Captain Cregor remembers scowling on the bridge when the auxilia officers had voiced their tepid objections. Baseline humans. Such weakness. They aren’t made for this.

The sky is full of iron. Ships the size of cities exchanging firepower that could shatter moons.

Explosions the size of mountains sprout across the horizon, shockwaves radiating out, wreckage peppering the surface.

Cregor leads his power-armoured killers through it all without pause.

They attack directly, of course, just as the traitors expected.

But they didn’t expect the comets.

Their perfect, textbook defence leaves the Fourth unable to react in time. Unable to prevent the redirected rocks, hurled by gravitic slingshots. They tear great chunks out of their orbital defences. 

And tear great chunks out of the planet, too, Cregor thinks with a snigger.

Through these gaping holes come the Stormbirds and the roaring drop pods. 

‘Kill them!’ Cregor roars across the company vox as they charge into the reeling defenders.

Now they approach the next line of fortifications, unbreakable bastion walls and macro-cannons.

Cregor gives the order, and several of his company heft their launchers and fire.

The overlapping explosions seem to shake the continent itself. Mushroom clouds rise before them, the atomic flash of rad-rockets turning his company into bulky silhouettes for long moments.

Cregor punches the air, ordering the advance through the smouldering ruins of the defences, the shockwaves pummeling him, the debris raining.

Unbreakable? Bah! 

‘Your company must do the damage of a Chapter,’ Lord Mor had instructed, unsealing the direst weapons from their extensive arsenal for this assault.

Chapter, Cregor sneers at the term. It’s all the talk these days. One of the Emperor’s surviving sons urging reforms to break down the legions of old into smaller formations. Idiot Primarch, thinks Cregor with distaste, leading the advance. Late as always. Our Clan has fought like a Chapter since before The Betrayal.

At the next defence line, towering pillboxes unleash heavy firepower into his forces. Warriors bearing the red talon on their armour rupture and fall into pieces.

Cregor aims his own devastating weapon and triggers the Phosphex Incinerator.

Green-white living fire consumes the towering pillboxes, spreading fast, ever-hungry and inexhaustible.

The heat wash singes his own armour.

Then he hears it. The rarest sound in the universe. 

Post-humans screaming in agony as they are consumed.

He savours it.

Cregor punches the air. The company advances.

They’re into the trenches now, charging the traitors. Battle is joined.

Post-human brutes killing post-human brutes—kinetic damage inflicted at speeds incomprehensible to ordinary men. The carnage is total. Torn bodies, armour shattered, insides spilt, piling higher and higher. Caked in mud, the vicious combatants rip and tear ceaselessly.

Cregor charges at his next opponent. The traitor’s chain bayonet tearing the incinerator out of his grip. Cregor’s cybernetic fist pulverises the attacker’s bolter in turn. Drawing their chainswords, they charge again, exchanging countless blows each second, shards of metal flying. 

They beat against each other with superhuman strength and martial expertise until the brutal weapons are reduced to shattered stubs, drives sparking, and saw chains hanging limp.

They pause, holding the broken swords, their armoured chests rising and falling. They have lost their helmets in the exchange, grizzled features, scarred and cybernetic, glare pure hatred.

Discarding the shattered blades, they pull combat knives and fly at each other once more.

Their form is perfect, but Perturabo’s son has less augmentation, making him a split second faster.

He stabs Cregor through the red talon etched on his chest.

Cregor looks down at the blade—a perfect transhuman kill-stab.

Then he looks up and meets the gaze of his opponent. The Iron Warrior is puzzled. Why isn’t he falling?

Cregor copies the move and stabs the traitor in turn.

The warrior collapses, shocked, not understanding.

Cregor towers over him and bangs the red talon on his plate with a ceramite fist.

Of course. Now the traitor understands.

The loyalist is heavily augmented. His multi-lungs and twin-hearts have not been mere flesh in a century. 

‘You lose,’ the Iron Warrior spits black ichor. ‘…lost half your company…’

‘Lost?’ snarls Cregor. ‘No.’

His augmetic eyes blaze with madness.

‘You merely culled the weak from our ranks, leaving the strong to grow stronger still.’

Cregor’s visage is hate incarnate.

’We thank you for it,’ he says and spits acid.

The traitor somehow manages to find words, drowning in his own fluids.

‘You can’t win… loyalist scum…’ he gargles. ‘…war without end…’

Finally dead, his eyes stare empty.

Cregor is silent for a moment, turning to gaze up at the burning skies. His metal lungs fill with the stench of gore and the discharge of lunatic weaponry. Chainswords clash and roar around him. His systems are bleating radiation warnings.

‘War without end, eh?’ he rasps with a slow smile. 

‘Good!’