While the Space Wolves and Ultramarines were enjoying their bromantic exchanges, Iax's vast fleet was plowing through the Warp.
The enormous Titan-class warship took point, leading the entire fleet through the Warp. Its surging power generated a Gellar Field that enveloped more than half the fleet, and the Spear of Titans even broke through the milder Warp waves with that field shielding it.
Its immense physical presence excited the Daemons that lurked everywhere in the Warp.
Unlike the Imperial Fleet, which had to pass through the Cicatrix Maledictum Corridor, avoiding the omnipresent Daemons and Rebels to make steady progress.
The Men of Iron, with their reduced risk of becoming lost in the Warp, took a far more brutal approach to navigation.
The distorted physical laws of the Warp spared this enormous vessel the danger of wreaking havoc on star systems and destroying them through its gravitational pull.
The tremendous energy pouring from its wake even raised vast energy tides behind the fleet, crushing nearby Daemons within the Warp itself.
Traveling such an immense distance meant spending far longer in the Warp, and encountering all manner of things along the way.
Almost no one but Traitors and Daemons would cross a third of the Imperium's territory through the Warp.
But today, it had one more heavy-handed visitor.
Iax had already lost count of how many scattered Daemon vessels had been destroyed along the way.
Every encounter ended without the slightest suspense.
The Spear of Titans opened with its antimatter beam cannon arrays, punching straight through the enemy, followed by a volley from the Strike Cruisers' Shatterer Cannons. Then the grinder formed by the Assault Cruisers' hulls reduced everything to finely shredded debris, and the fleet drove straight through the middle.
Whether they were Chaos Warbands or Daemons, their fate was always