Hitting the smelter isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. They’re stuck, not getting alloyed. However, one third of their forces are non-operational, and it’s the heavy infantry who are confined.

The boring machinery on the torpedo has seized from the rapidly cooling metals of the smelter, entombing the guardsmen.

The torpedoes are set to self-destruct after thirty minutes. It’s deliberately designed so you can’t disarm it in that length of time and everyone is, understandably, panicking.

After what is no doubt a serious debate within the chimera, Commander Mael Muire comes to a decision and has me direct the kataphrons to carve into the smelter with their torsion cannons. Meanwhile the heavy infantry all bunch up at the far end of the torpedo, hopefully avoiding friendly fire.

“Commander Muire to Magos Issengrund. Your guard detail has been assigned and your objective approved. Acknowledge.”

“Magos Issengrund. Objective and support received. Departing in fifteen seconds. Issengrund out.”

I continue to observe the operation, watching from the camera of every machine and man as my escort surrounds me and we depart.

The tau build to different specifications. Everything is more compact, the corridors are seven point five metres wide and eight metres high, with spacious, rounded corners at the intersections. Everything is just big enough for their infantry vehicles to skim and stack over each other.

Sixteen fire warriors and a pair of piranha skimmers hurtle towards us, trying to catch us at an intersection. Two burst cannons, multi-barreled pulse carbines mounted on the chins of the skimmers, send hundreds of plasma rounds at us while the fire warriors peek around the curved corners.

My two kataphrons return fire simultaneously, triple helices of arcing energy power through the air at a slower rate of fire. All machines are on target and it is only a quick reconfiguration of my conversion field that keeps the kataphrons from being completely slagged.

The skimmers are less fortunate and are destroyed. My kill count creeps up by four.

The guardsmen are alert and deploy their combat shields moments before my conversion field overloads. Their shields twist and sag under the powerful plasma bursts as the guardsmen rush forward, spraying bursts from their hellguns.

Red energy beams pummel the fire warriors and they duck back, five of them with glowing marks on their armour. Constant bursts keep their heads down as the guardsmen advance. With no reloads, the covering fire comes thick and fast.

The hellpistol mounted on my pauldron picks off a pair of grenades before they can detonate among us.

“Hug the walls,” I vox.

My guardsmen scatter and I surge forward, I input the fire mission to my flamer and it pulls free from my servo harness and launches four globules of burning promethium.

The Tau are undeterred, and I am hit by eight rounds.

A tiny dragon breaths flame on a holographic representation of my armour and several sections glow yellow. Percentages and timers label each major section, the timers ticking down as my armour rapidly sheds the heat.

The globules strike the fire warriors, who shift just enough that my shots impact on their shoulder armour as they keep up their attacks.

The guardsmen show initiative and stack up then advance at speed, staying spread out enough my flamer can’t hurt them.

With no time to hide behind the corners of the intersection, the tau dive for the floor. One fire warrior tosses seven tiny disks and my hellfire pistol fails to neutralise them all.

Two photon grenades, an advanced flashbang, explode. Thousands of flashing beams and a pair of potent electromagnetic blasts scatter my sensors. Sonic barrages and disorienting pressure waves overwhelm my senses for a moment, but my power-armour’s machine-spirit is not fooled and launches four micro-missiles from the integrated launcher on my back, painting the targets with lasers from a small emitter on the right side of my helmet.

My guardsmen are well protected against photon grenades and hunker behind their shields the moment they see them flying, but it does delay them. Apart from me, everyone is held back by the photon grenades and while the tau recover in half the time, it does them no good as my micro-missiles strike.

Two haywire warheads force their armour to reboot and seize their muscles, locking them up long enough the other two missiles wiz around the corner and detonate in the middle of the corridor bathing the tau in horrendous melta-fire and carbonating twelve of them.

The last four are overrun by the guardsmen who resume their hurried advance and execute the tau with four, well aimed phosphex rounds. Just to be sure, after rounding the junction, they then turn their hellguns on the carbonated tau. The concussive energy dusts their feeble corpses and my guardsmen stay well clear.

You never know if the bodies might be trapped.

We continue unimpeded. Magnetic cargo drone rails line the ceiling with frequent curving junctions. The lines become denser as we close in on the warehouse.

We arrive at our objective. The doors are constructed in a pair and each door splits four ways. Each divide is offset by the door behind and are offset from each other, creating an overlapping seal.

My nanites disintegrate the obstruction with their powerfield in forty-seven seconds. These doors are no way near as strong as the single slabs used in imperial construction. From my scans, I can tell they open a lot faster and only admit what they intend to, controlling traffic in a more efficient manner and offering a back up seal. I rather like the design, but I know I won’t be using it myself.

Even for a non-critical facility like storage, it would have taken me three minutes to breach if this was a door on the Distant Sun.

The kataphrons have mostly recovered from their searing and my conversion field has reset. I send the hulking murder bots into the breach, pinging the room with every available sensor.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

We detect nothing and enter.

One hundred and twenty-eight cargo drones lie still, attached to their rails high overhead. Thick, wide shelving stretches forty metres upwards filled with large boxes, tanks, and multi-storage units.

It’s unnerving how similar humanity is to the tau. I know there are only so many ways you can stack boxes and automate logistics, but if you wanted a generic sci-fi warehouse, this would be it. They don’t even decorate it in neon punk or gothic cyber skulls. Even the Imperium stores their broken junk with more style than this.

There’s a tiny glitch on my sensors and that’s all the warning I get.

Five DX-6 ‘Remora’ drone fighters decloak and fire ten seeker missiles at me from sixty-two metres away.

Eight are coming right for me and I shape my conversion field into a ramp, my overclocked reactions working furiously. Twenty micro-missiles attempt to counterfire, but the seeker missiles have exceptional evasion sequences and I only get four of them.

The kataphrons have no protection and I can’t afford to cover them. Each kataphron is penetrated by an anti-armour missile, one loses its tracked chassis and the other is disabled by a thunderous shaped charge to its chest.

My hellfire pistol takes out two more missiles and the seventh detonates on the conversion field, the blast knocks the final missile off target and it triggers a half a metre to the right of my head and throws me to the floor.

With shocked disbelief I pick myself off the floor as the remora stealth drones are obliterated by three micro-missiles each. The final missile disarms and drops to the floor, but is taken out by the combined explosion even as it slides to safety.

Those seeker missiles are the equivalent of an imperial hunter-killer missile, an advanced, long range anti-armour weapon that can cremate a tank. I know power armour is as good as tank armour, but being inside it when the blast goes off is actually kinda awesome. Terrifying too.

I can’t believe I survived that. Sure, it wasn’t a direct hit, but holy shit was that close!

A guardsman approaches, “Are you alright, sir?”

“Just my pride, Corporal Moredeleg, and that’s much softer than my flesh.”

Corporal Moredeleg chuckles quietly, “Good to hear, sir. Is there anything in particular we should search for here?”

“Just keep us as secure as you can. The kataphrons, if you can move them, will make good cover and will still fire, but don’t expect much more from them. We leave in ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” Corporal Moredeleg salutes and departs, whispering orders into his vox. The squad’s cyber mastiff trots over and pushes its nose against my chest. I pat it and my mechadendrites reach out and reload my launcher from the boxes hanging from its sides. Sure, it holds fifty, but it only takes ten seconds and I’m reloaded.

Meanwhile, eight foot-ball sized spider bots unfold from the mastiff's back and skitter away, scanning everything. Brian finally risks his skull, detaching from my servo-harness and starts scouting the warehouse too.

Seven minutes later, Brian’s angry beeping pierces the cavernous warehouse and I rush over and rapidly ascend shelving, pulling myself up a sturdy ladder and onto the shelf.

A row of armourglass tanks with metal bases and lids secure biological samples of whole, air-caste tau bodies. The closest one is female. She is tall and long limbed. Her skin is blue and her body, for a human, is impossibly thin.

Rather than the usual cloven feet of her caste, the tau body has human feet and a slight, protruding nose instead of a snake-like slit.

Instead, a deep groove splits her face from her forehead to the top of her nose, with two branching grooves arching over her eyebrows. Right in the centre of her forehead, the groove widens and a black growth nestles within.

For a moment, I think the growth is jewellery, as tau are fond of placing decorative inserts in their facial marks, then I recognise it.

That’s an undeveloped navigator eye.

Horror, anger, and admiration flood my thoughts. With morbid fascination, I command Brian to insert his data tendrils in each pod and I extract the data. If anyone finds out I have this I’m even more screwed than if they find out I have the ‘Cargo Container’ STC, but it’s right there.

Why wouldn’t I take it?

The hybrid tau corpse opens its eyes, “Hello, mortal. I’ve been waiting for you.”

I shiver as demonic taint floods the biotank and energy sparks reach through the fluid and dance off the armourglass.

Firming my mind, I power up my electoo wards, ignore the demon, and slide down the ladder. I vox Commander Muire, “This is Magos Issengrund. Priority Message. Terminate all missions. We have an entity breach. Head for the exit points. Abandon all prisoners and loot. Acknowledge.”

“Commander Muire. Command confirmed. Terminating seize and destroy. Muire out.”

I simultaneously vox the same order to my squad as Brian catches up and hides in my servo-harness. With my auspex at full power, I target the seven biotanks and fire three micro-missiles at each one.

“I am Balphomael, the Horned Darkness. Nothing is denied to me, your soul a petty snack I shall consume at my wh-”

My ordinance strikes true, wiping out the demon’s connection to the immaterium.

I snort, I can’t believe that guy keeps coming back. Who does he think he is, Team Rocket?

Running to the exit, I see my squad is engaged in another shoot out. Four of them are down, one with a pair of plasma burns close enough they’ve punched through his helmet. The other three are lying on hole riddled shields, clutching punctures in their chest.

Firm, coagulating foam covers fills the wounds. If we can get them out, they’ll make it.

The kataphrons are non-functional, though their bulk still holds back the tau pulse rifle barrages. The ark rifles have been recovered and two of my guardsmen are holding them, while another pair attempt to connect the powerful guns to their potentia coil power packs.

I stop beside them, “Good idea. I’ll finish that up. Gather the wounded.”

“Yes, sir,” they chorus.

I recall the spider bots and they return to their saddlebags on the cyber mastiff.

Corporal Moredeleg glances over his shoulder at me and voxes, “We’re pinned down, sir.”

I finish attaching the weapons and pat the two guardsmen on the shoulder, “You’re good to go.”

Twenty six fire warriors, taking cover behind three destroyed piranha skimmers, occupy the corridor beyond, sending a burst of rounds at us every handful of seconds.

“Stay in cover, Corporal and watch your back. I’ll hi-”

Eight dead tau lie in the open ground between the two sides, their blood trickling across the floor, then up the walls, forming mind bending runes.

Half my squad immediately goes mad and murder the wounded before the rest of us can put them down. The tau are no better, despite their psychic deafness, and lose thirteen of their number to the pulsing corruption.

There is a shimmer in the air, and at the entrance to the warehouse, a clawed hand punches through the materium and grasps at something in the air, dragging its red, false flesh out of immaterium and slithering into reality.

The red horned demon’s skin ripples as all the tau open fire. It sneers and blasts them all with warpfire. Their screams choke off and their brief assault peters out as the remaining tau scramble back.

The demon turns towards me, “Will you ignore me now, mortal?”