Aboard the Iron Hands' Blackstone Fortress, Ferrus gently rotated the scroll. His silver-grey metallic fingers registered the distinct, warm texture of the parchment. His brother had already departed the command hall, leaving behind a scroll sealed with a private signet and inscribed with psychic runes.
He hesitated. He fought down his curiosity, wavering over whether he should break the seal to probe the top-secret contents written within.
"You may view it."
His brother had confirmed his clearance before leaving; reading it was entirely within his rights. The parchment was already in his palm. He needed only to break the seal to glimpse the truth behind why Blazkowicz had insisted on the extermination campaigns during the Silk-Worm Wars.
Yet, his fingertips felt a sensation of searing heat, like cauterization.
His intellectual curiosity hungered to uncover the secret, but his instinctual intuition—the warning of a warrior born of the Warp-touched cosmos—shrieked a silent alarm: this was not merely a secret; it was a bottomless abyss.
Ferrus, the man of iron, hesitated.
He had always been accustomed to thinking through the lens of rationality, calculating the gains and losses of every inch of the battlefield with numerical precision, measuring the dimensions of conflict through logic, and extrapolating the depth and breadth of the universe through the same cold, analytical frame.
The scroll spun between his silver-grey fingers. Ferrus tossed it lightly, placing it before the empty throne. In the end, he chose not to lift the veil; he chose not to touch the dark secrets of the cosmos.
He felt no pity for the extinction of the alien races during the Silk-Worm Wars. But the lack of a clear, explicit justification for the extermination had always been a thorn in his side. He had wanted an "explanation," though in truth, he was reminding his brother that they had been fighting side-by-side, yet there had always been secrets kept from him.
Now, Blazkowicz had handed the answer over, placing it before himself and the Emperor, proving that the extermination had been entirely rational and necessary. Since it was lawful and reasonable, Ferrus had no desire to pry further.
In his understanding, the Imperium was a collection of countless messy, unresolved accounts. Various reasons and conflicting imperatives were mashed together, collectively constituting a singular, brutal, and raw engine of war. Since so many answers remained buried in the abyss, there was no need to disturb the surface of the water.
Ferrus did not consider himself a "judge" or an "arbiter." He was the hammer in the Emperor's hand, meant to strike the enemy with decisive force. Obsessing over extraneous matters would only create cracks in the hammer's resolve, allowing rust to corrupt its edge, rendering it hesitant and impotent. Moreover, he remained unshakably convinced that if one day the Emperor required him to face other, deeper enemies, all the questions that currently plagued him would receive their answers in due time.
Setting aside his curiosity, Ferrus walked to the life-support sarcophagus, shed his robes, and opened his arms to allow his Legionnaires to begin the maintenance protocols. He stepped back into the tank, observing the grand strategy from a position of absolute detachment.
Time flowed like water. A beam of radiance descended from the heavens, and the Legionnaires in the command hall knelt as one before the golden silhouette. The scroll floated into the air of its own accord; the wax seal melted and dripped away, and the hidden contents slowly unfurled before the Emperor.
The Supreme Overlord, the demigod, the path to godhood—the dark secrets seemed poised to swallow all light. The Emperor closed His eyes in contemplation, and the parchment dissolved into golden particles. When the Master of Mankind opened His eyes, He pointed a finger, sending a ray of golden light shooting into the sarcophagus below the throne.
[Send Astropathic message to Terra]
[Draft legalized Psykers to assist the Emperor]
[Draft the Sisters of Silence]
[Emperor's Command: Authorizing the Dark Angels Legion to utilize unconventional force]
Ferrus, having abandoned his quest for secrets and refusing to dwell on the past, sank into the depths of the life-support fluid to coordinate the theater of war and transmit orders to the various combat Legions.
In the J-11 star system, the Nur fleet and the Doom Marines were stationed on the fifth planet, threatening the Rangdan world on the sixth planet directly from the flank. The fifth planet was the innermost reach of the battlefield; its rotation speed around the pulsar was immense, making it the closest planet capable of sustaining a permanent military garrison. Inside the orbit of the fourth planet, exposure to electromagnetic pulses was constant; mechanical equipment failed rapidly, and void shields bled energy at unsustainable rates.
From the fifth planet out to the ninth, five viable worlds were being frantically fortified by both the Imperium of Man and the Rangdan Empire. Blazkowicz looked down through the transparent floor of the shuttle; worlds that had once been dead and silent were now blazing with light, construction raging like an inferno.
Nur had utilized the continental shelf to construct a continuous, continent-spanning defensive fortress, securing the entire eastern hemisphere. Mountains were flattened by heavy machinery; canyons were compacted into foundations as countless industrial facilities and defense bases rose from the earth. The western hemisphere was controlled by the Rangdan, who were mirroring the effort with a grand base of their own.
The front lines were so close that their void shields were nearly touching. Mortal soldiers peered across the void at one another; one could almost discern the expressions on the enemy's faces. The shuttle's altitude dropped rapidly, the horizon vanished, and the iron fortifications filled his entire field of vision.
The space outside the shuttle's viewport was incredibly busy, with massive freight ships ascending and descending, ferrying supplies and troops from high orbit to the surface. Blazkowicz donned his royal cloak, and when he stepped out of the shuttle, the vast landing pad was already waiting.
The ship's engines kicked up waves of air, and Junior stood straight, his cape snapping in the wind as he prepared to welcome the Gene-Primarch.
"Primarch!" the welcoming party knelt as one, offering their homage.
Blazkowicz strode forward, glancing left and right at the endless jungle of steel. "Speak as we walk," he said, bending to lift Junior and signaling the Gene-son to lead the way.
Junior moved to the Primarch's side, reporting rapidly: "Following Lord Ferrus's tactical guidance, we did not repel the Rangdan fleet. We allowed the xenos to land on the surface, constructing fortresses in direct, static opposition to our own."
"All ten billion of the Nur Auxilia have been deployed, and ten billion automated combat machines are ready for action."
"Automated machines have tunneled deep underground, establishing factories to refine local resources. Even if the orbital lanes are blockaded, we possess sufficient strategic resources to hold."
Blazkowicz nodded, listening intently. Ferrus's tactical logic was sound. By anchoring themselves at critical points along the warp currents and forcing the Rangdan to engage in planetary warfare, they could leverage a massive, decisive battle to establish dominance.
He issued an order to Junior: "Request reinforcements from the Command Center. Have the Supreme Commander provide us with another billion Imperial Auxilia."
In his mind, Blazkowicz had already mapped out the trajectory of the war, foreseeing the unimaginably brutal war of attrition that would follow. Humanity and the Rangdan now faced off like two mortal enemies, meeting in a "pure" struggle of raw, bloody physical power, seeking to decide the outcome through sheer, brutal force.
A decisive engagement was the necessary means to secure victory. But a battle between two such gargantuan empires could last for decades, until one side's breaking point was reached and catastrophic failure became inevitable. Such a campaign seemed foolish to an outsider, but it was the most efficient way to break the deadlock.
The two empires were so desperate to conquer one another that a tacit agreement regarding warfare had formed. If they abandoned the idea of a decisive battle and simply launched headlong into one another's territories in a chaotic, unending charge, the war would never conclude. The two empires would continue to consume resources and power amid endless destruction and purges, until both simply collapsed from exhaustion.
Only a grand, decisive battle could settle the fate of the galaxy!
By launching an apocalypse-level total war, annihilating the enemy's main forces in the simplest, most brutal fashion, the fate of both races would be decided in a single stroke. Blade against blade. Smash the enemy with absolute force and finish the work in one campaign!
"Understood." Junior raised a hand, noting the Primarch's order on his tactical terminal. Before total war broke out, requesting reinforcements was simple; there were already over a hundred billion Imperial Auxilia within the J-11 system alone. And beyond the stars, more were constantly arriving.
According to the War Council's projections, a total war against the Rangdan would consume trillions of mortal auxiliaries. According to the intelligence provided by Moribas Solas, the number of Rangdan slave-thralls available for war was at least one hundred quadrillion! Although capacity limits meant only ten trillion would ultimately reach the front, it was still an astronomical, unimaginable number.
They would wash over the Imperial positions like a tide! Facing ground forces of such magnitude, the Imperium had to use a decisive battle to draw them into the outer defensive lines. If the Rangdan slave-thralls were allowed to breach the Imperial heartlands, they would spread like a virus. That would be an extinction-level catastrophe.
As they spoke, they reached the ground command center. Blazkowicz signaled the staff to remain standing, walking to the holographic sand table to review the defensive fortress data, checking for any vulnerabilities.
The continent-scale war fortresses were built modularly; their force-field frameworks were driven one thousand kilometers into the crust, binding the fortress inextricably to the continent. The fortresses were built with space-grade airtight integrity, equipped with planetary-scale multi-layered shields and distributed plasma engines.
Blazkowicz nodded as he scanned the information. The defensive system was three-dimensional and rock-solid. Even if the Rangdan were driven to desperation and attempted to detonate the planet from the other side, the fortresses were engineered to survive even if the world itself were shattered.
Blazkowicz placed his hands on the console, nodding to Junior in praise. "You have done well."
Junior had anticipated and prepared for every possible contingency. He had even constructed underground farms to provide the mortal soldiers with fresh vegetables and meat, sustaining morale throughout the grueling, extended campaign. Mortals were not Astartes; in the midst of prolonged, hellish combat, a hot meal was enough to dispel the vast majority of their darkest fears.