On the bridge of the Big Wrench, Sharpfang and Ghazghk watched the magnificent "fireworks display" through a remote camera that a Gretchin scout had risked his life to install on an asteroid.
"Boom! Nice work! Give us another!" Sharpfang waved his enormous choppa excitedly, as though watching a thrilling gladiatorial match.
Beside him, however, Big Mek Ghazghk reacted very differently.
The hunched genius of a technician, with an enormous multipurpose servo-arm mounted on his back, had his eyes closed as he listened in rapture to the chaotic screams coming over the T'au fleet's communications channels, like a conductor savoring a symphony.
"What a beautiful chain reaction... what an enchanting collapse of logic... sweeter than any symphony I've ever heard."
He slowly turned, taking his gaze off the screen to look behind him.
In the shadows behind him stood neat ranks of hundreds of menacing steel behemoths-Vanguard-pattern Specialised Mechs. Built on the basic frames of Vanguard-pattern mechs, they combined the armor technologies of the Necrons, the Imperium of Man, the T'au Empire, and the Orks. In every cockpit sat a Gretchin ace pilot, fully prepared for battle, eyes blazing with the fires of war.
"All right. The appetizer's finished."
Ghazghk's gaze passed through the bridge's reinforced glass and settled on the enormous orbital platform under construction in the distance, a structure as magnificent as a small moon.
"We've cracked their shell. Now it's time for us... to perform a little surgery on their heart."
Fist of the Firmament-03 was the brightest jewel in the crown of the T'au Empire's Iron Wall project. Once completed, this behemoth, over thirty kilometers in diameter, would become a superfortress combining a fleet home port, an Over-the-Horizon Orbital Cannon emplacement, and a fully automated combat aircraft factory.
At that moment, tens of thousands of Earth Caste