Editing The 13th Black Crusade (section)

===Hunted by Wolves===

Some forty hours into the chase, engines suddenly failed on the agri-hauler ''Pride of St. Cerephos". Garadon chose not to stop, and only took what transports made it off the transport, but the captains of the ''Emperor's Wrath'' and ''Dominus Victor'' disagreed with the Brother-Captain's cold pragmatism, and turned around to aid it.

Their choice was admirable, but ultimately foolish. Barely half of the agri-hauler's cargo of Cadian refugees had boarded the two warships when the vanguard of the Black Fleet was upon them like ravenous wolves. ''The Emperor's Wrath'' didn't even have time to disengage its boarding tunnels when it was torn apart by a massive broadside. The ''Dominus Victor'' managed to disengage, but instead of trying to make for Cawl's convoy, an emergency warp jump was made by the captain's subordinate on his sudden death. It never re-emerged from the Warp.

More than a quarter million lives were lost in that brief encounter, doomed by misplaced compassion.

The ''Phalanx'' tried to slow its pace, and allowed the least-space worthy craft into its hangars, but afterward sealed their portals shut. Garadon didn't want to risk any undesirables from making it onboard the Fortress lest it be sabotaged, and it was only its massive guns that kept the Black Fleet from pouncing on the battered convoy.

The hours turned into days, and the mounting fatigue amongst the ships of the convoy took its own toll, as crew became careless. The destroyer ''Toxcra Clavius'' was set adrift after its gunnery crew made a costly error, while a [[Primaris Psyker]] on the ''Hades XII'' succumbed to possession, and allowed a [[Keeper of Secrets]] to run rampant through three decks before it was finally put down by Whiteshields of the Cadian 79th. For all their bravery, they were first quarantined from the rest of the fleet, before Cawl was ordered by Greyfax to put the destroyer to the sword lest it infect the rest of the convoy with possible heresy.

More than four days since the Fall of Cadia, the motley fleet managed to make it to the orbit of the Klaisus, an icy moon of Kasr Holn. The ''Phalanx's'' Navigators finally announced that the tides of the Warp were stable enough to allow translation. Only sixteen out of the twenty-nine ships that escaped Cadia remained by this point, with barely two and a half million Cadians spread among their holds.

The fleet fired up their Warp engines, ready to depart the benighted system, but it was then that the Black Fleet finally caught up with them.