The Emperor’s Angel of Death

On the bridge of the Eternal Loyalty, Talos was using the ship's massive main holographic sphere to monitor the rapidly deteriorating situation in the system.

He never considered himself a master of naval warfare, perhaps his former superior Van Drede was, but in his tens of thousands of years of service, he had never demonstrated any large-scale command talent.

But now he had to take responsibility. First Company Captain Maximilian of the Astral Knights was just a warrior, Chapter Master Arash of the White Templars could hardly be called an excellent commander, and as for the other Chapter Masters...

The situation of this battle was very serious. Talos could not explain to Sojyan the survival of the Eleventh Legion being entrusted to outsiders.

Yes, at least in Talos's view, the situation had really reached a critical juncture.

No one knew when or how such a massive Tyranid Hive Fleet had suddenly appeared. By the time the outer detection equipment discovered them, they were already at the edge of the system, and the reconnaissance fleets patrolling in the more distant areas had reported nothing, they didn't even know what had happened.

According to the Mechanicus, the secret of the Hive Fleet's movement seemed to have been cracked. In theory, as long as the Narwhale assault ships were detected, the trajectory of the Hive could be deduced, and changes in the gravitational field would also be a sign.

But this time, an accident happened. There was no movement trail of Narwhale assault ships, nor any change in the gravitational field. The Hive Fleet approached the edge of the Westeros system almost in a "stealth" manner.

Worse, their numbers were terrifying.

"All fleets, prepare to intercept the tendril fleets advancing towards Planet Four."

In addition to Talos, there were several figures standing around the central holographic sphere in the tactical center, each responsible for monitoring every aspect of the system's defenses, mainly Company Captains Bakhram, Lossa, Maximilian, and Oscar.

Talos's instructions were mainly issued by Bakhram, who was now the nominal commander of the fleet, replacing Sojyan, an arrangement that Talos had made over the objections of others.

During Sojyan's absence, the Legion's decisions were voted on by the High Lords Council, but Ustad was not among the five, and Sojyan had instructed Mark to prioritize Talos's opinions before leaving. Arash also expressed respect for Talos's opinions, so Bakhram, despite his efforts to decline, was pushed to the position of fleet commander as the Tenth Company Captain.

From the discovery of the Tyranids to their invasion, almost three standard Terran days had passed. At least the Mechanicus's theory was not entirely wrong. After the Tyranids entered the gravitational field of the system, their speed slowed down, and with the extensive minefields deployed by the Imperium in advance, the bio-ships were almost "crawling" towards their targets, namely Westeros Planets 2, 3, and 4.

At this time, nearly 1.5 billion refugees and 3.2 billion local residents had not been evacuated from the system. Such a huge population was almost a super delicacy for the Tyranids, so the Tyranid fleet's mode of operation was very simple. The entire fleet spread out completely, like a big mouth, wanting to swallow the entire system in one gulp. Therefore, even though they were slow, they still brought a sense of oppression that was close to despair.

From the perspective of humanity, the Tyranid fleet was deployed in a huge arc formation, with the entire fleet exceeding 250 million kilometers in length. If it were a normal fleet, daring to stretch itself out so long would be suicide, but they were Tyranids.

At this moment, the tactical panel of the Eternal Loyalty was blurred by an insane number of ships. The number of enemies had far exceeded the maximum value it could display.

"This is the first time in my life I've witnessed something like this."

Talos, who had been eager to see the so-called Tyranid swarm, also marveled at his good luck, having encountered a big one so soon after arriving.

"How many are there? Ten thousand? Thirty thousand? Fifty thousand?"

Leaning on his chain halberd, Talos stared at the frantic numbers on the tactical display, and couldn't help but ask a question from his soul, but no one could answer him.

Just to force their way through the minefield, tens of thousands of Tyranid bio-ships were blown to pieces. The vast area at the edge of the system was filled with shattered carapace fragments and huge chunks of meat, and frozen bodily fluids floated in the debris ring composed of bio-ship corpses.

But for every bio-ship destroyed, twenty more came to replace it.

Worse, those dead fleets were being reabsorbed and utilized. The huge bio-ships stretched out tentacles that enveloped the fragments of their own kind, ruthlessly pulling the fragments towards their bloody mouths. They ate everything, bones, flesh, and even the metal fragments of void mines, and then these recovery ships would provide the digested material to the mothership through umbilical-like tentacles.

The Hive Mothership, this was what shocked Talos the most, they were even bigger than the Gloriana Battleship.

It was like some kind of insect magnified countless times, covered in ancient, yellow, crust-like chitin, even with fragments of asteroids, these odds and ends were stuck together with secreted fluids, as hard as any armor.

According to Bakhram and others, the Adeptus Mechanicus had previously speculated that a Hive Fleet had only one mothership, but the actual situation exceeded their expectations.

At least according to the scans, there were more than fifteen Hive Motherships, or bio-ships of that size, in this massive Hive Fleet!

Fifteen!

What kind of concept is this, according to the Alien Inquisitor who came to Westeros, the Imperium has not encountered so many Hive Motherships in total in the hundreds of years since the first encounter with the Tyranid swarm!

If we divide according to the Imperium's one Hive Mothership representing one tendril fleet, then it is equivalent to saying that at least fifteen tendril fleets are now gathered in the Westeros system!

It is important to know that Hive Motherships not only represent command nodes, they themselves are extremely powerful capital ships. Although they do not have active defense systems such as energy shields, they can still navigate through the Imperium's most powerful artillery fire with their unparalleled size and petrified chitin shell, and are hardly affected.

Leaving aside the countless small bio-ships, these fifteen super-large bio-ships are enough for the Allied Coalition left here to take a beating, but according to the Mechanicus's speculation, one of these fifteen Hive ships must be the real "Mothership", and the others are just guardians or nodes - but their theory has no evidence to prove it, and they cannot give any verification plan.

"Sir!"

Suddenly, a communications officer ran to the tactical display and saluted Bakhram.

"It's an encrypted communication from the Inquisition, requiring you to connect personally!"