Chapter 144: You Can Always Trust Ka'Bandha (Patreon)

Watching them, Heydrich saw no fear of death in their eyes at all — only a strange, blissful glow.

Sigh...

Watching their reaction, Heydrich rubbed his temples, a headache building behind his eyes.

Good — that saved him from having to explain the rest. For now, the matter was settled.

Of course, there was no need to rush. Heydrich's plans unfolded in layers, one after another.

And the antimatter legion his War Engine produced wasn't nearly as stable as Nanook's — though it wouldn't blow the whole city sky-high.

Its duration was very short, so it had to be deployed at exactly the right moment.

As for the Ecclesiarch, he'd already begun assembling the most fanatical army of zealots — and really, Heydrich didn't need to say much more.

Keeping ordinary mortals off the front lines made sense: melee against the swarm was pointless, since every death simply became more fodder for the Tyranids.

Once the Astra Militarum, the Planetary Defense Force, and the Titan legions could no longer hold, these people would die anyway — and just as meaninglessly.

So now that there was a chance to go out taking a few Tyranids with them, none of them objected. And with Heydrich appearing to them as the Ancient Sage — most people felt an odd, dazed reverence just looking at him — it hadn't taken him long at all to raise enough troops.

This was the Warhammer universe, after all, a place of despair, where the lower and middle classes had no hope left. The more hopeless the conditions, the easier it was for fanatics to rise, and the more despair there was, the greater their numbers.

People always need something to believe in, and here there was nothing to cling to but the Emperor and the Ecclesiarchy.

And in the end, worshipping the Emperor here actually worked. For a pragmatist and materialist like Heydrich, that was fine — let them worship the Emperor all they wanted, just not him.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, a small group was slipping away in secret.

"This is deep in the swarm's rear. Even on this whole planet, these wastelands are about as lifeless as it gets — not even the Tyranid swarm bothers coming here."

Mephiston's expression was grim, and beside him stood the Dark Angels' Librarian, Ezekiel.

Summoning the Khorne Bloodthirster had fallen to these two Librarians alone. It was simple enough, really — just two round trips of teleportation. Once Ka'Bandha himself was summoned, the rest was his own business.

Everyone said the swarm's Warp shadow could conceal daemons, but as was so often true in the Warhammer universe...

every power had its limits. With Khorne personally watching this, there was no way the Great Devourer's shadow could hide it — Khorne had even contributed a share of souls just to let him summon his host.

"Our teleportation has already caused ripples. Even out here, far from the swarm, it could still draw their attention."

If the Alpharius group needed to slip into the biomass pools behind the swarm's lines, this group needed to stay well clear of the Tyranids.

After all, no matter how vast the swarm's numbers, they couldn't possibly blanket an entire planet edge to edge.

That would be far too wasteful. No matter how efficient the biomass recycling of Termagants and Hormagaunts was, there would still be losses, and none of that was necessary.

Unlike humans, who fight simply because they'll die otherwise, the swarm at its core fought to feed. Every engagement had to be weighed for its returns, and under normal circumstances, no one would venture behind the swarm's lines.

Ordinarily, doing so served no purpose. But this time was different — Khorne was more or less watching personally, which meant his daemon host, at least, wouldn't be banished straight back.

"Move now. I heard Dragon Emperor is going to use the War Engine this time. I don't know what that is exactly, but I'm looking forward to it."

Mephiston found Heydrich's methods fascinating. Getting even a glimpse of humanity's Golden Age technology was an honor in itself, as far as they were concerned.

It carried a faint whiff of blasphemy, sure, but at this level of power, who cared about blasphemy anymore?

As long as you didn't go smearing Chaos all over yourself, that was the only thing truly beyond redemption.

"Understood."

The Librarians quickly set to work. This time, they planned to hurl Ka'Bandha high into the sky.

Let him fall the rest of the way himself — that would buy them just enough time to withdraw.

Meanwhile, at the front lines, the Tyranids pressed their assault with mounting fury. With the Imperium deliberately holding back a third of its strength rather than fighting to the last, its battle line slowly gave ground.

As the front shortened, the swarm's advance was gradually forced to stall.

Worse still, from the swarm's perspective, was that all this was pure attrition — they hadn't gained so much as a scrap to feed on. They couldn't even reclaim their own biomass, and by now the Hive Mind was growing more than a little frantic.

The losses were staggering. No sooner had they chewed through one line than it was blown sky-high before they could recover any of it.

As a result, the pressure now bearing down on the entire planet of Kuent exceeded what the Netherworld Star and the Baal system had faced combined — after all, this time no one had detonated a star to wipe out a chunk of the swarm outright. In fact, the sheer scale of this engagement already surpassed every recorded Tyranid war in history; it would go down in the annals.

The swarm no longer held anything in reserve, throwing down nearly its entire strength. Nothing less could have maintained this pace of grinding through the human lines.

"Once the hive falls, everything will be fine. Victory is so close now..."

The Hive Mind's every thought converged on a single idea. It knew that vast populations lay within the hive. Break through into the hive's interior, and there would be food. There would be plenty...

Meanwhile, down in the under-hive, the battlefield was a spectacle of its own.

"Get back here, don't push forward!!!"

Irena fought while dragging the young man back at the same time. By now the entire under-hive was packed wall to wall with corpses.

Facing the tide of Tyranids, they had no choice but to fight and retreat at once — there were simply too many. Even the Ultra-Orks had lost more than half their number, though of course, they hadn't given the swarm the satisfaction of feeding on them.

The only standard-issue Imperial weapon Heydrich had given them was the melta bomb. When things got desperate, the Ultra-Orks would grab one and blow themselves up along with the bugs — anything to deny the swarm even a scrap of biomass.

Even so, they were slowly forced back.

"...Whew. Whew. All right, release them."

Dante let out a heavy breath, past caring anymore. He was about to unleash the Death Company along with the hosts drowning in the Red Thirst, hoping to relieve the pressure and buy everyone else a chance to fall back to the lower-hive.

The under-hive was already lost. What they needed to defend next were the few remaining passages.

If they couldn't hold, the ground battlefield would collapse right through the middle.

"There are too many..."

The young man Irena was dragging back felt his mind going numb. He hated the Tyranid swarm, but the sheer numbers were beyond anything he'd imagined. He'd already torn apart nearly a hundred Lictors in this battle alone, and it still wasn't enough to hold the line.

"All units, abandon your positions. Fall back to the lower-hive."

The order came through at just the right moment, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief — even Dante.

Unleashing the Blood Angels lost to the Black Rage would have had consequences far too severe to manage. And looking at how well Heydrich seemed to understand their condition, Dante thought he might find a chance to consult him about it later.

This ancient being's raw combat strength might not match the Emperor's, but in matters of technology, he seemed to utterly outclass the Emperor — and the entire Imperium besides.

Meanwhile, within the hive, Heydrich stood atop a high tower, looking down over the city below.

Hundreds of millions were now packed together down there. The Netherworld Star's population was estimated at no less than thirty billion, and nearly twenty billion of them had gathered here — essentially the entire population of the planet.

"The swarm has temporarily withdrawn from the other planets. They're concentrating everything they have against us now."

Azrael, standing beside Heydrich, delivered the report. To bring this world down, the swarm was maintaining only minimal pressure on the other planets, just enough to keep them from sending reinforcements to the Netherworld. Not that Heydrich had ever counted on those other worlds to help, from the very start.

The most Heydrich hoped for from them was that they could hold their own. Anything beyond that had never crossed his mind.

"Get ready to activate the War Engine. There are simply too many of them."

...

Heydrich let out a sigh. By now every senior member of the Ecclesiarchy across the Netherworld had mobilized. They were organizing zealots, though truthfully, there was hardly any organizing needed.

No one was a fool. Everyone understood that once the swarm broke through these positions, death was waiting for them regardless.

Since death was coming either way, they might as well take some of the bugs down with them. When humans are cornered with a chance to drag their enemy into the grave alongside them, they tend to unleash a terrifying ferocity.

At that moment...

"Attention, everyone. By the sacred order of the great Ancient Sage, the first wave will be drawn primarily from the disabled. Say your final farewells to your families now."

Ecclesiarchy priests stationed on the high platforms shouted through their loudspeakers. There was no room, now, for notions of caring for the elderly and young — once transformed into Voidranger, none of that made any difference anyway.

As for the elderly...

Even the comparatively well-off members of the Ecclesiarchy rarely lived past forty or fifty. The lower and mid-ranking priests, worn down by their thirties, were already nearing the end.

So the first wave consisted mostly of those already severely broken down, and many of them had simply been worked to ruin.

This was all handled by the Ecclesiarchy, through cold calculation, weighing victory and the reconstruction that would follow.

They needed to preserve as many of the most valuable people as possible. The rest was harsh, but there was no other way.

"Anna, I love you."

In the crowd, a man barely twenty-five or twenty-six, though his hair had gone gray and his back had bent like an old man's, embraced his equally weathered wife.

Then he looked over his five or six children, still too young to fend for themselves, and wiped at the corner of his eye.

As a hive worker, he'd given more than a decade to the hive. Years of crushing labor, with too little rest and never enough food, had brought his life nearly to its end. Now it was time to make one last contribution to the Imperium.

The great Planetary Governor, the Ecclesiarch, and that ancient human had all promised him something: if the war was won, his family would be well cared for.

So even without the Ecclesiarchy's exhortations, he'd already decided to fight for his family's sake.

He couldn't afford to retreat any further — his wife and children were right behind him.

"...Father. Wait for me. If you can't hold, I'll take your place and keep charging those xenos myself."

His eldest son gripped his hand. There were no tears in the boy's eyes, only a strange, open calm.

"Good boy..."

The father said nothing more. He walked, step by step, toward the transport already waiting for him. Along the way, crowds of believers sang hymns and scattered flowers, their eyes shining with envy — what a holy sacrifice this was.

Of course, this scene wasn't unique. It was playing out in every corner of the hive.

In almost no time at all, the Ecclesiarchy had assembled a first wave of over ten million people. They would be the first bombs thrown at the Tyranid swarm.

Meanwhile, the handful of massive, budget-model War Forges Heydrich had built began to power up, entering a state of readiness. All that remained was to wait for Ka'Bandha — the moment he went in to gut the Tyranids from behind, the humans would charge straight in from the front.

It was at that moment the Warp erupted into a raging storm. Khorne's power detonated across the local region, tearing the Great Devourer's Warp shadow to shreds. A flicker of unease passed through many minds in that instant.

"Fall back!!!"

Ezekiel and Mephiston didn't dare hesitate. They used the teleportation device Heydrich had prepared for them and left at once.

Then...

BOOM!!!

A massive shape plunged from the sky, slamming down directly on the very spot they had just left.

Ka'Bandha stared, expressionless, at the distant Tyranids now surging toward him, having sensed something was wrong. Fury filled his face.

This time, he was stronger than he had ever been. The Blood God had granted him power without stint — enough that he could summon his own host without spending anything at all.

The Bloodthirster swung his weapon in a wide arc, tearing open a Warp rift right there, one leading straight to Khorne's Brass Citadel. At the same time, the Great Devourer's shadow churned wildly, desperate to keep the horde from breaking into realspace.

Because of this, the Imperium's forces largely felt nothing at all. Much like the Orks' Waaagh field, the Tyranid swarm's shadow had, ironically, helped shield humanity from corruption.

But clearly, this time it couldn't hold back the tide. With Khorne all but watching in person, there was always some patch of ground the shadow simply couldn't cover.

"Blood for the Blood God, skulls for the Skull Throne!!!"