40 Thousand Reasons

Chapter 199: Cadia

The minute my fleet arrived in the Cadian_System, the magnitude of the Chaos assault on the Imperial bastion nearly frightened me. The tesseract vision revealed every tiny detail, creating a perfect 3D map of the system and its contents in my mind.

Over ten thousand warships, ten times as many Hell Fighters and other smaller demon engines, billions of traitor soldiers and millions of armored vehicles, xenos of a dozen species, many of them distorted by Chaos sorcery and psyker spells...it was almost as bad as I expected.

Still, the corner of my mouth raised in a slight smile. "This isn't so bad." I whispered softly.

"Open your eyes, my lord! I think it's pretty bad!" Semnai yelled and shook my shoulder, pointing at the holographic screen.

The human defenders were locked in battle with corrupted invaders on the big screen, losing ships at a much greater rate than the invaders, often choosing to sacrifice their ships in suicidal ramming or reactor detonations, or getting boarded and being massacred in detail.

A Black Templar Crusade fleet was engaged over Hive World Belisar, while their Astartes and Auxilia fought valiantly against overwhelming forces on the surface.

I just took a deep breath, and twisted space-time with my mind. The Black Templars and other exposed Imperium forces vanished in the Tesseract Labyrinth, and were replaced with blooming ordnance. Plasma warheads, Nova mines, incendiary bombs, canisters of nerve gas and atomic bombs, all dispersed over the battlefield in a mere minute. The entire Chaos army evaporated under my blanket of punishment, with few Titans and big demons remaining in a stunned state.

"The meaning of sacrifice is always a better future, Semnai. You will deploy at Cadia with two Companies, and make sure they obey my commands. This is too easy, so I bet the worst is yet to come." I answered instead, keeping my voice level.

For a second Captain Semnai stood still, eyes fixed on the screen and the cogitator statistics recomputing enemy numbers in the wake of my own strike. "Of course, Lord Lancefire. We are doing the Emperor's Will." he said in a rather impressed tone.

Partly on automatic control, I began deploying my own forces as needed, countering specific threats with effective counter-measures. Silent Sisters to block and weaken Daemon Princes, my own Titans and Knights to oppose enemy giants and armored regiments to protect soft targets like cities and vital infrastructure.

Meanwhile, my eyes turned to the right, where Inquisitor Ramaeus was still scrolling through her Nexus Arrangement device. "My lady, I think it's better if you direct the Black Templars for now. Melee battles might be awesome and glorious, but unnecessary for now. The cube allows nearly perfect asymmetric warfare. Use it."

My lover smiled thinly at me, and nodded gently. "Take care of Menelau." she demanded instead and vanished from the fort's bridge.

Two assets in place, I turned my attention on the Indomitus Fleet and contacted their Fleetmaster via the empathic Sounding Board. "Lady Cassandra, link up with Battlefleet Cadia and support them as well as you can. Former orders about fleet integrity still stand." I sent directly into her mind.

To her praise, the woman didn't flinch or scream at my intrusion, just bit her lower lip and frowned. "I thought my Null Wand prevented psyker spells." she answered back, while already directing her officers and Captains to fulfil the task I given her.

"This is not a psyker spell. It's merely advanced technology, Fleetmaster. Just remember, I need your fleet intact, for later."

As soon as the Indomitus Fleet Tertius changed course towards the bigger fleet defending Cadia, I turned my head to look at the Blank Princeps of Albedelach. "I need you to defend Hive World Macharia, my friend. There are 300 billion people there, and they need a rally point. You and the Dreadknights will be it." I spoke out loud. "And don't grope Stern too much." I added with an empathic mental smirk. The thin guy just scowled at me, before he popped right into the Titan's cockpit and Stern plopped into his lap.

By the next minute, Albesalom and the Demonifuge made landfall among the invaders at Macharia, while the Leviathan Dreadknights and the heavy infantry arrived to defend the Hive Cities.

I wasn't worried too much about that place now, with a Psi-Titan powered by the amazing Miss Stern to skew the odds in our favor.

"Finona, accelerate towards St. Josmane's Hope world, and blockade it. Nothing in or out." I ordered to the Captain of the Singularity, while splitting off escort corvettes and a dozen cruisers for her squadron.

It was a big risk, splitting off my forces to cover the entire system. Then again, I could see the big picture as well. While the Imperial Navy had to deal with the fog of war and erratic returns from their auspex sensors, Necron technology embedded into the Teseract allowed me to see the entire map at once.

What enemy forces were present at Cadia right now, were not sufficient to conquer the system, only damage it and create destruction and panic. An alarm bell rang in my mind at that.

Something else had to be going on, either some kind of sorcery ritual by Erebus and maybe Ahriman, or some different type of attack.

Just to make sure, I began advancing my fleet towards Vigilantum, a dockyard and training world filled with half-completed vessels and millions of Navy recruits, plus construction and repair facilities, techpriest conclaves and fusion reactor assembly plants for big warships. This was the softest target I could see, and probably the enemy could see that as well.

Maybe it was luck, or intuition. Maybe simply baggage of war experience for a century. But after a couple of hours, my guess was vindicated.

Warp rifts began opening en masse all over the Cadian system, revealing the other surprises that the planners of the invasion had in reserve.

Dark Eldar raids descended at the fortress world of Kasr Partox and a massive Ork Waagh carried on hundreds of Space Hulks at Vigilantum.

Captain Chyron scoffed at the emerging new enemies and slapped my shoulder with his dreadnought's massive arm. "So this is why we trained for decades on that Space Hulk at Illevar. There must be trillions of Orks here."

My shoulder ached so I smiled kindly towards the armored Lamenter. "You know what I see, when I look at these Space Hulks and their occupants, Captain Chyron?"

"A big fight?" he answered with a morose tone.

"I see free metal for new ships, and unpaid xenos auxiliaries, eager to battle Chaos on my behalf. I see thousands of STC templates waiting to be uncovered, and trade capital for my Rogue Trader house. I see fifty new Forge Worlds opening in the Fringe, just to exploit this generous gift I was given." I replied with a grin, then began abducting the incoming Space Hulks one after another.

It hadn't been possible til now, as my mind just wasn't strong enough. Maybe my willpower?

I don't know. But since the Emperor took his time to upgrade me personally, I was more. Blobs of intermingled ships, asteroids and Void whale skeletons, each measuring over a hundred kilometers in length, and sometimes depth would have been impossible to shift into the tesseract before. Not anymore.

It was tiring, but doable. An entire Green_Kroosade which could easily lay waste to a galactic sector just vanished, and remained in stasis in the Necron labyrinth housed in my necklace.

Soon enough, I began ejecting unneeded Ork gretchins and squigs and most of the weaker Ork ranks, directly into the sun, while mentally directing the mind controlling filaments to take over the Ork Bosses and convert their forces to my control.

Less than a billion Ork remained as xeno auxilia after the procedure was completed inside the labyrinth, only the largest and strongest of them, plus specialist units like Kommandoes, Mekboys and Painboyz.

The work of the Ork gods and even Chaos gods over the millennia, to steal and divert Warp-travelling ships and creatures into these constructs simply served to enrich me now.

It wasn't all great though. The Ork Waagh field still pushed against the limits of the tesseract, and I had to counter than constantly with mental energy. Holding the reins of an entire Ork Waagh was hard, even for me.

Perhaps it was time to trim the numbers even more, by unleashing most of the new forces on my enemies.

So I began empathically directing various Ork Bosses and Warbosses onto different targets. The Dark Eldar first, then other corrupted xenos or demons, then against Chaos marines from the Night Lords and Alpha Legion.

Sure, the losses of Ork lives were horrendous even so, but I didn't mind much. Losing a hundred Orks to kill a Chaos marine, in close melee in underhives or mining tunnels was perfectly acceptable. They will still run out of corrupted marines before I ran out of Orks to send.

At least it wasn't human lives I was spending so liberally.

You may think it was all going great, just like I did. But blood and death served Chaos too.

By the next week, although the invaders forces were diminished to less than half, and Cadia was intact and well, the next phase of the invasion began.

A major Warp rift opened right on the surface of Cadia, and out of it poured the real invasion.

"That is Kharn, and the World Eaters Legion. His Butcherhorde can take on Titans and still win." Captain Chyron warned me as he recognized the Chaos leader.

I began deploying more Orks and expendable assets like Tarantula turrets to hold off the new invasion force, and commenced retrieving the dispersed Lamenters from all over the system.

It seemed my luck hasn't failed me. I might not have Angron anymore, but this Kharn was a Champion of Khorne too. He would do just fine.