Chapter 1117 The old war ends, and a new war begins
With the fall of the last Norn Messenger, the battle is coming to an end.
The Empire wiped out this hive fleet consisting of hundreds of thousands of biological warships in this star region with a casualty rate of over 50%.
The biological warships as huge as mountains were shattered among the stars. The Empire's cleanup fleet began the cleanup work. Countless Zerg fragments were shattered by flames and then turned to ashes in the cold space.
Horus stood on the observation deck of the Phalanx, gazing at the battlefield graveyard through the reinforced glass windows.
His silver power armor was covered with fine scratches, and a corner of the Emperor's holy emblem on his left shoulder armor had peeled off.
The Warmaster's brows were furrowed, and his gray-blue eyes reflected the burning wreckage of the ship in the distance.
“Report the body count.”
His voice was extremely hoarse, as if every word was burning his throat.
Dorn stepped out of the shadows. The armor of the Primarch of the Imperial Fists was also scarred, but his posture was still as straight as the walls of the Imperial Palace.
The data pad in his hand glowed a faint blue light, projecting pale numbers into the air between them.
"Brother Horus."
"One captain of the Custodes was killed, and 1 Custodes were killed." Dorn's voice was like a precision machine, "58 Space Marines, 12 main battleships were sunk, and the number of auxiliary battleships could not be counted. There were 1698 star fortresses."
With each number that fell, Horus' fingers tightened a little.
When the last number was announced, the warmaster's fist had already deformed the armrest.
The sound of twisting metal was particularly harsh in the silent command room.
"We have suffered too many losses." Horus said slowly.
Outside the window, the Empire's cleanup fleet was at work. A fleet of destroyers shuttled between the wreckage, spewing out purifying flames that burned the Zerg corpses to ashes.
The flames appeared an eerie blue in the vacuum, like countless ghosts dancing a dance of death.
Occasionally, a Zerg unit that was not completely dead would struggle out of the wreckage, but would immediately be blown to pieces by macro cannons.
"How is your legion?" Horus asked.
"The Imperial Fists specialize in hard battles," Dorn replied, his eyes following a group of Space Marines in yellow power armour as they boarded the ship.
Their armor was stained with smoke and blood, but their steps remained firm.
Horus did not respond, but just nodded slightly.
The Warmaster looked beyond the burning star region and into the void beyond.
There are more battlefields out there, more worlds for them to save.
"How's father doing? And what about the Ryan brothers?" Dorn asked suddenly.
The Warmaster turned to the holostage and tapped his fingers on the control panel.
The star map unfolded, showing the battle situation in various parts of the empire.
"Brother Ryan is in charge of the battle against the Wotan Alliance and the Tau Empire. The situation is very good." Horus' voice returned to a calm and businesslike state. "The Dark Angels' offensive is going smoothly. It is expected that the star region will be pacified within three months."
The holographic image switched, showing an image of the solar system.
The golden light of Terra was still dazzling, but Horus noticed that there was something unusual about the signal from the Glory of Macragge - the Glorious Queen-class battleship was supposed to be in the dock for maintenance, but now it was showing as patrolling in low Earth orbit.
"Brother Robert looks like he has a mission."
“As for Father…” Horus shook his head, his fingers unconsciously stroking the edge of the datapad. “I don’t know.”
The control room fell silent. Both of them knew the meaning behind this sentence.
Ever since Yang Cheng met Neos, his condition has become increasingly difficult to predict.
Sometimes his will would come upon the battlefield like thunder, and sometimes there would be no news for months.
Dorn suddenly turned and headed for the exit, his golden armor casting a long shadow in the light.
"I will oversee the cleanup." His voice remained steady, but Horus noticed that his grip on his sword was tighter than usual.
When the buzzing sound of the automatic door closing faded away, the piercing alarm suddenly tore through the silence of the bridge.
"Biocontamination Alert! D-7 Medical Bay! I repeat, D-7 Biocontamination Alert!"
The Warmaster's pupils suddenly shrank.
Area D-7 - that is the medical cabin dedicated to treating the seriously injured on the front line. He pressed the communicator hard: "Start the isolation protocol! All..."
A heart-wrenching scream came through the communication channel, interrupting his order.
The sound was so painful that even the battle-hardened mortal officers and Space Marines nearby felt a chill run down their spines.
"I'll go take a look." Dorn's voice suddenly sounded behind him.
He had drawn his sword, and his armor glowed blood-red in the alarm red light.
Horus nodded. "I'll be there soon."
As Dorn's figure disappeared behind the automatic doors, the Warmaster turned to the bridge officer and said, "Pull up the surveillance footage of Sector D-7."
The holographic projection flickered a few times, and then a hellish scene appeared.
The once pristine white walls of the medical bay were now splattered with blood and some kind of yellow-green slime.
Dozens of medical beds were tilted here and there, some still spurting sparks.
Lying all over the ground were medical staff in white coats - or rather, they used to be medical staff.
Dorn’s perspective is more intuitive.
As he stepped out of the elevator, a bloody servo skull crashed into his chest armor.
The mechanical creation that was supposed to assist in the surgery now spun the bone saw madly until Dorn smashed it to pieces with a single punch.
"Emperor above..." the mortal officer following Dorne prayed in a low voice.
The scene before my eyes was indeed like a nightmare.
A medic knelt on the ground, his hands tightly grasping his throat.
His eyeballs were bulging and blood foam mixed with fragments of internal organs kept oozing out of the corners of his mouth.
Suddenly, his abdomen convulsed violently.
"Pfft!"
A sharp chitinous spur pierced through his uniform.
Then came the second one, the third one... The medic's body was torn apart from the inside like a rag doll, and a dozen palm-sized beetle-like creatures swarmed out.
Their shells were still stained with warm blood and human tissue, and their compound eyes glowed an eerie red under the alarm lights.
"Zerg larvae!" Dorn warned sharply, "Purification protocols!"
A group of Imperial Fists Space Marines and mortal soldiers immediately formed a defensive formation, but the chaos in the medical bay was out of control.
More wounded soldiers began to twitch and scream, their bodies swelled like air, and then—
"Bang! Boom! Boom!"
A series of muffled sounds of flesh and blood exploding.
Hundreds of microscopic Zerg burst out of the human body.
Some are common insect larvae, while others are never-before-seen variants, including worms with poisonous stings, arthropods crawling on multiple legs, and even flying insects that can briefly float in the air.
