I Am Purification! I Am Destruction!

"For the Emperor! For the Sacred Origins!"

"For the Emperor! For the Sacred Primordial Truth!"

The Battle Barge Chronicle of Ashes was a moving mountain of steel, bristling with spikes and sacred reliefs. Its void engines growled as it closed ruthlessly on its prey.

The Xenos Warship had sleek lines and shimmered with an eerie, mother-of-pearl sheen. Against the Stars, it looked like an elegant work of blasphemous art.

Its smooth curves were nothing like the angular Gothic forms of Imperium vessels, built to proclaim power and majesty. To the Word Bearers, those curves were themselves a deformity of Xenos culture.

"For our brothers in the Ultramarines Legion!"

"For those who sacrificed themselves before us! And those who carry on after us!"

"We bear the Emperor's word! We shall slay the Emperor's enemies!"

"Flames of purification, burn away all impurity!"

The Chaplain's deep, fervent sermon rang through the bridge's speakers, mingling with the deafening volleys of Lances and Macro-cannons in a symphony of destruction.

Countless point-defense turrets spat dense barrages, raising a rain of death to shred any Xenos Aircraft that dared approach while clearing the way for the true killing blow.

Trajectories wove a blazing net through the void. Now and then, a small enemy interceptor took a hit and became a brilliant, silent fireball. Its wreckage drifted through the cold stars like ashes scattered at a ceremony.

"Battle-Brothers! The Primarch is with you!"

The Chaplain, clad in bone-white armour, stood at the center of the boarding party. Gripping a Staff wreathed in a Disruption Field, he took his place at the front.

"We are the Angels of Death

We will never stand by and watch Mortals perish

We fight for those less mighty than ourselves

Word Bearers, charge!

For those we love! For the Emperor! For all that is to come! We go to our deaths so others may live!!!"

More than a dozen Gunships poured from the vast ventral hangars of the Chronicle of Ashes like hounds scenting blood.

They were no graceful swallows. They were brutal machines wrapped in heavy armour, their engines roaring like beasts.

Every Gunship's outer plating bore the dark-gray insignia of the Word Bearers Legion, crowded with hymn runes and images of scripture scrolls. Icons of the Emperor and the Primarch adorned their rams, now turned into instruments of destruction.

Chaplain Kroll stood among the squad. He raised his staff and preached to the legionaries around him, clad in Cataphractii Terminator Armour.

Chaplains did not cower in the rear. A true Space Marine Chaplain led his legionaries in the charge until every enemy lay dead beneath their weapons.

"Hold steady, legionaries! Lorgar is with us!" Kroll's voice boomed from his Helmet in a harsh battle cry.

The Gunships began their death run through the Xenos Warship's space-warping pulses and dense volleys of biological acid.

Corrosive slime struck one Gunship's wing. Its armour hissed and smoked, but it drove madly onward until more fire swallowed its engines and it blossomed into a swelling mass of metal and flame.

The warriors inside had no chance to speak a final word before giving their lives for the Emperor.

Their sacrifice was not in vain. Their deaths bought their brothers a fraction of a second—almost nothing, yet vital to the assault.

"For the Primarch! Punch through!"

The Gunship leading the way belonged to the Legion's Third Heavy Assault Squad.

Codenamed Hammer of Truth, it was especially large and rugged, with a Melta Cannon glowing a dangerous red at its prow.

Like a zealot bent on martyrdom, it ignored the interception fire bursting around it and poured all its power into a straight-line charge.

"Melta Cannon! Fire!" Chaplain Kroll shouted.

For an instant, every warrior watching the battle ahead might as well have gone blind.

A torrent of pure, primal energy, carrying the power of a Stars' core, erupted from the Melta Cannon's muzzle.

It was no mere beam, but a concentrated, boiling force of destruction. Its glare briefly overwhelmed every explosion on the battlefield, bleaching both the Chronicle of Ashes' dark-gray armour and the Xenos Warship's pearlescent hull white, like the light of death on Judgment Day.

That sacred light of destruction struck the Xenos Warship's sleek flank dead on.

The strange silver armour on the Xenos Warship, strong enough to deflect small asteroids, groaned beneath the unbearable heat.

The metal did not melt. It vaporized!

A vast hole was burned through the hull, its edges boiling with bright orange-red molten metal, exposing the structure within.

"Board them! Now! For the Emperor's glory!"

The pilot of the Hammer of Truth shouted in fervor and drove the engines to their limit.

The massive Gunship did not slow. With its reinforced armour, it slammed headlong into the newly opened wound, where glowing metal slag still dripped.

BOOM!

The impact drowned out even the engines' roar. The entire Gunship groaned under the strain.

Its shock absorbers worked at full capacity, yet every Adeptus Astartes warrior inside—each more than two meters tall and weighing half a ton—felt the violent jolt.

"Open the doors! Purify them! Leave none alive!"

Hydraulics shrieked as the assault ramp crashed down against the Xenos vessel's strange inner wall with a heavy, sharp clang.

The warriors of the Third Heavy Assault Squad, Angels of Death encased in heavy Terminator Armour, were the first to set foot in that blasphemous place.

Their armour was deep gray, trimmed with brass inscribed with scripture and adorned with icons of the Emperor. The sacred emblem of their Legion was carved into their pauldrons.

The tall crest on their leader's Helmet was spattered with steaming organic fluid from beyond the doors.

The Boltguns and Meltaguns in their hands were ready to fire. Lamps beneath the barrels cast cold beams through the Warship's thin mist, which carried a strange, sweet smell of blood.

Even through the Smoke and steam filling the breach, they could clearly see the enemy through their Helmet Firing Ports.

The creatures were roughly humanoid, but bore unsettling arthropod features.

Their smooth skin was an unnatural pearl white, as though fired from porcelain, yet it was unmistakably living flesh.

Multiple pairs of jointed limbs gave them an eerie, swift gait.

Their hideous faces had no features save huge black compound eyes and sharp, writhing, beaklike mouthparts at their centers, made for sucking.

Some were plainly warriors. They wore close-fitting biomatter armour, also pearl white, and carried oddly shaped pure-white weapons that seemed to be made of chitin or bone.

The weapons had no visible triggers or power packs. How they worked was utterly unknown to humanity.

But however inhuman they looked, however strange their technology, the Word Bearers saw something in their compound eyes, their rapidly twitching limbs and their shrieking beaks that they knew intimately—an emotion they could almost feed on. Fear.

Primal, unadulterated fear.

They had seen the Emperor's angels. They had seen his heralds of death.

They had watched their Warship torn open by the most direct, violent means. Now these giants, immense as walking icons in their heavy armour, stepped aboard with cold intent to kill.

"Xenos filth!" The voice of Slrax, captain of the Third Squad, rang through the living passageway like a cold funeral bell, amplified by his Helmet's speakers.

"Your very existence is a sin! Your forms defile the perfection of sacred humanity! In the names of the Emperor and Lorgar, be purified!"