21: Chapter 21 The Ultramarines Have Arrived. The bug says: I've been waiting for you for a long time.

The moment the Ultramarines 7th Expeditionary Fleet exited the Warp, the ninety-six Brood Lords in orbit above Dead Silence-42 turned simultaneously.

Captain Ortron stood on the command deck of the battle barge "hammer of macragge", watching the dense clusters of dark grey lights in the tactical holographic projection.

He had lived on the battlefields of the Astartes for two centuries, having seen Ork space hulks, Eldar ghost fleets, and Tyranid hive fleets.

But he had never seen orbital defenses like this—those lights were not randomly scattered predators, but a web of fire woven with mathematical precision, with each Brood Lord guarding a pre-calibrated firing sector, leaving no blind spots between them.

"They know from which direction we would Warp in," Ortron said. It was not a question.

Bern stood at his side, power halberd in hand, the silver light of his helmet visor overlapping with the tactical projection.

He had been studying this opponent since their first engagement at the tomb, from its technique in cutting through the Grey Knights' formation to the tactical rhythm of its suppression of the Imperial Navy's anti-aircraft batteries.

He knew better than anyone on this ship what was about to happen.

"They are waiting for us; they locked onto us the moment we emerged from the Warp. This is not a reaction, it is a prediction. They have calculated our trajectory."

The Tech-Officers on the bridge had already begun calling out numbers.

The first wave of parasite swarms, numbering over eighty thousand, was being released simultaneously from the four-layered orbital fire net, fusing upon collision into six high-density torrents that locked onto the trajectories of every capital ship in the expeditionary fleet.

"All-fleet anti-aircraft formation," Ortron's voice was as steady as if he were on the training grounds.

"Switch Lance Weapon arrays to scatter mode, Void Shields to full power, all strike cruisers move to cover positions."

The Ultramarines fleet began to shift formation.

Their movements were more than an order of magnitude faster than the 37th Garrison Fleet—the battle barge's Void Shields were fully charged ninety seconds before the parasite torrents arrived, wrapping the hull in three layers of energy shields.

Twelve strike cruisers deployed on the flanks, with each cruiser's Lance Weapon array locking onto the vanguard of a parasite torrent.

The Astartes naval officers did not need to shout, nor did they need to repeat orders; their reaction speeds, honed by genetic modification and decades of real combat training, had reached a level nearly on par with The Swarm.

This was destined to be different from previous battles.

This time, The Swarm was not facing ordinary human officers like Heinrich, but the Ultramarines—the greatest war machine of the Imperium of Man.

The moment the first wave of parasites struck the Void Shields, massive clouds of purple-green corrosive mist exploded in the void.

The Void Shields vibrated at a frequency of dozens of times per second, evaporating the parasites' corrosive fluid into harmless plasma gas.

The Lance Weapon scatter mode erected six high-energy photon walls in front of the fleet, burning the subsequent torrents to ash in swathes.

"Have they broken through?" Ortron stared at the tactical projection.

"Negative. Void Shields are stable. Lance Weapon interception rate is ninety-seven point three percent. The parasite swarms cannot penetrate the main fleet's defensive line."

No one on the bridge cheered. Not Ortron, not Bern, not a single Ultramarine.

They had read this script in the battle reports—the first wave was to suppress sensors, the second wave was the killing blow.

Ortron ordered the entire fleet to maintain scans of the low orbital direction, ensuring they were not blinded by the plasma clouds from the previous wave.

While the parasite swarms drew all the anti-aircraft fire, the main formation of Brood Lords ascended silently from the other side of the debris belt.

They had no wings—the vacuum did not require wings; those wing membranes were merely tools used to adjust posture in the atmosphere and at the edge of planetary gravity.

In deep space orbit, the Brood Lords used a different method of propulsion: high-pressure gas ejected from their carapace chambers condensed into thin, dark grey trails in the vacuum, accelerating them to speeds approaching the full speed of an Imperial frigate.

The first assault wave of sixteen Brood Lords charged directly toward the "Eternal Watch", a strike cruiser on the outermost perimeter of the expeditionary fleet.

When the impact alarm sounded, the captain of the Eternal Watch only had time to say: "They are too fast—"

A Brood Lord smashed through the outer layer of the Eternal Watch's Void Shield.

The Void Shield was designed to counter energy weapons and high-velocity projectiles—high-energy particles, plasma shells, macro-cannon armor-piercing rounds.

It was not designed to counter a living organism that would make micro-adjustments to its angle in the final half-second before impact.

The Brood Lord made an incredibly precise deflection the moment it contacted the Void Shield—it tilted its body slightly, and its mono-molecular bone blade cut into the Void Shield's energy barrier with the smallest cross-sectional area, using the energy-deflecting properties of its adamantine chitin to tear open a fissure that existed for only a fraction of a second.

This fissure was not large enough for the entire Brood Lord to pass through, but it was sufficient for all the remaining parasites in its chambers to be shot inside the shield.

Four thousand parasites poured through the fissure.

They did not strike the armor, but instead hit the bridge observation windows of the Eternal Watch directly.

The observation windows were made of diamond-reinforced glass, capable of withstanding small arms fire, but they could not hold up against the successive impacts of four thousand parasites carrying concentrated digestive fluids.

The glass cracked on the third impact and shattered on the seventh, and the remaining parasites flooded into the bridge.

Depressurization took only two seconds to sweep all officers on the bridge who were not wearing power armor into the vacuum.

The command chain of the Eternal Watch was broken.

Three Brood Lords took advantage of the moment it lost control to ascend to the front, their mono-molecular bone blades cutting into the hull along the armor seams beneath the bridge, severing the main power conduits.

The strike cruiser was paralyzed in darkness and depressurization; two-thirds of the Ultramarines landing squads on board were still in the hangar waiting for the landing indicator lights to turn on—they never did.

The hangar doors never opened again.

"Eternal Watch command chain incapacitated," the Tech-Officer's voice trembled for the first time.

"Power systems severed, Void Shields extinguished, bridge depressurized—the entire ship is silent."

Ortron's fist slammed against the edge of the command console, denting the adamantine surface.

"They were aiming for the bridge," Bern said. "It never intended to fight a fleet battle with us from the start—it wants to kill everyone capable of making decisions."

Ortron looked up, his voice still calm, but his gaze sharp.

"We are not here to fight a fleet battle with it. Orders: All landing troops from Ortron's Company and Vito's Company, drop onto the Hive City Ruins. Target—the xenos command node."

He paused for a second, then added: "For the Emperor. For Guilliman."

The Ultramarines began the tactic they were best at—the decapitation strike.

This was also what Marcus had repeatedly emphasized in the intelligence he gave them: this target was not fighting in the Tyranid way, it was using Astartes methods to counter the Astartes.

Since that was the case, they would settle it on the battlefield using Astartes methods.

Sixty Thunderhawk Gunships were catapulted from the hangars of the three battle barges, each carrying ten Ultramarines.

Two full companies of troops, plus the remnants of the Grey Knights strike squad, dove at high speed through the Brood Lords' fire net.

The Brood Lords attempted to intercept, but the Thunderhawk Gunships' flight speed was almost equal to the parasite pursuit, and the pilots' evasive maneuvers had been practiced repeatedly in hundreds of simulations—every time a Brood Lord's bone blade drew near, the gunships ejected lateral thrust with millisecond reactions, narrowly grazing past the ionization glow of the mono-molecular blades.

Some gunships were shot down, but the majority broke through the orbital defenses and plunged into the atmosphere.

The surface of the Hive City Ruins rapidly enlarged under the gunships' searchlights—the ruins bombed by Lance Weapons, the crumbling walls covered in creep—the Ultramarines leaped from the hatches, their power armor's shock-absorber thrusters ignited at ten meters, and sixty blue figures landed simultaneously amidst flames and dust, burning the creep of The Swarm into charred patches.

Ortron personally led the first assault group.

His Power Sword was already drawn the moment he landed, the blade glowing with a ghostly blue light in the dim shimmer of the creep.

Behind him were twenty veteran Terminators, each carrying a Storm Bolter or assault cannon on their shoulder, muzzles pointed in all directions—they knew that Zergling could be buried under every inch of creep around them.

"Search for the underground entrance," Ortron ordered. "Once found, blow it open immediately."

A Terminator scanned the stratum thirty meters deep with a seismic sensor and discovered a vertical passage beneath the altar of the collapsed cathedral in the center of the Hive City Ruins.

Ortron did not wait for the combat engineers, nor did he call for reserves.

He drew a cross on the altar with his Power Sword and then detonated a melta bomb.

Fire erupted, debris scattered, and the creep was torn apart by the shockwave, revealing a circular passage below that emitted a purple light.

Deep within the passage, the Brood Queen's Hive Mind node sensed the breach.

Four Ultralisks were gathering from underground, their mono-molecular bone blades trailing four streaks of cold light in the darkness.

From deep in the passage came a new command from the Brood Queen—pulsing rhythmically, that specific bio-electric rhythm meant "free hunt".

Ortron jumped into the passage first.

His power armor's searchlight cut through the darkness, and what he saw was a tunnel completely wrapped in creep, with four pairs of orange lights rapidly enlarging at the end of the tunnel.

"Ultralisks," he said over the comms channel. "Four of them. Engaging head-on."

The Terminators formed a firing formation behind him, the ammunition chains of their Storm Bolters beginning to rotate.

The four Ultralisks charged at full speed from the depths of the tunnel, their sixty-ton bodies shaking the walls of the creep as they ran in the narrow space, causing the entire tunnel to vibrate.

Ortron did not order a volley.

He waited for the Ultralisks to charge within fifty meters, then gave a hand signal.

Twenty Storm Bolters opened fire simultaneously, hitting the carapace on the head of the leading Ultralisk in succession.

The Bolter's armor-piercing cores sparked against the adamantine chitin, and while the carapace cracked, it did not stop the creature's momentum.

Ortron dodged to the side, and the mono-molecular bone blade grazed past his shoulder pauldron, cutting through the ceramite at the edge of the pauldron.

"Disperse! Fight individually!" The Terminators split into four squads, isolating the four Ultralisks and The Swarms of Zergling following behind into four separate combat zones.

The struggle unfolded simultaneously in the corridors of the three-level underground nest, with sparks from adamantine chitin colliding with Power Swords flying everywhere.

Amidst the overload alarms of his power armor's servomotors, Ortron used his Power Sword to pierce the left front knee joint of the Ultralisk in front of him—the wound was not deep, but it was enough to slow the Ultralisk down.

The veteran Terminators took the opportunity to stick a melta bomb onto the crack in its carapace.

Alarms, explosions, the sound of shattering chitin—the entire tunnel became a furnace.

This battle was fought in meters, and every step forward cost the price of a tunnel.

But the Ultramarines continued to fight on.

After paying the price of three Terminators completely destroyed and five severely damaged, two Ultralisks finally collapsed with a roar as their knee joints were severed by the concentrated fire and blades of the Ultramarines.

The other two Ultralisks were pinned to the tunnel walls by their own severed mono-molecular bone blades, their corpses still twitching.

In orbit, the Brood Lords' offensive was barely held outside the main fleet's defensive line by the Void Shields, but they continued to release parasites to deplete the Ultramarines' anti-aircraft ammunition.

Two strike cruisers had already been crippled in close combat, and a third was reporting overheating of its Void Shield generator.

The fire underground and the explosions in orbit lit up simultaneously on this planet, separated by an entire layer of the crust, echoing each other.

The Brood Queen monitored all battlefield data from deep underground, with the Hive Mind interface scrolling through the Brood Lords' ammunition consumption, Ultralisk damage assessment, and the incubation progress of the leviathan mothership.

The leviathan mothership's heartbeat frequency was accelerating.

The assault speed of Ortron's Company exceeded The Swarm's interception capabilities, but they were stepping, step by step, into an even denser defensive line.