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19: Chapter 19 – Ex!
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As the warships entered the Mandeville Point, two vast Imperial fleets plunged into the Warp once more.
First time strange, second time familiar.
Lorgar stood on the bridge and watched his fleet slip into the Warp, then begin crossing its boundless expanse at tremendous speed.
“Exterminatus targeting the objective planet and all enemy-occupied worlds is authorized.
The Primarch has approved.” The order went out to every warship.
The Vengeance Fleet — its core formed by dozens of battleships — responded immediately.
Lorgar stood on the bridge and waited.
Exterminatus.
The High Gothic term for the destruction of an entire planetary biosphere, every living thing on a world, wiped from existence.
It is only ordered under extreme circumstances: generally when a planet harbors a strategic threat of extinction-level magnitude to the Imperium itself, the kind that risks spreading to neighboring worlds.
When the cost of holding or reclaiming a world is deemed too great, when mutation, plague, or the spread of Chaos to other Imperial territories cannot be contained by conventional means, Exterminatus is the Imperium’s last resort.
It is rarely applied to planets of critical importance or high strategic value.
Normally, only senior officers of the Astra Militarum, the Imperial Navy, or the Astartes hold the authority to execute it, or an Inquisitor of the Inquisition.
The methods of execution vary.
As for Lorgar, holding the rank of Primarch, issuing an Exterminatus order was essentially unrestricted.
.
The Solomon System.
Outlake.
Fleet after fleet completed its transit through the Warp.
A force capable of reshaping the strategic balance of multiple sectors materialized above the xenos’ heads.
Macragge’s Honour hung in geosynchronous orbit above the xenos home world, a moving monument to civilization, vast and silent, blue and gold against the dark.
Across from it, in a slightly closer orbit, rode the Word Bearers Legion’s Gloriana-class Battleship: the Lex Fidei.
Its dark grey hull was covered in sacred reliefs and inscribed scripture, a solemn moving sanctuary brought into being for one purpose: to carry out final judgment.
Two warships of entirely different character.
Yet in this moment they were like twin fists extended from the Emperor’s will — one embodying the absolute force of reason and order, the other the burning fury of faith and purification, both aimed at the world below, which still shimmered with an ominous pale light.
Through interrogation, Lorgar had already extracted everything there was to know about these xenos.
This civilization was known as the Kaindrasi Civilization.
Also called the Flesh-Editor Civilization.
They possessed neural nodes.
Exceptionally powerful individuals within their society were preserved with partial consciousness, wired into their vast psychic network, and left to endure eternal agony, amplifying and relaying signals across the collective.
The Kaindrasi believed they were performing an act of elevation.
They took individual beings from meaningless, separate existence and wove them into their great unified collective consciousness, what they called the Unified Bloodflesh.
In their view, this was an act of mercy.
A gift.
They offered this sublimation to every race they conquered or attempted to negotiate with, and regarded it as the highest honor they could bestow.
And now, they were about to be annihilated.
“Execute Exterminatus.” Lorgar gave the order.
The space within the torpedo bays was thick with incense smoke and the haze of burning Sacred Unguents.
Hundreds of Tech-priests, Legion Chaplains, and Word Bearers warriors filled the air with a low, continuous chant that pressed against the walls like a living thing.
The icons and scripture covering the warship’s walls seemed to come alive in the interplay of flickering candlelight and the cold glow of data screens.
At the center of the sanctuary, the Atmospheric Incinerator Torpedo stood fixed upright, no longer a cold weapon.
It was a sacred relic.
An instrument of war waged in the Emperor’s name.
Tech-priests in red robes moved like priests conducting a rite, their mechadendrite limbs tracing Sacred Unguents across the torpedo’s cold casing.
Every stroke of oil was accompanied by a prayer to the Machine God.
Chaplains in grey robes and Astartes plate affixed parchment scrolls to the torpedo’s surface, each one inscribed with holy words for the casting out of xenos and the purification of all corruption.
The entire torpedo was nearly covered in sacred marks.
“Praise the Omnissiah!” a hoarse-voiced Tech-priest cried, lifting a blessed thurible and letting smoke wash over the warhead.
“Praise the Machine God!” the Tech-priests answered in unison, mechanical voices blending with surviving biological vocal cords into a strange, layered chorus.
Word Bearers Astartes draped in scripture sashes struck the deck in rhythm with their ceremonial weapons, the impacts rolling together like war drums.
Hundreds of Legion Chaplains stood at the fore.
Their scepters came down hard, the sound carried through amplifiers over every other noise: “May thy power be granted unto this sacred weapon, in the name of vengeance!
May its flames consume every form of desecration!
May its light reflect the Emperor’s wrath!
May its detonation become the death knell of xenos extinction!” Their words ignited something in the Word Bearers, a fanatical, consuming hunger for immolation.
Every voice merged into a single deafening roar.
“BURN!
PURIFY!
DESTROY!” To the cries of countless Legion warriors, the torpedo of the Lex Fidei, laden with boundless faith and hatred, was launched.
In the eyes of the Word Bearers, its exhaust trail blazed like the light of a descending angel, marking the path of destruction.
On the surface of the planet below, the remnants of the Kaindrasi Civilization looked up.
Their compound eyes perhaps caught those few new points of light on the orbital horizon, points that carried, even at this distance, the unmistakable meaning of annihilation.
They were perhaps still shrieking.
Still attempting a final, futile defense with their profane biotechnology.
But they could not understand what they were facing.
This was no longer war.
This was judgment.
Their species had been sentenced to extinction.
The method of execution was one of the most extreme and thorough purification instruments in the Imperial arsenal: the Atmospheric Incinerator Torpedo.
Two surface-targeted torpedoes were detonated in precisely calculated low-altitude orbits.
No sound travels through vacuum.
But the sight alone was enough to tear apart the soul of any who witnessed it.
What appeared first was pure white.
Indescribable.
All-consuming.
Two miniature suns were born within the xenos’ atmosphere.
Their light instantly eclipsed the star’s dim red glow and briefly illuminated the planet’s eternal dark side.
That light was the Emperor’s fury, the force contained within the detonated torpedo warheads, power enough to incinerate a star.
This ultimate light and heat became the match that set the world alight.
CRAAAACK,!
A sound like canvas being torn apart by force, immense, tectonic, transmitted through the medium of the planet itself, shook everything.
Wherever the light reached, the burning began.
But this was no ordinary ignition.
This was what made the Atmospheric Incinerator Torpedo so terrible: what it ignited was the atmosphere itself.
The oxygen abundant on the planet’s surface, the very gas upon which all life depended, became, in that moment, the perfect fuel for the destruction of an entire world.
After the light came an endless firestorm.
The entire planetary atmosphere ignited at once.
From pole to pole.
Ocean to landmass.
Every space visible to the eye was saturated with unimaginable flame.
The sky ceased to exist.
In its place: a boiling, howling sea of fire.
Temperature spiked in an instant to levels sufficient to vaporize all matter.
The oceans were not evaporated.
They were ignited.
Water underwent pyrolysis under the extreme heat and became part of the conflagration itself.
Mountain ranges began to melt.
Rock flowed like wax.
Those vast, pulsating organic structures, the Unified Bloodflesh that covered the planet, could not even produce a wisp of smoke.
Within one-hundredth of a second, they were completely ionized.
Gone.
Without a trace.
➤ Next: Guilliman and Lorgar’s Sparring Match