"Greater Than All Your Father's 'Achievements'"

Char's destruction left only the faintest "scar" on the universe.

The fragments of the once-hostile planet had begun to form a drifting asteroid belt under the star's gravity. Here and there, blobs of lava that had yet to cool completely crystallized into obsidian-like stone in the vacuum.

The vast remains of the planet's core were still slowly breaking apart. The energy they released created strange radiance in the "nebula," like a silent dirge.

The combined fleets of the Imperium of Man and the Terran Dominion held position in a safe region of space, silently "watching" the ruins.

The ground battle had indeed been tense, even desperate. Their objective, after all, had been to withstand the Zerg tide and draw out the Queen of Blades.

But to everyone involved, the battle that erupted in low orbit had been almost too "quiet"—

After the Sojourner-class Dreadnoughts fired their first coordinated volley, the Zerg bio-fleet could barely mount another effective attack.

The Emperor-class Battleship Nerva had not even needed to use its full firepower. Its escort ships alone swept away the remaining Zerg warships.

The difference in scale was crushing.

Every class of warship the Terran Dominion prided itself on looked like a toy beside the fleet of the Imperium of Man.

The Imperium's escorts, five to seven hundred meters long, surpassed the Dominion's capital ships in armor thickness and gun caliber. In total tonnage, the Dominion could not compete with its fleet at all.

The Imperium's true capital ships were like moving mountains of steel, carrying weapons systems far beyond anything Terran engineers could comprehend.

Aboard the Bucephalus.

Before the observation window of his private quarters, Valerian Mengsk sat sunk deep into a sofa.

The crown prince, usually known for his elegance, wore rumpled clothes, and his long platinum hair had lost