The Sun Strike came with it, and blew Battlemaster Chaerus’ skull apart in an explosion of whiteness whose bloom didn’t quite reach the ground.
Squad Five saw her grab their Battlemaster’s armor by the girth with her Shield-bearing off hand, halt its fall, and then use it as cover as she raced towards them, accelerating as if she wasn’t holding onto something weighing more than a standard hovercar. The corpse of their commanding officer whined and cracked as their desperate shots of gyros, explosive rounds, tracers, and even a ripping plasma beam tore into the armored corpse, but didn’t find her.
They were all unhelmed, and could see her moving, and the five Tails that rose up behind her and discharged at the face of the Legionnaire swallowing her and Chaerus’ corpse in a fusion stream, while the rest of the squad spread out to get arcs of fire on her.
The Legionnaire on the left screamed and collapsed, a burning Spike in each eye and his nose. Her hip-anchored spidery arms aimed two hand crossbow-like Weapons to the Legionnaire moving left, one bending behind her back in a manner impossible for natural arms, and a combination of violet laser fire wound in deadly spirals of banefire to the Warp and that deadly unwhite vivus danced up his chestplate to his head, where a Bolt of force from each autobow joined the lasers in blowing his revealed head apart.
Chaerus’ corpse was hurled right into the Legionnaire with the howling torcher, and a Sunstrike ripped the length of the demonic burning weapon, right into the flux of its power supply.
The explosion of that fireball was hot and very intense, and could have easily taken out a tank as it blew the two marines of Squad Five apart, and Chaerus’ corpse into pieces. The burner was half-eaten away by the blast, and the vivus riding the edge of it starting nom-noming deeper.
The last Legionnaire slammed into the wall of a grocery store there, wavered for a moment, and then slowly locked in place as his systems went off-line. The burns from the Torcher were minor, but the Soulsword inserted into his face where its wielder had ridden the explosion right into him was not.
Squad Eight, coming in from a parallel street, swore and activated their jump jets, aiming to get airborne and pick this woman off from above as she turned around from the last of Squad Five.
The jets on their back went off, but they were there for propulsion and speed; they couldn’t actually lift a ton of bioengineered combat mutate and his massive power armor off the ground... and their anti-gravity wasn’t working.
She was coming at them very quickly as they opened up with lines of gyro and tracer fire, her Shield taking the hits, and the first Legionnaire of the Eighth Squad died as multiple ballistic rockets bounced his way and blew his upper torso and head apart. The heavy gunner with the autocannon blazing in his hands clamped his helm back down, and instantly lost sight of her as she veered left. He sprayed wildly, missing her.
The Legionnaire on the left saw all those Tails and arms point his way, and didn’t get his helm down before the barrage slammed into him and took his grey matter and offensive threat away with them.
The one on the right, moving to pincer her with cross-fire, crossed his arms in front of him as her Sword swept his way and released an ebon, gold-edged arc from the point, up in front of him instantly. He screamed as the Sharding bit into the psychically-buttressed durasteel, and his hands spasmed, only maglocks making certain he didn’t drop his gyrifle. He brought them back down as he backpedaled, using his jets for additional speed, but she was right there keeping pace, her Sword flitting back and forth as if weightless, shooting out more of those unnatural cutting, piercing arcs.
Trooper Roolla watched as her Tails and false Arms rotated. Druzga the heavy gunner spun around, his helm flying off so he could see her, the screaming armor-piercing rounds of his auto-cannon gibbering demonically as they chewed up the scenery, all those limbs oriented directly onto him. The hugely armored heavy weapons Legionnaire turned around to see all those things pointing directly his way.
As his autocannon swept towards her, all the Tails and Arms fired at once, converging on the same screaming point. A foot away from her, the sweeping trail of devastation and hungry demonic bullets whined by as they failed to reach her. The headless Druzga’s corpse settled in place as his armor balanced itself automatically, his finger staying clasped on the trigger of his autocannon.
A bar of furiously burning unholy bullets screamed and swerved slightly from their paths, trying to get to her, but mostly they just shot down the street and began to reduce some plascrete walls to spraying shards of debris. Nothing behind them was going to survive them, if anyone was stupid enough to stay there.
Trooper Roolla knew he had to shoot her if he wanted to live, just as his gyrifle whined in protest as it was cut in two, there was a dangerous spark, and he had just enough time to look at it in alarm, hear the demons inside it wail as vivic energy shot through it, and the ammo feed detonated.
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I watched the Legionnaire’s copious Compressed magazine of gyrockets go off as Bane conducted Sundering and Breaking through his weapon, the Possessed magic proved to be tasty to vivus, and it blew off all at once, tearing off both his forearms, sending some violently impelled shrapnel through his armor as alchemistry and psychic feedback had puppy-kittens, and the concussion wasn’t a small thing, either.
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Lots of said shrapnel pinged off my skin fifty feet away, and more of it was gently shunted aside as it approached me, streaks of unwhiteness shooting through the air and putting pockmarks into everything solid around me.
The big Legionnaire’s autocannon was still shooting, two feet to my left. My ranged assets retargeted, and flashed once, blowing it apart, and the feedback of all that Compressed ammo cooking up through his feederbelt blew the hulking corpse and power armor of the brute sideways and past me in a burning arc of shrieking demons getting eaten and vivus nom-nomming away on them.
Warp sorcery usually took on the aspect of Possession of devices when it came to enchanting arms and armor, and the Legionnaires were no exception. They had quickly lost the Psychic templates that were automatically wrought into Legion suits of armor, probably to subtle corruption and influence by the Emperor, and so couldn’t make new suits or perfectly repair the ones they had with pure technology.
In the end, it didn’t matter. They could do the same thing with Warp sorcery, and they had, brute-forcing with an unholy mix of magic and psionics what the Empire had made possible with pure tech. Results-wise, it wasn’t that much different from what me and the kids did, but they didn’t dare Name their toys, or their toys would grow up and eat them.
They were genetically engineered super soldiers in high end power armor, with Possessed equipment for that +3 to +5 edge of baddy-badness, and definitely the big morale hits as you saw warpfire feasting on the souls of the comrades next to you, just before you died to the mercilessly accurate fire of the madman with the brain on fire shooting at you.
Chalice was only Singing to me, because I didn’t want the Legionnaires using the sound to zero on my position, which they would instantly do. Vampire’s Veil only affected electronics, so they couldn’t see me with their suit systems, unless the suits were full-on sentient, but they would be able to hear her song.
That also meant they couldn’t snap pictures of me and relay them. They had to see me to shoot me... which actually wouldn’t affect their aim at all, but those helms were made to be able to take a gyro to the face, and naturally didn’t have Mark I Eyeball view ports. They had to be popped if they wanted to lay eyes on me.
That was a rather big hole in their armor I immediately exploited, as it were.
Chalice was in Umbral mode, which bypassed their armor... or most of it, the Warp-enhanced portion stayed relevant, like elastic bands inside the armor, slowing down the cuts. Still, when the Sun Strikes went off on top of that, the Warped Legionnaires were still punished badly, and no doubt they really hated such things. Now, a Coronal surviving to get close enough to use such a toy was a thing, which was why Coronals were so adept with other offensive forms of psychic power.
To the Coronals, mindblades were usually finishing Weapons. Having enough investment in them to carve through a Legionnaire with them was extremely unusual. Making intelligent ones was just asking for the Warp to come in and corrupt them, after all, a very dangerous proposition when you were artificially making a Weapon spirit... and the volunteers to be imprisoned inside a Weapon for all eternity in slavery to who knew what somehow weren’t coming out of the woodwork.
Hmm, that meant I was basically a heretical blasphemer, having so many intelligent ‘demonic’ Weapons on me. Ah, well, I guess I’d have to live with it.
These legionnaires had shattered a defense of literally thousands, sweeping through the men with near abandon. Without even Null Psions dropping Sun Shots on them, the only thing they had to fear were heavy weapons, which they simply knocked out first with inhuman accuracy, and then began to reap the hapless natives and Imperials who happened to be in-system and tried to lend some aid.
The Boole and Strategos workers had tweaked me to the situation here; this place had been a stopping point for the regiment a certain B&R couple had been leading, now off to Khermark II to enjoy the hospitality of Mi-Go brain harvesters coming in for some experiments to expand the frontiers of proper Weird Science.
When all was said and done, I could take them. However, I couldn’t slaughter them.
Their armor was indeed heavy. In gaming terms, it provided an Armor Bonus, an Equipment bonus, and if they were defending, a freaking Cover bonus; it was massive enough to do so. While it wasn’t a tank, it was far nimbler and more responsive, responding just like a physical body to the enhanced power of the Legionnaire inside it, and they were literally bouncing around like hyped-up athletes, not slogging around like cargo movers.
My Ranged Assets couldn’t get much force through the armor without landing Sun Strikes, and all these guys were Sixes walking out of their psi-Conditioning, with the elites all Tens, going Deep with ancillary Skills if they weren’t completely off their rockers, maxed out Health and Soak, maybe Possessed and with Demonic Racial Levels as they worked towards their apotheosis/slavery to the Warp, and so able to take a literally unholy amount of punishment inside those brightly colored shells of theirs.
Pop the helms, not quite so hard to deal with. Get in sword range with Profound Artisan kicking in, also not quite as hard. Blow up their highly volatile ammunition, they might not like that too much, either.
But these were just the vanguard squads, the footsloggers/jet-jumping sots overrunning the walls and breaking all the hardpoints for the main forces behind, tearing open the defense so the troop transports and heavy armor of the forces behind could swarm in and begin the total slaughter, instead of the routing.
The main force would probably be in even heavier armor, eschewing jump jets in favor of wearing mecha suits instead of power armor, with even more outright Possession and the side effects thereof.
This seemed to be one of Klaw’s crews, judging by the blood-accented color schema. The Thunder Bulls had tagged them as the Bone Sharks, one of the many descendants of the Shark Legions that had followed their Primogenitor to the Warp, famous for leaving literally only the bones of the worlds they ravaged behind. They never sought fair engagements, laughing as they ran from the Legionnaires who came to fight them... unless such Legionnaires could be surrounded in a frenzy and brutally slaughtered, of course.
Stamping out a Fallen Legion that didn’t stand and fight was very annoying. The Thunder Bulls were cheering me heartily as I killed them, and watching my sensory feed with great interest as I did so.
The Thunder Bulls had slowly but deeply embraced the Strategos, and the Markspace in general. Yes, the Blood of the Emperor made them superhuman, stronger, faster, smarter than normal folks. However, it didn’t make them smarter and faster than ALL the folks, and certainly not smarter than Ranthas.
Too, a few million minds working for you could accomplish a great deal just by sheer volume. Never underestimate the inventiveness of games-oriented people lazing about in technological society with nothing better to do than help the valiant grandsons of the Emperor butcher their enemies...