Broken, The - The Fury Awakens: The lookouts of the Ultramarines stationed on the surface of the space hulk unexpectedly reported movement outside the base perimeter. Two-man teams of Scouts from the 10th Company equipped with Sniper Rifles had taken up overwatch positions and were surveying the surroundings.  Brothers Malthus and Huthor were the first to spot the attackers.First in the dozens, then in the hundreds and finally in their thousands, the smaller figures rushed the Scouts' position, forcing them to retreat. The attackers were visibly coordinated for as they gave ground, the two Scouts found themselves outflanked. The enemy rushed on, looking to engage in close combat.The two Scouts quickly identified the enemy as Adeptus Mechanicus Murder Servitors. Reaching for his Bolt Pistol, Brother Malthus felled many of the deadly cyborgs with headshots, while Brother Huthor's Combat Shotgun prevented them from closing. But once the Murder Servitors were upon them, Brother Malthus was injured by a vicious stab, the blade visibly coated in some kind of poison powerful enough to overcome the improved healing factor of their Astartes physiology.Only the timely intervention of a Tactical Squad from the 7th Company prevented the two Scouts' death. Other teams of Scouts reported hostiles closing in on the Ultramarines' base from all directions.Captain Ixion mounted a tenacious defence, disciplined volleys of bolter-fire mowing the mindless Servitors down like wheat in a field, but still the cyborgs launched themselves at the base defences. Even the heavy weapons of the Devastator Marines of the 9th Company proved powerless to stop the enemy tide from eventually reaching the Ultramarines' lines.Captain Ixion of the 7th Company had little choice but to call in air support from the Ultramarines' complement of Thunderhawk gunships. Overwatch Flight, a trio of Thunderhawks, launched from the Ultramarines fleet above the space hulk, and flew over the enemy's ranks.The flight was tasked with identifying and eliminating the enemy positions. After a first strafing run with Hellstrike Missiles, the three Thunderhawks readied for their second pass when one of their number was hit by fire from Heavy Arc Rifles carried by enemy Kataphron Battle Servitors and lost.Forced to disengage, the two remaining Thunderhawks returned to the Rex Aeterna for rearmament, promising to return in greater numbers. Meanwhile, the Ultramarines found themselves pitted against what they now assumed to be the creations of the Dark Mechanicus. Nine battle-brothers were severely wounded by the potent neurotoxins coating the servitor's blades, two of them succumbing to it before Apothecary Rannick could stabilise their condition.The remaining seven wounded were quickly transferred to the Octavius’ Apothecarion by Thunderhawk extraction. It was only with the battle well underway that Librarian Belisar of the 7th Company revealed to Captain Ixion that the enemy they faced were not servants of Chaos, but forces of the Martian Mechanicus, tremendously old, but untainted by the corruption of the Dark Gods.Elsewhere, Senior Artisan Alt-seven and his small party continued to explore the Fury. His orders were to gather enough data and return to Magos Fane before his absence was noticed by the rest of the Imperials exploring the space hulk. In the course of his wanderings, Alt-seven detected a code signature that had been active for two thousand Terran years. He ordered two of his accompanying Skitarii to investigate the chamber from which the program had originated.Elsewhere, Alt-seven continued to analyze the traces of an ancient battle within the hulk that he had discovered. Letting his auto-senses range over the area, he detected signs of Warp-damage, as though some gigantic force had taken the very fabric of the space hulk and shaken and twisted everything slightly out of frame. But there was more.As the Tech-priest looked closer, he saw that some of the damage was explosive in nature; hull plates that were torn and blackened as well as buckled, and here and there a line of shell holes in the plasteel -- large impacts that had to be the work of Bolter fire. Interspersed with these traces were other relics of past conflict; including the long, searing furrows of Arc Rifle blasts.There had clearly been a battle fought on the Fury long ago, a combat between his own Adeptus Mechanicus and the Adeptus Astartes. Alt-seven knew Magos Fane needed to be informed of what he had learned. But while the mission lasted he had been ordered to maintain Vox silence. It would have to wait. Impatience seized him as he realised there had been no word from the two Skitarii; they had been swallowed up by the darkness ahead.Suddenly, Alt-seven felt as if his brain had been filled with insects. Staggering at the sudden onset of the mental assault, he entered the next chamber and found the two Skitarii standing motionless without reacting to his presence. They stood before a vast, looming spire of wire-wrapped mechanica. The vid-screens on the pillar snapped into momentary life and displayed a haze of static.Reams of cable ran serpentine all around a floor from which billowed up a slowly boiling fog of vapour. The great pillar, composed of interwoven components of all kinds and drawn from many different eras, rose before them like some unquiet blinking icon, fifty Terran feet tall, a machine tree with limbs of cable and wire and plasteel supporting struts that rose up to grasp at the tall ceiling overhead.Alt-seven called up his internal vox in an attempt to contact Magos Fane, but the techno-tree that stood before him took control of his augmetic components. Alt-seven's cybernetic hardware became useless as his mind was invaded by foreign code. The Mechadendrites attached to his body and those of the Enginseers who had accompanied him fell limp with metallic clangs.Alt-seven's mind became a whirring blaze of uploading data, his head shaking on his shoulders as it flooded him. His warding incantations and protective protocols were swept aside like so much chaff, and a massive, blinding, enveloping stream of data coursed through him, realigning all his thought processes, rerouting programs, rewriting the sacred base code that made him who he was. It was over in only nanoseconds.The Mechanicus agents accepted the commands of their new master, who had finally shown them the true meaning of perfection. Elsewhere within the hulk, Marneus Calgar reviewed the reports of contact with an unknown enemy while most of his Ultramarines were still fighting the apparently Renegade forces of the Adeptus Mechanicus.The Chapter Master inquired of Magos Fane if he knew anything about these Dark Mechanicus forces that they had encountered. Fane objected that he and his techsorcist had detected no malign code that would indicate that the Heretek forces of the Dark Mechanicus were present on Fury.Faced with the Chapter Master's ire, Magos Fane revealed his duplicity and told Calgar and Inquisitor Drake all about the secret mission he had tasked Alt-Seven with and that whilst he had detected some traces suggesting an Adeptus Mechanicus presence aboard the Fury, he had no means of predicting their reaction. As Alt-Seven had not yet submitted his report, Magos Fane regretted he could not shed any light on that matter.Inquisitor Drake accused Fane of withholding vital data, but their quarrel ended abruptly when Chief Librarian Tigurius contacted Calgar. Tigurius informed his Chapter Master that power readings inside the Fury were rising quickly, the energy signature consistent with Imperial Geller Field technology. The Fury was obviously preparing to make a Warp jump!Located roughly 6 Terran miles inside the space hulk, Calgar, Inquisitor Drake, Magos Fane, Captain Galenus, the 5th Company and the remaining Inquisitorial and Mechanicus forces had no hope whatsoever of escaping the Fury in time. But those Ultramarines on the surface were not so trapped.With a heavy heart and yet without hesitation, Calgar ordered Captain Ixion to evacuate the space hulk. Tigurius was left in command of the mission whilst command of the Chapter would be passed on to Captain Severus Agemman, the commander of the Ultramarines' elite 1st Company.Not knowing if they would survive entering the Warp or be able to return, Calgar bid is old friend to stand by Agemman's side and advise him as well as he had Calgar. Calgar opened a last Vox-channel to Brother Honorus, the former Captain of 5th Company, now interred within a powerful Castraferrum Pattern Dreadnought.Too bulky to follow them down the deep chasm and narrow corridors of the hulk's interior, Brother Honorus had been standing guard over the expedition's exit route. Calgar ordered him to make all haste to the surface and evacuate as well, an order the Dreadnought tried to fulfill, but he arrived too late.At the same time Tigurius detected the rise in energy from the space hulk, the Mechanicus phalanxes broke off their attack. Unexpectedly freed, Captain Ixion and 7th Company quickly embarked upon the arriving Thunderhawks. They would have to leave most of their ammunition and materiel on the Fury, but that prospect pained the seasoned Captain less than the feeling of abandoning his brothers and his Chapter Master.With the Octavius' augurs carefully monitoring the space hulk's rising energy levels, Captain Ixion reluctantly departed on the last Thunderhawk to fly out. With barely sixty solar seconds to spare, the Octavius and her accompanying vessels reached minimum safe distance. With the last words of Tigurius to his trapped brethren -- "Courage and honour" -- still ringing in their ears, the Ultramarines trapped on the Fury braced themselves for Warp-translation before the space hulk disappeared from the Iax System in the blink of an eye, its destination unknown.