A Senju in the Stars, Chapter 18

“If we’re not going to the Imperial Palace to aid in its defense,” Hashirama began, his voice low, “then what exactly are we to do?”

Batu paused, armor scraping slightly as he turned his helm toward the horizon. In the distance, a pillar of smoke curled high and thick above fields of shattered tanks and twisted artillery, the ruins of battles lost or battles won. Fires flickered orange and dull beneath a sky the color of bruised skin. The giant shifted his weight slightly, gauntlets loose at his sides.

Hashirama watched him, waiting patiently for an answer, a faint smile on his lips. Not having to weigh strategy, politics, or the shifting tides of diplomacy was new to him. Pleasant, even—though pleasant felt wrong, given the ruin around them. It had always been his role to bear the weight of leadership. First, he had been the pillar that supported the Senju clan through endless conflict. Then the Hokage, whose words shaped the lives of thousands. But here, standing in the ashes of a world that was not his own, he was simply another fighter among many. It was simple. Direct. A breath of fresh air, clear despite the bitter smoke drifting around him.

At last, Batu spoke. “The traitors have an ammunition depot northeast of our current location. With the speed with which you and I move, I’d say we’ll reach it in a day or so.”

He pointed with one armored finger, the motion precise and deliberate. Hashirama followed it. Through the haze, he could see nothing but ruin. But he trusted Batu’s sense of direction, the innate precision of the Astartes mind.

“Destroying it will slow their advance considerably,” Batu continued. His voice was roughened by the vox, but clear. “Their weapons—bolters, autocannons, artillery—are dependent on constant resupply. Without ammunition, their capacity to wage war diminishes.”

Hashirama nodded slowly. The logic was sound, clear-cut. Even in his own time, cutting off supplies was often as decisive as any direct assault. Shinobi weren’t affected as much, but regular armies certainly were.

“Who is defending it?” Hashirama asked. “Astartes?” 

“The Iron Warriors,” Batu said. “Masters of siege warfare. They know fortifications better than any other Legion. Their defenses will be formidable.”

Hashirama’s smile widened slightly. “Well, I’ve climbed and slipped into plenty of fortresses in my day. Stronger walls have fallen for less.”

Batu tilted his helm toward him, silent. His posture suggested curiosity, the slight tilt of the massive shoulders, the quiet hum of his armor’s internal systems as he considered the shinobi’s words.

“Assassinations,” Hashirama explained softly. “Sabotage. Espionage. Sneaking behind enemy lines. Infiltrating keeps. Stealing documents right from under the noses of warlords. Those were the skills expected of me long before I stood at the head of armies.”

He reached up, brushing away dirt from his robes with quiet ease. Dust drifted gently to the earth. His hands were steady. Calm.

“How will you enter?” Batu asked, a hint of something close to curiosity edging his rough voice.

“The same way I always have,” Hashirama said. “Quietly. But, I suppose it depends on what awaits us.”

A moment passed between them. Batu inclined his head, the heavy ceramite grinding faintly at the neck joint.

“It won’t be easy,” Batu said at last. “Iron Warriors are methodical. Precise. They do not overlook weaknesses. Their fortifications will be complex, layered.”

Hashirama raised one brow, the smallest gesture of amusement. “I’ve yet to see a wall that was completely without flaw.”

“Indeed.” Batu nodded once, slowly. “I will guide you. I know their ways, their style. I have fought them before.”

Hashirama tilted his head. “Then we’ll need your knowledge to find the weakest point in their fortress. Once we breach it, destroying the ammunition won’t be difficult.”

He paused, eyes thoughtful. “You’ve learned my language so quickly. Remarkable, really. Perhaps when the fighting eases, you could teach me some of yours.”

Batu shifted again, ever so slightly. 

“If the fighting eases,” he said quietly.

Hashirama looked away, toward the endless ruin beyond. The wind whispered softly around them, stirred dust into tiny spirals that rose and fell like ghosts. The horizon held little but smoke, and yet somewhere out there lay another fortress, another enemy stronghold to breach. Another chance to strike at the heart of those who had brought ruin to this place.

“If the fighting eases,” Hashirama echoed. “Yes. If it does.”

For a moment they stood in silence. Each man contemplating the distant battle yet to come. Each preparing himself in the quiet, careful way that soldiers did, the way warriors had always done.

Finally, Batu turned his body to face the northeast. “We should move. The Iron Warriors are static fighters, but I’m quite certain they’ll have to haul out the ammunition soon enough and we might not reach it in time.”

Hashirama nodded. “Lead the way.”

Together, they began walking across the broken ground, stepping over rusted casings and the bones of soldiers whose names no longer mattered. Batu’s stride was powerful and relentless, heavy boots crunching through charred earth and shattered stone. Hashirama moved silently at his side, stepping lightly, his robes brushing softly through the smoke-choked air.

Above them, the sky darkened. Thunder growled softly, distant, like a beast waking from sleep. The ash drifted in slow, lazy spirals. Fires still burned in the distance. War, as always, carried on beyond the horizon.

But for now, in this moment, there was only silence. Only the two warriors moving toward another fortress, another fight.

There was a certain simplicity here. A purpose stripped bare, unburdened by command or leadership, free of politics and village squabbles. His only responsibility now was survival—and destruction of the enemy. It felt clean, unclouded. He moved forward into it willingly.

“If it ends, huh?” Hashirama said softly.

Batu did not reply. But the pace of his stride quickened slightly, armor plates shifting and humming as he moved toward their distant target. Hashirama matched him step for step, breathing steadily, eyes set forward, fixed on the horizon and the next fortress to fall.

Where possible, they skirted the great killing fields. Wide plains turned to graveyards of men and armor, stretched far under the choking sky. Firestorms rolled across the ridgelines. At night, the glow of artillery lit the low clouds like lightning trapped in a jar. They saw the distant flashes of void shields collapsing, the rising bloom of orbital strikes, the brief glint of Titans firing across kilometers of scorched dust.

They did not go there. They followed ravines carved by old shells, gullies where corpses sank into the red-black mire. Where the hills rose and offered no cover, they crawled. When the wreckage allowed, they moved like smoke between burned-out tanks and shattered rhino hulls. Once, they passed under a crashed Thunderhawk, its wings torn off, fuselage cracked open like a ribcage. The smell of fuel and meat lingered.

They did not linger.

Far off, war waged unbroken.

The fields were alive with killing. Men in flak armor screamed and bled in the churned earth, their lasguns clutched tight, held like relics. The beams snapped through the air in bright, flat lines. Red light blinked between trenches, carving holes in armor, flesh, and bone. One man had his head taken clean, and the body ran three steps more before falling. Another was caught in the hip. He crawled until the ground gave way and swallowed him whole.

When the charge failed, they ran at each other with shovels and blades and whatever else could be wielded. Some carried bayonets taped to broken rifles. Others had only bricks or clubs wrapped in wire. The field was soaked through. The dirt turned to mud, and the mud turned to blood. At every step it clung and pulled. Men drowned face-down, screaming, flailing. Others sank with silence, mouths full of earth.

They saw none of it up close. Only from afar. And even from a distance, the stench crawled across the wind.

Over the rise, a daemon galloped through the ranks. Its skin like oiled flame. Its legs bent wrong, hooves sharp and clicking. It sang as it moved. Not with voice, but with motion. Each swing of its blade painted the battlefield anew. Men burst apart like fruit dropped from height. Their screams chased the thing, but it never turned. It moved on, slaughtering in silence.

Behind it came more.

One daemon walked through a tank like it was smoke, and the crew inside screamed until their voices stopped. Another rode upon a chariot made of screaming skulls, its wheels grinding over the wounded who tried to crawl away. Its tongue trailed behind it like a banner of meat.

Batu said nothing.

Hashirama lowered his gaze. He placed one hand on the ground and let the world breathe through him. He felt the shape of the soil, the pull of broken roots, the groaning of the battlefield as if it were alive. His fingers twitched once. Then he stood and moved again.

There was killing to be done. But not here. Not now.

They passed that stretch of ruin by the low routes, through tunnels carved by old water lines and downed pipelines. They stepped over sparking cables that glowed like veins beneath the skin of the world. Once, a body stirred as they passed. Its hands reached for Hashirama. The face was gone, burned clean. He paused long enough to place two fingers on the man’s chest. The body stilled. He left no mark.

They moved without rest.

In the third hour, they came to a long ridge. Beneath it, the remnants of a Mechanicus convoy lay broken. Massive machines on wheels twice the height of a man. Great treads snapped and smoking. Servitors frozen mid-motion, their limbs still reaching for tools they would never hold again. The convoy had been hit by something massive. Perhaps shellfire. Perhaps something worse. Hashirama picked through the remains. Batu watched the hilltop.

A box still sealed lay in the dirt. Inside, rations. Dried meat. Compressed fruit. Hashirama ate in silence. Batu did not eat.

Further down, they found the remnants of a chimera transport. Its rear gate torn open. Blood along the walls. Shell casings littered the floor. The bodies were gone. Dragged or consumed. No way to tell. They moved on.

They did not speak much.

Once, Hashirama asked, “Do your people have a way to fight the daemons?”

Batu shook his head. “Some. Not enough. Not nearly as effective as whatever it is you do.”

That was all.

They walked through the dead and the forgotten. Through valleys carved by orbital fire and ridges lined with the bones of tanks. They moved past cathedrals crushed by falling ships, their stained-glass windows shattered across miles of dirt. They passed shrines drowned in blood and shrines raised in blood. They passed children clutching the hands of corpses and men praying to gods that never answered.

They did not stop.

The war was everywhere. But their path was forward. Always forward.

Nearly two days passed beneath the heavy pall of smoke and ash, days measured not in sunlight but in steps taken and breaths drawn. They moved carefully through fields littered with burnt-out tanks and broken soldiers, where crows picked at flesh and shells glittered brass in the dirt. They climbed past emplacements long abandoned, trenches lined with fallen men, faces pressed deep into mud that still smelled of sulfur and fear.

On the second day, near dusk, they reached the depot. The sun was gone behind black clouds and a dim twilight bled across the sky. The ridge where they stood was broken stone and rusted wire, earth scorched by old shells and scarred by fire. Hashirama knelt low. Batu crouched beside him, his warplate matte and stained with the journey’s toll. Together they peered down into the enemy’s stronghold.

Walls rose like cliffs below them, grey slabs of ferrocrete crowned with razor-wire coils. Floodlights swung slow arcs over wide courtyards piled high with ammunition crates and fuel barrels. Towers pierced the sky, topped by autocannons and missile pods scanning the dark horizon with glowing red eyes.

Figures moved in ranks below, mortal soldiers in flak armor, dragging crates and assembling barricades. Among them stood the towering forms of enemy Astartes, clad in dull iron armor that swallowed the weak light and gave nothing back. Their ceramite plate scarred and battered, their shoulders broad as doorways. They carried bolters slung loose in one hand, blades as long as men hung at their hips. Their helms reflected nothing, black lenses staring blankly forward, unmoving, implacable.

Hashirama's gaze shifted to the figure at the heart of it all, pacing slowly across the central yard, barking commands with a voice that carried clearly even over the distance. The voice was deep, iron-hard, edged with contempt.

The figure stood taller than all others. Twice the height of the tallest Astartes, towering over men who themselves stood giants among humanity. Armor thick and layered with weaponry: cannons at his shoulders, launchers on his gauntlets, guns lining his armor like thorns. The air rippled around him with barely-contained power, a searing, restless force, as though gravity itself feared to touch him. He wore no helm. His face was visible even from afar: broad and stern, features carved from granite, eyes that burned coldly beneath brows dark and furrowed.

Batu went still beside Hashirama. The White Scar’s breathing slowed. He leaned forward slightly, helm canting downward, fists tightening at his sides. One word slipped from his lips, quiet, hard-edged. A name.

“Perturabo.”