NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter Fifty-Three
My armour yells at me in lingua-technis, throwing up a countdown until its systems overheat right in the middle of my vision, though it somehow manages to arrange the red tide of numbers without blocking my view of an incoming headbutt as it propels itself upright.
The machine-spirit’s delicately placed warning doesn’t stop me from being knocked back by the blow. It doesn’t hurt, even though the force disrupts my second swing.
Auto-senses cycle, highlighting the battlesuit in greyscale, cutting out the bright flames from my vision. The image is good, though small amounts of interference skitter and fuzz the pict-feed.
A burning mechanical arm lashes out and I grab it with a spare hand. With the machine pinned, my servo-harness strikes, performing a masterful uncontrolled disassembly on the battlesuit, targeting its four limbs with all six mechadendrites while the articulating clamp grips its chest.
With the battle suit held in front of me, the fire warriors try to rush forward so they can shoot me point blank, rather than fire through their ally. However, they are kept pinned by my guardsmen.
Brian pokes his head out of my armour and tries to nick the energy shield stuck on the battlesuit’s shoulder, but he doesn’t have the right tools and tugs at it uselessly. The servo-harness finishes its destructive stress testing on the suit, grabs Brian, and shoves him back into his pocket, then it detaches the shield module and stuffs the module into Brian’s compartment.
The thieving servo-skull trills approval in its box and pushes a pict-feed to me as it pokes at the device.
Keeping the head and torso of the battlesuit in front of me, I stomp the final twenty metres towards the fire warriors. I struggle to move faster than a jog and I get another warning that my gyros are accruing damage as they work at 108% of their rated capacity.
Three fire warriors grab their injured comrades, who take pot shots at my legs as they are dragged through the doorway. The other two chuck photon grenades at me and with the battlesuit in the way, my hellfire pistol can’t pick off the grenades and they detonate either side of me.
My auto-senses are overwhelmed and take half a second to reset. Two more pairs of grenades are chucked towards me at one second intervals and, unwilling to be peppered with pulse rifles, I hold on to the battlesuit and tank the disorientating blasts.
The third round is less effective; my machine-spirit adapts, constantly resetting my power armour’s multiple sensors, covering different spectrums, in series and compiles the image into a moving, false colour, pixel-art image that has enough resolution I can understand what’s happening.
Its adaptation works just in time for me to see the tau retreat, weathering a barrage of shots from the guardsmen they were engaged with before we arrived as they do so. Six, needle-like red energy blasts burn through the armour of a fire warrior and turn his chest to bloody vapours.
I beckon my guardsmen forward. They stick private Sutherlainn on his extended shield and two others pick him up. Another two recover the dead guardsman.
While they approach, I collate the headcam feeds and other data streams from the guardsmen in the room beyond.
Three manta super-heavy drop ships lie in glorious ruins, their hulls breached and burning from powerful melta charges. Their colossal fifty-two metre wings still maintain their structure without sagging, despite the holes.
The landing gear, however, is toast, and the mantas have crashed to the floor, creating a triangle of fortifications.
A single, fully equipped command chimera huddles in the centre of the carnage, surrounded on all sides by ninety-four kataphrons and two hundred and thirty-five guardsmen.
Resistance has been fierce. I started with three hundred and seventy kataphrons, four hundred and eight heavily armoured infantry, and one chimera. That’s seventy five percent losses on my kataphrons and forty-two on the infantry.
At least the trapped guardsmen got out OK.
I’ve been watching the numbers tick up in my data feed and monitored all the vox channels as I completed my own mission. There is little I could do to assist them, other than oversee the kataphrons, so I haven’t focused on their progress and I’ve resisted yelling at the commander Muire over the vox.
My guardsmen have destroyed dozens of vehicles and facilities as well as taken down approximately fourteen hundred tau.
Despite the high casualties, the mission, so far, is a success.
The bloodletter demons led by a Herald of Khorne and his eight pet flesh hounds, clearly disagree with my summary.
As does the five metre battlesuit I can’t identify flanked by two other smaller, unknown battlesuits that are facing off against the demons.
There are also three TX7 Hammerhead Gunships and seventeen light vehicles, mostly drones led by two piranha skimmers, who are suppressing my guardsmen with hit and run strikes. The vehicles are supported by one hundred and seven fire warriors.
I wish we hadn’t butchered all the mantas, as one would be a fine getaway vehicle, but I couldn’t guarantee I could gain control in a practical time frame, or at all, really.
A hammerhead slides past one of the three openings of the wrecked manta fort. The absurdly long railgun waving on the top of the grav tank fires, obliterating three kataphrons and seven guardsmen, then the round impacts on the inside of the fort and dents the manta’s armour too.
The hammerhead doesn’t escape unscathed.
Four special weapon teams hit it with three las cannons and a heavy bolter.
The hammerhead is fast, but it’s just too close for the well trained teams, and their machine-spirits, to miss. It tries to spray the teams down with its twin burst cannons, but the teams are well sheltered behind piles of scrap and they are operating the guns remotely.
One lascannon is lost and the hammerhead barely reaches the other side of the gap before it lists then scrapes along the floor. Smoke pours from the small holes bored through its exceptional armour.
The supporting fire warriors continue to fire through the opening in short bursts on all three sides, occasionally catching a guardsman and damaging kataphrons, though not enough to stop the battle servitors from shooting back to devastating effect, killing a squad of fire warriors, eight tau, approximately every twenty seconds.
The remora drones are taking a beating as well.
Tau reinforcements trickle into the hanger, maintaining their numbers.
My HUD turns an angry red. Three minutes until the boarding torpedoes self-destruct.
I’m in a great position to flank the tau though I will have to be quick. A hammerhead, six drones, and sixteen fire warriors are already hurrying over to pin me down.
My armour chatters at me. ++Conversion field restored. Armour at sixty-four percent. Breach probable. Field repair kit at one hundred percent, automate emergency repairs?++
“Yes!”
Two mechadendrites whir around my suit, hitting me with fire suppressant that scours my armour clean of contaminants. They squirt ceramite paste into the thirty seven holes in my armour, most of which are on my chest and shins, then start to heat each spot to speed up its hardening.
With the tau closing fast, I program a fire mission, toss the remains of the battlesuit through the doorway, then sprint across it to the other side and launch twenty-five micro missiles at the incoming forces.
The hammerhead’s gun is too slow to target me, and the fire warriors’ only manage a few scattered shots that flash off my shield or get obstructed by the bulk of the battlesuit.
The six drones are much more nimble and responsive, launching their own missiles to counter mine and I take a nasty barrage from their burst cannons.
It’s too much for the conversion field and, as it drains, one shot gets through and severs a mechadendrite. I snap it from the air as it falls.
I don’t hold back and trigger the other twenty-five missiles. My first wave is destroyed by a coordinated burst as the twelve tau seeker missiles explode simultaneously, creating a concussive screen that obliterates my swarm.
The second wave is pushed off course. I override them and guide the ordinance manually, spreading them out in a double, concave wave. All twenty-five strike their targets, destroying the six drones and disabling the hammerhead’s weapons.
Fire warriors are thrown to the floor by the consecutive explosions and, before they can recover, I charge them with my pipe, killing five before they attack me. The rest pick themselves up and fire their pulse rifles on full auto.
As the rounds turn to splashes of light on my conversion shield, I catch three of the firewarriors with my flamer and my hellfire pistol disables another. The last six don’t stop and I hurl myself at the hammerhead, and grab on, keeping its bulk between me and the fire warriors.
My servo harness reports further damage just as my armour reports its field repairs are complete.
The hammerhead spins around exposing me once again to enemy fire.
While Corporal Moredeleg and his squad have their hands full with their stretchers and can’t assist, he does send the cyber mastiff forward. An armoured, pony-sized cyborg dog slams into the fire warriors’ line. She has more mass than I do and tramples them into the ground, pinning the last with her paws and ripping off his head with her jaws.
It bounds over to me, a blocky, armoured head in its jaws, as I swing back and forth on the tank and whines at me.
I reach out and pet its thick head and a mechadendrite gently takes the tau head from its mouth.
“Good dog?”
She wuffs happily, jumps onto the tank and digs her power claws into the fio-tak plating, then curls herself around the broken turret and lies down.
The hammer head sinks lower and the hum of its anti-grav systems turns obnoxious. Now I’m no longer covered with burning fuel or being peppered with plasma, I risk my limited supply of nanites and repaint the tank in silver.
As the nanites reduce the hull to grey dust, the hammerhead races for its lines.
I send nanites at the propulsion systems and the tiny machines are repelled, unable to get close. Shrugging, I climb over to the cyber mastiff and grab my final reload of micro-missiles.
Pointing at Moredeleg, I say, “Return and assist.”
The dog growls at me and rests its paw on my leg, clearly deciding it’s had enough and wants a free ride. Mordeleg is her handler and now isn’t the time to argue with a seven hundred kilogram intelligent attack dog.
I gently remove the dangerous integrated weapons from my thigh, giving them a cursory inspection for damage. The controlling machine spirit acknowledges me with the electronic equivalent of an ambivalent wave and continues its threat assessment so it knows when to, or, more importantly, when not to activate the cybermastiff’s power claws.
As we approach the tau lines, the hull finally opens up and I reach in and crush the hammerhead pilot’s skull with my hand. The vehicle’s autopilot is more stubborn and continues to drive the crumbling vehicle.
The co-pilot and commander shoot at me with pulse pistols, which depletes my conversion shield slower than it charges. I thrust my flamer into the compartment and hesitate.
Ever since I opened my eyes on the Federation Station, I’ve been doggedly following the Way of the Murder-Hobo. Each time I’ve tried to cling to the better parts of humanity, the other party has denied me.
With a small sigh, the soft, lyrical tau language flows from my mouth as E-SIM perfectly controls my voice and muscles even as I picture the words in English and still feel like I’m speaking it.
“Do you wish to surrender?”
The commander screams at me and continues to fire.
I shimmy inside the cramped compartment and pull the pulse pistol from the commander’s hand. My mechadendrites reach out and disarm the co-pilot.
The commander beats uselessly at my arm as I pocket the pistol and the co-pilot says nothing. I spray more nanites over the internal systems.
“Most Gue’la would take your silence as defiance and shoot you. Today, however, is your lucky day. The more people who die, the more fuel the warp entities have to breach the materium, so it doesn’t matter if you say nothing. I am going to take you prisoner regardless of your opinion.”
“We will never bow to you, Gue’la,” mutters the co-pilot. Her voice is rough and full of fear. “I will not slave for the Imperium.”
“I wonder if you will hold that opinion once you are far from your ethereal.”
At last, the hammerhead fails and plummets, sliding along the floor bowling through the back of the tau lines and right into the demons.
“I really should have seen that coming.”