The Invincible Reason and the Razor of Truth hovered high above the 746-43 system, their outer hulls still scarred from the encounter three weeks prior. Under the distant glare of the local star, temporary patches across several deck plates gleamed in a dull, mismatched gray against the surrounding armor plating.
Surrounding the Primarch's flagship, over four hundred Emperor-class Battleships alongside dozens of Gloriana-class and Abyss-class Battleships were slowly adjusting their formations. Ten Star Forts lined up side-by-side, forming an undying wall of defense.
The cold blue backfire of their engines merged into a flowing river of light across the vacuum—a shifting boundary line cutting off the imperiled system, already half-devoured by the swarm, from the core worlds of the Imperium.
Standing upon the bridge, Lion El'Jonson watched the devastated world below through the viewport, his right hand gripping the hilt of the Fealty Sword. His sharp, emerald eyes remained calm.
The grim battlefield metrics filled the Warmaster with deep anxiety.
The front line was advancing at a crawl, logistics could not keep pace with consumption, and over two hundred Chapters had been crippled by the now fully mobilized Tyranid swarms. Over half of the Imperium's heavy weaponry had been lost; even with every production line running at maximum load, the Tech-Priests were practically running their gears until they smoked without keeping up.
Across five galaxies, war raged on every front, and all manner of rogue factions had crawled out from the shadows to tear a piece off the Imperium amidst the chaos.
A hint of exhaustion lingered between Lion's brows. Commanding a theater that spanned five whole galaxies was no easy task; back when he commanded the Siege of Terra's counter-offensives, he had already been pushed near his limit.
Had he not grown far beyond his past self, Lion suspected he might have become the first Primarch to drop dead of overwork on the front line.
Truthfully, Lion was harboring a faint tinge of regret. Had he known a disaster of this scale would greet him, he would not have contested the title of Warmaster.
When Perturabo served as Warmaster, minor hiccups occurred toward the end, but he had resolved crises with terrifying speed. Now, Lion faced five Great Devourers simultaneously.
It was utterly absurd—how could these Tyranids exhibit such coordination? Across five separate galaxies, with the Eye of Terror sealed off, they still managed to network with one another. Lion found such capabilities genuinely alarming.
Having taken office so recently, he had barely warmed the Warmaster's seat. Was this the true nature of the test his Father had mentioned back then?
Had Perturabo truly stepped down due to psychological burnout, or was there more to it? The sheer tenacity of the swarm was driving Lion toward conspiracy theories.
"What is the status of the Titan Legions' deployment?" Lion asked, his voice low and clear without turning around.
Standing just behind him, Zabriel brought up the telemetry data. "The remnants of the 17th and 41st Legions of the Legio Mortis are regrouping in the $\alpha$-91 system, preparing to sort out alongside the 10th through 32nd Legions of the Legio Aegis."
Zabriel paused before continuing, "Over the course of this campaign, we have lost the equivalent of more than a thousand Titan configurations, Warmaster. Supply lines have grown exceptionally strained, and heavy weapons and vehicles are failing to arrive on schedule."
"Most critically, the loss rate among the Abominable Intelligence legions is spiking sharply. Our fleets are paying a heavy toll to secure victory in engagements against the hive fleets."
A subtle glint flickered in Lion's eyes at the mention of the Emperor-class Titans. As the Imperium's most formidable ground assets, the current Emperor-class Titans had undergone over forty iterative design overhauls at Perturabo's own hands.
Standing at heights well exceeding three hundred meters, bristling with dense weapon arrays, these engines of war possessed armor capable of withstanding orbital-grade bombardment.
Yet Lion had personally witnessed the Tyranid Bio-Titans melt through a quarter of an Emperor-class Titan's frontal plate with just two coordinated salvoes of their biomass beams.
"And the swarm's rate of advance?"
"Slowed by roughly twelve percent compared to last week. It is highly likely they are gathering biomass for their next offensive wave and undergoing further targeted evolutions. We should expect even more lethal, specialized bio-constructs."
Lion turned around, his demeanor composed, though Zabriel recognized the underlying tension and impatience in his gene-father.
"When will the resupply fleet from the primary segmentum arrive?"
"At current speeds, forty-two hours at the earliest."
"Tell them to push harder. That is far too slow."
"Father, warp routes through the primary galaxy have become highly erratic due to the interference of the hive fleets. The Logistics Department has already pushed warp-transit speeds to their absolute limit. Fleets traveling via the Webway are rushing to these battlefields as quickly as possible, but because several sectors lack stable Webway gates, our forces must still traverse significant realspace distances after exiting."
Lion held no real blame for the logistics corps, yet he burned to charge onto the field and cleanse the swarms personally.
"Commence the attack. Do not grant the swarm a moment to breathe, lest they evolve further unexpected countermeasures."
"Send another directive to the support fleets—tell them to find a way to accelerate their arrival. Every hour saved spares our troops."
"Understood, Warmaster."
A brief silence fell over the bridge, broken only by the hum of the Abominable Intelligence crew units continuously reallocating shield frequencies and tactical fleet distributions across holographic panels.
Suddenly, a high-priority communication signal chimed from a console on the flank of the bridge. The signal carried Priority-One tags, automatically requesting dual-verification decryption protocols.
Lion glanced at the origin identifier and recognized the emblem immediately.
"Olympia."
"Father, it is an encrypted transmission from the Iron Warriors. They are requesting a direct line—"
"Patch it through."
A holographic projection expanded in the center of the bridge, revealing the imposing figure of Barabas Dantioch.
With his helm locked in place, Dantioch's expression remained hidden, but his heavy Centurion armor was fitted with modular components Lion had never seen before—modules emanating an aura that felt subtly dangerous even to a Primarch.
"Warsmith Barabas."
"Warmaster," Dantioch greeted. "My Father has instructed me to inform you that he has unsealed a significant portion of his tech vaults. The initial shipment of materiel will arrive across all front-line sectors within thirty hours."
"Thirty hours?" Zabriel interjected, unable to hide his surprise. "Logistics calculated the absolute minimum transit time as—"
"We maintain a dedicated transport network linking Olympia directly to key hubs—one my Father chose not to integrate into the standard Imperial logistics system."
"Show me the manifest," Lion requested.
Dantioch nodded, transferring the encrypted dataset directly to Lion's logic terminal.
As Lion reviewed the items listed on the manifest, his brow furrowed once more.
"My Father mentioned he has already coordinated with the Lord Regent," Dantioch added. "Worlds where my Father previously cached these assets are moving to supply the front lines immediately. If you have any questions regarding the application of these assets, my Father stated you may contact him directly, and he will instruct you on their proper deployment."
Lion stared at the encrypted manifest for twenty full seconds, the atmosphere on the bridge feeling almost frozen in place.
Necron-derived Combat Field Phase Inverters.
Phase-Annihilation Warheads.
Antimatter Field Generators.
Extinction-Pattern Psychic Suppression Matrices.
And beneath them, three specific entries highlighted in bold red text:
Black Hole Ordnance (Uncontrolled Variant — Absolute Last Resort Only)
Celestial Array (Severely Degraded Variant — Deployment Discouraged)
Temporal Perception Field Regulator (Unstable — Handle with Extreme Caution)
Behind every single entry lay an entire technological framework never once recorded in the Imperium's official weapon registries.
At the bottom of the manifest sat a brief line of handwritten text added by Perturabo himself:
Theoretical principles have been validated through trials, but practical performance remains subject to real-world battlefield conditions. Unless facing absolute catastrophe, avoid using the three items marked in red.
Perturabo's tone was casual, yet Lion understood his brother's nature implicitly.
If Perturabo included such warnings, it meant even he could not guarantee absolute control over those three assets. He was releasing them only because the Tyranid threat was escalating beyond conventional containment, and the cost of purging them through standard attrition had grown unsustainable.
"When did he prepare all of this?" Lion asked, his voice dropping a register as he met Dantioch's gaze.
"Father never specified an exact timeframe," Dantioch replied. "However, judging by the inventory logs and designation stamps on these weapon systems, he began assembling these reserves shortly after the conclusion of the Resurgent Crusade."
That early? Perturabo had been quietly building contingencies for the Imperium that far back?
Lion suddenly recalled a detail from the day they had retrieved Perturabo. On Olympia, within his private vault, Perturabo had remarked that his finest creations resided there.
The very sword at Lion's hip—the Fealty Sword—was forged in that vault. It was the finest weapon Lion had ever wielded, having accompanied him through a thousand years of warfare without suffering a single notch along its edge.
Most in the Imperium assumed Perturabo kept his true arsenal within his personal forge domain inside the Warp, a realm considered completely impregnable.
Yet Lion realized now that Perturabo would never trust a single location with his most critical assets, regardless of how secure it seemed.
Lion chose not to press the matter. Every Primarch harbored secrets. In former times, Lion might have dispatched agents to investigate, but he no longer operated that way.
"When you return, extend my gratitude to your father. He has rendered the Imperium a monumental service."
Dantioch inclined his head, saluted with an Aquila, and cut the signal.
"Zabriel," Lion said, his tone returning to its usual cold authority.
"Father?"
"Import these supply metrics directly into the tactical simulation engine. Prioritize three operational models: direct fire suppression against Bio-Titan formations, swift interdiction of the swarm's bio-mass digestion lines, and decapitation strikes against synapse node-creatures."
"Sync the data continuously with the logic engine. I want preliminary results within the hour."
"At once, Warmaster."
Zabriel moved with practiced efficiency. Though the Dark Angels were not defined purely by speed, the command staff surrounding Lion operated with a precision that rivaled any elite cadre of the Ultramarines.
Lion stepped back toward the main viewing bay. His gaze passed over the four thousand capital ships adjusting their positions, past the ten Star Forts, and out toward the primary staging area of the Tyranid swarm.
"Order the fleet to Condition One battle readiness. Load anti-biomass protocols across all Abominable Intelligence combat units, reconfigure fleet shield arrays to optimal deflection patterns against beam weapon fire, and bring all Star Fort defense matrices to full output."
Lion's command echoed through the communication channels of every ship in the fleet.
Across the void, dense clouds of bio-spores and drop-capsules caught the glare of nova cannons and distant starlight, burning like falling stars as they descended toward the scorched surface of the planet below.
Another grueling meat-grinder of a campaign commenced. This time, however, the Tyranid forces met swift reversals. The sudden deployment of modified Necron assets and degraded archeotech caught the hive mind off-guard, disrupting its adaptive mechanisms.
Peak physical technology was not something a biological entity could simply adapt to overcome on short notice.
Ground forces from the Imperium pushed back the landing forces with relentless efficiency. Forty-two minutes later, the logic engine processed the live battlefield data and produced its final projections.
Zabriel walked up to Lion holding a data slate, his expression complex—a mix of visible excitement and subtle unease.
"Preliminary conclusions, Warmaster," Zabriel said, handing over the slate.
Lion took the slate, his eyes sweeping across the dense arrays of performance curves and output parameters.
Reading through the staggering performance metrics and the inherent lethality of the technology, even Lion—who possessed extensive experience managing the dark archeotech entrusted to his Legion by the Emperor—felt a faint chill.
"That madman, Perturabo..." Lion muttered under his breath. "To construct tools like this without notifying Father... if an containment breach had occurred—"
He started to critique Perturabo's reckless ambition, but stopped himself as he recalled Perturabo's current standing within the Imperium.
Regardless of his methods, Perturabo remained a pillar supporting the Imperium. Without him, the current balance of power would not exist.
Furthermore, these assets were now under Lion's operational authority. He would simply ensure his forces exercised strict restraint during their deployment.
Now, it was time to purge the swarm.
A cold, unyielding resolve flared in Lion's eyes.