(Bonus update thanks to the tip from "Loyal Port Racer Furiously Picks Khorne's Hemorrhoids."
Holy fucking shit, bro, how did that username get approved? Tell me how it got approved!)
On Li Qinwu's orders, the fleet left the Mandeville Point and headed toward the Asteroid Belt.
Who knew how this Asteroid Belt had formed? It was packed incredibly densely, with asteroids of every size.
Li Qinwu's fleet formed a single-file column, using the Fortune, the largest ship with the toughest prow, as an icebreaker to push into the Asteroid Belt. The smaller ships followed through the cleared passage behind it.
The adamantium Ram on the Fortune's prow smashed through asteroids large and small.
Traveling on conventional propulsion, the fleet pushed into the Asteroid Belt for a full day, disappearing completely from the observation range of the T'au warships near Sweet Star's orbit.
Rock upon rock was piled together far too densely. Looking toward the Fortune's position from Sweet Star, there was nothing but rock. There was no way to see inside.
Once they were hidden from view, Li Qinwu ordered the fleet to shut down its engines and began issuing commands:
"Mine Snail, get to work smelting steel. Prepare a sufficiently large block of pure steel in your hold!
"If things really deteriorate as far as I think they might, we'll use that block of pure steel as an orbital weapon to carry out exterminatus!"
Li Qinwu had no conventional exterminatus weapons on hand, such as Virus Bombs or Cyclonic Torpedoes.
With his meager resources, he could only resort to makeshift exterminatus: dropping junk from orbit.
A pure-steel construct eight hundred meters long and two to three hundred meters wide and tall would be enough to destroy a Hive City if dropped from the sky.
Combined with orbital bombardment and