As the engines of Huron's flagship, the Destroying Ghost, came to life, the vast fleet began moving from deep within the Maelstrom toward its northern edge.
To ensure his retreat, Huron had the supplies remaining on several planets piled in conspicuous locations, scattered as widely as possible. At some of the larger supply sites, he also ordered several Cyclonic Torpedoes taken from plundered ships to be left among them.
These included common varieties such as Nuclear Flame and native plasma.
These terrifying weapons were set to detonate on contact. The moment anyone touched the supplies and tried to inspect them, the bombs would engulf them all.
At the same time, every orbital defense platform and automated defense system aboard the starports was activated.
These weapon systems were covered in blasphemous eight-pointed star runes and saturated with immense Chaos energy. The Dark Mechanicum had brutally crammed Daemons into the machinery, binding them inside by special means to serve as machine spirits.
Constantly tormented within the machinery by the strange devices installed by the Dark Mechanicum, the Daemons grew ever more savage.
They longed to tear everything apart and sate themselves on flesh and blood.
Once all preparations were complete, the Red Corsairs began a large-scale withdrawal toward the northern Maelstrom.
Since this region of the Maelstrom was inherently unstable between realspace and the Warp, even the Red Corsairs would not attempt to use Warp Engines here.
Although the Daemons would not actively attack ships wreathed in Chaos power, the tides of the Warp could still tear those vessels apart with ease.
Several hours later, Iax finally detected the traces of energy disturbances left by the enormous fleet.
The energy tides stirred up by the wakes of so many warships were entirely different from natural Warp disturbances.
The Mechanicus Fleet, which had