Author's note - Let's get it out of the way, I don't own Warhammer 40k or Mass Effect. If I did I would strike Starchild and everything written by Matt Ward from existence.

That being said, enjoy!

On the unremarkable planet of Uskion III the sky began to burn. In orbit two old enemies clashed, trading enough firepower to obliterate all life on the world below. From the helm of his flagship, the grand cruiser His Eternal Will, Lord-Captain Darius Augustin, Rogue Trader and head of the Augustin dynasty watched a battle years in the making unfold.

Ten years. Ten years since the Chaos pirate Karrad Vall had ambushed his family holdings and utterly destroyed them, leaving only a crippled flagship. He had only survived the carnage by virtue of being on an extended diplomatic mission for his dynasty. His father, Absolon Augustin, had not been so lucky. It had taken him ten years to rebuild the shattered dynasty, ten years to restore their fleet, ten years to track down the pirate they called the Faceless Lord.

Now, he reflected, he was ambushing them. The Emperor had a grand sense of humour indeed.

It had been almost too easy. He'd stacked his two transports as full of valuable cargo as he could and then had them fake a distress signal while the rest of his fleet skulked behind the planet's moon. Vall's fleet couldn't resist. They descended on the transports like locusts only to find a couple of problems. One, the transports were armed and expecting them. Two, and more worryingly, there was a fleet approaching them from behind. Trapped between the planet's gravity well and the oncoming fleet, Vall's forces had nowhere to run. Their only option was to try and fight free.

There was a harsh screech as the ship-to-ship vox activated. Darius sighed, even when he was fighting for his life, Vall couldn't stop monologuing. "How, you Imperial lapdog? How did you know we were here?" Vall demanded over the vox. Darius refused to answer, while some of the bridge staff directed worried glances at the source of their knowledge. An Eldar Farseer.

He'd dealt with Eldar before. Hell, the Augustin dynasty's renewed fortunes depended on the Cold Trade, the smuggling of Xenos technology and artefacts into the Imperium for wealthy nobles with more money than sense. However Darius had never expected this. Farseer Kaerune had simply walked onto his bridge one day as if she owned it and offered him Karrad Vall's head on a plate. Subsequent inquires with his household guard and his seneschal's spy network revealed that not one of them had a clue as to how she got on board. He had no doubt that she had an ulterior motive. His time spent dealing with Eldar had taught him that they were always playing the long game. As such he'd demanded she be present on his ship as a show of good faith. He felt that if she was planning to betray them then she would have balked at being on-board one of the ship she was planning to betray. Kaerune had acquiesced to this demand willingly enough to reassure him that her offer was genuine. And her information had proven accurate. The bulk of Karrad Vall's fleet had indeed been stalking this region of space looking for fresh prey.

The shuddering impact of macrocannon fire against the ship's void shields brought Darius' attention back to the battle. Vall's fleet outnumbered his by a considerable margin. His crew manning the augur arrays reported twenty ships in Vall's fleet compared to his eight, only six of which were warships. But he had the advantage in size. Vall's fleet consisted of ships suitable for piracy, raiders and destroyers mostly with the only sizeable ship being the Optimus Nemesis, a Hades-Class heavy cruiser and Karrad Vall's flagship. His fleet however consisted of his flagship, His Eternal Will, a Repulsive-Class grand cruiser; The Dire Retribution, a Dictator-Class carrier-cruiser; The Voice of the Emperor, a Dauntless-Class light cruiser; Traitor's Bane and The Sword of Angels, a pair of Sword-Class frigates and finally the Vendetta Eternal, a Havoc-Class heavy raider. Vall may have had the advantage in numbers, but he had surprise and superior firepower on his side.

The Will charged headlong into Vall's battle line, trusting to triple layer void shields and meters of armour plating to keep her safe from retaliatory fire. She didn't even pause to engage the raiders that swarmed about her, but instead dove headlong towards the Optimus Nemesis. She may not have stopped to fight them but that did not prevent her from raking the raiders on either side of her with kilometres long broadsides, spitting hundreds of hab-block sized shells at them. As their void shields flared and failed under the withering bombardment, they were speared by massive beams of light from The Voice of the Emperor, a dedicated ship-killer, armed with nothing but three massive lance batteries that bored through the meters of armour plating that protected the raiders like paper. As they burned and died, venting atmosphere and crew to the black embrace of the void, the frigates followed the Will in, drawing fire away from her and allowing her to close on the Optimus Nemesis unopposed.

Darius entered a course correction into the Will's helm, keeping her on an intercept course for the Optimus Nemesis while Karrad Vall continued to rant, ignored, over the vox about the horrible death awaiting Darius. Unlike many other Rogue Traders, Darius took pride in being able to fly his own flagship. "Then again", he thought, "after Vall destroyed our fleet there wasn't anyone else who could fly her. I was the only one who had any idea how to."

His reminiscing was cut short when on the Will's starboard side three of the enemies raiders were caught in what appeared to be the sudden birth of a small sun. It flared blindingly bright for a brief second before disappearing, taking all three raiders with it. The pirate line wavered for a second… and then broke.

Darius couldn't help but grin. It had taken all of the influence he had in the Imperium, along several palms greased, to get a nova cannon installed on The Dire Retribution and it was a risky gamble to fire it at such short range, but it was all worth it just for that one shot. Were before there was an organised defence willing to fight to the death, now there was a rout, with every enemy ship trying to escape before that gun fired again.

Darius indulged himself in admiring the mayhem the nova canon had brought for second before pushing it to the back of his mind and adjusting the Will's heading. He had a pirate lord to kill.

Vall's flagship was the only pirate vessel not desperately engaged in trying to flee; instead she flared her own engines to meet His Eternal Will's charge. Dimly Darius noted that Vall had stopped monologuing over the vox. Perhaps he had finally grasped the gravity of the situation. The two ships drew along alongside each other and, in a tactic dating back to the earliest days of naval combat, exchanged a punishing broadside. Both side's void shields shimmered, struggling to absorb the massive amount of fire, and collapsed, unable to endure any more. With both ships stripped of their primary defences, the lance turrets in the prows of each ship turned to face the other. The Optimus Nemesis struck first, its lances carving into the Will's hull. On the Will's bridge klaxons blared, the ship shuddered and officers shouted orders as a servitor monotonously recounted the damage taken. But then His Eternal Will's own lance batteries had aligned on their target and filled the void with their fury. Unlike Karrad Vall's flagship these lances were not of Imperial manufacture, but instead were a legacy of trade with the Eldar. The Eldar pulsar lances dug deep into the rear of Vall's vessel, burning through hull, systems and crew alike. As the lance fire faded a bloom of secondary explosions rocked the Optimus Nemesis as lights across her hull flicked out. Her plasma drive, the beating heart of a starship, was crippled.

Darius exhaled a breath he didn't realise he had been holding. Vall's ship was at his mercy. The vox suddenly crackled back into life. It appeared Vall wasn't done monologuing. "You think you've won?" Vall demanded, his tone having shifted from its former anger into borderline hysteria. "Well if I die today, I will not die quietly and I will not die alone!"

The vox cut off, only to be replaced by an alarm from the augur station. "My lord!" one of the officers manning the augurs shouted, "The Optimus Nemesis' warp drive is destabilising! If it explodes it will drag everything in a major radius around it into a warp rift!" The bridge descended into anarchy at this statement with crewmembers either panicking or trying to get the Gellar field raised. Even Farseer Kaerune looked worried, things evidently not having gone as predicted.

Darius quickly keyed his micro-bead into the fleet-wide vox-net, "All ship this is Lord-Captain Augustin. Karrad Vall's ship's warp drive is about to critically destabilise. Focus on raising your Gellar fields. Do not panic, if you panic you will-" His orders were cut off as colours that had no place in this realm of existence spilled from the crippled ship as the Optimus Nemesis collapsed in on itself, leaving behind a howling tear in the fabric of reality that dragged traitor and loyalist ship alike into it depths. Still screaming orders to his crew to try and control his fleet, Darius could only watch as His Eternal Will was pulled into the abyss.

OK, confession time. This is actually my first fanfiction. Why have I not mentioned this before you ask? Because I've been lurking on for a while now and I noticed that people tend to ignore stories that mention that they are their author's first fanfiction. This way you've at least read the first chapter. Sneaky? Yeah, a bit I admit. Feel free to yell at me for it. That said if you want to leave a review mentioning if it's good, indifferent, bad or "for the love of God please stop writing now." Everything is appreciated.

Oh and thanks for reading!