Warhammer: Start with a dog.

Chapter 438: The stalemate was broken by the flames
"This world, which is the most cruel to life, will be honored to receive the beautiful life given by the loving Father. It will continue to grow and prosper."

— Audio recording of the Nameless Servo-Skull, collected after the Defense of Medusa, believed to be a pre-battle speech by Death Guard First Captain Typhons the Traveler.
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"The enemy on the ground is building their temporary fortress position. The subspace energy shield below is expected to be generated in less than a minute."

Thanks to the repairs it received on the journey back by three rare repairmen with perfect repair skills - especially one who liked to go to the unfrequented lower deck to make repairs, the pilots of the Lakuan Conquest Hall were surprised to find that the flying fortress they had lived in for many years actually displayed more optional functions, more powerful computing capabilities and sensor accuracy on the panel than before it set out.

"This is how it was designed. A true war engine with many auxiliary uses for the warriors." The technical officer asked the Primarch timidly about these changes and received this reply. People were surprised to find that the Machine Soul automatically used powerful calculations to plan for them the real-time battlefield terrain and changes in the military situation of both sides, which were originally quite vague and required a lot of manual interpretation, as if they were seeing it with their own eyes.

"Reporting the landing of the airdrop pod."

The data that subsequently came back indicated that the situation was slightly better than they had expected.

Most of the airdrop pods successfully arrived at the designated locations - perhaps it was because Nurgle's army was confident in their ability and efficiency in spreading the plague, and was not so concerned about their own consequences - because everything became peaceful and quiet.

"Malkan, order your Techmarine to assist in monitoring the communication frequencies of the Medusa defenders and be ready to take over their command system at any time."

This command is so concise and incredible.

Had it been issued by anyone else in this era, it would have been a rude, unjustified, and outright declaration of war against the entire Iron Hands and its successors.

But since it came from the silver giant sitting on the mechanical throne, it was an order that only needed to be distributed and executed, and the Iron Father and the technical sergeants began to carry it out in an orderly manner while silently chanting the holy name.

The communication data from the Lakuan Conquest Hall was like a sword dropped from the sky, forcefully peeling off the security protocol data protection layer of the Antarctic Fortress and the Gorgon Forge. Their machine spirits screamed while having to open their own protocol channels to this invader far behind the Iron Moon.

"Would you like to disclose your identity and security code immediately? This will help us advance faster and greatly save the time of cracking, my Lord."
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It's been ten thousand years, and the identity code you left in your home world is still retained and usable. I wonder who dares to say that the Iron Tens are lacking in emotions.

A phoenix in a sarcophagus made such an evaluation.
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Maybe they just…really, really need a leader who can change their lives and the world.
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These words are so emotional that they don't seem like something you would say, Mr. Jiujiu. I'm very relieved.
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Thank you, my friend, I believe your sharp tongue has played a big role in my learning how to treat others.

At the same time, the Iron Hand officers on the bridge saw their Gene-Father shaking his head.

"It's not the right time yet. We need a better time. Keep brute-forcing."

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Cardan Stunus was undoubtedly an experienced and outstanding leader. He immediately noticed this unusual invasion signal and while ordering to stop the rebellious behavior of the Lakuan clan, he also decisively requested assistance from the allies of the Voice of Mars.

"I'm sorry to have you witness the shameful scene within our Chapter, but at this critical moment of life and death, I will not choose to put my face above other matters."

Of course, the followers of the God of All Machines who were waiting for the Iron Council to judge the Lakuan and Hammonk clans readily agreed to this, but...

The chief of the three Martian Voices present, Commander-in-Chief, Nico Parps, the Forge General of the Sennos World (Note 1), solemnly declared that the Mechanicus was about to enter the battlefield.

Even the Chief Voice of Mars had to admit that their Forge World of Sennos, located on the outskirts of the galaxy, had also been invaded by a supernatural plague. The packets of warp plague juice ejected from the depths of the Terminus's cannons filled with filth seemed to be able to violate the laws of physics and cross the cold and empty vacuum to reach the surface of the planet and cause initial infection.

But what he did not tell Cardan Stunus was that the report he had just received contained the first sightings of some strange Nurglings and a mysterious unfamiliar virus, which seemed to be causing guns and vehicles to age and rust, databases to crash, and servers to malfunction, as if they had been running for dozens of centuries instead of being maintained every day. This strange enemy made the Skitarii, who had always had an advantage in dealing with Nurgle's creations, become very passive.

Of course, Sennos is actually a forge world that exists as an experimental base of the Mechanicus on more levels, so Forge General Pappus is... not that worried.

"The Emperor Titan's furnace is being preheated. The new unit of the Holy Spirit is in place." The Voice of Mars announced in his mechanical and cold binary language like a hymn. "The Supreme Creation of Om Messiah will lead its guards and skitarii to defend the core furnace of Sennos, and I promise you, Cardan Sturnus, once we have dealt with those scabies on Sennos, we will immediately come to support Medusa."

"Thank you for your speech, General Casting. The holy blessing of Om Messiah will provide our warriors with more courage and perseverance. Now, could you please consecrate our warriors and vehicles? Since the Hammonk clan cannot be fully trusted, we must ensure the purity and credibility of other dreadnoughts and vehicles."

The speed of the data invasion of the mother planet by the Lakuan Conquest Hall was unprecedentedly fast. Except for the Chief Casting General and the three Iron Fathers accused of treason, the remaining 38 Iron Fathers of the Iron Council were all here. In their huge mechanical seats, data cables connected the modified brains of all members, calculating the battlefield situation and command while fighting against the invasion from internal members.

The scene was eerily silent, with only the eyepieces or bionic eyes of the huge black armored figures sitting in the shadows flashing scarlet light.

In fact, they are conducting countless meetings, calculations and strategic planning in their minds at the same time. Tens of thousands of proposals and plans are put forward within seconds, and each proposal is not just an idea, but a detailed, calculated one with processes and results, and may be related to each other.

Now, the scarlet spots of light were flashing at a higher frequency - everyone began to feel that something was wrong, and it came from two aspects.

The overly friendly and ruthless cracking techniques of the Lakuan hacker data stream and the strange plague infection of the First Company of the Death Guard and its allies.

————————Although the Plague Warriors were fighting away from home, they were not at all inferior to the Iron Hands’ powerful firepower and offensive.

Unlike his own Primarch, who always loved to reshape every world into the image of Barbarus, while being content to live on his own plague planet and devote himself to torturing his adopted father and becoming like him.

His Primarch was always so stubborn and sentimental. His thoughts always stayed in the past, always hoping that the pain he had suffered could be soothed, but he did not fully understand the greatness of the Father God who spread pain equally to every soul and joyfully spread the glory of rebirth to every living being in the universe.

Mortarion could be as irritating and enviable as a willful child in his refusal of his Chaos gift, but Typhons was different.

He was the active one, bringing the Death Guard into the service of the holy god of rebirth, and getting Mortarion to put aside his ridiculous stubbornness and accept his fate.

So unlike his sentimental genetic father and brothers, Typhus knew very well the purpose of his coming here. Three was a suitable number, representing three sacred tasks: to slow down the actions of the Iron Hands, to sow the seeds of fatherly love in the barren land of Medusa, and if there were unexpected gains in ancient technology, it would be even better.

The assault troops of the Terminus Est marched forward under the Iron Hand's barrage of fire, and at the same time began to spread the grandfather god's tragic hymns full of despair and mercy for the new converts to this dark planet under the purple sun.

The barrage of the Medusa armored cluster was so dense that any other opponent would have been turned into a mixture of shrapnel and flesh on the ground. However, the tenacity of the Death Guard and the protection of the plague fog in the sky allowed them to finally engage in close combat with the Empire's lackeys at their own slow speed.

The front line of the battle is made up of those Death Guard with ten thousand years of experience, many of whom have been blessed with so much by Nurgle that they also have ten thousand years of training and combat experience and skills.

Bolts and rays pierced through the weakening mist and swarms of flies, still accurately penetrating the thin shells of decaying power armor and hitting the juicy, cancerous flesh and blood organs of Death Guard warriors carrying multiple diseases. But none of them could truly harm the sons of Mortarion, whose bodies were now filled with plague.

The first captain, who was in the center of command, smiled under his horn with a kind of appreciative viciousness. His lips seemed to stick to the inside of the helmet and tore a little, causing more liquid to flow out, which attracted the destruction bees that were drilling in and out of his body to rush over to feast on it.

He soothed these lovely Destroyer swarms while watching his men, with their battle walls of decayed ceramsite and vegetative pathological tissue, take damage that would have brought down any loyalist Space Marine. He saw Death Guard Plague Lords, their intestines hanging out from their burst plastrons, with huge holes burned out, then raised their death scythes high in the air and swung them casually - the blessed miasma began to invade the helmets, masks, breathing grids, and joints of their opponents' power armor.

The Iron Hands Astartes that were hit were still aiming at the enemy and pulling the trigger with mechanical efficiency. With the firepower of the tank artillery, heavy armed servitors and deployed self-propelled artillery behind them, Typhons was a little annoyed to see that the Death Guards began to suffer more intense and obvious damage.

Stormbolts and cannon shells struck the tall Chaos Terminator squarely, embedding themselves into the swollen giant's body like bullets into the slope behind a target, but there were so many of them that they filled the husks of the blessed warriors.

A Plague Warrior with a big mouth cracked on his belly fell down, the sharp teeth and tongue on his belly were still sighing in disappointment, and then his body was roasted into a pile of smoking dry fragments by the precise fire that fell fiercely on the same point.

A suspicious high-energy beam shot from a distance, burning away the pink and pale wriggling tentacles that emerged from another Death Guard warrior's body, but he continued to move forward steadily and shoot with his rusty grenade launcher until the beam burned his helmet and brain into powder. He was sure that he was dead and fell forward to the ground.

What a waste!
Typhons sighed beneath his horned helmet. The despair brought by plague and disease was the most gorgeous and delicious. As a psyker, he had always enjoyed the despair of souls devoured by the blessing of the loving father. Nurgle's gifts were so full of redemption. People who could not understand and thought they were abominations always troubled Typhons.

But he knew that the blessing of the merciful God of Life would ultimately help them to achieve victory.

Another second passed.

The trigger fingers of the loyalists began to grow weak, and their prosthetic fingers that pulled out the gear axes began to rust, become brittle, and turned into reddish-brown rust, and then fell off one by one - the rust of metal increased through entropy, making the instant seem as fast as a thousand years, and the waves of decay beat invisibly, but could be witnessed with horror.

A threatening corrosion line seemed to appear where the battle lines met. Any metal and flesh that came into contact with the Terminator Plague Lords of the First Company or within the range of their scythes began to rot rapidly like dead leaves curled up due to lack of water, becoming curled up and sickly.

Blood quickly gushed out from the seams of the loyal defenders' power armor helmets, and then began to turn black. Many recruits clutched their necks in their dying subconscious trying to breathe. The rancid blood quickly flooded every part of their circulatory system, and the dissolved smooth muscles and tissue walls prevented all implants from further trying to save their lives.

The good sealing of the armored vehicles temporarily saved the drivers inside, but as the Death Guards and the yellow-green mist they carried lingered, the hard rock and gravel began to become soft and muddy, and the swamp-like ground began to slowly swallow up a large number of steel behemoths.

The Iron Council calculated that the Death Guard and their allies would retreat due to the final loss-to-death ratio.

Therefore, more vehicles, more recruits and servitors are still being sent to the front line in an endless stream.

The data intrusion of the Lakuan clan suddenly became more violent, and the command link was forcibly taken over. Amid the electronic roar of Cardan Stunus, the front-line troops of the Iron Hands were reorganized by a powerful will from the sky, forming a formation that surrounded and was ready to respond at any time.

From above the clouds, there was a loud whistling sound of a fireball.

Just like the legendary advent of Ferrus Manus ten thousand years ago.

The Holy Mountain of Karash, which had been silent for ten thousand years, once again witnessed the collision of aliens riding on fire.

(End of this chapter)