Minerva put three bolts into the general's chest without hesitation, to no effect. His body twisted and expanded, feathered blue wings appearing as his face twisted into a beak. Minerva lowered her bolter and grabbed her combat blade, but she knew only two people in the room had any real hope of stopping the daemon.
Of the two, Medea was faster, leaping over the table and thrusting her force sword. It was met by a materializing staff in a crack of thunder. The daemon snarled a syllable in no human language, and with a gesture unleashed a crackling blue bolt at Medea, who didn't quite manage to twist aside and caught a glancing blow. The ceramite of her armor bubbled and warped.
Shane fired, a raging bolt of light striking the creature in the eye. It didn't even deign to pay attention, intent on the librarian in front of it. Medea brought her blade up to parry a stroke of its staff, and Minerva could see instantly she wasn't moving with her usual minimalist precision. The precognitive abilities she usually relied on were obstructed, and without that she was no more than a passible swordswoman.
She was, however, buying time. The Inquisitor had raised his staff and begun a chant in a language no human throat was meant to voice, lightning crackling around him. The daemon turned on him and Medea interposed, this time managing to cut the bolt of fire out of the air. Minerva's blade plunged into the daemon's back and melted. She grabbed at its wings, hoping to break them by main force, and was rewarded with a kick to the chest that threw her across the room. Most of the mortals had fled, while the tech-priest ineffectually poured plasma and coherent light into the daemon from a quartet of weapon arms.
The daemon seemed almost confused, probing at Medea's guard hesitantly. It made continual false starts, interrupting swings of its staff to pull back well clear of Medea's force sword. It began and interrupted arcane gestures, only occasionally completing them. Medea held her ground, parrying the occasional completed swing, staff meeting blade with thunderous roars.
Guarded by the librarian, the inquisitor completed his chant. Lightning stabbed out from his staff, surrounding the daemon in a crackling cage. It screamed in denial, striking out at the cage, but to no effect. The cage closed in on it, and the daemon vanished with a roar of inrushing air.
The inquisitor staggered, leaning on his staff. "I didn't think that was going to work," he admitted. "Actually, I expected it to age us to dust or rip the space apart. It barely used any sorcery at all."
"Dependent on its foresight," Medea replied. "Like me. It wasn't alone."
Minerva strode out the door, beyond the dampening field. The mortals had stopped in the hallway, probably due to the lurid blue flashes reflecting from around the corner. "All squads, full combat deployment on sector command. Daemonic attack. Crew, prepare to repel boarders." Acknowledgements crackled back; the relay in the Thunderhawk was still up. She heard a banshee-like shriek from the direction of the checkpoint, and cackling voices that suddenly cut off. The blue flashes stopped too.
"Mayumi is okay then," the Inquisitor remarked.
"Will she attack us?" Minerva was under no illusions about her ability to bring down the monster outside. If Medea had her foresight back, she might manage it, but even then the explosion would take down half the building.
"She is very stable for an Eversor," the man replied, not exactly reassuringly. "Even when she's in combat mode she can pick her targets."
General Solon was trying the vox. "S company, respond. S company, come in." Hissing static was his only answer.
"How widespread is this?" Shane asked. "Is it planet-wide?"
"Orbital assets report incursion," one of the techpriests droned. "Scrapcode infection occurring. Phenomenon is system-wide."
"Do you have any reinforcements for us?" Minerva asked the Inquisitor.
"Certain Astartes specialists," he replied. "I've already contacted them, but they weren't on deployment standby. I also have a unit of stormtroopers, but they're not really armed for fighting daemons. I've called them anyway."
A black blur rounded the corner. Mayumi, the woman with the painting. She moved fast, impossibly fast, even faster than an Aeldari exarch. In one hand she held a monstrous pistol, in the other a jet-black rod, a sword hanging at her waist. She halted gracefully and faced the inquisitor. "Target tasking?" she asked.
"The guards?" the inquisitor asked.
"Mem is fine. The others are dead. Burned from inside. Daemons came out. The pink ones, then they were the blue ones. Malachi, target tasking?" Her eyes were darting back and forth, bloodshot and dilated. The tranquilizers were gone, replaced with frenzon and slaught.
"The sanctioned psyker pens," he replied. "Eliminate possessed, eliminate daemons. Preserve unpossessed."
"Confirm tasking." Mayumi blurred away. Her stormtrooper minder came around the corner, hellgun at the ready.
"We need to get to the strategium," Lady General Brant said, "coordinate a response."
"No," an admiral who Minerva didn't recognize said. "In the event of an attack on the base key personnel go to the shelters. There's one in the building next door."
"Message traffic from both locations is contaminated," the tech-priest who'd spoken before droned. "Ninety-seven percent probability of daemonic control. Recommend extraction by Astartes transport until situation is stabilized."
"My drop pods will be here in three minutes," Minerva informed them. "We can evacuate then, and I will give you use of the Alecto's strategium. Until then, this position has at least been cleared."
"And it has only one way in or out," Solon noted. "Unless they can come in through the walls."
"With difficulty," Malachi said. "Astartes, take the door; I'll work on warding us. Everyone else, watch the walls."
They complied, although Minerva wasn't certain how the mortals would perform if something did actually come through the walls. It was likely the closest they'd had to personal combat experience in decades was being rushed to shelter by S company troops. The magos's combat programming should be reliable, at least.
Arachne's power axe split the bounding pink horror in two, both halves transforming into new blue beasts. Her servo-arm caught one even as it formed, and she brought her axe up to split the other. A handful of remaining combat servitors were advancing at her side, roaring chainblades slicing through daemonic flesh. Behind her, Skitarii had formed a firing line and were shooting into the daemonic mass entering the Titan bay. As usual when facing the horrors of the warp, advanced weaponry only unreliably functioned, sometimes phasing through without effect.
They weren't the only one shooting; some of the pink creatures were throwing warp fire. It clung to armored plate, sometimes oozing through gaps to reach the flesh components of the Skitarii. Still, it didn't burn with its usual intensity; the holy ground of the Machine God rejected the unholy presence.
Even as the battle raged, another fight was taking place on an informational plane. The noosphere boiled with scrapcode and code-phages, contesting with aegis barriers and purge programs. Arachne's implants invoked rites of purification as she struck, fighting back the data-daemon trying to access their augmetics. She'd considered cutting off her connection, but that would leave the Skitarii exposed, and her without a view of the overall battle.
"Arachne, status?" Minerva's voice came over the vox.
"Daemons are trying to take the Titans," Arachne replied. "The ones I recognize are Tzeenchian." She sidestepped a blast of blue flame from a serpentine horror, which was struck by multiple phosphor rounds. All but one of them phased through harmlessly; the last burned a hole in the daemon's skull. "The Skitarii are holding, for now. Heavy scrapcode-"she slashed through another of the serpent beasts "-but we're fighting it off."
"Will the Titans walk?"
"They were cold," Arachne replied. "The Princeps made it to the machines but the rites of awakening are complex. It will take thirty-seven more minutes for the Warhounds to activate. The Warlord was disabled for repairs and will take several hours." She considered the situation for a moment. "If they don't run out of daemons we'll be overrun before then. The Titans will walk, but not for us."
There was a pause as Minerva conferred with someone else. "Inquisitor Malachi is dispatching Astartes reinforcements by teleport; stand by for their arrival."
"Right, we'll do that." One of the combat servitors convulsed suddenly, overwhelmed by scrapcode. It was turning to face Arachne, weapon arms rising, when she split its skull with an axe blow, then dragged the blade down to cut the primary power conduits. "You know, for these guys this attack seems pretty straightforward."
Minerva considered that for a moment. "It does, yes." She fired a three-shot burst into the blue manta that had just flown into the security room and addressed Malachi. "My techmarine points out this does not appear to as subtle as expected for a Tzeentchian operation."
"There's a large-scale cult in the region that was active on this planet until quite recently," Malachi replied. He was in the process of burning some kind of runes into the walls, not pausing as he spoke. "They'd been preparing a series of major rituals, but none of the survivors could tell us anything useful. Likely they were intended to coincide with this."
"Evidently you missed some," Solon growled, then blanched. It seemed he was more frightened by the prospect of antagonizing an inquisitor than a daemonic invasion. Minerva had never been able to work out why mortals found some things more terrifying than others.
"No," Medea spoke up. "The cause isn't local."
"Do you know what happened?" Malachi asked sharply.
"The Eye opens," she replied. "The Emperor's light is withdrawn." Her eyes came into focus. "The local surge is already fading." She moved suddenly, driving her force sword through the wall next to the door, and was rewarded with a daemonic scream and the crack of inrushing air.
"Will they be forced to withdraw from the materium?" the techpriest queried.
"Eventually," Malachi replied, completing a rune. "If there's not another surge, maybe… twelve hours, unless they're able to find an anchor. They'd be able to persist longer if they possessed their hosts rather than using them as gateways."
The drop pods slammed into the rockcrete of the landing pad, their mounted storm bolters opening up. Sergeant Helen leapt to her feet, power sword in hand, and jumped out of the pod before it was even fully opened, seeking targets.
She wasn't disappointed; a quartet of manta-like creatures shrieked and dove for the arriving Astartes. Helen activated her jump-jets and met the leader in midair, slashing it apart with her blade, then boosted clear of the others, leaving them to her squad.
There were targets on the ground, too, scattered masses of pink and blue. Helen grinned exultantly as she dived into their rear, dodging a shower of flame on approach. It felt good to fight as assault marines should; she'd had enough of lugging around a bolter, providing mobile firepower instead of a smashing hammer blow.
This, though, was a time for blade work, not the ranged engagements the chapter preferred. Her blade bit deep, cleaving into daemonic flesh as easily as the material. She kept moving, not presenting an easy target for the horrors to concentrate fire on, while simultaneously staying out of the way of her sisters in the tactical and devastator squads.
Cornelia's tactical squad had fixed bayonets, and mounted a charge to meet up with Helen. Two of her marines were armed with flamers, the blazing promethium proving as effective against the daemons as blades. Medea had explained why once, but Helen hadn't really understood. Enough to know it was the case; leave the details to librarians and inquisitors.
Europa and Atlante had opted to engage at range anyways, not that the latter's devastators had much choice. Their firing drill was as sharp as ever, at least, putting trios of bolts dead center in daemonic skulls. More often than not, they had to try more than once for a bolt to bite.
The last daemon on the landing pad soon fell, cut apart by a chainblade. Helen took stock; one of her squad's runes burned red, her armor breached by a shower of warpflame. The body was twisted horribly, spikes of bone radiating out through the breach. Several tactical marines were down, one being tended by Vesta. She could see the Thunderhawk behind the drop pods, and it looked intact.
With no threats immediately around her, she finally noticed the sky. The regular blue was split, tainted by an iridescent wound, red and purple bleeding out. It took her a moment to realize the sun was in front of it, that it wasn't merely a local warp rift. A new Maelstrom, within their own sector. It must be close, to fill so much of the sky.
A problem for another time, and other hands. As she led her squad towards the headquarters building that the captain had gone to, she tried tuning her vox to the guard channels. The base channels were all hissing static and incomprehensible whispers she knew better than to try to puzzle out; the communications relay must have been overrun. The official backup channels were jammed too, but running through unallocated channels in the military band she found several squads had retuned their beads to the same one. Sounded like a commissar had his work cut out for him rallying them at the chapel.
She sent the channel to Europa, who set about trying to get some useful information out of them. Probably futile, but Europa had worked miracles with mortals before. Maybe having her on the channel would help to stabilize morale, at least.
Fortunately, the daemons didn't have much coordination either. They were scattered about in twos and threes, attacking whatever caught their interest rather than concentrating their forces. The design Minerva was always complaining about worked in her favor; there weren't any long, clear lines of fire for the daemons, even at the wreckage of security checkpoints. The tactical squads followed in their wake, watching for any emerging from buildings.
"Any word from the psyker pens?" she asked on the company channel. They'd either be the best weapon against the forces of the warp, or conduits for the enemy.
"Inquisitor sent an Eversor to handle that," Minerva replied.
"How does he even have- never mind." Best to avoid that section, then. "We're at the door to your building. Path back was cleared, but there's no telling if new ones have popped in."
"Medea says their window of opportunity is closed," Minerva replied. "They'd need a summoner now."
Mayumi rounded the corner into the square around the sanctioned psyker pens; the building was set apart from the others more for the comfort of the personnel than security. It was a cubical, windowless building, covered in carved silver wards.
The wards were smoking, blackened with corrosion, and the doors were melted and twisted, blasted open from the inside. Guards in the black armor of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica lay dead on the ground, with daemons clawing at the corpses. Two twisted humanoid figures stood among them, tentacles writhing beneath the remnants of robes. Lightning was crackling between them, flowing together. Mayumi didn't know what they were doing and cared even less.
Eliminate possessed, eliminate daemons. Images of attack patterns flickered through the red haze of her mind. The psykers were the priority target; psykers were always the priority target. She raised her executioner pistol and fired it in bolter mode at the one on the left, rushing towards the one on the right. Officio conditioning kept her aim steady, three bolts to the chest at exactly the cycle rate. They detonated against a flicker in the air, intercepted by a kine field.
The target of her charge raised a shield of his own, but the null rod in her hand cut through it without resistance, slamming into what was left of the psyker's face. The heavy rod, wielded by her enhanced strength, smashed through bone in a bloody spray. She instinctively swung twice more, shattering spine and ribs, knowing psykers did not die easily.
Euphoria flooded her at the kill, reward chemicals pumping from her implants. She didn't slow, turning on the other psyker with vicious speed and crossing the distance in a single enhanced leap, rod first. The kine field offered no more resistance than the last had. Her target tried ineffectually to dodge, but it was slow, so slow, and the null rod smashed home.
Eliminate daemons. There were still more kills to make. The warp-spawned nightmares were finally reacting, turning to face the engineered monster in their midst. Horrors born of primal fear, dread of what lay beyond the firelight, met one forged in twisted science, the fruit of the finest crafters of murderers in the history of mankind.
Perhaps against the subtler clades they would have stood a chance, but Mayumi was made for open battle. To her drugged perception, the blasts of warpflame floated lazily through the air, easily evaded or dispelled. They barely slowed her as she charged one daemon after another, the merest touch of the null rod splintering them into their blue, lesser kin, which fell just as easily. In seconds the ground outside was clear.
She turned towards the shattered gates. There were more targets inside, more to kill and-
Preserve unpossessed burned like acid in her mind, her command conditioning warring with her kill-thirst. The inquisitor had commanded it, her assigned handler. To defy him was to defy the God-Emperor Himself. Her artificially heightened devotion burned through even the fury of the combat drugs.
Arachne felt the surge of a nearby teleporter, and suddenly the crackle of galvanic rifles was joined by the thunder of storm bolters. The daemons screamed, blazing fire consuming them wherever the bolt rounds struck. The pressure of bodies coming in through the door suddenly dissipated, panic spreading among the daemonic ranks.
Arachne turned to examine the new arrivals; five grey-clad terminators, wielding blue-bladed swords and halberds that crackled with witch-light. Their armor was coated in runes of purity, and seals dangled from their shoulders. She felt a stab of envy as she examined their equipment, clearly forged to the highest quality. She did what she could, but the Astral Amazons had always lacked access to the great forges. Their truly fine weaponry had been bartered for with forge worlds or gifted from other chapters; a few items had returned with deathwatch veterans.
These marines, presumably the Inquisitor's reinforcements, were all armed like chapter champions. Their storm bolters barely recoiled as they fired, holding stable on target. Their joints moved like no terminator armor Arachne had ever seen, smoothly and swiftly. She could tell their force weapons had a smoother psi-matrix than Medea's sword, although they didn't seem to be carrying as much energy.
"Hold your positions," the lead terminator boomed. "We will take the battle to the enemy."
"There are data-daemons in the complex," Arachne advised. "We're holding the noosphere clean, but they may have compromised anything they've made direct contact with."
The terminators didn't deign to respond, continuing onwards in vox-silence. Well, they knew what they were doing, hopefully. If they were as well trained as they were equipped, they'd be fine without a tactical briefing. Might already have a better idea where everything is than she did, given they were all psykers, if the force weapons were any indication.
"Thunderhawk One will take you back to the Alecto," Minerva said, pausing on the landing field. She'd dispatched Europa to the chapel, to link up with the surviving resistance. "Sergeant Artemis will escort you to the strategium. An incursion had occurred and been repelled, but the ship is still being searched for survivors."
"You're not joining us?" Solon asked, as the rest of the officers filed into the Thunderhawk.
Minerva shook her head. "My place now is in the field." She turned to Malachi. "Will you be accompanying them?"
"I'm most needed here," he said. "My associates can take care of themselves. Besides, I'm the I and my stormtroopers are the only ones who can control Mayumi. To an extent."
"Very well. We should collect her." There was little doubt she was still alive; the death blast of an Eversor would have been noticeable even at this distance. "And any psykers she managed to save."
"Do you have any advice for killing daemons with bolters?" Atlantae called. She'd gotten her devastators positioned to cover the approaches they hadn't yet swept with a lascannon and heavy bolter each, with the women who lacked heavy weaponry positioned to move to support either.
"It takes specialist ammunition, I'm afraid," Malachi replied. "You wouldn't be able to use the variety my associates brought. There are no other techniques besides sheer weight of fire."
Minerva felt a stab of resentment. Another thing we don't have she thought. The only specialist round they'd been able to get their hands on were kraken rounds; she hadn't even heard of a source of anti-daemon rounds. She wondered what chapter his associates were from, to have such things. Or was it an organization similar to the Deathwatch? She hadn't heard of any Malleus equivalent, but they kept their secrets close.
"We'll just have to rely on blades," she said. She'd retrieved a replacement for hers from the drop-pods, but regretted leaving her personal power sword in her quarters in favor of her bolter. Regretted not waking the ancients, too; they had flamers to accompany their assault cannons and missile pods. For that matter, she could have used her suit of terminator armor, but that wouldn't have been very suitable for the meeting she intended, so she'd opted for regular armor.
"Helen, take Medea to clear the comm array. Stop it from broadcasting scrapcode; ideally without damaging it but use melta charges if you have to," she ordered. "Cornelia, accompany me and the inquisitor on the way to the psyker pens. Atlantae, continue to hold this position. Vesta, stay with the wounded."
The squads broke off as indicated, two of Cornelia's left to Vesta's care. If they'd been in a condition to be moved, she'd have brought them and the devastators, but one look at the mutated flesh Vesta was hacking away from the armor breaches put paid to that plan. At least they'd been limb hits; the progenoid glands would be intact, which might matter sooner rather than later.
They advanced at a jog, keeping a cordon around Malachi, who struggled to match even that pace. That was still better than she'd expect of most mortals, but it seemed he wasn't the sort of inquisitor who commanded from a desk. He was fast to react, too, flinging bolts of lightning from his staff at daemons almost as soon as the Astartes opened up. It was far more effective than the bolt rounds, some aspect of its arcane makeup opposing the daemon's presence in the materium.
Listening to reports from her sergeants, Minerva soon determined the psykers were drawing the daemons to attack. Europa's advance to the chapel had been almost uncontested, while she and Helen were fighting wave after wave. Most of them seemed to be the pink blobs, cackling and capering before they burst into the blue ones, but there were a few larger serpentine ones in the mix. She resolved to extract some proper reporting names from the inquisitor.
When they reached the psyker pens, they saw no immediate sign of Mayumi, beyond a pair of mutated corpses among the dead guards. The shattered doors and smoking wards were not promising, but Minerva knew the pens were split up individually, each independently warded. It was possible some had held. Malachi surveyed the building and clicked his tongue. "Sloppy. Whoever did those wards didn't know what they were doing."
Maybe if your Ordo was less secretive, they would have Minerva thought. She didn't voice it; she wasn't in a position to judge what knowledge was too dangerous for the common people, and she'd seen the results of Chaos corruption often enough. The Inquisition had its duty and she had hers.
She decided to leave Cornelia's squad outside, to lessen the chances they provoked the Eversor. As they entered the building, Mayumi found them first, rushing up with the same blurring speed she'd shown before, and addressed Malachi again. "Building clear. Out of targets. New targets?"
"Did any psykers survive?" Malachi asked.
"Five. One attacked, now there are four." Apparently Mayumi was only so stable. "Guards dead, all dead. New targets?"
"Assist the Astartes," Malachi said, speaking slowly and clearly. "Do not attack the Astartes. Do not attack unpossessed humans. Eliminate daemons and possessed."
"Yes," Mayumi said unhappily. "Assist Astartes."
"Helmets off," Medea suddenly ordered, already disconnecting her facemask from the psychic hood.
"Do it," Helen instructed her squad, pulling off her own and clamping it to her side. Technically Medea wasn't in the chain of command, but on the rare occasions she spoke everyone listened. Especially when it came to matters of warpcraft. It was an easy guess as to why they shouldn't be using autosenses near a data-daemon.
The communications relay loomed over them, a mass of dishes and antennae. It was purely for in-system communication; the astropathic choirs were elsewhere on the planet. Right now, the antennae were crackling with witchfire, arcs of it radiating out from the main dishes. The bases of the antennae were wrapped in shifting shadows, which didn't seem to match the light.
"Do you think you'll be able to clear it?" Helen asked Medea.
"By banishing the daemon," she replied. "It will likely be in the main chamber."
Medea led the way into the building, force sword raised. The security checkpoint was shattered, the guards the unrecognizable piles of flesh that had become so familiar over the past twenty minutes. No threat, just shadows. Shadows that moved without the light changing. Shadows that stood up.
Helen raised her precious plasma pistol and opened fire, immediately joined by the rest of the squad's bolt pistols. The plasma pistol struck one target and it burned away like flash paper. The shadows struck by bolts reeled momentarily as huge holes opened in them, then reformed and moved to attack.
The shadows swarmed forwards, forms rippling and changing. Fingers became claws. Horns emerged. The muzzle flashes of the bolt pistols outlined them, tarry black standing out among the light. The real shadows were missing, leaving the room oddly bare.
"Cover Medea," Helen ordered snapping off another shot. "Blades." She doubted chainblades would prove more effective than the bolt pistols, but they might at least stun the creatures.
Medea swept her force blade through the first two shadows to close. Light spread out from where the blade touched, consuming them in an instant. She swept back without resetting, catching a shadow that tried to strike her exposed left with the tip of the blade. Helen's plasma pistol struck the one aiming for her right in that moment of vulnerability.
Recognizing her as the true threat, the shadows tried to swarm around Medea, to be met by the hacking blades of Helen's squad. Cutting them apart delayed them for perhaps half a second each strike, enough to keep them off Medea's back while she disposed of the ones in front. After two more shots, Helen joined them with her power blade, not willing to risk a fifth so soon.
The shadows struck back, clawing at the armor of the Astartes when they could slip past the blades. One caught at Helen's right arm, and she felt the servos seize, struggling to reverse her movements and bring her blade to her throat, before Medea's blade cut through the shadow and restored Helen's control. She raised her left arm well clear of the shadows; if they got into the plasma pistol they'd overload it for sure.
One marine, Daphne, overextended herself and was swarmed. She convulsed, managing to drop her weapons as her armor tried to force them up. Her backpack began emitting an ominous whine. Medea leapt to her side, avoiding questing claws by the barest of margins, and struck Daphne's shoulder, cutting into the armor just enough to strike a cable. The shadows infesting her armor burned away even as Medea turned to resume her own defense. Daphne staggered back, dropping to her knees.
Soon the last of the shadows were burned away, consumed by the force sword's light. Helen turned to Daphne. "Can you continue?"
Daphne stood to retrieve her weapons. "I think so, although my left arm power is cut. It got into my black carapace, though. I could feel it in my mind."
"Check her," Helen ordered Medea. Medea stepped over and stared into Daphne's eyes, then nodded.
"Clear," she said. "May need a chaplain." Which, since their chaplain was hundreds of light years away with the Megaera, meant the captain.
The security room lead into a hallway, with scriptoriums and secure receiving rooms for Magenta-level communications radiating off it. The doors were all open, and scribes lay dead on the floor, heads smashed open by brute force. A handful of servitors were among the fallen, brought down by laspistol fire. So the servitors had been compromised, only to be expected.
The main control chamber lay at the end of the hall, its doors sealed. A keycard reader blinked next to the door. They could probably have found a card among the corpses, but Helen wasn't about to risk touching any powered system in this place. Nor was she going to walk into an obvious kill-zone. Instead, she directed her squad into the scriptorium closest to the main chamber, placed a melta charge against the wall, then charged through as soon as it detonated.
She was greeted by a vast array of control lecterns, hololith arrays, and writhing cables. The cables all gathered to a central mass of shadows, which had completely hidden the primary hololith projector. The screens scrolled endlessly with runes that hurt her eyes to glance at, and the air stank of sorcery.
The room contained other figures, too, and not only the servitors she'd been expecting. Several red-robed tech-priests were connected to the cabling by their mechadendrites, and fifteen red-clad figures were pointing hellguns at the door. "Skitarii!" Helen called, firing her pack to make a low jump to engage them in close before they could turn to react.
The first Skitarii was still bringing its hellgun around when her blade clove through its armor and the flesh and implants beneath. The others made their turn in time to fire on the incoming marines, their overpowered lasguns searing deep scores into ceramite. It wasn't enough to stop the charge at such a short distance.
Cables lashed up from the floor to intercept, trying to wrap the Amazons, spitting arcs of purple lightning. Their jumps carried them past the first wave, cleaving into the Skitarii. This group of the augmetic soldiers weren't intended for close combat, without the implanted blades of their melee kin. Their bayonets skidded harmlessly off armor, and their own armor wasn't enough to stand up to the adamantine teeth of chainblades. Bolt pistol rounds found those not engaged in the initial rush.
Helen turned to the shadow in the center of the room, which was rising from the hololith. It formed a figure with a serpent's head, feathery wings, and four clawed arms. A new wave of cables lashed out, this time finding their marks. Helen's blade cut at the cables that wrapped around her legs, and their ends fell away, their animating power severed. She raised her plasma pistol and fired, hoping it would burn as easily as the lesser ones.
The shadow hissed as it was struck by the bolt, a blast of fire coating its torso, but didn't fall. "The accursed silver knights may have kept us from the Titans, but you will be a fine prize to take to my master," it snarled.
Helen overcharged her pistol and fired again, causing the creature to stagger. It recovered quickly, unleashing a new wave of cables. It was working, but she didn't have the ammunition to finish it off. "Medea, can you get through?"
"Target the tech-priests," she replied, hacking down cables before they could touch her armor, then striking a servitor directly through the power cell. The squad complied, firing bolt pistols into the robed figures. The daemon shrieked as each one fell, the cables slowing.
Medea advanced into the room, her blade dancing. The squad moved to cover her. The cables they'd already severed were growing back, trying to surround them. They advanced in a circle of blades, pressing through the rings of control lecterns towards the waiting daemon. Servitors rushed towards them, then were easily cut down; mere data-handlers rather than combat or even cargo varients.
The shadow lashed out suddenly, striking for Helen, only for Medea to interpose her force sword, sending it reeling back in a flash of light. Helen signaled the squad back; Medea couldn't cover them all and didn't need the distraction of trying. Helen herself continued on, sticking to Medea's back.
Possibilities spilled out before Medea like a shattered mirror. One step forward in guard position and the daemon would strike high right and send cables from low left. One step left, and it would strike high left simultaneous with the cables. One step back and she'd bump into Helen, which would unbalance her strike against cables from behind. One step right and the daemon would hesitate, but that wouldn't get her closer to her goal.
Each possibility branched, parries and evasions. Most of them failed, saw the cables or the claws catch her armor. She didn't see far enough to reach the outcomes of those paths, but knew what they would be; the machine spirit of her armor overwhelmed, the daemon pouring in through her interface ports. She selected a more promising path and stepped forwards.
The clawed hand swept down from high right, and she brought her blade up and pivoted rightwards, striking the tip of her force sword against the claws and surging power through it as the pivot brought her clear of the cables. The instant the blade connected, blasting away the claw, she reversed her sweep and brought it down to cut the cables before they altered their course.
With her blade down to the left, the next attack was again high right from the undamaged claw on that side. Too fast to recover and parry, but high enough to duck. She had a split second to consider letting it strike her psychic hood and trying to banish the daemon through a direct contest of wills, but that fight would last beyond her combat sight. She ducked it entirely, bringing her blade up to a guard stance.
Another shower of possibilities. Claws from both sides this time. Cautious of her sword; it would pull back on the right if she feinted, leaving her enough time to reverse to the left. Two contacts, two destroyed claws, but the first lost was reforming. Forward and left, cut the next wave of cables. Claws from the right, delay the parry so it would commit.
Helen's presence was a constant aid, keeping cables from looping wide around and coming from behind. She knew all too well that when surrounded it was easy to produce an unwinnable array, where all paths led to ruin. With a guard at her back, she walked down the paths of foresight, until her blade plunged into the daemon's chest.
The cables dropped; the lightning died. The few screens still powered stopped showing runes, replacing them with dense lines of gibberish numbers and letters. She felt the daemonic presence fade from the building. "Put your helmets back on." She knew Helen's question before it was asked, but let her speak it aloud.
"Are the systems tainted?" Helen asked.
Possible answers spilled out, same as in battle. She ignored them; she'd always tell her sisters the truth. "The warp is gone from them. Their machine spirits will need a tech-priest." Pity the daemon had possessed the ones assigned.
Helen started her report to Minerva, and Medea took the moment of quiet to meditate on the further future. It didn't reveal itself as simply as the immediate, but the veil that had been upon it was lifting. It was now clear the Primordial Annihilator had concealed their strike from the eyes of seers, though such a vast catastrophe could not be hidden entirely.
For now, she focused on the next day. Death and battle every way she looked, but she didn't see the signs of a new warp surge. The daemons should dissipate on the inquisitor's schedule. She turned to focus on the company, and felt an odd resistance; her sight turned aside from Arachne. She pushed through, eventually seeing Arachne speak to an aura of silver fire that burned against Medea's sight. Apparently the inquisitor's associates had defenses.
The others were clearly visible, to the extent anything was clear. Easiest to see was if she said nothing, allowed events to play out. With the sanctionites secured, Minerva would begin a sectional clear, sending survivors to the chapel. More injuries suffered, perhaps a death, but they would find some.
Helen had finished her report, and Minerva had new orders, exactly as predicted. "Sweep through the officer's quarters, then lead them to the chapel. Bring anyone you find along the way," she instructed. Medea ceased her meditations and moved to obey; against this foe her blade was needed as much as her sight.
