The command traveled down the chain with high velocity, galvanized the entirety of the Tithe Fleet into immediate motion.
The voidships anchored across synchronous orbit adjusted their pitch and posture in synchronization, the primary macro-cannon turrets tracking slowly along their bearings to lock onto the surface plane of Brevis. The carrier fighter wings slid out from their internal hangar bays, forming tight defensive arrays along the perimeter of the capital ships. Piercing battle-alarms echoed through the companionways of every independent vessel, as amber-red readiness lights ignited in sequence.
Dominic reassumed his stance before the armored viewing port, monitoring the world below as it intermittently surfaced through the breaking cloud cover, a feeling like an immense megalith weighing down flush against his chest.
Deep within his analytical faculties, he still harbored a final index of hope.
Perhaps... perhaps the variables failed to map precisely to his darkest projections.
Perhaps Carey was genuinely being cloaked by his subordinate networks, manifesting nothing superior to a temporary lapse in structural judgment.
He waited, holding the line for that young individual to report topside and render an operational explanation that could comfortably resolve the data.
Yet he failed to receive an incoming transmission from Raynor. Instead, an independent catastrophe materialized first.
"Warning!!!"
The screaming report of the tracking officer violently shattered the suffocating gravity anchoring the bridge.
"The Eastern Anchorage Zone is registering extreme warp fluctuations! The energy profile... the energy metrics are escalating exponentially!"
"What?" Dominic snapped his torso around, striding with high-velocity paces toward the main scanning console.
Across the primary viewing monitor, space itself was transitioning into a highly volatile state within the coordinates where the eastern fleet element was anchored. The choir of astropaths issued a synchronized warning, their cognitive centers absorbing a trace of unprecedented terror and absolute decay.
A massive rift, violently spewing green miasma and swarms of carrion flies, tore open across the fabric of realspace. Immediately following the breach, upwards of a dozen grotesquely misshapen warships attempted to force their hulls out from the depths of the tear.
Those vessels had long ceased to retain the standard structural profiles of Imperial void-craft, their outer armor plates entirely encrusted under a dense layer of dark-green fungal spores. The hulls manifested bulbous, tumorous growths of raw meat and mutated flesh, as thick, vascular networks wrapped tightly around weapon barrels and bridge towers, pulsating with a rhythmic, breathing cadence.
The historically hardened prows had scaled as bloated and putrid, with viscous, yellow-green fluids oozing out from the bridge viewing slits, while even the primary thruster nozzles manifested jagged, tooth-like biological calcifications. The exhaust discharges failed to project standard plasma flame-trails; instead, they billowed out thick, gray smoke saturated with plague vectors.
The exact millisecond they crossed into realspace, the pustules and cysts covering their hulls began to contract and squeeze. They subsequently erupted with extreme violence, hurling corrosive shrapnel and biological filth across the vacuum of space, establishing a foul zone of absolute contamination.
"A Nurgle fleet..."
Dominic's pupils experienced a tremor born of sudden shock. He had never personally engaged a fleet under the command of the Plague Lord; yet across the official tactical manuals of the Imperial Navy, and deep within the battle logs dispatched from fortress worlds across the cosmos, this specific image of decaying, bloated, and infinitely filthy hulls had long been engraved into the mind of every officer.
The fleet of the Grandfather.
The plague dominating the Underhive had indubitably failed to manifest out of thin air. Its baseline origin point was comfortably mapped to this Chaos fleet currently forcing its ingress from the depths of the Immaterium.
"Establish immediate contact with the fleet element within the Eastern Anchorage!" Dominic ordered sharply. "Command them to assume combat vectors and execute a total quarantine of all infected hulls!"
"Understood!" The communications officer initialized the protocol with high velocity, yet the coloration of his facial plane transitioned to a deathly pale within a matter of seconds. "Major General, they are unresponsive!"
"The vast majority of the vessels have severed their data loops! Only... only a single escort frigate navigating the outermost perimeter is sustaining a transmission signal!"
"Patch it through to my station!"
The comms channel instantly discharged a highly fragmented stream of static, interlaced with the captain's raw screeching, his voice warped by an extreme index of terror.
"Major General, Major General Dominic! We initiated zero contact with them, zero contact!" The captain's register was entirely collapsed. "Prior to their translation into realspace, the ship had already malfunctioned!"
"The corrosion initialized directly from the engine core, propagating with terrifying velocity! Beneath the rust layers, biological tissue started sprouting..."
"All manners of intestines, tumors, and eye-like structures!"
"The automated systems have completely desynchronized; the gun barrels are tracking autonomously, the bulkhead doors are sealing without command..."
"The crew elements are spiking extreme fevers, their skin is rupturing into pustules—they have ceased to be human!"
"The cruiser has completely decoupled from manual overrides; it... it has come alive! It is actively attempting to lock weapons onto your coordinates!"
The captain's screeching peaked to an extreme tier, suddenly transforming into a agonizing scream, accompanied by a sound of thick, viscous squelching and a bizarre, bubbling gurgle.
The transmission terminated abruptly, leaving nothing superior to the sharp crackle of static noise.
An absolute, deathly silence claimed the bridge. Every independent personnel module stood paralyzed by the sheer horror of the unfolding sequence.
The vector of contact had indubitably failed to execute just now; the plague had to have been introduced to those specific ships across a pre-existing timeline via an independent carrier variable. Yet a biological pathogen possessing the capacity to infect and rewrite mechanical systems crossed entirely beyond their analytical paradigm of disease metrics.
"Orders!" Dominic was the first to reclaim his operational faculties, his voice vibrating with absolute, razor-sharp resolution.
"Transmit my directive: every functional warship within proximity of the Eastern Infection Zone is to immediately concentrate fire!"
"Annihilate every compromised allied hull. We cannot permit this plague vector to propagate across the fleet!"
The directive was transmitted down the line, yet the warships navigating the immediate perimeter hesitated.
Those were allied assets.
One millisecond they were brothers-in-arms anchored side-by-side, and the next millisecond they were commanded to execute them with their own hands?
The captain's hesitation sustained itself for strictly a sequence of seconds. Yet those few seconds of operational delay sufficed.
Across the tactical screen, those compromised hulls had successfully brought their prows around. From within their bloated, decaying barrels, zero macro-cannon thunder discharged; instead, high-velocity streams of viscous, gray-green pus were projected across the vacuum. They simulated a volley of the most repulsive phlegm, spraying directly toward the nearest uninfected fleet elements.
Splat!
The initial cluster of plague sludge slammed flush against the void shields of an escort frigate, triggering a sequence of blue psionic ripples. The shield integrity values failed to drop significantly. Yet it was entirely predictable that if these repulsive, fluid-based ordnance shells bypassed the shields and impacted the physical hull structure, a single hit would suffice to infect and completely paralyze an entire warship.
"Major General! The macro-cannon arrays have finalized charging protocols! All proximate vessels request formal clearance to open fire!"
At that exact chronological node, the voice of the officer coordinating inter-ship communications cut through the silence anchoring the bridge.
Dominic drew a deep breath, suppressing the rising wave of physical revulsion within his chest. Just as he prepared to articulate the command for the fleet to mass along the left flank to prioritize the destruction of the infected allied vessels, the secure line of the communication console suddenly illuminated. The flashing red alert pulsed with a frantic cadence, simulating the cardiac readouts of a critical medical emergency.
"Major General, it is Captain Wolken of the Flame of de Lance. Tier 1 encrypted channel; he reports an emergency military update." The communications officer elevated his head, a trace of surprise mapping across his features. "He states the intelligence directly governs the tactical protocols of the plague fleet; he must speak with you without an intermediary."
Dominic's brow furrowed tightly as his cognitive bank instantly retrieved the corresponding service file.
Wolken Hawke, Captain of the Mars-class Battlecruiser Flame of de Lance, holding the rank of Navy Colonel. A survivor of the Anvheim Campaign.
That had been a catastrophic pursuit engagement that transpired decades prior. Warships operating within the Segmentum Obscurus had pursued an outnumbered Nurgle plague fleet into the Quedus Asteroid Belt. Yet before the final plague vessel tore apart, it successfully deployed a Death Guard warband designated the "Rotting Choir" directly onto the naval perimeter. They severed every independent routing vector of the navy, trapping the Imperial military forces inside the polar fortress world of Anvheim.
The besieged Imperial Guard forces sustained their positions amid the brutal winter and the spreading plague for three months; ultimately, across a three-year war of attrition, the Imperial forces suffered near-total annihilation. The survival index fell below one-in-a-million, and the vast majority of those who endured sustained permanent, incurable physiological damage.
Wolken was a direct product of that trauma; his lungs had been permanently eroded by the plague, requiring more than half of his respiratory infrastructure to be substituted with cybernetic mechanical components. Under standard conditions, he depended on life-support arrays to sustain respiration, spending the vast majority of his operational timeline sealed inside a climate-controlled maintenance bay, rarely manifesting in person.
Dominic retained an exceptional memory of this individual; his psychological profile scaled as intensely stable, executing actions with watertight precision. Unless the strategic situation had genuinely reached an absolute crisis node, he would never autonomously bypass standard routing to initiate a direct encrypted call.
"Patch him through," Dominic stated in a low register.
The absolute millisecond the secure communication channel bridged, it initially broadcasted a sequence of low, labored respiration cycles—resembling a damaged pair of bellows—interlaced with the subtle, high-frequency hum of auxiliary cybernetic machinery.
Wolken's voice scaled as exceptionally coarse, matching a leaky ventilation line, forcing him to execute a tactical pause every few words to manually cycle oxygen through his systems. Yet his structural register remained entirely level, harboring zero indicators of operational panic:
"Major General... I will keep the transmission concise."
"Those infected frigates and destroyers maneuvering directly across our vanguard coordinates... function strictly as tactical decoys."
The bridge atmosphere fell completely stagnant for a brief sequence of seconds, as every independent personnel module instinctively tracked back toward the primary scanning matrix.
Across the monitor, those bloated, putrid vessels were clumsily rotating their firing arcs, projecting sluggish clusters of fluid ordnance toward the proximate Imperial line. The impacts discharged against the void shields, manifesting nothing superior to localized splotches of foul bioluminescence; yet the shield efficiency metrics experienced near-zero degradation.
"Elaborate," Dominic commanded, his phrasing stripped of unnecessary syntax.
"I have logged a functionally identical layout across an independent theater... Anvheim." Wolken's respiratory machinery labored with increased gravity, indicating the retrieval of a highly compromised memory register. "The traitors rewritten by the plague... historically decline to present their primary assets during the opening engagement."
"Their baseline protocol dictates displaying a localized cluster of desynchronized allied hulls first—forcing your command to panic, inducing terror regarding plague propagation, and manipulating your fleet to expend its entire macro-salvo directly onto your own brothers-in-arms."
"Analyze the tactical routing metrics carefully, Major General. Those seven compromised vessels comprise the exact task force that accepted standard logistical resupply from the orbital starport three solar cycles prior."
"The primary pathogen vector was engineered directly into the logistical inventory across a historical timeline. The precise chronological node of activation, alongside the exact volume of hulls to compromise, was calculated meticulously by their strategists."
"They deliberately infected the escort frigates occupying the absolute outer perimeter before permitting the strain to propagate inward, explicitly to engineer a false data readout indicating a high-velocity contagion vector."
"The intent is to force our primary fleet element to consolidate its formation and concentrate its macro-cannon arrays exclusively on purging the infected friendly targets."
Dominic's tracking sensors locked onto the fleet vector mapped across the tactical terminal.
Precisely as detailed, the seven compromised voidships were positioned exclusively across the outermost layer of the Eastern Anchorage Zone—simulating a ring of discarded, putrid meat, perfectly obstructing the primary navigation corridors linking the main fleet to the orbital starport. They demonstrated sluggish locomotion, atrocious targeting tracking, and zero capacity to sustain defensive void shields. They surfaced as nothing superior to a column of shambling, mindless husks—possessing zero threat metrics beyond their capacity to induce psychological revulsion.
Yet if the fleet elements consolidated their position to concentrate fire, they would effectively deliver their own hulls straight into the adversary's optimal engagement window.
"The core doctrine of a Nurgle fleet focuses heavily on close-quarters boarding vectors," Wolken's voice continued to stream through the encrypted loop, vibrating with a deep-seated caution etched directly into his bone structure. "Their hulls surface as sluggish and stripped of shield arrays, yet their raw structural durability scales as absurdly high."
"The moment they close the distance to establish direct hull contact, utilizing corrupted torpedo salvos to rupture our shields before driving boarding parties straight into the companionways, an independent vessel will sustain total biological corruption within less than half a solar cycle."
"The hulls currently compromised across our perimeter fail to qualify even as a vanguard detachment."
"The genuine primary fleet element comprises those dozen-plus capital ships currently forcing their translation through the warp rift. They are stalling for time—waiting for our formations to entangle themselves with the decoys before executing a high-velocity flank to engage at point-blank range."
"Process my counsel, Major General."
"When engaging these harbingers of pestilence, you cannot consolidate your formations, nor can you afford to hoard your territorial anchoring surrounding the starport infrastructure."
"Disperse the fleet architecture, maximize the distance parameters, and program the macro-cannons and lance arrays to lock exclusively onto the translating capital ships far downrange. Do not squander critical operational cycles on the decoys."
"The more your command attempts to safeguard high-density infrastructure, the easier it becomes for their fleet to execute a total sweep of our assets."
"This maps to a tactical directive purchased at the cost of hundreds of millions of human lives across the surface of Anvheim."
The transmission concluded, leaving nothing superior to the heavy, mechanical cycling of the life-support systems. Wolken declined to articulate another syllable, effectively delegating the total analytical evaluation to Dominic's discretion.
Dominic withheld an immediate reply, pivoting his head toward the Tech-Priest stationed adjacent to his platform and Silent Sister Elaine.
"Render the diagnostic output."
The optical lenses of the Tech-Priest flashed with a deep, crimson luminescence, as the data streams cascading across his interface cycled at extreme velocity: "Data verified, Major General."
"The void shield penetration index of the enemy's fluid ordnance falls beneath 1%. They possess near-zero efficacy against our defensive shield network."
"The corruption mechanics operate strictly across parameters of physical, material contact; provided the void shields sustain structural integrity, zero hull infection will materialize."
"The warp fluctuation metrics logged from the compromised vessels register at a low tier; the primary anchor point of the plague fails to reside within those specific hulls."
"A significantly more potent corruption source is verified at the coordinates of the warp rift, executing a slow translation into realspace."
Sister Elaine executed a subtle nod of concurrence, translating her hands into a sequence of precise, minimalist sign language:
I align my tactical evaluation with the hypothesis rendered by Colonel Wolken.
With both specialist units verifying Colonel Wolken's assessment, the final trace of analytical friction vanished from Dominic's mind. He locked his gaze onto the primary monitor, tracking completely past the decaying decoy vessels to focus squarely on the churning, dark-green warp rift anchoring the far sector of the void.
The tear was actively expanding; the distorted structural silhouettes of significantly larger capital ships were gradually surfacing through the rift, simulating apex leviathans submerged within stagnant, toxic waters, slowly rising toward the surface layer.
He genuinely harbored an intense desire to dive straight down to the surface plane, drag Carey Von before his command platform, and force him to account for every independent variable concerning the Genestealers, the Frost Dragon, and his treasonous collusion with xenos elements. Yet that ultimately remained an internal issue of Imperial jurisprudence—an accounting sheet that could be audited at a later chronological node.
Presently, an explicit Chaos fleet had obstructed the ingress corridors of the star system; the plague fleet of the dark god was actively attempting to drag an entire world into absolute rot and death. As a Major General of the Imperial Navy, as a warrior bound to the God-Emperor, he possessed zero justification to prioritize internal political friction over an existential threat.
"Transmit the command to the entirety of the fleet."
Dominic's voice resonated with absolute stability and power, instantly suppressing every trace of ambient noise anchoring the bridge.
"Abandon all starport anchorage points. Every independent combat asset is commanded to immediately disperse, maximizing distance parameters while establishing a sweeping, fan-shaped defensive array."
"Maintain a strict minimum separation baseline of five hundred kilometers between all hulls; close-quarters fleet clustering is strictly prohibited."
"All macro-cannons and lance arrays: terminate fire protocols directed against the compromised allied vessels."
"Synchronize and calibrate all tracking networks. Target: the translating fleet elements exiting the warp rift coordinates. Execute total saturation bombardment."
"Deploy the entirety of the carrier fighter wings; execute hunting sweeps across the outer perimeter void to intercept any corrupted vessels attempting to close the distance against our firing lines."
"Notify Colonel Wolken: the Flame of de Lance is temporarily integrated into the vanguard strike group. He is granted total tactical command over the long-range firepower assets along the left flank."
A sequence of highly explicit directives was dispatched down the line, completely devoid of administrative drag. The bridge officers initialized execution protocols with high velocity, as a wave of structured confirmation signals across the comms network substituted the previous friction.
The massive Imperial fleet commenced a methodical, disciplined realignment. Independent warships adjusted their headings, leaving the dense anchorage sectors surrounding the starport to disperse across the expansive void. They simulated a massive, slowly expanding net, systematically boxing in the translating primary fleet of Nurgle.
Dominic stood firm before the viewing port, monitoring the fleet elements as they executed their turns into the void, a cold, absolute light anchoring his pupils.
The ledger concerning Carey Von could be balanced across a later timeline. But presently, he would systematically deliver these Chaos dregs who dared breach the borders of the Imperium straight back into the embrace of their so-called "Grandfather."