Chapter 227: The Endless Swarm
The Cybertron Civilization alone would never have defeated the Sharkticon legions and Robot Guards. Even victory would have demanded an unconscionable price in Cybertronian lives.
But the Human Empire's intervention shattered that equation.
Under overwhelming Imperial firepower, the Sharkticons' numerical advantage became meaningless. They were massacred wholesale, reduced to burning wreckage that tumbled across Quintessa's scarred surface.
The Quintessons were formidable. Their civilization ran deep, built on millennia of cruel experimentation and conquest. But against the combined might of two great powers—the Human Empire and Cybertron—even their full strength could not avert annihilation.
The war lasted five hours and seventeen minutes before Quintessa fell.
While the Emperor and his chosen Primarchs campaigned alongside Primus against Unicron, the four Primarchs who remained in the home universe were far from idle.
Horus had led the Shadow Wolves beyond the galactic rim. There, in the vast darkness between galaxies, they encountered something that defied imagination: a Tyranid hive fleet of unprecedented scale.
Contact was inevitable. So was conflict.
Horus in the Name of the Wolf God, Let the Universe Burn
"They're here."
Abaddon stood upon the command platform at the apex of the Soul of Vengeance's bridge, his gaze cold as he studied the projection beneath the observation dome. The mechanical drone of the ship's systems mixed with the controlled urgency of the bridge crew's vox-chatter.
Red contact markers appeared at the projection's edge. One became dozens. Dozens became hundreds. Hundreds became thousands, tens of thousands, until they merged into a single crimson tide that stretched beyond the hololith's capacity to display.
The other three members of the Mournival stood beside him. Loken and the senior officers maintained position further back, their enhanced eyes tracking the swarm's approach.
"Then let them break upon the Empire's shield." Horus rose from his throne, his towering form radiating an aura of absolute authority. His face was sculpted perfection—sharp sea-green eyes set with amber pupils that held the wisdom to pierce any mystery.
Even among the Astartes, a Primarch stood apart. Over Horus's broad shoulders draped the pelt of some great beast, a trophy from battles already legend.
"The enemy's scale exceeds projections," Torgaddon observed, his tone measured despite the astronomical figures scrolling across the tactical displays. "I suspect these creatures have saturated the entire intergalactic void."
"What magnitude of consumption must fuel such numbers?" Hastur Sejanus added quietly. "How many star systems have they already devoured?"
"However many there are, we will annihilate them." Horus moved to the railing, surveying the multi-tiered decks below. His voice carried the weight of absolute certainty. "The Shadow Wolves have never known defeat. Not in the past. Not in the future."
He turned to his officers. "Order the fleet to battle stations. Engage with First Tactical Formation. We will be the blade that cuts through this swarm."
"Lord Horus." Even the unruly Abaddon offered respectful salute.
"Do you have concerns, First Captain?"
"Their numbers will overwhelm us through sheer mass, regardless of our firepower superiority."
"First Captain." Horus smiled faintly. "We stand in the void, thousands of light-years beyond the galactic rim. There are no inhabited worlds here. No civilian populations. No concerns about collateral damage." His expression hardened. "Inform all captains: full weapons authorization. They may employ every weapon in their arsenal, provided they avoid friendly fire."
"Every weapon?" Hastur Sejanus's eyes widened. "My lord, such firepower could shatter the fabric of reality itself."
"This is barren space—no life, no resources worth preserving. If we tear it apart, time will eventually repair the damage. Go. Relay my command."
Horus returned his gaze to the viewport, his sea-green eyes focusing on the distant swarm. "In the name of the Wolf God, let the universe burn."
The Gene-Engine's amplification extended his perception beyond normal dimensional limits. He saw through space and time, glimpsing the Tyranid bio-ships directly.
They glowed with a damp luminescence against the cosmic dark. Teardrop-shaped vessels covered in sensory tendrils breached the void like some nightmare tide. Their numbers defied counting—an endless sea of vessels stretching to infinity.
Horus saw only green light: the bioluminescence of plasma thrusters, countless millions strong.
"Attack." His voice resonated across every vox-channel in the fleet. "We will crush every xenos organism attempting to breach our galaxy. We will eradicate this ravenous species completely."
"First Tactical Formation. Maximum authorization. All weapons cleared for unrestricted use."
The communications officer rose, repeating the Warmaster's command to every designated vessel in the armada.
Across the fleet, crew stations erupted into orchestrated chaos. Technicians responsible for force field maintenance calibrated energy matrices that stabilized hull integrity. Parameters were adjusted for the coming holocaust.
Priests in the energy control sanctums transmitted data to weapon departments for precision targeting calibration.
The fleet shifted formation and accelerated, driving into the swarm like a dagger aimed at the heart.
The Tyranid ships came in countless variations. Some resembled slugs or void whales. Most bore similarities to marine organisms, magnified a millionfold. Some mounted massive blades or armored beaks at their prows. Others dominated through sheer mass and writhing tentacles.
Ships with ramming prows mingled with those bearing colossal bio-weapons—controlled by synaptic executors or brood mothers—hidden within vast, eternally gaping maws.
Finned ships. Tailed ships. Ships with atrophied limbs vestigial from some ancient evolution.
Many vessels possessed elongated tails that coiled like serpents, attempting to ensnare Imperial ships that ventured too close. Others bore the chitinous carapaces common to Tyranid organisms.
Every biological combination imaginable manifested within the hive fleet. All of it assimilated. All of it altered. All of it enslaved to the Hive Mind's singular will.
Within their diversity lay terrifying uniformity.
The Tyranid bio-cannons possessed far shorter range than Imperial weapons. When the fleets remained millions of kilometers apart, the Human Empire's artillery opened fire.
Massive ship batteries glowed with building energy before launching annihilation shells the size of hab-containers. Lances and laser beams wove through the void, bright as newborn stars, forming ephemeral constellations.
Tyranid ships lacked void shields but compensated with layered defenses: accumulated ice, captured asteroid fragments, and secreted biological compounds forming thick protective shells. Their capital ships also projected unique Tyranid psychic fields capable of neutralizing most kinetic attacks.
The opening barrage tore through bio-ships regardless, reducing them to shattered carapaces and frozen chunks of biomass. Crystallized fluids formed expanding clouds between the corpses.
Within hours, the debris field stretched across millions of kilometers—and continued growing.
But the swarm's numbers were endless. For every ship destroyed, a hundred more surged forward to replace it.
"Activate spatial weapon. Dimensional Collapse Beam."
The Soul of Vengeance's weapons officer's voice cut through the vox-traffic.
A luminous portal manifested before the Gloriana-class battleship. A concentrated beam entered the gateway and emerged millions of kilometers distant, plunging into the swarm's heart.
Three-dimensional space collapsed into two dimensions like a cascading waterfall. The collapse radius expanded exponentially, triggering a chain reaction across hundreds of thousands of cubic kilometers.
For the densely packed Tyranid fleet, it was apocalyptic.
Bio-ships fell into the collapsing dimensions one after another. Every atom of their being was imprinted with perfect precision onto the flattened plane of reality—not a single particle missing.
Yet the Warhammer universe differed fundamentally from realms governed purely by physical law. Where the immaterium remained active, reality possessed resilience. When the two-dimensionalization reached critical mass, the Warp pushed back, allowing spacetime to restore its natural state.
But the creatures caught in that dimensional collapse, upon returning to three dimensions, were torn apart by the spacetime restructuring. They became puddles of shattered chitin and liquefied flesh.
The Imperial fleet deployed other extinction-level weapons in concert. Induced singularities. Temporal acceleration. Causality reversal.
Space was cut like parchment and shattered like glass. Time became chaotic—accelerating forward in some zones, rewinding rapidly in others—ripping bio-ships into component molecules.
Spacetime itself became a weapon wielded by the Human Empire.
Psychic thought-waves rippled through the void, severing the Hive Mind's connection to its bio-ships.
The Imperial fleet carved through the Tyranid swarm like a blade through flesh, massacring every vessel in its path.
"A truly exhilarating slaughter." Abaddon smiled as a thirty-kilometer hive ship—five kilometers at its widest point—disintegrated under the Soul of Vengeance's concentrated firepower.
The colossal creature's body was pierced by lance strikes. Even in death, its limbs spasmed wildly in the airless void.
"Are these xenos truly endless?" Torgaddon stared at the tactical display, his usual humor strained. "We've been killing them for hours."
The Human Empire fleet had carved a path deep into the Tyranid formation through sheer firepower superiority. Yet the enemy's numbers showed no sign of diminishing. In every direction, the viewports revealed nothing but bioships—an infinite tide of xenos craft.
The battle sprawled across tens of billions of kilometers. The Tyranid fleet completely saturated that volume.
It was impossible to comprehend the swarm's true scale.
More critically, the Tyranids were recycling destroyed bio-ships in real-time, converting them back into raw biomass and reconstructing them as new vessels to be redeployed immediately.
"Their numbers are too great," Loken admitted, his brow furrowed.
[End of Chapter]
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