Horus: In the Name of the Wolf God, Let the Universe Burn

"They’re here."

Abaddon stood atop the highest command platform on the bridge of the Vengeful Spirit.

His expression was cold as he watched the projected world beneath the observation dome.

The mechanical hum mingled with the clamor of the bridge crew.

Dense red dots appeared at the edge of the projection.

First one, then hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, until they finally joined into a single mass—dense, endless, innumerable.

The other three members of the Council of Four Kings stood at his side.

Loken and the other senior officers stood slightly behind them.

"Then let them witness the Empire’s strength. Let them shatter against the Empire’s unbreakable shield."

Horus rose from his throne.

His towering, majestic frame carried an incomparable sense of oppression.

He possessed a perfect face with exquisitely defined features.

Two amber pupils rested within those sharp sea-green eyes, filled with the wisdom to see through the mysteries behind the workings of all things.

A Primarch’s body was far larger than that of an Astartes.

A giant beast’s pelt hung over his broad shoulders, a trophy claimed from some past war.

"The enemy’s scale exceeds our expectations. Their numbers are still rising rapidly." Toqadon looked at Horus. "I’m beginning to suspect these bugs have filled the void beyond the Milky Way."

"Then just how vast must this swarm be? Who knows how many galaxies they’ve gnawed clean." Sanguinius also offered his opinion.

"No matter how many there are, we will destroy them." Horus walked to the railing and looked down upon the bridge’s multilayered decks. "The Lunar Wolves have never lost a battle. Not in the past, and not in the future."

"Order the fleet to prepare for battle. Engage the enemy with the first tactical formation. We will become a blade and carve through these damned foes."

"Lord Horus." The proud, hot-tempered Abaddon respectfully saluted his Primarch.

"Do you have an objection, First Captain?" Horus asked.

"There are too many enemies. Even with the Empire’s warships’ ferocious firepower, we will be drowned beneath the overwhelming numbers of the swarm fleet."

"First Captain, this is the void, thousands of light-years from even the edge of the Milky Way." Horus smiled. "We have no reason for restraint. Tell every captain that as long as they do not harm friendly forces, they may use every weapon aboard their ships."

"Every weapon?" Sanguinius widened his eyes. "Wouldn’t that shatter the void itself?"

"This is merely a wasteland without life or matter. It does not matter if we break it. Time will slowly mend it. Go. Deliver my orders."

"In the name of the Wolf God, let the universe burn."

Horus looked through the viewport, his resolute gaze fixed upon the vast void.

Enhanced by the terrifying amplification of the Gene Engine, his sight pierced the limits of dimensions and space, allowing him to see the Tyranids’ living ships.

They glowed with a damp radiance in the black depths of space.

Teardrop-shaped vessels covered in sensory spines surged from the dark tide.

Their numbers were beyond counting.

At a glance, Horus could see only an endless expanse of green light.

It was the glow of biological plasma thrusters.

"Attack. We will crush every bug that seeks to enter the Milky Way and erase this ravenous race from the universe completely."

"First tactical formation. Maximum authorization. All weapons are permitted."

The communications director rose to his feet.

He repeated Horus’s orders to every fleet identified by the ship numbers before him.

Layer upon layer of work crews and stations throughout every warship immediately sprang into action.

The technicians responsible for maintaining the force fields calibrated the Energy Matrix that stabilized the hulls.

They adjusted the parameters for the coming war.

The priests in the energy control rooms sent data to their colleagues in every weapons division so they could make accurate assessments.

The fleet adjusted its formation and accelerated, stabbing toward the swarm like a sharp dagger.

The Tyranids had many different types of ships.

Some resembled slugs, while others resembled void whales.

Most bore similarities to marine creatures, only enlarged by a factor of a million.

Some had enormous blades or armored beaks at their prows.

Living ships with tentacles made up the majority.

Others had rams for bows, or carried colossal biological weapons controlled by executioners or brood mothers hidden within immense, ever-open throats.

There were ships with fins, ships with tails, and ships with atrophied arms and legs.

Many ships possessed exceptionally long tails that curled around Imperial vessels when they drew close, seeking to attack.

Some ships were also equipped with the chitinous carapaces common to most swarm organisms.

Every possible biological combination could be found within the swarm fleet.

Unfortunately, all of them had been fused and completely altered.

Forced into submission beneath the Hive Mind.

Within their diversity lay a terrifying uniformity.

The biological cannons of the swarm fleet had far shorter ranges than those of the Imperial warships.

While the two sides were still millions of kilometers apart, the Imperial guns unleashed their first salvo.

Massive cannon muzzles flashed, firing annihilation shells the size of cargo containers.

Lasers and Lances of Light intertwined in the void, bright as stars, weaving a short-lived constellation.

The Tyranid ships had no shields, but they used ice, asteroid fragments, and secreted bodily fluids to form thick protective layers.

Their mother ships also possessed unique Tyranid psychic force fields that could offset most physical attacks.

The concentrated barrage tore apart swarm vessels, turning them into shattered carapaces and huge chunks of flesh.

Frozen bodily fluids condensed into clouds between the corpses of the living ships.

Within hours, the wreckage filled millions of kilometers of space, and the area continued to expand sharply.

Yet the swarm’s numbers were endless.

Whenever one ship was destroyed, a hundred more came to replace it.

"Activate the spatial weapon—Dimensional Reduction Beam."

The Vengeful Spirit’s weapons director shouted.

A massive portal of light appeared before the Gloriana-class Battleship.

A beam entered the portal, then reappeared a million kilometers away and plunged into the swarm.

In an instant, the 3D Space within the beam’s target area fell into two dimensions like a cascading waterfall.

The area affected by the dimensional reduction rapidly expanded.

Then it triggered an even greater collapse.

For the densely packed Tyranid fleet, it was a terrifying natural disaster.

One living ship after another fell with the collapsing space.

Every atom of their bodies was clearly imprinted upon the space of the fallen dimension.

Perfectly precise, with not a single one missing.

Dimensional reduction was merely a problem in spatial structure; matter neither increased nor decreased.

After all, the Warhammer universe differed from the Three-Body Universe.

The Three-Body Universe was an absolute physical universe.

The Warp had been suppressed to the extreme, nearly nonexistent, and no supernatural powers existed.

No matter how powerful its civilizations became, they could not break free from the shackles of physical laws.

It was precisely because physics held absolute dominion that dimensional reduction and the spread of black domains seemed so terrifying to the civilizations of the Three-Body Universe.

But the Warp in the Warhammer universe was highly active, and physical laws could not completely overwhelm the immaterial realm.

Once Dimentionalization reached a certain range, the immaterial realm would help the material realm rebound, restoring space-time to three dimensions.

Yet when the creatures that had fallen into two dimensions returned to three dimensions, the altered structure of space-time tore them apart, turning them into piles of shattered carapace and flesh.

Besides spatial weapons, the Imperial warships also deployed all manner of extermination weapons.

Creating black holes, accelerating time, reversing causality, and more.

Space was cut apart like paper art, then shattered like glass.

Time descended into chaos, sometimes racing forward and sometimes rapidly reversing, tearing living ships apart one after another.

Space-time became a tool wielded by the Empire.

Thought-waves rippled through the void like water, severing the Hive Mind’s connection with countless living ships.

Like a sharp blade, the Imperial fleet cut through the Tyranid fleet.

Slaughtering every living ship it encountered.

"What a glorious slaughter."

Abaddon smiled as he watched a gigantic hive ship thirty kilometers long and five kilometers wide be destroyed beneath the Vengeful Spirit’s terrifying bombardment.

Beams pierced through the hive ship’s massive body.

Even though its parent organism was already dead, its limbs twitched wildly in the void.

"Are these things impossible to kill off?" Toqadon complained as he looked at the densely packed Tyranid warships outside.

Relying on their overwhelming firepower, the Imperial fleet had forcibly carved out a path and driven deep into the Tyranid fleet.

Yet the enemy’s numbers had not diminished in the slightest.

The ships seemed trapped in a sea of bugs. No matter which direction they looked, they saw only an endless tide of Tyranids.

The great battle raged across tens of billions of kilometers.

And yet the Tyranids’ living ships crammed every inch of that space.

One could only imagine the absurd scale their numbers had reached.

Worse still, the Tyranids continuously recovered destroyed living ships, converted them into biomass, reshaped them into warships, and sent them back onto the battlefield.

"There are too many enemies."

Loken frowned as well.

He had only felt numbers this absurd while fighting the Orks.

But even the Orks had never been this outrageous.

This was a battle in the void.

Just how many ships did the Tyranids possess, and how vast was their scale?!

"If they enter the Milky Way, they could probably stuff the entire galaxy full and still spill over." Sanguinius replied humorously.

"They’ll wear us down." Abaddon looked at Horus. "Our warships are far more powerful than those bugs, but their numbers are so great that they can already ignore the gap in weaponry."

"We’re now deeply trapped in the sea of bugs. Looks like we’re done for." Toqadon looked at Horus. "My lord, when the time comes, be sure to send my body back to Kossonia. Perhaps my countrymen will shed a few tears when they see my corpse."

Horus laughed at that.

"If I did not know your fondness for jokes so well, I might truly believe you had lost faith in me and be heartbroken."

He turned to the other officers of the Lunar Wolves.

"And you? What is your assessment of the current situation?"

"This time, I very much agree with Toqadon. We’re dead, Commander," Abaddon said. "We’ll need enough silver coins to cover all our eyes."

Kossonia had a tradition of placing silver coins over the eyes of departed loved ones and friends.

Abaddon’s words nearly made Sanguinius, Little Horus, Loken, and the others burst out laughing.

"You’ve spent too much time with Toqadon." Horus turned his gaze back to the void. "I have never lost a battle, including this one."

"Communications officer, contact Terra. Send our fleet rune coordinates and request Divine Retribution coverage. It is time to show you my brother’s creation."

The Lunar Wolves’ senior officers wore confused expressions and exchanged glances.

But their confusion was quickly answered.

Magnificent gates of light opened throughout the void.

Beyond them, they saw outrageous structures of steel floating in space.

Those structures restrained multiple stars and continuously drew power from them.

Light gathered at the spire-like emitters of those structures, radiating a terrifying aura of destruction.

Then the light fired, crossing tens of thousands of light-years and descending upon this vast battlefield.

Countless Tyranids burned swiftly like ignited dead leaves.

Then they turned to ash and vanished from the universe.

"This is Perturabo’s creation," Horus said calmly. "It draws upon the power of stars and uses instant teleportation technology to launch saturation strikes against any known location in the universe.

"The Tyranids’ numbers may be endless, but behind us stands an Empire with equally endless potential for war. From beginning to end, we were never fighting alone."

The members of the Council of Four Kings, along with Loken and the other senior officers, all stared wide-eyed.

They watched the frenzied swarm turn to ash and scatter through the void.

When the Divine Retribution barrage ended, the stars had visibly shrunk and dimmed.

One could imagine how much energy that single strike had released.

"Regroup the fleet. The swarm has not been utterly crushed yet." Horus gave orders to his stunned sons. "We must make this race disappear from the universe completely."

Bzzzt! Bzzzt! Bzzzt!

At that moment, strange electrical static came through the communications channel.

"An unknown signal source is interfering. It has been entered into the database for comparison."

"Commander, it is a Necron communication. They request a connection to speak with you."

The communications director’s words made Abaddon and the others frown.

"Weren’t those skeletons nearly wiped out? How are there some beyond the Milky Way too?"

"Could these bugs be their handiwork?"

"If so, they really deserve to die."

"…"

Ignoring his sons’ discussion, Horus said, "Put them through. I would like to know what these xenos have to say."

The projection device emitted a hum, its beam shifting through the air.

It quickly outlined the image of a Necron seated upon a magnificent throne.

It sat upright, with several Necron Guardsmen wielding phase weapons standing before the throne.

"Our lord is the head of the Council of Three Saints, the Star God Crusher, the one who defeated the Ancient Sages, the master of the Scepter of Eternal Glory—the King of Silence."

"Hurry and kneel before our lord. It is the courtesy you are obliged to show, for our lord is the true master of the galaxy, an existence your inferior races must worship and revere."

One of the Guardsmen before the throne spoke.