//------------------------------//
// Silverfall 
// Story: Entrenchment 
// by SFaccountant 
//------------------------------//

Entrenchment

An Age of Iron Story


Chapter 15

Silverfall


****


Ferrous Dominus – sector 20

Nightwatch – Luna’s bed chambers


“Princess? Princess Luna! Come on, wake up!”

An incoherent mumble answered the call. Under the covers of her bed, Princess Luna’s ear twitched, and her wings shifted.

“Princess? Princess! Okay, look, if you don’t wake up I’m going to have to start shaking you. I know this sort of thing is against protocol, but this is kind of an emergency! Please don’t blast me or anything, okay?”

Luna groaned and slowly kicked out a back leg. Then she sighed into her pillow.

A pair of greaves cautiously crept over the edge of the bed and pushed up against the sleeping alicorn along her back. Gently at first, as if the contact might be dangerous, the hooves started shaking her.

“Princess! Wake up! Seriously!”

Princess Luna squirmed, and her leg kicked out much more quickly this time. The hooves flinched away, and then suddenly shoved forward hard.

“Guh! Whuh?” Luna’s eyes fluttered open, her wings suddenly spread and her horn sparking with power. The pony next to her yelped and stumbled backward, shielding his face with his front legs.

Luna jumped up to stand on her mattress, dizzily glancing left and right. Spotting the pony next to her bed, she quickly whirled around.

“Lieutenant Dusk Blade! Wherefore hast thou disturbed our slumber?” Luna demanded sourly. “’Tis not yet time for our awakening, lest the device should hath sounded!” One wing beckoned to the cogitator console in the wall.

Dusk Blade, who was clad in full armor and had his mask down, quickly fell into a bowing pose. “Forgive me, Princess, but this is an emergency! We need you in the field immediately!”

“The field?” Luna frowned, her mind sluggishly working through its sleep-deprived haze to figure out what he was talking about. “Ah, of course. The siege of the changeling hive was to occur today, was it not?”

She yawned, lifting a wing to her mouth. “We hast thought the assault force wouldst be sufficient to crush the insects. Didst General Harlin fall into some trap?”

“Ah… no. Well, maybe? In a strategic sense?” Dusk mumbled. “See, the thing is, the field isn’t out near the hive, it’s here.”

“Here? In the badlands?” Luna asked.

“No, ‘here’ as in ‘right outside.’” Dusk Blade pointed a hoof anxiously toward the balcony door.

Luna looked over toward the balcony, and then back toward Dusk Blade. Her expression was halfway between uncomprehending and incredulous.

“What dost thou imply? The enemy charges the walls? By what means? They wouldst surely be repelled with ease!”

Dusk growled incoherently, his patience rapidly wearing thin. He dashed over to the black shutters over the balcony, and then hit the button near the base of the door. A whirring noise came from the shutters, and then the darkened plate metal started sliding down into the floor.

Luna blinked. “… We do not understand. What is the meaning of this?”

Dusk, for his part, seemed to be confused as well. “Wait, what happened to all the alarms? Isn’t this shielding soundproofed?”

He stepped forward onto the balcony, the air around him shimmering slightly as he breached an invisible magic perimeter. He recoiled, his ears standing straight up. Suddenly he could hear everything happening in the city below: the siege klaxons, the crack of lasguns, and distant booming noises. He took a step back, and suddenly he couldn’t hear a thing.

“Wait, is your room MAGICALLY soundproofed?! Why?” Dusk asked, turning back to the Princess of the Night. “No wonder you can’t hear any of the klaxons! You probably even have your console muted to regular base announcements during the day, don’t you?”

“That… is a… matter of personal preference. Nothing more,” Luna said evasively. “And what of it? Thou hast not explained the current emergency that apparently requires our intervention.”

“The city is under attack, Princess!” Dusk Blade said through clenched teeth. “The enemy is here! In the streets below us! Diamond dogs! Yaks! Griffons! Minotaur! Even Orks! They’re all here and we’re getting our flanks kicked! We need your help!”

“How did this happen?” Luna asked, her jaw agape. “When we took to bed there was not a hint of the foe! And now they hath pierced the outer bastions?”

A massive, scaly green body suddenly flew in front of the tower balcony. The shutters that still protected Luna’s bedchambers from the light of day rattled from the powerful wind, and a long, whip-like tail struck the railing at the edge of the platform, tearing part of it free and sending it plummeting to the streets below. Luna and Dusk watched with wide eyes, the entire event occurring in complete silence while they remained within the boundary of the magic noise-canceling barrier.

“…… Okay, then. Also dragons. We have dragons supporting the attack.” Dusk Blade sucked in a breath through his teeth. “That’s not good.”

“What is this?!” Luna bellowed, racing out onto the balcony.


The Princess stumbled once she passed the edge of the noise barrier, suddenly surrounded by blaring alarms amidst the distant sounds of combat. Recovering quickly, she searched the sky for the dragon, and found it gliding over the streets in an adjacent sector and searching for targets. It seemed to be studying one of the larger refineries, trying to determine if it were a suitable target and how it might be destroyed.

“Wherefore does the foe attack unmolested?! What of the defenses?! What of our armies?!” Luna complained.

As if in response to her comment, the thunder of a single quad gun came from the edge of the lots, slicing into the serpent’s side. The dragon roared and whirled about in the air, zeroing in on the weapon in an instant.

The gun emplacement was swiftly engulfed in an enormous fireball. Its operator was incinerated before he could attempt any kind of escape, and a moment later the entire weapon detonated along with its ammunition stores. The dragon built altitude, laughing as a plume of smoke billowed up beneath it.


Luna stared, and then her lip slowly curled into a snarl. An arc of blue lightning ran up the length of her horn, and her eyes started shining with power.

“What revolting ARROGANCE,” the alicorn growled, feeling a deep, almost painful burning in her chest. “To think, after We took to battle so many times and endured so much to defeat the Orks, these... insolent FOOLS would side with the greenskins!” A furious storm of dark, shadowy energy started to swirl around her, flushed with crimson sparks. “Wouldst that We could leave these wretches to the mercy of the Orks if they so fear the dominion of Chaos!”

An explosion of power came from the Princess, and Dusk was almost bowled over by a pressure wave that left his fur standing on end. He steadied himself and pushed down his goggles over his eyes to protect them.

When he looked up again, Luna was wearing her daemon armor. The Iron Gage floated by her shoulders, fingers curled and twitching, as if they were clutching at something only the dark Princess could see. Her helmet was retracted, revealing a furious scowl to the world as well as the magic aura around her horn. The magic kept flickering and changing colors, turning to bloody crimson to dark blue and back again.

“… But We cannot,” Luna hissed. The Iron Gage swung around, and one gauntlet curled into a fist and slammed into the palm of the other. “So be it. We shalt see these traitors ground into the dust from whence they rose! How fares the Lunar Guard, Lieutenant?!”

“Not great,” Dusk Blade sighed. “We’ve been clustering around Nightwatch so far and spread a few teams down into the adjacent structures in sector 20. A couple of griffons showed up and we shot them down, but other than that we’re not crazy about moving out. It’s the middle of the day, most of us have only had a few hours’ sleep, and nopony wants to lead a counter-attack when the humans are still on the back hoof. Er… foot.”

Luna’s helmet engaged, and a swarm of tiny black plates of metal clambered up her neck and locked into place all around her head. Her optics flickered on, and the seams of circuitry wrapped around her horn started to glow hot.

“We shalt lead the counter-attack, Lieutenant,” Luna said solemnly. “We shalt descend upon the foe postehaste and smite their mightiest warriors directly! Assemble thy soldiers, and bolster our WHAT THE HAY EVEN IS THIS.”

Behind the visor of her helmet, Luna clenched her teeth in frustration. According to her visor, there wasn’t a single enemy contact in the streets below Nightwatch. Friendly signum intercepts were spread all throughout the distance, and their identifier tags flickered and shifted sporadically across her view screen. She zoomed her view further, and her field of vision narrowed on a mob of green-skinned soldiers covering behind a burning lifter.

A vertical line swept over her visor, from left to right, and every one of the Orks was surrounded by a blue outline to indicate allied status. Individual Ork soldiers were picked out one by one, and her system starting matching the identifier signums to names. Verrex. Kash’mull. Yerrel. Wyatt Daniels. Targus. Starling Snows. Princess Luna.

The Princess of the Night felt a vein on her head pulse upon reading that last icon. Her wargear was malfunctioning? Such a thing seemed unlikely for a device of the Warsmith, especially as it hadn’t suffered any damage recently. But she was hardly proficient with technology, and the evidence was clear as a moonlit Canterlot sky.

“Bah! The enemy masks their tresspass from our machines, do they? So be it!”

Luna’s helmet came apart again, crumbling into metal chips and crawling down her neck in a perfect reversal of its deployment. The crimson shroud around Luna’s horn became less pronounced, and her magical aura flickered between daemonic red and its natural blue again.

“We shalt track the foe with our own eyes before We smite them! These wretches shalt see the true face of their demise in their final moments!”

“Sounds good, Princess. I’ll get a few squads together for support.” Dusk pushed his mask into place and then dove over the edge of the balcony.

Luna’s eyes narrowed at the distant blooms of explosions and columns of rising smoke. Her horn’s power built, and her mane billowed out behind her in a dramatic, star-spangled pool.

“THOSE WHO MARCH UPON THIS FORTRESS, KNOW THAT THY LIVES ART FORFEIT!! THE TRAITOR, THE ALIEN, AND ANY CHANGELING WRETCH AMONG THEM SHALT FEEL THE FULL, UNBRIDLED FURY OF THE NIGHT UNLEASHED!!”

After that primal, magic-enhanced scream, Luna leapt over the balcony’s edge. Her magic swallowed her in a bubble of darkness, and Princess Luna vanished in mid-air.


Luna’s magic took her next to the band of Orks she had spotted before. The mob had been suppressing a few human soldiers shooting from a building while a pair of Meks tore apart the cargo lifter nearby. The shadows of the greenskins seemed to spring to life and congeal on the ground briefly, before rapidly bubbling up into the vengeful form of an alicorn armored in daemonic plate. The aliens weren’t especially frightened by the display of witchcraft, and the nearest ones turned their shootas on her immediately.

Luna didn’t waste any time either. The Iron Gage swung into the nearest boy, punching him with enough force to flatten his rib cage. The other gauntlet rose above the mob, its fingers sparking with eldritch power.

Lightning coursed from the Iron Gage, whipping across the enemies. Several Orks fell where they stood, stunned if not dead, while others howled in pain and turned their attention away from the soldiers they had been shooting at. The unit Nob roared in challenge, firing his big shoota into the air.

“We’ve little time for thee, knave!” Luna barked, a single finger of the Gage pointing toward the larger Ork.

A beam of searing red light jumped from the gauntlet and struck the Nob, and then the other Gage floated up overhead. It made a fist and then hammered downward, trailing a glowing arc of glittering crimson behind it before driving into the Ork’s skull with pulverizing force.

Bullets whipped around Luna, many plinking uselessly off her armor. The laser fire from the adjacent building started to become more accurate and discriminating with their target distracted, and more and more Orks were cut down.

A burst of lasers suddenly rained down on the Princess from above. Most of them sparked off her wing plating, but one struck her face, slashing down over her cheek. A blue flash came from the contact as her magic aura – passively protecting her otherwise vulnerable head – deflected it, leaving nothing but a hot stinging sensation. The Princess grimaced, and then glared up at the sky.

“Equestrian dogs! We’ll never submit to you or your alien masters!” snarled a griffon before aiming his lasgun down at the Princess again.

Luna spread her wings, and the crystal shards embedded in her flight pack emitted a resonant hum. The alicorn vaulted up into the air, leaping ahead of the next laser burst before swinging around. The Iron Gage punched forward like a haymaker, trailing crackling whips of blue lightning behind it.

The griffon dodged, veering out of the way in a burst of feathers. He turned around entirely and dove away in a panic, barely avoiding a magic beam that scorched his tail.


The flailing rebel swooped around the corner of a building to put some cover between him and the Princess, and he nearly collided with another griffon that had been sheltering in the alley.

“Move! We gotta fly! They’ve got a Princess over here, and she is MAD!”

“A Princess? Which one?”

“The SCARY one! Let the Orks handle her! We can run down-“

Barely a whisper came from above before a fully armored batpony landed on the griffon’s back and a pair of adamantium talons punched into the back of his neck. The insurgent gasped in pain, and an aggravated snort came from behind the thestral’s rebreather mask.

The other griffon recoiled and snapped up his lasgun, only for several quiet cracking noises to come from above. Crystal needles punctured his back and wings, and nerve-shredding agony burned across his body. The griffon wheezed – lacking the energy to scream – and then dropped to the ground in a quivering heap.


Dusk Blade kicked off of the insurgent he had landed on, sending the corpse down to join its partner. Two more Lunar Guards hovered a few floors above, silently awaiting orders amongst bedlam going on outside the alleyway.

“All right ponies, let’s stay sharp and stay quiet. I know this isn’t ideal for anypony, but we have a job to do.” He pointed a hoof toward the streets. “Stay elevated, stay covered, and take the easy kills. Try to trail the Princess, too; she draws lots of attention and that causes plenty of openings.”

A loud shrieking noise from a vehicle sliding across rough ferrocrete came from the streets. The batponies winced at the noise, their sensitive ears catching the agonizing screech much better than was strictly necessary.

“Loathsome wastrels! Have at thee!”

Dusk pressed a hoof against his helmet, turning up its noise dampeners just before the sound of thunder rolled down the alley. Dusk merely flinched at the booming reverberations, while his subordinates were nearly swatted out of the sky from the sound.

“Also, I know we don’t usually bother with this feature, but turn the sonics down! You don’t need echolocation in the middle of the day! Now get flapping and cut some throats! MOVE!”


Large black fingers closed around a drum of metal, each digit buzzing with an aura of destructive power. Alloys instantly softened under their grip, and then the great floating gauntlet squeezed. The plating buckled like clay, and the muscle and bone below hardly offered more resistance.

“AGH! Ya daggum hoss! Dat wuz me ahm!” the Big Mek snarled after his bicep was crushed to a pulp. He tried to swing his power klaw at the alicorn floating over him, but the other gauntlet slammed into it directly. The power fields exploded against each other, blasting both weapons away.

Luna’s Iron Gage bounced up into the air and then plummeted down again. Its knuckles hammered the Mek’s armor flat, crushing the Ork and cratering the street below him.

“WAAAAAAAGH!!”

The ever-familiar battle cry of the Orks roared from behind her, and the Princess spun around just in time to catch a hail of bullets against her chest. Her armor shuddered around her, and one stray bullet was barely deflected from her head before the stream of gunfire passed to saw across the ground.

Two Ork Nobs barreled down the street on armored yaks, charging straight for the Princess of the Night. They carried shootas in both hands and gleefully sprayed bullets in the Princess’s direction while they closed the distance.

“FOOLS! BACK TO THE VOID WITH THEE!!” Luna roared, her Iron Gage swinging to the fore. The fists opened toward the nearest Ork, and wisps of shadowy power collected into their palms.

Twin beams of force washed over the mounted warrior, utterly obliterating Ork and yak in a screaming blue flash. The beams tore into the streets behind the target as well, shredding the ferrocrete surface and leaving behind smoky wisps of darkness.

The other Nob didn’t spare a glance for his partner, seeing only an opening for his own attack. The yak poured on a burst of speed and rammed into Luna’s shoulder, throwing the mare upward with a toss of his thick, spike-covered horns. The Ork swung his shootas into the air, firing an enthusiastic spray of bullets after the stunned alicorn.

Luna recovered near the apex of her flight, and her flight pack pulsed before it stabilized her in the air. A string of gunfire cut across her chest plate and one wing, but the dark Princess pushed it aside as little more than a distraction. She focused her power in her horn, and then her eyes flashed and became windows of pure shining light.

Luna’s body briefly dematerialized, and a bolt of lightning crashed down into the Ork cavalry below. Ork and yak recoiled in pain while the whips of blue power seared them, only to stumble when their target reappeared to their rear.

Luna bucked the Nob off his seat, sending the burly alien flying. The yak rounded on her, but her Iron Gage smashed into the beast’s side before it could attack again. The yak was tossed across the street, and the other gauntlet began to charge with magical power.

The Nob rider was just pushing himself up before he was annihilated by a beam of shadow blasting him in the back. His yak mount stirred, wounded but not yet broken, and started climbing to his feet.

Then the Iron Gage seized the hairy bovine by the horn, pulling its head up and twisting it to the side to face an infuriated alicorn.


“So now the prideful yaks, who scoffed at the entreaties of the Chaos Lords, instead submit thyselves to the Orks as beasts of burden? It is to laugh.” Despite her words, Luna did not seem in any way amused. “Explain thyself, wretch! How hast thou pierced the outer bastions?! Wherefore art our guns silent as thou roams our city at will?!”

The yak snorted angrily, and his struggles increased. He began pawing at the ground and twisting his head, trying to get free from the grip of the dark metal fist.

“Did our last blow deafen thee, beast? SPEAK!” Luna growled. “Our patience runs short!”

A roar came from above, and Luna snapped her head up. A huge red dragon was soaring overhead, flames leaking from its maw. A Valkyrie Gunship was flying just ahead of the serpent, its engines burning with magical crimson fire. The dragon raised its altitude and speed, pushing itself above the damaged aircraft, and then smacked it out of the sky with a claw. The Valkyrie entered an uncontrolled spin into a building, and the reptilian predator bellowed with laughter.


Luna’s eyes narrowed, and she flung the yak into a wall. “Soldiers! Advance and clear the avenue of the foe! Drive them from this sector! We shalt deal with the serpent!”

Several Ork boys had been left behind in Luna’s wake; some continued shooting at defenders in the windows, some sat in cover waiting for her to go away, and still others fired after the Princess (to minimal effect). At Luna’s order, dark clothed, bat-winged equines burst out of alleys and windows, descending on the scattered infantry with terrifying speed. Talon-shaped blades sunk into necks and crystal spikes rained from above. One by one the Ork warriors were rapidly cut down by the fleeting shadows, silencing the survivors’ guns in short order.

The counter-attack had begun.


****


Ferrous Dominus – sector 14


“With me, Councilor Hope. Stay low, but do not lag behind.”

“Yes, Lord Kessler. I’ll keep up!”


The streets of Ferrous Dominus had descended into pandemonium. Mobs of Orks swarmed around any vehicle they could find while firing wildly at the surrounding buildings. Griffons flew over and between the structures, pouring lasfire onto any defenders from above before zipping away from any retaliation. Humans soldiers and diamond dogs fired from the windows, frequently engaging each other in building-to-building firefights with laser volleys flashing back and forth over the streets. Minotaur followed behind the Ork raiders, carrying heavy weapons or sacks of explosives. Whenever the greenskins stopped to shoot at something or dismantle a vehicle, the horned hybrid beasts would seek out the most important-looking piece of equipment in the area and destroy it.

Ahead of the invaders rushed a panicked swarm of humans and ponies trying to flee to safety. Every time the Ork spearhead would get bogged down in fighting the Ferrous Dominus residents would scatter, trying to seek shelter in buildings or break off onto a street where they hopefully wouldn’t be pursued. None had any particular destination or plan in mind; they could only hope to find shelter while the invader’s numbers slowly withered from attrition.

It was against this stampede that Kessler marched, his optics fixed on the Ork vanguard. Humans and ponies parted away from his path, sometimes ramming into other refugees in order to keep their distance. Hope followed in his footsteps, her ears pinned down against the constant rattle of machine guns and cracks of lasweapons.

A fan of lasbolts cut across the crowds, and a man and a pony stumbled onto the ground with blackened holes in their backs. Kessler’s head snapped up and to the side, locking on to a griffon insurgent just as she spotted him.

“Whoa, is that-“ the griffon didn’t manage to utter another word before she was swallowed by a plasma bolt. It incinerated most of her body in an instant, and the surrounding non-combatants scattered away from the shot.


“You there! Stop!” Hope shouted while jumping out from behind the Warpsmith. Most of the fleeing individuals ignored her, but a few ponies stumbled to a halt long enough for her to give further orders.

“Over here! Take the wounded and head to the train station! We’ll have treatment facilities established there! Go! Go!”

Her horn flashed, and the gasping, las-burnt bodies on the ground slowly lifted into the air. The ponies scrambled underneath them, taking the wounded onto their backs, and then quickly raced off to re-join the panicked stampede.


Kessler started building speed, charging toward a dozen Orks who were hacking apart a battle servitor. The servitor, naturally, offered negligible resistance; its wetware detected only friendlies around it. By the time the choppas started ripping it apart and its engagement protocols allowed it to retaliate, its primary and secondary weapons had already been torn off.

Kessler pinpointed the servitor on his approach, uplinking his mind to its power regulators. In an eye blink, all of its safeties were disengaged and the drum-shaped reactor on the servitor’s chassis started to overcharge.

Kessler fired his plasma pistol the moment he was in range, taking down one of the Orks furthest from the pile-on. The mob reacted almost immediately, and the aliens jumped off of the wrecked cyber-slave to meet the Warpsmith’s assault.

A sharp whistle came from the servitor’s smokestacks.

The cyborg detonated, blasting apart the center of the mob and throwing heavy shrapnel and fans of plasma over the rest. Orks went flailing over the ground or were torn down where they stood by the explosion, and those furthest away from the servitor stumbled.

This was all the opening that Kessler needed. His power axe met the closest Ork at the shoulder, slicing deep into the alien warrior’s torso. The Chaos Marine kicked him away to tear his weapon free, while at the same time a mechatendril drilled into an Ork reaching for his back.

A sharp turn on one foot, and the wounded greenskin was beheaded. Kessler shot down another, and then leapt forward to stomp on an Ork trying to stand up.

“I will never be able to fathom the joy some of my peers experience in slaying the greenskin hordes,” grumbled the Warpsmith. One of his mechatendrils spat a jet of fire over the struggling aliens in front of him, lighting them ablaze. “They’re such tiresome opponents.” He flipped his power axe upside-down and planted the spike atop the head into an Ork’s back.

Bullets suddenly sawed across the street, and several hammered against Kessler’s breastplate. He’d identified the weapon as a heavy stubber by the impacts and discharge noise even before he spotted the two minotaur shooting at him.

Kessler wrenched his axe free and walked into the spray of burst fire, holding his vambrace in front of his visor. His armor shook and shuddered from the constant impacts, and hot sparks rained down his legs along with dozens of flattened lead slugs.

“Lord Kessler!” Hope shouted in a panic, galloping toward the Iron Warrior.

“Hold position, Councilor,” Kessler commanded. “I have not yet secured the combat zone.”


One of the heavy stubbers shuddered to a halt when the last of its bullets slid into the feed. The minotaur bearing the weapon had additional ammunition hanging over his chest in belts, but tossed the gun aside rather than reloading it. He reached behind him to unstrap a chainaxe, and his hooves pawed at the ground in preparation to charge.

Kessler shot the other minotaur with his plasma pistol, sending the beast to the ground clutching its chest. Then he bolted forward, meeting the minotaur’s charge head-on.

The blades crashed into each other, and ferrocrete cracked underfoot from the collision of the two warriors. The teeth of the chainaxe screamed while they scraped across the haft of the power axe, and Kessler leaned hard against his opponent. His mechatendrils struck like the serpents they resembled, slicing and biting at the minotaur, but the minotaur didn’t flinch.

The beast threw his head forward, slamming a horn into Kessler’s helmet and tearing through the optics cluster. It didn’t penetrate far enough to dig into the eye socket itself, but the Warpsmith was staggered long enough for his opponent to press the advantage.

The deadlock broke, and the minotaur swung his axe again, striking Kessler’s shoulder. Sparks blasted furiously from the impact, and the teeth of the chainaxe screeched against the hardened shell of fleshmetal.

Kessler detected his plasma pistol had cooled sufficiently, and he fired a blast directly into the minotaur’s chest. The beast howled as a molten hole burned into his ribs, and one of his hands slipped from the axe grip. Kessler kicked forward, knocking his opponent onto the ground and onto his back.

“Lord Kessler! Behind you! The other one is up again!”

Hope’s voice alerted the Warpsmith in time, and he spun on one heel while a mechatendril blasted a gout of flame into the air. The minotaur, bearing a huge sword and with a blackened crater in his abdomen, flinched back from the wall of fire before he could land a blow, and shifted his weapon to parry.

Kessler dashed through the billowing flames, and his power axe whistled sharply as it cut through the air. Through metal, then flesh, then bone; the energized edge sliced through all three with equal ease while blood boiled away on its disruption field. The minotaur fell with a groan, and Kessler wrenched the axe free of its corpse.

A final shot from his plasma pistol finished off the other invader, who had been struggling to get up again. The scorched bovine mass collapsed onto the ground, and a plume of dusty ashes curled around it.


“Feeble animals.” The Iron Warrior grumbled, walking past the dead insurgents.

There were more fighters above, as a group of diamond dogs in the adjacent building were locked in a firefight with some ponies in the structure across the street. The Warpsmith paid them no mind, though; his objective was the vox spire behind the minotaur.

The construct had been damaged by an explosive halfway up the main shaft, almost splitting off the tip entirely and causing the spire to tilt over and lean against a wall. An Ork Mek was already digging around in the wreckage as well, tearing out hoses and internals. Several Gretchin worked around him, prying open the spire’s casing and throwing bits and pieces into a sack.

Kessler wished he could have simply flamed the lot of them, but he didn’t dare risk more damage to the spire. Brushing some ruined glassine away from his damaged optical, he prepared to charge.

The greenskins heard him coming, and several of the Grots shrieked and scattered. The Mek turned in surprise, and then threw himself behind the spire just in time to avoid a plasma bolt.

“Oi, it’z wunna dem spikies! Stop runnin’ and stab da git!” the Ork engineer snarled, peeking out at the Iron Warrior.

The Gretchin stalled in their panicked retreat just long enough for Kessler to reach them. The first was crushed under an adamantine boot, and another died by a sweep of his axe. Mechatendrils snarled and lashed out, biting and drilling into the puny alien slaves. In short order half a dozen of the Grots were dead, and the remainder were fleeing again.

The Mek burst from his hiding spot, his power klaw sparking dangerously and swinging for the Warpsmith. Kessler turned away from the attack and swung his axe at the same time. The power field cracked against the Mek’s shoulder pauldron, and the blade hewed the Ork’s arm from his shoulder.

“Wretched vermin,” Kessler said, his voice emerging almost as a sigh. His mechatendrils stabbed and snapped at the wounded Ork in rapid sequence, staggering the alien, until a second axe swing ripped through the alien’s chest. Blood sprayed across Kessler’s armor in a crimson fan, and then he wrenched his axe free of the body.


“Councilor Hope, warn me of any approaching threats.” Kessler kicked the Mek’s corpse away, and then approached the vox spire. “Here. Use this if the little ones try to sneak back here.”

The Warpsmith tossed his plasma pistol behind him. Hope yelped and recoiled, barely catching the weapon with her telekinesis before it hit the ground.

“But Lord Kessler, is your eye okay?” the mare asked anxiously.

“No. The damage is limited, but it will be a considerable hindrance,” the Warpsmith replied before leaning up against the spire and peering inside the breach in the structure. His mechatendrils seemed to start working on their own, sweeping over the damaged pylon, pulling loose pieces of shrapnel, drilling through damaged plating, and digging into frayed wires. “But I will endure. Keep your watch, Councilor.” One tendril stretched across the ground to bite onto the Mek’s bag of looted parts, and then dragged the sack closer.


Hope scanned the area nervously, levitating Kessler’s plasma pistol just inches from her nose. She could still hear the crack of lasguns above, firing in rapid volleys from one building to another. Thankfully, none of the windows faced the spire alcove, but it was far too close for her to be comfortable with. And that was aside from all the other, slightly more distant sounds of warfare. Booming explosions rolled through the streets, the rattle of machine guns regularly mingled with lasblasts, and more than one enthusiastic Orkish battle cry echoed across Ferrous Dominus while Kessler worked.

“Do you… Do you think these insurgents can win, Lord Kessler?” Hope asked after several minutes of silence.

Kessler pulled a cable free of the rupture, and then touched it to another loose cable clasped by a mechatendril. “They can. Briefly. Our current strength is too scattered, and the enemy’s assaults too precise.” He touched a finger to the point where the cables met, and a hot spark flashed at the contact. “The Orks, in particular, will take a grievous toll now that they have surpassed our defenses. They excel at this manner of assault; close, chaotic, and with a wealth of wargear and machinery to scavenge.”

He shoved his power axe into the breach, and then started levering it against the surrounding plating. The power field sparked and hissed, and within seconds the edge had sliced through the width of the spire tower. The upper length, leaning against the adjacent building, came loose and fell onto the ground with a metallic crash.

“However… we will not yield for long. This assault is not enough to sweep our defenders before we will have a chance to regroup. Our army has already been recalled to our defense. And while our active defenses have been foiled, our enemies cannot turn them against us. They will NOT keep Ferrous Dominus. The only matter is how much damage they are allowed to cause before they are purged.” He held up an antennae and started twisting something into the bottom.

“So much death and terror… and for what, then?” Hope asked sadly, staring at the plasma pistol floating in front of her. “Why do all this if their efforts are so obviously futile?”

“The Orks, obviously, need no impetus to war with us,” Kessler mused while he connected more parts to the antennae. “For them the assault is its own reward. For the others…”

He placed the antennae on the edge of the severed spire casing, and then started welding it into place. “Perhaps they are so eager for revenge that they wish to harm us no matter the cost to themselves. Or, more likely, they do not know the hopelessness of their objective. Many such warriors are but pawns being positioned to be sacrificed to some greater advantage, all without their knowledge. Pushed into one kill zone after another, waiting on a call to retreat or a reinforcement drop that will never come. We’ve done the same on numerous occasions.”

“For a greater advantage?”

“Affirmative. Such as when the grayskins used our liberation of your capital city as a diversion to deliver the final components of their Warp beacon.” Kessler pushed the spike atop his axe into a slot near the base of the spire, and then turned. A heavy clunking noise issued from within. “I have little idea what greater objective these creatures would seek, however. Particularly if the changelings have been guiding this scum for their own ends.” He retracted his axe, and a torch on his arm started welding another piece in place.

“The changelings…” Hope mumbled. “They seek dominion, mostly. But mainly for a food source. They wanted to defeat Equestria for our love, since that’s what they eat. What could they want to defeat the Iron Warriors for? Your weapons?”

“They seem to have acquired those without great difficulty,” Kessler grumbled while installing a wire.

“Your other technology, then? But I hardly think a changeling could understand human devices sufficiently to use most of them, never mind maintain or copy them.” Hope scratched at her head, frowning.

“It would be a curious objective, although still worthwhile,” Kessler noted mildly. One mechatendril slithered down to the spire base and bit onto an exposed length of cabling. “I cannot guess as to their true goal. But we possess other treasures besides those of steel and fire.”

An electric jolt rushed through the tendril, and dozens of lumens lit up over the spire’s base. A subtle hum came from the antenna, and several meters on the damaged cogitator console jumped after the instruments started drawing new energy. The main vox spire – still laying next to the adjacent building – hummed with current, and a whip of energy lashed from the shattered tip and cracked against the wall.


“THIS IS LORD KESSLER, ACTING COMMANDER OF THE 38TH COMPANY. THIS VOX TRANSMISSION IS BEING BROADCAST ON ALL AVAILABLE FREQUENCIES.”

The Warpsmith’s voice boomed across the city, pouring from every vox caster at once. Much of the gunfire stopped, with both the defenders and many attackers curious about the interruption.

“IN CASE IT IS NOT ALREADY CLEAR, FERROUS DOMINUS IS UNDER ATTACK. OUR DEFENSE WEB AND INITIAL CONTAINMENT PROTOCOLS HAVE FAILED. AS ACTING COMMANDER, I AM ISSUING AN ORDER FOR THE EVACUATION OF ALL CIVILIAN PERSONNEL. ALL SUCH INDIVIDUALS SHOULD RETREAT TO THE TRAIN STATION IN SECTOR 19 BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. THEY WILL BE RELEASED TO THE FORTRESS EXTERIOR. THE ENEMY IS NOT EXPECTED TO PURSUE.”

Hope nodded encouragingly, and then paused when a shadow fell over her. It passed after a moment, and then she looked up.

“ALL DARK MECHANICUS PERSONNEL ARE SUBJECT TO TACTICAE DOCTRINAE OMEGA. REINFORCE YOUR CURRENT POSITION OR REACH A RENDEZVOUS NEXUS TO REGROUP. ANY UNITS THAT CAN REACH THE MANUFACTORUM AND SUBMIT AN AUTHORIZATION CODEX FOR ENTRY SHOULD DO SO. STRATEGEM PRIORITUS 7-7-2 IS IN EFFECT.”

Hope started backing away while staring upward. “Was that…? No. It couldn’t be.”

“COMBAT PERSONNEL ARE TO FALL BACK AND REGROUP AT LOCAL SECTOR HARDPOINTS. IF THE POSITION CANNOT BE HELD AGAINST THE ENEMY, RETREAT TO SECTORS 4, 16, 20-“

“L-Lord Kessler!” Hope squeaked. “Dragon! There’s a dragon!”

Kessler glanced upward at the warning, but could do little else before a quivering orb of crimson landed atop the broken vox spire. The Warpsmith was engulfed in flame, and the vox transmission screeched with feedback before cutting out entirely.


****


Sector 12

Manufactorum munitions block


Voidsong stared up at the vox caster, the light of her optics glittering in the dim light.

*So this is working, then? Fascinating… I can hardly believe that the insects actually pulled it off.*

She stood in the midst of her small army, which was holding position in an empty lot. Behind them was the manufactorum. In front of them were the empty streets. There was no fighting going on this section of the fortress; the subterranean levels below were part of the manufactorum and effectively cut off from the attackers. All the workers, fighters, and other assorted personnel had already fled the area either to get to a fortified location or aid a location under attack.

The Fio’o was typing furiously at a cogitator console, occasionally releasing a frustrated grunt. A set of massive, reinforced double-doors lay beyond, and within the massive labyrinth of iron was their objective: the fusion reactor core. The beating, molten heart of the city.

The target was obvious enough, among all the lesser devices and facilities throughout the fortress. It was by far the most valuable machine in Ferrous Dominus, and destroying it would leave the fortress crippled long after this assault was over. With the fortress gutted and without power, it would probably fall prey to a determined Ork offensive within a week.

No doubt with that in mind, the manufactorum was subject to a whole second layer of defenses. Dark Techpriests had taken direct control of many defensive guns, manually targeting enemy units that stubbornly registered to augurs and autosenses as friendlies. The doors had all been locked down, requiring personalized Mechanicus access codices in order to unlock them. Their code bypass protocols had also been tightened, much to the Head Engineer’s frustration.

*BLAST! Another lockout!* the Fio’o snarled, looking like he was about to punch the screen. *This is complete gibberish! How do these lunatics work with this garbage system code?!*

*You’re the one that spent a month working under them. You tell me,* grumbled a Fireblade. *Look, if we can’t bust through the system, let’s just bust through the doors!*

*Yes, fine. You do that. Good luck explaining your incursion to the Scavurel and Dark Mechanicus fire teams that will meet you on the other side,* the Fio’o sneered. *They’re already on high alert and no longer trusting IFF signums. They’ll be able to detect and identify our class of weapons and figure out what’s happening within minutes. You can be sure they won’t hesitate to slay their “allies” to protect their precious core.* He paused, looking over to Voidsong. *Of course, if you feel that our forces here are adequate for such an assault, that may be the most feasible plan. Shas’o? What are your orders?*

Voidsong was still staring up at the vox caster. *He said they were evacuating. They’re actually moving non-combatants away from the fighting.*

*… So? Is that… unusual?* one of the other battlesuits asked.

*Yes. I believe it is.* Voidsong turned her battlesuit around, gazing at the Fio’o. *Suddenly my thoughts turn to escape. Perhaps there is another way after all.*

*Shas’o?*

*Our battlecruiser. The Rep’talal. During our fleet’s assault on this world, it was invaded by monsters and abandoned in orbit. The automated navigation systems pulled it into a stable orbit to minimize power drain. Is it still there?*

*Correct. The Iron Warriors haven’t touched it. They’ve ignored all our questions and requests about the vessel.*

*Then that will be our escape ship,* Voidsong said, bringing up a sector map. *Sector 19 holds the station, and is also where they park their landing vessels. There is one such ship currently on the ground. We will take it, pick up our remaining brothers at Black Point, and then quit this planet entirely.*

The other Fire Warriors and battlesuits seemed jarred by the sudden change in priorities.

*Shas’o, are… are you sure? To leave the base intact…*

*Oh, I would love nothing more than to gut this wretched scrap heap once and for all and watch it be swallowed under a tide of Ork filth,* Voidsong admitted with a sigh. *I would gladly be willing to give my life for that eventuality. But there are greater concerns in play than my life.*

She turned to regard her soldiers. *Which would better serve the Greater Good? To ensure the death of the remaining vermin here and deny them a foothold on this world, or seize our ship back and return to our Sept? So many battles rage all around the Empire, and millions of lives hang in the balance; why should we die here, on this discarded backwater, to spite some miserable rogues? Let the insect queen do what she will with this place. And if she should fail, let the Orks pick apart what’s left. We have better things to do than struggle and die for the hollow satisfaction of finishing these wretches ourselves.*

With a gesture, the Fire Warriors started moving to get into formation. The Earth Caste bunched up behind Voidsong, and soon the detachment was marching down the avenue.

*Shas’o Voidsong, shall I transmit a message to our brothers here in the fortress?* the Fio’o asked. *No doubt that even now they’re being forced to fight the attackers, or locked down in the manufactorum. And we’ll need all the help we can get to fight those… things in the Rep’talal and crew it once it’s clear!*

Voidsong’s battlesuit turned its head to side far enough that he could see the crimson gleam of its optics. *And how long would it take for the gue’la to pick up and translate your message, Fio’o? What countermeasures could they deploy if they wish to stop us? How hard would it be to shoot us down?*

*… I, uh… I didn’t-*

*I feel for my Caste-brothers and sisters that will be forced to die in service to this vermin,* Voidsong declared while she kept plodding forward, *but we cannot be so clumsy. We will get but one strike, if we are lucky; it must be swift, and it must be SILENT.* She turned her head forward again. *For the Greater Good.*

*… Y-Yes, Shas’o. For… for the Greater Good.*


****


Ferrous Dominus – sector 14

Vox spire 339-C


“Lord Kessler! Lord Kessler!”

Hope coughed and turned her face away from the smoke billowing around her, wishing she had remembered to secure a respirator before she had left the dormitory structure. She had been just out of the blast radius of the dragon’s fireball, but still close enough that she had been knocked off her hooves by the explosion. She couldn’t see much behind the plume of smoke; something in the spire was releasing an impressive amount of it while it burned.

A deep, rumbling chuckle eventually turned her head upward. A yellow-scaled dragon stooped over the edge of the adjacent structure, grinning down at the mare. It wasn’t the largest dragon she had ever seen – about the size of a daemon engine – but it hardly mattered. Hope glanced over at the plasma pistol that had fallen to the ground behind her, and then up at the serpent.

The dragon vaulted off of the roof, spreading its great wings to hover. “Hello, little equine! Did you think you would escape this place? That you could get away from us?” He chuckled some more. “The ponies will burn for siding with the human scum. For betraying our world to this filth.”

Hope stared up at the dragon. He found her expression perplexing; it seemed to sit somewhere between incredulity and sorrow. While he imagined she must have been very sad at having her space ape buddy incinerated and being mere moments from annihilation herself, the situation still felt… off.

“So why are YOU here? What lies did the changelings offer the dragons to get their help? Or did they buy your assistance? For treasure? Land? What?” Hope asked miserably. “You’re going to die here. You’re all going to die. I can’t save you. Chrysalis can’t save you.”

“What are you blubbering about?” the great serpent asked, tilting its head to the side. “I need no bribe or contract to cleanse the humans from our lands. The changelings simply said that they could stop the humans’ weapons. And so they have! Without them in my way, I am unstoppable!”

He laughed, gesturing to a nearby pylon. A twin-linked heavy bolter sat atop the short iron tower, active and alert, but completely oblivious to the massive beast behind it. The turret slowly swiveled back and forth, its targeting lumens blinking.

“Ha ha ha hwa?”

The dragon’s laughter cut off when he spied… something darting over the ground toward the tower. It appeared to be a ray of shimmering light, like a gossamer thread, zipping across the scorched ferrocrete. The light crossed the floor of the alcove, reached the tower, and then faded away.

The turret stopped swiveling. Its lumens turned red. Its ammo hoppers wound up with a hefty clunk. The guns, and three other nearby turrets, all swung about on their servos to aim directly at the dragon.

“Wh… What?” he managed to mumble before the guns opened fire.


Hope Springs flinched away from the thundering heavy bolters, and her ears pinned to her head as the dragon let out an enraged roar. Bolt shells hammered the thick, steely scales, while the bursts stitching over his wings punched a jagged line of bloody holes in the thinner flesh.

Then the serpent moved, leaping within swiping range of the nearest turret and smashing it with a claw. The gun came apart with the blow, and bits of shattered metal and fans of sparks spilled onto the ground below. The other heavy bolters swiveled after their target, tearing a line of explosive shells over the wall and ground.

Hope turned away from the dragon, and looked toward the flames around the vox spire. There was still a great deal of smoke coming from the device, but as the fire waned it seemed as if much of the smoke was coming from something else within the firestorm.

“Kessler! Lord Kessler!” Hope gasped, spotting the glimmer of golden trim that capped the Warpsmith’s integrated smoke stacks.

A gust of air – perhaps coming from a flailing dragon wing while the beast destroyed the guns – blew away the curtain of smoke in front of the Space Marine. He was kneeling on the ground, one hand spread against the ferrocrete, while a prayer of low-pitched Binary clicking came from his vox. The mechatendrils were all bent to the ground as well, as if the serpentine tentacles were respectfully bowing their heads. His armor was scorched from the flame, and one bionic arm was smoldering badly, but the Iron Warrior was obviously alive.

A second heavy bolter turret was smashed, and then the third one was swallowed in a jet of flame. Rays of light flashed over the ground again, shooting back to the Warpsmith and then zig-zagging around him on the ground. It was hard for Hope to track the light amongst the smoke and debris, but she was guessing the pattern was an eight-spoked wheel.

“If this is the best you worms have to face me with, then you never stood a chance!” raged the dragon as he descended on the final gun.

The heavy bolters hammered the beast’s scaled chest, sputtering fire and metal until a claw dropped on it. The servo mounting came apart under the blow, and the dragon swatted the final turret aside. The moment the last weapon failed, Kessler stopped his chanting and rose to his feet.

“That is not, in fact, the best we have to offer,” the Warpsmith quipped, hefting his axe and raising his vox amplifier. “Come to me, lizard. Let me show you.”


The dragon wasted no more breath arguing, and instead put it all into a jet of fire. The flames washed over Kessler even while he ran toward the serpent, and several mechatendrils shriveled away and crumbled from the heat.

Kessler kept moving. He hoisted his power axe in a two-handed grip and swung into the dragon’s chest as soon as he was within reach. The power field popped and sparked chaotically while the axe blade ripped through the thick, heat-resistance scales. Much of the wiring and external components of the power weapon had been damaged or melted clean off due to the dragonflame, and cutting through the beast’s natural armor taxed the weapon to its limit.

The serpent screeched and lurched backward, crawling away from the Iron Warrior while swiping clumsily with a claw. Kessler met the attack with his own, slicing into his foe’s massive hand and hewing two fingers off. He flinched and the Warpsmith pressed his advantage, driving forward relentlessly with brutal swings of his axe.

The dragon shielded his face and started to flap his wings rapidly, aiming to fly out of reach. Kessler vaulted forward, jumping past his foe’s head and slicing through the left wing at the shoulder joint. It flopped onto the ground amidst a wild spray of blood, followed a moment later by its wounded owner.

Both combatants turned, and Kessler plunged his weapon forward again, driving it toward the breach he had cut into the dragon’s chest scales. The great serpent attacked at the same time, swatting the Warpsmith aside with his non-wounded claw. The Iron Warrior was sent flying, bouncing painfully across the ferrocrete ground.

The dragon grunted, tenderly taking hold of the axe lodged in his chest and pulling it free. Once it was loose he closed his fist around it, shattering the haft.

“Useless,” he snarled, tossing the twisted bits of metal aside. Then he rushed after his opponent, hot blood still drooling from his wounds.


The Warpsmith was starting to stand up when a giant scaled hand – missing two fingers – slammed onto his back, pinning him against the ground.

“I have you now, you insolent little-OW!”

The dragon flinched again when a screaming bolt of green stabbed into his shoulder. The projectile was extremely hot, to the point that it completely burned through his lava-proof scales and scorched the more sensitive flesh beneath. He turned to see what had shot him, and a puff of fire blasted from his nose when he saw the little unicorn mare leveling a plasma pistol at him.

“Get off! Get off of him!” Hope shouted, tears streaming down her face and spoiling her view. Luckily, her target was very big and at the moment effectively immobile. Another two bolts bored into the dragon’s side, and steam started rising around the pistol’s flex sheathing.

The dragon snarled, and then sucked in a breath. Hope yelped and bolted away, sprinting as fast as she could before the serpent vomited another fireball. The crimson orb exploded behind her, missing the diplomat but still blasting her off her hooves. Hope crashed against the ground painfully, feeling an intense wave of heat singe her fur. The plasma pistol, left behind in the blast zone, released a shrill whistle before it overheated catastrophically, causing a second, smaller explosion after the first.

The dragon was readying a second projectile when he heard a slight ringing noise from metal bouncing against the ferrocrete below him.

Kessler’s krak grenade exploded next to his leg, and the great serpent staggered to the side as yet another extremity was injured. With his breath already caught in his throat, the dragon released a pitiful wail on a jet of dragonflame, sweeping the ground before him with fire entirely by accident.

Kessler was caught in the conflagration, but after enduring two such assaults, he didn’t waver before another. The Warpsmith leapt to his feet and then dove through the flames for the dragon, slugging the beast in the jaw with his augmetic arm.

The dragon reeled, but then swiped at the Warpsmith with his good claw. The mighty talons ripped into Kessler’s shoulder with a ferocious shriek and splash of sparks. Kessler, already aflame and half-blind, fell to his knees before his left arm was severed entirely. Blood and oil spurted from the wound briefly before internal pressure regulators cut off the flow. A thick blast of oily smoke puffed from the smokestacks on his back.

The serpent was already rearing his claw back to attack again, but the Warpsmith moved faster. Leaping forward, past the raking talons, Kessler plunged his remaining arm into the chest wound he had already carved into the dragon’s torso. His augmetic fingers seized bone and sinews and he held fast, pinning himself against the beast’s breast as the dragon recoiled.

“WHY?! WHY WON’T YOU JUST DIE?!” the dragon roared painfully, grabbing the Iron Warrior with his good claw.

He tried to pull Kessler away, but the pain in his chest was too intense and the Warpsmith’s grip was too strong. The serpent gasped weakly, and then started squeezing the Astartes instead. Metal screeched and seals started to crack from the desperate pressure, and the puffs of smoke from Kessler’s smokestacks became jets of black mixed with crimson embers.

STILL the Iron Warrior did not buckle. Between his own wounds and the Warpsmith’s unnaturally strong armor, crushing him seemed as painful to the dragon as his victim.

“You will not stop us, tin man,” the serpent snarled. “Your city will burn and you… you will… what… what are you doing?”

His concern was due to the intense heat coming from the armor shell he was slowly crushing between his fingers. His scales were, of course, all but heat-proof, which made the slight twinges of pain all the more worrisome. He released his grip to get a better look at the Iron Warrior.

“K-Kessler? Lord Kessler!” Hope shrieked, surging upright when she got a good look at him.

Kessler’s torso was glowing a bright red. Weaker alloys and non-metallic components melted and sloughed off of the Warpsmith’s fleshmetal plating, while his smokestacks started blasting flame rather than mere exhaust. The source of the heat was obviously internal, and it was clearly more intense than anything the dragon had managed to spit out. Even with all his remarkable technology and arcane power, she couldn’t see any way that the Warpsmith could generate that level of energy and survive.

Which suggested very strongly that he did not intend to.

“By the will of the Warsmith do I fulfill my final duty this day,” the Iron Warrior intoned. His voice was choked and hard to hear over the roar of his smokestacks. “Ferrous Dominus will not fall to you, xeno filth.”

“Kessler! Kessler, please, stop!” Hope begged.

“L-Listen to the pony! Stop it! Wh-Whatever you’re doing, cut it out!” the dragon agreed nervously. His remaining wing, utterly useless on its own, started to flap out of sheer panic.

Kessler’s vision had already blacked out entirely, and his thoughts were hazy. His internal reactor had nearly overloaded, and his remaining biological parts were being cooked alive. In the final seconds before detonation he intended to murmur the Iron Warrior’s ancient catchphrase, but something else bubbled up through the Warpsmith’s rapidly melting vox grille instead.

“Forgive me, Councilor Hope. You were right.”


The reactor went critical, and the Astartes and dragon both were consumed by the unbound wrath of a miniature star.


****


Ferrous Dominus – sector 24


“Begone, serpent! Return to thy lair, or thy carcass shalt decorate our tower!”

“Puny little horse… you won’t escape from us. Your masters’ fate is sealed, and yours with it.”



A screaming beam of crimson pulsed from the Iron Gage, slashing over the streets of Ferrous Dominus and crashing against scales hardened by ancient magic and hundreds of years. A fireball sailed in the other direction, exploding against the ground and splashing eldritch flame against plates of gleaming ebony.

The dragon definitely came out the worse for the exchange, staggering and clutching the burning wound in his side. But the creature was enormous, as large as a small building, and his scales offered surprising resistance to the psychic weapon. Luna’s armor held against the dragonfire, but the heat scorched her exposed face and the Princess leapt into the air to escape the blaze.


Around the serpent and the pony was the full and uncompromised pandemonium of war. Men took cover wherever they could with no effective orders and no thought to unit cohesion. Orks scrambled over the battlefield, laughing and bellowing amidst the storms of gunfire. Lasblasts and bullets flashed across the street in wild, scattered bursts. A Leman Russ tank, badly damaged but still operable, trudged down the street with guns blazing and several greenskins clinging to the back. Along the margins of the combat stalked dark shapes in the alleys and piping that wound through the city between the buildings, preying on any invaders that strayed into shadowed spaces for cover.

The battle tank had the misfortune of coming too close to the duel in the middle of the avenue. The dragon’s tail smashed into it entirely by accident, throwing the tank onto its side. Several Orks were squashed or flung away, and the damaged engine sputtered weakly before finally giving out entirely.

Luna dove toward her opponent, and the fists of the Iron Gage followed close to her wings on trails of crimson magic. The dragon moved to bite at her, and she altered direction at the last moment. Teeth like greatswords, each one longer and thicker than her leg, snapped closed next to her. Spittle flecked against her armor, only to instantly combust against the furious aura of her magic.

The Iron Gage fell upon the serpent, slamming into his neck with explosive force; one in the side, and one in the throat. A fiery gasp escaped the dragon’s lips, and then he swung at the Princess with his claws. The talons swept through a wisp of liquid darkness, slicing through it without meeting resistance or causing injury. Luna materialized behind him a second later, and her horn blazed red with magic.

Sparks burst into the air above her, and then started moving in sharp, geometric patterns through air. Lines of glowing crimson were drawn in the air behind them: first, a series of circles, layered within and above one another. Then stars. Then a series of runes.

The dragon twisted its head back and forth, and then heard a keening noise rapidly building behind him. The beast whirled about, its tail accidentally smashing aside a bloody melee occurring a little too close. The magical pattern finished drawing itself in the air, and then the layered circles started turning.

“TO THE VOID WITH THEE!!” Luna screamed, her voice drowning out the sound of gunfire. The magic circle pulsed.

The dragon lurched into motion, accelerating to a sprint as fast as he could. His strides crushed men and Orks alike in its haste, and a half-wrecked macrocrane was knocked over after he shouldered it aside.

The magic circle started releasing large crimson projectiles that rained down on the avenue below. One by one the missiles burst from the swirling portal and curved down into the city below, screaming like angry daemons and exploding like battle cannon shells. Several Ork mobs were flattened all at once under the rain of devastation, while the magical bombardment shifted away from the human and pony positions in sudden, inexplicable arcs or vanished in mid-air.

Many of the crimson bolts chased after the dragon, spiraling through the air and cutting into the serpent’s back and wings. He snarled in pain, but kept up his manic sprint before leaping into the air and taking flight. Great splashes of steaming blood rained on the streets below from the beast’s wounds, scalding a few soldiers who were fortunate enough to escape being trampled. The missiles trailing behind the serpent slammed uselessly into the streets or veered away, dissipating into the air.


“Your power is considerable, little equine,” the dragon snarled as he turned in the air. “To think, a creature like you – Mistress of the moon itself! – should become a mere attack hound for the human scum!”

Luna closed the crimson gateway and swung about to face her opponent. “Dost thou imagine thyself to be our better, serpent king? Thou fights in league with the Orks, monsters that seek to slay and destroy for mere sport. Should they stand unopposed, all life on this world shalt become fodder for the greenskins!”

“The Orks are a mere tool. What other vermin are so happy to die in their hundreds in the streets below? Once the apes and the little gray ones are crushed, the green filth will be cleansed from this world as well.” The dragon laughed, a puff of flame spurting from his jaws. “Just think, Princess! Our world can belong to us again! Free from the torment and corruption of this alien scum!”

“Such grand foresight,” Luna sniffed. “And to think, there are those who ponder why the dragons do not rule Equestria.” The fists of the Iron Gage slammed together in a crash of glowing red sparks. “This is thy final warning, lizard. Retreat or perish.”

The thundering staccato of a quad gun came from below, and heavy tracer rounds slashed through the air between the two combatants.

“There will be no retreat, equine,” the dragon snarled. “It seems we’ll have to do without the moon for a time…”


An autocannon round whipped past Luna’s ear, close enough for her to feel the heat of its passage. She recoiled, floating backward, only for two more to slice through the air in front of her.

She was just starting to consider that maybe the turret gunner wasn’t just a poor shot when the first shot found its mark. Shells the size of a man’s fist hammered her from below, cracking against the daemon plate. The rounds weren’t especially good at piercing armor plating, but the sheer force of the explosive impacts sent the alicorn flailing through the air in a panic.

Luna banked sharply, picking up speed to try and escape the sudden barrage. She heard the dragon pursue behind her, but dismissed the beast for now. She was slightly more worried about the weapons of the 38th Company being turned on her than the eldritch flame of the dragons.

Down below, on the edge of a refinery complex, was the gun. A quad-barreled autocannon platform with an armor shield protecting the gunner platform and twin ammunition feeds drawing from the building interior. Luna couldn’t see the gunner from her angle, but it was obviously being crewed by one of the insurgents. Putting aside that she seemed to be the main target, the turret kept jerking unsteadily to try to track her, as if the shooter was just learning how to use the controls.

A furious roar came from behind the Princess, and she flinched from the sheer volume. A stream of fire shot under her a second later, brushing her greaves.

Luna fixed her gaze on the roof of the nearby building, and her eyes gleamed. Darkness spilled from her horn like a pen suddenly overrunning with ink. The tendrils of black swirled over her armor, surrounding it entirely in a blanket of pitch, and then the entire mass began to shrink and deform. The quad gun’s fire found the dark alicorn, cutting across the darkness with a stitch of explosive shells, but the projectiles found no flesh or armor to sink into, tearing the amorphous shadow apart without effect.


Another pool of darkness appeared on the rooftop next to the turret, expanding from a dark spot into a puddle. Luna emerged from the shadows, her starlit mane whipping up above her and the Iron Gage twitching in the air. Her eyes found the quad gun and narrowed; as expected, there was a rebel fighter there. A griffon, as it happened. She was swiveling the gun turret back and forth, clearly confused as to where her target went.

“Tiresome pest,” Luna sniffed, one gauntlet bolting forward toward the griffon. “Such mundane weapons are useless against-“

The soldier whipped around, and Luna’s taunt died on her lips when she saw a plasma gun in the griffon’s hands. Instantly the Iron Gage stopped, and then spread its fingers.

The griffon fired, and a force screen flickered into place in front of the Iron Gage. Luna winced as a burst of screaming, white-hot bolts crashed against the field, quickly overwhelming the barrier from the tremendous energy output. The other gauntlet swung in from the side, but the insurgent leapt up into the air ahead of it, leaving the black fist to smash into the turret.

“A plasma weapon?! Where didst thou acquire such a thing?!” Luna demanded.

The griffon didn’t answer, taking off into the air while snapping another shot at Luna. The Princess leapt, and her flight pack carried her well over the shot and sent her soaring after her prey.

“Art thou listening to us?” Luna barked. The Iron Gage hummed, and spheres of crimson power swelled between their fingers while they zoomed along next to the alicorn. “Don’t presume to test us, scoundrel! Thou hast absconded with a superior weapon, but We assure thee, thou shalt not triumph here!”

The griffon swung around in the air, firing another burst. At the speed the two combatants were moving, and with her target similarly airborne, the shots went wide, and Luna barely budged her approach as the screaming blasts of plasma sailed past her.

One of her gauntlets flung its sphere like a baseball, sending it spinning through the air on a curving course toward the griffon. She banked sharply through the air, only for the crimson projectile to curve its trajectory and follow.

“Tch! Oh, no you don’t!” The insurgent whirled to face the oncoming sphere, and her eyes flashed a bright green.

A lash of magical lightning erupted from her talons, striking the orb. Both magic projectiles burst into flashes of colored sparks, and then dissipated in the air.

Luna almost stopped mid-flight from her surprise. The other gauntlet hovered unsteadily, still holding its own charge, but she didn’t release it. The pony’s eyes narrowed angrily.

“CHANGELING,” Luna spat.

“Well, well… It looks like my cover’s blown. Pity,” mumbled Nox. Her claw pulled back a switch on her plasma gun, and a puff of steam blasted from the coolant vent. “Then again, if I bury you here, I suppose none of the rubes need to know about it.”

“So it is true! The changeling spies command these foolish rebels! Thou hast led them all to their deaths!” Luna snarled. “For what purpose?! Speak, insect!”

“I think I’ll let this do the talking.” Nox aimed the plasma gun. She squeezed one eye shut, leaning her head to the side and staring down the sight. A high-pitched whine began to come from the weapon, and the flex-coiling glowed a bright green.

Luna was unimpressed. “Surely thou dost not think We can be defeated with yon trinket?” The Iron Gage holding a power sphere tapped the magic orb with its index finger, and then twisted about to point it at the hive guardian. “We bear the greatest artifacts the Warsmith could devise. Even the plasma weaponry of the Dark Techpriests art but foal’s toys in comparison. Surrender to us or to oblivion, changeling. ‘Tis thy only choice; thou canst defeat us.”

An earth-shaking roar came from above.

“… Oh. Right,” Luna mumbled.

Nox smirked.


The dragon descended on the two combatants, his wings sliding back and his neck arching into a dive.

Luna tried to evade to the side, but a burst of plasma bolts caused her flight path to cut back the other way, losing precious speed. Her horn flashed to attempt a teleport, but she had already lost precious seconds. Enormous claws seized the alicorn, and her armor plates groaned under the sudden pressure.

The dragon broke his dive, beating his tremendous wings rapidly while clutching his prey tighter. Pressure seals popped and plating screeched from digging into the other armor layers. His maw opened, and dozens of teeth like steel swords descended on the mare.

The Iron Gage fired, expending its stored magic charge and cutting across the dragon’s wing. He flinched, briefly sparing Luna from his jaws, and his flight became unsteady.

Luna craned her head up toward the snarling serpent, and then fired a blast of magic from her horn, striking the dragon directly in the eye. He reeled from the pain, only for another hand of the Iron Gage to circle around and smash into his jaw.

He recoiled, roaring, and then flung Luna away toward a rooftop. Her flight pack pulsed, trying to stabilize her flight, but it was a useless effort. She slammed onto the top of processing plant, her armor shrieking against the surface of the roof while she tumbled painfully to a stop.


Blood dribbled down the side of Luna’s head, and scraps of ebony plating lay scattered around her. Her eyes were unfocused and her vision spinning. She felt like vomiting, and dozens of needle-points of pain came from her legs and wings.

The moment her vertigo passed, the dark Princess was on her hooves again. Her breath came in angry, snarling huffs, and she could feel a burning sensation against her chest that she had never experienced before. Her thoughts were scattered, but her body seemed to move on its own, guided by nothing more than inchoate rage. Brilliant arcs of red power crawled up the length of her horn, burning with such intensity that they scorched the fur near the base.

Wretched lizards. Pitiful Orks. Mewling humans. Cowardly equines. So many vermin snapping at your heels. So many souls begging for final release…

Luna wasn’t completely sure whether the thoughts bubbling to the surface were her own or not. All the anger flooded her limbs with strength and fed ever more power to her horn, but it left her a little hazy. Certainly some parts of that tirade seemed wrong, but it hardly seemed important at the moment.

The dragon spent several precious seconds massaging the point where he had been struck by the Iron Gage. The great fists hit with the power of cannons, but the ancient serpent’s bones were as hard as any alloy. With a snort and a shake of his head, the dragon descended once again. He sucked in his breath, and then blasted a veritable beam of dragonflame down on his equine foe.

With a booming shout, Luna fired her own magic beam skyward. The swirling crimson lance met the jet of flame head-on and ripped through it, dispersing the fire in a useless spiral while pushing up toward Luna’s target. It slashed across the serpent’s cheek, and the dragon winced as another dozen scales were ripped off.

This beast is nothing. An overgrown snake that thinks itself a god. Rip its heart out and it dies, like any other mortal. You know what to do, don’t you?

The dragon descended, reaching back a claw. It looked like he was aiming to smash Luna flat against the rooftop.

Crimson magic washed around the mare like a shroud of red ink seeping from her horn. Pain surged up her legs from more punctures; claws of metal and pointed wires poking hesitantly into her legs, chest, and flanks. The mysterious voice seethed, goading her onward and whispering promises of bloody victory into her ear. Luna’s racing thoughts reached a fever pitch, drawing upon the hundreds of spell patterns locked within her memories. Works of fantastic destruction were drawn, unraveled, altered, re-drawn, combined, pruned, washed away, and drawn again. In those few, crucial seconds the world around her was stripped away; there was only her, her enemy, and the power thrumming around her head.


The dragon reached the alicorn, and he thrust his claw onto the shimmering pony.

Luna’s aura exploded, and a black spike surrounded by a blood-red coil thrust upward into the serpent’s palm. Enchanted scales like adamantium resisted for a moment, and then buckled. The ebony lance tore through flesh, muscle, and bone like so much paper, and then twisted and splintered. The dragon’s entire forearm turned into a cloud of shredded gore, and the beast crashed onto the roof in agonizing pain.

Wings flailed and tail thrashed, hammering duralloy and tearing off the various smaller structures and peripherals on the roof. The dragon roared again, but the bellow that had sent tremors through the city’s structures minutes ago was weaker now. Exhausted. Pained.

Afraid.

Luna watched the serpent stumble, her vision encompassed by a red haze and a cruel, terrible laughter in her ears. The Iron Gage floated down to her, and crackling arcs of crimson lashed from her horn between the two mighty gauntlets.

The dragon turned his head, gasping, and stared past the stump of his arm at the Princess of the Night. The mare was shrouded in a blood-colored fog, with only the tips of her flight pack and the pale white glow of her eyes visible from within the storm. Malevolence rolled off of her in waves, and droplets of spilled blood seemed to be peeling off the ground and darting toward her, only to vanish amongst the crimson mist. A daemon in all but name.

He swiped at his enemy with his tail, and Luna blurred into motion. The enormous whip of flesh and scales was taller at mid-length than she was, but she leapt over it and landed right next to the dragon’s belly. Her greaves crashed loudly against the durasteel roof cladding, and the Iron Gage swung in behind her, ready to assist.

The serpent moved to snap at her, but crimson lightning flashed from one gauntlet and pounded against his face, stunning him. The other Gage grabbed onto the dragon’s chest, and its power fields crackled as the fingers dug into the outer scales.

“Thou hast lost,” Luna said simply while her enemy gasped for breath. Her voice had a curious quality to it, as if another voice were repeating her words in an angry hiss, but the dragon could hardly be bothered to care at this point.

“Equestria lost long ago, as soon as it submitted itself to these monsters,” he growled back. “At least I lost fighting for my own cause, rather than as some alien’s pet! You are a traitor and a coward, equine!”

“Thou knows nothing of what We hath endured. Of the unstoppable brutality  from beyond the void that still hungers to engulf us all,” Luna snarled back. A surge of energy pulsed from the Iron Gage over her foe’s heart, and the dragon quivered in pain. “Thou preening reptiles couldst not be bothered to take to battle until thy precious treasure hoards were threatened directly. And even then, this is all the force thou hast mustered to face us? Marching astride the Orks themselves, the very monsters that wouldst see us all killed and enslaved! ‘Tis not OUR people that art cowards, wastrel.”

The dragon inhaled deeply, intending to make another attempt to blast the mare with fire. Luna’s horn pulsed, and the gauntlet over his chest pulsed in sympathy, flaring a brilliant crimson. The dragon gasped, and his lungs emptied.

“Perish, fool. Trouble this world no longer.”

The Iron Gage suddenly pulled away from the dragon’s chest. A crimson haze still surrounded it, like ethereal smoke surrounding a central point of light carried in the palm of the gauntlet. The dragon convulsed, its tail whipping back and ripping through a power substation.

The Iron Gage floated back to Luna, the glittering light still clinging to its palm. Luna kept staring at her opponent, watching as his eyes clouded over.

“Even if you… defeat us…” the dragon gasped, his vision dimming fast, “… you have still… failed.”

Luna clenched her teeth, and the Iron Gage slammed flat over her chest plate. Seams of brilliant red ran over the daemon armor, and she felt a quiver run through the plating’s frame. Breaks in the plating sealed themselves, spines lengthened and sharpened, and the entire suit seemed to sit even lighter over the alicorn’s body. The light was sucked into the face of the golden helm on her chest, and the red mist seemed to seep into the joints of the armor.

The dragon slumped onto the roof, dead.


****


Beads of cold sweat crawled down Nox’s neck while she stared down the iron sights of her plasma gun. The weapon whined gently in her ear, its charge capacitors at full and its vents overloading. At the other end, some thirty feet away from the edge of the roof, stood Princess Luna, facing away from her.

A corona of shining red light surrounded the pony, and a shadow seemed to be cast in such a way that it stood in the colored light rather than being cast from it; or so it seemed. It was hard to tell from Nox’s angle, there was an almost palpable fog of magic on the roof, and the changeling’s thoughts were racing. The shot was perfect. The target was distracted. One super-charged plasma bolt to the back of her head would remove it, and half the Equestrian diarchy, from the changelings’ path to supremacy. She would never get a better chance than this.

Nox’s claw tightened around the trigger. Her eyes strayed to the massive corpse laying next to her target. A dragon. A giant, warrior dragon, at that; no mere wyrm or hundred-year drake that had been coaxed out of its nest with a promise of easy prey. How confident had he been when he saw Luna? Had he imagined that he’d find himself outmatched? Had he sensed the otherworldly hatred and ancient power entombed within her armor plating? Or had he thought that the Princess might fall easily and crumble before a single, opportune strike?

Just like Nox was counting on now.

A whistling noise started coming from the auxiliary coolant valve.


Luna’s ear twitched, and she twisted her head around.

There was nothing there. The sounds of gunfire still raged from the surrounding streets, albeit nothing directly adjacent this building. She took a deep breath, and then winced at the smell of blood mixed with sulfur that greeted her senses.

“We mayhaps were somewhat carried away,” she mumbled, kicking out one leg. She could feel several sharp points on the inside of the armor that weren’t there before, almost as if the frame was trying to burrow into her skin. Which it may well have been, for all she knew; Solon had admitted that daemon armor gradually attempted to fuse with its bearer.

The Iron Gage smashed their knuckles together, and another pulsing wave of crimson swirled around her horn. “Onward, to the next invader!”


As Luna flew off, Nox clung to a shuttered window just below the roof’s edge. Her plasma gun was quietly dissipating its charge, and her heartbeat thundered in her ears. The weapon’s grip felt very hot to the touch, but she clutched it like a lifeline.

How close had she just come to being vaporized in a pulse of magic? Surely closer than she had been to killing the Princess of the Night. Just staring at the mare’s backside had generated premonitions of doom unlike anything she had experienced before. A fear so paralyzing she had to wonder if it wasn’t a defense mechanism in and of itself.

“Forget the Princess,” Nox whispered to herself, staring at the shutters. “This is still proceeding according to plan. The dragons, the griffons, the greenskins; they’re all just here to die. It may as well be the moon horse that gets them. But I have to be more careful…”


With a self-satisfied nod, Nox jumped back from the wall and spread her wings.

A pair of razor-edged talons punched into the Guardian’s back, and Nox gasped in pain. Then something struck her hard, pushing her off of the blades and slamming her against the shuttered window. She bounced off the durasteel slats and plummeted into the alley below, stunned.

Nox seemed to burst into green flames in midair, and before she’d even reached the bottom floor her form had reverted entirely to her changeling body. She snapped one wing out and flipped herself right before impact, landing painfully, but safely, on her hooves. A flash of green from her twisted horn caught her plasma gun before it struck the ground, and the Guardian snapped her head upward to search the sky.

She saw nothing. The two looming walls of the adjacent buildings stretched upward, and the crack of gunfire came from the street at the end of the alley. Lumens built high on the structure flickered unsteadily due to the power disruption. The light was dim, but hardly low enough to hide an assailant.

The wound was anything but imaginary, obviously. Ichor dripped from the deep puncture in Nox’s carapace, collecting in a small pool at her hooves. Adrenaline and a minor combat enchantment kept the worst of the pain at bay, but if she didn’t address it soon it would become debilitating.

The sound of moving air from behind her was all the warning she got. The Guardian whipped around to face the noise, and swung the plasma gun around along with her. Adamantium blades sunk into the flex-sheathing, piercing the outer coils and nearly ripping the weapon in half. Nox telekinetically pulled the trigger, and a shrill whine came from the ignition chamber.

The claws embedded in the gun swung upward, tossing it into the air. Nox jumped back, her horn already pulsing with magic. The dark shape that had assaulted her did the same, its attention mostly on the crackling plasma gun.

Said plasma gun exploded in the air a second later, vanishing within a screeching fireball.


“… A bat pony,” Nox said after a moment of tense silence.

“A changeling,” Dusk Blade said, flicking one foreleg to the side. Tiny glowing droplets of plasma spattered over the ground, burning against the ferrocrete ground where they landed. “What a surprise. I don’t suppose you want to give up, do you? Our resident Sorcerer would enjoy carving up your mind…” His voice had a hollow, echoing effect from within the respirator mask, and his eyes were hidden behind a half-dozen green optics lenses set in his visor.

Nox’s horn glowed brighter, and her eyes shifted to become windows of pure white light. “That’s enough, slave. Lay down.”

The enchantment hit Dusk like a physical blow; he staggered to the side, and his vision started to blur badly. His thoughts started to jumble as well. Images, memories, and observations spun into a kaleidoscope of incoherence that made it impossible to concentrate.

He did not lay down, however.

Dusk stumbled forward, and Nox yelped and started backing up. Her wound was distracting and weakening her, and in the end she hadn’t managed to get any real grip on the thestral’s mind. The infiltrator turned and ran, galloping toward the streets at full speed.

“You’re not going…” Dusk bolted after his prey, leapt up onto one wall, and then kicked off toward the Guardian. “ANYWHERE!”

The kick landed on Nox’s hip, knocking the changeling out of her sprint. She whipped her head around as she stumbled, and crackling orb of green launched from her horn and curved into Dusk’s head.

He shrieked loudly when the magic bolt struck him, tearing open the side of his helmet. The helmet and his optics goggles fell off with a shake of his head, and a bit of blood spattered across the ground next to them.

Nox winced at Dusk’s scream, feeling a sudden wave of vertigo. She stood back up in a hurry, but Dusk was after her just as quickly. Hoofblades slashed across her leg, and then a kick slammed her into the wall again.

“W-Wait!” Nox gasped, her eyes practically spinning in her head. “I surrender! I’ve had enough!”

“Sorry, you already selected the ‘no surrender’ option!” Dusk chirped. “Now go to sleep. Forever.”

He whipped around, lashing out with a back leg and the adamantium claw mounted behind it. The blade sliced into the changeling at the neck, slashing a long streak of bright turquoise fluid across the wall behind her.


Dusk Blade turned his head to watch his prey topple to the ground. Then he took a deep breath and tapped the vox bead just below his ear. “Lieutenant Blade, here. Changeling down. I repeat, we have a changeling infiltrator down in sector… uh… like, 22, I guess? 18? Kinda lost track stalking the Orks.”

He took his hoof off the bead. Only static answered him.

“Command? Hello? Is anybody still around? What’s going on? I’m requesting mission objectives!”

Static and silence.


****


Sector 19 – train station

Rendezvous point


“Fill those cars! First come, first serve! As tight as you can pack them! Come ON, people, we could have rebels or Orks or whatever on top of us any minute!”

Breezy Blight hovered above a veritable river of ponies and humans, her vox grille turned up to maximum volume. Below her, at the gates of the train station, a plethora of turrets and heavy combat servitors sat in a row in front of the gates of the station or mounted on fence pylons. Heavy bolters, autocannons, plasma culverins, and assault cannons twitched back and forth before the flood of refugees, boasting enough firepower to wipe out a platoon of soldiers in an eye blink.

All those weapons were useless. Attached to automated wetware programs hard-coded to ignore certain signals under all circumstances. The unthinking, unfeeling machines, for all their advantages in the traumatic, chaotic fury of total war, would obliviously watch a thousand friendly targets die if engagement conflicted with their wartime protocols. Fierce debate raged elsewhere as to the potential gains and risks of immediately replacing those protocols with something more haphazard and reactionary, but for now the phalanx of heavy guns remained thankfully silent.

In front of the station, behind platforms and barricades, were the remaining mercenaries that had so far decided to extract themselves from their sectors and had survived the journey. Barely more than two hundred men, and less than half as many armed ponies. Three Leman Russ tanks and a pair of Sentinels at least provided some heavy firepower that wasn’t crippled by the mysterious electronic warfare, but there would probably be little more, if any, armored support coming. The attackers were relatively ill-equipped to fight off the Company’s vehicles, and as such the tanks were critical in containing the assault and protect the most important sectors.

“Hey! If you have wings, use them!” Breezy shouted, causing a pair of pegasi to flinch. “Go on, get out of here! The defense perimeter is down anyway!”

The winged equines jumped into the air, building up altitude. Then they soared over the palisade wall and out into the wasteland beyond the gates.

“Breezy!” Poison Kiss called from below. “The train is packed! We’re moving her out!”

The armored pegasus looked back over the line of refugees. “There’s still a lot of people left! Can we cram some ponies into the cargo train or something?”

“Rubbish that! We’re just going to open the gate and let them out into the wastes!” Kiss pointed a hoof off to the side. “There’s also-“

The sudden booming of battle cannons and heavy bolters came from the defensive line, and both ponies winced.

“Contact! Contact! We have greenskins on the eastern approach!”

“Watch that cannon fire! There’s a lot of people in those buildings!”

“Keep those heavy bolters on them! Squad, clean them out while they’re suppressed!”


Poison Kiss levitated her bolter free of her armor. “Go! Get that train moving! Everyone who doesn’t have a gun, get into the security gate proper! Leg it!”

The crush of non-combatants became a stampede, with the ponies flooding around and under the humans to get behind the turret pylons. The servitors swiveled to track the various civilians, their guns warm and their optical trackers processing hundreds of images per second. Their heightened alert status didn’t help them process the flood of false data fed to them, however, or make them any less oblivious to the enemies close by.

Kiss’s vox system suddenly linked up to Rot Blossom.

“Kiss! We found some crew who know how to fly the cargo lander! We still don’t have a Dark Techpriest, but they say they can get it into orbit without a problem!”

“Bully!” Poison Kiss galloped past a battle tank, and then fired a burst of bolt shells down the street. “Start moving the other survivors onto the lander, then! Prioritize the humans; if this fracas gets much worse, they’ve got nowhere to go but back to their ship!”

“Wait, some of us are evacuating to space?” asked a stallion behind her. “I want to evacuate to space! Where’s the space line?”

A spray of gunfire sawed across the ground, cutting across Kiss’s chest. Sparks and bullets bounced across the ground in front of her hooves, and her visor briefly turned to static before resetting.

“Bloody greenskins,” the unicorn snarled, swinging up her bolter and firing back. There was a great deal of smoke, however, and her targeting system was still effectively useless. “Bloody signal. Bloody yaks, bloody diamond dogs, bloody griffons, and BLOODY thrice-cursed dragons!”

The battle tanks fired again, rocking backward under the force of their battle cannons. Detonations rolled across the street in a flaming volley, pulverizing the mob trying to advance into the sector.

One Ork stumbled out of the dust, and a half dozen lasbolts promptly cut him down. A second one emerged, and Kiss put a single bolt round into his chest, knocking him over with a crater in his sternum. A third one bolted into view, and then keeled over forward when a pulse round struck him in the back.

Kiss blinked in surprise. The impact flash of pulse weaponry was very distinctive, and that Ork had looked like he was fleeing, not charging. She had almost forgotten about the Tau forces stationed in the fortress.

“Hold fire! Hold fire!” barked one man next to the battle tanks. Their lower-caliber guns cut off immediately, smoke seeping from the barrels.


The haze started to clear enough that the defenders could make out shapes marching toward the station. The Fire Warriors had a thankfully distinctive profile; smaller than Orks, with their oddly-shaped helmets and unusually long rifles. Behind the ranks of the light infantry came battlesuits: Crisis and Broadside teams stomped along the avenue, obliviously squashing Ork corpses to paste under their tread.

The small army looked largely untouched, with very few signs of damage and injury among the aliens. Poison Kiss briefly wondered where they had been such that they had apparently avoided most of the fighting, but she supposed that didn’t matter now.

“Oi! Grays! Get behind a barricade and take up formation!” she shouted, beckoning to the advancing ranks of blue and black. “Suits can go near the tanks! We need a bigger firing line until the civvies can book it!”

One of the battlesuits barked something to the other troops in their own language. The Tau ignored the pony’s instructions, marching past the defensive barricades and the train station.

“Hey! Don’t any of you louts understand Gothic?!” Poison Kiss growled.

Most of the Tau soldiers kept moving, ignoring her, but one of the suits suddenly hit its jet boosters and leapt over its allies. It flew over to Kiss and landed in front of her, causing the mare to recoil a few steps.

The battlesuit looked like one of the Lamman Sept’s XV28 Heavy Stealth Suits. Big and boxy like the XV8, but with veins of silvery circuitry running over the ablative armor layers and several round emitter lenses mounted over the body, the battlesuit towered over ponies even more than the Chaos Space Marines in their power armor. This particular suit, though, seemed slightly… different, somehow. Kiss couldn’t immediately identify why.

“Are you in charge here?” the battlesuit rumbled.

“No, all the Commanders and Sergeants are back there!” Kiss swung her boltgun around to point to a small crowd beyond the gates. They were huddled around a platform near the end of the tracks, next to several servitors and a stack of dataslates. “They’re planning a counter-attack while we manage the evacuation!”

The battlesuit looked up. “And those are all the city’s surviving leadership?”

“Not quite, no,” Kiss said again. “There’s quite a few that were out on mission, and Warpsmith Kessler hasn’t checked in yet.” She smiled behind her helmet. “I have to admit, I’m right tickled you lot showed up! With this many guns it should be easy to push out the baddies!”

Then she glanced behind her. The Tau were still marching past the defensive lines, past even the evacuees moving out of the city. Some of the other soldiers were yelling at them, but the aliens paid them as much attention as they had paid the Plague Witch.

“Say, where are your lads going? We need the firepower here!” Kiss complained.

“We’re moving our Earth Caste personnel into the lander for safety,” the battlesuit replied. “Then we’ll survey the area for the best defensive positions.”

Kiss nodded. “That’s fine, then. We just got a pilot in there and we’re starting to load her up with other civvies. They’ll make for orbit if things get dicey.”

The battlesuit stood up straight, and its box-shaped sensor head turned toward the ship.


*Fio’o, it seems fortune favors us. The lander is crewed and will be able to depart. Get on board. We’ll be making quite a mess before we join you,* Voidsong ordered into her comms.

*Acknowledged, Shas’o. However… it seems they’re loading humans and equines onto the vessel already. We may-*

*That’s our ship now, Fio’o, and we do not give sanctuary to the servants of Chaos. Once you reach it, have a Fireblade tell the evacuees as much and then shoot a man. They’ll get the message; they’re pirates, after all.*

*Ah… y-yes, Shas’o Voidsong. As you say.*

*Once you’re inside, switch the frequency of the local disruptor drones to block vox signals from this area. I’ll be along to help you with the crew.* Voidsong switched her comms to connect to the other squad leaders. *All Broadside groups and Crisis groups, take aim. Railguns in the tanks, missile pods in the commanders. Fire Warrior teams, you have the soldiers. Sink the dagger on my mark, then break for the ship.*


“Say, are you going to speak to the leadership?” Poison Kiss asked the battlesuit towering over her. “They’ve been in right tizzy since the command tower was overrun. You should let them know you’re ready to deploy!”

Several of the other battlesuits stopped and swiveled on the spot, bracing their weapons in preparation to fire.

“It’ll really help morale, if nothing else!” Kiss continued. “Some of us were starting to think we wouldn’t make it out of this!”

“And so you won’t.” Voidsong’s voice came strong and clear from her suit’s external speaker, completely free of the feedback and distortion from before. “For the Greater Good.”


Poison Kiss didn’t feel pain, but she certainly felt plenty of other sensations when two plasma bolts cut through her flank armor and bored into her torso. Her stomach lurched, her legs failed, and the world suddenly seemed to spin around her. Her visor exploded into warning icons and emergency runes, and then quickly blurred into a fuzzy kaleidoscope of bright colors.

She tried to move, but promptly stumbled and fell onto her side. Noise erupted all around her, but then started to fade just as rapidly. The spinning lights from her visor display began to dim, and shadows stretched across her vision.

Then the three-toed foot of a Tau battlesuit struck her helmet, sending the mare’s armored body spinning away.


Voidsong looked up as the Broadsides discharged their weapons, stabbing deep into the side of a Leman Russ battle tank. The hypersonic rails pierced the vehicle entirely, punching small, clean holes in one side before blasting out the opposite armor facing in huge, messy explosions of superheated metal. The tank was perforated before its crew had even known it was being fired upon; a perfect kill for a Lamman warrior.

The Commanders, Lieutenants, and other men of any rank enjoyed slightly more time to panic before the missile bomblets hit them. The entire group was swallowed by explosions and utterly pulverized, firmly decapitating the defenders.

The Fire Warriors opened fire as well, and the entire area erupted into pandemonium. Ponies and menials bolted away in a panic, soldiers hit the ground or started shouting, and the engines of the tanks sputtered to life in order to turn around.

Voidsong watched the rapid descent into chaos with a small smile. In all her years in command, in all her ambushes and combat operations, she had never executed a strike quite as satisfying as this one. It was a petty revenge, and honestly quite beneath her. But this vengeance, at least, would serve Tau’va.

A nearby Sentinel walker rounded about, its lascannon whining while it built up power. Voidsong almost casually lifted her fusion blaster and shot it in the head section, vaporizing its cockpit and pilot in a single blast. The legs, still in the midst of turning, wobbled comically before tripping and collapsing onto the ground.

She gunned her jet pack, and her battlesuit skimmed over the ground. Several civilians sprinted or dove out of her way, and she ignored them entirely. Swiveling her head, her targeters zeroed in on the engine block of a Leman Russ, and her fusion blaster began its recharging cycle.

One of the heavy bolter sponsons snapped toward her, but the Shas’o veered out of its firing arc with effortless grace. The treads squeaked and churned to swing the tank around, but soon the battlesuit was behind it.

Voidsong reached optimal range and fired her fusion blaster. A menial running by at the wrong time had his entire upper torso burned away to nothing, and the bolt kept going to bore into the battle tank’s engine. It liquefied much of the internal systems, and then instantly cooked the fuel supply, which went on to detonate the munitions. In a chain of three rapid explosions, the tank was ripped in two, hurling bits of hot armor plating into those nearby.

*One more,* Voidsong mumbled. Her armor shimmered, and then disappeared from view.


*Go! Go! To the ship! That’s enough!*

Fire Warriors and battlesuits sprinted across the landing lot toward the mass lander. Lasfire raked at them from behind, but the shots were scattered and half-hearted. Most of the mercenaries and guards were trying to reach new cover or had joined the civilians in fleeing the area. The servitors and automated guns watched over the firefight with heightened interest, detecting the exchange of gunfire but being unable to process a response. Very few circumstances would allow them to fire upon a friendly Space Marine, and the 38th Company’s mightiest defenders appeared frequently among the false signals blanketing the base.

The Fio’o and his Fire Warrior team disappeared up the embarkation ramp. Seconds later, shouting came from within the vessel, followed by the flash of pulse fire. People and ponies started fleeing the vessel’s hold immediately, sprinting into the lots and then scattering away from the incoming soldiers.

*Battlesuits, secure the ramp! Fire teams, get up into the bridge, before they try to lock it down! Move! Move! Mo-*

The report of a battle cannon drowned out the Fireblade’s shout, and a detonation came from the middle of the Broadside battlesuits. One of the suits took the shell directly, its arms blown off and the pilot compartment knocked onto the ground in a useless, immobile heap. The others stumbled, and then continued their rapid march to the landing ship while swiveling to face the vehicles attacking them.

Heavy bolter fire sputtered from the remaining Leman Russ, cutting into the fleeing Tau with stopping power and vicious decisiveness the lasfire lacked. Polyceramic body armor was pulped by the shells and shrapnel scythed into the soldiers’ legs. A Sentinel scout walker accompanied the battle tank, firing its multilaser into the troops scattered by the larger vehicle to pick off the wounded.

The Broadsides fired back, sending screaming volleys of hyper-accelerated rails back at the tank. Most missed their mark entirely, their aim troubled by the lumbering, desperate gait of the heavy battlesuits. Those rails that did hit strained against the Russ’s heaviest armor, and the projectiles were found wanting. One shot came at the Sentinel, striking its leg at the knee. The walker was instantly dismembered, and crashed onto its face in an immobile heap.

The Leman Russ rumbled forward toward the retreat, every gun blazing into the Tau. A swarm of missiles came back into it, pounding the front plating some more, but the vehicle pushed through the explosions and smoke in a single-minded fury. Its battle cannon fired again, briefly causing the entire vehicle to lurch backward. A Broadside battlesuit vanished under the impact, torn open and pulverized.

Then the air behind the tank shimmered.


*That’s enough of that,* Voidsong grumbled before she fired her fusion blaster again.

The Leman Russ detonated, ripping itself in half under the force of its own ordnance exploding. Voidsong’s battlesuit turned away, raising an arm to shield her from the chunks of smoldering armor peppering her suit.

*You’re clear of the heavy weapons. All units, gather any wounded and board the landing vessel at once. Full speed; don’t worry about return fire.* Lasbolts and the odd heavy stubber slug started striking the back of Voidsong’s suit, and she activated her cloaking field once more. *I’ll do a final sweep for any problem targets, and… hm?*

Her primary optics were suddenly covered by a dark shape landing on top of it. She had no idea what to make of it at first. A long, thin thing surrounded by several thinner lengths splayed out around the lens. It twitched and then turned, and Voidsong finally realized what she was staring at: the underbelly of a flying insect.

With a grunt, she raised a hand and flicked the insect away with a blocky metal finger. With her vision cleared, she could see that there were several such bugs circling her now. Wasps and flies buzzed around her sensor head and crawled over her armor. They seemed to have come from nowhere, but Voidsong had seen something similar before.

*Cultists,* she hissed, whirling around.


“YOU TREACHEROUS GRAY FREAK!!” a swarm of bugs, clustered together closely enough to form an obscuring smokescreen, raced toward Voidsong while a voice from within screamed at her. “I’M GOING TO INFEST EVERY ONE OF YOU RUBBERY MULES!!”

Voidsong cursed to herself and quickly re-routed power away from her cloaking field. She swiveled about to shoot into the oncoming whatever-it-was, only for another large wasp to land on her sensors and obscure her view.

She fired anyway, and a burst of plasma bolts sprayed across the oncoming swarm. Dozens of insects vanished in puffs of hot vapor, and the swarm broke apart in an angry frenzy just before an armored form galloped out of it.

“DIE, SCUM!!” Rot Blossom snarled, leaping up at the battlesuit before it could move to evade. Small triangular blades popped out of her greaves, and she slammed them into the suit’s torso.

Voidsong rocked back under the attack, spitting curses in her native language. The power transmission and agility of the XV28 was far inferior to that of her customized battlesuit, but that armor had been ripped apart by pony psykers. She very much didn’t want to consign this battlesuit to the same fate.

A kick from the armored pony struck her leg and staggered her, but Voidsong didn’t break her concentration. Putting the full output of her suit reactor to the jet pack, the Shas’o leapt into the air and out of reach of the mare thrashing at her. A quick spin and a venting of her heat sinks scattered the insects crawling all over her armor as well, clearing the pests from her battlesuit.

“GET BACK HERE!!” Blossom roared, snapping up her bolter leg to fire. Flying insects whipped around her like a whirlwind, chittering and buzzing while a stitch of mass-reactive shells crossed the sky toward the Tau Commander.

Voidsong darted to the side, neatly evading the first burst and aiming her plasma rifle. Before she could fire, however, a plume of thick green fog washed over her from above, obscuring her vision again.

“Oh, what NOW?” the Shas’o snarled, switching her vision modes to thermal while also activating a sensor ping. She picked up her attacker almost immediately – a suit of powered armor hovering several meters behind her – but before she could act on it alerts started flashing in front of her.

She switched gears again, spinning in the air to dodge away from another boltgun burst. The alerts started multiplying, however, and a quick diagnostic revealed minor damage in several joints and power transmission systems.

*Corrosive gas. Of course,* Voidsong sighed, feeding more power to her jetpack. A pair of bolt shells and a lasblast hit her arm, and the Shas’o grit her teeth. If any of those weapons managed to breach her pilot compartment, she could only imagine what the toxins or insects would do to her with direct exposure.

It would be a tremendous and humiliating irony if, after being freed from her stone prison and initiating this attack upon her enemies, she fell in combat to a pair of deluded equine cultists after ushering her people to safety. It was an utterly absurd prospect. Her pride rebelled against the very prospect, detesting such defeatism and spurring her to counter-attack.

And yet…

*This is Shas’o Voidsong,* she grumbled into her comms system. *Get ready to seal the ship and lift off. I’m coming in.*


Breezy Blight could barely see her targeting reticules through the haze of sheer anger over her vision. It may not have mattered if she could; after all, the treacherous battlesuit still registered on her visor as a friendly like everything else. Her armor shuddered from the constant bolter salvos, and her flight pack strained to keep up with the shockingly agile battlesuit ahead of her.

“Stop MOVING you grayskin worm!” she snarled, rising up above the battlesuit to get another angle. Her wrist bolter rattled again, firing another spread of mass-reactive shells after the traitor.

The suit shimmered, and then its cloaking field activated again. The effect didn’t hide it very well; the damage the suit had sustained meant that some armor facings were still exposed, or kept flickering into translucency. It did make it harder to shoot at, though, which made Breezy even angrier.

“You’re not getting away!” the pegasus roared, her voice amplified by her vox into a dreadful shriek. The wings of her flight pack tilted forward, and miniature boosters hidden in the top paneling fired. The armored pony burst forward with the extra push, closing rapidly to a range at which she could use her breath weapon. Her helmet’s jaws opened, revealing sharpened teeth and a pestilent green fog seeping from her muzzle. The transport ship loomed ahead of her, its cargo ramp yawning open.

She sucked in a breath, and Breezy’s chest tingled. Secondary organs teeming with parasites and acidic spores flooded her lungs, rapidly mixing it all into a poisonous stew. A pulse blast sliced through the air under her, but she ignored it, concentrating on the battlesuit.

Another pulse shot slammed into her chest, and warning runes flashed over her visor between brief floods of crackling static. This made it slightly harder to ignore. Her flight path stumbled slightly, but she remained on course. Then another warning flashed.

A markerlight had painted her, sending data pulses flooding through her systems. And those of the Tau targeting networks, presumably. She briefly glanced down at the soldiers who were firing at her from the ship’s loading ramp.

Breezy spotted the hulking armor frame of a Broadside battlesuit too late. Its railguns fired into the air, whipping past Breezy’s prey at hypersonic speed. One of the shots missed by sheer dumb luck.

One of them didn’t.

Breezy’s wing was sheared clean off, armor casing and all. To the Nurgle cultist it felt like nothing more than a sharp tug at the limb, but the bright red indicators and the lurching sensation in her stomach suggested far more serious damage. She also started spinning through the air out of control, totally losing sight of her target and winding badly off-course.

The pegasus smashed into the top deck of the lander, her plating scraping across the outer shielding that protected the vessel’s bridge. Breezy hit a random protrusion and yelped, and then bounced away into the lot.

She didn’t feel so much as a pinprick of pain crashing onto the ferrocrete, but the shock of the impact still stunned her. Her visor cracked, and the increasingly dire damage display was engulfed by static briefly before blacking out entirely.


Voidsong barely registered the mare’s fate. She landed onto the entry ramp and sprinted into the vessel’s cavernous cargo bay.

*Close the ramp. Seal and guard all entrances to the vessel!* she hissed, stomping past the threshold.

A Fire Warrior rushed to comply, pulling a heavy lever on a manual control panel. Jets of pressurized gas blasted from huge hydraulics, and the ramp lurched upward.

*Broadsides, keep watch and prepare to fend off any incursion. We’ll be in the air as soon as possible, but someone out there might be able to dig up a plasma cutter on short notice,* Voidsong commanded, pointing toward the heavier battlesuits. The warriors nodded back to her, and then the Shas’o started heading toward the deck access. *We’re almost done. Almost free of these maniacs…*


The ramp finally closed, and a wave of palpable relief rolled through the Tau soldiers in the cargo bay. Many slumped against walls and crates or rapidly stripped off their helmets. The rest kept their guns at the ready, facing the ramp in grim silence.

One Fire Warrior with his helmet off suddenly yelped in pain, and then smacked a hand against his neck.

*What’s the matter? Did some shrapnel hit you back there?*

*No… It’s nothing. Just some kind of insect.* He wiped his glove off on a crate in disgust.

*Did it sting you?* Another soldier walked up and checked the back of his neck. *Ah, it did. It’s already swelling. See if you can find a medkit in the upper decks.*

*Does it look bad?* asked the victim.

*A little. It got you three time, it seems.*

*Three times? Really?*

*Yes. There are three welts, in a triangle. They look a bit discolored, too. See to that medkit, Shas’la.*