"Hah! Those skeletal xenos never stood a chance!"
War Warrior crowed after his warband crushed the awakening Necrons under their ceramite boots. Having unleashed the Possessed upon the metallic xenos, War Warrior watched as they overwhelmed the legions of warriors, smashing them underfoot before tearing through Wraiths and other constructs. Even the Overlord was no match for the surviving Possessed, and despite scything them down, he was worn out by their sheer numbers and ferocity.
The Obliterators seemed to have pulled their weight too, their firepower crucial to the Edge Lords' success. With this, Barca seemed to have fallen under the Chaos Warband's control.
"You guys are the true MVP," War Warrior told the proud Possessed. He nodded at the Master of Possession, who straightened his back while trying not to look too pleased with himself. "Great work, Riot."
"With the daemons under our control, nothing can match our power. With the gods in ascension, we will throw the entire sector into...chaos! Muahahaha!"
"Not yet," War Warrior cautioned Riot. "There is one more obstacle we must clear. Let us invade Carthage, for there is hidden archeotech on that world that will serve to further our plans of galactic domination!"
"For the Warmaster!" The Master of Possession raised his force stave. "We shall drown the Imperium in a tide of blood!"
Or so he thought, but when the Edge Lords landed on Carthage, they found a wall of adamantium, steel and ceramite waiting for them. The Draconian Imperial Guard regiment, usually under the jurisdiction of House Yato in Draconis III, had taken up defensive positions. Right in the center of the fortress was the modified Shadowsword, Tenken. Known as the Divine Blade, the super-heavy tank had functioned as a lynchpin in many defensive actions.
The tank commander, Colonel Ikeda, stood in his cupola and surveyed the approaching warband grimly. They had landed in a flourish and were now stampeding toward the Imperial Guard positions like the fanatical zealots they were. Leading the charge was an advancing horde of Possessed, but they were accompanied by burning Cultists. Unlike the crazed Cultists and berserk Possessed, a small squad of legionnaires hung back by the Noctilith Crown they had constructed, trusting in its empyric powers to protect them. A forcefield shimmered around them, the unnatural energies billowing like a storm.
Riot cackled as he led two Obliterators who were ready to...well, obliterate any enemy that stood in their path. Much like the Necrons they had blasted to oblivion earlier. Their fleshmetal guns rippled and extended, the gleaming barrels ripping through pinkish meat to point toward Tenken.
War Warrior followed in the wake of his Possessed, determined to offer the lives of the stalwart Guardsmen to the dark gods. He grinned and licked his fanged lips in anticipation, his aura granting his daemonic possessed brethren strength.
"That doesn't look good," Ikeda murmured. He thumbed the vox device. "Mizuno, you ready?"
"As ready as can be, sir," the sergeant replied. Unlike Ikeda, he commanded a Leman Russ Executioner tank, and was already readying his gunners to kill on sight. Further up, three Armored Sentinels stalked forward. Led by Sergeant Ueda, they trained their plasma cannons on the squad of legionnaires.
The Obliterators and the legionnaires opened fire first, but the lascannon missed Tenken. The Obliterators, on the other hand, delivered a ferocious barrage that stripped the front plating off, leaving molten metal dribbling down the surface.
"Fire!" Ikeda ordered. Tenken rocked as the plasma-powered volcano cannon roared, the incadescent beam slicing through the Possessed and disintegrating half of their number in one volley. The lascannons added to their fury, vaporizing another Possessed with a direct hit. Meanwhile, the twin heavy bolters chattered angrily as they ejected mass reactives at the legionnaires, who took cover. One of them fell, his armor dented by the endless stream.
Still, the Possessed kept coming.
"Mizuno, any time when you're ready."
"Right you are, sir."
This time, the Leman Russ Executioner, Taiyou, opened fire. The excutioner plasma cannon unleashed a bluish-white stream of superheated matter that engulfed the remaining Possessed and wiped them out completely.
"What the?!" War Warrior bellowed in disbelief as he saw his main force get taken out in a single round of shooting. "That's not fair! My whole strategy depended on getting the Possessed close enough to destroy those damned tanks in melee! What are we going to do now?!"
"Continue attacking!" One of his legionnaires yelled as they ducked under a barrage of plasma from the Armored Sentinels. Most of the superheated shots went wild, disintegrating the cover around them but otherwise failing to hurt the legionnaires. "We can't give up so easily!"
The cultists howled as they were cut down by a barrage of las-fire from an infantry squad. Sergeant Shirakawa and his men took aim and fired, following Major Murakami's orders. By the time the dust settled, only a single cultist was left in the open, looking dazed from the death and fire around him.
"Destroy that tank!" Riot yelled at the Obliterators, and they complied as best as they could. The fleshmetal guns roared once more, pummeling the front of Tenken and causing its armor to buckle. "What the, why won't it die?!"
"It's too tough," one of the Obliterators replied sourly. Riot spat and pointed his force stave at Shirakawa's squad.
"Fine, whatever! Charge into them and massacre the infantry!"
"Good idea."
"Uh oh."
Shirakawa gulped and watched helplessly as his squad was massacred. The last thing he saw was a force stave detonating with distorted energies that sent him flying across the ground.
"Hey! Pick on someone your own size!" Ueda yelled, leading his Sentinel squadron to the fight. They opened fire with their plasma cannons and finally wiped out the legionnaires, and then they crashed into the Master of Possession. He turned to direct his Obliterators forward, but realized they no longer existed.
Tenken had opened fire and wiped them out from existence with its volcano cannon. Meanwhile, the heavy bolters finished off the last Cultist. The Sentinels then hacked at Riot, but he parried and blocked them before destroying one of them with his force stave. Twirling the stave, he proceeded to slay Major Murakami, whose shining power sword did frak all. The officer should never have challenged a transhuman warrior swelled by the warp to physical combat, but...hey, at least he had courage.
"It's your turn now."
Mizuno gestured to his gunner, who squeezed the trigger. Plasma and las-fire lanced into War Warrior, and despite the blessings he had received from the dark gods, he was erased from existence, banished into the warp once more.
"Not again!" He screamed as he was sucked into a vortex, only to look up fearfully when he felt the disapproving gaze of the ruinous powers. "No! Give me another chance!"
"Sure," Tzeentch said before flinging him back to his ship. So the Warband broke even on glory points, thankfully.
Riot, on the other hand, continued to fend off the Armored Sentinels' repeated attacks with their chainsaws. He chuckled as he smashed them, his force stave glowing ominously.
"Why won't he die?!" Ueda complained.
"Get out of the way! We're going to crush him!" Ikeda bellowed. He slapped the side of his cupola and waved his hand. "Drive me closer! I want to hit him with my sword!"
With a roar, Tenken surged forward and crushed Riot under its adamantium tracks. The Master of Possession howled in defiance, but he disappeared under the tremendous weight of the super-heavy tank. Pulped into nothing but a bloody smear and flattened power armor, his remains twitched once like a chaos spawn in a pool, then went still as Tenken continued to roll over the area. Just to make sure.
"Phew..." Ikeda sighed a breath of relief. He stared down at Tenken, which was battered but otherwise still very much intact. Raising his hand, he cheered triumphantly. "We've successfully defended Carthage! Good job, men!"
Inwardly, he wondered if bringing a super-heavy tank to a battle was overkill. Maybe he should go a little easier on his enemies. He decided to swap Tenken for a Leman Russ tank next time, unless the enemy was bringing a Knight.
And thus the Astra Militarum prevailed. For now.
"What? We're being attacked by the Encarmine Angels and a bunch of Skitarii?"
No sooner than when he had switched to a Leman Russ tank, Ikeda received bad news. He glanced up at the fiery contrails of drop pods. The Encarmine Angels and a ranking Tech-priest had claimed that the Astra Militarum were sitting on a treasure trove of archeotech, and they were determined to seize it. However, Ikeda had orders from high command to not allow anyone to enter the area. Even if they were of the vaunted Adeptus Astartes.
Unbeknownst to the Draconians, the Death Guard had landed not far away and were carrying out their own insidious plans to infect the sector. Having realized the anomaly, the bulk of the Adeptus Mechanicus forces landed in the area, with Skitarii Rangers marching foward to pump volley of galvanic rounds into the inexorably advancing Plague Marines.
"Technoheresy!" The Magos Dominus hissed in binharic when he saw the foul shapes of Plagueburst Crawlers crest the hill. He waved toward a couple of Ironstriders Ballistarii, filling them with doctrina imperatives via the noosphere. "Destroy these tech heretics with extreme prejudice!"
Twin cognis lascannons hissed as they unleashed ruby las-beams at the Plagueburst Crawlers. Onager Dunecrawlers lumbered toward the battlefield, one of them equipped with an Icarus array. Autocannon rounds cluttered and rockets rained down on the Death Guard's position, blasting even the revoltingly resilient Plague Marines to bits.
The other Onager Dunecrawler fired its neutron laser at the Leman Russ tanks that had taken up defensive positions on the other side of the fortress.
"Damn it! Tell them to stop firing!" Ikeda complained. He winced when he saw two units of Kataphron Destroyers roll up, hammering Ueda's Armored Sentinels with grav. In a single volley, all three Armored Sentinels were crushed by esoteric grav weaponry. "Holy Throne! They're murdering us out here!"
To make matters worse, the Encarmine Angels had joined the fray. While the Leviathan Dreadnought advanced toward the Death Guard's position, backed up by a tactical squad, the Intercessors and a third tactical squad hunkered down before firing at the poor infantry. Shirakawa's squad took cover, suffering minimal casualties.
While the Dreadnought traded fire with a Foetid Blight Drone, the Astra Militarum retaliated. Plasma volleys engulfed the Kataphron Destroyers, eliminating the maniples before the lobotomized servitors realized what was happening. Plasma cannons barked, engulfing the Intercessors in plasma and erasing them from the surface of Carthage.
Then the Sanguinary Guard swooped down from above.
The Death Guard were slowly being ground down by weight of fire, with the Poxwalkers falling over from volley after volley of galvanic and radium fire. The Death Guard moved in, the Plague Marines shrugging all but the worst of the bombardment, and a Skitarii Ranger squad was butchered by a Sorcerer in Terminator armor. Meanwhile, the Plagueburst Crawlers continued to pound their positions, causing diseased Skitarii to fall over as they rained diseased shells upon their position.
Fortunately for the Adeptus Mechanicus, they managed to blow up one of the Plagueburst Crawlers, with the combined firepower of the Ironstriders Ballistarii and the Leviathan Dreadnought carving it open and noxious fumes billowed out of the wreck.
Undaunted, the Death Guard continued moving forward, with the Foetid Blight Drone charging at the damaged Leviathan Dreadnought. Not to be outdone, the Lord of Virulence joined the combat, and with his flail, he brought the might walker down with a couple of blows. The Blight Drone stabbed the Librarian with a plague probe and caused the ill space marine to succumb to whatever foul diseases it carried.
Even so, there were very little Death Guard left on the field. Both the Death Guard and Imperial Guard were being slaughtered by the sheer firepower the Adeptus Astartes and Adeptus Mechanicus brought to bear.
"Ugh!"
Ikeda watched in frustration as two units of Sanguinary Guard chopped and hacked the Leman Russ tanks in his squadron to pieces. Shirakawa was forced to witness his squad get massacred once again as the murderous transhumans cut the relatively unprotected infantry apart, and he was hurled across the room after attempting to parry a power sword with his own.
Of course he would be no match for the augmented Adeptus Astartes. He closed his eyes and slumped against the wall, unable to respond to the frantic demands of his commanding officer who wanted to know what was going on inside the building.
Ikeda was about to issue an order when a neutron laser beam from the Onager Dunecrawler blasted his new Leman Russ tank to bits.
"...I should have stuck with Tenzen," he groaned as he crawled from the ruins of his tank, wishing for the armor and resilience of the venerable Shadowsword. And firepower too.
Only Mizuno was left, and he ordered Taiyou to reverse as he opened fire on the Sanguinary Guard. Avenging the other Leman Russ Executioner tanks that had been wrecked, he killed all but one Sanguinary Guard. Meanwhile, the lascannon and Executioner plasma turret slew the Captain who led them, melting him and his power armor to slag.
Apparently, that act of defiance allowed the stubborn Astra Militarum to dig in and hold onto the archeotech. With the dwindling forces of Encarmine Angels and Adeptus Mechanicus succumbing to disease, and perhaps realizing they were attacking loyal, Imperial allies, they decided to retreat. The Death Guard also pulled back, with only a Lord of Virulence, Maglinant Plaguecaster and Sorcerer in Terminator armor left. That and a single Plagueburst Crawler that was in danger of being blown apart by two Onager Dunecrawlers and a single surviving Ironstrider Ballistarius. At least they had killed almost all of the infantry, Skitarii or Astartes.
With that, the Astra Militarum were the only ones left standing over the archeotech.
"At least we carried out our orders to the bitter end," Ikeda remarked as he was tended to by a medic, his arm in a sling. He glanced at the grotesque heavens, the dark colors dancing in hideous fashion as they basked in the insidious glow of the Great Rift. "Holy Terra, I'm sick of all this. I hope the xenos and traitors give up, or we're royally screwed."
The battered colonel vowed that the next time he fought, he was going back out in Tenzen. No more going easy on the enemy, that was for sure. The Draconians might not have the genhanced might of their Space Marine allies or the cyborg augmentations of the Skitarii, but they had the grit and will to outlast anyone in a battle of attrition.
...or so he hoped.
