382 IMPERIAL YEARS POST-HERESY
We meant no harm.
It was just another reclamation mission. Another attempt at saving a remote world which our war against the Faith had destroyed centuries prior. We were to land, set up an outpost, evaluate the state of the environment, and begin environmental repair operations.
A few old war machines were expected to have remained active even through the centuries, and so we sent out a universal re-activation signal, as per protocol. We did not expect the Faith to have set a trap of such scale.
The stone beneath our feet shook and shuddered, tremendous wounds in the earth re-opened, and from the bowels of the planet crawled, walked, skittered and skulked a thousand thousand abominations against the draconian form. They belched toxic sludge and bent the fabric of reality around them in all the wrong ways, their flesh shifting and hardening seemingly at random, the cursed soil beneath their feet undulating as though alive.
Grotesque mockeries of our forms, rebuilt and reshaped - not with steel and metal, but with reality itself, bent to the will of the Faith at a fundamental level. The last act of the Faith upon this world was to desecrate the bodies of the fallen, to twist and contort their legacies into little more than walking engines of death and destruction, slumbering within the poisoned soil.
Waiting for us to land and try to reclaim that which was rightfully ours.
I… I fought in the war. I was once High Chaplain Ultaboz, but no more. Not until that day.
On that day, I was thrust back into the fire. We had neither the equipment nor the manpower to handle this kind of situation… And so we called for help. If there was even a single imperial ship within transmission range, they would be here in minutes.
I knew there were none, and so did my men. This mission had taken so long to get off the ground because the planet was so remote. But we sent the distress call nonetheless. By my estimations, our position would be overrun in half a day at most.
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Sixty-four draconians landed that day. Fifty of the warrior caste, ten of the thinker caste, four of the shapers, those whose power to bend reality rivaled even clan elders.
Fifty-one lay dead in the mud, or worse. Only one of the shapers remained, only three of the thinkers did.
The horde was not letting up, and neither the turrets nor the shield projectors were going to hold up for longer than a few minutes. The ground was slick with a mixture of bodily fluids, the turrets had long ruined their focusing crystals and were now firing shotgun-like bursts instead of focused beams. The single shaper they had left was bleeding from his tattoos, geysers of blood gushing from his diminutive figure each time something impacted the defensive field which he had been holding up alone for hours prior. It was a technique meant to be used by a full squad of shapers, the ultimate defense, wherein the fabric of the world itself is used as a shield. He could have become an elder in mere decades if he was sent on any other mission instead of this one.
The distress beacon pinged. Someone received the call and had sent a confirmation back. But it was not an imperial ship.
It was them.
The Many-Limbed Ones.
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The sky wept tears of fire as crimson comets ripped through the atmosphere at tens of times the speed of sound, tremendous bursting jets of red energy propelling their infernal machines downward.
A masculine voice sounded from the distress beacon. My translator implant kicked in.
”-his is Executive Officer Inoue Nobumitsu of the Novahuman Sovereignty Breaker Corps, 39th Company! Remain in position and reduce reality-warping to a minimum, I repeat, remain in position and reduce reality-warping to a minimum!”
It would be perhaps a minute or two before they landed. I reached deep within myself, and roared a battlecry I had not used since the heresy.
“THIS DAY, DEATH CLAIMS EVERY SINGLE SOUL BUT OURS!”
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Their machines shattered the ground around the outpost as they landed, kicking up tremendous clouds of dust and rubble and crushing many of the Dead Ones underfoot before they even entered the fray. The shaper collapsed, the shock breaking his focus and causing his near-death levels of exhaustion to catch up with him.
I could just barely see one of the tremendous war machines -huge beasts of gleaming silver and polished black stone, covered in occult symbols which shined with the unholy orange light of the place beyond thought.
Its armor plating resembled some perverse misinterpretation of draconian royal garb, a manufactured holy knight. It had two eyes like the Many-Limbed Ones, and a third above. Its head was crowned by three pairs of bent-back horns, and in its arms it clutched a living-metal sword larger than itself. It burst forth faster than I could see, ripping a trail in the ground and cleaving a swathe through the Dead Ones.
As the dust cleared, I saw that none were alike.
One of the machines was bright red, and had a giant shoulder-plate over its left arm. It had a massive drill for one arm, and a hollow tube with some sort of rod coming out the back for the other. It emitted green exotic particles from its back which formed into the shape of a flowing cape.
Another was as though one of their kind, merely made huge.
One had gigantic railguns for arms, railguns on its shoulders, and some sort of energy cannon mounted within its torso, where I expected the cockpit to be. I wondered where the pilot was, but then it came to me - these war machines mimicked the natural bodies of the Many-Limbed Ones, they moved all too naturally to be controlled like a ship.
They had linked their minds to their machines, become as one with them.
In the fray, I had failed to notice that along with the giants, there were also Many-Limbed Ones on foot - and even they moved faster than nature would allow, their savage punches and kicks causing supersonic cracks. Their bodies all had the same traits - the same style of armor, the same style of mask, the same casement of red crystal around the left arm, but they differed enough that individuals were recognizable, both in their weaponry and physical silhouette.
With their blades of singing steel they cut through the desecrated hordes of my former brethren, with their unholy light they forced them to fight on equal terms with them, without their perverted version of the sacred arts.
There must've been dozens of machines and hundreds of Many-Limbed Ones on the ground, for in their rampage they carved out a circle around the outpost, and the circle was getting larger by the minute.
I know not for how long I watched the fray as my men tended to each-other's wounds, but I came to realize one thing.
I kept seeing the same machine, where I thought there were multiple. The same masked visage where I thought there were multiple men. There were not hundreds of them, they were less than a dozen at most, with no more than half a dozen of those infernal machines.
Another comet ripped through the heavens. It landed the closest to the outpost out of all of them. Up-close, I could see that it was some sort of drop pod. It burst apart with a loud hiss, and from within stood up a strange visage. It was clearly one of the Many-Limbed Ones, but his body was different. He had no suit, no second pair of arms.
One of his eyes was a flaming pit, his face was… Not a face. I could see exposed muscle intermingling with metal and polymer, veins mixing with tubes. I had been told that the Many-Limbed Ones often changed their bodies to an extreme degree, but this was beyond what I had imagined.
He spoke, and I recognized the voice that came out. It was then that I realized it was not static that made him sound so rough in the transmission - his actual voice really did sound like that. It was deep and gravelly, and conveyed a distinct sense of both power and pride.
“I am Executive Officer Inoue Nobumitsu of the Novahuman Sovereignty Breaker Corps, 39th Company. I presume you are the one who issued the distress call?”