“Sir, we have a problem.”
Battlemaster Chaerus sneered when he heard the clipped relay coming over his armor’s relays, while his gyro gun blew explosive rounds into the position of the Imperial Marines he was currently crossing, blood and guts flying everywhere as their mass-produced carapace armor proved no match for the heavy guns of a Warp Legionnaire.
A long, long time ago, he had been a member of the Blue Sharks, famed in the Legions for their swift raiding ability and plunging charges from surprise deep into enemy positions.
As he understood it, there were only three Shark Imperial Legions left, and they were all space-based, all moving from battlefield to battlefield, hunting the enemies of the Empire. The rest of the Shark Legions had emotionlessly followed their Primogenitor Charcharin into service to the Warp. It was the single largest defection among all the Imperial Legions, and so the Sharks were inevitably tainted with association to the Warp.
The frenzy the Bone Sharks could enter into in the thick of combat was as powerful as the rage, fury, battle madness, combat euphoria, or fugue mindlessness of any of the other Legions, and their speed on the attack and retreat unmatched. The Sharks stood the proudest of all the Legions of the Warp, and were not at all shy about proving it.
This Imperial World was no great threat, a mere agriworld, with production facilities scarcely able to provide for their own war goods, let alone send material off world. However, this breadbasket world produced literal mountains of grain for other worlds that didn’t have adequate recycling facilities, or the more idyllic worlds of the wealthy and noble who would not touch such processed fare.
They had already slashed through the outer defenses of the only kiloplex on the planet, a sprawling urban dystopia built over the only viable mining region of the planet, as well as its only major spaceport.
The defenders here were mostly Planetary Guard, and were both soft and inexperienced. The few companies of Imperial Marines stationed here also going soft on the job, and hampered by the panic of the native troops. Any competency they had was being buried in the panic of their fleeing native fellow troops, destroying any coordination or chance at a defense.
Exactly as intended.
“Did some psions turn up?” he growled back. Psions were always a random element, but the psionic presence on this world was mild, and any competent mentalists left basically as soon as they could, or got cushy jobs serving the planet’s debauched and decadent elite, whose numbers had been infiltrated by cultists and were hampering the command structure of the planet deftly as they did so, be it by misdirecting information, playing down the threat, giving power to the incompetent, sidelining the competent, or simply and subtly isolating and removing any positive influences over time.
The upper class of this place was an indolent and self-obsessed mess of fools, and without that overarching, mutual support and belief in one another, the drones of the worker class simply would not and could not fight for them as they should.
They should not be running into anything resembling a disciplined unit of battle psions, and the Orders Twilight on this world was largely passive and kept occupied by minor cults exposed here and there, unaware of the greater infiltration going on... and they certainly didn’t have the numbers to turn around the situation themselves.
The assassination of their Dukes on the eve of the attack probably had something to do with it, too, he thought with a grim laugh.
“No, sir, it’s- brzzzzz....”
“Austal? Sergeant?” He flicked to the indicator lights of his company, just tiny dots, but each representing a member of the company. Focusing on one of the tiny lights brought up current status, and with his command codes could even do a shared sensory feed or armor override.
The dot for Sergeant Austal had just gone dark. The indicators were that he’d died a couple hundred yards through the sprawl in that direction, where the panicked PG was retreating in broken fashion, and being gunned down whether they fought or ran, thermal sensors ferreting them out if they tried to hide. There was an explosion ahead as the vanguard team took out a hardpoint with an embedded short autocannon that had pinned down a couple squads, sending hot rounds into its power supply.
Wait, all four other members of the sergeant’s squad went dark, without warning. How did they die so fast?
“We have incoming! Beware of an ambusher!” Psychoactive rounds were ready to be chambered for his gyrifle, specifically enchanted by Warp sorcery to deal with psionic defenses. “Someone get me a track on what killed Squad Four!”
There were clicks of acknowledgement as the advancing teams scanned their surroundings, looking for signs of whatever killer had managed to off a team of their brethren.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Sir!” There was a click, and suddenly Gusker’s light was gone.
Chaerus immediately accessed Gusker’s suit feeds, since his power supply was still active. Actually, the armor could get up and bring a dead Legionnaire back to his unit if guided properly, although this had a habit of triggering necroic events and animating the corpses of their departed squad-mates.
There was nothing for the last ten seconds, but then Hrihim, Huebloz, and Ybrosk’s lights blinked out, one after another, as their shouts filled the tactical feed with confusion and defiance.
Chaerus was pounding towards their location, as were all other squads in the vicinity. Drones had been launched to spot for them, the little demons powering them tittering as they Possessed the skull-ornamented mechanical toys and swept the area, looking for targets.
Some bright things shot into the air and promptly wiped every one of the machines with remarkable precision, given the amount of Warp influence burning comfortably in the air that had been brought along by the advancing Legionnaires. They blew up and fell, burning in white light...
Vivus, the white flames that ate the Warp. Chaerus’ blood quickened to see it, and he heard the static wails of the drone-demons as they were devoured and broadcast it to everyone nearby in unnatural wails.
Gusker had been panning right to left, his suit’s displays actually giving him 360 vision, a feature so many would-be attackers were ignorant of, looking for the ambusher.
Sir!, replayed his voice, and then suddenly there was a crack of disruption as something came through the screen, the telltale mark of something punching right through his helm and into the brain of the Legionnaire.
There had been no sign of who did it?...
Squad Six began screaming, and gyros and slugthrowers chewed burning rounds through plascrete and into the sky, clearly indicating where the firefight was taking place.
He watched their lights blink off, one by one by one...
“HELMS OFF!” screamed Qormic, and then his light faded as the crump of a point-blank grenade went off.
Helms off... Chaerus rounded the corner to where Squad Six had been, seeing three armored bodies scattered and fallen, and one still overbalancing, the head smoking, and no sign of who had done it. Squad Five was coming up behind him with great speed, their armor almost effectively weightless despite its weight.
Chaerus raised his helm quickly.
The unfiltered sounds and sharper smells of the outside world hit him instantly. His visual range was considerably more limited, even with the enhanced senses of his bloodline, than it was inside the armor, and even with a partial kinetic screen about him to deflect incoming attacks, he was much more vulnerable.
The woman was coming for him out of nowhere as his natural eyes met hers in shock, as if she had been invisible.
His gyrifle roared, and he almost died.
The small Shield on her arm glittered with light, gained a foot all around, and met the incoming burning rockets, which should have immediately detonated, blown the shield apart, and sent the mangled body of the woman flying.
Instead, they were reflected right back at him!
Only the enhanced reflexes of his bioengineered body saved him from blowing his own head off as the rockets came bouncing back at him. Three of them walked up his chest armor, ringing and cracking off the diamond-hard ceramic of his armor, scoring it, the last of them impacting against his gorget and sending parts of it winging away, tearing through his ear with a shard of ceramite and durasteel.
She had a mindblade. He recognized the Suns and Stars instantly, an armor-shredding charge of energy empowering it that could tear his suit right open with sufficient power. Coronals with mindblades had killed many Legionnaires over the millennia, and the Warped Legions paid the debt back with interest whenever possible.
This woman was not wearing a Coronal cloak. A mere mercenary bladebelle was daring to attack him?...
A bladebelle with Five Stars and Two Suns...
And too many arms, and Tails rising up behind her...
“Weaver!” he swore, as he brought his arms up.
With crunches of shattering ceramite, Spikes of burning force buried themselves in the bracers of his armor, and he felt cold pain spiking through his arms as the points reached his flesh and tore important things there. She knew exactly where his arms ended, driving the spikes in high up his armor’s limbs.
He leapt to the side, the gauntlet-Blade of his armor snapping out with fractal eagerness and demon-reinforced strength.
She leapt sideways right with him, and his swing swept behind her into where she should have been as her Blade came up on him.
Why was it black with a gold edge? That seemed...wrong...
Five tails, two unnatural limbs, a mindblade...
This was the Dark Angel, who he had thought was just some propaganda shill dreamed up by Imperial fools, giving the masses hope where there was none...
The Sword flashed forward. His reflexes were fast enough to see it, not to respond as it went in under his other arm, to the seam between his chestplate and girth... and despite his armor being Energized by Warp Sorcery to resist the armor-rending effect of a Sun Strike, it slid right in as the Sun Strike discharged.
The damage was horrendous. His implants screamed at him as the energy tore apart his insides, severed his spine, and raged up his nervous system. His armor’s systems didn’t actually require him to use his own nervous system, and had bypasses for when just this sort of thing happened, but Battlemaster Chaerus knew instantly that he had never been hit so badly as he just was, and he could only try to knock her away.
Her Shield took the impact of his arm, lifting and turning it up and away with superhuman strength, spinning him so his return lunge with his gauntlet-Blade whisked an inch above her head. She was getting in even closer as she lifted up, and his armored arm went with it, as did he. He looked down into cold, clear blue eyes, holding a trace of serenity, a trace of amusement as her hand came up his carapace, holding a bladeless Sword Focus and bringing it up right in front of his eyes.
He could only glare at her with his lidless black eyes, snarling with his razored, triangular teeth as she activated her Mindsword, and the manifesting Blade drove right through his head.