23: Chapter 23: Torpedoes Ignite the Atmosphere; Insects Still Fly in Orbit After the Smoke Clears.

Marcus Aurelian stood before the command console of the Emperor's Hammer, hands behind his back, staring motionlessly at the tactical projection.

In the projection, the leviathan mothership was slowly turning in low orbit.

After destroying the Shield of Faith, its main bow cannon did not continue firing, but instead used twelve launch bays on its broadside to scatter spore mines throughout low orbit.

Each of those spore mines was only the size of a Zergling, but there were enough of them to gradually overheat the fleet's Void Shields through continuous interception.

The Swarm was not in a hurry; they were waiting for him to make a mistake.

"Inquisitor." The voice of Tech-Priest Melchior came from the side of the tactical table, his mechadendrites furiously switching through data interfaces. "The hammer of macragge has sent a reply—Captain Ortron confirms receipt of the Exterminatus authorization, but he requires your final verbal confirmation. The system prompts that, according to the relevant clauses of the Codex Astartes, initiating Exterminatus-level weaponry requires joint authorization from the Inquisition and the Astartes Chapter, with neither being dispensable."

Marcus did not turn back.

He looked at the grey-green planet in the projection—the northern hemisphere was already more than half covered in creep, and in orbit was the densest alien defensive network he had ever seen in his life.

In less than a standard hour of engagement, the Ultramarines 7th Expeditionary Fleet had already lost one strike cruiser, and another was paralyzed in orbit, waiting for rescue.

He knew that once this decision was made, there would be no turning back.

"Connect me to Ortron." He said.

The communication channel was established a few seconds later.

Ortron's voice came through the helmet communicator, with the background noise of the Thunderhawk Gunship engines roaring and continuous explosions outside the cabin.

The gunship was passing through the Brood Lord's low-orbit fire net, and the sound of dense parasites impacting the gunship's armor pattered against the bulkhead.

"Captain Ortron. I am Inquisitor Marcus Aurelian. As a special Inquisitor of the Inquisition, I formally confirm the joint approval of the Exterminatus authorization. You are authorized to carry out the Imperial Exterminatus on Dead Silence-42—codename 'Final Sanction'. Exterminatus-level weapons may be used. Authorization code: Inquisition-Aurelian-Alpha-7-9-3. The Emperor protects."

The communication channel fell silent for a brief moment.

Then Ortron's voice sounded again, hoarse and steady: "Authorization code confirmed. The Emperor protects."

Marcus cut the connection and turned to Melchior.

"Notify the entire fleet. All units capable of Warp jump are to immediately disengage from the current combat zone and retreat to a safe distance outside the system. The execution window for Exterminatus is twenty minutes—this is not a drill."

Melchior's mechadendrites froze in mid-air, emitting a faint sound of gears grinding.

But he did not ask for clarification.

He knew better than anyone what Exterminatus meant—the ultimate verdict imposed upon a planet.

Exterminatus-level weapons would ignite the entire planet's atmosphere, burning all surface and subterranean life, along with the creep, and any alien nests detectable beneath the crust, into glass under sustained high temperatures.

This was the Empire's final reckoning, and they were about to trigger it themselves right before their eyes.

A retreat alarm sounded on the bridge.

The Emperor's Hammer and the remaining strike cruisers began to turn, with Void Shields maintained at full power on the outermost layer to cover the fleet's orderly withdrawal from low orbit.

The Brood Lord's attacks surged as the fleet retreated—the release frequency of parasite swarms skyrocketed from thousands per second to over ten thousand, and spore mines were deployed by the tyrants into the forward sectors of the retreat route, attempting to leave behind a few more heavily damaged ships before the fleet accelerated away.

The Brood Queen received the orbital data analysis results at her command node in the underground nest.

The Imperial Fleet was not routing; a routing fleet would not maintain such a rigorous anti-aircraft formation, nor would it concentrate all remaining mobile strike cruisers on the periphery of the retreat formation as meat shields.

They were clearing a firing lane—forcibly clearing the airspace within a fixed countdown window.

The Empire was about to launch an Exterminatus-level strike.

The Brood Queen submitted this judgment to the Hive Mind, while simultaneously beginning to synchronize an internal audit of the nest's depth.

The spore mine dispersion was confirmed, the coverage sectors of the orbital fire net were being reallocated, and the ground-based main nest hatchery and gene sample stocks were all urgently switching to low-power mode.

The leviathan mothership adjusted its posture in synchronous orbit, its main cannon recharging, and was targeting its firepower at the Imperial Fleet flagship "hammer of macragge"—but whether this final blow could hit before the Exterminatus took effect remained an unknown assessment.

The Hive Mind's command from underground was extremely brief.

It did not have the Brood Queen organize an interception—Exterminatus was not something that could be intercepted; that was power sufficient to destroy an entire world.

Its command responded with only three words: "Evacuation protocol."

The Brood Queen initiated the contingency plan, targeting the containment of gene sample banks, core biological smelting facilities, and all critical evolutionary data into underground hermetic storage chambers, using adamantine-chitin composite layers and calcified shells to create survival isolation pods resistant to extreme high temperatures.

The leviathan mothership simultaneously began receiving transfer orders for all high-level Tyranid units—save core assets, leave the surface units where they were, and wait for the world after it burned out.

On the bridge of the hammer of macragge, Captain Ortron disengaged the physical safety for the Exterminatus weapon.

It was a Cyclonic torpedo with the Holy Hammer emblem painted on its head, stored separately in the deepest reliquary of the battle barge.

Its casing was covered in the scent of chainswords and holy oils, and its tail fins were engraved with prayers to the Emperor.

It needed no guidance, no electronic fuses, no mechanical devices that could malfunction.

Lock onto a planet, then fire.

"Target: Dead Silence-42. Exterminatus weapon ready. Launch countdown—ten minutes." The Tech-Officer's countdown echoed on the bridge.

Ortron took one last look at the Dead Silence planet in the tactical projection, half of its surface crawled over by purple creep.

He had lost seven Terminators veterans and half an assault squad here, and he admitted this was the most dangerous alien he had seen in his two centuries of service.

But his voice did not tremble.

"Emperor, please grant this planet—rest."

After the countdown hit zero, the Cyclonic torpedo exited the torpedo tube of the hammer of macragge.

It had no exhaust flame, no roar, just a shadow streaking through the void at extreme speed.

Its target was the atmosphere of Dead Silence-42; upon entering, it would detonate its core warhead in the stratosphere—igniting the entire planet.

As the torpedo passed through low orbit, six Brood Lords attempted to intercept it.

Their mono-molecular bone blades slashed across the torpedo's casing, cutting into the ceramite armor, but not deeply enough.

The torpedo's armor thickness was designed by the Empire specifically for traversing alien orbital defensive lines; the tyrants' bone blades only managed to cut through the outer shell and did not touch the internal detonation device.

Other tyrants turned to spray corrosive spores to cover the torpedo's tail attitude control thrusters, attempting to disrupt its pitch during the terminal ballistic phase and make it deviate from the detonation window.

But the detonation window for the Exterminatus torpedo was generous—it only needed to enter the atmosphere, only needed to reach the stratosphere.

It did not need to hit a specific city or bunker.

Its target was an entire planet.

The torpedo entered the atmosphere.

The next second, the stratosphere was ignited.

Seen from orbit, the northern hemisphere of Dead Silence-42 turned into a blinding white in an instant.

That was not the white of fire, but the plasma white of the atmosphere itself being ignited—with the stratosphere as the core, a circular shockwave mixed with a chain ignition effect spread rapidly, sweeping across the entire planet.

The creep on the surface was instantly vaporized by high temperatures, the broken walls and ruins of the Hive City Ruins melted like sugar cubes in boiling water, and the crust of the northern hemisphere began to experience large-scale melting under sustained high heat, with magma gushing out from cracks, only to be slapped back to the surface by stronger shockwaves.

The shockwave bypassed the entire planet, and the southern hemisphere was also ignited a few minutes later.

The atmosphere turned into a planetary-scale high-pressure furnace while burning, destroying all organic matter on the ground, destroying the creep network dozens of meters deep underground, and destroying the Drones and Zerglings in the shallow layers of the underground.

There was no more creep, no Hive City Ruins, and nothing alive left on the planet's surface.

The fleet was deathly silent before the observation screens on the outskirts of the system.

"Exterminatus strike complete. The surface of the target planet has been completely destroyed—no, wait." The Tech-Officer's voice suddenly changed pitch.

"What is wrong?" Ortron pressed.

"The atmosphere was ignited, the surface was completely burned—but there is a batch of high-density signals." Melchior zoomed in on the scan image.

In the low orbit of Dead Silence-42, thirty-two Brood Lords were still flying.

They had hidden in an orbital region not covered by the torpedo's shockwave, their wing membranes were tattered from the explosion radiation, but their torsos remained intact.

"Not just the Tyrants. That leviathan mothership is also there."

Everyone looked at the projection.

The leviathan mothership was slowly emerging from the synchronous orbit of Dead Silence-42, its adamantine-chitin carapace steaming with white smoke remaining from the impact—there was a ravine deep enough to see bone extending from the bow to the stern, and several layers of the carapace had been stripped away by the shockwave, but the main body was intact.

It had withstood the Exterminatus.

Screams rang out in the communication channel again, but this time it was of a different type—more intense alarms were triggering the Warp detection arrays of all ships.

Less than half a light-year from the fleet, a series of Warp rifts were opening; it was not the Imperial Fleet, but a batch of metallic ships with larger sizes and older signal characteristics.

"Unknown fleet detected! The quantity is increasing—the signal characteristics do not match any alien race data known to humanity—they are not Aeldari, not Orks, not Tyranids—" Melchior's voice stopped abruptly.

On the scanner, the first complete ship silhouette emerging from that Warp rift was captured by the system with a fuzzy outline—that ship was shaped like a closed sickle, entirely made of black living metal, with no lights on its surface, no engine exhaust, only cold green energy glowing faintly in the gaps of the hull.

The Necron Node in the hall at the lowest level of the Hive City Ruins quietly received the vibration of the Exterminatus strike completion, and then it heard the sound of the strata above its head collapsing in the molten magma.

Its hall had withstood the high temperature—the natural barrier of the surrounding adamantine veins and the living metal structure of the hall itself had protected it.

It once again sent a short message in the direction of the leviathan mothership, with the transmission power adjusted to the maximum allowed by its own system.

"Message sent. The reply is on its way. They have arrived."