“Translation successful. Depositing…”

The harsh blare of a brass horn signalled the conclusion of the Lexomat servitor’s cogitations. With a flash of purple light, inky living smoke, and frustrated whispers, the massive abhumans thudded to the ground behind him, prone on their faces. Sand followed a moment later, cushioning his short fall on the hard flesh of his men. He pushed himself up with his hands, whipping his head around and glaring at everything in sight. Of course. Even a moment in the illogical hellscape of the Warp could result in semi-permanent doubt in the reality of things. But the Omnissiah would not abide such insults to logic. With a whisper of Manifold cant, Zeta-21 sent a calming data-trigger to their neural augmetics, erasing and healing the harm their hell-walk had wrought.

Sand’s eyes glazed over, but his relief was only temporary as mental pain was replaced by physical: the heavy, armoured form of the Sororitas palatine appeared three feet in the air above him and promptly performed a radical gravity-aided adjustment to his posture.

“Oof,” Sand groaned, the sound muffled by the stirring ogryns. He had managed to drive his face directly into one’s underarm.

The palatine—Veridara—recovered quicker, scrambling to her feet. She relied on her left arm more than her right: a discrepancy he had not noted beforehand. Something had weakened her biological components. Which meant that the other arm was no biological.

“Palatine, you had not made me aware that you bear sanctified augmetics.”

When she looked up at him, her eyes were blazing not with fear of what she had seen in those brief moments, but with disgust at it. “What. The. Feth. Just. Happened?”

By way of answer, he raised his hand. Around thirty silver orbs, the size of marbles, extracted themselves from the tangle of bodies and levitated back to small slots within his arm hardpoints. “Miniaturized Warp-exchange technology. It has not yet been sanctioned by sacred Mars, so I would recommend you tell no one of it. Especially Inquisitor Loran, Sergeant.”

Bax nodded, standing at his side. “You have my word, Skitarius. I am told it means a lot.”

“Debatable. Meme-injection is the only guarantee.”

“Wait, hold on.” Sand waved a hand, crawling to his feet. “Warp exchange?”

“Your friend doesn’t seem too interested in sharing, Sand.”

“It is proprietary Mechanicus technology, Sergeant. Not meant for consumption by the Imperium. Not meant for viewing by the Imperium. You should count yourself lucky, to even stand witness to secrets the Machine God reveals only to His chosen.”

“You had this all this time.” Veridara gritted her teeth. “Why not use it before? When we were dying? Why force them to throw their lives away? Do you think them… us… lesser to you?”

“Why do you sound agitated at a statement of fact, palatine? You are lesser. You are not privy to Mysteries I comprehend, just as I am not privy to the hidden lore of the blessed priests. It is they who claim the most exalted closeness to Him, the spark that elevates them above us.”

Veridara stared up at him, mouth slightly agape. His augurs, however, presaged the build-up of an explosive emotional outburst thundering through her neural pathways. How troublesome. With sanctioned promptness, he set his cogitators to work, fabricating a suitable placation out of rationales already present.

“You think me discriminatory. But I am not so wasteful as to throw away lives on mere prejudice. That is the weakness of flesh-plagued minds and myopic suicide cult-adjacent behaviour. Qualities of ecclesiastical creeds, such as yours. You all belong to the Omnissiah, and wasting His resources without cause would be an unforgivable sin. The mission must remain within acceptable loss parameters.”

“Was that adequate?”

There was a moment of silence. Then Veridara marched up and reared her arm back to punch him.

“Whoa!” Sergeant Bax stepped in front of her. “Okay, Zeta-21, why did you insist on leaving the ogryns behind at the front?”

“Warp exchange works best when exchanged masses are similar,” he clarified, gesturing back at the frontline with a mechadendrite.

The orkoids had temporarily ceased their mindless brawls, eyeing the new arrivals warily. Before them, gene-bulked slabs of tissue towered, a head taller than even the Homo sapiens giganticus specimens he had forcibly retreated. Their limbs had been shorn off at the shoulders and hips, replaced by bulky, recycled snarls of servos, pistons, hydraulics, and actuators. Nests of pneumatic claws menaced where their hands would have been pre-conversion, crackling with arcs of motive force. Wrist-mounted flamers released threatening gouts from their pilot flames. Their bare torsos gleamed with the aesthetic sheen of transparent plasteel armour, revealing snaking networks of conducting electoos connecting micro-injectors, aggression enhancers, and slaughter-dirge mini-augmitters to a large, central brass plate.

A plate with an anachronistic clockwork face, marked for sixty small chrono-units. Even from this distance, the pungent smell of combat stimulant overload would have been nearly intolerable if not for his neuro-somatic olfactory filters.

Even to one as uninformed as a battle-sister, this figure was recognizable.

“Chrono-gladiators,” Veridara whispered.

Without responding, he canted a shrill binharic command to the barely restrained cyborgs. Immediately, the clocks on their chest began ticking down steadily. The musk of rage, pain, and bloodthirst in the air rose to a new high, sending shivers down even what little remained of his flesh. And then they were on the move, roaring at the top of their lungs as whatever crude intellect remained undampened by their obedience cowls propelled them into the melee. Their panting, groans, and strangled laughter bounced off the metal walls, sounding more like animals in heat than soldiers at war. Though, to their brutalized minds, little distinction remained between the two. With every broken body they dedicated to the Omnissiah’s grace, the clocks on their chests shifted ever so slightly upwards again, raising their desperation to new heights as claws crackled, flamers roared, and shoulder-mounted bolters whirred in a painful struggle for life itself.

Service or death: none exemplified this simple stricture more succinctly than the repentant blessed with the mantle of the chrono-gladiator. Despite their crimes, he could not help but bow his head in a moment of ecstatic thanks to his God and to his Archmagos, to allow him to witness such a simple and mindless devotion. His troops felt him through their uplinks, and though they gave no outward indication, the Manifold resonated with the drone of their own supplications. After the moment of indulgence, he redirected the output of his emotion sub-threads to garbage collection, growing calm once more. Logic. Calm logic was valued.

“You will be pleased to know, Colonel Sand,” he breathed through his vox synthesizer, “that I prognosticate a reduced probability of casualties for your unit from this point forward.”

Sand raised an eyebrow. “So, you guys will be doing the fighting now? Well, I suppose it’s only fair.”

“No. I mean only that we have the resources and acceptable risk auguries to proceed with the risky block-off strategy you had suggested. A complete annihilation has been made possible.”

“What, with a couple of chrono-gladiators?” Veridara demanded. “Those things are strong, Zeta, but look at the number of Orks! Even if they hold the line for hours…”

“I estimate one hour and a half, before their kill rate no longer sustains the difficulty increase-over-time on their timers. Luckily, they will not have to hold that long.”

Before they could ask another inane question, the roar of a mighty engine behind them cleared any doubts.

Sand’s eyes widened, his trained ears instantly picking out the sound. “Leman.”

“The Archmagos has fast-tracked the deployment of armoured assets. Heavy support has arrived.”

With a boom that would have ruptured organic eardrums had it been mere metres closer, a battle cannon spoke from the gloom. Moments later, a streak of metal shot over their heads and into the thronging masses of the enemy, exploding in a fiery conflagration that instantly incinerated anything for ten feet around. More followed, resonating off each other into an unbearable bass of doom: a hail of high-explosive and incendiary shells. Sand cursed, sonic pads in his ears inflating automatically to protect him from the noise. Zeta-21 merely tuned the inloads out from his sensory feeds. The ogryns flinched slightly at the shells whistling overhead, but did not seem otherwise bothered; evidently, they were used to loud environments. If anything, they had seemed most skittish in the cramped, dark, and silent hallways between fights.

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Soon, there were more sounds: the stamping feet of Sentinels, the smooth grinding of Chimera treads, and the heavier, distant trundling of something far, far larger.

“Advance,” he canted into the Manifold.

A Punisher gatling cannon fired, filling the air with the heat of hundreds of shells as they scythed straight through the xeno hoards.

“War is our prayer.”

An Executioner’s plasma gun fired with a teeth-rattling thrum, carving a glowing path straight through a chrono-gladiator and his former enemies.

“By battle is the Unmaker praised.”

A relentless cacophony of autocannons, missiles, las discharge, plasma, and heavy ordnance gradually filled the air as more and more vehicles joined the fray. The hallways were too narrow for all of them to fire at once, but they still tried, their machine spirits baying for blood as the gunners sought every possible gap to fill with their hateful ministrations.

“Destruction is our meaning.”

The Sentinels were even more resolute, climbing onto their tracked allies and using the height advantage to rain fire down on their enemies.

“Extermination is our purpose.”

As they fought, incense and sacred oils fell from specialized attachments on their chassis, and the swarming infantry around them chanted litanies in an omnipresent hum: even in the thick of battle, a Forgeworlder would not shirk his duty towards his machinery.

“Hear my benediction, holy sparks of machine-life, and fulfil the Omnissiah’s will. Cognis Immortalis.”

Responding to his prayer, the guttural roar of engines grew louder behind him, as their magnificent war-spirits screamed bloody murder at the enemy. But what he truly sought was still only barely visible, at the end of the growling and menacing columns of heavy armour. The brilliant, defining rust-red of sacred Mars. The scuttling of infallible insectoid feet.

“I would recommend clearing a path.”

“What?” Veridara asked, but Sand had already followed the glance of his sub-optics.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her to the side. His abhumans followed his lead without question. “Trust me. You don’t want to be caught in that.”

A moment later, a baleful, sickly surge of yellow light shot past their position, slowly widening into a cone as it advanced. It was soundless, heatless: almost as if it did not even exist. As the expanding glow touched the frontlines, everything in its path disappeared. There were no shouts of warning, no screams of pain, no desperate grunts of survival. One moment, materials were present. The next moment, they had been returned to the data-flows of the universe.

The light faded. A slight breeze buffeted their robes as atmo rushed in to fill the cone-shaped vacuum newly formed in its wake. But the sterile stench of total death lingered for a few moments more, flashing as warnings in his tactical display.

“Eradicator discharge. Eradicator discharge. Eradicator discharge.”

Then the light came again. And then once again, strobing like a lighthouse from the old lexicons, when Terra still had its oceans and ships to ply them. And each time it came, the crystallized energy of matter was melted in a moment: meta-stable equations resolved to nothing.

“Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero.”

The chanting filled the Manifold, the data-cants of the Skitarii rising and falling in the lilt of rapture.

The sound of the end. The sound of resolution. The sound of emptiness.

“Zero,” he whispered, contorting his metal hands into a cog across his chest as the thumping legs of a Dunecrawler pulled its jerking form over the tangle of Militarum vehicles. The venerated relic shimmered with the glow of electro-paint markings and jangling chains of ornate cogs: devotional offerings made by the Skitarii it fought alongside, hoping for the Machine God’s favour. It held its Eradication beamer aloft like a hero’s blade, blaring a warning from its horn as it charged with unnatural speed. His optics sensoriums interfaced with the haze of servo-skulls now descending on the battlefield, adding dashes of sight and sound to the battle-sphere. The back lines of the xenos were breaking. They were falling back. With a thought, he rerouted power to his intrinsic vox amplifier.

“Acuitor, this one has secured the necessary positioning. The orkoids’ morale is broken. Please proceed with the demolition.”

Sand palmed his own vox bead. “Gana, get out of there! Quit the walkways! It’s about to blow!”

Both Bax and Veridara were stunned temporarily, watching the advancing machines as their well-maintained growls drowned out all weak organic noise. Unbidden, a surge of satisfaction ran through him: another soul recognizing the majesty of the Machine was always a welcome change.

“Boss! Look what the felinids dragged in!” A soldier riding desant jumped down from one of the vehicles, baring his teeth from ear to ear in what he could remember was an inane biological display of mirth. “Armour actually decided to carry their weight for once!”

“Lukas? Nug, is he…” Sand started.

“Resting, sir. I’ve handed him over to the medical section. There are a few more injuries, but those not dead are by and large only lightly scuffed. They should be back on duty soon.” Pulling his lasgun off its cordless attachment point on his back, trooper Lukas shot straight into the enemy horde, blasting an escaping Ork’s head apart.

“Great. And what about the Tally?”

“Anders is on his way right now. Keep it in your pants for a few minutes longer, boss.”

“If you can,” Gana breathed into the vox, causing a suppressed burst of laughter across the Guardians’ channels.

“Bold words for someone I’m going to punt into the corpse starch vat first chance I get. Anders, are you reading? Anders?”

“Loud and clear, colonel. The 21st Ferrite, all reporting and accounted for. The Tally is met.” The voice that responded was deep and no-nonsense. According to Zeta’s cultural inloads, that apparently was correlated with veterancy in the troop in question.

“You have the plans?”

“The Manifold inloads have informed me.”

“Well then.” Sand breathed and summoned his command cogitator at his wrist, waving his hand over the unit icons. Their red glows disappeared, replaced by a momentary golden flash. “Let’s make it rain. Sergeant Bax, if you would.”

Bax nodded and activated his pointing laser, training it at the pre-decided arch.

“All units, follow the mark. Bring it down!”

With a deep boom, a main gun fired somewhere in the back. A large-bore shell sailed over their heads and hit the offending arch, exploding in a withering shower of shrapnel that tore through the hardened plasteel and ceramite. A moment later, a blinding flash ejected a consuming jet of plasma straight into the target, splitting it almost completely in half. The ceiling groaned under the newly unsupported weight, beginning to sag inwards.

Even without his ability to match the firing sound profile, the effects of the shell would have made the identity of the vehicle self-evident.

“Demolisher cannon,” Zeta-21 said dispassionately. “The sound of the firing mechanism was… remarkably smooth. I must commend your Enginseers, colonel.”

“I’ll be sure to pass it on! Come on, boys! One more shot! Get it!”

The second Demolisher shot completely shattered the keystones. With a great screeching, the ceiling caved, slowly inching inwards. At the same time, a bright flash went up at the back of the xeno lines as rigged explosives detonated against the rear arch, tearing it apart and swallowing the remains like a great beast. The Orks screamed warning to each other in their guttural language as they attempted to get out of the way. Some rushed forward to meet them head-on, only to be cut down by a blistering volley from the galvanic casters of his Skitarii. Others attempted to retreat deeper into the hallways, only to run into the waiting weaponry of the rear team and Acuitor Vakor.

Ponderously, the ceiling descended, the material stresses tearing it into large sheets. Loose pieces dropped, wiping out entire formations below it. And then, everything was falling at once. With a speed that seemed almost unnatural, the hallway on either side of the enemy force was buried under a never-ending fall of debris. And then the central portion between the arches collapsed, newly bereft of support. In the few moments he had until the servo-skulls inside were also crushed, Zeta made sure to take a good look at the half-afraid, half-angry expressions of the xenos. It satisfied him.

And then, with a flash of trauma indicators, the connections dropped. They had been buried.

For a few seconds, no one spoke. There were only the sounds of panting from the organics, and the low beeps of self-diagnostic routines from the Skitarii.

“Is it over?” Veridara finally asked.

“For now.” Sand wiped a hand over his grimy face, though the manoeuvre was ineffective at removing the dirt. “Maybe.”

“Acuitor?” Zeta canted over the vox.

“Conditions nominal. Some Adsecularis casualties. Nothing too unusual. Proceed as soon as you are able. We will meet you on the alternate pathway.”

“Acknowledged. Terminating.” He turned to the others. “We will return to the camp and prepare for the advance.”

“No.”

“Repeat.” He turned to face the palatine.

“No.” She glared right into his optics. “I’m not following someone who’s going to sacrifice us first chance he gets.”

“Veridara, he had a plan,” The colonel urged.

“A plan that involved us dying so his Skitarii could swoop in later and act the heroes.”

“The only serious injury that has been sustained in this operation, palatine, is by fratricide.” Zeta deliberately down-keyed the warmth of his synthesizer, lending his voice a chill that he had learned the biological construed as a sign of seriousness. “I would be very interested to hear your judgement on the actions of the one you call Sabrus.”

“I—”

“I will be the judge of who is at fault here, tin-can.” The sing-song voice of the Inquisitor was making its way forward through the tangle of idling vehicles. “I believe I possess that much authority, at least.”

Zeta-21 swivelled his optics to Sergeant Bax. He just shrugged helplessly. How optimal.

“I would recommend staying out of this, Inquisitor. It is merely an operational dispute,” Sand warned.

“An operational dispute that involves the deliberate endangering of the God-Emperor’s faithful? Hmm…” She gave him a glare that was obviously vindictive, not taking her eyes off his. “Palatine Veridara, you are the complainant. What do you say? Do you wish to handle it as an internal dispute?”

Sand turned to her. “Veridara.”

There was a moment of hesitation. Then the palatine stood straighter, jutting out her jaw. “I believe the Skitarii have designs against the Throne’s servants.”

“Inquisitor, perhaps we might have further deliberations—” Bax started.

“Good girl,” Inquisitor Loran interrupted with a crooked smile. “For letting your personal vendetta and prejudices influence your command and deliberately endangering the lives of the servants of the Throne, Skitarius Zeta-21, I declare you guilty prima facie of heretical actions. Colonel Sand, for repeatedly speaking out in support of his heresy, you will also be subject to inquiry. Pending final decision, I hereby divest you of the command of your respective forces. Palatine, take them into custody.”

There was a moment of silence. And then, with a cacophony of rasps, pings, and outraged shouts, weapons were drawn.