The Princeps sat hunched over, coughing, on his command throne.
"Emperor's teeth," he muttered, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. It felt like he'd been run over by a tank, actually scratch that. It felt like he'd been pulled apart with chainblades and reassembled by a drunken chirurgeon. He was uncomfortably aware of the spiderwebbing intricacies of major nerves in his body, feeling like they'd just been plucked at like an instrument.
He tried to steady himself, noting he was thankfully withdrawn from the manifold. He reached out to the Warlord, sensing no urgency from the machine spirit he let his mind slowly ease back into the titan's semi-consciousness. He, or rather the Aquilis Redemptor, was standing in a deep valley. The vegetation was lush, a blue sky overhead. He smelt by chemical sensors, the taste of industrial pollutants slight compared to Orestes. The usual graphite smell blowing off the Astrobleme was absent.
One thing caught his attention, nuclear material of two distinct types. The first was simple atomics, the other was residue from plasma warheads. There was a war here, and it was evident in the air itself. He began to feel out with passive auspex, keeping his power signature small. He'd have to crest a hill to make his active detection systems useful.
The Princeps plodded onwards, the Warlord's senses coming online as his physical limbs. He could see the world around him, hear everything, even sense the wind whistling across his armor. Gone was the grit of the vast hives and deserts, replaced by clean air and well-filtered sunlight. Despite this, he felt the suspicion instilled in him since birth nagging that something was wrong.
He melded fully with the Warlord and began to receive a wide input of vox signals across a wide band, some tagged by the cogitator array as encrypted audio-visual. He cautiously walked the Warlord up the slope, his head and carapace crested as he looked into the distance, ready to bring himself to full power at a moment's notice and sweeping his sensors back and forth.
Almost immediately he found a contact. Warlord class and with a huge energy signature, and all the markers of a bio-titan. The Devourer? He doubted it, there wasn't a single spore or other sign of a Tyrannid invasion. Whatever it was, it had yet to notice him. He watched the huge creature stride westward, bipedal with spindly arms ending in huge fists. A red sphere sat centered below a thin abdominal section.
He observed for a few more moments before his munitions alarms all went off at once. He had only a second to react as hundreds of solid slugs and explosive munitions rained down on the bio titan. He raised his voids, thinking the next volley might be meant for him. As his own bubble of purple and blue energies gained cohesion around the Warlord he saw the contact raise its own barrier of geometric orange light. Rounds deflected off and detonated without much effect, and the creature turned towards the Aquillis.
Whatever it was, he had gained its attention.
On instinct, the reactor of the god-engine pushed to combat power as the Warlord began to strafe to its right. The bio titan stared at him for a moment before the red sphere on its chest pulsed. A beam of brilliant light smashed into the Warlord's void shields, and the nearly invisible barrier began to glow and spit arcs of blue lightning that grounded themselves in the earth around it.
His shoulder twin laser destructors began to pulse red lances at the hostile, each one deflecting off the geometric orange barrier. The Princeps brought up his right weapon, feeling his forearm's skin bead with sweat as the plasma annihilator cycled up to fire. He let it fly in a single concentrated shot, the wash of heat around the weapon's muzzle was enough to ignite the forest at its feet with a crashing and booming sound. The round crashed into the orange barrier of the bio titan and it glowed fiercely, but it still held.
The Warlord changed directions now, moving left as its turbo lasers pulsed and pounded the defenses of the enemy contact. Again its red core flashed a beam of energy into the titan's voids, bringing down a quarter of the layers and nearly knocking the wind out of its princeps from the manifold feedback.
He loosed another bolt of plasma and managed to punch the orange shield apart, turbo lasers flaring in afterward and vaporizing craters in the enemy. The bio titan was in tatters, but it was still alive. The orange barrier reformed just in time to block a third plasma bolt, and slowly flesh began to boil out of flesh to replace the damage done. Blaring its warhorn in rage, the Warlord retreated around another hill. The bio titan followed, trying to circle and flush the Warlord out of its cover.
Grant was starting to worry, whatever ranged weapon it had was potent enough and its shielding was tough. Close combat was an option, but not one he liked. Nonetheless, he cycled his Vulcan Mega Bolter's autoloader and activated his left-handed lightning claw, flexing the meters long talon fingers.
The Warlord moved forward, strafing down the hill as if it knew exactly where it was going. The bio titan moved after, its feet stomping through the soil as it charged. It was fast, far faster than Grant had expected despite its bizarre proportions. Its red sphere pulsed and sent another beam crashing against the Aquilis' void shields, crashing through over a third of the layers before it was halted. The Warlord moved to meet it, turbo lasers cracking its shield open one more time. He charged his plasma annihilator as much as he dared, feeling his corresponding flesh arm becoming slick with sweat under his combat uniform. The gun retched the drop of sun into the center of the creature's chest where Grant reckoned its brain must be, and the bio titan emitted a warbling cry despite its lack of a mouth as a good portion of the monster's torso was punched away.
Despite the Warlord's assault, it still stood with flesh slowly reforming as it stood wavering on the scorched hillside. The Princeps let his bolter roar, hundreds of shells detonating in the flesh of the bio titan. Still, it refused to fall. Still, it denied him. He lunged with the power claw, tearing downwards into the red sphere. His claws sliced through the thick skin and armor of the creature with little effort, but they met some resistance as they were buried in the mineral-like core. He twisted the huge talons, servos straining as he fought to crack the strange organ.
Too late. A huge fist smashed into his, the Warlord's, stomach. He felt support structures strain as the force exerted on the armor suddenly increased, but they held against the assault. Grant felt winded, his diaphragm refusing to work properly despite the lack of any observable damage to his person. The Warlord's warhorn bellowed again as it shoved downwards with the power claw, cracking the red sphere in a shower of sparks.
The bio titan slumped to its right, crashing down into the burning hillside and lying motionless. The warhorn shouted victory to the scorched landscape, and Grant let his weapons power down. He sat back on his throne, staring at the corpse of the bio titan.
His first engine kill, and he had no idea what the hell it was.
The auspex demanded his attention. Hard contacts, three of them. They were moving fast, but their signatures weren't quite right. He checked the sensor readings on his display. They flicked back and forth between mechanized and biological energy forms, he thought at one point it identified the Warlord-sized contacts as human. He didn't think that was possible. The cogitator banks referenced the readings against everything in their data stacks before settling on 'unidentified'.
"Very helpful," muttered Grant, the Warlord's own impatience growing and growling in the back of his mind. He took a few moments to focus, to let his mind calm and settle. He was a princeps, he had to maintain his composure and discipline.
He gained visual contact, and his eyes widened at the sight before him.