Chapter 167 - Loken's Boarding Action
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The Emperor's Children fleet arrived at the Iax system as scheduled.
The fallen serpent didn't hesitate for a moment. He took his Phoenix Guard and a handful of his most elite warriors and dove straight for the surface of Iax.
He could already feel the clone's presence. That counterfeit's soul-mark pulsed from the ruins below, radiating a nauseatingly pure light.
The fleet? The war? Victory or defeat?
None of it mattered.
He had one objective. One.
The moment the primarch left, the Emperor's Children fleet was hit from two sides at once.
The civilian transports had already been moved behind the system's star, well clear of the iron storm now breaking loose. The Wolf God's hidden fist swung out from the system's edge and the asteroid belts. The Lord of Ultramar's main fleet pushed in steady from the front. Two forces, two jaws of the same vice, clamping down on the enemy fleet with the Pride of the Emperor at its heart.
Horus had handed off void command to several mortal naval officers, men he'd watched carefully and chosen with care, along with his most trusted son, Loken.
Two Gloriana-class Battleships faced each other across the dark: the Macragge's Honour and the Pride of the Emperor. Ancient giants, both of them, born in the age of the Great Crusade. They spat furious fire at each other, macro-cannon broadsides weaving a web of death through the void.
The Macragge's Honour wore the Ultramarines' eternal discipline in every line of her armor. The Pride of the Emperor's hull crawled with Slaanesh's living adornments.
Two warships. Two fates. An old enmity playing out beneath the stars of Iax.
Loken had a full Terminator company and two companies of Primaris Greyshield Astartes under his command.
His objective was simple: destroy the Pride of the Emperor.
He didn't go straight at her. While both main fleets had their eyes locked on each other, he took a small strike force on a quiet wide arc and closed to boarding range.
A hundred boarding torpedoes cut ghostly blue trails through the void and slammed into the Pride of the Emperor's broadside like a meteor shower.
Explosions lit up the Gloriana's massive hull. The tearing of steel rang out soundlessly in the vacuum.
Terminators punched through the breaches first, storm bolters blazing down the narrow corridors. The Primaris Astartes poured in behind them, steady and relentless.
What greeted them was laughter.
The Emperor's Children veterans came forward with ornate blades and hungry grins, delighting in the combat, finding beauty in the kill. To them, these new-generation warriors were nothing but prey that had walked through the door.
10,000 years of combat. Swordsmanship blessed by Slaanesh. Total mastery over pain and pleasure. They had every right to be proud, and the ability to grind any ordinary Space Marine force into paste.
But seniority and a long kill record only take you so far.
Loken's Primaris Astartes carried gene-seed from across the Legions. The fires of the Indomitus Crusade had forged them into something the Emperor's Children weren't: a single cohesive killing unit, whose coordination had long since surpassed anything a single bloodline could produce.
Imperial Fists and Iron Warriors gene-seed warriors led the advance, boarding shields up, forming a moving wall that ate the Emperor's Children's flamboyant assault and gave nothing back. Behind them, warriors of Dark Angels, Ultramarines, and Iron Hands gene-seed set up their weapons and fired with methodical precision, shearing away the enemy's charging lines section by section.
When the Emperor's Children's formation began to buckle, the Space Wolves, Luna Wolves, and Blood Angels gene-seed warriors drove in from the front. While that was happening, Raven Guard, Night Lords, and White Scars gene-seed warriors had already wrapped around both flanks and sealed the pocket shut.
All of it directed by one man: Luna Wolves Captain Garviel Loken.
The loyalist advance was a meat grinder. Efficient, merciless, and completely indifferent to aesthetics.
Everything the Emperor's Children prided themselves on, the individual swordsmanship, the combat artistry, the personal glory of a perfect duel, meant nothing against a machine built from iron discipline. They could beat any single opponent they faced. Loken never gave them a single opponent. Every time one of them tried to open a duel, warriors from two or more different gene-lines came at them from multiple angles simultaneously.
No swordsmanship in the galaxy is pretty enough to stop 3 chainswords coming from 3 different directions at once.
Desperate, the Emperor's Children sorcerers unleashed the Slaaneshi daemons bound within the ship's hull. Chaos whispers flooded the corridors, coiling around the loyalists, tempting them to drop their weapons and surrender to desire.
Loken reached to his belt and drew out a single feather. The Great Angel Sanguinius's feather.
Golden light detonated through the corridors of the Pride of the Emperor. The Chaos whispers burned away like dew in direct sunlight. The Slaaneshi daemons reeled in the holy radiance, their power guttering, and one by one they were driven back into the Warp.
The force pushed on, destroying critical systems as they went, planting timed charges and melta bombs in the engine room, the weapons arrays, and the bridge access corridors.
They were moving to withdraw when a new force appeared at the far end of the corridor.
The man at the front carried the Blade of Laer. His face wore a smile that was both twisted and delighted.
Chosen of Slaanesh. Lucius the Eternal.
When he saw Loken's square, familiar face, Lucius let out a laugh that tipped toward hysteria.
"Long time no see, Captain Loken!" His voice rang through the corridor, soaked in sick pleasure. "That punch you gave me on the Vengeful Spirit — I still think about it!"
There was history between them.
The fighting pits of the Vengeful Spirit, before the Heresy had fully broken open. The arrogant Lucius had knocked down one Luna Wolf after another, and Abaddon had watched it for as long as he could stand before he had someone drag Loken over to teach this insolent Emperor's Children warrior a lesson.
It went exactly as Lucius described. Loken used no swordsmanship. One straight punch, and the insufferably proud blademaster of the Emperor's Children went down.
That should have been forgotten long ago. But seeing Loken's measured, unhurried face again, the humiliation from 10,000 years past sank its fangs back into his heart.
Loken looked at him without expression.
"I told you then — don't fight a son of Cthonia." His voice dropped to something flat and cold. "We don't care about swordsmanship, Lucius." A beat. "I will always remember you. You betrayed Captain Tarvitz."
On Isstvan III, Lucius had stood with the loyalists. He had fought beside his brothers against the first traitor purge.
Then he had betrayed them. Betrayed the Emperor of Mankind.
"You — how dare you say his name to my face!"
The words landed on a wound that had never closed. Lucius roared, and the hideous scarring left by 10,000 years of death and resurrection stood out across his face, raw with fury.
He would never forget it. That damned Tarvitz had used Loken's trick on the battlefield, driven a fist straight into his proud face. Two different men. The same humiliation, given twice.
"There's nothing left to say, Lucius."
Loken closed his grip on his power axe. The blade caught the corridor's dim light and threw back a cold, hard gleam.
"We have nothing left to say to each other."
"Then fight me, Garviel!"
Lucius bellowed and swung the Blade of Laer through a lethal arc. The 10,000-year veterans behind him surged forward with him. Their twisted faces were full of only one thing: hunger for the kill.
"For the living! For the dead! My life to Lupercal and the Emperor of Mankind!"
Loken's battle cry broke like thunder through the corridors of the Pride of the Emperor.
Power axe met the Blade of Laer. The impact threw sparks in every direction.
And the loyalist warriors at Loken's back, an unbreakable wall of iron, crashed into the traitors head-on.
➤ Next: Call Out the True Lord of the Legion — Typhus!
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