"Sergeant Magron now could see for himself why the lieutenant had given the order to deploy. He had fought engagements in space before, but then there had always been a sun at the heart of the system. Here the scene was lit by starlight from the massed stars of the galaxy, the nearest of which were light-years off.
A very cold place, for sure. Blotting out a patch of that light was a planetoid about the size of Jupiter's small inner moon, Io.
Mm... Io, 0.286 times Earth's radius, 0.082 times its surface area, 0.023 times its volume and 0.015 its mass. How it had got here - whether by escape from some planetary system millions of years ago, or by forming in interstellar space in some freakish manner - no one would ever seek to know. Its value was strategic: it was roughly equidistant between a number of settled star systems, and so was an ideal place for a military base.
How the frak can a dead planetoid lost in the middle of nowhere be of any value instead of, say, a mere space station where you don't have to worry about gravity? Or is it because of its ores? You bet it must be something like that. Long before the rebellion, the World Eaters Legion had taken possession of this lightless, frozen world and had excavated a stronghold deep within it.
Oh wait. It's of strategical value because someone built a bunkered base down there. Yeah, the thickness of the rock layer above said base is the value. But now the World Eaters were among the blasphemer traitors. They had transferred their allegiance to Horus, the renegade warmaster and therefore were anathema. To seize or extirpate the interstellar base was the Dark Angels' objective. A battleship, three cruisers and any number of improvised spacecraft had formed a staggered crescent around one half of the ancient planetoid and were sending massed laser fire slicing into its surface. Nothing else would have sufficed for the task; thermonuclear bombardment would no more than have dented the blacked-out landscape.
That's really the golden part. It's flat out said that thermonuclears would have sucked big times to dig a hole. Actually that's a fair statement, since nukes, contrary to directed energy weapons, would have a poor capacity regarding ground coupling, although it could be increased with heavier casings. Eventually, one could actually consider digging a hole by firing multiple 3 digits multi-megaton nukes, eventually a tad focused, and with a heavy casing, so much as to transfer a high amount of energy into the materials that compose that casing and therefore get some nice momentum out of the explosion, in order to produce a larger and deeper crater. Of course, digging down the crust would still require a high amount of such thermonuclear weapons. However, if wankers were right, in that the Imperium could throw gigaton/teraton level nukes at will, such a statement would make no sense. What this means is that the Imperium's thermonuclear/fusion "explosives" are simply nowhere that powerful. Unsurprisingly, this rather crucial fact would get totally ignored. No matter how it sticks out like a bright neon in a desert during a pitch black night. Only high-density lasers carried enough energy to dig through the planetary crust and penetrate the mantle beneath, carving up the little world as if it were a ripe melon.
It is of no surprise. Not only the lance weapons generally are counted as part of the most powerful offense systems, they all totally focus their energy into the ground. However, there would be little to expect from a beam weapon if true power wasn't present. But the text is quite clear that the weapon will dig a hole, and that can only happen if material is violently vaporized, whether the beam is pulsed or not. The "high density" may suggest a high energy density, or just a large concentration of photons. Or another note, Io's lithosphere (crust + upper mantle) is lately estimated to be between 12 and 40 km thick. The battleship - recommissioned as the Imperial Vengeance - was at the centre of the crescent, a huge cathedral-like form shrouded in intricately worked turrets. Most of the planetoid's defence lasers must have been put out of action in the first salvo; only a few brilliant beams still stabbed upward from their armoured keeps, wavering to and fro in search of targets. Just the same, the scratch fleet's commander had miscalculated, for the battle crescent was already being broken up, under attack from another quarter. Round from the other side of the planetoid, ascending from what must have been subterranean hangars secretly excavated, had come a fleet of heretic ships the Imperial planners had surely believed to be elsewhere! Now the two forces were manoeuvring, the Imperial fleet forced to defend itself even while keeping up the laser bombardment of the minor world below.
What I'm going to say might sound obvious to some people blessed with common sense, but wouldn't Connor's calculations leading to multi-teraton lances mean that that distraction represented by those heretics' ships already be irrelevant by now? Wouldn't the crust be a gaping hole on the opening volley? Plasma drivers ripped through the ether, tearing ships apart. The vast bulk of the Imperial Vengeance hove close by, blotting out the stars
[/literalism], a gargantuan turreted shape gouting plasma as well as planet-targeted lasers, smaller rebel ships gathering round it like sharks round a whale, while in its shadow the battle-barge seemed no more than a beetle.
Oh, so the ship that actually does the damage is one of those few supersize ships that actually manage to dwarf a Battle Barge, which depending on the fan whom you ask the question to, either is above 1 km long or perhaps 5 km long? Are these fools going to pretend that this demonstration shall be understood as a presentation of standard firepower capacity when an actually more or less standardized Battle Barge is of the size of an insect in comparison?? Why am I having shades of the Death Star here? The cloaked lieutenant was ignoring the bulking, blazing battleship, the flashes of battle visible over a range of thousands of miles. He was pointing down towards the World Eater planetoid. Brother-Sergeant Magron switched to visor magnification and directed his gaze likewise. Combat assault craft, small, lumpy images even at maxmag, were rising from the surface of the planetoid. World Eater Space Marines, ready to take on even a battleship in close order combat!
And what were they going to fire? Even the thermonuclear weapons of the fleet couldn't scratch the planet, and they're obviously going to be huge and numerous. And these guys think that their combat assault crafts would stand a chance against a ship that could ditch... what? At the very least multi-gigaton firepower and therefore come with a similar shielding/armour capacity? Or that must be the honour thing.
...
There was some snipped material that might have given us an idea of how long this bombardment took place. Accident?
It was at that moment that Magron noticed something happening on the planetoid below. A glow was emanating from it, becoming brighter and brighter.
The same Magron who used visor maginification on maxmag. Is he finally seeing a large lake of lava? Despite the raging space battle ranging over the planetoid, the Imperial task force had managed to sustain the laser barrage. Now it was working, and what was more, it was working better than its directors had planned. The beams had scythed through the planet, had cut aside the crust and had delved deep into the mantle in search of the deep keeps.
Point to WH4nKers, these Space Marines had built their lair in a place of great pressures and hot material. Well, if it's anywhere like Io. However, if it's solid, like if the planetoid's internal structure had more to do with the Moon, they'd have to keep digging and digging before actually reaching anything molten. And now, what had not been intended - they had penetrated to the hot liquid metal core of the planetoid. The little world was not like other planets and moons. It was alone, lacking a parent sun or brother worlds to flex it with gravitational tidal forces.
So that actually means no heat production via tidal dissipation. So it had never been tempered by a dynamic environment. It had never been forced to settle and cool into long-term stability.
So what? This planetoid hasn't lost an inch of rotational kinetic energy? Now it was paying the price for its aeons-long inertness. The pent-up power of the core, which had lain quiet for so long, encased in its thick shell of rock, was roused. It seethed and moved. And it had more than its own energy now. The high-density lasers had added theirs to it, turning it into a bomb.
Sorry but... what? Since when a beam that's like good enough to dig through the crust of a planet is now capable of turning a core into a bomb? There's certainly a property to these lasers that we didn't consider, for they can nullify gravity quite easily. Already partly disintegrated by the barrage, the planet exploded.
Ok so now the lances and plasma drivers could partly disintegrate the planetoid. Why, we've jumped to petatons in no time flat there. Raised several orders of magnitude so the thing blows up ... nothing is said about, I don't know, the lack of pressure. Planets in WH40K have a weird tendency to blow up despite not being ascribed a special composition. It all happened tremendously fast. The core glowed and swelled, lighting up the darkness, demolishing the crust and mantle and hurling their fragments outward mingled with sprays and streams of flaming, molten iron, a vast outpouring of high-velocity matter and total destruction.
So the core does explode, demolishes the mantle and the crust, and scatters fragments of them, and all that goes tremendously fast. WH40K VS Physics, Yes, it's that time again.
...
When his visor cleared, the first thing Magron saw was the ruddy face of the World Eater sergeant, mouth exultantly agape, as if revelling in the annihilation of his own base. A red glow suffused the scene, coming from the still-expanding mass of the exploding planet below them.
No doubt, we're dealing with some fancy fast planetary mass scattering there. However, they can see the debris coming at them, from the exploding planet beneath. Magron staved off the World Eater's next rush, at the same time snatching glances around him. Several of his brothers had been despatched during their sudden blindness, betrayed by their own equipment. Some of the Traitor Marines, however, had met the glare unprotected and were dazzled, unable to see clearly. The strident voice of the lieutenant came through his communicator from one of the other rafts: 'Brother Sergeant! Brother Angels! Our end has come! Pray for your souls! Pray to the Emperor!' The first wave of that explosion began to reach them, the smaller fragments, the gravel, the tiny shards of rock, that had been flung outward at higher velocity than the more massive pieces of the disintegrated world. It was a preliminary warning of the greater flood of stone and metal that was coming. Magron heard a rattling against the exterior of his armour. Too late, he realised he had allowed his attention to be distracted. He was open to the traitor sergeant's next lunge. Then a rock the size of his fist took off the World Eater's head. Similar missiles were slamming into the assault carriers, wrecking them completely, shoving them back towards the World Eaters' original destination, the Imperial Vengeance. Marines of both chapters were crushed as high-velocity rocks smashed into them, cracking open their armour, flinging them into space broken and crippled. Even that was but a foretaste of the deluge to come, the broken-up masses of the one-time planetoid's crust and mantle, the still- molten spilled core, the raving glowing vapour, which now overwhelmed the space battle which was still in progress, spouting plasma and laser fire even in the face of the catastrophe. Aghast, Sergeant Magron watched as a huge chunk of black basalt, as big as the Imperial Vengeance itself, struck the task force's turret-encrusted capital ship. The impact shattered them both. Fractured adamantium, twisted metal, broken rock and superheated steam receded into the darkness in a writhing turmoil.
Interesting that an impact that only shatters the large fragment... ends shattering the capital ship as well. Something crashed into the assault craft and carried it away into the darkness too, away from the great torrent of debris that smashed both spacefleets to nothing. Had Sergeant Magron not been a Space Marine the initial impact might have killed him instantly, but he was a Space Marine, with his specially hardened body. So he survived, to be briefly carried along in the wreckage until he became dislodged from his footing and went flying off, spinning slowly end over end, the stars apparently spinning about him. For a long time faint glimmers - chunks of basalt, globules of cooling metal or fragments of spaceship - went sailing by at the edges of his enhanced vision, against a background of spiralling stars. Finally there was nothing. Nothing to show that there ever had been a solitary interstellar planet, or a base buried deep within it, or a task force, or a battle in space. No voices, whether friend or foe, loyalist or traitor, came through his communicator. No one else had survived to answer his calls, he was adrift in space, with no other human being within ten light-years. He was utterly, completely alone."
