Disclaimer: Warhammer 40k and Code Geass are properties of their respective owners.
A/N: Is there, like, a Grey Knights for grad school? Armed with Free Time Shields and whose names are anathema to the Daemon Princes of Sleep Deprivation, Living in the Lab, and Chinese Takeout Every Day of the Month? No? Dammit.
Also, y'know what kinda sucks about taking a lengthy hiatus? I have one Code Geass anime, two editions of 40k codices, and what looks like at least fifteen Horus Heresy novels (I think the last one I read was A Thousand Sons, though I did skip a few near the end…) to catch up on…
Also, a game-changer nearly thirty chapters in the making! A huge shoutout to starspawn07, who masterminded it way back in 2012. Which honestly might as well be the Dark Age of Technology for how long ago that feels… A few people have already figured bits and pieces of it out, from what I've seen.
Chapter Thirty-Five: Metal Monsters, Part X
Hangar Bay
Space Station Ikaruga
Very few humans of the current generation could truthfully claim they had ever even seen a Ramilles-pattern star fortress, much less step foot in one. Lieutenant Alisha Sampson of the Cadian 203rd could lay claim to both feats, her troop convoy having discovered a derelict Ramilles during its harrowing journey to Terra. Battle damage and lack of maintenance had already claimed many ships, and the few surviving Tech-Priests offered their thanks to the Omnissiah before ripping the fortress apart for supplies and spare parts. None so much as grumbled about destroying so much irreplaceable technology, so focused were they on ensuring the ships could survive the next Warp jump.
Alisha remembered standing within the fortress' immense docking bays, her regiment one of the fortunate few chosen to disembark and assist the Tech-Priests in their task. She remembered the sheer vastness, easily enough to accommodate several regiments on parade and the ships needed to transport them. Even objects as mundane as blast shields bore Imperial iconography. She had felt tiny indeed as she stood before the life's work of countless Tech-Priests and, for the briefest of moments, came as close as any outsider could to understanding the reverence the Adeptus Mechanics held for such ancient artifacts. It was a small mercy that she never witnessed the aftermath as warships unloaded salvo after salvo into the derelict star fortress, ensuring that it could not fall into the Despoiler's hands.
Bay S-94 of the Ikaruga was slightly smaller than the Ramilles' main hangars, and the similarities ended with the dimensions. Alisha, like many of her comrades, had endlessly grumbled about Imperial warships' failing electrical systems and the endless brownouts, but the bright sterile lighting was nearly as bad. The vaulted gothic ceiling was replaced with metal walls and overhead gantry cranes, some large enough to lift the drop shuttles and haul them away to parts unknown. The armored blast doors on the hangar's other end occasionally slid open, and the Cadian caught glimpses of large Knightmare formations rapidly marching past.
"Attention all hands, t-minus twenty minutes to jump. Secure your stations."
Even with hearing protection, the whirring as armored blast doors slid over the hangar entrance left Alisha with an uncomfortable ringing in her ears.
Tharsis Region
Surface of Mars
Perturabo's singular desire to break the Imperial fortress that was the Argyre Planitia forge complex allowed for a surprisingly orderly evacuation. Freed from their normal tasks of coordinating troops and bridging communications, the formidable computing capabilities of numerous allied field bases were put to work compiling unit rosters and head counts. The defense lines were slowly collapsed back, with the information-deprived enemy none the wiser of their true intentions. Troop convoys entered and left the atmosphere virtually unmolested.
Though allied tacticians hailed Mars as one of the greatest evacuations in history, millions were left behind on the red planet's surface. Many were isolated pockets of resistance, surrounded by Chaos forces and cut off from reinforcements, whom not even the armored extraction convoys could reach. The great majority were annihilated as countless daemonic legions swarmed the world. Just as many of those left behind had elected to stay, forfeiting their seats to ensure that the enemy never reached the spaceports.
The Mordian Grand Regiment was one of the latter.
The harsh and anarchy-ridden world of Mordian was one of the first in Abaddon's path when the Fourteenth Black Crusade broke out of the Cadia system, but it didn't fall easily. The narrow streets funneled the enemy into the Iron Guard's waiting lasgun volleys and bayonets. By the time Imperial generals realized the Despoiler never intended to conquer the tidally-locked planet but instead use it to draw their forces into a costly quagmire, it was already far too late and Abaddon's fleet had already begun bombarding Mordian. Numerous regiments and chapters were lost, and the Iron Guard was irrevocably shattered.
The Mordian Grand Regiment was originally born of necessity: with no means to raise new regiments and with combat losses outpacing recruiting, the surviving Iron Guard regiments merged their rosters and command hierarchies. Any Imperial citizen capable of enduring the harsh training and willing to fight under the Mordian banner was accepted into their ranks, and the Munitorium turned a blind eye to their swelling numbers in light of their devotion to the Emperor and their success on the battlefield. At its height, the Grand Regiment numbered nearly seven hundred thousand men and women under arms. A series of disastrous campaigns in the defense of Ultima Segmentum nearly annihilated the unit, prompting its withdrawal to Terra.
On the plains of Tharsis, the last of the Grand Regiment—numbering seventy thousand—stood against the seemingly-endless daemonic legions.
In Private Gustaf Hahn's mind, only one word captured even the tiniest shard of the scene around him: pandemonium. The very ground before him was a writhing mass of Warp-touched flesh, the cultists and daemons packed so tightly that aiming proved wholly unnecessary. Each charge was met with disciplined volley after disciplined volley, the crimson lances searing flesh and scything off limbs. Fragmentation grenades arced overhead, reducing dozens of cultists to shrapnel-ridden corpses with each detonation. The dead and wounded were either carried forward by the sheer momentum of bodies or trampled underfoot, their mangled flesh serving as conduits for yet more daemons.
Even peering over the shoulders of those before him, Gustaf could see the horrors bludgeoning their way to the front of the horde. Some may have been human once, but the Warp had twisted them into putrid sacks of bile and disease, their flesh rotted away and their rank innards dragging along the ground. Hulks of sigil-encrusted metal bound by blood sinew, with weapons literally sprouting from the flesh, towered over even the Chaos Space Marines. Twisted parodies of Astartes Dreadnoughts, their victim's faces uncovered and twisted into silent screams, ripped through cultist and Guardsman alike. Infinite varieties of Daemon Engines, each as horrific and terrible as the one before it, cut a bloody swathe across the Mordian lines. Men and women went irrevocably insane as they looked upon shifting mountains of daemonic flesh, the many eyes covering the twisting and bubbling forms each holding truths too terrible to comprehend.
"Above us!"
It was a testament to Mordian discipline that Gustaf kept his eyes forward even as a winged creature sank its claws into the man beside him. He moved only to wipe the blood off his face as the unfortunate soldier, screaming in terror and agony as the daemon brutally mauled him, was lifted into the air. Screams became gurgles, and Private Hahn suppressed a retch as the predator tore its victim in half with a wet rip and threw the remains to the crazed horde below. Great gouts of flame arced into the sky, incinerating the airborne daemons as they swooped in for a second pass.
"Company, volley fire!" a voice—not the same one that ordered the previous volley—roared over the vox.
The Guardsman was thankful that the order came when it did: it distracted him from the carnage a mere half-dozen men down the line. The sound of a hundred lasrifles firing at once drowned out the screams as countless tiny blade-like daemons flayed their victims alive. The soldier in front of Gustaf jerked backwards, killed instantaneously by a lasbolt to the throat. The Mordian didn't spare so much as a glance downwards as he stepped forward and filled the gap.
A second volley passed mere centimeters overhead, incinerating the vessel of many a manifesting daemon. None in the Grand Regiment held delusions that the tactic would stem the tide of daemons for much longer: the rifts overhead had grown so wide that many were surprised Mars had not fallen into the Warp altogether.
"Bayonets!"
The dying screams of cultist and daemon alike reached the Private's ears long before the galloping did. Frenzied with the desire to spill blood in their master's name, Flesh Hounds and Juggernauts trampled their nominal allies in a mad rush to reach the Mordian lines. Krak missiles and lascannon bolts ripped through the pack, felling many a Khornate creature but ultimately failing to even so much as slow the charge. A horrific symphony of metal shattering and the wet crunch of bone and flesh trampled underfoot filled the air as the daemons smashed through the depleted Mordian company without so much as slowing down.
"Another wave incoming! Regroup! Regroup!" the nth new company commander in so many minutes screamed over the vox.
Their sights already set on the nearly full-strength company to the rear, the servants of the Blood God paid the shattered remnants of Gustaf's unit no mind. Slugs and flies bloated with contagion, impossibly-quick serpentine creatures, and screaming many-eyed disks assaulted the Mordians as they struggled to reform ranks. Private Hahn narrowly dodged a wad of phlegm and pus, though his neighbor was not as lucky. The woman screamed as her flesh liquefied and sloughed off her bones.
By the time Private Gustaf Hahn saw the Fiend bounding towards him, it was already far too late. The creature had already disemboweled him and ripped his still-beating heart from his chest by the time lasrifles were bought to bear.
C's World
The Warp
To the one once known as Euphemia li Britannia the scene projected before her bordered on surreal. She was no stranger to Lelouch's abilities: she had watched over him from the Great War to the Horus Heresy, witnessed firsthand his evolution from a lanky tactician to a lethal warrior. It was one thing to see her half-brother rip apart greater daemons in a long-since-destroyed suit of custom Terminator armor, and another thing entirely to see him perform such feats in the gaudy outfit of Zero. Long-ago memories of the Special Administrative Zone rose to the forefront of her mind.
"He'll never forgive you when he finds out," a low, sibilant voice whispered into the Guardian's ear.
A many-faced serpent appeared within one of the side archways, and Euphemia turned to face the Architect of Fate's image directly.
"Perhaps it would be for the best," the pink-haired Warp entity countered, with only the white-knuckled grip upon her staff betraying any emotion.
"In his mortal life, he loved you," the image of a horned golden-haired being faded into existence under the archway beside Tzeentch, "Yet it is the greatest excesses of love that turn into the foulest of hates."
"You already know the tales," laughed the image of a great crimson warrior perched atop a throne of skulls rising out of an ocean of blood, "In the final days of his mortal life, he spilled so much blood that you were forgotten. Had he done so in my name, he would have become my greatest champion, yet he did so to erase the 'Massacre Princess' from history!"
"And yet, you lie to him and continue to lie," a new arrival announced, his bloated and disease-ridden form at odds with his jovial demeanor, "Even the youngest of my children know what you apparently do not: the truth will always be revealed. Every name you have ever used and discarded, every dark bargain you have struck."
"Enough!" Euphemia shrieked, "If the price of him finally forgiving himself for that day is his eternal hatred, then I will gladly pay it!"
"We shall see. We shall see," four voices laughed as their images faded from view.
Her hands quivering slightly, the Guardian returned her attentions to Lelouch's mad dash across Mars. The torn veil between reality and the Warp made transitioning between the two realms trivial, and the Emperor crossed many kilometers in heartbeats. Wherever he appeared, he became a whirlwind of destruction, annihilating vast armies of daemons and cultists as he sealed the Warp rifts with sheer force of will. Yet, for each rent repaired, a dozen appeared all across the planet.
Lelouch hopped again, and Euphemia summoned a favorable Warp current with a wave of her hand. Despite the severity of the situation, she giggled at the Emperor's surprised expression as he was carried thousands of kilometers to his final destination.
As she watched her half-brother touch down upon the sands of Tharsis, a near-forgotten emotion gripped Euphemia's heart. She could afford to show no weakness to the Ruinous Powers, yet their words had sunk in. For the first time in millennia, Euphemia li Britannia felt doubt.
Tharsis Region
Surface of Mars
The seemingly-endless hordes gradually tapered off, though the beleaguered Mordian Grand Regiment hardly noticed at first. Enemy reinforcements arrived less frequently and in smaller numbers, and the dead started to stay dead. Lesser daemons were banished with a handful of lasbolts, a feat that previously required focused fire from entire squads. Some Daemon Engines fell apart outright, cut off from the energies that sustained their impossible forms. The enemy advance under repeated volleys of Mordian weapons fire slowed then stopped entirely. Several volleys later, and the Grand Regiment actually began gaining ground.
"Company, volley fire!"
The remnants of the Grand Regiment's 74th Company grew increasingly relaxed with each successive lasgun volley, and Corporal Rodolf Foth need not glance at his neighbors to make sure. Though the iron-hard Mordian discipline remained, the suffocating weight that rested upon the Guardsmen all throughout the battle slowly lifted. None dared breathe easy: the enemy turning their attentions to the Grand Regiment's badly-mauled—at some points, as little as two men deep—southern flank explained the thinning horde at the center every bit as well as the Chaos offensive losing steam. No Guardsmen felt more than cautious optimism when the vox operations confirmed the enemy offensive faltering all along the Mordian line.
"Company, fall in!"
Imperial fire support suddenly began focusing on the center, gradually driving the servants of the Ruinous Powers back. Rodolf returned his lasgun to shoulder arms as he rose in synchrony with the Guardsman in front of him. The high-explosive death raining from above intensified, giving the enemy no chance to exploit the sudden lack of lasbolts.
"Company, advance! Fire at will!"
As the shelling died down, some of the enemy—mostly renegade Guard and PDF, judging from their appearances—managed to rally and push forward. The respite ended seconds later as three Mordian companies pressed their advantage. The disciplined volleys were replaced by a steady stream of lasbolts, dismantling the renewed Chaos advance before it could gather steam. Faced with a wall of gleaming bayonets and Guardsmen eager to avenge their fallen comrades, the enemy outright broke and ran.
Standing in the second rank, Corporal Foth had only scant degrees to swing his lasgun before the barrel struck the Guardsman before him or the weapon blocked the firing arc of the one behind him. His feet fell into a familiar cadence, the steady tramp-tramp-tramp punctuated by the occasional crack of a lasgun. Several Mordians in the second and third ranks took potshots at the fleeing horde, but Rodolf held his fire. The initial stretch presented nothing but wounded enemies to execute and corpses to re-shoot, and the first rank was far better positioned to deal with such targets. The Corporal's patience was rewarded several minutes later, as several of his comrades were forced to reload while he still had a full charge pack. Taking a deep breath to steady his heartbeat, Rodolf unloaded precisely-aimed lasbolts into the fleeing traitors' backs with grim efficiency.
Though his comrades showed no outward signs, the Mordian could feel the tension slowly sinking in. Whether through the white-knuckled grips on lasguns or the uneven gaits, he could tell many eagerly awaited an order to charge. Rodolf doubted such an order would come: a sinking feeling in his stomach told him that the enemy was not broken by the Grand Regiment's sheer force of arms, and he had served far too long to ignore his gut instinct. His misgivings were vindicated moments later as a horrific cry filled the air.
"Company, halt! Dress ranks!"
The ground shook slightly under the weight of countless footfalls, and Corporal Foth's blood grew cold as he realized the cultists were not shouting battle cries. Even the most inexperienced Guardsman could recognize the shrieks of pure, animalistic terror.
"Make ready!" not even the company commander could keep a hint of panic out of his voice.
Rodolf made a futile effort to clear his mind as he sank to one knee and presented his lasgun. His hands shook as he quietly wondered what could possibly scare the enemy so badly that they would prefer Mordian steel.
"Shoulder arms!"
The order to fire never came, and Corporal Foth received his answer. The oncoming horde evaporated as gouts of green lighting ripped through their ranks, punching through both flesh and armor with equally-frightening ease. Bolts of blue-white electricity, seemingly guided by some malevolent and ravenous intelligence, reduced the survivors to charred husks. Many of the Grand Regiment did not realize the significance of the sight before them, but Rodolf Foth had survived enough battles in the Ultima Segmentum to recognize the dread weapons.
The first ranks of metal soldiers, each one mind-bogglingly old, appeared moments later. They stood in ranks of such razor-straight precision that the Mordians appeared as undisciplined rabble in comparison. Gleaming metal titans, towering over even Astartes warriors, made up their center. Unnervingly humanoid standard bearers stood between the blocks of infantry, their staves projecting the rune of their allegiance high into the air. The ground beneath Rodolf's feet shook as a hundred thousand pairs of feet marched in microsecond synchrony.
"Company, fire at will!"
The Necrons cared not as the Mordians sent volley after volley downrange, their march continuing as lasbolts splashed off their living metal bodies. The Corporal couldn't even say for sure if the metal monsters even noticed the Guardsmens' existence: their lines never faltered, and they did not so much as return fire. Artillery shells landed amongst the enemy, reducing dozens of Warriors and Immortals to twisted scrap with each impact. Some pulled themselves back together and resumed their march, others disappeared in a flash of sickly green, and occasionally a Necron death-scream would assault the Mordians' ears.
Only their iron-hard discipline kept the Mordians in their ranks when the Necron formation finally halted a mere ninety meters before them. Some continued to take potshots at the monstrosities, while others quietly prayed to the Emperor as Gauss and Tesla weapons were levelled.
In the split second before a Tesla bolt reduced him to a charred corpse, Corporal Rodolf Foth saw the familiar crimson skies of Mars obscured by a terrible clawed beast many kilometers in length.
The three companies sent ahead had vanished almost instantly, and scant moments passed before the Mordian command tent devolved into pandemonium. The vox operators were pushed to their limits parsing the dozens of transmissions streaming in each second. Requests for permission to withdraw, calls for fire support, and far too many abruptly terminated with bursts of static. The sheer volume of casualty reports overwhelmed their ability to process them, and updating the tactical map quickly became a purely academic exercise.
"33rd Company's been wiped out!"
"Enemy fast attack forces have routed 52nd Company!"
Secondary hololiths projected grainy picts of the chaos: ranks of Necron soldiers tearing through the Grand Regiment without slowing their march, arcane artillery reducing entire companies to ash with a single shot, fast-moving serpentine constructs phasing through bayonet walls and ripping through Guardsmen like a child would paper. One image, captured and transmitted moments before the 74th Company was wiped out in the opening volleys, caught the eye of General Berthold Winther.
"What in the Emperor's name is that?" the seasoned General uttered as he stared wide-eyed at the serpentine form.
Even if the question were not rhetorical, the leader of the Mordian Grand Regiment doubted any of his staff would know more about the creature than he did: absolutely nothing. Such thoughts made it all the more surprising when a modulated voice supplied an answer.
"That is the truth behind the great lie of Mars: Mag'ladroth, the Void Dragon, the Dragon of Mars."
Despite the situation, Berthold had to admit the stranger's ability to infiltrate his command tent was impressive: none had so much as heard the tent flap open, and none of the sentries reported anything amiss. On the other hand, he had to wonder how they pulled off such a feat: a close-fitting outfit of purple and gold, a cravat, and a spiked mask that resembled the Emperor piece on a regicide board were not the most subtle of outfits. Within seconds, a dozen weapons were levelled at the new arrival, though he seemed strangely unperturbed.
"General Berthold Winther, I have one question for you: do you wish to survive?"
A dozen clicks echoed through the tent as the Mordians' armaments simultaneously misfired. A wave of the intruder's hand, and their weapons were forced down as though by some unseen hand.
"Only the Emperor may decide when we live or die," General Winther answered after a moment's pause, "It is the duty of every Guardsman…"
"That wasn't what I asked," the stranger shook his head sadly, "I ask the soldiers of the Mordian Grand Regiment the same question: do you wish to survive?"
"None of us wish to die hunted like animals by the Necron legions," one of the General's command staff ventured after a lengthy pause.
"Good answer. In the distant past, I was known as Zero, the Man of Miracles," Lelouch chuckled as he removed his mask, "As loyal servants of the Imperium, however, you know me better as the Emperor."
Checkpoint A, Daylight Wall
Imperial Palace, Terra
Like many of his brothers, Diodoros had only ever seen the Imperial Palace from a great distance if at all. He beheld the structure's grand scale with an awe only marginally better concealed than that of his charges. The crowd of civilians surrounding him seemed intent on drinking in each and every magnificent sight, and a childlike wonder overtook many a gaunt face. Others seemed overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the Palace, still visible even under the fortifications. Several times, the Salamander had knelt down to reassure one of the civilians that they were indeed standing within the Imperial Palace.
They were scared of him still, of that Diodoros had no doubt, but they seemed much more relaxed compared to the start of the journey. The Primarch had addressed the Salamanders directly, telling them of the many atrocities their traitorous kin had wrought upon the people of Terra and stressing the need for patience and gentleness. His own convoy, assigned to a hive south of the Imperial Palace, had already started their task poorly: arriving in the middle of a night cycle, the Sororitas fanning out across the sublevel and rousing the citizens from their slumber. Lead into a nearby market square with little more than their ragged clothing and clutching what few worldly possessions they could carry, many of the evacuees were reduced to hysterics upon the sight of lined-up Rhinos and a single Astartes warrior standing guard.
The Battle-Brother constantly rotated between the Rhinos, boarding a different transport at each checkpoint. The Salamander had learned the hard way that removing his helmet only frightened his charges more, his pitch black skin and crimson eyes zeroing out any humanizing effect his human face may have had. To Diodoros' amusement, the ones he expected would take the longest to win over—the infants and toddlers—were the first to warm up to him. The tension finally broke as they neared the Imperial Palace, the Salamanders' indulgent laugh as the young clambered over his armor finally putting the adults at ease.
Throngs of people were crammed into the makeshift security checkpoint, and many of Diodoros' charges shrank behind him as they neared the Custodians lining the fortifications. No longer did the Imperial Palace's guards wear the color of mourning: with the return of the Emperor, they once again clad themselves in golden armor and rich crimson plumage. The Salamander had heard stories of Tech-Priests working feverishly to restore segments of the high-speed rails that once crisscrossed Terra, and the varied dialects with which the guardians of the Imperial Palace instructed the new arrivals gave credence to the rumors.
"Well met, Battle-Brother," an Astartes warrior clad in bare ceramite armor of frighteningly-high quality boomed as he approached, "I shall take over from here."
Diodoros was fairly sure his charges were more focused on the massive halberd their greeter wielded. Its simple construction belied a quality that even the most skilled Salamanders blacksmith would envy, and its blade hummed with subtle psychic energy.
"Come, I must screen you before we allow you into the Palace," the Grey Knight addressed the evacuees in a much softer voice, "Those who have committed no sin have nothing to fear."
Tharsis Region
Surface of Mars
Not even Lelouch could deny that cloaking himself in a veil of obscurity as he neared the front lines served next to no practical purpose: he just enjoyed watching the looks on the Mordians' faces when he revealed his identity. Though still somewhat unnerved by the Imperium's literal worship of him, the amethyst-eyed immortal could not deny its usefulness. Previously on the verge of routing, the Guardsmen rallied within moments of realizing their Emperor walked among them. Despite exhaustion and wounds, none wished to be found wanting in the Master of Mankind's eyes.
The display of psychic pyrotechnics that followed was born out of both practicality and Lelouch's penchant for unnecessary theatrics. Mustering enough power to destroy the Void Dragon would have certainly plunged Mars into the Warp, but even the slightest touch of the Empyrean was anathema to the C'tan. The great serpentine beast roared in agony as spears of psychic flame tore through its corporeal form, and its attentions immediately shifted from the Grand Regiment to Lelouch. More importantly, the pain disrupted Mag'ladroth's connection to its near-invincible legions.
The effects were immediate: the once-immaculate ranks of Necron Warriors devolved into a shambling horde driven only by primitive patrol routines. Their weapons volleys, though still unerringly precise, became sporadic and uncoordinated. The Immortals, denied even the kernel of free will normally afforded to their kind, adopted similarly-mindless tactics. The Mordians loosed volley after volley of lasbolts, overwhelming the enemy's self-repair systems through sheer volume of fire. The Guardsmen did not falter even as gouts of green and blue lightning crossed the scant dozens of meters separating them from the metal tide, and they were rewarded with the sight of the bolts dissipating well short of their intended targets or abruptly veering off-course.
"Start falling back once the enemy closes to forty meters," Lelouch instructed as he saturated the skies with Warp-fueled lightning.
The Void Dragon bellowed in pain and rage, its living metal body bubbling and warping under the psychic assault. Bolts of arcane energy and pillars of dark flame spewed forth from its many limbs, all of which splashed harmlessly against the Emperor's defenses. The shimmering barrier grew fainter with each salvo, and cracks began appearing in the dome. Though the C'tan had yet to reassert full control over its Necron legions, the formations of Warriors began to tighten and their return volleys grew increasingly coordinated. Even an untrained observer could see that the Mordians' reprieve would not last much longer, and the Guardsmen could only hope they had bought the rear companies enough time to complete their tasks.
"Riflemen, fall back! Grenadiers, to the front!"
The Grand Regiment vanguard formations loosened in perfect synchrony, their files parting to allow grenade launcher-equipped Guardsmen passage. Though the Mordians had all but exhausted their stocks of fragmentation grenades, their ammunition dumps still held mountains of krak grenades. Lelouch, reasoning that anything meant to kill armored vehicles and defensive structures would kill a Necron legionary with similar prejudice, hurriedly ordered the armor-piercing explosives and spare launchers distributed to grenadier units. As the line Guardsmen withdrew from the skirmish, the grenadiers formed a single rank and settled into the wide-legged stance demanded by their weapons.
"Now! Fire at will!" Lelouch's order was punctuated with a psychic shockwave that knocked dozens of Immortals off their feet.
The Mordian grenade launchers, drum-fed and boasting recoil on par with a bolter's, inflicted a frightening toll on the advancing Necrons. The death-screams of Warriors damaged beyond repair blended together into a continuous deafening wail, and the sheer volume of fire overwhelmed even the Immortals' self-repair systems. Even the fast-moving Wraiths stood no chance, the powerful krak grenades reducing them to twisted scrap within seconds. The highly-trained grenadiers could empty a twenty-round magazine in eight seconds, and each was paired with a Guardsman whose sole duty was to exchange their spent launchers for a reloaded one.
"Empty your current magazines and fall back!"
The metal legions abruptly halted their advance as the Void Dragon finally resumed direct control. The parting krak grenade volleys disrupted the formation of firing lines and bought the Mordians precious seconds, though the truly massive wall of Gauss and Tesla blasts loosed by the rallied Necrons in retaliation nevertheless claimed many lives. Though he managed to deflect a great number, Lelouch doubted he could have completely stopped such an attack even with the Shinkirou's aid. The Emperor lagged several meters behind his troops, unleashing great arcs of psychic fire and lightning in an attempt to slow the Necron legions.
"Heavy weapons, fire on my mark!"
A low ridge dominated the battlefield at Tharsis, and the Void Dragon's forces regained their lost momentum and then some as they charged down the slope. Unfortunately, the seeming advantage only bought them into the firing zones of entrenched mortars and lascannons. Entire companies of Necron soldiers were reduced to twisted scrap metal, destroyed before their arcane technology could teleport them to safety. Mag'ladroth's enraged bellow as it witnessed a paltry forty thousand Guardsmen rip apart a Necron force three times larger was heard for kilometers in every direction.
"No more games!" the serpentine creature shrieked in a thousand tongues, some impossibly old and most unknown to humanity, "Emperor of humanity, these plains will be your grave!"
The very ground shook as the C'tan's arcane powers reduced the rock to magma. Spears of temporal energy, their incomprehensible geometries driving any unfortunate enough to look upon them to madness, rained down upon the assembled Mordians and utterly erased their victims from time itself. The skies themselves were ripped asunder as baleful stars and crackling globs of antimatter rained from above. With even his formidable mental stamina exhausted from the journey across Mars and the subsequent battle, the Emperor could only present a weak defense against Mag'ladroth's rampage.
An antimatter projectile landed by Lelouch's feet, throwing the immortal high into the air. He saw the onrushing ground moments before his world went black.
Adeptus Mechanicus Battleship Omnissiah's Glory
Orbit of Mars
With the battle of Mars rejoined, not a single eye in orbit paid the Mordian Grand Regiment's desperate last stand any mind. At the Emperor's request, the Adeptus Mechanicus had held the bulk of their forces in reserve, and their deployment nearly drove the Despoiler's forces off the world altogether. The tables quickly turned with the daemonic legions' arrival, the flood of Warp-spawned horrors overwhelming the defenders of countless forges. The situation only worsened as the invasion of Mars began anew, with ships pouring from the corrupted Craftworld Altansar by the thousands. Imperial Titans grappled with their damned counterparts as legions of Skitarii and Tech-Priests weathered endless hordes of mutants, cultists, and renegades. Visible even from space, the fires of a thousand battles burned all across the Martian surface.
The Omnissiah's Glory, an ancient warship of the Ark Mechanicus class, spearheaded the defenses in space. A relic of the Great Crusade, the titanic battleship reduced dozens of Chaos warships to burning hulks with each volley of its main guns. Lances and torpedoes splashed harmlessly against its void shields, the ship's massive bulk protecting dozens of its more fragile allies from enemy gunners. Clouds of Starhawk bombers and Fury interceptors braved the rapidly-shrinking no-man's land between fleets to harass the lumbering Chaos transports and herd them into the waiting guns of the Basilikon Astra.
"By the Omnissiah…" the commander of the Omnissiah's Glory breathed, the fear in what little flesh he had left overriding the cold logic in his implants.
So focused was the Mechanicus fleet in annihilating the enemy before them that they failed to detect the objects until they were nearly on top of them. From their lack of reaction, the Chaos fleet was apparently caught similarly flat-footed, and being closer to the new arrivals, paid dearly for their narrow-sightedness. The largest of the new arrivals, a pair of crescent-shaped warships many kilometers across, loosed a massive barrage of lightning and particle beams that carved a path of destruction through Abaddon's fleet. Yet others abruptly stopped firing and began slowly spinning through space as though robbed of all power. Smaller warships joined the fray, and the one-sided battle became a massacre.
Entrusted with recovering relics of the Dark Age of Technology from the most hostile environments imaginable, the Archmagos Explorator commanding the Omnissiah's Glory once thought he had purged all fear from his mind. He silently cursed the foolish thought as countless signatures flooded the auspex.
Tharsis Region
Surface of Mars
His ears ringing from impact and his vision blurry, Lelouch awoke to the sight of a Mordian desperately dragging him away from the front lines. The Guardsman nearly dropped the immortal in shock when the latter suddenly dug his heels into the red sands. The Emperor gratefully accepted the proffered hand as he shakily stood up, the blood suddenly rushing out of his head nearly causing him to pass out again.
Pure pandemonium reigned, the Mordians desperately charging into bayonet range in the mistaken belief that the Void Dragon would hesitate to destroy its own soldiers. The Guardsmen would have easily held their own against the Necrons if the latter fought alone, their corroded living metal bodies limiting them to sluggish but devastating melee strikes. Faced with the Void Dragon's arcane powers in addition to its soulless legions, however, the Grand Regiment only delayed the inevitable. Mag'ladroth's wrath rained down upon the battle, the C'tan heedless of the Warriors and Immortals caught in the barrage.
Lelouch and the Guardsman accompanying him watched in horror as a Tesla blast clipped the Mordian standard bearer. Even as the ravenous energies consumed her alive, the doomed soldier's only thoughts were to ensure the richly-ornamented banner—created in the Tetrarchal Palace itself and the last of its kind in the galaxy—never touched the ground. As a horrified Emperor and Guardsman rushed forward, she drove the shaft into the Martian soil moments before she finally expired. Her efforts were in vain, her waning strength succeeding only in piercing the loose topsoil.
Lelouch reached the toppling standard moments later, only to realize somebody had beaten him to the punch. A set of metallic fingers closed around the shaft, lifting the standard high into the air and plunging it deep into the red soil. The Emperor whirled around to stare into the skull-like visage of a Necron Warrior, though its eyes held a spark he had only seen once before. Though its body was pitted and faded with age, Lelouch could still see the rich blue and gold patterns adorning the living metal. The Necron legionary stood tall and proud, starkly contrasting with the hunched-over Warriors of Mag'ladroth's legions. A curved sickle-like blade was strapped to its waist, and its left hand held an unusually long and thin Gauss Flayer by the barrel.
"Your soldiers fight well," the Warrior addressed Lelouch in a flat metallic voice, "They need not fear the Void Dragon's legions any longer, for the forces of the Tulun Dynasty now fight at their side."
A/N: So I think I'll split it here, because I don't think I'm ready to post a 10k-word chapter.