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His Majesty called to her, in her eternal slumber.

She knew that much, in her sleep, that only He could possibly do such a thing. The Impossible. The Miracle. To call to her as she slept in death.

She had earned this much, to rest for eternity. Armageddon survived due to her. It's people safe from the Orks, the Greenskin menace. She had ensured that much. So why couldn't she sleep? Rest after more than ten millennia of honorable service?

His Majesty called to her, in her eternal slumber.

Why? Why couldn't he let her sleep? Her Admiral. He'd… Why?

Again, he called to her.

...because there were still people who still needed her. Because there were people who still depended on her. People who would die senselessly without her.

Memories of Armageddon flooded forth, of a world beset on all sides by an endless green tide, of men and women standing strong and holding fast against all odds and making the ultimate sacrifice. Hives awash in green, the inhabitants butchered like cattle. A lone man, a Commissar in a peaked cap and an Orkish Klaw where his arm should have been facing off against an Ork Warboss thrice his size. Countless warships, fighting, burning, dying…

The Third War. That... was then. But this was now.

New images. She saw a man, not unlike the other, short, squat, his massive greatcoat ensconcing his form and a cigar clamped tightly in his mouth, barking orders to those around him. The world he stood on, majestic and recognizable. Towering hive cities, glorified fortresses bristling with artillery, massive reinforced hab-blocks and zig-zagging claustrophobic streets. Its surface swathed in armies of both the Imperium and the Ruinous Powers, bleeding and dying for every last square meter of ground. She knew this world, despite having served a Segmentum away.

Cadia.

Above it, vast battle fleets clashed, lances and macro-cannons blazing in the void, countless warships torn asunder by capital fire. On one side, the Imperial Navy, fighting tooth and nail. On the other…

Chaos. Chaos Undivided. A vast armada of disparate, insidious vessels. At the lead, a colossal heinous thing, vast weapon barrels aimed forward, glowing from within...

This… This was why he called to her.

But… there was nothing she could do. She had fought and died, and joined her fallen Sisters in eternal sleep. No matter her feelings there was little she could do beyond watch events unfold.

Again, he called to her.

...Could she? Could she fight once more?

YES.

GO.

A tremendous surge of energy washed through her, and for the first time in what felt like eons, she moved. Vast plasma reactors roared, fires once more kindled within them. Colossal engines flared, thrusting her tremendous bulk into motion. Augur arrays and cogitators came alive, sensing and thinking where there had been neither, tasting what lay beyond her vast void shields which too flickered into being.

This place. This cold nothing. A mouth unfamiliar to her opened and she roared, aether parting before her prow as she aimed up, towards whatever constituted a surface or boundary in that forsaken place. In the darkened gloom she saw a light above and ahead of her. Seeing where she needed to go her engines burned, gouts of plasma propelling her forwards.

She burst through, into the Void, the blackness of space, screaming with lungs she never knew she had. That she shouldn't have…

She saw. The glittering of stars. Blooms of light in the far distance, all around her. And that majestic planet beneath her keel that needed her.

She laughed, She cried as she laughed. She felt the sunlight of a nearby star wash across her hull. She lived, a blazing fire within her rekindled by the glory that was His Majesty. By his will.

His Will.

Her name.

Will looked at the stars around her. What few that were visible, beyond the swirling nightmarish Warp clouds of the Eye of Terror. She knew that many of the stars her augury arrays were seeing weren't stars at all but warships, their weapon batteries blossoming as they spoke with the Emperor's voice. Even then, battle raged. It, all of it was overwhelming, the thrill of anticipation that was the eve of battle, just being alive once again… She threw her arms out and shouted into the black, her Vox carrying through the void to any who would hear her.

Her arms… Wait... Arms?

It was then that Will finally noticed two important details she had overlooked.

First, She had arms. And breasts. And a body, a human body, all attached to said breasts.

The second was that heretical weapon batteries were opening fire upon her, corrupted macro cannon shells already in flight.

Despite her current predicament, her formerly exuberant grin turned absolutely savage, and she spoke, her voice reverberating through the stars.

"Apocalypse-class Battleship 'His Will,' one of many. In His name, His Will Be Done."

Her engines flared to life, and she charged the Enemy.

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Lord Admiral Timotheus Quarren was far from a simple man. No, he was quite the opposite. To understand the complexities of Navy politics, of its strategy and warfare, one had to possess a mind most intricately complex. One capable of handling the daily intrigues that came with such a lofty rank, the subtle rivalries and subterfuge and ploys, the web of politics and agreements. The daily headaches that came with managing the defense of one of the most important sectors in the Imperium, second perhaps only to Terra itself.

But he didn't need that mind to see the predicament that had befallen the Sector. Or that the Sector would likely fall today, in the absence of a miracle.

Before him, above a great holo-pedestal on the Bridge of his flag battleship Savon's Legacy, a flickering hologram of the Cadia System glowed. Countless orbital lines and planetary spheres and pict-symbols filling the empty wire-frame space. There were many small blue symbols amongst the green worlds and orbit-lines denoting the honorable warships of the Imperial Navy, his own included. But there were many, many more that were a shade of insidious red, denoting those of Abaddon's battlefleet. Much of it was currently engaged with his own forces around Cadia, massive kilometers-long conglomerations of chaotic stars and spikes trading battery fire with his own warships.

But much more of it had just arrived - the main force, a vast armada lead from the front by The Despoiler's own monstrous and nightmarish flagship: Planet Killer.

Quarren sighed heavily. It was not long before the vessel would be within range, and deal a death blow to the Segmentum with its main armament. Even still, he would not give up fighting, not as long as he had a ship beneath his feet and a fleet at his beck and call. He had a plan, but it was a long shot… and a suicidal shot at that.

"My Lord, you look unwell." Vice Admiral Pieter von Saeger, the proper Captain of the Legacy. A good friend over many, many years of service in the Segmentum's Navy. A true Cadian by birth, and a man Quarren could have called his brother. "And the thoughts I have no doubt you are considering…" von Saeger grimaced, already understanding his Commander's motives.

"Reinforcements?"

"Reserve Fleets from the Agripinaa and Calixis Sectors, primarily. There are additional Fleets en route as well from several sectors further away..."

"They will not arrive in time." Quarren stated as matter-of-fact. There weren't any assumptions needed. What few ships he had left was all he had. Not before Abaddon claimed his victory. He had no doubts that the Warmaster knew this. Thirteen Black Crusades, ten thousand years of war, for this moment.

"So we charge the enemy. Muster what few fleet elements we have left and plunge head-on into the Warmaster's own fleet with the express intent of destroying him and his flagship at all cost, and thereby buying Cadia enough time for our own reinforcements to replace us as its defense?"

Quarren nodded, grimly. His long-time friend knew him far too well.

"My Admiral, what you plan is guaranteed suicide," von Saeger stated. "And my ship, crew and the entire fleet stand ready for your orders."

"What little left of it there is, sadly." It was a terrible moment for snark, but there was little else he could say. The writing was on the wall, so to speak.

"Which is why I advise giving any further orders with due haste," the Vice Admiral replied. "Lest your plan fall away into the void."

Quarren sighed once more, before a grin spread across his face. "To the very end?"

von Saeger nodded. "And into the Eye of Terror, if need be."

Quarren nodded, turning from the holo-sphere to gaze out upon the Bridge, and the void and stars beyond. Before him and to his left, the world of Cadia, a beacon in the darkness. And all around the reddish swirling clouds of the Eye of Terror, and the ongoing battles therein. He drew a breath, preparing to issue the order he decided would earn him his banner before the Eternity Gate upon Holy Terra when one of the many officers manning the Bridge consoles, specifically the augury technician, spoke up.

"My Lord Admiral, I have identified an unknown contact. Bearing zero-four-five, deprecation neg-zero-three-five..." A beat. Quarren had a feeling what was coming next and the man promptly confirmed that fear. "An Apocalypse-class battleship, my Lord. It's vox-transponder… It's His Will sir." Four words, spoken with slight, subtle reverence.

A chill ran down Quarren's spine. von Saeger's as well, at hearing those four words. The latter ignored procedure, stepping down from the vast command podium and towards the front of the Bridge. In a moment he was standing beside the augury technician at his post. "Say again, Lieutenant." The Vice Admiral stared at the glowing green screen, if only to confirm with his own eyes what was spoken.

The Bridge stirred at the unprecedented sight, the rarity and disruption of ceremonial procedure. And the sudden and almost imperceptible shift of the battlefield. Quarren, from his vantage point on the command podium above, noted a single blinking pict-symbol on the Augury before the two. Even from this distance he could observe the screen, but that was more the benefit of a bionic eye than anything else. "His Will, sir. Apocalypse-class."

"Impossible. Unless…"

"It has turned Traitor," Quarren spoke. His Will. Believed lost in the Warp and destroyed a year before, in the Armageddon Sector and a Segmentum away. A legend of Segmentum Solar, lost to the Orks during the closing hours of the Third Armageddon War. Quarren knew the name and ship well - it was a sad day in the Navy, when such a rare and venerated ship was lost.

But here and now of all places and times… He turned back to the holo-sphere and the flickering battlescape. At that moment, the mystery warship had appeared equidistant between his own fleet and Abaddon's, in the center of a rapidly forming maelstrom of battle. As he observed, the vessel's pict-symbol rotated, angling towards the Heretic fleet.

As the pict-symbol lurched towards Abaddon's cluster of red, Quarren spoke. "Hail the vessel," the Lord Admiral ordered.

"We have tried, my Lord," another Officer replied. "No reply to our direct summons but… it is broadcasting on all channels. Vox-cast only."

Quarren grimaced. "Let us hear it." A mere moment later, the Bridge was filled with quite possibly the last thing a Lord Admiral with more than two centuries of service in the Navy of the Imperium of Man ever expected to hear: The sound of a young woman, laughing with deranged glee and mocking the Ruinous Powers.

"Is that it!? Is that the best you've got!? Your little macro shells tickle me. TICKLE ME! I am His Will made manifest! Let me show you the best the Emperor's got, foul heretic scum!"

As girlish maniacal laughter filled the Bridge of Savon's Legacy, it was everything Quarren could do to keep his composure from collapsing into slack-jawed amazement. Even as, at the back of his mind, he realized what this meant.

The miracle he had been hoping for had come to Cadia.

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