Perturabo stood at the center of the Iron Blood's vast, cavernous Bridge, illuminated by countless streams of data and holographic images.
There were no viewports here, no direct view of the Starry Expanse outside.
The Primarch of the Iron Warriors had no need for such things. All he saw, heard, and trusted was data and logic, rigorously calculated and filtered of all unnecessary sensory "noise."
Floating before him now was an immense, high-resolution, real-time strategic star chart of the entire Bloodscab Star System and its surrounding space.
Countless points of light flickered, moved, collided, and vanished against the dark background. Each represented a Fleet, a company, an explosion, or an entire region engulfed by death.
Yet this precise, expansive chart, which should have possessed the beauty of order, now presented Perturabo with a sight that made even his processor-like mind feel as though it were "overheating."
Chaos.
Utter chaos.
"It's chaos. Chaos. Everything is in chaos." Perturabo's low voice echoed through the empty Command Throne area.
His iron fingers swept unconsciously through the air, repeatedly enlarging and shrinking sections of the chart and switching between different data layers.
Friend-or-foe identification, energy levels, movement vectors, communications density...
Each layer was like stirring an already boiling pot of thick soup filled with countless ingredients, making it even more hopelessly muddled.
On the planet's surface, the blue markers that had represented the Imperium's advancing spearheads were already hopelessly entangled with the red markers representing the Rangdan defenses.
And now, the dark gold markers representing the Second Legion's traitor forces spread and seeped through the blue and red like a lethal mold. Sometimes they attacked the blue, sometimes the red, and sometimes they exchanged fierce fire among themselves.
Landing zones, fortresses, Defense Lines, assembly areas...
Every tactical node had become a furnace of combat