Psychic Ruse

"Waaaagh!"

Even from within his Throne Mechanicum, and safely protected behind several inches of ceramite-steel, Satoru could still hear the bloodcurdling cry of the Orks. The greenskins charged forward, heedless of the ferocious electro-galvanic projectiles and radioactive rounds that poured forth from the tightly packed ranks of skitarii. Wading through the notoriously inaccurate bolter fire from the onrushing Orks, Satoru swept the Avenger gatling cannon of his Knight Crusader across their ranks, the high-caliber rounds chewing through them in retaliation.

"Kaneda! Tetsuo!"

In response to his commands, his bondsmen loped on either side of his imposing Knight Crusader, their smaller Armiger-class Knights surging ahead of his heavier chassis. Unlike the more conventional Armiger Helverin or Warglaives used by most other Knight houses, House Yato made use of Armiger Moirax, a specialized class manufactured only by a few select forge worlds. Draconis IV's decision to manufacture the Armiger Moirax over the conventional types was vindicated when Kaneda and Tetsuo opened up with their twin volkite veuglaires. The weapons, an ancient design that was lost to most forge worlds, continued to be produced on Draconis IV because of their potent firepower. Crimson rays strobed outward and lanced into the mass of Orks, disintegrating the front row of them. However, their devastating effects didn't end there. The greenskins at the back also spontaneously combusted from the sheer heat, their hulking forms immolated by the embers scattered by their blazing comrades.

A single Morkanaut lumbered forward, its heavy shooter spitting out brick-sized slugs. An entire squad of skitarii Vanguard simply ceased to exist, their forms reduced to bloody splatters and metallic shrapnel on the ground. Rockets spiraled from the shoulder-mounted launcher, but most of them missed, twisting away in a mocking manner before crashing into the Orks, dealing more damage to them than to the enemy. The few missiles that landed a direct hit against Satoru's Knight detonated harmlessly against a shimmering wall of energy, the noble skillfully angling his ion shield to deflect the shots.

Narrowing his eyes and relying on the auspexes that filled his Throne Mechanicum, Satoru lifted the right arm of his Knight Crusader and swiveled about. A vermillion beam burst out and struck the Morkanaut square in the center, burning out its haphazardly constructed forcefield and melting through several layers of steel and scrap that the greenskins had patched together in what appeared to be armor. It didn't matter. A Knight's thermal cannon was capable of melting through even the most fortified of armor, and it was clear that he had inflicted critical damage. The scrap-giant listed for a moment, fumes pouring out of its grievous wound, but before it could right itself, Satoru was already charging into it.

With a grace that belied his gigantic suit, he spun about and kicked the xenos engine with one of his titanic feeet. The Morkanaut staggered for a moment, but the momentum behind Satoru's strike was too much. With a dreadful, metallic groan, the Morkanaut crashed onto the ground, shattering into debris. For good measure, Satoru stomped on one of its arms - reducing the heavy gatling cannon into flattened scrap, and fired off another melta burst into its insides, cooking the howling greenskin crew that manned it.

Beside him, Kaneda and Tetsuo continued onward. Bestial roars drew their attention back to the front, where a squadron of buggies zoomed forward. Missiles and mass reactive projectiles pelted them, most of them exploding harmlessly against their formidable ion shields. The bondsmen responded by triggering their volkite weapons, and the lead buggies caught fire, their drivers shrieking as they combusted within their seats. The buggies continued swerving forward, rudderless, before they flipped over, crashed upside down and blew up. Debris struck their comrades, who yanked at what passed for a steering wheel to prevent a collision. However, one huge shrapnel sailed out and decapitated one of the ork drivers, and without direction, the buggy rammed right into a tightly knotted mass of greenskins before being totalled.

"It is beneath us to deal with such rubbish," Haku remarked, his Knight Crusader lumbering forward several dozen meters left of Satoru's own. "The greenskins do not make for good sport...they lack any ounce of skill or intelligence. They just throw themselves at us, as if asking to be culled. I have never seen any other species as suicidal or so mentally...limited."

"It is not wise to underestimate the orks, Haku-dono," Satoru reminded him. "You have heard the briefing from Yato-sama. Ever since the appearance of their self-proclaimed prophet, these foul beasts have been gathering in numbers unheard since the days of the Beast. They have been carrying out tactics and strategies that have taken even the most esteemed Guard generals by surprise."

"Really now?" Haku snorted as he hefted his rapid-fire battle cannon and fired several rounds into a second Morkanaut. The xenos engine stumbled as the high explosive rounds detonated against its bulk, its force field flickering out. Without pause, both Haku and Satoru sent stormspear rockets streaking from their carpace-mounted pods and into the wouded construct. Orange conflagrations blossomed both inside and outside the Morkanaut and it slumped down, a fuming wreck. Orks attempted to bail from their now useless machine, but the heavy stubbers and Avenger gatling cannons made short work of them. "You call this tactics? We have cornered these brainless beasts and are slaughtering them by the thousands. At this rate, we'll exterminate the vermin by nightfall."

Satoru could detect a trace of mockery in his lance-mate's tone, and picture him curling his lips into a sneer.

"Perhaps it's only natural for a lowborn for you to be so cowardly. You lack the pure noble blood of true Knights, and thus your courage naturally falters in the face of such scum. Just follow my lead and we'll lead House Yato to glory once again."

"Sir Shirayama, Sir Hounouji. We request assistance."

A motonous, almost mechanical voice sounded over the vox. Satoru recognized it as belonging to Radis-74-Cronius, the skitarii alpha in overall command of the cybernetic infantry assigned to escort the Knights.

"What is it, Alpha Cronius?" Satoru asked, consulting the visual auspexes and trying to get a read on the skitarii's position. They were still fighting the ork infantry, radium rounds and galvanic projectiles shredding the howling greenskins, but the distance between the two forces was gradually shrinking. Satoru knew that if the orks got in close and engaged the skitarii in melee, the latter would be routed. "We'll clear out the lines of greenskin..."

"I apologize for the interruption, but given the urgency of the circumstances, I hope you forgive my lack of protocol." Satoru fell silent and allowed Cronius to continue. "We have heavy ork infantry materializing behind us. Terminator equivalent class. They are butchering our rearlines. I request for support."

"Huh? Behind?" It was Kaneda. "How did the orks get behind us?!"

"I do not know. I speculate, however, that there is a 37.8% probabilility that they employed teleportation technology. There is also a 61.2% probability that they exercised the use of psychic powers to transport the group of heavy infantry over space. Judging from the traces of empyrean energy that our sensors detected, I believe the latter reason is the most likely explanation."

Satoru was hardly paying attention to Cronius's explanation. He had already turned back and sighted the heavy ork infantry that the skitarii alpha had mentioned. A horde of meganobz had suddenly teleported right behind the skitarii lines and were laying into them with their power claws. The skitarii vanguard and rangers desperately fired into them at near pointblank range, but despite being pieced together from scrap, the bulky armor of the meganobz was more than a match for the tactical dreadnought armor that the space marines wore. It was almost as if they were shooting into a tank. Heedless of the radioactive or electronically charged rounds that sparked off their formidable armor, the massive orks mowed the fragile skitarii down, leaving a trail of broken bionics and torn flesh in their wake.

Several of the skitarii vanguard specialists strode forward, leveling their plasma calivers at the newly appeared enemy. Blue globes of superheated light burst out and slammed into the bellowing monsters, incinerating the first couple of them. Snarling, the meganobz turned toward them, their power claws clacking incessantly as they set their ferocious eyes on their new prey.

The horde vanished as a massive blast of thermal energy washed over them, melting even their vaunted armor into slag. The surviving skitarii rallied, their plasma gunners continuing to pummel the remaining meganobz with superheated projectiles. Satoru added to their barrage, sweeping his Avenger gatling cannon over the growling greenskins. The high-caliber rounds did little against the towering monsters, but they contained enough kinetic force to smack them off their feet and send them bowling. The skitarii capitalized on the moment of vulnerability to finish them off with a barrage of plasma, arc lightning, radium rounds and galvanic bullets.

"You didn't have to bother with that," Haku snorted derisively. "Leave the infantry to fight infantry. There is no glory in stomping on those ground sloggers. We are Knights...we deserve bigger prey than that."

"It is our duty to provide support to the infantry," Satoru pointed out wearily. Haku merely chuckled.

"Then you go and continue stomping around in the mud with them. I will not share any credit or glory with you when I claim another super-heavy kill."

Satoru didn't even bother to watch as Haku stalk off with his own bondsmen. There were other nobles who followed him, their Questoris chassis Knights disappearing into the distance as they surged toward the greenskin lines, to take the fight to the enemy. Fortunately, Kaneda and Tetsuo remained loyal, their Armiger Moirax Knights staying back to rake the diminishing ork lines with thermal rays. Buggies, mek guns and greenskin infantry vanished into ash as the devastating beams washed over them.

Pivoting around, Satoru unleashed another thermal lance into a battlewagon, scything it into half. As immolated orks poured out of the crippled vehicle, the surviving skitarii advanced and pumped them with radioactive rounds or electrocuted the tough brutes with galvanic and arc lightning, dropping them onto the ground. As tenacious as they were, even the orks couldn't withstand the sheer firepower of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

"We will visit the vengeance of the Omnissiah upon his foes!" Cronius hollered in both flesh-voice and binary, rallying his skitarii to him. "Let none of the foul xenos survive, for their existence alone is an affront to the Machine God!"

Satoru continued to stalk at the back, moving his heavy stubbers to cut down more of the orks. Lifting his thermal cannon, he let loose another shot at a speeding buggy. The impossible contraption was somehow fast enough to evade his fire, but even so he managed to clip the tail and the engines exploded, turning the dakkajet into a streaking fireball that careened right into the lines of scattering greenskin. Even the orks weren't stupid enough to stand around and let a crashing vehicle smash them into bits.

"Charge! Get in close before...!"

An explosion engulfed the panicking voice of Haku, and Satoru felt the ground shudder from violent tremors as something massive detonated. Swiveling around, he caught sight of Haku's Knight Crusader blow up as something blasted it, overloading even the ancient walker's vaunted ion shields and engulfing it in fiery destruction.

"What...?!"

"Super-heavy engine approaching from the west! Titan-class! All Knights, spread out, and then charge in!"

Another noble - from the voice, Satoru suspected it was Jisatsu - was yelling, before his Knight Gallant was enveloped in green flames. Within several seconds, the ion shields fizzled out and the huge armored suit crashed over, emerald lightning shorting out its systems and frying the screaming pilot inside.

Despite the deaths of two Knights in so short a time, the remaining Knights charged at their killer. Amidst the gloom, Satoru spotted something lumbering forward - a massive war engine towering over thirty meters long. A long skirt that covered its thick, clumsy legs, bristling with all sorts of guns, while the head was carved into a fanged, mechanical grin that was supposed to resemble the orks' gods in some twisted humorous fashion. Gigantic cannons jutted out of its eyes and shoulders, firing colossal beams and projectiles that rendered even the Knights' normally impervious ion shields useless.

"Satoru-sama! Satoru-sama!" Satoru snapped out of his stupor when he realized that Tetsuo was calling out to him. "What do we do? Do we engage?"

"Y...yes." He nodded, his mouth dry. Another Questoris-class Knight had blossomed into shrapnel and flame, its shields and armor no longer proof against the apocalyptic firepower that the ork Gargant meted out upon them. With their ranged weaponry, shields and armor outclassed, there was only one way for the smaller Knights to bring down the gargantuan walker. They had to close in and engage it in close combat, right beneath its weapons' arcs. Well, most, anyway. One of the Gargant's hands had ended in a gigantic wrecking ball almost half the size of a Questoris Knight. Even so, their only chance was to carve into the titan with their reaper-chainswords or tear into it with their thunderstrike gauntlets. Those not armed with dedicated melee weapons could coordinate their firepower, concentrating thermal lances or volleys of high-caliber rounds into a single spot. It wasn't going to be easy, but it was doable. "We need to help them."

Then, for some reason, he felt as if the Gargant was looking at him. It couldn't be possible - the xenos titan was still swatting away his comrades like horseflies, its lethal weapons still spitting out a torrent of death at his dwindling comrades. Yet he could feel its stare...or at least the eldritch stare of the ork that was in command of it.

Even though he didn't know how he knew, he instinctively understood that the princeps of the Gargant was a witch. A psyker. And it also recognized him somehow...as a threat.

One of the super-heavy weapons of the Gargant was leveled at him, and a green arc of devastating light formed between them. Despite adjusting his ion shields to deflect the powerful blast, Satoru's Knight was knocked off its feet. The entire space around him disintegrated, the skitarii unfortunate enough to be near him simply ceasing to exist as the eldritch energy curled about their cybernetic bodies. His Throne Mechanicum sparked and his auspexes all went dark.

For a moment, Satoru thought he was dead. So dark...so silent was his surroundings that he believed that he had descended into oblivion.

Get up!

Don't dishonor your ancestors!

You're still alive! Fight!

The ghosts in his Throne Mechanicum urged him up, and his hands twitched in his haptic gloves. Pain stabbed through his throbbing body, assuring him that he was very much alive. The neural plugs stung as the machine-spirit of his Knight growled, determined to return to the fight.

You're not done yet, boy! Get up!

The voice sounded familiar. His grandfather? Or perhaps his great-great-grandfather, whose voice he had heard once in a holo-vid, when he was taught how to pilot the Knight and was introduced to the past glories of the Honouji family. They were always close to him, especially during his Ritual of Becoming, but he often tuned them out. However, shaken by the Gargant's strike, his mental defenses had crumbled and he was hearing the ghosts' voices once more.

"Throne," he mumbled as he restarted his suit. Several of the visual auspexes flickered back on, the holo-picts displaying the outside world.

Then he froze.

The Gargant was approaching him, another of its deadly weapons pointed straight at him. Even with its horrendous aim, Satoru recognized the titan-grade weapon as having such a massive blast radius that it didn't matter if it missed. With his ion shields down, even a single clip or graze from such a powerful weapon would wipe him from the face of this planet.

He could sense the triumph from the greenskin witch. The weirdboy at the helm of the Gargant was laughing gleefully, ready to destroy what he thought was a pathetic enemy.

"Pathetic humie, you iz tinkin' you can krump us? The prophet iz here! He will ledz us all to victory! We iz rulez the galaxy once more, and not you or your humie Imperium will standz in our way! Waaagh!"

Eldritch fire burned across the Gragant's titanic form, gathering into its weapon once more. The other Knights were battered, either blasted to scrap, destroyed or incapacitated, and all across the battlefield, skitarii were fighting valiantly to prevent the orks from capturing the pilots and their downed machines...for they knew the dreadful fate that awaited them if they succeeded. Kaneda and Tetsuo were doing their best, their volkite weapons lancing into rows of howling orks, but they were fast being overwhelmed.

Not that it matter. Not when the orks had brought one of their god-machines along with them. Defeat was inevitable.

I'm going to die here... Satoru realized. In an Emperor forsaken planet whose name I can't even remember...

You fool!

His hands twitched when he heard the ghostly voice chiding him.

Is this the time to give up!? You are a scion of the Honouji family! A Knight of House Yato! Use whatever power you have within your disposal to win! Don't just roll over and die!

Satoru shut his eyes. Power? What power? His Knight suit didn't have any power left. He didn't have any power to fight back...

...no, that was not true. Ever since he sensed the ork witch, he had been feeling some sort of inner turmoil within his chest. A maelstrom of...something, something dark and ominous burning within him.

He had been afraid to touch it, for its whispers were dark and ghastly. He didn't want to consider what this power was, or the consequences that came along if he was to harness it.

But if he didn't, he would die here.

Taking a deep breath, Satoru reached within himself and harnessed the maelstrom of psychic energy building up within his chest. He did not know what its origins were, only that it was agitated in response to the ork witch's presence. He knew intuitively that it was this...this entity that was what made the weirdboy wary of him in the first place.

Well, so be it. If the weirdboy was afraid of this, then he might as well give it a real reason to feel fear. Tapping into the power, he reached out and...

...the empyrean...the great ocean of power...the hard gaze from a single eye...a cyclopean entity with angelic wings of fire, his towering form stretching as far as he could see. A sea filled with primordial predators, their intangible forms swimming about and getting as close to him as he could. Blazing fire - fire that burned from phantom stars, fire that was his to harness. An insidious chuckle, and a promise of damnation if he were to accept that power for himself.

And looming death as the Gargant approached, its weapon near critical discharge.

Satoru made his decision.

The ork witch shrieked as crimson flames bathed its form. Dropping its staff, it rolled about in its throne, screaming and yelling. The flames spread from him and spread across the cockpit, overwhelming the other greenskins and gretchin that had been bullied into piloting the Gargant. The titanic war engine stumbled and its shot went wide, immolating a column of battlewagons that were packed full of whooping orks, not realizing that friendly fire was in fact not friendly.

That wasn't all.

Deep within the core of the Gargant, the plasma reactor that caged the power of a star, temperatures rose. The gretchin that were manning it yelped and jumped back, but before they knew it their tiny forms were incinerated from the intense heat that continued to spike upward. Within seconds, the reactor blew and the Gargant was immolated from within. The fuming wreck tottered for a few moments, and for a second it seemed that it was breathing fire, molten metal leaking from its eyes, mouth and other gaps. Then with a bestial groan, it toppled over, blazing like an effigy at the burning stakes.

Satoru gasped as something threatened to devour him...something from the immaterium, seeking this chance to use his body as a portal to enter the material universe. With a force of will, he shut the gate down, somehow halting the empyrean powers that were overflowing from him and bathing his Throne Mechanicum. Red-hot agony filled him, and he could almost see the claws rip out of his chest, but somehow they stitched back together. Blood oozing from his mouth, nose and eyes, he fumbled about his Throne, brushing against the warp-frost that had condensed all over the metallic surface of his cockpit. Outside, Kaneda and Tetsuo, the skitarii and the orks looked in wonder at the coat of warp-frost that covered the fallen Knight.

With their idol downed, the orks were still dazed when the skitarii overrode their human emotions and returned to butchering the hated xenos in a blaze of cold, methodical firepower.