Chapter 366: The Greenskins' Battlefield Skill
Fletcher and Olivia watched as the planet Scintilla was continuously devoured, as if they were admiring a work of art. The remaining warships that did not have jump drives were unable to escape. The aftershock of the planet-killer weapon had severely damaged them, making it impossible to escape the warp rift. It was as if invisible tentacles were grabbing them and dragging them into the breach.
The tormented souls of the tens of billions on Scintilla poured through the veil of reality and into the Empyrean, further fueling the expansion of the rift.
The Navigators of House D'Kaeth and the other crew members on Komus stared blankly at the great power that could be achieved by psionics. The capital of an important Imperial sector had been destroyed, just like that. A loss of this magnitude was a heavy blow to the Imperium. It meant that the Calixis Sector would lose an important strategic hub, and the nearby resource worlds would also lose their protection.
The strike, which had gathered a large amount of warp energy and the power of the Four Chaos Gods, had also caused alarms to blare within Komus. The massive, mixed influx of divine Chaos power had caused the world-destroying weapon array to crash. A portion of the array's emitters had even been melted by the massive energy wash. Until the maintenance was complete, Komus would not be able to fire such an attack again.
"Fletcher, the weapon array has overloaded and is damaged," Olivia reported. "The nano-metal will take time to repair it."
"We can't fire it again? Dammit! If only those nanite-weapons were still here..."
Komus itself was something of a specialist. While it had pushed its psychic technology to the extreme, it had also abandoned other technological weapons, such as the nanobots that could devour an entire planet. Compared to the warp weapons, which could potentially overload, those weapons, while not as powerful in their burst damage, were stable, durable, and could be used repeatedly.
The appearance of the warp rift in this system made the surrounding space even more unstable. The Stellar Pioneer pushed its engines to their maximum, barely escaping the aftershock.
"Fletcher, there are surviving enemy warships heading for us," Olivia warned. "The shape of that warship is very similar to that of a pioneer colonization fleet!"
The style of the Stellar Pioneer was vastly different from that of other Imperial warships. But Fletcher showed no concern, his eyes filled with mockery.
"A pioneer colonization ship?! A bunch of creatures who can only pick up the scraps of others. When I was observing that planet, I discovered that they were using a lot of technology from our era. But most of it was the castrated version... However, their ability to move instantaneously is quite special. I don't remember the colonization fleets being equipped with such things. But you can't win a victory with mobility alone.
"So what if the planet-killer array is down? With our conventional weapons, we can still destroy the warships of these parasites! All shipboard weapons, target that colonization ship! The usurpers must have fled to it!"
Before Komus, the Stellar Pioneer seemed exceptionally small. Fletcher's face was a mask of disdain. In his eyes, although this ship was a bit stronger than the other Imperial vessels, how could a mere colonization ship possibly fight against the supreme psychic-technological creation of his era?
The Stellar Pioneer began its attack. The Nova Cannon, which could evaporate warp energy, struck Komus directly. Although the warp energy surrounding it was vaporized, its sturdy outer armor was more than enough to withstand such a bombardment. The damage was limited, though still better than that of other Imperial shipboard weapons.
Seeing that his attack had not achieved the desired effect, Lucan nevertheless ordered the fleet to advance at full speed.
"Lucan! Your warship can't threaten it! You can't just blindly advance like this! Your ship can't withstand its shipboard weapons!" Guilliman couldn't help but warn him. He thought that the great loss of Scintilla had made Lucan lose his reason.
"Guilliman! I'm not being impulsive... rest assured!"
The Stellar Pioneer entered Komus's attack range. They could even see the glow of energy in its weapon ports. Guilliman's heart was in his throat.
And in the next second, points of light, like a field of stars, flickered into existence throughout the nearby void. It was the light of countless warp jumps. At the same time, the detection arrays on Komus began to blare with innumerable alarms. A dense mass of red dots had suddenly filled the identification system's screen.
What had arrived were the reinforcements from Agathos: the humans, the Protoss, and the Zerg.
The emergency response forces from within the Mongorte Dynasty had all warped to the Stellar Pioneer's side, forming a defensive line in front of it. And the Spear of Adun, radiating psionic fluctuations, warped directly to a position close to Komus, along with a large number of its escort fleet.
The profane Chaos energy in the area battered the Spear of Adun's shields, but it could not affect the arkship or the other Protoss vessels. The Protoss's own psychic power nullified the impact, and the Khala protected their minds from the negative energy. In fact, the dense warp energy was even activating the special Wraithbone material of the Spear of Adun's hull, granting it higher strength and a faster self-repair speed.
And besides the Protoss warships, the Zerg, led by Kerrigan, had also entered the battlefield on a massive scale, riding their Leviathans. This time, the bio-fleet from Char had been deployed in its entirety. The threat posed by Komus had made Lucan hold nothing back. The power of the Zerg was now known to all; there was no longer a need to hide it. Among the nearly three hundred Leviathan bio-ships were ten giant Leviathans. These were almost as large as Imperial cruisers, far exceeding the size of a conventional Leviathan. The largest of them was even comparable to an Imperial heavy cruiser, and this Leviathan had become Kerrigan's flagship.
The moment the Zerg bio-ships appeared, countless streams of biological acid and plasma cannons slammed into Komus's armor. Some Leviathans even charged directly at Komus, trying to tear open its armor with their rams and tendrils.
After the victory in the Cryptus System, the biggest beneficiary had been the Zerg. With the fusion of the two races' genes, it wasn't just the Zerg ground forces that had been improved. After absorbing the genes of the Tyranid Hive Ships, the Zerg bio-ships, which had originally been smaller and weaker in void combat, had now reached the level of the Tyranid bio-ships in terms of size, biological armor strength, and attack power.
And Kerrigan's flagship had been fused from the genes of the Norn-Queen's own Hive Ship. These large bio-ships, like the Brutalisks, could not be produced directly with energy, but had to be evolved from biomass. And the biomass obtained from the victory over the Tyranid tendril had been used to create these large bio-ships. And even more of them were still being gestated on Char.
This was the first time the Zerg had mobilized a fleet of this scale.
Seeing the sudden appearance of the enemy, Fletcher's expression changed again. He couldn't understand why, every time he felt victory was in his grasp, the other party always had a way to suppress or counter him.
"These creatures... what in the world are they?! Olivia, have you ever seen any record of these xenos?"
"No... I have never seen any record of such creatures! Perhaps they were born after we went into slumber. Fletcher, we must be careful. These warships all have high-energy psionic reactions!"
In Komus's detection equipment, both the technologically-advanced Protoss warships and the fleshy Zerg bio-ships were radiating intense psychic signatures. Especially the Spear of Adun.
When did innately psychic races in the galaxy become so cheap?!
The Protoss and Zerg fleets completely surrounded Komus. Its conventional weapons began to operate at full power, firing back. Destructive rays tore through flesh. One after another, the smaller Leviathans were destroyed, but they also released even more flying units. They had successfully covered the advance of the follow-up forces.
The Spear of Adun also began to exchange fire with Komus. Both possessed the ability to self-repair. But the hundred-kilometer-long Spear of Adun still seemed a bit small before the planet-sized Komus. However, its Solarite Beam had become the only weapon on the battlefield that could quickly inflict direct damage on Komus. The star-temperature beam washed over Komus's outer armor, and a part of it began to melt at a rate visible to the naked eye. Looking into the breach, one could already see the corridors within.
"We've opened a breach! Release the Warp Prisms! For Aiur! For Lord Lucan!" Artanis commanded. "Kerrigan! Send your Zerg in with my forces! It will be too difficult to destroy this behemoth with our firepower alone! We must destroy the enemy from within!"
The size of Komus was simply too great. The difficulty of trying to destroy this planet-sized warship with firepower alone could be imagined. After learning that Lucan was in danger, the Protoss and the Zerg had, this time, come out in full force. A large number of Warp Prisms were sent into the breach. And the Leviathans attached themselves directly to the opening. The Zerg were immune to the negative effects of the dense warp energy. A massive number of Leviathans used their tendrils to send a sea of Zerg into Komus.
If you don't know the internal layout, just use a massive number of Zerg to find the way. A number of Brutalisks, acting as the vanguard, tore through one blast door after another. Tzeentch's internal invasion had destroyed a large number of Komus's internal defense facilities, which now made it convenient for Lucan.
"Fletcher! The outer armor has been breached! The enemy has entered the interior of Komus! There are too few Annihilation Engines! We must retreat to the warp!" the Tzeentchian daemon infesting the system reported, providing them with the enemy's numbers and direction of attack.
The Protoss and Zerg's deployment capabilities had stunned the two of them. Just how many troops had they sent in? And the number was rising every second.
"No matter what, send the Annihilation Engines to stop them first! And immediately prepare to jump to the warp!"
"The planet-killer array consumed a massive amount of energy. I need a little time!"
The warp engines within Komus began to accumulate energy again. But the other three gods were clearly not going to provide any more assistance, which made its operation speed much slower.
A special thought was once again guided into the minds of Fletcher and Olivia. Tzeentch's voice was telling them to use their own psychic powers to open warp portals and summon "their army" from the warp. The two of them mobilized their psionic power, and one after another, warp portals were opened. A legion of daemons began to appear from the psychic energy. However, this time, only the daemonic legions of Tzeentch were left. The other three gods, feeling they had been deceived again, were no longer willing to be used by him.
They, along with the Annihilation Engines, launched an attack on the Protoss and Zerg who had entered Komus.
The Zerg and Protoss who had entered Komus were using every means at their disposal to try and destroy the planet-ship and to find the two Men of Gold.
Lucan had stopped Artanis and Kerrigan from joining the boarding action. The internal situation was still unknown. It was safer to have the Zerg and the Zealots scout it out. The Zerg could be expended at will, and a heavily wounded Zealot could be directly warped back to the Spear of Adun.
And to give them even greater combat strength against the Annihilation Engines and the daemons, Lucan also ordered the Tech-priests on the Synaptic Lathe to begin their operation. The responsible Tech-priests immediately activated the pre-set program.
The minds of the hundreds of millions of Ork Boyz in the life-support pods began to be guided and controlled. The images of the Zerg and the Protoss began to appear in their minds. In their eyes, the Zerg and the Protoss had also become the servants of Gork and Mork.
"I fink dem spiky gits an' dem bug gits is dead 'ard! An' I fink dey ain't scared of no weirdboy magic! Let's get 'em!"
As these Ork Boyz all began to "fink" in this direction, a change occurred in the Zerg and Protoss who had landed on Komus. The WAAAGH! energy did not radiate to the entire Zerg and Protoss races. Instead, it was focused solely on these boarding parties. This way, there was enough WAAAGH! energy to strengthen them.
The power of "Ork know-wotz" was activated!
In an instant, every Protoss and Zerg body began to be covered in a green light. The daemons fighting them discovered that the damage from their attacks and spells, which carried the profane rites of Chaos, was becoming smaller and smaller. Previously, a Tzeentchian spell might have been able to instantly incinerate an entire corridor of Zerg. But now, these Zerg could last much longer in the warp-fire, long enough to launch a final attack on the daemons before they died.
If it was like this for the Zerg, then it was even more so for the Zealots. Their resistance to psychic spells was even stronger. And the physical strength of these Protoss and Zerg had also been greatly increased.
Chaos had fought the Greenskins many times in the galaxy. But this was the first time Tzeentch had ever seen the WAAAGH! energy being applied to other races on such a large scale. In the battles between Chaos and the Greenskins, there had been precedents of Orks being controlled and corrupted by Chaos sorcery. But once corrupted, the object of these Chaos Orks' faith would change. They would no longer believe in Gork and Mork, and naturally, they would no longer be able to use the WAAAGH! energy.
Under the enhancement of this special battlefield, the massive number of Zerg and the elite Protoss began to break through one layer of defense after another. Some individual Zerg who had gotten a lot of kills even began to, in defiance of all reason, grow to a much larger size. The same was true for a small number of the Protoss; their control over their psionic powers was also growing stronger, as if they were evolving into Ork Warbosses.
"Olivia! Are the warp engines ready or not?!"
Watching the Zerg and Protoss drawing ever closer, and with his twenty-something Annihilation Engines unable to control all the areas, Fletcher was growing more and more anxious.
"They can be activated!"
"Jump immediately!"
The moment a warship enters the warp is often its most vulnerable. The same was true for Komus. The warship, under continuous bombardment, was beginning to show serious damage. But weathering the attacks, Komus still forced its way into the warp.
But what it did not know was that while its enemies in the material universe were trying to destroy it, the same was true in the warp.
The Emperor's Black Sun had also moved into position.