Aldara, Blackstone deposit
The Armiger-class Knights bearing the heraldry of House Sidus stalked through the ancient ruins, tracking their surroundings with sophisticated sensors. Their auspexes pinged nothing, but the Mechanicus indentured pilots remained alert. Their tech-priest masters had busied themselves with collecting Blackstone from the deposit in this far-flung planet on the far reaches of Segmentum Ultima. While they were not directly subordinated to the Prime Conduit of the Omnissiah, Archmagos Belisarius Cawl himself, the Ryzan priesthood had their own interests in the Blackstone.
Several cycles earlier, Magos Aelph Rho had reported that he had lost contact with a maniple of Skitarii. The Ryzan Skitarii had sent a signal several milliseconds before all signals had been cut off, reporting an encounter with an unknown force. Calculating a 97.8% probability that they had fallen to an enemy attack, Magos Rho had dispatched the attached House Sidus Knights to investigate.
Theta 2-Alpha, bonded to his Helm Mechanicum by neural cabling and optic fibers, guided his Knight Moirax across the uneven terrain. On either side, the more standard Armiger Warglaive pattern Knights loped, much like hunting hounds sniffing out the enemy.
"Remains of Maniple Sigma 3 spotted." Theta 2-Alpha turned at Epsilon 7-Delta's cold, mechanical voice that spoke in harsh binharic cant. Linking his mind neurally to the bondsman, he received the visual capture on his pict-screen. Obliterated cyborg warriors lay in pieces, their bonics shattered. So complete was their destruction, the ragged tatters of their orange cowls and robes were the only visual identification that the dead Skitarii were from Ryza.
"Updating threat status to vermillion level," Theta 2-Alpha said in binharic, exloading the status report to Magos Rho. The priestly masters must be warned of this...and even if they didn't, they craved data all the same.
There was a panicked blurt of binharic from Epsilon 7-Delta's side. Turning around, Theta 2-Alpha spotted a squad of xenos charging forward, their blades leaving ghostly wisps of esoteric energy in the air as they slashed and cut. Epsilon's Armiger Warglaive faltered, cabling ruptured and servos damaged from the ferocious attack. He swung back, the Reaper chain-cleaver mowing down one of the xenos, but the rest darted away swiftly. Their brutal harmonics assaulted the auditory channels, and judging from his sluggish movements, Epislon was feeling the worst of them.
Howling Banshees, Theta designated the xenos caste with a thought, inloading combat data from the noosphere. He moved to help, but Epsilon appeared to be handling the combat just fine. Instead, Beta 8-Mu's Armiger Warglaive exploded to the right.
Swerving around, Theta spotted Beta's killer. A lumbering behemoth strode forward, bearing twin massive cannons on its shoulders while wielding a single gigantic glaive. Its head was sleek, a featureless dome that tapered at the crown. The blue surface gleamed, emanating some sort of frequency that Theta couldn't quite identify. Shrapnel splattered from the glaive, sparks running along its length as the ghostly walker yanked it out of the convulsing Armiger Warglaive that it had just disemboweled.
Wraith constructs. The term trickled into his cyborgized mind, inloaded by the information that the noosphere provided. The Skitarii cohorts of Ryza had encountered them several times over the last few millennia. Highly dangerous war engines of the doomed Aeldari race, they operated by means unknown to the Mechanicus. There were rumors abound the Biologis division that these machines were powered by the spirits of dead xenos, their essence trapped within gems they termed spirit stones. Constructed out of Wraithbone, a psychic material that the Adeptus Mechanicus were unable to replicate, they could scythe a Leman Russ tank in half easily.
Beta 8-Mu never stood a chance.
"Updating threat status to crimson level," Theta 2-Alpha amended, his voice crackling in dispassionate binharic. He then squeezed the trigger, unleashing graviton pulses from the paired graviton pulsars of his Knight Moirax. The distorted waves slammed into the Wraithlord, enveloping it in an invisble well of gravity and cracking its armor. It staggered but didn't fall. Its cannons slowly rotated about, but weren't aimed at his Armiger.
Is the foe underestimating me? Theta did not feel fury or any emotion, simply curiosity. An eccentric behavior that he filed away for his tech-priest masters to analyze later.
Then his Armiger Knight Moriax shuddered. Warning reports bathed his Helm Mechanicum red, holo-picts materializing around him to display damaged circuits. As he struggled to right his steed, Theta spotted a squad of smaller Wraith constructs lumbering forward to support the Wraithlord.
Wraithguard. Armed with wraithcannons, they were mercilessly hammering into the Armiger Knight Moirax. Theta somehow deflected a few shots with his ion shield, but several went through, severing the arm of his Knight.
Then the Wraithlord fired again. For a moment, Theta was resigned, leaning back against his seat and accepting his fate. When oblivion did not arrive, he blinked and consulted his auspexes.
He understood why he was still alive.
To his left, the smoldering wreck of Epsilon 7-Delta lay to the side, a molten hole lanced into the cockpit. The last member of Theta's lance had tried to circle around and catch the Wraithlord by surprise with his thermal spear, but the ghostly Aeldari walker had taken him out first...with cold precision.
Theta attempted to aim at the Wraithlord once more, but the Wraithguard advanced, continuing to ravage his Knight Moirax with relentless fire from their cannons. One finally punched through his faltering ion shield, ripping a hole through the hip of the Armiger class Knight and sending it careening to the back.
"Ugh..."
Theta moved his haptic gloves futilely, trying to restore some semblance of motive force to his downed engine. Even as he struggled, he watched as the looming silhouette of the Wraithlord grew all over his primary visual pict-screen. Already the damage dealt to it had disappeared, the mysterious wraithbone having swirled and mended, covering the cracks that the graviton pulses had forced upon its surface earlier.
A chill spread over Theta as he stared at the Wraithlord, his neutered brain dimly registering the emotion as fear. Perhaps the Mechanicus hadn't fully excised his sensations after all.
The barrels of the two cannons mounted upon the Wraithlord spat. Theta felt a molten heat and shrieking agony for a second, and then nothing.
Hestia, Imperium's Bastion World, Outpost Sigma
"Holy Emperor of Mankind..."
Tanaka breathed wearily as he watched the Eldar warhost come bearing down on Outpost Sigma. He clenched his fists, and Kazan responded, whirring its Reaper chain-cleaver almost unconsciously. Tanaka could sense the machine spirit of his steed growling, its fiery furnace of a heart flaring aggressively.
Wraith constructs were ambling toward the Guard outpost. For whatever reason, Imperial Command had assigned his Knight lance to guard this particular bastion. Normally they wouldn't order Knights from a noble house such as House Yato to such dreary tasks, but...evidently they lacked the manpower.
Tanaka didn't blame them. The Imperial Guard had been stretched thin and decimated in that last encounter, the infantry nearly annihilated after General Jerome Korsky's reckless blunder had seen them routed by Orks' speedbuggies and bikers. There weren't enough men left to form even a platoon.
The foul greenskins weren't the only xenos that wanted this planet, it seemed. Now even the ancient Aeldari wanted a piece of the pie that was Hestia. After the debacle with the Orks, who managed to land a SpeedWaaagh! down in great numbers, the Adeptus Mechanicus had hastily repaired and restored several of the imperial bastions dotted across the fortress, reactivating the orbital defense guns and taking big chunks out of the Ork fleet. The greenskins had been forced to withdraw, and the pressure had slackened on the imperial defenders. However, it appeared that the Aeldari was desperate for this planet, for they had landed a force further out to take out one of the emplacements.
Currently, the Aeldari fleet was engaging the crude Ork ships, elegantly dancing through brutal hulks of rock and metal while blasting chunks out of the ramshackle armada. The Orks didn't seem to care, though. They had overwhelming numbers. If anything, they reveled in the space combat, recklessly hurling themselves at the sleek Craftworld ships in suicidal attempts to board them. They tore at each other without impunity, the Eldar ships precisely slicing the ramshackle frigates and cruisers apart like surgical knives while the Ork battleships and roks cruelly bludgeoned fragile Aeldari cruisers and corvettes to pieces.
The only thing keeping both xenos fleets at bay were the orbital defense guns. And Tanaka would be damned if he let them fall.
Purple blurs streaked toward him, Eldar jetbikes strafing him with their Shuriken weapons. Tanaka deflected them with his ion shields and had Kazan step forward. With a single swing of his steed's Reaper chain-cleaver, he ripped a jetbike apart and sent its rider vaulting into a blossoming fireball. The remaining Windrunners circled about and took potshots at his rear, forcing Tanaka to angle his ion shield accordingly. He patiently waited for them to reach him before he scythed through them. One of the Eldar riders ceased to exist, the power field wreathing the Reaper chain-cleaver disintegrating his body instantly. Its jetbike fipped over and crashed into a nearby Windrunner, the collision sending both hover vehicles crashing into the ground and ending in fire and fury.
A searing lance slammed into his ion shield, causing Kazan to shudder. While Tanaka struggled to right his steed, he caught sight of Kanda's Knight Moirax lumbering forward. Graviton pulses emitted from the esoteric weaponry of the Mechanicus Knight, crushing a handful of advancing Wraithguard that were about to hit him.
"Thanks, Kanda," Tanaka voxed. A holo-pict at the bottom corner of his Helm Mechanicum displayed his comrade's sharp features, Kanda nodding in acknowledgement.
With a determined yell, Tanaka had Kazan charge at the Wraithlord. His meltagun and thermal spear spat, incadescent beams of fury that struck the enemy walker and sent it reeling. Before it could recover, he drove the Reaper chain-cleaver of Kazan right into its chest, obliterating the spirit stone embedded there and shattering the delicate circuitry. The Wraithlord slumped down, its body hanging limply off the whirring blade.
"Not bad." Not far away, Suzuki was hunting down the last of the Aeldari raiders. Hebi mowed down a Spiritseer who was trying to conjure some ominous xenos witchery to repair the fallen Wraith constructs while Kanda had finished off the last of the Wraithguard with his graviton weaponry. A group of armored xenos were fleeing, their bodies clad in carapace that Tanaka didn't recognize. A quick browse through his database showed them to be the caste designated as Dire Avengers or something.
Not that monkeigh such as him would understand the myriad pathways that the Aeldari walked. Nor did he wanted to. For warriors of House Yato such as him, the only path for him to walk was that of Bushido, the way of the warrior. No xenos philosophy could ever match that.
"We still have to be careful, though," Tanaka remarked as he melted one of the retreating Dire Avengers to slag with the carapace-mounted meltagun. Kazan bellowed in triumph, and Tanaka had to suppress the machine-spirit's ectasy. He couldn't let his steed control him. Looking up into the skies, he sighed. "Somewhere far away, I bet there's another Knight Lance who's getting their asses kicked by a similar Aeldari Warhost."
"Impossible!" Suzuki sneered arrogantly. "Nothing can challenge the dominion of mankind! The galaxy is ours!"
"No," Tanaka muttered as he remembered the ravenous hordes of Tyranids that House Yato had so recently fought in the Charadon Sector. Until they eliminated the diverse xenos threats and the heretical traitors who blighted the Imperium, humanity had no way of laying claim to supremacy. For a while, Tanaka didn't dare imagine that they would ever be able to exterminate all the dangers to the Imperium, but the return of Lord Commander Roboute Guilliman had offered him some hope. "Not yet."
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