Dr. Dew stood in the planning chamber, surrounded by holographic displays and orbital trajectories looping across transparent panes. The discussion had turned somber. Leonardo da Vinci, Paracelsus, Tesla, and Cassidy—tethered in via secure feed—had all reached the same unspoken conclusion: if the Imperium ever uncovered the truth of Pangea, they wouldn't offer terms. They'd bring fleets. Fire. Exterminatus.
"What if they try to take it?" Paracelsus asked, voice low.
Before Dew could answer, the room dimmed. Crimson alerts pulsed across the main screen. Cassidy's voice came through the speakers—calm, but clipped.
"Director. Warp activity—same region the pilgrim ship emerged from. Multiple signals converging. Stronger than before."
Da Vinci snapped to the feed, analyzing patterns. Warp scars bloomed and twisted, overlaying each other like veins of corruption fracturing open space. Probabilities scrolled down the side.
"Hostile intent: 89.4%," Tesla muttered.
"We don't wait," Dr. Dew said flatly. "Alert every system. Defensive lockdown. Full shield readiness."
No need for further commands. The system responded automatically. City shielding ramped up. Orbital guns calibrated. Transport networks rerouted. In Pangea, crisis wasn't feared—it was expected.
Moments later, space tore open.
A wound in the void. Violent. Grotesque. From it came twelve vessels—festering slabs of rot and metal. Mutated steel, bloated plating, engines coughing plagues. Living pustules clung to hulls. Decay spread with them like a fungus hunting fertile soil.
"Chaos," Dew muttered.
Unbeknownst to Dr. Dew and his crew, it was the Death Guard.
Once noble Astartes, now vessels of contagion. Apostles of corruption. They hadn't come to explore. They came to claim. Or infect. But most certainly annihilate.
"They're looking for their lost vanguard," Dew said. " and im very certain they're not going to leaving this place empty-handed."
The sirens began. Not blaring. Not panicked. Just firm, rhythmic pulses.
Shutters fell across windows. Street kiosks folded into reinforced shells. Transit pods rerouted. People cleared the streets—not running, but moving with absolute coordination. Every civilian was armed, with each and every household had emergency crates—armor, med packs, ammo, backup rations. Dr. Dew made sure to prepare his people for anything that may happen, especially after witnessing an entire hive city fall in mere moments.
Inside the Museum of Old History, the mood shifted instantly. Lights turned red. Security doors sealed. The voice of Dr. Dew rang out clearly from the comm system.
<>
The pilgrims looked around in disbelief as civilians snapped visors shut and locked modular armor pieces together with practiced speed. Guns—sleek, but look as if they where old fashioned gus from the 25th century. But none the less the civilian already had there guns ready, and fully loaded. Their designs were archaic.
"They're bringing relics to a war," Clarent muttered.
The first enemy drop ships pierced the upper atmosphere, just barley outside the barrier.
Pangea's orbital guns answered. Each round struck with the precision of a rail spike, too fast to see, too powerful to resist. Seven ships ruptured mid-air, dissolving in flashes of plasma. But five made it through—blighted transports vomiting rot as they neared the surface.
Imperial eyes widened as they saw the planetary defenses in action—but still unaware that the ships we're uncrewed, moving with reflexes no normal organic system could match. Weapons that reloaded themselves. Shields that shimmered with an energy no psyker could describe.
In the museum, the display screens switched to live battlefeeds. One Death Guard squad hit the surface. The corruption began—plague spores released, fetid fluids leaking from armored gauntlets. But the land and plants inside the barrier refused to yield.
Grass stood green. Trees remained untouched. The spores died in the air.
Unbeknownst to the Imperium and Death Guard the city was being secretly protected by conduits that are currently in there complete elemental form hiding in plane site and are actively resisting the corruption of the warp. along with the barrier weakening the disease inside the barrier by preventing them from receiving enough energy from the warp.
Soon gunfire started to fill the city.
A squad of citizens, positioned behind barricades, opened fire. Their weapons didn't bounce. They penetrated there armor. Armor cracked. Plague Marines staggered back but they refuse to die like the undead they are.
Clarent flinched. "Emperor protect… they penetrated right through power armor."
Before anyone could respond, a blur shot past the window. A young man—with a mask and football helmet, and military armor with shoulder gard—launched himself forward and shoulder-tackled a Death Guard. The impact sent the Chaos Marine skidding twenty meters through concrete.
Another followed. A woman wearing a baseball helmet, and carrying a bat—a simple looking black bat. She swung. The sound was like a gong. The Marine's torso armor dented inwards as he was hurled backward. The pilgrims, black Dragons, and sisters of Battle had a look of shock on there faces, unaware that most of the citizens had been enhanced by replacing and fusing there hearts with same tenology senior armstrong had but to a lesser degree when compared to senior armstrong.
"No signs of infection or corruption," Garran said.
"Despite the danger, they show no fear," Seraphina added.
All around the city, it happened. Civilians rushed forward—not randomly, but in formation. They used cover. They moved in squads. Melee specialists, ranged teams, medics. Like a military. Like more than a military.
A black and green-armored Death Guard raised his plague flamer—only for a man with bare hands to leap in and crush the weapon's nozzle with a grip like a vice. Then he punched through the traitor's chest.
Clarent couldn't look away. "They're not just citizens. What are they?" Sadly for them, they would never know that this was a test to see if the citizens if the citizens where prepared for such cases to happen and that the true military was there but using cloaking technology from Metal Gear rising and where secretly helping in the background.
"I don't know," the Astropath whispered. "They show no signs of using anything related to the warp . It's like they don't care that thay are currently exposed to such disgusting diseases."
A new group made there way to the museum. Another Death Guard. He raised his bolter. Too slow. A civilian dashed forward and uppercutted the Marine's chinplate—shattering the helmet.
Glass rained down. The battle raged on.
Pangea refuse to bend the knee.
Above the city, orbital fire continued. Dropships turned to fireballs. The Death Guard attempted to regroup—but the citizens refuses to yield or break.
In the observation deck, Leonardo da Vinci, eyes narrowed, murmured, "It seems that we might have over estimated the enemy."
Dr. Dew, standing at the heart of the central command node, gave one command: "It's better to over estimate the enemy, then to under estimate them."
Below, a feed showed another squad of rot-infested Marines being driven back by a dozen unarmored locals using nothing but precision, coordination, and overwhelming firepower.
Dr. Dew exhaled. "Let them learn—we are not some simple groups of people that will disappear quietly, if they want us dead thay thay are going to need to work for it."
The feed ended with Death Guard forces retreating, confused. They hadn't expected resistance. They hadn't expected defeat.
But that's exactly what Pangea gave them.
End of Chapter Forty-Three