Emperor's Bane

Chapter 616: Space Verdun

The first offensive launched by the Human Empire against the Crown System of Ullanor began three hundred days after the official outbreak of the entire expedition.

When most of the Ork Empire had been swept away by the iron fist of Holy Terra, the Emperor's proudest sons were finally ready to reap the only remaining fruit of victory in the entire galaxy: everyone knew that the man who first cut down the throne of Ullanor would be famous through the ages, and could even become a symbol of the entire Great Crusade and even the miraculous rise of the entire human empire, and be praised by the Emperor's people for thousands of years.

No one can resist this temptation, not Horus, not Jonson, even Dorn might hesitate for a moment before giving it up firmly: the pursuit of honor is the initial setting written in the gene list of every Primarch and Astartes warrior, and no one can truly resist the shouts of millions of people.

What's more: the Emperor has already taken the initiative to give them this opportunity.

Is not it?
Then, naturally, everyone must rely on their own abilities to try their best to fight for the crown of the winner, but they must not lose the friendship of fighting side by side: so when the siege of the Ullanor system officially began, the war machines on the two fronts were activated at the same time.

Behind them stood the Lord of Mankind and the Spider Queen, two of the galaxy's top psychic masters. The father and daughter each played with the laws of the subspace. Even the gods watched with relish the power they displayed: the majestic will made the originally chaotic time and space conform to the wishes of the father and daughter, thus fulfilling this incomparable luxury of fair competition.

So, the war began.

According to the details that had been discussed long before the battle began, the legions from the Hazy Star Region and the Far East Star Region simultaneously sent their first vanguard army to the Orc capital: to ensure success in one go, both sides simultaneously took out their best cards and paired them with their most ferocious generals.

To the east of Ullanor, Corswayn led three orders of the Dark Angels, supported by several companies of Dawnbreakers, and drove straight into the blind spot of the Orc fleet's guns: the Spider Queen's sight protected them, and the Dark Angels gained a valuable first move.

But at the other end of the galaxy, Abaddon and Sigismund led the first companies of their respective legions and rammed head-on into thousands of scrap Ork ships. The light of the Emperor flickered beside these warriors, and behind the light were 100,000 Luna Wolves commanded by Horus himself.

The moment the first Imperial battleship jumped into the Ullanor system, it met its own death: the star fortress of the Ork fleet was hidden in the celestial cemetery on which they depended for survival, and those long-damaged orbital guns, with the blessing of unimaginable mechanical sorcery, became the gods of death capable of blocking an entire asteroid belt.

It unscrupulously unleashed its vicious firepower, its almost exposed ion reactor allowing it to move freely on the battlefield, its fantastic engine fairing protecting a large number of ferocious space giants, and it won several victories in succession, until Sigismund, who could no longer endure it, personally boarded a landing torpedo and rushed to the core of this steel glacier the size of a hive city, with only fifty Templars who were as outstanding as him beside him.

Fifteen minutes later, the entire star fortress was completely silent, as if it was dead. About twenty minutes later, the Black Knight, bathed in blood, walked out of his hunting ground. The star fortress and millions of orcs behind him were reduced to ashes due to the collapse of the ion reactor: only thirty-three brothers were left beside the Black Knight.

Having lost their protector, the remaining greenskin fleet was immediately torn apart by Horus's wolf pack. When the Black Knight returned to the void battlefield, the human empire had already occupied an advantageous position in this area. The continuous fleet not only repelled the first wave of obstructionists in the Ullanor system, but also relied on the numerical advantage to nail down the [beachhead] built around Mandeville Point.

The Imperial Expeditionary Force sent a thousand Astartes into the battlefield within three minutes of the start of the war, and half an hour later, the number had risen to 150,000, followed by countless auxiliary troops and crusaders. The endless fleet stretched as far as the eye could see. For every ship the Orks destroyed, at least five more would come out from the Mandeville points at both ends of the galaxy.

The seesaw battle lasted for about one Terra standard hour, until the Queen of Glory-class battleships and an equal number of mechanical arks, commanded by the Primarchs themselves, entered the battlefield one after another. Finally, the brutal beasts of Ullanor had to admit defeat: under an invisible and tough order, these greenskins actually did something incredible.

They retreated in an orderly manner: at least, for greenskins, very orderly.

Star fortresses, ancient space giants and tens of millions of murderous faces slowly moved to the rear of the asteroid belt: these celestial bodies were pulled by unknown technology, forming a line of defense that could not be bypassed at all, and the astonishing number of orbital guns, armed fortresses and mine belts were spread among these mutually obstructed mountains, greatly slowing down the advancement of the human fleet.

The Primarchs first tried to command the fleet to conduct long-range shooting tens of thousands of kilometers away, but the effect was not satisfactory, and the Mechanicus's blasting methods were unable to destroy the planet-like celestial graveyards: as the Luna Wolves, Imperial Fists and even the Dark Angels at the forefront of the battle line gradually lost their patience, the direction of the Void War also inevitably fell from the original neat confrontation into a close-range bloody mincing.

The Human Empire's glittering space killers engaged in face-to-face hand-to-hand combat with those ancient giants that were dragged out of space hulks and welded together with rusted hulls. Warships tore at each other, and atomic shock waves and electromagnetic shock waves tortured the bodies and souls of the combatants one after another, and incidentally turned the already chaotic public communication channels into a complete mess.

In this bloody environment, the classical solution was once again regarded as the golden rule: torpedoes loaded with Astartes warriors left thousands of parabolas at the intersection of the two armies. The warriors on the torpedoes flew side by side with lasers and artillery shells. If they were not careful, they would die in the sky.

If they are lucky enough, these first-line warriors will encounter their fellow aliens halfway: the Orc raiders are delighted with the distance between the warships at this time. They don't even need the weak torpedoes of the cans. They just need to stand on the air leaks that can be seen everywhere in the ancient giant garbage and ignite the jet packs behind them. Thousands of Orcs will crash into the warships of the Human Empire like meteors.

If these guys were lucky enough not to be hit by the ship's guns and become one of the millions of corpses floating in the void, and not to be directly smashed into a pool of meat paste on the warship due to the strong acceleration, then they would just use their brains a little, and with the idea of ​​"I think the axe in my hand can chop this lump of iron into pieces", they would easily pierce the outer armor of the human warship and give the stunned crew members an unpleasant surprise.

But this untactical approach often has no effect. The survival time of each green-skinned lander is counted down in seconds: but their human counterparts on the opposite side are not much better. Wipeout is the most basic treatment.

After several rounds of collective boarding, the number of Astartes killed exceeded four thousand, including many well-known company captains and champion swordsmen, who disappeared after boarding the Ork warships: the magnificent explosions of those star fortresses and ancient giants were their silent funerals.

Such a risky behavior will naturally be richly rewarded: as long as three torpedoes successfully penetrate the interior of an ancient giant, the war beast can be paralyzed, and a few Astartes squads will be enough to reverse the situation on the local battlefield under the siege of one million orcs.

It was precisely with such heroic courage and recklessness that the Imperial Fleet, after several hours of blood-for-blood fighting, gradually turned the situation around, broke through the second line of defense set up by the green-skinned orcs in the asteroid belt, and slaughtered hundreds of millions of opponents. The sprayed corpses made the void look slightly dark green.

But this is far from the end. There are at least hundreds of equally solid defense lines separating the Crown World where the Orc Emperor is entrenched. Each of them has unexpected secret weapons and countless monsters roaring and fighting, adding a bloody color to the destruction of Ullanor: it is like a painting that is destined to be remembered through the ages.

【The good news is that we still have enough paint on hand. 】

Morgan's fingers rested on the hard edge of the holographic projector. Her untrimmed nails looked a little messy, and the paleness and sweat on her fingertips proved that the Spider Queen had frequently used her psychic power in the past period of time. The consumption was so great that it even directly penetrated the soul and caused a certain degree of burden on the body: but it was all worth it.

Whether it was the first wave of offensive that seized the initiative and caught the Orc fleet off guard; or the orderly coordination of warships that forced the beasts of Ullanor to retreat step by step; or the efficient and calm public communication channels, the mortal auxiliary army generals who performed their duties, the support fleets and replenishment of troops that came from the sky: everything was inseparable from the Spider Queen's dispatch in the warp.

She was already familiar with the task, but it had been so long since she had repeated such a feat that she seemed a little exhausted for a moment: after commanding for a few hours, the feeling of the Randan War returned to Morgan, and even the Dark Angel veterans who were fighting on the front lines began to whisper "familiar feeling" in their hearts during the intervals between battles.

Before we knew it, a hundred years had passed.

The three brothers who fought alongside Morgan did not disappoint this kindness. Even Fulgrim had put away his usual playful attitude and fully demonstrated on the battlefield the reason why the Emperor's Children were praised as "perfect": the combat efficiency of the Third Legion even surpassed that of the Dark Angels and the Dawnbreakers without Morgan's full command. Unknowingly, it became the most useful blade in Jonson's hands. Even the Knights of Corswain were not as efficient as these seemingly gorgeous guards of honor.

The Phoenix Lord personally braved the arrows and stones, and only the most loyal Phoenix Guard and Akudona's Second Company could keep up with him: whenever Jonson stood in front of a star map that was so chaotic that even Morgan would feel dizzy, and pointed out the location of the greenskin commander with his beast-like battlefield instinct, Fulgrim's team would always take on the responsibility of beheading him.

Jonson's words guided him, Morgan's psychic powers kept him safe, and the Phoenix's own blade was always able to break down an entire line of greenskins in an instant: even if a greenskin warlord managed to escape, Jaghatai Khan's warships would appear like ghosts to ensure that his brothers' blood and sweat were not wasted.

When the greenskins on the front line fell into a brief chaos due to the loss of their leader, the Ultramarines, Skitarii and Imperial Auxiliary Forces on the front battlefield would seize this moment and crush the greenskins' painstakingly built defenses like a sledgehammer: this set of joint tactics, which did not need to be finalized in advance, was now methodically crushing the Orks' kingdom in the void on a hourly basis.

Compared with the results of the battle, the price they paid was negligible.

【From the reports we received and the calculated big data, the current casualties are lower than we originally expected: the casualties of the Astartes Legions in our hands generally do not exceed 500, and only the Ultramarines lost more than 2,000 people, but it has no effect on their battle line advancement.】

At this point, even Morgan couldn't help but nodded with satisfaction. The petty-mindedness in her bones was greatly satisfied: the name lines on the star map and the constantly popping up message data boards enveloped the Spider Queen's face in a strange halo, isolating her from the disturbances in the strategic hall.

The lion's voice is an exception.

“But this cannot be condoned.”

Jonson shook his head, his voice hoarse from the long battle.

"Who commands the Ultramarines?"

【Orfeo.】

"Is this person reliable? Is there an impulsive side to his character?"

[I want to lure this guy to the Dawnbreaker Legion to work for me.]

"That's good."

The lion king nodded, then turned around and shouted to his servants in the distance.

"Tell Orfeo to temporarily suspend his offensive to prevent the Thirteenth Legion from being disconnected from other troops. At the same time, tell him to give up those areas that he is not sure of. My knights will take over in half an hour. Don't let them suffer too much loss now. This may affect our subsequent strategic deployment."

"Tell him everything, exactly as it is!"

【Reasonable. 】

Morgan nodded, and the attendant called by Jonson immediately ran down to pass on the message. As he left, he could see hundreds of operators constantly contacting the main battleships scattered throughout the battlefield, repeating orders and reports endlessly, and the noisy voices everywhere seemed to have entered the forest during the mating season. The technical priests from Riza and more than 20 other worlds were guarding their duties: whether it was calibrating the void shield readings and the firepower of the battleships, or confirming the accuracy of the operators' words, Jonson had to tolerate their existence.

But in private, one could still hear these Omnissiah believers cursing the greenskins in front of them in low voices, especially when they saw the [mechanical witchcraft] that any discerning person could see was crudely made, but was as effective and powerful as the exquisite sanctified creations in their hands, the voices of hatred, astonishment, jealousy and greed rose one after another.

For example, when the great sage Reza, who was traveling with the Dawnbreaker Legion, saw the Ullanor orcs exposing the unprotected ion reactor to the high radiation environment and artillery fire in the void, the anger he exuded even made Jonson look sideways: even Morgan had to give him a few words of persuasion to ensure that this respectable elder who had served her for fifty years did not swing his mechanical battle axe and rush directly into the front line of the battlefield where the fighting was the most intense.

But a long string of binary codes that sounded creepy could not be avoided. Even Zhuang Sen could only try his best to ignore this old thing and instead asked new questions to his relative beside him: he only cared about the details on the battlefield, and all questions related to numbers were Morgan's responsibility.

This long-standing cooperation model makes the Lions feel very comfortable.

"How's the auxiliary army doing?"

【The situation is under control.】

Morgan nodded.

[Fulgrim and Jaghatai Khan's auxiliary forces are the responsibility of their own legions, so I cannot interfere. However, I heard that the White Scars' Chogorius Garrison suffered heavy casualties, and as for the Ultramarines' Calth High Guard, some of them are under my command.]

"How did you do it?"

[I can't say that I succeeded, but it was just out of the... personal friendship between Guilliman and me. ]

"..."

"Remember my words: stay away from him."

Jonson's face was serious.

"Where are Luther's troops?"

[You mean the Caliban Hunters? They were clearly the auxiliary troops assigned to you by Luther, but since you threw them all to me anyway, I let them act together with my Queen's Guards: although they are definitely not as elite as my army, there is no problem deploying them in those secondary battlefields.]

"What do you mean, not as good as yours?"

The lion frowned. Although he didn't care much about this issue, the Primarch's inherent desire to win still made the Caliban people instinctively refute.

【Look there. 】

Morgan didn't bother to argue.

[In the past few hours, the army number you used as a whole Astartes regiment is actually the Hunting God Rose Legion in my auxiliary army: if I hadn't taken the initiative to point this out, with their attack speed and results, you probably wouldn't have realized this problem until the end of the war. ]

"..."

Zhuang Sen looked in the direction indicated, and what followed was a long silence.

"In other words: Are there no problems with the casualties in our troops at present?"

【Enough to support the fight.】

Morgan nodded.

[Horus' progress is similar to ours, or even faster: he is breaking through the eleventh line of defense, and we have just solved the tenth line of defense. Although in the face of the total number of hundreds of lines of defense, our progress is about the same. ]

"We can't relax either."

The lion narrowed his eyes, and for the first time in his life, he seemed to start thinking seriously about the question concerning Horus: The ability of the Wolf God had been fully demonstrated in the past few hours since the start of the war, and the fleet of the Lord of Mankind had not yet entered the battlefield.

"How long do you think it will take us to break into Ullanor's low-Earth orbit?"

【At least five days.】

Morgan was firm.

[After all, the strength displayed by these greenskins is not as good as that of the Randan Empire. ]

"What do you think about Horus?"

[Probably... also five days. ]

"That's just right."

Zhuang Sen took a deep breath and slowly emptied the turbid air in his chest. The continuous command of the war made his face tired, his eyes were full of scarlet bloodshot, and his golden hair had lost its former luster: but what was really fatal was the tense pupils, which were as dangerous as a bowstring ready to be released.

The lion was silent for a moment.

"I have a favor to ask of you, Morgan: Can you promise me?"

【cannot. 】

Morgan didn't even look up.

"I hope you can take over my responsibilities for the next period of time."

Zhuang Sen was not affected, he was just minding his own business... giving instructions.

[I said no! ]

"I will go to the front and lead my knights to join the battle. I need some time to fight to relieve my fatigue and relax my brain. Otherwise, I won't be able to face the next battle in a good posture."

[I said...]

"Then leave it to you!"

Jonson smiled, turned away happily, and cursed: the people of Caliban knew that the final outcome of this matter would be as he wished, and it had been the case for the past century.

after all……

"You're always so reassuring, Morgan."

(End of this chapter)