This story is a sequel to Entrenchment
Boarding actions are often frantic, desperate assaults. Men are launched directly into the greatest bastions of the enemy while guns that can level city blocks roar around them. Boarding soldiers are swarmed in minutes by all manner of defenses and opponents, trying to wreak what havoc they can within a vessel's belly before they're overwhelmed and extinguished. Incoming fire from their own ships continue to pound away at their target the entire time. Depressurization, incineration, and rad-flensing are all common ends to the life of the boarding trooper, and as often as not their death comes as a result of their own sabotage.
Pity these courageous souls who take their weapons to the hearts of giants.
(Dark humor warning; grimdark themes)
(Cover art by EZTP)
(Featured on 8/4/2019!)
This is incredibly awesome.
The power of this saga keeps growing. Only one query is yet to be given answer.
Will Dany ever get a bloody raise? (And will Gaela ever remember his name?)
A welcome sight! I do love your stories.
yes more iron ponys
Space piracy for the pyrrhic win!
This was worth the wait!, also no wonder you were waiting for the cover, its amazing!
yessssssssss
Friendship is magic.
and MAGIC IS HERESY!
Murphy's gonna have a field day with this. Also, what happened to gear's story?
yay~ More Iron ponies :3
A bit sad that Gear Works didn't tag along o.o But I guess it's for the better... Though I do hope we get to see more of him soon
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So ergo Friendship is Heresy?
Either that’s Vel talking, or Dest’s time with Pinkie is changing him way more than anyone realizes.
Dang. I totally expected them to name the ship the reptile, cus its kind of a bastardization of its tau name. That woulda been funny.
If you want edge, you should figure out how to steal and operate a Dark Eldar ship lol. Just paint it blue and it’d be perfect design wise for the Princess of the Night.
I wonder how Solon’s going to react to this. And I wonder where exactly Luna plans to get the crew required to fly the Void Ship(though I doubt she’s has such plans as of yet) The only options I really see is either have the Tau teach her bat ponies how to fly the thing(and remodel it so hooves could operate it), keep enough of the remaining Tau on the ship to crew it, or for Luna to do what she did with her armor and beat the demon/demons in charge of the ship into submission and have it function like the Solon’s ship, which considering they are fear demons might actually work out.
What an amazing and unexpected treat from my favorite FF writer! This story is off to a great start and I can't wait for more.
I am very excited!
But now I suspect a long wait for chapter 2.
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That, or just being the best name being suggested, only topped by the translated name, "Sword o' Centaur" sounded good too
Really Twilight is terrible on that
Congratz, you got featured. 8/4/2019
Fear demons, huh? Seems like they feed on fear... Looks like we're in for some horror movie shenanigans!
Kinda surprised they even bothered with the Tau. I didn't think they had big enough souls to be worth munching on.
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Beggars can't choose, keep in mind the demons were really dumped there so tiny tau soul better than no soul at all. Besides, all the crew dying in terror despite being Tau, that will attract warp shenanigans, demons and assorted nasty stuff for sure
Oh lookie a new story for me to stalk. Yeee~<3
More of Iron Hearts is ALWAYS good news! I missed their shenanigans dearly
Poor Jerriha though, she's lifting oh so many death flags... Ah, and nice touch on the Event Horizon reference, if it was so. Exceptionally fitting for a Tau crew first contact with a full warp breach.
I know it's marked as complete, but any chance of some final notes? Epilogue-like? I imagine some of the iron warriors might find this amusing.
Well that actually ended easier than I thought it would. Luna has her ship now -- hopefully they let her keep it.
Short and sweet. This was a fun little dungeon crawl of a story.
And now for the hilarious hijinks as the Omen takes to the cruel tides of the Empyrian, to seek plunder and souls for the Dark Gods. Oh, and spread Harmony and Friendship too, I guess.
I’m not entirely certain if I want to know what he is doing to Chrysalis. I mean, I’m kinda of assuming Dreadnought or some Demon Engine along those lines, but how happy he sounds about it is honestly one of the most terrifying things I’ve yet read in this series
Awww... Shorter than I thought, but nice still. Hope there is more soon(tm)
Well a short (at least by the author usual story lenghts) and amazing story...
But the way it is layed out and written looks like an intermission between major plots (meanin books). I hope i am right
And lets deal with it, we all want to know what he's doing with bug queen
I don't know about the rest of you, but i thought these critters sounded a lot like Malal's brand of buggery.
Great writing as usual. Can't wait for more. :D
Daww I was really hoping for a short epilogue. I can only imagine an amused solon looking over the ship like. "A warsmith gets in your way, toss a pony at it. You need to take back a ship that the iron warriors wouldnt bother with? Toss a pony at it. I really should toss ponies at more problems." Only ya know, with the lisp.
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Wanna go to heaven? You better be a dog!
I was not disappointed. The power of friendship and gratuitous violence carries the day again!
And now Luna has her own (somewhat worse for wear) battlecruiser!
Also, I guess I was right about the ship itself not being warped too badly by the rift.
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Omnissiah is heresy too.
The Imperium has looked the other way on "heresy" that is useful to their ends before.
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Whenever Gearworks pops up, I hope that he takes Dusk with him. Dusk always annoyed me, but he actually managed to come off as funny when interacting with the put-upon Gear Works. Here, when he's hiding under the bed of his stalker-crush, he just comes off as predatory and I want Twilight to just power-stomp him.
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No raise, but his fringe benefits have improved tremendously ever since on-world deployment in Equestria was reclassified as "vacation time!"
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I'm working on it con-currently, but to be honest I'm having a bit more trouble with his plot-line. Some day!
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The Mane Six really wouldn't want to have him around while they're doing anything important. Gaela is more experienced AND she can fight.
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Fennin definitely wasn't the only one weirded out by the Dreadnought/Chaos Marine hug. Just saying
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I feel like Dark Eldar ships would be all but unusable to humans, even if they had much better retrofit facilities than the 38th does. Eldar technology is much more mysterious and arcane than Tau technology.
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HUZZAH! +no Luna icon detected+
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Well, I wasn't expecting to do an epilogue, but The People seem to be demanding it!
Besides, I'm sure I can come up with something.
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I'll keep that in mind! Because Twilight thrashing him would be perfectly in character anyway!
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It doesnt have to be long, I just feel like we havent gotten a real cooldown after the end of the last story so a little bit of an epilogue would be good here. Like the shwarma scene at the end of avengers, it feels good, it helps reset the action so to speak, plus there are just a ton of fun things you could do. Solon could marvel over what I mentioned and then toss a pony at something that was broken and he couldnt fix and it spontaeously fixes itself only for Twilight to stop him before he keeps throwing ponies at things. Or you could have them all go to a bar and the mercs be there, the mane six dont understand what a big deal it is but the mercs are just absolutely astounded by how powerful they are. Or Pinkie Pie throws a victory party and everyone gets drunk, hijinks ensue.
Plenty of fun possibilities, and imo, would be a good way to cool down from all the action.
Another fantastic addition to this series. Excellent work.
I was sure that those green mounds were going to be the Ork bodies, but that they had turned into sacs for the ork spores in lieu of any soil to gestate new orkoid life. Has the GW Source material ever gone into what happens with Ork spores that are released on spaceships and hulks?
They should have brought Dusk. So he can die already. I don't find his antics funny, nor did I ever.
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And take that pleasure from Twilight? I can already see her dropping him into the Calefactor as an offering to the Harvest
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I can only imagine that the harmonic nature of space in the Centaur system may have helped to keep the warp corruption at a manageable level.
I think the thing I'm most looking forward to is the Warsmith's reaction when they inevitably succeed despite all odds.
I can understand why Daniel would be determined not to go onto another warp cursed vessel. I'm expecting "The Omen" to be at least partially daemonvessel by the end of this, if it's not already. Pinkie will likely win it over with cupcakes.
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They haven't, but I'm pretty sure they require soil or soil-like surfaces to gestate. At least that's what all the (limited) sourcing on Ork reproduction suggest.
Granted, there's probably enough detritus on Ork ships for them to seed properly anyway...
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Sorry to hear that.
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Well, that and all the "Tau souls are puny and light on psychic calories" thing. The horrors of the Warp just can't unlock their full potential on the socialist grunts.
Damn. I was really hoping to see Solon's reaction to Luna acquiring her own ship. I really really wanted to see the reactions of people and ponies in general. What would Sliver have to say on the matter?
I'm also really curious what the Omen will look like after the 38th and Solon are done with it. Should be an interesting mix of Chaos motifs and Luna's own personal flair. Will Solon add some sort of psychic amplifier so Luna can channel her powers through the whole ship? Visit other worlds, throw moons at them!
You know, when Fluttershy first woke up in Gharrl's grasp, I was thinking she would use The Stare on it and come out victorious... or at least be a draw.
I'm surprised more people haven't commented on the fact that Luna (or her daemon armor at least) basically just ate a minor daemon lord. I'm curious what kind of long-term repercussions that will have.
There should be some interesting long term consequences to this event in general, and I can't wait to see them. Keep up the awesome work and definitely looking forward to more!
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Sliver? At this point i can see him simply snorting and chuckling a moment at Luna's antics, and then back minding his own business as the professional he is. Kaelith must be twisting is body in binaric rage.
I was thinking the same about Fluttershy, but i can guess that demon was several magnitudes over Fluttershy's capabilities, so instead she did the next most Fluttershy thing to do: HOOVES FLAILIN' PANIC!!! outflailing a tentacled demon, that must count as an achievement of sorts....
And Luna's armor nomnomming that demon its indeed worrying if not unexpected as it means the entity trapped in the armor is growing stronger. And a demon possessed luna can be catasthropic...
One reaction at the capture that intrigues me would be Wraithstar's one
Does Luna get the right to claim the ship if she's not the one who killed the daemon lord?
Also, this was great and I second all the calls for an epilogue. Ending was a bit abrupt. What happened to Pinkie, for instance?
No you can't you can't be this cruel to end it like this..... What happened to Pinky? How will Solon react? What will Sunbutt say when she hears her sister has now a space ship to go on a big rampage in space? I NEED TO KNOW!!!
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Of course. If they gave it to Twilight she'd name it something dumb.
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Fine, FINE. I'm doing an epilogue. Geez.
I don't know what everyone is worried about Pinkie for, though. She was doing very well when they checked in on her and it was clearly established that all the daemons were destroyed.