739.M41

Manufactorum Theta-Phi 15, Capitol Continent, Esteran Secundus, Esteran System, Thule Sector, Segmentum Obscurus, Imperium of Man

Bolter fire and the high, piercing whine of power armor were the only sounds. A battle was usually a noisy affair, with war cries and the sounds of wounded and dying men all under the constant chatter of men or aliens in a stressful, high pressure situation. Not a battle between the Adeptus Astartes of the Iron Hands chapter and the Adeptus Mechanicus' slave-soldiers. Skitarii were not known for their humanity, and the Iron Hands hardly even started human. Even fallen Skitarii, in the service of the Dark Gods of Chaos, communicated in binharic. A corrupted, twisted form of it, but still recognizably binharic.

He hated it more than any other language he had ever heard. Ferenk Verrn was a Techmarine, a servant of the holy Omnissiah. He was a veteran of hundreds or perhaps thousands of battles, and was familiar with the total silence the Iron Hands operated in. Having their enemy operate in a similar fashion was new, but being able to hear their hidden dialogues in a corrupted form of his own language, having them forced upon him by daemonically boosted voxcasters was both new and awful. The Omnissiah only knew what had forced these Skitarii into servitude to a new master, but the Iron Hands of Clan Vurgaan were there to fix it.

Ferenk watched as Clade Vaur, the tactical squad assigned to support him, cleared the cavernous assembly hall, filled with tables and chairs once used by the sprawling manufactorum worker population. Sergeant Talrok Vaur, in his ancient set of Cataphractii plate, went up the middle, scything aside the Vanguard in his path, ignoring with contemptuous ease the rads infused into their bodies and weaponry. His nine other marines flanked him, taking measured, simultaneous steps and swiveling their torsos to deliver aimed bolter fire. Ferenk watched as one marine, his armor swelled with augmetics, turned his torso 180 degrees to engage a squad of Sicarians that dropped from a vent.

As the marine took down a pair of the corrupted Skitarii with his bolter, Ferenk analyzed the situation. His cogitators clacked, analyzing the information provided by his armor sensors and implants and spitting out a response.

++ Mission potentially compromised by presence of new threat. Engagement advised ++

That was clear enough to Ferenk.

Striding out of the shadows that had concealed his heavily modified rust-red Mark VIII artificer armor, Ferenk raised his Storm Bolter with his right hand, supported it with a servo-arm, and, working left to right, put a bolt into the neck of every remaining Sicarian in the space of less than a second. Had he been capable of satisfaction, he would have felt it.

A blurt of binharic cant over the Clave noosphere was temporarily clear over the background of angry corrupted binary.

The next room is our objective. As short and to the point as could be expected of a century-long veteran of the Iron Hands. Ferenk switched his gaze without moving his body, shifting his view from his front-facing augmetic eyes staring through his helmet visor to the servo-arm holding his axe, giving him an excellent view of the hall and the terse Veteran Sergeant. At the far end of the hall was a pair of double doors, from floor to ceiling measuring over ten meters. They led to nothing more than another non-descript dining area, but for some inscrutable reason, the chaos cult that had subverted the local Skitarii and slaughtered the workers and tech priests that lived and worked on the continent had chosen this room for the apparently massive voxcast apparatus that was broadcasting corrupt doctrina imperatives and broken scraps of holy machine codes. The broadcast could be felt by machines and adepts across the planet, and as a result, both had been acting up. The native Skitarii forces had attempted to deal with the insurrection and had taken 100% casualties for their trouble. So the Iron Hands had come.

Ferenk and Clade Vaur advanced. He crossed the gore-strewn floor of the hall, overturned tables and other furniture cracking under his heavy strides. The heavy thumps and consistent chatter of the marines ahead of him was a familiar background noise, the blurts and clicks a pleasant counterpoint to the eternal and infernal background noise of staticky daemonic noise. As the tactical marines neared the door, eight scattered to each side of the door, the one with the heavy bolter kneeled and braced his weapon so he could fire into the next room without obstruction, and Veteran Sergeant Vaur strode up to the door and braced his massive power fist against it, ready to batter it down. Without turning around, he stopped, waiting for Ferenk to get into position.

We are ready to breach, Brother Techmarine. Ferenk stopped behind the bulky Terminator armor and signaled back with a noospheric acknowledgement paired with a time code, letting the squad know that he would need exactly five minutes to set up.

The servo arm bracing his Storm Bolter swung back behind him and locked the weapon into the slot on his servo-harness. Another servo arm retrieved his Omnissian Axe, a third brought forward a melta charge, and the original folded back and retrieved his vox-array. Ferenk set himself to setting up the confusing array of antenna, dataslates, and other esoteric devices designed to get at transmission from under all the layers of metal and manufactorum all the way to the orbiting battle-barge Kalach.

Four minutes after getting set up, no Iron Hand had moved, but the vox report had been entirely uploaded and Ferenk was ready. He stowed the vox-array and his servo arms, brought forward his flamer, plasma cutter, storm bolter, and Omnissian Axe, and placed the melta charge on the door.

Breach. He took a step back and triggered the charge. The door dissolved in a pile of slag and sparks, and Vaur and his squad charged in.

Ferenk's incredibly sensitive aural implants could, when properly calibrated, allow him to hear a tunneling Ambull kilometers away. They were completely unnecessary to hear the daemonic screeching and extremely rapid bolter-fire. He moved into the room and readied his weapons, just in time to see the lead tactical marine have his entire left arm sheared off by a daemonette's claw hand. The Slaaneshi daemon drove another spiked arm through the marine's helm, through his brain. Before the twisted monstrosity could pull its weapon out of the sparking, ruined helm, the marine brought his combat knife around and severed the arm, then its head. Several other daemonettes swarmed over their sister's corpse, and Ferenk opened up with both his Storm Bolter and his flamer, burning and blowing up the majority of the onrushing daemons, scything down the few remaining with his axe.

Ferenk ran the numbers through his cogitation implants, and the calculus was… less than encouraging.

++ Unknown threat. Caution advised. Priority: Complete the mission ++

More daemonettes were flooding out of the far door, the massive room rapidly filling with screaming horrors. Despite their terrifying visage, the Iron Hands were unaffected. Nothing can manipulate the emotions of that which has none, after all, and most Iron Hands Vaur's age had shed all the weakness of their flesh. Even the younger tactical marines, none of them more than a century old, were at least mostly augmetic. Ferenk's own four centuries had left him unsure if he even had any flesh left. To find out would require removing his armor, and, following the example of Warleader Kristos, he had had his armor combined with his augmetics. The daemonettes' psychic aura was entirely ineffective.

The telekinetics of the Keeper of Secrets behind the daemonettes were a different matter. Another tactical marine was lifted into the air, limbs splayed, and began to shudder before he fell apart in a spray of sparks and gore, the Greater Daemon laughing and contorting in impossible ways. Ferenk didn't have to consult his cogitators for this. He had to kill the daemon and get to the -

Only then did he notice the biomechanical monstrosity in the middle of the room, occluded by the swarm of lesser daemons, and glowing with a baleful pink energy. It stretched from floor to ceiling, with tendrils of muscle fiber and mechadendrites spreading across both surfaces and suspending the massive canister of flesh in the middle. The Keeper of Secrets was guarding it, and doing so quite effectively. A massive tendril swung directly at Ferenk, bowling over another tactical marine on the way. Before it hit him, however, he raised his axe and bisected it, the tip flying off to impact the opposite wall. The massive creature screeched, its smile becoming slightly more fixed, and it turned toward the techmarine.

The Iron Hands fell back in response to a binharic bleep from their sergeant, forming a half-circle in front of their sergeant, and Ferenk moved up to engage the daemon in close combat. He raised his axe and walked forward, pumping heavy mass-reactive rounds into the Keeper, the tactical marines following suit, and Vaur prepared his back-mounted Cyclone missile launcher. Ferenk swung his axe, severing one of the daemons multitudinous arms, and then raised a servo-arm to block an incoming strike. The daemon shrieked and sent a blast of psychic energy at the tactical squad, blasting the marine group across the room and forcing Veteran Sergeant Vaur back nearly a meter.

The cogitators, unprompted, offered another take.

++ Kill the daemon and destroy the device. ++

Ferenk didn't have time to worry about restless machine spirits. He took his axe and drove it straight down, cutting through the daemon's head and nearly down to the end of its torso before its weight and servo-induced momentum ended.

Good kill, Brother Techmarine. The sergeant and his marines fanned out once more, taking down daemonettes left and right. Now destroy the device. Ferenk was entirely in agreement, and indicated so through the noosphere.

One of his servo arms rose from his harness and grabbed a second melta bomb, and he painstakingly worked his way through a crowd of daemons and up the biomechanical slope to the core of the machine. As he neared the glowing core, it began to brighten and hum. He bashed his way through the horde of daemons, and threw the charge into the device. The glow wavered, then broke, and Ferenk turned and began working his way down the slope. Then the charge went off and Ferenk felt his body moving as the blast blew him across the room, until he slammed into the opposite wall. Or at least he should have, but against all logic, instead of hitting the wall, he continued moving, and the world turned red, then pink, then black.