//------------------------------//
// Retribution 
// Story: Entrenchment 
// by SFaccountant 
//------------------------------//

Entrenchment
An Age of Iron Story

Chapter 18
Retribution

****

Airspace above Ferrous Dominus
serra-class cargo transport T-338, bridge

It was mere seconds after they had taken to the air that the crew heard a battlesuit sprinting through the halls. The door slid open, and once again the Earth Caste survivors watched Voidsong’s heavy stealth suit stomp into the bridge.

*FINALLY. What took so long? The battle down there is turning completely on its head,* Voidsong complained. *The Orks dug up something big, apparently. The sooner we’re rid of this place, the better.*

*Agreed, Shas’o. I apologize for the delay,* replied the Fio’o at the helm. *Obviously, it was necessary to ensure that all systems were optimal and properly responsive in accordance with the instructional materials. We’re not going to get another chance at this.*

*Yes, yes, fine,* Voidsong said impatiently. She approached a screen and then placed a large metal palm on it, activating it. Then she poked clumsily at various input selections so that she could see outside the vessel. *Bring us to Black Point first. We’ll snatch up the remainder of our forces before entering orbit.*

*Wait, we have to fly over a war zone and land this thing too? I thought the operations were take-off and zero-g manual docking!* interjected another worker.

Voidsong’s sensor head swiveled to face the complaining engineer. He felt a cold chill down his back, but the High Commander said nothing.

*It’s… It’s just that these vessels are primarily designed to ascend and descend atmosphere, connecting vessels in orbit with fixed contact points below,* he explained nervously. *Our lateral flight speed is pitiful relative to, say, combat transports. It will add half a day to our projected flight time.*

*An acceptable cost to recover some twenty good soldiers,* Voidsong said simply. *The field has changed swiftly since initiating the operation, but I’m satisfied with these results. The greatest challenge lies-*

A red lumen on the main command console started beeping and flashing red. The Fio’o blinked, and then stared at the console through narrowed eyes.

*That’s a prioritus vox communication…*

*I was under the impression that their vox network was crippled,* Voidsong said darkly.

*It should be! And what’s left is being shut down by our disruptor drones! But… ugh…* he started tapping at his console. 

*Rejecting transmission… what? No, wait! Something is overriding-*

The screen went black. The bridge’s primary vox caster spat static. Then a voice entered the bridge.

“Attention vessel T-388. You are currently in violation of siege protocol directives V-91, 121, 83, 86…”

The voice, obviously some Techpriest’s droning vocalizer, continued to rattle off numbers in no obvious order. Voidsong raised her plasma gun at the console.

*Shut it off or I’ll do it for you,* she commanded.

*No! No, we need that console! You can’t shoot the console!*

The voice halted, apparently overhearing the argument. “Xeno linguistics confirmed. Additional protocol violations logged. Attention, xeno units: your presence on T-388 is unauthorized. Immediately descend for processing or vessel T-388 shall be designated an enemy unit and be targeted appropriately.”

*They can’t do that with the signum bafflers up,* Voidsong reminded her crew. *Maintain course!*

“Tau signum baffling has been resolved. All functional auto-targeting layers are optimal,” the Techpriest warned them.

The Tau were only slightly surprised that the cyborg-cultist had mastered their language; Tau wasn’t especially difficult for humans, and Techpriests were tireless students. They were quite shocked, however, to learn that their key strategic advantage had been taken out of play. The Fio’o snatched up his engineering tablet and his fingers began to dance over the screen.

“You would fire upon your own vessel?” Voidsong asked, stepping closer to the vox receiver.

“Affirmative,” replied the Techpriest.

“We have civilians on board trying to escape the invasion. You’d kill hundreds of humans and equines,” Voidsong lied.

“Irrelevant,” replied the Techpriest.

Voidsong glanced down at the Fio’o again. He was swiping at a particular section of the screen repeatedly, but several red icons kept blooming in response. He was also becoming increasingly frustrated.

She rounded on another group of Earth Caste. *Terminate the transmission. I don’t care if you have to rip the console apart. Disconnect that vox link.*

“As you wish,” the Techpriest’s voice responded. “You have been designated as a hostile unit, prioritus 7. Targeting configurations under way. Goodbye, xeno.”


The lumen winked out, and Voidsong whirled on the Fio’o again. *What is going on down there?!*

*I don’t know!* he replied, similarly distressed. *The drones themselves haven’t been destroyed! Something happened to the controller! I’ve been locked out, and…*

He stopped suddenly, staring hard at a particular line on his screen. *Wait… Earlier, before we took off, there was a message that was trying to piggyback on our control network to feed messages to isolated vox links.* His hands started tapping rapidly on the screen again. *I assumed that it was just a Dark Techpriest getting too clever and trying to use our systems after theirs had failed. I shut it right down. But now that I think about it…*

A muted thump came from the hull, followed by a groan that seemed to echo through the substructure. Another member of the improvised bridge crew grimaced, looking at his console.

*We have missile hits on the bottom-left… er, keel? Port keel? Is that how…? Whatever, they’re shooting at us. Autocannons too.*

*Get our void shields up! What’s the damage?*

*Not much. Those are small weapons compared to this voidship, and for a lander this vessel has impressive armor. But we have no way to retaliate or evade. No matter what our exit vector is, we’re going to have to soak up all the incoming fire until we’re out of range.*

*Would elevating help? We could enter the upper atmosphere to get out of range of the point-defense network and then travel to Black Point at high altitude.*

*That would work, Shas’o, although it would add several more hours to our flight path.* The engineer hesitated. *Also, it would bring us within the firing angle of the heavy anti-orbital batteries. But they wouldn’t shoot those at us while we’re over the city… Right?*

A growl rose from Voidsong’s suit, only for her to be interrupted by an enraged scream from the head engineer.

*Fennin, you traitorous scum!* he roared, gripping his engineering tablet at both ends like he was trying to snap it in half. *He did this! He shut down the drone bafflers! He’s locked me out of the controller network! He’s helping the Company finish us off!*

While he sputtered indignantly, Voidsong walked up behind the Fio’o. *Are you communicating with him now?*

*Yes! He-*

*Can you open a voice link?* Voidsong said, cutting him off.

Still fuming, the Fio’o tapped a few icons on the engineering tablet. Within seconds, a new icon blinked onto the screen.

*Fio’el, are you reading me? This is Shas’o Voidsong. Respond at once.*

“Why hello, Shas’o!” Fennin’s voice replied in cheery Gothic. “It’s nice to be able to speak to you again, given that it will probably be the last time. Good work seizing the lander! I didn’t expect that angle at all! Here I’d nearly sent Gears to shut down the fusion reactor under the assumption you were arming it to blow! Ha!”

*Fio’el, what do you think you’re doing?* Voidsong demanded. *Surrender the authorization key to the drone controller at once.*

“That would run contrary to my orders from Wraithstar, Shas’o. So sorry.”

*Wraithstar? He’s giving people orders from within the brig?*

“Sure. Something like that.”

*I OUTRANK the former Shas’el,* Voidsong growled.

“Maybe if you escape the city to secure our lost battleship, you can find some survivor inside who cares.”

The weapons on Voidsong’s battlesuit started humming and warming up from her sheer agitation, and the Earth Caste Tau flinched away. *Submit your codes, traitor! And quit speaking Gothic like a tame gue’la servant!*

“No, aaaaaand… no. I need the practice. At the rate you’re getting us killed, there won’t be anyone else left speaking Tau in Ferrous Dominus soon.”

The bridge shook and groaned again. One of the bridge crew looked over to his console and hissed through his teeth.

*We’ve lost an elevator thruster! There are plenty more, but… well, we still have a long way to go. If we lose too many of them we won’t be able to escape the atmosphere! And that’s assuming we maintain hull integrity. Our void shields just aren’t strong enough to repel this sustained attack.*

*We can affect repairs at Black Point if necessary. Stay on course, Fio’la!* Voidsong barked.

“Oh, that is just ADORABLE. You really think you’re getting out of here alive,” mused Fennin. “You’ve made quite a mess, Shas’o, and the humans don’t yet understand all you’ve done. When they do, there is no force in all of Tau’va that will stop them from tearing you from the sky.”

Voidsong stared back at the tablet for several seconds. *… And you will help them. Why?* she demanded. *I am not accustomed to asking things like this, but why would you do such a thing? Betray Tau’va, betray the Tau Empire, betray your Sept and your brothers and sisters? What do you get out of it? What do you want, Fio’el?*

“Why? You’re asking me why? Are you serious? Are you really this deluded, Shas’o? Or just stupid?!” Real anger finally touched the voice of the engineer. “After our empire and Sept left us here to die, after Wraithstar crafted an alliance with our enemy while you were locked in stone, after we – NOT you – fought and bled to preserve this world against impossible odds, after you allied with ORKS of all things to unseat the Iron Warriors, after betraying Wraithstar’s bargain and abandoning our remaining soldiers in the pirates’ grip, doomed to face whatever retribution the humans desire after you slip through their fingers?! After all that, Shas’o, you have the GALL to call ME traitor?!”

*I have-*

Fennin cut her off immediately. “You have tried your hardest to doom all of us, leading the Lamman Sept into one slaughter after another! And just when a handful of us finally escaped your insanity – after completing one of your missions, no less – you swiftly return and demand we die obediently to ensure that Chaos not benefit from our survival! Do you really wonder WHY we do not obey, you arrogant fanatic?!”

*Fanatic? I am a fanatic for abiding to Tau’va? I am a fanatic for aiding the creation of a brighter, better future rather than submitting to the whims of monsters, madmen, and pirates?* Voidsong asked, sounding weary.

“Ah, yes. The Greater Good. The Greater Good that decided the bright future for me and every other resident of this planet was as brief entertainment for a billion Orks,” Fennin spat. “What am I to think, Shas’o, when the whims of madmen make so much more sense?”

*Pitiful. You have been fully corrupted, then. For a Fio’el of the Lamm-*

“I am no longer a ‘Fio’el!’” Fennin shouted. “I’m no longer merely a caste title to be used and discarded by you imbeciles! My name is Fennin! Fennin! Xenis Engineer Superior Fennin of the 38th Company! For the first time in my blighted existence, I choose my fate!” Several deep, heaving breaths were audible over the link. “And now… I’ve also chosen yours. Good luck, Shas’o. I’ll see you in hell.”

****

Ferrous Dominus sector
Mechanicus Temple Tertius-6

Fennin practically punched the face of his engineering tablet to sever the audio link. Then he shoved the device across the table, sending it sliding off the end and onto the floor.

The engineer was shaking, sweat rolling down his head. He’d never spoken like that even to one of his subordinates, never mind someone who ostensibly outranked him… and commanded a small army. Authority was everything in the Tau Empire. The explosion of resentment he had been endured for decades was as terrifying as it was exhilarating.

Gear Works was standing behind Fennin, glancing back and forth between the engineer and the tablet.

“… Do you need a hug?” the cyborg pony asked after an awkward stretch of silence.

“NO,” Fennin said immediately.

A few more seconds passed.

“… Maybe,” Fennin mumbled.

Gears leaned forward and gently wrapped his forelegs around the alien’s waist.

Several more second passed.

“If you get debriefed on what happened here, make sure to leave this part out,” Fennin grumbled.

“I know.” Gears’ servo arm levered up and then tapped Fennin’s shoulder several times in an awkward, stilted imitation of a back-pat.

Eventually Fennin coughed and leaned away from the stallion. “Anyway. I have to go over the access logs to detail precisely what those idiots did and how we can prevent it from ever happening again. You should go help the security sweeps. There’s going to be a lot of damage to patch up, and we still have that… that…”

“Ursa Major.”

“Yes. Go on. I’ll take care of things here.”

Gear Works backed away, and then his servo arm swung flat over his brow in imitation of a salute. Then the equine cyborg turned and galloped out the door.


Fennin eventually pushed himself up from his seat once the sound of metal clattering against metal faded into the background. He walked over to his discarded engineering tablet, and stooped over to pick it up.

The air shimmered in front of him, revealing the hidden contours of a cloaking field.

Fennin screamed, stumbling backward onto his rear and fumbling for the pulse pistol holstered on his belt.

“Relax, Fennin. It’s me.” Wraithstar’s battlesuit walked past him, becoming a ghostly distortion of bent light. “Sorry about startling you. The cloak becomes a force of habit at times.”

“How did you sneak in here?!” Fennin demanded as he snatched his tablet from the floor. The battlesuit’s steps were heavy against the metal flooring and its movements made other noise besides; it seemed impossible that the suit could have entered without making considerable noise.

A chuckle came from the suit’s speaker. “Trade secret.”

“Wait, how long were you watching? Did you see… uh…”

“Voidsong is going to escape at this rate,” Wraithstar said grimly, strategically changing the subject. “Given its trajectory, I do not believe the base’s basic anti-air defenses will knock out the cargo lander before it escapes their effective range. Likewise the escape of Shas’o Voidsong is hardly a priority for the humans now, as they struggle to recover their city. But it must be done. She must be stopped.”

“How? All our combat interceptors are grounded or were loaded back onto the fleet carrier when the rest of the ships left,” Fennin admitted.

“We do have transport gunships. I only need one. Plus a pilot. Can you acquire these?”

“… I can beg the Dark Mechanicus. I imagine they’ll be interested in revenge, but I can’t promise they’ll trust us to carry it out.”

“I don’t need promises, Fennin. I need action. Can you do it?”

“I’ll find some way to ship you off to your doom,” the engineer sighed. “I’m fairly certain everyone on the lander would perish trying to re-capture the Rep’talal anyway, but I suppose it would be tragic if she died before we got a chance to kill her first.”

“Voidsong is too dangerous. I will not leave her fate to chance,” Wraithstar said coldly.

“It may sound odd after my earlier spiel – if you were around to hear it after all – but this really is a revolting eventuality. Fire grunts or no, Shas’o Voidsong was your teacher. I can’t understand what happened to her…”

Wraithstar’s battlesuit turned its sensor head, and a few gleaming red lights stared at Fennin through an indistinct cloud of awkwardly refracted light.

“You think something happened to her? You think Voidsong lost her mind?” He chuckled. “No, Fennin. She hasn’t changed. She’s as much a vicious servant of her creed as always. We’ve changed, though. Whether by isolation or simple adaptation, Tau’va has loosened its grip on our spirits.”

“Maybe we have been corrupted, then,” Fennin grumbled.

“Maybe the corruption is right. Get me that gunship, Fennin.”

****

Ponyville
Nethalican temple

Virgil rejoined his fellow priests as a loud crash echoed through the temple interior. Pews snapped in two, brass candlesticks were flung aside, and iron chains rattled obnoxiously overhead. Guttural laughter and hisses of defiance created a frantic backdrop to the comical excuse of a battle, with a power-armored Sorcerer sprinting in a circle away from the massive, snapping jaws of a stone-scaled lizard.

“Father Virgil,” bowed one of the acolytes, “the Gods no longer speak to me. The voices since this… creature arrived have been silent.”

Virgil nodded, watching the bedlam with a flat, inscrutable gaze. “They reach out to her. They whisper. But she does not answer. She drinks of the Dark Gods’ power without tithe in blood or devotion. She hungers… but she thinks herself the master. She will not obey.”

“Can she not be taken, Father? Or at least stopped?” asked another cultist, scratching his chin. “Is this changeling beyond the reach of Chaos?”

“Nothing is beyond the reach of Chaos,” Virgil confided. “But… at times the Dark Gods require their servants to act in their stead.”

Another loud crash came from the inner sanctum, followed by the screech of a psychic enchantment running its course to no real effect.

“… Does that mean we should help, Father Virgil?” asked another acolyte.

“Nah.”


Chrysalis lunged across the altar, her enormous crag-toothed maw snapping at Serith’s armored heels. Serith snapped an arm toward her as he ran, and a broken pew jumped from the floor and into her mouth, wedging her jaws open.

Chrysalis stopped for barely a second, crushing the wooden bench to splinters within her mouth. After spitting out the remains she advanced again, marching implacably across the temple.

“Such courage from the mighty Iron Warriors! The feared invincible soldiers from the stars! Ha ha ha!” Her voice was a rumbling snarl, barely intelligible from the cragodile’s throat.

Serith reached a safe-ish distance and swiped one hand toward his foe, palm out. Black lightning flashed across the temple, howling in a disturbing, soulful manner quite unlike its natural counterpart. Dark ribbons of power met the stony carapace of Chrysalis’s chosen form, dancing across them and digging shallow, glowing wounds into the scales.

Chrysalis hissed, but didn’t stop. Her eyes flashed bright green, and then beams of hot, screaming power blasted toward Serith in return.

The Sorcerer absorbed the beam into his hand, activating the psykant occulus as expected. The changeling’s attack did no damage, but it did give her a few precious seconds to dash into biting range again.

Serith fell over as the enormous stone jaws slammed shut on one leg, sweeping him from the ground. Diamond-hard teeth punched through the outer layers of ceramite, and the larger adamantium frame slowly crumpled under the sheer pressure. Interior reinforcements snapped into place and held firm, keeping the entire greave from being crushed, and in response Chrysalis started tugging at the limb to rip it off.

Serith couldn’t feel a thing, of course. He twisted until he could get a good angle of attack, and then stabbed his force glaive into his foe’s neck. The disruption field hissed and popped, slicing easily through the rocky scales, and was followed by an unearthly shriek. A psionic pulse surged into the wound, and Chrysalis recoiled in pain.

“Ah, so you DO know how to fight!” Chrysalis shrank, her excess mass and rock-like hide burning away in a wave of bright green. Then she was in her natural form again, staring down at the Iron Warrior with a haughty smirk. A small cut was visible on her neck, but the wound was visibly shrinking even as she spoke. “Good! Good! Chances are I’ll need to battle another one of you metal goons eventually, so I need to get in some practice now. I might not always be able to face your kind in front of a wellspring of unlimited power.”

With a wordless cry, Serith jumped up and swung his force glaive at the changeling Queen. It slammed into an arc of shining green energy, bouncing off with a sharp crack.

“Don’t you have anything else to show me? No further tricks, clever machines, or mighty war engines?” Numerous swords shimmered into place around Chrysalis, summoned by the energy pulsing around her horn. “I was told you were the mightiest creations of humanity, clad in their finest armors and given their most powerful weapons. Is this really the best you can do?”

Serith thrust a hand forward, and a lightning bolt lanced through several of the floating blades, whipping from one emerald sword to the next. They popped like balloons, vanishing into nothing, and Serith leapt into the gap in her defenses.

He was too slow, however, and as he swung his glaive toward Chrysalis the rest of her summoned blades swooped in to parry.

“Ah-ah-ah… Not good enough,” Chrysalis laughed.

The blades swung outward all at once, nearly wrenching the force glaive out of Serith’s hand and pushing him back. Then they started darting in, slashing and stabbing at the Sorcerer in rapid sequence. The shriek and squeal of ceramite being carved open, little by little, clashed with Chrysalis’s laughter within the great hall of the Nethalican, rising high above the murmurs and prayers of the watching clergy.

“Useless,” Serith hissed. He lashed out with the psykant occulus, spreading the palm of his hand while the dispersal rods fanned out and started to buzz.

With a flash of light, the many blades nicking away at his armor vanished into motes of green light. Then they were sucked into the palm of his gauntlet, seeping into the gem set in the center.

“You toy with the likes of Chaos Space Marines at your own peril, insect scum,” Serith growled. He started advancing again, his grip firmly upon his force glaive.

Chrysalis pouted. “Insect scum? How hurtful. You don’t like insects?”

Serith lashed out with a palm, hurling a lash of dark lightning yet again. The psychic attack struck Chrysalis in the chest, and then immediately broke apart into useless, twinkling green sparks. Thin, singed ridges had been burned into her carapace, but the damage was trifling.

“Hmm…” Chrysalis raised a twisted hoof to her chin, as if pondering. “I don’t know too much about you metal monsters, but you favor the fleshy, tentacled sort of creature, don’t you?” She grinned, and her eyes flashed. “I can work with that!”
Serith charged, sprinting across the length of the temple. He raised his glaive in both hands, swinging the blade in a wide arc to decapitate the Changeling Queen.

Before he reached melee range, a fleshy tentacle with one side covered in suckers shot forward out of an emerald miasma. The impact did no damage, but was enough to stop Serith’s charge and surprise him long enough for another tendril to sweep in from the side and wrap around his leg.

He stabbed his glaive down into the tentacle, slicing into it, and then cut the entire tendril off in a spray of blood and green sparks. He kicked the rubbery limb away, but found seven more such tentacles hovering in front of him.

Chrysalis chuckled, her voice a raw, wet gurgle. Her body had transformed into an enormous squid, boasting several tentacles, a large, hooked beak, and a torpedo-shaped head with a crest of blue-green spines bisecting it. The one severed tentacle thrashed about while oozing blood, but promptly started to seal up into a stump and regenerate.

“Is this more to your liking, Serith?”

A tentacle jabbed at the Sorcerer, and he lashed out with his glaive to slice it open along its length. In the same moment another tendril swung in from the side, slapping into him with wet, meaty impact. Serith staggered but swung back with the force glaive, only to have another tentacle sweep in and trip him.

“Ha ha ha haa! This is so much FUN! I never get to use my morphing magic as a combat spell! I wonder how big I can get? Chimera? Dragon? Ursa minor, maybe?” Another tentacle slapped Serith on the back while he was trying to rise, knocking him flat again. “You have no idea the kind of things I can do with this much energy! I could spawn a million changelings! I could build a dozen hives and shield them from any retaliation! Why, with time and some research, I could wrench control of the very sun from Celestia herself!” Chrysalis cackled. “And what were you bumbling thugs using it for? To scare away other alien ships or something? Bah!”

Serith rolled over, sweeping his arm through the air, and an arc of blazing crimson sliced through the three tentacles jabbing and swatting at him. Thick, squirming lumps of flesh thumped to the floor in pools of blood and brine, and Serith stood up defiantly.

“You gorge yourself on the strength of Chaos, and yet you know nothing of it,” the Iron Warrior snarled. “You will learn to fear-“

A jet of ink splashed over his helmet, cutting him off mid-sentence.

“Oops. Sorry about that,” Chrysalis giggled.

Then another tentacle smashed into the Sorcerer, throwing him into the wall of the temple.


Serith bounced off of a daemonic statue and collapsed onto the floor with a metallic rattle. Although he felt no pain from the impacts, each blow threatened to shake his armor apart and still required a moment for him to strengthen the telekinetic bonds that allowed him to move. Then the Sorcerer rose to his feet, lifted from the floor with effortless grace.

Or rather, he would have, but a tentacle pulled the daemon statue out of the wall and dropped it on top of him.

The Queen’s guttural laughter filled the temple as Serith hit the floor again, pinned under several hundred pounds of finely-carved stone. Black ink still dribbled down his gorget, so he had to rely on thermal imaging to see that the remaining tentacles were hovering over him while the others rapidly grew back.

“Oh, my poor, poor Serith. Such a valiant attempt, and such a complete, humiliating failure!” Chrysalis slowly lurched across the temple floor, her tentacles rolling under her to move the slimy mass of her body.

Serith dropped his force glaive – useless with his current lack of leverage and range – and his hand spat another bolt of black lightning. Chrysalis’s eyes flashed, and the psychic attack fizzled to glittering sparks in an instant. Then she continued speaking as if nothing had happened.

“I think I’m done with you, now. But I might grant you a final favor before I dispose of you… Tell me, Serith: do you have any loved ones?”

The statue shook and started to rise off of the Sorcerer’s back, carried on a wave of pure will. A tentacle slapped it back down, followed by the creak of straining metal.

“Although this Chaos energy is nice and filling, it lacks… flavor. I find myself craving some good, old-fashioned love!” A slurping, pointed tongue flicked out of her beak. “Is there someone you love, Serith? I’ll take their form, and let that be the last thing you see! Very merciful, if I do say so myself! Just think of the creature and let me into your mind! Come on, now!”

Serith grunted, and his hand reached for the force glaive he had discarded earlier. A tentacle beat him to it, picking up the polearm, flipping it blade-down, and then stabbing it into the floor well out of his reach.

“Is there anyone? Anyone at all?” Chrysalis asked, her voice almost giddy. “No? Really? Are you truly so pitiful, so repulsive, so utterly useless that you don’t have a single true friend or lover with the entire galaxy open to you?!” The Changeling Queen laughed some more, and another tentacle slapped down on top of the statue pinning Serith down.

Then Virgil interrupted. “As it so happens, the entire galaxy is not available to him,” he said, innocently correcting the taunt. “There are many systems in which his presence would be opposed with prejudice.”

Chrysalis swiveled her massive, rubbery body around to give the priest a half-lidded stare. Then she spat a glob of ink at him, covering his face.

“Anyway…” she turned back to the struggling Chaos Space Marine. “I think I feel something… Do you have a friend after all? I can’t see it clearly. I am a patient changeling, Serith, but I DO have other things to do today.”

“Spare me your mind games, insect,” Serith snarled. He felt her presence probing his consciousness, and he expelled it with his own psychic will. “If you think to destroy me, then do so. I will not sully my final moments.”

“Pity. Then you’ll die as you lived. Angry, alone, and an embarrassing failure.” Chrysalis’s tentacles had mostly grown back by now, and they crept toward the Sorcerer.

“Putting aside how he lived,” Virgil interrupted, wiping his face with a cloth, “the Gods seem fit to spare him his ultimate fate this day.”

One massive green eye rolled to the side to stare at Virgil. It squinted. “If your Gods think to stop me, pest, they’re sure taking their time. What do you think they’re going to do? Smite me? Drive me mad? Steal back their power? Send some kind of monster after me?”

“That last one, probably,” Virgil replied. “For a given definition of ‘monster,’ I suppose.”

A scream suddenly came from the doors. Chrysalis recognized it immediately; it was the shriek of a wounded changeling, and it was coming from outside.

Another changeling guard was holding position on the inside of the heavy double doors, standing in front of a barricade it had assembled of furniture and a pair of corpses. That changeling whirled to face the entrance, frightened and confused.

“What, did you manage to warn somepony?” Chrysalis hissed.

“Maybe,” Virgil answered.

“I asked you a question, worm!”

“I provided a response, Queen Chrysalis.”

With a frustrated growl, Chrysalis shifted several tentacles toward the priest while making sure the other ones kept Serith pinned. He made no move to defend himself and evade, but before they reached him, something slammed against the temple doors.

Chrysalis froze. The changeling guard yelped. Another heavy impact struck the door, shaking it and rattling the objects being used as a barricade. The changeling, in its desperation, jumped onto the barricade to add its meager weight to the various objects blocking entry.

“Here comes a new challenger,” Virgil said blithely.

Then the doors exploded open. The furniture was either smashed to pieces or thrown clear, and the changeling met a swift, untimely end when the door swung into it and crushed it against the wall.


“Well, well, well… Ain’t this a fine how-do-ya-do.”

Heavy, armored hoofsteps clapped against the flooring, crushing bits of furniture flat. Chrysalis narrowed her eyes.

“Now, this here temple ain’t beachfront accessible. So Ah’m guessin’ this here sea critter must be her Royal Highness, the queen of them shady bugs.”

“Eeyup.”

A clunk came from a heavy bolter entering active fire mode. The pilot light on a heavy flamer flickered on. Tactical codices came online, painting the giant squid in red and mapping out vulnerable points.

Applejack and Bic Macintosh stood in the entrance, gleaming in their respective armor suits.

“Welcome to Ponyville, Chrysalis.” Applejack’s armored tail curved over her head to briefly tip her Stetson. “Stay awhile.”

****

Ferrous Dominus – sector 10

“Khorne’s teeth, what in the Warp IS that thing?!”

“Damned Orks found a monster! It’s bigger than any Squiggoth I’ve ever seen!”

“Autocannon turrets are back online, but I don’t see them making a dent!”

“Armored support! We need armored support, now! That… alien… bear THING is heading for the manufactorum!”





An ear-piercing boom filled the air, and the soopagun on Big Bloo’s back spat an enormous shell into a building. A thundering explosion absolutely gutted the structure, stripping away the outer armor and then caving in the interior reinforcement.

Armed men and ponies sprinted down the street and ducked into alleyways, chased by bursts of hopelessly inaccurate machine gun fire. The few Company vehicles that were on the same avenue as the Ursa Major spun around and accelerated to full throttle to get away.

Trukks and Wartrakks rolled alongside and under the enormous blue beast, but they were hardly worth the defender’s attention compared to the monster they were supporting. The vehicles, including a handful of heavy transports, raced about in tight circuits, tailing Big Bloo or diverting themselves by gunning down some random fleeing target. The Ork formation, such as it was, mostly held together over its plodding advance, weathering a constant beat of fire from the newly active gun turrets.

Their warpath was meandering and uncertain, as the Ursa stopped frequently to sniff the air or scratch at a shell impact on its belly. The Orks didn’t have any clear objective besides marching through Ferrous Dominus and leaving a trail of blazing destruction behind them.

To the greenskins, of course, such carnage was its own reward. But there were more than just Orks crowded on Big Bloo’s battle platform.


“I SED: lemme haff da behr, ya gitz! Iz my turn!” Gox shouted furiously at the Nobs in the driving throne.

Big Bloo was driven (such as it was) from a small armored hut that sat between two enormous motorized wheels. The wheels held the chains that “steered” the Ursa Major by dragging its helmet to one side or the other, while a number of prodding blades above the beast’s neck controlled its speed. In theory.

The Nobs piloting Big Bloo didn’t seem to give too much thought to how much control they had over their mount, whooping and cheering with every swipe of claws or blast of the cannon. They were also having too much fun to let Gox onto the piloting seat, much to her chagrin.

“Ahm in charjj o’ dis fight, an’ ya dumm gitz bettah lissen! Ya wanna ansah to Warboss Changeyface?” the guardian snarled.

A fist-sized piece of rubbish smacked into her face. One of the Nobs managing a chain wheel pointed and laughed.

Seething, Gox approached the gantry that led up to the driving throne. One Nob stood in her way, laughing and firing his shoota at random windows as they passed. She grabbed onto the Nob’s shoulder, and yanked him around to face her.

“Now lissen heah,” she began, leaning in close. Her eyes flashed from red to green, piercing the fog of the Ork’s mind. “Yooz gonna wokk up dere an’ tell da boyz-“

A meaty fist collided with her face, and Gox stumbled away. Her hypnosis broke instantly, and she had to concentrate hard to avoid reverting to her true form.

“Buzz off,” the Nob snorted. He slapped a new clip into his shoota and turned away.

Gox pushed herself upright, absolutely livid, but didn’t know what to do about it. A true Ork would have jumped at the Nob and beaten the defiant thug into the ground, obviously. But Gox was far from a true Ork. What use was subterfuge and deceit when your targets were too dumb and violent to respond properly?

It was maddening. She was SUPPOSED to be driving Big Bloo on a high-speed rampage to the front gates to rip them open, destroying everything in their path and disabling the gate’s defensive cannons. Her sisters were to meet her there, along with a considerable number of insurgents, and from that point the Guardians would sneak away and let the carnage conclude at a safe distance.

Instead, the bear was plodding along to the middle of the city, sniffing at things, blowing open random buildings, and generally wasting time. It made no sense. What did the Orks think they were accomplishing? The humans had plenty of time to escape, regroup, and encircle the insurgents, and she could spot several vehicles rolling by on the intersecting streets. It was only a matter of time until the 38th Company tightened the noose.

But of course, that probably sounded like a good time to the idiot aliens.

“IRON WITHIN, BECOME THE IRON WITHOUT!!” screeched a voice from above. Gox groaned and dove for cover.

“BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!”


Tellis barreled onto the combat platform like a gleaming comet, smashing several Orks to paste and then immediately setting upon the startled crew.

“Hi how ya doin’ don’t mind me just need some blood to patch up an organ some dude knifed earlier DIE XENOS DIE!”

Lightning claws scissored across the decks, slicing through choppas and limbs alike. Tellis kicked out the legs from one boy and grabbed his leg in mid-air, using the greenskin as a flail. His other hand punched his claws into a gunner and then ripped them upwards, slicing apart the warrior’s entire upper torso in a wash of red.

“WOOOOOO!! Killing is the BEST!!”

At the other end of the platform, a silvery rocket-propelled body trailing rainbow-colored exhaust arced down into the tightly-packed crew. Rainbow Dash broke through the railing on one side and blasted all the way to the other, plowing over a dozen greenskins in her path. Once she broke through to the other side she hit her impulse blasters, jumping back up into the air while also launching a Mekboy off the edge of the platform and down into the streets.

Tellis blasted off a moment later, and they rocketed up into the air while explosions of flakk and streams of bullets chased after them.

“HELL yeah! This is what I’m talking about!” the Raptor whooped, spinning in the air. Red streaks trailed behind him, mixing with the flame and smoke from his flight pack. “This is just the finisher I need after that sweet duel earlier!”

Rainbow Dash budged her flight path to bring her closer to the Iron Warrior. “How’s your heart doing?!”

“Not great!” Tellis replied. He cut most of the power to his pack, and his ascent slowed rapidly. “It takes a LOT of blood to regrow the major organs!” He banged on his chest plate. 

The daemon armor was gleaming silver now, but hadn’t completely regenerated from its earlier damage. Bizarrely, the part of the plating that had been pierced was even slightly discolored, like scar tissue. On top of that, Tellis was still missing one set of lightning claws.

“Should we pick off some of the transports? I’ll bet I can hit the engine block with my suicide dive!” Rainbow volunteered. “Then you can drop into the back!”

“Naw! It’s time for a REAL sacrifice to Khorne!” Tellis laughed, pointing down at Big Bloo again. “That thing should have enough blood for me!”

Rainbow looked down at the Ursa Major, watching as the entire creature was wrapped in a glowing red outline. Apparently the problem with their visors’ targeting had been solved somehow, but that didn’t matter much when the target was the size of a building.

“So… how do we do this? Take down the drivers? Blow the ammo supply? Try to cripple its legs?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“HIT IT IN THE FACE!!” Tellis announced before tilting into an attack dive.


With a feral shriek, the Chaos Lord blasted down toward the head of the massive war beast. Gunfire whipped around him while the Ork crew fired at the loudest and brightest immediate target, and bullets cracked against his plating in bursts of sparks. None landed a good hit, much less one that could divert the Raptor from his target. Tellis adjusted his dive, curving away from the ground and toward the Ursa’s eye.

“KHORNE SAYS HI!!” Tellis landed directly beneath the monster’s eye, hammering his boot over the cheekbones. His lightning claws went into the eye itself, punching through the thin membrane and piercing into the sensitive nerves.

Big Bloo flinched, blinking in pain. Then it raised a paw and scraped its claws over its cheek. Tellis was brushed off and flung onto the ground, slamming into the ferrocrete road and bouncing across the surface for several meters until he scraped to a stop.

“Owwww…” the Chaos Lord moaned, laying face-down in the street. A few seconds later a Trukk raced over him, its passengers whooping enthusiastically while the vehicle bounced off the prone Space Marine.

Big Bloo glanced down in annoyance, looking for the tiny flying pest that had poked it in the eye. Then another shout came from above.

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall! RAINBOW BUSTER!!”

Rainbow Dash blasted downward through the pollution layers, streaming rainbow-colored light behind her against a plume of flame and exhaust. After tilting into her approach vector she activated her booster and the kinetic refraction field, striking Big Bloo precisely in the forehead like a missile. The monster’s helmet gave way, and a blinding flash of prismatic light emanated from the impact point, followed near-instantly by the deafening crash of a sonic boom.

When Rainbow Dash’s helmet finished suppressing the excessive light and noise, however, she found herself sitting in a big metal crater staring at the unbroken fur – or whatever it was Ursas had – of Big Bloo’s forehead. It didn’t even look bruised, although that was possibly because the Ursa Major’s hide was a dark purple to begin with.

Big Bloo grimaced and flung its head to the side, hurtling Rainbow Dash into an adjacent building. She smashed into the damaged metal wall, and then bounced off to fall down to the street with her flight pack sputtering.

****

“Well, the flying idiots are down. That may have slowed down the beast a minute,” General Harlin mused.

He was reviewing the vid-capture footage from the back of his command Chimera, several blocks away from the new Ork spearhead. Leman Russ tanks rumbled nearby, forming a perimeter, and Dark Techpriests waited in a line behind the man.

“If we can’t lure the beast back outside the fortress we’re going to have a hard battle on our hands to stop it. That… thing is just too big and well-equipped, and the Ork escorts aren’t straying far enough from it to pick them off separately.” Harlin groaned. “What a time for the Iron Warriors to be off-world. Give me a few dozen Astartes and I’d put down that monster where it stands.”

“Explanatory: multiple vid-captures have demonstrated the effect of lascannon impacts during the creature’s assault,” a Techpriest interjected. “Analysis of these images suggest that the creature’s epidermal structure has unusual properties that mitigate tissue damage from amplified light weapons. Conclusive: visible damage from las discharge has been registered at just thirty percent of estimations.”

Harlin turned and stared hard at the Techpriest. “… Are you telling me that in addition to being enormous and covered in Orks and guns, that thing is resistant to las?”

“Affirmative. Addendum: kinetic and explosive weapons inflict damage within expected parameters. Recommend additional autoweapons feature in prime deterrence strategems.”


As the General shook his head, Princess Celestia and Luna swooped down over the ring of tanks. The latter quickly took the lead, rushing up to Harlin with the Iron Gage still slick with Ork blood.

“We hast routed the greenskins who dared assault the eastern manufactorum halls! The foe is crushed!” One hand of the Iron Gage gripped into a fist and then pumped up and down in the air.

“It looks like the insurgents are abandoning their attack across the city,” Celestia continued. “I saw several diamond dogs and griffons fleeing into the underground tunnels. We did our best to seal those entrances behind them, but Ferrous Dominus is vast. There are countless spaces to hide, and no simple way to root them out.”

“That’s good enough,” General Harlin said curtly, his attention still fixed on his monitor. “We’ll eventually form teams to sweep the sub-structures and patrol them. I’ll take a rout for now. Then we just have the Orks, and more specifically this ‘Ursa Major’ to deal with.” He frowned, eventually glancing at the alicorns. “I’ve just been informed it’s resistant to las weaponry. Have you any idea why?”

Celestia set her jaw into a somber frown. “The Ursas are an ancient race, and their bodies are rich in magic. Equestrian scholars have discovered that an Ursa’s hide actually drinks in the sunlight, energizing the Ursa and storing the energy as the stars you can see in its coat.”

“It… photosynthesizes?” Harlin asked, perplexed.

“Aye. As such, the Ursa’s appetite ‘tis greatly diminished for a beast of its girth,” Luna muttered. “And a fortunate thing, that. Surely a predator of such size wouldst devour entire forests and villages to sate its hunger otherwise.”

“Fascinating. And unfortunate, as that makes it resistant to our most common and effective anti-armor weapon,” Harlin grunted. “But hopefully that won’t be an issue.”

“Pardon? Why would it not be?” Celestia asked.

“I have another plan. Something Miss Pie suggested, actually,” Harlin grumbled, turning some dials on his vox unit. “It sounded ridiculous, but as we’re  being besieged by talking animals and enormous, weaponized bear xenos, perhaps a ridiculous solution is most appropriate.” He picked up the vox receiver and pressed the switch on the side. “Miss Fluttershy, the Ursa is approaching your position. All units have fallen back from the engagement zone. You are cleared to engage.”

Luna and Celestia stared at the General as he put down the receiver and turned around.

“… Fluttershy?” Celestia asked incredulously.

“As I said, it wasn’t my idea,” Harlin mumbled, “but we’ve seen more absurd feats from you horses than what she’s been tasked with.”

“And… what, pray thee, hast she been tasked with?” Luna asked uncertainly.

“Talking it out,” General Harlin said, shrugging helplessly.

****

Big Bloo grunted, blinking its eyes as an auto-turret stitched fire across its cheek. The massive bear halted, watching impatiently while tracer fire sprayed across the building at random and failing to touch the thundering autocannons mounted atop it.

Snarling, Bloo wheeled to the side, and then reared up to reach the top of the building. The obnoxious cheering and whooping from the Orks on its back increased tenfold, even while some of the aliens failed to grab onto something in time and spilled off the edge of the battle platform. Then Big Bloo raised a massive paw and slashed its claws across the building top. The turret was instantly sheared from its mounting, and huge furrows were carved into the dirty metal wall.

One of the steering chains tugged at Big Bloo’s head, and the titanic beast dropped back to the streets below. Almost immediately the soopagun on its back fired, stunning the Ursa with the fantastic noise of its discharge and subsequent detonation. Another building had its upper floors annihilated, swallowing much of the structure in flame and smoke.

A blade jabbed into the back of Big Bloo’s neck, eliciting a growl from the beast. Then it strode forward, resigned to its slow march to the sprawling manufactorum ahead.

Then, inexplicably, something below caught the Ursa Major’s eye. A flicker of light, bending and snapping into place before being replaced by a tiny, shiny… thing. Big Bloo paused briefly at the curiosity, but another jab to its neck diverted it. Its eyes lifted up and it strode forward.

Until the weird shiny thing spoke.


“Uhm, hi! Excuse me, Mister Ursa!” chirped a vox-amplified voice from below.

Despite its ears still ringing from the soopagun, Big Bloo picked up the voice and glanced down again. Its next step hesitated.

“I’m very sorry to ask this of you. I know it must be very unpleasant having all those Orks on top of you, goading you like this.” Fluttershy flinched slightly as a burst of gunfire sawed across the ground next to her, ripping a line of holes down the street. “I really think it would help if you turned around and left the fortress, though.”

Another blade pricked Big Bloo in the back of the neck. Rather than moving forward, however, the Ursa Major leaned down and lowered its head to get a better look at the shiny pony.


“… Oh, for hive’s sake, what NOW?” Gox growled once she realized that Big Bloo had stopped.

Most of the Orks were unfazed, shooting at terribly offensive windows or throwing things at the transports rumbling along below, but the Nobs seemed agitated. Angry shouting was coming from the command throne, and Orks were rushing to the great wheels that were chained to Bloo’s head.

The changeling frowned at the bedlam, and then leaned over the side of the platform railing to try to see what had caught Bloo’s attention.

It was hard to see past the Ursa’s enormous head, and impossible to hear past the Orkish shouting, but she got a glimpse of something sitting in the middle of the road when Bloo tilted its head briefly.

“Is that… a pony?” Gox was confused at first. Then her waxy green face paled.


A resonant growl came from Big Bloo, and the Ursa Major pawed at the air with one arm.

“Oh, dear. That’s just terrible,” Fluttershy agreed. “And what happened after that?”

A Warbuggy raced out from under the massive beast, twin big shootas blazing. Bullets pattered across the ground, and a few of them cracked against Fluttershy’s armor, knocking the pegasus over with a terrified squeak.

With a snarl, Big Bloo slammed a paw down onto the vehicle, flattening it instantly and smearing the pair of Ork drivers across the street. The number of blades and prods jabbing into its neck increased, but the Ursa just grunted and licked the pad of its paw. Fluttershy quickly pushed herself back up off the ground.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Fluttershy said, her voice a low whimper amplified by her helmet. “What the Orks have done to you… They don’t care about pain. They don’t understand loss. This is all just a game to them.”

A Battlewagon rumbled forward from under Big Blue, its deff rolla grinding against the ferrocrete and aimed to crush the armored pony flat. Big Bloo simply pushed the vehicle with a paw, throwing it onto its side and spilling a dozen passengers onto the ground.

“You don’t need to do this. We can help you!”

Big Bloo made a deep, mournful groan. Then one of the skorchas mounted on its helmet suddenly activated, blasting a wave of fire into the air over the pegasus. Fluttershy flinched, while Big Bloo seemed to be even more agitated.


“Idiots. Idiots. Idiots. IDIOTS.”

Gox seethed to herself while she ran across the battle deck, so incensed that she didn’t bother to use her hard-learned Orkish accent. The greenskins were shouting suggestions at the command throne, trying to get Big Bloo moving again, but none of the imbeciles knew what the problem was. Gox hardly knew anything about the mechanics of controlling an enormous alien monster, but she guessed the Orks’ hold on it was far weaker than they imagined.

Spotting an Ork hefting a rokkit launcha, Gox grabbed the end of the weapon and tried to yank it away. “Oi, gimme dat! It’z a ‘merjencee!”

“Git yer own!” the foot soldier grunted, tugging his weapon back and throwing a fist into the changeling’s gut.

Gox doubled over from the hit, concentrating on keeping her form stable over the pain. Then she slapped a hand over the resisting Ork’s face, and her eyes flashed a bright green. The Ork shuddered, and then his grip on the launcha went slack.

Gox seized the weapon, and then clubbed her victim over the head with it, knocking him over. Such a careless use of magic could have easily exposed her, and it went against all her training and experience to take such a risk. But right now she was the only green-skinned soldier who understood what was happening.

Carrying the rokkit launcha under one arm, Gox leaped off of the edge of the combat platform. She landed on a huge chain that wrapped around Big Bloo’s shoulder, forming an uneven walkway toward the front of the massive Ursa. She dashed along the chain as best she could, almost tripping on more than one occasion.

Then, suddenly, she could see it: the dull metal and beaten gold of Iron Warrior power armor in the diminutive form of a pony. The pegasus was completely focused on Big Bloo, nodding her head and mumbling niceties in response to the Ursa Major’s groaning. It was a perfect shot, and probably the only one Gox was going to get.

She lifted the rokkit launcha and fired. Immediately the rokkit veered off to one side, spinning wildly due to its poor fuel packing and badly bent tailfins. Gox didn’t have time to curse, and brought the full strength of her telekinesis to bear on the projectile. Her eyes flashed, and a shimmering emerald aura surrounded her. With sheer force of will, the rokkit curved back, screaming toward the road.


Fluttershy was largely ignoring the gunfire from the various Orks; Big Bloo’s head blocked the vast majority of firing angles, and what’s left was the usual inaccurate, smooth-bore gunfire that her armor deflected with ease. When a green light glinted in the corner of her eye and a red warning icon flashed on her visor, however, the pegasus was quickly shocked out of her complacency.

She jumped into the air, instantly shifting her flight pack to maximum acceleration, but her armor wasn’t made for speedy take-offs like Rainbow Dash’s suit. The rokkit slammed into the ferrocrete under her, failing to hit directly but blasting the pegasus with a wave of fire and shrapnel.

Fluttershy shrieked as she was tossed upward and spun, and then fell after she failed to stabilize her flight. She crashed onto her side and bounced, skidding across the avenue and past Big Bloo’s paw.

The Ursa Major blinked, and then growled and turned its head to look for the source of the explosion.

A quivering Grot pressed flat as possible to the misshapen armor plating of Big Bloo’s shoulder pad, trying to stay out of sight of the hairy behemoth. A rokkit launcha fell to the ground below, forgotten. A heavy snort blasted a wave of steam over the shoulder pad, instantly soaking the lone greenskin.

After a few seconds, however, Big Bloo lost interest and gave in to the constant jabbing pains in the back of its neck. The Ursa Major began walking forward once again, stepping over the smoking pony-shaped armor by the side of the road.

****

“Blast. BLAST! Dark Gods help us that thing is still on approach!” General Harlin slammed a fist onto his command console in frustration.

“Oh no! Fluttershy! Is Fluttershy okay?!” Princess Celestia gasped.

“Oh, how should I know?” the officer snapped. “I’ve got what amounts to a Bio-Titan bearing down on the city’s most important asset, and you-“

A thunderous explosion interrupted him, courtesy of Big Bloo’s soopagun. A fireball surrounded by showers of hot metal bloomed over the manufactorum. Secondary detonations rolled over the surface, and a nearby smokestack toppled over.

Harlin set his jaw. “It’s firing on the manufactorum. If it breaks through the superstructure and hits a munitions or chem-vat cell, the entire facility could be rendered inoperable.”

“How many volleys wouldst that take? The manufactorum doth not seem crippled by the enemy attack so far.” Luna asked grimly.

“Impossible to say. Ork super-heavy weapons are powerful, but unreliable as anything else they construct. The manufactorum is heavily armored from above, but the walls are more vulnerable. I don’t even know for sure if the Orks are driving toward the main facility as an objective, or because it’s the largest building that just happens to be in their way.” General Harlin swiped across his command screen and picked up his vox receiver again. “All armored squadrons, proceed to your engagement zone. Tacticae pattern Zeta-9, center entry zone avenue 66-E! Prepare ranked formation and await orders to fire on my mark!”

“We art attacking, then?” Luna asked, slamming the fists of the Iron Gage together.

“We have little choice. Unless your Majesty would care to scour the beast from above with the fury of the sun, as you did to the enemy Squiggoth?” Harlin asked.

“I could try, but…” Celestia stared up at the sky and sighed. “The pollution cover will make such a spell much weaker.”

“We have little to lose. Use whatever means you have at your disposal to shut down that primary cannon.” Harlin snapped his fingers and pointed down the avenue. “Take up position and await my signal.”

“Aye, Lord General!”

“Of course, Sir.”

****

“Here be the ambush point. Whence the beast crosses this threshold, we shalt crush it with fire and steel!”

Luna and Celestia perched atop an iron tower on the corner of an intersection, inspecting the deployment below. Rows of tanks were lined up at an angle, cannons bared and engines idling. Soldiers were holding positions behind barricades, boasting numerous autocannons and missile launchers. Pinkie Pie’s Contemptor Dreadnought stood at the flank of one row of tanks, its vox casters booming industrial techno music.

It was a fearsome show of force, but an Ursa Major was still an Ursa Major.

“Will it be enough, Luna?” Celestia asked breathlessly. A few guards flew next to the Princess of the Sun, huddled within a magical air bubble.

Luna had re-deployed her helmet, pleased to see that the device was working properly once more. “If We hast one boast We might make of Chaos without reservation, ‘tis the potency of their weapons. With our aid, the Ursa shalt fall.”

“How tragic. Such an ancient, majestic creature, turned into a crude war beast,” Celestia sighed. Her horn started flashing brighter, pulsing with ever-greater power. “Curse the Orks.”

****

Gox had just finished climbing back onto the platform when she sensed it.

Magic power, flooding through the ether with such potency that it almost blacked out her meta-senses. The sheer amount was dizzying, rushing up from the ground and up to a raised pinnacle like a waterfall running in reverse. Enough power to move an entire world, it seemed, or stop it short in an instant.

Gox suspected that such a quantity of magic was being gathered for some less dramatic purpose, but it was extremely troubling to feel it now, when she was clinging onto the side of a titanic war monster during a high-stakes assault.

She made a tortured groan, eliciting annoyed glances from nearby Orkish crew. The real Orks didn’t know what she was making discontented noise about, considering that they were rampaging through a massive fortress with impunity. The idiot aliens were oblivious to every possible threat, even after they’d been dive-bombed by a pair of armored foes and temporarily immobilized by an even weaker one. They had encountered some vehicles and troops, but not nearly as many as expected. Where were the armies of Chaos so feared by their enemies and lauded by the Equestrian weaklings? Where was the Princess of the Night, given over to the aliens’ warlord and fully weaponized to act as their attack dog?

Closer than Big Bloo’s drivers thought, Gox suspected.


The Guardian leapt back down into the avenue, her form dropping well out of sight of Bloo’s battle palanquin before she was consumed by green magic. Moments later she zipped back up, her wings buzzing furiously to build altitude.

Immediately the random gunfire from Big Bloo doubled and became much less random. Bullets whipped past the changeling and plinked against the building adjacent, tearing long, crooked lines of dents into the metal layering.

The pace was maddening, but after a few seconds Gox reached the top of the building and flung herself flat onto the roof, her breath heaving and her pulse roaring in her ears. After a brief break to catch her breath, she pushed herself upright again.

“These greenskin clods must be rubbing off on me. Such bold tactics aren’t my style,” Gox grumbled. With a thought, her body changed to that of a nondescript white pegasus bearing the humans’ flak armor.


With her position mostly safe Gox dashed toward a higher structure, leaping up and building altitude toward the roof. She didn’t even have to land before she spied the gleaming beacon of power standing atop a taller building across the street.

“Oh. Oh, no… No, no, no, no…” Gox felt her fur pale when she spotted the two bodies standing atop the structure, well out of the line of fire of Big Bloo. One shining like a lighthouse, standing within a column of brilliant power. One standing at attention within a shell of ebony, waiting for her turn to strike.

“BOTH Princesses. We have the daggum sisters right on top of us!” Gox hissed as she landed, spitting an Ork curse. “If they engage Big Bloo…”

Gox paused. She wasn’t sure exactly how that would turn out, actually. The power of Celestia and Luna was a very different power from that of a weaponized thousand-ton monster covered in Orks and cannons. But suffice to say, such a match was far more even than she was comfortable with.

She started to turn, considering her options, when she happened to spy something else in the streets below. “Wait a minute…”

Gox flew up to get a better look, coughing briefly from entering a particularly thick pollution layer.

“… Okay, no. This isn’t happening,” she groused to herself.

Dozens of tanks were lined up at an angle on both sides of an intersection, ready to decapitate Big Bloo as soon as the Ursa was exposed. Gox had only a vague idea of how much damage the human tanks could cause, but there were just too many of them. Combined with the Princesses, this spelled the end of the Orks’ superweapon.

She could warn them about the trap they were strolling into, of course. But Orks being Orks, they’d probably just run into it faster. They thought themselves invincible upon Big Bloo’s back.

Gox’s eyes narrowed, and a plan started forming in her mind. There were a series of relatively short buildings off to the right side of the avenue, before the intersection. The low height relative to the adjacent structures formed a little alleyway through the block, and looked just large enough to accommodate the Ursa Major’s titanic girth.

Of course, deciding on an alternate route was the easy part.

Gox transformed again, turning into a Nob once more. This time, however, she kept her insectoid changeling wings, and formed the appearance of a Stormboy’s jump rokkit between them. Inert, of course; her magic wasn’t nearly strong enough to create a working chemical fuel out of pure will. The wings stuck out of her shoulder blades at a rather awkward angle, and she wasn’t entirely sure they would be able to carry her weight in this state.

“Welp. ‘ere goez nuffin’.”

****

“WAAAAAAAAGH!!”

The classic greenskin battle cry boomed from above, and several Orks cheered and fired their guns into the air while responding in kind. Others looked up to see who was goading them on, and they were surprised and somewhat confused to see a Nob plummeting toward the battle platform on a trail of green flame.

Granted, they were all big fans of green, but rokkit burn was usually more in the red-yellow spectrum. Also there was a strange blur just behind the Nob. Also none of them remembered there being a Stormboy contingent fighting with them.

Gox hit the rusted metal deck, and her wings vanished in a flash of green. Her legs quivered in agony – her descent had been much quicker than she would have liked – but she forced herself to stand immediately so she could start bellowing orders.

“OI!! Wut’re yoo gitz doin’?! All da fightin’ is ovah dat way!” the Guardian shouted, pointing to the right side of the road.

“Erm… wut wuz dat glowy-“ one Ork started mumbling a question, but Gox simply shoved him aside and marched toward the command throne.

“OI!! Yoo gitz lissenin’?” Gox barked. “Youz goin’ da wrong way!!”

Her belligerence was rewarded when two Nobs in the shack that made up the “cockpit” stepped out and sized her up.

“Eh? Oo’re yoo?” glowered one of the larger Orks. The smaller crew formed a circle around the disguised changeling, staring at her with varying degrees of suspicion and anticipation.

“Don’ mattah!” Gox barked. “Dere’s nuffin’ ovah dere!”

Before she had tried to leverage her abstract authority to get the alien clods to do what she said. It had failed disastrously. But now she was done with subtlety. If she was going to manipulate the Orks, she had to make her lies big, flashy, and aggressive.

Gox pointed off to the side. “Dere’s a buncha humies and spikies runnin’ dat way! I saw ‘em jus’ now! Lotsa big dakka! We’z gotta cach ‘em! Now!”

“But I wanna nokk down da big bildin’!” complained one of the Nobs to the other. “Dere muss be lotsa gud loot in dere!”

“Dere ain’t nuffin in dat bilding!” Gox shouted, pointing ever more firmly toward the gap in the structures. “Da… Da humies took all da loot! Dey’z getting’ away! We gotta cach ‘em! WAAAAAAAAAAGH!!”

The changeling threw her fists into the air while she shouted, and numerous other Orks copied her, bellowing at the top of their lungs. The Nobs didn’t quite look convinced, but they weren’t brushing her off, either, which was a substantial improvement over last time.

“’Ey, wut mob’re yoo wiff?” grunted one of the larger greenskins, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Da mob of SHUT IT AN’ GET TA FIGHTIN’!!” Gox screamed, shoving her way past the Nobs. She approached the giant chain spool mounted on Big Bloo’s right shoulder. “Le’s get dis WAAAAAGH on! Hahd ta starbear’d!”

The Gretchin manning the chain spool hopped to work, grabbing a heavy lever at the base of the machine and pulling it down. The engine next to it sputtered into action, and the giant wheel started to turn. Chain links bigger than the Orks themselves were rolled up onto the spool, tugging the Ursa Major’s head to the right.


The monstrous bear grunted as its head was pulled to the side to face the uneven wall of industrial buildings. The spool engine stopped, and Big Bloo sniffed at the shorter adjacent structures in puzzlement. It reached up and clawed at one, eliciting an ear-rending shriek from its enormous talons scraping through the metal plating.

A sharp prodding to its neck spurred it forward. Big Bloo took a cautious step up, placing one paw on the roof of the building and pressing some weight down. When the roof failed to fold in, Big Bloo reared up and started climbing onto it.

The battle platform tilted backward, and the various crew quickly reached for something to hold on to. The Nobs driving Big Bloo latched on to handles bolted onto the cockpit, while Gox herself latched onto the chain spool. Those greenskins that didn’t find a way to brace themselves tumbled down the inclined deck, eventually slamming against the rear railing before plummeting to the streets below.

The Ork vehicles below screech to a halt, confused about the sudden detour and unsure how they were to follow. Some hit their accelerators and sped forward into the intersection ahead. Some parked where they were, either to argue with each other about where to go or point and laugh at the light rain of their fellow Orks slamming into the street around them.

Those in the former group were instantly demolished, gutted by a crossfire of lascannons, missiles, and anti-tank guns. Two Warbuggies were reduced to smoldering black spots on the ferrocrete in an instant, while the Battlewagon racing behind them had its chassis gutted by lasers before a demolisher shell flattened its passenger cab. The hefty vehicle skidded forward on shredded tires for a few more meters, its hull belching smoke and flame, and then a burst from a butcher cannon stabbed into the driver’s cab. The vehicle fell apart on the spot, spilling scorched metal and pulverized greenskins onto the ground around it.


Pinkie Pie zoomed in on the wreck, her visor picking out particular pieces of interest and estimating the number of kills. She zoomed out again, and then scanned the kill zone for further targets. There were none.

The head of her Dreadnought popped up, and the pink pony looked down to the Iron Warrior next to her. “Wasn’t there supposed to be a really big thingamagobbin coming? Was that it? Are we done?”

Dest touched the ear of his helmet. “Negative. Primary target seems to be… stalling? What is it doing?”

He cycled his vox to connect to Luna’s. “Princess, you have a higher vantage point. Where is the target? Why have the escorts left?”

****

“It seems our prey hath… taken an alternate path. Vexing.”

Luna peered over the edge of the tower at the Ursa Major below, watching it climb over the low buildings. The immense weight of the creature had folded in the top floors, collapsing them inward. The Dark Mechanicus reinforced the buildings well, however, and they were constructed to resist bombardment from above. As the roofs collapsed secondary struts fell into place to help support the load-bearing beams against the crushing force, creating solid footholds for the Ursa. Big Bloo seemed uncertain about its path, pausing every time a floor buckled and a paw sunk closer to the ground, but it slowly pushed forward.

“Drat. The beast hath detected our trap. It flees northward!” Luna proclaimed.

A flakk shell slammed into the tower just below the roof, and the Princess recoiled as shards of red-hot flechette slashed across her helmet and chest. Grimacing, she turned to Celestia.

“Sister, art thou going to smite the creature? It is nearly immobile at present.”

“I can’t possibly hit it now, Luna! The beam is hard to aim and the Ursa is right below us!”

“Shouldst we take to a different perch, then? What distance is ideal?”

“I really don’t think I’m going to do any damage at all with this smog cover! And it’s already evening! The sun is already at the horizon!”

“Then call it back. Really, Sister, thou acts like our star doth not cross the sky at thy whim.”

“I can’t just delay nighttime whenever it’s convenient, Luna! You remember the 20-year drought!”

“We consider the present circumstances slightly more dire than thy cake being delivered with excessive-“

A thunderous series of booming noises interrupted them, and the roof started quivering under their hooves. The Princesses froze anxiously, wings spread in case they needed to retreat, but after a few seconds the structure was still again.

Then General Harlin’s vox boom in Luna’s ear. “I’ve dispatched two squadrons to clean up the Ork escorts and secure the breach in the palisade. The rest of my units are moving to flank the ursine, but we won’t be able to form another trap like that unless the blasted creature stops. Are you two going to do anything about it?”

Luna frowned. “We hast little chance of halting the Ursa Major outright, but mayhaps We might foil its primary weapon. Sister! General! We shalt engage the foe!”

“Luna, wait! It’s too dangerous!” Celestia protested.

General Harlin was more understanding. “Great. I’m sure they have a Mek or two on-board to repair any such damage, so try to kill it while you’re down there, too.”

“Aye, General!” Luna’s flight pack spread, and the crystals at the edges of her wing case glowed. “Sister, assist my descent!”

Celestia groaned, but did as requested. Her horn lit up while Luna galloped to the edge of the roof, and a bubble of golden light appeared around the Princess of the Night before she leapt off the edge.


“BY THE MOON ABOVE, THOU SHALT BE DELIVERED TO THE VOID BY THE BRINGER OF NIGHT!!”

Flakk bursts and sprays of gunfire pelted the barrier around Luna, sizzling and sparking in flashes of gold. Her drop toward the battle platform was loud, certainly, but not especially quick. She maintained a controlled drop while her visor scanned and picked apart the components of the central soopagun.

The ammo supply, it seemed, was internal; somewhere in the veritable mountain of metal was its shell storage, but it wasn’t easily accessible to enemies wishing to blow it up. An unfortunate feature of this weapon’s design, Luna thought. Most Ork constructions were more accommodating.

“NO MATTER!!” she roared, continuing her silent stream of thought less silently. “FEEL THE POWER OF THE NIGHT, GREENSKIN SCUM!!”


The Iron Gage detached and fired twin beams of shadow down into the combat platform. They punched into the heavy armor of the gun and then exploded, blasting blackened pits into the metal and flattening the Gretchin clinging to the outside of the weapon.

Flakk guns continued to pound away at the alicorn descending toward Big Bloo, but the puffs of shrapnel seemed useless against the golden bubble of light that surrounded her. Luna landed on the soopagun’s mounting, and then smashed a glowing fist into a nearby secondary turret, caving in the frame. The other gauntlet shot over to an anti-air gun on the other side, grabbing onto the barrels of the thundering flakk cannons and squeezing them shut.

“Now, then…” The Iron Gage returned, black fingers wiggling as she looked over the main cannon to decide where to start.


“… We’z SO boned.”

Gox’s comment was completely drowned out by the scattered gunfire while dozens of crew all around her fired shootas, sluggas, and whatever other weapons they could turn in on the platform, at the armored alicorn. A few particularly bright sparks even fired rokkits, inevitably missing the pony-sized target and slamming armor-piercing explosives into the enormous cannon receiver she was standing on.

Big, black gauntlets crackling with destructive power slammed into breaches that were patched over with scraps of junk metal or pulled apart banks of wiring and dense cables. The gunfire around Luna intensified into a steady beat against her shield, but Celestia’s magic seemed indestructible to the Orkish small arms. Crimson energy surged around the black spike jutting from Luna’s helmet, and lashes of power whipped about and struck random greenskin crew while the Princess worked on the greater task of sabotage.

“I’z gettin’ reel tihad o’ savin’ deez gitz,” Gox growled, gripping the railing next to her.

The Iron Gage swooped downward, punching into one of the bracing struts that kept the receiver secure against the platform. It grabbed onto the strut, power field crackling, and then broke it in two before snapping forward and grabbing on to the next one.

“Hmmmm…” Gox’s eyes narrowed.

“Oi, wot’z dat hoss doin’ up dere! Shoot it!” a Nob bellowed, stepping out of the command hut.

“We IZ shootin’ it!” barked an Ork boy in response. “It ain’t helpin’! We needz mo’ dakka!”

A pair of Meks emerged from the command hut bearing kustom blastas, and Gox suppressed a groan.

“Ferget dat! Lissen up!” the Guardian shouted suddenly. “Wen I say ‘now,’ fiyah da soopagun!”

The Meks looked at her strangely, peering through their oil-stained goggles and flickering optiks screens.

“Fiyah at wot?” one Mek asked.

“Don’ even mattah!” Gox replied.

The Meks apparently found this plan agreeable, as they cackled and turned back toward the hut. Gox peered back at Luna, who was still ripping apart the main gun with impunity.

Bolts were melted in their sockets and pneumatic pumps flattened into scrap. Granted, Ork weapons were assembled from trashed machinery to begin with, and the sheer size of the weapon was clearly giving the mare some trouble, but it was definitely steaming a lot more than usual.

What Gox was watching for, though, was the support struts. Luna’s Iron Gage ripped through another pair, and the entire cannon started to shake from its ever-looser connection to its platform mounting.

“NOW!!” Gox bellowed.


The soopagun fired, and the massive cannon instantly tore itself apart. Jets of fire blasted from numerous breaches in the casing, tracking the shell’s journey through the gun barrel. Pieces of machinery were ripped apart or simply burst into flames from proximity.

The barrel itself flew backward from the explosive recoil, breaking free of the receiver and sailing clear of the platform itself. Luna was flung away through the air with it, cleared the partially collapsed structures behind Big Bloo, and then hit the street on the other side gracelessly. The golden bubble around her popped, and the Princess of the Night bounced and rolled until she scraped to a stop in the middle of the avenue.

“LUNA!!” Celestia shouted from above. “LUNA, ARE YOU OKAY?!”

Luna’s vision blurred as she struggled to stand, her legs having become a tangled mess during her ejection from the Ursa Major. Her visor flickered and blinked with rapidly flowing warning text, doing the Princess no favors. Impact analysis, relocation data, velocity tracking, and kinetic stress mapping all flashed uselessly before her eyes while she was still trying to work out what, exactly, had hit her.

She raised her head to find her sister’s voice. “We-“

A massive shell casing, similar in size to a light combat vehicle and still smoldering from the heat of its munition discharge, landed on top of her. The casing bounced off and rolled down the avenue, now sporting an alicorn-shaped dent on one side of its brass surface.

Luna did not attempt to finish her sentence, choosing instead to lie down where she was for a little while.


“Luna! Luna! Oh no, did she pass out?!”

Princess Celestia swooped down onto the street in a panic, landing next to the armored figure embedded in the street. “Luna! Speak to me! Please, tell me you’re okay!”

Heavy footsteps came from behind her, but in her panic Celestia didn’t realize anyone had approached until a vox-distorted growl interjected.

“Her life signs are stable. She is alive,” Dest concluded after linking his visor to that of the mare’s. “More importantly, she has successfully disabled the warbeast’s primary weapon.”

“That’s not the most important thing to me,” Celestia huffed at the Possessed Marine. “Your people can finish the Ursa now, right?”

“… Eventually,” Dest murmured.

Explosions came from several blocks away, followed by an enraged roar.

“The warbeast is still a considerable threat. The main gun will be unable to wipe out our armored support, but they will still struggle to stop such a creature. Especially considering its… light resistance.” Dest admitted. “However, we have cut off further Ork reinforcements. This battle is almost over.”

A squeal came from below, and Luna’s legs started to move.

“Wait! Luna, no! Stay still, please! You could hurt yourself inside that thing!” Celestia begged. Then she turned her head away. “Techpriest! Is there a Techpriest nearby?!”

Dest grunted. “I will find one. Remain here.” He turned and bolted away, moving with such sudden speed that Celestia recoiled slightly in surprise.

“Urgh…” Luna struggled to place her hooves such that she could stand up, the folds of her plating fighting her every move.

“Luna! Please, stop! Help is coming!”

“We require no assistance…” Luna hissed through clenched teeth. “This is… but a minor… setback.”

“Yes, fine, I understand,” Celestia assured her. “Now lie down and let the hateful cyborgs do their jobs, please!”

“Our fury sustains our armor!” Luna retorted, starting to push herself up.

“Luna, would you stop being so stubborn?” Celestia growled, seriously considering using her magic to push down the other Princess. “You’ve done enough already! Calm down!”


The rapid thump of ceramite greaves against the ground announced Dest’s return.

“I have acquired a Dark Acolyte,” the Iron Warrior announced, holding up the cultist in question. “Apparently some of them are ponies now.”

“Uhm, h-hello.” Gear Works greeted the Princesses hesitantly, quite uncomfortable being held within the heavy, curved talons of the Possessed Marine. “Can I help you?”

“Aye! Thou may indeed!” Luna barked, standing up on her own. Sparks blasted from her armor joints and dented plating shrieked from the movement, but the daemonic plate was slowly shaping itself back into a fully functional state. “Hath not the city’s defenses recovered from the earlier affliction? Wherefore doth the Ursa Major march unmolested?!”

The numerous optics lights under Gear’s hood winked off and on in sequence. “But it doesn’t really… the interior turrets-“

“We speak not of those trifling heavy bolter emplacements,” Luna interrupted. “The cannon, stallion! Wherefore doth the perimeter cannons not fire upon the beast?”

“You mean those big guns on the wall?” Celestia asked, puzzled. “Wouldn’t they cause damage to the city if they fired into the streets?”

“Surely less damage than the Ursa shalt inflict if not promptly dispatched! They art the only weapons large enough to quickly fell this creature!” Luna countered. “Techpriest, give the order!”

“Impossible,” Gear Works scoffed.

“Why?” Celestia asked. “Do we need General Harlin’s permission?”

“No. It’s physically impossible,” Gears replied. “The turret foundations are built to deny them firing solutions into the city, or even at each other. They don’t rotate that far in their mountings.”

Dest grunted in agreement. “I remember that engineering doctrinae. In a successful siege, the outer wall is often the first part of the fortress seized. It’s crucial the foe isn’t able to turn its weapons onto the rest of the fortress.”

“Then what of the daemon engines? Canst we not deploy thy abominations, as thou didst against the Ork Gargants?” Luna demanded.

“Most of the daemon engines went with the fleet,” Dest grunted. “And the ones we have left don’t bear any weapons that can easily cripple that warbeast.”

“By the moon and stars, what absurdity is this?!” Luna shouted, slamming her Iron Gage into the street. “We stand athwart a city of arms and machines of destruction, and yet there art no weapons to slay this beast?!”

“The Pride of Olympia could have made a decent opponent for that thing, but not much of her survived the Battle of Ponyville,” Dest admitted. “I see no other options besides degrading its defenses with conventional anti-armor weaponry. Even the Baneblade or macro-turrets would take several hits to fell something that size, and we have nothing larger.”

“Nothing larger that can be effectively used on a ground target, that is,” Gears corrected.

Luna’s head swiveled toward the Dark Acolyte. “Explain,” she commanded.

“Err… I was referring to the ground batteries. The anti-ship guns,” Gear Works said hesitantly. “Obviously, those would kill the Ursa Major instantly. But there’s no possible way to use them against a ground target.”

Luna swiveled her head around again, zooming in on the distant towers of sector 1. Massive steel obelisks surrounded by webs of cabling and enormous hydraulic pistons stretched into the sky, silent and helpless against the assault. Weapons of a scale so absurd they were useless against even something as large as an Ursa.

Supposedly.

“… Sister, gather thy pegasi. Lord Dest, find Pinkie Pie and take her and the Acolyte to the battery grounds. We hast an idea…”

****

Ponyville
Nethalican Temple

“Take ‘er her down, Mac.”

With that simple command, the heavy bolter roared to life.

Chrysalis summoned a protective barrier immediately, her eyes flashing a brilliant green. Small explosions bloomed across the shield, sending ripples of emerald light spreading across the air with every impact. Despite this, many shards of hot shrapnel carved into the tentacles below unimpeded, shredding the slimy, glistening flesh. The Changeling Queen was simply too big for her to protect all of her bulk with the barrier.

“Shucks, y’all were really makin’ a play fer our spooky evil invasion repellant?” Applejack asked, galloping forward. “Sorry Queenie, this thang’s a little too important to lose to you!”

Tentacles slithered across the floor toward Applejack, and Big Mac shifted his aim. The heavy bolter sawed across the floor in front of the barrier, tearing into the fleshy tendrils and blowing them apart mid-length. Blood, ink, and green flame spewed from the shredded, rubbery stumps, and several of the lengths sliding toward Applejack went slack.

One of them crept up from around the other side and struck, slapping the armored mare on the back. Applejack brushed off the impact without a misstep and kept rushing forward. The tendril then slithered around her barrel, wrapping around under her belly and sticking to the plating with its suckers.

Her gravity plating turned on, and her weight increased fivefold in an instant. The tentacle tugged and writhed uselessly, trying to lift or at least knock over the mare without appreciable effect.

Applejack turned her flamer on the length of tendril in front of her, blasting fire over it in a tight, controlled stream. The tendril shriveled and burned rapidly, and once it weakened Applejack shook it off.

“Feh. This body is no fun anymore,” Chrysalis groused, vanishing behind a curtain of green magic. “Time for a new one…”

“Now! Strike at her now!” Serith shouted, still pinned to the floor. “While her focus is diverted away from a barrier!”

The green aura vanished, revealing Chrysalis in her true form. The changeling Queen gazed upon the ponies with contempt, her horn and eyes flickering with power.

Big Macintosh locked his targeting reticule onto her, and the micro-servos of his suit whirred and clicked as they shifted the heavy bolter into position. Applejack started stomping forward again, small tongues of fire sputtering from her heavy flamer.

“FALL, equines,” Chrysalis commanded, her eyes pulsing brightly.

In an instant, Big Mac’s vision went fuzzy and started spinning. A pain in his head came from nowhere, like someone had beaten in his skull with an iron rod. The stallion stumbled to the side drunkenly, his firing solution lost amidst the confusion.

Applejack suffered the same effects, but she recognized it immediately. She’d suffered these symptoms before several times thanks to the very Iron Warrior lying on the floor on the other end of the temple.

“Blasted mind games!” Applejack spat, slowing down her charge. Her vision spun and blurred, turning colored notifications into streaks of neon across her perception. Her skull pounded like her brain was trying to escape, and hot needles seemed to plunge into her back. “Git outta mah head, ya changelin’ pest!” She concentrated on putting one hoof in front of the other, moving forward on momentum and simple muscle memory.

Chrysalis frowned at seeing such resistance, but quickly moved her attention toward a new shapeshift. The giant squid had been fun, but it seemed a more conventional “combat form” would be necessary.

Applejack’s vision started to come back into focus, and she triggered her flamer as soon as she saw the dark splotch surrounded by green center in her vision. “BURN, varmint!”

Yellow flame poured from the nozzle and mixed with green, and the changeling Queen screamed. An unearthly howl of pain sent another pulse of psionic agony through the Apple siblings. Big Mac nearly fell over, still dazzled by the previous magical assault. Applejack didn’t flinch, her anger laser-focused on the target in front of her.

That target was growing. Growing a lot, and quickly.

Chrysalis grew taller, her equine neck stretching high up and becoming more serpentine. Her legs spread, growing fingers and claws. Her tail thickened, changing from a loose collection of hair to a single, scale-covered length that tapered to a point. Her wings stretched and deformed even while they burned, becoming bony, bat-like protrusions.

Applejack continued spraying fire at Chrysalis, but as the changeling swelled to her full size and the green flame abated, the form of a smallish red dragon unfolded before the armored mare. The heavy flamer’s discharge had done some damage to Chrysalis, evident now in patches of missing scales, but now the flames washed over her without effect. She was about the size of a Maulerfiend, which certainly put the changeling Queen in the lower range of dragons size-wise, but still a great deal larger than anything the Apples were hoping to face, and the replication of fireproof scales was more than a little inconvenient.

“Mmm… toasty,” snarled the red serpent.

Chrysalis swatted Applejack away with a claw, her talons slamming into the heavy armor with an ear-rending shriek. Applejack was knocked onto her side and skidded across the floor, but wasn’t flung very far. Even against a dragon’s talons, her armor seemed almost impenetrable.

Chrysalis slammed her claw down onto the mare, pinning her in place. “Well-protected, aren’t you? Just like a fresh egg.” Flames puffed from between her teeth. “Yummy.”

She blew a stream of fire down onto her hand atop the struggling pony. Applejack’s thermal regulators blinked on in an instant, and warning runes started flashing in various corners of her visor. After a few seconds the heat started working its way through her frame insulation, and she could feel the metal bands of her suit interior warming up.

A heavy bolter burst slammed into Chrysalis, tearing into her side and stitching a line of explosions up to her neck. The changeling Queen cut off her breath weapon, coughing, and tried to shield her body with her wing.

Her dragon scales did a remarkable job of protecting Chrysalis from severe damage, but the sheer output of fire from a heavy bolter was punishing. The hefty shells battered the shape-shifter with explosions, and one bolt whipped by her eye closely enough that she couldn’t afford to ignore the shooter any longer.

“You're annoying! Die, fool!” Chrysalis whipped her head toward Big Macintosh, and her eyes pulsed with magical light. The stallion was too far away for her breath weapon, so instead two piercing beams of green blasted into him. One beam cut across the side of Mac’s armor without lasting effect, scorching a black line over his flank. The other punched directly through the chest plate, breaking into the collection of augmetics that made up most of Mac’s life support. The stallion recoiled, staggering, and a pained whinny came from his vox grille.


“MAC!!” Applejack screamed. She redoubled her efforts in standing up, and her greaves and leggings creaked against the weight of the dragon on top of her.

Chrysalis promptly slapped another claw down over the first, nearly doubling the force pinning her down. It was a ridiculous sight, a dragon putting its entire weigh to try to hold down a creature a fraction of its size, but the Queen looked rapturous rather than worried.

“Yes. YES. This is what I wanted!” Her tongue swiped from one edge of her jaw to the other, wetting her lips. “The quickening heartbeat! The surging strength! The intoxicating brew of fear and anger, anchored to another! Love! Sweet, succulent, delectable LOVE!” She inhaled deeply, taking in a scent that no one else, not even the other psyker in the room, could detect. “Familial love, a rather lighter bouquet, but so PURE!”

Then she lowered her head and opened her jaws just over Applejack’s head. “GIVE IT TO ME…”

Mist-like energy started seeping from the pony-shaped terminator armor and into the changeling’s oversized maw. Chrysalis shuddered in ecstasy, her tongue making lapping motions at the nearly invisible sustenance.

“Fascinating. So this is how you feed,” Serith mumbled.

Chrysalis snapped her head up, her eyes narrowing. Serith was standing again, and the statue that had pinned him down was now floating in the air next to him.

With a thrust of his hand, the badly abused artwork flew through the air at the shape-shifter. Chrysalis snorted in contempt, and her eyes pulsed again. The telekinetic hold on the statue broke, and it dropped uselessly to the floor halfway to its target.

“Do you MIND? I’m trying to eat!” Chrysalis complained.

“I do mind, actually.” Serith walked up to his force halberd and yanked it from the ground.

“Are you really going to go through this again? The only reason you lasted longer than these pests was because that machine on your hand absorbs my magic!” Chrysalis said, spreading her wings. “But fine. Come at me, wretch. I’ll turn you to scrap and cinders.”

“Not so long as you can’t move your claws, you won’t,” Serith mused. “Are you afraid of these creatures, Queen? Do they threaten you? More than I?”

“Well... yes, actually. More than you. That’s not saying a lot, though.”


While the Sorcerer and shape-shifter bantered, Applejack switched her vox system to internal mode and linked to Big Mac’s suit.

“Mac! Mac, are ya still kickin’? Please…”

A gasping noise came through the vox. “… Eeyup.”

“Oh, thank Celestia,” Applejack sighed. “Listen, Ah got an idea. But we need to break Chryss outta this dragon body, meanin’ we need to hurt her, bad. Can ya still stand up and shoot?”

A grunt came from the vox. “Eeyup.”

“Good. Here’s whatcha need to do…”


“What tiresome creatures you Iron Warriors are. If you didn’t create such interesting things, then you’d be completely useless,” Chrysalis taunted. Then she leaned back and spread her wings, as if gesturing to the temple interior. “But I am VERY fond of your constructions. Such grand tools and fascinating arcana! Perhaps I’ll keep that polearm of yours as a personal weapon. Or a trophy, to remind me of the blackened soul that bravely perished to delay my victory for half an hour.” She chuckled darkly, and flames started to build within her jaws.

“If yer looking fer high-tech trophies, ya can’t do better’n these armor suits,” Applejack said suddenly.

Chrysalis looked down hesitantly, somewhat confused that the mare was volunteering that information. “I think I’d have trouble fitting into those. And it will be so much work to clean your ashen remains out of it!”

“But lookit all the neat stuff these things can do! Show her, Mac!”


Chrysalis snapped her head up and summoned a barrier, protecting her face from the expected sneak attack.

Big Mac, moving once again despite the considerable hole in his chest plate, galloped forward with his heavy bolter on full burst. Rather than the changeling Queen, however, he was aiming up at the massive spike-covered chandelier that dominated the upper level of the temple.

Iron screeched and folded around the heavy bolter impacts, and the entire disk shuddered as three of the chains holding it to the ceiling snapped apart and went slack. A resonant groan came from it, and Chrysalis glance up in understanding.

“Cute. But no.”

Flares of green light burst from her eyes, and the heavy bolter on Big Mac’s side was sliced clean off its mounting with another beam of emerald magic. He staggered to a stop, and then watched helplessly as his main weapon was flung back toward the entrance with a pulse of telekinesis. Then an emerald-colored blade formed above the stallion’s head.

“My fault for not finishing you last time,” Chrysalis hissed. “Let’s see the humans rebuild THIS.”

The blade plunged downward, straight toward Mac’s forehead. But a silver gauntlet reached forward and grazed the edge of the magical weapon on its way down, before it could touch the armored equine. The blade collapsed around its fingers, breaking apart into twinkling green light.

Serith stood over Big Macintosh, wiggling the fingers of the psykant occulus as if teasing his opponent. “I’m sorry, my Queen, but we find these beasts too useful to simply stand idly by for their slaughter.” He glanced over at the priests. “Well, SOME of us, anyway.”

“Die! Just, die! Why won’t any of you DIE?!” Chrysalis snarled furiously. “Fine! You wish to defeat me? Come here and try it!” She spat a brief stream of fire across the room in front of her, although neither the stallion nor the Astartes was within range. “Strike me down, if you dare! I’m tired of toying with you and your ridiculous-huh?”


Applejack had finally managed to wriggle her tail loose from under the changeling’s claws, and her gravity lash shot up and struck the damaged edge of the chandelier.

With a powerful tug, several more supports on that side ripped loose, and the spike-covered wheel swung down over the pews and slammed into Chrysalis’s head. The many metal spikes among the candles mostly bludgeoned themselves against the dragon scales, but a few managed to puncture the thick, armored hide. Chrysalis shrieked in agony, and most of the clergy watching the battle fell to the floor with their hands pressed over their ears.

Applejack finally shouldered aside the dragon’s claw, and then she promptly whipped around to line up her rear legs with the changeling Queen. “Consarn it, drop the scaly face already!”

She bucked Chrysalis in the stomach, her greaves striking the shape-shifter like a cannon shot. Chrysalis lurched back, stunned and bleeding, and the familiar green fire of her magic aura started to spill from her wounds and spread over her.

“There we go! Keep the pressure on!” Applejack barked, using her gravity lash to grab the edge of the chandelier again. Another tug slammed it into the false dragon’s wing, staggering Chrysalis yet again.

Big Macintosh galloped across the temple, plowing aside the battered pews in a thundering charge. Sorcerous lightning flashed over his head from behind, striking the great shape-shifter in a rapid volley. The stallion struck Chrysalis in the leg with a tremendous crack of bone and spray of blood, and her body lurched backward before it finally began to shrink.

Chrysalis howled again in pain and fury, and her eyes became mirrors of pure energy. A pulse of force blasted out from her shriveling form, throwing Big Mac away through the air. Applejack activated her gravity plating in time, her greaves shrieking while they were slowly pushed across the floor anyway. Her armor shook all around her and her visor flickered with error screeds under the weight of the psionic assault, but Applejack kept her eyes focused on the changeling Queen. Chrysalis was stumbling backward, trying to keep her distance while her body re-formed.

Then, once the emerald flames had abated and Chrysalis had returned to her true visage, the farmer snapped the gravity lash at Serith.

“What? What are you-“ the Sorcerer mumbled a confused protest when the crackling beam struck his right hand, securing the energy string to the gauntlet.

“GOTCHA!” Applejack pulled Serith’s entire forearm clean off, flinging it across the temple and back at Chrysalis. The changeling Queen was still regenerating her newest injuries when the disembodied gauntlet latched onto her horn.

Chrysalis blinked up at the metal hand grasping her horn, uncomprehending. Applejack started charging again, her greaves thundering against the floor.

“Try yer fancy magic tricks NOW ya sneaky, no-good, love-munchin’-“

A volley of green magic promptly hammered the mare. Rays of force slammed into her visor, chest, and legs, denting the outer ceramite layers and putting a solid crack in Applejack’s visor. She staggered in shock, staring at the flickering, distorted icons and runes flashing in front of her eyes.

“Good try,” Chrysalis said. Her horn flashed even brighter than before, the magical energy flooding around the gauntlet still attached to her horn.

Applejack started to feel pressure building in her head, as if something in her skull was trying to push its way out. “Augh! How? Why didn’t that work?!”

“It was a clever tactic,” Serith admitted, holding up the empty sleeve of his right arm plating. “But you took the wrong hand.”

“Ha ha ha ha! You fool!” Chrysalis laughed, increasing the flow of magic power into the mare. “You had the perfect chance to stop me, and you… Wait, hold on. What is this?”

Chrysalis stopped trying to crush Applejack’s head and pointed a twisted hoof at Serith. “Where is your arm?! She pulled your arm apart! But there’s no blood!”

Serith didn’t answer, wiggling his right-hand bicep sleeve in the air.

Chrysalis removed the gauntlet from around her horn with her magic, and then flipped it around to look into the glove. “Empty! There’s nothing inside! No flesh, no blood, no machines, no nothing!” She flipped the gauntlet back around, peering closely at the palm. “THIS is how I’ve been biting you and cutting you and crushing you and flinging you around like a doll and you keep getting back up! You’re not a Space Marine! What are you?!”

“Something more. And something less. An immortal, implacable nightmare; a pale shadow of a soul, clinging to this world through the feeble artifice of fools and madmen,” Serith intoned darkly. “… But that’s not important. Don’t blink.”

The fingers of his disembodied gauntlet suddenly stabbed forward, poking Chrysalis in the eyes. The changeling Queen yelped in pain, reeling back and dropping the empty hunk of armor onto the floor.


“Now! Crush the insect!” Serith commanded. His right arm flew back to him through the air, slamming into place on his elbow sleeve in a burst of sparks.

Chrysalis snarled angrily, eyes still squeezed shut. “That is IT!! I’ve had it up to HERE with you worthless pests!”

The Apple siblings, each battered but still breathing, once again charged across the temple with the intent of flattening Chrysalis up close. This time she took to the air, floating up out of reach just before Big Mac could hit her. Applejack followed, spraying a stream of fire up at the changeling, but Chrysalis buzzed away ahead of the flames and zipped up to the altar.

“You scum have NO IDEA what you’ve done!” Chrysalis landed in front of the Warp portal, blinking her eyes painfully. “Your love, your souls, your homes, your families! Everything will be dust! No survivors! I’ll construct my new hive on the ashes of this town!”

Long, flickering whips of ethereal energy came from the blazing red gateway, curving like eels swimming through open sea. They curled around Chrysalis and collided in front of her chest, rapidly forming a sphere of energy.

The ponies had little sense for magic, but they felt the power of this spell like a vibration in their bones. Serith’s vision started to blur as the ambient psionic energy started to overwhelm his senses. Several of the priests fell to their knees, screaming and clutching their heads (Virgil wasn’t one of them, of course).

“Stop her!” Once again Applejack and Big Mac charged, racing across the floor of the Nethalican in thundering gallop.

Chrysalis narrowed her eyes, and the changeling Queen allowed some small quantity of power to leak from the sphere.

A tremendous pulse of force blasted out from the altar, smashing aside splintered furniture until slamming into the iron walls of the temple. The Apple siblings lurched back from their charge as if they had hit a wall, and Serith stumbled and fell to one knee. Most of the priests were flung backward, slamming hard into the nearby wall and slumping to the floor. Virgil leaned into the wall of force and somehow seemed to weather it easily, merely sliding backward across the ground.

Another pulse followed the first, and then a third, and then a fourth. These waves were less intense, but the constant drumbeat of force radiated through the temple and pushed constantly against the two armored ponies closest to the altar.

“Ah… Ah can’t… MOVE!” Applejack growled. Her armor shuddered all around her, creaking and squealing against the power trying to hurl her back. Big Mac wasn’t doing any better, and sparks sputtered from the gearwork of his augmetic legs.

“You have failed. Now BEGONE,” Chrysalis hissed.


A beam blasted forward from the energy sphere in a tremendous howl, aimed at nothing in particular. It sawed a line across the ground, ripping a trench through the flooring between the Apples, before racing toward the exit in what would had doubtless been a titanic explosion.

Instead, however, it met the outstretched hand of a Space Marine.

The beam hit the psykant occulus with a sound like a thunderclap, and several of the dispersal rods blew apart on the spot. The entire gauntlet assembly quivered, and that vibration rolled up Serith’s arm, rattling the armor plating. The beam didn’t disperse, however, and instead flooded into the Sorcerer’s palm, streaming from its source to the gauntlet in a screaming river of power.

“I cannot hold this much power for long!!” Serith growled. “Slay her! Now!”

Applejack whipped her gravity lash toward the changeling. The tractor beam fizzled in an instant, undone by the sheer force surging around the target.

“The Star of Chaos shall be your salvation!” Virgil shouted, raising his voice for the first time Serith could ever recall. “Deliver her to those beyond the veil!”

“The dark gods have not seen fit to interfere yet,” Serith spat. “This moment calls for more than mere faith!” His vision was flickering now, his senses being totally overwhelmed by the psychic currents.

“I was speaking literally!” Virgil shouted back.

Applejack puzzled over that for a moment. There were Chaos Stars all over the temple, but the two largest ones were the massive chandelier (now ripped free of its moorings and smashed against the wall), and the portal ring itself. With the instruction to “deliver her,” that meant…

Applejack’s gravity lash fired again, zipping past the river of psychic power and attaching to one side of the spiked metal ring holding the portal. “Mac! Let’s do this!”

The other farmpony understood in an instant. His magnetic harpoon fired across the temple, striking one of the spiked arrows on his side of the portal circumference.

“PULL!” Applejack commanded.

“Useless vermin!” Chrysalis howled. “STILL you resist? You waste so much effort fighting the inevitable, and yet you-eh?”

The floating ring did not move easily. The chains attaching the portal ring to the walls hung loose and looked to be generally ornamental; the force that held the ring and the energies within was invisible and, it turned out, quite formidable. Against the grinding force of both Apple siblings, the swirling eye of the Dark Portal leaned forward just enough to touch the tips of the changeling Queen’s wings.

Chrysalis gasped, her every nerve suddenly ablaze. Her eyes went wide, and the stream of magical destruction fizzled to a few scattered, buzzing arcs of energy crackling along the beam’s path. Serith promptly fell over, collapsing into a pile of disparate pieces of armor on the floor. The floating sphere of power remained, wobbling unsteadily and flashing an array of inexplicable colors.

“No… No no no no NONONONONONO” Chrysalis began chanting frantically, her eyes wild and unfocused. Her body twitched and spasmed, and the orb of power started frothing wildly in the air, like boiling water.

“I WILL NOT!! NOT TO YOU!!” Chrysalis howled, her eyes suddenly blazing green. “GET AWAY FROM ME, MONSTER!!” She began to move forward, slowly and haltingly, as if merely flexing her legs and neck were feats of tremendous will. “I WILL NOT FALL! I WILL NOT SUBMIT! I WILL NOT DIE! I WILL NOT LOSE! NOT TO YOU!!”

With an enraged snarl, her horn lit up and pulsed even faster than before. Green whips lashed out and pushed against the portal ring, tearing away Big Mac’s harpoon. The portal bobbed back up, slipping away from the changeling’s wings.

In an instant, ordinary sensation returned to Chrysalis. Her limbs moved freely, the pain surging up her spine washed away, and her eyes once again witnessed the gloomy interior of the Chaos Temple and all of her enemies standing within it.

The first of those enemies whom Chrysalis saw was Applejack, just as the farmer slammed a boot into the hovering magic sphere and shoved it into her chest.

“Hrkklg!” Chrysalis tried to cry out, but her lungs burned away in an instant. Along with a few other important organs. The sheer magical power still dissipating from the orb ate away at Applejack’s hoof plating and Chrysalis’s torso with equal intensity, but the latter proved far less resilient. The sphere quickly destabilized and fizzled to nothing, leaving a much larger hole in the changeling’s body than the various notches and grooves cut into her legs.

Applejack’s helmet hissed and split apart, the plates and visor opening up to reveal the farmer’s stern glare. Chrysalis could only stare at her, gaping, while her body weakened and her vision dimmed.

“Don’t you EVER hurt mah family, ya slimy, lyin’, hole-ridden freak.” Chrysalis wobbled and slumped to the floor, and Applejack kept her icy gaze locked with hers the entire way down. “Ah reckon ya learned that lesson a mite late, though.”

Chrysalis twitched, and the twisted horn on her head flickered slightly, like a lumen trying to squeeze a few more seconds of lighting out of a dead battery. Then it dimmed, and the Queen’s eyes clouded over.


Applejack snorted and turned around, hopping down from the altar. Her gait was slightly uneven, and one of her greaves scraped loudly against the floor with every step due to the uneven disintegration of its sole. She passed by the priests without comment, trotting directly for Big Macintosh.

“Mac, you okay? She got ya right in the chest back there. Nothin’ important broken?”

The stallion spent a moment to bring up his internal diagnostic. A long series of incomprehensible data screeds poured across his visor, along with small diagrams that he didn’t understand but were mostly colored red.

“Eee… maybe?”

“Well, that ain’t good enough. Let’s head into Canterlot and see one of them Techpriests. Ah know the Warsmith makes a good ticker, but Ah don’t trust that ‘livin’ metal’ stuff to keep yer organs workin’.”

Applejack tossed her head toward the exit and started to lead the way, only to find Virgil standing in their path.

“Apple siblings, this humble servant of the Dark Gods thanks you.” Virgil’s voice was as deadpan as ever, and he made an obscure gesture with one hand, like he was writing in the air. “In our hour of need, Chaos has-“

“Look, don’t take this the wrong way, Father, but Ah’m leavin’.” Applejack plodded right past the preacher, followed hesitantly by Big Macintosh. “Ah’m bruised, burnt, Ah have a headache from whatever Queenie tried to do to mah brain back there, and my big bro could have a heart-motor attack at any moment.” Her muzzle scrunched up. “Also, this place still gives me the heebie-jeebies. If ya wanna thank somepony, thank Apple Bloom! She told us what all was happenin’! Bye!”


The armored ponies rushed out the front door, not slowing down for any response.

Virgil watched them go, and then crossed his arms. His brow creased deeply in contemplation. He tilted his head up, staring at the free-hanging, broken chains that once suspended the great chandelier lying in a heap on one side of the temple. He squinted his eyes, as if looking for something in the dusty air that only he could perceive.

Finally, he uncrossed his arms and looked over at Serith. “How was her hat undamaged?”

“I can think of few mysteries less worthy of my attention,” the Sorcerer admitted.

Serith hadn’t cast a single glance at the ponies since Chrysalis had fallen, even after he had finished reassembling himself with his mind. Even now he stood over the Queen’s corpse, quietly scanning every inch of the changeling’s devastated body. Smoke poured from the dark, jagged pit in her chest, but no blood or ichor. The stifled horror and disbelief of her last moments – a brief glance of pure, incomprehensible Chaos, followed by the disastrous return to the waking world – hung in the air above her like a foul smell.

The Sorcerer kneeled down next to Chrysalis, slowly reaching out toward the twisted, notched horn on her head.

A spark of green crackled around it, jumping across the gaps and notches and finally leaping up to his gauntlet.

“Hmmmm…”

****

Ferrous Dominus – sector 1
Ground batteries

“… No. No way. Nuh-uh. Negative. Nope!”

“Priest, do try to keep thy mind open. These art desperate times, and call for extreme methods.”

“It’s impossible. Completely impossible! You can’t angle the weapon to fire at something in the city! The batteries are just too big!”

“We hast sufficient force. We can move the weapon. We need only the will.”

“I don’t have it! I don’t have NEARLY enough will!”

“Do as We instruct, Priest. Our salvation is at hoof!”


While Luna argued with Gear Works, Celestia, Pinkie Pie, and Dest were looking over the massive cannons that made up the ground batteries. Towering guns built into huge scaffolds, each one was much thinner than most buildings, but they stretched hundreds of feet into the air. Nets of cabling followed the weapons over the length of their barrels, along with the necessary oversized hydraulic pistons needed to move such a cannon from side to side to aim.

Obviously, none of the enormous guns could move far enough to be fired into the streets of the city.

“What do you think we’re doing here?” Dest asked, brushing his clawed hand across the well-oiled metal of the scaffolding supports. “These are useless against our target, are they not?”

“Maybe… Princess Luna wants to shoot into the air, so that it comes back down on the Ursa Major?” Pinkie guessed, tracing an imaginary arc with the finger of her power fist.

“These are Tau rail and ion cannons. Their projectiles do not function like that,” Dest explained.

Ooh! I know! She wants to tear the supports out and aim it down the street, so you can fire the entire thing at the big bear when it walks past!

Dest restrained a frustrated sigh. “Even more unlikely,” the possessed warrior said, heedless that he was openly answering the voice in his head. “That would require dismembering the weapon barrel.”

“Aye! We shalt begin at once!” Luna jumped forward, her Iron Gage pointing at the base of the nearest rail cannon. “We shalt remove these components! Once the weapon begins to fall, it will take all our combined might to shift it into place!”

Dest stared. Vel laughed.

Oh, dude, I wasn’t even serious! This mare rocks!

“Absolutely not!” Gear Works shouted, running up between the armored Princess and the anti-orbit cannon. “You can’t possibly disassemble, aim, and fire this gun like that!”

A great black gauntlet gently picked the cyborg pony up by his servo arm and carried him out of the way. “Thy objection is noted, Priest. Now please instruct Sister as to which connectors are strictly required to discharge the weapon. All others shalt be given over to the pegasi as support rigging.”

“You’re insane!” Gears protested.

“Our corrupt pirate allies art laid low by a tremendous ursine armed and ridden by deadly, inept warmongers from beyond the stars! What use is sanity in such dire times?!” Luna proclaimed, pointing her gauntlet at a rivet over a foot in circumference.

A beam of bright orange zapped the rivet head, and it swiftly melted down and drained down the side of the cannon.

“You- I- It- That-“ Gears sputtered uselessly, his mask spitting static. Then he whirled on Pinkie Pie and Dest. “Why aren’t you stopping her?! She needs to be stopped!”

Pinkie Pie’s Dreadnought made a humming noise while the mare inside watched Luna melt down another rivet. “I dunno… I kinda like this plan! Besides, if we don’t do this then they’re gonna make me fight the Ursa, and there’s no WAY this walker is surviving that. I don’t have any more replacements, you know!”

Dest crossed his arms over his chest. “As unlikely as this endeavor is, I have no better plans. If it works, it will deal a deathblow to the beast and save us countless lives and heavy units.”

“But it WON’T work!” Gears retorted, banging an augmetic leg on the ground.

“Is it truly impossible?” Princess Celestia asked, looming over the Dark Acolyte with a concerned frown. “I believe that between me and Luna, we can lower the weapon down to the street safely.”

“Yes, it’s impossible! A quarter of the cannon is underground! Along with the receiver and the ammunition hoppers! It would be like breaking off the barrel of a rifle and trying to fire it without the rest of the mechanism! The machine spirits do NOT approve!” Gears explained hotly.

“That is true, but the barrel of a rail weapon accelerates the projectile on its own,” Dest mused. “We would have to deliver the munition directly to the removed component, but it could yet achieve kill velocity. Possibly.”

A creaking noise came from the rail cannon, and Luna suddenly shouted to the others. “Lord Dest! Miss Pie! Begin tearing down the scaffolding at once! Sister, hold the tower in place with thy magic! Priest, cease thy prattling and ensure the device shalt function once repositioned!”

“How?! How am I supposed to make it work after you’ve torn it in half?! Stop this at once!” Gears protested.

Dest and Pinkie Pie approached the gun and started grabbing at the support scaffolding and cutting away bundles of wires. Gear Works shrieked, his voice like a circular saw cutting into steel gauge, but they seemed unbothered by the reaction. Pinkie’s power fist ripped away the duralloy bars like cobwebs, while Dest worked on cutting the links at their connection to the gun itself.

Celestia winced at the noise, and then beckoned the Dark Acolyte with a wing. “My little pony, please, calm yourself. Trust in Luna.”

“Trust?! Trust that nocturnal lunatic tearing apart a priceless weapon so she can fire it into the city streets?!” Gears raged, jumping up and down in place while puffs of steam blasted from beneath his hood.

Celestia frowned. “I cannot pretend to understand the value of these machines, but for now many lives are at stake. Machines can be rebuilt. The dead cannot be restored.”

“Yes we can,” Dest interjected.

“I mean besides that one time,” Celestia huffed.


A loud groan came from the rail cannon, and the towering barrel started to visibly tilt to one side.

“Royal Guard! Get into position! Hold the weapon upright!” Celestia ordered, her horn flashing with power.

Golden light flooded over the rail cannon, and dozens of pegasi swooped by and snatched up the loose cables to help.

Luna continued dissolving rivets, and the rail cannon’s superstructure started to shift out of alignment with the rest of the weapon underground.

She took a moment to search her vox channels, and then linked to a particularly busy one. “General! How fares thee?!”

“What? Princess, where are you?! You disabled the main gun but chasing this damnable bear through the streets is impossible!” cursed Harlin through the vox.

“Fear not, General! We hast a plan!” Luna announced proudly, zapping another rivet and watching it melt down. “We need but a few more moments. Then thou must shepherd the Ursa into position!”

“A plan? What are you doing?”

“’Tis nary time to explain further! We require the enemy step foot on avenue 9 once we hath prepared thusly! That is all!”

She turned off the vox, and then charged up two more beams within the Iron Gage. “Prepare thyselves! We canst let the weapon fall without our guidance!”

Dest reached down for another bundle of cables, only to hesitate when Gear Works started shouting.

“Wait! No! That’s a primary power supply! If you damage that cabling the magnetic accelerators won’t work!” the Dark Acolyte protested. “Each magnetic assembly has an individual power coupling and capacitor array! Destroy them and this entire weapon becomes an inert metal tube!”

“I see.” Dest dropped the cables, and then pointed to another bundle attached to a different point.. “And what of these?”

“Those power the dampening array! They’re necessary for diffusing the structural stress of firing each shot! Without them, the cannon would be useless after a few discharges,” Gears explained impatiently.

“Then they are unnecessary,” Dest declared, slicing through the bundle with a claw. “We will only be able to attempt this once, I’m sure.”


Luna unleashed the charged rays into another pair of rivet heads. Within seconds, the groaning creak of metal shifting against metal rose rapidly in pitch as ever more of the gun’s weight threatened to topple over. Finally a series of sharp snaps came from the cannon superstructure as the remaining rivets broke one by one.

Luna’s horn casing flashed, and her magic shifted from blue to a deadly crimson as it wrapped around the tower threatening to topple over. Both alicorns grunted, straining their telekinesis magic to its limits, and the pegasi trying to help flapped ever-more-desperately to keep the cannon from falling.

Dest and Pinkie backed away, staring up at the quivering rail cannon finally unmoored from its mounting.

“Where are you going to place it now?” Dest asked. “Flat against the road will not work. Bracing it atop a building may position it too high to aim correctly.”

“Follow our lead!” Luna declared. The Iron Gage flew up into the air, and then started swinging to one side in tandem, like an air traffic director. The cannon barrel started to move through the air, trembling under the forces keeping it aloft. Wires hung loose and bits of small debris fell off as it moved, bouncing along under its shadow.

Luna’s vox crackled in her ear. “Princess Luna, we’re directing the enemy per your instructions. However, we have very limited control over the beast’s speed. It seems to be avoiding our armored formations – an unusual response from Orks, but one I’m thankful for – and we’re chasing it to the requested intersection.”

“How long do we have?” Luna asked grimly.

“One hundred and fifty seconds is my best guess, Princess. I suppose we could try to turn the monster around again, but it would be near impossible without cornering it.”

“Try to slow thy pursuit if thou can,” Luna requested. “This process is quite-“

“BLAST! No! All units, cease pursuit at once! The damned monster is dropping explosive charges into the streets behind it! It has some kind of mine dispenser, too?!” Harlin shouted, causing Luna to wince. “How many tons of ordnance did they manage to fit onto that thing?! Redirect formation seven and have four move down sector 9! Don’t let it turn!”


Another blast of static ended the transmission, although Luna had to imagine the General was still howling orders into his command console. The Princess of the Night looked up at the dismantled anti-ship cannon floating overhead and set her jaw.

“Faster, compatriots! Our time grows short!” Luna bellowed. The glowing red eyes set into her chest plate glowed brighter, and the cannon’s movement accelerated.

“Luna! Careful!” Celestia yelped, her horn pulsing as she tried to keep up.

“We wouldst surely prefer to conduct this plot with caution and diligence, but circumstances hath conspired against us!” Luna said. “Quickly, now! Move the weapon into position!”

Princess Celestia looked over the area, frowning. “Where is the position? Where were you planning on putting it?”

Currently the cannon was floating parallel to the street, hovering dozens of feet above a macrocrane. The boxy construction vehicle was the size of a superheavy tank, boasting thick, wide treads and an array of extending construction rigs. The vehicle wasn’t made for combat, but like most heavy construction units, boasted thick armor and a reinforced chassis anyway.

None of which helped much when the barrel of a titanic rail cannon dropped onto it.

“Oh! Look at that! That’s just great!” Gear Works shouted angrily. “Now you’ve destroyed TWO valuable machines for the sake of this ridiculous plan! Splendid!” His servo arm lashed about wildly, and Celestia sighed.

Luna seemed undaunted, and she flew up onto the cannon. The partially flattened macrocrane stood roughly halfway down the barrel length, acting as a fulcrum that left the mouth of the gun tilted up into the air while the other end rested on the ferrocrete. Luna trotted up its length toward the high end and started barking more orders.

“The beast is nearly in position! Priest, ready the device for firing! Sister! Attendant pegasi! We shalt lift the end of the cannon to aim it!”

“Oh, yes. Fine. Will do, Princess!” Gears sneered. “As long as you’re destroying important things for stupid reasons, do you want to test-fire the cannon first? Maybe you could use the city’s fusion reactor as target practice!”

“’Tis little time for thy admonitions, Priest! See to the weapon!” Luna retorted. “Ammunition!”

“Present!” Pinkie Pie and Dest marched from a surface lift, carrying an enormous rail cartridge between them. The projectile was a tremendous metal spike with two thick rings of some non-metallic material wrapped around it near each end, making the munition dumbbell-shaped. It was very nearly too large for Dest to keep his end up off the ground, and the driver’s armor squealed as its enhanced servo-motors fought to move against the formidable mass.

The Iron Gage swooped down and clamped onto the middle of the ordnance, helping to carry it along. Pinkie’s Dreadnought fed one end of the munition into the end of the cannon barrel, and then helped Dest push it into place.

Luna’s visor entered telescopic mode, peering down the street and filtering out the particulate interference. Immediately she could see the looming shape of Big Bloo striding toward the intersection far ahead.

“The target approacheth! Priest, prepare the weapon to fire!” Luna barked.

Another jet of steam shot from beneath Gear’s hood, but the Dark Acolyte stomped over to the cannon barrel. “Fine! But don’t you dare miss! If you destroy a heavy rail cannon and a macrocrane just to put a hole in one of our buildings don’t expect me to take any more of your early morning calls to clean up your-“

The Iron Gage suddenly banged its knuckles on the cyborg pony’s head, and Gear Works yelped and staggered.

“Priest, prepare the weapon to fire!” Luna repeated, glaring down at him through the blood-red lens of her helmet.

Gears glared back through the shining green optic clusters within his hood, but he said nothing. His servo arm reached up and opened a panel next to the main power cables, revealing an assortment of buttons, switches, and sockets. His tail swiveled around and reared back, scorpion-like, and then plunged into one of the sockets.

“… All right, I can power the magnets in sequence from here,” Gears grumbled. “You may not want to be standing on the cannon when it fires, though. Without the regulator fields the barrel won’t survive a discharge.”

Celestia frowned, staring at the massive weapon thoughtfully. “Now that I think about it… could we have just placed a linked portal at the top of the gun and then opened another one facing down the street? That would have been much easier.”

The sound of metal smashing into metal came from Gears, followed by an outpour of angry-sounding static.

“’Tis no time! Aim the cannon!” Luna bellowed.

The alicorns once again took hold of the broken rail cannon, but this time their magic concentrated on one end of it. That end lifted up, swiftly bringing the entire weapon more or less parallel to the street. Gear Works, who was attached to the side of the gun, yelped and quickly mag-locked his hooves onto the outer plating below his access panel before he was carried up into the air above the ground. Luna spread her legs and braced herself, pointing her horn forward.

“Shell of rage and iron, We beseech thee! Guide our hoof so that this lance of devastation should find the foe! Reveal to us the way forward!” the Princess of the Night bellowed.

“Are… Are you talking to your armor suit?” Celestia asked hesitantly.

A large, glowing track appeared within Luna’s visor, sweeping down the street and tilting slightly to the left. The outline of Big Bloo stepped into the intersection dead ahead, just out of line with the shot.

Luna’s horn pulsed brighter, and the metal under her hooves creaked in protest from the tremendous force need to shift its aim. Big Bloo walked into the middle of the street, and a targeting reticule flashed over it.

“LOOSE THE CANNON!!” Luna roared, stamping a hoof.

“Omnissiah forgive us,” Gears whimpered.


Sparks blasted from around the Dark Acolyte’s dataspike, and a gentle electric hum quickly rose to an ear-splitting shriek. A brilliant beam flashed across the city; a rolling trail of flame where the hypersonic projectile’s passing ignited the air.

The cannon barrel split on one side, the outer case tearing from the oscillating magnetic fields deforming the superstructure. The power sockets exploded one by one, gradually crawling over the length of the cannon barrel in a steady march of crackling detonations. Whips of partially-melted cables flopped weakly on the ground like wounded tentacles, still buzzing with raw energy. The dismembered weapon shook, grinding away at the macrocrane beneath it and caving in the top of the structure a few more feet. A wave of silvery particles blew up into the air from the breach, like a dusty cough, as superheated metals were released to the air and rapidly cooled back to a solid state.

The barrel, suspended in the air via magic on one end, unceremoniously crashed back down. Gear Works was wrenched free of his perch and slammed into the street on his back, and Pinkie Pie was nearly bowled over from the massive pieces of broken plating that flew off the cannon like shrapnel. The entire gun collapsed from the impact, its various segments snapping apart one by one and dropping as massive, inert, partially shredded rings.

Only the section Luna was standing on remained unsettled, as it sat more-or-less stable on top of the macrocrane. The mare herself paid no heed to the destruction unleashed all around her; the quaking of the cannon barrel, the rending of its structure, and not even the various discharges of gas and debris seemed to disturb her.

The Princess of the Night listened, entranced, to the echoing death cry of an Ursa Major, and the last gasp of the assault on Ferrous Dominus.

****

Serra-class cargo transport T-338, bridge

*By Tau’va... it’s… it’s dead. I don’t know what happened, but…*

Several screens on the bridge of the lander showed still-frame picts of Ferrous Dominus. A fiery streak cut across the city’s street grid, striking Big Bloo in the side. The light and particulate interference made the images grainy, and the angle obscured wherever the discharge had come from, but there was no disguising the sheer scale of the weapon. Jets of flame scorched nearby buildings around its passing, and the impact with its massive target had blown out all the armorglass and shuttered windows within a block of its impact.

The enormous bear itself was frozen in mid-roar, its head flung up to the sky while its body lurched sharply to the side. A creature equal in size and might to an Imperial Titan, felled by a weapon of somehow ever greater scale.

Voidsong studied the picts silently while the crew murmured in speculation and awe. That the Chaos pirates had killed the Ork-dominated warbeast hardly impressed her. However, there were strategic implications that could not be denied. The Company was wounded, but not broken, and had cleared the last of the primary threats endangering their home.

She was out of time.


*Prepare for immediate ascent. Keep our trajectory outside of their anti-ship batteries, but we need altitude, NOW,* Voidsong said suddenly.

The Earth Caste crew looked shocked. *But… Black Point is-*

*Too far away,* Voidsong snapped, her voice cold as ever. *I regret leaving loyal Fire Warriors behind, as always, but the base represents too great a risk now. Change our heading.*

The crew moved to comply, staggered as they were by this newest setback. The Fio’o peered more closely at the pict-capture on the main screen, squinting at the impact point.

*This… This is… a starship-class rail cannon?* He breathed the words, as if he dared not contemplate such a thing. *How did the Gue’la construct such a thing? How did they fire an ANTI-SHIP weapon at a ground target?!*

*They are resourceful, desperate, and insane. Such a combination has led to countless mythical feats of destruction,* Voidsong said acidly. *I intend to leave their sphere of influence before such a thing is used on us.*

The bridge crew went to work, and the lander creaked ominously while its angle of movement shifted considerably.

Then, a muffled explosion came from outside the hull, near the bottom, and one of the fio’la hissed.

*Blast! We lost another vertical thruster! Our speed has been nearly cut in half compared to when we lifted off!*

Voidsong frowned. *We left the firing range of the fortress’s point defense weapons long ago.*

*Yes, Shas’o. It must have been residual damage catching up with us when we ignited the vertical lift. They can’t-*

Another explosion came from below, and several crew glanced at each other nervously.

Then one of them slammed a fist onto his console and cursed. *Gunship! We have an interceptor right under us! It’s opened fire!*

*How did we not notice until now?* Voidsong barked.

*I’ve never controlled an augur station before, Shas’o! I’m still managing this device according to the instruction slate!*

*How do we lose it? Aren’t there any weapons on this boat at all?*

*Is there only one? Why did they not send a full squadron?* Voidsong asked.

*I don’t know, Shas’o. It seems to be one of the patterns used primarily to transport assault teams rather than a pursuit fighter.*

*Get those void shields back up! Re-route power from the damaged engines!*


While the bridge crew barked orders and worried over their pursuer, Voidsong considered other possibilities.

It didn’t make much sense that they had dispatched only one gunship to chase after the escaping lander. Combat resources were currently stretched thin and endangered, but surely they warranted a wing of fighters if they warranted any response at all. Unless, of course, they were very confident a single gunship would be enough…

*Get me an augur scan of the hull,* Voidsong commanded.

*Yes, Shas’o. The gunship is-*

*No, not the gunship. OUR hull. Scan for anything attached to it.*

*Ah… Okay…* The Fio’la worker shifted his eyes anxiously between the battlesuit and his station instruments. *Hmm. These reading are odd. There’s… something on the hull, all right. It’s moving. I’ll attempt to ascertain-*

*Don’t bother,* Voidsong said sharply. Her battlesuit turned on its heel, heading to the door. *It’s a strike force. Probably Mechanicus. They’re sabotaging the lander.*

She reached the door and halted, turning its sensor head toward the crew. *Maintain our ascent according to my orders. We’re still vulnerable. I’ll resolve the threat.*

Without waiting for a response, the battlesuit stepped out into the hallway.


Outside of the bridge, several Fire Warriors stood guard in the hall. They turned sharply as Voidsong emerged, clutching their pulse carbines to their chests.

*We have boarders on the hull exterior. They’ll be trying to access maintenance hatches and sabotage power relays and fuel cells,* Voidsong barked while she stomped between the soldiers. *We also have a gunship cutting apart our engines. I’ll see what I can do about that, but I need the rest of the battlesuits ready to deploy on the hull exterior as soon as they can. Get down to the cargo bays and assist them! Now!*

*Yes, Shas’o! Ah…* One Fire Warrior hesitated when Voidsong turned a corner and disappeared down the hall. *Shas’o! The airlocks are on the level below us! There’s no access to the exterior that way!*

*Yes there is,* Voidsong retorted. She continued down the hall, and her heavy footsteps soon fell out of earshot.


*What is she up to? There’s nothing over there, is there?* asked one soldier.

*No idea. I didn’t have time to study the maps.* The other soldiers jogged past, heading toward the stairwell. *Let’s get the others ready to deploy! We’ll need to WHOA!*

The Fire Warriors stumbled to a halt when an insect squeezed through the vent near the top of the hallway. It was large for a bug; almost the size of a rat with a green coloration and yellow mottling on its wing case.

Its internals were mostly black, as the Tau learned when one of them smashed it against the wall with his pulse carbine.

*These Chaos gue’la are disgusting,* the soldier hissed, wiping off the side of his weapon. *Feeble minds, slaves to superstition, and they can’t even keep vermin off their starships. Do you think there’s a nest on board?*

*Shas’vre, we don’t have time to sanitize the vessel! Get to the hangar and… and, uh…*

The other soldier trailed off as another bug crawled out of the vent. Along with another. And another. A vent on the opposite wall started rattling, and a pair of insectoid antenna poked out from the metal slits.

*What is this?! Shoot them!*

*Shoot the bugs? Really?*

*Shoot them or run, Shas’la! There are too many!*

*Tau’va, where did they all come from?!*

*OW! Get it off! Get it off me!*

*Eeyaaah! Gyaaah! AAAAAAAAAAH!!*

****

Ferrous Dominus sector 9

Gox gasped and started coughing violently. Her body shuddered, and pain surged through every joint. Everything hurt. Except the parts of her body she couldn’t feel anymore. Those were fine. Or they had been torn off entirely, which was very not-fine. One of those.

A bloody haze clouded her thoughts. She was pretty sure she had been leading Big Bloo on a winding course through the city, trying to find her way to a good exit point. Now she was… elsewhere. On the ground. Was it the ground? There was this dark, oily substance everywhere. It smelled elemental, somehow. Like fresh rain and dark soil and crackling fire all at once.

Time passed, and more senses and thoughts slowly came into focus. Gox was still in Ferrous Dominus. The ground was covered in some inexplicable fluid, but it was also littered with Ork corpses. Big Bloo was…

She twisted her neck around, painful as that simple motion was. A terrified quiver ran through the Guardian’s body. Big Bloo was dead. Very, very dead. She had no idea what had happened, but after identifying the enormous corpse behind her, Gox came to the belated conclusion that she was lying in a giant puddle of the thing’s blood, or whatever bizarre concoction made up its internal fluids.

That realization, in turn, spurred several subsequent concerns. Gox had shifted back to her real form. She was still in enemy territory. The death of Big Bloo marked the removal of the final threat to the humans’ armies. The invasion had failed.

“Regrettable. Now, to get out of here…” Gox slowly pushed herself up, feeling her legs wobble under her. She had been injured, perhaps seriously, but she had no time to take stock of her injuries. For now it was enough that she could feel all of her legs. All she had to do was reach an obscured position where she could track her surroundings and then shapeshift when appropriate. In the bedlam following the assault, it would be trivial to escape the city.

Gox had barely taken a single step when a thick, meaty hand grabbed onto her hind leg.


“Wuzzis fing?” A Nob was kneeling on the ground behind the changeling, one hand clamped tightly around her hind leg and the other groping blindly on the ground for a weapon. Blood dribbled freely down the side of the Ork’s head, and he was swaying unsteadily from side to side, but the warrior was obviously lucid enough to restrain an enemy, at least.

“Leggo, ya git!” Gox barked, automatically defaulting to Orkish slang.

Her horn flickered, but a sudden surge of pain broke the changeling’s concentration. Her vision spun, and Gox nearly collapsed on the spot from her vertigo.

More Orks started standing up. Although much of the crew had been wiped out along with their combat beast, several had survived being flung into the streets below. Gox only realized belatedly that this made her the only non-Ork in the immediate vicinity.

The Nob stood up, hauling Gox’s leg with him. She yelped and tugged, trying to break free. The Nob yanked her back and slammed his fist into her side, knocking the wind out of her.

“W-Wait! No!” Gox started coughing painfully. “Da humies-I mean, the humans are coming! Don’t you want to fight them? Because they sure want to fight you!”

“Dere’s sumfin funny ‘bout dis hoss,” the Nob noted, ignoring her pleas. “Iz got holes innit. But we aint’ shot it up, yet!”

“We’z gonna add s’more?” asked another alien, eagerly loading his slugga.

Gox’s struggling became ever-more frantic. She could see large, metal shapes advancing down the street through the pollution haze. Tanks. And every Ork was surrounding her, completely oblivious to the threat.

She tried to change shape. Even an Ork would be unlikely to be fooled by an Ork that had been a changeling Guardian just seconds ago, but perhaps the shock and confusion would give her an opportunity to escape.

The moment her horn lit up a metal-shod boot slammed into her stomach. Gox collapsed onto her side, gasping desperately. Her horn sputtered, and then went dark.

“Feh. Dis wun ain’t nuffin’ speshul. Kill it and le’s go,” the Nob sneered.

“Please, stop this! They’re coming! They’re going to kill all of us!” Gox begged.

She received another kick for her trouble. A slugga went off, and new surges of pain flooded her body as the gun’s report rang in her ears. Changeling blood mixed with the strange fluids below, forming new, colorful, and terribly morbid patterns over the street.

“You… You’re all-“ A choppa wedged into her back, and Gox interrupted herself with a pained gasp.

Past the ring of alien brutes, the tanks of the 38th Company ground to a halt. Cannons slowly positioned themselves to take aim, and heavy bolter sponsons swiveled into place in preparation for a lethal, concentrated volley.

“… You’re all loveless, vile, smelly idiots, and I hated being one of you, and now we’re all going to die,” Gox snapped even as her body started to go numb. “Tartarus take you all, alien scum.” She closed her eyes and relaxed, feeling oddly satisfied at the admission.

The tanks fired.

****

Serra-class cargo transport T-338, exterior

+Warning: Vessel acceleration vector has altered. Tactical outlook modified. Processing…+

A Scavurel soldier looked up, and an altimeter blinked over his visor, flashing a series of increasing numbers. The clouds above started approaching as the massive metal floor underfoot roared up into the sky.

Five of the cyborgs held a perimeter on the lander’s hull, their augmetic feet mag-locked to the bulkheads. Behind them was a large pit several meters across that had been carved into the superstructure. The sounds of las-welders and melta cutters crackled from the pit as the other Scavurel and the Dark Techpriest they were escorting rapidly dug a hole through the bulkheads to the critical systems. Plating had to be breached carefully, and the Mechanicus saboteurs had to avoid those structural blocks that would open up into the ship interior.

While the pirates would normally seek entry into the vessel itself to cripple its systems, they were quite aware of the heavy complement of troops that the Tau were escaping with. Instead, it was decided that the vessel would merely be crippled so that it might be forced to land. At that point, it could be surrounded and its occupants hunted down at the Company’s leisure once its military assets were less occupied. The lander could be recovered and repaired, and the alien traitors shown an appropriately horrific fate.

+Warning: Grid surge detected. Savior pod system engaged.+

The Core, the unit leader, immediately snapped his head toward the source of the disruption. His taser goad crackled, energy dancing along its tines at the soldier’s agitation. Warning runes and data-screed flashed across his visor in a jumble of information.

Some twenty meters away, a piece of armor plating was blown off of the hull by carefully placed microcharges. A cylinder-shaped vessel arose from the cell underneath it, sliding up slowly like a rising piston. Then it blasted off, rocketing up into the air with the single-use heavy thruster attached on its bottom.

The Scavurel were on their guard, weapons ready, but none did anything but observe as the savior pod launched. Several seconds later, the pod suddenly flashed as an energy discharge tore it apart.

+Anomaly. No external discharge detected. Emission originating within savior pod. Causation: pod failure/occupant malfunction/ordnance detonation?+ muttered the unit Core.

+Only one pod launched. Either this was some sort of attempt to launch an improvised missile, or some coward is fleeing while escape is still likely,+ a Dreg grumbled in rougher, informal Binary.

+Error detected: No causation of explosive reaction in latter hypothesis.+

The Scavurel soldier turned away, the edges of his cloak whipping in the wind. +The Machine Spirits rejected the xeno fool. The Dark Gods have many ways of taking vengeance upon their enemies.+

The Core glanced upward again, unsatisfied. The remains of the savior pod flew back, falling away from the lander’s ascent path. A stray splash of sparks erupted from nowhere, leaving a strange shimmer in the air.

He shifted his vision mode just in time to identify the foot of a battlesuit descending toward his head.


Voidsong landed with a sickening crunch as bone and metal shattered under the weight of her armor. A last-second burst of her jet pack minimized the jolt to her system, and she had her weapons aimed the moment she touched down. One shot from her fusion blaster at point-blank range vaporized a cyborg from the waist up, leaving his legs standing comically on their own, feet fixed to the hull. Her plasma gun took down the next-nearest soldier, burning through flesh and metal with equal ease and rendering the Dreg into a smoldering heap.

The remaining two Scavurel were moving in an eye blink, instantly reverting strategic control from the Core to the Dark Techpriest. One hit the deck in a roll, his servo arm latching on to the edge of a discarded armor plate in passing. When he pushed himself upright again the plate came with him, propping upright to form a barricade. The other Scavurel leapt at just the right time to land in a crouch behind the plate, ducking her head out of the line of fire.

+Proximity warning! Battlesuit detected; heavy stealth sub-pattern. Anti-armor weaponry confirmed. Chances of combat success 8.291% and falling.+ The two soldiers shifted to the ends of the barricade, gripping their lasguns tightly. +Engaging.+

As one, they leaned out with their weapons ready to rake the Tau defender. They saw only the ruined bodies of their companions.

+Enhancing aural sensitivity. Check air-flow vectors for mass displacement. Do not-+

He was interrupted by the sound of a battlesuit landing from a high jump behind him, its feet scraping across the hull and its jetpack firing a sudden, intense burst of thrust. The Scavurel again dove away, which managed to save one of them from the flanking plasma fire. The other hit the ground with smoking holes in her body and a burst of static erupting from her vocalizer.

The other Scavurel jumped to his feet and loosed a burst of lasblasts at Voidsong, who was in no position to evade. He dashed behind a spire, barely ducking out of sight ahead of a screaming bolt of plasma.


Voidsong spat a curse, glancing at her diagnostic display. The lasbolts did minimal damage, but every crack in her armor made her cloaking field less effective. A single visible fluctuation could mean the difference between life and death in a close-quarters fight such as this one.

She shimmered into invisibility again, and then connected her comms to her men inside the lander.

*Shas’ui, I need that support! Where are-*

A hideous scream filled her ears, almost causing her battlesuit to recoil.

*GO! GO! GET OUT OF GYAAAEEH!!* The shrill whine of energy weapons followed the cry of agony. Shifting machinery, small detonations, and some kind of persistent buzzing noise turned the feed into a useless, horrible cacophony.

Voidsong quickly switched her connection while she hovered away from her previous position with her jetpack. The noise was mostly obscured by the rushing wind and the roar of the lander’s engines, but it still meant she’d be much easier to detect when she faced enemies again.

*Fio’o! What’s happening down there?! The boarding team is in a panic!* Voidsong demanded.

*It’s an infestation, Shas’o! We don’t know where they came from! Some kind of insects are pouring into the main halls, and-*

Banging noises interrupted the transmission. There was more shouting, indecipherable to Voidsong, but no blood-curdling screams, at least. Then more banging noises, but this time from outside her suit, coming from the open wound in the lander’s hull.

Scavurel soldiers leapt from the pit, landing on the edge of the opening and instantly dropping into crouching combat positions. Three of them wielded lasguns, while the others boasted phosphor pistols and flickering energy shields projected over a metal span bolted onto their forearms. The shields created a protective screen for the others, who searched the area to try and spot their assailant.

Then came the Dark Techpriest. Steel appendages akin to a scuttling insect clambered over the edge of the hull breach, carrying with them a hunched body wrapped in a black shroud. A servo arm that resembled a fanged maw hung over its head, along with an array of less imposing technical mechatendrils. A sizzling energy cannon hung from one arm, while a thick, bulky augmetic arm on the other side carried the priest’s power axe.

The sound from Voidsong’s comms stabilized. *We managed to block the vents and seal off the room before they got in here, but we’re trying to figure out how to vent sections of the ship while we’re still in an atmosphere!*

*I’m not getting my support, am I?* Voidsong sighed.

A moving screen of fragmented light swept across the deck, originating from the Dark Techpriest. Voidsong shifted away to try to get behind a raised bulkhead, but the edge of the screen tagged her arm before she moved out of sight.

In an instant, a furious barrage of lasblasts scoured the air behind her. They first bisected at a single point in the air, and then the shots started spreading away from each other in burst fire to generate a growing web of burning light. A fascinating firing pattern for dealing with hidden enemies, if not useless against one crouched behind cover as she was.

A high-pitched whine filled the air, and Voidsong felt a cold chill run down her spine. She rushed further behind the bulkhead, putting more space between her battlesuit and the raking lasfire.

A shriek cut through the air before a section of the bulkhead behind her vanished in a burst of hot, flickering particles. The blue-white beam of the eradication ray punched through the metal and lashed out into the sky, burning away atmosphere with a sickening hiss before dissipating into clouds of light. Voidsong winced and tried to re-balance her stealth field to compensate for her armor damage. She’d never encountered that particular weapon before.

*Fio’o, can you deploy savior pods remotely? I need you to launch one for me.*

*Uh… yes, actually. Why, though?*

*Prepare to launch unit… 23-C. On my mark. The timing will be close, so pay attention!*


+Target not found. Area scan complete. Determining assault vectors. Threat must be eliminated before mission completion.+ The Dark Techpriests buzzed noisily while he removed a canister from his eradication ray and replaced it with a new one. With a twist the new munitions cell snapped into place, and then sunk into the particle accelerator with a hiss of air.

The Scavurel broke into two groups of three soldiers, including the one survivor of Voidsong’s assault. The raised section of the hull she was hiding behind was roughly twenty feet across, and the two groups each approached one end with a shield Dreg in the lead.

+Aural intercept detected. Active jetpack, thruster class F-19 H-2. Low-energy mode. Pinpointing target location…+

The Scavurel stopped at either end of the bulkhead, waiting for a data resolution before committing to the assault.

Suddenly, several micro-charges detonated under the feet of one of the groups, blasting aside restraining clamps and staggering the cyborgs. Before they realized what was happening a savior pod underneath them catapulted into the sky. One of the Scavurel was flipped over and landed painfully on his (largely organic) shoulder. The two others were not so lucky, and were launched upward with the pod to an altitude that guaranteed their descent would be fatal.

Another cyborg met his fate when the discharge of a fusion blaster tore through the bulkhead and into his chest. The others scattered, trying to get clear, but Voidsong was on top of them already. A pair of plasma bolts cut into the back of one, and then she darted toward the final target.

The Scavurel reversed course almost instantly, swiveling about with stunning speed to meet the battlesuit. The bayonet attached to his rifle plunged into the side of Voidsong’s torso component, ripping a wide tear into the much-abused armor layer. He ducked a swinging fist as the battlesuit tried to club him, and a spike-tipped mechatendril whipped around to stab into the suit’s sensor head, like a scorpion’s stinger.

Voidsong’s second swipe at the Dreg worked, smashing him off his feet and onto the ship’s hull. She lunged forward immediately, stomping the cyborg’s body underfoot to ensure he wouldn’t be re-joining the fight.

She turned on her heel and snapped off a plasma bolt. It struck the last Scavurel in the chest while he was struggling to stand up from where he had been flung by the savior pod launch. He collapsed with a weak burst of static, smoke puffing from the blackened hole in his torso.

Voidsong quickly re-cloaked, and then did a count of her enemies. The Dark Techpriest. Where did it…?

A high-pitched whine came from behind her, right next to the raised section of the hull she had emerged from.


Voidsong cursed as she dodged, screaming a litany of angry slurs in her native tongue while the eradication ray howled into the air. Her damage displays flashed around her arm – the one that held her fusion blaster – and then the suit component diagram for that part went hollow. It was gone.

She hit the ground and rolled, displaying uncanny agility for a battlesuit. Mid-roll her jet pack activated, carrying her off the top of the ship’s hull.

When she turned around, however, the Techpriest was already on top of her, his many legs scuttling across the bulkheads. A power axe scythed toward the suit’s head, slicing through part of it in a shallow gash. Steely tendrils snaked and stabbed from the hooded figure, lashing wildly and trying to entangle her. Voidsong swung back at the cyborg, but he leaned backward and avoided the attack with ease, his body curving like a snake.

These Techpriests fought using pre-programmed, ever-evolving combat protocols that determined the predicted combat response and controlled their reflexes ahead of time. If Voidsong tried to pull away to clear room for her plasma gun – the most obvious tactical option – her opponent would almost certainly prevail. Her cloaking field was useless at this point, and her skill wasn’t sufficient to overcome the Techpriest’s combat programming on its own.

The Dark Techpriest swung again, his power axe singing over the hollow roar of the lander’s engines.

Voidsong grabbed his axe around the haft, seizing it mid-swing and stopping it dead.

The Techpriest paused, and though his face was a cluster of green lights set in the darkness of his hood, the Shas’o imagined there was real shock behind the façade of metal and glass.

She slammed a brutal kick into the cyborg’s body, and the limb holding the power axe actually ripped out of its shoulder socket rather than relinquish its grip. The Techpriest lurched away, fluids gushing briefly from its shoulder.

A box on Voidsong’s shoulder opened, and a cluster of micro-explosives shot out at her foe like a shotgun blast. A defense field flashed in front of the Techpriest briefly, catching the worst of the discharges, but shrapnel and flame punched through to the armored body nursing its new wound. The engineer-cultist fell, slamming sidelong onto the hull of the lander while its legs and mechatendrils tried to restore balance.

Voidsong flipped the axe around in the grip of her battlesuit’s hand, and then plunged the spike atop the weapon directly into the cyborg’s hood. She didn’t know how to activate the axe’s power field and she didn’t try; metal shrieked and tore and less ductile materials shattered before the raw force behind the strike. The Dark Techpriest keeled over, a Binaric howl erupting from his vox.

“And so it ends,” Voidsong hissed in Gothic, leaning further into the blow. “Your final effort, wasted. Just another pile of bodies in my wake.”

The Techpriest was fading fast, but not yet dead. His tendrils whipped and thrashed, and the lights of his optics flickered even as fluids oozed into the gorget of his personal armor. Voidsong watched him die, both as a matter of prudence and some lingering fascination with the cyborgs.

She remembered the last time she had engaged one of the monstrous cultists of the Dark Mechanicus in battle: in Canterlot, while facing Warsmith Solon himself. Then, as now, she had been ascendant, having outwitted her enemies against dubious odds. This time, however, the ending would be different. She would take back her ship, rejoin her Sept, and return to this wretched planet with a force capable of annihilating the fortress from orbit.

A proximity warning flickered in the corner of her eye.


With a sizzling crack, a single powered blade plunged into the back of Voidsong’s battlesuit.

It didn’t even occur to Voidsong to dodge until she felt the hot razor pierce her physical, living back. She gasped, and her battlesuit shuddered in sympathy. The crippled suit started to turn its head, but a hand reached up and seized it, holding it still.

*… It’s over, Shas’o. You lose.*

Voidsong felt like laughing when she heard the quiet, steely voice behind her. *Wraithstar. You’re here. Unbelievable. The one dagger that I couldn’t see coming. How long have you been watching and waiting for the perfect strike?*

*I’ve been trying to get inside the lander airlocks. It took some time to get back here once I realized you were on top of the vessel. I didn’t hide in the shadows and watch you kill these men while waiting for an opportunity. I’m not like you,* Wraithstar hissed, shoving the other battlesuit down to the bulkheads.

Voidsong’s suit thumped against the hull, its one remaining arm bouncing limply. *No… you’re not like me,* she mumbled. *You’re broken. Look at you. Even escape is too much for you now. So desperate are you to please your vile ‘masters.’ Sickening.*

A whirring noise came from the decks around them, and several large vents opened up on the top of the cargo lander. The sound of rushing wind doubled, and insects started pouring out of the vents. Hundreds of them were blown into the sky, streaming up over the sides of the lander and spreading into the air.

Wraithstar watched the purge of the lander’s  ventilation system silently, barely glancing away from his target. *It seems escape is too much for you, too. Did you know you were leading our survivors to their doom? Do you care?*

Voidsong didn’t answer. Within her battlesuit, her comms system received a link from the lander’s bridge again.

*Shas’o, we managed to purge the ventilation shafts and the infested rooms, but… the men in those rooms… I don’t think they’ll survive. That’s over half our warriors. We’re having difficulty working out the distribution system for the remaining atmosphere – we don’t want to risk sucking up any of the creatures we just ejected or exposing our crew to any surviving insects in the vented rooms – but we should have enough air to-*

Voidsong cut the link. Her senses were starting to fade, and she didn’t want to spend her final moments listening to a bleak status report.

*What do you think you’ve accomplished here, Wraithstar? You’ve abandoned Tau’va to fight for corrupt monsters,* Voidsong said wearily.

*The Greater Good asked me to fight and die in order to doom a world. Chaos asked me to fight and survive in order to save it,* he replied evenly.

*You haven’t saved anything,* Voidsong snapped. *You’ve simply sentenced it, and us, to a different kind of doom.*

She convulsed painfully, and then spat a glob of pale blue blood onto her suit display. Her breathing was more ragged now, and she couldn’t feel much of her lower body.

*… But I suppose it doesn’t matter now. The project was completed. The Empire is saved. Our lives are nothing in comparison. Our fate is nothing but a footnote in the history of the Lamman Sept’s wars,* Voidsong sighed.

*My life no longer belongs to the Sept,* Wraithstar retorted. Then he pushed the other battlesuit so that in lay on its side. *Now eject, Shas’o. If I can return your body mostly undamaged, perhaps I can get it turned to stone again and returned to the ponies’ garden.*

*A hero’s burial for the planet’s greatest villain,* Voidsong whispered, a rueful chuckle escaping her lips. *It doesn’t sound all that bad…*


Wraithstar waited several seconds, and then a sharp crack came from Voidsong’s battlesuit. The emergency ejection system within her cockpit broke open the front armoring and inner frame structure, and it spat Voidsong out onto the hull of the lander. Her body rolled limply across the bulkheads, leaving a grisly cyan streak over the dirty metal. She came to a stop next to the corpse of the Dark Techpriest, who still had his own power axe stuck in his face.

Wraithstar kicked aside the empty battlesuit, and then glanced up. The air was getting very thin, now. The lander would soon break atmosphere. The gunship had already pulled off its pursuit after the assault team had died. The remaining Chaos void ship was performing a system patrol and wouldn’t return in time to intercept. This transport would reach its destination and dock with the Rep’talal.

And after that? What would these desperate survivors find when they reached the tomb that Chaos had made out of a fully crewed Tau battleship?

As he lifted Voidsong’s body up and held her under one arm, he connected his comms system to the bridge below him.

*Goodbye and good luck.*

*Wh-What?* stuttered a voice in return. *Who is-*


Wraithstar didn’t bother to listen to a response. He cut the channel immediately and took to the skies, Voidsong clutched tight in the crook of his battlesuit’s arm.