Conversation ceased. Even the lights in the staging area seemed to brighten a little, and almost every Space Marine stopped what he was doing in the same second.
The last sharp click of a weapon check, the final dull snap of armor fastening shut, the low hum of Power Weapons activating...
Every sound blended into a brief, efficient clamor, then faded into the taut silence peculiar to the moments before battle.
Helmets went on. Lenses lit up.
Fifty men, five hundred, five thousand...
Tens of thousands of Space Marines scattered throughout the combat staging areas aboard the Endurance and the Law of Faith slipped silently into a state of war, meshing like precision gears.
Less than thirty minutes later, the Primarch's order arrived.
"All units, maximum combat readiness. Estimated contact with the enemy's main fleet groups: zero to three standard minutes. Coordinates synchronized. Prepare to engage."
With that order, the Imperium's vast war machine began operating at peak efficiency.
The Endurance and the Law of Faith, two Gloriana-class Battleships of starkly different styles, hung silently in the cold void like two steel mountain ranges standing back to back.
Hundreds of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers from both forces clustered around them like stars surrounding the moon, while still more escorts and Battle Barges prowled farther out like wolf packs.
In the deep space marked as the direction of the enemy's approach, ripples began to churn violently.
The veil of reality was brutally torn open. First came isolated shapes, then groups, then whole swathes of distorted shadows trailing unnatural purple-green light. It was the Rangdan fleet.
They maintained a high-speed advance formation, clearly hurrying toward some predetermined battlefield, utterly unprepared for the destruction about to descend upon them.
The instant the outline of the last Rangdan capital ship fully emerged from