Chapter 155: Antimatter Legion? (Patreon)

Irena was, after all, the eldest of the group. She was a little obsessed too, but she was up against the Tyranid swarm, not Khorne, so she kept her emotions reasonably in check.

That left her as the only one who had to hold a few lunatics back. In the Warhammer universe there is no such thing as the craziest, only crazier.

Fortunately, they were still on the defensive. Without artillery cover and the Voidrangers who were teleported onto the battlefield from time to time, their small force could never have stopped such a ferocious Tyranid swarm.

So the two lunatics couldn't break out. They had nothing like Heydrich's superb mobility in his dragon form.

Wondrous Shadow might have managed it, but her strength wasn't up to it. She was simply too young. When Heydrich waded in, it was mowing grass. If she went in, she might end up brawling with the grass.

Heydrich, however, who had been roaming freely in dragon form, suddenly stopped short. Several razor-sharp attacks had come out of nowhere and left a few scratches across his dragon scales.

Every Norn Emissary carries a disintegration field, and on a purely physical level it is very powerful. But with a touch of metaphysics added it was nothing special, and Heydrich's body was saturated with the imaginary-number energy of the Path.

That meant these attacks weren't purely physical, yet even so, they surprised Heydrich a little.

No other bug could even touch him. Not even the Hierophant Bio-Titan Titans were any use. With his speed they couldn't lock onto him, and he could dodge their area attacks. On top of that, the Hierophant Bio-Titans had to withstand the bombardment of Heydrich's Titan legion, so in his eyes they were nothing but decoration.

But soon a look of relief spread across Heydrich's face, because he had spotted several massive monsters.

"So they're Norn Emissaries. No wonder. And there are seven or eight of them! The Hive Mind has really gone all in. Meanwhile those warships still haven't reached their designated orbit to play with them."

At that moment Heydrich dropped his dragon form. It was only good for high-speed instant kills, and a large body meant taking more hits in a short time. He wasn't some masochist, so there was no need to tank them head-on.

With that settled, he returned to his normal appearance. Several enormous creatures charged straight at him. Heydrich wasn't in a hurry. He raised his sword and fought them.

What surprised him most was that, of these eight Norn Emissaries, five already carried an excessive load of Memetic Virus. Hatching a Norn Emissary takes a lot more biomass, and more biomass means more Memetic Virus infection. They were still in the incubation period, and Heydrich simply hadn't set the virus off.

If it were any other Tyranid creature, even a Hive Tyrant, he wouldn't have cared if it blew up. But these were treasures, and Heydrich was reluctant to destroy them.

After all, nobody picks a fight with his own property, so Heydrich fought carefully. Of course, he hadn't detonated the Memetic Virus yet, so the eight Norn Emissaries were attacking him in earnest.

"You'd better hurry up..."

*

Meanwhile, out in space, Azrael and Dante wore grim expressions.

The two of them stood on the bridge of the Indomitable Truth. The battle below had nothing to do with the two Colonels. And they weren't alone: Loken had also brought the large force of Luna Wolves he'd led out, and they had gathered here too.

"The swarm's firepower is clearly lacking now. And the Imperial Navy are a bunch of useless fools. What was Guilliman thinking, splitting the Space Marine forces from the Astra Militarum and the Imperial Navy?"

Loken was furious enough to want to curse. But like Heydrich, he had no one to curse. Bugs or not, the Navy hadn't flinched. They had truly given everything, down to the last ship.

As for the Hive Fleet, how to put it? Its firepower had dwindled to a pitiful level. Its bio-plasma cannons couldn't punch through the Imperial void shields, and close combat was no better.

The Hive Fleet is supposed to excel at close combat, but one look at those shriveled hulls told you how fragile they had become. Apart from the few largest hive ships, the rest had no offensive or defensive capability at all.

If the Imperial Navy were still here, it could simply have pressed forward and even surrounded them. They would only need to watch out for those few biggest hive ships.

As things stood, they could only creep outward a little at a time with the help of the orbital defense systems, staying wary of those giant hive ships.

"Dragon Emperor wants us to avoid attacking these bio-fleets as far as possible until he plays his trump card. Many of them are already infected with the Memetic Virus."

Loken directed the others with great caution. He was a Son of Horus, and a member of the Four Kings' Council, the highest body among the Sons of Horus. But his standing as the last of the Luna Wolves and a veteran of the Long War was enough to command these men.

His own account was that after being ambushed by that son of a bitch Erebus, he had fallen into the Warp. There the Dragon Emperor, who was also deep in the Warp at the time, had found him and saved him.

The story left everyone speechless. After all, his identity had been acknowledged by Abaddon the Despoiler himself, which had nearly made Abaddon lose his composure.

Only because he was with Heydrich now did Abaddon lack the nerve to confront the Dragon Emperor, and so things stayed peaceful. If he were anywhere else, Abaddon would have brought his army down on him long ago.

And it wasn't only Abaddon. Akurduana had much the same reaction, and everywhere that fellow went, Fulgrim paid him special attention.

Loken also knew Heydrich's aims, especially regarding this Memetic Virus. It looked like an Ultramarine-style meme, but it was actually a Memetic Virus Heydrich had refined many times, wearing the skin of the Ultramarines. He had loaded it with an excessive amount of the power of the Path of Destruction.

Once the modification was complete, it would reach a level every Star Rail player knows well...

The antimatter legion!!!

Building an Imperial Navy was simply too difficult, so Heydrich meant to acquire a fleet of his own. This fleet would protect his key footholds in Imperium Nihilus. A fleet infected by the Path could, with the power of the Path behind it, withstand the pressure of the space Necron Obsidian portals.

If you sent the Imperium's ships in instead, the Imperium would be crushed to fragments, ships and crews together.

The main defense of Imperial warships comes from void shields, while the space Necron rely mainly on the material strength of their hulls.

As for how Heydrich had such a vast amount of energy, you'd have to ask those Voidranger lunatics.

The Path of Destruction had now spread across the entire Underworld Sector, supplying Heydrich with a huge amount of energy. It would be a waste not to use it.

Moreover, Heydrich's territory now had two parts. One was the forge world in the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, where most places already had owners, so he could not expand there quickly.

The other was the planets in Imperium Nihilus, which was his main target. Imperium Nihilus had essentially been cut off from Imperium Sanctus, so no one would ever come there to collect the tithe.

Building a naval fleet at a forge world and bringing it to his own territory would be a hassle. More importantly, such ships had limited strength and couldn't withstand Necron Blackstone teleportation.

Heydrich thought using Blackstone technology directly was out of the question. Humans couldn't use it, and neither could his own machine-intelligences converted from Necron.

It wasn't just a matter of physical acceleration. Necron weapons were riddled with pitfalls. Gauss weapons, for example, have terrifying backlash when used, and the energy that leaks from the Gauss beam harms the user. Using one now and then is fine.

But keep using one and the body will collapse, and there were plenty of other problems besides. Necron weapons and technology all have a kind of beauty that disregards whether the user lives or dies, so don't expect people to use them.

"Keep your distance. Don't attack unless they charge at us, except for those main warships."

Loken calmly gave the order. He was quite good at this kind of combined space-and-ground operation.

After all, there's a joke in Warhammer 30K: no matter the Legion or the command structure, there is always one overworked clerk who bears the pressure, and for the Sons of Horus, that was him.

Naturally, when Horus led Abaddon and the others on a Boarding Action against the enemy flagship, he was the one left behind to hold the rear.

Of course, this had nothing to do with bullying. Someone simply had to direct the whole battle.

The Hive Fleet was being cautious too. If this were the fleet that had charged the Imperial Navy back at the Crystalline Ring, it would have rushed in long ago.

But now they were truly weak, having lost a huge amount of biomass. The hulls of these bio-ships were like freshly molted crustaceans, at their most vulnerable.

A crustacean will recover with time, but they couldn't. They needed biomass to replenish themselves. A single lance Macrocannon shot landing on one could blow a bio-ship apart.

In these past few days, Heydrich had done only one thing for these warships: he had given them an AI-assisted targeting system. It sharpened their aim and raised their combat power by at least one tier.

And it was clear that even swallowing the entire Cryptus System might not be enough for them. This war was like Gryphonne IV back then, fought through gritted teeth for special strategic reasons.

Here it was even more extreme than at Gryphonne IV, because that place never had so many cheap, self-destructing Voidrangers to throw into battle.

So as the Imperial fleet slowly approached, the swarm had no choice but to withdraw slowly. Both sides were being very careful, and both knew exactly how fragile they were.

After all, apart from the Dark Angels' Gloriana-class battleship, every other ship here was Space Marine-exclusive, a tier below the standard Imperial Navy in firepower.

They weren't as strong as they looked. As for the swarm, there was no need to say more. Their fragility was plain to see.

"You'd better hurry up..."

The Hive Fleet was anxious too. If it could obtain even a little biomass from that Enigmata creature, it would turn tail and run.

Obtaining the genetic information of such a precious creature would be worth losing an entire fleet. All that mattered was getting the bio-ships carrying that gene out safely.

The Hive Mind no longer even had any interest in going to Baal, because it knew full well that Baal could never be taken.

Their speed might be great, but it could never beat travel through the Warp. Moreover, with the Dark Gods covertly helping the Imperium of Man in every way as they faced the swarm, it had no other choice.

*

Meanwhile, on the battlefield below, Heydrich kicked one Norn Emissary away. Then he reversed his sword and cleaved clean in two one that clearly hadn't been contaminated by the Memetic Virus, or whose load fell short, splitting it straight down the middle.

Facing so many Norn Emissaries at once was wearing even for Heydrich. It wasn't that he couldn't beat them. If he went all out to kill, it would actually be easy. But holding back and trading blows evenly was a real mess.

In truth, he was still feigning difficulty, waiting for the fleet in space to finish encircling them. Only then could he wipe them all out.

The Norn Emissaries' attacks were strong enough, too. Landing a real hit on Heydrich, they could break his defenses. Of course, he could ignore that damage. He could even enter the stage where the more severely he was wounded, the more damage he dealt, like Irena and Phainon. But there was no need. These bugs weren't worthy of making him fight like that.

"Hurry up. We can't give them any chance to cut off their flesh and survive."

As Heydrich thought this calmly, an answer came quickly.

"The fleet is already in..."

"Heh heh..."

In that instant, an eerie smile appeared on Heydrich's face. Seeing it through the eyes of a Norn Emissary, a synapse creature, the Hive Mind felt a sudden chill.

Almost at once, that line of sight was severed, and in that same moment the Hive Mind froze entirely.

"Then the plan begins!!!"

Snap!!!

Heydrich gently snapped his fingers. Almost instantly, the six Norn Emissaries remaining before him stopped dead.

Then a faint glow spread over their bodies. The fearsome, jagged flesh spikes vanished, replaced by a thick layer of carapace.

Their savage forms turned smooth and round, and each bug grew taller and more imposing.

"My plan really is flawless."

Looking at the Norn Emissaries before him, Heydrich wore a satisfied look. As expected, the aesthetics of imaginary numbers are the final authority.