The klaxons wailed—a harsh, metallic shriek that tore through the uneasy calm of the bridge of Aurora's Folly. Red emergency lighting bathed the command deck in a frantic, blood-tinged glow, casting long, distorted shadows across the walls as the ship shuddered violently. Outside the reinforced view-ports, the void flared with unnatural light—not the cold, steady burn of distant stars or the scorching lances of plasma, but the flickering, corrupted glow of warp-lightning, streaking across space like the fury of a god gone mad.
"Status report! Damage report!" Captain Viktor Volkov barked, his voice normally calm and deliberate, now raw and hoarse with urgency. Braced against the command throne, his white-knuckled grip on the armrest seemed the only thing anchoring him to sanity amid the chaos. His eyes scanned the bridge—controlled panic writ large across every face.
"External hull breaches—decks three and five, aft sections!" a ratings officer shouted. "Atmospheric pressure destabilizing! Power conduits arcing!"
"Seal those decks! Reroute auxiliary power and dispatch damage control units immediately!" Volkov snapped. "Defensive auspex sweep—fire at will!"
"Auspex blind, Captain!" the ship's Tech-Priest, Designate Delta-79, rasped. Mechanical limbs trembled slightly as sparks danced from overloaded data-nodes. "Target is phasing intermittently. Appears... and vanishes. Predictive lock impossible. Entity behaves as though slipping between realspace and immaterium."
Another hit slammed into the hull with brutal force. The deck tilted, throwing personnel to the floor. A console exploded in a shower of sparks. Someone screamed.
Then came a different scream.
Elara, the ship's astropath, typically silent within her reinforced psy-chamber adjacent to the bridge, let out a sound that transcended pain. It wasn't a scream so much as a soul tearing itself apart—raw, high-pitched, and laced with psychic torment. Her restraints barely held her flailing form.
Volkov turned, heart pounding. "Elara! Report! What do you see?"
She choked out syllables, eyes wide and glowing with warp-burn. "It... it's him... the Serpent... perfection... pain so exquisite... it's inside me... inside the ship!"
Volkov's blood ran cold.
"Fulgrim..." she whispered, blood seeping from her eyes. "The Phoenician... he sees us."
A beat of silence followed, filled only by klaxons and groaning steel. Then Delta-79 clicked urgently.
"Visual contact achieved. Momentary lock through secondary void array. Transmitting."
The main viewscreen flickered, clearing just long enough to show the nightmare pursuing them.
Not an Imperial silhouette. Not a crude Chaos raider.
A vessel impossibly sleek and serpentine, as if carved from living pearl. Its surface shimmered with an oil-slick sheen, pulsating softly, like breathing skin. Lashes of warp-light shimmered across its hull, and from its prow gleamed a corrupted Aquila—twisted and split into the mark of the Emperor's Children.
Volkov stared. A ship of Fulgrim's legion. No ordinary threat—this was a predator, hunting for pleasure.
"Hull integrity critical—Gellar field destabilizing!" cried another officer. "We're seconds from warp intrusion!"
Volkov made a choice. "Navigator, nearest grav-well? Planet? Anything!"
"PX-403, fourth planet of Proxima system! Atmosphere viable!"
"Take us in! Emergency descent!"
Aurora's Folly bucked violently as its injured engines complied. A roar built as they entered the atmosphere, hull screaming under friction. Emergency lighting flickered; screams echoed as crew were thrown about. Elara continued keening, her voice no longer her own.
Through the veils of fire and smoke, the planet below resolved—a world in agony.
Patchworks of chitinous infestation covered vast regions. Tyranid hives. The planet wasn't just dying—it was being devoured.
But amidst the red haze of biosignature scans, flickers of hope gleamed in gold and cobalt.
"Imperial bastion detected! XIII Legion signatures confirmed—Ultramarines!" Delta-79 reported. "Heavily besieged, but transmitting recognition codes."
"Overlay infection density. Find the thinnest zone near that bastion!" Volkov ordered.
A small, relatively uninfested corridor lit up. A tiny flicker of resistance in a sea of horror.
"Adjust descent. Burn every coil we've got—bring us down there!"
The ship groaned under the strain, trajectory adjusting steeply. Viewscreens crackled. Below, flashes of bolter fire and bio-plasma fire danced in the dark.
"Transmitting request for coordination with Ultramarine forces. Immediate ground team deployment on landing. Evacuation priority." Delta-79 clicked.
Volkov gritted his teeth. "This is Captain Volkov of the Rogue Trader vessel Aurora's Folly. Requesting immediate joint action with loyalist forces on the surface. Our ship is compromised. Emergency descent in progress. We bring survivors, munitions, and support."
Silence answered. Then—barely—crackling over the vox:
"Acknowledged, Aurora's Folly. This is Sergeant Kaelon of the Ultramarines 3rd Company. You have a narrow window. Touch down within the perimeter or be overrun. We will hold. Emperor protects."
"Coordinates locked," Delta-79 confirmed. "Touchdown in sixty-five seconds."
Volkov stood tall as fire danced across the void-shields. "All hands, brace for impact. Engage landing protocols. And pray."
As the crippled vessel screamed toward the surface, pursued by madness, they aimed for a single spark of hope in a world buried beneath the shadow of alien hunger and daemonic elegance.
The sky burned. The Emperor's Children whispered. The Tyranids waited.
And still, humanity endured.
---
The groan of stressed metal was a living thing, a rising shriek of protest against the unimaginable pressure squeezing Aurora's Folly like a vice. Outside the reinforced hull, the atmosphere of PX-403 wasn't merely air—it was a roiling sea of corrosive gases, dense particulate matter, and bio-contaminants. The descent was no longer guided—it was a controlled fall through planetary hell.
"Hull integrity failing—sections Gamma-7, Delta-12, and Epsilon-9!" the Nav-Serf shrieked. Alarms screamed in reply, joined by klaxons and the guttural roar of stressed engines.
"Brace for impact!" Volkov bellowed.
Two figures moved amid the chaos.
Aang, his body trembling with strain, stood near the porthole. His eyes narrowed, hands sweeping into formation. The air shimmered as he forced a turbulent vacuum into a bubble of compressed stability. Screeching metal faded in his wake, structural groans muted by shifting pressure. "I can slow it," he gasped, "but not for long."
Far below, Sanguinius moved like lightning through the breaking corridors. Bursting through sealed hatches, he slammed his armored body into place, forcing ruptured metal shut with bare hands. The ship shuddered as he braced failing walls, his wings folding protectively over falling crew.
"Gamma-7 sealed! Delta-12... sealed manually!" a crewman gasped.
Volkov exhaled. "Aang, Sanguinius—you've saved us. The Emperor... and whatever gods may be... bless you."
Through the cloudbanks, horror emerged. Gargoyles swarmed in clouds, their wings slicing air, screeching in anticipation. Organic spores floated like tumors, drifting with ominous weight.
Aang glimpsed them. "We're flying into a storm of flesh."
The ship breached the lower cloud layer—into an atmosphere thick with Tyranid organisms.
Impactors struck first. Spores screamed as they hit—millions of them. They latched to hull and port, spreading, sloughing biomass across external surfaces. Filaments rooted, squirming for entry.
"Contamination accelerating! Sensors blind!" Delta-79's voice was laced with static.
"Engage external augers and vent-flame turrets! Burn them off!" Volkov ordered.
"System jammed—vents choked. Flames receding. External targeting lost!"
The Aurora's Folly fell, weighed down by Tyranid mass. Navigation was a guess. The ravine below rose like a blade.
Impact.
Metal tore and screamed. Earth cracked. Aurora's Folly slammed into the rock wall, carving deep into the ravine before coming to rest—a tilted, buried hulk.
Silence fell.
"Report," Volkov croaked, wrenching free from the collapsed command throne.
"Emergency power only... hull breaches lower decks... structural collapse possible," someone muttered.
"Gellar Field... stable, but fluctuating..." Delta-79 rasped.
"Casualties?" Volkov demanded.
"Severe. Multiple decks inaccessible. Crew scattered."
Volkov pushed through the haze. "Then we go to work. Triage. Armament. External recon. Kael, assemble a scouting team—find high ground, establish vox contact."
Kael saluted. "By His Will."
Hours passed. Firefighting, wounded evacuation, pressure patching. The hull moaned as Tyranid matter crept, searching for purchase.
Then—crackle.
"...Sergeant Baridan... Third Company, Ultramarines... identify... under siege..."
Volkov lunged for the vox. "This is Captain Volkov of Aurora's Folly. Crashed. Survivors onboard. Request assistance!"
Static.
"Aurora's Folly? Signature irregular. Energy anomalies. Explain now. Who are your passengers? What powers bleed from your wreckage?"
The line cut, swallowed by bolter fire.
Volkov's hand hovered. To speak truth risked execution. To lie risked worse. The war for survival had just begun—and trust, even among Imperials, was a fragile currency in a galaxy of horror.