The incursion alarms were going off as Imperial Hound Commander Jesus Halavior burst through the Rift into the broad marshaling field before the fortress of his Legion. The swirl of disorientation was forcefully banished as his new com systems hooked into the communications net with his Legion, and he immediately sent out an ALL ALERT to his entire Legion.
The honor guards standing duty were stupefied at his sudden arrival through a tear in space, and the normal humans pouring out through it after them.
“This is Commander Halavior, Code H-One-Niner-Niner-Zulu-Kappa-Niner! This is a Code Ultraviolet Order, to be obeyed immediately and without question!
“All Legion personnel are to immediately and violently eject from their power armor! It has been treated with killtech to necrofy you and reanimate you as an undead thrall under the Emperor’s command!”
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“All personnel will immediately assemble on the Field of the Lions at all possible speed to neutralize the Necrus Codes emblazoned on our DNA!” Commander Felix of the Imperial Lions continued.
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“All personnel will carry one armed fusion grenade in their hand close to their body. If you cannot reach the hangar bay within a maximum of five minutes, or if you feel the hand of the Emperor upon you, you will fall upon that grenade to make sure the Emperor cannot turn your body against your brothers!” Commander Sethimul of the Imperial Serpents added on grimly, and knew that his instructions would be obeyed.
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“All of our sacred technology has been turned against us, my brothers! Prepare your auto-destruct protocols if you cannot reach us in time,” Commander Gorman of the Iron Bulls stated grimly to his highly cyberized Legion.
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“Any thralls who can reach the control circuits... you are directed to destroy power to the sarcophagi, the Revenant Mecha systems, and the core furnace of the base.” The eyes of Bone Panther Commander Oijima closed in massive sorrow, but he could recall all the technology running through the ancestral home of his Legion, and did not think the Emperor would stop with just the armor. “Our Ancestors go with us!”
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Huge men, nearly naked, most of them clutching live grenades in their fists, poured into the assembly field at breakneck speed. Those who had happened to be there first had already ejected their armor, and sweating psions were pouring power into them, severing the connection to death hard-coded into them, while psychic light swirled in the air.
Those who had cybernetics were aware of the threat of them, and when the psychic power came in to expel them from their bodies, they could only take the pain and scream at it, while the grenades they were gripping were re-pinned and set aside quickly.
Each incoming Falcon Legionnaire found a Beacon psion waiting for them. They also saw men coming up behind those psions hefting oversized Weapons clearly not made for normal humans...
Commander Kevrix of the Imperial Falcons counted off the seconds with all the others in Markspace.
-Probability shift!- one of the elven Seers halfway across the galaxy shouted into Markspace at one hundred and sixty-one seconds, just seconds after the open Rifts closed.
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On multiple worlds, things started to go very, very wrong.
-Jade Falcons, necroic event underway!-
-Shadow Panthers!-
-Scarlet Kraits!-
-Silver Bulls!-
“Carry your psion! Into the Rifts!” the Ranthas ordered, as Rifts were torn in space, and salvation beckoned.
Explosions began to sound on ships and worlds as faithful, loyal Legionnaires, whose lives had been devoted to the defense of the Empire and humanity, were passed over by a deathly hand, and foul energies erupted inside of them. Strong bodies convulsed and fell, stumbling and sprawling, and purple and black energies began to writhe over them as powerful hands shuddered, withered, relaxed...
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And the fusion grenades held in them went off. When the cleansing fires got done, there wasn’t enough of the Legionnaires left to be Animated...
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Commander Sethimul watched his incoming men pulse with the energies of death, fall, and the fires take them. He heard the screams of the thralls on his coms as energies pulsing through the walls from the secondary power systems stole their lives away. He and what Legionnaires had managed to reach the hold evacuated, his slit-irised men holding the psions burning massive amounts of energy through them close as they charged through the hole, and the psions ignored the motion and continued with their tasks.
Sethimul looked to the side, where two power-armored men were holding something in their gauntlets larger than they were. As the last Legionnaire who could make it charged past, they tossed it through the open rift into the hangar beyond, and a Rantha there swept her arm through the Rift, closing it instantly.
Two seconds later, the antimatter warhead went off, and the Shadow of the Throne, the fortress-ship of the Imperial Serpents, was blown out from within, denying the necrofying crew and any incidental Legionnaire survivors to the Emperor.
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Deep within the halls and holds of fortresses and ships, the most badly-damaged Legionnaires, harmed beyond the ability of even psionics or Imperial medicine to heal, slumbered in sleep, ready to wake, and the sarcophagi that kept them alive to be installed into the great Revenant war-machines that marched alongside their brethren, guiding the mighty constructs into battle alongside them once more.
Death swept past them, and their chambers of life promptly became coffins of undeath.
Screaming with rage and hate, the trapped souls clawed for a way out, a cold and distant command telling them to rise, and bring their unfaithful brothers back to the Emperor.
They reached out, clawing for the commands that would activate the ancient machines to install them into the waiting shells of war they had agreed to man when they could do naught else.
In many cases, there was no power to do so, or the systems had been destroyed and severed. The screaming, helpless undead Legionnaires were trapped in their sarcophagi for real.
In other instances, the thralls did not reach them in time, or get the power cut off enough. The machinery was activated, and reached out to deliver them to their chariots of war, while other systems in the constructs began to turn on, one by one, ready for them...
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The combination of ejecting from their armor and leaving their weapons behind hampered any newly risen Legionnaire as they rose, flesh rotted to black and grey, eyes burning purple deathfire. Too, taking a grenade with themselves to blow apart their body denied a good chunk more of them the fate the Emperor wished upon them.
This left the Legionnaires unprepared, if no less skilled and violent, when the Corunsun forces raced into the abandoned bases that were not totally lost, in many cases led by Legionnaires who had found themselves in new armor with new weapons, looking to shoot down the mockeries made of their battle-brothers.
The first things secured were the armories and the vehicles, as the undead tried to re-arm and re-armor. Unfortunately, getting back into armor was something that required the help of extra hands and often machinery, or a great deal of time to do themselves. They could pick up the devoted Weapons of the Legions and use them perfectly well, but without their armor they were definitely at a defensive disadvantage, even if their undead strength and durability was even greater than it was while they were living.
Fortress-ship after carrier-base was blown out from within. Even if it didn’t totally destroy the starbase or capital ship it detonated within, it crippled it and made it useless to anything that survived the blast.
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I watched the knots of conflict roiling across a thousand solar systems, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
-Necroic Event, Krasmar II! Soylent Virus!-
-Egla III! IV! VI!-
-Juntaspace!-
-Virgospace!-
-Julius Cluster!-
The alarms and alerts boiled across the Markspace as the Emperor, doubtless enraged at the fact we’d managed to foil his perfect conversion plan for the Legions, went exploring other timelines and found his plans there foiled or being foiled, snipped off every second in massive numbers, and began to race the forces shutting them down to completion.
Our spotters down on Tellus could feel the psionic energy radiating from the Imperial Palace like a grim and deadly black star, and the whole world there was cowering below ground, fearing the power being displayed, and the great and terrible wrath it was carrying with it.
I smiled, as Dead Walking Events began, and petered out.
We’d unleashed our own genetic viruses to undo what the Emperor had done some time ago. We couldn’t get to everyone, of course, and those who didn’t get the cleansing were naturally affected when He made His move... and their numbers had kept those timelines open to Him, not alerting Him to the fact that we were onto Him and them.
Did that mean nobody was affected? Naturally not. Anywhere from 1-10% of the populations on the remaining worlds of humanity fell and became undead... but the alarms and alerts were going out even before the Emperor made His move, and surprisingly enough, there were a lot of ready people willing and able to beat on and shoot down anyone or anything that was converted. The mechanical dispensers of death were identified and obliterated on command, leaving only the random biological element to be taken care of, with extreme prejudice.
We had a lot of land armies begging to be put to use, and this was the time during which they really started seeing some action. They dispersed across worlds, armed and ready to face the undead wherever they were concentrated and gathering, with great energy and great aplomb.
Over three billion survivors necrofied on Tellus alone. The other hundred billion made short work of them.
Their ring around the Sol System drawing tighter, the Demon Princes felt the massive energies pouring out of Sol, knew something awesomely horrible was going on, and congratulated themselves on not attacking immediately...