//------------------------------// // Entry VIII: Blood Over the Smoke // Story: PonyHammer 40k: Legions At War // by Ozone31 //------------------------------// ENTRY BEGINS. 2nd YEAR OF THE GRAND AGE OF EQUESTRIA Jock Maintrom was deafened. More than that, his every sense was drowned out by the cacophony pressing down on him from all sides. The hellish roar of the Dragon's Teeth's power plant, the thunderous rattling of the tank's metal bones and the screams were placing such a block on his senses that he could barely tell what was happening at all. He was vaguely aware of some pressure on his sides, the insignificant shaking of something held in his fetlocks, a slight burning sensation in the back of his throat. It was all nothing when compared to the crushing weight of the noise. Who was even screaming? He was so detached from his own body in that moment that it could well have been him and he never would have known. However, none of this was trauma unparalleled to him. He'd been in situations like this before, where sound and crushing G-forces drowned all his senses in a horrific, cacophonous miasma. This moment was eerily similar to the feelings generated by a trans-orbital shuttle flight, the unbearable pressure on his ears, the vibrations that threatened to shake his organs free of his body and the desperate want to be just about anywhere else - it all lined up perfectly. Maintrom pushed desperately through the marsh that currently was his own mind, searching for the words of wisdom his grandmother had given him when he'd left his home on the city ship Returner for a life in the Imperial Army. The retired veteran's harsh rasp of a voice was easily found in his memory, so cemented there by her constant nagging that he would never forget it, no matter how hard he may try. "Don't get so caught up in the moment that you forget to look where you're going, lad." He clung to those words, using their wisdom to cut a sense of clarity into his addled thoughts. He forced his eyes open, wrenching them even a sliver taking as much effort as it would take to lift one of the tank's massive Demolisher shells with his bare-hooves. But it was enough, he could see what they were rapidly approaching and he knew what to do in response - pushing his forehooves forward and depressing his hind hoof on the accelerator. Even at the best of times, a Baneblade was ultimately a graceless machine. Big, blocky and favouring sheer brute force over precision strikes, they were the war hammer of the Imperium's armoured vehicle arsenal. They did their remarkably simple job splendidly well, able to break through some of the toughest emplacements ever erected by the enemies of man - given sufficient time and resources. However, flight wasn't included in the Baneblade's list of strengths - in fact, long drops were one of the tank line's few natural enemies, able to turn its immense mass into a costly weakness. Dragon's Teeth, despite the long list of modifications made to it by Captain Basarian over the years, was no different from any of its millions of kin spread across Humanity's empire in this regard. It's turret skirts would offer it no protection from the hard concrete below, it's extra sponson plating would do little to help the crew as they were crushed into paste by the forces created by landing. But, what did save both the tank and its hopelessly squishy crew was it's supercharged engine block. The gigantic power plant in its rear had been modified and experimented with beyond reason by the more ambitious Mechanicum Adepts of Fabricator General Talboran's sect. The result of these alterations was a fifty seven kilometres-per-hour top speed, improved fuel economy and vastly improved acceleration. So, whereas any typical Baneblade would have barely reached top speed before reaching the gash in the building, the Dragon's Teeth's enhanced acceleration gave it several full seconds of careening forwards at full tilt before taking flight. This additional momentum carried it far further through the air, bridging the gap between the building they had crashed in and its neighbour. Sergeant Franklin's crazy, nincompoop plan was actually working. The panes of glass windows, and the concrete pillars that surrounded them, put up very little resistance as over three hundred metric tonnes of tank slammed into them - shattering into tiny fragments as the modified Baneblade came thundering down upon them. The same could be said for the floor of the forty fifth level of the Hoofield-&-Marecoy HQ building, simply giving out under the vehicle's immense bulk - and for the forty forth floor, and the forty third. It was almost as if the building wasn't there at all as the Dragon's Teeth continued to plummet with only minimal deceleration occurring as they passed through each floor. But it was accumulating. Maintrom could feel the forces on his body decreasing, or in the very least changing form. No longer was the pressure on him a continuous, crushing feeling - instead it had become sudden painful jolts, that rattled the teeth in his gums, interspersed with very short periods of weightlessness. He could feel his organs being tossed around in his chest cavity, first being lifted gently upwards, before being harshly thrown straight back downwards again. He was sure that he would have puked, if his stomach hadn't already emptied itself of its contents of partly digested dry crackers, vitamin cubes and recycled water during the crash landing of the Devourer less than half an hour ago. Then, all of a sudden, the bone shaking crashing stopped and the crew of the Dragon's Teeth were caught in a weightless period for several seconds. They had breached into the building's magnificently designed and splendidly tall main lobby and were careening down through it towards the ground at tremendous speeds. But, those speeds had been lessened, not only by the floors they had been crashing through, but also through conversion into forward momentum created by Maintrom's inputs with the accelerator and controls, enough so that when they finally made it to the ground they weren't instantly flattened into a bloody paste by the impact. However, it was still by no means a soft landing. Only Jock's harness prevented both him and the two foals at his sides from having their heads catapulted into the dash board at velocities that would have most certainly shattered their skulls. After that titanic crash of steel tracks on marble floor, the tank continued to move. It did not bounce, it was far too heavy to ever regain air again, instead it began to skid - tracks scraping furiously on the smooth ground trying to get purchase. Maintrom knew what to do, while keeping his hind-hoof planted firmly on the accelerator, he wrenched back on the left handle on the control column. With a mighty *CLUNK* the gears in the left tracks changed and the meters of chain-linked metal plates began to spin in reverse - producing just enough friction to turn the far-too-fast skid into a ponderous swerve. Forcing the left column back forward again, but keeping the right one more depressed, he had the multi-hundred tonne tank doing donuts around the lobby - gradually reducing the power and bringing the tank finally to a hard stop against a nearby pillar. But it was with that last, violent lurch that the forces being exerted on the makeshift crew of the Dragon's Teeth finally settled and faded entirely, leaving the group of mortal ponies to groan and gripe in peace. When his vision eventually stopped its wobbly spinning Maintrom was able to force his trembling hooves to remove themselves from the control columns, un-clipping the safety harness and allowing his body to relax into his seat with an exhausted sigh. "If we were meant to fly, the gods would have made us all pegasi." the young Equestrian male uttered breathlessly, his tennis ball sized eyes still wedged open by terror. His comment elicited a ragged chuckle from the trooper he was still clinging to, little more than a few coughs forced out from lips baring a haggard ghost of a smile. "If you spend your whole life waiting for the help of the gods, you will never gain anything." Maintrom replied, wiping great droplets of cold sweat from his forehead with the back of his foreleg. "Besides, the gods that are listening... you don't want their help anyway..." "The enemy have lined their side of the banks with heavy weapons emplacements, lascannons, auto cannons, heavy bolters... even a coupla Earth-Shakers dotted around the place." Lieutenant Enart gave the grim report on the enemy forces while leaning over a wide holo-map, hastily set up inside a prefab windowless bunker that was set into the rear most trench line. It illuminated the confined space with an image of the bridge, the Imperial dug out and the section of the Chaotic defensive line that protected the bridge - although this was only on account of the table's small size, rather than an actual lack of data. With him standing around the device were; Captain Dragoon, Princess Luna, Guard-Captain Skies, Lunar-Captain Silent Arrow and Sister in Waiting Freida Tolm. They stood in silence, attentive to his words, but the eyes of three of the room's occupants were fixed firmly on one of the others. The young Sister seemed to wilt under the harsh gazes of the three Equestrians, the answer to the question she knew they were dying to ask plaguing her mind almost as much as the pain from the shallow cut across her brow. Her superior had almost done the unthinkable and she'd been willing to go through Tolm to do it - it was a scary prospect, especially for the young Imperial who had seen the Sister-Commander work and knew exactly what she was capable of. Although Lady Rodrias wasn't the focus of her thoughts right now, these three ponies and the Sixth Captain were. The latter especially, not only because he had struck a high ranking member of one of The Emperor's most elite forces, but also because he was seemingly unfazed by it. He had not raised word of it since the event had occurred over fifteen minutes ago and as a result, neither had anyone else. "The entire shore of the island is protected in this way, although we believe that a vast majority of their 'swarm' forces are located near the bridge here." Enart rounded off, plopping down onto his haunches as he did so and rubbing his aching neck with a spare hoof. He hadn't slept in days and he was really starting to feel the weight of days worth of near non-stop combat resting on his bones - or maybe it was just the fact that he, as an equine, had just spent ten minutes sitting upright in a tank's turret firing a stubber on full auto. I can't afford to get lazy now... I'll just have to rest when I'm dead. "Anything else worthy of mention, Lieutenant?" Dragoon pressed, not wanting anything left out or otherwise under noticed. This battle was no different from some of the earlier sieges of the Purge Campaign, for him at least. It was simply another combat on soil he never expected to have to fight on, against a foe he could have never predicted. Although it said a lot about the Imperium's hubris, that a primarch's betrayal was considered just as impossible as fighting a race of technicoloured sapient equines. "No, sir." "Very good." the Astartes captain nodded in satisfaction, at least they knew what types of gun barrels they were going to be throwing themselves at. Neither his demeanour nor his posture changed as he calmly shifted his attention to the next thing on his list of priorities. He turned his head slowly, but with pointed purpose, so when it finally stopped he was staring straight at the young Sister of Silence - the harsh glare of his solid red eye lenses boring into her. For a time, he said nothing - simply continuing to melt the barely adult Sister under his unreadable gaze. "Libidine Sanguinem Necro-psychosis." the words he did eventually speak were done so casually and with little flair, as if he were ordering a meal at a restaurant. Although they sounded to the Equestrians like nothing more than the mutterings of a mad pony and even though they sounded like actual language to Enart - their exact meaning was utterly lost on the under-hiver. But, to Tolm it was as if he had just plucked the secret she had been keeping straight from the confines of her skull with as much effort as it would take for a Dreadnought to remove a carrot from the ground. "H-How?" Tolm stuttered, eyes wide as dinner plates and jaw working dumbly as she attempted to force out more words. She eventually succeeded and threw her hooves onto the holo-table before her, forcing herself closer to the captain as if she thought he was having trouble hearing her. "Lady Rodrias' ailment is a classified secret of the Sister's of Silence! Only a select few of the Upper Order and her closest Sisters know it!" "On paper, we Astartes have precious little free time. Never more than an hour per Standard Terran Cycle, and that's only during transit periods." Dragoon began, removing his stare from the frantic Sister and placing it back onto the flickering image displayed before him - its purpose, to press on Tolm's already fragile mental state, complete. "However, we spend a great deal of time in transit, young one. Days, even weeks, at a time. Even an hour adds up to a lot over such repetitive periods." "I know you master's ailment, because I recognise the symptoms from the disease's entry in many Medicae Journals, all of which I read during my free periods, and from conversations with many Apothecaries. I am also aware, after extensive research and data mining, that Sister Commander Rodrias originates from the planet Empolias - where LSNP patient zero was found." Silence descended briefly upon the bunker, as all present soaked up what information their brains could - the Equestrians understanding very little due to an overall lack of knowledge of the Imperium's list of medical problems. Enart fared a bit better, although the disease's name meant little to him, he was well aware that if a Space Marine made note of an illness, it had to be pretty freaking serious. Tolm was completely stunned by the revelation that the Marine Captain had just opened her eyes to, but also left feeling profoundly stupid as well. Of course the Adeptus Astartes knew of the existence of her CO's ailment, they were the most travelled, most aware and most medically superior force humanity had besides the Emperor Himself and his Primarch sons. If anyone had such information at their disposal, despite the censoring of all information regarding LSNP, it was the super-soldiers who occasionally had to fight it. "Ahem." Princess Luna cleared her throat, feeling that it was finally her time to speak up and get some thing straightened out. "I feel pressed to remind you, Captain Dragoon, that we have near to no knowledge of your world's... issues. So, as respectfully as I can manage, I demand to know exactly why that... Beast attempted to kill one of my loyal subjects." her tone was sharp and harsh, every emphasis she made on certain words caused all the mortals present to flinch drastically. Dragoon was as unfazed by her actions as ever, a fact which irritated the Princess to no end, choosing to shrug nonchalantly before talking again. "Libidine Sanguinem Necro-psychosis is a recurring physical disease, not a mental one - so it is not treatable in the long term with medication or mental conditioning. It is the result of a permanent genetic defect found in most inhabitants of Empolias, that causes portions of the brain, that are linked to greater reasoning and several key emotional controls, to degrade and eventually die. It can be treated temporarily with genetic suppressants, to stop further degradation, and cell replicators, to repair some of the damage - but the life spans of those diagnosed with it are often short and painful regardless of whether it is treated or not." "What are the symptoms?" Enart asked quickly, pushing the words out of a dry mouth - the description of the disease creating a hollow well in the pit of his stomach. "Besides the ones that Sister-Commander Rodrias has already made obvious." "Hallucinations, feelings of continuous hunger, emotional detachment, to name some of the less notable ones." Dragoon began, his voice never losing its somewhat disinterested lilt. He did not continue himself, however, and instead of which he turned his head back to face Tolm again - every set of eyes in the room followed his gaze as it rested upon the young Imperial. "The worst symptoms include; madness, intense simultaneous migraines and... insatiable blood lust." she grew increasingly quiet as she made her way through the sentence, the last few words coming out as a barely audible whisper and she shrank in on herself at the same pace, retreating back off the holo-table and back onto her haunches. She still has some ways to go before she makes full Sisterhood the Sixth Captain mused to himself, her mind still far from the steel cage it would need to become if she were to continue down this path. "And she is allowed to lead under such circumstances?!" Luna cried, aghast at such a prospect - how could anyone with such a volatile illness be allowed to command troops, that she could turn on at any conceivable moment. What sort of world did these 'Imperials' come from, where the criminally psychopathic were allowed to lead armies and millions dead was just another day on the battlefront. "Lady Rodrias is a fine warrior and great leader!" Tolm yelled across the table, the complete one-eighty of her typical demeanour causing even the typically stoic and reaction-less Dragoon to blanch slightly. She was reared up onto the holo-table again, teeth clenched and a fearsome fire of devotion burning in her glare. "She may be unwell, but she is wholly devoted to the Imperial Truth and she is more than capable of spreading The Emperor's word, even with her condition!" "She is a MONSTER!" Luna roared back, pushing Silent Arrow, who had put herself between the Princess and the young sister when the latter had arisen to defend her leader's honour, aside and throwing her fore-hooves onto the table to bellow down at the smaller mare. "SHE POSES A CONSTANT THREAT TO THOSE AROUND HER AND SO LONG AS THOSE AROUND HER INCLUDE MY SUBJECTS, I WILL NOT STAND FOR HER PRESENCE!" Tolm was about to shout back a retort, but she was cut off by the blaring howls of warning klaxons and a voice yelling over all vox channels; "AIR RAID!" The world beyond the command bunker had erupted into a frantic, hellish fire fight - corrupted pegasi rained from the sky in a hateful and bloody torrent. The Leman Russ Tanks' pintle mounted weapons spat their metal fury right back, the gunners forcing their weapons to the maximum elevation possible to try and intercept the flyers before they reached the ground. The landing force's trio of Hydra Flak Tanks had just opened up when Princess Luna emerged from the ferrocrete bunker, their batteries of powerful autocannons forcing out a continuous staccato of tracer-marked death into the skies above. She watched in awe as the munitions they fired detonated in mid flight, sending brutal flurries of metal shards tearing through anything in their path. But even with the barrage of the Hydras, Leman Russes and the weapons teams shredding pegasi left, right and centre - the attack did not relent. An endless tide of airborne ponies poured over the top of the thick, black smoke still being produced by the roaring flames below. With shrieking cries of fury, pain and pleasure they descended upon the Imperial base - some with fangs bared, others with horrifically grown claws outstretched, others still baring whips formed of their own entrails. Imperial Army troopers dashed about frantically all around the Princess of the Night, desperately adorning spiked battle-plate or clambering into the relative safety of tanks and bunkers. Astartes charged about with far greater purpose, moving to the defence of the wounded in the medicae camp or closing on the static AA teams to protect them from ground attack - firing off bursts from their wrist mounted Bolters as they went. The first few corrupt Equestrians to make ground fall were nothing but broken stragglers, landing hard with broken limbs and gaping bullet wounds - some simply pasted themselves on the hard dirt and tank armour below them, unable to control their descent after having their wings sheared off by passing shrapnel or blown off entirely, along with chunks of their sides, by bolt rounds. But as the core of the swarm arrived, more of the mutated horrors began to make it to ground intact or well enough to start laying into the frantic defenders. It was here that Luna would get her first taste of battle with the Forces of Chaos, and she was far from happy with its flavour. A screaming pegasus stallion came diving straight for her, his right forelimb raised and ready to impale her with a rusted brass spike that grew from his very bones, breaching his flesh from within and dripping with crimson ichor. But he was too slow, a mere mortal challenging a Celestial God. Luna caught the howling pony in her magic and took a few seconds to take in his features. She could no longer tell his coat or mane colour, most of both having been stripped away along with the surface layer of skin below. What little hair he had left was drenched with blood, soaked into the very fibres of his coat and dripping from every available orifice. He was crying blood, bleeding smoke and jabbering a frenzied mantra at throat shredding volumes. "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!!" he garbled through a lung-full of his own life fluids, seemingly unfazed by its loss and the pulsing fissures in his skin. He swung his ice pick of a limb at his old ruler over and over again, desperately trying to drive it into her eye socket and stab the brain that lay behind those cold, hard orbs. The youngest Celestial Sister only sighed, feeling an immense swell of pity for the creature that she held in her telekinetic grasp. "What a waste of a life." she spat, cursing the beings that had reduced one of her fine subjects to such a monstrous state. With a thought, she crushed his heart in his chest, causing his entire body to convulse and spasm, it's muscles locking up from the pain. Luna relaxed her grip and was about to let the dead stallion fall to the ground, when a burst of motion erupted from the would-be corpse. The supposedly dead pony let out a scream that curdled the blood of everyone who heard it, a demented howl that would sound out of place coming from anything beyond a nightmare, and lashed out with its brass spike once again. It was such a shock to Luna, that a being with a crushed heart could move at all let alone attack with such speed, that she was unable to re-tighten her hold on him and he was much too close for her to raise a shield in time. The possessed pony was mere millimetres from gouging her eye out when Freida Tolm threw herself at the levitating corpse, ripping it free of the Princess' grip, and driving her wrist blades into both the extended limb and the side of the already dead stallion's skull. Tolm's momentum then carried the two out of Luna's field of vision, but she could afford no time to track their progress as she and her Lunar Guard were set upon by further scores of furiously screaming heretics. For the first time in her life the Princess of the Night was unable to take the time out in combat to check on the well-being of her guards, such was the sheer volume of bodies throwing themselves at her. All she could do was react to each problem as it arrived, hacking down a mare with her hoof-claws on her right, decimating a stallion with a magic blast on the left, buck kicking a flayed body of indeterminate gender behind her. It was total carnage, beyond anything she had ever encountered before. Where, once upon a time, she would have taken a moment to reflect on every bone she broke, on every limb split and on every life taken - now she did not have the time. It was one kill, straight into the next. A terrible, bloody dance. However, she quickly grew tired of the brutal rhythm. With a scream of fury she unleashed a short range, three-sixty-degree blast of force that granted her just enough time to charge up a beam of seething magical power - raking it across all those who attempted to dive on her from above for a good few seconds. With the surrounding airspace temporarily cleared, she threw up a wide dome shield and was finally able to turn around and check on her subordinates - what she saw horrified her. Four of them were dead. Leather Wing lay on the ground not far from Luna herself, bisected by the crab-like pincer of a mutated pony that lay dead only foot or so away, with a gaping hole where its upper skull used to be. Solid Stone was impaled through the chest and nailed against the wall of the nearby command bunker by an imposingly large spear, made entirely of bone, his killer nowhere to be seen. Dread Beat was missing a foreleg and her entire barrel had been split open, revealing her innards to the unforgiving world. All that was left of Ground Pounder was his helmet, a large, blooded crack in the section that typically resided over the left eye. The twins, Iron and Bronze Plate, still stood - side by side and facing opposite directions, guarding each other's rears. Iron was limping, resting against his sister for support, and was bleeding from a gash in his cheek. Bronze was missing an ear and her helmet was a dented, tattered mess on the ground at her hooves. Both were still engaged with some beaten stragglers from the attack, but were otherwise in the clear. Silent Arrow, on the other hoof, was still very much fighting for her life - pinned to the ground and struggling with a six-legged, hairless, pink skinned horror of a pony that was attempting to devour her entire face with its over-fanged maw. Luna was about to deal with the beast herself, charging up another blast to remove the creature from her friend and bodyguard, when Lieutenant Enart came charging in - throwing himself headlong at the horror's side and knocking it clean off the Lunar Guard Captain. The two tussled on the ground for a brief moment, before the Imperial was able to right himself atop his screeching opponent, draw his combat knife with a fetlock and with a single, swift movement he drove the blade into the roof of the creature's mouth. It continued to struggle and scream even as it neared death, clawing at Enart's flak armour with grotesquely bent and misshapen fingers - but it was fruitless. With a sharp twist of his hoof and, by extension, the knife the Lieutenant ended the creature's life then and there. Once he was sure the beast was truly deceased, he wrenched his knife free of its maw and slid it back into its holster. Rising to his hooves, he used the reprieve that the Equestrian Princess had granted them to take note of the situation. The fierce knife fight between the Imperials and the Corrupted Equestrians was still raging all around them, but it was as if they weren't actually there - ponies threw themselves at the barrier, but could not get through. Bolters and cannons fired, but he could not hear them nor feel their thunderous repeats rumbling through his lungs. The inside of this bubble was so cut off from the outside world, they might as well have been watching this scene through a display back on the Excalibur. "Silent, are you alright?" Luna trotted quickly up to her chief guard and helped her to right herself. The Lunar-Captain was littered with shallow scrapes, rendered onto her by the mutant's malformed fingernails - but other than that she appeared fine. She insisted as much, claiming that she was just winded and a bit sore. This, however, was nowhere near enough to prevent her Princess from performing a full medical scan of her body, checking for even the slightest hint of something being wrong. Only when she was absolutely certain that her friend's life wasn't about to end at the hands of some terrible infection or a Warp-borne curse, she slowly released the smaller pony from her magical hold. This was a stroke of luck, for her concentration at the moment directly following the one where she set Silent Arrow back down, was broken by a brief and high pitched whine in her left ear - before being superseded by the deep, rumbling voice of Captain Dragoon. "To all those who can hear my voice, this is Lord Captain Dragoon of the Sixth Company of the Scarred Swords legion." he spoke clearly and with no signs of fatigue what-so-ever, but his message was delivered with great urgency. Luna could hardly believe the clarity with which his voice was spoken into her ear, it was as if he was standing right next to her in the middle of a calm, grassy field in the middle of Spring - rather than in the midst of an incredibly heated conflict against demented, shrieking foes. "I have formulated a plan; to breach the enemy defences around the city and to eliminate the Destroyer Arc Phantom. I will lead two squads of my legion in a Thunderhawk strike against the enemy ship, we will breach through the hull, dispose of its crew and take command of the ship. From there, we will shut down the vessel's Warp Core before activating the scuttling charges in its fusion reactors." "The second and concurrent phase of the plan will be lead by Sergeant Tiades of Third Squad, with the support of Ancient Brother Margam. They will spearhead an assault through the wall of fire, with the support of the Imperial Army Armoured divisions. While these assault actions are taking place, the Army Infantry will escort the wounded and Equestrian loyalists to the Devourer and await reinforcement from the rear." "I know this plan may be considered suicidal by some of you, but in times like these - when 'holding the line' is no longer possible, your only two remaining options are; 'DEATH OR GLORY'!!!" with the outburst of those three words, Princess Luna perceived a stark change in the movements of the Imperials around her. In the space of a second, their entire battle posture turned a full one-eighty - launching straight from a staggering and weakened defence, into an unstoppable counter attack. Groups of IA troopers, clad in spiked battle-plate, formed up around the static weapons positions and charged straight into heretical ponies around them. The Space Marines also regrouped their squads, clustering up before driving themselves into the largest formations of babbling pegasi. The tides had been utterly turned on the Chaotic attackers - no longer were they assaulting an off-guard and weary enemy camp, now they were an overextended regiment grounded and cut-off in the middle of a horde of furious Imperials. Nonetheless, they still threw themselves at the loyalists who surrounded them on all sides - breaking their bodies on hulking ceremite-clad warriors or being buried beneath the relentless tides of the Imperial Army. "DEATH OR GLORY!" Enart roared as he reared up on his hind legs, kicking out with his forelegs as he did so - a phantom feeling of happiness filling him as he did so, as if he had just undertaken some right of passage that all ponies were entitled to. He then threw himself forward, making a bee-line for the portion of Luna's shield where some Traitor Equestrians still pounded uselessly against it. The Princess opened a gap in her shield bubble mere moments before the frenzied Lieutenant crashed into it, the dome of blue energy splitting open and allowing the last dregs of their attackers tumble in. Enart didn't even stop to kill them all, simply sprinting straight through them as if they weren't even there - shattering one's skull with his helmet without even a second's pause for thought. Those who hadn't been killed by the Imperial's zealous charge were finished off by Iron Plate, Bronze Plate and Luna herself - with effective but slightly sorrowful ease. Silent couldn't help but let out a low whistle, from her place leaning against her leader's side, as she watched Enart continue his sprint through the enemy, on an unyielding path towards his Leman Russ - the Hell Raiser. "He may be... messed up, for thinking that millions of dead ponies is acceptable." she muttered, wincing as talking agitated several of the shallow scratches on her muzzle. "But he sure as Tartarus isn't a coward." Luna only nodded silently in response, finding herself rendered speechless by the sheer carnage unfolding all around her. She could by no means fault the Imperials on the grounds of bravery, if even a normal (if not very fit and well trained) Earth Pony like Enart could square off against pegasi that breathed cold, pink flames and not back down. But there was still something off about them that deeply unsettled her. Maybe it was their practised and brutal approach to war, maybe it was the mind set that they all shared - that any losses were acceptable, so long as strategic victory was achieved in the end. Whatever it was, it was irrelevant at the current moment. In the here and now, they had a battle to win. "Silent, Bronze, Iron stay close to me." Luna ordered her three remaining Guards, her voice returning strong and authoritative - any doubt about what had to be done to succeed abolished, for the sake of Greater Equestria. "We follow the Lieutenant, to his 'steel elephant'. Move out!" With that order given, the Royal Alicorn and her entourage set off after Enart - following in the wake of his thunderous cries of: "FOR THE EMPEROR!!!"