On the surface, Marius Gage, First Company Captain of the Ultramarines Legion, was directing the evacuation.
His voice had grown hoarse from his relentless shouting, but his orders remained clear and decisive. Like a man dancing on a knife's edge, he had to make the right decisions in the shortest possible time.
The Legion had lost contact with at least twenty companies in an instant during the attack.
The unit designations that had once been active on the Communications Channel now offered only deathly silence. That meant at least forty thousand Legion warriors had died in that single instant.
Forty thousand veterans of countless battles, forty thousand brothers who had fought side by side, forty thousand living souls had been utterly erased in mere minutes.
Their names had yet to be entered on the casualty rolls, their bodies had yet to be recovered, and there had not even been time to mourn their sacrifice.
Gage knew that Calth could no longer be defended. There was no way to hold it.
The transformed metal monsters were far too numerous. They poured from every street, every building, every ventilation duct, like an endless tide.
Their Bolters could shatter the monsters' shells, but more monsters would fill the gaps a second later.
Their Power Swords could sever the monsters' limbs, but those severed limbs still writhed on the ground, trying to reassemble themselves.
This was a war they could not win. Fighting on would only send more men to pointless deaths.
They needed their Primarch, but Guilliman, the master of their Legion, was still conducting the Great Crusade on the distant frontier, unaware of anything that had happened on Calth.
Their communications had also been cut off by an unknown force. Every long-range Communications Channel was filled with an eerie static, and any