"Caution! The Swarm is closing in!"
"Out of my way, pups!"
The charging Carnifex was knocked clean off its feet by a head-on collision from Byrne.
"Hah! These bugs pack quite a wallop."
The heavy assault cannon mounted on his chassis barked at point-blank range, buried deep in the Carnifex's face. Thirty seconds of sustained, maximum-baseline fire effectively pulverized its entire upper torso.
A Dreadnought operated precisely like a mobile tank, comfortably eclipsing a standard armored vehicle in both agility and raw firepower.
"I caught word that Tyranids would manifest in this sector, but why the hell are these creatures dropping in right as we are locked in combat with the Sons of Magnus? Are they plotting a flank assault?"
Byrne seized another Tyranid Warrior and slammed its physical form violently against a stone wall.
"Venerable One, they might have simply been drawn to our coordinates by the noise of the engagement."
"Drop the speculation for a moment. Where is this newly ascended Living Saint? Didn't she forward the emergency deployment request to us herself?"
"Unverified. She appears to have vanished entirely, likely still marooned within the currents of the Warp. That is far too common an occurrence. Speaking of which, Venerable One, what actually prompted you to answer her call?"
"She brought her crusade to Prospero, that's why. If this were a simple matter of squashing bugs, I wouldn't harbor an ounce of interest, and Logan wouldn't have troubled to rouse me from my slumber. But Prospero is different. It is well past time I revisited my old stomping grounds."
A Space Wolf let out a booming laugh. "Venerable One, it has been far too many years since we last sat to hear you recount the tales of how we systematically executed the Emperor's traitors across the soil of Prospero."
"Hahaha! Once today's butcher's bill is settled, I shall regale you all with the tales the moment we return to barracks. Perhaps the shattered remnants of that ancient battlefield still linger out there."
As they spoke, the forward momentum of the swarm began to visibly flag.
The deployment sent to this theater comprised a mere four companies of the Space Wolves, but backed by the tactical support of Byrne and a specialized Terminator squad, managing a minor splinter tendril was far from an impossible feat.
"Venerable One, our reconnaissance assets report that the hive fleet has entirely inverted its heading."
"Are these cunning beasts preparing to launch a coordinated ambush?"
"It bears the tactical signatures of one, sir, but they have completely bypassed our defensive lines, driving their vanguard straight toward the epicenter of the sorcerer city."
Byrne sensed a jarring tactical anomaly. According to the strategic briefings, the combat intellect governing this Hive Fleet Aether-Kronos was exceptionally sophisticated; how could they possibly commit to such an overtly foolish maneuver?
Could it be that their primary objective was actually this sorcerous warp-world itself?
The realization left Byrne feeling somewhat cross. "The Thousand Sons... those traitors serve as the rightful quarry for the Rout! Press the advance! I intend to witness exactly what kind of profane theater these heretics and xenos are staging. Where are the mortal regiments? Step up the pressure of the bombardment!"
The flanking Astra Militarum officer could only stare back in complete, wide-eyed astonishment, far too intimidated to voice a single syllable of dissent.
Byrne still vividly remembered the days he marched alongside Russ toward Prospero to execute the absolute will of the Emperor. Scholars later labeled that campaign a grand deceit, a tragic catastrophe that could have comfortably been avoided.
But Byrne harbored no desire to debate the historical alignment of right and wrong. The deeds had been transacted, the Thousand Sons had fallen to damnation, and their blind devotion to their Primarch had inflicted structural, irreparable harm upon the Imperium of Man.
That reality alone served as the solitary justification required for their swift eradication today.
The Space Wolves converged upon the core perimeter of the sorcerer city, a region heavily blanketed by colossal, floating megaliths and dense, interlocking networks of profane runes. Countless heretics knelt in manic prayer across the plazas, while mortals who had fallen to damnation in their pursuit of forbidden knowledge bartered away their souls with daemons.
Skins of cerulean power armor, reanimated and anchored under the absolute control of Astartes sorcerers, unleashed continuous defensive volleys into the encroaching vanguard.
The Space Wolves would find no easy victory in breaching these walls.
Byrne personally spearheaded a strike team, battering his way through the primary gate perimeter.
"Graaaagh!"
Byrne violently snapped the heavy weapon-limb off a Helbrute, plunging his power claw deep into the chassis to tear the corrupted warrior's physical remains from the pilot housing, grinding it into unrecognizable paste beneath his armored foot.
"They are already deploying Helbrutes to anchor the line. If that's the baseline, it indicates we are pressing exceptionally close to the primary anchors of these warp sorceries, does it not?"
As Byrne conversed with his battle-brothers while clearing the corridors, they rounded a bulkhead and collided head-on with two women.
Eleven and War froze in complete bewilderment, completely refraining from launching an attack for a critical fraction of a second. The moment the Hive Tyrant looming directly behind them let out a thunderous roar, Byrne instantly raised his twin-linked bolters.
Eleven swept her hand upward, and a dense psychic barrier materialized seamlessly between the two factions.
Yet, for reasons neither side could fully articulate, neither group initiated a direct engagement.
Though Byrne was a Space Wolf through and through, he was a veteran who had witnessed the full breadth of the cosmos. As one of the exceptionally rare Space Marines still drawing breath who had actively fought in the Great Crusade, witnessing the collapse of the Emperor's grand vision had rendered him far more stoic and clear-headed than his younger kin.
"Space Wolves?"
"You two certainly don't bear the standard morphology of a Tyranid strain."
"Hold your tongues," War snapped coldly. "We lack the operational window to consume your forces at this present juncture. Count yourselves fortunate and clear the grid."
The Space Wolves could barely contain their feral fury, their muscles tensing to launch a direct, bloody assault, but Byrne held his massive chassis back to obstruct their path.
The xenos vanguard immediately broke contact and drifted out of visual range, looking thoroughly vexed by the detour.
"Our absolute priority at this juncture remains the neutralization of the Thousand Sons," Byrne analyzed as his strike team repositioned. "A metropolis engineered on this staggering scale is invariably channeling a catastrophic warp ritual. Think about it—even the bugs chose to withhold their fire against us; they are likely executing a sweep to suppress this anomaly as well."
The Space Wolf pack-brothers voiced their sharp dissatisfaction: "Do these mindless bugs truly possess that level of tactical intellect?"
"That is the first recorded instance of a Tyranid articulating speech."
The moment Byrne dropped that observation, the pack's arguments withered away entirely. It was indeed a complete historical precedent; if reports of a talking Tyranid breached the wider Imperium, it would invariably spark a massive structural uproar.
"This data remains strictly classified within the chapter borders for now," Byrne decreed. "We shall formulate a comprehensive intelligence report for Segmentum Command only after we have thoroughly verified the variables ourselves. I harbor absolutely no desire to trigger another political confrontation with the lackeys of the Inquisition. Those fellows caused quite an unnecessary scene during our last crossing."
"Are we truly permitting them to depart without an engagement?"
"Until we successfully break the primary hive fleet out of the isolation loop, all alternative targets remain entirely secondary," War analyzed. "Furthermore, Byrne's combat potential is a variable we cannot afford to underestimate. I must preserve our core evolutionary assets to contend with Magnus."
Following their brief crossing with the Space Wolves, War and Eleven immediately routed their advance, executing a flanking maneuver to strike the sorcerer city from an alternate tactical vector.
Utilizing every single available variable on the shifting battlefield to maximize operational efficiency—such was the core strategic wisdom governing War.
The splinters of the hive fleet that had evaded the chronological trap launched a synchronized, total assault against the Thousand Sons. Simultaneously, on the opposite front, the combined forces of the Space Wolves and the Astra Militarum stepped up the violence of their own bombardment.
As for why the local theater had devolved into this specific paradigm, one would have to demand answers directly from Magnus.
To secure the absolute maximum baseline for his grandest ritual, Magnus and his collective of sorcerers had woven an immense psychic metropolis. This city effectively functioned like a blazing beacon in the Immaterium, loudly broadcasting its coordinates across the neighboring star sectors.
It could be argued that the current double-team execution by the Space Wolves and the Tyranids was merely a consequence of them being the closest assets to the sector. If the structural anchors of this ritual endured over a prolonged window, alternative galactic factions would invariably converge on the coordinates, transforming this star system into a chaotic, multi-theater warzone.
Stretching out across the extreme perimeter of the star sector, an entirely separate fleet translated abruptly into realspace.
The distinct, elegant crescent hulls of the warships immediately heralded exactly which ancient power had bridged the distance to the battlefield.
The Silent King had tracked the immense warp fluctuations radiating from this coordinate, and he harbored absolutely no reservations about using this dense concentration of psychic energy to field-test his latest blackstone counter-measures.
Naturally, the paramount motivation driving his campaign was far more personal. He had painstakingly extracted the current coordinates of the Aether fleet from human channels; how could he possibly decline an opportunity to exact absolute vengeance?
The entity who had the sheer audacity to subject him to a face-to-face humiliation—Szarekh swore an absolute oath upon the title of the Silent King that he would make that creature bitterly regret the very day it was brought into existence.