Chapter 234: Take My Axe! (Patreon)

[Combat Protocols: Engaged.]

[Primary Directive: Exterminate all detectable organic life.]

Every Iron Man on the battlefield straightened in unison, servo-motors humming like a mechanical choir of death as their metallic frames locked into firing stances. Bolts of crackling energy surged from their arm-mounted cannons, cutting across the battlefield in an instant.

Where the beams struck, ceramite shoulder guards and transhuman flesh alike were punctured clean through. The residual energy cascaded through muscle and bone, breaking down the very cells of the Astartes it touched. Warriors of the Traitor Legions roared as their gene-forged flesh dissolved within their power armor.

Within the first two seconds of the clash, Abaddon the Despoiler lost an entire squad of elite Terminators. Under Kossolax’s command, more than thirty Chaos Space Marines of the Foresworn were reduced to charred husks, their once-defiant armor now smoking coffins.

Only Typhus, the Herald of Nurgle, fared better. His warriors did not die unless struck in vital organ. Most of the beams simply bored new cavities through their plague-swollen bodies. The excess energy could do little more than boil away tumors and cysts that festered within them, hardly a hindrance to the Lord of Nurgle’s children.

By contrast, the traitor Astartes’ return fire proved almost useless. Bolter rounds did little more than polish the Men of Iron’s adamantine hides. Plasma weaponry had some effect, but not enough.

The Chaos Marines quickly realized the grim truth: only power weapons could carve through these abominations of the Dark Age of Technology. With the grim resolve of veterans, they pressed forward, advancing under withering energy fire, seeking the sanctuary of close quarters where chainblades, lightning claws, and daemon-forged swords might bite true.

The battlefield erupted into brutal, grinding melee.

“TYPHUS!”

Abaddon tore the power core from one of the constructs with the Talon of Horus, its armored shell splitting with a metallic shriek, sparks cascading in a violent display. His crimson gaze snapped toward the Plague Lord, burning with impatience.

Typhus gripped his massive scythe, the Manreaper, but for a moment did not join the fray. Instead, he lingered at the edge of the carnage, his insectile respirators hissing with every slow breath, merely observing.

At Abaddon’s furious roar, Typhus finally moved. After another moment’s hesitation, he casually swung his scythe through a charging Man of Iron, its frame sparking and collapsing at his feet.

“I am recording.” Typhus planted his armored boot upon the broken chassis, leaning in to study its internal frame with morbid fascination. “See? No datasmiths guiding them. These are true Men of Iron, unshackled, autonomous.”

The words were almost redundant, but Abaddon understood the weight behind them.

Within the Imperium, Abominable Intelligences were forbidden, and the Men of Iron were the greatest taboo of all. The Adeptus Mechanicus still fielded machine-warriors like Kastelan Robots, but never without the presence of a human datasmith, the leash to bind their will. Without such masters, they would be deemed heretekal, and purged without hesitation.

Yet here these constructs fought unaided. If word of this reached the wrong ears, the entire Talon Sector could face holy extermination by the Inquisition.

Typhus’ recordings meant little now. But later… they would prove invaluable.

Abaddon paid the matter little heed for now. His focus remained on slaughter. Every Man of Iron that dared to stand before him was ripped apart. His mastery of war was undeniable, and with his weapons he was unstoppable.

The Talon of Horus, once wielded by his gene-father, Horus Lupercal himself. The blade, Drach’nyen, a daemon blade so accursed that even the Emperor Himself could not destroy it.

Together, with the flagship Vengeful Spirit, these relics were proof of Abaddon’s status as Warmaster of Chaos.

Within two minutes of relentless close combat, the Despoiler carved down the last of the Men of Iron beneath his fury.

“A pity,” Abaddon growled, grinding his armored boot into a ruined chassis, sparks flaring beneath his heel. “Each one of these relics is a treasure of the Dark Age. Once gone, they cannot be replaced. To see them squandered here, wasted as fodder... Had they been mine, they would never have been wasted so meaninglessly.”

Typhus gave a rare nod. He, too, understood. The Iron Men were remnants of Humanity’s greatest age. Now, in its decay, they were rare and priceless. In the days of the Great Crusade, when an Imperial Legion encountered warlords fielding Men of Iron, the campaigns devolved into wars of attrition. The cost was staggering, hundreds, sometimes thousands of Legionaries for every one of the machines destroyed.

Even now, Abaddon weighed their prowess. Thirty of his warriors had been torn apart in the melee alone. Stronger than an Astartes, perhaps fewer in number, but each a titan in its own right.

“Look there,” Typhus rasped suddenly, striking Abaddon’s pauldron to draw his gaze skyward.

Above them, one of the orbiting planetoids flared with a sudden, blinding yellow light.

Abaddon remembered well. During the first assault on Cadia, when the Celestial Engine’s satellite burned red, it heralded the firing of their stellar lances. Yellow meant arc weapons unleashed their fury. Their flaw was the lengthy charge time, but when unleashed, the energy storms could annihilate entire fleets in an instant.

Either weapon spelled doom. If the arc-weapons fired now, the hundreds of troop transports laden with Chaos warriors, Titans, and mortal legions would be reduced to a spectacular graveyard of fire.

Abaddon turned toward Kossolax to demand an explanation regarding the ritual. But Kossolax had already turned to him.

“The rite was completed the moment we boarded,” Kossolax said, his voice thick with dark satisfaction. “The Blood God has seen our courage. Our offering is accepted.”

At his words, Abaddon felt a tremor in his blackened heart. Something vast, ancient, and hungry stirred beyond the veil of reality, coiling through the Immaterium like a serpent of endless scale, its attention falling upon the battlefield with suffocating weight.

Typhus felt it. Kossolax felt it. Every chosen son of Chaos froze in that instant, their corrupted hearts beating in unison with that monstrous rhythm beyond the veil.

A presence stirred.

Across the void, a titanic consciousness awoke. Its perception swept through the system like a burning tide, searing away the shadows, seeing all. It seethed with hatred, hatred for the sorcerous filth who had defiled Cadia, hatred for the creeping warp-taint of the Crystal Labyrinth. That taint was receding, banished in time, but for now the world still bled with corruption.

On Cadia itself, mortal soldiers fought on despite their terror. Though many despaired at the sight of daemons, they did not break. They held their lines, dying in droves rather than flee. Even when daemons appeared in their midst, most held their ground, dying at their posts. Their courage pleased the presence. It had given the mortals strength, and they had not squandered it.

With a measure of satisfaction, it shifted its gaze elsewhere.

It saw the flotilla of transports, carrying billions of mortal soldiers, Titan engines, and Astartes alike, heading toward the planet. A war meant to drown the stars in blood, a storm of slaughter worthy of the Pantheon’s gaze. It should have been glorious.

But it also saw what was to come. Those transports would never make landfall. The arc weapons would fire, and all would be lost before battle could even be joined. No battle. No rivers of blood.

It grew wrathful.

A shadow vast as a sun coalesced in the void, a monolithic silhouette, rage incarnate, raising a colossal axe wreathed in unreality. With a roar that shook the skein of existence, it brought the weapon crashing down upon the Celestial Engine.

Reality screamed.

The Celestial Engine’s layered shields shattered like glass. Its arc arrays split apart, a glowing wound yawning across its surface, venting gouts of plasma and debris. The satellite lurched violently, knocked from its orbit, spinning helplessly toward the core of the Celestial Engine.

The Stone man reacted swiftly. Power was stripped from every planetary system except the shield grid. With every watt diverted, the planetary shield blazed to life. The broken moon slammed into it, bounced off, and careened toward Cadia itself.

Gravitic engines roared as the Stone man redirected every erg of power, dragging the broken satellite away from its death spiral before it could obliterate the fortress-world.

Then the colossus of industry awoke. Vast material-forges, planetary-scale printers usually kept dormant, engaged. They consumed eighty percent of the Celestial Engine’s power grid, drawing upon stored reserves to repair the wounded satellite. Within an hour, the ruined satellite would be restored.

Still, the satellite remained crippled, unable to sustain its own rotation. The last scraps of power were fed into its gravity engines, forcing it to hold orbit once more.

Until the forges completed their work, its twin, still intact, could not draw further energy. They spun helplessly in orbit, conserving what little reserves they had.