Chapter 289: The Humanoid Flame (Patreon)

Ten Talon Fleet torpedo destroyers began to converge at the vanguard of the formation, their prows angling into the oncoming swarms of Hive Fleet Leviathan.

These vessels were a newly commissioned class, designed with a singular purpose: to hurl torpedoes into the void in overwhelming volleys. To maximize their payload capacity, they carried no lance batteries or arc weapons, nothing but torpedo tubes and the machinery to feed them.

Their hulls were lean, almost skeletal compared to traditional Imperial destroyers, the internal architecture re-engineered so that ammunition conduits, automated load-feeders, and void-pressurized torpedo silos made up nearly two-thirds of the vessel’s mass.

Once clustered together, the destroyers unleashed their opening salvo toward the endless horizon of Tyranid bio-ships. Thousands of torpedoes erupted from their tubes, streaking forward in luminous phalanxes. The salvo spread into a wide triangular pattern, each torpedo programmed to adjust its course by millimeters so the wave struck as a synchronized sheet of destruction.

The Tyranid bio-ships along the torpedoes’ projected path expelled clouds of oily black mist, living shrouds made of countless razor-winged organisms. Like swarms of suicidal interceptors, the creatures flung themselves against the incoming warheads. When their bio-projectiles failed to puncture the torpedo casings, they simply massed together and smashed directly into them.

Inside each torpedo destroyer, automated cyclers teleported fresh torpedoes from the munitions vault straight into the launch tubes.
A second salvo roared out, equal in number, but this time composed of armoured heavy torpedoes, each protected by point-defence housings. Hidden among them were ten far bulkier, slower projectiles.

Half of the initial volley was lost to interception, but the surviving warheads detonated amid the Tyranid ranks. Each torpedo carried a specialized payload: some burst in thunderous explosions; others released crackling arclight storms; still others erupted like strobe-bright suns, disgorging hundreds of micro-lances of particle energy.

The opening strike annihilated at least three hundred bio-ships. Realizing the danger, the Hive Mind committed itself fully to interception.

A mass of Gargoyles, Spore Mines, and Krakens swarmed toward the second wave of torpedoes. More Tyranid interceptors poured in from every vector.

But the heavy torpedoes activated their point-defence arrays, tiny but vicious rotary cannons and las-emitters that stitched incoming organisms apart. These arrays were short-ranged but brutally efficient, carving narrow tunnels of cleared space for the torpedoes to continue their advance.

The Hive Mind noted this in confusion. Why would prey-things mount point-defence weaponry on torpedoes? Their speed was clearly inferior to the lighter first wave; their interception rate could not compare.

But it soon understood something was wrong.

Hidden among the heavy torpedoes were ten ultra-heavy warheads, these were the real strike.

The heavy torpedoes punched through swarms of bio-fighters and bored holes through the living wall of flesh and chitin, clearing a path for the giants behind them.

Once the ten super-heavy torpedoes detected they had reached the heart of the Tyranid formation, they detonated.

Space shuddered.

A dimensional rift tore itself open. Everything, every drone, feeder-tendon, node-beast, and escort-organism, caught in its hungry radius was simply consumed as if it were a black hole.

Dimensional Torpedoes. Talon-pattern equivalents to the forbidden Vortex Torpedoes.

Anything consumed by the dimensional maelstrom was shredded on a metaphysical level; those without field protection had their very souls annihilated. Even empty chitin husks were rapidly aged and pulverized by temporal shear.

The Hive Mind recognized the torpedo destroyers as a significant threat. Yet it did not redirect assets to attack them. Even though a thousand bio-ships had vanished into the “black hole,” such losses were acceptable within the immensity of the swarm.

Its priority remained unchanged: isolate and divide the human fleet, and the prey would die.

And it was close to succeeding.

A frigate on the fleet’s far-left flank was bitten apart; beside it, a cruiser was dragged screaming into the dark by a massive Devourer organism. The collapse of that flank triggered a chain reaction, formation lines began to separate, hulls drifted apart, and the entire battle line teetered on the verge of being split in two.

Admiral Quarren realized they could advance no further. Something had to hold the Tyranids back long enough for the fleet to re-form.

Adam reached the same conclusion. “Activate the defence platforms.”

The command reached the orbital shipyard. Rows of dormant voidborne defence platforms shuddered alive, teleported from their cradles into formation around the fleet.

Each platform carried more weaponry than a battleship but lacked the mobility of one, not that it needed it. Immediately, their lance batteries unleashed blinding beams of hard light, spearing every Tyranid creature within their arcs.

From beneath their armored bellies, fresh waves of heavy torpedoes spilled outward, their point-defence arrays shielding the beleaguered Imperial vessels. The human ships, once moments from encirclement, found themselves in a fortified umbrella of firepower.

For five uninterrupted minutes the lances fired. Then the platforms’ primary cannons ignited; two enormous crimson plasma spheres erupted from their cores, melting everything in their path. Fifty kilometers out, each sphere burst into a rain of incandescent beams that perforated every Tyranid smaller than a heavy cruiser.

Above, the orbital shipyard ascended into position over the fleet, unleashing second wave of arc-storms downward in sweeping sheets of lethal lightning.

Caught between defence platforms and the shipyard’s wrath, the Tyranids faltered. They circled warily, looking for openings, desperate to tear down the platforms, but each time a shield flickered toward collapse, a flash of blue energy leapt between platforms, knitting the barrier whole again.

The Hive Mind recognized them, these were of the same type of platforms left over Baal during its earlier engagements. They could not be attritioned. They must either all be destroyed at once, or avoided entirely.

Under the platforms’ protection, the human fleet re-formed with astonishing speed. Damaged vessels limped into the shipyard’s cavernous docks for rapid repairs. All the Tyranids’ earlier effort to divide the line had been rendered meaningless. The battle group restored firing discipline, reforming its spearhead formation with renewed vigor.

The fleet advanced again.

Quarren ordered the platforms teleported directly above the “flagship” of the Tyranids, the Commanding Hive Ship, hoping to assassinate the beast. But the moment each platform emerged in realspace, a Kraken creature was already coiled around the arrival point, almost as if the Tyranid could see the future.

When each platform emerged from dimensional transit, it overlapped directly with a Kraken, resulting in catastrophic mutual destruction. 

“Psykers…” Quarren muttered. Only psychic foresight could explain such perfect counters.

Just as humanity had psykers who were capable of precognition, the Tyranids possessed Neurothropes and synaptic oracles who could do the same. 

The decapitation attempt had failed, but with their formation restored and their ships repaired, the fleet could continue forward.

The battle repeated its grim rhythm: advance, endure, crush, repair.

Under constant Tyranid assault, the fleet crawled forward. The bio-titan that functioned as the Tyranid command ship maintained distance, always retreating, always herding them.

“If it simply keeps fleeing, we’ll never catch it,” Quarren growled.

“Of course we won’t,” Adam replied calmly, already computing distances. “At our speed, pursuit is impossible. But we don’t need to catch it. Only to get within seven hundred kilometers. At that distance we can establish a stable teleport lock. As long as the Tyranids cannot pack every cubic meter within that radius with their own bodies, we can teleport there directly.”

A feasible plan, Quarren admitted, except that the space around them was so congested with bio-ships that even short-range teleport hops were impossible.

Still the fleet pushed forward.

Then, at the moment Quarren and Adam believed the struggle would grind on endlessly, a blazing inferno erupted from Baal’s surface.

A pillar of fire tore through the atmosphere, rising into the void toward the fleet.

Nothing could halt it. Tyranid armour, layered chitin that shrugged off lance beams, shattered like brittle glass before its passage. The fiery figure didn’t dodge or weave; it punched straight through even the largest bio-ships as if they were parchment.

When it drew close enough for Adam’s augurs to resolve the shape, his breath caught.

It wasn’t a fireball.

It was a humanoid wreathed in living flame.