Fire Engulfs a Planet

The war council's conclusion could be summed up in one phrase: "Build strongholds and fight a war of attrition."

Rely on the fortresses and hold the line. It was that simple.

It was not that no one had contributed ideas, but defensive warfare inevitably had to be fought this way. There was simply not much room for tactics.

Before the enemy arrived, the Ragefang traveled between the stars, gathering intelligence.

When the Ragefang returned, Lu Jin learned of the Imperial strategy—leapfrog attacks.

All border systems that openly declared loyalty to the Red Corsairs would be designated as rebellious. Then, an offensive route deep into the Maelstrom would be planned. Every time the fleet passed through a system, it would leave behind part of its forces to attack the worlds within, establishing supply stations and garrisons for the troops that followed.

This news had been spread by an Imperial world that had declared itself loyal to the Imperium. Then, after obtaining the strategic intelligence, that Imperial world declared rebellion.

The Imperium still decided to carry out its compromised military strategy.

The Eye of Terror was under urgent attack from several large Chaos warbands, and multiple Legions and several fleets were involved. Their strategies could not be easily altered.

Just before the war began, the Ragefang delivered twenty-two newly modified recruits to Manros.

The efficiency of the automated modification equipment was beyond question.

The Ragefang would not remain to defend Manros. Lu Jin had ordered its crew to take the modification equipment and leave, avoiding the war.

Vengar's ships also repaired their engines just before the war began. Once they learned that Vengar and his people would not be coming back, they fled immediately.

Two weeks after the war council.

The war began.

The Underhive of the hive city.

Strategic command center.

Amanius had established the command center, and the people operating its various devices were also personnel he had left behind.

The observation station on the surface scanned the entire system.

The black-and-green scanning display flickered continuously.

"Warp travel fluctuations detected!"

As he heard the report, Lu Jin saw a string of signals appear on the scanning display.

After being decoded, the signals were visibly represented by various icons.

Having crammed relevant knowledge before the war, Lu Jin recognized the meaning of those icons: strike cruisers.

Behind the crude image on the scanning display, twenty cruisers had emerged from the Warp into realspace at the edge of the Manros system. The Space Marine Legions and landing forces aboard them were all assembling and rushing to their battle stations amid the alarms.

Yet those twenty strike cruisers were only the first wave of enemies.

After a brief wait, as the icons on the scanning display drew nearer to the green marker representing Manros, another twenty warships entered the system.

Judging by the icons, there were cruisers and frigates. It appeared to be a standard Imperial Navy fleet rather than a Legion fleet.

A total of forty warships approached Manros.

After another brief wait, the most critical part of Manros's planetary defenses—the Void Shield—came under orbital bombardment.

Void Shields came in ship-mounted and planetary-defense varieties.

The planetary-defense Void Shields were vastly larger and could envelop an extremely broad area. Their effect was no different from ship-mounted Void Shields: they deflected high-speed attacks into the Warp.

"If we could stand outside and look at the sky... we'd definitely see lance beams falling on our heads like rain..."

Lu Jin heard a staff member chatting with someone nearby.

He guessed the outside world was just as that person described.

Every orbital strike absorbed by the Void Shield was likely enough to destroy an entire region.

After the bombardment continued for a while, Lu Jin turned to look toward the quietest corner of the command center.

A boy of about twelve sat cross-legged there, covered in mystical ornaments from Manros's local culture—beast teeth, feathers, human skulls, and the like. He looked much like a shaman.

He was the grandson of the Psyker who had foretold, [The Emperor closes his eyes and will not save the world; Lu Jin opens his eyes and will slaughter beasts.]

He was someone whose Psionic Talent had awakened at an early age.

Former resistance fighters, now soldiers of the Manros defense force, surrounded the boy to keep others from disturbing him.

His duty was to make prophecies of war.

"Report! Fortress Thirteen has sent word that they detected a large number of entities breaking into the atmosphere."

Lu Jin's attention was drawn by the report. An image relayed from Fortress Thirteen appeared on the screen.

Drop Pods carrying Space Marines fell from the sky after passing through the Void Shield. Due to the Void Shield's defensive principles, Drop Pods and other entities moving at lower speeds could pass through it.

A rough count put them at more than twenty Drop Pods.

All Space Marines and Mortal troops were dispersed among the fortresses and hive cities. Fortress Thirteen had forty Space Marines and over a hundred thousand Mortal soldiers.

But all things considered, Fortress Thirteen, located at the edge of the planet's northern continent, was the weakest fortress in the defense line.

Lu Jin stared at the screen, waiting for the defenders of Fortress Thirteen to produce a result.

After one solar hour passed, bad news arrived.

"Fortress Thirteen has fallen. All defenders have retreated underground."

Lu Jin took a deep breath and thought.

This was real wartime command.

With only limited information, all he could do was wait for the combatants to produce a result.

As for what had actually happened in the battle, he could only guess.

Lu Jin believed that the main force defending Fortress Thirteen had been a unit of "Manros military police," along with Vengar's people. The latter had been unwilling to put in honest effort, and the former had failed to stop the defeat.

But Space Marines were still Space Marines. For the fortress to collapse in less than one solar hour, the enemy who had launched the airborne assault had to be elite troops.

Just as he had expected.

After Fortress Thirteen fell, the defenders hid underground and sent the details of the battle to the command center.

After the command center staff sorted through the information, they summarized it: "One hundred Terminators from the enemy Legion's First Company defeated the defenders. The Astartes military police and the remaining twenty of Vengar's men retreated into the underground barracks with the local Mortals."

If no one compiled and reported these matters, if the defenders completely collapsed or had no route of retreat, then Lu Jin would never know what had happened at Fortress Thirteen.

"The Soul of Manros... reveals to me..."

The boy sitting in the corner suddenly spoke in a cryptic tone.

Lu Jin turned to look at him. The boy opened his eyes, golden light shining within them. "The storm has dispersed!"

The moment he spoke, Lu Jin turned back and saw that thirty-seven of the more than forty warships on the scanning display were retreating.

The Warp storm had dispersed.

The defensive line had opened up. Manros was no longer a strategic focal point.

The attacking force had been greatly reduced, perhaps to only one Legion.

This sudden stroke of good fortune put Lu Jin slightly at ease.

But the boy suddenly began trembling, tears streaming from the corners of his eyes. "I saw... I saw blazing fire consuming Manros... this planet wailing and screaming amid a hellish catastrophe..."

Lu Jin froze for two seconds upon hearing that, then reacted and shouted at the communications personnel, "Order everyone to retreat into the underground barracks!"

The communications personnel hesitated slightly, but still relayed the order.

In every fortress, the Mortal defenders abandoned their posts and hid underground.

Vengar's people loudly cursed the Mortals, only to be driven underground by the Blood God Cultists, who cursed as they did so and believed Lu Jin was issuing orders blindly. Though they were displeased at being unable to fight a bloody battle, they still carried out the order. That was why they could become "Manros military police."

Half a solar hour later.

The boy's prophecy, what he had seen, came true.

A colossal change swept across the entire planet of Manros.

Every organic substance on the planet's surface was decomposed. The ecosystems that existed on the southern continent due to the planet's own regulatory mechanisms, whether forests or grasslands, all turned into swamps.

During this decomposition, vast quantities of flammable gas were produced.

Then the gas ignited, and the entire planet became a sea of fire.

This was the work of a Virus Bomb.

A Virus Bomb was a Star Killer Weapon. It could release a virus called the "Life-Eater," a virus that even Space Marine Power Armor could not filter out.

The flammable gas was merely a byproduct of the virus decomposing the planet's ecosystem.

Imperial Inquisitors could sign an order known as Exterminatus to destroy an entire planet. Cyclonic Torpedoes and Virus Bombs were both methods of carrying it out.

But Lu Jin had not initially believed that the Imperium would use Exterminatus.

Across the entire galaxy, planets suitable for human colonization and habitation were extremely rare. Ninety percent of planets could not be colonized, so the Imperium normally would not employ planet-killing methods.

Even if a planet's situation became irredeemable, an Inquisitor who signed an Exterminatus order would be investigated afterward. Destroying a colonizable planet was itself a crime.

Now...

Think about who could sign an Exterminatus order.

Think about who would sign one after the storm had dispersed and Manros had lost its value as a strategic focal point.

Then, after most of the attacking warships had departed, the identity of the people who remained outside Manros's orbit to attack this place was obvious.

"Report! The communications channel has been breached!"

As soon as the report ended, a communication image appeared on the largest screen in the command center.

It showed the face of an acquaintance.

It was the Inquisitor who had previously plotted to ambush and kill Lu Jin, the sworn enemy of the Fierce Angels Legion.

That beast... when he had fled by some unknown means before, he had not forgotten to kill every crewman he had captured.

"I'm back." The Inquisitor looked at Lu Jin. "You... why do you have another suit of armor now? That Ironclad Terminator can't have been smashed down to nothing but the crotch plate, can it?"

"Did you have adamantium implanted in your neck before you dared come back?" Lu Jin asked.

"Yes." The Inquisitor turned around, revealing his modified neck. "It was specifically to stop you from chopping it off."

He turned back to face Lu Jin. "Just kidding. Actually, a Manros slave infiltrated my side and chopped me once... If the techmarine of the Mercy Emissaries hadn't saved me, I wouldn't have been able to return, and I wouldn't have been able to meet my old friends, the Fierce Angels."

Lu Jin inwardly felt that this Inquisitor had an exceptionally lively personality. He was not like the bitter, grim figure from the usual stereotypes. His evil was simply lively.

"So the ones still attacking Manros now are the Mercy Emissaries Legion?" Lu Jin asked.

"Yes. This doesn't count as leaking classified information, does it? It's obvious." The Inquisitor appeared entirely unwary.

Lu Jin then examined the command deck of the strike cruiser outside orbit through the image behind the Inquisitor.

The officers and Chapter Master of the Mercy Emissaries Legion were discussing strategy.

Outside the observation windows, anti-orbital strikes from Manros sent dark-purple ripples across the ship's Void Shield.

"Cut the communication." Lu Jin gave the order.

"Don't!" The Inquisitor hurriedly stopped him. "I even let you see the command deck. Can't you keep this communication signal open? Just pretend I don't exist. Turn off the audio equipment so I can't hear your command orders."

"But I'm begging you! Lord Chapter Master of the Fierce Angels!"

"I'm begging you, let me see... see how my people slaughter every last one of you!"

"I said slaughter. Did you notice my choice of words? It means butchering livestock in bulk."

"Just like how I slaughtered ninety-nine percent of you before, like livestock. And the place where I lured you in to kill you was the slaughterhouse, and I..."

The communication was cut off.

Lu Jin gritted his teeth.

No matter what, as long as he found a way to board that ship, he had decided that he would rush up there and chop that Inquisitor apart.