Black Horizons

by SFaccountant

Redemption Denied

Black Horizons
By SFaccountant

Chapter 3
Redemption Denied

Space station Eschel
Deck 36-C, weapons hub

The heavy bolter thundered the moment the gunner glimpsed movement, spitting a torrent of mass-reactive shells down the length of the hallway. The bolts crashed against a wall of thick, folded adamantium already pitted from impacts and scorched by laser blasts. The boarding shield pushed forward against the tide of ammunition, propelled by heavy greaves laden with chains and spikes. The rectangular slot sized for a boltgun was empty; its bearer didn’t bother trying to fire his weapon while he closed with the defense emplacement.

The Iron Warrior’s shield had nearly come apart by the time he reached the gun, with several holes large enough for subsequent rounds to pass through. He used it as a club to smash the heavy bolter aside, and then his chainsword descended on the terrified gunner.

Lasblasts splashed across the Marine’s armor along with fans of blood as the men behind the gunner opened fire. A few of the defenders hurled grenades instead, and the Astartes couldn’t push his way past his first victim in time to avoid them. The frag grenades exploded, and the Chaos Space Marine fell with an enraged snarl.

Behind him was another Iron Warrior. But bigger, with long talons, a pair of servo arms mounting scythe blades over his shoulders, and flames sprouting from his palms.

“Iron within,” Dest intoned while the Warpflame swirled into a sphere between his claws, “iron without.”

The fireball exploded in the middle of the defenders, and a half dozen men perished within the coruscating flames. One of the soldiers flung himself to the deck in time to avoid the worst of it, and he scrambled around a corner before pushing himself to his feet.

“We can’t hold them!” the man gasped, sprinting down the narrow corridor connecting the hall to the gunnery cloister. “Help! Let me in!”

He fell against the thick, armored door to the cloister, pulling fruitlessly on the hatch access latch. “Please! In the Emperor’s name, open up! They’ll kill us all! Don’t leave us out-“

A metal hand with fingers like a raptor’s talons fell upon the man’s shoulder, and his breath caught in his throat. The gauntlet didn’t squeeze him, nor did the claws pierce his armored jacket.

“You’re in the way. Move,” Dest commanded.

The soldier slowly shifted to the side, his body quivering under the Iron Warrior’s touch. When he reached the bulkhead he flattened his back against it, whispering prayers under his breath. Dest took his hand off the man and turned toward the cloister hatch. He pulled an arm back, tendons popping and ceramite cracking, and his talons grew together and formed a thick, sword-like wedge wrapped in a sheathe of seething crimson.

He plunged his claw into the door, tearing through the lock and punching through to the other side. He wrenched his arm back out, and then briefly inspected the hole. He had torn through the lock on this side of the door, but the cloister hatch still wouldn’t budge. Most likely bar locks secured it from the other side.

Dest turned back to the soldier, who was still frozen in place. His non-blade hand reached for the man’s belt, taking the single frag grenade next to his laspistol and tugging it free.

“Thank you,” he said politely, flicking away the pin. Then he shoved the grenade into the hole in the door.

Dest turned away from the gunnery cloister, ignoring the panicked shouts and subsequent detonation. There were two more Iron Warriors waiting at the end of the corridor, and one spoke up as he approached.

“Brother Helkan is wounded. He cannot run, but the injuries are not mortal.”

Dest beckoned to the Astartes that had spoken. “Brother Danan, you and I will move on to the next cloister. Brother Herros, we have a prisoner. Escort him and Helkan back to the docks.”

“You’ll need more support,” growled the second Chaos Marine.

“These defense points are nothing. They cannot stop me. But I’d rather not have to kill the prisoner. He’s been quite cooperative so far.” Dest chuckled, speeding up down the hall. “Hurry, brothers! The guns are not yet silent! Eschel will soon be ours!”

Space station Eschel
Command deck

“This is all that’s left, then?”

“Well, not quite, Lord Director. There’s a number of squads who were cut off from their path of retreat when the fallback order came. I estimate there are some sixty men stuck outside of our lines of control.”

“Those lines are shifting rapidly. The Astartes kill teams have penetrated deep into the fortress to hit the gunnery cloisters, and they’re still on the move. Half the bombardment turrets are inactive.”

“They also struck the generator room early and managed to choke off the power supply to our lance batteries. They haven’t shut down power entirely, though; they must expect to control the whole station soon or they would have disabled it entirely to weaken our remaining defenses.”

“And for that, they can only have one target in mind,” lamented the Director Primus. “This room.”

The Director Primus of the space station Eschel looked down from his command throne at the ranks of young men and women standing at attention below him. The throne was positioned on a raised platform, looking down over a grand hallway on one side and the many control terminals of the command center on the other.

Nearly one hundred soldiers were crammed shoulder to shoulder in the grand hall, each of them wearing pressurized boarding suits or heavy combat armor. Another twenty or so injured were lined up on the wall next to them, and more were still being carried in from outside. These ones bore all manner of injuries from missing limbs to hideous burns, and some had perished a short time after being carried to safety, lying still on the deck while the other troopers pointedly ignored them. Outside the command center another two dozen soldiers manned the emplaced guns and barricades that protected the station’s nerve center. It was a formidable bulwark, and a much greater concentration of military force than was established anywhere else in the station, but it would not be enough. Not against Space Marines.

“Friends and fellow servants of the almighty Emperor,” the Director intoned, “today our home is threatened by the insidious and traitorous forces of the Great Enemy… Chaos. These treacherous cowards and corrupted filth advance on us even now, seeking to take Eschel for their own profane purposes.”

He stood up from his command throne, shaking a fist in the air and clenching his teeth. “Our enemy has struck a fierce blow, but he is WEAK. He attacks from hiding, masquerading as a humble trader out of fear of the Imperium’s might!”

A pair of soldiers entered the command center while he spoke, helping along another soldier to get to the line of injured defenders. The Sergeant seemed lightly wounded, but he clutched his abdomen tenderly as he was laid against the wall.

“The enemy is coming for us, my brothers. But they will suffer greatly to take this prize. And then, when they’ve climbed over the bodies of their allies and slogged through an ocean of blood to reach this throne, that prize shall be DENIED them!” The Director nodded at his aide. “This room will be armed with melta charges. The Planetary Governor has been warned of this treachery and is even now mobilizing to protect our cities. Our patrol fleets have called for aid and are regrouping for a counter attack that will wipe out this plague once and for all!”

He lowered his fist again, sneering. “But to fulfill our duty and foil these villains, we must hold the line! Today may well see us called to the Emperor’s side, but we fall as martyrs! Eschel belongs to the Emperor and it will die in His service!” His voice shook, and he turned his face skyward, speaking to the ranks like a preacher. “Death to the heretics! For the Imperium of-“

Several terrified shouts came from the side of the room, interrupting the director, and the ranks of troops were briefly illuminated by a flash of green light. The men turned to see what was wrong, and the Director Primus stopped to see what had warranted the sudden panic.

Chrysalis took a step toward the stunned soldiers, sighing in contentment. Her body was that of a Chaos Terminator, boasting thick plating of servo-assisted armor, a pair of oversized flamers, and a servo arm tipped with a skull at the end arched over her back. Her helmet visor pulsed a strange, fluorescent green, while a jagged black horn extended from the forehead. It was a restrained body, considering the many larger options her warforms offered her, but the changeling queen still relished the raw power surging through her with even the slightest movement.

The soldiers were already leaping into action, most of them turning their weapons onto the intruder while others started sprinting for cover. Chrysalis simply spread her arms apart and fired.

Huge waves of fire blasted into the soldiers, knocking over the closest ones and washing through the rest of the ranks. Chrysalis brought her arms together, blanketing the entire lobby area in flame, and then spread them out again while she pushed the mimicked weapons to their limit. A few laser blasts splashed against her armor from either side, but she ignored them as easily as any true Terminator would.

“Okay, I admit it. I’m really enjoying this! This part of the slavery thing is kind of fun!” Chrysalis cackled as the inferno grew in front of her, spreading further among the scattering troops. She couldn’t make anything out anymore between the dancing flames and flailing bodies, so she finally let her weapons rest and turned toward the command center proper.

She spotted an aide fumbling with an extinguisher-sized melta charge, and the skull at the end of her servo arm opened its jaws. A laser beam emerged and pierced the woman’s leg, and she screamed and fell before dropping the charge on its side.

“Ah, ah, ah…” Chrysalis reached out with her levitation magic while she approached the woman and sent the bomb rolling into the flames behind her. Laser fire continued to crack against her armor, but it wasn’t nearly concentrated enough to pose a threat.

Her left arm flashed green, and then shifted from a flamer to a power fist. Chrysalis grabbed the woman by her arm and then hoisted her up, staring directly into her wide, terrified eyes.

“Which of these gadgets controls the weapons?” the changeling asked, nudging her head in the direction of the many control consoles. Her visor flashed, and the green light was reflected in the aide’s eyes a moment later.

The woman’s arm jerked upward like a marionette, pointing rigidly to one section of the banks of consoles within the control center. After a moment she seemed to realize what she was doing, and she pulled her arm back to her side.

An alarm klaxon blared, and suddenly jets of white mist erupted from the ceiling panels. The fire suppression system fought valiantly against the blaze in the lobby strategium, and smothered the fires that were threatening to spread further into the command center.

Chrysalis glanced backward. “Hmm. For the best, I suppose. The apes did say they wanted this place intact.”

A pair of plasma bolts rocketed from the shroud of mist. The first barely scraped Chrysalis’s shoulder pad in a near-miss, but another struck her square in the back, burning deep into the plating. The changeling staggered, struggling to hold her transformation against the surging pain.

A soldier in a scorched but intact boarding suit dashed out of the flames and mist, his plasma gun crackling while it charged the next shot. Chrysalis turned to spot the interloper, and then hurled the woman at him, knocking them both back into the vortex of anti-reactant tincture and burning promethium.

“Have to watch out for those glowing weapons,” Chrysalis grumbled, her arms shifting again. Each hand stretched into a rotary barrel, while ammo feeds snaked under her elbows to attach to a pair of ammunition drums appearing behind her shoulder pads.

The assault cannons roared into action, cutting across the room and into the shrouds of fire suppressant. Everywhere a lasblast emerged was swept by a punishing hail of bullets, tearing apart the survivors of her initial attack.

Another lasblast cut across her visor from her left side, and Chrysalis half turned to identify the source. Several of the station crew were sheltering behind their control centers and cogitator banks, armed with laspistols. Her servo arm aimed toward the man who had taken the shot, but then Chrysalis hesitated.

Rather than firing, she started walking into the control pits. Her helmet swiveled left and right, and her visor outlined and tagged each of the men and women cowering from her. Chrysalis walked past the one who had shot her, offering only an irritated snort.

“I believe I got all of the fighters, or drove them into the halls. I needn’t soil my hands killing simple workers. You may yet be of use…” She smiled behind her helmet, her unfamiliar face stretching into an amused sneer. “Let’s see…”

The changeling queen turned her assault cannons – still leaking smoke from the withering barrage she had unleashed earlier – back into talon-tipped gauntlets. Then she reached down and pulled a technician out into the open.

Once again, Chrysalis stared into the terrified eyes of the hapless human, and her visor flashed a bright green. “Seal the entrance to this room,” she commanded. An arc of green energy ran up and down her horn, crackling as it leapt across the gaps in the malformed ceramite.

The man stiffened, and one of his fingers started groping toward a particular console. Chrysalis put him down and then stomped off, walking toward the weapons command cogitator that had been identified earlier.

Another pair of lasblasts cracked against her back, and damage markers briefly flashed over her visor. She ignored them, briefly regretting that she hadn’t spent any time practicing with her warforms since she had been tested back at Ferrous Dominus. All kinds of runes and markers flickered confusingly across her visor, and she had only the slightest idea of what any of it meant. The modifications Solon had made had granted her power beyond her imagination, but ultimately they did not impart competence or understanding. Regretful, but Chrysalis supposed even the Warsmith’s devices had limits.

She reached down under the cogitator and pulled another command technician out onto the deck. The woman stared up at the massive armored form, quivering in fear as her eyes locked onto the glowing green visor.

“Lock down all the station’s weapons,” Chrysalis commanded, her magic sinking deep into the woman’s psyche. The pulsing glow of her visor was reflected in the technician’s eyes, but for a few seconds the changeling’s victim resisted.

The sound of a plasma discharge came from behind Chrysalis, and the crackling energy blast struck the weapons technician, incinerating much of her body instantly. Chrysalis recoiled and then spun on her heel, turning just in time to catch a second shot in the side of her chest. She gasped and staggered, feeling the searing plasma burn into her armor and start to eat into the frame.

“Emperor deliver us from your evil, heretic!” The Director Primus dashed across the upper deck of the command center, a plasma pistol poised over the guard railing and a short power sword in his other hand.

The servo arm turned to intercept the old man, but in a shocking display of agility he vaulted over the guard railing right over Chrysalis, making a long downward slash with his blade. The skull’s jaw opened, only for the head to be suddenly severed in burst of sparks and blue lightning. The Director landed in front of Chrysalis, and then leapt back when she swiped at him with a claw.

Chrysalis snarled angrily, and her arms flashed with magical light. Weapons schema swam through her thoughts, offering glimpses of dozens of tools of destruction at her metaphorical fingertips: power fists, chain blades, autocannons, laser arrays, disintegration spindles, plasma culverins, and melta torches all flashed before her eyes.

Apparently her attention wandered a moment too long. The Director fired another plasma shot into her chest plate, and then slashed at her arm with his power sword. The blade bit into the glowing armor, digging deep into the flesh while it was in a state of change and not fully hardened to its edge. The plasma bolt burned through the chest armor, searing the queen’s core. An angry shriek came from Chrysalis as she recoiled, and green smoke started rising from her shoulder pads and cowling.

“What in the name of Terra?” the Director retreated out of arm’s reach, watching in fascination as his opponent seemed to boil away before his eyes. Green whips of energy lashed and crackled across the armor suit, and plates and joints sizzled away into a teal-colored mist.

After a few seconds the rest of the massive Terminator simply collapsed, leaving behind a black, hole-ridden, four-legged creature clutching her chest and clenching her needle-sharp teeth angrily. Words failed the Director Primus, but his instincts brought his plasma pistol up to finish off the bizarre alien.

Chrysalis struck first, launching a jolt of energy with a bright flash of her horn and an enraged snarl. The Director reeled, and his subsequent shot went wide, landing the plasma bolt in a console.

“What is that? What happened to the traitor?”

“Xeno scum! Kill it!”

Chrysalis scrambled away as the crew started emerging from their hiding places. Some were brandishing laspistols, while others were taking up improvised weapons or sprinting for the lobby to scavenge a gun from the dead. She leapt into the air as a dart of crimson slashed by her leg, and her wings started buzzing desperately to carry her toward a large bank of auxiliary datastacks.

Two more lasblasts followed her, one of them striking her leg and burning a fresh hole through it. Chrysalis shrieked and dropped behind the wall of thrumming metal hives, landing out of sight of the defenders.

“Arm yourselves, men! Neither heretic nor alien will escape our wrath!” The Director raced after the changeling queen, smoke still rising from his chest where the magic bolt had struck. “Emperor deliver us from the perfidious witchcraft of the fallen horrors of the void, and the darkness within the hearts of curs and heretics!”

The Director reached the datastacks and jumped past them, his plasma pistol already humming while it cooked its next shot within its micro-fusion reactor. His shoe hit the deck and he turned on his heel.

“Yeek!” a woman in the dress of a aide flinched away, shielding her chest with her arms. She appeared to be pinned to the spot with a patch of strange green slime that covered her legs and stuck them to the floor.

The Director whirled around, glancing between the other humming metal towers. There were many spots to hide in this area of the control center, but he saw no hint of his quarry. “Blast! Where did it flee to?”

“She ducked under there, I think!” the woman on the floor pointed toward a corner of the data hives that was almost untouched by the flickering lumens. “She shot me with this… this SLIME and fled into the shadows!”

The Director took a step in the direction she pointed, and then glanced back at the woman. “She? The monster is female?”

“What? Of course she is. You couldn’t tell?” the aide asked, sounding slightly offended. “Not that it matters, of course. She’s getting away!”

The Director frowned, still staring at the woman. She was still holding one arm over her chest, clutching it tightly. “Are you wounded? You said it fired that slime at you.”

Chrysalis bit her lip, silently cursing the man’s eye for attention. She’d been worried he’d realize that the aide she was mimicking had been thrown aside while setting up the melta charge and probably killed, but it had been her wound that caught his eye. With her core damaged she didn’t have the energy to take on any bodies that were particularly large or powerful and with the Director’s attention on her she wouldn’t have the time to shift bodies anyway. More of the command crew were arriving behind the old man as well, nervously clutching laspistols. The situation had become untenable.

An explosion came from the entry hall.

“They’re here,” the Director snarled, promptly turning around and striding back into the command center proper. The crew rushed after him, leaving the bewildered changeling lying on the ground where they found her. “They’ll try to cut through to inflict minimal damage. We have minutes at the most!”

Something struck the blast doors, and the thick metal bowed inward. The locks creaked, straining under the tremendous force.

“Lord Director, they’re not cutting through,” a weapons officer said, his voice shaking as another impact struck the doors. “The soldiers are dead. We cannot-“

“Do not cower in the face of the wicked!” the Director shouted, striding up to the upper level that held his command throne. “Those that deny the glory of the Emperor will find no safety or succor within the halls of Eschel! This is our sacred oath!”

Twice more something struck the doors, snapping the internal locks. One of the plates was bent open far enough for a man to squeeze through, but the blows kept coming.

“Divine Emperor, deliver us from the perfidious heretic!” the Director prayed, his plasma pistol charging in his hand. “Holy Emperor, deliver us from the corruption of the xeno!”

The hammer blows kept coming, and the opening kept widening. Through the haze of the fire suppressant and the dim section lighting it was hard to get a good look at what waited on the other side, but a faint glint of gold was visible through the breach.

“Emperor be my shield, and I shall be thy sword!” the Director proclaimed, aiming his pistol toward the door. The remaining crew moved into covered positions, crouching behind railings, supports, and strategium tables while propping up their weapons. “In faith, we stand before the wretched traitors! In righteousness, we smite their vile pawns! In glory, we-“

An orb of swirling green arced up over the command platform, slamming into his back. The old man shouted in surprise as he was flung into and over the railing, tumbling some ten feet to the lower deck of the command center. The fall wasn’t fatal, but the moment he struck the floor the orb exploded, plastering a web of adhesive slime over his arms and legs.

Several of the crew spun around to see what had happened, only to see a shining emerald glow fade away around a bank of cogitators and a jagged black horn duck out of sight.

Another impact slammed into the blast doors, and a moment later the first Iron Warrior stepped into Eschel’s command center.

“My Lord, the command center is… largely pacified,” the Chaos Marine grumbled, stepping over the charred corpses dusted with white tincture.

A few lasblasts came from the other end of the entry lobby to crack against his armor, and he answered them with a single bolter shot. A defender was blasted apart, spraying the two technicians next to him with gore and shrapnel.

More Iron Warriors entered the command center, each one pausing to behold the carnage that had preceded them. After the fifth Astartes stomped into the room, a particularly large armored figure ducked through the ruined blast doors.

“Foul heretics!” sputtered the immobilized Director, his fingers twitching toward the plasma pistol lying inches away from his hand. “Show them no quarter, men! Slay them all!”

Sliver strode through the command center, heedlessly crushing the fallen defenders underfoot with each step. His hammer was held loosely at his side, still sparking from the many strikes that had been necessary to batter through the doors. A few laser shots lashed out at the hulk of disease-ridden armor, but he ignored them as easily as the curling mists of the fire suppressant.

“Sseize them.” Sliver lifted his hammer to gesture vaguely at the command center while he approached it. “Take them all alive. We have no oppossition here.” The Iron Warriors rushed past him to comply, and more troops started flooding into the room.

The Commander’s greaves kicked something aside while he advanced, and Sliver glanced down just long enough to identify a damaged heavy melta charge. He didn’t bother stopping, heading straight for the trapped Director Primus. Once he reached the Director he spun his hammer about so that it was upside-down and then let it fall to the deck, crushing the dropped plasma weapon under its head. He rested his arm on the butt of the hammer, silently peering down at the elderly man through the glowering lens of his helmet.

“Vile traitor! Though your treachery has won you Eschel, you will NEVER rule Ghessheim!” the old man spat.

“Fine,” Sliver said calmly. He looked up, his helmet slowly scanning back and forth while the other Iron Warriors subdued and restrained the crew. “Wass there ssomeone elsse here? There’ss quite a messs.”

A buzzing noise came from above, and Chrysalis landed atop the Director’s command throne. “Yes, hi. I’m here.” She brushed a hoof against the ruby core in her chest, and then winced when a spark of energy erupted from the brief contact. “My plan worked. You’re welcome.”

Sliver craned his head up and spent a few seconds observing the changeling queen. “… Eschel’ss gunss have not completely fallen ssilent. And you appear to be wounded.”

“Things got a little hectic after I cooked the small army that you’re standing on right now. Sorry,” Chrysalis grumbled, and then shifted uncomfortably, lifting her back hoof. “And yes, I took a few hits. One of these pests shot a hole through my leg!”

Sliver said nothing, still staring up at her.

“Yeah, okay, I know,” Chrysalis snapped, “but still! Those lasers can really hurt!”

A pair of Dark Techpriests scurried toward the control center while the Iron Warriors trudged the other way, dragging along their captives. Sliver briefly nodded to the cyborgs, and then hefted his hammer over his shoulder, mag-locking it onto a pair of braces on his back.

“Ssilence, inssect. Your tassk iss complete.” Sliver pointed at the Director. “Free thiss one.”

Chrysalis hopped over to the edge of the upper platform, looking over the railing. “He still has his sword, though.” The weapon was glued against the deck along with the rest of the man’s arm, but it hadn’t been knocked free of his grip like the pistol.

“Free thiss one,” Sliver said again. “Do not make me command you thrice.”

With an annoyed huff, Chrysalis fired another beam of magic down at the Director Primus. The slime covering him immediately dried and shriveled, crumbling to pale dust underneath him.

“Emperor take you, daemonic filth,” the old man snarled, pushing himself to his feet.

Sliver watched the man rise from the deck and take his power sword in a double-handed grip. “Director Primuss Issen Von Kerrig. Watch thiss man, inssect. Obsserve hiss movementss and hear hiss futile lamentationss. Make them your own.”

“Though I stand in the shadow of heresy and the alien I fear not,” Director Issen spat. He shifted to the side, circling around the enormous Astartes with his blade poised to strike. “The Emperor’s guiding light be my shield! The Emperor’s holy wrath be my sword! DIE, HERETIC!!”

He struck with surprising speed, his blade swinging for Sliver’s helmet face. Sliver moved even faster, his bulk swinging out of the way and his free hand grabbing Issen’s weapon arm. He hauled the old man up into the air, holding him high and close enough that they were almost nose-to-helmet.

“I trusst you have thiss man’ss face now, inssect?” Sliver asked as the Director swore and flailed against his grip.

“Yes. I do,” Chrysalis said.

Sliver puffed a cloud of yellow gas from his respirator, spraying Director Issen directly in the face. The man seized up almost immediately, and then started coughing.

“The inssect hass your face. The Iron Warriorss have your sstation. And now Nurgle hass your body.” Sliver dropped the Director Primus onto the deck. The man promptly stumbled and fell, his legs failing him while he heaved and clutched at his throat. “That will be all we need from you, Lord Director.”

Sliver turned on one heel, beckoning to Chrysalis with his free hand. The changeling queen hesitated briefly, watching the Director Primus writhe on the floor, but then she grimaced and flew down to follow the hulking Terminator.

“You have done… adequately,” Sliver decided after a pause. “Your asssisstance ssaved many livess thiss day. But you did not ssilence the gunss before we arrived. My Sspace Mariness have desstroyed mosst of the gunnery cloissterss on their own, but the Harvesst hass ssuffered for your laxity.”

Chrysalis groaned as she stepped over the many burnt bodies on her way to the exit. “That old man was much more… spry than I expected,” she grumbled.

“I’ve no doubt. And yet, ssuch a man iss the leasst of the opponentss we will call upon you to face.” Sliver stopped at the shattered doors of the command center, beckoning for the changeling to proceed ahead of him. “You’ve been given powerful giftss, inssect. Prove to uss you are worthy of them.”

“Okay, okay, fine,” she sighed, sulking slightly while she walked past him. “But for now I need to see the big boss. I think that geezer knocked something loose in me; the ticking sounds kind of off-rhythm now.”

“We will have time before the next phasse of our raid,” Sliver advised the changeling. “The sspace sstation Esschel is ourss.”

Grand Cruiser Blessed Redemption
Underdecks access junction F-9

The Lieutenant Commander turned to address the approaching Techpriest, a weary grimace on his face. “What is the situation? Quickly, now!”

“The situation is critical, Lieutenant,” the cyborg replied curtly. “Eschel is compromised. It has been boarded and its defenses will not hold. The defense fleet is crippled. Considering damage estimates of both friendly and enemy ships, the chances of victory are less than three percent. Our orbital resistance has failed.”

“And our status?”

“Far from nominal. The reactor will be active soon, and the macro-cannon batteries are loaded, but with engines critically damaged the Blessed Redemption will not be tactically viable. There is barely enough crew stuck in quarantine to man the weapons.”

“And the command crew is still planetside. No Captain, no gunnery masters, no auspex scriveners,” the Lieutenant growled.

“Affirmative. We are relying on signum relays from Eschel for targeting data, but we can expect transmissions to cease once the station is claimed by the enemy.” The Techpriest paused. “In addition… there may be another problem.”

“Another problem! Well, why not?!” the Lieutenant snapped. “We’re surrounded by traitors, don’t have enough men to use the vessel we’re trapped in, and holding back a swarm of who knows how many xenos digging through the underdecks! The situation can hardly get worse! Go on, what is it?”

The Techpriest hesitated. “… There was a signum convergence event that coincided with the attack on Eschel. After analyzing the data, I have determined that the enemy teleported onto the Blessed Redemption. However… their destination point seems to be the underdecks.”

“They teleported into… Emperor’s light!” The Lieutenant laughed, scratching his head under his beret. “The heretic scum had no idea what we were quarantined for and dropped right into the middle of a xeno infestation!”

“That appears to be the case. As our ability to monitor the quarantine zone is limited I am unable to gather more data on the threat, but I estimate a 14.47 percent chance of escaping to operational regions.”

“Rather high, don’t you think?”

“I cannot discount the possibility of uniquely profane tactics and wargear, or a much-reduced xeno response due to our recent purge attempts. Regardless, it is highly likely that the xeno boarders will dispatch the intruders before we establish contact.”

The Lieutenant grimaced. “Well it isn’t as if we don’t have enough to worry about. But if the boarding team gets through the Tyranids we have quite a surprise for them…”

The underdeck junction consisted of a sloped ramp, with the bottom end supporting a set of superheavy blast doors and the higher end branching into several hallways. At the lower end, which connected to the infested underdecks, lay the remains of dozens of Tyranids. Some were burnt by flame or laser, but most had been blown apart by explosive weapons. Razor wire had been strung along the approach to the ramp in multiple coils, creating a short maze of bladed metal before the sloped deck of the ramp. Upon the ramp sat the soldiers of the Imperial purging teams.

The first rank sat behind barricades, carrying flamers and shotguns. The middle ranks, consisting of nearly fifty soldiers spaced out so that they could fire over each other, had lasguns or sat behind mounted heavy bolters. The top-most part of the ramp hosted large ballistic shields protecting numerous autocannons; each one of the guns could tear a Genestealer in half with a glancing hit, and together the weapons were capable of taking down beasts much larger than anything that could reasonably traverse the interior of a void ship.

The junction was a death trap, with a concentration of firepower that couldn’t be overcome by sheer numbers. Not that the Tyranids have been given many opportunities to try; the blast doors had successfully held the snarling beasts at bay whenever they were closed.

“Detecting local power surge,” the Techpriest said suddenly, turning sharply toward the incline.

The lumens flickered overhead, and the tension among the defenders jumped. The few men who weren’t already nervously alert were quickly shaken awake, and the soldiers manning heavy weapons checked their ammunition feeds.

“What’s happening? Are the damned xenos chewing on the power conduits now?” the Lieutenant growled.

“Negative. This is deliberate sabotage, not xeno savagery.” The Techpriest started heading down the junction ramp at a hurried pace. “Someone is attempting to defeat the mag seal.”

“What?! Hey, get back!” the Lieutenant ordered. “If they come through the door then we’ll wipe them out! Come back here!”

“Negative. The blast doors cannot be compromised,” the Techpriest protested, passing by the front barricades.

The soldiers looked in askance to the Lieutenant, but the officer just threw up his hands. The Techpriest carefully navigated the razor wire, his cloak catching and tearing several times in the process.

As he approached the blast doors, the massive magnetic seal had begun to turn, subject to an override on the other side. The Techpriest brought his servo arm around and inserted it into a depression in the main gear, and the massive metal wheel promptly stopped turning.

“Containment has been sustained. Request reinforcements,” the cyborg said, his voice rising slightly in distress.

“Reinforcements? What’s going on here? What’s on the other side of those doors?”

The Techpriest heard a crackling noise and spotted an arc of electricity briefly flashing across the face of the seal. Another appeared a second later, running perpendicular to the first energy string. Whispers of a strange, foreign-sounding Binaric reached his ears.

More of the mysterious arcs appeared, burning into the metal and leaving behind a bright red glow. After several seconds it formed an eight-pointed star and flared brighter, and the buzzing of irregular Cant grew louder.

“Omnissiah, protect us,” intoned the Techpriest, right before he lurched backward and screamed.

Several soldiers jumped up to assist, but the Lieutenant immediately shouted them back down. “Stay at your posts! Hold position and stay ready!”

The officer himself started running down the ramp toward the cyborg, who convulsed wildly while sputtering gibberish machine code. “You see something that isn’t human, you open fire!”

Before he even reached the razor wire the mag seal suddenly turned sharply, and the thick reinforcing rods that protected the blast doors swiftly withdrew into the floor and ceiling. The Lieutenant stopped, watching helplessly as the superheavy barrier started to lift itself from the deck.

“Don’t just stand there! Move! Can you hear me?!” the officer shouted.

The Techpriest didn’t respond, clutching the visor over his eyes and continuing to screech incoherently. The door slowly opened in front of him, the mechanisms straining under their irregular power supply.

Suddenly, the Techpriest’s voice returned. “The blasphemers! They are here! They bring-“

As he turned around, a power axe slipped through the four-inch gap under the rising blast doors and swung across the deck. It sliced through the Techpriest’s augmetic feet in a blast of sparks and twisted metal shards, and the hapless engineer-cultist fell forward onto the floor. His own power axe – a cog-toothed Omnissian weapon with an extended haft and a wrench grip on the back head – clattered to the deck just out of reach. A metal arm promptly shot out from under the door and seized him by the leg, and then started dragging him through the gap.

Several soldiers stood up as the Techpriest was carried off, aiming their weapons into the gloom beneath the blast doors but finding no target. A few fired anyway, splashing laser shot against the floor bulkheads with no effect whatsoever.

The Techpriest disappeared under the blast doors, howling a string of Binaric curses. A moment later, the sound of metal splitting beneath a powered blade came from the other side, and the shouting stopped. The blast doors continued to lift slowly from the deck, creaking upward inch by inch.

“The moment you see ANYTHING come into the junction, you kill it!” shouted the Lieutenant, racing back up the ramp. “Somebody get a lumen down there! Get ready!”

One of the soldiers at the front barricade complied, pulling a short rod from his belt and twisting off the cap. Then he flung it into the webs of razor wire, and the lumen rod lit up on one end.

The soldiers higher up on the junction ramp couldn’t see past the still-rising blast doors, but those closest to the entrance watched, bewildered, as the light exposed a figure in silver and beaten gold. A short, four-legged figure, specifically, wearing gleaming power armor with short, backward-pointed horns on its helmet and a pair of large wings on its back. The wings spread, each one splitting into several long fins. The impulse thrusters inside the fins started a slow burn, and a sharp whine echoed through the halls.

“What in Terra’s name is THAT?” exclaimed one man, sounding far more confused than frightened at the sight.

“YO HO HO, SUCKERS!!” Rainbow Dash hit her boosters, blasting forward as low to the floor as she could. She barely cut under the blast doors but kept skimming low to the deck, flying face-first into the loops of razor wire that protected the barricades from incursion. Lasblasts and shotgun rounds started spraying across the junction, but Rainbow simply sped up while the wire caught on her legs and shoulders.

“Down! Get down!” the Lieutenant dove to the deck as Rainbow Dash flew up the ramp. She was moving far too fast for any of the heavy weapons to track, and even the las bursts could barely try to chase her before she zipped overhead.

The razor wire, torn from its moorings on the deck, dragged along beneath the pegasus like dozens of whipping, bladed tentacles lashing at the soldiers underneath. Most of the men were wearing pressurized armor suits, protecting them from the sharp edges, but where the wire caught onto armor plates or wrapped around limbs the soldiers were thrown to the floor.

Rainbow Dash killed her main booster once she shot past the autocannons, swung her body about mid-flight, and hit the wall hooves-first. The razor wire shook and bounced all around her, and she closed her flight pack while her boots were mag-locked to the wall. The soldiers were all scrambling to their feet again, hefting rifles or drawing sidearms.

“Hi! I’m a diversion!” Rainbow bounced away from the bulkhead just before a stream of lasblasts hit it, still dragging along the razor wire tangled around her body. At the other end of the junction, the first of the Hormagaunts bounded toward the barricades.

It died in an instant, struck by two lasers and a shotgun. Its carapace armor shattered under the pressure, and a milky ooze splashed across the deck as it sunk to join the other corpses.

Ten Tyranids raced from the gloom to take its place.

“Hey! HEY!! Incoming from the front!”

“Xenos! Take them down!”

“The wire is gone! They’re coming too fast!”

“What is that flying thing?! Is that a Tyranid? Or are these things Chaos?”

“It doesn’t matter! Just kill the big ones like before!”

“I don’t SEE any big ones!”

Jets of flame and bursts from the heavy bolters joined the lasgun fusillade, ripping apart waves of incoming Tyranids at a time. The autocannons joined in, and soon strings of explosions were criss-crossing the approach ahead of the walls of fire. A veritable storm of death greeted the aliens, and most of them perished before they even saw one of the defenders.

Suddenly, cannon fire emerged from the darkness of the underdecks. One of the barricades folded, and the men covering behind it were blown apart under the unexpected attack. At the same time a flurry of shuriken struck one of the autocannon positions from behind, cutting down the gunner while his attention was elsewhere.

“What was THAT? How did Tyranids get a real gun?!”

A purple beam lashed out from the darkness, screaming over the heads of the aliens to cut across the heavy bolters. Men were hurled backwards from the deadly psychic force and heavy guns crumpled just as another wave of Hormagaunts clawed over the bodies of their siblings. Another burst of light and the roar of another flight pack heralded the emergence of a much larger armored body into the junction, along with the pounding of other armored boots against the deck.

As a cackling Chaos Lord leapt upon the barricades and the first Tyranid drones finally reached attack range of the defenders, it dawned upon the men that their bulwark would not hold.

“IRON WITHIN, BECOME THE IRON WITHOUT!!” Tellis crushed a man’s body underfoot and almost casually sliced apart his partner with a flick of his wrist. “BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!”

“Comin’ through! Get outta the way!” Applejack shouldered through the hissing aliens and walls of fire like a locomotive, lasblasts raining on her all the while. An autocannon round slammed into her cowl, blowing off a chunk of heavy plating but barely slowing her down. Rarity galloped along in her wake, her plasma gun floating high overhead while it fired relentlessly.

“Emperor forgive us… What is this abomination?” the Lieutenant gaped helplessly at the sight of an enormous pink walker – an actual DREADNOUGHT, by all appearances – stomping into the junction. At its side was a Techpriest in black robes and another of the strange four-legged things in armor. “The Great Enemy commands the xenos as his thralls? How can we stand against such evil?”

Another scream came from the autocannon crew, and another one of the heavy guns fell silent.

“Okay, I know I said I was a decoy and all, but you guys probably should be paying attention at least a little bit,” Rainbow Dash murmured, turning her shuriken catapult to the next target. The heavy weapons gunners continued pounding away, understandably more worried about the swarm carving through the barricades than the one pegasus behind them.

A lasblast struck her square in the visor, and she flinched as half her optical display turned into a mess of scattered and disjointed icons. The Lieutenant was sprinting up the ramp toward her, brandishing a power sword in one hand and firing his laspistol in the other.

“Abominations against mankind!” the soldier snarled. “Whether alien monsters or corrupt heretics, we cast you all to the abyss!”

Rainbow Dash couldn’t properly aim her catapult with her visor still malfunctioning, so she jumped up into the air when the Lieutenant slashed at her head. The crackling blade sliced through the trailing wires still clinging to her, cutting away several loops of it while she dodged. He rushed after the pegasus with another strike, but Rainbow weaved through the air with ease.

“Sorry buddy, but we’ve gotta sabotage your ship,” Rainbow said, another lasblast striking her boot. “Nothing personal. It’s a pirate thing!”

“You will never escape the Emperor’s wrath!” snarled the Lieutenant, bolting forward with his blade overhead.

Rainbow raised her forelegs toward the man as if to ward him off, and then hit her impulse blasters. She lurched backward, and the soldier charging at her was knocked clean off his feet and flung backward. He hit the deck and slid to a stop, barely managing to hold on to his weapons.

“C’mon, don’t make me move around too much. Some of this wire is cutting into the rubber bits and it hurts,” Rainbow complained while the soldier stood up.

“Daemonic filth!” the Lieutenant snarled, raising his pistol to shoot again.

He turned suddenly on his heel, firing instead on a Hormagaunt that was crouching in preparation to pounce. The lasblast speared through its skull, and it slumped to the deck. Three more bound up behind it, raising their sickle-clawed limbs and snapping hungry jaws thick with saliva and fresh blood.

Two of the aliens died in a flash of bright blue as the man’s power sword slashed through the air, slicing across one Hormagaunt’s head and then cutting down onto another. The third pounced, leaping upon the Lieutenant and knocking him to the deck. Four more of the aliens sprinted up the ramp to join in, snarling ferociously and plunging their talons into the fray.

Rainbow Dash grimaced as her damaged visor flashed wildly with targeting data, nearly blinding her with a cascade of redundant spinning brackets. Her armor systems still designated the Tyranids as enemy targets, and the flailing limbs and blood wasn’t helping, either. She landed on the floor and disengaged her helmet, finally getting an unfiltered look at the grand cruiser’s interior.

“Well… guess we won,” the pegasus mumbled, looking over the ruins of the barricades. The corpses of Hormagaunts and Imperial armsmen were scattered behind every barricade, and the smell of gunsmoke and burning promethium hung heavily in the junction. The surviving Tyranids – which numbered a mere fifteen Hormagaunts – mostly ran back and forth between the gun emplacements, seeking more live targets. Without the firm psychic hold of a synapse controller to direct them, the creatures were in thrall to their own feral hunger and surging adrenaline, and they frequently stopped to take bites of the dead or snap at each other.

At the bottom of the ramp, Gaela watched the carnage silently while she reviewed each emplacement. Pinkie Pie stood behind her in her Dreadnought, swiveling her cannon back and forth to hunt for any remaining targets. Fluttershy was actively corralling the surviving Hormagaunts, racing from barricade to barricade and assuring them they were very good boys.

“Hey, that went pretty well! They didn’t even kill all of Flutter’s little buddies!” Pinkie chirped.

“Much to my chagrin,” Gaela said darkly. She kneeled down on the floor, picking up a cog-toothed power axe lying at her feet. “We must hurry. I believe there is still crew in this ship, and they will have detected this combat.” Then she paused and glanced behind her at the gore-drenched halls of the underdecks. “And the crew isn’t the only threat, either.”

“Where do we go from here?” Twilight asked.

“The datastacks should be closest, and not well-guarded if at all. From there we can proceed to the reactor core, and then the teleportarium.” Gaela walked up the ramp, with Pinkie and Twilight right behind her. “Fluttershy!”

The meek pegasus half-turned from where she was helping wipe the blood off a Hormagaunt’s maw. “Hmm?”

“I’m going to open the next series of blast doors. Order the survivors deeper into the ship to hunt.”

Fluttershy looked around at the Tyranids. Most of them were returning to her and forming a protective circle again. Some were injured, and these particular creatures seemed to be lining up behind the Hormagaunt she was cleaning.

“I, uhm, don’t think they want to leave me, actually,” Fluttershy mumbled. “They think they’re safer with us.”

“They are battle spawn. They are bred specifically to obey suicidal commands without question,” Gaela pointed out.

“I… I suppose? But, well…” One of the aliens nuzzled her helmet, rubbing its dark red dorsal plating against her vox grille. “They really don’t want to leave…”

Gaela halted her ascent up the junction to stop and glare at Fluttershy for several seconds. “… We’re not taking them back to the Harvest of Steel.”

Fluttershy’s helmet opened up, and she stared at the Dark Techpriest with big, sorrowful, watery eyes. She sniffled slightly, and the nearest Tyranids bristled.

“We are NOT taking them back to the Harvest of Steel,” Gaela reiterated firmly, heading up the ramp again.

“So what are we going to do with them?” Tellis asked while he stood over several corpses he’d arranged into a Chaos Star. “Should I kill ‘em?”

Gaela paused briefly, surprised that the Chaos Lord would ask her for advice. “We need not do anything. I intend to leave them here. The infestation is largely irrelevant at this point.”

Twilight rushed up next to her, and the rest of the Equinoughts formed up from behind. “So what’s our exit strategy look like, then?”

“I have not decided on our best method of evacuation, but it will be necessary to depart the ship rather than waiting for extraction. After I sabotage the reactor, we’ll make our way out.” Gaela reached the top of the junction and turned toward one of the security doors leading deeper into the ship. She started working on the door’s seal, grabbing onto the lock mechanism with a servo claw before wedging her power axe into an adjacent slot. “It will not be long now.”

“Can’t we take just a few of the bugs home? Like for arena fodder and stuff?” Tellis asked.

Gaela glanced back at the Iron Warrior while she worked. “… Lord Tellis, you do not need my permission for anything.”

“Oh yeah, huh? The ponies keep acting like you’re in charge, so I guess I just went with it.” Tellis suddenly lashed out toward one of the Hormagaunts and picked it up by its tail. The alien started thrashing in a panic and swiping at the Chaos Lord’s greaves, but its claws did no apparent damage to the Warp-fueled armor. “I think I’ll take some back for the changeling farm. Maybe they’ll fight!”

Fluttershy sighed, hanging her head. “I suppose Miss Gaela is right. It would be best for all of us if they stay here. At least they’ll have a fighting chance that way.”

“No, they won’t.” Gaela finished unlocking the blast doors, and then stepped aside. “Contact.”

The door slid open, revealing another hall. A squad of soldiers were running toward the junction with some deck ratings in tow, and they stumbled to a halt when they saw the collection of armored figures waiting for them.

“Blood blood BLOOD!” Tellis hurled the Hormagaunt in his arms like a javelin, bowling over the squad leader before the defenders could open fire. He raced off after the alien just as swiftly, enduring a few desperate lasblasts before he reached melee.

Gaela dismissed the combat as the screaming started, turning to the Equinoughts. “The datastacks are this way. Deeper in is the reactor. Hurry!”

Rarity hesitated, looking back down the ramp. “Ah, shouldn’t we make sure to-“

“Negative. The longer we delay, the greater the danger of an overwhelming enemy response,” Gaela explained, running near the bulkhead wall to give Tellis a wide berth.

Rainbow Dash zoomed around the other side of the combat, and then turned around mid-air to address the Techpriest. “Like anyone around here can take us on! Between the Pain Train and Tellis, we can handle anything!”

“I would really prefer not to call it the Pain Train,” Pinkie interjected, stomping along behind everyone else.

“Objectively terrible designations aside, mere armsmen are not the worst that the Blessed Redemption can inflict if its crew is desperate enough. Once they decide the ship cannot be saved, many more options become viable.”

Pinkie Pie’s Dreadnought stopped in front of Tellis as the Chaos Lord finished up, his armor slowly absorbing the blood and gore splattered over his armor. Her gait became unsteady while she tried to avoid stepping on Fluttershy, who was tenderly helping the Hormagaunt Tellis had hurled back to its feet.

“Fluttershy, I know you wanna help the scary alien bugs but try to keep it moving, okay?” Pinkie asked anxiously. “It’s hard to see where I’m stepping!”

“I can’t believe we found out that Fluttershy can befriend Tyranids and the cyber-nerd wants to get rid of them rather than raising a bug army,” Tellis complained. “Forget the ship; if we went back for the rest of the ‘Nids we could start our own brood or something!”

“No you couldn’t!” Gaela interrupted loudly without turning around.

“We should at LEAST pack a few into savior pods and shoot them off toward the planet for kicks,” the Chaos Lord grumbled.

“Why would we wanna infest a random planet with killer space bugs?” Applejack asked.

“For one – and this is just for starters – it would make phase two of this attack WAY more exciting.”

“Phase two? What’s phase two?” Applejack asked suspiciously.

“Obviously phase two is attacking the planet,” Gaela replied. “The major production centers and transport nodes are rich with material that rely on the orbital defenses for protection. Once the void-borne defenders are routed, we will descend on the Imperium’s cities.”

Twilight grimaced. “Then it’s definitely best we-“

“CONTACT!!”

Gaela’s shout spurred Twilight into action, and the force harmonizer jumped from her back before activating its shield mode. Twin autoturrets were dropping from the ceiling in front of a fortified door, and the door itself slid open to reveal the barrel of a lasgun.

The Dark Techpriest immediately speared one of the turrets with her heavy laser, slicing through its servos and rendering it unable to aim. The other gun opened fire, spraying a storm of lasblasts into Twilight’s energy barrier.

“I got it!” Rainbow Dash announced, zipping past Gaela and rocketing down the hall. She even remembered to engage her helmet first, disliking the prospect of lasers to the face slightly more than she liked feeling the wind in her mane.

The turret swiveled to bracket her, and Rainbow kicked off a wall with the impulse blasters in her greaves, instantly doubling her speed. She smashed into the servo actuator above the turret body, wrenching the arm apart, and the automated weapon promptly fell onto the deck while she spiraled dizzily down the hall.

The soldier shifted his lasgun to follow her, but Applejack’s gravity lash struck the rifle and pulled. The defender was yanked off his feet and flung into the hall, his weapon slipping free of his grasp in the process.

He rolled with the impact, and then slapped his hand onto his fallen rifle. A metal boot fell onto the other end, pinning it to the ground. The man craned his head up just before a crackling power axe swung down.

Gaela barely had time to step away from the fresh corpse before Tellis came barreling past her to charge into the room the soldier had been protecting.

“BLOOD FOR THE BLOoh there’s no else here.”

The Raptor slumped in disappointment at seeing the interior of the room, which was empty of further defenders and too small to offer any potential hiding places. The walls were covered over by octagonal columns and loops of wiring, and a single console screen hung from the ceiling.

Gaela walked in behind the Iron Warrior. “The guard complement for the primary datastacks is always feeble, whenever there is one posted at all. But the reactor room should provide more sport for you, Lord.” Her servo arm snagged the console, gently lowering it to a more convenient height. “It will take some time to…“

She trailed off at the sound of footsteps banging against the deck behind her and out the hallway. After a few seconds they faded into the general background noise of the ship interior, and her helmet informed her that she had lost short-range contact.

Twilight leaned her head into the doorway. “Tellis ran off again.”

“I noticed,” Gaela deadpanned, locking a mechadendrite into a data port. “It will be some time before we can follow. The security bypass for the data wards is much more complex and delicate than a mag-seal.”

“What? Oh! Here, let me help!” Twilight eagerly stepped into the datastack repository, locking on to the screen.

“This is slightly beyond your technical… erm…” Gaela found herself at a loss for words as several progress bars appeared on-screen, filled up, and then vanished in a matter of seconds. Windows opened and closed rapidly at a pace she was barely able to track, and soon Gaela was staring at the administrator primus access nodule.

The Dark Techpriest glanced back at the alicorn, who tilted her head to the side innocently. “Did I do it right?”

“You… You did,” Gaela mumbled. “Since when were you capable of dataslicing security wards?” She promptly set to work, rapidly sorting through the archives for information of possible value.

“Since I got my new augmetic eye! Isn’t it cool?” Twilight gushed. “I barely even know what it’s doing sometimes, but it’s really come in handy!”

“If Gaela says ya helped, fair ‘nuff, but Ah sure hope Ah never need none o’ mah pony parts replaced,” Applejack grumbled.

“Seconded. The Warsmith works miracles, to be sure, but his aesthetic taste is…” Rarity trailed off for a moment, and then quickly cleared her throat. “N-Not that you look bad, darling! The eye is very… neat! It’s just not my style!”

“It’s definitely MY style. I wanna get a robot tail that shoots lasers,” Rainbow said with a giggle. “Do we need to actually get the parts blasted off before they replace them with metal bits? How does this work, anyway?”

“I imagine that if you simply tried to pester him into it like you did for our armor suits, he’d be happy to rip it out of you himself,” Rarity advised wryly.

Gaela slid a metal finger across the screen, and the monitor went dark and pulled itself back up to the ceiling. A whirring noise came from the wall, and a portion of the datahive extended out into the room. The stacked octagonal cells locked into the column separated, and Gaela delicately took the top-most cell.

“Objective complete. We proceed at once.” She slipped the cell into her robes and then stepped into the hallway. “Assuming Lord Tellis went the right way, I do not expect significant armed resistance. However, we…”

She stopped talking when she saw Fluttershy, who was in the rear of the formation with Pinkie Pie. The pegasus had her helmet disengaged, and a Hormagaunt was nuzzling her snout tenderly while the yellow mare cooed happily. That was quite disturbing on its own, but what Gaela found more distressing was that she now counted twenty-five of the alien war-fodder; significantly more than they left the junction with.

“Are you summoning more of those? We no longer need their assistance!” Gaela insisted. “And engage your armor seals! We could be exposed to environmental hazards at any time!”

“Okay, but… the Tyranids, um, keep wandering up from the underdecks behind us,” Fluttershy said apologetically while her helmet clicked back into place and pressurized. “I think they were hungry, and then followed the scent of-“

“I don’t CARE why they’re here. Get rid of them,” Gaela snapped while she turned away and headed down the hall. “If the wretched insects absolutely insist on following you, I can always push you all out the airlock and you can fly back to the Harvest.”

Fluttershy sighed, hanging her head. The nearest Hormagaunt made an awkward croaking sound and started nudging her chin up with its nose.

Twilight started to follow Gaela, but hesitated and looked back at Fluttershy. “To be absolutely clear: the flagship is AT LEAST twenty kilometers away so at your maximum flight speed you couldn’t actually make it back there.”

“I know, Twilight,” Fluttershy said calmly.

“Do not fall behind! If we get separated further we are vulnerable!” Gaela announced.

Their passage through the rest of the ship was unremarkable, save for the occasional massacred crewman that marked their path following the Mad Angel. The groans of a straining substructure and distant clanking of heavy machinery were conspicuous for their absence, and instead mysterious clicking noises and echoing screams rang through the hull. The air ducts occasionally rattled, causing the mares to stop and nervously search the nearest vent covers with thermal scans. The scans returned nothing each time, and the boarding party scrambled to keep up with Gaela’s lead.

Eventually Gaela stopped, slicing her axe down to the side. The ponies halted, waiting on her command. The Dark Techpriest reached a corner at another intersection in the hall, and then cautiously leaned out around it.

“… As I anticipated,” Gaela mumbled. “The area is secure. Mostly.”

“’Mostly?’ What does that mean?” Rarity asked.

“Lord Tellis does not possess what you’d call a delicate touch, and this is a sensitive area of the ship,” Gaela warned. “Follow behind me, and stay away from anything that looks damaged.”

It was easy to see what Gaela meant when they turned the corner. Bodies were strewn about the hall, most of them bearing the extremely distinctive wounds left by powered claws. A pair of autoturrets had been destroyed, one of them by being wrenched straight out of its housing socket. The blast doors had been blown open, and there was a stream of some kind of synthetic fluid leaking out from the room behind the doors.

“The heart of the Blessed Redemption awaits,” Gaela intoned, stepping over the bodies in her path. “Pie, remain here. It’s entirely likely the rest of the crew is evacuating or hiding, but if there are any officers remaining they would be wise to attempt a counter-attack about now. Fluttershy, you may remain here as well, if only so that the aliens provide a wall of physical obstacles to our objective.”

“Roger dodger!” Pinkie’s Dreadnought swiveled around on the spot, and a clunking noise came from the butcher cannon’s ammo hoppers resetting.

Rainbow Dash sped up to join Gaela while she entered the main reactor sanctum. “Yo, Tellis! You here?”

The interior of the sanctum was a cavernous web of consoles and pipes surrounding a massive, metal pillar. All manner of machines were scattered about the interior, from grav-lifters to servo-regulator towers to thrumming electro-shrines. The idle noises of the infested ship were completely swallowed by the hollow roar of the reactor in this place, and the Equinoughts found their visors briefly flickering into static every few seconds.

There was also a very conspicuous trail of destruction and dead bodies winding through the room, leading up to a piece of scorched wreckage that Gaela guessed used to be a generator. There were several burnt skeletons surrounding it bearing partially-melted augments, and one Iron Warrior hanging limply with his flight pack entangled in some cables and smoke pouring off his armor.

“Tellis! Tellis, are you okay?!” Rainbow Dash asked, her own flight pack spreading in preparation to launch her across the room.

Gaela’s servo arm clamped onto her leg, stopping her in place. “Remain GROUNDED,” the Dark Techpriest commanded. “See to Lord Tellis, but be more cautious than he was.”

Rainbow nodded eagerly, and Gaela let her drop onto the floor and gallop off. Then Gaela looked up at the webs of cabling running across the ceiling and hanging between the reactor core and the various cylinder towers surrounding it. “Sparkle, slice the admin prioritus warding on the primary regulator console. Rarity!”

The unicorn started in surprise. It was rare for Gaela to give her a command. “Y-Yes?”

“I have marked a number of critical tubes. I am exloading the designation matrices to you now. Cut them,” the Techpriest commanded while she stepped up to the terminal next to Twilight. “Do NOT damage any of the adjacent cabling, as a stray discharge or accidental fluid ejection could prove fatal.”

“Of course, darling.” Rarity drew her power sword as a number of markers appeared on her visor, highlighting certain tubes in bright red.

“Tellis? Tellis! Dude, you okay?” Rainbow Dash stood underneath the Iron Warrior, tapping his greaves with her own. “I’m pretty sure he’s still alive. What’s wrong with him?”

“The amperage necessary to scour flesh from bone is adequate to still even Astartes biology,” Gaela noted. “His armor’s internal dampers probably saved his life, but he remains stunned.”

“Should we carry him outta here?” Applejack asked.

“You may do as you wish. His survival is not a mission priority for me.” Gaela inserted a mechadendrite into a data socket, and several of the holoscreens flickered and started to fill up with aberrant code.

“Yeesh. Ice cold.” Rainbow stared up at the Chaos Lord for a few more seconds, thinking.

Rarity sliced open one of the tubes with her power sword, and then watched as freezing white mist poured from the breach. The spray splashed across the deck as the tubing fell from the other cables and wiring, instantly icing over the metal flooring.

“Freezing liquid? Hmm…” Rarity levitated her sword to the next target. “This tube looks the same… are these all used to cool the reactor?”

“Affirmative,” Gaela said.

“Ah. Then severing them is going to cause this system to overheat, will it not?”

“Affirmative,” Gaela repeated.

“Oh, I get it! And then the safety mechanisms kick in and turn off the reactor, right?” Twilight asked.

“Something like that,” the Dark Techpriest mumbled as she worked.

Rainbow Dash connected her vox link to Fluttershy, pressing a boot to the side of her helmet. “Hey Flutters, you’ve got medical stuff, right? Can you come check on Tellis? He needs a kick in the tail.”

Gaela immediately whirled around, almost tearing her datalink free of its socket. “Don’t call her in here!”

“Why not?” Rainbow replied as Fluttershy galloped into the room. “Gaela, I know you’re not a huge Tellis fan but he fought through all the defenses for us. Let Fluttershy patch him up.”

“That is not why I-“

The Dark Techpriest was interrupted by a sharp electric crack as a Hormagaunt stepped on a patch of damaged cabling. The Tyranid shrieked, its body cooking near-instantly within its electrified carapace, and then it collapsed in a smoldering heap.

“Oh no! Scuttles!” Fluttershy gasped, stumbling to a halt. The Tyranids were flooding into the reactor sanctum now, surrounding their pony protector and poking unwisely at the many machines and sparking objects scattered around the interior. “Please, be careful everyone! Chitters, don’t touch that!”

“Ya NAMED ‘em?” Applejack asked incredulously.

“Er… well… yes,” Fluttershy admitted meekly. “Why not?”

Rarity sliced through another coolant tube overhead, and one end of the sundered hose swung down in a long arc while spitting a jet of freezing mist. The hose passed over a few Hormagaunts, and by the time it sputtered to a stop three of the aliens were frozen solid.

“…… That’s why,” Applejack sighed. “Not good t’get attached.”

“Eep! Rarity!” Fluttershy quailed.

“Oops! Sorry, darling. These things just whip around everywhere when you cut them.” Rarity ducked her head in embarrassment but otherwise didn’t seem terribly regretful as one of the Tyranid’s scythe-limbs broke off and shattered on the floor. “Gaela did warn us it was dangerous in here.”

“I take it all back,” Gaela said curtly, finally turning back to the console. “Have your revolting pets crawl all over the reactor; see what I care. It’s not going to matter at this point, anyway.”

“Oh? Um… why is that?” Fluttershy asked.

“Hey! C’mon, Flutters!” Rainbow snapped, tapping her boot on the deck. “We’re on a time limit here! Help Tellis out!”

The other pegasus squeaked and rushed across the room. The Tyranids scuttled after her, trying to keep a tighter line behind the mare after seeing their broodmates killed. Once Fluttershy reached the Iron Warrior, she lifted off to hover in front of him and carefully inserted a needle from her narthecium into the soft neck covering of his armor.

“He’s in an advanced state of shock. I’ve seen this before in the badly wounded Iron Warriors where their bodies shut down and enter a kind of hibernation. I know how to wake him up. Rainbow Dash, could you lift an arm, please?”

As the pegasi worked to get Tellis conscious again, Twilight suddenly heard Gaela’s voice through her vox receptor. “I thought I should advise you that this is your last chance to overload the particular transformer tower Lord Tellis is entangled with and finish him off,” she explained.

“What? No,” Twilight scoffed, whispering into her vox and ensuring that her external speakers were inactive. “This isn’t like the… other situation. I’m not going to start plotting to kill whatever Iron Warriors I don’t like.”

“Ah. It wouldn’t comport to your sense of justice, I suppose,” Gaela mused.

“It’s not that. It’s that Dash would be really sad,” Twilight admitted. “This is a friendship issue. And you’ve never seen Dash when she gets really mopey, it’s the worst.” Then she cleared her throat. “But aside from that, no, I don’t think it would be the best decision from a moral philosophy perspective, either.”

A maniacal laugh boomed through the reactor sanctum.

Tellis spread the wings of his flight pack, stretching the cabling and webs of wired they had been entangled in. His claws came alive with power, their bright red disruption fields crackling sharply.

“WOOOOOOOOOOOO I’m on DRUGS!!” he screeched. Then he swung his arms up, slicing through dozens of cables at once and dropping his armored bulk to the deck.

The Hormagaunts flinched away from the impact, and in the brief window of opportunity the Iron Warrior snatched Fluttershy off the floor and held her up in front of his face. She squeaked in fright and her body seized up, but to her credit she didn’t bother trying to activate her cloak this time.

“Y’know, I don’t say this often enough Shy: you’re really cool for someone who doesn’t kill things for kicks,” Tellis said, his voice somber. “I really don’t give you enough credit for being able to dominate lower life forms and daemonic spirits. It’s a really great power! Also you have some pretty sweet chemicals on you. So thanks!”

“Y-You’re w-welcome,” Fluttershy stuttered. It wasn’t the she didn’t appreciate the compliments, but Tellis was holding her up by one of her wing casings and his lightning claws were still fully active, crackling dangerously just inches from her armor suit. The Tyranids picked up on her unease and started hissing loudly and raising their talons, but Tellis didn’t seem to care.

“Wanna hug?” the Chaos Lord asked Fluttershy. “I’m in a huggy mood right now. Probably ‘cuz drugs.”

“I’m g-good, th-thank you!” Fluttershy stuttered. “C-Can you let me d-down, please?”

Tellis dropped her so suddenly that Fluttershy stumbled upon landing, although her swarm of Hormagaunts quickly surrounded her to hold her up.

“I could go for a hug,” Rainbow Dash volunteered.

“HUG TIME!!” Tellis scooped Rainbow off the floor in an instant, squeezing her against his chest plate.

“Whoa, hey! Watch the claws, buddy! Ha ha!” Rainbow laughed as their armor plating scraped against each other.

“Aww, shucks. That’s kinda cute,” Applejack chuckled.

“Gaela, darling, I got the last of those tubes. Now what?” Rarity trotted back to the main control panel, idly scraping the blade of her power sword against an armor edge to remove the frost.

“Stand by. I am almost finished,” the Techpriest assured them. She swiped an armored finger across a holoscreen and then took hold of a lever, slowly pushing it up while various meters started turning red.

“…… Hey, Gaela?” Twilight interrupted.

“No, I don’t want any hugs,” she replied.

“It’s not that. I, uh… I thought we were here to shut down the reactor. Are we… doing that?” the alicorn asked anxiously.

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“All the temperature gauges and energy readings keep going up,” Twilight pointed out. “Why didn’t it initiate emergency shutdown after the coolant system was disabled?”

“Because I have purged the shutdown protocols from the logic engines,” Gaela explained.

“Gaela… dear… is this ship going to explode?” Rarity asked tenderly.

“Nah. When ships are overloading their reactors there’s always a bunch of klaxons and warnings for evac and last rites and stuff,” Tellis insisted, joining the others with Rainbow Dash still tucked under one arm. “We’d definitely know if the core was on track to blow.”

“I have disabled those functions as well,” Gaela replied calmly. “I have also severed diagnostic links with the bridge and replaced them with spoofed data, so they will be unaware of the reactor overload. We have at most half an hour until the core reaches critical containment failure and the Blessed Redemption is destroyed.”

Gaela unplugged her mechadentrites and servo arms, and then picked up the axe she had taken from the dead Techpriest in the underdeck junction. Then she swung it into the primary control console, causing an explosion of sparks and loose metal before all the holoscreens went dark.

“…… Huh. So I was wrong, I guess,” Tellis mumbled while the ponies stared at the Techpriest in mute horror. “Still, that was pretty clever! Good job! Mission complete!”

“No! No, not mission complete! We’re all going to die!” Rarity shrieked, rearing up and kicking her forelegs in a panic.

“I have an exfiltration plan.” Gaela stepped down from the main control platform. “We should leave this area immediately, however. The radiation and ambient heat will become lethal long before meltdown.”

Valves started popping loose of the main reactor column, firing disks of hot metal across the room and shooting jets of scalding steam into the air. The electric sparking around the spots of damaged cabling intensified, and a whip of intense voltage struck another Hormagaunt while the invaders rushed for the exits.

“Ah! No! Please be careful!” Fluttershy warned, hovering above the stream of aliens and trying to guide their way. “Move single file! No pushing!”

“Shy, we don’t have time fer this! Get ‘em outta here!” Applejack shouted, galloping alongside the herd of claws and chitin. One of the flying nozzle caps struck her shoulder pad and bounced into another Hormagaunt, punching through its armor plating and searing a tunnel through its torso.

“There’s no point in trying to protect them from immediate hazards,” Gaela explained, walking behind all the others at an unhurried pace. “They’re not coming with us, and they will not survive the reactor detonation.”

“Gaela, can we not have this argument right now?!” Twilight flew over the Tyranids and out into the hall. “Pinkie! We have to get out of here! The ship’s gonna blow!”

The Contemptor Dreadnought lumbered about to face the aliens and equines racing out of the reactor sanctum. “Oh, okay. When?”

“Half an hour!” Twilight shouted.

“Within half an hour,” Gaela corrected while she and Tellis stepped into the hall. “A more likely estimate is half that, but this is a volatile process by nature.” She pushed a Hormagaunt aside with the flat of her axe while she advanced past the others. “We’ll evacuate via the teleportarium. This way.”

“Ugh, the teleporter again? I hate that thing,” Rainbow Dash complained, finally hopping off of Tellis and flying down the hall with everyone else.

“Unless you plan on flying home, it’s our only option!” Twilight countered.

“… Wait, I can fly home, can’t I? I’m way faster than Fluttershy is! Where’s the nearest airlock?”

“It’s an awful long trip back to the flagship, Rainbabe,” Tellis pointed out. “Also there might still be a void battle going on, and macro cannon broadsides get a little intense. Let the nerds do their thing.”

“You could have WARNED us you were going to set the ship to explode!” Rarity griped. “A little more time to get out wouldn’t have hurt! You already disabled all the means to fix the core!”

“I wanted to pre-empt any arguments about the moral expediency of destroying the entire ship,” Gaela explained blandly. “Not least the argument with Fluttershy as to whether we can leave the infestation of killer xenos alive.”

“I wasn’t going to argue that!” the meek pegasus protested. “But… well, since we already have these little Tyranids with us-“

“We’re not taking them back,” Gaela interrupted. “Besides the obvious reasons, they won’t survive the teleportation process.”

“They won’t? Why not?” Tellis asked.

“Because I’m the only one who knows how to prepare the teleport and I’ll ensure they don’t,” the Techpriest explained. “Our armor is strong enough to resist a brief radiation burst that would kill every unshielded life-form on the teleportarium altar, but it would still inflict measurable tissue damage. Rarity in particular would regret having her follicles seared away. I recommend you don’t try to bring them along so I don’t have to do that.”

“Darling, I’m so sorry!” Rarity shook her head as she galloped up next to the pegasus. “I know you’ve gotten very attached to the horrible space monsters that would kill us all under slightly different circumstances, but you KNOW she isn’t bluffing and we don’t have time to fight about this!”

“Up ahead! The teleportarium!” Twilight announced after turning the corner.

An open door in the middle of a T intersection ahead marked their destination. Skull reliefs hung on either side of the passage, and the strange twin-headed eagle of the Imperium of Man was stretched over the entrance, glowering at those who might pass through.

Twilight and Rainbow Dash flew ahead of the others, landing at the intersection and checking the other corridors.

“It’s clear! We are outta here!” Rainbow cackled. “That is a WRAP ponies! Another mission complete and another bolter shell on our chains!”

Gaela and the others soon reached them, but the Dark Techpriest hesitated upon reaching the entrance.

“Gaela? Somethin’ the matter? We’re kinda in a hurry!” Applejack prodded.

“Nothing of consequence. Let us proceed,” the cyborg said before stepping into the gloom of the teleportarium.

The room was large, with racks of munitions lockers on one side and numerous columns rigged with skull reliefs and transformers. Bundles of cables hung between them and across the deck, much like the reactor sanctum, but without the constant thrum of racing energy. Near the back of the room stood the teleportation dais: a circular platform some twenty feet in diameter mostly surrounded by a cage of wire-strung metal bars and hanging under a grand sculpture of the Imperial Aquila. Twilight recalled that it looked similar to the equivalent device on the Harvest of Steel that they had used several hours ago to get here, but with fewer spikes and lots of red wax seals pinning scraps of writing to nearly every device and surface.

“I’ve already directed a considerable amount of the power overflow to this system,” Gaela advised the others while she reached the main control console and turned it on. “We should be able to depart within… a few minutes.” The Techpriest almost lost herself mid-sentence, feeling an inexplicable sense of unease. “I should do a preliminary check to make sure this device isn’t sabotaged.”

“Are you sure we have time for that?” Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Tellis entered after Gaela, but the others hesitated outside. Mostly because Fluttershy was mumbling sadly to the many Hormagaunts and they were reluctant to leave her with them.

“You do what you need to do, dear. Should we cover the hallway?” Rarity asked.

“Negative. It will be relatively easy to delay an assault long enough to depart, if necessary.” Gaela’s mechanical fingers were a blur over the console, flipping switches and swiping at readouts. “Enter and standby. And for all our sakes, keep the Tyranids outside!”

Fluttershy grimaced at hearing the command echo through her vox; Gaela had connected to her helmet vox specifically to ensure her point got across. The pegasus looked up into the curious, hopeful eyes of the thirty or so Hormagaunts that were clustered around the doorway, tails gently swaying and scything talons eagerly scraping each other. Some more of the creatures had evidently joined their group when she hadn’t been paying attention again. It made it all the more tragic that she had to leave them so soon.

Fluttershy’s helmet opened up, exposing her large teal eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “I’m… I’m so sorry. I… failed,” she mumbled. “I can’t save you. None of us can.”

A Hormagaunt stepped forward and nuzzled its snout against her cheek. Fluttershy squeaked and giggled at the sensation, but it quickly petered out.

“You’ll be gone soon, but… it’ll be quick, at least. Nothing like the brutal, violent slog that you were fighting before.” One of her miniature servo arms reached out from her chest and scratched under an alien’s chin. “Thank you all so much for your help. I’m glad that… even if it was just for an hour… we got to be frien-“

Rarity’s scream cut off her sorrowful monologue, and Fluttershy flinched and whirled around. “Wh-What? What’s wrong?!”

Rarity had only moved a few steps into the teleportarium before suddenly stopping short. Her plasma gun quivered in the air, surrounded by her levitation magic, and then it dropped to the floor. The glowing circuit threading around her horn casing faded away, and the unicorn recoiled.

“It’s here!” she wailed in a panic. “The shadow! It’s here!”

The other ponies were startled and confused, but Gaela picked up on her meaning immediately. “A synapse beast? Here? But that would mean…”

A scraping noise and a low snarl came from above. An arc of plasma briefly flared around a capacitor, and the glow briefly illuminated a silhouette against the wall before it faded away.

Outside the teleportarium, Fluttershy’s heart skipped a beat. The mood of the Hormagaunts had changed in an instant. The primal, animal intellect in their eyes withdrew, and their bodies went still. Something else emerged to the fore, surfacing in their minds and smothering their individual will with practiced ease.

A deeper, higher intellect seized control, guided not by instinct or curiosity or even recognizable emotion, but by a hunger beyond mortal contemplation. Dozens of alien eyes blinked at the yellow pegasus, no longer seeing a pony but recognizing only a quivering lump of digestible mass. Fluttershy felt like a shard of ice had been plunged into her heart.

“Everypony LOOK OUT!!” she screamed, firing a photon grenade into the swarm and bolting away.

The stun grenade struck a Hormagaunt in the middle of the group and exploded, completely blinding half of them in an instant. The Tyranids in front, spared the intense pulsing light flare, surged forward all at once with sickle talons raised to slash and tear.

Fluttershy sprinted past Pinkie Pie and Applejack, who were both too surprised and confused by Rarity’s scream to properly react to Fluttershy’s follow-up scream. Applejack turned to look behind her just before a trio of Hormagaunts leapt onto her back and battered their talons against her armor. Pinkie Pie was a much larger target, and the first few Tyranids simply rammed themselves against the legs of her walker uselessly. More of the aliens followed after, leaping and climbing their brethren to climb higher onto the Dreadnought and claw at the gaps between the armor.

“Hey! No! Quit that!” Pinkie started to turn around, staggering slightly from the creatures swarming all around her. The Dreadnought’s heavy flamer ignited, incinerating a pair of Tyranids and splashing fire over the supply lockers.

“Do not fire heavy weapons in here! If you damage the machinery we cannot escape!” Gaela warned.

“Flutters, what happened? Your bugs are going crazy!” Rainbow Dash quickly shot back toward the entrance, spraying a pair of the aliens with shuriken. The mono-molecular blades sliced through the thin carapace armor with ease, and the Hormagaunts stumbled to the deck in a mess of ichor.

“The Tyranids are in their heads! I can’t stop them!” a scything blade struck her hind leg, and a Hormagaunt jumped to tackle her to the floor.

She kicked the alien away, smashing its teeth in with a ceramite-plated boot, and then started scrambling upright. “Gaela! Shut the door!”

“Incoming! Dash! Move!” Twilight shouted, firing off a magic missile from her horn.

“Yes, I see them! Fine!” Dash bounced upward into the air, evading a lunging Hormagaunt, and then twisted around to kick it aside.

“Forget the little ones! Above you!” Gaela shouted even while she continued working the control panel.

Dash whirled around just in time to see a large body kick off of a transformer tower above her. Four arms spread to cover as much area as possible, each one ending in claws like daggers. The Genestealer barely snarled as it descended on the pegasus, and it had only been spotted at all because Gaela was far more worried about hidden assailants than the swarm of lesser aliens that had turned on them. Rainbow Dash had swiveled about in time to spot the creature, but her boosters were in no position to do anything at that split-second; even her impulse blasters were aimed directly away from the attacker, ensuring that any discharge would send her flying into its arms.

The Genestealer descended, but landed instead on the chest plate of an Iron Warrior. Two of its arms were seized in an instant, even as the alien’s extra limbs carved into the thickened daemon plate. The Genestealer screamed into the Chaos Lord’s face, a howl of hunger and cold, bestial fury beyond mortal imagination.

“BEST MISSION EVER!!” Tellis cheered before crushing the Genestealer’s forearms and tearing them off.

The alien fell to the deck, recoiling from the severe wound, and Tellis promptly planted one of its own dismembered claws into its face. “Blood and skulls and stuff WHEEEEEEEE!!” he shouted before booting the alien away.

“Incoming! There are more of them!” Rainbow warned as more hulking bodies burst from hiding. Some of them leapt down on the boarding party from above, while others had been waiting quietly behind machinery.

“Got ‘em!” Tellis shouted, launching himself forward and sweeping his claws through one of the aliens. Another one tried to land on Rainbow, but with sufficient warning she veered away, keeping well ahead of the razor claws.

“The doors are non-functional! Engaging the blast shield!” Gaela shouted, slamming a fist onto a button.

An armored sheet of metal dropped in front of the entrance, falling onto the backs of two Hormagaunts and crushing them in an instant. Unfortunately it was largely too late; even most of the aliens initially blinded had already flooded inside, guided by the shared will of the hive mind.

“Git OFFA ME!” Applejack raged, kicking and stomping in a frenzy to shake loose the Tyranids biting at her and stabbing their claws into whatever joints and seams they could find. Hormagaunts sailed across the room and smashed against the deck, all but helpless to pierce her armor but driven beyond all reason to try.

“And there’s another!” Tellis drew his claws down a Genestealer’s chest and then punched it in the face, caving in the alien’s jaws and sending it spinning away.

Another Genestealer leapt at the raptor’s back, only to be struck in mid-jump by the wing of his flight pack. It landed nimbly on its feet, but before it could react further a set of lightning claws plunged into its neck.

“Ha ha! Too easy!” the Iron Warrior crowed while the alien’s claws fell slack. “What else you chumps got? Don’t tell me this is it?!”

“They have a Broodlord!” Gaela warned, still working at the console. “It is the source of the psionic control!”

“Broodlord? What’s a Broodlord?” Twilight asked while she helped blast Hormagaunts off of Pinkie Pie.

As if on command, another body dropped from above and landed in the middle of the teleporter platform. It was a Genestealer in form, with the same four-armed, humanoid physiology and armored carapace and elongated head, but larger. Whereas the Genestealers were almost as big as Space Marines – and only fell short in the comparison because they lacked power armor of their own – the Broodlord towered over Tellis as it stood to its full height. Its talons were the size of short swords, and the shaped plates that covered its body in lieu of artificial combat armor were as thick as the power armored equivalent.

Most of the boarding party was otherwise occupied when the psionic bio-form dropped into range, but Tellis and Rainbow Dash immediately leapt toward the new threat. Rainbow was faster, spinning away from a Hormagaunt in mid-swipe and blasting directly toward the Broodlord. Tellis slung away the other Tyranid on his claws first, and then bellowed incoherently as he barreled at the new target.

The Broodlord paid Rainbow Dash only a moment’s attention, locking its dark, gleaming eyes with the lenses of her helmet visor. To the speeding pegasus time seemed to slow down, and the alien’s eyes flashed a brilliant, disorienting cascade of colors. Rainbow’s vision started spinning, with her helmet display turning into a blur of twisting runes and fracturing geometric shapes. Then she flew face-first into a metal column.

“Eyes up here, buddy!” Tellis laughed, thrusting one set of claws at the Broodlord with a right hook.

It recoiled at the last moment, shifting backward to let the crackling power blades pass bare millimeters from its throat. Its own talons lashed out, only to strike against the other set of lightning claws and lose a bit of the hardened bone to the powered disruption field.

The Broodlord jumped back to avoid another swing, landing feet first on the teleporter’s cage and sticking to it. A feral snarl came from the creature, followed by another mesmerizing flash of light around its eyes, but unlike its previous target Tellis was completely unfazed.

“Slippery little bastard, aren’t you?! Bleed for me, insect! Ah ha ha ha haaaa!” With a deranged shout Tellis launched himself up at the alien, and the Broodlord again leapt out of range of the Chaos Lord’s claws.

“Gaela, can you help us out?!” Twilight shouted before magically hurling a Hormagaunt into several others that were chasing after Rarity.

“Negative! We are still on a narrow timeline for exfiltration!” Gaela tapped several buttons and then flipped a switch. “Make your way to the platform! I’m readying the radiation pulse!”

“No! Gaela!” Rarity screamed.

“We do not have time to humor your petty van-“

“Not that! Above! Gaela, run!” the unicorn interrupted again.

The warning came too late. The Genestealer fell upon the Dark Techpriest in a perfect lunge, scything talons poised just above her right shoulder. They punched through the outer layers of ceramite padding with only minor difficulty, and then ripped through the augmetic bracing underneath. The alien’s feet struck the deck, and a moment later Gaela did as well. Her right arm tumbled free of its socket, bouncing across the floor over a jet of dark fluids.

“Gaela, no!” Twilight tried to bring her force harmonizer about, but was tackled by a pair of Hormagaunts the moment her attention wandered. Teeth and claws raked furiously against her armor plating, seeking gaps between the plate that they could not pierce otherwise.

A servo arm on Gaela’s back swiveled around, but the Genestealer seized the pincer and tore it off with a swipe of its claws. Then it reached down and flipped the Dark Techpriest over before planting a foot on her belly to pin her down.

Gaela swung her remaining arm the moment she had the leverage, only to have the alien catch it by the vambrace and slam it back to the deck. It used two other arms to seize her extra servo limbs, holding them in place. The Genestealer loomed over her, snarling, and then its remaining hand reached for her helmet.

Fluttershy watched helplessly as her friends were overrun, the dread in her stomach reaching a horrific peak. Applejack was almost buried in Tyranids. Twilight was reduced to jumping and kicking wildly to try to keep the Hormagaunts away. Rarity was screaming and running in circles while the aliens chased her, nearly helpless without her levitation. Tellis gleefully fought the Broodlord, leaping and slashing furiously, but the alien remained on the defensive and dodged as much as it could, only striking back when it sensed an opening. Gaela was pinned. Rainbow Dash was still dazed, and trying to kick away a Hormagaunt chewing on her flight pack.

Only Pinkie Pie was making substantial progress against her assailants, having the good fortune to be inside a heavy siege walker rather than a mere armor suit. She plucked the Tyranids off of her one by one, crushing them in her power fist before tossing them aside like litter. A squeaky, enraged shout came from within the mighty war machine, and a leg kicked out and flung several Hormagaunts across the room.

One of the aliens bounced and rolled toward Fluttershy, and once it scrambled to its feet it spotted the meek, terrified pegasus. With a bestial snarl the Hormagaunt lunged, scything talons raised to slice into Fluttershy’s unprotected head.

Time seemed to slow down as Fluttershy’s heart rate surged. Her senses became crystal clear. Fury, sorrow, and horror became indistinguishable; a morass of hot, ugly emotion that wrapped around her heart and filled her with terrible strength.

Fluttershy swatted aside the claws, unbalancing the Hormagaunt. She slammed a boot down into its flank, pinning it to the deck. The alien turned its head to face hers, a shriek of protest building in its throat, but it couldn’t utter a sound once it locked eyes with the pegasus.

“I have had ENOUGH,” Fluttershy said, her voice seething with venom and her eyes almost glowing with anger. “Stop this. NOW. You will NOT take my friends from me!”

The Hormagaunt froze, its limbs seizing up as if it was paralyzed. Every other Hormagaunt also froze. The sudden, instinctual submission echoed through the psychic network of the Tyranids, soaking every one of the beasts in primal terror. Applejack finally managed to throw aside the aliens clinging to her, and Twilight and Rarity both got away from their pursuers as they faltered.

Gaela hissed in pain as the Genestealer ripped the face plate of her helmet off, slicing through a fair bit of her cheek in the process. It loomed closer, bits of spittle dripping onto her chin while its jaws yawned open. Its long tongue emerged and extended, reaching down for the cyborg's scowling face.

The alien suddenly flinched, snapping its head back as a surge of utterly unfamiliar terror flooded its mind. The empathic contamination lasted for merely a second before the psychic will of the Broodlord reasserted itself and purged the aberrant thoughts, but that distraction proved fatal.

A heavy laser blasted the Tyranid in the chest, burning straight through its torso and erupting out the other side. It recoiled again, shrieking, and then Gaela lurched up to a sitting position and grabbed the Genestealer’s face with her remaining arm. The ion blaster in that arm discharged, cooking the alien’s head in an instant.

“Lord Tellis!” Gaela shouted, kicking the Genestealer corpse off of her. “Get the Broodlord to the teleportation dais! It would seem we’re doing this the hard way!”

Tellis edged out of the path of some swiping claws, and then made a quick jab at his opponent. “Why? You wanna send him somewhere?” The Broodlord hopped backward and then shifted to the side, evading a much more powerful blow from the Raptor.

Gaela turned around to face the console again, pulling herself back to her feet. “We do not have time to argue! Just do it!” The tri-claws on her remaining augmetic flicked several switches, and the readout flashed red while several progress bars drained to nothing.

Tellis released a sudden, amplified shriek from his vox grille, and then charged toward the alien with a burst from his flight pack. His claws swung furiously ahead of him, cutting through the air in a frenzy of wild slashes that turned the air crimson.

Only the first swing grazed the Broodlord, which jumped backward to evade the assault. The alien landed in a crouch on the rear edge of the teleportation dais, touching the cage that surrounded most of the platform. Tellis followed it, his claws and flight pack spread to his sides like a falcon that had finally cornered it prey.

“The flesh is WEAK,” Gaela snarled, slamming her arm onto another button beneath a glass shield. “Rad-pulse initialized!”

A rapidly building hum came from the cage surrounding the altar, and several transformers around the teleportarium started sparking. The Broodlord kept its eyes – still aglow with psychic power, for all it mattered against the Mad Angel – locked on Tellis, and then started rushing toward him.

Tellis howled in delight, darting forward to meet the alien, but the move was a feint. As the Iron Warrior committed to the attack the Broodlord jumped off to the side with unnatural agility, just barely evading the crackling claws. It landed on the cage and then kicked off, bounding higher and angling to land outside the teleportation platform.

It found a flying pony in its path. The pony was the same one it had initially stunned with its psychic abilities, and was hovering with her greaves pointed straight toward it.

“Nope,” said Rainbow, activating her impulse blasters.

The Broodlord was flung back down to the platform, landing gracefully on its feet and skidding several feet across the surface. It was unharmed and still fully mobile, if not slightly disoriented.

Then the teleporter cage was flooded with cascading rad-bursts, and the Broodlord was harmed.

Great pulses of light warped the air within the cage, swallowing Tellis and the alien both. The paint was instantly stripped from the Iron Warrior’s armor, and sparks started shooting from his helmet and flight pack as the radiation damaged the more sensitive systems. For the Broodlord the damage was decidedly more dramatic: its carapace cracked, its muscles contracted, and its eyes went pale and deflated. Steam started pouring from its body as internal moisture boiled away in seconds and forced its way out through fresh, scalding wounds.

Even under such intense damage, the Broodlord didn’t perish. Its body was highly resistant to all manner of harmful energies and its unnatural vigor was greater than even the Astartes. It was badly damaged and briefly stunned, however, and Tellis – unfortunately for the xeno – was both extremely resilient and properly protected.

The Raptor Lord plunged his talons into the Broodlord’s neck while it was still staggered. “CRITICAL HIT!” he shouted gleefully, twisting the claws and then tearing them free with a spray of arterial fluids. The Broodlord recoiled, gasping, and Tellis brought his other arm around in a wide, crackling arc. In a flash of crimson the Broodlord was decapitated, and its limbs slackened before its body finally keeled over.

Every other Tyranid was sent reeling from the sudden shock of its death, and again the Hormagaunts found their guiding will shattered. This time it was no momentary lapse, however: the lesser aliens immediately broke and ran, fleeing toward the doors and clawing against it desperately. Pinkie smashed an alien under her power fist and then suddenly found no others within reach. Applejack zapped one of them with her gravity lash and flung it aside into one of its broodmates. Rarity finally felt the shadow lift its dampening effect from her mind, but by the time she finally lifted her sword and gun again the fight was over.

As the other mares gathered their wits, Fluttershy gently cleared her throat. “Uhm… so… I feel like I should apolo-“

The sound of an explosion came from deeper in the ship, and the deck quivered underfoot.

“Get on the dais! The core is melting down! We are out of time!” Gaela was still making adjustments as best she could with her remaining limbs, poking and swiping at the screens with her tri-claw and a servo probe.

The ponies groaned but swiftly moved to comply, galloping to the teleportation platform. Applejack seemed to have the most trouble, lurching painfully across the teleportarium while leaving a trail of blood – not all of it hers – in her wake. Twilight likewise limped her way onto the dais, but paused long enough to levitate Gaela’s dismembered arm along with her.

“I just wanna say, this went GREAT. I’m really glad I jumped in at the last moment and got us beamed to the wrong place!” Tellis said, holding the decapitated Broodlord head under one arm.

“Shut up, Tellis,” Applejack said weakly, collapsing as soon as she was entirely on the platform.

Gaela smashed another button with her blaster arm, and then turned on her heel and sprinted to the teleportation dais. Once there she kicked the Broodlord’s corpse off the platform, and then leaned awkwardly against Pinkie’s Dreadnought, her armored body being badly unbalanced with only one arm. The teleporter’s transformers started sparking again, and a deep thrumming noise came from the coils behind the platform.

“Are we SURE we don’t want to take any of the ‘Nids back for a Fluttershy brood?” Tellis said suddenly. “Just one. I can jet over there and be back in two seconds.”

“SHUT UP, TELLIS!” snapped every pony other than Rainbow Dash (who wisely resisted egging him on).

The teleport engaged, enveloping the boarding party in light and whisking them away from the dying ship.

Barely a minute later, flames engulfed the teleportarium as the substructure was torn apart from secondary detonations. The mighty void ship died with a ferocious howl, muted though it was by the airless void. Hundreds of Tyranids still stalking its depths were pulverized in an instant, as were the several dozen human crew who were still laboring obliviously to bring the vessel’s combat systems on-line.

The Blessed Redemption was no more.