"Just the ship's internal armament has reached this level. Those personal armor suits are even stronger than the Solar Auxilia's…"
Dorn could only sigh, and silently pity the enemy.
As a master of defensive warfare, he understood the battlefield and knew how hard this fire saturation was to break.
There were almost no dead angles.
Even he would find it troublesome to push through.
"Fall back, fall back!"
The Chaos Space Marine commander roared, ordering the Traitor Astartes who had failed to break out to withdraw.
His scalp prickled.
Not long ago, intelligence from the Lord of the Red Corsairs claimed that the Savior, the Emperor of the Imperium, had just won the Vigilance Star campaign and was about to reach the Sol System.
The Chaos warbands had planned a raid to blunt the enemy's momentum.
That was how this operation began.
The warband under this commander had intended to exploit the moment when the Redemption Fleet was tied down, hit this pathetic pilgrim ship, and butcher the pilgrims aboard.
They planned to use the pilgrims' corpses to build a blasphemous ritual array, then throw the ship into the Sol System as a provocation, to demonstrate to the Corpse-Emperor and the Imperium.
To make that so-called Savior, that Emperor of the Imperium, lose face.
There was no choice. Right now, the Chaos forces resisting the Imperium had been greatly weakened. For the time being, they had no way to strike the Imperium's core regions.
They didn't even dare touch larger ships.
But those warbands that rejected the Savior and the new Chaos Warmaster's rule, and that insisted on resisting the Imperium to the end, still wanted to do something to recover morale.
Even if it was just to annoy the Savior, it was better than doing nothing.
For a Chaos warband, raiding a civilian pilgrim ship should have been effortless. Send a few Chaos Space Marines and they could slaughter the entire vessel.
But to finish the blasphemous plan quickly, they still dispatched several squads plus large numbers of cultists.
Although the pilgrim ship's void shields and shipboard firepower were a bit beyond expectation, the Chaos Space Marines and cultists still boarded successfully.
Then everything spiraled beyond prediction.
The commander's main force was intercepted on the main deck sector, and then they suddenly realized that the "Living Saint" statues in that area were moving.
The deck shook. Heavy fire poured down like a storm.
Those were not decorative Living Saint statues at all.
They were refitted heavy war assets, Imperial Knights!
What sane ship would station that kind of heavy asset inside its interior? And not even a warship, but a civilian vessel?
"Damn it, this isn't even a key defense line. Why are there elite forces here, with Imperial Knights protecting it?
Is there some high-value target aboard?!"
The Chaos commander realized he had chosen the wrong target and fell into impotent rage.
This was the terror of the Savior's strategy of hiding soldiers among the people.
No matter where xenos and heretic forces attacked, even if they only hit a civilian ship, they would meet fierce resistance.
Not like the old Imperium, fearful and helpless, waiting to be butchered.
The Imperium's enemies would be swallowed by the ocean of Imperial citizens.
The Chaos Space Marines and cultists were beaten senseless. After several assaults failed to break the Imperial line, they were hammered so hard they barely dared raise their heads.
With reinforcements arriving, they were pinned so completely they couldn't even peek out.
The Chaos Space Marines' battered power armor could not withstand the fire of Imperial Knights and super-heavy emplacements, especially with personal-armored infantry supporting.
Their shield fields had already been ground down to nothing under sustained fire. They were even less willing to expose themselves.
Even so, death stalked them constantly. Krak grenades and melta grenades could end them at any time.
The Imperium's saturating fire never let up. They saw no hope of victory.
So there was only withdrawal.
They decided to abandon the plan and leave this damned pilgrim ship.
But the moment the Chaos commander gave the withdrawal order and tried to contact his pickup, he discovered his warship's comms channel had gone silent.
…???
He turned around, and his Chaos warship was already…
Gone. Blown apart.
Then a battle barge of the Blood Angels, painted in vivid crimson, slammed into everyone's view.
(End of Chapter)
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