Chapter 499: Why Not Consult the Primarchs?
Click.
The amber glow of the active system-lights illuminated the interior of the command deck and the reinforced ribbing of the armored ceiling. From the shift in the engine's vibration and the slight starboard tilt of the hull, Commissar Yarrick knew they had entered the kill-zone of the greenskin heavy batteries.
But for those within the belly of this Imperial Leviathan, the saturation bombardment outside was little more than background noise.
This class of command vehicle—a Capitol Imperialis, typically reserved for elite Astra Militarum formations like the Cadian Shock Troops—was a behemoth. It hummed with a void-shield array capable of weathering a naval bombardment and housed a full regiment of the Steel Legion within its guts.
It was, for all practical purposes, a mobile hive-sector on tracks.
Yarrick opened his ever-present briefcase, carefully stowing the reports and tactical notes he had scribbled during the transit. He was constantly reassessing the planetary defensive capacity and raw combat metrics. His data-logs were clinical, precise, and purged of error.
Even with Armageddon and its surrounding sub-sectors currently severed by a massed Ork blockade, the internal vox-network and the various high-speed data-nodes remained functional. The disparate commands communicated in synchronized windows, trading critical intelligence in the brief seconds allowed by Warp-static.
Yarrick was well aware of how he had ascended to this level of authority. The Lord General of the Armageddon Command had granted him a temporary field mandate, elevating him to lead forces that had once been beyond his social reach.
It was a staggering honor. Especially now.
Yarrick turned his attention back to the battle-line.
THRUMM—THRUMM—
His inner ear told him the Leviathan was climbing an incline. Through the reinforced blast-shielding a hundred meters ahead, the sun of Armageddon fought through the soot, casting a creamy, sickly mist across the viewing ports.
Given the height the Capitol Imperialis afforded them, it felt as though they were looking down from the heavens.
As the mobile fortress executed a wide-angle turn behind the trenches, the landscape of war was revealed.
The majestic peaks of the mountains, the endless spires of the hive-hubs, the sprawling hab-blocks, plazas, and scorched highways were all visible. Below them, smoke billowed in black plumes, punctuated by the rhythmic flashes of macro-cannons.
In the engagement zones, deep within the subterranean tunnels preserved beneath the rubble—zones beyond the reach of conventional artillery—the greenskins and the Imperial Guard were locked in a vicious, close-quarters struggle. The Armageddon Steel Legion, legendary for its mechanized iron-fist, utilized these tunnel networks to drive armored wedges into the enemy's rear, reaping a harvest of xenos flesh.
The Second War for Armageddon had entered its fourth year. Since Yarrick had reorganized the remnants and stabilized the line, the campaign had transitioned into the second phase: "Protracted Attrition and Active Defense."
To bolster the stability of the lines, Yarrick had mandated the integration of trench-works and deep-tunnel fortifications. The field works were linked into a complete ecosystem—capable of total annihilation of the foe, self-sustained survival, mobile repositioning, and habitation. This created a synergy of "Mobile Defense and Reactive Counter-Thrusts."
It allowed the defenders to bleed the Orks at the contact point while preventing the "Waaagh!"-infused survivors from returning to the greenskin hives on the other side of the planet to grow stronger.
But Yarrick was not satisfied with a stalemate. Not since he realized the Orks were making themselves at home.
Flipping through the high-tier intelligence secured by Astartes deep-strikes, the Commissar pondered the breakthrough.
A cold, instinctive premonition told him that this cycle was a trap. He didn't know what he was walking into, but he felt the ground shifting.
Unless... of course, he understood the risks of a new strategy. "New" meant unstable. Unstable meant a potential catastrophe.
The War Council was currently satisfied with the status quo. Given the Navy's disastrous initial miscalculation and the defenders' numerical inferiority, maintaining this line was a miracle in itself. For the ground forces, their role was to hold the throat of Armageddon and ensure the Orks knew no peace.
Quick victory was the Navy's job. The problem was the Navy was currently bottlenecked at the Mandeville points, unable to punch through the greenskin blockade.
The fate of the fleets orbiting the moons served as a warning; they had been picked off by Ork "Kruisers" the moment they manifested from the Warp, before the sector defense could react.
This delay suited the War Council's logistics, but it also suited the Ork commander.
Ghazghkull "Salazar" Thraka. This Beast, much like the invasion he led, was a calculated anomaly. He was not like the Orks of the past.
Yarrick shook his head, clearing his mind of radical thoughts. Around him, staff officers were busy coordinating the defense of a dozen sub-sectors. An adjutant stepped forward, delivering a stack of physical documents to his station.
The numbers remained "pretty."
The Imperium's current communication infrastructure—a blend of psionic resonance and advanced logic-engines—was preternaturally fast and resistant to interference. With the Untouchables (Blanks), psychic cadres, and localized Blackstone arrays stationed on every world like Armageddon, the defenders could adapt their counters to specific threats with surgical precision.
Everything appeared to be under control.
CLANG.
The heavy steel doors at the rear of the deck retracted. The pressure valves hissed as the air synchronized.
The Space Wolves currently guarding the command center—charged with the security of the high command—let out a collective cheer. They shared a few rowdy jests as the watch-rotation arrived, then departed. Taking their place were a dozen giants in deep emerald plate.
Yarrick narrowed his right eye, nodding politely to the newcomers. His left eye—the red bionic lens—flickered with the intensity of his thoughts.
The adjutant withdrew with a look of awe.
The legends claimed that Commissar Yarrick's bionic eye could fire a beam of pure annihilation, capable of vaporizing an Ork Mega-Armor Nob in a heartbeat. Yarrick's authority wasn't just built on his tactical mind; it was anchored in the mythic kills he had achieved in the early days of the war.
The citizens of the Imperium thrived on such tales.
In truth, it was a standard medical-pattern unit he had scavenged from a field hospital, though the Mechanicus Magi had upgraded its logic-cogitators after he assumed command.
But in reality, Yarrick could do those things.
He could fire the laser. He could kill the Nobz.
His rise had begun at Hive Volcanus, where he had slain the Warboss Ugulhard in single combat.
One-on-one.
Every soul present—Imperial and Ork alike—had watched the Commissar and the Warboss tumble into the ruins of the hive. When Yarrick emerged, he was fitted with an Evil Eye, and the Warboss was a headless ruin, its remaining metal arm melted into slag.
The reality was more clinical. He had simply learned to understand the guttural language of the greenskins. He had exploited Ugulhard's boastful nature, using his knowledge of the defensive grid and his own youth and vigor to outplay the beast in the dark trenches.
As for the eye? His own had been blinded by chemical fog and then gouged out by a power-claw. He had found the replacement in a derelict medicae center while evading the pursuit.
Back then, he had offered a prayer of thanks to the Great Charter Fleets for delivering the supplies and to the Dawnstar-sanctioned administration for their distribution protocols. He had fitted the eye himself.
Plug-and-play. Imperial technology—truly miraculous.
The epilogue of that duel involved a melta-charge and a very dead Warboss.
"My friend, you are truly—"
Tu'Shan, Chapter Master of the Salamanders, looked at Yarrick. As the Ork offensive swelled, the Commissar's aura had grown increasingly fierce.
"—I feel as if I am standing before a battle-brother who has walked the Path of Magma."
"Then I am merely lacking the sacred complexion of a son of Nocturne, tempered by the holy fires," Yarrick replied, meeting Tu'Shan's gaze. The Chapter Master's face was a mask of obsidian skin and burning red eyes, terrifying to any normal man.
"Hahaha!"
The Salamanders around them let out a roar of good-natured laughter.
The Astartes dispersed to their stations, ready for the next crisis. Yarrick could hear the low, rhythmic chanting of these demigods—the native tongue of Nocturne.
He caught fragments of the prayers: "Primarch," "Dawnbreakers," "Return."
Yarrick had a gift for linguistics. He had learned the Ork tongue through exposure, allowing him to mimic their thought patterns and predict tactical moves that looked nonsensical to a standard Imperial scholar.
It was the reason for his rapid ascension.
War is a meritocracy. If you have the talent, you rise.
It didn't matter how perfect your simulations were or how elegant your plans looked on paper. Only the battlefield could validate your right to lead a great crusade.
"Thank the greenskins," Yarrick said with a faint smile, offering a formal salute to Tu'Shan, who had just returned from a deep-strike mission.
The Orks manifested a localized psychic field known as the "Waaagh! Field." It was a collective reality-warping phenomenon that made them stronger, tougher, and faster based on their conviction. It was the power of "I Believe."
It allowed a mundane bionic eye to shoot lasers and a red-painted Trukk to move at impossible speeds.
As the anchor of this field, the Warbosses were the primary beneficiaries. If the Boyz believed the Boss was "ded 'ard," he became so. Until he met a bigger Boss and lost, at which point the belief shifted.
The more Orks believed in the "Ardness" of a leader, the more powerful that leader became.
And the research suggest that in rare instances, if the Orks reached a consensus on an opponent, the Waaagh! Field would grant that opponent the same benefits.
Regardless of how "lucky" Yarrick's kill of the Warboss had been, the result was a planetary consensus among the Orks: Yarrick is the meanest humie alive.
And so, on a planet drowning in a green tide, Yarrick had truly become powerful.
In a previous age, such an anomaly would have invited an Inquisitorial purge.
But now, the Departmento Munitorum archives contained detailed, public records of xenos-phenomena. The Dawnbreakers even encouraged the active cultivation of such variables where necessary.
Of course, to ensure the commander's safety, Yarrick was always shadowed by a contingent of Blanks to regulate the influence.
"Do not diminish the courage or wisdom you have displayed, Commissar," Tu'Shan said seriously. "You were a mortal man when you slew the beast. Do not let your current strength blind you to your own merit."
The Chapter Master, who stood a full head taller than a standard Astartes, leaned in beside Yarrick. A hovering servo-skull began feeding data into the primary terminal.
"This is the recon report from the greenskin rear. Combined with the fact that Armageddon is effectively the ancient throne-world of Ullanor—your hypothesis is correct, Commissar."
Tu'Shan explained the layout of the Ork encampments using memory-projected images.
While the Salamanders were slightly slower in reflex than some of their cousins, they possessed a mutation known as "Infra-Sight," which allowed them to reconstruct past events through residual thermal signatures.
Tu'Shan's scouts had confirmed that the remnants of the Orks who survived the frontal assaults were being gathered in "Selection Hives."
They were being issued better wargear—weapons that bore a striking, disturbing departure from the standard Ork "scrap-tech" style.
Tu'Shan had cross-referenced these laser and psychic weapons against the Legion's archives of the War of the Beast. There had been a series of internal Ork wars; the victors abandoned the outposts and moved deeper into the continental interior of Armageddon, as if following a tiered selection process.
The humans were not the target. They were the sieve.
"As expected," Yarrick's gaze hardened.
War, at its heart, is simple—especially for those who command it.
Complex calculations, squad-level logistics, and trench maneuvers are the domain of servo-systems, field officers, and clerks.
A true strategist takes the available data, guesses the enemy's grand design, and formulates a counter-stroke while ensuring his own intent remains hidden.
"He is training them. And these weapons... you are certain they are being unearthed from the planetary crust?"
Yarrick had spent thirty years on this soil. He had never suspected what lay beneath.
"Because this world is Ullanor," Tu'Shan said, the words heavy with bitterness.
The Salamanders' opinion of this world was abysmal. It was here, during the War of the Beast, that their Gene-father, Vulkan, had vanished once more.
The true identity of the planet was no secret to the Imperial elite. The Mechanicus cadres stationed on the desolate northern continent—those who had fully converted to the faith of the "Prime Motive"—never missed an opportunity to use this as a political weapon against Mars.
After the pyrrhic victory of the War of the Beast, the Imperium had handed the planet to the Adeptus Mechanicus for study, with a terminal order to destroy it once the research was complete.
But Mars, seeing the short research window and craving the planet's secrets, had played a grand game of deception.
Why destroy a world when you can just move it and change its name?
It was a staggering scandal.
And Forge Worlds like Incaladion, Agrippina, the Lathe Worlds, Ryza, and Steel Mound—who had entered an open rivalry with Mars under the Dawnstar's aegis—were not letting the opportunity pass.
The Imperium ordered its destruction. You defied the Throne, kept the planet, placed it on a critical shipping lane, and invited colonization.
No wonder the Ork infestations in this sector have been constant since the 33rd Millennium. No wonder Angron invaded. It was Mars's treason that cost the Imperium these losses.
The blame for the First War for Armageddon, the historical Ork raids, and this current campaign was being laid squarely at the feet of the Fabricator-General.
But Yarrick had no time for Mechanicus politics.
He had to ensure Armageddon survived. He had to win.
With the data Tu'Shan had brought back, the radical option Yarrick had been harboring was no longer a possibility; it was a necessity.
He looked at the tactical display.
"Why are so many of our reserves concentrated in this sector?" Tu'Shan asked in a low voice, noting the apparent waste of manpower.
As a Salamander, he understood the value of the Astra Militarum better than most. The Armageddon Steel Legion was arguably second only to the Cadians, and in terms of mechanized defense, they were peerless.
"It is necessary," Yarrick whispered. "We must preserve these assets for the jump."
Tu'Shan's hand passed through the holographic cargo-logs. Eighteen black-skinned warriors stood stoically nearby, offering computational assistance to the mortal adjutants.
A squire expanded an image on the 3D-projection.
"Nineteen Armageddon-class Siege Engines. Salvaged during the destruction of the orbital manufactorums," Yarrick noted.
"Impressive," Tu'Shan admitted. To save such strategic assets amidst that level of carnage was a feat.
"This is no small move, Yarrick."
The Commissar switched the feed.
"Three Ordinatus Engines—"
"Truly..." Tu'Shan was speechless. How had this blockaded world retained so much heavy ordnance?
"Major assets."
"Critical," Yarrick agreed. "Especially considering what is required to make them functional. Technicians, Aeronautica support, and the attached shock-brigades... we require six million personnel. The secondary logistics are even more daunting, but the surface factories can handle that. For these strategic resources and the crews capable of operating them, Armageddon can only muster a single, concentrated offensive of this scale."
He switched the image again.
"Two thousand four hundred artillery batteries. Mobile guns, plasma arrays, and missile platforms."
"Combined with the shells and the crews... a continuous bombardment of the 'Wall of Volcanus' and the 'West Bulge' requires a logistical miracle."
"Volcanus and the West Bulge are the strongest points of the greenskin line," Tu'Shan noted, shaking his head. "The Orks are expecting a breakthrough there."
"Do you intend for us to lead a deep-strike into those teeth? It is a poor suggestion. Even with ten full companies of Astartes—the best we have—and the Space Wolves, we cannot breach those positions."
"I agree," Yarrick said. He found the Space Wolves' wild, unpredictable nature a tactical liability in a synchronized operation.
In a meat-grinder, the Wolves were an unstable variable.
"But I do not intend to send this host against Volcanus or the West Bulge."
"Then—"
"It is a feint, My Lord. A grand, world-shaking feint. We must move every asset the Orks can see."
Yarrick leaned forward, rotating the map. He pointed to a minute speck on the greenskin territory of the sub-continent.
"This is the true objective."
"But that... that is also impregnable," Tu'Shan countered.
They had attempted deep-strikes before. The closer to the heart of the "Waaagh!", the stronger the xenos became.
"It is not as strong as you believe," Yarrick said. "Or rather, it is not as strong as the enemy wants us to believe. The greenskin is at his weakest the moment before he realizes he is under threat. If we can organize a force armed with strategic-tier weaponry and strike before they can react... our air supremacy can mask the approach."
Another layer of the trap, Tu'Shan realized.
He was struck by Yarrick's presence of mind. Without the Commissar's decision to abandon the moons early in the war to concentrate the sector fleet over Armageddon, the Imperium would have lost the skies long ago.
Commanding the defense, salvaging materiel, developing the resistance, training the reserves...
How had he done all this in the few years since taking command?
"This is high-risk strategy, Yarrick. Perhaps we should wait," Tu'Shan suggested mildly. As an advisor, he sought to avoid unnecessary sacrifice. "The news of the victory at Badab has spread. The Primarchs are coming."
The choice remained with Yarrick.
"That is exactly why we cannot wait. My Steel Legion has the execution and the strength. The education I received tells me this army is fundamentally different from the records of the past. I trust them."
Yarrick lowered his voice. "We cannot leave a fully armed Ullanor for the Primarchs to clean up."
The victory at Badab was the catalyst for his radical choice. He believed that to delay was only to let the bomb grow larger. Better to detonate it now with the defenders of Armageddon than let it fester.
If this world truly was Ullanor, no one on the surface was safe.
Ullanor was a literal fortress-planet. The entire crust was slaved to power-cores that allowed the controller to shift continents at will. During the War of the Beast, millions had been crushed by the shifting earth itself.
If Vulkan hadn't destroyed the core, the Imperium might still be fighting that war.
If these Orks could use the surface weapons, what would happen if they restored the planet's propulsion?
Tu'Shan's face went grim.
"In that case—"
The Chapter Master thought for a moment, looking at Yarrick with a new intensity. He made a decision.
He signaled for the Chapter Librarian.
"Why not consult the Primarchs?"
"?"
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