Two Blackstone Fortresses breached reality once more, returning to the material universe. Alongside them, Ferrus's Iron Tenth and the Emperor's radiant glory descended simultaneously, tearing through the suffocating darkness for the Imperium of Man.
Blazkowicz donned his battle vestments, silently striding toward the Titan train.
The atmosphere within the fortress grew increasingly somber as the Nur Auxilia, clad in mortal power armor, filed out of their barracks.
The war had begun!
The martial populace showed no fear of death; instead, their eyes burned with a fiery thirst for battle and a hunger for glory.
"All units, deploy to your designated lines. Reserves, move to the engagement zones and prepare for rotation."
"Victory for Mankind! The xenos shall be destroyed!"
Driven by the automated announcements of the artificial intelligence, the continent-class fortress shifted into full war mode. Warn-lights flared to life in long, sequential rows, illuminating the primary combat sector and kindling the resolve of the human soldiers.
The subterranean deck plates slid open. Mortal mechanized infantry piloted single-person mechs into the open, forming rigid ranks before marching with heavy, synchronized strides onto high-speed transit trains, waiting in full battle readiness.
These single-person mechs were inspired by the AMP suits of Pseudo-Earth, refined and redesigned by the Iron Men for use by mortal troops. Standing three meters tall, they were equipped with auxiliary AI, a versatile array of heavy weaponry, and deflector shields. They were incredibly agile, packing immense physical power.
As Blazkowicz stepped onto the Titan train, the soldiers inside the carriage snapped to a crisp, reverent salute.
Flushed with excitement, the legionaries stood at rigid attention after he motioned for them to ease. To stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the field of slaughter with the King of Novik was the ultimate honor.
Blazkowicz tapped the carriage terminal display. Millions of troops were currently boarding the Titan trains. Dull, heavy vibrations reverberated from the rear of the transport line as mortal Titans lined up on towed flatbed cars.
Hum— Hum— Hum—
Lightning arcs crackled inside the track housings. Electromagnetic rail decelerators launched the Titan train, accelerating it to twenty times the speed of sound. In just half an hour, it would traverse the distance from the central fortress district to the absolute front line.
By the time Blazkowicz arrived at the high-ground defense line, the garrison forces had already secured their positions. Every automated weapon system was fully activated, and the automata had awakened from their standby slumber.
The defensive line stretched for hundreds of kilometers, manned by hundreds of millions of troops and an countless array of war engines. Miniature fusion suns blazed, lighting up the entire front.
Looking out from the heights of the defensive fortress, Blazkowicz spotted two Rangdan Overlords standing atop their own ramparts a hundred kilometers away, staring back across the void.
Without a single word, Blazkowicz extended his hand and pointed his thumb brutally downward.
The Rangdan Overlords were well-versed in human culture. Confronted with such blatant disrespect, the dark-green convolutions of their exposed brains tightened in fury, and they used their tentacles to mimic the exact same gesture.
Blazkowicz scoffed, shrugging his shoulders and spreading his hands to mock their incomprehension.
The Rangdan Overlords seethed with rage, their thorough understanding of human culture proving to be their own undoing as they absorbed the full weight of the insult.
While the two factions hurled silent, distant mockeries at one another, a barrage of meteoric projectiles erupted from the Rangdan lines, slamming into the dirt just a few kilometers outside the human void shields.
Automated drones leaped from the impact shells, projecting a massive holographic image: a dark green, looming head.
This exact scene was playing out across every front line. In the void above, Rangdan warships acted as broadcast relays, projecting colossal images that spanned thousands of kilometers.
The Grand Overlord!
Blazkowicz narrowed his eyes, staring intently at the xenos leader projected before the two armies, picking up on several anomalies. Its physical form matched that of the standard Rangdan Overlords, but the aura it projected—even through a hologram—exuded an intangible, deep-seated malice.
Seeing the xenos leader's projection manifest, the human soldiers knew exactly what time it was: the pre-battle trash-talk phase.
Following this, there would only be a war stretching across years, perhaps even decades.
"Humans!" the Grand Overlord boomed, its authority boundless. Its blood-red eyes dripped with condescension and disdain, and its deep, resonant voice tore across the plains like a gathering storm, seeking to shred humanity's resolve.
"Xenos!" A golden silhouette manifested at the front lines, confronting the darkness. Expressionless, the figure locked eyes with the Grand Overlord. "You will die."
The human soldiers immediately offered their salutes; the Master of Mankind was shielding his people.
"Master of Mankind." The Grand Overlord masked its contempt, its eyes flashing with gravity as it scrutinized the figure draped in golden light. "I admit, from a strategic standpoint, I underestimated humanity."
"The little rats you sent caused no small amount of trouble within my empire."
"However!" Its strange, authoritative tone suddenly spiked, laced with infinite venom. "Can your sons and your subjects truly withstand mine?"
"You are welcome to try," the Emperor's grand voice shook the heavens, firm and unwavering. "Come and challenge the courage and awakening of Mankind. You will merely become another footnote of victory in human history."
"The outcome remains unwritten!" the Grand Overlord countered with chilling calm.
"Victory belongs to Mankind!" the Emperor declared with absolute certainty.
"@#!￥"
"￥@#!#"
As the final exchange of greetings concluded, the words warped into unrecognizable static to everyone save Blazkowicz.
"Self-deceiver!"
"Filthy deity!"
The verbal duel ended, and both projections vanished simultaneously. The psychological warfare drew to a close, and its dispersal pulled back the curtain on the ground assault.
Across the smoke-choked battlefield, the supreme commanders of both sides stood upon their heights, casting down the sparks that would ignite the conflagration.
The fires of war were lit!
On the fifth planet, the Rangdan positions opened fire first. Heavy artillery shells howled through the air, punching through their own shields before arching down to strike the human defenses. Violent explosions rippled across the planetary-grade, multi-layered shield barriers.
The bombardment achieved nothing practical, yet it stood as a monumental symbol.
Without warning, both sides mutually expanded their energy shields. The two barriers rammed into one another, generating a fierce storm of lightning. As the outer rings pressed together, their frequencies resonated, drawing closer until they finally fused, forming a massive resonance corridor.
This shield corridor encapsulated the entire engagement basin, soaring to heights of over a hundred kilometers and carving out a brutal, self-contained theater of war.
"Horanion Assault Corps!" At the center of the line, the Corps Commander roared, "Follow the excavators! Expand the defensive line outward!"
From the edges of the black hole clusters, human colonies that had been harassed by xenos for a millennium had been liberated by Nur , subsequently providing a tax of manpower to the Nur stars. The stocky Horanions, encased in mortal power armor, brought their natural subterranean excavation talents directly into the tactical doctrine.
The Horanion warriors operated massive tunneling machines, tearing open wide trenches and advancing through disciplined sapper doctrines. Behind them, mobile shield generators tracked their footprints, maintaining a secure umbrella of protection for the advancing forces.
Countless pieces of debris rained down from the sky.
Missiles, rockets, heavy artillery shells—every conceivable piece of ground-to-ground ordnance could be found filling this three-dimensional kill zone, five hundred kilometers wide and one hundred kilometers high.
With the shields merged, even the artificial atmospheres began to clash. Synthetic air rushed into the corridor, compressing missile plumes and artillery fires, the opposing air currents colliding to form a tempest of thunder, lightning, and acrid smoke within the basin.
The dead wasteland had never seen such frantic activity. Solid stone was ground to dust by the shelling, and the artificial storm unleashed torrents of rain and lightning. Before the infantry forces could even trade direct fire, the sheer volume of artillery threw the micro-climate into violent chaos.
Engineering automata followed the Horanion Corps' advance, entering the complex, freshly dug trenches. They reinforced the earthen walls with steel plates, erecting automated bunkers and setting up heavy weapon emplacements according to preset algorithms.
The Rangdan acted in kind. Under the cover of mobile shields, legions of slave-auxiliaries swarmed out of their lines, trailing behind tunneling machines to fortify their own trench networks.
BANG—!
A tremendous explosion shook the field. A mobile shield generator suffered a direct hit. The plasma reactor detonated, sending a small mushroom cloud billowing into the sky. A denser rain of artillery immediately followed; stripped of their shield cover, the stubborn rocks of Planet Five were systematically pulverized.
Blazkowicz watched the feed and let a faint smile slip.
The shells utilized a specialized Nur crystal molecular coating. When supercharged, they could bypass low-yield energy shields to strike the generator cores directly.
He gestured mockingly toward the Rangdan Overlords, signaling for them to observe the wreckage.
Unable to stomach the humiliation, the Rangdan Overlords glared hatefully at Blazkowicz before stalking down from the ramparts, opting for out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
Blazkowicz scanned the defensive lines. Millions of Horanions were tunneling in perfect synchronization, engineering machinery pressed forward steadily, and the trenches crawled relentlessly toward the Rangdan positions.
Over a hundred thousand engineering units maintained the network, backed by hundreds of millions of Nur Auxilia. Hundreds of thousands of artillery shells were fired every single minute. In this current theater, any sound other than the deafening roar of artillery was completely drowned out.
He raised his arm, and holographic text blinked to life over his gauntlet:
[In five hours, our lines will secure the majority of the basin plains, initiating direct engagement with the xenos.]
[Continent-class shield generators will deploy to our rear to guarantee the safety of the Auxilia.]
[Field tactical computing cores are moving forward. One hundred million floating drones are prepared for deployment.]
[Siege artillery arriving.]
The reports scrolled past at blistering speed. Blazkowicz turned to look behind the fortress wall: anti-gravity pyramids were ascending into the upper atmosphere, and hundred-meter-caliber "City-Breaker" siege cannons were crawling sluggishly out from the subterranean depths.
It was a staggering spectacle.
As the drone swarms blotted out the sky like a gathering black cloud and surged forward, even a man of Blazkowicz's tempered composure could not help but feel a profound sense of awe.
Void fleet actions were battles of cold statistics, data parameters, and calculations, where warships traded salvos across millions of kilometers of empty space. Distributed across the infinite void, massive fleets appeared deceptively small, and the destruction of an enemy was nothing more than a brief flicker of light.
But a ground war—where armies a billion strong collided, and countless engines of destruction thundered forward—moved with the terrifying, visible precision of a planetary meat grinder.
To cram a force of such unimaginable magnitude into so localized a space was, by all accounts, utterly breathtaking.