was getting the Imperium forces trapped here out.
No... getting the Imperium forces out seemed to require yielding to those two insane pieces of news as well.
The inside of the hastily excavated command room was filled with suppressed rage. This fury was even more terrifying and sinister than the Iron Warriors' polite exchanges. Marshal Amana of the Black Templars stood beside the map with a dark expression, having remained motionless for a long time since hearing those two reports.
The Cadia officers fortunate enough to fight alongside