The Iron Warriors' fleet was locked in fierce combat with the Greenskins in the void.
In the Warp, the enormous Daemon Factory had positioned itself across the mouth of the Warp rift.
Countless warships and Star Forts unleashed torrents of fire, destroying every daemon that tried to claw its way out of the tear.
The firepower of six thousand Phalanx-equivalent weapons batteries hammered the daemons into nothing — even the Greater Daemons, those with names and histories behind them, burst like bubbles in the face of it.
Titan Legions the size of warships waded into the daemon host and slaughtered without pause. From the Daemon Factory, mechanical arms extended in every direction, snatching daemons that tried to use the chaos to slip quietly through the rift.
A host of iron giants crackling with black lightning and trailing smoke stood as the final defensive line before the tear — though nothing had managed to reach them.
"You festering bird — you think there won't be consequences for this?"
Perturabo watched the blue avian figure laughing uproariously from the safest possible distance, and spoke through gritted teeth.
In the far distance, two enormous green figures were engaged in violent and ongoing collision with the same large green presence. The Pantheon's daemon armies and various Undivided forces were pressing against the rift behind the Daemon Factory, attempting to pry the gap wider.
Perturabo had come the moment his sons' transmission reached him. Greenskins appearing with three Battle Moons, with no prior warning or traceable history — in all his experience, he had never heard of such a thing.
Greenskins needed time to develop. That growth left traces. Even the conflicts that would later come to be known as the War of the Beast had shown clear early signs in the period before they erupted.
So where had this force come from?
Perturabo didn't need to think hard. The bird was obviously involved.
Sure enough, the first thing he saw upon arriving was Nurgle caught in an inexplicable multi-front brawl, Khorne and Slaanesh fighting each other over who got to emerge into realspace first, and Tzeentch standing well back and cackling.
He had no other option — he had to seal the rift and wait for it to close, deal with the immediate crisis. Gorkamorka had clearly been manipulated somehow.
He filled in the details in his mind. The bird's fingerprints were on every part of this.
But there was nothing he could do about it right now. He wasn't going to punch his way through four Chaos Gods single-handedly.
All he could do was hold the door from inside the Daemon Factory.
Thank the forges for the Daemon Factory.
Zenobia System.
Ferrix stood on the bridge of the Iron Indomitable, watching the three enormous Battle Moons on the holographic display, his expression unreadable.
The massive Battle Moons were slathered in red and yellow-black paint. Uncountable Greenskins swarmed across their surfaces, screaming and bellowing.
Surrounding them, crude and ugly warships filled the void like a swarm of locusts, blotting out half the stars.
Ferrix looked at this physics-defying mass of salvaged iron drifting in the void with its frankly unreasonable firepower, and felt no fear whatsoever.
"Signal all fleets."
His voice was even.
"Execute the encirclement as planned. Third and Fourth Fleets focus on the ground campaign — clear the orbital space quickly to support surface operations."
"Star Forts continue to press forward. Gloria Reginas disperse — three ships per group, working in conjunction with the Star Forts for fire coverage. Capital ships maintain mobile formation to prevent enemy boarding actions."
"All Legion forces hold the critical sections of their vessels. Nova Cannons and electromagnetic Nova Cannons are not to cease charging at any point — no interruption in fire until the naval engagement is concluded."
"Every Greenskin in this system is to be destroyed. Every last spore."
"If a single Greenskin escapes, or if I hear next year that any Greenskin growth has been detected anywhere in this system — everyone goes back to Olympia for retraining with the new recruits."
The orders were transmitted and the fleet began its coordinated operation.
The comprehensive fire suppression they already had on the Greenskins tightened further as the fleet steadily encircled the Battle Moons and their surrounding ship masses.
Nova Cannon beams and electromagnetic Nova Cannon shots tore through the void and hammered the Battle Moons and accompanying vessels.
Macro-cannons the size of Titans fired in continuous salvoes, reducing the Greenskins' ramshackle warships — bolted-together collections of scrap and strange machinery — to fragments.
This was not a comparable contest. It bore no resemblance to the hell-difficulty training scenarios they had faced.
Ferrix thought back to the training his father had designed — almost always fighting against superior numbers, or executing precise boarding decapitation strikes, or accepting mutual destruction in exchange for victory. There had been almost no other outcomes on offer.
Coming back out into the actual Great Crusade, Ferrix had finally understood what an armoured tide looked like. What total-coverage fire support meant in practice.
In training, if they'd had a fleet like this, Ferrix could guarantee the traitor with the topknot would never have gotten close enough to be relevant. One Volcano Cannon would have concluded that lesson entirely.
Not for nothing did Greenskins have the reputation they had. Any normal force facing fire like this would have broken on first contact.
But Greenskins consistently defied expectation.
Nobody could explain how a warship reduced to several hundred pieces of scrap could be hammered back together by a group of small Greenskins and somehow become functional again.
Nobody could explain how three Battle Moons, cratered and battered across their surfaces, suddenly sprouted new gun batteries where none had been before — and somehow acquired what appeared to be planetary void shields.
The Greenskins' counter-fire came back like a rainstorm — but twenty-two layers of void shields formed an impenetrable barrier and absorbed every bit of it.
They even managed to organise boarding formations with some degree of coherence, launching dense waves of projectile-pods from the Battle Moons and the larger wreck-ships directly at the Iron Warriors' fleet.
Nobody knew how the Greenskins did any of it. Ferrix had no interest in understanding.
Faced with xenos that didn't follow the rules, Ferrix saw no particular reason to follow them either.
"Double the Nova Cannon and Macro-cannon arrays! Launch torpedoes — laser batteries and plasma macro-cannons prepare to fire in conjunction with the electromagnetic planetary cannons!"
The Battle Moons' shields couldn't hold against the Iron Warriors' concentrated firepower. Craters dozens of kilometres across opened across their surfaces.
Green debris and fragments scattered in every direction. Greenskins, gun batteries, and makeshift factories were flung into vacuum. Along the crater rims, metal melted and resolidified into jagged, ugly scarring.
But a moment later, the Battle Moons fired back again — and this time, they appeared to have produced Nova Cannon equivalents of their own, hammering the Star Forts hard enough to make their planetary-grade void shields shudder.
Then the Star Forts' shields layered back up again, with reserve energy cycling in rapidly from behind.
The Greenskins' counter-attack was aggressive. It was the first time Ferrix had faced an enemy that could sustain a fierce counter-offensive under the Iron Warriors' current level of firepower.
Does every Greenskin force with three Battle Moons perform like this?
The ones in training never came close to this level.
Did even Father's simulation training underestimate what Greenskins could actually do?
Ferrix had questions, but this wasn't the time to work through them.
These Greenskins were genuinely abnormal. What force could learn the enemy's tactics and reverse-engineer their technology this quickly — in under three hours of actual combat?
In the Imperium's experience, Greenskins simply didn't do this. Ferrix had encountered Greenskins during the Great Crusade before and none of them had been anything like this.
He hoped his father would find the reason soon. The Greenskins appearing in this system at all had been suspicious from the start.
"Commander."
The logic engine spoke.
"The enemy has begun a large-scale boarding operation. Our fire cannot intercept this volume of boarding craft."
"Get the automata and Iron Circle units into position. Iron Warriors and Iron Guard advance to meet them directly. Auxilia to hold defensive positions. Let these Greenskins see what Olympia's iron fist actually means."
Boarding pods struck the Iron Warriors' vessels like a locust swarm. They impacted against thick hull plating, ramps blew open, and large, powerfully-built Greenskins in black armour poured out.
Among them were several Bosses.
WAAAGH!
They roared and charged, intent on tearing apart everything they found aboard these ships.
Unfortunately for them, what they found was Iron Circles and automata.
Arranged in tight formations in the corridors and chambers, heavy bolters working without pause, sweeping the incoming Greenskins down in swaths.
Plasma cannon bursts cleared larger groups entirely.
The automata's movements were precise and fast and completely without emotion. Machines don't know how to retreat from fear.
Several Greenskin Bosses tried to organise counter-charges, but the weight of fire kept them pinned with no ability to respond. Some were cut down immediately. Melta weapons fired into the ship's interior sections — the extreme heat couldn't melt the high-grade alloy of the hull, but Greenskins had no such resistance.
Not a single spore could survive the melta's temperatures.
More boarding craft kept coming — but they weren't meeting only Iron Circles and automata.
Contemptor Dreadnoughts, comparable in scale to Iron Circles, blocked every chokepoint.
Terminator squads worked in concert with brothers in precision power armour bearing storm shields, and the Greenskins who came aboard were harvested without pause. In the coverage fire, some purple-armoured Greenskins could be spotted — but their armour had already been shredded.
The heavily-armoured black Greenskins were no longer as fearsome as they might have been. Plasma, bolt, and melta fire equalled them with everything else.
Power weapons cut through the smaller Greenskins from every angle. In the confined spaces of the ship's interior, the Bosses had no room to use their physical advantage against Terminator-armoured Iron Warriors — their weapons couldn't get through. And power fists and bolt weapons were having no trouble getting through them. Black armour burst like foam under the impact. Power fists detonated bodies. Bolts punched straight through skulls.
On the Iron Indomitable's bridge, Ferrix watched the tactical display.
The Greenskin boarding assault was being dealt with like a training exercise.
The three Battle Moons were still firing, but their output had clearly diminished. At least two thirds of their surface gun batteries had been destroyed. Enormous craters covered them from end to end — in places, interior structural detail was now visible through the gaps.
"Commander, the Greenskin assault is weakening."
Ferrix gave a small nod.
Aboard the Iron Resolution, Dantioch watched the stars ahead, illuminated by the ongoing fire. The Third Fleet was steadily clearing out the Greenskin fleet in orbit.
Thirteen hours.
The space battle was still ongoing, but it had entered its final phase. The three Battle Moons were savagely pockmarked — enormous craters one after another, to the point that they barely resembled the imposing spheres they had been — yet they remained stubbornly functional, their remaining guns still firing.
The Greenskin fleet had taken severe losses. Their crude ships shredded under Iron Warriors fire as fast as they could throw them forward. And yet, somehow, Greenskins kept hammering those wrecks back into service with their bare hands and getting them flying again — a sight that had genuinely tested Ferrix's composure.
What kind of Greenskins were these?
"Warsmith, orbital Greenskin fleet is mostly cleared. We're ready to drop ground forces."
Tolaramino's voice came from behind.
Dantioch nodded.
He was about to issue the order when Ferrix's communication came through.
"Commander."
"Barabbas — you and Tolaramino find Crushskull. Get me exact coordinates and report back."
"Yes, Commander."
"Looks like the Commander wants to take this Warboss's head himself," Tolaramino observed.
"These Greenskins aren't natural. I think we've been set up."
"What do you mean?"
Tolaramino looked at Dantioch.
"You've seen what these Greenskins are doing. Their evolution rate is completely beyond expectation — and they're far more capable than anything we faced in training."
"The Commander's forces never encountered anything like this on the Crusade before either."
"I believe our fleet's movements were exposed in advance. And Father hasn't intervened yet — we've had no word from him."
Tolaramino absorbed this.
"You're saying someone set a trap for the Fourth Legion specifically?"
"Yes. And the actual target isn't us. It's Father."
Tolaramino's reaction was immediate.
"What enemy could command Greenskins like this and dare come after Father? We need to report this to the Commander immediately!"
Dantioch shook his head.
"Don't worry. Father won't be in any real danger. And I reported it to the Commander a short while ago — Father has sent word back telling the Commander to focus on the battle."
"All right."
Tolaramino relaxed slightly.
"We still need to find Crushskull as quickly as possible. If any of these Greenskins get out of this system, it won't just be our Legion at risk — every world Father governs could be in danger."
"Does our reconnaissance force still have enough assets to sweep this planet?"
Dantioch asked the logic engine.
"Unmanned fleet and aerial units are still at adequate levels."
"Deploy with the ground forces. Find Crushskull's location as quickly as possible."
"Yes."
The Iron Steadfast's belly opened. Hundreds of thousands of drop pods fell like meteors toward the planet's surface.
The Greenskins on the ground — some of them already constructing crude factories — looked up at the lights falling from above.
They felt no fear. Only deep excitement, and WAAAGH.
The big green two-headed thing had been right. This WAAAGH Campaign's enemies were exactly as tough as promised. This battle was the most WAAAGH thing that had ever WAAGHed!
GREAT! WAAAGH!
Greenskins roared and charged toward the landing sites.
The Biker Boys arrived fastest, riding red motorcycles that shed components with every bump, wielding an assortment of weapons and howling at full volume.
The Greenskin numbers were staggering. Their charging mass was dense enough to give the impression of a mountain rolling toward you.
Countless Grots and smaller Greenskins were crushed underfoot. It was not considered relevant.
The enemy they had been waiting for was finally coming. These little ones were exactly what they wanted!
WAAAGH!
The drop pods hit with cascading impacts, kicking up walls of dust. Ramps blew open. Iron Circles and automata flooded out like a tide.
They hit the ground and immediately snapped into formation — heavy bolters and melta weapons firing immediately, sweeping and incinerating the front ranks of the Greenskin charge.
The charge was checked, but more Greenskins pushed forward without pause.
Their large choppas and shooting weapons struck Iron Circle and automata armour, throwing sparks, but producing no meaningful damage.
Iron Circle war hammers blurred with the speed of their swings, simultaneously sweeping incoming Greenskins back with heavy bolter fire.
Contemptor Dreadnoughts' siege hammers drove continuous streams of melta fire, their heavy bolters firing at a rate that exceeded even the Iron Circles', eliminating every incoming threat.
The green body count mounted. Greenskins ran across the bodies of their own kin and kept coming — some leaped directly from the piles of corpses to land on the automata formations.
Fifteen minutes later, the second wave of drop pods came down. This time they carried Knight Households and Titan Legions.
Twenty-two thousand Titans in formation applied crushing pressure to the Greenskin line and began driving it back steadily.
Even the mountains of Greenskin dead counted for nothing in front of Volcano Cannons and missile batteries.
Deff Dreads and Killa Kans couldn't form any effective counter-charge. Knights and Raptors used their speed to sweep laterally through everything that tried to hold ground.
Volcano Cannons and plasma cannons turned the surface to scorched glass and ash. Greenskins were vaporised by the thousand.
But the Greenskins became more frenzied.
They came from every direction — dense, endless, a green ocean.
And then more drop pods fell. More Stormbirds and Thunderhawks descended. Armoured companies rolled out in columns.
Dantioch watched the green tide pouring toward him from every direction, and his expression remained completely neutral throughout.
"Armoured companies — advance. Grind them down."
Heavy main battle tank treads crushed Greenskin bodies. Volcano Cannons and railguns fired without pause, detonating fireball after fireball inside the Greenskin formations.
Armoured personnel carriers' heavy bolters fired constantly, cutting down everything that tried to approach.
The freshly-landed Knights covered both flanks of the armoured advance. Self-propelled artillery fired intermittently into concentrations of Meks and Warbosses — especially those riding red motorcycles in the front.
The Greenskin Bosses that attempted to punch through the armoured line didn't last a single exchange against the Knights.
The Titan Legions continued their steady advance — their sheer size and firepower making them unstoppable on any ground battlefield.
Iron Circles and automata escorted the god-machines. Contemptor Dreadnoughts followed the Knights and Raptors and carved through anything that slipped past.
Stormbirds and Thunderhawks, combined with fast-attack craft, hunted the Greenskins' aerial forces.
Dantioch and his staff were positioned at the centre of the armoured formation, with Fourth Battalion Iron Warriors and Iron Guard forming a defensive perimeter around the command post.
"Warsmith, Greenskins attacking from the rear."
"Second Company to intercept. Resolve it quickly."
"Yes."
Part of the armoured formation peeled off and reversed its guns.
The drop pods from above kept coming.
Dantioch wasn't thinking about the flanking Greenskins.
Ahead of him, a massive Greenskin fortress was driving toward the Legion at speed.
These Greenskins had been on this world for less than two days. Dantioch looked at the mobile structure closing on them — at least five hundred metres tall — and felt deep unease move through him.
How did they develop this so fast?
"Where are the Artillery pieces?"
"Still being assembled, Warsmith. Estimated thirteen more minutes."
"Speed it up. We need to push through these Greenskins quickly — the Titan Legions aren't advancing fast enough. These Greenskins are evolving rapidly."
This was only day two.
A mobile war fortress had already appeared. Dantioch didn't want to imagine what the Greenskins might look like tomorrow.
There was almost certainly more than one Warboss driving this. And whatever they were, they were powerful.
If a flat push could resolve this, Dantioch would never consider a boarding decapitation strike. But watching these Greenskins develop at this rate, if the leadership wasn't cut out quickly, there was no telling what they would become.
"Have the suspected Warboss locations been narrowed down?"
"Current locations remain in flux. They appear to be converging on a single direction."
"Can you give me a rough projection of the final convergence point?"
The logic engine produced approximate coordinates.
Dantioch looked at them and a plan began forming.
"Commander, one warship is approaching our position. Weapons fire cannot achieve a targeting solution."
The logic engine spoke.
Ferrix's brow drew together.
"Cannot achieve a targeting solution — what does that mean?"
The logic engine immediately showed him the real-time feed.
A two-point-three-kilometre assault ship, assembled from various scraps of metal in blue and red, was moving directly toward the Iron Indomitable.
Nova Cannon beams and Macro-cannon shots had been fired along its approach vector — and the assault ship had dodged all of them with inexplicable ease.
Several torpedoes had been on track to intercept — and then their trajectories had simply bent, as though something had warped the space around them, and they had veered wide.
Ferrix identified it almost instantly. That was Greenskin Waaagh! field — that bizarre, causality-defying force. He would never forget it for as long as he lived.
"Ram it with the prow!"
The Iron Indomitable accelerated. The massive ram was about to destroy the assault ship — but at that moment, the assault ship seemed to develop eyes, and performed a manoeuvre that should have been physically impossible for any vessel — the hull itself appeared to bend — and it cleared the ram.
Then it drove directly into the Iron Indomitable's forward section, punching an enormous hole through the hull.
Ancestors' forge.
Ferrix's eyes went red.
"Get the automata and Iron Circles into position — prepare to receive."
WAAAGH!
A roar that shook the entire Iron Indomitable to its bulkheads.
A seven-metre Warboss had entered the ship.
The powerful black armour and the enormous power claw in its right hand identified it almost instantaneously.
Crushskull.
Sought everywhere and found by walking right through the front door.
"Logic engine — take command of the tactical situation. Route all engagements through your systems. I'm going to remove this thing's head personally."
"Yes, Commander."
Ferrix led his guard force directly toward Crushskull's position.
WAAAGH!
Crushskull cut a Contemptor Dreadnought cleanly in half and roared at the automata and Iron Circles ahead.
Dozens of four-metre war Bosses poured through every corridor toward the Iron Circles and automata.
What greeted them was bolt fire, melta, and plasma.
Crushskull had intended to push straight through — but the instinct that existed between powerful beings made it turn its head.
There was something at the end of the corridor that was nearly as large as the Bosses in its warband. And considerably broader.
Crushskull registered that this was the enemy leader.
Around that figure stood a group of similarly large individuals, currently engaging the war Bosses directly.
With its left hand, Crushskull drew from its hip the large weapon it carried — a massive chainsaw-axe.
WAAAGH!
Crushskull roared and charged. The equally large figure at the other end of the corridor charged as well. Between powerful beings, no further exchange was needed.
WAAAGH.
"Halt the advance. Contract the line. Begin withdrawal — evacuate this planet."
Dantioch issued the order.
The Fourth Battalion began an orderly retreat.
"Do you have a plan?"
Tolaramino asked.
"Yes. We can simply not take this planet. These Greenskins are wrong in a way I can't fully explain — even if we eliminate them entirely, I can't be certain their spores haven't already survived somewhere."
"These Greenskins are evolving too fast. Better to issue the Edict of Extermination directly. Destroy the planet completely."
"I've already notified Warsmith Tolaramino, but the Commander has a situation. I haven't been able to reach him yet."
"What's happened to the Commander?"
Tolaramino asked — the last thing they needed right now was a command crisis.
"Crushskull boarded the Iron Indomitable. The Commander is personally leading the response. Results should come through shortly."
"Then why are we retreating? Crushskull's finished — these Greenskins should be easy to handle after that."
Tolaramino didn't follow the logic.
"These Greenskins are wrong. Even if Crushskull dies, I believe they'll simply produce a new leader from the chaos. To be safe — I'm going to recommend to the Commander that we destroy the entire system."
Tolaramino didn't fully understand the reasoning. The situation had gotten difficult, but it wasn't unmanageable — and this was a pocket empire. These resources were good. Abandoning the system seemed like a large price to pay.
But Dantioch had already given the order. Tolaramino didn't argue.
Ferrix spat blood.
He pulled open the enormous power claw that had crushed one of his hearts and one of his lungs, then dropped it aside.
Crushskull was on the bridge floor. The skull and much of the chest cavity had been caved in.
Ferrix's power fist — comparable in striking force to a siege ram — was completely destroyed. But the fight was his.
He had absorbed a blow that could have ended him in exchange for delivering one full-powered strike to a Greenskin Warlord's skull.
Worth it.
"Clean this up."
Ferrix wiped the blood from his mouth and moved quickly back to the bridge with his guard.
Medical automata attended to his wounds and ran high-temperature decontamination sweeps over his Tyrant Terminator plate.
"What's the situation?"
"The Greenskins have entered a state of temporary confusion."
The logic engine's answer made Ferrix's brow draw together again.
"This Warboss wasn't their leader? Can they actually produce a second one at this level?"
"That is highly probable. Warsmith Dantioch has already registered this possibility. He is requesting authorisation to issue the Edict of Extermination for the system and destroy it entirely."
Ferrix was quiet for a moment. Thinking back to how dangerous Crushskull had been, he found Dantioch's recommendation entirely sound.
"Approved. Have them proceed."
"Yes."
"Looks like the Commander won."
The Greenskins that had been charging toward the retreating Iron Warriors had suddenly collapsed into internal chaos. Dantioch and the others knew Ferrix had taken Crushskull's head.
Tolaramino had been preparing to argue for continuing the offensive — but Dantioch received new orders.
"Yes, Commander."
"What did he say?"
Tolaramino asked.
"The Commander approved the plan. Warsmith Tolaramino's forces have already withdrawn. We need to move quickly."
"All right."
Tolaramino looked back at the planet below — ravaged almost beyond recognition by the Greenskins — and felt a flash of regret. He had been quietly working through some interesting modifications to the war fortress designs from Father's schematics, and had had his eye on this world as a place to implement them.
He'd chosen it and now this had happened.
"By the way, is there any word from Father—"
Tolaramino had barely begun the sentence when every member of the Fourth Legion heard the same voice in their minds simultaneously.
"Destroy this system. Then return to Olympia."
A moment of silence moved through everyone who heard it. Then they each gave the Aquila salute and quietly began carrying out the order.
Crushskull's death had thrown the Greenskins into disarray — but they weren't panicking. The big green two-headed thing had been watching over them from the beginning of the Great WAAAGH Campaign. They had always known it.
So — fight! You lot!
"I'M DA BOSS NOW!"
A six-metre Warboss in red-and-black armour put another Warboss on the ground with one punch, its power claw reaching for the fallen one's chest.
The same scene was playing out in multiple locations across two of the planets simultaneously. The Greenskins had broken into internal warfare, each mob rallying to its own Warlord, fighting everyone else — and this would continue until a new Crushskull emerged.
But as they fought, something felt wrong. They were getting weaker. As though the big green two-headed thing had stopped looking at them.
Even the brawl between themselves was starting to feel off in some way they couldn't define.
Before any of them could work out what had changed, new lights appeared in the sky — streaks of fire, like the ones those little ones had used to land their pods.
The Greenskins thought the little ones were coming back.
They weren't.
Cyclonic torpedoes drove deep into the planetary cores. Plasma warheads detonated. The planets crystallised at visible speed — and then fractured from the inside out.
One by one, cyclonic torpedoes detonated across the planets of the Zenobia system. The sound of crystallised worlds shattering propagated through every vessel in the Fourth Legion's fleet.
Ferrix and the others watched the planets destroyed and felt a private moment of regret — they understood the value of resources now, and these had been good ones.
A tall figure appeared beside Ferrix.
"Father — are you all right?"
Ferrix could see immediately that something was wrong. He was genuinely shocked. What could possibly have done this to his father?
"I'm fine. Minor injuries. A few days and they'll be dealt with."
Perturabo's expression carried something that was clearly anger. He collected the souls of the sons and auxilia who had fallen in the fighting and placed them within the Daemon Factory, and his mouth was tight at the corners.
These miserable creatures. One day I will wipe every last one of you from existence and shatter the Eight-Pointed Star itself.
He reached out and compressed the system's star into a small sphere. He wasn't wasting it — after all that, he wasn't going to come away from this with nothing.
Damn Chaos. And those two overgrown animals.