Chapter 903 - 902

"Use the Fifth and Seventh Fleets, together with the Imperial Auxiliary Fleet Groups, to seize the key routes along the perimeter of the Silent Zone and establish a defensive line.

"You must prevent the xenos Tomb Fleets from circling around our forces and launching surprise attacks against humanity's major territories."

Eden's thoughts were perfectly clear as he controlled his necrodermis clone body.

He spoke rapidly, issuing a series of fleet deployments.

"Station the Ninth and Eleventh Fleets on opposite flanks of the Silent Zone. Monitor the movements of the surrounding xenos dynasties and prevent them from attacking our supply lines.

"The First Flagship Fleet will serve as the strategic reserve. It is to remain on standby in the central regions of the Silent Zone, ready to reinforce any theater of operations at a moment's notice…"

These were only broad strategic directives, of course. During the opening stages, their primary target would be the Silent King's forces.

The details of implementation and battlefield command would still have to be adapted to local conditions by Guilliman, the fleet's temporary supreme commander.

"Oh, right. I also put together some intelligence for you. Take a look when you have the time. It might help with the war."

After saying that, Eden transmitted another data package.

It was a colossal archive containing tens of quadrillions of volumes of information. The flood of data was so immense that the command nexus's psychic network briefly froze.

Fortunately, a core psychic-network engine belonging to the Machine Goddess had been installed here, allowing it to withstand the enormous flow of information.

One of the old Imperium's shoddy data engines would probably have overloaded until its cables glowed red and its cooling fans screamed, then crashed on the spot.

"By the Emperor!"

Guilliman rapidly skimmed through the decompressed intelligence and stared in stunned disbelief.

He was completely overwhelmed. He almost wanted to prostrate himself before Eden.

"This is incredible! Did you package the Necrons' entire core database and send it to me?!"

The archive contained an enormous volume of confidential information from within the Necron Empire.

It included details on numerous xenos dynasties, fleet numbers, a complete star chart of the Silent Zone, and the defenses of its various regions.

There were also organizational charts for each Tomb Fleet, their current deployments, and even the locations of their central command nodes.

It contained data on some of the Silent King's and the Stormlord's primary planet-killing weapons and relic armaments, complete with their destructive power and effective ranges.

It even included their latest deployment orders.

Practically everything Guilliman could have asked for was there!

He had originally assumed that Eden's infiltration of Necron society consisted of gathering a small force, spreading viruses, and gradually corrupting the enemy from within.

In other words, guerrilla warfare.

But now it seemed that his brother's operation was far larger than Guilliman had ever imagined. Eden was practically carving out his own kingdom inside the Necron Empire.

Otherwise, there was no possible way he could have obtained so much intelligence!

That was precisely what had happened.

After successfully infiltrating the Necrons and expanding his influence until he became a Necron Lord, Eden had never neglected intelligence gathering.

He had even used the emotion virus to plant moles inside the armies of both the Silent King and the Stormlord.

At this point, he had practically stripped them naked.

Of course, most of his moles were embedded in the lower and middle levels of the command structure, or even among ordinary Necron Warriors. Their sole purpose was to gather intelligence. Eden did not dare infiltrate the upper ranks.

If he tried, entities such as the Silent King would detect them almost immediately.

Under normal circumstances, infiltration on this scale would have been impossible. Eden had succeeded only by exploiting the Necrons' habitual patterns of thought.

Because of their rigid hierarchy, command protocols, and cortical fields, low-ranking Necrons simply did not betray their superiors.

That assumption had allowed Eden to place large numbers of low-level moles throughout the armies of both the Silent King and the Stormlord.

They could not disrupt the enemy's military operations, but they were more than sufficient for gathering and stealing intelligence.

Each Necron mole was effectively a listening device and tracking beacon.

Other than the Savior himself, there was probably no one else in the galaxy capable of accomplishing such a feat.

"G-Man, it's time for us brothers to fight side by side. We have to trap them between our forces!"

Eden's voice was full of confidence.

They had the intelligence. The Imperial armies were in position. Everything was ready.

All that remained was to sound the signal for the attack.

Humanity's armies and the Holy Soul Cult's Necron legions would fight together.

"I'll coordinate with you and make this battle a success. Every part of the strategic plan will be carried out exactly as intended!" Guilliman declared with a firm nod.

He was one step away from swearing that if he failed, he would present Eden with his own severed head.

After all, Eden had entrusted him with an enormous Imperial army, provided him with detailed intelligence and a complete strategy, and stationed allied forces inside the enemy's territory to support him.

Humanity possessed the numerical advantage, a fully revealed star chart, near-total battlefield intelligence, and friendly agents embedded within the enemy's ranks.

He had been dealt a perfect hand, with a dragon already sitting on the enemy's face. If he still managed to lose, there would be no excuse.

"I must win an overwhelming victory. Anything less would be unworthy of this level of support!"

Guilliman silently made up his mind.

If he still could not win under such favorable conditions, how could he possibly show his face among the Imperium's armies again?

He might as well retire to Macragge and grow vegetables.

Not long afterward, Guilliman finished processing the intelligence. He refined the Savior's strategic directives and convened a war council.

Inside the strategium, Guilliman stood with the confident bearing of a man who had everything under control.

"Khan, take this down. I'm making the following adjustments to your force's deployments…"

He issued a series of combat orders to the lord of the White Scars. Their primary mission would be to act as a mobile force supporting the central theater.

After he finished, Guilliman added, "Now read it back to me!"

"Yes!"

The Khan immediately repeated the orders. With a Primarch's memory, recalling them was effortless.

Still, he found himself wondering, "What's gotten into Roboute today? He seems completely different."

Previously, Guilliman had always worn a worried frown and seemed burdened by endless concerns. He had never spoken or carried himself like this before.

It was also somewhat different from how the Imperium normally issued orders. In fact, it felt strangely old-fashioned.

Yet somehow, it sounded impressively commanding.

The real difference was Guilliman's state of mind. He now had far greater confidence in the coming war.

With his brother supporting him from behind the lines, Guilliman could fight without restraint.

He did not disclose any intelligence concerning the Savior's activities within the Silent Zone. There was no reason to risk leaking such a vital strategic secret.

Every additional person who knew increased the danger. The xenos possessed methods of extracting memories, and too much knowledge could also cause commanders to alter their operations in ways that undermined the plan.

Guilliman soon completed all the operational preparations.

The Khan, Rogal Dorn, the other Primarchs, and the Imperial commanders departed with their fleets for their assigned regions of the Silent Zone.

Seen from above the galactic plane, the vast shadows of cold steel split apart, transforming into countless tendrils that reached deep into the Silent Zone.

...

The Silent Zone.

A battlefield within an unnamed sector.

Dozens of star systems appeared to be burning as one of the Silent King's fleets clashed with a force belonging to the Stormlord.

When the Silent King's Tomb Fleet unleashed its particle whips, streams of antimatter effortlessly sliced through numerous warships, setting off a chain of secondary explosions.

One beam continued onward and swept across a moon, shearing away nearly half of it.

The Stormlord's Tomb Fleet retaliated with a type of gauss death ray, melting several enemy vessels.

Both sides exchanged massive salvos. Planet-killing weapons and even more terrifying armaments were deployed one after another, devastating the planets within the surrounding systems.

Their surfaces were covered in gigantic craters. Their atmospheres had been burned away. Some planets had fractured completely, leaving nothing but drifting wreckage.

Life was being extinguished on an unimaginable scale.

Yet neither side had deliberately targeted those planets. The unfortunate worlds had simply been caught in the crossfire between the Tomb Fleets.

To some of the galaxy's weaker, younger civilizations, this was an apocalyptic disaster.

Across the hundreds of sectors where the Silent King and the Stormlord were at war, however, it had become routine.

Planets died every moment, while tens of thousands of warships became metallic tombstones amid seas of fire.

Clouds of wreckage expanded rapidly, forming metallic nebulae that stretched for several light-years between multiple systems. Some grew so vast that they began disturbing the gravitational balance of the systems around them.

Even more terrifying weapons were being brought into play.

The Silent King employed some form of large-scale gravitic technology to hurl several stars at the enemy simultaneously.

Those dying stars collapsed within systems controlled by the Stormlord. The massive black holes born from their destruction greedily swallowed light, Tomb Fleets, and the fabric of spacetime itself.

Eventually, they merged into a supermassive gravitational abyss spanning half a light-year.

The Stormlord's retaliation was equally astonishing.

He unleashed tidal waves through space itself. The structure of the surrounding void shattered like a broken mirror, casting numerous Tomb Fleets into the Warp or trapping them within the folds of higher dimensions.

Other unlucky vessels fell into chaotic temporal currents and disappeared from that region of spacetime entirely.

Both the Silent King's and the Stormlord's Tomb Fleets had lost all restraint.

Many star systems had already been reduced to lifeless wastelands by their devastating weapons, but the scale of the war continued to expand.

Any observer who witnessed the battlefield could only tremble in horror.

Spacefaring species were fleeing the war zone. They would need to retreat at least a thousand light-years before they had any chance of escaping the danger and surviving.

Humanity, however, was heading in the opposite direction.

The Third Fleet of the Reclamation Crusade was racing toward this exceptionally dangerous battlefield at maximum speed.

"Ha! Those fellows are really going at it…"

Admiral Voladi stared at the burning stars in the distance without the slightest trace of fear.

As far as he was concerned, this was hardly an impossible situation.

In the psychic network's command-training simulations, he had once led a fleet through decades of apocalyptic warfare and achieved remarkably good results.

The Imperium was extremely cautious. Its highest authorities never underestimated an enemy's strength. They always prepared for the worst possible outcome and trained their forces accordingly.

Of course, the Savior's personal influence had also played a part.

He was always worried that the galaxy might be destroyed. Occasionally, he could be heard muttering strange things about GW, the situation looking bad, some final ending, and whether those people might decide to kill them all.

The Savior's words were vague, but he was an omniscient and omnipotent being. Anything he said had to be taken seriously.

The senior Imperial officials who overheard these mutterings became deeply wary. They treated them as some form of prophecy, perhaps warning of a legend even more terrifying than the birth of the Dark King.

Consequently, neither the Silent King, the Great Devourer, nor the Chaos Gods were considered the Imperium's greatest enemy.

Imperial High Strategic Command had designated an unknown higher-dimensional civilization called GW as the Imperium's ultimate foe. It was now researching ways to survive the possible final catastrophe.

As a result, the Departmento Munitorum had become even more demanding when training the Imperium's soldiers and commanders.

It had even created apocalyptic combat simulations that made commanders wish they were dead.

What did they mean, the galaxy had been destroyed, and you were the Imperium's last surviving commander, tasked with leading one small fleet through an enemy encirclement?

What did they mean, you were humanity's last hope and had to lead your fleet in a surprise attack against a higher-dimensional civilization?

What the hell was a dimensional strike?

Why had the entire star system suddenly become two-dimensional?!

Damn it, you training officers are a pack of motherless bastards!

In short, every commander who endured the apocalyptic combat simulations emerged at least slightly depressed.

Some even had to visit the church for psychological counseling.

After enduring those hopeless scenarios, most commanders no longer reacted strongly to ordinary galactic warfare.

Voladi was an especially notable case. He was one of the few commanders capable of surviving for an extended period in apocalyptic simulations.

The destruction before him did not seem particularly serious.

So what if a star system was on the verge of annihilation?

That was practically routine.

"Reconnaissance fleet, do something about those black holes ahead. They're blocking our route."

Voladi took a sip of strong tea and spoke as though the black holes were nothing more than piles of garbage obstructing the road.

The Imperium could not truly destroy a black hole, but it could lessen the gravitational interference by detonating the surrounding region of space or establishing gravitational isolation zones.

Human technology had advanced until it was now extremely close to that of the Necrons. Humanity could even use its technology to interfere with or reshape the universe itself.

Voladi calmly guided his fleet around the swirling wreckage and gravitational traps in the void, quietly approaching the heart of the battle.

He and the other admirals assigned to the central theater needed to join the war as quickly as possible and reverse the Stormlord's deteriorating position.

They could not allow him to be completely defeated.

According to Imperial High Command's assessment, the Silent King had already placed the Stormlord's armies under overwhelming pressure. The situation was dire, and several Phaerons had even begun defecting.

If the war deteriorated any further, more Phaerons would change sides, causing the Stormlord's complete defeat.

The Silent King would then absorb the remainder of the Stormlord's forces and rapidly bring the civil war to an end.

Humanity and the Holy Soul Cult would be left facing a stronger Silent King and a highly unified Infinite Empire.

That was not the outcome Eden wanted.

The war between the Silent King and the Stormlord had to continue. Only then could the Holy Soul Cult exploit the chaos, incite further internal conflict, and tear apart their strongholds from within.

Within the battlefield, the dynasties loyal to the Stormlord were being suppressed.

One Tomb Ship after another burned and fell.

"Lord Imotekh, this system requires immediate reinforcements! Without them, my dynasty's fleet will be defeated!"

Seated upon the throne of a Cairn-class Tomb Ship, a Phaeron transmitted a desperate plea for assistance to the Stormlord.

"No. I must prevent this."

He watched as more of his fleet formations were destroyed. An overwhelming sense of loss flooded his data-logic core.

The destroyed Tomb Ships would require an enormous amount of time to repair. Some had already suffered damage beyond recovery.

His power was slipping away.

If a Phaeron lost the military strength supporting his authority, he would soon lose his crown as well. Even his command protocols would be stripped from him, reducing him to a vassal of another Phaeron.

Hum.

A figure appeared upon a black disc, glowing with pale blue light.

It was a living-metal skeleton draped in robes and chains.

An emissary of the Silent King.

"Satem, my honored Phaeron, this is your final opportunity," the emissary said.

"The Silent King has made his will clear. You may continue serving beneath him and spare your dynasty the tragic fate of annihilation.

"Humanity, those wretched vermin, has declared war upon the noble Necrons. Their fleets are already here.

"We must end this meaningless civil war as quickly as possible. Then we can turn our full strength against those reckless vermin, crush them beneath our feet, and teach them a lesson written in blood…"

(End of Chapter)