Boom!
The Chaos destroyer Holy Despoiler detonated into wreckage amid a bloom of fire.
Then a gigantic crimson battle barge plowed straight through the debris field and body-checked another Chaos escort into a ruin.
It was fighting a Chaos warband's destroyer and several escorts all by itself.
Simple. Unadorned. Brutal.
That warship, a vessel of the Blood Angels, was practically not fitted with shipborne gun batteries at all. Its outer hull was nothing but thick armor, a ramming prow, and layer upon layer of void shields.
Apart from its relic engine, the rest was all hardened structure, like a super-heavy sledgehammer.
It was a dump truck in space, dealing damage by impact alone, a living monument to violence.
This colossal battle barge had once destroyed two infamous Khorne-aligned Chaos warships in consecutive head-on collisions, while suffering minimal damage to its own hull.
Against the battered little ships of a minor Chaos warband, it had an even more crushing advantage. It barely felt anything when it hit them.
Like rolling over a speed bump.
Besides, the Blood Angels had dedicated budgets for repairs and replacements. If they didn't spend it, accounting got awkward.
In short, just ram them. Take it up with my budget.
"Damn that Imperial ship!"
"That lunatic has us locked. It's faster!"
"Changer of Ways, where's our plan?!"
"It's coming, it's coming!"
"Run!"
Curses, prayers, sobs, shrieks. The Chaos fleet's vox channels dissolved into chaos and helplessness.
The crimson battle barge's repeated bullying and crushing impacts spread terror like a contagion.
Chaos Space Marines and cultists hurled into the void screamed and raged in the face of an unstoppable catastrophe.
They watched the Imperial crimson monster bear down on them, and then their ship simply lifted, ruptured, and shattered under the collision.
They had no ability to fight back at all.
That fear and despair transmitted cleanly to the boarding force on the pilgrim ship's main deck.
They watched their warband's warship being pulverized again and again.
"That's still an Imperial warship? How is it crazier than the Khorne warbands' maniacs? Did the Corpse-Emperor feed them madness drugs?!"
The Chaos commander and his Traitor Astartes stared upward, frozen in place, their minds boiling.
"Changer of Ways, someone save us. They're hateful devils…"
Some cultists couldn't take the pressure. Their legs gave out. They fell to their knees, shaking.
They were utterly helpless.
These were the same creatures who had always seen Imperial citizens as lambs, to be slaughtered at will. Now, after being drowned in suppressive fire and having their retreat route severed by violent ship-to-ship impact, they had none of their earlier arrogance left.
Before corruption, they had been weak-willed cowards to begin with, clinging to Chaos power just to indulge their own depravity.
Now the situation had flipped, and they were simply being beaten back into their original selves.
The old Imperium rarely managed this.
But the New Imperium's crushing posture laid bare the enormous gap in power between the two sides.
It sobered them up. Fear took the high ground again.
"What a mighty warship. What a satisfying, exhilarating doctrine…"
Dorn watched the void battle between the Imperium and Chaos and felt his blood surge.
So space warfare could be fought like this. Simple and savage.
It was an assault pattern he had never even considered.
Thick armor, a void-shielded ramming prow, and engines with brute thrust. Turn the ship itself into a hammer and smash.
Even the Khorne warbands' ships couldn't compare.
Yes, they had ramming prows, but their internal structure wasn't built for it. They just got carried away and rammed when they felt like it.
The Blood Angels' "dump-truck" heavy battle barge had been born for ramming and had abandoned almost every other function to serve that purpose.
Even in the galaxy at large, it counted as a top-tier ship series.
It was a perfect fusion of Imperial forging and xenos technology, even drawing on ancient prow-forging techniques preserved in Ork genetic memory.
Of course, that also depended on the New Imperium's wealth of manufacturing capacity. Other factions didn't have the capital to fight like this.
Behind it stood a vast supply system and war-ready infrastructure: a crushing advantage in technology and resources.
Even if a Chaos warband wanted to copy it, they couldn't. A few battles later, they'd be so broke they'd be pawning the last scraps of their armor.
Dorn took a deep breath.
That Imperial warship was still far inferior to the Phalanx.
But the unstoppable momentum and crushing dominance were unlike anything he had ever seen in the Imperium.
It was an inevitable contrast.
For a long time, the Lord of the Phalanx had been the Imperium's master of defense.
Especially during the Horus Heresy and the Siege of the Imperial Palace, he had been locked in an extreme defensive posture, beaten down without respite. Even the fortress lines he built were torn apart by the daemons Perturabo summoned.
Nearly every defensive battle had been desperate, failing by inches, stacked with casualties.
Then, for ten thousand years, the Imperium entered its age of darkness, trampled by heretics and xenos, mired in endless suffering. Almost every war became a fight for survival.
There was no hope of victory.
Even Guilliman's earlier Indomitus Crusade could only be called a gamble with death: win and the Imperium breathes, lose and it's over.
In that reality, most high-level Imperial figures, especially Primarchs who had lived through despair and seen the Emperor fall, carried a deep exhaustion.
Some Primarchs simply gave up and exiled themselves.
Dorn had wandered the Eye of Terror for so long. Part of it was searching for a way to heal the Emperor's wounds. Part of it was avoidance.
He didn't know how to save his father's Imperium, how to reverse the darkness.
He knew that beyond building fortifications, he seemed unable to do anything else.
Worse, he hadn't even held the final Palace line.
He didn't want to face that.
Now, newly returned, Dorn had witnessed the vitality and courage of Imperial citizens aboard a mere pilgrim ship.
He had also witnessed a crushing victory, clean and exhilarating.
How could his heart not surge?
From this battle he saw the Imperium's rising morale and its advantage in arms and equipment.
The Imperium… could be saved.
Hummm.
"For the Golden Sun and the Savior!"
Blood Angels in blazing heavy armor used teleportation facilities to board the main deck, then pressed into the line of heretic traitors.
Those warriors were even larger than ordinary Space Marines. Traitor Astartes rounds struggled to penetrate the shield fields layered over their armor.
A slaughter began.
The Traitor Astartes and cultists fell into complete despair.
Ahead of them was the interception fire net formed by Imperial Knights, super-heavy gun emplacements, and the ship's security troops.
Behind them, the Blood Angels closed in.
They were trapped in a pincer. This was an extermination.
The heretic line finally broke. Under the relentless assault, they fell one after another.
"Break out!"
The Chaos commander no longer cared about the cultists. He gathered the remaining Traitor Astartes, surged toward a breach, and threw himself into open space without hesitation.
A dark escape craft then shot into the wreckage field.
As void pirates, these Traitor Astartes had long since developed the habit of keeping a way out.
For example, this specialized escape craft, built for extreme speed.
As long as it used the wreckage as cover and reached the nearby asteroid belt, they would be safe.
At least they'd keep their lives and wait for other Red Corsairs brothers to salvage them.
Inside the escape craft.
"Idiot. Any pursuit on auspex?" The Chaos commander stared at the radar, heart in his throat.
He was terrified those madmen would chase. If they did, their survival odds would plummet.
Fortunately, the Blood Angels did not immediately pursue.
The Chaos commander watched the radar for a while. No fluctuations.
He finally let out a breath.
By experience, the Imperium had already won. They wouldn't waste effort chasing a handful of survivors.
It wasn't worth it.
Besides, that Blood Angels battle barge seemed to lack large-scale gun batteries. Interception would be inconvenient.
Then, in the next second, the escape craft's alarms screamed. On the radar were more than ten red dots, each signifying lethal threat.
…???
"Damn it. Those, those are heavy torpedoes?!"
The Chaos commander stared at the signal returns, disbelieving.
Just now, the Blood Angels battle barge had launched a spread of heavy torpedoes in this direction, the kind of weapon meant to cripple capital ships.
Absurdly expensive.
Using heavy torpedoes to kill this escape craft and a few remaining Chaos Space Marines was like using anti-air flak to swat a mosquito.
Boom, boom, boom!
Several heavy torpedoes detonated first within the asteroid belt, clearing that entire pocket of space.
The Chaos commander and the surviving Traitor Astartes shut their eyes in pain.
They were desperate beyond measure.
There was no escape.
The heavy torpedoes had bracketed the escape craft and the surrounding void.
The attack was brutally direct, saturation fire annihilating every potential piece of cover.
Wave after wave of detonations rolled through.
When the bombardment ended, the entire volume of space was empty, leaving only the escape craft resisting the lingering shockwaves, alone in the void.
It looked lonely, pitiful, and doomed.
"Changer of Ways… we didn't get hit. We survived?"
Inside the craft, the Chaos commander opened his eyes slowly, unbelieving. A thrill of surviving death surged through him.
Blessed by the Changer of Ways!
The other Traitor Astartes exhaled too, a collective release.
Then, in the next instant, pressure like a nightmare descended.
They lifted their heads in horror.
A crimson wall was sweeping over them at terrifying speed.
That damned battle barge.
Splat.
The gigantic crimson battle barge crushed the escape craft like an egg being popped in the void, bursting a tiny spark beneath the ramming prow's shielded field.
Every fleeing Chaos creature died in a ridiculous, pitiful manner, without a shred of dignity.
It was the death the Blood Angels had chosen for them.
On the pilgrim ship's main deck.
When the crowd saw the Savior's forces execute the heretic traitors with such dominance, a roar of cheers erupted.
They had won this defensive battle.
"Big guy, you okay?"
The short veteran laughed loudly.
He came over, tried to clap Dorn's shoulder, hesitated, and finally slapped Dorn's thigh instead.
"By the Savior above, how did I not notice before that you're this tall…"
The veteran frowned, confused. Instinctively, he felt the big man's height exceeded what should be normal.
But under the influence of the taboo relic, he didn't question it too deeply.
Even though, during the chaos of the battle, the Lord of the Phalanx had seized moments to crush two Traitor Astartes skulls with his bare hands.
The artillery thunder had covered it. No one noticed.
Dorn stood amid the cheering crowd, in a genuinely good mood, tasting the joy of victory.
"How long has it been since I felt a joy like this?"
He lowered his head and wondered silently.
He couldn't remember.
In his mind, war was always agony. Humanity seemed to have so few victories that were this clean, this exhilarating.
There were more crushing defeats, or victories paid for in blood.
Like the fifty-five days he held the walls during the Siege of Terra.
One of the most painful memories of his life, a memory that had nearly shattered all his pride.
His "unbreakable" defenses had been destroyed.
Perturabo's ugly, traitorous face still burned in his mind.
Even now, Dorn wanted nothing more than to find that traitor and smash his face into pulp.
"Hahahaha.
Not one person from our cabin is missing. Every one of us did well.
Big guy, later we'll go to the ship's dining hall and celebrate properly. I'm buying. I've got plenty of pension.
Honorary veterans get treated real well. Back then, Savior, His Majesty said the Imperium can't shortchange…"
The veteran's hearty laughter and the crowd's cheers shoved back into Dorn's mind, pulling him into the present.
Dorn looked at the cheering crowd, at the smiling faces, and his eyes slowly grew wet.
He murmured, "Maybe this is what humanity should look like. A spirit that rises, full of hope…"
Dorn didn't isolate himself from the crowd.
He joined them, letting himself breathe in that atmosphere.
He had wandered the Warp for too long, and he had been alone for too long.
As the battle ended, personnel from the ship's departments emerged to clear the battlefield and repair damaged sections, eliminating hazards. Everything was orderly.
"We apologize. Our battle barge was intercepted by heretic traitors earlier, and you suffered an attack.
That failure is ours."
The Blood Angels captain, a heavily armored figure, spoke to the pilgrim ship's responsible officer with sincere regret.
In truth, their response had been fast.
But in the New Imperium, allowing a civilian vessel to be attacked was responsibility that could not be dodged. There was no excuse.
They would have to write a self-criticism report afterward.
More importantly, the Savior, the Emperor of the Imperium, the genetic father of the Blood Angels, would soon pass through this route aboard his flagship.
If the Savior's flagship were ambushed during this window, or if the pilgrims aboard this ship were slaughtered and desecrated, it would be an eternal disgrace to the Blood Angels.
That was why they had been so furious.
That was why they had used the most violent, most ferocious methods and destroyed every heretic traitor within auspex range, regardless of cost.
Not one left alive.
The Blood Angels captain calmed the rage in his heart and said slowly, "Fortunately, the heretic renegades have all been put down.
The Redemption Fleet has already cleared the route ahead completely. The rest of your journey will be smooth, with no obstacles at all…"
The earlier attack had humiliated the Redemption Fleet, especially with the Savior about to pass through this corridor.
They planned to purge the entire route.
Even the asteroid belts along the corridor had been "cleared" with heavy torpedoes, just in case enemies could hide within them.
As for the ports of call that might conceal filth, the Inquisition's departments had launched emergency sweeps.
A full purge action.
Any illegal elements suspected of xenos or heresy were struck with a heavy fist.
Temporary picket posts were established along the route.
Even passing void whales had taken a few shots and fled howling into the dark.
Rumor said the next step was a full rectification campaign across the Sol System.
Even pirates in the peripheral zones had fled at the news, not daring to look back.
That was how forceful it was.
In short, the Departmento Munitorum had mobilized local defense strength as much as possible, for one purpose.
Make sure the great Savior, His Majesty the Emperor of the Imperium, encountered nothing unpleasant in the Sol System.
If the Emperor were attacked in the Sol System, how humiliating would that be?
It would be the Imperium's shame.
The Blood Angels captain was still briefing the pilgrim ship's responsible officer on procedures when he suddenly frowned, as if he sensed something.
He lifted his gaze toward the forward section.
A tall figure's back came into view.
It was Rogal Dorn.
(End of Chapter)
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