34: In Chapter 34, when the orbital fleet was surrounded, the Inquisitor realized a problem.

I am rewriting this chapter.

The battle in orbit exploded into chaos the moment the Macragge's Pride broke through the atmosphere.

The Imperial Fleet formed a wedge formation, and the orange-red beams of the Lance Weapon volley lit up half the sky.

Marcus Aurelian stood on the bridge of the Wrath of the Emperor, hands clasped behind his back, watching the light points of twenty leviathan motherships on the tactical projection.

"Report, the first volley hit, the target's outer defenses have sustained—"

Before the Tech-Officer could finish, eight new light points suddenly appeared on the tactical projection.

Eight.

Emerging from the gravity reefs.

Marcus's pupils constricted sharply.

He had seen countless traps in his life, but he had never seen one timed so perfectly—exactly during the window when all Lance Weapons of the Wrath of the Emperor were recharging, exactly at the half-second when the Void Shield frequency was switching and exposed.

Eight dark purple trails streaked across the void.

A cruiser at the rear of the Wrath of the Emperor was instantly pierced, its engine compartment exploding into a fireball.

Before the burning wreckage could drift away, a second armor-piercing shell penetrated the bridge of another frigate.

"Rearguard fleet! Contract to the right flank! Now!"

It was too late.

Marcus's order was still echoing in the communication channel when the fourth armor-piercing shell penetrated the Void Shield on the flank of the Wrath of the Emperor; the bridge floor jolted violently, and all the emergency lights on the ceiling lit up.

Several Tech-Officers fell from their seats.

"The Void Shield is still holding!" the first mate shouted, "But the outer hull armor has been torn open!"

Marcus steadied himself against the command console.

He stared at the eight leviathan motherships flanking from behind in the tactical projection—the lattice layers on their carapaces were thicker than other hive ships, and their main gun charging frequency was faster.

This was not a hastily assembled reinforcement force; this was an ambush force specifically left to wait for him.

The xenos knew from the beginning that the Imperial Fleet would assemble from this direction.

They had hidden the eight strongest hive ships in the gravity reefs, waiting for the very moment his entire fleet pressed forward and exposed its retreat path.

"This thing…" Marcus's voice squeezed through his teeth, "It is teaching me a lesson."

Meanwhile, the battle on the surface was equally intense.

Captain Sebastian led a squad of Terminators to force a landing through the gap in the dome, and the moment his feet touched the ground, he was surrounded by bugs.

It wasn't the wave-after-wave rush of Zergling like before—it was Zergling surging out simultaneously from six directions, twelve passageways, and twenty-four ventilation shafts.

They were not charging randomly; they were precisely timing their assaults to hit during the intervals when the Terminators were reloading.

"Left! Give me suppressive fire on the left!"

Sebastian's Power Sword cut down two Zergling, the disruption field on the blade spraying a shower of blue-white sparks.

The veteran Terminators behind him opened fire with Storm Bolters, the Bolter rounds exploding into clouds of purple-green blood mist in the darkness.

But the bugs just kept coming, no matter how many they killed.

"Where are the Grey Knights? I need psychic suppression!"

Bern's voice came through the communication channel, with the background sounds of violent explosions and unintelligible insect chittering: "The blackstone engine power is up! The psychic amulets are all useless! I'm pinned down on the periphery by three anti-psyker platforms! Give me ten more minutes—no, five minutes!"

Sebastian cursed.

He looked up toward the depths of the temple—the Brood Queen was crouching beneath the blackstone engine, every lattice on her gray-purple carapace glowing.

She was surrounded by six Ultralisks, their mono-molecular bone blades dragging on the ground, the creep smoking where the blade tips passed.

"Captain, charge head-on?"

Sebastian glanced at the veteran who made the suggestion. "Charge? Like hell. She is waiting for me to charge."

He stared at the Brood Queen's orange eyes; there was no anger or fighting spirit in them, only a cold, detached calculation.

She was calculating his ammunition reserves, his casualty ratios, and his retreat routes.

This thing didn't just know how to fight; it knew how to do the math.

"Ortron!" Sebastian roared into the comms, "How long until you can blow up those anti-psyker platforms?"

Ortron's voice came from deep in the tunnel, accompanied by the muffled thud of Bolters and the screeching sound of Ultralisk bone blades slicing through armor: "Three minutes! Three minutes at most!"

"I don't have three minutes—"

An Ultralisk lunged from the flank, its mono-molecular bone blade slashing toward Sebastian's head.

He dodged and parried, the Power Sword and bone blade clashing, spraying a shower of blinding sparks.

The Ultralisk's strength pressed down on him, and the power armor's servo systems began to scream with overload warnings.

Then, the Ultralisk's head suddenly exploded.

It wasn't shattered by a Bolter—it was pierced from above by a thick, orange-red beam, burning everything from carapace to brains into ash.

The beam passed through the Ultralisk and slammed into the ground, burning a charred trench.

Sebastian snapped his head around.

On the bridge of the Wrath of the Emperor, Marcus Aurelian's finger had just left the Lance Weapon fire button.

He watched the Ultralisk signal on the tactical projection that had been precisely picked off by the Lance Weapon, a cold, hard arc forming at the corner of his mouth.

"Notify the entire fleet," he said, "Split half the orbital Lance Weapons to provide fire support for the ground. Regardless of how the Void Shields overload, regardless of how those hive ships fight—the assault team on the ground must not die."

His eyes were fixed on the light point of the Brood Queen in the projection.

"That thing wants to drag my ground forces to their deaths in front of the blackstone engine. The more it calculates, the less I will do as it calculates."

The third volley after the Lance Weapon array redistributed its fire landed precisely on the periphery of the temple, several scorching orange-red beams gouging into the creep-covered ground, vaporizing the Zergling swarm that was assembling to charge.

Bern's anti-psyker suppression finally tore open a gap after destroying one platform on the periphery, the remaining psychic energy of the Grey Knights began to flood back into the battlefield, and silver holy power lit up around the armor of the Ultramarines.

Sebastian kicked aside the still-twitching corpse of the Ultralisk in front of him and charged into the Brood Queen's field of vision with his sword raised.

The Brood Queen slowly rose from the base of the blackstone engine, her orange eyes staring at him without blinking—then she made a move that Sebastian could not understand.

She took a step back.

It was not a retreat. It was making way.

On the blackstone engine base behind her, a piece of black stone was quietly moved aside, revealing a bottomless passage entrance.

Sebastian skidded to a halt.

He stared at the passage, the tip of his Power Sword pointing in the direction of the Brood Queen.

He did not pursue inside.

He knew the Brood Queen would not give way for no reason.

"Bern, I have a situation here—"

His words were interrupted by a low-frequency vibration.

It was not an earthquake, not an explosion—it was a low-frequency pulse similar to a heartbeat, coming from the depths of that passage.

Each beat made the creep tremble, and each beat made the cold green light of the blackstone engine flicker once.

There was something in the depths of the passage.

The Brood Queen stood beside the passage entrance, watching Sebastian motionlessly.

Her posture seemed to say: You want to find the controller for the blackstone engine? It's down there. But do you dare to go down?

Sebastian stared fixedly at the Brood Queen, the tip of his Power Sword did not lower.

"Ortron—there is something under the blackstone engine. It's huge. It's moving."

There was silence in the communication channel for two seconds.

"How big?"

Sebastian watched the cold green light patterns spreading from the passage entrance, watched the creep peeling off from the vibration, watched what was revealed beneath the creep—not rock, not metal—it was a carapace. A living carapace. A breathing carapace.

"Big enough that all the Ultralisks we've fought before combined wouldn't even be a snack."

In orbit, Marcus heard this communication.

He turned to look at the Tech-Officer, not asking for the scan results—because he didn't need to ask.

In the tactical projection, directly beneath the blackstone engine, a new biological signal was waking up.

Size assessment: over four hundred meters. Equivalent to half of the Wrath of the Emperor.

The Swarm had never stopped hatching bigger things.

They just never let the enemy know what they were hatching.

Until the enemy delivered their ground forces to the entrance of the hatchery themselves.