The unthinkable happened. In all the long centuries since Horus lead half the Empire against the Emperor, no enemy force has ever landed a blow against the Exalted One. That is, until now. The entire Chapter of Novamarines, from the ancient Dreadnoughts to the youngest recruits who could wear half-armor had done the impossible and now threatened the God of Man.

They had been in the service of Rogue Trader McKimmon, exploring and dominating a series of worlds along the border between the segmentae Ultima and Obscuris. For two years, they had fought and won. Then suddenly there was no contact between the Darkest Recovery and the sentinel stations. Twelve years after that, parts of McKimmon began to show up around the Imperium. His hands in the bunk of an Ultramarine Captain, his head in a chafing dish at a feast of Lord Helmawr. For a time, it became something of a game among the idle and the powerful, guessing where the next part of McKimmon might appear. For more than fifteen years, still-bleeding bits and pieces of McKimmon showed up far and wide across the Imperium.

By the time the Battle Barge Darkest Recovery appeared deep within Sol's defensive net, many had forgotten about the Novamarines. She and her fighters destroyed the guardian ships before they could do much more than scream in pain. Gathering her forces, she changed her course for Terra in less than half an hour. The ship shuddered as the main plasma drives burned a course for the Throneworld.

The defensive forces made every attempt to stop the lone ship. The battlefleets were recalled from a third of the Empire, only to have the impassioned cries for help from choruses of powerful astropaths became so much static and garbled nonsense. The great temple of the Astronomnican was destroyed by a cloaked fusion missile, crippling the Great Imperium and striking a blow from which the Imperium might never recover.

Powerful missiles and devastating conversion batteries around the Jovian bases targeted the ship, but she evaded the hail of deadly energy with dexterity seen only in the Eldar. The rumors flew that the ancient race sought revenge for some millennia old debt. The Recovery released her fighters and fired her weapons and millions more died in an hour of combat, roasted alive and then frozen solid in the reaches of space.

The Recovery maimed her way into orbit around Terra. Mars had gone insane. Somehow, a powerful technological daemon had gotten loose in the central data cores. The techno-magi did everything they could to stop the loss of their data, only to have to battle their own creations. Everything from servitors to Titans danced and slew to the insane piping of a ghost within the greatest of machines. Terra herself tried to fight off the single ship that laid her under siege, but a far more insidious control was taken over the warmachines of the Throneworld. The Titans would not move. Snub fighters would launch and burn for the upper atmosphere only to have the flight control computer fail and flare, killing the pilot and bringing tons of flaming metal back down on the planet. Every defensive system seemed to fail at the whim of the Novamarines.

Pandemonium ruled the Imperial Demesne. The temple of the Assassins, so long a secret terror for the Imperium, blew into so many atoms as they immolated themselves rather than have all of their secret shames exposed, even if there would remain none to see them. The population, goaded by fear and hatred of those who had controlled them for so long, went mad. Arbiters were torn from their rounds and beaten to death with bare hands. The great adeptus astartes were killed by those they had sworn to defend. Men and women threw themselves on the great warriors, slashing at them with tools stolen from their places of work. Children who glimpsed freedom for an instant charged the armored men with primitive explosives. Even the Inquisitors were not immune to the hate of mega-generations. They were found beaten to death and locked in their own porta-racks - their last thoughts those of unthinkable agony and humiliation; many were found missing their private parts or with those organs stuffed in their mouths.

Even the mighty dreadnoughts that defended the homes of the powerful families were attacked and destroyed by servitors driven mad by instructions they could not comprehend. The high lords of Terra gathered their retinues and hid within the only safe place, the Hall of the Golden Throne itself. They hid there with their century old weapons and their prayers for an Emperor who did not seem to listen. His custodians held the cusps of heroes to his eyes as the tears coursed down. The Master of Mankind had done nothing to stop his errant sons - for his mighty golden throne was winding down. Everything was going to pieces; repairs went undone. The palace, in all of its majestic, clockwork, glory, was dying.

The mighty lords of Terra hid within the palace of the Golden Throne. They waited, with their house troops and their useless honors, praying for a salvation that was not coming. They watched as the end of all they knew was upon them and they knew fear. They watched the battle rage on and on as the Novamarines fought their way through the twisting passages of the palace. The Rainbow Warriors and the Iron Hands fought as best they could against their brethren, but they were as unschooled recruits with toys fighting the Novamarines. Two Chapters died almost to a man, killing but a handful of the invaders.

There was one chance left. The antechamber to the Golden Throne was the home of the mightiest defenders of the Imperium - the Warlord Titans Truth and Faith. The massed throng behind the doors of gold and adamantine heard a massive explosion and knew that the Novamarines had used nuclear weapons to breach the outer barbican. They watched the battle unfold on handheld monitors and through the monocles of their powered armor. They were watching from remote feeds and spy-eyes scattered about the outer chamber.

They watched as the two giants stood erect, the mile-high ceiling crashing down to form a rampart. The Novamarines in odd, smooth, armor charged on - recklessly daring the titans to fire. For generations, the pilots and gunners of Truth and Faith had been culled from the very best of the forge world orders. Like armored leviathans, full of animal speed and cunning, the titans struck. Their multi-launchers and plasma weapons screamed death at the heretic invaders. But it did little good, for the Novamarines dodged the fire and absorbed most of it with fields, perhaps twenty of them died. In response, the marines all produced single shot rocket launchers. Scores of fiery fingers leapt up through the scintillating void shields to smash repeatedly at their great heads with high explosives and burning plasma.

The titans were stunned and blinded, their crews killed or grievously wounded. They thrashed about, the animal spirits taking control. Faith turned on Truth and smashed it against the great doors of adamantine and gold. No mortal barrier could stand against megatons of kinetic energy. The great doors buckled, smashing a number of the High Lords like so many scurrying creatures. The titans tore at each other and rolled away from the Master of Mankind, to tear wires and buckle plate until one could fight no more.

The Novamarines scrambled past them to engage the surviving High Lord house troops and Adeptus Custodes warriors in the presence of His Imperial Majesty. For a few tense instants they fought, ancient technology against something completely alien. But then, when it looked like the imperial lines could take no more, something came over the Novas and they dropped to their knees, wailing like lost children. They were cut to ribbons, their blood mixing with the blood oozing beneath the great golden doors. As they died, they chanted their sins and begged for forgiveness. One thousand marines that had crippled the Imperium died in seconds. Only one remained, an ancient dreadnought from the days of the Warmaster. He leapt over the carnage on flaming contrails. Somersaulting through the last line of defenders, it brought a garishly painted weapon to bear on the Emperor. A single pencil-fine ray of laser light bathed the face of His Majesty. The beam snuffed out as a tiny ball shot from the barrel. Everyone in the great room breathed a final prayer as the projectile sailed over the intervening distance and struck with a soft splat. Luminous purple marking paint ran down the immortal face, dropping like tears.

Then, from every communication device among the dead marines, and from the desiccated throat of the last Nova dread, a gravely, almost inhuman voice spoke. The voice was old, cynical, it spoke with an accent that had not been heard in more than eleven thousand years. Those there knew that every survivor on Earth could hear this same message and that their Empire would never be the same again.

"Do Not Go Where You Are Not Welcome. This Is Your Last Warning Rikkard."

And so the ancient dreadnought stood and spoke. The assembled Lords and warriors fell silent, unwilling to act against the now unmoving machine lest some new terror strike them dead. In a voice full of mockery and ancient hatred, it spat, "My dear, sweet Rikkard. I cannot believe how your nightmares have spread. You are now the Emperor of a Kingdom of stars that spans much of this galaxy. But it is not a place where men can walk free. No, your need for control has sacrificed how many trillions? Your men say that you survive on the souls of the infirm and that you battle the daemons of the Warp. I remember a time when you masqueraded as a young man, haunted and driven by his dreams."

"You remember me. I was the one that saved you on that long trek through the Ukkaz sprawls. Perhaps more of that old story will jog that millennia-long memory of yours. Now I want all of your attention here, put down your thousand-fold sword, stop crying your oceans of tears for those you consume and listen for once in your life. Humanity existed far before you strolled on the scene. It will live long past the day you finally turn to so much dust. You must remember that it was just the simple men who saved you and your daughter so long ago. The simple men that you now twist into inquisitors or cripple so that the carapace fits. The Cabal saved your life once and you forgot. Now, once you count up your dead, yet again, perhaps you will be more cautious as to where you send your armored goons."

"Listening now? Good."

The Dreadnought rocked back on its huge splayed feet and that dreadful voice spoke again, "I know that your pathetic little cronies here are far more concerned with the paint that's dripping off your face than the trillions of citizens who are now outside of your reach with the destruction of the Astronomnican. They should wonder about all of those people who are free of you. For right now, as no doubt you can see, there is a new light illuminating the warp. That light is not a single beacon, rather hundreds of machines are creating a similar signal. They are proof against demonic possession and should keep functioning for more than one hundred years, long enough for you to rebuild. Everywhere that light illuminates, I see. Should one Black Ship fly for a culling, the light will vanish. Should any of your marines head for a peaceful world, the light will vanish. This is my new covenant and bond to you.

According to our records, the year was 23,764 - a bad time for those who crawled across the broken face of our Mother. The Earth had been shattered by countless wars over resources, over honor, over stupidity. Nav-driven travel through nearspace did little to benefit the people still on the planet's surface. We survived on the meager resources the filtered through the Orbital Lord's nets. Even though there was almost nothing left, save poisoned oceans full of mutated leviathans and hive cities where gunfire never ended, the wars continued. For the governments of Earth had fled to the highest towers, orbiting fortresses: it had become far too dangerous for people of importance to live on the planet. A single ton of nickel-iron taken from the scrap-yards around the moon and launched from one of the ubiquitous magnetic accelerators was enough to destroy any real resistance.

The Moon and Mars were little better. Luna finally had her lunatics. A score of generations ago, the Moon had been a place of peace, a Shangri-La were all could go to experience the beauty of mystical thoughts and reflect back on the religious teachings of the great Buddha, the ancient Jews, even the teachings of the Hawking Adepts. But a dark cloud fell over the peace-loving clans and they fell to battling against each other. The religious groups had warred against each other for more than five centuries to prove their prince of peace was the true one. Needless to say, few visited the Moon. The Martians, so long independent from the Governments of Earth, saw the troubles and kept their heads down. They built their ships and their robots, had their own intercinene wars and looked ever outward to the stars.

Earth was still home to billions but the only people who remained upon the scarred face of mother Earth were those too petty to leave. The insignificant warlords and gang bosses locked in ongoing hate-filled wars of attrition kept millions of slaves or serfs to keep their warmachines going. But that was not all, for the Cabal stood on Earth as well. We were newcomers here. We had left the Orbital Lords, turning against our parents and our elders. For we had learned our history too well. There was once a place where every one had a voice in the way of things. There was a time when you could walk under the skies and breathe free. There was a time when a grasp of hands, equal to equal, meant more than a knife in the back. We had decided to return home in order to try to change things. Our hope was to bring the insanity to an end.

But I should leave off of what the Cabal was trying to do. We were forgotten soon enough, or erased from your history books. I think it would be best for me to tell the story as it began. And in so doing, tell everything so that you remember.

I was on point watch that day. Kier and the Scytan were out in the tunnels with me, watching the other aggressive groups near us. It was the way that I could contribute to the Cabal. I was never much of a statesman or a scientist, so I lead the warriors and kept the others safe. The three of us were separated by only a couple of kilometers and kept in contact through an elaborate system of relays imbedded in the walls and floor of the ancient sewers. Our perimeter sweeps lasted days at a time - making sure our borders were secure and keeping tabs on the activities of our neighbors around Claw Lake.

I'm still not sure why we all fought so hard to control those stretches of territory. The Cen-Ukkaz sprawl that had once lay across hundreds of kilometers, a gigantic organism of plascrete and durasteel. Its habitats, plazas, transport systems and millions of kilometers of conduits were woven into complex designs that were once said to be the most efficient and best defended structure on the face of the earth. That was before the attacks. Halcyon Corporation in their orbital stations was in direct competition with Cen-Ukkaz on many fronts. Today it is not known who started the hostilities, but the war that ensued changed everything. It left Halcyon at war with three other Corporations and it left Cen-Ukkaz in ruined and half-abandoned.

But like I was saying, I was on point watch, maybe twenty kilometers away from Cabal central, when I heard screams, female screams. Part of the Cabal's philosophy was that the rule of strength would come to an end. The best application of that philosophy was to hunt down those who murdered and raped because they had the power. So I took off at speed, alerting the others. There were more screams and then the scrape of armor against plascrete. Best guess was that they were just under a kilometer away. My ears were augmented for no-light combat and long-range tracking, among other things, so this wasn't much of a guess.

The water that still settled in these tunnels was freezing. It still stunk of humanity after sixty years of absence. The screaming reached a peak and then went silent. All I could hope was that she had passed out and had not died. I ran faster, sprinting through the tunnels. Five seconds later, I was able to hear her heartbeat, thready and rapid. Eight seconds after that, I found them.

They were in an overflow chamber of the old sewer system. The vaulted ceiling was about seven meters over my head. Four hulks were holding down a girl who could not have been more than fourteen. A fifth was in the process of stripping her, his pants already down around his knees. I activated the combat chips and felt them take over. As I dove at them, I heard a signal from Kier, an electronic warble at the hinge of my mastoid process. He was less than ten seconds away. Ten seconds is a long time for warriors as fast as the Hulks. It was an eternity for me.

I enjoyed the fight. The Grannels were an amazing feat of genetic engineering and selective breeding. They were gigantic masses of muscle, over three meters tall, with ceramite hardening over all of their bones. Their brains were so small and they were grown so quickly that they could not be trained to fight. Instead, computers had to be installed along their nerve trunks to give them combat skills. Our hackers stole the new programs so that we could interpret the techniques the current generation would, in all likelihood, make use of.

The would-be rapist looked up just as my feet left the ground. The blade mounted inside my left arm snapped out. The long dagger-like shaft caught him in the throat. As I tumbled him onto his back, the blade retracted and the wound spouted hot scarlet. He gagged, swinging his head from side to side. For an instant, the poor fool tried to stand; luckily for me, my blade had penetrated his spinal cord, severely damaging it. He sat there with his pants halfway down and looked stupid and pathetic. I killed him and watched him die in less than a second.

The opticals that replaced the majority of my nervous system distorted my relative time. In the tenth of a second it took for the Grannels to realize that their mate was dead, I had my pistols out. I let one of them have it with the fletcher. Thousands of hypersonic needles of metal disintegrated against the hulk's near impenetrable breastplate. As he charged, there would be a 90 percent chance he would try to dodge to the left. I twitched the stream of metal to match his dodge. The flechettes struck deep in his eyes and through his open mouth and pinwheeled through his body, shredding him inside his armor. The second of the hulks died almost before the girl hit the ground.

The other three dropped their bolters and switched to chain-knives. I could almost hear the computers in their heads making assumption and planning attacks.
     1. Hostile is faster.
     2. Hostile's weapon is empty.
     3. Hostile must not be allowed to change position.
          Projected Action: Close and attack with chain knives.
They came at me, hills of armored muscle. I let one of them have it with my other gun. Kranak had gotten his hands on a sniper's rifle and had cut the barrel off about 20cm in front of the trigger- guard. It threw a 140-gram projectile at incredible velocities, but without much accuracy. The hulk on the left caught the thumb-thick round just below his hard armor. The chunk of high-density ceramic tumbled through him and exploded as it struck his spine, tearing him in half. 325 kilos of flesh struck the foul water with two distinct, meaty thumps.

Faster than expected, another hulk was on me. The whirling blade, a strip of flexible fiber with a monofilament edge, slashed through my fletcher. I dropped my guns and grappled with him: silver chrome fingers clenched around adamantine wrists the size of my legs. Yanking with everything I had, I pulled him off his feet. As I dropped back onto my shoulders, I was able to get a boot against his chin. The telltales went off as I overstrained my implants and pushed. I felt the thick bones in his neck give. The blade shut down as the thing lost what will it had to live.

For an instant, I didn't think I would get him off me. The implants were giving out, too much stress. It took three seconds to shove his corpse off. As I did, the last of them had turned back toward the girl. I could barely move. I tried to get its attention turned toward to me. "Bastard!" I shouted, "come over here and fight." It looked at me for a portion of a second before looking at the girl again. Its mind was made up. Raping the girl was a better bet than taking on something that had killed his friends.

As he took another step toward her, a white-hot needle of laser energy caught him in the throat. The flesh charred and smoked as he dropped to his knees and then onto his back, sending up a wave of cold, black water. Minutes compressed themselves back into seconds as the combat reflexes shut down. Pain materialized everywhere, neurons wailing in torment. But pain is just a chemical reaction and chemical reactions can be countered. As Kier and the Scytan closed on the girl, I set off a series of programs to flood my body with endorphin-analogs. The chemicals broke the muscle spasms with heavy, warm hands. My arms hung enervated at my sides, the servos burned out.

The girl was still in danger. The ravenous bacteria in the tunnels would quickly turn her wounds septic. Kier helped me lock my arms into a cradle with one of his multi-tools and some doing. I held her as best I could while the two of them stripped the bodies of valuables: rocket rounds, e-packs, comm-gear. We left their armor and their useless bodies with a surprise - 100g of thermite with mercury switches.

The Scytan, a member of one of the more experimental Orbitals, was more alien and strange than the hulks. They were masters of genetic manipulation. He stood more than three meters tall and looked like a cross between a horse and a man. Covered in a deep purple hide the texture of tanned leather, he made a very incongruous pair with Kier, his best friend. Kier was small and scrawny and hairy, to an extreme. Red hair seemed to sprout from almost everywhere, back, chest, ears. The Scytan took the girl from me and we quickly, soundlessly, made our way back to the Lair.

She made soft, frightened noises as though she had risen from unconsciousness into nightmare. She mumbled something about her father again and again. She moaned once, loud enough to give away our position to any within a klik. The Scytan used his empathic abilities to calm her mind, slowing some. I looked at her again and wondered what had happened to her father that would cause such stress.

We made good time down the dark tunnels that made up the sprawl. As we crossed the border into what we considered our home, I began a silent conversation with a number of sensors. Everyone that crossed our borders was accosted by a radio signal. If the signal is not replied to within a few seconds, a powerful set of magneto-gravitic pressor beams will 'glue' the intruder to the nearest wall until one of us goes to investigate. It is a most embarrassing thing to have happen. Once across the border, the three of us felt safe enough to speak out loud.

"Jesu, Caz, what were you thinking?" asked Keir, "when did five on one turn into good odds?"

I half-laughed and said, "any time the two of you can't keep up."

Scytan turned his head toward the two of us and said, "Little men, the only reason I stray behind is to make sure that five do not become fifty." There was a long history of the Scytan's orbital coming under massive invasion because of their work with recombinant genetics. "There is much to be said for a cautious advance."

"You are right, my friends," I nodded as I spoke, "I will try to look twice before jumping in."

"Good Enough," rumbled the big creature, "now let us get this one back to the Lair so that her injuries can be tended to." We were quiet for a while longer. The tunnels began to smell a little less foul as we made our way deeper into our territory. The cabal had decided while it was important that our tunnels look like the rest, there was no reason for them to smell like them. The graffiti and other paint-borne territorial markings were painstaking reconstructions of tags from more than a dozen different gangs in the area. Our psych-experts agreed that the paint job would further reinforce a group of invaders that they were in an uninteresting portion of the sprawl.

Even though most of the ancient light sources had been destroyed, there was still enough to see by, if you knew what polarization frequency we used. All of us wore, or had special lenses that allowed us to make use of the altered light. There were more deterrents to invaders. We had special emitters installed throughout the outer tunnels that would slowly inject false data into any advanced scanner, forcing the machine to shut down to recalibrate its internal mechanisms.

Imagine, if you will, how a group of raiders felt when moving through our tunnels. They can see only through the use of whatever light source they brought with them. At least one of their company has been crushed to death by an unseen force, (yes the pressors are capable of exerting enough v-newtons to kill a lightly-armored human.) Their sensors reveal nothing of value until the devices being to fail. Not a place to visit on a dare.

Eventually, we believed we were deep enough in our own territory to talk to each other. Keir turned to me and said, "The rest of the sweep went without incident.