There was a big push of Warped coming in, bodies in heavy worksuits that had been painted and stitched with patterns and runes of devotion to the Warped powers, breath masks against fumes dipped in blood and ichor wrought from corpses and making the countenances and auras of those coming even more inhuman and unreal.

I was shooting them, and they were dying in droves.

They were supposed to be following the shelling in yet another drive of death, pitched trench combat that would inevitably end, and they would retreat under the cover of yet more shelling, drawing out this insane war.

Trench warfare, in the far future. The Mekkers seriously needed to be mass exterminated. Factories could be fabbed back easily, all you needed was energy and raw material. Spending lives for something that was going to be sabotaged, ruined, and Tainted, and would likely need to be broken down even if the whole world could somehow be reconsecrated... Mek-heads were barking insane.

The puke grey-brown work gear with the garish yellow and white symbols looked plenty revolting on many levels, but the Warped were just people behind the suits, Human/1’s with a Class Level in Expert or Commoner or two, just normal folk laboring for their Empire, their hearts broken under the weight of the demands on them, and the despair of Riggibuhl finding easy purchase.

They were dying at every touch of Banefire delivered by strobing rapid-fire impacts, and vivic energies were feasting on the corruption infesting their bodies. I glanced at some corpses as I glided past, seeing the internal boils and lesions running through their flesh, cancers replicating madly, swelling their bodies with foul strength and endurance even as it stole their sanity.

They were tough, and strong, but slow and none too bright, nor very accurate.

Paten and Host didn’t care. Host replicated Paten’s anti-Warp bias, and both of them were delivering killer impacts with the slightest touch, delivered with unstinting accuracy and lethality by my Marksman’s Gloves, Enmity, and Greater Soulbound. The average damage of thirty points and higher was fully capable of killing any of the rote soldiers, and as for the Possessed ones a foot taller, with a random mix of second heads, demonic limbs, tentacles, massive girths, and clouds of flies born from the maggots being spat from their mouths, they got Force Quarrels on top of it as I held the triggers down and simply calculated all the angles and movements.

It required almost half my attention to do mass slaughter. There was movement in the now, and where I needed to go in the future, tracking and laying off objectives, reading the positions of the enemy, noting the strong and the weak, avoiding incoming fire, directing and redirecting it, focusing on the tough ones, endlessly tracking the weak ones so easily killed, monitoring my arcs of fire, looking endlessly for surprises...

Like that ill-wrought tank fresh out of the forges and Possessed by a demon, bursting out of a crater hole and surging towards me with its eyes burning with ochre baleflames, swarms of drones crackling with the presence of the demon dispersed among them and directing them like components of its body. Warped paused and screamed as lightning converged on them and they gave themselves over to fully manifest a demon, bulging and twisting as ectoplasmic mass and Warp energies flooded into them...

My Swarmbane Clasp hummed as my Tails mass-launched five Spikes and my Autobows crossed the Swarm once. Excess damage was transmitted throughout the cloud of explosive drones, and the demon howled as all the drones detonated in reaction to the impacts.

My Spikes flicked out, and the headlight eyes of the Possessed Tank churning through the muck towards me were shot away as I dodged the explosive shell it launched at me, moving too fast for it to accurately track as it closed. Its stubber-guns launched shells burning with hellfire I cut between, skidded up onto its hull as I cut the guns away, and then Lightningphasing flashed as a swathe of electricity burned through the electromagnetic clamps of its hatch, which promptly went flying.

My Tails extended down within, and promptly blew the engine core, ammo dump, controls, and firing controls, all inhabited by the demon’s consciousness, into scraps burning with vivus.

The tank ruptured under me, and I rode the impact into the sky, using the opportunity to blow apart nine commanding Possessed officers, arcs of pulsing violet, black, and white lasers crossing them before Spikes and Quarrels finished them off.

I didn’t hit the ground, just sliding down the air and resuming my skating at speed four inches above it, spinning continuously as targets presented themselves and didn’t get down in time... and even if they did, I was accurate enough that they weren’t going to escape unless they dropped behind cover.

But that was fine, because they were just grains of rice, and I was heading for the cookpot. I was just doing my duty and saving a few soldiers as I did so.

I moved past the demons being brought in, Swordshards flying out with Sun Strikes imbued, slicing into and blowing them apart violently, frequently taking a couple toadies hanging too close to them with them as they died.

Guys on hoverloaders, gravsleds, rovers, troop transports, and the like were picked off in passing, with those manning any cannons or pintle mounts enjoying their deaths first, the engines of their rides second, and those that survived the resulting explosions and fires getting to go last.

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A broad swathe of burning vivus was extending for two hundred yards and more to either side of me, and the oncoming rush had completely collapsed, mostly because everything within line of sight of me was dying violently and burning away as I came on.

Grim was the focus on my Halo Crown, not on full display, but giving me full 360 vision, so I didn’t actually have to be facing the direction I was shooting in. This would normally give any species accustomed to binocular vision conniption fits, but that Lilitu stuff pumping through me meant I already had the mental architecture in place to deal with seeing with my whole face, not just my eyes, and going from a 200-degree arc of vision to full circle was basically no harder than going from wearing blinders to not.

Forward was still obvious, as the magnifier of my Mask only worked directly ahead, meaning that if I wanted to shoot at something in the far distance I still had to turn my head. My eyes were keen enough that it wasn’t an issue under two hundred yards, but when I was looking for incoming shells, it was kind of important to see them coming some distance away.

I was well under the umbrella of shells now, although their spotters had to have seen the swathe I was cutting through their own troops. Being Warped and realizing the danger, they would certainly be willing to shell their own troops as I rapidly approached their lines. That was fine by me; as long as I didn’t take a direct hit, the damage I took would be trivial and healed away rapidly, Thunder Resistance sloughing off the shockwave and deafening noise, and my Damage Reduction dealing with any incidental shrapnel.

The lines of the enemy were right ahead, long rows of bunkers and reinforced trenches built up by the enthralled workforce with tireless energy and skill. Some of them started shooting at me as I approached, and I reciprocated happily, threading shots into their bunkhouses with the improbable skill of a +13 RAB base, 50 Dex, and Improved Precise Shot ignoring all but absolute cover, just picking them off and killing them. The difference in lighting meant nothing to me; I could see everyone inside through the gaps, and I killed them all unless they went flat to the floor in time.

Then I was over the last rows of filth-smeared razor wire, kicking off a couple of the anchor posts, on the edge of the trench and looking down at the Warped staring up at me in shock.

There were quite a lot of them, but they were not as packed as they could have been, probably because of the waves that had run out ahead of them.

Plenty of targets, however. I began to run along the lip of the trench, Paten and Host still on full speed, my Tails finding the tough ones and putting holes in them as Faith lightly batted away what accurate fire was coming my way from the heavier weapons, and Warped screamed and exploded in both directions down the trench from me.

I definitely was not interested in following them down into their buried tunnels and the booby traps waiting within, as my Trembling Domain was happy to show me. Since hopping over a trench was basically effortless, I wasn’t going to be tripping any mines since I didn’t actually touch the ground. If dumping a scavenged, TK-harvested-and-directed grenade into every pillbox shooting at me as I passed was a thing, it was all fine, fine, fine.

I could cut my way through the razorwire and open a path for the Marines behind me, but that would slow me down and make it easier for shooters to target me. Jumping along the anchor poles was easy enough, and the rows of obstructions that would take tanks and heavy machines to clear I just avoided, without even flying as I did so.

Yeah, there were a bunch of things shooting at me, but, friendly person that I was, I just shot back at them, and they stopped welcoming me that way soon enough.

The cloud of flesh-devouring locusts that covered half a square klik sweeping down on me was a good thing... good that it targeted me, and not the men behind me, who could only have dealt with it by psions unleashing some big AoE’s to disrupt it.

A Swarmbane Clasp turned narrow lasers, spontaneously forming Force Quarrels, my Tail Spikes, and the sweeping Shardings of my Sword into multiple sweeping brooms, driving massive holes into the Swarm as Banefire popped on millions of insects with a sound like endless amounts of popcorn cooking off, and swathes of unwhite coursed through the air.

I waved my attacks through the mass, and burning patterns of vivus devoured them as they popped to Banefire excesses and died en masse. No passing Go, no collecting two hundred dollars, and not managing to make it to Sama in the slightest as the roaring drone of the vermin cloud became firecracker pops of annihilation.

It didn’t stop my forwards progress, either. Not being able to see because of the burning locusts filling the air meant nothing to my Trembling Domain.

I was paralleling the buried evacuation tunnels from above, and if there were some alarms going off as repurposed grenades kept going off inside the gunner stations I was passing, well, that was for the Warped below to worry about.

It appeared they hadn’t withdrawn to proper fighting positions back here, my attack having been too quick... which was odd. The population projections sent to me indicated the enemy still had hundreds of millions of converts, if not more, so these positions should have all been manned.

Why weren’t they? They had been pulled back... to do what?

I looked at the mountain of steel sending out endless shells in the distance, and had a bad feeling...

But not half as bad as the fleeing troops were about to have. Their tunnel ended up in the basement of the bunker ahead, four shots had just killed the four shooters inside, and going down inside and meeting them as they streamed toward me was a thing that just made good sense at this point.

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The Inquiry Team wanted to speed across the battlefield after their quarry, but were foiled. The way ahead of them was actually open, as when the artillery barrage had ended, there was no wave of mutated attackers surging across the open space towards them through the area the woman had run into at all.

Unfortunately, the artillery spotters had noticed the lack of attackers, and mere minutes after the attack was launched, the incoming fire had unceremoniously resumed, trapping the Warped between the incoming guns and the Imperial lines.

The Warped fought tenaciously and hopelessly to the end regardless, uncaring if they lived or died, only that they could get vengeance on their oppressors. The bloody firefight was still ongoing, and the team even let loose a few shots at thralls who dared shoot at their skimmer.

But a wall of shells was coming down, and a visible haze of psychoactive power was lingering on the battlefield and the diseased filth thrown into the air. If they tried to move ahead, their systems would certainly short out.

Sir Mugamu cursed the fact that they didn’t have any of that new Vakker-tech he had heard of, so resistant to Warp influences, or he might have dared the trip...