119: Chapter 119 The Dominator's Next Target Is Not the Empire

Three days after The Swarm returned, the Imperial Psionic Warning Array detected new movements from the Leviathan Battle Group.

It was not heading toward Griffin IV Anchorage, nor toward any Imperial defensive node in the Ultima Segmentum, but was instead re-forming from low orbit around Metallis, with all ship bows turned toward the Cadian Ruins.

Marcus Aurelian stood before the main screen in the briefing room of the Emperors Hammer, his right hand pressed against the edge of the command console, watching that purple trajectory extend outward from Metallis.

The bio-neural network fluctuations of the six leviathan motherships intensified once again, the Void-class core signal of the Titan-Eater lit up again in the center of the fleet, and the Brood Lord formation arranged itself into an attack wedge on the periphery.

The Swarm had barely returned home before setting out again.

"The target is not us." Heinrich von Strauheim's mechanical prosthetic eye flashed red on the other end of the fleet channel. His raspy voice carried a complex emotion—neither relief nor disappointment. "It is heading to the Cadian Ruins. The remnants of the Chaos Hulk Fleets, after being purged in the Lead-Gray Abyss, were caught by The Swarm's lateral scans during its return."

Bern sent supplementary data from the Griffin IV Anchorage via the Grey Knights' Psionic Warning Array.

The residual signals of the Chaos Hulk Fleets in the direction of the Cadian Ruins had been precisely located by The Swarm's lateral scans; that remnant had evaded the coalition's rift sanitization scan, hiding in a dark matter debris field left behind after the closing of the Great Rift. Though small in scale, its signal characteristics were homologous to the Tzeentch Error-correction code infiltration fleet.

This remnant was highly likely carrying the Error-Correction Code Prototype that Tzeentch failed to recover during the battle in the Lead-Gray Abyss—The Swarm was not cleaning up trash; it was hunting down a Chaos relic.

Marcus zoomed the star map into the Cadian Ruins sector.

The Swarm's attack trajectory was a straight line plunging from Metallis into the dark matter debris field. This route would not pass through any Imperial Anchorage, but its terminus—the edge of the debris field—was very close to an Imperial outpost in the Cadian Ruins.

If the Chaos remnants attempted to flee under The Swarm's assault, they would very likely crash into the alert zone of the Imperial outpost.

He pressed the fleet channel, ordering all Imperial Anchorages to maintain a combat-ready status. The outpost in the direction of Cadia was to raise its alert level to maximum but not actively intercept the fleeing Chaos units, letting The Swarm and Chaos resolve it themselves.

Meanwhile, the Brood Queen stood on the creep command platform of the leviathan mothership, transmitting the attack plan approved by the Overmind point by point to the brain-bug nodes of the Titan-Eater and the six motherships.

The core of the attack plan was concise and clear: no negotiations, no warnings, and no time for Chaos to react.

Her forelimbs swept across the creep, integrating the first combat deployment of the new generation of Zergling into the first wave of the attack sequence.

The carapaces of this batch of Zergling were coated with Tyranid genes. Their self-repair protocols needed to complete final validation in actual combat, and the psychic weapons of the Chaos remnants would serve perfectly to test the filtration efficiency of the dark matter radiation tolerance proteins against psychic flames.

The Overmind reviewed the attack plan within the Hive Mind and then sent a brief battlefield note to all Brood Queen nodes: "The Void-level suppression of the Error-Correction Code Prototype by the Titan-Eater is the highest priority of this attack. Do not pursue fleeing ships until the Error-Correction Code Prototype is captured intact. The Chaos remnants may attempt to contaminate the debris field with suicidal psychic explosions; the brain-bugs must complete the genetic sample recovery before the psychic contamination spreads."

The Titan-Eater slowly accelerated from the center of the Leviathan formation, the cold green light patterns on the surface of its Void-class core dragging an arc-shaped wake across the debris field in deep space.

The Living Railgun arrays of the leviathan motherships reported charging complete one by one, and the Brood Lord formation deployed on both flanks into a three-layered crossfire network.

The Blackstone Cerebrate aimed the long-range passive scanning array, upgraded during the return journey, at the debris field, and the coordinates of every wreck of the Chaos remnants were precisely marked in the fire control database.

The Brood Queen sent a brief communication to the Emperors Hammer.

After reading it, Marcus told Heinrich that The Swarm was going to purge the Chaos remnants, and the Empire should take advantage of this window to continue consolidating the Anchorages, but not to interfere in the battle in the direction of Cadia.

Heinrich pressed the fleet channel, ordering all Strike Cruisers to keep their independent fire control systems in a warm-up state, but they were not to enter the debris field identification zone.

Bern shifted the monitoring focus of the Grey Knights' Psionic Warning Array from The Swarm's return route to the direction of the Cadian Ruins, and the Holy Power monitoring network began tracking the psychic activity of the Chaos remnants.

After The Swarm fleet entered the attack position, the Brood Queen issued the attack order.

Her voice was transmitted simultaneously to the brain-bug nodes of every mothership through the bio-neural network.

The Titan-Eater was the first to break into the periphery of the debris field, its Void-class core exploding in a circle of cold green shockwaves in front of its bow, scattering all the dark matter dust at the edge of the debris field.

The new generation of Zergling was ejected from the Drop Pods in the bellies of the motherships, their carapaces gleaming with a very dark purple light in the weak radiation of the debris field as they lunged straight at the hulls of the Chaos wrecks.

The Chaos remnants did not even have time to activate their psychic shields before the Zergling swarm crawled all over their hulls.