The main strength of the xenos fleet was closing in. Those enormous capital warships — each several kilometres in length, their surfaces covered in heavier organic armour, their hulls bristling with additional biological weapons — were advancing.
They held a dense formation, individual yet perfectly synchronised, moving like a wall of living flesh toward the First Fleet.
"Their intention is clear."
Berossus's voice came through the vox.
"They want a direct engagement. They intend to use numerical superiority to encircle and destroy us."
The First Fleet was indeed outnumbered.
"Then let them come. We'll settle this in one stroke."
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly — a cold, hard smile.
Did the xenos fleet honestly think it could stand against a fleet built by their Father?
"Where are the Second and Third Fleets?"
Forrix asked.
"The Second Fleet has advanced to the rear and can engage at any moment. The Third Fleet has dispersed elements to begin the encirclement."
In other words — they were only waiting for the xenos reinforcements to enter the kill zone.
Forrix looked at what remained of the xenos van, already completely broken by the First Fleet, and let his face settle back into its usual expressionless calm.
"Signal all warships."
His voice turned cold again.
"Prepare to encircle and annihilate the xenos fleet."
The xenos main force drew closer.
Forrix's eyes grew colder by the moment. He watched the clear imagery the Logic Engine was feeding him. As a seasoned commander, he had always been patient. He would let the enemy be torn to fragments by the Legion's overwhelming fire.
Finally, the Kratos xenos seemed utterly unaware that their forward fleet was on the verge of total annihilation. They sailed straight into the trap the Fourth Legion had laid.
"Fire."
At Forrix's command, every warship's weapons arrays opened up simultaneously.
Lance batteries. Plasma cannons. Torpedoes. Electromagnetic accelerators. Countless weapons discharged at once, weaving a dense net of fire that swept toward the xenos fleet.
The First and Second Fleets' combined fire struck the incoming reinforcements head-on.
After only a single salvo, the leading formation of the Kratos xenos fleet had already broken apart, its cohesion dissolving into chaos.
This was the moment the Fourth Legion revealed what a truly powerful heavy-fire Legion looked like.
Endless volleys lit the surrounding stars. Dense clusters of detonations streaked across the void like meteor showers.
The xenos fleet's return fire could not even penetrate through the Fourth Legion's outgoing barrage — thousands of warships were focused down simultaneously, their defences rendered completely useless.
Against firepower capable of scorching the surface of an entire planet, their protection was a joke.
One xenos warship after another was destroyed, blinding flashes erupting continuously across the void.
After only two uninterrupted salvos, the xenos were already attempting to flee — but the Third Fleet had closed around them.
By the time the Kratos xenos realised it, it was already too late.
Everything had happened too fast. They had been completely unprepared.
Something had gone wrong with the Queen's signal reception — the vanguard fleet's reports had never reached her. The only signals she received spoke of desperate requests for reinforcements and dire situations.
They had already sensed something was wrong on their approach, because the Queen could no longer reach them.
This void battlefield was deeply wrong. The fleet's internal communications with each other still functioned — but contact with the Queen had been completely severed.
The xenos fleet commander had never encountered anything like this in all its years of warfare.
It had not panicked. It had simply been overconfident in its fleet.
The conquest of the Solk Empire had led it to assume that any enemy it faced would be, at most, its own equal. The fleet it had brought here represented nearly half of Solk's primary strength — even if things went badly, surely it could at least escape.
The Kratos xenos were indeed formidable. But this time, they had badly misjudged their opponent.
The Iron Warriors' firepower had shattered their arrogance in an instant.
The commander attempted to transmit a warning back through its biological signal network — but no matter how it tried, it could not get the message through. The frustration was immense.
This enemy was something the Solk Empire could never hope to match. It had to retreat — now.
But the commander's thoughts were extinguished entirely by a plasma macrocannon round.
Forrix looked at what he was now calling the "lethal flash belt" spread before him, and felt, for the first time, a clear understanding of what his Father had meant by "fire support."
He was not alone. Berossus, Toramino, Dantioch — all of them were looking at the firepower and the fleet their Father had provided with entirely new eyes.
Why hadn't this level of support been available during training?
The question passed through all of their minds. If this firepower had been available in training, how could they possibly have died so many times?
But none of them dwelled on it — they simply accepted it as another of their Father's tests.
"Xenos fleet completely annihilated. No survivors."
The Logic Engine's voice came through, and Forrix felt the tension leave him.
"Fleet, advance."
Forrix had zero interest in what remained of the xenos fleet — essentially melted by their own guns at this point. In conditions like this, even Orks wouldn't have any spore-survivors to worry about, but for safety's sake he had the Logic Engine run a full sweep regardless.
The Kratos xenos had to be completely exterminated. That was their Father's standing order — and as warriors of the Imperium, they shared nothing but contempt for xenos.
Deep in the Warp, the enormous Daemon Forge had come to this place. The colossal machine-construct that ran through all twenty-two levels and was fused with the Forge itself severed several intermittent psychic transmissions.
Perturabo let out a quiet, contemptuous laugh.
"You self-debasing bitch, resorting to these cheap tricks."
"Disgusting insects."
From the distance, waves of Khorne and Nurgle daemon armies surged toward him — only to be obliterated on their approach by the Daemon Forge's near-inexhaustible Warp-rated heavy weapons.
Even a Great Unclean One running maximum regeneration and maximum resilience would be directly purified by a single macro-lance shot. The Khorne daemons' battle-gifts couldn't resist long-range fire attacks at all.
Even the primordial darkness of the Warp was being lit up across a broad expanse by the Daemon Forge's blazing guns.
Perturabo watched the endless waves of Bloodletters and Flesh Hounds, and felt only contempt for Khorne's brainless aggression.
"If you don't have the ability, stop provoking me. If you want to show real courage, tear open the veil of reality and invade directly."
"Using these underhanded tactics — do you even understand what courage and honour mean?"
The Bloodletters and Flesh Hounds felt their power surge several times over in an instant. Just as they were savouring that strength and surging forward with triumphant roars—
Six thousand immense Phalanx-class vessels translated out of the Daemon Forge, their near-invincible broadsides sweeping through the four Gods' daemon armies massing in this place.
Slaanesh and Tzeentch, who had been lurking at the edges trying to take advantage of the situation, were forced to pull their own daemon armies back.
Nurgle watched his children wailing and retreating, and a few thick tears — saturated with viruses and plagues — rolled from his eyes.
It was only when the Daemon Forge extended uncountable mechanical arms to snatch up the daemons of all four Gods that Nurgle's fat face finally showed a flicker of actual anger, and he reluctantly began to withdraw.
From deep in the Warp came a single enraged roar, followed by a blinding blood-red beam of light striking directly at the entire Daemon Forge from the distance — but a pitch-black shield absorbed it entirely.
The Daemon Forge's mechanical arms also retracted.
Perturabo knew when to stop pressing. He had come out ahead — that was enough.
"Get out."
"RAAAGH!"
"RAAAGH!"
A roar saturated with murderous fury and rage spread through the entire Warp — even the Emperor, deep beneath Terra working on the Webway, felt it reverberate through him.
From the depths of the Crystal Labyrinth and the Six Rings came peals of mocking laughter and tittering amusement.
The Plague Father, who had been discreetly shedding a few tears over his children's low morale in the depths of his Garden, now split open his mouth in a wide grin — bloated maggots the size of warships sliding out and dropping into the broth he had been preparing as an offering to Isha.
After hammering in seven more strikes for good measure, the Blood God finally, reluctantly, withdrew.
Perturabo had no interest in playing these tedious games with them. They wouldn't even let him participate in a War in Heaven — and now they thought they could meddle with his sons' campaigns in realspace?
Did they think they could have all the good things?
If not for the fact that he was not yet strong enough to beat these miscreants decisively, Perturabo would absolutely not have let them off.
When the Fourth Legion's fleet entered this system, they had already detected that something was wrong.
A deep red haze seemed to pervade every planet. Even the red dwarf star had an aura about it that made the temper spike instantly.
The deepest, most primal aggression within the Iron Warriors and the void-born crew members aboard the fleet's ships had been stirred.
But the sensation vanished after only a moment.
Forrix and the others had noticed the anomaly in themselves — but couldn't identify the cause. They simply moved with greater caution in directing the fleet.
Solk-Prime IV was a planet somewhat larger than Olympia.
Its surface was blanketed in dense urban sprawl and industrial facilities, and carried a nauseating viscous stench. Enormous tentacles and the carapaces of unidentifiable organisms had been incorporated directly into the surface.
In orbit around that world, over two thousand Kratos xenos warships were massing.
Their hull types varied — from small escort craft to massive battleships — forming an immense defensive formation. Behind them, tens of thousands of orbital defence platforms bristled with gun emplacements and missile launchers.
"Two thousand three hundred warships. Fourteen thousand orbital defence platforms."
The Logic Engine's voice came to Forrix.
Forrix showed no arrogance — even though their fleet's capabilities vastly exceeded the Solk Empire's.
"They should still have elements deployed in other systems. Signal the Second Fleet to begin clearing the xenos from the remaining systems."
"Once we begin dismantling Solk's naval forces here, the Third Fleet is to prepare orbital drop operations — Iron Circle, automata, and sacred Dreadnoughts to land on the surface and open the ground campaign, followed by Knight deployment and Titan Legion assets to drive the line forward."
Forrix issued the orders. Still cautious — but he had faced desperate situations before, and this time he had far more resources. Better to open the road with god-machines.
"Yes."
The Second Fleet received the order and departed in the Iron Warriors, Berossus at its head. Berossus had always been steady. Forrix trusted this old friend completely.
Looking at the massed Solk fleet before him, something shifted in Forrix's otherwise expressionless face — a flicker of bloodlust.
"Fire."
His voice didn't change. But the fire inside him blazed higher.
The Iron Undaunted's plasma macrocannon unleashed a column of plasma fire stretching tens of kilometres. That was a Gloriana-class battleship's main armament — a single shot powerful enough to destroy an entire hive world.
Now it was aimed at the centre of the Solk fleet.
Countless lance arrays and electromagnetic accelerators opened up alongside it.
The surface of the Fourth Primary World lit up as if it were midday. The Iron Warriors' guns illuminated the entire facing hemisphere.
The Kratos xenos Queen knew only that nearly half her primary fleet had failed to stop the enemy. Beyond that, she knew nothing — her biological sensory arrays and psychic reception had both failed entirely.
She was agitated. Her immense body writhed continuously. Red pus erupted from within her, forming a blood-red fog around her body.
The planet's defensive void shields had activated. The orbital platforms' anti-ordnance guns began firing.
But in the face of the Iron Warriors fleet's insane all-coverage saturation fire, all of this amounted to nothing.
The few shots that slipped through couldn't raise so much as a ripple against twenty-two layers of stacked void shields.
Before this level of firepower, the Kratos xenos fleet was nothing.
The lead xenos capital ship — eighteen kilometres in length — was punched clean through by the Iron Will's plasma macrocannon and exploded in a spectacular flash.
Within moments, the Iron Warriors had once again annihilated Solk's primary fleet without taking a single casualty. Something that would have been unimaginable before.
Forrix had never fought a battle this easy. Had never been in a position where he could simply expend this much firepower so freely.
Even the fleet captains — experienced in naval warfare — found themselves with little to actually do. Controlling the navigation of their ships was the full extent of their role, and some of them were finding it almost dull.
The Logic Engine had provided complete firing solutions. Even the weapons system activations didn't require manual command relay. The captains simply minded their navigation.
It left them feeling oddly superfluous — like ornamental figures whose only purpose was that a ship technically required a captain in the chair, otherwise something would feel fundamentally wrong. Their existence served that function and little else.
"All xenos fleet elements destroyed."
After only five uninterrupted salvos, the Logic Engine returned the confirmation.
"Fleet, advance."
Forrix had no interest in what remained of the xenos fleet — effectively melted slag by this point. Even Orks wouldn't leave spores in conditions like these, but he had the Logic Engine do a thorough sweep just in case.
The Kratos xenos had to be completely exterminated. Father's standing order. And as members of the Imperium, they shared nothing but loathing for xenos.
"Dantioch — is the Third Fleet ready?"
"Iron Circle and automata units are standing by. Two thousand two hundred sacred Dreadnoughts have been awakened and are ready for surface deployment at any time."
Dantioch's voice came through the vox.
"Begin operations."
"Yes, Commander."
Forrix said nothing further, simply ordering the naval fleet to continue orbital bombardment of the Kratos xenos homeworld's void shields.
If they could break those shields first, victory would be completely in their hands.
The Kratos xenos across the fourth primary world and the surrounding systems began to stir with an inexplicable sense of crisis.
This made them agitated — none more so than the Queen, whose mind had been growing increasingly clouded.
She had originally gained powerful psychic ability through exploring the Warp, but her mind was now nearly mush after being invaded by several overwhelming psychic forces she had never anticipated.
At the time she had perceived a great deal — a violent, blood-red psychic energy had forced its way into her body, followed by a gentle-yet-putrid sickly-green energy slipping in quietly.
These two forces had been colliding inside her ever since, leaving her emotionally erratic — sometimes overcome with an urge to slaughter everything in sight, other times feeling a bizarre desire to do absolutely nothing, to lie in her nest all day without any will to act.
What had finally reduced her to a complete fool capable of acting only on instinct was an immense shadow in the Warp — so vast it couldn't even be seen clearly.
Its terrifying shrieking and ravenous hunger had left her without independent thought, reduced to nothing but manipulated instinct.
Countless meteors streaked through the fourth primary world's atmosphere, raining down onto the red, foul-smelling land below.
Drop pods slammed into the ground, kicking up clouds of red, faintly luminescent dust.
Automata and Iron Circle units set foot on this soil, sensors sweeping the local atmosphere.
Across the fourth world, Kratos xenos warriors began massing — crawling from nests, surging from hatcheries, burrowing up from underground tunnels. Dense, endless, like a crimson ocean flooding the plains.
Then the drop pods came down right in the middle of them.
Tens of thousands of drop pods crashed onto xenos bodies that had no intelligence left in their eyes. Thick green-black blood with a foul stench splashed across the pod hulls. The xenos shrieked and tried to struggle — and were immediately crushed underfoot by the massive metal bodies stepping out.
Automata and Iron Circle units began clearing the filth.
Endless fire spread across the surface like an anti-air grid at ground level. Nothing that was Kratos xenos could survive where it passed.
The sacred Dreadnoughts' siege hammers and thermal weapons battered and burned everything in their path. Heavy bolt cannons that seemed never to run out of ammunition blew apart everything before them.
Dantioch watched the Abominable Intelligence sweeping the surface on his display, his face showing no particular surprise.
During training, he had already come to understand just how powerful these Abominable Intelligence units were.
Setting aside the question of their risk — in open battlefield conditions, their combat effectiveness was something no living warrior, not even Astartes, could match.
But watching these xenos being slaughtered, Dantioch's eyes did not relax. He knew the enemy wouldn't send just a mob of basic infantry to stop them.
On the ground battlefield, the advance elements felt the earth tremble.
Millions of Solk warriors were surging toward the landing zone — their heavy fire vehicles and artillery in dense formation, xenos infantry brandishing strange weapons, filling the air with piercing shrieks.
A blue-red wave crashed in — fiercer by far than what had come before.
The initial exchange of fire immediately overturned large numbers of Iron Circle and automata units. Even three sacred Dreadnoughts were destroyed by tank rounds before they could respond.
The Kratos xenos side was also hammered flat by the return fire, their charge hard-stopped. Hundreds of thousands of xenos infantry went down in that single wave.
Yet the raw scale of the Kratos xenos was simply staggering. The mindless quadrupedal forms threw themselves at the Abominable Intelligence units without any regard for their own lives.
Among them, certain xenos caught Dantioch's attention — slimmer, more elongated, and noticeably faster.
They were mixed in with the mindless horde, but every attack they made brought down automata and Iron Circle units. They were even capable of dragging down a sacred Dreadnought through sheer numbers.
Their claws seemed to carry a disintegration field — a single swipe could cleave through a sacred Dreadnought's armour.
Dantioch was genuinely surprised. He had never seen xenos capable of cutting through a Dreadnought's protection with pure physical ability alone — and these were Father's sacred Dreadnoughts.
The ground battlefield stalled into a deadlock. Abominable Intelligence units were powerful, but the numbers deployed were finite. Even if they eventually achieved dominance, it would take considerable time.
"Continue dropping automata and Iron Circle units. Additional sacred Dreadnoughts — two hundred and twenty more. Knight armour — two hundred and twenty units."
To break open the ground campaign quickly they needed to keep feeding force into it, or the armoured assets would never be able to land and drive the line forward.
Without armoured assets and the heavy fire of god-machines pushing the line, the Abominable Intelligence and Dreadnoughts alone would struggle to advance — even with Knight armour alongside them.
Furthermore, a planetary void shield was genuinely difficult to overload with fleet fire alone, even with the Iron Warriors' extraordinary firepower.
Unless something like the Phalanx itself entered the engagement, even a Gloriana-class battleship's armament would need to pound for a very long time before a planetary-grade shield buckled.
At current fire rates, breaking the shield before him would require at least a standard Terran week.
Dantioch's expression was grave. These xenos were behaving strangely — and they were a psychic species. He had felt no elation from the naval victory, not since the beginning.
During training, he had experienced firsthand just how completely unreasonable psychic power could be.
What manner of renegade Space Marine could take the commander's power fist — a blow comparable to a siege ram — not once but thirteen times, at full force?
Dantioch had seen it. Those four corrupt psychic energies, pure and vile, wreathing a tall and powerful Astartes with a top-knot rising from his head.
The face that had absorbed thirteen full-force power fist blows showed only minor grazes. The psychic force had preserved him — and then that enormous power claw had cut the commander in half.
The shock that had delivered to Dantioch at the time was beyond description.
Since that day he had maintained the utmost vigilance for anything involving psychic power.
It was force that simply did not follow natural law.
So he felt no relaxation at all in the face of the Kratos xenos.
The psychic energy wreathing this world made the hair on Dantioch's neck stand on end. He was certain of one thing — he had encountered this force during training before. More than once.
He reported it to the commander. To his surprise, even Forrix shared the same sense.
"I'll also be deploying ground forces to land on the other side. Dantioch — be careful."
"Yes, Commander."
On the ground, the newly dropped forces had landed. Knights charged at the front, their enormous chainswords and gun barrels crushing and grinding the surging Kratos xenos.
The first wave of sacred Dreadnoughts had lost more than half their number already. Without support and covering fire, even sacred Dreadnoughts could be overwhelmed and focus-fired down.
That strange strain of Kratos variant was causing the landing forces serious trouble. Their claws were a grave threat to any armoured unit they got close to.
Even an exchange ratio of one variant to a hundred automata was a profitable trade for the xenos. They had no shortage of variants.
To say nothing of the mindless xenos so lost to instinct they were actually trying to chew through machinery.
The Kratos xenos's technological level was genuinely not low. Any other Astartes Legion that encountered them would face a bitter, hard-fought naval engagement before winning.
It was only the Iron Warriors' insane volume and density of fire — along with their layered void shields, and the xenos command network being compromised — that had made the naval campaign so easy.
Their armoured assets were the equal of the Imperium's, and particularly remarkable was how their biotechnology had been fused with psychic units.
One type of armoured vehicle carried a bloated, immense xenos organism that could unleash a large-scale psychic shockwave — an indiscriminate pulse that struck everything within five hundred metres. It was not fast, but it was always well-screened. Any Knight armour that moved to engage it would trigger a self-destruct, destroying the Knight entirely in the explosion.
This significantly slowed the ground campaign's expansion. The xenos armoured forces were no joke either.
The ground campaign had already opened to a sufficient size, but Dantioch still wanted to minimise unnecessary losses. He did not think in terms of Imperial doctrine. Sacred Dreadnoughts and Knight armour could not replace even a single brother.
"Deploy all remaining automata units and sacred Dreadnoughts. Two hundred and twenty additional Knight armour."
"Yes."
A pity the god-machines couldn't simply be dropped directly. Otherwise Dantioch would have thrown down at least one Imperator-class Titan and a full Titan Legion to show these xenos what the Imperium's iron fist actually felt like.
In orbit of Solk-Prime IV, on the bridge of the Iron Will, Dantioch's gaze was fixed on the constantly refreshing battlefield data on the holographic display.
The ground campaign was opening more slowly than expected.
"Based on battlefield data collection: the tissue of those variant xenos' claws contains high concentrations of psychic residue. Their attack method resembles an Imperial disintegration field in effect, but the source is not technological — it is a product of biological evolution fused with psychic development."
The Logic Engine's analysis came through quickly.
"They constitute approximately one in a thousand of the ordinary xenos infantry, but their threat rating is extremely high. Priority elimination is recommended."
"Signal all units. Continue dropping automata. Change tactics."
Dantioch's decision was immediate.
"Sacred Dreadnoughts and Knight armour to form assault formations specifically targeting the variant xenos. Automata to handle standard xenos clearance and pin their armoured forces. Iron Circle units to provide fire support, with priority targeting of armoured vehicles carrying psychic units."
"Yes."
On the Iron Undaunted, Forrix's brow furrowed slightly. The pace of the ground campaign's expansion surprised him. How were these xenos stopping the Iron Warriors' advance? It didn't add up.
"How long until the planetary shield is breached?"
"Based on current fire output calculations — estimated six days, thirteen hours, thirteen minutes, fifty-two seconds."
Six days.
A cold light passed through Forrix's eyes.
"Too slow. Signal all warships — bring the Third Fleet in. Concentrate fire on a single coordinate point of the planetary shield. Don't worry about energy consumption. I want that shield collapsed within three days."
"Yes, Commander."
On the surface of the fourth world — the landing zone.
Dantioch stood in the temporary command post, watching the battlefield situation through the holographic display.
Their Father's technology had given him a perspective he had never possessed before.
Every automaton, every Iron Circle unit, every sacred Dreadnought, every Knight armour — their position and status displayed in real time before him.
Enemy force deployment, fire configurations, movement vectors — all precisely marked by the Logic Engine.
He could even track the specific locations of each variant xenos, the movement routes of the psychic vehicles, the massing areas of the xenos armoured forces.
What this kind of information advantage meant on a battlefield, Dantioch understood as well as anyone.
"Sixth wave of automata deployment complete — fifty thousand units total."
An Iron Circle unit's voice came through the vox.
"Sacred Dreadnought additional drop — two hundred and twenty units. Knight armour additional drop — two hundred and twenty units. Iron Circle combat units — thirty thousand."
The numbers sounded immense. Against the near-inexhaustible numbers of the Kratos xenos, they were still a drop in the ocean.
War was not a simple numerical comparison. It was a contest of quality, tactics, and will combined.
And in that contest, the Iron Warriors held an absolute advantage.
"Signal all units — change tactics."
"Automata to disperse into three hundred combat groups of five hundred units each. Advance on the xenos defensive line from multiple directions simultaneously. Iron Circle units to follow each combat group providing fire support, priority targeting enemy heavy weapons emplacements."
"Sacred Dreadnoughts to form twenty assault teams of thirty-three units each, dedicated to hunting variant xenos and psychic vehicles."
"Knight armour to form ten charge formations of sixty-six units each, tasked with breaking through the enemy defensive line."
"Armoured units — direct frontal engagement."
"Storm Raven, Thunderhawk, and light assault craft squadrons to deploy and secure air superiority."
"All units maintain full information sharing. Logic Engine to coordinate in real time, ensuring every combat unit operates at maximum effectiveness wherever it is needed most."
Dantioch's voice was calm and steady.
The moment the orders were issued, the ground battlefield began to shift.
The previously massed automata advance dispersed — flowing outward toward the xenos defensive line from all directions like a tide of steel.
This dispersion put the Kratos xenos commanders in an impossible bind.
Concentrate against one direction, and the other directions would exploit the gap. Spread to meet all directions simultaneously, and no local superiority could be formed anywhere.
They chose to spread.
Then the killing began.
Each five-hundred-unit combat group faced waves of hundreds of thousands of xenos warriors — but the automata did not waver. They held their pre-designated tactical formation with perfect precision.
The front rank held heavy bolt guns, targeting the charging xenos. Every trigger pull took several lives.
The second rank was equipped with melta guns and plasma cannons, targeting larger xenos warriors and light armoured vehicles.
The third rank was fire support — multi-missile launchers and heavy artillery, delivering saturation strikes against distant targets.
This formation had been designed by Dantioch from his accumulated combat experience through training, optimised through the Logic Engine's precise calculations to bring every automaton to peak effectiveness.
Wave after wave of xenos charge broke against the automata line and shattered.
But neither could they fully destroy the xenos. The enemy simply had too many.
The battlefield was heaped with xenos dead. Crimson bodies piled into mountains. Foul green-black blood pooled into rivers that snaked across the ground, breeding infection and swarming insects.
More xenos came on without fear or hesitation, crawling over the corpses of their own, charging with frenzied abandon.
One combat group's ammunition began running critical.
The xenos assault intensified — as if they sensed the automata's supplies dwindling, they threw themselves at the line without any regard for cost.
Automata whose ammunition was spent drew war hammers and chainswords and swung wildly, hacking the xenos into bloody ruin — but there were simply too many. Gaps began to open in the line.
Then came a shriek from above.
Twenty drop pods fell from the sky, smashing into the midst of the Kratos xenos. The pod hatches opened. Twenty Iron Circle units stepped out, weapons systems firing immediately.
The thunder of multi-barrel heavy bolt guns was deafening. The dense storm of rounds fell like a wall of steel, tearing apart the charging xenos en masse.
Plasma cannon beams swept through the xenos press in blue-white arcs, leaving scorched black trails, xenos along the path instantaneously vaporised.
Micro-missile launchers screamed, dozens of missiles trailing fire streaking toward the xenos rear — detonating in the concentrations of psychic vehicles and variant xenos, throwing up massive fireballs.
Similar scenes played out across the entire landing zone.
The ground advance was moving fast — but Dantioch knew this was only the beginning. These xenos were not simple.
He stood in the command post, watching the battlefield situation on the holographic display, calculating his timing.
The dispersed advance of the automata had successfully divided the xenos' attention and forces. The hunting operations of the sacred Dreadnoughts and Knights were steadily reducing the count of high-threat targets.
The armoured assault was moving with near-total freedom — Volcano Cannons and plasma cannons on heavy main battle tanks were sweeping through Solk's armoured assets.
But it was not enough.
The sheer numbers of the Kratos xenos were simply too great. At the current rate of attrition — even with the Fourth Legion's fire supply effectively unlimited — complete clearance of the xenos on this world would take at minimum two weeks.
And these xenos were evolving quickly. Dantioch could clearly observe dedicated assassination units and psychic units appearing among the enemy's assault forces.
Were it not for the Iron Warriors being such a pure heavy-fire armoured Legion, this single day of engagement would already have cost them two armoured battlegroups.
These xenos were far more troublesome than the Iron Warriors had anticipated.
They had planned to take the xenos' capital world within three hours and sweep eleven systems clean within three months, returning to Olympia on schedule.
But clearly, despite their vastly improved capabilities, they had now met an enemy that was genuinely powerful and difficult to deal with.
Where were all these soldiers coming from?
Dantioch couldn't understand it. Even the Logic Engine had not yet identified the weak point.
This left the Iron Warriors' command staff somewhat at a loss. Berossus had already slowed his pace and redirected toward the third and remaining worlds of the Solk-Prime system.
As for relief forces from the Kratos xenos' other systems — honestly, the Iron Warriors weren't concerned. Their fleet had sealed the entire Solk-Prime system. Anything that came in wouldn't be coming out.
What the Fourth Legion was actually worried about was whether any of these xenos might simply run.
They had dispatched some fleet elements to probe the situation in other systems, but the response from those systems had been far less intense than anticipated.
That was clearly wrong. But for now — take this system first, then deal with whatever anomaly emerged by grinding it to paste with overwhelming force.
What enemy could stand against an entire Astartes Legion?
Dantioch's gaze fell on a single coordinate point on the holographic display.
The core of the xenos defensive line. A vast biotitanic city, hundreds of millions of xenos warriors concentrated there in prepared defensive positions.
At the city's centre — the nest of the Kratos xenos Queen.
"How much longer for the Titan Legion assembly?"
Dantioch asked.
"Estimated thirteen hours to complete assembly."
Dantioch's brow furrowed slightly.
"Can it be faster?"
"Warhound-class Titans: two hundred and twenty assembled. Reaver-class Titans: one hundred and thirty assembled. Remaining Titan classes not yet complete."
"Deploy what's ready. Get my line pushed to the outer perimeter of the xenos Queen's city."
"Yes."
The Kratos xenos being slowly ground down by the Iron Warriors' relentless heavy fire suddenly felt the ground tremble beneath them.
Hundreds of steel constructs — some ten metres tall, others over twenty — moved slowly through the enemy rear.
Faint flashes of light could be seen emanating from their arm mounts.
"What is that light?"
This was the last thought the Kratos xenos commander had before it saw the beam.
Tens of thousands of metres of defensive line were blown into a vacuum by Volcano Cannons and cluster missiles.
The god-machines had entered the field.