Warhammer: Empire Reboot

That bastard...

In order to prevent him from being completely wiped out at the beginning, they actually returned control of the flagship to him.

It's as if it's saying: Look, I can take everything away from you anytime. Now I'm giving it back to you, just so that you, my dog, can bite people better for me.

"Lord of Steel".

The leader of the Trident, Fore Bazaro, broke the silence: "What should we do?"

Another war blacksmith, Haxor, offered a suggestion: "My lord, the Dark Eldar are also enemies of Lord Rathian. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Perhaps we could... form an alliance with them to fight Lord Rathian together."

Perturabo turned around abruptly, his icy gaze immediately silencing Harkso.

"An alliance with bean sprouts?"

His gaze swept over every battle commander present.

"We are the Fourth Legion! We are the Iron Warriors! We have conquered countless fortified cities for the Empire with our blood and steel! We have gnawed the toughest bones and fought the most desperate battles! When did it become our turn to wag our tails and beg for mercy from a bunch of despicable alien pirates?"

His pride wouldn't allow him to do that.

"Lossen dumped us here to watch us tear each other apart like dogs. He wants to see us abandon our dignity and join the aliens in order to survive."

Peturabo's steely will was rekindled.

"But he miscalculated one thing."

"We are the masters of sieges, the destroyers of fortresses. We are war itself!"

He pointed out the porthole to the endless, dark city.

"Comoros is good; it is indeed a city worth attacking."

He was no longer angry.

"Pass on my orders! The entire fleet is to enter a state of first-level combat readiness! All war blacksmiths must immediately conduct a damage assessment of the Ironblood and complete emergency repairs within thirty minutes! The fourth, seventh, and twelfth attack groups, with the Ironblood at their core, shall construct the Iron Fist defensive formation! All slave laborers and machine servants, immediately begin reinforcing the outer armor and constructing temporary gun emplacements!"

He turned around and walked back to his captain's throne.

"Lossen gave us two hours. We'll use those two hours to turn this place into an impenetrable steel fortress!"

After Peturabo gave the order, the remaining fleet of the Iron Warriors, like a war machine that had been wound up again, began to operate at high speed.

Two hours is but a blink of an eye in an interstellar war, but for the Fourth Legion, it is enough to build a line of death.

Just as Lawson had predicted, and as Victor had arranged, the first group of welcome party members arrived just two hours later.

Three Dark Eldar Crusaders and seven Venom-class corvettes slid out from the shadows of the shattered net tunnels.

The ship's lines are sleek yet deadly, like the most vicious predator in the deep sea.

The dark matter lance at the bow of the ship began to charge, preparing to tear this steel fleet that had trespassed into forbidden territory to pieces.

However, they were facing the siege master who was the most skilled in positional warfare and calculating firepower in the galaxy.

"Fire."

Peturabo coldly uttered two words.

On the Ironblood, thousands of turrets that had just undergone emergency repairs and calibrations turned simultaneously.

A barrage of blazing light spears and heavy cannon shells formed an inescapable web of death, which then enveloped the space where the Dark Eldar fleet was located.

The Dark Eldar ships are known for their speed and maneuverability, but against Perturabo's ballistic calculations, which are as precise as mathematical formulas, any evasive maneuvers are futile.

A Toxic-class frigate attempted to dodge incoming shells with a graceful roll, only to be simultaneously struck by three light spears that had predicted all its maneuvering paths.

The ship's void shield shattered like glass struck by a hammer. The energy core was detonated, and the entire warship vanished into a dazzling cloud of fireworks in the silent void.

Another Cruel-class cruiser released a large number of Phantom Field flares in an attempt to disrupt the Ironblood's fire control system.

However, the Iron Warrior's enemy-finding logic does not rely on the fragile electromagnetic spectrum at all.

They rely on the most reliable mass, gravity, and optical tracking.

The bullets penetrated the interference cloud with pinpoint accuracy.

The Dark Eldar fleet commander realized he had made a fatal mistake in his final moments.

The battle ended quickly.

None of the ten Dark Eldar warships survived; they were all reduced to cold wreckage floating above the Comoros.

A long-suppressed cheer erupted from the bridge of the Ironblood.

The frustration of being trapped in the Eye of Fear for months, and the humiliation of being manipulated by Lawson, were all released at this moment with the explosion of the enemy ship.

They are the Iron Warriors, and they are back!

Peturabo showed no expression.

He simply stared indifferently at the wreckage of the warships.

"Clean up the battlefield," he ordered. "Dismantle their weapons, engines, and skeleton structures. Transport all usable materials back to the Ironblood."

He then pointed to a city below with a distorted structure.

It was a slave trading port and pleasure city suspended in the void of the Internet, called Shattered Soul Port.

"Bazaro..."

He named the two Trident commanders, "Each of you will lead a strike team, using boarding torpedoes and Terror Claws, to break in from two directions. I want you to clear out everything that moves in that city within three hours."

A lightning-fast siege ensued.

The Iron Warriors crashed into the unprepared Dark Eldar city like a torrent of steel descending from the sky.

Accustomed to torturing and killing helpless slaves, the aliens experienced for the first time the feeling of being crushed by even more ruthless violence.

Three hours later, Shattered Soul Harbor completely changed hands.

With minimal casualties, the Iron Warriors seized control of the city's energy core, weapons depot, and slave pen.

In the city's central square, Forl Bazaro looked around at the destroyed spirit bone spires and the mountains of dark Eldar corpses, his brow furrowed.

"Lord of Steel".

He said via communications, "Although we have taken this place, our forces are still too weak. Once Victor's main force arrives, we will be trapped here. We need reinforcements, we need to summon the main force of the Legion, and we even need demons."

Peturabo's holographic image appeared in front of him.

“I know, but Comoros is no ordinary place.”

He was right.

Comoros is located at the deepest part of the Web, which is a gap dimension created by the Old Ones, separate from the real universe and the subspace.

The rules here are completely different from those outside.

The Dark Eldar fear the Warp more than any other race in the galaxy.

Because once the subspace energy leaks on a large scale, the ravenous lady's gaze will immediately lock onto this place, and she will devour them along with the city.

Therefore, the various monastic orders of Victor and Comoros deployed countless ancient and powerful shielding arrays and void shields around the city. Their sole purpose was to prevent any form of warp energy infiltration.

If an ordinary Chaos Wizard were thrown into Comoros, he wouldn't be able to summon even the smallest Nurgle.

His meticulously constructed spell model would be crushed by the laws of the Net Dao itself before it could even take shape.

But Perturabo is no ordinary chaos wizard.

He is the Primarch of the Demons, the genetic father of the Fourth Legion.

This determined that his summoning method was unique.

Peturabo presented the chapter commanders with a complex blueprint.

"I plan to build a demon furnace in Comoros."

The battle group commanders looked at the blueprint.

It was not an altar or magic circle, but a colossal complex of buildings made of flesh, steel, spirit bones, and runes, resembling a hellish foundry.

“We will dismantle those bean sprout skeleton structures, throw their corpses and the slaves they captured into the furnace. Mix them with steel, the Eraser virus, and the raw energy extracted from the flagship reactor. Here, we will forcibly create war machines that do not require direct warp connections—the Crusher, the Hellbeast, the Brass Scorpion!”

“This…” Bazaro hesitated, “This requires a huge amount of materials and time, and Victor won’t give us that opportunity.”

Peturabo sneered.

"He will, because he is arrogant."

"Moreover, the Kane Gate in Comoros was once breached by demons. This proves that the defenses of the Web are not impenetrable."

"The half-demon creations we make, once the frequency and intensity of their impacts are high enough, can blast a gap in here that leads to the warp."

"At that time, we will be able to receive real reinforcements."

He put away the blueprints and issued new orders.

"Now, everyone get out of here. Go hunt, go plunder, drag everything in this city that can burn into the furnace. I need materials!"

Meanwhile, at the highest spire in Comoros.

Bloodlust, the Lord of the Conspiracy, the Witch Chieftain—all the highest elves of the Dark Eldar gathered before Victor's throne.

News of the fall of Shattered Soul Harbor has already reached us.

“Peturabo…the Iron Warrior…”

Victor's face was contorted with rage.

His meticulously planned scheme to steal the god of thieves and his plot to kill with a borrowed knife not only failed completely, but also attracted a giant beast that should never have been there.

He knew better than anyone what it meant to establish a Chaos Primarch, especially one skilled in siege warfare and chaos engineering, in Comoros.

Victor rose from his throne and roared, "Issue my orders! Assemble the entire fleets of Blackheart, Bloodfang, and Witherblade! Mobilize all the raiding ships of the Conspiracy Cult and the air power of the Witchcraft Cult! I want you to blast that iron can called Ironblood, along with every rock around it, into cosmic dust!"

He strode to the porthole, gazing at the distant starry sky illuminated by the flames of war, his eyes burning with murderous intent.

"We must not let him open the gates to hell!"

The eternal night in Comoros was completely ignited by the flames of war.

Perturabo's Demon Forge project, like a steel seed thrown into the Dark City, quickly took root and sprouted.

On the ruins of Shattered Soul Harbor, the Iron Warriors built temporary foundries made of spirit bones, corpses, and twisted metal.

They hunted down Eldar patrols, dismantled their raiding ships, and even threw the alien nobles, along with their ornate instruments of torture and slaves, into the smoldering furnaces.