Chapter 236: The Blade of the Omnissiah (Patreon)

The regiments detached by Lord Castellan Creed boarded their transports and made for the Celestial Engine. While above them, the void burned with fire as the Chaos fleet and the Talon Navy exchanged broadsides, their lance-beams carving scars across the darkness of high orbit. The Imperial transport ships, under this cover, swung wide around to the far side of the satellite, evading the heaviest guns before disgorging the Astra Militarum to the surface below.

On the surface, the barren plains of steel stretched endlessly, featureless save for the occasional monolithic pylon that reached toward the black sky. The Cadian Combat Engineers wasted no time, they began constructing forward bastions and establishing supply nodes. From the vast core of the Celestial Engine, streams of munitions, heavy weaponry, and the indispensable logistics drones were teleported down to the drop zones.

Within hours, a proper Imperial foothold stood upon the barren steel. The Guard consolidated, assembled, and began their advance toward enemy positions, the crack of lasfire and the roar of heavy bolters announcing the first clashes.

The battles raged along the equatorial line of the satellite.

On the eastern and western fronts stood titanic weapons arrays, cyclopean defense constructs that loomed like mountain ranges. Both Imperial and Traitor forces threw the bulk of their infantry and even Adeptus Astartes detachments into seizing control of these arrays, fighting beneath towers that seemed to pierce the heavens themselves.

Each array contained thousands of defense turrets. Against the backdrop of voidships, these guns were as small as ants, their energy lances but pinpricks in the void. Yet on the ground, to mortal eyes, a single turret was as vast as a fortress. The machinery that rotated its housing, the cathedral-sized chambers for its cogitators and capacitor banks, all of it became battlefields in their own right.

Dogfights broke out in the heat-vent tunnels of the turrets. Amphibious assault vehicles clashed within colossal coolant conduits of transparent glass. Guardsmen fought desperate, bloody corridor wars amidst gearworks and ammunition hoppers, hurling incendiaries and unleashing fusillades of las and shot.

Commanders pored over schematics of the array, directing infantry and tanks to seize gear-axles and plasma capacitors, occasionally pleading for Space Marines to reinforce the blood-soaked choke points. And this was but a single turret. There were thousands more across the arrays.

Even the “gaps” between two arrays became warzones. From orbit, these spaces looked like slivers of darkness, but on the ground they stretched like endless plains. Armoured battalions thundered across this “plain,” while fighter squadrons dove through the cracks between turrets, releasing payloads before retreating back for rearmament.

It was here that the servants of Chaos quickly gained the upper hand, not only because of their Daemonic Engines, but because they had unleashed their Titan Legion.

The Death’s Head Titan Legion advanced in terrible order: fifteen Warhound-class Titans prowled at the vanguard, flanked by infantry and armour. Warhounds, the swiftest of the God-Machines, hunted ahead like steel predators, their turbo-lasers and plasma blastguns designed to shred armour columns and cripple slower Titans before they could react.

Behind them marched ten Reaver-class Titans, the mainstay of any Titan Legion. Where Warhounds were hunters, Reavers were brawlers, weapon-laden frames that could both anchor the line and press an assault, pouring withering fire into enemy ranks with apocalypse launchers, gatling blasters, and melta weaponry.

At the rear strode the dreaded Dies Irae, a Warlord Titan of infamous reputation. Warlords were walking cathedrals of war, towering command-engines that combined sheer durability with devastating firepower. The Dies Irae had shattered cities during the Horus Heresy and still bore the scars of ten thousand years of blasphemous service. Its bulk was screened by four other Warlords and the corrupted Knight Households sworn to the Legio Mortis.

Some of these Knight Households traced their lineage back to the days of the Great Crusade, their ancient banners older than entire subsectors. Among them strode one venerable Knight, its ion shield scarred and its long-shafted lance glimmering with kill-honours from millennia past.

They were called God-Machines for a reason. On this satellite, the advance of the line was dictated not by tanks or infantry, but by the ponderous tread of Titans. Nothing of flesh and steel could long endure the wrath of Volcano Cannons and Hellstorm Batteries. And yet, Lord Castellan Creed held his armoured divisions in deliberate restraint, trading space for time. The Chaos Titans pressed forward, but the Imperial line did not break.

....

Half an hour after the first salvo, deep within the Celestial Engine’s planetary core, the Titan Legion of the Blade of the Omnissiah completed its rite of battle.

This was no ordinary Titan Legion. Forged on the Forge World of Agripinaa, crafted under the guiding will of Archmagos Vick, it was a Legion built for one sacred purpose. Among their Warhounds and Reavers strode a legend: a Warlord Titan unlike any other, the Glory of Agripinaa, a Titan of the Imperator-class.

The Imperator was more than a Titan, it was a walking fortress, the tallest of the God-Machines, its weapons capable of levelling continents. Its spires bristled with defense turrets, its carapace bore plasma annihilators that could erase entire battalions, and its very presence was an act of faith in the Machine God.

It had slumbered for millennia beneath the crust of Agripinaa, awakened only in times of greatest peril. Few in the upper echelons of the Forge World even knew it existed. Vick had placed it at the heart of this Legion, not because Agripinaa faced annihilation, but because there was a higher calling: to make war in the name of the Omnissiah Himself.

The Rite of Battle concluded. On the command deck of the Glory of Agripinaa, all eyes turned toward the Throne Mechanicum.

There sat Princeps Omon, eyes closed in rapture. His flesh was almost gone. His limbs had long since been excised, replaced by thick cables and synaptic conduits. Only a sliver of organic brain remained, the rest fused with the Throne’s manifold.

He felt it.

The machine-spirit of the Glory roared, plasma annihilators charging with an eager growl. Every cannon, every launcher, every sacred weapon longed to kill in the Omnissiah’s name.

He was the Titan, and the Titan was him.

“For the Machine God! For the Omnissiah!” Omon’s voice boomed, no longer entirely human. His remaining eye snapped open, its pupil replaced by a green rune. “Deploy!”

With a blinding flash, void-displacement fields flared. Reality split.

The forty Titans of the Blade of the Omnissiah materialized fifty meters above the metallic plains, their colossi slamming down in a storm of klaxons and thunder. The ground quaked as if the satellite itself bowed to their presence.

Directly ahead, no more than a kilometre away, stood the Chaos Titan Legion.

For a heartbeat, even the Legio Mortis faltered, stunned by the sudden appearance of their foes. Then came the counter-order: weapons swung to bear.

But the Traitors were a second too slow. At the rear of their line, the Dies Irae and its Warlord escorts came under immediate concentrated fire. Their Void Shields collapsed in a storm of blue static.

The plasma annihilator of the Glory of Agripinaa spat an incandescent torrent, tearing through a Warlord Titan and lancing straight into the Dies Irae itself.

The Chaos Warlord’s left arm exploded in a blinding detonation, shearing off entirely. The colossal limb came crashing down, crushing three Knights beneath its ruin.

Another Warlord lumbered forward, interposing its shields to block a second salvo, sparing the Dies Irae from greater damage, for the moment.

The Legio Mortis responded with fury. Hellstorm Cannons roared like thunder, Volcano Cannons spat molten death, plasma batteries screamed in incandescent wrath, an entire arsenal poured onto the Glory of Agripinaa. Its shields shimmered and thudded with every impact, not flickering void-fields but solid energy barriers, their surfaces glowing blue at each strike, echoing like a fist pounding upon a steel door.

The Glory howled, vox-horns blaring a hymn in binary canticles. Its Apocalypse Missile Launchers roared, not at the Titans, but at the armoured spearhead of the Chaos Guard. A thousand tanks at the fore of the enemy line were annihilated in a chain of sun-bright detonations.

With titanic tread, the Imperator-class Warmaster strode forward, leading the entire Legion Blade of the Omnissiah in its advance.

Beside their God-Machines, the Skitarii cohorts, the Knight Households of the Mechanicus, the Cadian Shock Troops, and even detachments of Space Marines deployed into the fray, ants beside titans, yet vital to exploit the ground gained with each colossal step.

Thus did Titans, Knights, Astartes, and Guard collide with the Traitor Legions amidst the gaps between the weapons arrays.

Meanwhile, within the arrays themselves, the bloody “Streetfights” ground on. And reports kept arriving at High Command: soldiers swore they had seen strange humanoid machines fighting alongside them, metallic warriors whose origins no one could identify…