Warhammer: The Worst Start There Is (40k) - Chapter 18: Space Battle

Wearing a sky-blue colored power armor, Guilliman stood on the command deck, followed closely by the Honour Guard in their Iron Cavalier Terminator Armor.

The massive steel bodies exuded tremendous pressure, and everyone on the command deck felt their hearts being firmly gripped by fear, making even breathing a bit difficult.

The Honour Guard were all elite veterans among the extreme warriors, each with astonishing battle records. They wore the bulkier and more imposing Terminator Armor compared to the typical Space Marine Armour. For ordinary people to stand before members of the Honour Guard and speak was already an act of great courage.

“How’s the situation, Brehe?” Guilliman looked at the captain seated in the command chair and inquired.

“They’ve gathered on the second planet of the Sara System. From the emblems on their warships and certain characteristics, the information we received appears to be accurate. The enemy indeed belongs to the Death Guards. Our fleet is spread out, and in terms of the balance of power between us and the enemy, victory should come easily.”

The Death Guards, Plague Spreaders, Cursed Traitors – eternal enemies of the Imperium, unforgivable beings.

The Death Guards once belonged to the Imperium’s Fourteenth Legion, led by the Primarch Mortarion. They had made indelible contributions to the Imperium’s Great Crusade, helping the God Emperor in unifying humanity.

Towards the end of the Great Crusade, Mortarion led the Death Guards in the Horus Heresy. In the Istvaan III, they openly betrayed the loyalists, collaborating with other Traitor legions to massacre the loyalists and commit unforgivable crimes.

Subsequently, when Mortarion led the fleet into the Eye of Terror, he was betrayed by Typhus, a lowly traitor. Typhus killed the Legion navigator and disrupted the ship’s Gellar field, trapping the fleet in the Warp, where they were severely tormented by the Chaos Gods.

With his extraordinary skills, the Chaos God of Plague, Nurgle, forcibly subdued Mortarion, who detested Psyker and chaos, and made him its Daemon Primarch, representing plague, death, and rebirth.

Mortarion was originally someone who had an immense hatred toward Psyker and chaos.

But after being trapped for countless amounts of time in the Warp, all the while being tortured by the plague, to save his Legion from death, Mortarion was forced to surrender to one of the Chaos Gods.

And then, the fleet participated in the Battle of Terra, using the plague to break through the palace’s defenses, causing massive casualties. After Horus’s failure, they split into multiple warbands, fleeing to the Eye of Terror and the edges of the Imperium.

Guilliman organized the information about the Death Guards in his mind before turning to Captain Brehe once again.

“I don’t question the chance of them achieving victory, but I just want to know about the situation on the surface.”

“My lord, we haven’t received any feedback. All the messages we sent have been intercepted. Whether in electromagnetic or astrological forms, none have received any response. I suspect the enemy has taken control of communications. If things are worse, the surface Astropath has either been contaminated or killed.”

Captain Brehe’s tone was heavy, and his remaining biological eye showed anger.

Another planetary-level massacre, with billions of human lives harvested by the gods of chaos.

May the God Emperor have mercy on those poor souls and welcome their spirits into his embrace.

“Perhaps there’s still a chance, or else these remnants of chaos wouldn’t be lingering here.” Guilliman looked toward the console, where the mechanically humming strategic device carefully maintained by the Mechanicum was in operation. A series of data symbols and beams formed a tactical projection, clearly displaying the situation in the Sara System and the strength of the plague marine ships.

At this moment, all the plague ships were orbiting the second planet of the Sara System.

“Let’s hope so,” Brehe nodded.

“Move out, no matter what. We must eliminate them. If there are survivors, we’ll save them. If not, we’ll avenge them.”

“Understood, my Lord.”

The fleet, led by Macragge’s Honour, was advancing rapidly, and the second planet of Sara was becoming more prominent in their view.

It was a green planet with polar regions covered in glaciers.

The overall terrain consisted of grasslands and forests, with only scattered deserts. It was an extremely suitable planet for humans, with high colonization value.

There were six gigantic nests on the planet, one of which was particularly massive. From the observed data, its area should be over 26 million square kilometers.

The planet’s projected population was estimated to be at least five hundred billion, making it extremely valuable to the Imperium.

Upon seeing the arrival of the Imperial fleet, the plague fleet also reacted. They formed a defensive line, attempting to intercept the Imperial ships.

Guilliman observed the changes on the battlefield. The enemy consisted of three separate fleets, each lacking coordination with the others.

Mutual distrust was a weakness of the forces of the Chaos forces. They often operated on a warband scale, resisting unified command and refusing to trust other warbands.

As the distance closed to less than three million kilometers, both sides transitioned from the probing phase to intense close-range combat.

Imperial ships launched volleys of torpedoes and missiles, spreading out in a fan-shaped broad distribution, creating an interlocking pattern. They also fired tons of anti-ship shells to cut off the enemy’s maneuvering space.

Space battles were intricate and unpredictable, with combat distances often spanning millions of kilometers. This made it difficult for weapons like torpedoes, missiles, and shells to hit moving ships accurately.

Commanding such battles required immense computational power to calculate the enemy’s movements and the variables on the battlefield.

Guilliman attentively scrutinized the battlefield, not missing any minor details.

Before his transmigration, he had thought that torpedoes and missiles were useless on future space battlefields, and energy weapons like lances were all that was needed.

But witnessing fleet combat had changed his perspective entirely.

Each weapon had its own advantages. Missiles could track targets automatically and hit any part of an enemy ship. Lances were fast and had great firepower, but they were straightforward and easily intercepted.

Torpedoes and shells, physical weapons, had both tremendous firepower and the potential advantage of slow speed, which increased the enemy’s computational load and made them reluctant to maneuver to avoid collision.

Stationary torpedoes and mines had a good chance of not triggering void shields when they collided, leading to catastrophic results upon impact.

At a range of over a million kilometers, it was a close-quarters battle in space. Lances and giant shells were constantly fired, and the space between the two sides quickly turned into a deadly thicket of energy lances and shells.

The Void Shield on the Macragge’s Honour occasionally lit up, rippling under powerful energy beams.

The dispersed energy from energy weapons caused occasional feedback noise and even sparks from the Void Shield generator on Macragge’s Honour.

The Plague Marines were well aware of who posed the greatest threat to them. Despite their lack of coordination, they prioritized the Macragge’s Honour as their primary target.

Facing the enemy’s concentrated fire, the Macragge’s Honour did not retreat, delivering a similarly resolute counterattack, unleashing firepower capable of easily leveling cities upon the enemy.