[Mission Progress — Hold Macragge.]
[Remaining Enemies: 5 Tyranid Hive Fleets.]
[Destroy all five fleets to complete this mission.]
[If the mission fails, the Host will spend 30 days surviving on a world currently being consumed by Tyranids.]
"Great..."
Caleb couldn't be bothered reading the penalty carefully. If it was a Hive Fleet, consuming a planet wouldn't take long. Probably less than 30 days before the whole world was devoured — he'd have no chance of survival with zero biomass left.
Well, honestly, Caleb thought the Tyranid vanguard forces were fairly mediocre. They'd crawled all the way from outside the galaxy just to eat some planets — what a waste of effort. The vast majority of any star system's mass was in the star itself, over 99%. Even if the Tyranids could devour a planet the size of Jupiter, the proportion of total mass they gained was still pitifully small.
Of course, Caleb's board was still limited in scope — he could only see Ultramar as a whole. And right now, almost all the fighting was concentrated at Macragge, so he had no way to observe the main Tyranid fleet through the board.
"It's time!"
"If we can capture the Hive Ships in this battle, the Imperium's strength will increase enormously!"
"Once Guilliman gets control of these Tyranids, with his logistical capabilities, the fighting ahead will become much easier!"
This time around, Caleb wasn't directing his pieces — there was no need. With Malcador, Lion, and Guilliman on the field, it was already a winning situation.
Malcador had also successfully resolved Guilliman's signal interference problem. At the very least, he could now ensure Guilliman heard the Emperor's continuous muttering.
"Waah, waah, waah..."
In a candlelit chamber, Guilliman stood before a statue of the Emperor, silently weeping. Her cheeks were puffed out as if someone had grabbed and squeezed them hard. Two large golden psychic hands were still pressing into her cheeks with great force — clearly the Emperor was furious.
[Emperor: Ah, having Malcador around is wonderful!]
[With Malcador, I can finally properly discipline the ambitious Guilliman!]
[Well, I can't discipline her too harshly — otherwise who's going to work overtime for me later?]
The Emperor pinched Guilliman's cheeks a few more times before letting her go, then immediately ordered Guilliman to come to Terra once this situation was resolved — he had something very important for her to do. At minimum, he needed Guilliman to buy time for the future ahead.
"Hehe!"
Lion watched Guilliman suffer and laughed to herself.
Then, promptly, she received a psychic slap to the face.
The Emperor roared at Lion for being crude, reminding her — again — to get along properly with her sisters. Starting a fistfight right away, even if understandable given the circumstances, was still absolutely idiotic behaviour.
"I refuse to accept this!"
How could a proud little lion ever speak politely to her own father? Especially after getting a psychic smack from him — absolutely not!
"The whole thing was Guilliman's fault for having bad signal — why is it being blamed on me?!"
"Guilliman said things that were infuriating — how could I possibly just stand there and take it?!"
As she spoke, the large golden hand that had been raised suddenly changed its gesture. The Emperor pointed a single finger at Lion, using sign language to express his exasperation.
"You two, stop bickering!"
"It's been ten thousand years and you're both still acting like children!"
Malcador was completely done with them. Though he felt the Primarchs had changed somewhat since becoming women — there was more of a youthful energy about them now, less purely feral — they were still exhausting.
"Haah..." Malcador sighed. He had little personal history with these Primarchs, but they were the Emperor's legacy. Seeing some new hope in them, he had no choice but to keep carrying forward what had been left unfinished.
The psychic communication was cut off. Moments later, Guilliman's psychic Bluetooth showed as disconnected. The giant psychic hands pinching her cheeks dissolved into nothing.
Malcador had hung up the call.
The Emperor had wanted to tease his favourite daughter a bit longer, but let it go for now.
Two Primarchs, cheeks red as baboon backsides, finally began to actually talk to each other — quietly relieved that none of the children had been around to witness that, or the embarrassment would have been catastrophic.
"Lion, your main force hasn't arrived yet. My forces will serve as the vanguard!"
"My main fleet will do everything it can to engage four of the Hive Ships!"
"We work with Macragge's Honour to destroy them!"
Lion rubbed her still-stinging cheek and nodded. "That works. Then our combined forces will strike simultaneously at the weakest Hive Ship."
"Based on experience, a single large Hive Ship may contain multiple Norn-Queens. The Momotaro onigiri are all prepared?"
"As long as we can control most of the Norn-Queens inside, we control the entire ship!"
"And if that plan fails, your Macragge's Honour plus my reinforcements will destroy it outright."
"As long as we prevent the Tyranids from gaining access to endless agricultural worlds — if the plan succeeds, we'll have an inexhaustible swarm army of our own!"
The two Primarchs had basically reached a workable plan and were ready to engage. But then Guilliman suddenly brought something else up.
"Sister Lion..."
"Something just occurred to me."
"This approach reminds me of the Rangdan Xenocides from the old days. Didn't they have something similar back then?"
At that, even Malcador furrowed his brow slightly. The Rangdan had been an existential threat to the Imperium — the Emperor had even unleashed the Void Dragon to finally exterminate them.
He said nothing, only watching Guilliman. He couldn't read her ambitions clearly, but right now she seemed to harbour no ill will toward anyone present.
"...Yes."
Lion gave a single nod — as good as a confirmation.
That was enough. Guilliman didn't press further. Knowing her sister had an ace up her sleeve was sufficient. She wasn't going to force anyone to explain themselves.
Every fleet prepared for battle.
The Dark Angels stood silently at Lion's back.
"Doraemon — prepare the Anywhere Door. This operation needs to move fast, so that's the only way."
"Understood!"
The blue round robot reached into his bottomless pocket and produced the Anywhere Door. Fortunately, the Door didn't count against any usage limit — otherwise they'd have run out long ago.
"Calgar! Sicarius!"
"You two are joining this joint operation."
"I know there's still a little resentment in your hearts. But since I've already made an agreement with my sister, I trust the rest of the Dark Angels won't cause any further trouble."
"Yes, Gene-Mother."
"Then make sure your people keep up!"
Lion said nothing more. She stepped forward — and a forest appeared before her. Dense mist clung between the trees, and hostile creatures prowled the shadows, as though it were a truly primordial jungle.
Lion warned everyone not to follow her. They were to wait for Doraemon's Anywhere Door before crossing over. Her own path — the Walk Through the Forest — was exceptionally dangerous. Of all those tested, only an extremely small number of her sons had ever survived the transit.
Anyone following her would have a very low probability of making it through. Only warriors of exceptional fortitude could pass. By Lion's estimation, perhaps only those at the level of Supreme Grand Master Azrael or Interrogator-Chaplain Asmodai could even attempt it.
Losing inner-circle veterans of that calibre was unthinkable. These precious sons were absolutely not going to be risked unnecessarily.
"Dark Angels — charge!"
"For the glory of the First Legion! For the Lioness!"
As the Hive Ships continued advancing from the mandeville point toward the endless agricultural worlds, another bloody battle began.
With the Eldar Craftworld's assistance, portions of the relief fleet could translate directly to Macragge, guided by the small beacon and flooding into the Imperial fleet in a steady stream.
Steel and flesh carpeted the entire ecliptic plane. Around Macragge's orbit, a debris field of wrecked ships was beginning to form — almost like a new asteroid belt.
"Follow me!"
Guilliman seized the moment. She moved at a surprising pace for someone of such small stature, leading the charge into the interior of the Hive Ship.
Stepping through the pink-framed doorway, what met them was an array of bizarre biological tissue.
[Malcador: Guilliman, I'll maintain comms with you.]
[I can sense you. Directly ahead there's a powerful psychic signature — likely a Norn-Queen. You know what to do.]
With Malcador guiding her, Guilliman was no longer operating blind. She led her Ultramarines surging forward through the interior of the Hive Ship.
The two Legions moved fluidly — sometimes merging, sometimes splitting off to face their own fronts independently.
Though the Dark Angels were significantly fewer in number than the Ultramarines, what was astonishing was that the Dark Angels' level of mechanisation was actually higher than the Ultramarines'.
Machine spirits roared. Souls just awakening to consciousness thundered and bellowed. Many machine spirits let out cries like newborn infants in that moment — reaching out for their mothers — and all those cries eventually found their way into Alice's embrace.
"There, there, don't cry. Be good!"
"You won't disappear. Death just means returning to my arms."
With Alice soothing the machine spirits, many of the volatile souls calmed considerably. They began to express distinct personalities — each one tied intimately to the warrior who had wielded them.
And so the Ultramarines witnessed the profoundly uncanny side of the Dark Angels.
The weapons in their hands seemed to carry infinite ammunition, spraying down enemies without pause. Bolt pistols had been reconfigured by their machine spirits into full-on bolt machine guns. A single squad was somehow generating the firepower of two or three.
"These things are incredible!"
Several Ultramarines fighting alongside the Dark Angels asked to borrow their weapons.
But every single one was refused. These precious personality-bound weapons were personally guarded by each Dark Angel. In many cases it wasn't a polite refusal — if anyone so much as touched one, the Dark Angel in question would turn on them immediately.
At several points Guilliman had to issue direct orders for her sons to stop coveting her sister's weapons — and she promised that once the battle was over, she'd ask Lion to explain everything.
"Heh."
Lion heard this and just smiled dismissively. Watching her sons' casualty rate come in lower than the Ultramarines' was making her very happy.
Lion stood atop the chitinous hull and drove her sword hard into the wall ahead of her. A massive Norn-Queen — round as a ball — tumbled out before her, screeching and thrashing its limbs to kill the Primarch in front of it.
"Settle down."
No further words. She tossed an onigiri into the creature's maw and tamed the beast.
The Norn-Queen thrashed wildly at first, howling again and again as she struggled to maintain her last link to the Great Devourer — a kind of distress signal. Malcador could detect it.
But even Malcador didn't know where those signals ultimately went. He could only watch them drift away, out beyond the edge of the galaxy.
[Malcador: What a terrifying entity.]
[It seems the ten thousand years since my death have gifted the Imperium yet another foe that defies all conventional strategy.]
Malcador was deeply troubled. He knew little about the Tyranids, but it was clear enough — this was only the vanguard. Because the final signals from these Tyranids weren't calls for reinforcement.
They were distress calls.
Something far larger, far more terrible, was slowly closing in behind them. Still distant from the galaxy for now — but coming.
The Norn-Queen grovelled, lowering her enormous head in submission. Despite the immense bloated sphere of her body behind her, she made her surrender unmistakable.
A Hive Ship of this scale required more than one Norn-Queen to manage. Smaller Hive Ships could be controlled by a single Queen. But this combined devouring fleet — bristling with countless tendril organisms — was not something a single Norn-Queen could command alone.
Lion's side went smoothly. Guilliman's was no different.
Using her small stature to her advantage, Guilliman ducked beneath the writhing tendrils. After cutting down three Lictor-forms, she led her sons straight into another Norn-Queen's spawning chamber.
Inside was a deeply unsettling sight. The entire space was packed with Tyranid creatures waiting to hatch. Among them, the number of Lictors alone exceeded a hundred. The fleshy walls around them had already begun to wither and decay — the Norn-Queen was clearly growing desperate.
"This ends now."
Guilliman raised the Sword of the Emperor. Though her frame was small, that didn't stop her from leading the charge personally.
She launched herself upward faster than any bullet — spinning once in midair, cutting down a swarm of Gargoyles — and landed the onigiri directly into the Norn-Queen's mouth.
The Norn-Queen let out a mournful wail. Then, her link with the Great Devourer severed, the entire Hive Ship came under Imperial control.
At that moment, the relief forces from the Rock arrived.
The Rock's sheer size alone was enough to physically ram straight through another Hive Ship. Biomass and corpses scattered across the entire orbital path. Its internal weaponry — a diverse array of incendiary systems — burned every last Tyranid to nothing.
"Dark Angels Legion, arriving to reinforce!"
"We will defend Macragge until every last xenos is driven out!"
The arrival of reinforcements instantly turned the tide.
And somewhere deep inside one of the Hive Ships, an Ork was waaagh-ing his lungs out, simply hacking away.
"FOR ULTRAMAR WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"
When an Ork bellowed those words in his stumbling, mangled pronunciation, everyone felt an irresistible urge to burst out laughing. Especially Huron of the Astral Claws, who experienced a moment of profound identity crisis — who exactly is the Ultramarine here?
Huron watched the Ork bring his giant cleaver down and take off the last Norn-Queen's head.
Then he switched off his comms and didn't want to look anymore.
Because that Ork had just killed the last Norn-Queen on the battlefield.
What remained was cleanup. Nothing left worth fearing.
"Wouldn't it be wonderful if these xenos could serve us?"
"I think our mother must be thinking exactly that. Perhaps this is the moment to sit down with our Gene-Mother for a proper conversation."
Huron of the Astral Claws said this not in private to his own Chapter — he said it openly, in front of multiple Chapter Masters. It was a formal proposal.
What happened at Macragge would ripple outward like a butterfly's wings, slowly shaping the fate of the entire galaxy.
And at that moment, Caleb was already unlocking his rewards. With the death of the last Norn-Queen, the mission was complete.
[Congratulations, Player — Campaign Completed!]
[Reward: Board Skill — Resurrection. 70% of pieces that would be destroyed return to your hand instead.]
[Reward: Ultramarine Gene-Template. This template contains a Warp-based essence —
"Oh..."
Caleb knew the difference between a Space Marine Seed and a Space Marine Gene-Template. But even knowing that, when he saw what this template could do, he was stunned.
"...I won't rush. Maybe I can do something unexpected with this."
_______________
TL/N : Did the author fever dream eldar into existence?