Destruction Draws Near

"May the Emperor guide your soul back into His light. Your suffering has been witnessed, and we will avenge you," Kroll said, glancing at the corpse.

Then he snapped his head up. The pity in his eyes vanished, replaced by a rekindled fury fierce enough to burn the stars.

He raised his scepter high, alien blood and nutrient fluid still dripping from it, and pointed it across the laboratory, at the endless rows of living tanks holding untold human suffering.

His voice became thunder once more, shaking the desecrated hall with a final judgment:

"Battle-brothers! Burn this place! Burn everything in it! Leave no trace! Let not one speck of these blasphemous creations defile the Emperor's galaxy! Let the flames of purification be this place's only dirge!"

He did not need to give the order twice.

Every Space Marine carrying a heavy flamer stepped forward at once and raised his weapon.

They moved as one, with a solemn, Ritual-like coldness.

They pulled the triggers.

Not one, but several roaring dragons of white-hot fire surged forth!

The enhanced flamers spewed melta flames reaching tens of thousands of degrees: fire embodying the Imperium of Man's fiercest hatred and its will to purify.

The flames swallowed the first row of tanks in an instant. The glass vaporized in the extreme heat.

The nutrient fluid inside evaporated at once. The imprisoned, altered human bodies caught fire the moment the flames touched them, charring, twisting, and crumbling to ash.

In an instant, the entire laboratory became a vast fireball.

Heat warped the air. The pale walls blackened and peeled, and green conduits burst.

Wails rose again—not from the mothers, who were already dead, but from the surviving alien researchers caught in the flames and the still-functioning, sentient apparatus used for live experimentation.

Yet amid the symphony of roaring fire, crackling matter, and the aliens' dying shrieks, the warriors of the Word Bearers caught another sound with their superhuman hearing. It was faint and fleeting, but unmistakable.

From the human remains rapidly turning to ash came what sounded like a soft, relieved... laugh.

It held the release of suffering finally brought to an end, as though the imprisoned souls had found a final, cruel mercy in the purifying flames brought by the Emperor's angels.

And the aliens' souls would burn forever beneath humanity's wrath.

The Third Heavy Assault Squad advanced unimpeded until it reached an exceptionally sturdy gate that appeared to have been cast from a mixture of alien alloy and biological polymer.

There, the Third Heavy Assault Squad of the Word Bearers met its last and only obstacle.

Unlike the pulsing silver structures elsewhere in the ship, the gate was cold and silent. Faint energy runes flickered across it, marking the area beyond as something special and important.

"By the Primarch's name, break it down!" Sergeant Slrax roared down the passage. Repeated battles had left his voice hoarser, but had done nothing to diminish its fervor.

Two Cataphractii Terminators bearing heavy breaching weapons stepped forward.

Their armour was covered in blast scars, acid burns, and crusts of dried pale-blue blood, making the scripture engraved upon it look all the more savage.

The heads of their warhammers gathered destructive energy. With the hum of servos driving at full power, they slammed into the gate.

Bang!!!

Bang!!!

Bang!!!

Every blow shook the passage. Metal shrieked as it warped, while an overloaded energy shield crackled without pause.

Under the repeated assault of sheer force, the seemingly indestructible gate finally groaned. A huge dent appeared in its center, and cracks spread outward like a spiderweb.

At last, a coordinated strike brought the locking system down completely.

Half the gate twisted inward and tore open, revealing the dim space beyond.

But what first poured through the breach was not the Space Marines' roar of vengeance. It was—

"Boom-boom-boom-boom!!!!!"

An impossibly dense, ferocious barrage of Autocannon fire!

A torrent of searing rounds swallowed the breach. The deadly storm of metal howled into the passage and struck the Terminators' thick frontal armour, throwing off countless dazzling sparks amid a deafening clatter.

An ambush! The surviving alien guards had established one final firing position here. A ground-mounted, rotating multi-barrel alien Laser weapon poured out fire, trying to turn the sole entrance into a killing zone.

"Pathetic death throes!" the squad's second-in-command scoffed through the hail of shots.

Cataphractii Terminator Armour deserved its reputation as a fortress. Even fire this fierce could not pierce it at once, though it held their advance in check.

"For the Emperor! Purge them!"

No further orders were needed. The squad's heavy-weapons specialist moved up from the flank.

He carried a large-caliber Autocannon, a fearsome weapon normally mounted on vehicles, yet it sat as steadily in his hands as a feather. He answered the enemy's clamor with a brief, silent moment of aim.

Then he pulled the trigger.

"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"

The Heavy Bolter's thunder stood in stark contrast to the alien Laser weapon's piercing shriek. Its report was deeper and heavier, each round carrying immense kinetic force and the destructive will of the Emperor and the Primarch.

The barrage struck precisely at the source of the Autocannon's muzzle flashes.

The hastily piled-up cover—workbenches or instruments made of some biological material—tore apart and shattered under the Heavy Bolter rounds as easily as paper.

The pearl-white armour and fragile bodies of the dozen or so alien soldiers hiding behind it meant nothing before that storm of metal.

A brief, violent explosion reduced them, their weapons, and their cover alike to flying metal fragments, chunks of tissue, and a mist of fluorescent blue blood.

The Laser cannon fell abruptly silent. Only its twisted barrels remained, trailing smoke above the wreckage strewn across the floor.

Before the smoke had cleared, five dark-gray giants of steel strode over the smoldering ruins with heavy, unstoppable steps and entered the final room.

"In the Emperor's name! Sweep the galaxy clean!"

Their battle cry rang with static and a mechanically distorted roar. Their figures filled the entrance, the blasphemous blood coating their armour gleaming strangely in the room's dim light. They looked like judges risen from the depths of hell.

Two alien soldiers nearest the door let out piercing shrieks and lunged forward, brandishing pale beam weapons and biological blades. Perhaps they acted out of desperate courage; perhaps they were following one last programmed command. Their counterattack was as futile as an insect trying to stop a tank.

The Terminators did not even need their weapons.

The two in front simply wielded their massive bodies with utter contempt, driving their power-assisted shoulders and arms into the attackers.

"Bang! Squelch—"

The dull impacts were followed by the hideous sound of flesh and carapace collapsing and bursting under overwhelming force.

The two aliens failed to slow the Terminators for even a moment. The tremendous impact smashed them apart, leaving two foul patterns of blood and flesh splashed across the walls and floor.

Silence fell over the room. Only the low hum of the Terminator Armour's servos and the faint crackle of the Power Weapons' energy fields remained.

The air reeked of ozone, blood, and scorched alien tissue.

Only one living alien remained in sight.

It cowered in the farthest corner of the room, beside a destroyed control console.

Its bone-white armour was more finely made than that of the soldiers they had encountered earlier. Perhaps it was a technician or a low-ranking official.

Its segmented body shook violently with fear. The many lenses of its compound eyes reflected five advancing giants of steel, like nightmares given form.

A small self-defense weapon slipped from its grasp and landed nearby with a sharp clink.

It emitted a string of shrill, rapid cries filled with despair. Its many-jointed limbs scrabbled uselessly behind it, as though it could merge with the wall and escape its inevitable end.

A Word Bearers warrior raised his boltgun and settled his sights on the pearl-white head.

"Stop."

Chaplain Kroll's voice was cold and commanding.

The warrior immediately lowered his gun, though he kept it trained close enough to threaten.

Kroll strode forward. The shadow of his huge, bloodstained form swallowed the alien whole.

He looked down on it as he would an insect.

He did not draw a weapon. Instead, he reached out with one enormous hand encased in Power Armour.

The alien screamed in utter terror, flailing its limbs to ward him off, but it was no use.

Kroll's hand slipped easily past its feeble defense and closed precisely around its torso.

The faint hum of the Power Fist sent the alien into painful spasms. Its smooth carapace began to crack under the immense pressure.

But it did not die.

Kroll held it fast and lifted it from the floor, forcing its compound eyes, wide with terror, to meet the cold, merciless lenses of his helmet.

"You're afraid?" Kroll's voice was low and oppressive. "This is only the beginning. Your blasphemy and your crimes must be answered in full. And that reckoning must reach your homeworld, the source of your kind."

His words came through the speaker, cold and devoid of emotion, yet more chilling than any battle cry.

"The Legion does not want your death, alien," he continued, each word tolling like a funeral bell. "The Legion wants everything you know. You will tell us where your homeworld is. You will give us the coordinates of every filthy nest where your kind hides."

He tightened his grip slightly. The alien immediately let out an agonized wail.

"Then you will have the honor of witnessing..." A grim resolve entered Kroll's voice.

"We will take the destruction you fear and the despair you feel now, magnify them a thousandfold, ten thousandfold, and bring them directly to your homeworld. Your species will be erased beneath the Emperor's wrath. That is the fate awaiting you for defiling humanity and defying the Emperor."

He turned and held the struggling, shrieking captive up for the warriors behind him to see.

"Take it away. Make sure it reaches the interrogation chamber aboard the Chronicle of Ashes alive. Have the Apothecary and the Techmarine prepare to... question it. We must have the coordinates of that accursed world."

"Understood, Chaplain," the squad members replied at once.