There was no telling how long they had drifted through warped space and time.
It might have been an instant, or it might have been centuries.
When Horus regained consciousness, shrill alarms and the acrid stink of burning cables filled the bridge.
"...Status report!" He shook his swimming head and barked the order.
"Engines... seventy percent have shut down. Weapons systems... all offline. Hull integrity... forty-three percent. We're... we're alive, Warmaster." The Ultramarines captain climbed off the floor, his armor covered in electrical scorch marks.
"Our position?"
"Unknown... none of the star maps match. We were thrown out of the storm, but this... is definitely not the region we were in before."
"Raise the viewing port shutters."
At Horus's command, the heavy alloy shields slowly rose.
A wash of... green met everyone's eyes.
It was a planet.
A vibrant green planet, teeming with primal life. Slightly larger than Terra, it had two moons and an asteroid belt formed from shattered meteoroids.
From orbit, vast forests and mountain ranges covered its continental plates, with blue oceans running between them like enormous arteries.
But that expanse of green was dotted with countless... ugly "scars."
They were tribes and factories belching black smoke, built from heaps of scrap metal and garbage in a savage, chaotic style. Huge, crudely built war machines rampaged across the ground, leaving ugly, centipede-like tracks behind them.
At certain mountain passes and river confluences, fortresses of unmistakably human design, now battered and broken, mounted a desperate resistance. Sporadic artillery fire burst in feeble flashes among those smoke-shrouded "scars."
"...We've picked up a... faint distress signal." Weariness tinged the communications officer's voice. "It's... in Low Gothic."
He patched the signal through and amplified it.
"...This is... Zelanis... Ninth Army Group... requesting... any Imperial Fleet that can hear us... assistance... we...