"We must react immediately!"
Fabius Bile's voice exploded across the bridge, carrying a sharp, almost piercing urgency.
His usually cold eyes were now wide open, their pupils reflecting the dense, unstoppable cluster of approaching light spots on the auspex.
As a technician—though that title had long since been warped beyond recognition in his case—Bile completed an assessment of the entire tactical situation in a fraction of a second.
This tactic was incredibly simple and crude.
Yet, it was utterly fatal.
The Phalanx.
Those monolithic structures, akin to mobile star fortresses, were never classified merely as battleships. They were star fortresses—the ultimate creations of the Imperium.
The thickness and redundancy of their void shields placed them among the most terrifying tier in the entire supreme order of battle within the Imperium.
Even if the Pride of the Emperor—a Gloriana-class battleship—poured its full firepower into one without any restraint, it would be absolutely impossible to break the shields of even a single Phalanx and completely disable it in a short amount of time.
And a focus-fire tactic?
Bile's brain whirled at high speed, his augmented neurons processing battlefield data far faster than any normal human.
His conclusion took only an instant.
It wouldn't work.
At this very moment, there was far more than just one Phalanx charging toward them.
With a mere glance at the front array, he counted nearly twenty of them—approaching at extreme speeds, their plasma exhaust trails dragging searing white bands across the void. They were clearly fully preheated, their engines long since pushed to the absolute limit.
In other directions, even more Phalanxes were flanking them from the sides, the rear, above, and below. Positioned with bone-chillingly precise coordinates, they wove a massive, tightening web in three-dimensional space.
Behind each Phalanx, gravity-capture devices dragged continent-sized asteroid fragments, casting cold shadows across the void.
"Can we just shatter those asteroid fragments?"
Lucius's voice cut in urgently. His tongue flicked anxiously in the air, his palm already tightly gripping the daemon sword at his waist—the blade hosting a Slaaneshi Daemonette vibrated in his hand, letting out bursts of humming.
As the favorite of Slaanesh, possessing the ability of infinite resurrection, he shouldn't have feared death in any form—after all, it was just another cycle of ecstasy.
But being crushed to death by a fleet throwing giant rocks?
Lucius begged to be excused from that kind of amusement.
It was far too joyless.
And who knew where he would reincarnate. If he revived inside some fleet commander, it would be somewhat acceptable. But if that fellow Slaanesh altered the judgment mechanism on a whim just to see a joke, causing him to crash straight into Ferrus across the way—the one currently issuing the grand commands—that would be too fucking hilarious.
Even if Lucius were ten times more arrogant, he would never believe himself capable of taking over the body of a Primarch.
"That is also impossible."
A cold voice cut off Lucius's train of thought.
Fulgrim.
His previous fit of maniacal laughter had abruptly stopped, as if severed by an invisible blade.
In just a brief moment, his expression shifted completely—from ecstasy to apathy, switching so thoroughly and rapidly that it seemed as though no emotional fluctuation had ever existed on that face.
"Or rather——"
Fulgrim's voice was terrifyingly calm. His purple eyes narrowed slightly as his gaze pierced through the bridge's observation window, landing on the rapidly approaching Phalanxes. "This is precisely what my dear 'brother' is eagerly hoping for."
His serpentine tail slid slowly over the throne, making a soft, rustling sound.
"Shattering the asteroid fragments is indeed easy—too easy. Those fragile rocks are defenseless against void shields and macro-cannon arrays. But precisely because of that, we would fall into his trap."
Fulgrim reached out, his long, twisted fingers gesturing in the air. "Once our firepower is drawn away and consumed by those fragments, even if for a brief window of a few minutes, those Phalanxes will seize the momentum to complete the encirclement and breach the core of our fleet array. When that happens——"
He paused, the corners of his mouth curving slightly into a chilling smile devoid of any warmth.
"We won't even be able to flee, let alone triumph. All attempts to resist would be nothing but futile efforts."
"Then what do we do?"
Bile looked up at his genetic father.
Fulgrim withdrew his gaze.
He looked around the bridge, observing his sons, whose faces bore various expressions.
Then, he gave a cold wave of his hand.
"Retreat."
Fulgrim spoke lightly.
He said, "We shall yield for now and avoid their edge."
The bridge fell into a momentary silence.
Bile's brow furrowed slightly, Lucius's mouth opened and closed, and the Emperors' Children exchanged looks, seemingly unable to believe these words had come from the mouth of their genetic father.
The Fulgrim of the past—the purple phoenix who was proud to his very bones—was actually ordering a retreat?
"What? Are you surprised?"
Looking at his sons' reactions, Fulgrim shook his head in disgust.
The expression was like an artist looking at a crudely made imitation, filled with nothing but disdain and disappointment.
"Humph, do not take me for some madman. On this point—"
His serpentine tail gently tapped the armrest of the throne. "Patience is something I still possess."
These words acted like a spell being lifted. The air in the bridge began to flow again, and the Emperors' Children snapped out of it, beginning to issue retreat orders.
The voices of the heralds rose and fell, dense command sequences rolled across data-slates, and the massive Chaos fleet began to slowly turn around.
However, some individuals were destined to be left behind as pawns.
Those Chaos Astartes whom Fulgrim despised—such as the Nurgle-aligned warships covered in plagues, their hulls crawling with rotting, hyperplastic tissue—were ruthlessly thrown to the rear of the fleet to serve as a rearguard sacrifice.
Standing before the observation window, Bile watched it all with the dispassionate gaze of a researcher.
Those Nurgle warships were abandoned at the outermost edge of the retreating array, their void shields already thinned to near transparency due to a chronic lack of maintenance.
When the first wave of asteroid fragments came howling in, Bile could even clearly see the terrifying acceleration the fragments gained under the push of the gravity-projection devices. The moment they broke free from the gravity-harnessing mechanisms, the immense g-force caused those continent-sized rocks to disintegrate in the void, fracturing into tens of billions of pieces.
No, those weren't fragments.
That was ammunition.
The reason the disintegrated asteroid fragments could form such a terrifying strike zone was precisely because each individual piece was larger than the most massive macro-cannon shells used by Imperial warships. Aided by the cold laws of physics in the real universe, those rocks expanded at sub-light speeds, sweeping through every sector of space within sight like a meteor storm.
The first Nurgle warship was hit.
The moment the first fragment touched the void shield of that once massive, bloated battleship, the shield erupted with an intensely brilliant glare. This was a phenomenon that occurred only when a shield generator desperately absorbed impact energy, indicating it was enduring a load far exceeding its design limits.
The light rippled outward from the point of impact like ripples on water, and the entire void shield shuddered violently at a visible frequency.
Immediately following, a second fragment arrived. The shield's light abruptly died out, like a candle being pinched.
Then, a third fragment smashed straight through the hull.
Naturally, it didn't explode.
Before sub-light kinetic energy, an explosion was laughable.
That rock fragment, larger than a macro-cannon shell, pierced through the midsection of the battleship like a red-hot iron rod through butter.
The ship's structure collapsed in an instant. Armor plates were torn, folded, and shattered like sheets of paper; the internal air and fires erupted from the breach, freezing into brilliant ice crystals in the void.
More fragments followed in succession.
The entire sector of space turned into a desperate death trap. Those Nurgle battleships had absolutely no room to resist.
They first slammed into the barrage barrier formed by the asteroid fragments, and the void shields on their hulls vanished into nothingness after a brief flicker.
The lights of those shields were like candles in a gale, flickering before completely disappearing.
Deprived of their shields' protection, the hulls were repeatedly struck by subsequent fragments. Metal frameworks let out silent groans under the immense pressure, and plague-like green mist leaked from the ruptures, condensing into bizarre ice crystals in the void.
And that was only the beginning.
The main gun arrays of the Phalanxes thundered to life.
It was a carpet bombing in the truest sense. Thousands of macro-cannon shells poured down like a torrential rain, precisely penetrating the gaps in the fragment barrage and accurately striking those Nurgle warships that had already lost their void shields.
Every shell found its target flawlessly. Under the dense bombardment of the macro-cannons, the ships exploded one after another, turning into burning wreckage scattered across space.
The debris drifted in spirals, only to be completely crushed by the impacts of subsequent asteroid fragments, turning into smaller shards, into dust, into nothingness.
One ship.
Two ships.
Ten ships.
Fifteen ships.
In just a few short minutes, the entire rearguard fleet became a floating graveyard.
Those once overbearing Chaos warships now consisted of nothing but twisted metal skeletons and cooling plasma residue, drifting slowly through the void.
"Truly beautiful," Bile said softly.
His tone was as calm as water, completely undisturbed by the sight.
As the Clonelord, he had long since backed up his consciousness across countless clones; each death was merely a process of consciousness transfer.
Every single one of these Biles was his own most perfect creation, granted immortality by a biological technology so excellent it bordered on a miracle.
This gave him ample capital for arrogance—he was controlling Chaos, not being utilized by Chaos.
A certain Chaos Warmaster whose ashes had long since gone cold: First time?
"Wow, this looks incredibly cool!"
A completely different voice rang out on the bridge.
Lucius had already pressed his entire face against the viewport, his augmented eyes staring unblinkingly at the grand spectacle of destruction unfolding outside.
The purple light reflected on his face, casting a bizarre excitement over a countenance distorted to the point of hideousness.
His tongue slowly licked across his lips, leaving a wet trail.
"I regret it now," he said, his voice carrying an intense passion. "I should have stayed with that rearguard fleet just now to experience this feeling firsthand. This way of dying looks much more interesting than I imagined! Hahahahahahaha..."
His laughter echoed through the bridge, loud and shrill, yet inexplicably laced with a touch of dissatisfaction.
After laughing his fill, Lucius turned around, looking up toward the captain's throne. The maniacal mirth still lingered on his face, his mouth opening as words welled up in his throat.
"Father, what do you think—"
The words jammed.
As if throttled by an invisible hand, Lucius's voice abruptly broke off in mid-air.
His eyes widened—those eyes usually filled with madness and pleasure were, for the first time, filled with shock.
At the same time, Bile snapped around. A crack finally appeared on his usually indifferent face.
Everyone inside the bridge—the Emperors' Children, the reassembled Chaos Astartes, the heralds, and the tech-sergeants—all realized something was wrong at the exact same moment.
They uniformly cast their gazes toward the captain's throne upon the high platform.
The throne was empty.
No one saw when Fulgrim had left. No one had detected the slightest inkling or sign.
The Primarch with the twisted serpentine tail, the exquisite visage, and an aura that exuded deep unease—the master of the Emperor's Children legion, the favorite of Slaanesh, the Purple Phoenix Fulgrim—had vanished into thin air just like that.
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
Fulgrim opened his eyes.
Through the blessings of Slaanesh and the terrifying power of a Daemon Primarch, he instantly adapted to the changing light in an extremely short amount of time.
Looking out, the place appeared to be an immensely bright space, illuminated thoroughly by descending white light.
There were no decorations whatsoever, making it resemble an exceptionally vast, spacious room.
The person standing before him slowly spoke.
Ferrus looked calmly at Fulgrim—his dearest friend during the Great Crusade, and his mortal enemy during the Horus Heresy.
Seeing Fulgrim appear here, he seemed not the least bit surprised, merely tightening his grip on his weapon.
The pack on his back suddenly deployed, extending numerous weapons that even a Daemon Primarch would find hard to identify.
Simultaneously, contrary to the Purple Phoenix's expectations, Ferrus showed no emotional fluctuation whatsoever upon seeing his mortal enemy appear before him.
Dispensing with any pleasantries, he spoke directly and bluntly:
"Let's duel—just you and me."