"Since the Horus Heresy, the Imperium has never assembled a host of this magnitude.
Humanity is reforging the sword once broken—and reclaiming its unyielding will…"
Standing beneath the opened dome, Roboute Guilliman stared at the fleets stretching to the farthest stars and could not help but breathe a stunned sigh.
He had never seen a naval concentration this dense.
Perhaps only in the Great Crusade, under the leadership of the Emperor—of his father—had Humanity projected such might.
In mere tens of seconds, warp-translating task forces nearly filled this minor system, and more were still arriving.
The sheer mass of so many fleets swelled the system's gravity well, tugging even on the flow of time.
"With a force this large, coordinating operations becomes nightmarishly difficult.
We may have to simplify the plan."
After scanning the projected muster totals, Guilliman felt a twinge of dread.
Hundreds of grand Imperial fleets. Numbers of hulls and troops beyond imagining. Much of it ad hoc. A command snarl seemed inevitable.
Worse, the Savior wanted them to execute a sector-wide encirclement, all arms moving as one in a coordinated advance.
Forget ordinary commanders.
Even the cogitator-augmented brains of senior Tech-priests might not crunch data at this scale and issue correct orders.
This was mobilization measured in the trillions.
"There's no simplifying it. We have to do it this way, or we'll never break the Chaos array blanketing all Vostonia.
It's a nasty toy laid by the Changer of Ways—a trap tailored for the Imperium, keyed to our weaknesses."
Eden exhaled softly.
If there were a simpler way, he wouldn't be making this much noise.
Tzeentch's array coiled around both time and space. Imperial forces had to retake worlds on precise schedules and then use psychic sorcery to shatter the sigils.
That was the best solution Magnus the Red—the Crimson King—and the Emperor Himself could devise.
The Savior's words left Guilliman silent, as if running the permutations in his head.
In moments his brows drew tight—and he swayed a little. Even a Primarch's mind reeled from a brief simulation.
"Old Roboute, now you see the scale of it, eh?"
Eden's smile was faint as he pushed more feeds to the Ultramarines' Primarch and famed master of war:
"These are the latest musters from the Departmento Munitorum, plus reconnaissance and our projected theatre picture."
Not long ago, Guilliman had boasted of his strategic mastery and offered to command the entire war, hoping to leverage experience to lift their odds.
Eden had gently declined, intent on employing commanders from his own domains as planned.
"You were right. Thank the Throne I'm not in overall command…"
Guilliman swallowed after absorbing the fresh counts and the sector forecasts.
The war over Vostonia sprawled across hundreds of light-years, more than a thousand worlds, and tens of thousands of distinct battlespaces.
Too many variables to track.
Time-zone offsets between systems, signal lag, march distances, enemy and friendly strengths, the newest shifts at the front—an information deluge bordering on apocalyptic.
Any mistake could chain-react across the theatre.
Guilliman could micromanage: from a flagship down to the individual macro-cannon.
But at this scale—even he felt it obscene.
He could not promise to wield the entire host as Eden demanded.
Not even the Emperor—if we're honest—could do this alone.
Why else raise twenty Primarchs, minds and bodies towering over man, if not to share the burden?
In the Great Crusade, the Primarchs liberated the galaxy by plotting axes and pushing one world at a time.
They did not attempt what Eden proposed now—unfurl the whole map, synchronize the entire sector, and finish it in one sweep.
How do you conduct war on this scale?
No single brain—Primarch or no—could drink it all. You relied on instinct to nudge the shape of the fight and pushed resources accordingly.
"Brothers, I have a suggestion: we solve command by using one tactic—full-on shock-assault."
Jaghatai Khan, bright-eyed, offered a new angle.
If the Imperial hosts advanced fast enough, they could handle their objectives before the next command packet even arrived.
In short: issue a time-bounded order and have everyone slam forward until it's done.
No retreat lines. No hedging.
The White Scars' Primarch was met with… silence. Eden and Guilliman both let it pass.
They were builders and schemers by instinct; the Khan loved the thunder of the charge. Not a great fit for this.
And that sort of tactic was too dangerous. If a mass charge bogged down, or blundered into a god-trap, the Imperium would bleed itself white.
Better to step, set, and push.
Sensing the dip in mood, Eden offered a balm. "We don't need to tie ourselves in knots. Don't forget the networked warfare personnel under my banner."
Years ago he'd proposed a doctrine of network-centric war and had founded Loyal Scions Academy to teach it.
He'd trained cadres of specialists.
These officers excelled at information-led command and cross-arm cooperation.
Layer by layer, orders could be driven down to single turrets and even individual guns to realize tightly meshed action.
"I know about them," Guilliman said, shaking his head, "but I doubt mortals can manage a host this large."
He'd studied the Savior's information commands. They astonished him—dozens of minds combining to perform at near-Primarch levels.
He'd even considered them rivals to his own generalship.
But mortal minds had limits. There was no way they could sustain coordination at this size.
"Who said they can't? We've built a better command architecture—and a large-scale Network Command Center."
Eden's confidence was unruffled.
He pointed toward the void. "There. The newest Network Command Center.
It carries tens of thousands of controllers and the Machine-Goddess's psycho-cog supercomputing core, plus massive comms arrays.
They can command regional fights—and also mesh into a theatre-spanning command web.
Enough to feed the war."
In their augmented view, a heavy-bellied ship sat under layered guard.
The command center.
Roughly nine kilometers long, it bristled with scanners and antennae—and no offensive weapons.
Most eye-catching of all—five or six shimmering shield veils stacked like tortoise plates. A true bunker of the void.
Protect the brain; preserve the war.
In other words, this vessel's comms and defenses were maxed. It was a command ship through and through.
Inside, tens of thousands of controllers, with yet more signallers and aides, watched every battlespace in range, synthesizing cleaner truth.
The core controller judged.
And orders were nailed down the chain to every level—making coordination real.
More than a dozen such command ships were embedded throughout the host, knitting an even larger web.
And masking the true command core from decapitation strikes.
"So this is the networked command model…"
Guilliman gazed at the holo of the core controller wearing a massive neural helm, hard-linked into psycho-cog engines.
He was shaken.
For the Imperium, this was wetware wedded to proscribed intelligence: a truly novel path.
But it was also palatable.
At least they weren't scooping out brains and bolting them into tin coffins.
"Then we needn't fret over grand command. We can do what we were born to do—fight."
Eden's smile was satisfied.
He'd always hated command; it fried the brain.
Grand-host warfare was a crematorium for synapses. Pressure and cognitive burn stacked until only iron souls remained.
Take Guilliman's early comeback campaigns—weeks without sleep, thinking until his hair went white and his face lined.
Now the Network Command Center could piggyback on Webby's computations and simulations to lay down exquisite star-maps—
—and bleed pressure from the core controller.
If someone crashed, medevac them to the ICU and swap in the next.
For Primarchs and Astartes, that meant a simpler truth: compared to running the whole leviathan, punching the enemy in the face is easier.
Dante, for one, often dumped command midfight to "retire" to the front line.
He'd even talked about quitting entirely.
Eden had a suspicion: Old Roboute's charging record looked bad—and his trap rate high—because brutal theatres and mega-host command had ravaged his wits.
By the time he had to lead the charge, he had no patience left—just a need to break through something to vent the pressure.
Most Primarchs can handle one thing flawlessly.
The Lion, for instance, rarely touched grand command, choosing instead to own the battlefield with his blade.
But Old Roboute? He loved doing everything—convinced he was the total package.
Something had to give. And the consequences could be bloody.
Not that it was his fault.
He'd slept too long on the stasis throne. His command apparatus had rotted away. Anyone waking to an Imperium in freefall would struggle.
He did what he had to—burned himself to keep the lights on.
"Old Roboute's had it rough," Eden mused, a flicker of sympathy in his eyes. "Let's spare him what we can."
"Perhaps I could…"
Guilliman began hopefully.
He couldn't run the grand host, but he could certainly command an elite strike formation.
Let the three Primarchs take a raiding spear independent of the main net—free to prowl within the ring, seeking the enemy heart for the kill.
In short: stab deep, stab often.
He didn't finish.
"Our elite strike force goes to the Khan," Eden said, voice even. "You and I will fight as a pair."
The Ultramarines' Primarch—his marble-strong features—visibly fell.
…?
"Do you doubt my art of command, brother?"
Disbelief crept into Guilliman's voice. In any fair tally he towered over the Khan in command skill.
"Old Roboute…"
Eden read his thoughts and clapped him on the shoulder.
"We're running a strike formation. We need speed, slewing, and sickle-slash penetrations. The Khan is the finest master of the shock-lance."
Eden himself rarely took the reins. But when he did, he picked the right rider for the horse. For thrust-and-bleed, the White Scars were unmatched.
"Brother, I'll show you what a true shock assault looks like!"
The Eagle of Chogoris drew himself up, laughing with easy joy.
He could already taste the oncoming charge into the daemon tide.
"Khan, get familiar with the Redemption Legion's Men of Iron war engines—fast," Guilliman added, conceding the point but offering a warning.
For a Primarch, such learning was trivial.
This too was why the Savior mattered.
Without him to grease egos, the Primarchs would chafe—and sometimes clash.
There was another reason Eden didn't voice:
If Guilliman led the spear, Eden feared the elite would spend the whole war en route.
And given Roboute's habit of charging headlong into trap after trap—who would put him on point?
But he kept that to himself, for brotherhood's sake.
"Right, that's that."
With tasks assigned, Eden's schedule loosened. He settled in to wait.
In the surrounding reaches, the shimmering of translation never ceased.
Fresh fleets arrived, took orders from the command net, and slotted into their battlegroups.
Those groups would bracket the Vostonia Pan-Sector from multiple vectors, then grind inward, cleansing each assigned battlespace of the Archenemy.
Even the muster phase took several days. Then the Ark Mechanicus arrived, trailing the foundry platform for the Armor of Redemption.
Departure neared.
From this point, stragglers fighting warp-weather would not be waited on.
Those fleets would miss the glory and serve as rear-echelon, guarding logistics rivers.
A new round of mustering oaths echoed through the host, stoking hearts:
"It is time, my children. We require a vast mobilization—a great purgation among the stars…
…We shall prevail!"
All saw the golden-armoured Savior raise the Emperor's Sword in flame—holy beyond words.
"Victory!"
Warriors roared back, giving up fear, doubt, and hesitation—keeping only the hunger to win.
Not just this system, not only the grand host—across provinces and countless worlds, the Imperium bristled the same.
The drumbeat of the Savior's proclamations never stopped.
Vmmm—
Human faith and will condensed. In the warp, the Savior's Hope-Sun surged, a blaze beyond telling.
Even the Sacred Sun could not outshine it.
"This wave of faith is… a bit much. Hard to digest all at once…"
Eden drew a deep breath, tamping down the power sloshing back through his flesh.
A good problem.
He would soon face the Dark Gods—and the champions swollen with their ichor.
He looked over the armada that darkened the firmament and gave the word:
"Make way!"
Whoom—whoom—whoom—
Battlegroup after battlegroup vanished from the system—bound for assigned theatres in the Vostonian war.
At last, the Dreamweaver translated as well.
—
Vostonia Pan-Sector, outer approaches.
"Roooar—
Skulls for the Skull Throne! Kill the Savior—slay the False Emperor!"
A ragged Khorne fleet rammed out of the warp in a blaze of arrogance, the drake-prows belching fire.
This was the warband called the Anointed, answering the Blood God's call to the grand hunt for the Savior—and the promise of deathless glory.
Their lord—Asavar Kul—still swam in the Blood God's gifts and his own rages.
He craved the coming butchery—the human lambs upon Vostonia's altar.
Then he heard his champions screaming.
"Blood God—!"
He looked up—and shook, scales to soul. Even the hellfire from the ramming-beast's jaws guttered out.
Ahead, a wall of metal filled the stars, from zenith to nadir, port to starboard—no end in sight.
An entire shoal of iron leviathans sealed the passage.
They were all… Imperial warships.
(End of Chapter)
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