Laconia System
Laconia Prime, low Orbit.
The sky was burning, and it was falling.
Wreckage from xenos Orbit structures, as massive as mountain ranges, rolled slowly from the heavens toward the ravaged earth. Wreathed in searing plasma flames and billowing smoke, it trailed long wakes like the corpses of slain gods.
Every impact unleashed an earthshaking roar, adding fresh scars to the planet's surface.
Countless smaller fragments fell even more densely, an inverted storm of steel that battered the ground without pause, raising endless explosions and clouds of dust from the scorched earth.
Against this hellish backdrop, the forces of the Imperium had intervened.
Led by the Steadfast Prayer, flagship of the Word Bearers' Fourth Chapter, the strike fleet tore through the thin xenos defenses in the outer Orbit and deployed its strength directly onto the bloodiest battlefield.
After receiving an unquestionable rescue order issued personally by Primarch Lorgar, Chapter Master Allen Colin committed his entire Chapter without hesitation.
Their Storm Eagle Gunships plunged like eagles into an inferno, threading through falling wreckage and sparse but lethal ground-based antiaircraft fire to force open landing zones along the edges of several relatively intact civilian concentrations.
A smaller fleet arrived almost alongside them. Its ships had cold, forbidding lines, their deep-space blue hulls adorned with pale lightning and bat-wing insignia.
It was a Night Lords Company that had just completed a "punishment" mission against a corrupt noble world in a neighboring sector. Upon receiving the Word Bearers' request for joint action, they changed course and joined the rescue.
Now, battle raged around a temporary shelter built into a half-collapsed giant warehouse on the edge of a shattered city.
"Get the civilians aboard! Order! Maintain order!" Chapter Master Allen Colin's voice reverberated through both external speakers and psychic amplification, drowning out the explosions