So the Tyranids really were preparing the next wormhole in advance.
That made the situation even worse.
Four Tyranid bioships had appeared, and two of them were headed for the site where the next wormhole was being formed. If the thing inside that ten-thousand-kilometer-wide wormhole still had not emerged by then, those two Tyranid bioships would likely move on to the next star system ahead of schedule.
So what was the right choice?
If they tried to stop them, they would have to activate the weapon early. But if they did that, they would lose their chance to stop the most dangerous thing of all.
If they did not stop them, then the two bioships and the Hive Fleet they carried still represented a catastrophic threat.
"Activate it!"
One of the Astartes from the Lamenters could not hold back anymore.
In his view, they could not wait any longer. If those two bioships reached the next star system, then with the speed of Tyranid infestation, countless humans would die in a very short time, and the Tyranids would spread even farther.
The next system most likely had no meaningful ability to resist. If it did, it would have already sent reinforcements here.
The xenos would rapidly contaminate Imperial territory, seize countless human worlds, and reduce them all to dead stars.
"Shut your mouth!"
Silt, captain of the Lamenters squad, snapped at him at once.
In truth, he was just as anxious. But this was not something anyone should say lightly, especially not if it might shake morale.
They knew very little about this Lance Plane, but judging from the attitude the Salamanders brothers showed toward him, he was clearly no ordinary figure.
And there was something else.
Silt could sense a strange closeness from him, almost as if they shared the same Primarch's gene-seed.
No. If that were the case, it would not explain the instinctive respect he felt toward him.
It was as if Lance Plane's gene-seed was even more advanced than theirs, closer to a Primarch's own.
Just then, a massive spatial-gravity shock alarm suddenly blared, drawing everyone's attention.
The scale was enormous.
"That is the Webway!"
"The Aeldari Webway?"
A sizable fleet stabbed into the system like a blade.
Under the interference of the Tyranids' Shadow in the Warp, a fleet should not have been able to make such a clean and orderly jump into this system. Clearly, the Imperium had reached out to the Aeldari and borrowed the Webway to bring its fleet here.
"The Webway?"
Kain murmured as he watched the fleet emerge before him.
The Emperor had once tried to build a Webway of His own, only to be sabotaged in the process, forcing Him to sit upon the Golden Throne, or as some would put it, the golden toilet.
The Webway could be understood this way: if the Warp was an extremely dangerous ocean, then ships traveling through it were submarines, always at risk of attack by the dangerous creatures lurking in the depths. The Webway, by contrast, was like an underwater tunnel built beneath that ocean. Traveling through the tunnel was far safer.
The Aeldari controlled portions of the Webway, and the Imperium had borrowed one of those routes to enter this system successfully.
Less than ten minutes after the fleet emerged and joined the battle, it immediately shifted toward the region where the wormhole was being constructed.
With that fleet thrusting into the conflict, the war instantly reached a fever pitch. The construction of the Tyranids' next-stage wormhole was interrupted.
At the same time, Kain and Archmagos Cawl's quantum communication device received a message. It was a pager-like note informing him of the decision that had been made.
They would wait for the thing on the other side of the gigantic wormhole to come through, then activate the dimensional flattening weapon.
So his ghost ship would remain silent until the thing beyond the wormhole appeared.
Alternatively, if the Tyranids attempted to construct another next-stage wormhole before that thing arrived, they would have no choice but to activate it then.
The Tyranid bioships absolutely could not be allowed to enter the next star system.
In the blink of an eye, half a day passed in silence. The fleet that had arrived through the Aeldari Webway had already lost two-thirds of its strength.
At this rate, the second wormhole would soon begin forming again.
"This is!"
"Is it coming?"
"What the hell is that thing?"
They could not yet see anything emerging from the wormhole, but Kain suddenly felt a violent impact against his mind.
The Astartes clearly felt it as well, and they seemed to be hit far harder than he was. Their brains must have felt as if someone had smashed them with a hammer. Several of them swayed, dizzy enough to almost lose their footing.
That mental impact, or rather, that psychic impact, caused problems across the entire system. The Imperial fleets, the T'au Empire fleets, and every other force still locked in battle suddenly faltered.
In that instant, countless people may have lost consciousness. It was not impossible that some had their minds destroyed outright.
After all, even Astartes had been left dizzy enough to nearly collapse. For ordinary mortals, instant brain death would not have been surprising.
Kain's pupils widened, then contracted sharply.
Something was finally emerging from the wormhole.
If that wormhole was compared to a birth canal, then the thing forcing its way out was a hideous, grotesque egg.
The egg was larger than the mouth of the wormhole itself. It looked almost as if it were stuck in a difficult birth, slowly stretching the opening wider bit by bit as it forced its way into the system. Little by little, its true form became visible.
When the layer of distorted space-time membrane on its surface vanished, the portion that had entered the system was clearly exposed.
"Is that their nest?"
"Did their entire nest come through?"
The voices of the two Astartes captains were grim.
Just as they said, the thing looked like a nest. It resembled an anthill and a beehive at the same time, except it was a colossal structure thirteen thousand kilometers across, comparable to a planet.
On closer inspection, the planet-sized nest also appeared to be a single gigantic living organism. Terrifying tentacles could be seen writhing out from some of its openings.
From a distance, it looked like a bizarre sphere covered in sparse, unnaturally long hair.
In the next second, the thing grew legs like a crab.
No. Spider legs would be a better description.
It was like a spider squeezing through a space far too narrow for its body. Once it reached the mouth of the opening, its legs stretched out first, braced against both sides, and began dragging the rest of its body out.
Now all they had to do was wait until the moment it fully emerged, then activate the dimensional flattening weapon.
Hm?
Kain suddenly frowned.
The battlefield had changed in an abnormal way. The Tyranids from every direction had suddenly abandoned their firefights with the human and allied fleets. They were moving toward him.
His ship, hidden in quantum ghost mode, seemed to have been detected.
Yes. They had definitely detected it.
Because they had just been hit by that psychic shock.
Just as Kain realized why they had nearly been discovered, another wave of psychic impact swept over them. More than half the Astartes dropped to one knee, unable to remain standing, and Kain's expression changed drastically.
He had been attacked too.
But the attack he suffered was different from the one aimed at the Astartes. He now understood that he had been attacked indirectly, while the Astartes had been attacked directly.
In other words, the Astartes' presence aboard his ship had exposed them.
The Astartes were not blanks. They had soul reflections in the Warp, and the Tyranid Hive Mind had discovered the hidden ship through those soul reflections.
And after this indirect attack struck him, the Hive Mind confirmed his existence.
That meant he had been locked onto.
Now the Astartes had become routers for the Hive Mind to attack him.
They could not wait any longer. A terrible premonition surged through him. He had to activate the dimensional flattening weapon immediately.
He began activating it at once.
Bang!
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]