//------------------------------//
// Mont'ka 
// Story: Iron Hearts: Book 2 - Ferrous Dominus 
// by SFaccountant 
//------------------------------//

Iron Hearts: Book 2
Chapter 2
Mont'ka


****


Sweet Apple Acres


They had come in the middle of the night.
The roar of jet engines had introduced them long before crimson floodlights poured over the ground, casting an eerie red glow over the rubble pile that used to make up the Apple family household.
Stopping into a hover, the first transport descended to the ground, kicking up dirt, leaves, and scraps of debris all around it. Laser sights swept back and forth along the trees as gun turrets searched for targets, and hydraulics hissed noisily before the ramp on the rear of the vehicle yawned open.
Out came the soldiers, their optics glaring green in the night. Their armor suits were of different model patterns and decorative schemes, varying in durability and ease of mobility, but they were all far superior to the scavenged and cheaply purchased fare of the cultists and mercenaries of the 38th Company. These suits of pressurized carapace armor were merely a step below power armor in durability and protection, each one customized - and in some cases built directly into - the wearer. Many boasted in-built ammo hoppers and weaponized servo arms, and few of them were significantly alike. The only thing truly uniform about the unit, in fact, was the black rubber robes they wore bearing the Iron Skull.
These were the Scavurel, the 38th Company's cyborg soldiers that served as the primary combat arm of the Dark Mechanicus. Nicknamed "scavengers" or "vultures" by the other soldiers of the Company, and referred to mainly with expletives by the Company's foes, these heavily modified humans formed the operational core of the Iron Warriors' looting and resource harvesting. Every soldier was a human remade into a weapon and equipped to serve as the Dark Techpriests' personal corp of combat engineers.
These men and women now turned their augmented gazes on Sweet Apple Acres, weapons at the ready. Two more airborne transports swept in behind them, even bigger than the first.
+Life signs detected. Registering bio-signatures,+ blurted one of the Scavurel soldiers in Binaric Cant as she turned several laser designators onto a treehouse nearby.
The transport practically jumped into the air again, its floodlights and weapon sights converging on the small wooden dwelling sitting in the high branches.
One of the lights halted over a machine that was settled at the bottom of the tree.
+Dark Mechanicus units identified. Alert level 4 imposed,+ Crabapple buzzed, +please state your intended purpose.+
+The corrupted probe automata,+ said the squad leader, shaking his head as his optics returned floods of data on the compromised machine, +Dark Acolyte Gaela informed us of your affliction. A tragic waste of a machine.+
+Unit Crabapple does not comprehend your negative sentiment. Once again requesting stated objective.+ The probe stomped up to the squad, trying its best to seem intimidating, but it would have been hard-pressed to frighten a group of normal soldiers, much less the Dark Mechanicus guardians.
The door to the treehouse opened, and the Scavurel looked up as a large red pony hesitantly stepped into the light cast by the transport gunship.
"Hello?" Big Mac mumbled, looking down at the robed maybe-humans. What with the darkness combining with the Scavurel's black robes to obscure their appearance, Big Macintosh could only make a hopeful guess as to whether the new arrivals were human, Tau, or some OTHER bipedal alien race that had decided to land on their farm and menace them. All he knew was that the creatures were clearly armed, and that they hadn't shot anything yet.
The lead Scavurel, the Core of the unit, stepped forward, and the sheathing panels on his servo-mounted laser stripped away to reveal the glowing red core of the weapon.
"Greetings, xeno scum," he barked, his voice barely intelligible among the crackling static of his mouthpiece, "we hail from the Dark Mechanicus of the mighty Iron Warriors 38th Company. Are you a member of the so-designated 'Apple family'?"
Big Mac bobbed his head. "Eeyup."
The sheathing panels slid back into place as the cargo transports slowly lowered themselves next to the pile of debris. The other Scavurel lowered their weapons and turned around. Then they headed for the transports, their servo arms and mechatendrils unfolding and ready to work.
"Good. We're here to rebuild your home."


****


Sweet Apple Acres - six hours later


Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Bell all stared in slack-jawed awe as they watched the Dark Mechanicus workers clustered around the massive grain silos that now towered over their barn.
It wasn't the buildings themselves that amazed them, although they were certainly impressive on their own. It was more the way that the teams of servitors, Scavurel, and the two Dark Acolytes assigned to the task had put the things together.
First had come the substructures after the rubble of the previous home and barn had been cleared away by a servitor team equipped with a bulldozer shield. Wiring, piping, and the buildings' skeletons had gone up within hours as ferrocrete was mixed and heated and a reactor core was built by the Acolytes. After that the Scavurel had practically swarmed over the structures with welders and torches, leaving shining metal and angled ferrocrete behind them as the huge supply crates attached to the transports were emptied.
The barn and farmhouse were already complete, and Apple Bloom had expected them to stop after simply replacing what had been lost in the Gnarloc attack. But they hadn't stopped.
The Apple family was now the proud owner of its own plasma reactor power station, a water extractor and purifier, a septic cycler, an automata service bay, and a bombardment shelter. Atop the shelter and the reactor hall, which had been dug into the ground behind the barn, the Dark Mechanicus had started on the refrigerated preservatories - which Apple Bloom had identified as silos - and if any of them understood Crabapple's Binary they would have been informed that the work crew was now reinforcing the vessels to protect against subterranean shocks and explosive blasts.
"Are they almost finished? The sun just came up a few hours ago!" Sweetie Bell asked.
The three fillies were all sitting on top of Crabapple, who was standing sentinel next to Granny Smith as the green mare snored away in her rocking chair.
"Ah dunno," Apple Bloom admitted, "they finished the barn hours ago. They just keep buildin' new stuff."
"If your brother doesn't say something, they might just keep going until they build a whole town here," Scootaloo joked.
Sweetie Bell didn't look sure whether the pegasus was joking. Big Macintosh had served them all a late-night snack after they had been woken up by all the commotion, and by the time they'd finished their food someone had outfitted the clubhouse with ablative armor paneling, a vox station, and a roof-mounted quad gun.


Big Macintosh, meanwhile, was touring the new farmhouse while trying not to get in the way of the Acolytes and servitors that kept rushing through it.
The house was big and sturdy. Not nice, by any stretch, but Macintosh could see that Mechanicus architecture played its two strengths to the hilt. The farmhouse was made mostly of ferrocrete, arranged in a multi-story bunker-shaped complex. Each room was lit by lumen strips set in the ceiling, and separated by sliding durasteel doors that would open when he pressed his hoof against a large black button installed near the floor. It seemed an odd place to put a fancy electric doorknob, but after trying it a few times Big Mac had to admit it was easy to adjust to and actually felt more natural to him than using knobs or levers placed at head level. If anything it seemed the humans were the ones having trouble with them, stepping aside to give the buttons an awkward kick to open the doors.
All in all, the place would take a lot of work to turn into a proper home. Furnishing and painting the place up so that it didn't look like the pillboxes currently in front of Fluttershy's cottage was going to take several days, even if all the serious work had been done in a single night.
Of course, that was also assuming that the Dark Mechanicus wasn't going to go ahead and do that themselves, too. None of the humans had spoken to him or any other pony since they had arrived, and they had kept working and building things long after they had finished the barn. Which was now twice its previous size and had segregated, climate-controlled animal cells. Big Macintosh was honestly getting worried that Applejack had swindled the humans somehow, or that he would be expected to pay for the extra structures.
He was on the second story staring at the armorglass window panes and wondering if there was some way to open them during the summer when he was interrupted from his thoughts. Big Mac heard the door behind him open, but didn't react immediately since he probably wasn't in anyone's way.
"You there. Xeno." The red stallion looked back as a Dark Acolyte approached him, surprised that the humans were actually speaking to him again.
"My associate is conducting the final prayers of activation on the preservatory cryo-engine. Our task is almost complete, and absent further delays, will end within point-zero-two cycles of projected completion time."
Big Macintosh rolled the wheat stalk in his mouth from one side to the other. "Thank ya kindly," he said simply.
"We are performing our duties as outlined by Dark Acolyte Gaela, nothing more," the Dark Acolyte said, producing a dataslate from within his robes and presenting it to Big Mac, "similarly, she instructed me on the proper modifications to the dataslates such that you can manipulate them properly with your poorly evolved, useless equine limbs. This contains all the information a human would need on use and maintenance of your facilities, although judging by your hesitancy in basic communications it may be a false presumption on my part that you're even literate. Even if you can read the information, considering the deplorable tech level around this agri-facility prior to construction, you still may not be able to make use of it. But orders are orders."
Big Macintosh took the dataslate, ignoring the rude commentary. "Thank ya again."
"We depart within the cycle, if you have no other concerns that are worth my attention."
Big Mac tapped the surface of the dataslate, watching as it blinked on and presented him with a menu of topics. "Nnope."
"Good. Care well for the machines here, xeno." Without further commentary the Dark Acolyte turned on his armored heel and walked out of the room.


****


About 1 kilometer outside of Sweet Apple Acres


+I still cannot comprehend the Acolyte's logic. Constructing an agri-facility for xenos?+ the Scavurel Core made a discordant whine through his vox grille, emphasizing his displeasure with the idea.
The Dark Acolyte shook his head. His servo arm was clamped onto an overhead rail to protect against turbulence as their transport made a bee-line to Ferrous Dominus, allowing him to stand free of the safety restraints of the gunship. +As she explained it, it was part of a trade.+
+A trade? With militarily inferior xenos? Why would we not simply take what we need rather than expending our own resources here?+
+The science of negotiation is full of arbitrary nuances and codes of behavior,+ the Dark Acolyte surmised, +it is little different from when we engage in trade with human pirates despite possessing far superior arms. The Dark Acolyte Gaela seems to want to preserve a non-hostile relationship to the equine xenos.+
The Scavurel Core turned away. +Human pirates are at least human. Constructing things for aliens disgusts me.+
+You cannot simply-+
Their conversation was interrupted by an alert transmitted from the cockpit, and the Scavurel all snapped to attention as their systems automatically went to combat status.
+Warning! Sensors detect incoming targets at intercept speed! Tau Empire aircraft detected!+ blasted a string of Binary from the transport bay casters.
+What? Impossible! Where did those come from?+ the Dark Acolyte demanded, walking up to the cockpit door and opening it.
The pilot of the aircraft was a withered husk of a woman with her upper torso implanted in a life-support core and numerous cables plugged into her arms and back. She turned to address the Acolyte as he entered, looking at him through a thick metal visor implanted over her eyes. +It was almost by chance that they were detected this early. They're hiding their drive emissions somehow.+
The pilot's cockpit was fully enclosed, with no windows. Instead, pict screens surrounded the pilot and fed images of her surroundings constantly to aid her. Her link with the more sophisticated sensor systems rendered even these largely redundant, although they helped the Acolyte spot the incoming aircraft and verify that there was no sensory malfunction.
+Initiate vox link with Ferrous Dominus immediately! The transports are to take evasive action!+ the Dark Acolyte barked.
+We cannot establish a vox connection. We are being jammed,+ the pilot replied.
+I was informed the jamming field had been destroyed!+
+It was. This effect is targeting us, specifically.+
The transport on the right screen suddenly flared brightly as a lash of blue sliced through its port engine, and the pilot quickly nosed the gunship up as the other aircraft spun under them while vomiting smoke into the air.
+Turn us around and engage the enemy! Get the other transport out of here!+ the Dark Acolyte commanded.
+We are outnumbered and ill-equipped for aerial combat,+ the pilot warned even as she began to turn the vessel around and cycled power to weapons, +estimated chance of successful combat engagement is eight-point-one-seven percent.+
+So, what is the estimated chance of successful retreat against the interceptor wing right on top of us?+ the Dark Acolyte asked.
+... Target locked. Beginning attack run.+


****


Ferrous Dominus - psyker dorms


The relationship between Chaos and the Warp has always been disputed, debated, tested, and revised. Those who look upon Chaos as the primordial truth, the alpha and the omega, insist that the Warp IS Chaos. That the ability to bend reality is the sole purview of the Gods, and that the Immaterium is their realm, their foodstuffs, and their substance.
This theory excites zealotry and imagination, but is unsatisfactory in logic. It is clear upon objective analysis that the entities identified as the Chaos Gods do not possess true omniscience, even within the realm of the Empyrean. Events occur constantly within the Warp that seem to proceed untouched by the Gods and do not excite their attention. Psykers dip their minds into the Warp frequently without suffering any great corruption, and ships with Warp drives travel through that nightmare universe without being struck down by its inhabitants, even when it would be in the Gods' best interest to do so. Proponents of the religious theory insist that not all events are worth the Gods' time and power, or that their motivations are simply unfathomable to us. While perfectly reasonable in itself, such assumptions rest on the illogical presumption that Chaos is infinite in power and awareness yet prone to petty fits of boredom and whimsy. It is more reasonable to assume from the outset that the power of Chaos is limited, even within the realm they call home.
The most scientific-minded hypothesis rests on the mirror theorem of the Warp. The mirror theorem posits that the material universe exists to impose rules of physical interaction on sentient consciousness and imagination; any creature with the ability for abstract thought can dream of flying in defiance of gravity, but the universe imposes very strict requirements on our ability to succeed in these efforts. The Warp, on the other hand, seeks to undo and challenge the rules imposed by sentient thought. Any creature of intellect will seek to organize and analyze data and find patterns, but the Warp vigorously fights such understanding; even the most basic of physical bonds can come undone for no perceptible reason, and mere thought can perform feats as powerful as the most coveted technologies. This theory posits that this relationship is evident in the technologies that we use to interact with them: in the Materium, technology is used primarily to circumvent or overcome physical laws that impede our goals. In the Immaterium, technology is employed to enforce those same troublesome laws against unreality.
As such, the theory goes on to suggest that Chaos fulfills the same sort of role in the Warp as order does in the Materium. Order, when given meaningful form and deployed with serious force, has an unmistakable, tangible impact. Intelligent and even many non-sentient beings recognize the role of authority and the function of hierarchy almost instinctively, from the monstrous Tyranids to the "enigmatic" Eldar witches. Societal structure is prized and used to build complex economies even in races as barbaric and violent as the Orks. With the concept of order in place to mobilize any group of organisms, whether that order manifests as a religion, a government, a tribe, or a set of worthless, esoteric rituals - seriously, to Hell with the Eldar - the goal is always essentially the same: the mobilization of organisms in groups to enhance their productivity and accomplish that which no individual could manage in the face of the basic challenges of the material universe.
It would seem, then, that Chaos accomplishes the exact same function for the Immaterium. Most see it as a religion, and that description is not incorrect, merely limited. But regardless of how it is treated and approached, Chaos serves to bring the denizens of the Warp together and bring structure to what is otherwise a rudderless and senseless ocean of limitless, uncontrolled power. Daemons that would otherwise be mindless predators lashing about at each other are arranged into allied pantheons. Eddies of power are given names and consistent personalities and associated with certain concepts and elemental forces. Rituals are formed and cause and effect is reinforced as coherent needs and appropriate rewards are determined. It gives shape to that which struggles against the very concept of form. And, most importantly, it allows mortal minds some shred of comprehension of the Empyrean, a universe that specifically defies conceivable structure.
Many Astartes, and nearly all Iron Warriors, did not turn to Chaos because they were corrupted by daemonic artifacts or tempted by whispered promises of power and immortality. When driven into the Warp and forced to survive within that realm of insanity, Chaos stood out as the only means of comprehension and structure available to seize control of their new environment. It offered intelligent, coherent Gods with specific goals and temperaments. It offered tangible rewards for particular deeds. It offered protection from many of the horrific beasts that otherwise troubled them hourly. It had symbols, and languages, and rules.
Chaos is perhaps a misnomer, for it is in fact an island of order and sanity in an otherwise unfathomable storm of energy and madness. A single glimmer of hope to those minds plunged into the darkness and stripped of everything but their senses and their souls. Chaos, like order, is a way of survival and mobilization; terrible and twisted, no doubt, but sufficient for the mortal mind to withstand the insanities of the Immaterium.
Or so the theory goes.
"Twi? Twilight? How long have you been reading that?"


Twilight's head snapped up sharply as something prodded her back leg, her heart leaping into her throat. Her horn lit up with magic immediately, casting her surroundings in a ghostly purple light.
"Whoa! Calm down! It's me!" Spike said, shielding his face with his arms and flinching away.
Twilight breathed heavily and her eyes refocused, taking in her surroundings. The glow around her horn slowly faded, and the alicorn let her body relax as the room turned dark again.
"S-Sorry about that. I..." Twilight shook her head, and then looked down at the dataslate in front of her, "I kind of lost track of where I was."
"You mean in the boo-er, slate?" Spike asked.
"No, Spike," Twilight mumbled, looking around the room.
She was laying on her bed in the dorm that she shared with Rarity and Spike, which was no huge revelation since she remembered being here when she had started reading. Given that the room had no windows, however, she couldn't easily tell what time it was, and aside from the helpfully back-lit dataslate screen the room was completely dark.
"Urrrgh..." a groaning noise came from the other bed in the room, and Twilight heard Rarity grumble. "Whatever time it is, and whatever's wrong, it's way too early for it."
Twilight's horn lit up again so that she could get a good look at Rarity's antique clock perched on the wall. "It's past six o'clock."
"I rest my case," the unicorn mumbled, shifting in her bed.
"You don't look so good, Twi. How are you feeling?" Spike asked in concern.
"Like I spent all night reading about space monsters from another dimension that want to eat my brain," Twilight said humorlessly, rubbing at her muzzle.
"A real page-turner, huh?" Spike said with a wry smile.
"Don't get me wrong, Spike; this compilation is incredible. The topic is just... difficult." Twilight sighed, feeling her eyes droop. "I've already found several fascinating parallels with my magic studies, especially my experiences with the Alicorn Amulet and Sombra's dark magic. And personal relevance aside, it's just... well, it's really interesting! The humans that wrote these articles are outstanding!"
Spike stood at the edge of the bed and tried to get a good look at the dataslate display. "Oh? Who wrote them?"
"A few different people, I think," Twilight said, tapping a box with the tip of her hoof to bring up a list of citations, "it cites a lot of different materials, mostly from some human called 'Perturabo'. But the essays and thesis are written by... let's see... 'Solon'."
Twilight's muzzle wrinkled. "Huh. Awkward."
"You two aren't going back to sleep, are you?" Rarity grumbled from her bed. "Twilight, aren't you at ALL tired?"
"Pft, please. You think this is the first time I've stayed up all night reading?" Twilight scoffed.
"It isn't even the first time this WEEK," Spike agreed.
Rarity groaned again.
"Come on Rarity, we can't spend all day sleeping, anyway," the purple alicorn said, standing up on her bed, "we've still got most of the fortress to explore!"
"Can't you just go back to reading?" Rarity asked, shifting in her bed again.
"No, the dumb cogitator cores won't give me access to their systems with a guest pass," Twilight growled, having obviously considered the option, "so our first exploration is going to be finding someone who will let me use theirs."
Rarity made more displeased noises, while Spike looked confused. "Wait, so where did that one come from, then?"
"I had to use Trixie's security card," Twilight grumbled.
"Well, then it's off to Trixie's room we go," Rarity said suddenly, raising her head off her pillow. She was wearing a clay mask and had curlers in her mane, Twilight saw, and the alicorn wondered just what, if anything, Rarity had actually left behind in her home.
"Just give me a little while to get ready and do my mane. Then we can get Trixie to load you up with new reading material and I can go back to bed."
Twilight raised an eyebrow as the snow-colored unicorn trudged toward the bathroom. "Why would you bother primping when you're planning to go back to sleep?"
Rarity didn't answer, and the door slid shut behind her.
"Isn't she magnificent?" Spike sighed, his claws clasped together.
"Yeah, sure," Twilight rolled her eyes as she stepped down from her bed, "I wonder how the others are doing. I wish we didn't have to get separated like this. I find this entire place fascinating, if not objectively awful, but it must be pretty scary for the others..."


****


Ferrous Dominus - menial dormitory showers


"We're Apples forever, Apples together, we're family and so much more! No matter what comes, we will face the weather! 'Cuz we're aaaaaapples to the core!"
Applejack's voice echoed within the vast open spaces of the shower rooms, bouncing off the bald steel walls and ceiling as steaming hot water streamed down her head and mane.
A moment later the room was filled with loud clanging as Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie started banging their hooves on the metal floor in pony applause. Fluttershy was joining in as well, but her tepid hoof-taps were completely lost in the din.
"And that's mah encore, ladies! Thank ya'll and goodnight!" Applejack twisted the metal wheel under the shower head, and the water streaming down from the shower head turned to a dribbling trickle.
She and Rainbow Dash exited first, retrieving the towels hanging from hooks outside the rows of shower stalls.
"Well, Ah was pretty worried about havin' to stay in this place, but Ah gotta admit that this isn't half bad," Applejack admitted as she dried herself.
"I'd say it's exactly half bad. But the other half is pretty good," Rainbow Dash admitted as she shook out her wings, "the rooms are more like closets, and I don't think there's a single window in this whole building, but everything works, at least."
She tilted her head to the side. "Hey, I wonder what the Space Marines' rooms are like! When Tellis gets back we should totally have him give us a tour!"
"Oh, no, I don't think we should bother Mister Tellis for that," Fluttershy said with a cringe as she emerged from her stall and started to dry off, "in fact, we should probably not bother him about anything anymore... ever."
"Well, fer now Ah'd settle fer a tour of the mess hall," Applejack said before stepping up to Pinkie's stall and banging a hoof on the door, "yo, Pinkie, ya wrappin' up in there?"
"Yeah, I was just reading the wall graffiti," the pink pony explained as she emerged from the stall, chuckling, "heh. Metal boxes."
Applejack's happy expression dimmed a bit. "Ya feelin' better today? Ya were a pretty sour apple after we set out fer this place."
Pinkie sighed, lowering her head. "I guess. I'm still sad that we have to leave all our human friends, though."
"I'm more worried about having to get rid of them," Fluttershy admitted, shuddering.
"Yeah, well, we'll see what Twi has to say about that when we see her," Applejack noted as she found the pair of hair ties she had left on a metal counter. She had just started doing her mane and tail up in their usual style when Rainbow Dash snorted.
"I'd love to hear what her big plan is. If we take out this 'Warsmith', then what? Do the rest of the humans give up and leave? Is that how it works?"
"Ah dunno Dash. Maybe this 'Chaos' or whatever will go with him?" Applejack finished tying her mane and then started moving toward the entrance. "If not, Ah really don't like our chances. And we haven't even met the head honcho yet. Ah'd wager half a season's harvest he ain't any softer than the Space Marines we've met so far."
As the farmer was reaching for the exit button the doors suddenly slid open on their own, courtesy of the two menials on the other side.
The two male, naked menials, with towels over their shoulders.
The two groups stopped and stared at each other for several seconds in confused silence, and Fluttershy's eyes widened as her cheeks started to burn.
"Huh," Applejack said suddenly, "so that's what a human one looks like." She didn't mean to stare, but the humans' bipedal stature kind of put their groin right at pony face level. And given that the humans always seemed to wear clothes, this was also her first time getting a good look at homo sapien anatomy.
"I thought they'd be bigger," Rainbow mused, tilting her head to one side, "no offense, guys."
This seemed to jar the men out of their stupor, and one of them turned right around and left while the other quickly pulled his towel down and wrapped it around his waist.
"What the blazes is this? Who are you?"
"Ah think introducin' ourselves in the shower room is a mite strange, sugarcube," Applejack said while waving a hoof at the man, "mind if we get by?"
The man stumbled backward out of the door and into the locker rooms, still completely out of his depth as the ponies walked out calmly (save Fluttershy, who was hiding behind Rainbow Dash again).
"So is that the guy's shower room? That would explain things," Pinkie noted.
"Y-Yes! It is!" the menial confirmed. That wasn't really the most obvious thing wrong with this encounter, but he seized onto the topic nonetheless.
"Well, sorry! How were we supposed to know?" Rainbow Dash asked.
"Didn't you see a symbol mounted next to the locker room entrance?" the menial demanded.
"Ya mean the blue one that's a stick figure of a human?" Applejack asked. "What about it?"
"That symbol is supposed to be a human male," the man groused.
"Then that other one that had those weird fins on its legs was supposed to be a female?" Rainbow Dash asked. "How does that make sense?"
"It's... It's supposed to be a dress," sighed the menial.
"Do any humans wear dresses? The only one I've seen was the one Rarity made for Gaela, so that doesn't count."
"Ah think it's supposed to be a robe, not a dress. Ah could see that. Lotsa humans 'round here wear those."
"But don't the men wear those too?"
"This is really confusing."
The menial finally gave up, stepping past the ponies into the shower room. "You know what? It doesn't matter. You're a different species, and you're naked anyway. I'm gonna go wash."


Rainbow Dash watched the random human leave, and then shrugged her shoulders. "Dude's got a point. Wearing clothes all the time seems to make things really complicated for them."
"Fluttershy, what're ya scared of NOW? That one didn't have a mask on," Applejack pointed out as she retrieved her hat from a locker.
"Why don't humans have fur anywhere but on their heads?" the yellow pegasus mumbled quietly.
"What are you talking about? You saw them, they had fur all around their-"
"BESIDES there, Rainbow!"
The others likewise had stashed their saddlebags in the lockers, since the bags held their security access cards which allowed them into the room.
"So, what're we doing today in the big human fortress of doom?" Rainbow Dash asked once she'd secured her saddlebag and checked the card pinned to it. "'Cause if we have time, I want to find someone to put my name into my card, like Trixie did."
"Well, Ah suppose we should find Twi and see about that..." Applejack trailed off. "But if we're bein' honest, and ya know Ah always am, Ah'd like to find Gaela first and check on mah house gettin' rebuilt."
Pinkie leaned over to Rainbow Dash. "You know, Daniels implied that human liquor is way, WAY stronger than our cider..."
The racer's eyebrows climbed, and she shared a silent smirk with the pink pony.
"Uhm, aren't we on a super-important mission to save Equestria from evil?" Fluttershy asked meekly, looking around to make sure that there were no more humans within earshot.
"Yeah, fine, we'll get to that eventually," Rainbow Dash said, "but until then we should probably enjoy having the humans around while we still can, right?"
"Ah hear that," Applejack grinned, raising up a hoof.
As Rainbow smacked the earth pony's hoof with her own, Fluttershy made a desperate noise in the back of her throat.
"Isn't that going to make it harder to eventually turn against them, though?" Fluttershy asked.
"No, it won't be any harder, just more dramatic and emotionally devastating," Pinkie pointed out.
Applejack led the way out into the hall with the other three mares trailing close behind her and two of them inappropriately excited. "Then let's go get..."
A red light started flashing above the ponies, cutting the farmer off and casting the steel walls in a deep crimson. Within moments, each of them could hear air raid sirens going off around the building; a deep, mournful horn that sent chills down their spines.
"That's not good," Pinkie said with a wince.
"Wh-What does it mean? What's happening?" Fluttershy asked.
"Ah don't know. Maybe we should ask-"
Again the farmer was cut off before she could complete her thoughts: first by the locker room door slamming shut behind Fluttershy - despite her still being close enough to open it by proximity - and then by a vox transmission cast over the entire fortress.
"Warning! Warning! All personnel to battle stations! This is not a drill! Siege lockdown is now in effect! All non-combat personnel's building access is now restricted until lockdown release! I repeat! Siege lockdown is now in effect!"
"Well. There go our plans for the day," Rainbow muttered, glaring at a vox caster near the ceiling as if it was the device's fault.
"Are we under attack? Who'd be dumb enough to try that on a place like this?" Applejack asked, peeking out from her hat to stare at the emergency lights.
"You mean besides us?" Rainbow asked with a snicker.
"Don't gimme that sass, RD. Ya know what Ah meant."
"Enemy sensor intercepts identified!" blared the vox caster again. "All personnel, prepare for assault! Tau armor is incoming!"
A trio of groans came from the three ponies that weren't whimpering in fear.
"Ah knew it! Damn grayskin freaks!" Applejack growled.
"Those guys ruin EVERYTHING," Rainbow agreed bitterly.
"All personnel, to battle stations!" the vox again announced, a note of increased desperation and fear in the voice on the other end. "The palisade has been breached!"


****


Ferrous Dominus - sector 30 (rear quadrant)


It was said that when the Iron Warriors struck, they struck like a hammer upon an anvil: slowly, perhaps, but precise, purposeful, and with unstoppable force. This had been evident in the assault upon the Tau encampment: even when the foe saw the 38th Company poised to strike, they could do little but plot lingering resistance before they were swept away.
The Tau, it was said, struck more like a lightning bolt: hard, fast, and out of nowhere, leaving nothing but confusion and smoking ruin in their wake.
The incoming aircraft had been detected first via ghost readings on the individual sensors of the anti-aircraft guns, and were confirmed by physical sightings moments before a pair of Rhino transports on the perimeter were blasted into smoking hulks.
Ordinarily there would have been a sensorium established by this phase of the base's construction that could have pierced the stealth fields of the Tau aircraft. Alas, given that they had only restored basic vox function the previous evening, the sensorium's establishment had been delayed since it would have been of limited use under the previously imposed jamming conditions.
As aircraft had begun peeling away from a tardy but furious anti-air response, the first dozen Hammerhead gunships had reached firing range of the perimeter bunkers. Their engines screamed as the hover tanks maintained pursuit speed, flying full tilt toward the fortress-city.
The land they were traveling over was on queue to be mined; special anti-gravity trigger explosives would have sensed the approach of the hover tanks, unleashing magnetic charges into the sensitive underbelly of the vehicles. Such was the setup around most of the fortress. Alas, this quadrant was where the Company had been scavenging the Tau command cruiser, and as such had been left untrapped thus far to minimize any accidents and maximize efficiency. Besides losing no vehicles to mines, the starship carcass provided a convenient shield from some of the fortress guns. It was a glaring weak point in the fortress's defenses, and one that had been considered.
The security cordon would have indeed posed an intimidating gauntlet normally, covering the obvious point of approach with a devastating array of heavy weapons. Alas, with the bulk of the 38th Company deployed to the Everfree Forest and searching for more Tau, the defenses were diminished to the point of a few dug-in tanks and lightly manned bunkers for each sector.
These defenses, already struggling against the element of surprise and stunned at the number of enemy units, put down but one of the enemy tanks before the armored spearhead pushed past the first and second lines of defense. Those tanks then slowed to combat speed before unleashing their weapons into the rear of the perimeter strongpoints. Tanks and bunkers were carved apart by heavy railguns and had their internals cooked by ion cannons as slaves and Dark Techpriests started taking flight from the starship's grave. The palisade guns - what few could find a targeting solution in the close-quarters fight below - fired desperately at the invaders, but in this one assault scenario the firing angles were stacked against them. What few kills they managed was no cause for celebration, for within minutes the security cordon had been reduced to smoking wreckage while groups of human soldiers and Chaos Space Marines sprinted for new cover.
Following behind the Hammerheads came the true bulk of the invasion force, and soon dozens of Devilfish transports were dodging through the smoking gap cut into the Iron Warriors' defenses with Piranha light attack skimmers running escort alongside them. Behind them came the battlesuits, jet packs straining to keep up with the assault.
Even with the outer perimeter smashed, the palisade wall would have stopped the attack dead until it was breached; the walls had been specifically designed to foil the Tau's anti-gravity technology that would normally see them bound over such obstacles. Explosive charges in the wall spikes would have cut down ascending vehicles trying to navigate past them, while more traps triggered by the unique anti-gravity drives awaited those who reached the top. Alas, this sector was the only part of the base that had not yet had its wall erected; again a consequence of the ongoing disassembly of the starship. It would have slowed construction intolerably to have a wall erected between the fortress and the primary source of its walls. So it had been saved for last.
Each conceit was a calculated risk; every Iron Warrior and even the mundane human soldiers could see the glaring blind spot in their base's defenses, but it didn't matter. The Tau, having been driven from orbit, hunted like animals, and having lost their base, were not supposed to have the resources available to launch an assault.
Alas, they did.


The first of the Piranhas zipped past the gunnery towers and started skirting around the crowds of fleeing slaves flooding into the base. Its squadron spread out, picking out groups of armed Scavurel soldiers and heavy Mechanicus walkers that served as security for the construction site. Burst cannons and fusion blasters unleashed streams of destructive energies into the barricades as the heavier, slower vehicles started pouring in through the gap, and they were soon joined by ranked fusillades from Fire Warrior teams as the vanguard unloaded the first of the infantry.


A few of the devilfish APCs broke off from the veritable river pouring into the base, passing over the crowds of fleeing slaves and slowing in front of them to box in the crowd. Those transports started to unload their soldiers as the tide of forced laborers started to slow; the Tau among the slaves were already whooping and cheering even as they sought cover from the attack, and they tried their best to keep the humans calm as they were surrounded.
One Fire Warrior unloading from the transports boasted unique rank markings on her helmet and carried a rail rifle over her shoulder as she watched the skimmers branch out and chase the remaining Dark Mechanicus overseers with volleys of burst cannon fire.
"Attention, humans!" the Fireblade barked in Gothic. "Calm yourselves at once and rejoice! You who are oppressed and forced into labor by your cruel Imperial overlords have been granted reprieve! We are not here to harm you!"
As Crisis Suits and Stealth Suits landed in the fortress interior and started linking up with their mission teams, numerous other Devilfish APCs started landing by the crowd and opening up, although no soldiers exited from them. Other Fire Warriors began organizing a line of the frantic laborers into the APCs, prioritizing the eager Tau prisoners.
"Your day has come, gue'la brothers and sisters! We offer you freedom! All you need do is take it!" The Fireblade raised her rifle in the air, and many of the humans roared their approval, lifting their fists to the sky. The Tau and Kroot prisoners gladly joined them, not having understood the speech but easily being swept up in the energy as their army's armored vehicles rushed by.
The Fireblade turned away from the cheering crowd, and one of the unit veterans nodded to her.
*Shas'vre Jerriha, these numbers exceed our estimates. We won't have enough room to transport all these humans back to base.*
Jerriha nodded before she stared out at the avenues of the Iron Warrior base. The sounds of war were spreading fast as her units carried out their missions, and the guns on the towers behind them were still thundering away at the vehicles streaming in.
*Triple-load every transport. Pack them in as tight as possible. Prioritize our own, obviously, and then the young and healthy humans. Those will be of the most use to the Greater Good.*
*Aye, Shas'vre.*
*Every Devilfish transport that loses its squad is to take on prisoners before departing for base.* Then her head whipped about to stare at the macro-cannon turrets mounted on the towers. *And somebody find the power transmissions for those blasted turrets! I want our escape corridor as safe as possible!*
*We have Riptide battlesuits coming in. Should they target the cannons?*
*No,* Jerriha said reluctantly, *have them save their ordnance. It's better spent on the gue'la infrastructure rather than their defenses.*
As the Fire Warrior saluted smartly, Jerriha stepped back into her waiting Devilfish. *Prepare for killing, Shas'la. We walk into the very maw of the enemy.*


****


Ferrous Dominus - psyker dormitories (ten minutes before perimeter breach)


"Triiiixiiiiie! Get up! I need your help!"
Twilight banged her hoof on Trixie's door as Rarity and Spike watched from behind with considerable sympathy.
"Trixie!" Twilight barked after several seconds passed without a response. "Don't make me teleport in there! Mister Serith said that this place affects our magic powers and I'm not sure if it would be safe! But I will TOTALLY do it if I have to!"
After a few more seconds a voice finally came from the other side of the door.
"Good morning, Lady Sparkle," said Suuna, her voice muffled by the metal barrier, "Mistress Trixie wished for me to greet you and kindly request that you... uhm, I believe she said 'get bent'."
"Oh, good morning Suuna! Please tell Miss Trixie that I require her Great and Powerful assistance in order to get more reading material!" Twilight said brightly, quite pleased that Trixie had confirmed that she could hear her.
"Ah. Right. Hold on."
There was more muffled grumbling from behind the door, and after a minute it finally slid open.
Trixie stood before the opening, her usual hat and cape absent. Her mane was also a ragged mess, and Rarity winced at the crude display.
"You have PRECISELY two minutes to convince the Great and Sleepy Trixie not to embrace the dark, hateful magic that blankets this place and go all magic duel on your flank, Sparkle," Trixie mumbled, her eyes squeezed shut, "go."
Twilight rolled her eyes. "Oh, get a grip. It's almost seven o'clock, Trixie."
"What do you think Trixie is, an earth pony?" the blue unicorn growled, her eyes cracking open. "Trixie's day doesn't start until 8 AM, the earliest!"
"Right? This girl just doesn't listen," Rarity sighed, for once finding a rapport with the other unicorn.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just give me your stupid card so I can get into the cogitator core," Twilight snapped impatiently.
"They don't work that way! Some machines actually check to make sure you're the same pony who the card was given to!" Trixie barked back as she stepped out into the hall. "Besides, Trixie already gave you all that reading material yesterday!"
"I need to get back into the archive to cross-reference several things I read about but didn't understand," Twilight explained impatiently, "in particular, I want to look at information about the 'Imperium', 'Nikea', 'the Book of Lorgar', and maybe-"
"If you want to park your fat butt in the space library all day, go find the human you rode in with and ask her to help you!" Trixie interrupted hotly. "Besides, aren't you on a super-important mission to vanquish these Iron Warriors? Trixie would have thought you might want to get started on that!"
Rarity and Spike recoiled, and Twilight's fur stood on end. "SSSH! Don't go shouting that out in the open here!"
"Oh, calm down," the blue unicorn said with a huff, "there's nopony around to hear."
"It's not PONIES I'm worried about," Twilight growled, "besides, we don't know this place! The humans have communication devices everywhere, and I don't know how they work! What if they're listening in and we can't even tell?"
Trixie snorted. "Trixie thinks you'd know very quickly if the Iron Warriors ever caught on to your plan. You don't have to worry."
It was just about at that point that the air sirens started blaring and the emergency lighting switched on.
Trixie stared as she watched Twilight turn several shades paler without the aid of magic, as if her fur had suddenly been bleached.
"Warning! Warning! All personnel to battle stations! This is not a drill! Siege lockdown is now in effect! All non-combat personnel's building access is now restricted until lockdown release! I repeat! Siege lockdown is now in effect!"
"That... That alarm could be about anything!" Trixie said, although there were droplets of sweat collecting around her horn.
"Nononononono, this is not happening, this is not happening," Rarity chanted like a mantra, her head snapping from side to side to watch for any incoming soldiers.
"So, uh, Rarity?" Spike asked, poking the white unicorn on the leg. "We probably only have a few minutes left to live, so I was wondering if maybe you would-"
"Enemy sensor intercepts identified! All personnel, prepare for assault! Tau armor is incoming!"
The relief that came from the three ponies was palpable, although Spike's reaction was more mixed.
"There! See? We'll be fine! ... For now." Trixie turned around to re-enter her room. "These 'Tau' clowns are going to get themselves crushed, and then everything will be-"
This time Trixie was interrupted by the sound of her dorm room doors slamming shut right in front of her, followed by another vox message.
"All personnel, to battle stations! The palisade has been breached!"
"Well, that's discouraging," Trixie mumbled, placing a hoof against the door.
"Mistress? Are you all right?" Suuna asked from behind the door.
"Yes, yes. Trixie is fine. Suuna, could you open the door, please?" Trixie asked.
"I can't! The door is locked!"
Trixie frowned. "Trixie thought the doors didn't lock from that side. Well, in any case, Trixie's key is on her Great and Fabulous hat. If you could-"
"No, Mistress, you don't understand," Suuna interrupted, "the lockdown prevents any of us from opening the doors. Only the Iron Warriors and the Dark Mechanicus can open them until the lockdown ends!"
"What? Why would they do that?" Trixie demanded.
"I believe it's for your safety, Mistress Trixie."
"The irony of this is just sickening," Twilight mumbled, turning around to face Spike, "Spike, you still have the Elements?"
The young dragon nodded, slapping the backpack he was carrying. He had been instructed not to let the pack out of his sight, and as such he had brought it along even for their (theoretically) brief trip to try to coerce Trixie.
Twilight chewed her lip as possibilities rolled through her head. "Okay. We need to go find the others."
"Twilight," Rarity gasped, "you can't be serious! You want to-"
"Yes," Twilight said with a nod.
"NOW? While the fortress is under attack?" Spike asked incredulously.
"Yes," Twilight said with another nod.
"Are you out of your egg-shaped little mind?" Trixie asked.
"No," Twilight said with an annoyed glance at the unicorn, "the base is probably in a panic right now, and every one of the 38th Company has more important things to do than deal with us. I don't know what it looks like out there, but if there's any chance we might be able to get to the Warsmith now, I want to take it, even just to get a look at him."
"How are we supposed to get around with all the doors locked?" Rarity asked, quite distressed by this whole plan. Already the sounds of heavy weapon fire was ringing through the halls, distant echoes of the carnage taking place outside.
"That's the easy part. I'll just teleport us through any locked doors," Twilight said, her horn flashing with magic.
"And you don't think that the Warsmith guy might be better defended and harder to get to with the fortress under attack?" Spike questioned.
"Maybe. That part I don't know about. But I'd rather risk finding out than sitting around in the hallway waiting for things to sort themselves out on their own. We can still back down if confronting him looks impossible," Twilight reasoned, "we got this far only because we got help. It's time we took our own initiative."
Trixie's eyes narrowed. "Are you doing this just because you don't have any more reading material readily available and you have nothing else to do?"
"Trixie, you don't have to come," Twilight deadpanned, her wings spreading as she pointed her hoof down the hallway.
"W-Wait! Don't leave Trixie behind!" the blue unicorn said, casting a regretful glance at her room. "Suuna, you stay here and out of trouble! Trixie will be back soon!"
"Gladly, Mistress," came the tired reply from beyond the doors.


"Wait up! Trixie's coming with you!"
Twilight put on aggravated face as she led the others down the hall, but she was inwardly relieved that she had another pony - not to mention another magic-user - to help her. Bravery was all well and good, but Twilight was quite aware she had no idea what she was getting into.
"Twilight, I have plenty of reservations about this plan of yours, but I think one point needs to be addressed right away, before anything bad happens," Rarity said, creeping nervously behind Spike.
"If this is about the way the red emergency lighting looks against your coat, it'll clear up when we're outside," Twilight murmured.
"... In that case, the SECOND most pressing matter would be how we're going to handle being in a battlefield," Rarity said. She was hardly mollified by Twilight's reassurance about her coat, but at least the alicorn had her priorities straight. "Specifically, if we happen upon Tau fighting humans, do we stop to help the humans?"
"No," Twilight said immediately, "we should keep out of this fight and stay neutral."
"What if it's a human we know?" Rarity asked.
Twilight hesitated. "Well... I guess it would be pretty heartless to abandon a friend like that..."
"What if the human is clearly an innocent non-combatant? Not all the humans here are soldiers, you know," Trixie pointed out.
Twilight grimaced. "Well, I suppose that's an extenuating circumstance..."
"What if the human is a soldier we don't know, but they seem like they'd be pretty cool once we got to know them and it's easily within our power to save their lives?" asked Spike, scratching his chin.
Twilight's expression shifted to one of annoyance as her wings drooped. "You know what? You can all just use your best judgment."
"So once again, we're basically on the humans' side," Rarity clarified.
"Sure, why not," Twilight grumbled, coming up to the door that led to the secondary data center.
The sound of gunfire was much closer now, and despite Twilight's limited exposure to human weapons so far she could already recognize the sound of Tau pulse weapons dueling with Astartes boltguns nearby.


Twilight was working out in her head how best to avoid the nearby firefight when the doors in front of her slid open, taking the matter right out of her hooves.
Two Chaos Space Marines ducked into the hall, and they used the hallway wall as cover as their bolters spat mass-reactive rounds in furious bursts back into the data repository.
Twilight backed up immediately, and she very nearly slipped on the brass shell casings that were rolling down the hall in a haphazard stream. Had she stayed still she might have been stepped on as one of the Iron Warriors took another step back and began to reload.
"We should probably find a different way!" Rarity said, her ears pinned in an attempt to block out the noise of the boltguns.
"There IS no other way!" Trixie shouted back.
It was about at that moment that a Tau photon grenade landed in the hall, blanketing everybody's vision in blinding white.
"AHHH! Trixie can't see!"
"I take it back! The red lights weren't that bad! Bring them back, please!"
Twilight blocked out the complaining unicorns behind her as she tried to focus on her hearing, having been blinded like everyone else.
She was rewarded for her vigilance by the sound of a volley of pulse shots, followed by the sound of two vox-garbled screams of pain.
The sound of two heavy armor suits hitting the ground right in front of her left a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach, and as her vision started to turn from solid white to shimmering grayscale blobs she decided to put up her magic shield.
That decision saved her life, and likely that of her friends. There was no shout of "psyker", demand for surrender, or any other warning. One moment Twilight saw a dark blob moving into her field of vision, and the next she felt a surge of hot pain running through her horn as energy bolts exploded against her magic barrier.
"Wh-What? What's going on?!" Trixie demanded, blinking rapidly while her vision started to return to normal.
"The Tau! They're shooting at us!" Twilight shouted, squeezing her eyes shut against the building pain.
"Why would they do that?! We're not their enemies!" Trixie cried. She could now see clearly enough to make out the smoking hulks of armor lying in front of them, as well as the crackling impacts of the pulse volleys against Twilight's magic shield.
"This is all Applejack and Rainbow Dash's fault!" Rarity cried out, rubbing her foreleg over her eyes.
Twilight cracked an eye open against the pain in her horn, and she clenched her teeth when she saw two more Fire Warriors in blue and black armor moving into a firing position next to their compatriot.
"Somepony do something! I can't hold them off forever!"
Trixie gulped as her sight recovered entirely, bringing the image of alien soldiers aiming their pulse carbines into sharp relief. Twilight's body trembled in front of her, the alicorn's horn pulsing with a corona of brilliant purple.
Her gaze dropped to the gunmetal and gold heaps on the floor off to the side, and the unicorn's jaw set.
"How dare you kill the Great and Powerful Trixie's audience, wretched invaders?!" Trixie barked, suddenly holding her head high before her horn lit up with magic. "Experience the wrath of Equestria's second mightiest magician!"
The Fire Warriors didn't understand a word she said - all the soldiers that could speak Gothic were helping rescue the slaves - but they surely understood that they had overreached in their assault when a pair of boltguns floated up off the ground of their own accord, pointing toward the doorway with a pink field of magic swirling around them.
"REVENGE IS TRIXIE'S, ALIEN SCUM!!"
Rarity and Spike gaped as the bolters started firing on full automatic, promptly swallowing the three Fire Warriors in mass-reactive fire before they could hope to escape.
Trixie kept firing the battle rifles as sweat trickled down her forehead, and soon the weapons clicked empty.


"... Well," Twilight said uncomfortably after an awkward silence descended upon the Equestrians, "it seems we've kind of crossed an ugly line here."
"You didn't warn Trixie that these 'Tau' people shoot ponies on sight!" Trixie snapped. The boltguns released their empty magazines onto the floor, dropping them among the scattered casings.
"Last we saw, they didn't!" Twilight protested. "I warned everypony this was going to happen! Every time we ran into the Tau, Applejack and Rainbow Dash knocked them silly! Now they're out for us, too!"
The Marines' bodies shifted slightly as fresh ammunition magazines broke free of their belts and floated up into the bolters.
Trixie levitated the slides back as she glared at Twilight. "Well then, that settles any lingering moral qualms about attacking the Tau for the benefit of the humans, doesn't it?"
"Hey, yeah, it does!" Spike agreed, apparently surprised by the revelation. "That's convenient!"
"There's nothing 'convenient' about being targeted by one group of alien warriors while skulking about in order to defeat another!" Rarity protested, turning her head away from the bloody bits of alien splattered all over the hall. "Twilight, this idea was bad before, but we can't proceed if we're going to be actually attacked out there!"
Twilight grimaced. "Rarity, we can make it! Whether we aid the humans or just avoid the individual battles, we need to make sure the others are safe! Besides, we're probably not any better off here, given that we already have firefights right outside our front door!"
Rarity frowned, considering that argument. Before she could come to any decisive conclusion, the whistling noise of rockets came from outside.
The explosions that rocked the building didn't even come close to harming the ponies directly, and in fact it was only Spike with his two-legged gait who even lost his footing when the metal floors trembled.
Twilight watched a burst of flame wash through the secondary data center, and winced. Then she ducked to the floor as the squeal of stressed metal came from the numerous pipes that ran over the ceilings throughout the halls. Lumen strips flickered and started leaking sparks as the power supply started to fluctuate uncontrollably, and an ominous creak came from directly above them.
A loud banging noise had all the ponies ducking along with Twilight when a pipe valve burst directly over Rarity, having been bent by the tremors and then blasted open by a sudden, uncontrolled influx of gas. It was sudden and loud enough that Twilight would have put her shield up again under normal conditions, but she was still quite tired from fending off so much pulse weapon fire.
Spike heard the hiss of escaping gas and the crackling of a sparking lumen strip, and his eyes widened.
"Everypony get down!" the dragon cried, diving at a surprised and confused Rarity.
The gas explosion was, in all honesty, much less severe than he had feared; automatic failsafes had kicked in once a breach had been detected to cut off the supply of fuel and flood the line with reactant-inhibitors. The pipe did spit out an impressive tongue of fire with what it had left though, vomiting a fireball downward that would have surely left the glamorous unicorn badly scorched had she stayed still.
"Rarity! Spike! Are you okay?" Twilight asked, trying to focus on her friends so that she could stop thinking about the explosions that had just torn through the data center. The cogitator cores! The dataslates! How much knowledge had just been turned into burnt rubble?
"Y-Yes. I'm fine, darling," Rarity said somewhat dizzily, standing up next to Spike, "but as I was saying, this... is..."
Trixie winced. Rarity was looking at her tail. Or rather, what was left of it. Half of the shining purple curl had been burnt clean off, and there was a thin trail of smoke winding up from what was left.
"And here it comes," Trixie groaned, lowering her head. Twilight didn't say anything, but was similarly braced for an overdramatic outpour.
"I'm sorry, Rarity! I t-tried to... I mean-" Spike started blubbering, but fell silent when Rarity suddenly shushed him.
"That's quite all right, Spike. Thank you. You were very brave," Rarity said calmly, surprising all of them. She smiled pleasantly at the young dragon while her horn lit up.
Trixie quirked an eyebrow as one of the bolters started quivering in the air, and a moment later the magic field around it turned from pink to blue.
"Sorry for the hold-up, everypony. We can continue now," the white unicorn said pleasantly. The boltgun she was now controlling floated over next to her. "Lead the way, Twilight."
Twilight was a bit concerned about the way Rarity's serene smile didn't reach her eyes and the way she stared at the Astartes battle rifle with newfound admiration, but she decided it was enough that they could move on without any further complaints. She could already hear new volleys of pulse rifle fire and shouting in an alien language from the next room.


Six Tau Fire Warriors were holed up in the remains of the secondary data center, taking cover behind the shattered armorglass windows to trade fire with the building across the street.
Their Devilfish floated nearby, sawing across a cluster of humans huddled behind a barricade with its burst cannon to keep the squad down and out of the firefight. Thin lances of red light and solid-slug ammunition splashed uselessly against its hull, but most of the human fire sought out the Tau infantry that had disembarked here.
*I told you, the demo team is down! This building has been crippled but is not secure!* a unit leader barked into his communicator. *Is there another demolitions team available, or do you want us to move on?*
*Many unusual power readings coming from that structure. But definitely not a generator,* decided the voice on the other end, *all right, embark on your transport and join the-*
*Behind us!* the Fire Warrior on rearguard shouted a warning as he raised his pulse rifle to fire.
The alien warrior promptly had his weapon magically wrenched from his hand before a single bolt shell slammed into his helmet, taking his head off.
The rest of the squad ducked away from the windows and turned around just in time to see three horned ponies gallop into the room, each of them flaring with magic. Then a puff of smoke exploded around them from nowhere, and the ponies vanished from sight before any of the soldiers could so much as fire a shot in panic.
*Where'd they go?*
*Behind the burnt-out columns! Flank them!*
*Wait! On the sides!*
That last Fire Warrior had noted that there were a pair of boltguns floating through the smoke and hot ash that now flooded the room, one on each side of the unit.
The floating bolters opened fire as Trixie and Rarity peeked out from behind a scorched cogitator core, trapping the aliens between their gunshots. Trixie's gun once again slammed its trigger back and shook wildly to spray ammunition into the soldiers, while Rarity's gun snapped off single shots into the aliens, picking them off precisely and efficiently.
The unit leader sprinted for the cores, but an errant bolter round exploded near his leg and he stumbled. His pulse rifle tumbled out of his grip as he fell and bounced across the floor, spinning through the shattered bits of dataslates that practically carpeted the data center before coming to rest next to the devastated core that his enemies were covering behind.
The Fire Warrior grunted and crawled forward, seizing the stock of his rifle.
A moment later, a dainty white hoof slammed down on top of it.
"Crimes against fabulosity will NOT go unpunished!" Rarity snarled, the boltgun levitating into place with its muzzle next to the alien's head. "Perish, alien thug!"
*Farewell, Aun'va. I hope I have been of service,* the soldier murmured as the bolter's hammer clicked back into place.


The sound of Rarity's boltgun obliterating another helmet marked the end of the skirmish, and Twilight cautiously stepped out from behind a collapsed data core.
"Yeah, I definitely think we're setting a troubling precedent, here," the alicorn noted, staring at the dead bodies lying on the floor. There were several humans in Mechanicus robes and another Iron Warrior, but her eyes were inevitably drawn back to the aliens killed at the hooves of ponies. All the same, she couldn't really complain too much; venturing out into battle had been her idea in the first place, even if Twilight had envisioned a lot less fighting and more sneaking and running.
A few seconds later they heard the whine of a Devilfish engine kicking up outside, and the ponies ducked out of sight as the empty APC sped away down the street.
"Twilight, be a dear and search for any more Tau garbage nearby, would you?" Rarity said as she looked over the unmoving Astartes for more bolter ammunition. "Spikey, could you wipe these off for me, please? There's blood and dust EVERYWHERE in here!"
Trixie frowned as she levitated one of the scavenged ammunition magazines into her scavenged bolter. "Trixie would like to know how you're so accurate firing a boltgun with levitation when this is your first time trying." It was easy to tell which kills had been made by which unicorn: the ones killed by Trixie's desperate barrage had been utterly torn apart by the wild bursts that had completely exhausted the magazine, while the bodies on the other side had a single gaping bolter wound each. Rarity wasn't even bothering to reload yet.
"Oh, you know, I've always been good at putting sharp bits of metal through pieces of clothing," the other unicorn said, stepping daintily over the corpses of the fallen, "Twilight, darling, do you have our next destination in mind?"
Twilight looked very uncomfortable dismissing the combat they had just completed, but she stepped up to the window to look at the carnage outside.
And "carnage" was the only word to describe it. Wrecked lifters and other non-armored transports were lying in heaps in front of the data center, and several dead bodies were visible in the streets, smoke still wafting from their wounds. Most were humans, but Twilight saw a few Fire Warriors and Chaos Space Marines lying around the barricades that stood in front of every building, and there was even a scorched hulk of a Crisis Suit in the middle of the street.
Twilight ducked back down before a Leman Russ battle tank rumbled down the street, its sponson turrets spitting an angry storm of heavy bolter fire ahead of it at some target the alicorn couldn't see.
"Okay, we need to find those 'menial dormitories' Serith mentioned," Twilight said to her companions, turning around, "Trixie, do you know where those are?"
"Sure!" the blue unicorn answered. "I mean, probably."
"Can't we just ask those humans there? Or even go with them?" Spike asked, pointing at the battle tank passing by.
Said battle tank promptly took a pair of fusion blasts to its side, and Twilight was briefly back-lit by the exploding tank before a squadron of Piranha light skimmers flew by in the opposite direction.
"That would be a 'no'," Trixie noted as Spike cringed.
"Yeah, we should avoid getting too close to the humans even if we're fighting the Tau explicitly now," Twilight agreed with a definite note of bitterness in her voice. Behind her, two more Devilfish APCs sped down the street after the Piranhas. "Even if we're a target to the Tau, we're still a small target, and I'd like to keep it that way."
"Good point, Twilight. But keep that shield handy for us, would you? Trixie, lead on. I'll cover you," Rarity said, her boltgun hovering at the window sill.
"Fine, but Trixie still says you adapted to this far too quickly."
As Spike sighed in admiration of the white unicorn, Twilight winced. "Please be safe, everypony..."


****


Ferrous Dominus - menial dormitories unit 3


"What's going on out there?"
"I can't get into my room!"
"Does anybody know why there's a group of talking horses in the showers?"


A small crowd of menials milled about the main lobby of the dormitory building, looking worried as the sounds of combat intensified outside.
Aside from the noise, there was practically no way for the lowest-ranking non-slaves to get any idea what was happening outdoors. The lobby had no windows, and their paltry security clearance couldn't glean anything from the few consoles located in the dormitories. Information-wise, they were at the mercy of the base-wide emergency vox-caster, and that had gone ominously silent after the announcement that the perimeter wall had been penetrated.


"What if the Tau break in here? What should we do?"
"Why would they break in here? We're no one important."
"Shouldn't there be an emergency armory around here or something? We should get guns!"
"Yeah, right. Those xeno bastards just plowed right through an Astartes battle line. You want to try your luck against them?"
"He's right. This place is crawling with soldiers. Just sit tight and let them do their job."
On that note the blast doors at the front of the lobby suddenly blinked green, and the menials all started backing up as the doors creaked open.
The noise of lasblasts and pulse volleys got louder, and an armed man in the red overcoat typical of 38th Company human soldiery slipped into the gap while the doors were still opening.
"Hurry! Get in! Faster, faster!" the mercenary barked.
A few more soldiers started rushing through the doorway, but before any of the frightened menials could ask what was happening a stream of pulse energy poured out from behind them, carving into the warriors' backs and cutting most of them down in a neat line.
"Dammit! Close!" the first soldier growled before he hit the door control with his security card, forcing the blast door mechanism to suddenly kick into reverse. Of the other men only one had survived the volley, and that one struggled to push off the smoking corpses of his squadmates while the thick metal barriers slowly ground shut behind him.
The grinding noise turned to a shrill squeal when a pair of large, poly-ceramic hands grabbed the edge of the doors, forcing them open. The hulking body of a Crisis battlesuit stepped into the doorway as the mechanism strained, glowering at the people inside the building.
The menials watched helplessly as a Fire Warrior stepped in front of the battlesuit. He calmly blasted the soldier on the ground with his pulse carbine, and then turned toward the one that had led the retreat.
A few desperate lasbolts escaped the mercenary's rifle and crackled against the Fire Warrior's torso armor before a second carbine shot cut the man down, cooking his chest cavity before he keeled backward onto the floor.


The menials gaped as another Fire Warrior ducked in under the Crisis Suit, which forced the doors all the way open in brutal defiance of the door mechanism. Said mechanism eventually exceeded its permissible stress tolerances and gave up trying to close the blast doors, finally allowing the battlesuit to lower its arms and follow the two alien soldiers inside.
Some of the menials started fleeing back into the halls and upstairs, but most of the human workers remained surprisingly calm. Having worked more or less willingly for the Iron Warriors for many years and having seen a great number of monstrous things while in the employ of Chaos, they were not so easily spooked, and the menials also couldn't help but notice that the aliens hadn't started shooting at them after finishing off the soldiers.
"Do not fear, human laborers! We are not your enemy!" shouted the first Fire Warrior in Gothic, aiming his pulse carbine toward the ceiling.
"Could've fooled me; you just killed a bunch of our guys," one woman near the back muttered before she caught sight of something bright pink moving behind her.
"We are the Tau, a race of mighty-"
"We know who you are," interrupted a man near the front, crossing his arms over his chest, "what do you want?"
The alien soldier hesitated, surprised at getting a response that was neither explicitly hostile nor fearful.
"We have come to liberate you from the cruel tyranny of the Imperium and the vengeful gaze of its Space Marines!" he tried again, holding out a four-fingered hand. "Come with me! To freedom and the beneficent glory of the Greater Good!"
Once again, the Tau was surprised to see a complete lack of interest in the humans.
"Putting aside the 'Imperium' thing, do you blokes think we're slaves?" the man at the front asked. "We're not. Every man and woman here is here working for the Company by choice."
"For a given definition of 'choice'," another man piped up, "not all of us had many options other than working or dying."
The Fire Warrior hesitated again. "So you are... loyal to this fleet?"
"No, but we're actually paid something for our work and are a lot more afraid of the Iron Warriors than you lot," spat a short, hardened woman as she glared at the Tau, "how much does service to your 'Greater Good' pull in? Going with you is probably suicide in the long run, but I'd consider it if it pays well."
The Fire Warrior was now completely confused, and he stopped briefly to converse with his squadmates in his own language. The Crisis Suit grumbled something from its communicator, and the first Fire Warrior nodded reluctantly before turning back to the waiting humans.
"Service to the Greater Good does not work that way, I'm afraid. And you said you were workers, correct?"
"Yeah. Workers as in 'folks who work for money'. We just man the cranes, drive the lifts, clean the place, and take care of whatever else takes half a brain or that we don't have enough servitors to do. So we're not your targets."
"In that, you are mistaken. You represent a significant aspect of the base's infrastructure and construction capacity," the Fire Warrior said with deceptive pleasantness before snapping his pulse carbine down into a firing position, "so I'm afraid the Greater Good will benefit most from your elimination."
The Fire Warrior squeezed the trigger just as a length of rope lashed around the barrel of his weapon and went taught, causing the shot to veer off to the side.
The Fire Warrior shouted in shock as his pulse carbine was yanked out of his grip, and his partner made a similar yelp as something fast and blue shot out of the crowd of humans at him, crashing into his chest.
The second Fire Warrior staggered backward, and then promptly fell over after his legs bumped into a pink body strategically positioned behind him.
"GET THEM!" bellowed the menials, surging forward and jumping on the aliens in an angry mob.
The Crisis Suit reacted slowly but vengefully as the other warriors were dogpiled, and soon it started swinging its massive fists into the melee to try to dig out its comrades.
The battlesuit shattered bones like twigs and smashed menials aside with each slow, sweeping blow, but so long as the suit refrained from unleashing its weapons it was a losing battle as the workers kicked and beat at the Fire Warriors ferociously.
"Hey, big guy! Down here!" Applejack barked as she positioned herself with the Crisis Suit behind her.
The armored warrior ignored her, which was to its detriment when the orange pony slammed both hooves into its leg with a crushing force usually reserved for those trees on her farm that she had decided to uproot rather than harvest. The shock of the impact was carried through the outermost ablative armor and nearly split the leg joint, and the Crisis Suit was thrown across the room.
"Wow, that varmint's a lot lighter than he looks," Applejack noted, impressed by the distance she had gotten with her kick.
"The big one's down! Get a gun and shoot it!"
The menials scrambled for the Tau pulse weapons first, and the two men that managed to secure those guns grinned viciously before they aimed them at the struggling battlesuit and pulled the triggers. Absolutely nothing happened when they did so, which Pinkie would find pretty funny in retrospect.
Many other menials had managed to seize a lasgun from the small collection of rifles that had belonged to the mercenaries, and these weapons were far more cooperative. A hail of low-intensity laser bursts peppered the battlesuit as it rolled onto its belly, staggering back into the fight.
Armor plating cracked and servos fused from the spears of heat stabbing into the bulk of the battlesuit, and the armored Tau warrior struggled to raise its burst cannon to defend itself.
The suit staggered again after a lucky lasblast struck it in the neck joint with a noisy crack, and the burst cannon arm fell limp as the suit's systems started to go dark.
"Looks like somepony rolled a 1!" Pinkie taunted. The smoldering mass of armor slumped onto the floor, inactive.


"We did it. We actually did it!" one man gasped, holding his scavenged lasgun to his chest. "It's dead!"
"Yeah, that's, uh, great," mumbled another menial as he stared at Applejack.
"Somethin' on mah face, sugarcube?"
Another man shook his head, choosing to ignore the presence of ponies that had proven way more useful in taking down the Tau than they had. "That's only going to last until another handful of xenos decide they want to take this building. Someone get that door closed! Someone else help me get everybody who's injured upstairs!"
"I got a soldier's access card! We'll be able to open the locked rooms with this!" shouted another menial.
"Don't kill those two grayskin whelps, either! The Iron Warriors will want them alive!"


While the workers recovered from the encounter and moved into action, the ponies took their leave of the crowd, slipping out of the front blast doors before one of the humans managed to close them again.
"Uh, girls? Wouldn't it be safer to stay inside?" Fluttershy asked meekly as she followed Rainbow Dash past the heavy metal barriers. The only reason that she was following them under her own power was because she was even more terrified of being abandoned alone in a building full of unfamiliar humans.
"I doubt that. I can barely get aloft in there, it's so cramped," the other pegasus reasoned, "and it sure doesn't seem safer when we have Tau creeps beating down the door trying to kill everything inside."
Applejack walked up to the barricade wall that was built on the edge of the sidewalk, stepping gingerly around the dead bodies in her way before peeking up over the top of the reinforced ferrocrete.
The sight that greeted her was ugly, and it was ugly in the Tau's favor. Given that this sector had a lot of human foot traffic and housed most of the non-soldiers that accompanied the 38th Company, there had been plenty of people caught out on the streets when the Tau had sped in, and targets of opportunity had been everywhere.
Most of those targets were now wrecks and corpses on the streets.
In the distance, the hovering blue and black Devilfish transports of the Lamman Sept steadily advanced on the few barricades that were still mounting resistance, their burst cannons running hot to force the human soldiers down and shred what few heavy weapon mounts challenged them.
Most of the barricades were now manned by Fire Warriors instead, who traded fire with humans shooting from windows and out of doorways. The buildings seemed to be the only places left where the human soldiers could stay relatively safe from the Tau heavy weapons, and the Tau themselves were reluctant to enter into such close quarters when they dominated the base exterior. Notably absent from the firefights were any human vehicles to match the Devilfish APCs and any Iron Warriors.
"This's lookin' bad," Applejack murmured as the door clanked shut behind them, sealing them outside, "we gotta get a move-on, girls."
"Where to?" Rainbow Dash asked, ruffling her feathers in preparation to jump into a hover again.
She thought better of it and ducked her head down instead after a Hammerhead gunship rounded the corner ahead of them, its heavy railgun sweeping back and forth for targets.
"To wherever Twi is, Ah guess. Ah'd feel a lot better about our chances if we weren't all split up."
Rainbow Dash peeked up over the barricade while the Hammerhead floated past. Below her, Fluttershy squeezed as tightly as possible against the barricade, shivering.
"Man, we're getting our flanks kicked out here! Where are all the Company troops?"
"Mostly hangin' out at Shy's cottage, Ah reckon," Applejack mused as the tank passed by without firing or targeting them, "as fer the rest, well, this is a mighty big fort, Dash."
The Hammerhead suddenly fired its cannon, and the ponies flinched as they heard the deceptively gentle hum of its magnetic accelerators followed by the shriek of tearing metal.
Pinkie poked her head up just in time to see the fortress transit train careen off its rail and plow into one of the dormitories, courtesy of the hole that had been carved into its magnetic engine. The impact crushed the front car of the vehicle entirely, and soon the entire train had collapsed onto the ground into a shredded and mangled heap.
"Really? You guys had to get the train, too?!" Pinkie shouted angrily, jumping up with her forelegs against the barricade. "Now it's going to take us hours to get ANYWHERE around here!"
Rainbow and Fluttershy tackled the pink pony down as the Hammerhead swung about, its smart missile launchers swiveling about and searching for target locks.
After several seconds the hover tank turned and moved on, not wanting to waste heavy ordnance on the handful of tiny bio-signatures huddled behind the barrier.
"This's bad. Real bad," Applejack groaned, hugging the barricade as she walked to the end and glanced out into the streets again, "does anypony even know where that data place is, anyway?"
Rainbow Dash growled, her wings ruffling in irritation. "Well, if we can't find Twilight, then forget it! Let's just find some Iron Warriors and help them beat up these sorry mules!"
"Rainbow, you can't seriously want to get involved in this!" Fluttershy gasped.
"Well, Ah don't know about runnin' off to find a bunch of random Space Marines, but Ah suppose hookin' up with Daniels or Gaela would be as good a plan as any," Applejack mumbled, "problem is, we don't really know where they are, neither."
A light bulb suddenly winked into being over Pinkie's head. "Hey, wait! I have an idea!"


****


Ferrous Dominus - sector 4


"This is armory control. Submitting control codes... complete. Clearance granted."
"Plasma guns. Four of them. NOW."
"Request confirmed. Receiving."
In the enormous structure that served as the main Astartes armory on-base, servos whirled rapidly as machinery in the bulk of the building shifted containers about and plucked the requested weapons from their resting place using automated servo arms. Within seconds the doors to the weapons receptacles opened in front of the impatient Iron Warriors, four new plasma guns revealing themselves. Energy cells fell into another receiving cell nearby in a neat stack, offering ammunition reserves to the waiting soldiers.
"Weapons registered and cleared for deployment," said the Dark Techpriest while the Chaos Space Marines gathered their weapons, "please be advised that plasma weap-"
"Shut up," snapped the squad champion before the unit broke into a run for the Rhino idling nearby.
"Request confirmed," the Techpriest said in his normal, emotionless monotone. The next group of Space Marines in line rushed up to him. "Hello, this is armory control. Submitting-"
"Stop your prattling and give us a lascannon already! We're under attack!"


Long lines of Rhino transports were parked haphazardly in front of the armories as troops loaded up heavy and special weapons, and small groups of them would rumble out into the avenues every once in awhile as their squads decided on where to go.
Under normal circumstances, which is to say, in any other part of the Iron Warriors Legion, every squad would know exactly what to do in case of enemy attack, and would anyway probably have orders from above.
This was the 38th Company, however, and their drills consisted of boarding actions and artillery spotting, not fortress security. To make matters worse, the Tau had evidently deployed more of their vox-jamming drones in the air, and although they didn't cause nearly as much disruption as the array in the forest, it had been enough to delay mission orders and convince many impatient units of Iron Warriors to deploy on their own initiative.
Such a disorganized response had its drawbacks, obviously. Already, another line of transports was moving into the sector from the direction that the others were heading out, and these APCs bore heavy damage on their armor and usually carried wounded soldiers in their bellies.


+Replace axle R-seven-one, and then cut into the braking unit to remove the slag. I'll repair the combi-bolter system,+ Dark Acolyte Gaela commanded once her optics finished their initial scans of the smoldering Rhino before her. It had been hammered hard by pulse gun and missile fire, but had still survived to carry its squad out of danger.
Two more Dark Acolytes nodded silently, their servo pincers clanging shut to denote their eagerness. One immediately began issuing orders to the servitors waiting in the makeshift repair bay, and Gaela stepped onto the roof of the vehicle and kneeled next to the combi-bolter.
Of course, this wasn't the real repair bay; those facilities were in a completely different sector next to the vehicle lots, and that area had been abandoned as the Piranha light skimmers had headed there in force and released their gun drone squadrons. Gaela didn't know if there was any Company resistance trying to take the area back, but last she had heard the Piranhas had been playing executioner with the parked vehicles, demolishing the unmanned armor one after another with their fusion blasters. Whether there was someone still fighting the drones or not, the skimmers were sure to cause tremendous damage before they were ousted.
Gaela sighed as she finished clearing the firing chamber of obstruction, and then repaired the hammer that had fused with the rest of the weapon.
Within minutes she was reloading the gun and chanting a prayer in Binary, imploring the weapon to annihilate the hated xeno.
+Acolyte Gaela, the Rhino repair is complete and Helim is performing the last of the necessary rites,+ blurted one of the other Acolytes, +however, we are quickly running out of parts. The only materials we have available are from the emergency supply caches. They will not be enough to care for all the vehicles that are still in pain.+
+Very well. Continue working here. I will get the Scavurel to begin salvaging the Rhinos that would require excessive materials,+ Gaela explained, jumping onto the ground with a heavy thud.


The Scavurel in question had arrayed themselves around the barricades in a multi-layered defense web in front of the armories. They waited silently behind numerous heavy weapon emplacements and manned auspex stations, ready to annihilate anything that so much as got within sight of the armory. Already, there was a Devilfish APC lying against the wall of the manufactorum, its side armor cracked wide open. A pair of Black Praetors - hulking cyborgs larger than Space Marines that writhed with daemonic energy and bristled with heavy lasers - stomped among the transport's cargo, crushing the hapless and mostly wounded Fire Warriors underfoot as the Dark Mechanicus warriors looked on in grim silence.
Gaela approached the barricades and walked straight for the commander - referred to as a Network Leader in their unique ranking terminology - her power axe resting against her shoulder.
+Dark Acolyte Gaela,+ buzzed the Network Leader, not turning to look at her, +did you have something to report?+
+I have orders for you. Designate some of your units with scavenger prioritus and have them cannibalize the most badly damaged Rhinos. We're running out of supplies for vehicle parts.+
The Network Leader still didn't turn around as he worked out the likely impact on combat efficiency and the readiness of his defensive formation.
+Acknowledged. I will set a squad to the task.+
Gaela turned to walk away, but the Scavurel spoke again, stopping her.
+Acolyte Gaela, you were deployed against the Tau recently. Was there any indication that they possessed this level of troop strength? These numbers far exceed all estimates,+ the Network Leader growled in Binaric Cant.
Gaela's mask was up, but her scowl was evident in her words. +The xeno filth has consistently shown a deeper and more extensive presence on this world than expected,+ she said as she turned back to the Scavurel, +but even I am surprised they managed to stuff enough troops for an assault of this scale on that lander.+
+If this attack represents the strength of their presence on this world, then it's surprising you or any of the field teams came back alive,+ the Network Leader noted, finally turning his optics visor toward the Dark Acolyte.
Gaela snorted behind her mask. +Well, I had some help with that. Although I much prefer serving in a combat zone without pink ponies clambering about underfoot.+
The Scavurel jerked his head back, as if surprised. After a few seconds Gaela realized that it wasn't her comment that had surprised him, and she turned around wearily.
"Seriously? I wasn't even speaking Gothic this time," she said to Pinkie Pie.
The pink pony was sitting on her haunches next to the barricade wall, ahead of Rainbow Dash and Applejack. Amusingly, the ponies behind her were looking around wildly in bouts of fear and confusion that had nothing to do with being in a battle zone.
"Ah don't... how did... where are we?" Applejack asked, her head snapping to one side and then the other. She was clutching her hat to her chest as if it were some kind of lifeline. Rainbow Dash wasn't much better, although she quickly dropped her confusion in favor of staring at all the new kinds of weapons and soldiers on display.
"I'm so glad we found you! It's really scary out there!" Pinkie said, clamping onto Gaela's armored leg with a hug. "We were taking a shower and then these guys came in but it was okay because we're usually naked and then the doors locked and there was that siren going off and the guy from the vox caster said that we couldn't get around and then..."
As Pinkie rambled on, the Network Leader finally dredged up enough sense to speak again. +Acolyte... these-+
"Thank you for your efforts, Network Leader," Gaela interrupted sharply in Gothic, "that will be all. Hold this area for the Company, and for the Warsmith. And kindly ignore whatever else you see here that isn't related to killing Tau."
The Scavurel hesitated, but eventually did as asked.
"-and then the guy said to the other guy 'we're not slaves!' And the first guy didn't like that I guess, because he was about to shoot the second guy, but then Applejack saved him with her lasso, it was so cool, and then..."
Gaela walked past Applejack and Rainbow Dash with Pinkie Pie still attached to her leg. "Come on, try to stay out of the way. We could have enemies sighted at any moment."
"Ah hear ya, Miss Gaela," Applejack mumbled, still visibly confused about how they had gotten here, "we're just lookin' fer a safe place to ride this out."
"Very well. I'm not sure how safe this area really is, but given that the Tau have effectively flooded the sector you were staying in, I'm sure it's an improvement."
Rainbow Dash finally took to the air again, satisfied that it was safe enough to hover with all the "friendly" firepower around. That was when she noticed something important about the pony headcount.
"Hey! Pinkie! Where'd Fluttershy go?"
"-and then I said 'oatmeal?! Are you crazy?!'" Pinkie's ramblings suddenly ended, and she turned her head to look at Rainbow Dash. "Fluttershy? I don't know. I guess she wandered off somewhere."
"What? How did that happen?" Applejack gasped.
"Plot contrivance, probably."
Gaela watched as the other ponies gaped in confusion. "Am I to understand that you don't comprehend what she's talking about either?"
"Not a clue, but it means that poor Flutters is all by her lonesome out there," Applejack said, looking out over a barricade and searching the avenues for any sign of pink and yellow.
"Oh, she'll be fine," Pinkie scoffed, leaning away from Gaela's leg to wave her hoof dismissively, "this place is huge! As long as she finds a good, safe corner to cower in, she won't have a problem with the Tau!"


****


"H-How did this happen to me? Wh-Where am I? Rainbow Dash? Applejack? Pinkie?"
Fluttershy shivered as she walked gingerly down an alley, her head lashing back and forth to search for any signs of her friends. Overhead was a winding, twisted network of pipes of various sizes that fed from the wall of the manufactorum into a different building on the other side of the alley. Below was hardened ferrocrete. And at either end of the alley stood fire and lasers.
The sounds of heavy weapons fire had been ever present since the Tau attacked, but Fluttershy could definitely hear it coming louder and stronger now as she crawled down the alley. In either direction it seemed that the 38th Company were fighting the Tau in force, and the booming of battle cannons and thunder-crack of autocannons dominated the hum of Tau anti-gravity drives as the invaders were slowly beaten back.
"Twilight? Rarity? Mister Terrifying Murderer? Anypony?"
The sound of an explosion overhead pinned Fluttershy to the ground immediately, and thus she missed the sight of a Tau Hammerhead tumbling end over end after it tried - and failed - to make a risky run over the rooftops.
Pieces of smoldering poly-ceramic armor rained down onto the pipes, and one of the larger pieces smashed into a thick water drain, tearing it free of the building it had been attached to.
Fluttershy peeked out from under her hooves as the noises of battle started to grow more distant, and then she unsteadily stood up, looking over the wreckage that now littered the alley.
Her face practically lit up when she saw that one of the pipes had torn free, uncovering an opening in the wall that was easily large enough for a pony. There wasn't anything coming out of the damaged end of the pipe, either, so she reasoned that whatever it normally carried into the building, there wasn't any in her way right now.
"Iron within! Iron without!" came a battle cry from one end of the alley, spurring her into action.
Fluttershy bolted into the air, her wings flapping desperately before she landed with her front half in the opening. She spent a few more seconds clambering inside, and then vanished completely into the piping, all too eager to get indoors again where it was safe.
Whether because she had been too scared, too distracted, or perhaps just unused to running around industrial areas, she had completely missed the large warning sign printed on every side of the structure she had decided to enter, even in the alleyway. It was surrounded by a frame of yellow and black stripes and boasted a leering, horned silhouette of a monstrous face at the top.
Under the face was the explanatory text: "Warning! Daemon engines!"


****


Ferrous Dominus - psyker dormitories


Suuna sighed as she placed down the empty can of nutrient gruel, placing her tin spoon aside for cleaning later.
It seemed odd to her to be eating breakfast in the middle of an enemy attack, especially when she could hear stray weapons fire hitting the other side of the building wall behind her, but she had decided there was very little else she could do. She was locked inside the room with no one to talk to, she had no ability to work the control console on the wall, and all the belongings in the room were the property of her maybe-owner except for the clothes on her back.
Perhaps them too. Suuna really had no idea where she stood now on the spectrum between slave and free woman.
She considered praying, but to whom? The Emperor was probably a bad choice, given her location in a Chaos stronghold, and it's not like that had ever helped her before in her many nights doing forced labor for the Iron Warriors. The Dark Gods? Well, that was an awful choice from the get-go, and besides that she didn't know anything about them.
"I wonder if they shut off the water. If not, I could draw a bath," Suuna mused to herself. Without useful work to do or spiritual exercise to give her hope, all she could really do was seek petty comfort.
And then the hall door beeped and slid open.
Suuna didn't really have time to think about who might be entering before she saw who was at the door, but surely Serith the High Sorcerer wouldn't have been one of her guesses. Not because the Astartes was unlikely to appear under these circumstances, necessarily, but more because she tried hard not to think of the Chaos psyker at all, ever.
"Lord Serith," Suuna said, her voice rising considerably in pitch to suppress a terrified squeal, "welcome. How can I help you?"
Serith stepped into the room without any indication of haste, his helmet's gaze sweeping from side to side.
Finally, after several silent seconds, he sighed in frustration and finally acknowledged the human servant.
"It would seem that Lady Trixie is not here after all. Unless she is using the facilities?" the Sorcerer asked, honestly embarrassed at having to ask such a question. The vox signal disruption and emergency protocols had prevented him from checking up on the room via his spy recorder, however, while the psycomantic shielding around the rooms here foiled his ability to sense other minds.
Suuna shook her head. "No, my lord. She is not here. I'm afraid she got caught out in the hall when siege lockdown engaged."
Serith thought that over briefly, tilting his helmet downward before it rose again to glare into Suuna's eyes. "I see. Pardon me, slave, but I'll be needing your thoughts for a moment." The Sorcerer raised an armored gauntlet, fingers spread, toward the young woman.
"Mistress Trixie has departed with Twilight Sparkle and her 'groupies', as she puts it," Suuna explained calmly, "they ultimately decided to try to seek out the Warsmith, to see if they could get to him using the confusion of the xeno attack."
She paused briefly. "I'm fairly certain they intend to murder him, although they're always very vague about that part of their plan. I suspect they're trying not to think about it. Mistress Trixie did not want to be so directly involved, but was dragged along due to the circumstances. I believe their first step was going to be finding the other ponies."
Serith was silent for several seconds after Suuna finished speaking, and then he lowered his hand. "I didn't do anything yet."
"Yes, my lord. I'm trying to keep it that way," Suuna admitted nervously.
"Such loyalty," the Sorcerer drawled, crossing his arms over his chest.
"I have nothing but gratitude for Mistress Trixie's kind treatment of me," Suuna said meekly, "but I've known her for less than two days. I'm not going to oppose a Sorcerer for her sake."
"Hmph," said Sorcerer did not sound impressed, "you're taking all the fun out of this, you know."
An explosion from outside shook the floor briefly, and both of them glanced upward as the ceiling lumens flickered.
"Such an inconvenience, these aliens," Serith tsked, still staring up at the ceiling, "a needless complication in an already chaotic galactic stage. And not a single psyker among the entire race. Worthless beasts."
Suuna remained silent, not having much to say on the topic of aliens. The Tau she had met during her recent slave days seemed decent enough, but again, she wasn't going to start arguing with the Astartes.
"Well, I suppose I'm wasting my time here, and you bore me. Were you not Lady Trixie's property I might use you as a shield, but as things stand that would be quite impolite," Serith admitted, turning on his metal heel, "stay alive, worm. Your Mistress may yet have need of you. I shall see to her safe return."
"You are too gracious, my lord," Suuna said, enormously relieved that the psyker was leaving.


Serith ignored her on his way out and then passed his hand over the door control panel.
The scanner recognized his ID signal from his armor, and the door slammed shut before the lock indicators turned red again.
He walked over to a long, silvery polearm that laid on the floor outside the door; it had been resting upright before, but had apparently fallen over due to the building tremors.
Serith gestured sharply with his hand, and the weapon jumped off the floor and into his grip. The weapon was shaped in a form that was technically that of a halberd, although the spear point and chopping edge were formed into one angled blade that gave the weapon the look of a massive scalpel. Cables ran down from the weapon head in thick tangles, feeding power from the energy cells in the haft to the disruption field generators in the blade. Thick golden bands were spaced over the length of the pole to serve as grips, reinforce the haft structure, and catch blade edges during parries.
The force halberd was the only weapon that Serith ever carried on his person; the Sorcerer's belt held no pistol or grenades, but contained only his book, small tools, and assorted symbols and focii. Even the halberd he would only carry when he was specifically joining a combat, and with a certain amount of reluctance. To Serith, the psyker mind was the most potent weapon that the Legions or any other galactic power had available, and he found the technologies of war a pale shadow of what he was capable of with sheer will.
Which made it particularly galling to have his day interrupted by the Tau, of all species.
"Filthy, soulless mongrels," the Sorcerer spat as he stepped over a pair of Chaos Space Marines lying in a heap in the hall, "there will be a reckoning for such insolence. I will unmake you and your pathetic toys with but a thought!"