Since the Master of Mankind had issued an order, it was carried out at once. The four Legions began gathering at speed and marched toward the lunar base.
To ensure their own ships could pass through as well, Perturabo and Dorn—who had been bickering over the blackout issue—were summoned back at the same time. Together, they began building a split subspace portal large enough for a Gloriana-class Battleship to pass through.
With the principle already established, this sort of gigantic portal was simply a matter of scale. The Imperium's materials science was fully capable of handling construction on this scale.
Under normal circumstances, that might have been enough. But since they were competing alongside an old rival, the construction bros went all out. Two entire Legions worked around the clock in shifts, and in just one short week, they had built an outer planetary ring around Luna that revolved on its own.
The sudden increase in mass even altered Luna's gravity. To stabilize the fluctuations, six enormous antigravity devices were installed on the lunar surface to counter the gravitational disturbances.
There were no tricks to it. That was just how the Imperium's technology worked: brute force made the bricks fly.
Take Ork fighters, for instance. Their aerodynamics were more scientifically sound than those of human Thunderhawk Gunships. But with a powerful plasma engine, even a brick could take off if you bolted an engine onto it.
For this expedition, Blackwatch dropped everything it was doing and headed to the Martian shipyards. The Blacklight, now complete, was waiting there to be loaded with supplies and fill its countless dimensional warehouses.
Though the Imperium of Man had inherited technology from the Dark Age of Technology and had plenty of problems, its productive capacity was more than sufficient. Under the planned economy, all