Introduction:

  The world of Beta Dalas had once been a loyal hive world of the Imperium, its towering manufactorums feeding the endless wars of mankind. Beneath its cathedrals and refinery stacks, however, corruption had taken root. Inquisitor Broman uncovered a vast Genestealer Cult hidden deep within the underhive, worshipping the so-called Four-Armed God. Before the cult could rise openly, Broman transmitted an emergency astropathic plea to the Imperial Fists. The First Company’s battle barge, Hammer of Dorn, answered. The Imperial Fists veteran company was already engaged upon the planet, while the Veteran Terminators under Captain Severan Thale remained in reserve, awaiting deployment into the heart of the infestation. Their orders were simple: purge the corruption before the world was consumed.

  The Imperial Fists fleet cordoned off the planet, while their troops and the attending Imperial Guard began the purging of the planet.  Inquisitor Broman and his acolytes continued to search for priority targets for the Imperial Fists.  The purge had been going well for months, but they hadn't found the Patriarch.

    Months after the start of the battle for Beta Dalas, a wounded Tyranid splinter fleet arrived in-system. A fraction of a fleet, it had limped across the stars in response to the Genestealer Cult's call, looking for an easy source of biomass.   At first, the Imperial Fist fleet moved to a defensive position, unsure of how large a fleet was incoming.   When the auguries showed the size of the incoming fleet, the Imperial Fist fleet went on the attack.  The fragmented Tyranid fleet was no match for the Imperial Fist fleet as it turned to attack them.  

    In the chaos of the arriving Tyranid fleet, the Genestealer Patriarch escaped aboard a massive transport vessel known as The Emperor’s Grace.  The Emperor's Grace had been loaded with large amounts of weapons and armor, meant for the Imperial Fists as a Tithe.   It had been cleared on the ground for launch, and the Patriarch's brood had rushed to the ship, filling all the available spaces with bodies.  The Patriarch was getting as many off-planet as they could; their plans had been disrupted on this planet.  It was a lightning strike at the space port to overcome the defenses, and thousands of his brood carried him onto the ship.  They flew away from the Tyranid fleet and the now repositioned Imperial Fists, a straight shot out of the system with no target destination.

  The Emperor's Grace raced away from the battle between the Imperial Fist and the main Tyranid fleet only to be intercepted by a wounded Tyranid bioship. The ship was relatively small, meant to feed on asteroids and disabled ships.  The Emperor's Grace was a long-haul ship and couldn't outrun the bioship.  Due to the minimal size of the Tyranid fleet, the Hive Mind didn't extend far enough to encompass the plant, but as the bioship got close to the fleeing transport, the will of the Patriarch was overwhelmed beneath the crushing psychic pressure of the Hive Mind.   As the ship was caught and brought into the ship's gigantic maw, the Genestealer Cult was commanded toward the digestion pools to be absorbed into the greater swarm as biomass to feed the hungry ship.  The hundreds of years of planning and growing the Patriarch had done were nothing compared to the will of the Hive Mind.  Their escape had turned into a death sentence.

  In a brilliant tactical move, the Imperial Fists struck with devastating precision on the hapless Tyranid fleet. Torpedoes and lance batteries destroyed the fleet’s already wounded synaptic command organism, obliterating the controlling ship, and the splinter fleets' Hive Mind shattered in a psychic scream felt across the void.   Across the planet and the void, millions of Tyranids died from the scream, and millions more are stunned, blinded, and unguided.  The Imperial Fists and their escort vessels immediately began hunting down the stunned Tyranid ships one by one.  Alongside him marched Chaplain Garran Holt, Apothecary Severan Dietrich, and Techmarine Hestovar Thale, who spread out their expertise to eliminate the Tyranid bioships.

    Aboard the smaller bioship, the synaptic beast that sat deep within the ship died to the final scream of the Hive Mind. In the sudden silence, the Patriarch recovered and re-established contact with its brood. Something had changed; through the broken synaptic pathways, the Patriarch discovered it could impose its will upon the living vessel itself. It halted the march of its brood into the digestion pits and instead led them deeper into the bowels of the ship, into the spaces of the Genestealers' previous masters.  Now the ship was reacting, obeying the Patriarch.  The living hybrids and pure strains of its brood were recovering, and their psychic presence strengthened the patriarch.  The ship was responding to the Patriarch, ignoring his brood and feeding him information.  But it wasn't complete, it wasn't natural.  The Patriarch knew that somewhere there was a throne for him.   His mind was expanding as the ship was trying to communicate with it.  It was far beyond what his brood would communicate, and his mind was evolving to meet it.  There had to be a better way.  It was this imperfect control that made the ship spasm.

The ship’s unexpected movements triggered the auguries of the Hammer of Dorn.  Techmarine Hestovar activated the active scans painting the bioship with waves of energy, and saw the Emperor's Grace trapped within.  Suspecting that something aboard the drifting bioship had survived, he deployed the Hammer of Dorn to investigate.  Launching waves of Thunderhawks to scout the behemoth, the Imperial Fists witnessed the horrifying sight of The Emperor’s Grace being slowly absorbed into the Tyranid vessel. Without hesitation, Severan ordered the boarding action to begin.

The Imperial Fists believed that there may be surviving Genestealer cultists aboard the transport, so they went in prepared; it could not be allowed to escape into the wider Imperium. Terminator squads prepared within the launch bays while Hestovar warned that the bioship’s life signs fluctuated erratically, as though portions of the vessel were dead while others continued regenerating. The boarding force deployed through the shattered cargo decks of The Emperor’s Grace and entered a ship consumed by darkness and silence.

They expected a purge operation.

Instead, they found a living nightmare awakening in the void.

Somewhere deep within the Ghost Ship, the Patriarch had survived the death of the Hive Mind. And now, surrounded by broken Tyranid flesh, abandoned cultists, and the drifting dead of Beta Dalas, it was becoming something entirely new.