The Blackstone Fortress was shuddering violently, its gravity engines locked in a fierce battle against the external gravitational forces pressing down upon the titanic vessel.
[ENTERING NEUTRON STAR GRAVITATIONAL WELL]
The text on the light-screen stuttered for a mere picosecond upon entering the gravity well, but Blazkowicz's keen perception caught it instantly. Even though the Blackstone Fortress was flying at 60% lightspeed, the pull of the neutron star was so intense that Blazkowicz, relying on his superhuman senses, could still feel a distinct drag grinding against the vessel's acceleration.
[AFFECTED BY EXTERNAL GRAVITATIONAL FORCES, GRAVITY ENGINES OVERLOADING. PSYCHIC SENSORY EFFICIENCY DEGRADING; COGNITIVE LOGIC PATHWAYS CURRENTLY FRACTURING.]
As annihilation loomed, the Blackstone intelligence remained entirely devoid of fear, loyally relaying the critical updates.
"My Lord," the holographic phantom flickered slightly, its voice low and resolute. "If you have any further directives, please issue them immediately. It is estimated that in ten seconds, the psychic sensor latency will reach microsecond-level delays, at which point my cognitive processing will practically cease."
"Activate all weapons of extermination." Blazkowicz's thought-patterns were translated through the Archon armor into photoelectric signals, streaming directly into the Blackstone matrix. "Set them all to detonate in one minute!"
[ALL EXTERMINATION WEAPONS FULLY ACTIVATED]
"Take all secondary systems offline, excluding critical flight navigation. Funnel the remaining Warp energy to push back against the laws of physics. I need you to maintain the operating framework and preserve control over the vessel's attitude."
[ALL AUXILIARY SYSTEMS DEACTIVATED, EXCLUDING FLIGHT CONTROL, DEFENSIVE SHIELDS, AND VORTEX ARRAYS.]
The Blackstone Fortress trembled. The ancient Old One creation sustained a relentless bombardment from the defensive grid, its warp shields flickering incessantly as it surged doggedly forward.
70% lightspeed!
Across astronomical distances, the automated defensive platforms constantly revised their data parameters and adjusted their firing vectors, yet many of the massive energy lances still whizzed past the Blackstone Fortress, missing it entirely. Behind the purple fortress, the crisscrossing heavy fire bloomed into a deadly, beautiful flower across the void.
Back on his own Blackstone Throne, the Lion sat perfectly still, staring intently at the tactical projection. His features were frozen in an expressionless mask, but the sharp screech of ceramite twisting against ceramite from his gauntlets betrayed the true turmoil in his chest. Grasping the armrests with immense tension, he crushed the blackstone beneath his fingers without even realizing it.
Yet within the command deck, no one paid attention to the Primarch's momentary slip. The Legion warriors stared unblinkingly at the holographic display, their eyes wide. They held their collective breath, as if they had forgotten how to breathe entirely. Their spines were locked rigid with tension, their hands gripping the hilts of their swords and guardian spears to channel their mounting anxiety.
Before their very eyes, a genetic Primarch was about to forge an absolute legend!
At the opposite end of the stars, in stark contrast to the grim silence of the human fortress, the security alert levels within the xenos command center steadily spiked. The lighting shifted from a calm, soft glow to a blinding, rhythmic crimson flash in less than five minutes.
The visual arrays tracked a fortress hurtling toward them at a velocity the naked eye could not fathom. The simulation projected that it had already attained 65% lightspeed!
[ATTENTION ALL CREW SECTIONS: PREPARE FOR CONCUSSIVE IMPACT!]
The artificial intelligence blared its warnings. Though the World Engine was brightly illuminated, it could not conceal the absolute chaos erupting across its interior sectors. Countless scientists, structural engineers, and construction serfs scurried frantically through the thoroughfares, fleeing toward the deep-level bastions guided by emergency beacons.
Prior to this day, many had deemed the inclusion of defensive bunkers completely redundant, arguing they squandered space that could have been allocated to weapon systems. They believed that once the World Engine asserted its dominance over the cosmos, no species in the galaxy could hope to impede it. It was built for conquest and annihilation; danger and catastrophe were not concepts meant for a megastructure of this scale.
Yet today, before the World Engine could even embark on its maiden voyage, it was subjected to an absolute, mocking humiliation! A single human fortress was hurtling directly toward it, wielding its smaller mass with a suicidal conviction, boldly charging to ram the sleeping leviathan!
Inside the primary bridge, the Creator grew intensely hyperactive. Its tentacles lit up the terminal interfaces, ordering every available battery to hammer the inbound human asset. To its mind, there was little actual danger. The human initiative—while seemingly tragic and heroic—was nothing more than a moth throwing itself into a flame: a brilliant, brief flash. They were destined to fail; the resulting explosion would merely serve as a spectacular firework celebrating the awakening of the World Engine!
[IMPACT IN 20 SECONDS. MASS-ACCELERATION CONVERSION PREDICTS THE FORCE OF THE IMPACT WILL DISPLACE THE WORLD ENGINE BY 361 FEET.]
[CAUTION: EXTENSIVE KINETIC SHOCKWAVE IMMINENT.]
[DEFENSIVE SHIELD CAPACITY WILL DROP BY AT LEAST 50%.]
The Rangdan glyphs flashed with critical warnings. The Creator trembled, but not from fear. Its cerebral cortex pulsed rapidly with absolute excitement, operating like a grand conductor coordinating the defensive grid, utilizing raw firepower to force the human vessel to lose velocity.
A mere comet presuming to shatter a world?
Absurd delusion!
The Creator's crimson eyes flared with purple psychic energy. Beyond the central axis gap, the human fortress had achieved near-lightspeed velocity!
An intense time-dilation effect gripped the interior of the Blackstone Fortress. Blazkowicz moved like a blur across the main console, punching in continuous command strings.
[SIX... FIVE...]
The Void Dragon stood with his arms crossed inside the Archon armor, counting down the seconds to keep Blazkowicz anchored to the slipping timeline. Seeing the display tick down to the final three seconds, Blazkowicz instantly dropped the forward shields, then slammed his fist directly onto the primary firing mechanism of the vortex cannons!
Boom!
The moment the warp shields collapsed, an immense wave of defensive fire scored direct hits. The exterior blackstone plating of the fortress fractured layer by layer, massive fragments tearing away from the hull at near-lightspeed. Yet the enemy bombardment could not halt the fortress's death charge, and an even more terrifying torrent of fire erupted from its own vortex cannons!
The purple lance of light consolidated the devastating potential of two Blackstone Fortresses. Warping the very laws of physics, the beam traveled faster than light itself, slamming squarely into the World Engine's defensive shield and causing the massive barrier to shudder violently.
"Two!"
Another second slipped away. Blazkowicz smoothly retrieved his chainshield from his pocket dimension, raising it before him in a flawless, fluid motion, his mind recalling every minutia of the plan: A three-second window is insufficient for the vortex cannons to shatter a super-shield, but it is enough to tear open a localized patch of unstable Warp space.
The internal motor buzzed to life, the serrated edge spinning violently as a three-inch plasma edge ignited along the teeth. Blazkowicz had no time to spare on the external reality; he narrowed his focus to its absolute zenith! The universe slowed to a crawl around him, a single second stretching into an eternity as his sharp gaze locked onto the terminal hub of the shield generator.
Aboard the World Engine, the Creator's eyes went wide as its entire field of vision was consumed by a blinding purple glare. It was forced to turn its head toward the holographic display to discern what tactical trick the humans were employing. Though the acoustic properties of the bombardment were staggering, it had only managed to obscure their visual sensors, depleting the shield's total energy capacity by a mere one percent.
As always, even before its full activation, the World Engine could easily dismiss any threat. Out of sheer respect for the impending kinetic impact, the Creator lowered its posture, wrapping several tentacles tightly around the structural handrails as it silently calculated the moment of collision.
"One!"
Both sides concluded the countdown in the exact same second, yet their states of mind were worlds apart: one was completely unconcerned, while the other was focused to an absolute point.
At the manual console, Blazkowicz snapped his head up at the final fraction of a second, his eyes flashing with a savage, predatory fury as absolute lethal intent and anger ignited his vision. In the path of his gaze, the Greater Demon trapped within the warp-stave container screamed as its spiritual form was scorched, triggering its own detonation sequence!
A demon container ruptured, pouring a torrent of volatile Warp energy through the blackstone conduits and redirecting it straight into the fortress's shield matrix. Blazkowicz instantly reactivated the warp shield, utilizing the foul, corrupted energy of the Chaos entity to supercharge the shield generators, cocooning the vessel's primary core.
"Stabilizing inertia fields," the Void Dragon announced, engaging the safety features of the Archon armor to ensure Blazkowicz would not be launched through the bulkheads like a near-lightspeed bullet upon impact.
[IMPACT IMMINENT!]
Across the Blackstone Fortress and the World Engine alike, every interface blared with blood-red glyphs, warning of imminent, cataclysmive peril.
Hum—!!!
A dull, concussive thud seemed to echo through the vacuum of space. At that moment, the sheer force of the impact appeared to tear through physical laws, transferring the sound through the void as a raw, physical vibration.
During that hyper-compressed fraction of a second, the Blackstone Fortress's shields collapsed entirely as the vessel collided with the artificial world at near-lightspeed!
Crack! Crunch!
Shattering sounds tore through the vacuum as the structural integrity of the Blackstone Fortress failed. Under the weight of a near-infinite kinetic impact, the ancient sorcery of the Old Ones began to come apart. The moment the warp shields overloaded, a second Slaaneshi demon container was detonated, instantly feeding fresh energy into the blackstone hull. Before its consciousness was banished back into the warp, the entity blew a sickening kiss toward Blazkowicz.
One after another, the specialized payloads erupted: a Bloodthirster, a Lord of Change, a Great Unclean One. To ensure a successful breach into the World Engine, Blazkowicz had expended every single demon bomb in his arsenal. The warp shield became utterly defiled; the combined authority of the four Ruinous Powers stained the energy barrier into a mottled, chaotic mess, eating away at the World Engine's defensive shields like acid.
A grim smile touched Blazkowicz's lips. In that fleeting instant, he felt the Blackstone Fortress continue to grind its way forward.
It had worked!
Crash!
The Blackstone Fortress shattered completely. The forward apex of the four-pointed star pierced deep into the World Engine, while its lateral flanks were sheared away by the defensive barrier, reducing its profile to a jagged, ship-like prow. It resembled a massive shuttle, utilizing the corrupt warp energies to pierce through layer after layer of defensive shields, embedding itself directly into the core structural tiers of the World Engine.
Blazkowicz ran with everything he had through the interior of the collapsing pyramid. Moving faster than time itself, he lunged into the still-functioning teleportation grid, initiating an outbound displacement away from the dying vessel.
Snap. Another second passed.
In a flash, a deafening roar of thunder exploded within the interior of the World Engine as a violent kinetic shockwave rippled through the structure. The world seemed to tip on its axis as continuous explosions and metal fracturing tore through the environment, the vibrations traveling along the primary iron bulkheads to permeate the entire superstructure.
By the time the Creator could process what had happened, it was met with the concussive force of a massive internal explosion.
Wait! It shook its massive head, its consciousness snapping awake in sudden panic. Where did an internal explosion come from?
A terrible foreboding gripped the Rangdan Overlord. Looking down from the command dais, its pupils contracted to absolute pins, as if it were witnessing the fracturing of its species' homeworld. A massive trail of shattered blackstone and catastrophic impact gouges stretched across its viewing monitors. Looking up, it could see the world-class defensive shield only now beginning to slowly knit itself back together.
"Overlord, the World Engine has sustained critical structural trauma," the artificial intelligence materialized precisely on cue, its projection mapping the current devastation. "The human fortress executed a high-velocity ramming strike. The vessel's wreckage has embedded itself 1,200 kilometers deep into the World Engine's interior, causing catastrophic destruction to the main structural spine and primary functional sectors along its path."
"Initial projections estimate 300 million personnel casualties from the impact, with 20% of functional sectors entirely destroyed. Detailed figures are still being compiled."
A wave of profound vertigo washed over the Creator, leaving it entirely unable to address the AI.
It was over!
Not a single shred of complacency remained within its mind.