The Ganas Homeworld lay broken beneath the unforgiving void. Orbital bombardments had carved deep scars across its surface, transforming once-magnificent cities into graveyards of twisted metal and shattered stone.
Lance strikes had torn through the atmosphere itself, leaving it choked with ash and toxins. Where verdant gardens once bloomed, endless dunes of yellow sand now stretched across lifeless wastes.
Blazkowicz's gaze descended to the ruined world below, his augmented eyes piercing through layers of debris and dust to focus on what lurked beneath. His expression remained impassive, but certainty burned within him.
The Ganas leader lived. The xenos consciousness had abandoned its dying flesh the instant before death, fleeing with its mate into the deep places of the world. Blazkowicz had felt their psychic signatures slip away like serpents into darkness, burrowing beyond reach of conventional weapons.
He kept this knowledge locked behind his teeth. To speak of such warp-touched perceptions would invite questions he could not answer, not to Ferrus, whose rationality would demand explanations that could not be given. Better to wait. Better to act when the moment presented itself.
Now, fate had delivered that moment.
The Shaper Union relief fleet had translated from the warp too late to save their client world. Instead, they had drawn Ferrus and his Iron Hands into the outer system, where void combat blazed across the darkness. The Primarch of the Tenth Legion would be occupied for hours yet, his attention consumed by ship-to-ship warfare.
Blazkowicz reclined upon his command throne, watching through the vast observation ports as his brother's battlegroup accelerated toward the enemy formation. Their engine trails burned like falling stars against the black.
Patience. He had learned patience over the long decades. The perfect strike came not from haste, but from timing.
He activated a holographic vox-link with a gesture. An Iron Hands legionary materialized before him, immediately dropping to one knee in respect.
"Relay my command to all ground forces," Blazkowicz said, his voice carrying the weight of absolute authority. "The Mortal Auxiliary Army will evacuate Ganas Homeworld. They have three Terran standard days."
The legionary's bionic eye flickered as he recorded the order. "It shall be done, Lord Primarch."
No hesitation. No questions. The command of a Primarch was law itself. Within minutes, vox-channels crackled with new orders, and across the poisoned surface below, Imperial forces began their withdrawal.
Blazkowicz watched through augur feeds as transports lifted from staging grounds, laden with troops and equipment. Satisfied, he turned to his other companion.
"Gates. Load Atmospheric Incinerator torpedoes. Target solution: planetary saturation."
The Iron Man's form shifted, manipulated interfaces flowing across his mechanical appendages. "Acknowledged. Calculating optimal deployment parameters... three torpedoes required for complete atmospheric conversion. Loading now."
Servo-arms extended from the Iron Man's chassis, interfacing with the Royal Majesty's weapon systems. Deep in the flagship's magazines, massive ordnance was moved into launch position.
Atmospheric Incinerator torpedoes represented one of the Imperium's more surgical apocalyptic weapons, if such a term could apply to planetary annihilation. Unlike cyclonic warheads that shattered worlds into asteroid fields, or virus bombs that left radioactive corpses, incinerators simply... burned. Everything. Completely. With terrible efficiency.
"Sir," Gates interjected, his synthetic voice carefully neutral, "logic suggests a Bipolar Cyclonic torpedo would achieve terminal results with greater resource efficiency."
The Iron Man was correct, of course. A single cyclonic warhead would crack the planetary crust like an eggshell, exposing the mantle and eliminating any possibility of survival in the deep-warren complexes where the xenos hid.
Blazkowicz smiled, a predatory expression. "I want them to feel it coming. I want them to watch their world die, knowing there is no escape."
Then, more quietly: "And I need to see them face-to-face."
Understanding flickered in Gates' optical sensors. This was not mere destruction, this was provocation. The burning world would be bait for prey that thought itself hidden.
"Your strategic acumen exceeds my programming, Lord Primarch. I spoke inappropriately."
"You spoke truthfully, which is your function," Blazkowicz replied, waving away the apology. "Your counsel is always valued, old friend."
The Royal Majesty could end this world in a dozen different ways. The Molecular Disintegrator cannon mounted along its dorsal spine could trigger atomic cascades that would unravel planetary cohesion at the subatomic level, reducing continents to expanding clouds of constituent particles. But such overwhelming force would leave nothing to draw out the hidden enemy.
Three days passed like the turning of a great wheel.
A hololithic projection materialized on the bridge, an Iron Hands legionary in full battle plate, one knee touching the deck in formal obedience.
"Lord Primarch, final evacuation transports have cleared the gravity well. All Imperial personnel are accounted for."
Blazkowicz leaned forward, his expression severe. "Confirm that statement, legionary. I will tolerate no errors in this matter."
The warrior's face remained stoic, but pride flickered in his eyes. "I have cross-referenced embarkation manifests six times against deployed unit rosters. Every soldier, every menial, every servitor, all are accounted for. The world below holds only xenos and ash."
"Your diligence honors the Legion," Blazkowicz acknowledged. Such thoroughness deserved recognition, it was the difference between duty and excellence.
"For the Emperor and the Great Crusade!" The legionary's voice rang with fervor. To receive personal commendation from a Primarch was an honor he would carry to his grave.
The hologram dissolved. Blazkowicz turned to Gates once more.
"Captain. Release the battering ram."
"Atmospheric Incinerator torpedoes launching. Commencing Exterminatus protocol."
The Royal Majesty's engines flared brilliant blue as the massive flagship broke synchronous orbit, climbing away from the planet's gravity well. Its ventral launch bays cycled open, revealing the torpedo tubes within.
The first weapon dropped free, its guidance systems activating immediately. For a moment it fell in silence, then its engines ignited, sending it plummeting toward the atmosphere in a controlled descent.
Entry. The torpedo's ablative shielding glowed white-hot as it punched through the upper atmosphere, trailing plasma in its wake. At the pre-calculated altitude, the weapon's casing fractured along stress lines.
The warhead detonated, not with explosive force, but with precise dispersal. Billions of nano-scale particles erupted outward, riding atmospheric currents across entire continents. Each particle was a marvel of dark-age engineering: a self-replicating accelerant that would bond with any matter it touched, lowering ignition thresholds to nearly nothing.
Wood, flesh, steel, stone, water, soil, all would become fuel.
Meanwhile, the torpedo's penetrator section continued its descent, using gravity to drive itself deep into the bedrock. There it would wait, a buried match waiting to strike.
The Royal Majesty repositioned itself with ponderous grace, firing the second and third torpedoes at calculated points along the planet's equator. Mathematical precision ensured complete saturation. Every cubic meter of atmosphere, every handful of soil, every drop of water, all would be transformed.
Within hours, word of the Primarch's actions reached Ferrus Manus.
The Iron Hands' gene-father stood upon his flagship's bridge, surrounded by tactical displays showing the ongoing void battle. His silver hands, those legendary metal replacements that gave his Legion its name, clenched slowly as he read the report.
An Exterminatus order. Against a world already broken, already conquered.
Why?
Ferrus was no fool. His brother was concealing something, some threat, some reason that could not be spoken openly. The timing was too precise, the execution too deliberate.
For a long moment, Ferrus considered breaking off the engagement, returning to demand answers. But even as the thought formed, he understood that this was exactly what Blazkowicz had anticipated. The Shaper Union fleet had been the distraction, the opportunity.
Whatever threat his brother faced, he faced it alone by choice.
"Do not interfere," Ferrus commanded his subordinates. Trust was a luxury in the Great Crusade, but sometimes between brothers, it was necessary.
One Terran week later, the transformation completed.
Across the entire surface of Ganas Homeworld, every molecule had been altered by the nano-accelerants. The planet had become a bomb waiting for ignition.
Deep below, in kilometer-deep tunnels carved through ancient stone, the Ganas consciousness felt the change but could not comprehend its meaning. They had survived bombardment and massacre. They would survive this too, hidden in the deep dark, waiting to reclaim their world once the humans departed.
They were wrong.
The embedded triggers activated simultaneously at three equatorial points.
For a single frozen instant, three pinpricks of light appeared on the planet's surface. Then reality caught fire.
WHOOM.
The sound was felt rather than heard, a deep, subsonic pulse that resonated through the planet's crust like the death-cry of a world. The three detonation points erupted in columns of incandescent fury, pillars of flame that reached up to claw at the void itself.
The atmosphere ignited.
From orbital observation, it appeared almost beautiful, three expanding rings of orange-red fire, spreading outward with geometric precision. Where the rings met, they merged seamlessly, creating a web of flame that wrapped itself around the entire world.
Everything burned. The air itself was fuel. Oceans boiled and then combusted, their surfaces transformed into sheets of liquid fire. Forests that had somehow survived the initial bombardment vanished in microseconds, consumed so completely that not even ash remained. Cities, already ruins, melted like wax, their metals achieving temperatures that turned them into incandescent rivers.
The soil burned. Rock burned. Even the dust in the atmosphere burned with hungry, terrible appetite.
Ganas Homeworld transformed into a perfect sphere of flame. Its light blazed across the void, bright enough to cast shadows on its own moon. That dead satellite, which had reflected only pale borrowed light for eons, now glowed orange-red, lit by the funeral pyre of the world it had orbited.
At the three detonation points, atmospheric convection created firestorms of impossible scale. Cyclonic columns of flame, hundreds of kilometers across, rose into the upper atmosphere before being dragged back down by gravity. They spun like vast tornados made of fire, consuming everything in their paths, feeding on the planet itself.
The flames reached beyond the atmosphere, tongues of fire licking at vacuum where no fire should exist, sustained by the sheer density of combustible material escaping the gravity well.
Aboard the Royal Majesty, Blazkowicz stood before the observation ports, bathed in orange light. His face was impassive, but his eyes never left the burning world below.
He felt it. Deep beneath the flames, beyond the melting crust, in tunnels that were rapidly becoming ovens, he felt the xenos consciousness begin to understand. Panic. Horror. The realization that there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
And something else. Something rising. Coming up toward the fire.
Good.
In the outer system, observers aboard both Imperial and xenos vessels detected the new stellar object. Instruments registered thermal radiation output that momentarily exceeded several small suns.
The Shaper Union fleet, seeing their world transform into an orb of fire, abandoned all tactical restraint. They threw themselves at the Iron Hands in suicidal fury, trading their ships for kills in berserk desperation.