"The Explorator fleet actually struck gold this time," Lord Takeda murmured as he surveyed the verdant fields before us.
, the venerable Cerastus Knight Lancer chassis in which he was ensconced in, crossed over the tall grass in loping strides, its shock lance crackling with disruptive energies as if in anticipation of hostiles, but there was nothing more threatening than the occasional saber felids that prowled the shadows of the fields, fleeing from the metal titans that now stalked their territory. "The data tallies with their reports...the perfect climate, as well as fertile soil for grain and crops, enough to feed a hundred hive worlds."
I silently agreed with his assessment as I studied the scrolling hololith of images fed by my visual auspex. The ghosts in my Throne Mechanicum stirred, excited by a world similar to the lush plains of Draconis III, and I couldn't help but feel excited over claiming this agri-world on the border of the Imperium. An explorator fleet had passed by this subsector years ago, marked this world as habitable and ripe for colonization, and as such, a lance of House Yato was detached from Fleet Tertius - one of the great Indomitus Fleets dispatched by the Lord Commander and Regent of Holy Terra to seize this planet.
"Shouldn't we have waited for the Astra Militarum regiments, though?" Kanda asked. His Questoris Knight Errant pattern Engetsu lumbered after the graceful Naginata, the younger pilot sweeping the plains with his mighty thermal cannon. He had a point. It would be one solar week before the combined arms regiment from Argent Prime arrive in their slow and titanic transport vessels, the infantry and tank crews commanded by General Adrian Muller.
"As much as I respect our peers in the Imperial Guard, they will be too slow," Takeda replied bluntly. He gestured with Naginata's spear toward the distance. "Remember the Martian Tech-priests' requests aboard the Kajira? They detected an anomaly on the planet's surface, and so we shall investigate. If it turns out to be that heretical warband whose fleet has been caught snooping around this subector by the Kajira's auspex, then we've to stamp out the infestation before it can take root."
"The coordinates that the Tech-priests supplied us are just ahead, Lord Takeda," Suzuki said deferentially, his Armiger Warglaive returning. Hebi was sprinting in a low run, waist-deep in tall ferns and crops, and felling what trees that blocked his path with its revving chain-cleaver. "Something's weird. It seems like they've set up...several altars or something."
"Whatever they're planning, it can't be good," Takeda decided. "Let's crush them before they can put their nefarious plans in motion."
At his command, the lance of House Yato strode forward, passing by ruins left by a pre-Old Night civilization - one lost to the madness of the Age of Strife millennia ago before being rediscovered by the resurgent Imperium. I stayed on the vox as I listened to the navigation officer aboard the Emperor-class battleship, Kajira, relay directions to our auspex.
It wasn't long before the altars that Suzuki mentioned came into view. Twisted idols of dark gods, painted with symbols that made my eyes water and my stomach sick with nausea, loomed ahead. Corpses were strewn about, piled in grotesque heaps as cultists ringed them, offering them as dark sacrifices to their malevolent patrons.
"Hit them hard. Leave none alive."
Takeda's voice was icy with fury, particularly when he had witnessed the gruesome scene of carnage. We followed, charging along the plains and charging our weapons to fire at the four icons that had been raised. Each was a different aspect of whatever foul deities the demented lunatics worshipped. I couldn't keep my eyes on them for too long, fearing that insanity would overtake my mind, but I caught a glimpse. One was a brutal warrior with a cleaver and an axe, soaked red in blood. One was a bird-like contraption with a staff, its silhouette crackling with blue eldritch energies. A third was a bloated sculpture coated in filth and a scar that tore across its midriff like a leering grin. The last of them was a slender creature that made me sick to look at, its form strangely feminine, yet simultaneously attractive and repulsive.
Worst, though, was the center. A swirling vortex, created from the mutilated bodies of whatever poor population that had become victims of the cultists and brought here to this world for whatever deranged purposes they had.
"Careful," Sato warned, slowing Kaen to a stop. The Armiger Warglaive had been at the front, sprinting ahead of the larger super-heavy Knights. "Traitor Astartes presence."
"I see them!" Watanabe said as he steered Tsurugi. The Armiger Warglaive managed to bring its ion shield up to deflect incoming bolter shots as the Chaos Space Marines bounded forward at incredible speed, their armored forms moving with a graceful agility that seemed impossible for one clad in such mass and bulk.
"Tanaka." Lord Takeda gave the command coldly and calmly. "Priority targets ahead. Blast the daemon engine to bits."
I had spotted the daemon engine before he issued the order, already aligning the volcano lance and adjusting the glowing barrel to my sights. Kazan, my trusted Dominus Knight Castellan, had been a gift from the previous crusade in the Carthage Crusade, where we had successfully driven out Chaos and xenos foes and secured the system for the Lord of Ultramar.
A Forgefiend. I recognized the cerberus-type daemon engine, its heads illuminated by sickly ectoplasma and powered by warpfire. Feeling revulsion in my chest, I unleashed an incadescent fury at the foul thing that shouldn't exist. It was enveloped by the blast, its frame torn apart by the wrath of the Omnissiah given form. A titan-slaying weapon, used to vaporize whatever lunacies that the Dark Mechanicus had wrought.
That wasn't all. The plasma decimator in Kazan's other arm glowed, its power coils venting steam before ejecting superheated matter at the Chaos Space Marines. Several of them disintegrated, even the transhuman warriors unable to withstand such fiery rage. The siegebreaker cannons boomed, spitting slugs that tore craters into the fields and throwing up clods of soil.
Sato and Suzuki's Armiger Warglaives advanced ahead of the bigger Knights, their thermal spears erupting with superheated beams that sloughed off the putrid Rhino that jumbled forward. Then Kanda finished it off with a blast from his thermal spear that blew up the vehicle and transformed it into a colossal fireball that incinerated a nearby Chaos Space Marine and hammered two nearby Helbrutes. A nearby Predator Annihilator, ancient and seeming to originate from the days of the Heresy, was buffeted from the shockwaves and almost flipped over.
The Chaos Space Marines didn't pause their advance, the surviving traitors lunging forward to meet Kaen and Hebi. Watanabe's Tsurugi stayed behind, taking plasma fire from the Chosen's plasma pistols and staggering, his ion shield flickering as it gave out under the sustained fire. The Predator Annihilator retaliated, its lascannons punching through my ion shield, but Kazan shrugged off most of the devastating beams, continuing to stomp forward inexorably.
The Possessed hit Kaen like men possessed, tearing at the Armiger Warglaive. Sato calmly fought back, cutting one of them down with his chain-cleaver, but he appeared to be outmatched.
"Hang in there, Sato!" Kanda ordered, maneuvering Engetsu around to help him. On the other side, Lord Takeda charged ahead alone, left exposed on the flank, and his advance was halted by a pack of Possessed crashing into the Cerastus Knight Lancer. Despite their lethal hits, where they tore and ripped at the joints of the loping giant's legs, he managed to sweep his shock lance about and obliterated a couple of them.
The chanting Cultists had paused in their rituals and joined their dark posthuman masters, fearlessly marching toward us with nothing but autoguns and heavy stubbers. The low-caliber shells could not possibly hope to penetrate the adamantium armor of the Knights, but to my shock, they were punching through Kaen, Hebi, Tsurugi and even Naginata.
Witches.
I recognized, to my folly, the telltale sign of withfire attacks, the crazed cultists having discarded their lives to the dark gods and drawing upon the powers of the warp to hurl ensorcelled rounds and psychic screams into our Knights. The runes in our armor flared hot, but even with the protection of the priests back on Draconis III inscribed into our steeds, we found ourselves slowly wilted down.
Sato fell back from the Possessed, giving Kanda a clear shot to wipe them out with Stormspear missiles, melta fire from the torso-mounted meltagun and thermal cannon. The Bushi roared as he charged in, scything the last of them with his reaper chainsword, annihilating the horde.
"Stay where you are!" Takeda ordered, despite having trouble with the Possessed still maiming his Naginata. He crushed another two with the powerful lance, though his movements appeared slowed as they damaged a servo in the arm. "Destroy the idols and disrupt the rituals!"
"Not like we can," Suzuki grumbled as Hebi blasted the Chosen at pointblank range with melta weapons, clearing them out. Watanabe moved up to support him, Tsurugi also firing at the Helbrute and remaining Chosen with precision fire with his thermal spear, and then suddenly Suzuki found himself free to charge the nearest Helbrute, stabbing the grotesque man-machine hybrid with his reaper chain-cleaver and pulping the desiccated traitor Marine buried within the ruined sacrophagus. Meanwhile, I turned my fire on the Predator and erased it from existence with a volcano lance, while my plasma decimator continued to rain down fire upon the Chosen that sought cover in the trees. I ended up missing most of my shots, but it didn't matter. I had at least forced them to go to ground and all but eliminated their heavy armor.
Not to be outdone, the last of the Chosen and the second Helbrute charged Hebi and Tsurugi, while the a squad of Cultists and Dark Commune suicidically threw themselves at Engetsu and Kaen. A second squad of Cultists, having abandoned their efforts at one of the twisted idols, joined the dwindling Possessed in bringing down Naginata, their withering human figures supplemented by foul magicks.
"Damn witches!" Takeda snarled, cleaving apart the last of the Possessed and leaving the Master of Possession in command of them to retreat while the rabid Cultists attempted to climb over his Knight.
"Ugh!?" Suzuki cried as the Chosen brought down his Hebi with concentrated firepower, plasma and bolts tearing the already weakening joints in the Armiger Warglaive and toppling it over. They swung their accursed weapons at Tsurugi, slowly cutting it apart and hacking its limbs from its torso. Watanabe cursed, trapped within his Helm Mechanicum, as his armor was laid low. But as vengeance, he swung Tsurugi's reaper chain-cleaver and sliced the Helbrute in half, splitting the entombed Marine into two and ending his woeful existence.
Way to go, Watanabe! Defiant to the last!
"Hang in there!" I yelled, bringing Kazan closer to the center, where that vortex gate thingy continued to swirl with empyreanic energies. The Exalted Champion crowed after slaying two Armiger class Knights and gestured toward my Dominus Knight Castellan, buoyant after his brief victory. The remaining Chosen whirled around and prepared their charge when they saw Kazan looming closer, but I wasn't about to engage them in melee. Instead, I triggered the twin meltaguns on both sides of Kazan's torso and vaporized two of them. The siegebreaker cannons hurled volleys at the cultists falling off Naginata's form as Takeda pulled free, and I unleashed the superheated wrath of the plasma decimator.
The Chosen never knew what hit them. A few seconds later, nothing remained of the traitor Marines but a smoldering crater of molten rock.
The Exalted Champion, reeling from the death of his men, and his power armor peeling off in melted ceramite after being exposed to temperatures usually found on the surface of a star, turned his horned helm up to stare at me.
I squeezed the trigger in my haptic gloves and disintegrated him with a beam from the volcano lance.
The Master of Possession, still the only one left after witnessing the last of the Cultists and Dark Commune get slaughtered by Engetsu and a terribly wounded Kaen, fell back, but as he turned around to flee, a vengeful Takeda ran him down with Naginata, crushing him underneath the loping colossus's clawed talons and flattening him to a bloody pulp.
"That's the last of them," he said, Naginata swaying from the horrific damage it had suffered. "Tanaka, Kanda, destroy these distorted idols and whatever it is in the center."
"Gladly," I said, leveling my volcano lance at the gate and obliterating it from existence. The eldritch energies died with a shriek. Behind, I could hear whistling and avalanche as Kanda cut apart the idols with his reaper chainsword or melted them with his thermal cannon. Turning around, I joined him, the plasma decimator spitting out superheated streams to reduce a third to slag.
Kaen laid low the final with precise volleys from his thermal spear, and I thought I heard a sigh on the wind, as if the agri-world was breathing in relief after being freed of the invaders' taint.
"What now, my lord?" Kanda asked, turning Engetsu around to face the limping Naginata. We both could hear the smile in Lord Takeda's voice as he replied.
"Well, we shall claim this world as ours...Inari. A fitting name for an agri planet, isn't it? And the first of many that we will conquer yet in this subsector." He stabbed the ground with the crackling shock lance, a posture of triumph and martial pride. "But first, we have to drive out the heretic, the witch, and the alien out of this place. The galaxy will belong to humanity!"
