Broken, The - Enemy of my Enemy: Far above, a second column of humanoid figures arrived on the surface of the Fury and began to follow the Ultramarines' trail into the space hulk's interior. They were the same foe which had forced the Ultramarines' 7th Company to swiftly retreat from the space hulk's surface.The columns of Renegade Mechanicus troops followed the path Calgar's expedition had taken into the hulk. Quite unexpectedly, they were met by the heavily armoured form of Brother Honorus. Too slow to reach the extraction point, the Dreadnought had reverted to his last standing order, determined to defend his brothers' only egress point at all cost.Lying in wait at one of the corridors' many turns, Brother Honorus rushed into close-combat, his armoured sarcophagus and frame impervious to the Skitarii's melee weapons and the short-range fire of their Galvanic Rifles. Brother Honorus used every choke point to his advantage, and retreated down the corridor, unleashing maximum havoc on the Mechanicus troops. To further delay the enemy advance, the Dreadnought collapsed the entire corridor upon his foes, buying his brothers as much time as he could.Ultimately, Brother Honorus realised his second life was forfeit. As the Renegade Adeptus Mechanicus brought up Kastelan-class Robots to clear the debris and deal with him, Brother Honorus knew his time had come. Although the valiant former captain of the 5th Company acquitted himself well, ultimately he was pressed back to the chasm leading into the Fury’s inner levels and fell to his long-delayed death.Blissfully ignorant of the events unfolding several kilometres above him, Marneus Calgar kept his thoughts to himself. While the column came under attack several times by local fauna, the vigilance of Captain Galenus and his Astartes made sure that they never posed a serious threat to the Imperial forces. Yet, invariably, these attacks slowed their advance and were accompanied by casualties.At the same time, the Chapter Master pondered the words broadcast by the hulk at the very beginning of the mission, Insanista in tenebris. Insanista was generally translated from High Gothic as "insanity", a meaning that seemed more than accurate given the maddening variety of micro-ecosystems and baleful creatures the Fury harboured -- former Viridian Consuls included.And yet, Calgar pondered the words more than he should have. As they ventured deeper into the space hulk, his humours became increasingly unbalanced, he could see it in his own actions and that of his men. Anger was quick to blossom and clouded his ordinarily focused mind for longer than it should, as the hulk's Warp-taint was clearly beginning to affect him. With a sudden realisation, Calgar knew he had to consider the message in its original context of the 36th Millennium when the Viridian Consuls had first been lost in the Warp.Four thousand Terran years before, "insanista" had carried an alternate meaning, that of the blind fury that swallowed the warrior in the fit of battle. Perhaps the taint lurking at the heart of the Fury was the touch of the Blood God.If so, this meant that whatever the Ultramarines and their allies would encounter at the heart of the space hulk would fight tooth and nail to oppose them. The pragmatic Calgar decided he needed to reevaluate his mission parameters, for their venture might just have become a suicide mission.The scout-party under Inquisitor Drake soon reached the heart of the hulk, metal giving way to red stone at the junction between the asteroid initially colonised by the Adeptus Mechanicus and the space hulk that had formed around it. At the end of the corridor, a sculpted arch of red stone opened into the dark. The arch itself was festooned with a multitude of skulls, thousand of them forming the pillars of the archway into darkness.Drake saw that a great many species had "contributed" to this macabre edifice, the long, elongated skulls of the Eldar and the brutishly thick heads of Orks lying next to predominantly human and T'au skulls. Here and there, the tell-tale augmented skulls of a Space Marine or a Heretic Astartes could be found. All of the skulls bore the baleful rune of Khorne upon them, confirming Calgar's worst suspicions.The true horror awaited on the other side of the archway. As they moved through the unguarded entry, the Inquisitor and his remaining Imperial veterans were greeted by a breathtaking sight. Before them stood a gargantuan cavern, a hall so big that it defied comprehension, a hollow world more than a mere interior. By the Inquisitor's estimations and readings the ceiling must have been a Terran mile and a half up, with the total length of the cavern perhaps three miles in length.What from a distance had looked like darkness was in fact filled with light as a shallow lake full of bioluminescent algae stretched before their feet. The lake was riddled with pieces of broken machinery and masonry, collapsed walls and crosses welded from broken girders and stanchions. On each and every one of them, a Space Marine had been crucified.Drake counted scores, even hundred of crosses while the men of his retinue -- all battle-hardened veterans who had seen the ugliest things the galaxy had to offer -- made the sign of the Aquila or averted their gaze. But Inquisitor Lazarus Drake was made of sterner stuff. All the crucified Space Marines were still dressed in portions of ancient marks of Power Armour, its original color long obscured by spilled vitae and other bodily fluids and moss. Big bolts of crude metal affixed each corpse to its cross by each limb.In some cases the Space Marines had been disemboweled, their innards spilling from their abdomen, either dead or deep in their Sus-an coma, others had been visibly dismembered and then put back together, a grim mockery of their former form now rotting away beneath the gaze of their brothers.All of the crucified Astartes were unhelmed. On the closest faces Drake could still see the horror in their eyes, the captives screaming in silence, their tongues plucked from their mouths and their vocal cords likely severed. Inquisitor Drake had discovered the fate of the remaining Viridian Consuls.From the middle of this grim forest of the impaled an island rose from the lake, its shores broken like that of an island battered by the elements on some Ocean World. Unable to ascertain if the island was made of dark stone or metal, the Inquisitor's gaze was drawn to the mighty keep rising from its highest reaches. The fortress' walls rose up like sheer metallic cliffs, their outer layers now stained with filth.At their top, medieval battlements had been hacked from the metal, the work crude but obviously functional. Towers rose from these battlements, some of which bore the aspect of the serrated prows of Imperial starships, while others seemed to have been built out of Imperial shipping containers, the big metallic boxes used as the fortress' bricks.From the battlements banners of crimson and green rippled in a hot wind. Each was made of skin, their poles of human bone. The symbols they carried were varied. The most common was the skull-rune of Khorne and the three wounds of Nurgle as well as the same sigil borne by the Astartes slain at the "Lost Cathedral," an Omega bisected by a sword and flanked by wings. The rune of the Blood God adorned the keep's gate, a hundred feet high, dabbed in blood and surrounded by skulls.More skulls littered the floor, much like the currents of a mighty ocean would have deposited fields of sea-shells at the bottom of a beach. Drake's psychic senses detected the great malevolence that radiated from the keep. Here, then, was their true enemy. Here the Broken had built their fortress, watching over the corruption and torture of their former brethren.Where Drake's group had been small enough not to attract much attention, the main Imperial column did not fare as well. Time and again, the Ultramarines were attacked by the denizens of the Fury, grotesquely mutated Chaos Spawns or packs of almost feral Broken Heretic Astartes attacking the column in waves.Soon, every Space Marine of the expedition sported some wound or damage to their armour. The noble cobalt-blue of the Chapter was stained with blood and pus from their kills, or burned by the acidic touch of the mindless beasts attacking them. Nevertheless, every battle-brother reverently cleaned his left pauldron -- the one bearing the sigil of Ultramar.Only brute force kept the column advancing, Marneus Calgar and his two Honour Guard and Starn's Terminators fighting at its head. Even before reaching the hulk's main chamber where the true battle would be fought, the Ultramarines were running low on ammunition. Ever a pragmatist, their Chapter Master ordered his battle-brothers to rearm their Bolters with bolts taken from the slain Renegades. Purified by a short prayer from Chaplain Mortorius, 5th Company and its attached elements continued their advance against the odds.As the column neared Inquisitor Drake's coordinates, Brother Ulfius came before Marneus Calgar, and warned him that he had psychically sensed a presence approaching the rear of their column. Auspex readings confirmed that a large force was closing on the Imperials. Fearing an ambush, Marneus Calgar made for the rear of the column and ordered Captain Galenus and his Command Squad to take point. When Calgar reached his destination, he found Brother Ulfius and Magos Fane already waiting for him. 5th Company's 2nd Squad under Sergeant Gaden dutifully covered the rear with their Bolters. But the enemy was nowhere to be seen.Magos Fabe initiated a private exchange with the Chapter Master and confessed that since Alt-Seven's return, he had been in contact with the other Mechanicus elements present on the hulk. The Ultramarines had falsely assumed them to be members of the Dark Mechanicus, but in truth this faction was composed of Martian Renegades, a sub-cult of the Adeptus Mechanicus that had developed in isolation for several thousand Terran years.Although its tenets were a far cry from Martian orthodoxy, these Mechanicus forces were undeniably loyal to Mars and the Omnissiah and free of the taint of Chaos. Their leader, Magos Dominus Hagnon-Cro, wished to conduct a formal parley between himself and the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines. Although reluctant, Calgar agreed to the meeeting. But before leaving the column alone he ordered Sergeant Gaden to kill Magos Fane at the slightest hint of treachery.