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The first few daemons that emerged from the vortex were lean, scaly creatures with razor-tipped talons, their crimson bodies emanating a bloody hue that seemed to bathe the area in murderous rage. Howling filled the air, the shrill noise sending my teeth chattering and ears cringing despite my ample protection in the Throne Mechanicum.
My pict screens began turning fuzzy, with grey, grainy textures overlapping with my visuals. I tapped the screens feverishly, forcing them to stabilize and for a moment I paused at the unbelievable sight. The Bloodletter daemons that were pouring out of the maelstrom were relatively few in number, and they were draped in what looked like chains. Heavy metal chains coiled around their necks and bodies in a suffocating manner, weighing them down, but in no way reducing their bloodlust.
"Fire!" I shouted, finally finding my voice in the chaos. Striding forward in my colossal machine, I led the first barrage, pumping a few battle cannon rounds into the onrushing Bloodletters. "Kill them all!"
The thunderous shots drove the Imperial Guardsmen behind me into action. Leman Russ Executioners roared into life, their Executioner plasma cannons glowing and firing streams of bluish-white superheated energy that vaporized the foul creatures that dared set foot upon our realm.
Even the denizens of the Warp couldn't stand up to the punishing power of a line of Leman Russ tanks. Encouraged by our initial success, the Tau from the Farsight Enclaves fired upon the few daemons that survived, the plasma rifles and burst cannons on their Crisis battlesuits sparking to life and hammering the monsters into bloodied messes.
However, as it was always with Chaos, the first wave was always the smallest.
The next wave was surprisingly, not made out of Bloodletters or other daemons associated with Khorne, but a bunch of Pink Horrors. Unlike the massacred Bloodletters, the Pink Horrors were not chained or restricted. Sneering, mocking and laughing, they strolled out of the maelstrom holding the remnants of chains in their gnarled and twisted appendages that served as hands.
I fired a second salvo, knocking a few Pink Horrors back and shredding them into nothing more than pink flesh. Following my example, the column of Leman Russ Executioners vaporized the armies of Pink Horrors that crawled out of the vortex before they could conjure their psychic energies. Aware of the Pink Horrors' main threat - their potent psyker abilities - we worked on finishing them off before they could cast any psychic spells. Without a Primaris Psyker or any other psykers in our army, we had no way of Denying the Witch if the Great Enemy had a particularly dangerous psychic ability hidden in the back. The Tau, too bereft of psychic abilities, joined in, as did the Adeptus Mechanicus who completely avoided psychic abilities altogether, focusing on the mechanical augmentics rather than the organic potential of biological bodies.
I frowned as I surveyed the dying Pink Horrors that continued to stream out endlessly, their chilling laughter ringing disturbingly in my Throne Mechanicum. I had heard from friends inside the Ordo Malleus that among the so-called four Chaos gods, Khorne the Blood God or Lord of Skulls and Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways were openly hostile toward each other. That probably explained why the Pink Horrors were gleefully holding the unfortunate and now very dead Bloodletters on a leash. Segments of both factions challenged each other and Tzeentch's forces had obviously won out.
And then a Lord of Change, a twisted, bird-like monstrosity with wings and a staff, soared out of the raging storm of warp energies, its staff crackling with warp charges. Raising the wizened, gnarled weapon, the Lord of Change fired a stream of lightning into a bunch of blue Fire Warriors that remained loyal to the Tau Empire, reducing them into mere wisps of smoke.
The red Crisis battlesuits of the Farsight Enclaves stared at each other for a moment before all engaging their jump jets and firing their thrusters to avoid the Lord of Change's wicked warp spells. Lightning, fire and even a sonic shriek burst through the air, roasting the reinforced ferrocrete that made up the fortress we recently captured.
As the Imperial forces engaged the Pink Horrors, several Heralds of Tzeentch emerged, their paws holding onto chains that were wrapped around unfortunate Flesh Hounds of Khorne. The Flesh Hounds didn't seem all that uncomfortable, though, their slavering jaws snapping for blood, their eyes more focused on the fresh meat before them than anything else. Screamers of Tzeentch screamed from the vortex, the flying monsters sailing through the air to scream down on us. Fortunately, the majority of them were shot down by volleys of rockets, missiles and autocannons by awaiting Onager Dunecrawlers with Icarus Array.
As the Flesh Hounds bounded toward us, the Skitarii met them with cold steel and crackling energy weapons. Devastating blasts from arc rifles and superheated spheres from plasma calivers launched from the massed ranks of heavily augmented warriors, their omnispexes and other targeting devices aiding them - as well as the doctrina imperatives - in ensuring their hits land true. The Flesh Hounds fell as huge chunks of them were blown out, the pitiful creatures being trampled by their ravenous brethren from behind. At the back of them all, the Heralds of Tzeentch crackled, obviously enjoying the demise of their bitter foes.
Well, I wasn't going to let them enjoy themselves for much longer. Reaching for my vox, I sent a message to Colonel Ikeda.
"Sir, if you don't mind, target all the Heralds of Tzeentch at the back."
"Huh? Heralds of what?"
Oh, I forgot. The Ordo Malleus had kept the division of Chaos into four significant factions a closely guarded secret, and the average Guardsmen certainly had no idea what the different types of daemons were. Only an expert trained by the Ordo Malleus would, and those specialists usually went around with the supposedly non-existent Grey Knights, serving as Daemon Hunters.
"The pink dudes at the back, floating on discs. Um, holding books and daggers and stuff. Hit them with everything you got, I think they're running the show."
"Heh. Sure thing."
As the Skitarii engaged the Pink Horrors and Flesh Hounds, the Vanguard and Rangers relying on their radium carbines and galvanic rifles to mow the approaching charges down, supported by the heavy firepower of Onager Dunecrawlers with neutron lasers and Ironstrider Ballistarii with cognis lascannons, the Leman Russ Executioners fired as one. A plasma bombardment grandly orchestrated by the commanding officer arced across the killing field, vaporizing almost the entire group of Heralds. Moving in, Yamada finished off the remnants with his high volume of fire, the Avenger Gatling cannon busily spinning as it unloaded high caliber rounds into the survivors.
For now, the daemons were gone. Turning around, I saw the red Broadside battlesuits from the Farsight Enclaves targeting the flying Lord of Change with their high-yield missile pods, their velocity trackers locking onto the swooping monstrosity and forcing it to jink.
Snarling now, the Lord of Change yanked his staff back, materializing a large chain that stretched all the way to the swirling vortex. Another pull, and something colossal rolled out of the maelstrom.
I almost passed out.
It was a daemon engine so vast it towered over even my Knight Crusader and stretched to fill almost the entirety of the fortress's wide basement. If I recalled, the name given to such classes of daemon engines were Lord of Skulls, named after their patron, the Blood God Khorne. Like the other servants of Khorne, this one was chained, ruthlessly compelled into obedience by the cackling Lord of Change that soared above us now. With its space and flight restricted by the sheer size of the colossal daemon engine, the Lord of Change gently urged its charge to point its daemonforged cannon upward. A single blast, and the whole ceiling literally disappeared, leaving nothing but sizzling edges where the fortress used to be.
Suzuki was the first to snap out of his stupor, leading his lumbering Knight in a charge at the towering monstrosity. His battle cannon barked, assailing the daemon engine with heavy rounds and driving it back, and he drew his reaper chainsword to slice through the heavy armor.
Bellowing in both fury and what seemed like pain, the Lord of Skulls peeled away, firing its monstrous cannon at Suzuki. Suzuki's Knight Paladin withstood the pointblank salvo, his ion shield sizzling but holding, and he continued to rake the creature with his reaper chainsword. Even as the two super-heavy class engines fought in a desperate melee, more daemons poured out of the vortex, finding a more open space in the crumbling ruins of the fortress than before.
"Direct your fire on the smaller forces before supporting Sir Suzuki," Raiji 44-Stroika ordered, his mechanical voice even and unchanged despite the encroaching chaos. The Skitarii under his command opened up a barrage of energy shots on the rushing daemons, taking most of them down with calm and organized fire. However, as the daemons that managed to survive the opening salvo closed in on the unmoving ranks of the Skitarii Vanguard and Rangers, Stroika continued with his orders without a hint of panic. "Princeps Rho-Mannu, provide Sicarian support."
"My pleasure. The Omnissiah awaits." Mannu sounded gleeful as his Sicarians pounced on the beleaguered daemons from every angle. Transonic weaponry cleaved through daemon hides as if they were nothing more than air, and chordclaws disassembled the warp-spawn easily at a molecular level. "I love my job!"
I joined in, helping with whatever I could. Even as I fired a volley of high powered rounds from my Avenger Gatling cannon and heavy stubbers, I suddenly heard a heavy metal pop song drift from all my vox channels.
"Yeah, oh yeah! The Omnissiah is the man! He brings on the death! We'll kill because we can!"
The Draconis version of psalms praising the Machine God, huh. How very typical.
However, the daemons were obviously not listening to the same music. Holding their heads as the Sicarian Infiltrators popped out of nowhere to goad them with taser goads, they fell into disarray, their senses distorted and splitting headaches powerful enough to tear apart their skulls pounding their brains mercilessly. Oh, so this was the Infiltrators' Neurostatic Aura that I had heard so much about. I didn't think it would actually be this potent. Fortunately, whatever screaming noise the Great Enemy was hearing had been converted into soothing psalms for us.
Um, or maybe they were motivating and hip psalms.
As we cleared the next wave of the daemons, with the help of the Farsight Enclaves' contingent of Crisis battlesuits, the battle between super-heavies took a turn for the worse. Now that the Lord of Skulls had fully focused its attention on Suzuki, it was dealing more damage to his smoking machine, cleaving through the adamantine armor with its destroyer-class cleaver. Suzuki's Knight Paladin buckled as he fought to evade the swift, deadly strokes, and his attempt to counter with his reaper chainsword ended in failure. In one precise move, the Lord of Skulls dismembered the luckless Knight, the butcher weapon shearing through the arm's metal and sending it crashing onto the ground.
"Suzuki! Retreat!" I yelled as I moved my Knight around at an angle, stomping on rubble and trying to get a clear shot. I fired a few rounds from my Avenger Gatling cannon as well as three rockets from my Stormspear rocket pods, the missiles landing heavily on the daemon engine and sending it faltering. Yamada had joined in the barrage, his Avenger Gatling cannon also stitching wounds across the Lord of Skulls' battered body. "Now!"
Suzuki limped away reluctantly, sparks flying from his wounded machine. For a moment I thought he would make it, but the daemon engine of Khorne was not so forgiving.
Shrugging off my shots, the Lord of Skulls lunged forward and plunged its cleaver right into the torso of Suzuki's Knight, the daemonic weapon piercing the core - a nexus of wires and reactors that powered the heavily armored suit. For a moment I froze, my eyes fixed on Suzuki's impaled metal steed, and then my mind kicked back in.
"Everyone get down!"
My warning was not for naught. Barely a few seconds later, Suzuki's Knight went critical, the reactor blowing sky-high and enveloping both him and his killer in a white-hot cloud of billowing plasma. Despite sending my ion shield to the front, I found myself knocked back. Fortunately, I had positioned my machine in a way to take the brunt of the catastrophic explosion so that my Draconis and Sktiarii allies wouldn't be caught. My towering form crashed just several meters away from the divisions of Vanguard and Rangers who had gone to ground to take cover from the devastating explosion, the Sicarians hopefully having disappeared the moment Suzuki's ride went critical, and the Leman Russ Executioners buckled from the impact, their heavy front armor thankfully weathering the shockwave without much damage.
A few dozen meters away, Yamada also stumbled back, his machine smoking and his ion shield giving out. Fortunately, he didn't suffer much other than a few seared circuits, and his Knight was still largely operable.
"Everyone all right?" I asked. Glancing around at my blinking pict-screens, I could see that the Imperial forces were largely all right, with miraculously no casualties. The Farsight Enclaves fared a little worse, with a few of the Crisis battlesuits heavily damaged. The others were helping the wounded Tau, and having no knowledge of xenos physiology to offer anything of help, I left the injured to them. I was bemused when I saw the already decimated blue Tau Empire forces get reduced further by the explosion, with most of the surviving Fire Warriors killed in the explosion. The apocalyptic blast must have scattered in their direction, huh.
"My lord, it's not over yet."
Stroika warned me, a bit futile on his part as I was still unable to get my fallen Knight upright. I was going to need a while. I appreciated the warning though, because I could see the smoking Lord of Skulls, the majority of the daemon engine almost falling apart from the devastating damage the catastrophic explosion inflicted on it, rolling slowly through the soot.
"It's on its last legs. Take it out!"
It wasn't me but Ikeda who responded, and the Leman Russ Executioners blew the daemon engine up with the fury of miniature suns, the plasma bombardment literally vaporizing chunks of the rusted and torn metal armor. The Onager Dunecrawlers joined in, their neutron lasers disintegrating the remnants of the Lord of Skulls, and in a few seconds of the furious barrage of destructive energies, the colossal daemon engine was no more.
"Lord Styrimidon would like to have a few pieces of the super-heavy class intact, though," Stroika remarked regretfully, a tint of wryness in his otherwise monotonous voice. "Unfortunately the situation does not permit it."
"Yeah, you tell him that."
Sighing, I forced my Knight up, the slow and cumbersome machine finally willing to rise to its two legs. As I stood up, I caught sight of the Lord of Change diving in our direction, laughing hysterically as warp energies charged around it.
"Emperor's ba..."
Before I could finish the curse, the Lord of Change unleashed an onslaught of psychic blasts on us. A couple of the Onager Dunecrawlers were flipped over, the spidery tanks sent rolling about, and the tanks shuddered heavily as they were stripped of their hull points. Several tank crews were forced to bail out before their Leman Russ Executioners blew up in clouds of hot bluish-white vapor, their plasma weapons unable to withstand any more punishment.
"My tank!" one of the sergeants wailed. "Emperor's bowels! I just received a new tank the last cycle! How am I going to explain to the Munitorum?!"
"I'll put in a good word for you," I assured him. "And Colonel Ikeda will see that you and everyone else get your tanks replaced. We all did good out here today."
I just hoped the Inquisition didn't learn of the daemonic incursion and decide to purge us all. That would suck. I mean, after surviving all this chaos and murderous daemons just to be killed by someone from our own side? It wasn't just fair!
And the Emperor was supposed to be fair and just. Unfortunately, most of his servants failed to share those traits.
I wasn't given much time to whine on that, though.
The Lord of Change swooped down on us again, getting ready to fire another psychic blast to topple us over. However, before it could fire off another wave of cursed warp energies, several volleys of rounds coated in yellow chemicals slammed into its body, sending it crashing into the ground.
"Missed me?"
If his face wasn't so heavily augmented and replaced by metal masks and scopes, I would swear by the Emperor that Magos Sigmar was grinning. The Tech-Priest Dominus was leading a maniple of Kastelan robots into our position, their heavy phosphor blasters blazing as they hammered the fallen Lord of Change with their cognis rounds. One of the Cybernetica Datasmiths that were responsible for the Kastelan robots was leading the charge, his gamma pistol barking. From his attire I could see that he was wearing the Raiment of the Technomartyr, a baroque suit of artificer armor that contained dozens of machine spirits that buzzed inside its confines. From what I knew, these spirits swarmed out of the armor to dwell inside both the datasmiths and Kastelan robots' weapons, turning them into cognis weapons.
And cognis weapons made good anti-air weapons in a pinch, especially when the Onager Dunecrawlers with Icarus arrays had been sent toppling and confused by the Lord of Change's psychic attack from earlier.
Sigmar strode over to the fallen Lord of Change, raising his power axe and cleaving a huge chunk of flesh away from the abomination.
"The Omnissiah dispels you," he declared grandly. The Lord of Change raised its bird-like head weakly to chortle at the Tech-Priest Dominus' grandeur.
"Asmodai."
Sigmar froze for a second.
"What about Asmodai?"
The Lord of Change grinned, or at least it tried to with its ugly beak.
"The answers you seek lie within."
And then the daemonic entity exploded into wisps of warp energy, disappearing from the material realm entirely. At the same time, the vortex shut down and the monolith crumbled, signaling the end of the grueling skirmish with a minor daemonic force.
"What was that about?" I asked Sigmar as I forced my Knight over.
The magos shrugged, tilting his mechanical head in confusion.
"I have no idea. I suspect the foul thing was talking about our attempts to recover STCs on Asmodai, and he somehow knew about it. He's just confirming what we suspected all along."
"For what reason?"
"Only the Omnissiah knows. Well, the probability of the STCs being on Amodai were a mere twenty-eight point seven percent before, but with the daemon's confirmation it has just jumped to seventy-nine point four. I'm sure the Fabricator-General of Draconis IV will want the Explorator fleet to get there more than ever."
"So...it's a trap. The Lord of Change is deliberately sending us there." I frowned as I tried to consider the implications. "For what reason?"
Sigmar turned to me, his metal mask once again concealing an imaginary grin.
"I guess we'll find out when we go there, eh?"