On the first day of the 820th year of the Thirtieth Millennium, Nareth sat upon the Black Throne.
Even without consciously seeking out information from his surroundings, the Primarch's superhuman perception gathered the conversations of the officers around him.
The words of the Master of Vox caught his attention.
"Communications operator, this is the fifth time in your shift you have failed to report on schedule. The average delay is 3.2 seconds."
Nareth's ears twitched slightly as the voice fed through his comms.
"My lord, apologies. Communications relay A-185 and backup relay B-274 both experienced anomalies simultaneously."
"Confirm the cause of the anomaly. Repair it immediately."
Nareth soon realized that during a single duty cycle, the communications network had suffered thirteen separate disruptions.
Though each time interference had been cleared, the root cause could not be identified.
The irregularities touched the Primarch's sharpened instincts, and he immediately gave the order:
"Command all receiving ships to activate their augur arrays in full. Sweep the area of the detection grid."
"Fleetwide, bring augurs to maximum output. Power up all active and passive data arrays."
Each vessel's total energy output over time was fixed, and a commander normally allocated energy between weapons, void shields, and drives according to combat conditions. Against Orks, priority would usually be given to firepower and defenses. But the will of a Primarch was absolute.
Nareth's command spread through the fleet. Scan data streamed rapidly into his aide's hands.
Arsena, a Student of Ratiocination with prodigious memory and deductive power, spotted the pattern at once.
"My lord, gravitational readings across this system are showing abnormal fluctuations, amplitude increased by approximately 24.1%."
"This is causing intermittent disruptions to communications channels."
"Navigators and astropaths both report strange lights in the warp. No tangible interference yet, but it is notable."
Nareth compared these subtle abnormalities with the knowledge stored in his memory.
'An Attack Moon?'
He knew an Attak Moon was not truly a planet nor an independent void-ship. It was, in fact, the tunnel terminus and signal beacon of the Orks' Waaagh! Gates.
Through these monstrocities, the greenskins could teleport across the galaxy, bypassing conventional warp travel.
He remembered: during the War of the Beast, the Mechanicum had named this Ork translation technology "subspace corridors."
The Orks did not rely on warp drives. Instead, they crossed the hyper-dimension between material space and the immaterium, moving faster-than-light through a subspace corridor.
Unlike most Ork technology, unstable and prone to catastrophic failure, their subspace corridors were peculiarly stable. Safer even than Imperial warp travel, though it could not instantly teleport; it required transit time.
An Attack Moon would approach its target world by sliding through subspace in a way that defied physics.
Its arrival brought gravitational tides that wrecked a planet's gravity well, sparking geological cataclysms and distortions.
'The Wheel of Fire's Orks are vast in number; they may indeed have mastered building an Attack Moon. I have no memory of this; perhaps Leman Russ ordered its reactor destroyed. To the Wolf King, all xenos technology is anathema. If void-war turns against them, the Orks might call an Attack Moon for reinforcement.'
Once convinced of the threat, Nareth acted.
"All ships, break away at once. Do not approach any planet or moon."
He paused, then added to the master of vox:
"Send word to Leman Russ, warn him to keep his forces away from the inner worlds of the Wheel of Fire system."
The black battleships of his Eleventh Legion immediately obeyed, altering their attack vectors to avoid celestial bodies.
The grey ships of the Sixth Legion did not relent; they pressed the hunt.
The Sixth Legion Flagship
Enoch frowned at the hololithic display before him.
"Are the Shadows of Order cowed by the Orks' counterattack? Their formation shifts, abandoning a position of advantage."
The Wolf King scowled. He remembered Sanchez's fearlessness in his palace and shook his head.
"Impossible. Nareth's whelps do not lack for courage. Nor have their losses been severe."
Russ had to admit, Nareth's casualties were far fewer than his own, yet he had reaped greater victories.
"Send to Nareth. Ask his reason."
Before the master of vox could transmit, a communique arrived from the Eleventh Legion.
The master of vox, pale, hurried to relay it to the Wolf King and his jarls.
Enoch exploded: "What?! Keep away from the planets of the Wheel of Fire? Our mission is to cleanse the greenskins! If we cannot approach the worlds, then we may as well turn tail and run!"
Russ bared his fangs, blue eyes cold with disdain.
"Witchcraft nonsense."
He almost turned to ask his Sons of Storm for counsel, only to recall they were still undergoing surgery.
Though contemptuous of sorcery, the Wolf King knew Nareth always had cause. He growled:
"Issue the order…"
Beside the Wheel of Fire fourth planet, a new moon rose suddenly.
With it came a thousand Ork battleships.
A gravity bubble appeared without warning. The whole moon shook.
Everything in that world, rock, air, and water, was transformed.
The planet detonated like a bomb. Tons of debris blasted skyward in a storm like snowfall.
The ground split. Water vaporized into steam.
The oceans swelled, birthing waves tens of meters tall, smashing mountain ridges to rubble.
Stone, mud, and spray, hammered terrified Orks as they ran.
Two were crushed flat by boulders.
"Da Moon's back!" the greenskins bellowed in terror.
They remembered all too well: the last time the moon rose, another gravity bubble had torn their world apart.
Hundreds of Orks had become blood-mist, erased in explosions and shockwaves.
In the void, the Wheel of Fire reeled as tidal forces spread.
Four Sixth Legion capital ships and twenty-six escorts, just beginning to withdraw under Russ's orders, were dragged helplessly toward the newborn moon, sucked into its maw.
The Space Wolves struck back in fury, lashing the rising orb with lances, torpedoes, and lasers.
Aboard the Throne of Shadow's Sovereignity.
Nareth gazed upon the newborn moon.
'Smaller than I expected, only one-fifth the size of Luna. Ah. Newly built, then. It has not yet devoured a world.'
He knew Attack Moon required time to consume planets.
The Orks would first seize a world, build gravity linkage facilities upon it, then tune them to match the moon's systems.
Once activated, those facilities would begin tearing the world apart, feeding mountains and mantle plates upward until the planet became part of the Attack Moon's mass.
From the size of the orb and the debris orbiting it, Nareth knew it had never completed a full planetary feast.
His deep gaze fixed upon the surface, there, etched into mountains of metal, was a vast, warped Ork totem.
Round in form, edged with ripples, a twisted crescent grinning at its heart.
'The Bad Moons Clan. So, they built this Attack Moon. Fitting. The Barron of Corruption potion requires Bad Moons' teeth.'
Even as he thought this, the moon's surface writhed. Mountain-sized flails uncoiled like serpents and lashed toward the grey ships.
Where the flails struck, armor crumpled like paper.
Gravity ripples radiated outward; hull-keels snapped in rings, molten fractures glowing glass-bright.
In an instant, thirty Space Wolf ships were torn apart by gravitational whips.
Nareth's thoughts were calm, resolute:
'The Battle Moon's primary weapon, gravity lashes. My chance has come.'
The Primarch gave his order without hesitation: "Board the moon. Launch the assault!"
...
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