Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 147
Vorshaan's chainglaive swept through a surprised Frater in a spray of viscera, adamantine teeth flinging red droplets over the rest. The men gawped as a towering Night Lord alighted the gantry with an act of murder. Vorshaan didn't give them time to recover, swinging his weapon about to tear a red furrow through their ranks. Golden lasrifles fell as he sundered three more lives, easily overpowering them. A thrust to through the belly sent a fifth collapsing to the floor allowing him to free one gauntlet to backhand another over the railing. A seventh he killed with a lateral swipe to the neck from his weapon's length. The eighth and ninth he killed with blunt chops from his open hand that impacted organs. The tenth he caught by the neck and hoisted aloft, swinging the Frater over the drop to daggle over a ten-story plummet.
"Too easy," Vorshaan sighed as he glanced over the railing. Far below bedlam was erupting among the Fraters and Tech-Adepts, milling crowds thrown into disarray as Chaos Marines appeared from nowhere. Raptor squads soared over the perimeter, crashing upon defence positions with chainswords revving and taloned feet sinking into wet meat. Havoc squads put missiles into gun towers and blew up gun nests, as bronzed Rhinos crashed over lines of Razorwire, tracks effortlessly overcoming the barriers to disgorge Night Lords into the base's centre.
The Fraters were panicking, unable to understand how such an attack could have come this far behind the front line. A repair centre, for the recovery and rebuilding of Tanks and APCs, but also more. The once-brutally stark and efficient Imperial war machine had become degraded over the millennia, filled with fanes and pointless rituals. Vorshaan could see where Tech-Priests had established shrines to their clockwork god and where groups of Enginseers wasted time with incense and applications of unguent. It was a sham, truly the Imperium deserved to fall, but that didn't mean they were powerless. At the very centre of the camp arose a towering structure, soaring over everything else. Rigid walls, with heavy weapon emplacements around the top, and bulging retro-rockets crammed about the base. This was Vorshaan's objective.
"Please…" the Frater dangling from his outstretched hand begged, "Please don't kill me…"
"Where are they?" Vorshaan mused, ignoring the plea.
"I'll do anything…"
"I know stealth is their forte, but the attack has already started."
"I'll serve you, I'll renounce the Throne!"
"Oh, there you are. Late as usual."
Far below the shadows were coming alive. Fraters fleeing in terror from the savage giants storming the perimeter were horrified to find more emerging in their rear. Dark Tusks appeared from the night, their bolters barking with hoarse coughs. The XIXth had owned the shadows in a way the VIIIth could only envy, but these ones were changed. Armour had corroded, leaving pitted scars over broad plates and they seemed to have shed mass, become ravenous shades of eternal hunger. Their backpacks were crowned with triple marks of Nurgle and their eyes burned with green fire. Vorshaan had seen Plague Marines before, bloated and corpulent things, but the Dark Tusks seemed to be losing mass, becoming skeletal famine victims. Odd, but they killed just fine.
"Not bad," Vorshaan sniffed, "But they need to buck up their ideas."
"I'll be your slave," the Frater whimpered in his grip.
"What… oh, I forgot about you," Vorshaan blinked.
"Anything you want, I'll do anything you desire…."
"That might appeal to Fulgrim's degenerates… but unfortunately for you I have standards," Vorshaan sneered.
The Dusk Prince opened his grip and the man vanished. Vorshaan spent a few seconds enjoying the sound of fading screams, then the wet thud of mortal flesh impacting on Ferrocrete brought a nod of satisfaction. Vorshaan spread his wings and took to the sky, soaring over the embattled repair base. Fires were spreading, lighting up the night sky as flaming Promethium spread over broad aprons and wrapped vehicles in a red embrace. Fraters and adepts were fleeing everywhere, but there was nowhere to run, the Chaos Marines were cutting them down in scores.
Vorshaan looked for places he needed to intervene but found little to interest him. The Guardsmen were few, expecting no opposition this far behind the line, and the bulk of the station's personnel were support crew. Poor sport, Vorshaan lamented, this was proving far too easy. Then something caught his eye. Empex was among his Brothers, ploughing through opposition with relentless fervour. The Master of the Dark Tusks was wrapped in warp-potential, the seeds of Nurgle finding pestilent bloom at last. His form was hulking but in a skeletal way the green glow of his eyes could be seen even from above. His flail left a thick grey smoke in the air, flickering with white spots. Vorshaan saw Empex smite a knot of Fraters, and their wounds grew over with fungal moulds within seconds.
Interested Vorshaan banked about and looped around for a closer inspection. The Dark Tusks moved off but their victims were not still. Arms twitched, legs scrabbled for purchase and heads lolled about. For a moment the Dusk Prince thought they'd left the victims alive, but then Cordyceps tendrils pushed out of eye sockets and mouths, punching through skin like pincushions. Empex's victims lurched back into horrific unlife, nervous systems corrupted by fungal moulds, sent staggering off to find new victims to share their contagion with. Vorshaan was impressed, Empex had grown mighty in a very short amount of time. This could be very useful, but also very dangerous. Vorshaan resolved to keep a close eye on his new ally, lest this power be turned against him.
An explosion caught his eye, near the base of the towering structure. Instantly Vorshaan curved about, heading for the fight. Here a knot of Fraters had managed to erect sandbagged emplacements at the entrance, using torrents of Heavy Bolter fire to hold back a pair of Night Lord Claws. It was a troubling obstacle, not insurmountable, but annoying, yet Vorshaan was feeling like stretching his wings. The Dusk Prince flapped his pinions for altitude, then tucked them in and dropped hard. He struck the entrenched defenders like a meteor, his weapon a streak of light in the reflected firelight. The Fraters screamed as he tore them limb from limb, his motions so fast they could barely see him. They thought a Daemon had come among them and one may as well have, for Vorshaan took a dozen men apart in seconds.
"We had them," Claw-leader Xreshan protested as the Night Lords emerged from cover.
"Too slow," Vorshaan scoffed.
Claw-leader Mekret snarled, "With the boons of Nurgle we would not need to pause."
Vorshaan eyed him, "Tread carefully Mekret, you veer dangerously close to worship."
"The Dark Tusks employ the favour of the Gods freely!" Mekret protested.
"The Dark Tusks are fools and dupes, employing power they do not control. We use them to further our goals, but we are not so short-sighted as to become pawns of ruin. We were lackeys to a false master once, never again. The Night Lords are masters of our own destiny, remember that well Mekret."
Vorshaan turned his back on them and entered the broad entrance. The roof was high and the interior ringed with arcane tools and heavy-lifting cranes. Yet what drew Vorshaan's attention was the soaring statue within. Feet broad as a tank, legs made of Adamantium girders and a torso large enough to house a plasma reactor. One arm was a mighty triple-barrelled turbolaser, the other a Gatling blaster taller than he was. A triangular head hung below a sweeping shoulder carapace, which was crowned with an enormous missile pod. A Titan, Reaver-class, God-Engine and city killer. The size of it took the breath away, the power of its weapons could obliterate the Chaos Marines in an instant and across its chest was emblazed the name, "Silentio Gravis."
"Quickly, before they can awaken it!" Vorshaan snapped as he ran for an open hatch. A man was trying to seal it shut, desperate hands tugging at the heavy door, but Vorshaan's fist caught him by the shoulder and flung him into the rim so hard his brains were dashed out. The Dusk Prince folded his wings back as he ducked within, leading with his Chainglaive. The interior would be cramped for a mortal, but for a Space Marine it was claustrophobic. The roof was low and the walls pressed his shoulders, forcing him to stoop and turn as he advanced.
The leg passage led to a narrow circular stair, which forced the Night Lords to progress in single file. Vorshaan led the way, feeling constricted in the narrow confines. In all his millennia he'd never actually been inside a Titan and he found himself eyeing strange devices, enormous support rods and cogs the size of tanks. Such strange beasts these Tech-Priests were, inhuman in their fanatical quest for efficiency and order. Grinding human flesh in the gears of industry, greasing the cogs of productivity with the blood of the downtrodden. A single Mechanicus Forge World killed more humans than the Night Lords ever had, plus they openly defied the Imperial Truth with their faith in the supernatural, and yet it had been the VIIIth who'd been scorned for their practices. Truly the Emperor's hypocrisy was offensive.
Vorshaan had just climbed past the Titan's hips when a flash of incoming fire caught his shoulder. The impact of surface layers vaporising was staggering and made him hunker down. The stair had opened up to a long gantry, stretching between the two hips, enclosed in pipes and energy conduits of ferocious weight. At the far end stood a Tech-Priest in a red robe, his arms tipped with bulbous energy projectors, one of them glowing with vented heat, the other whining as it built up in power.
"Frak!" Vorshaan spat as the Tech-Priest let off another shot, this one cratering his left pauldron so deeply the automechanisms beneath were exposed. Splintered Ceramite rained on his boots and he knew a direct hit on his breastplate would punch straight through. Vorshaan had no room to manoeuvre, he could not fly nor evade in this tight space, so chose to attack. As the Tech-priest's weapons cycled the Dusk Prince drew back his right arm and threw the Chainglaive. The heavy weapon shot down the corridor like a cast spear, smashing into the Adept's chest with a heavy thud.
The Augmented man did not fall, his innards mostly metal and his bulk doughty. He swayed though, his aim ruined and in that instant Vorshaan was moving. There was just enough room to spread his wings and snap forward, propelling himself after his weapon like a rocket. In an instant Vorshaan had crossed the distance, grabbing the Chainglaive that was sticking out of the Tech-Priest's chest. He transferred all his momentum to the haft, pushing the head even deeper, then heaved upwards. Adamatine teeth snarled as they sawed through metal and circuit, motor clogging on oil and wiring. It took all the Traitor's strength to rip his weapon out, but he did so, bisecting the Tech-Priest from sternum to the tip of his scalp. Vorshaan grinned as the Adept fell backwards, that had been true sport.
"Secure the reactor!" Vorshaan barked at his underlings as he made for the next stair. The Dusk Prince left them behind as he wriggled upwards, passing the beating heart of the Titan to rise to the upper decks. The heat grew intense and the sense of energy in the walls was oppressive, but still he pressed on. His goal was so close he could taste it, and he would not be denied. Soon enough he reached the cockpit and was confronted by the Moderatii.
Three burly men with cybernetic plugs in their heads confronted him, defiant to the last. The hatch was so narrow he couldn't even bring his Chainglaive to bear, so had to content himself with fists. It hardly mattered, his Ceramite gauntlet mashed in one face, shattered a ribcage so the jagged ends impaled the heart then snapped a neck with a sideways chop. For all their augmentations the Titan's crew proved no more resilient than any other mortal.
Vorshaan squeezed his bulk into the cockpit and found the Princeps bound to his throne. Numerous cords were buried in his spine and brain, leaving him unable to stand without assistance to remove them, yet he glared upwards with defiance in the eye. No fear, that was unusual , but then for one walking as God-Engine mortal fear was a remote concept.
"You will suffer for this scum!" the Princeps yelled.
"Yes, yes, yes," Vorshaan dismissed, "Knives and torture and pain-goads I expect."
"You are too late, I sent a distress call, the Imperium knows you are here. You won't escape before reinforcements reach us!"
"Escape?" Vorshaan scoffed as he bowed face-to-face, "I never said anything about escaping. I was counting on them coming."
The Princeps gawped in shock but Vorshaan's hand grabbed him by the shoulder. With terrible strength he ripped the man from the throne, exerting immense pressure on the cables. Woven by the finest Mechanicus arts the cabling did not snap, but the man's flesh did, sockets ripping out of his spine and skull in a series of wet pops. The cables fell trailing wet neural tissue over the floor, as the Princeps let out a brief scream, then his brain was violated and he died in a series of shuddering convulsions.
Vorshaan didn't care to watch and dropped the dying man to the deck. He eyed the throne and sighed, "Shame I don't have the implants to run this thing, I've always wanted a Titan. But it's served its purpose. The lapdogs can't fail to notice this attack and will come running after me. I do trust they won't wait too long, after all I don't want to be waiting all night to kill them. I can't wait to look into the Smoke Jaguar's eyes when I rip out their beating hearts."