46: Chapter 46 The day the Blackrock defenses of the Zerg swarm closed into a ring, Terra fell silent.

The bridge of the Wrath of the Emperor plunged into a chaos Marcus had never seen in his career within the first hour after the Talasta Tomb was fully activated.

It wasn't an attack. The leviathan mothership's orbital formations remained in low orbit over Metallis, and the Brood Lord's patrol routes were even more regular than usual. No Swarm units opened fire on the Imperial Fleet. However, every scanner on the bridge was alarming simultaneously—not for enemy contact, but for star map updates. On the star map of the Ultima Segmentum, coordinates for one Tomb World after another, marked by the Imperium as 'Pending Observation' or 'Prohibited Entry,' were lighting up on their own. As each coordinate lit up, another line of cold green identification codes appeared on the Tech-Officer's console, in a format that did not belong to any known Imperial communication protocol.

"My Lord Inquisitor," the Tech-Officer's voice trembled, "since the Talasta Tomb activated, every dormant blackstone engine in the sector is responding. They haven't been physically occupied by The Swarm—they're being remotely activated. They are resonating on the same frequency. The Astropaths report that all long-range psychic communications being sent through the Warp are being jammed by a continuous low-frequency hum—even the light of the Astronomican is flickering slightly."

Marcus Aurelian stood before the command dais, his right arm still hanging in a sling. During his last conversation with the Sovereign, he had ordered the fleet not to provoke The Swarm or enter the identification zone at the edge of the Blackstone Defense Line. But now, the Blackstone Defense Line was becoming a reality at a speed he feared most.

"Bring up the distribution map of the blackstone nodes," he said, his voice kept extremely low.

The Tech-Officer zoomed the star map out to the entire Ultima Segmentum. From Metallis to Hails, from Hails to Talastra, to the outskirts of Griffin IV, and then to over a dozen Necron tomb coordinates the Imperium had never fully surveyed—cold green light points lit up one by one, connecting into a silent and dense dome that encased the entire sector occupied by The Swarm. The quantum resonance barrier, centered on the blackstone network, completed its initial calibration within minutes. The main control signal radiating from Talastra converged onto the fire control arrays of every leviathan mothership and Brood Lord.

Marcus stared at the star map for a long time before turning to the communications officer. "Connect me to the War Council," he said.

Bern, Sebastian, and Ortron appeared in the holographic projection almost simultaneously. Bern had not removed his helmet, and the light of his Psychic Talisman was so dim deep within his eyepieces it was almost invisible. Sebastian's power armor was covered in scorch marks, standing before the bulkhead of a Thunderhawk Gunship hangar—he had just finished loading the wounded from Talastra onto the ship. Ortron stood in the command center of Griffin IV, the star map behind him refreshing those cold green light points in sync.

"The Blackstone Defense Line has taken shape," Marcus said, omitting any preamble. "It's not the crude mode used on Metallis where engines were just power stations. The Swarm has used a blackstone key to link every remaining blackstone engine in the entire Ultima Segmentum into a network. Now, this network is actively scanning the Imperial Fleet's communication bands, psychic pulses, and even the charging frequencies of our Void Shields."

"And after the scan?" Sebastian asked. "When do they act?"

"I don't know," Marcus was silent for a moment. "That's the most terrifying part. The initiative it has seized isn't just fire support—it's all-domain awareness. We can't discover its next target; we can only wait for it to play its hand. The last time it was this quiet was during the negotiations on Metallis—"

"And then it sent Leviathans to flank us, taking Graia in a surprise attack," Bern finished for him.

"Precisely." Marcus turned to Ortron. "Are the orbital platforms on Griffin IV ready?"

"Ready," Ortron paused. "But if the Blackstone Defense Line is fully operational, the Void Shields of these orbital platforms will suffer the same penetration effect as the Wrath of the Emperor—the blackstone resonance ignores Void Shield charging frequencies and cancels them out directly."

"How long must we hold?"

Ortron looked down at his Power Sword in silence, then stated a time window.

Marcus nodded. "Stick to that window. All orbital platforms are authorized to activate weapon safeties. No one is to fire on Swarm units without the War Council's approval."

Bern asked if this order was to prevent the blackstone engines from misinterpreting scanning beams as precursors to an attack.

Marcus admitted it. "The Sovereign made it very clear when it hijacked the main screen last time—if you dare touch it with a scanning beam, it will make your orbital platform self-destruct on the spot. It's not bluffing. It precisely turned a cruiser into scrap metal using eight Leviathans right in front of the entire expeditionary fleet in the Magma System. Back then, it had only just obtained the key from the Blackstone Reliquary on Hails; now, it has full control over the entire network."

Bern held his Psychic Talisman in his hand; its surface no longer emitted any light. "All the Grey Knights' Psychic Talismans have failed," he said. "The Librarians tried to remotely bless the strike teams on the outskirts of Talastra, but the blessing backfired—the blackstone network reflected the psychic energy directly back to the source. Now, the advice from all Librarians is: do not use psychic powers. Not even a little bit."

"Then we won't use psychic powers," Marcus's voice was raspy but decisive. "I never intended to use the Grey Knights' Holy Hammer to smash that defense line. Our only chance now is to hold out until Nephilak returns to the Ultima Segmentum—the Necron Overlord has the protocol records, and The Swarm promised not to tear up the void covenant. As long as he is alive and willing to continue the terms of the alliance, and allows us to maintain a minimal Imperial defense zone on the periphery of the line in the supplementary articles, we'll have room to breathe. But the premise is that we must hold out until that second."

After the War Council's holographic meeting ended, Marcus stood alone on the bridge. He looked down at his right arm in the sling, a lingering injury from a bone fracture caused by the shock of an explosion near a blackstone engine in the Forge Temple. Then he looked up through the viewport at the star map—in the space of the Ultima Segmentum, those cold green light points were like a silent constellation, slowly enveloping the Imperium's territory.

The Astropath sent Terra's reply. Marcus unfurled the encrypted scroll; it contained only a single line in high gothic: 'WE HAVE RECEIVED. Terra IS SILENT.' That silence was not the silence of death, but a signal heavier than any roar—after the assessments of all the highest decision-making levels on Terra were completed, they realized this was not something that troop mobilization could solve. In the ten-thousand-year history of the Imperium of Man, Terra had never reached a consensus on a crisis so quickly.

Marcus folded the scroll and tucked it into his robe, then issued orders to the entire ship: "Switch to the lowest frequency. Execute all defensive deployments according to the preset time window. Do not fire first."