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Chapter 224: Persuasion
🕑 Added 2025-08-16 13:57:14 +0000 UTCChapter 224: Persuasion
The sheer size of these two Chaos warships was too great, and the Ultramarines' most powerful vessel, the Macragge's Honour, had not yet had time to return to Macragge.
Lucan immediately ordered the Stellar Pioneer to reinforce the Macragge fleet. Fortunately, the Ultramarines had invested a massive amount of resources into their homeworld without regard for cost. This allowed the Macragge fleet to temporarily stabilize the situation, but it was only temporary.
At this moment, Vashtorr, aboard the Ark of Omen, had already sensed Lucan. There was a special connection between the two who shared the same divine portfolio. Vashtorr could sense that the other was currently on the surface of Macragge. This also made him a little frantic.
Located on the Ark of Omen, he released his own divine power with all his might. Countless strands of Chaos scrap-code, created by Chaos sorcery, began to invade the systems of the Imperial warships before him. For a time, fire-control arrays crashed, and communication arrays went down. This created huge problems for the coordination and fire suppression between the Imperial warships.
Vashtorr was well aware of the suppression Lucan's power had on him. As a pure creature of the warp, in front of Lucan, his proudest and most powerful means were all useless. He had to rely on the Chaos Astartes beside him and the Dark Mechanicum hereteks under his command to defeat Lucan through physical, non-warp means. He would then appear at the end to devour Lucan and steal his power for himself.
"Vingaard, don't think about completely annihilating those fleets. Remember your goal and mine: capture that Rogue Trader and kill him! Let the fleet break through! We need to land on Macragge!"
"Daemon! You don't need to teach me! The dogs of the False Emperor can't stop me! I will destroy the target of the Dark Gods along with this homeworld of the False Emperor's followers!" At this moment, Vingaard was clearly getting ahead of himself.
Right now, the only warship with full combat capability was the Stellar Pioneer. Its main cannon, capable of creating a warp vacuum, tried to stop the Chaos advance. Every shot after its cooldown could cause unprecedented damage to the Chaos-corrupted warships, but one Stellar Pioneer was clearly not enough to completely repel the enemy. The shields of the Blackstone Fortress and the Ark of Omen were both sufficiently strong.
With its tactical jump drive, the Stellar Pioneer roamed the battlefield, hunting enemy ships. Wherever its main cannon passed, the warp energy was completely dissipated, causing the two massive, blasphemous warships to slow down significantly. It even affected Vashtorr's control over them with his divine power. Some of the malicious warp entities that had been bound within the Ark of Omen began to go berserk, attacking the hereteks and the other bound daemons inside. Vashtorr did his best to regain control of the warship. His research on the Arks of Omen was not yet complete. Bringing it into the war now was a move of desperation. The various ancient hulks from different races that drifted in the warp were originally inhabited by all sorts of creatures and warp evils.
With the sheer size of their fleet, the Chaos warships were breaking through the Imperial formation and closing in on Macragge. But they did not directly approach the orbit. The anti-warship ground-based defensive firepower, into which a large amount of resources had been invested, could also bring a nightmarish experience to the Chaos warships.
One by one, the fanatical Red Corsairs boarded their landing craft. Many of them held daemonic beacons gifted by Tzeentch. As long as they could reach the surface and plant them in the soil of Macragge, the warp corruption released would summon daemons into the material universe. It could also provide teleportation beacons for subsequent forces. The forces that reached the ground would destroy Macragge's ground-based firepower and deploy more troops to hunt Lucan.
And it wasn't just in the void. With the arrival of the Red Corsairs, the hidden followers of Chaos also began to make trouble. Although the Chaos forces on Macragge were not large, some officials had been secretly corrupted. They were taking this opportunity to create chaos. Fortunately, the defense system of Macragge was sufficiently complete. The moment the chaos appeared, the Auxilia moved to eliminate them.
But the forces of Chaos had, in the end, landed. And the first wave of Chaos attacks was not the Red Corsairs, but a large number of Ork junk drop pods, attached to the Red Corsairs as raiders, which impatiently slammed down toward the surface even before them. As these drop pods, full of Ork Boyz, landed, the Orks, shouting "WAAAGH!", immediately began to search for their enemies.
And to cause more chaos, Vashtorr had even captured a portion of the Genestealers that had been residing in the Ark of Omen and had thrown them directly at Macragge as a weapon. Capturing these terrifying creatures had taken Vashtorr quite a bit of effort.
The report of the Genestealers' appearance on the ground was immediately raised to the highest level. This caused the Ultramarines to immediately divert a large number of troops to clean up these enemies. The Ultramarines did not want to endure another Tyranid tendril invasion.
And the successfully landed Red Corsairs also planted the Chaos beacons on the ground. Corruption began to spread, the laws of physics began to twist, and one small warp rift after another was opened. One by one, the Tzaangors of Tzeentch poured out from within, mixed with various daemons from Tzeentch's domain. Warp sorcery began to spread on Macragge.
The Dark Mechanicum hereteks also brought their daemon engines. Vashtorr could be said to have gone all in; the number of daemon engines was beyond imagination.
"Open fire with all planetary defense guns! Tell Captain Sicarius! Protect the sacred shrine where the Primarch slumbers! Guard against the enemy's attack! Tell all members of the Chapter to stop the enemy at all costs! Have the Auxilia hold their positions and protect the people! For Macragge! Courage and Honour!"
The Ultramarines immediately launched a counter-attack. But the entire Chapter on Macragge now had only half its strength. It was almost impossible to drive the enemy out of Macragge in a short period of time. And the direction of the enemy's actions was very clear: the landing field where Lucan was now. This also made Tigurius believe that Chaos was really coming for Lucan.
And what Tigurius had to do now was to protect the shrine, wait for Calgar's return, and for the support from the other fleets of the 500 Worlds.
Lucan silently watched Tigurius's actions.
He strode up to Tigurius. The Honour Guard beside him tried to stop him, but they found that they couldn't even see Lucan's movement before being brutally pushed aside. An unarmored mortal had easily restrained a member of the Honour Guard?
"Do not approach Lord Tigurius!"
And in the moment of their shock, the Custodes also stepped forward and restrained the other Honour Guard and the surrounding Auxilia. The Auxilia looked at the weapons in their hands, which had been split in two, and for a moment did not know what to do. And Tigurius, who had raised his psychic staff, also found that he could not mobilize a single bit of psychic energy.
"Tigurius, don't hesitate any longer! The Custodes are here, what more do you not believe? Would the Emperor deceive you? You might be able to hold off the enemy's ground attack, but do you know how terrifying the Blackstone Fortress is? Does Macragge have a planetary defense shield comparable to Cadia's? Even if you can block its cannon fire, what do you plan to do if he gets desperate and just rams it into Macragge?" Lucan questioned Tigurius.
"I will help you hold off the Chaos fleet. You take me to Guilliman's side! You don't want to become the sinner of the Ultramarines, do you?!"
"Hold off the Chaos fleet with just you?! Don't you just have one warship?"
"I have my ways!"
Looking at Lucan, Tigurius finally chose to believe the vision he had seen. He had once saved Macragge with this ability. He hoped that he could do it again this time.
"Fine! You, follow me!"
Lucan then began to communicate with his own forces. Lucan's conventional fleet was indeed difficult to compare to a Blackstone Fortress, but the Spear of Adun could.
Lucan simultaneously contacted the Dynasty's forces on Lorysia, and the Zerg and Protoss near their respective homeworlds of Char and Aiur. If he could successfully resurrect Guilliman, it also meant that he would inevitably and officially step onto the stage of the Imperium. To continue to hide his strength was now meaningless. With the support of the Emperor, and with Guilliman, a son of a god walking among mortals, he could also help him withstand the pressure from the Imperial government. If it really came down to it, he would just let Guilliman chop off the heads of the opposing High Lords. He would do it later anyway. He still had faith in Guilliman; he would definitely be able to distinguish between what was important and what was not.
