0011
Tech-Priest Dominus Sigmar proceeded through the ruins of the munitions factory, detachedly interested at how his enemies had deployed themselves. Apparently, after capturing the factory, the blue Tau army had left a skeleton crew here while dispatching the bulk of their forces back into the base northeast.
From the noospheric feeds, Sigmar could see that the battle at the Tau base had already been won. The Tau forces were in full retreat, with both the Imperial military and Farsight Enclaves cornering them in their supposedly formidable fortress. The Skitarii Alpha that Sigmar had relinquished command to, Raiji 44-Stroika, was leading his Vanguard and Rangers into the gaping chasm of the fortress, but already inside the building were squads of Sicarian Infiltrators and Ruststalkers, the deadly cybernetic assassins more suited for combat in such close quarters than the gun-wielding Skitarii soldiers.
Well, it's my turn to produce results.
Sigmar felt neither pride nor a sense of rivalry; the only emotions in his mind were that of determination and a desire to produce results. Rivalry was an unnecessary human emotion that led units and leaders to become reckless and make mistakes. Every unit, every warrior and every servitor in the Mechanicus was a cog, all of them working together harmoniously to obtain the best possible product. Rivalry would only get in the way of such harmony and destroy the tenuous links of cooperation that the servants of the Omnissiah had. Already Sigmar could see fissures between the high-ranking Magos of the Mechanicus, with the Fabricator General of Draconis III often in conflict with the Fabricator Generals of other forge worlds. Never mind between forge worlds, it was not strange for the Magos of Draconis III to have different priorities - the ambitious Fabricator Locum, for example, often sought to stifle the independence of Archmagos Styrimidon, the leading Explorator of Draconis III.
As the Tech-Priest Dominus approached the factory, his sensors indicated to him that there were little more than two squads of Fire Warriors in the building, and a few accompanying Crisis battlesuits and Broadside battlesuits. There was little in the way of the resistance, and Magos Sigmar calculated a ninety-seven point eight five percent probability of crushing the xenos occupiers. The rest were Earth-caste Tau running around and trying to start up the factory to churn out plasma weapons, but unlike the Farsight Enclaves whose Earth caste piloted Riptide battlesuits, these were non-combatants.
The moment Magos Sigmar invaded the factory, they would be sure to flee. They posed no significant threat.
The battle servitors, two clades of Kataphron Destroyers, moved up first, separating into a clade equipped with plasma culverins and a clade armed with heavy grav-cannons. As they were expendable, Sigmar sent them into the factory first.
A high-pitched volley crashed into the wall right next to the lead Kataphron Destroyer, chipping the paint off the crumbling wall and reducing it to rubble. The heavy battle servitors halted and retreated behind cover, their simple instincts combined with Sigmar's binaric commands. Spotting the teams of Fire Warriors approaching, Sigmar moved forward determinedly, his neural implants already calculating the range, distance and best possible tactical positions.
Right now it seemed that the Kastelan robot maniple had the longest reach out of all his forces, so Sigmar nodded to his accompanying datasmiths. Two cybernetica datasmiths, Xi-Lomar and Rho-Gox, had been assigned to the three hulking Kastelan robots that towered above them all, with the former holding onto the Protector protocol doctrina wafer and the latter Conqueror doctrina wafer. The default doctrina wafers installed into the robots were the Aegis Protocol, which frankly allowed the Kastelan robots to Feel No Pain no matter how many damaging blows they took.
[Weapons free. Fire when ready.]
[Yes, Archmagos.]
Xi-Lomar responded with a binaric blurt before administering a short but sacred ritual to the machines in his charge. Unlike most forge worlds, Draconis III had shortened their rituals to a mere seconds of prayer for practicality. After all, the rituals would be useless if the enemy shot the tech-priests in the middle of consecrating a weapon.
The Kastelan robots opened up with their heavy phosphor blasters, firing into the squad of Fire Warriors that had taken up position in a high archway overlooking the factory. Only three of them were hit, the burning chemical rounds blasting sizzling holes in their bodies and sending them toppling over like broken dolls. The surviving Fire Warriors looked at each other, lost their nerve, failed their morale check and literally ran off the board, only to plunge into the abyss right behind the plasma munitions factory.
[That was...unexpected.]
[What were you expecting? Their leadership values only amounted to 7.]
[I still don't understand the criteria for calculating leadership values.]
[Acquire that knowledge as soon as possible. They are imperative to understanding an enemy's psychology, unless they happen to be Fearless.]
Xi-Lomar went silent at Sigmar's chiding, which the Magos took as acquiescence.
The second team of Fire Warriors took shelter in a Devilfish that weaved past the wide passage of the factory, taking cover behind behemoth pillars that stood like Titan's legs.
For now, they were too far to do anything, so Sigmar busied himself with the interior of the plasma factory, his augmented eyes recording every detail. The assembly line, the various convoys, and the myriad parts used in the manufacture of xenos plasma weaponry...they were all open to him for study, and he would like to acquire as much firsthand data as he could before the Tau gave him their blueprints, which most likely would be doctored or edited.
Magos Sigmar pulled his cowl forward as the poor illumination of the factory cast darting shadows over the conveyor belts and the components that lay upon them, playing tricks on his optics. The Kastelan robots might have fired upon the first team of Fire Warriors, causing them to run off to their own demise, but the second team of Fire Warriors were approaching in their armored Devilfish, impervious to harm. Sigmar gave a binharic blurt of irritation as he turned to the Kataphron Destroyers at his back. He would very much like to record more footage on the inner workings of a Tau munitions factory this day, but it seemed the Machine God had other work in mind.
"Let the fires of enlightenment rain from thy sacred weaponry!" cried Sigmar to his corpse-faced congregation of plasma servitors, all four of his arms raised to the skies. "Let the heart of Draconis steel thee for battle!"
He turned back, recalibrating his volkite blaster as the APC-sized Devilfish hovered into weapons range, its gun drones spitting fire and having no effect on the heavily armored Kastelan robots. To his exasperation, the Kataphrons behind him still had yet to engage.
"And Omnissiah deliver us from slow-minded glitchwits," Sigmar muttered. "All right, open fire."
The factory lit up with blinding blue energies, and the surface of the Devilfish melted a little. And then the plasma culverins began smoking as they turned red, getting hot and damaging their wielders in the process.
"Oh, for the love of the Omnissiah!" Sigmar threw his mechanical hands up in frustration. Couldn't those plasma weapons work without blowing up in the Machine God's face? Too late he remembered that he had completely forgotten to implement one of the canticles of the Omnissiah. If he had canted the Benediction of Omniscience, the receiving Kataphron Destroyers would have avoided the Gets Hot! results. Well, it mattered little. "This is why we need that xenos plasma technology so badly."
One of the Kataphron Destroyers that were bearing the heavy grav-cannons rocked backward as a railgun slug from the Broadside slammed into it. Markerlights were appearing all over the poor servitors' bodies, marking them out for fire. The next instance, a trio of Stealth suits popped out of nowhere and hammered the three Destroyers with burst cannons. The burst cannons did no damage to the heavily armored battle servitors though, the puny rounds bouncing off their Kataphron demiplates. The third one fared better, blasting them with a more devastating fusion blaster that would have certainly melted a hole through one of them if Sigmar hadn't sent a binharic command for it to pull back. Then he switched back to his flesh-voice for a simpler command.
"Fire!"
Fortunately, unlike the plasma servitors, the heavy grav-cannons had no chance of getting hot. The trio of Kataphron Destroyers retaliated with vicious salvos, the grav-rounds tearing into the armor of the Stealth battlesuits and crumpling the poor wearer inside. Two of them went down, their armored suits crushed like drink cans, while the third fled, disappearing into the surrounding with near perfect camouflage.
"I want to analyze that stealth technology if I can," Sigmar remarked, forgetting to command his Kataphron Destroyers to unleash a trail of blazing promethium with their cognis flamers. Well, the Stealth battlesuit was out of range anyhow, having lost his nerve and fell back. "If we could equip our Skitarii legions with that..."
The Devilfish had swooped in front of a pillar now, disgorging its occupants. The second team of Fire Warriors disembarked, heaving their pulse rifles up to aim at the Legio Cybernetica. This time Sigmar remembered to use the canticles of the Omnissiah, playing the Benediction of Omniscience through his servitors' neural network. The plasma Kataphron Destroyers raised their plasma culverins and unloaded several plasma spheres into the sitting Devilfish without suffering any mishap this time.
The Devilfish buckled, its metallic surface turning red-hot and releasing dangerous fumes. Three Fire Warriors who were too close to the vehicle were caught in the plasma blast, vaporized by the deadly blue balls of high energy.
Meanwhile, Xi-Lomar had directed the three Kastelan robots to fire on the nearest Broadside battlesuit that continued to take potshots o the Mechanicus army's location. The heavily armored battlesuit staggered as the blazing chemical rounds struck him, and for a moment it seemed that he might hold, but the sheer volume of fire overwhelmed his suit's defenses, as well as the shield drone that struggled to protect him. The shield drone was the first to go, its shields failing as the tremendous amount of fire broke through it and destroyed it, leaving the poor Broadside vulnerable to the remaining shots.
The rest, as Sigmar would say, was data.
The annoying Pathfinders continued to mark out the Mechanicus position, but as they posed little threat with their lack of weapons, Sigmar chose to ignore them. Confident of his victory, he was about to direct his troops to advance on the beleaguered Fire Warriors' position, as well as finish off the last, remaining Broadside, but a couple of plasma Kataphron Destroyers exploded behind him. Turning around, stunned, Sigmar almost found himself staring down the barrel of fusion blasters, a duo of Crisis battlesuits somehow getting behind them. All that stood between him and his demise was his last Kataphron Destroyer, and it too was buckling under the weight of fire, unable to withstand the Crisis suits' punishing firepower much longer. In front, one of the heavy grav-cannon servitors that were leading the charge were taken out as well, with another two Crisis battlesuits jumping right in front of them and blasting them pointblank. Added to the voluminous firepower was the Broadside's devastating, long-range railgun, and the lead Kataphron Destroyer finally fell, a tangled mess of burned flesh and shredded metal. Before the remaining two Kataphron Destroyers could launch a counterattack at Sigmar's command, the Crisis battlesuits and their gun drones boosted away to the side. One of them weren't able to escape the vengeful salvo that the remaining Destroyers launched, the gun drone crumpling under the grav rounds and the wearer of the Crisis suit squashed into a bloody pulp within his own armor.
The datasmiths spun around, their gamma pistols barking and scoring a gouging wound on one of the Crisis battlesuits that had attacked the plasma servitors, causing him to stagger. From the looks of it, the blue Crisis battlesuit hiding behind the wounded one seemed to be the Commander, his Crisis suit modified to adopt a slightly different appearance.
Sigmar recognized him as the main threat, and he ordered the Kastelan robots to fire upon the commander.
"Roger that," Xi-Lomar complied as he transmitted his master's orders to the robots in his charge, directing their fire at the new threat behind them. However, the injured Crisis suit threw himself in front of his commander, taking all the hits and wilting away from the tremendous amount of shots. The last few shots pinged against the commander, who stood defiantly against the three behemoths and their tech-priest masters. Xi-Lomar observed the fallen Crisis suit curiously. "Hmm. The deceased might actually be a Crisis Bodyguard whose role is to protect the Crisis Commander."
"Whatever the case, the Crisis Bodyguard is now in a crisis, having failed that role," Sigmar remarked candidly. "He was lucky to be standing between his Commander and all our shots, otherwise he would have failed at least a few of his Look Out, Sir rolls."
To the Mechanicus, there was no greater shame to a servitor or a construct than being unable to fulfill the role it was created for. Not that most of the servitors could feel shame, of course, but there was a seventy-seven point six probability that the xenos might share the same codes and ethics.
Raising his macrostubber, Sigmar loosed a burst of rounds that the wounded Commander somehow shook off. However, Sigmar was not done. Advancing on his faltering foe, he fired his volkite blaster, the shimmering rays cooking the Commander inside his Crisis suit. In just a few seconds, the armor combusted into flames, the Tau Commander letting out a shrill cry as he was incinerated.
The Pathfinders continued to ping them with markerlights, and getting irritated at their antics by now, Sigmar commanded his last, surviving plasma servitor to fire at them. However, the two plasma blasts missed their mark by a lot, reducing a nearby conveyor belt to smoldering metal.
"Why, Omnissiah, why?!" Sigmar moaned dramatically, his arms held up in the sky. "I have yet to finish recording the data of this factory!"
He wasn't given any time to grieve over his blundered command. In front of him, a second heavy grav-cannon servitor exploded as the Crisis battlesuit darted out and peppered it with his shots. Combined with another round from that pesky Broadside that continued to lurk just out of range of the Mechanicus' weapons, the heavy battle servitor was reduced into smoking wreckage and torn circuitry.
More bothered by the insolent Tau units interrupting his anger than the loss of his servitors, Sigmar blandly sent another binaric blurt. Now that the Crisis suit had jumped out into the open, he would learn of his folly. The gun drone that accompanied him went down first, taken apart by a single grav round. The remaining five rounds tore through the Crisis battlesuit, the armor buckling as if squeezed by a giant, invisible hand, and the organic contents of the suit reduced into an oozing bio-paste.
The remaining Fire Warriors and the gun drones of the fuming Devilfish let loose whatever rounds they had, but the pathetic projectiles of their pulse rifles and pulse carbines did nothing against the monstrous Kastelan robots' ceramite armor. Xi-Lomar responded without Sigmar needing to issue any orders, directing a phosphor rain of destructive chemical rounds on their position, reducing the already damaged hover craft into shredded metal.
The Fire Warriors emerged from behind the smoking wreck of their vehicle, peppering the Kastelan robots with pulse rounds but having completely no effect at all. On the other side, the Broadside fired another couple of railgun rounds, but Sigmar forced his remaining Kataphron Destroyer back to cover. As the Broadside was out of range, it was senseless to engage him in a shootout. While Sigmar would sacrifice his battle servitor without a second thought, he wasn't going to waste it for nothing when there were no benefits in doing so.
Instead he turned his attention on the firing Fire Warriors.
The final plasma servitor fired again, and this time it scored two direct hits, disintegrating three Pathfinders with superheated clouds of plasma. Sigmar would have smirked, but his highly augmented face was no longer capable of conveying emotions. At least the annoying Pathfinders would be deterred from painting his unit with markerlights from now on. Meanwhile, the Kastelan robots fired upon the hiding Fire Warriors mercilessly, sending five of them sprawling on the ground amidst chunks of concrete and debris, chemical smoke rising from huge holes in their suits. Sigmar didn't allow the remaining survivors to even run. Relying on his sensors, he picked out the last two Fire Warriors in infrared, and with uncanny precision, sniped them with his volkite blaster.
With the last of the offense teams down, the Pathfinders and the remaining Broadside saw no option but to either retreat or surrender. The Pathfinder teams raised their hands and emerged from their positions, their heads bowed in defeat. The Broadside opted to jump down the abyss along with the Fire Warriors who had committed suicide earlier, unable to handle the shame of defeat.
If Sigmar was a tech-priest of any other world, he would not have accepted the Tau's surrender and would have mercilessly gunned them down on the spot. However, the tech-priests of Draconis III knew the disadvantages of pursuing violence when an enemy surrendered. Showing no mercy would have drive the enemy to fight harder and even more desperately, forcing the Mechanicus to waste more time and resources to completely exterminate the threat. Those time and resources were better spent finding new Standard Template Constructs or uncovering xeno technology from the surrendered foe.
The only exceptions were the traitor legions, Tyranids and Orks, monstrous foes who were completely oblivious to the very concept of surrender.
The loss of so many battle servitors meant nothing to Sigmar. They were expendable, and there was no shortage of raw materials back in Draconis III to build new Kataphron Destroyers. In fact, the Kastelan robots were much more valuable than the heavy battle servitors. Sigmar, like every other tech-priest, would expend them with no more thought than a Space Marine who expended his clip of bolter rounds.
Satisfied with the result, Sigmar turned to his accompanying cybernetica datasmiths, wishing that he could smile and almost regretting the removal of his flesh face.
"Just as planned," he said.
The Skitarii forces that scrambled into the fortification were not the Vanguard and Rangers that had been leading the offensive so far, but the Sicarian Ruststalkers and Infiltrators. Armed with transonic razors and chordclaws, the Ruststalkers were more suited for close combat in such tight confines than the infantry troopers of the Skitarii, their transonic weaponry slicing through Crisis armor and Broadside plating alike, the deadly melee weapons vibrating at a frequency that allowed them to cut through even the most advanced armor at a molecular level.
I couldn't see many Infiltrators, the shadowy assassins always lurking out of sight, but the few I saw proved effective in melee combat. Then again, this was Tau we were talking about here. They might possess overwhelming long-range firepower, but up close they were pathetic in hand-to-hand combat. What few Infiltrators I saw were goading the fleeing Tau into their taser goads and shocking them with tremendous amounts of potential energy.
It was a rout.
"This should mop them up," I said, satisfied. There was no need to force my Knight in there.
"Heads up," Colonel Ikeda called out over the vox, his tense voice calling for caution. "Incoming flyer."
"The Onager Dunecrawlers with Icarus arrays are on it," Raiji 44-Stroika informed him. "But it's a super-heavy flyer. We have identified the target as a Tiger Shark."
"Launch everything you have!" I ordered as I brought my Knight around to face the incoming flyer. By the Emperor, the Tiger Shark was huge, much bigger than the Sun Shark bombers or Razorshark fighters that we had been facing earlier. I wondered if the Icarus arrays on the Onager Dunecrawlers would be able to take them down.
And then unexpected cavalry swooped down right behind the advancing Tiger Shark.
"74th Draconis Battalion, this is the Imperial Navy, Draconis 31st Fleet. Be advised that we're tracking the boogey in the sky with every intention of taking it out."
"31st Fleet, this is 74th Battalion. Please nail the bastard with everything you've got!"
Ikeda almost sounded gleeful. As if responding to his enthusiasm, the squadrons of Vendettas spread out and hammered the rear of the Tiger Shark with their lascannons. Each Vendetta gunship had three lascannons, so three squadrons of three Vendettas meant twenty-seven ruby beams of destruction, with over half of them lancing into the Tiger Shark's soft behind with vicious gusto.
The Vendetta was hailed as the best assault gunships in the Imperium, better than even the revered Stormraven of the stalwart Astartes. With three twin-linked lascannons, and the gunships frequently deployed en masse, they were capable of ripping apart legions of massed enemy aircraft by drowning the sky in devastating laser fire. Unlike the multi-lasers that the Valkyries sported, the Vendetta's trio of lascannons were capable of punching through thick armor with highly forceful beams of focused energy, making them perfect for anti-armor roles.
That was proven almost immediately as the Tiger Shark exploded in midair, unable to withstand the onslaught of lascannon beams. A sinking mass of melted metal and molten slag, the super-heavy aircraft crashed far away from the fortress in an undignified manner, disappearing in a shower of sand.
The defeated Tau seemed to shrink even further, if that was possible.
"All right, let's round them up," I told Alpha Stroika. "Don't kill any enemy who surrenders. Make sure your troops know that, especially the Sicarian Ruststalkers and Infiltrators."
The Ruststalkers were notorious for their murderous tendencies, their psychotic nature enhanced by the cocktail of drugs and chemicals injected into their bodies by their augmetics. Similarly, the Infiltrators had been lobotomized and built from scratch to be cold, uncaring killers who were only interested in death and destruction. Nothing short of an order from the Skitarii Alpha would stop them from indulging in bloodshed and carnage.
"I have already sent the relevant orders," Stroika replied, much to my relief. His voice might be dull and monotonous, but he was an effective leader with an eye for practicality. The Mechanicus of Draconis III saw little use in slaughtering those who had lost the will to fight - rather, it would be detrimental as the survivors would fight even harder when they realized no mercy would be shown. And desperate warriors, particularly ones who were pushed to the brink, were extremely dangerous.
It took a while to consolidate the enemy and claim the fortress, with the Farsight Enclaves being quick to assert their control over it. As I milled around restlessly in my Knight, acting as a silent sentinel standing guard outside the fortress, Stroika came to me with a message.
"My lord Knight, it appears we found something at the bottom of the fortress."
"What is it?"
I leaned back in my Throne Mechanicum, exhausted from the fight and hoping it wasn't anything major. The Skitarii Alpha transmitted a few picts to my machine, allowing me an optical view through the eyes of the Vanguard who made the discovery.
I almost threw up at the sight.
It was an arch, obsidian black and marked with thousands of indecipherable sigils. Yet the very image felt wrong to me somehow, felt corrupted. Just by seeing the monument, I could feel cold fear coiling within my chest, almost as if squeezing the life out of me.
"We have no idea what it is, and neither do the warriors of the Farsight Enclaves." Stroika continued calmly, unaffected by the sight. Whether it was because the mechanical process of making him a Skitarius had removed his emotions and relieved him of fear, or he didn't understand what he was seeing, I had no idea. "I suspect it to be xeno archeotech, and my lord Archmagos Styrimidon agrees with me."
"No," I said, harsher than I intended. "That belongs to the Great Enemy. Get all our forces out of there, and warn the Farsight Enclaves. We are going to obliterate that foul...thing."
"My lord? Are you sure?"
"You don't feel it?" I swallowed, my eyes glued to the pict-screen as I fought the icy fear that wrapped its tendrils around my neck. "It's corrupted. I have seen one of those things before. It's a gateway to the Warp. If you accidentally activate it, daemons and warp-spawn will pour out of it."
"But Archmagos Styrimidon insists that we preserve the site for further study..."
"Tell Archmagos Styrimidon that he can shove his orders up his mechadendrite ass...unless he wants a daemonic incursion and the Ordo Malleus declaring Exterminatus on us. I will take all responsibility. Give the order to pull back, then fire upon that thing with every neutron laser we have."
Stroika hesitated for a moment. "Very well, sir."
At that moment, either one of the Vanguard or one of the red Tau from the Farsight Enclaves accidentally tripped over something. I didn't see it clearly, but I could see the arch glowing and coming to life, the space captured within its foul curvature warping and spiraling. Red, tainted energies crackled and danced around the center, whirling into an insidious maelstrom. A single red appendage, tipped with black claws, emerged from the vortex, and the hysterical laughter of something inhuman filled all the vox channels.
As the shrill laughter resounded throughout my machine's systems, the corrupted voice causing me to wince and instinctively cover my ears, even more hideous appendages rose out of the raging maelstrom.
"Throne save us all," I whispered.
And then all hell broke loose.