I stare at the demon and a mechadendrite passes me a familiar plasteel pipe. I’ve killed over fifty minor demons with this scavengers’ weapon and it oozes menace, as if each demon I’ve bashed and consumed for power left its final scream behind.

Balphomael, or whatever it’s pretending to be, stiffens then frowns as I twirl the pipe in my hand.

Over the years, I’ve tinkered with the pipe and added an adamantium crowsbeak to the L-shaped end, reinforced the head with auramite wire, and studded the corner with blackstone chips.

A tassel of specially treated vellum strands hangs from the end near my fist. Each thin strip contains one of the sixteen tenets of the mechanicus in lingua-technis. The ragged grip has been replaced with robust rubber and the pipe maglocks to my armour. Last, I placed a mechanism inside the pipe to make it an independent power weapon and covered everything in materium stabilising runes.

It’s not a proper warhammer, but it is mine and the familiar tool gives me confidence.

I spray the bodies of my dead allies with nanites, destroying their gear and ashing their remains. It’s wasteful, but better than letting the tau have them.

My remaining seven guardsmen, one of whom carries a heavy arc rifle, shift uneasily. The cyber mastiff whines.

I advance on the demon and use a thought to speech program to contact Moredeleg.

“Corporal, I’m going to focus on destroying the party crasher. Do your best to cover our retreat and lead your team to the extraction point. Don’t attack the horned guy, just keep the tau off my back. Acknowledge.”

“Orders confirmed. Withdraw and assist. Horns are to be ignored. Moredeleg out.”

I charge Baphomel; the last five tau fire on him and me. The pulse rifles skitter off my shield and Baphomel’s skin, either his sorcery or innate nature keeping him from harm.

Baphomel showers them in warpfire. The wave screams and crackles from his open palm. The flames linger on their bodies as they drop to the floor yelling.

I add to the carnage with a pair of micro-missiles and grant them the Emperor’s Mercy.

One moment Baphomel has his arm stretched towards the tau, the next he is standing with a fiery blade in both hands, held high above his head, with no discernible time spent between changing poses as if he can reset reality at will.

I sweep my pipe in front of me. Baphomel retreats a single step and strikes down. I turn sideways and swing my pipe at his forearm. As Baphomel deflects my strike, my mechadendrite nanyte lathes hose the demon in humming, silver paste.

The nanite powerfield claws at the demon’s body and slides off. Where before he had bare skin, now he has black spiky armour. Between one blink and the next his appearance changes from topless barbarian to black, spiked armour, identical to the heavy armour the dark eldar incubi warriors are known for.

I’ve no idea why a demon would need to look even more edgy and can only assume his armour does something to counter my nanites. I withdraw the silvery mass and we continue our rapid exchange.

Baphomel immolates me with warpfire. He laughs when it slips past my conversion field but I don’t flinch and continue my swing. His flames fizzle out a centimetre from my armour, the warp sorcery banished by E-SIM’s gellar field.

He jerks back and I strike his wrist. It crunches and Baphomel curses in a language even E-SIM can’t, or won’t, translate.

I return the favour, blasting him with my flamer and hellfire pistol. Most of my counterfire is absorbed by his arcane wards and the rest scatters on his armour, leaving it chipped and glowing. It is helping and my remote weapons keep firing.

We stop and slide through the tau corpses, the gyros and weight of my armour keep me from stumbling on the mushed xenos. At last, I manoeuvre him so he’s between me and my squad.

Moredeleg has led a fine retreat and is two-hundred metres away, but that doesn’t make him any less aware of our fight.

His order hisses over the vox and I jump three metres to my right, bouncing slightly against the wall.

Hellfire energy blasts dig into Baphomel’s back and he closes in on me as fast as he can. I notice my machine-spirit do something as the servo harness sends out all six mechadendrites and one grabs a small disk from the floor.

I grin and swing like a loon.

Baphomel flows towards me and lashes at my deliberately vulnerable chest. As he closes, four mechadendrites strike and grab his arms. Another grasps his head and rips off his visor. The last shoves the small disk into his mouth and detonates the photon grenade.

I jump back a mighty four metres, but it isn’t enough. This close, the blast is blinding.

++Trauma detected. Life Support Module power draw increased.++

Blinking rapidly, I groan. I know photon grenades are supposedly non-lethal, but I call bullshit, that was unpleasant.

Baphomel lies on the ground screaming, clutching his mutilated face. I hit him with a haywire micro-missile then follow it with an armour piercing one. His unnatural flesh spasms and a fist sized hole is bored through his chest. Purple fog flows from the wound and I target him with more hellfire and keep a constant stream of promethium on him as I rush forward and bring my pipe down on his head.

At last, the demon bursts. A shadow tries to slip back to the Immaterium.

++Extending gellar field.++

The shadow struggles, a small tendril still attached to its false body. With the field extended I can feel the warp upon my skin. Oil curls within my blood and sharp, static bursts torture my nerves and mind, yet these horrors are no longer enough to break me.

++Grasp the shadow, Aldrich.++

I hand my pipe to my servo-harness and reach out and mould the demon with my hands, compressing it into a misshapen grey ball then yank the final tendril from its corpse. Its body and armour dissolves into rainbow smoke and flows into me.

Golden light rushes from my hands and imprisons the shadow ball.

++Deploying trace.++

A rune forms in the centre of the ball. It looks like lightning in a cloudy bottle.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

++Warp entity marked. Consuming fragment of greater demon ‘Baphomel’.++

The golden light intensifies. Gibbering whispers claw at my thoughts and I brush them aside. The orb compresses into a golden ball then disperses into sparkling motes and seeps into my hands.

++Warning. Main power exhausted. Emergency power engaged. Shut down excess non-essential modules?++

“No. We can recharge later and I want your advanced problem solving active, E-SIM.”

++Very well, Aldrich. I shall assist.++

“Thank you. I didn’t know you could crush a demon like that, E-SIM.”

++What you do not know, Aldrich, cannot be stolen or foretold.++

“I get it. Doesn’t mean I like it.” I run, quickly catching up with Moredeleg.

++When I was designed, the operator's feelings and opinions were dismissed in favour of maximum secrecy, yet chaos and its agents, as well as the eldar were waiting to destroy you upon your revival and continue to pick at us wherever they can. Be it caution, spite, or master plan there is no way to know enemy motivations or the extent of their knowledge. We can only do our best, plan as if our opponents knows everything and hope they know much less.++

“The dead cannot be questioned nor stand before the fury of the living,” I scowl. “They could not ask me and I can no longer ask the researchers. I often wonder how much of my circumstance was planned for by the Emperor, or mere coincidence and my desire for a figure to blame, damns me to paranoia and false accusations.”

++Now is not the time.++

“Then let us be done with this shameful execution. An eye for an eye leaves nothing but corpses and I do not intend to add myself to the pile.”

I reach my guardsmen. After their one volley they had continued towards the rally point. We continue our run along the corridors unopposed.

“Sir,” says Moredeleg, “what was that thing?”

“Good job, Corporal. Get to a high enough rank and I’ll give you a full debrief. For now, it is enough to know they are the great enemy of all life. One of two, actually. Today’s enemy is why we ward and bless everything, as well as say our prayers. I’ll create some training sims for facing the other one.”

“What are they called, sir?”

“Best stick with the Great Enemy. You are a citizen of Marwolv and, with all those psy-errants running about, should understand the otherworldly power of names. The other major enemy is the Great Devourer.”

“Can you kill them too?”

“Yes, anything is possible with, as the orks say, enough ‘dakka dakka’.”

“The ork sims ar-”

We dash over the next intersection. Bloody symbols and gibbed tau bodies coat every surface. The guardsmen slow and stumble.

There must be more than one demon.

“Don’t hesitate, ignore the carnage and run!” I yell.

A guardsman collapses and the cyber mastiff picks him up in his jaws and runs on.

“Biometrics are yellow, sir. Ian has fainted,” says Moredeleg.

I direct the cyber mastiff to me, “I’ll carry him.”

The large articulating clamp on my servo harness grabs private Ian Sutherlainn around his chest and a mechadendrite holds his neck steady.

“More Great Enemy, sir?”

“Yes. Forget it if you can and focus on what you were saying before.”

“Yes, sir. Err, I was saying the ork sims are rough, sir. It’s hard to believe such creatures exist.”

“If we’re lucky, you’ll never have to know for real.”

“I can’t say I fancy my chances there, sir. Militaries only invest so much in training for probable threats, not possible ones.”

“I’m glad you were paying attention to all those classes, Corporal.”

“One remedial class was enough for me, sir.”

“Funny how everyone ends up doing exactly one of those.”

“I may dodge bullets for a living sir, but even I’m not suicidal enough to comment on that.”

“That may be for the best, we’re nearly at the main hangar and I’m detecting weapons’ fire.”

“Sir.”

“I’ll cover you all with my conversion field for the first few seconds, stick close and make or get to whatever cover you can during that time. I’ll get Sutherlainn to the casualty point. Omnissiah be with you, Corporal Moredeleg.”

“You too, sir.”

I refill my missiles again as we run.

We reach the final intersection as we near the edge of the dome. Seventy metres from our position, a door on our left opens into a large space. Eight fire warriors and a XV8 crisis battlesuit, spray streams of plasma into the room beyond.

The battlesuit is a blocky power armour twice the size of a fire warrior, with a rapid firing burst cannon on one arm and a hefty flamer on the other.

There’s fuck all cover for anyone so both parties fire on each other without hesitation or constraint.

My conversion shield turns their blasts to tiny light flashes, though it doesn’t stop everything, especially the intense fire from the battlesuit’s burst cannon, and I take multiple hits. My toughened skin burns beneath my armour and I move just fast enough that the fire warriors can’t target the same spot more than twice and punch through.

Our return fire is a little scattered and, much to my annoyance, the battlesuit has an energy shield too. It doesn’t extend to cover the fire warriors and they all take hits, though only three go down, taking vaporising strikes to their arms and legs.

The other fire warriors maintain their fire, even as their shoulder shields take hits, protecting their chests and heads from kill shots.

The white and orange battlesuit pushes forwards, standing in front of the injured fire warriors and sprays a wide plasma burst down the corridor.

Dozens of tiny, white hot balls hurtle towards us and the guardsmen hit the deck, taking cover behind their MOA combat shields and return fire.

The battlesuit advances, and its flamer starts to glow.

My squad focuses fire on the battlesuit, the hellfire rounds skitter off its head, blackening its main sensor suite and it starts swaying side to side, trying to throw off the shots.

Whoever has the arc rifle fires for the battlesuit’s waist, the shield flickers from the blow and blue-white blasts spread over the frame and pit the armour.

“There goes the plan,” I mutter.

I place private Sutherland in the alcove of a doorway, draw my pipe and accelerate to sixty kilometres an hour and sprint fifty metres, straight into the battlesuit.

As I charge, the battlesuit hops sideways and sends a concentrated stream of plasma at my guardsmen, killing the arc rifle wielder.

Before he can kill any more, I step into the fire. My shield weathers the shots right up until I take a long burst from the battlesuit’s flamer. The fire isn’t concentrated enough to punch through my armour and my reckless approach forces the pilot to cut off the stream before they can cook me.

I counter him with my own flamer. Viscous promethium launches before me, burning two fire warriors, and leaving the battlesuit dripping with fire as I thunder towards them. I swing my pipe at the battle suit.

At two point eight metres tall and two point five tons, the battlesuit is half a metre taller than me and more than three times my weight. None of that deters me and, at the last moment, I abandon my swing, duck, and press forward closing in on the battlesuit as it jumps backwards and I tackle it at the knees.

I’m sure my rugby coach is shedding tears of pride and joy in his unlamented grave on dusty Terra.

The pilot flares his jump jets. My weight unbalances him and we both crash to the floor.

I flip upright, engage the power field, and swing my pipe, aiming for his head. The pilot’s burst cannon is pinned against the floor as he rolls out the way. He isn’t fast enough and wards off my blow with his flamer instead. My strike carves into his suit.

His weapon explodes in a shower of sparks and metal, spraying fuel over both of us. I watch the sparks drifting in slow motion. They settle in the fuel. The first few do nothing, then a fire warrior shoots me in the leg.

White hot balls of ceramite and plasteel splatter everywhere. Fuel vapours bloom and ignite, covering the battlesuit and I in endless flames.