30: Chapter 30: The Ultramarines' Third Counterattack – They Discover the Queen is Already Waiting for Them.

The return signal of the 7th Expeditionary Fleet of the Ultramarines appeared on the periphery of the Metallis system seventeen minutes after the Brood Queen captured the Forge Temple.

Captain Ortron did not wait for follow-up reinforcements. The moment his battle barge, the hammer of macragge, exited the Warp, it entered an assault trajectory. The Void Shield on the hull was charged to its limit, and twelve strike cruisers deployed into a wedge-shaped assault formation on the flanks. Ortron stood before the bridge command console, the scorch marks from the creep digestive fluids of Dead Silence-42 still remaining on his power armor—he had not changed his armor. After retreating from that purple planet, he had gone directly into the Warp and stayed there long enough for his company to complete weapon maintenance and recover the gene-seeds of the fallen, then immediately returned.

"The orbital defense line of Metallis has lost all contact. The signal of Forge Master Omicron-7 has disappeared." The Tech-Officer's voice trembled with disbelief, "The core area of the Iron Furnace has been covered by xenos biomass. Temple area—no Imperial identification codes can be scanned."

Ortron did not speak. He looked at the Forge World in the tactical projection, wrapped tightly in industrial smog. Beneath the gray-yellow clouds, the dark purple outlines of leviathan motherships could be faintly seen moving slowly in low orbit. The number of those outlines made him rethink his next orders twice in his mind.

"Strike cruisers, do not approach low orbit. The xenos anti-aircraft network will cause the Void Shield to overheat within minutes." He turned to Bern, "I need the Grey Knights' psychic resonance scan to determine if there are any survivors inside the temple, then we will cut in from the side of the atmosphere and descend directly onto the gap in the temple dome—that is the only entrance at the moment, and also our only chance."

Bern nodded. His power halberd was in his hand, and the psychic flame on the blade flickered in the bridge lights.

Five Thunderhawk Gunships were ejected from the hangar of the hammer of macragge. When they passed through the Metallis atmosphere, the heat-resistant ceramic on the hull burned red from intense friction. They did not follow the standard approach route—during normal landing operations, the Imperial Navy would first clear a safe airborne corridor in high orbit, but the orbit of Metallis was currently completely blockaded by leviathan motherships and Brood Lords, and a standard route simply did not exist. The gunship pilots cut in at low altitude along a deep valley on the side of the atmosphere, using the cover of smelting smoke and industrial exhaust to pass through the radar blind spots of The Swarm's anti-aircraft network.

The gap in the dome of the Forge Temple rapidly enlarged under the searchlights of the gunships. The five gunships entered the gap in a tight formation, and the melta cutters on both sides of the fuselage sparked with blinding blue-white sparks in the narrow space. Ortron was the first to jump off the gunship. His power armor shattered the creep on the temple floor upon landing, and the fragments were crushed into dust by the Ultramarines following closely behind before they even hit the ground.

"Five-man squads, search the temple core area. Objective: Find and destroy the xenos command node." Ortron ordered on the communication channel. His Power Sword was already drawn, the blade glowing with a ghostly blue light in the dim green light of the temple.

The Terminators fanned out behind him, and the ammo chains of the storm Bolters began to rotate. The structure inside the temple was more complex than recorded in Imperial archives—the Adeptus Mechanicus had transformed this building into a labyrinth over the past few millennia, and every floor was packed with pipes, cables, and giant gears of unknown purpose. The creep had crawled over most of the walls, but when the Ultramarines' searchlight swept over a corner, Ortron noticed an abnormal detail: the creep did not cover the black wall in the deepest part of the temple. It was avoiding it. The purple mycelium stopped spreading neatly about half a meter from the surface of the black stone, as if it had hit an invisible fence.

"Bern, here." Ortron aimed his searchlight at the black stone wall. Bern walked over and placed his palm against the surface of the black stone. His psychic sense was drained in an instant—not suppressed, not countered, but the familiar whisper of the Warp that he heard when he activated his psychic powers suddenly disappeared completely, and his whole brain became so quiet that he was at a loss for a moment. This was black stone, an ancient material that absorbed all psychic energy and suppressed the Warp dimension. He had read about it in Inquisition archives, but had never seen such a large piece in actual combat.

"That is not an Imperial structure. The Adeptus Mechanicus built the temple on top of it." Bern withdrew his hand, his voice carrying a rare sense of awe as it came from his helmet, "If The Swarm can utilize this thing—"

He didn't finish. An insectoid screech echoed from the depths of the temple.

The Brood Queen's voice did not come from the mouth of any Zerg unit; it was a multi-frequency sound wave resonating simultaneously from all the creep pipes on the four walls of the temple, broadcasting her will directly to every human present. She crouched in the depths of the temple, the lattice structure on her gray-purple carapace shimmering with a metallic luster as sunlight shone through the gap. Four Carnifexes stepped slowly out of the shadows behind her, their mono-molecular bone blades dragging cold light across the temple floor.

The Ultramarines stared at the Brood Queen across half the temple, both sides able to smell the scent of blood on the other. Bern recognized this Brood Queen—he had once split her carapace with a power halberd in the catacombs of Dead Silence-42. Now, harder, denser new carapace had grown where it had been split, and the lattice arrangement of the adamantium chitin on the surface was more regular than the time he had seen her.

"It is you." Bern said, "I failed to kill you in the tomb last time, but I will this time."

The Brood Queen did not answer the challenge. She responded in a more direct way—the creep peeled off the four walls of the temple simultaneously, revealing the intertwined Drone excavation tunnels beneath. Hundreds of Zerglings surged out of the tunnels. They did not charge, but quickly climbed up the temple walls along the dome, occupying every firing port and maintenance platform. This formation clearly indicated her intention—not to repel the Ultramarines, but to trap them in the temple. Bern thought she would fight one-on-one, but she did not. She was telling him: This is not a place for the leaders of both sides to duel, but a trap she had set for the entire 7th Company of the Ultramarines.

The battle exploded the moment Ortron's Power Sword collided with the bone blade of the first Carnifex.

The Terminators were locked in a melee with the Zerglings. The narrow interior of the temple limited large-scale deployment by both sides, but it also amplified the impact of every weapon collision. A Terminator hit the facial carapace of a Carnifex continuously with a storm Bolter, and the cracks gouged out by the armor-piercing Bolter cores caused the Carnifex to briefly lose the vision of one sensor. Another Terminator seized the opportunity to strike the same spot with a power fist, driving the mono-molecular bone blade into the root joint of the upper jaw carapace from the Carnifex's mouth.

But the Brood Queen had already calculated the standard tactics of the Ultramarines against Carnifexes. After the Terminators finished their concentrated fire on the first Carnifex, the Zerglings lurking on the temple dome jumped down simultaneously, knocking the Terminator who didn't have time to retract his fist to the ground. Bern roared and swept away The Swarm of Zerglings with his power halberd, only to find that the Brood Queen in front of him was moving towards the black stone wall—she was not retreating, she was leading him there.

"You want to get close to the black stone." Bern swung his halberd in pursuit, "Because your anti-psychic weapon principle is the same as it. You want the black stone to turn this temple into a dead zone and disable my psychic powers."

The Brood Queen did not answer. But the moment Bern's power halberd slashed towards her shoulder armor, he saw her response—she did not want to use the black stone to disable his psychic powers. She wanted to see how much combat power was left in a Grey Knights Justicar who had been stripped of all Warp power by the black stone.

The psychic flame of the power halberd extinguished suddenly at the edge of the black stone wall. Bern's movement did not stop—his combat skills did not rely entirely on psychic powers, and the weight of the power halberd itself and the mono-molecular cutting power of the blade were still lethal—but he was accustomed to using psychic powers to enhance reaction speed, and habits create dependency in battle. His next block was slow, and the Brood Queen's sickle blade cut into his chest armor from the side, leaving a long dent on his chest armor with its adamantium chitin edge.

Ortron rushed over from the flank, his Power Sword blocking the Brood Queen's pursuit. His swordsmanship was famous among the Ultramarines, but after exchanging blows with the Brood Queen at close range for several rounds, he found that this insect's combat data had already loaded predictions of his sword style—she recognized his sword moves. Every time, she could make preemptive evasions based on the Astartes combat models accumulated from previous encounters.

"7th Company, retreat! The whole team retreat to the Thunderhawk Gunship!" Ortron ordered on the communication channel. He found that these insects were not pursuing with full force. They were just forcing the Ultramarines towards the periphery of the temple, pushing them towards the gunship landing point like herding sheep. The Brood Queen had no intention of annihilating the Ultramarines—she wanted them to leave alive. Leaving survivors for the Ultramarines allowed them to bring everything that happened here back to Terra, letting the Empire know that the black stone was in the hands of The Swarm.

Ortron was the last to board the gunship. He looked back at the depths of the temple. The Brood Queen was standing in front of the black stone wall, her orange eyes watching him motionlessly in the gloom. A few extremely subtle cold green light patterns appeared on the surface of the black stone behind her—the quantum link of Nephilak was connecting. The arrangement of those light patterns was completely different from the Necron text he had seen on the battlefield of Dead Silence-42, but their meaning did not need translation. They were saying: This piece of black stone is no longer the Empire's.

When the Thunderhawk Gunship rushed out of the dome gap, no Imperial ship identification codes could be seen in the low orbit of Metallis. The Ultramarines 7th Expeditionary Fleet retreated from the battlefield again, but this time they did not return with everyone. The remains and gene-seeds of five Terminators were left on the creep of the black stone temple, dragged underground by the Zerglings.

The Brood Queen sent the battle report to the Overmind. The Overmind was examining the energy output curve of the black stone—after being reactivated by the Necron quantum link, it was powering the entire Swarm industrial system with higher efficiency than before. The Forge World Metallis, the Empire's largest armor production line in the Ultima Segmentum, now belonged to The Swarm.