Black Horizons

by SFaccountant

Underhive

Black Horizons
By SFaccountant

Chapter 9
Underhive

---

Ulaisse capital moon
Underhive complex sigma
Exact geo-coordinates unknown

A long train of warriors moved through the dark, cramped confines of the tunnel, walking in near silence.

A single soldier led the way, a stub pistol gripped in one hand and a jagged-edged machete in the other. A third hand carried a lumen rod up above his head, providing the only bare trickle of light in the area.

The space was barely six feet high and half as wide at its most passable points. Alien arthropods teemed over the floor, and the occasional drip-feed from old water lines and natural seepage created pools of filthy water here and there along the path. Metal paneling ahead on the right side marked the tunnel’s exit point into the main passage, and dim light seeped through a trio of vent slits near the top.

The Genestealer cultist at the front slowed, and he cast a glance behind him. More hybrid cultists waited in the darkness, their weapons held tight and their eyes gleaming in the shadows. Further back, Purestrain Genestealers hunkered down in the path, bracing their four arms against the walls and following in a crouch.

With the entire group still, it was easy to hear the sounds coming from the adjacent tunnel. Heavy boots scuffed the debris-ridden ground, followed by the rhythmic clanking of shifting armor plates. Further away from the wall, but clearly audible, the much heavier footfalls of a mechanical walker ground rocks to dust while gears spun and pistons churned.

The lead cultist handed his light source to the man behind him and then stepped in front of the metal panel. His free hand went to the small, lonely thumbscrew holding the panel in place, while at the same time he peered through the vent slit to check on their prey.

A large, curved spike promptly punched through the panel and impaled the hybrid through the chest. The cultist barely had time to snarl in pain before he was yanked out through the access panel, his blood washing over the ground and walls.

His compatriots readied their weapons and surged forward. There was no place to retreat to, and the enemy had detected them. An impulse deep in their mind, tethering their thoughts to the will of a distant master, flooded their bodies with adrenaline and drove them to berserk rage.

Advance. Attack. KILL. Nothing else matters.

Then an Iron Warrior with one arm wreathed in green flame leaned through the opening. The soldier was clearly too big to enter the passageway; putting aside the enhanced stature of an Astartes, this one’s power armor was riddled with metal horns and spiked ridges that made him even larger. It also gave him a uniquely terrifying visage, even before one accounted for the building flames.

The frontmost cultist stumbled, feeling new, long-buried impulses suddenly emerge to drown out the singular imperative driving him forward. His companions shoved him from the back and one even stuck his pistol over his shoulder to fire off a few shots, but the man in front understood immediately that there would be no assault.

They had failed. And now they would die.

“Iron within,” Dest said solemnly after the pistol slug bounced off his vambrace, “iron without.”

He hurled the fireball into the soldiers.

---

“And that’s another interception team down,” Twilight said while howls of pain and anger flooded into the tunnel. “That’s the third group we’ve encountered trying to ambush us. They really want to stop us, or at least slow us down, but we haven’t encountered any more blockades or checkpoints.”

“They dare not challenge us openly while we possess heavy support and they do not. Yet desperation may force the issue,” Serith said conversationally, walking behind the alicorn. “Genestealer cults are not necessarily powerful or well-armed. Their strength lay in treachery and patience. But we are an unexpected factor, and this hive is already suffering from having its agents unveiled. It is making mistakes…”

“Up ahead! Contact!” Erin Whyd lifted her shotgun as another metal panel on the wall rattled. This one was far ahead of the group, and the floodlights from Pinkie’s Dreadnought shell slashed across the ground to illuminate it.

The light barely caught sight of a Purestrain Genestealer before it dashed off into cover, and another alien that was emerging from the access panel flinched back from the blinding light. Erin fired her shotgun and it flinched again, but a moment later it scrambled out into the main cavern anyway.

A burst from Pinkie’s butcher cannon blasted the Genestealer in half. The Contemptor twitched its aim over to the open panel itself and kept shooting, cracking apart the surrounding tunnel masonry and filling the opening with explosions of shrapnel.

“Applejack, flame that opening ahead! Dest, keep at it! Torch them from both sides!” Twilight commanded, racing to intercept the Genestealer that had already escaped the access hatch.

The force harmonizer floating over her head released a purple ray of destruction, slashing across the ground and striking the alien across the legs. The Genestealer stumbled, and then fell over after Erin shot it in the back.

“An’ STAY DOWN!” Applejack shouted, sprinting past the others. She leapt into the air over the wounded Genestealer and then activated her gravity plating.

The farmer hit the ground with an impact like a cannon shell, and the eroded flooring exploded around her. The Genestealer was utterly pulverized underfoot, and a shock wave of dust billowed out in all directions while the rockcrete cracked apart.

Applejack galloped away from the fresh crater, and Pinkie Pie let her cannon rest as the other earth pony reached the access panel. Applejack turned on her heavy flamer, and light filled the halls as the gap in the wall was drowned in fire.

The furious howls of dying Genestealers and cultists echoed down the halls, and writhing shadows flickered across the tunnel. Serith stood behind Pinkie Pie, watching the combat in satisfied silence. Chrysalis stood by his side, her eyes frequently twitching back and forth to search the shadows. The rest of the party was grouped behind them, with Rarity and Trixie covering Suuna and Byron Hess. Suuna still clutched the mysterious artifact against her chest, while Byron was holding an autopistol in a two-handed grip and trying not to look quite as terrified as he felt. The only two members of the group missing were Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy.

“Above,” Serith said suddenly, startling the others. “It seems some of them found an alternate route.”

Rarity and Trixie immediately started powering up their horns, and Byron peered up into the gloom to try to identify the exit point. An air vent crusted over with mold and other filth was suddenly torn off its frame and plummeted to the ground.

A Purestrain Genestealer landed in a crouch atop the fallen grate, only to be immediately cut down by a swing of Serith’s force halberd. Shadowy lightning crackled across the weapon’s head as it hewed through chitin and flesh, blasting the life force from the alien before it could perish of its mundane wounds. Its death shriek caused the humans nearby to flinch back, and as a result they missed when a second Genestealer dropped to the floor.

The Purestrain found itself glaring into the wide eyes of Suuna, who was holding up the strange artifact like a clumsy shield. The Genestealer moved to seize her arm with one hand, while another stabbed its deadly talons straight for her throat.

The alien’s claws passed through the hololith uselessly, groping for a victim that wasn’t there. The illusion flickered, but before it could fully grasp that it had been tricked a plasma gun shot off one of its legs.

The Genestealer fell onto its hands and clambered away, showing shocking agility for a creature that had just had a major limb vaporized. Byron fired his pistol but the shots went wide, and it launched itself away just ahead of Trixie’s fireball launcher.

“Hey! It’s getting away!” the magician shouted angrily, magic swirling around her horn.

“Do we… Do we actually need to make sure we get it? What happens if it escapes?” Rarity asked, keeping watch on the ventilation shaft above. “This place is already infested with these aliens, right?”

Trixie grimaced. “Okay, you have a point, but on the other hoof KILL IT PINK ROBOT KILL IT NOW!!”

Pinkie Pie swiveled about, and a clunking noise came from her ammunition hoppers. The butcher cannon opened up, and once again shadows flashed across the walls while pieces of the main hallway exploded.

The wounded Genestealer scrambled wildly on its five remaining limbs, bolting from column to trash pile among the barrage. A heavy shell drilled into the wall above it, and then it bounced off the ground like a grasshopper just before another pair of shots crossed over it. The alien grabbed onto the end of a large pipe that was jutting out from a corner, and then clawed its way inside and out of sight.

“GAH!” Trixie shot her fireburst launcher after the last alien vanished into the darkness, but the fireball landed well short of the pipe and merely set a fire on the ground. “Ponyfeathers! We HAD that thing!” she complained, stamping a boot on the ground angrily.

“Trixie, relax. It’s not like the enemy doesn’t already know where we are,” Twilight chided. “We’re more likely to walk into a trap chasing after them than if we let them fall back.” She twisted her head around. “Lord Dest, Lord Serith, are we clear?”

“The enemies in the side passage have been extinguished,” Dest said, the spikes and blades slowly receding into his armor as he approached.

“I sense no further targets, save for the wretch that just fled,” Serith agreed. “The cultist scum… hm?”

“What’s wrong?” Twilight asked quickly, alarmed.

A screech came from the tunnel where the last Genestealer had escaped, and then the five-limbed alien came careening back out toward the space pirates. It hit the ground right in front of the fire left by Trixie’s weapon, and subsequently rolled through the flames before sliding to a stop.

Erin took the shot the moment it was still, and a spasm ran through Genestealer before it curled up on the floor, flames still clinging to its body.

“… There. The area is secure.” Serith flung his force halberd to the side to shake the blood off of it, and then rested the polearm over his shoulder pad. “It seems our scouts have returned.”

The sounds of rapid hoofsteps came from the pipe, and the pirates spotted a pair of crimson lights sailing through the darkness.

“Hey guys!” Rainbow Dash announced, leaping out of the pipe and shifting into a hover. “Sorry about blasting the monster toward you. It startled me.”

“We’re fine, Dash. What do you have for us? Were you and Fluttershy able to reach the camp Erin told us about?” Twilight asked.

Rainbow Dash shook her head. “Well, uh, I guess I have good news and bad news. The good news is that there are no traps, ambushes, or armies waiting for us on the path to Ein’s Well. Or in Ein’s Well.”

“That’s very good news,” Erin admitted. “Ein isn’t the worst bandit in these ruins, but I had to imagine he’d have some of his people infected by these aliens. And they’re willing to let us through?”

“I doubt the headstrong flying equine met with the underhive gangers to negotiate passage,” Dest scoffed, “so that makes me wonder how you could know there are no ambushes waiting there.”

“Well that has a lot to do with the bad news,” Rainbow said, trying to force out a chuckle and failing. Fluttershy decloaked while she was standing at the mouth of the pipe, hanging her head and looking away. “The bad news is that everybody’s dead.”

Erin winced and rubbed her temples. Byron blinked in shock.

“What? Everybody? Are you sure? His gang had almost two hundred people!” the explosives expert said.

“Okay, so, it’s not like I could question them or knew who Ein is exactly, so I guess it’s possible not EVERYONE is dead…” Rainbow took a deep breath, forcing out the next part of her report, “but there were a lot more than two hundred bodies there, so if they’re not dead it looks like they barely escaped.”

“Unbelievable. A massacre, this deep in the ruins?” Byron mumbled. “How did we not hear about it? We should have gotten word and probably several refugees.”

“The bodies were…” Fluttershy started speaking, and the others could hear the cringing in her tone. “… Fresh, kind of. They died less than a day ago. Possibly after we arrived on-world.”

“That whole area is a wasted battlefield,” Dash said. “But we didn’t find any signs of life, so I guess it’s safe for now.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Serith said, his visor lights pulsing in the darkness. “Show us.”

The pirates were soon on their way again, led by the massive pink Dreadnought and its floodlights. The tunnel was poorly maintained and frequently damaged, but it was also large and straight to allow for vehicle traffic. Barely one out of every ten lumens were even still in their sockets, much less providing illumination. Water occasionally dripped down from breaches in the ceiling, forming small puddles on the rockcrete ground. The creatures that gathered in and around the water tended to scatter and squirm when bright light passed over them, and each time a disgusted groan came from Rarity’s helmet.

“The pipe goes straight there but the hall has a bit of a detour,” Rainbow Dash explained, pointing a boot toward a distant pile of rubble. “I figured this was a pretty good point for a trap, but we didn’t see anything when we passed by the first time.”

“The Genestealer cult has launched several attacks on us, but they have been slipshod,” Dest rumbled as his blazing eyes searched the darkness. “Normally the cults are able to deploy hundreds of troops when necessary or lay devastating traps for their victims. Their best effort so far was when we escaped the sanctuary. It’s strange.”

“Maybe they’re stretched too thin to properly react to us. We’re not really a high priority,” Twilight reasoned. “Rainbow, you said Ein’s Well had become a battlefield? Who were they fighting?”

“Imperium,” Rainbow answered, “… probably.”

“There were a… LOT of dead,” Fluttershy whimpered. “We didn’t study it for very long.”

“Ein was surprisingly good at keeping his crew out of Imperial crosshairs,” Erin noted, “but I guess his luck had to run out eventually. The Imperium has been tightening the noose and his gang is probably the largest force here. Certainly the best-armed.”

“The largest and best armed force you are aware of,” Serith corrected. “Although if these bandits were strong and numerous they were surely infiltrated by the cult to some degree.”

“What… What do these cults do, after they take over?” Byron asked anxiously. “They have all these people under their control, right? So they lead an uprising and overthrow the governor? Then what? What are they after?”

“They want… you,” Serith said with a grim chuckle. Seeing the man’s confusion, the Sorcerer elaborated. “Don’t be fooled by their byzantine plans, sophisticated treachery, or arcane methods. The Tyranids’ motivation is almost insultingly simple: they want food.”

“Food?” Erin asked, frowning under her mask. “That’s all?”

“That’s all,” Dest grunted, “but they want ALL of it, is the problem. Much of that food is ours. And some of it is us.”

“Tyranids don’t think of planets as biospheres in which to settle and live,” Twilight continued. “They don’t even consider them places to hunt prey, even. They think of planets more like… like we think of a ration tin. Crack it open, slurp up the contents, and then throw away the husk.”

“So all of this subterfuge, this corruption, all this SUFFERING you have borne witness to, both at the hands of the cultists and the Imperium that hunts them… is all merely to weaken the defenses for when the hive fleets darken your orbit.” Serith chuckled again, this time with more genuine humor. “Their numbers limitless, their potential endless, and their consciousness ascendant, yet still the Tyranid invaders sometimes falter when the heirs of this galaxy strike back. So they have come to use the cults to beat their path.”

The Sorcerer tapped his helmet with an armored finger. “The cult not only sabotages the world’s defenses, but the master acts as a psychic beacon, reaching across the stars to guide its brethren. How long has this one festered, I wonder? How many tendrils are reaching for your hapless system by now?”

The pirates trudged through the dripping caverns in silence for a few long seconds, and then Erin spoke up again. “Do you… Do you think the Imperium will be able to stop them?”

“The Imperium wasn’t even able to stop us,” Serith scoffed.

“Can we talk about something else?” Trixie asked with an annoyed grunt. “Like the artifact! Serith, what do you make of the artifact?”

Serith turned his helmet toward Suuna, who immediately stood up straighter and held up the octahedron she was carrying.

“Ah guess it’s been guidin’ us through Twilight before now, but it’s been mighty quiet ever since we found it,” Applejack said. “Be real nice if it could show us a shortcut outta here.”

“I don’t think the artifact knows the way out of here,” Twilight retorted. “Presuming, for now, that the artifact’s knowledge base is of a limited scope like any other being’s, it would have no context for how planetary extraction would occur or how to assist it.”

“What does any of THAT mean?” Chrysalis growled.

“It means that the artifact doesn’t know the way off the planet because how could it? How would a carved hunk of rock hidden underground know about the fleet or the defenses arranged to stop it from picking us up?” Rarity answered. “Even if it was secretly rooting around in our heads for clues, we barely know what to expect either.”

“I have completed a rudimentary scan of the object,” Serith interjected, causing the others to fall silent. “Unsurprisingly, almost all of the material analysis was returned as inconclusive. However, I am certain some portion of this artifact is composed of blackstone.”

“Blackstone? You mean like shale or something?” Pinkie asked, her voice booming from the Dreadnought’s helmet.

“No. Blackstone is no mundane material. It is a strange, rare substance that reacts unusually to the Warp,” Serith explained. “I know little about it; in all my centuries I have never had the opportunity to experiment with the substance or come across any notable research about it. However, in some constructs it is used as a bulwark against the power of the psyker. I can sense its presence.”

“That stone isn’t black, though,” Rainbow Dash pointed out. “It’s white.”

“Off-white,” Rarity corrected. “Pearl, I’d say. It would be a nice color with a little polish.”

“Presumably the blackstone is underneath various other inexplicable materials,” Serith drawled. “With extensive study I could tell you more, but this is hardly the time or place. For now it is enough that the object does not seem harmful.”

“Hey! There it is! Up there!” Rainbow Dash suddenly boosted forward toward an intersection, and then swung to the left and pointed a boot toward a long ramp. “That’s the way to the battlefield. It gets WAY uglier in the cavern.”

“I see we have some casualties already,” Dest grunted, speeding up ahead of the others.

Several bodies were laying on the ground, still clutching their weapons. They were obviously underhive scavengers or raiders, judging by their clothes and general physique, but as Dest approached he couldn’t find any obvious wounds. All of them were stretched out on the ground, aligned more or less in the same direction. They had been retreating. They didn’t make it.

“The battle must have been quite recent indeed if nobody has taken their equipment yet,” Dest remarked, leaning down to roll over a corpse. “Fluttershy, determine what killed this man. I see no wounds on him.”

Fluttershy’s helmet visor pulsed, and reams of data-screed filled her heads-up-display. She filtered away most of the redundant or unnecessary information, squinting at the data tags attached to the corpse.

“The cause of death was… paralysis, I think,” Fluttershy said, her voice trembling only a little. “There’s no wound, but there’s a lot more damage to the nervous system and brain matter than the rest of the body.”

“Nerve-shredder gas,” Byron said grimly.

“What? Gas?! Is it still here?! Trixie’s helmet is broken!” Trixie yelped, recoiling.

“Hmmm… Aerosol filtering doesn’t detect anything like that,” Twilight pointed out, bringing up an analysis window on her visor screen. “Plenty of other minor contaminants, but not a poison gas.”

“Nerve-shredder gas is mostly used to clear entrenched targets in preparation for combat assaults, so it spreads fast and turns inert quickly,” Byron explained. “Five minutes after release it’s considered non-lethal in potency, and after twenty the gas is effectively harmless to mammals. Still… there could be pockets of it concentrated in crevices or small canisters remaining that weren’t properly deployed, so be careful!”

“I have to say, despite our harrowing landing on this world it will be almost refreshing to deal with the simple threats of the Imperial war machine again,” Rarity admitted. “These cultists aliens are simply TERRIBLE. Converting helpless refugees into gene-slaves and compelling them to breed soldiers for their insurrection! The thought makes my fur bristle!”

“It makes me sick,” Twilight agreed, her voice carrying a surprising amount of venom. Some of the other mares paused to look at her, but the young Princess advanced up the ramp toward Ein’s Well without looking back. “Everyone with a helmet, make sure your void seals are locked and your air supply is flowing. Everyone without a helmet should stay well behind the rest of us.”

“I have a respirator. How well will that do?” Erin asked, fitting her breathing mask over her face.

“Against a fresh dose it would probably save you, depending on the exact circumstances and whether you could escape a saturated zone. But without the visor part of the gas mask you’d suffer excruciating pain and permanent blindness,” Byron explained. “Definitely better than nothing!”

“’Better than nothing’ is standard issue in the underhives,” Erin said wryly, hefting her shotgun. “Let’s see what we’re working with here.”

The ramp opened up into another series of larger caverns. Like in the sanctuary, these areas had been excavated and fashioned into living space for the underhive residents with tents, defensive barricades, and alcoves where people could set up something resembling a home and rest in partial privacy. Unlike the sanctuary, this living space had been subjected to an assault before they had gotten there.

Bodies were everywhere, scattered around the cavern more or less as one would expect after a desperate battle. Most of them bore conventional deadly wounds and had fallen from lasgun fire or being cut down by chainswords. Others had clearly been in the process of fleeing and didn’t have any external injuries.

Not all of the bodies were human, and Twilight immediately fixed a scowl on a Purestrain Genestealer that had perished with its claws buried in a heavily tattooed raider. Its back carapace was covered in lasburns and cracks from autogun fire. There were a few more of the Tyranids among the dead, and each one looked like it had been attacked from both sides of the combat.

Dest joined the young Princess at the top of the ramp and slowly looked over the combat. “… This was not a battle between two united forces. The underhive wretches also fought the xenos.”

“By the Emperor…” Erin mumbled as she stepped up behind Twilight. Dest turned his head toward her, and she winced. “I… I mean… s-sorry, my Lord.”

“I take no offense at your plea,” the Iron Warrior assured her before he moved forward again, “but it is a futile one. The people fleeing your cities will find no refuge with the Imperium’s faithful. The Emperor will not hear your cries for aid or mercy.”

“I suppose our real savior would be Miss Twilight Sparkle, then” the guard admitted. “Do you think ’by the purple pirate pony’ could catch on?”

Dest laughed. It was a full-throated, honest guffaw that roared within his throat, and the sound startled Erin briefly. “You have a cold wit about you, Whyd! I’m glad I didn’t execute you and the specialist as a precaution.”

“Not quite as glad as I am, Lord,” Erin replied. She climbed up onto a bit of burnt scaffolding to get a better view, and then everyone nearby heard her hiss an unfamiliar curse.

“Miss Erin? What’s wrong?” Twilight asked, turning away from a wide blood slick full of entangled corpses and broken weapons.

“The tunnel! I think they collapsed the exit!” Erin suddenly took off, rushing through the battlefield at a sprint.

Dest bolted forward to follow her at the same speed, his armor creating a mighty din as the greaves pounded against the rockcrete flooring. They crossed most of the ravaged battlefield quickly, with Erin leaping or curving around barricades and bodies while Dest simply plowed through them.

Soon enough, they reached the far wall of the cavern and Erin slowed to a stop. An enormous pile of blasted stone lay ahead. Dest guessed it was the exit tunnel completely buried by mining charges judging by what Erin had said, as well as the crumpled chassis of a Hellhound flame tank partially sticking out of the cave-in. It was otherwise difficult to tell that there was any kind of passage behind the debris here; it could have been a bunch of rock piled up on one side of the cavern as part of an excavation, or the result of some other, less deliberate collapse.

“Damn it all,” Erin hissed, walking up to the Hellhound and giving it a pointless kick. “This path branched out to another whole section of the underhive. Nearly half of our potential exit paths rely on this route being open.” She turned around and glared at the veritable ocean of dead bodies.

Dest reached down and hauled one of the dead men up by the arm. He wore a bloodied uniform marking him a member of the Planetary Defense Force, and had a heavy gas mask on that completely obscured his features behind a plasteel shell with a blue vision slit.. “Nearly all the corpses on this end of the battlefield are Imperial. The Imperium forces advanced through this tunnel and the denizens collapsed it on top of them. I’d expect the gas was deployed more or less at the same time.”

“Not before the battle was raging at full tilt, evidently,” Erin grumbled. “I can’t really claim the circumstances weren’t desperate enough. We also brought down a tunnel on our way here. Guess I can’t blame them.”

Rainbow Dash and Twilight swooped in overhead, hovering high above the carnage that surrounded their friends on the ground.

“We’ll figure out another way. For now…” Twilight cleared her throat and then shouted through her vox amplifier. “Erin! Byron! Suuna! Find some body armor and masks in decent condition and put them on! Take anything else you need too; there are plenty of weapons and munitions scattered about.”

“Ugh. Corpse scavenging duty, is it?” Byron sighed from where the others were picking their way through the battlefield. “All right, let me just find some unlucky thug in my size.”

Twilight switched her vox off and then swung around to face Dest. “Check my thinking: If the Imperial assault force gassed this place and their troops were outfitted to handle that, then they’re the only ones that could have walked away from this battle, right? The combat would have ended as soon as it was deployed.”

“It is the most likely result, yes,” Dest agreed. “It is distantly possible some other combatants had sufficiently well-sealed respirator gear and managed to kill the remaining Imperial troops not crushed by the tunnel collapse, but I would not seriously consider it.”

Twilight turned back around, scanning the area with her visor some more. “There! That must be the canister!” She pointed a hoof toward a large metal vessel standing next to the cavern wall some ways off from the collapsed tunnel. Her flight pack tilted forward, and she accelerated through the air.

“Don’t touch it!” Byron Hess shouted while strapping on a combat vest. “Usually the chem seeder just equalizes its pressure when it’s deployed rather than emptying the interior or freely mixing it with the local atmosphere! It very likely still contains active nerve agents!”

“Got it! Thank you!” Twilight shouted back as she slowed to a hover.

The canister was four feet in diameter and twice that in height, and shaped like a barrel. Piping ran all over the rounded surface, while at the flat top end a protrusion shaped somewhat like a flower was extended. The entire vessel was secured to a low-lying platform with a set of small caterpillar treads and a micro-engine. Twilight recognized it as a personal cargo carrier, a smaller version of the hauler platforms that were common around Ferrous Dominus.

Dest followed at a more cautious pace, this time carefully choosing his path to avoid disturbing the many bodies littering the cavern floor. “Are we simply wasting time until the civilians are finished scavenging wargear, or did you have a specific reason for investigating this site further?” the driver asked. “We should make for the next escape route quickly. Either the Imperium or the Genestealers will return to this place eventually. Probably both.”

Twilight nodded absently as she stared at the canister, and then started walking a circuit around the vessel. “I’m looking for any sign of survivors.”

“… As you said before, the survivors would likely be Imperial soldiers,” Dest pointed out.

“I know. I’d like to find them before the cultists do anyway,” the alicorn admitted.

She spotted a pair of bodies in a heap on the other side of the vessel and stepped closer. One of them had clear rank markings that her visor quickly tagged as those of a Brigade Captain. She didn’t have any serious wounds, but it was easy to see how she had died: the hose leading from her gas mask to her air canisters had been sliced clean through. The other body had three arms, immediately marking it as a member of the alien cult. It had been impaled by a power sword, but it’s talon-tipped hands were wrapped around a trio of scrap-made knives tightly enough that their grip had endured long after the cultist had expired.

Twilight sat down heavily, staring at the bodies. Her visor started a deeper scan, picking out obscure details and tagging them for analysis, but the data screed quickly blurred into incoherence. Her heartbeat started to thump in her ears. A spark of… something… lit in her belly, chasing away the sorrow and disgust at witnessing the remnants of such carnage.

The underhive denizens were going to retreat, leaving the passage clear. The Imperium was going to feed the gas deeper, once it had located the Genestealer’s nest. The cult launched an attack on both forces to escalate the battle. The Imperium used the gas and the residents collapsed the tunnel. All of the cultists died too, of course.

Twilight glanced to the side, but she saw nothing. The voice was on the edge of her consciousness, barely audible to her, yet the words registered clearly in her thoughts.

The cult master is pleased. It does not care that its soldiers perished. More humans died, and the passage collapse has extended its lifetime. That is all it wants. More death. More time. More despair.

Twilight stepped over to the dead cultist and pushed him over with her boot, turning him onto his back. The hybrid’s face was pale, and frozen into an expression of anguished fury. An amulet rattled about its neck. A brass wyrm, curled into a circle.

The cult cannot prevail. It will perish here. It hopes only to last long enough that the hive fleets find their way…

Twilight levitated the amulet, giving it a sharp tug to snap the thin chain that kept it looped around the hybrid’s neck. It floated before her visor, glimmering in the dim light cast by the ceiling lumens and Twilight’s own magic aura.

Despicable monsters…
Treacherous slavers…
Worse than even the Orks…
They should all be-

“Hey! Hey you guys! Check this out!” Rainbow Dash shouted, suddenly alerting the others scattered about the cavern. She was floating near the wall and had a boot pointed toward the ground. “I found tracks!”

“Tracks? This’s a battlefield, there’re tracks everywhere,” Applejack shouted back, trotting across the carnage with Rarity right behind her.

“Okay, sure, but these are probably easier to follow than all those!” the speedster retorted. “Come look!”

Twilight took a moment to slip the amulet into her gorget, and then reset her helmet seals. Then she jumped into the air again, speeding over to Rainbow Dash.

“… These tracks are from another cargo carrier,” Twilight said, studying the indentations in the ground. “Wait, this carrier moved after the battle! Look!” Twilight flew further along the path, gesturing to the ground. “The rest of the area is covered by debris from the cave-in and combat, but these tracks are moving over or through all that! It must have left after the battle was over!”

“Uh… yeah! Yes. I knew that,” Rainbow said. “So we should probably head another way.”

“No. We’re following them,” Twilight said firmly. “Rainbow, you’re with me. Applejack, Rarity, Lord Dest: follow us. Everyone else is to stay here while Erin finishes suiting up and figures out the next-best route! Stay close to Pinkie Pie!”

Rainbow gave a slightly confused cheer and blasted off in the direction the tracks led. Twilight followed, boosting her speed as best she could to keep up with the pegasus. The tracks kept close to the cavern wall, but then turned sharply into another tunnel. This one was much smaller than the path they had entered from, and totally unlit. Rainbow slowed only slightly to check Twilight’s position, and then zipped into the tunnel while doing a barrel roll.

Twilight followed her, making sure to switch her visor mode to see in the dark. The tracks were more difficult to spot here without all the detritus of the battlefield shifted aside, but she could still make out the ridges scraped into the dirt that had layered over the rockcrete over the past few decades.

Her vox link turned active. Dest.

“Would you care to explain why we’re wasting time seeking Imperial troopers? If we were merely searching the battlefield that would be one thing, but this is a serious diversion.”

“They might need help,” Twilight said simply.

“… And that is our concern, why?”

“None of this is our concern. But this is a rescue mission, and we have a common enemy now. They’re being hunted, and I want to save them,” the young Princess said.

“What if we’re the ones they need saving from?” the Astartes asked.

“Oh. Uh… okay, yes, I can see how that might come about. But I-“ she was cut off by the sound of gunfire echoing through the tunnel.

“Twi, let’s hit it!” Rainbow shouted, doubling her speed.

Twilight increased her own speed as well, although her flight pack was already straining near its limit. “Rainbow, don’t leave me behind again! Remember what happened last time?”

“No, why? What happened last time?” Rainbow asked right before a shotgun blast struck her wing.

Sparks flashed off her armor plating as it was scored by the shot, and Rainbow did a roll to evade the incoming salvo. Autogun slugs pelted the wall in a wide, desperate spread, and the pegasus flew as close to the wall as possible until she passed by her assailants.

Dash hit her impulse blasters, jolted to a stop, and then spun around in the air to get a look at what had shot her. Another chemical canister sat in the middle of the tunnel, surrounded by a half-dozen soldiers, half of which were swiftly moving to attack her. There were other details of interest, not least which faction these soldiers belonged to, but in the heat of the moment and the darkness of the tunnel Rainbow Dash didn’t study the scene any longer.

“NINJA STARS TO THE FACE!” the speedy mare shouted, firing a burst from her shuriken catapult and then jolting backward through the air.

One of the troops fell immediately, but the others pressed on, their autoguns splashing light through the tunnel with every shot. Dash twisted in the air, trying to throw off their aim, but aerial evasion was almost impossible in the narrow space. Autogun slugs cracked against her wing, shoulder, and flank, and impact warnings started to flash on her visor while she came around for another pass.

On the other side of the enemy, Twilight had just arrived on the scene, her horn blazing violet and her vox set to amplify.

“SURRENDER AT ONCE! WE ARE NOT ALLIES OF THE CULT! WE WISH TO-“

A fusillade of gunshots met her demand, smacking against the barrier Twilight had prepared. The shield pulsed with magical energy, lighting up the cavern much better than the gunshots did, and the alicorn pony got a much better look at their enemies. Dirty robes, crude wrappings, and scavenged gear immediately picked these men out as Genestealer cultists. They all had scarves or crude respirators over their mouths, but none had complex gas protection gear of the sort one would need while handling powerful poisons.

Something else caught Twilight’s attention, though: there were bodies on the floor, wearing heavier armor. And next to the chem canister was a larger body on the ground that looked like it was stooped over on top of something else…

Twilight’s eyes went wide, and she felt a tide of nausea well up in her stomach. A Genestealer was pinning down a man, its tongue – or some other lengthy organ extending from within its jaws – writhing down his throat. Twilight stared at the sight in horror, illuminated as it was by the continuing impacts of bullets against her magic barrier. Then her disgust was replaced with anger, and her force harmonizer detached from her back.

“Hi guys I’m back!” Rainbow spat another wave of shuriken into the cultists while rocketing back where she came from, and then slammed greaves-first into one of them. The man was knocked clean off his feet by the impact, and Rainbow jumped away from the body before it hit the ground, finishing the maneuver with another barrel roll.

As Rainbow zipped by, Twilight’s armor and weapon were consumed by a violet aura, her body illuminating the tunnel well enough that the hybrid soldiers flinched back from the light.

“No surrender, then,” the armored alicorn said, her voice booming with power.

Bright purple lightning blasted from her horn, the inlaid circuits blazing white. The magic arced from one cultist to another, running through the entire unit in an eye blink. The soldiers fell to the ground, convulsing badly while ribbons of searing magic crawling over them, and the stench of scorched flesh quickly filled the tunnel.

Only the Purestrain Genestealer remained, having been too far away from its allies to be affected by the spell. It withdrew its ovipositor from the man underneath it, and then stood upright.

The force harmonizer reached it before it could do much more than that, and a crackling blade of psychic energy carved into the alien’s back. The Genestealer shrieked and leapt away, leaking dark ichor across the ground behind it.

“You’re not getting away!” Rainbow Dash shouted, rocketing around the opposite side of the gas canister to intercept it. She fired a spread of shuriken, but the Genestealer jumped with uncanny speed, landing on the wall of the tunnel and then kicking off for further acceleration.

The alien passed closely enough to the pegasus to lash out with a claw, and Rainbow spun in the air to evade. Her reflexes proved barely adequate, and the Genestealer’s claws sliced a deep cut across the chest and gorget of her armor without piercing all the way through to the flesh below.

Rainbow Dash kicked out with one boot toward her assailant, activating her impulse blaster at the same time. What would have been a rough tap instead sent both combatants flying away from each other, and the Genestealer was hurled into the tunnel wall.

Twilight’s harmonizer flew after the alien, swinging in a wide arc. The blade sliced through stone, carapace, and flesh with equal ease, carving a trench through the wall and the Genestealer both. It released a feeble squeal, and then its upper torso toppled while its lower torso slid to the floor.

“I’m not reading any more targets,” Twilight said, turning toward the quivering soldier on the ground. “We can-“

A cultist next to the gas canister suddenly reached up, grabbing onto the piping on the outside of the container. He started to lift his shotgun, but then Rainbow Dash struck him in the side of the head, knocking him back to the ground. His body spasmed, and then he went still once more.

“Not on my watch, chump!” Rainbow huffed. “I think he was going for the valve! What did he think he’s going to accomplish?”

“I don’t know, but good work stopping him,” Twilight said, slowly approaching the Imperial soldier. Her horn lit up softly as her harmonizer returned to her back, and she illuminated the Genestealers’ most recent victim.

The man was a pale, with the veins around his neck and head bulging, as if they were ready to pop. His eyes were wide open, staring at the armored equine in mute horror, but his gaze was responsive. The man was conscious and at least partially lucid. He was also clutching at his throat, and emitting a constant string of mournful choking noises.

“Please calm down. We’re not here to harm you,” the Princess said to the man. She wished she could take her helmet off for this conversation, but there was simply no way she could justify that with enemy soldiers around and a vat of poison gas right next to her. “Were you infected? I saw the Genestealer doing… uh… something…”

The soldier closed his eyes, and slowly managed to choke out intelligible words. “My Lord… Emperor…” he paused to cough, his breath heaving. “Grant me… your final… mercy…”

His trembling hand reached toward the bodies nearby, clumsily groping about for one of their dropped weapons. Twilight winced and quietly levitated a fallen stub pistol well out of his reach.

“Listen, if you were just infected, maybe we can halt the process! Or maybe it wasn’t complete! Don’t give up! We brought help!” Twilight said, hoping she sounded more optimistic than she felt.

“Emperor… deliver… us from… evil,” the soldier hissed, his eyes still squeezed shut. The veins around his neck and face continued pulsing even faster, like his heart was about to burst.

Twilight activated her vox to the squad channel. “We ran into some cultists and a Genestealer. Area is secure, but we have a survivor here. Fluttershy, I need you here right away!”

“Twi? Are you… Are you sure she can…?” Rainbow fidgeted uncomfortably while she stared at the Imperial soldier.

“I don’t know. None of us know. But we have to try something!” Twilight protested.

“From the… the… predations… of the… alien,” the soldier gurgled, “my Emperor… deliver us…”

Twilight heard the sound of power-armored footsteps and turned around. Dest was approaching with Applejack and Rarity flanking him, his visor lenses gleaming brightly in the darkness of the tunnel. Applejack’s armor had a high-beam lumen set in the cowl, and it illuminated the chemical vessel and the unfortunate victims laid all around it.

Dest raised his boltgun, searching the tunnel for movement. “You said there was a Genestealer. Is that man infected?”

“Yes! Do you know of any sort of treatment we can try? I think we may have interrupted the process!” Twilight asked.

The boltgun dropped its aim and fired once. The feverish mumbling of the soldier ceased.

“The corruption has been dealt with,” the Rhino driver said, his voice grim, “I presume this vessel contains more nerve-shredder gas? What are we to do with it?”

Twilight slumped onto her rear, her armor joints rattling. “That… He… He was-“

“He was an enemy, taken as a thrall to another enemy,” Dest said. “Let us hurry with our mission.”

“But… maybe we could have saved him!” Twilight protested.

“We did,” the Iron Warrior retorted.

Twilight’s reply turned to ash in her mouth. The other mares shifted uncomfortably, trying to think of something useful to say.

“CONTACT!” Dest barked suddenly, right before his bolter fired again.

A screech came from deeper in the tunnel, and Applejack shifted her lumen beam to illuminate the incoming targets. Snarling hybrids dashed through the shadows clutching pistols and knives, accompanied by large, misshapen creatures hefting lengths of pipe and axes assembled from scrap metal. These strange mutants resembled Genestealers, but their forms were twisted and their muscles swollen; some had multiple limbs branching awkwardly from a single joint, some had overgrown chitin plates and tentacle growths, and one possessed oversized crab-like claws rather than hands and talons.

“Aberrants!” Dest roared, firing a burst across the cultist vanguard. The mass-reactive rounds pounded against the larger mutants, drilling holes in chitin and pulping muscle. Only one of the monstrosities fell, however, although a plasma ball and a psychic beam took down the next two.

“They must be here for the gas!” Twilight shouted, pressing up against the container while her harmonizer charged again. The sudden return to combat restored her focus in an instant, washing away the doubts and despair that had been welling in her heart. “Applejack, put some fire between us!”

“Ah gotcha!” the farmer shouted, rushing out from behind the chemical container. Her flamer filled quickly filled a patch of ground between the walls, the fire mixing into a deadly barrier that served to illuminate the stretch of tunnel.

Twilight clenched her teeth as bullets started to ricochet off of the gas container. “Who knows what they’ll do with this stuff if they capture it! We should destroy it if we need to!”

Several more bullets rattled the vessel, the cultists opening fire as quickly as they could before they were shot down by the defenders. The enemy had no cover, and even the lurching Aberrants hesitated to charge into the wall of flames. One by one the enemy died, each one striving to unload their weapons into the gas canister.

One of the Abberants managed to fling its hammer before a jet of fire washed over it, and the weapon slammed headlong into the metal vessel. The entire container shook from the blow, and its wall dented inward.

“Wait a minute…” Twilight glanced over at Dest, who was standing away from the container with his boltgun. None of the incoming fire seemed to hit the Iron Warrior. “They’re not shooting at us at all! They’re trying to break open the gas canister!”

“What? Why?” Rarity asked, popping out the energy cell of her plasma gun. “Our armor will protect us from that, right?”

“Uh, yeah, about that,” Rainbow Dash mumbled, “I have a hard time with some of the readouts on this thing but I’m pretty sure I’ve got a few holes in mine.”

Twilight felt her heart leap into her throat. “Dash, retreat! Go back to the main caverns!”

“But I can-“

“NO ARGUING! THIS IS A DIRECT ORDER!” Twilight shouted, using her telekinesis to shove the pegasus back.

A mining pick flew over the wall of fire, embedding its point in the dent left by the hammer. It was impossible for Twilight to hear the hiss of escaping gas over the gunfire and the sound of Rainbow’s flight pack, but several of the meters built into the wall of the canister started to shift wildly.

“Everyone! Fall back!” Twilight shouted, her horn charging with magic. “One stray hole in your suit and you’re done for! Hurry!”

Dest twisted about on one foot and bolted away, and Rarity activated her time dilation engine to give herself an extra burst of speed. The unicorn became a silvery blur racing through the tunnel, and Dest swiftly followed her into the tunnel.

Applejack turned around to follow them, but then Twilight shouted again.

“Applejack, wait! Can you kick that canister further down into the cultists?” Twilight asked.

“Now we’re talkin’!” Applejack snarled, fixing her front greaves on the ground and activating the gravity plating.

Gears and micro-motors squealed as the rear half of her body lifted from the ground, and then a tremendous crash echoed through the tunnel. Applejack’s kick shredded the scaffolding securing the canister to the cargo carrier, and the entire vessel was sent spinning over the wall of fire.

Twilight overcharged the force harmonizer, and then tilted it upward at the ceiling. A screaming energy beam passed over the flames and drilled into the stone above, raining chunks of rock onto the fire. The cultists on the other side were already in full retreat, although many of then had fallen onto the ground, twitching and rasping.

“Applejack, get clear!” Twilight shouted, backing up herself before she fired again.

More of the tunnel collapsed, and this time much larger piles of rock and dust broke away. The debris completely filled the stretch of tunnel between the ponies and the cultists, and once again the hall was plunged into darkness.

Applejack, who had started sprinting away from the cave-in, suddenly noticed that Twilight wasn’t following after her. She quickly turned around, fixing her cowl’s lumen on her friend and leader. “Twi? Ya comin’?”

Twilight was standing in front of the rock pile, staring at it. Her attention seemed to shift slightly when Applejack shined the light over her, casting a long shadow over the rubble. She remained this way for a few more seconds before turning around and securing her force harmonizer to her back.

“They weren’t here for the container. They were here for us,” Twilight said, walking past Applejack. The grimace was evident in her voice.

“Well we gave ‘em plenty of that, then,” Applejack snorted as she followed. “Sure are wastin’ a lot of grunts t’see us off.”

Dozens of warriors lost, just on the chance one of you had a hole in your armor. Tactics borne of confusion and desperation.

The voice was back. Twilight didn’t bother looking around for it this time.

So many dead. So many corrupted, hapless, shackled souls sent screaming to their doom. Bleeding, choking, burning, and left heaped among the tunnels to rot.

Why?

“It’s afraid of us,” Twilight said aloud.

“Huh? Who is?” Applejack asked.

“The head Genestealer. Genestealer cults are led by a Patriarch: the original alien that managed to make its way to the new world and start infecting the populace,” Twilight explained. Her tone was grim, and sounded somewhat distracted. “It builds a psychic network between all the infected so that it can direct its forces or even take complete control if it needs to. That’s what we saw back in the artifact room. The Patriarch took over Lady Nacellus directly, to make sure she carried out its suicidal plan and protect her from Serith’s mind control.”

“And… it’s scared o’us?” Applejack asked, quirking a brow behind the glowing red slits of her visor. “Ah guess we got some pretty nasty muscle on our side, sure, but are we really more dangerous than the army marchin’ down here with tanks and poison gas?”

“Yes,” Twilight answered without hesitation. “We’re an unexpected variable. A wrench bouncing around the cogs of two separate war machines. At first it thought it could fool us and get some of its agents off-world. Then it concocted that ridiculous bargain to try to get our weapons. By now it’s just desperate to be rid of us.”

“Well the feelin’s mutual,” Applejack huffed. “Ah can’t believe we got shot down and ran through a mess o’ bombs just to find more alien monsters down here. We could be helpin’ sack the city or protect the cargo lifts, but instead we’re trudging through dirt n’ corpses tryin’ to get off-world with some kinda fancy rock!”

Twilight didn’t respond. Her thoughts churned chaotically in her head, and her breath seemed to echo within her helmet.

After a few more minutes of travel, they re-emerged into the caverns where the others were waiting. The mares picked their way over and around the dead, but with each corpse she stepped over Twilight felt her anger grow once more. The expressions frozen in grimaces of rage or ashen agony touched her in a way that she hadn’t felt since the invasion of Equestria.

They could have been saved. They could have been left alone to live peaceful, if deprived lives. But they were betrayed and murdered on the whims of that cowardly wretch that crawls within the depths.

“About time you got back! We were starting to get worried!”

Twilight shook off the strange whispers while she and Applejack approached the others. Erin, Byron, and Suuna were all wearing slightly different variants of Imperial body armor, each one with their rank insignias and heraldry cut off. Their gas masks were perfectly identical in design, and Twilight wouldn’t have been able to guess which was which if Suuna wasn’t carrying the artifact and Erin her scavenged shotgun. There was also a third Iron Warrior once again, which Twilight had to assume was Chrysalis taking a form that had a proper breathing apparatus that could protect her from poison gas.

“Lord Dest said you found another gas canister. What happened to it?” Byron asked anxiously. “These suits and masks should keep us safe, but I’d prefer not to test them.”

“Also, Mistress Trixie is still unprotected,” Suuna interjected. “Her helmet is useless and none of these masks fit a pony’s head, especially not a unicorn’s.” The unicorn in question nodded anxiously and awaited a response.

“I don’t think we have to worry about the gas,” Twilight said. “They pierced the vessel, but I caved in the tunnel behind us with the canister on the other side. I could only detect trace elements back near the debris pile, and none at all in here.”

“It was largely a waste of time and ammunition,” Dest grumbled, “but I suppose it is for the best that we deny the alien filth more victims and weapons.”

“I have our next-best exit. It’s quite a walk; we may have to stop and rest before we can get out,” Erin admitted.

“That doesn’t sound safe,” Rarity grimaced. “but whether we elect to try to sleep in the middle of enemy territory or not, we should update the Warsmith on our progress. Or lack thereof.”

“I’m telling you, you should just unseal my warforms,” Chrysalis sniffed, her feminine voice sounding quite strange filtered through the Astartes vox. “I’m sure one of them could blast a tunnel through here or something.”

“These tunnels are weak and have been subjected to more stress than ever lately,” Byron said wearily. “There’s every chance that trying to dig a new tunnel, much less BLASTING one, will just get us trapped down here or buried alive.”

“Then let us get our heading and leave this rotting sewer,” Serith said, standing impatiently at the edge of the group.

Twilight looked from one person and pony to another, one after another, until finally her visor’s gaze settled on Serith. “Lord Serith, you said you sensed the cult’s master when Lady Nacellus confronted us before, right?”

The Sorcerer tilted his head to one side. “Yes. The Patriarch – the heinous master of this nest of xeno filth – seized direct control of her mind to confront us. No lesser officer of these fools could have shielded their pawns so effectively from my own power, but the strength of its link proved to be their undoing.”

Twilight nodded. “Was it strong enough that you could tell where the Patriarch is? Or was, at least?”

Serith hesitated. “If you’re asking if I know where to find the beast I’m afraid I do not, Lady Sparkle.”

“That would be extremely helpful, but that wasn’t what I meant,” the Princess said. “Could you do that, potentially? Use a cultist to find the Patriarch?”

“Sparkle, what do you think you’re doing?” Dest asked.

“That depends on his answer,” Twilight replied, still staring directly at Serith.

The Sorcerer raised an armored finger and scratched the chin of his helmet. “Hmmmm… yes. I believe I could. It would have to be one of the true spawn of the cult, not merely an infected host, and we would need it alive, but I could use such a link to guide us in the material labyrinth.”

“Then we need to set up a trap,” Twilight said with a nod.

“No, we do not,” Dest snapped. “Sparkle, what is this? What are you trying to accomplish here?”

Twilight turned to face Dest and the others. “I want to exterminate the Genestealer Cult. Or at least kill the Patriarch.”

“Oh HAY yes!” Rainbow Dash did an excited somersault in the air and then clapped her front greaves together.

“If we’re going to take that monster down, I want to be there to help,” Erin said immediately, her face flush with barely suppressed rage.

“Wait, why exactly are we attacking the cult?” Rarity asked.

“Because I’m mad at them,” Twilight answered calmly. “More philosophically, they’re very bad people doing very bad things, and they should be stopped for the good of the rest of the galaxy. But I want to be honest that mostly I’m just personally offended by their activities here and want them all to die.”

“Welp, nothing we can do. You can’t argue with philosophy,” Pinkie Pie said solemnly before her ammo hoppers clunked into place.

“People argue with philosophy all the time, idiot. That’s practically the point,” Chrysalis snapped, “but anyway, I like this plan. Let’s murder this Patriarch creature.”

“No. This is absurd,” Dest said firmly, stepping up behind Twilight. “This is unrelated to our mission. We have a way out already.”

Twilight politely waited for him to finish, and then turned her head to look at the driver. “We have two mission objectives here: To rescue as many refugees as we can, and to recover the artifact that Mister Hess used to contact me. We’ve accomplished the latter, and I consider the elimination of the Patriarch to be our best option for the former.” Twilight then turned the rest of the way around and bowed her head. “Of course, you’re an Iron Warrior. If you insist we avoid the cultists as much as possible, I can’t disobey your orders, even if I’m nominally in charge. Do you order us to withdraw instead?”

Dest didn’t answer, staring down at the alicorn.

It all seemed so ridiculous. This mission. This plan. This staring match between a corrupt, demon-infested Astartes and a miniature horse. The lives of these underhive slum-dwellers meant nothing to him, particularly now that he knew some portion of them were brainwashed slaves of xeno infiltrators. The answer seemed so obvious.

And yet…

“Ah’m not usually one to stick mah snout in lookin’ fer trouble, but this varmint sounds like it needs to be put down,” Applejack opined. “Violatin’ folk and turnin’ ‘em against their kin… Ah see where Twi’s comin’ from.”

“I really would like to be out of here as soon as possible,” Rarity sighed, “BUT… it isn’t as if this creature has been minding its own business and leaving us to our affairs. There’s no reason to think it would let us leave safely if we try to avoid it.”

“Let’s beat up the bad bug,” Rainbow Dash said. “The bad bug that’s not on our side, that is.”

“Shut up,” Chrysalis huffed. “I’ve already said my piece. I’m perfectly happy putting off whatever clash with Imperial patrols waits for us on the surface by hunting down some monster skulking in the sewers.”

“Trixie’s going to have to go against the grain here and advise we just leave.” The magician made a gagging expression. “Aside from the needless risks to life and limb, this place smells AWFUL without a pressurized helmet, and Trixie really wants to get home to get hers fixed as soon as possible.”

Fluttershy shimmered into the visible spectrum behind Dest’s leg. “Uhm… E-Excuse me… I know that I’m usually in favor of pacifism, or at least reducing potential violence as much p-possible,” she stuttered, taking a deep breath, “but what the Genestealers are doing to these people is BEYOND VILE! The way they violate their bodies and minds, turn them against their friends and families, and then turn them into… into… BABY FACTORIES for their soldiers! It’s… I just…” The meek pegasus stumbled over her words, her anger struggling against her fear. Then she took another breath and finished with a surprising degree of frost in her voice. “We need to stop them.”

A groan came from Dest, but before he could speak Vel’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

I don’t really get why everyone’s so mad at the bug people, but it sure sounds like we’ll get to kill more things if we do what the horses want. I would like to kill more things.

“All right. All right!” Dest snapped, clenching his clawed gauntlets into fists. “Fine! We’ll kill the Patriarch. It’s an unnecessary risk, but I have no further objections,” the Possessed Astartes growled.

“As the only other Iron Warrior among our unit, I suppose you’ll be wanting my opinion as well,” Serith offered.

“No,” Dest, Twilight, and Chrysalis all replied.

Twilight turned around and stepped up to Chrysalis. “If we need a live cultist to do this, then we need a trap and we need bait.”

“I’ll be the bait,” Erin said immediately, stepping forward. “Apparently these monsters have been sneaking around my home for weeks or months, turning my friends and subordinates into brainwashed slaves. I’ll do anything and everything I can to pay them back for that.”

“I’ll be the trap,” Chrysalis said. A green glow washed over her and the surface of her armor rippled, as if her magic itself was so excited it could barely be contained. “I have no particular grievance against these aliens, but it sounds like fun.”

“This had better work, Sparkle,” Dest warned. “We’ve given you a great deal of leeway in your missions because you are not one of us and you get results. But here you are aiding our enemies directly. Any losses suffered in this attempt may well doom our chances to escape this world.”

“I know, Lord,” Twilight said. “Thank you for understanding.” Then she turned around. “Chrysalis?”

“I just have to look harmless and follow the human female, right?” the changeling asked. Her body was consumed in a green glow and shrank considerably. When the aura vanished, Erin Whyd was looking at a perfect replica of Byron Hess, who was still standing behind her. The only difference was that the visor of the gas mask was tinted green.

“Are you… me?” Byron asked, sounding awestruck. “You can take on the appearance of someone else at will? Without harming the original?”

“I generally prefer a little harm to the original to keep them in line while I’m busy deceiving their loved ones, but yes,” Chrysalis admitted, her voice matching Byron’s perfectly. “Shall we move out?”

“Just a moment,” Twilight said, taking a deep breath. “Disengage Nemesis lock. Authorization six.”

Chrysalis shuddered, feeling a rush of heat pulse up her spine. Her senses felt electrified, and a heavy gasp escaped from the mask that obscured her face. “… Thank you,” she said, sounding even happier than before.

Erin took a cautious step back. “What… What was that? What just happened?”

“It’s a long story, but the upshot is that if you run into a much larger patrol or assault force than we’re expecting then she should be able to handle it now,” Twilight said. “Chrysalis, I’m trusting you with this because I want you to protect Erin. Is that understood? Bring her back alive.”

“A trifle,” the Changeling Queen assured her. The mask visor pulsed green, and an electric arc danced over the fingers of one hand.

“Great. Then move out. We won’t be far behind you, but we can’t follow too closely.” Then Twilight turned around. “Lord Serith, I have some technical questions… about psychic networks.”

---

Harvest of Steel
Solon’s Forge

“Oh what ish THISH now? She wantsh to delay extraction? For what? I thought they had all the humansh they could shafely eshcape with!”

Spike chuckled nervously as he shuffled through the sheets of parchment in his claws. Two of them were crude maps of underground tunnels hastily marked up with icons, notes, and corrections, while the others held long messages littered with footnotes. The footnotes mostly referenced the maps, and Spike’s throat was already starting to hurt from the amount of paperwork he was spitting up.

“They seem to have taken on a… secondary objective? Yeah, let’s go with that,” the young dragon said, looking embarrassed. “Twilight says that they need to track and destroy the head of the Genestealer Cult before they can safely leave the ruins. It seems to be interfering with their withdrawal.”

“Hunting a cult Patriarch ish no shimple tashk,” Solon grunted. “Granted, it’sh not the mosht dangeroush thing she’sh ever done, but thish ish not a priority misshion.”

“Should I tell her you said to just leave and avoid getting into fights?” Spike asked.

Solon didn’t respond right away. He was working on some sort of disc the size of a manhole cover, and an array of needle-like probes attached his arm kept stabbing into the ring of nodes and circuits drawn into the top. He pulled his arm away, and then a beam of blue light pulsed from above, searing something in the assembly.

“No. While her prioritiesh may not alwaysh align ash I wish, the Princessh ish in a better poshition than I to judge her tactical needsh,” Solon admitted. “Beshidesh! Desht and Sherith are with her. They should keep her in one piece.”

Spike considered that silently for a few seconds. “… Really?”

“… Well, Desht will. Probably. I don’t know him very well.” Solon brought up a holo-screen and then tapped at it. “Oh. Okay, he’sh that one. Huh.” He swiped at the screen again, flipping the image to the next section. “Maybe I should have inshishted Gaela go with them after all.”

“Is she gonna be okay?” Spike asked anxiously.

“If anyone can endure the treachery of the alien while the Imperium shlowly closhesh itsh nooshe, it’sh our little Princessh Shparkle,” Solon chuckled, flipping over the disc. “But I may be able to help with her exit, at leasht.”

He tapped the top of the disc, and it started to vibrate. Lumens set into the circumference blinked on, and Spike winced as a high-pitched whine came from the device.

“What is that thing, anyway?” Spike asked, finally putting away all the papers he was holding.

“It’sh an augur dishruptor array. Shtolen from our friendsh in the Lamman Shept and modified for our ushe, of courshe,” Solon chuckled. “Converting a transhport to have a dedicated cloaking field is a project of weeksh. Thish device will protect the extraction craft from long-range detection and weapon locksh while it shneaksh into the landing zone.”

“Also: mines. Make sure it has something to deal with mines,” Spike reminded him.

A raspy chuckled came from the armored giant. “Of courshe, ash you shay. Deployment ish in shix hoursh. Sho much work yet to do!”

---

Ulaisse capital moon
Underhive complex sigma
Exact geo-coordinates unknown

“So… I don’t think we covered this before, but… what… are you, exactly? If you don’t mind me asking?”

Chrysalis looked up from the dataslate she had been perusing. She was shuffling along barely a meter behind Erin, who crept ahead and scanned the tunnel for threats with a lumen taped to her shotgun. They’d kept relatively silent up until now, with nothing interrupting the scuffing of boots on rockcrete and the sound of dripping water.

“Didn’t one of the ponies tell you?”

“She just said you were a monster.”

“Well I don’t know what difference it makes, but if you want to know my particular type of monster, I’m called a changeling,” Chrysalis said with a shrug.

“I see. And… you arrived with the others? The, uh, the ponies and Astartes?”

“Correct. There’s only been one species of aliens stalking you and your people for untold years, and it’s not mine,” the Changeling Queen explained. “I just found some guard sleeping at his post and took his appearance. Eventually I was collected by your leader for a guard detail as we rushed to the artifact chamber. Not my most intricate infiltration work, but I’m rather proud of it.”

“You’re different from the other xenos, aren’t you?” Erin asked. “Different from the… the Chaos soldiers too. Not just in your species.”

Chrysalis gave a hearty chuckle in Byron’s baritone voice. “You noticed,” she said lightly.

Then the changeling’s tone changed. “Yes, I am different. I’m not a good little soldier like the pony servants or a half-insane slave to evil gods or whatnot. I’m not in this for you or for the fleet. I’m still not totally convinced you aren’t infected like your leader, in fact.”

Erin sped up her advance and grimaced under her mask. “Yeah… me neither.”

“Grim!” Chrysalis chirped, keeping her pace the same.

Erin slowed down as they approached another section of tunnel. The walls on both sides gave away to a larger hallway with rough, drilled stone for a ceiling. The left side was also raw stone, albeit stone that had been prepared for construction, abandoned for a century, and then exposed to a few battles between rival scavenger gangs. The right side was a veritable web of piping that fed into a large water pump. It had been completely gutted for scrap by now, of course, and half the pipes were egregiously damaged or missing.

Erin Whyd spent a few seconds studying the area, and then beckoned her partner forward. Chrysalis approached, her attention back on the dataslate Twilight had left her with.

This time Erin didn’t advance again once Chrysalis stepped within earshot. “Someone else is here,” she whispered.

“Hmm?” the Changeling Queen looked up. “Where?”

Erin nudged her head toward the piping without actually turning to face it.

“… Hello? Where?” Chrysalis asked. “Can’t you just point? Who cares if they know they’re detected?”

Erin groaned, which was the last thing Chrysalis heard before a shadowy blur tackled her to the ground.

“Gurk!” Chrysalis hit the rockcrete roughly, and before she knew it she felt a heavy weight on her back. Both her arms were pinned to the ground, and she felt the flat of a knife press into the leather collar that fully sealed her head into the gas mask. A snarling command was issued into her ear, but the changeling missed it completely; she was already thinking of the best retaliation for the unlucky wretch on top of her that wouldn’t kill the creature.

Erin whirled around, beaming her lumen directly onto the assailant. A four-armed hybrid glared back at her through the gloom. A bandanna was wrapped around its neck and chin, obscuring much of its face but leaving its swollen, bald, and chitin-plated upper head exposed. Three of its four arms held long daggers, with one of them pressed against Chrysalis. The fourth held a stub pistol that was aimed squarely at Erin.

Her first instinct was to fire, but Erin fought down her survival reflex and started stuttering instead. “Wh-What… What are y-you?” she gasped.

Several clicking noises came from behind her, and Erin glanced over her shoulder. Four more gunmen were in the passage now, autoguns aimed at her back. Their faces were obscured with bandages, rags, and goggles, but these soldiers at least had only two arms each.

“O… Okay. Y-You got me,” Erin mumbled, carefully leaning down to place her shotgun on the ground. “I surrender.”

The cultists advanced, and one of them seized her by the arm and spun her around. Erin grunted as her arm was twisted about, and then yelped as she was hurled onto the rockcrete. The gunmen pinned her down on her belly, occasionally whispering to each other but largely working in disturbing silence.

“Wh-What are you doing? Are you going to kill us?” she asked nervously.

They didn’t respond. A scraping noise came from behind the group, and the hybrids turned to acknowledge the new arrival. A Purestrain Genestealer crept down from the web of piping, its black eyes gleaming in the dim light.

The alien stalked up to the hybrids surrounding Erin, drool leaking from between its needle-sharp teeth. The soldiers started to move, intending to shift Erin on her back.

“No,” croaked the four-armed hybrid. “Do this one first. There’s something off with him.” The voice was raspy and cracked on nearly every syllable, as if it wasn’t used to speech.

The Genestealer paused only for a moment, and then scurried past Erin. The dagger-wielding cultist nodded and then moved out of the way. The Genestealer seized Chrysalis by the arm, and then pulled her up before pushing her down again, this time on her back. Two of its hands pinned down her arms, and a third reached up for the mask over her head.

With a quick swipe of its claw, the alien infiltrator tore the face mask off of its next victim and tossed it to the side. The face plate of the mask evaporated into green sparks in mid-air, dispersing in all directions and then flickering in the gloom. This was sufficiently strange that the Genestealer hesitated, watching the dying lights rather than its next victim.

The face of Byron Hess grinned victoriously, eyes aglow in the color of emeralds.

Erin stared in genuine shock as the Genestealer was flung into the air. It struck the network of piping, slamming its head into one of the rusted input valves hard enough to dent the metal. The alien landed flat on its face, badly dazed and bleeding from its swollen skull.

Chrysalis lurched upward into a sitting position, gears whirling and rotors straining. Huge drum-shaped hands with three fingers pressed against the floor, lifting a massive mechanical body weighed down with thick armor plating. A dome-like head swiveled back and forth, looking over the Genestealer cultists from behind a featureless glassine screen. A heavy stubber sat on one shoulder, turning with the movement of the head, but it didn’t fire.

Chrysalis stood up fully, almost filling the hall from floor to ceiling with the mass of the Kastelan Robot she had turned into. One of the cultists broke from his incredulous gaping and opened fire, spraying into the side of the mechanical body. The bullets spanked uselessly against thickened battle plate, and a few fizzled without even touching armor, instead bouncing off of a protective energy shield.

The Changeling Queen ignored the shooter entirely, shifting toward the dagger-wielding hybrid. One of the robot’s hands swiped for the creature, moving ponderously but with tremendous force behind it. The hybrid leapt over the grasping digits, landed on the arm’s vambrace, and then plunged two daggers right into the face plate. A gunshot followed the assault, pounding the visor with a heavy slug.

Chrysalis was quite surprised by such a bold attack, but it proved futile. The blades scraped against the layered glassine without piercing it, and damage returns were negative. The data flashed before her eyes – or whatever the exact sensory organ her current body used – and she pushed it aside to make another lunge for the cultist. It leapt away, firing the pistol again, but wasn’t quite fast enough this time.

The awkward metal fingers clamped around the hybrid’s leg, and it began to claw and scrape at the Kastelan’s hand to try to find a weak point. Bullets hammered the transformed queen from behind as well, but Chrysalis merely chuckled while she held up her prize, her laugh emerging as a low-pitched rumble.

“SO GULLIBLE. SO WEAK,” she blared, her voice distorting badly from the vocalizer that was never meant to emit complex speech. “NOW… WHO WILL GET TO LIVE?”

The Purestrain Genestealer stumbled to its feet, a lazy snarl emerging from its throat. Chrysalis dropped a metal fist onto its head, pulverizing it against the ground. Much of the alien’s body disintegrated as the fist’s power field activated, and a thick crack ran through the rockcrete as it was painted a dark red from what remained.

“WELL, NOT YOU THEN.” Bullets continued sparking against her back and left arm, and the dome head swiveled to face the handful of cultists shooting at her. “I SEE NONE OF YOU ARE VOLUNTEERING EITHER.”

The soldiers began to scatter, but they had waited too long. Chrysalis cut into them with her heavy stubber, sending a steady burst of slugs sawing across the width of the tunnel. Erin kept her head down and covered her ears while her captors were scythed down, making herself as small a target as possible.

Then the deserter was grabbed and hauled to her feet, an autogun thrust into her neck.

Chrysalis stopped shooting when one of the cultists grabbed Erin and held her in front of him as shield, his gun pointed at her neck. “OH? AND WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?”

The cultist glanced around uncertainly. His fellow soldiers were either dead or dying on the ground, and it was sheer luck that he hadn’t taken a hit. The Purestrain was dead. But the assassin…

“Put that one down or this one dies,” the cultist growled, nudging his chin toward the hybrid still clawing uselessly at the robot’s hand.

“HMMMMM…” Chrysalis made a thoughtful noise that trailed off into a resonant hum. “TERMS ACCEPTED.”

Then she crushed the hybrid’s leg within her fist and dropped it onto the floor.

The assassin released an enraged shriek as it hit the ground, and its fellow cultist flinched. In that moment the autogun’s barrel shifted, and Erin grabbed the weapon before throwing her head backward to slam into the cultist’s face. He stumbled, and then she twisted around on one foot to plant a kick into his belly.

He fell onto the ground, releasing his rifle to his own hostage. Erin immediately spun it about in her hands and then fired, executing him.

“HAH! HAH! HAH! HAH!” Chrysalis laughed at the sight before her, the awkward, halting sound booming through the tunnels. “THAT WAS FUN! YOU’RE NOT SO BAD AFTER ALL!”

Erin couldn’t respond right away, as her breath was heaving and her heart was thundering in her chest. “I could say the same about you… but you are actually pretty bad.”

Chrysalis kept laughing as the body of the combat robot shrank into her natural quadrupedal form. The flickering green magic clung to her horn once she completed the transformation, clearly illuminating the changeling’s fangs while she looked over the surviving hybrid and grinned.

The cultist assassin, which laid on its belly with its mangled leg, suddenly flipped onto its back and fired its pistol blindly. The stubber slug whipped by Chrysalis’s mane, passing close enough that she could feel the air pressure along her cheek. Her smile only faltered slightly as she cast her next spell, striking the hostage with a ray of green.

“Still so spry? Perhaps I should have ripped the leg off completely!” the Changeling Queen taunted. Her magic washed over the hybrid, wrapping it in sticky webbing. In the blink of an eye, the cultist’s four arms were all glued tight to its torso and its legs were locked in a tight cocoon.

“There. That should keep-“ Chrysalis was interrupted when the hybrid fired its pistol again, as its finger was still stuck over the trigger. The stub round tore out of the webbing and ricocheted off the floor, coming nowhere near her or Erin.

“You’re going to make this difficult, aren’t you?” Chrysalis asked blandly.

“Not quite as difficult as we did, I hope.” Erin walked up behind the cultist and gave it a swift kick in the shoulder. “That should be good enough until the others make their way here.” She walked past the hostage and picked up the tablet Chrysalis had been carrying while they had been laying their trap. A few taps and a swipe, and the device started generating a signum beacon.

The hybrid fired its pistol again, trying to shift its aim as best it could with the gun barrel pasted against its stomach. The stub slug struck the ground slightly closer to Chrysalis, but she looked more bored than upset.

“I hope this works,” Erin mumbled as she secured her new autorifle to her waist and went back for her shotgun.

“I expect it will. Sparkle has disgustingly good luck when it comes to these silly heroic quests of hers,” Chrysalis noted. Then her ears perked. “Ah, and here they come.”

Rainbow Dash came rocketing through the tunnel at what she considered a decent cruising speed, ranging far ahead of the other ponies. She cut her boosters once she spied green light down the corridor, slowing to a hover right over Chrysalis.

“All right! Looks like you cleaned up over here!” Rainbow landed at the foot of their hostage and spent a moment observing the large, flat footprints behind the changeling. “So what’d you turn into this time? Dreadnought?”

“It was some kind of large metal human,” Chrysalis answered with a shrug.

“A large… what?” Erin furrowed her brow. “That was a robot. A Kastelan war robot, I believe. I’ve seen them before, in the Adrast Mechanicus facilities.”

“Oh. Okay, sure. One of those,” Chrysalis shrugged. “I don’t know the names of all the bodies yet. The little labels are very hard to read.”

Suddenly the cultist’s gun discharged again, striking Rainbow’s leg. The slug bounced off her greaves, and then hit the wall. The pegasus jumped in surprise, stumbling away from the entangled hybrid.

“What the hay?! That guy’s still armed?!”

Chrysalis snickered. “Yes. I suppose I should have disarmed it before trapping it like this, but it’s too late now. Besides, it’s not like it can aim.”

Erin gave the entangled body another kick, eliciting a hiss from the masked killer. “It has a stub revolver. It should be out of ammunition by now. Or… after one or two more shots, at the most. I wasn’t keeping careful track with an autogun pressed to my neck.”

The ground-shaking footsteps of an approaching Dreadnought became audible, announcing the arrival of the rest of the space pirates. Erin remained behind the head of their hostage, crouched with her weapon ready. Chrysalis seemed to lose herself in thought, staring into the flickering lights projected within her augmented eye. Rainbow Dash paced around the hybrid, observing it closely.

“Can this guy talk?” the pegasus asked.

“Yes, I think it said something earlier,” Erin replied. “A lot of the Deep Skulkers avoid speaking because they have harsh, raspy voices. Their throats have been damaged from all the dust and subterranean gases down in the lower depths. Or… at least, that’s what we were told before. I suppose there might be a much different reason for it.”

“Hey. Hey, you!” Rainbow Dash crept over next to the cocooned cultists and poked it with her hoof. “Where’s your home base at? Are there more of your friends nearby?”

Black eyes stared back at her from the hood and wrappings around the prisoner’s face. The hybrid didn’t make a peep.

“Awww, how brave! It won’t tell its captors anything!” Chrysalis cooed. Her malicious grin showed off her fangs while she loomed over the hybrid. “Is that what your Patriarch demands of you? Is it here now, watching us through its puppet’s eyes?”

The hybrid’s eyes shifted to meet her gaze, and Chrysalis’s eyes flashed. The cultist’s eyes went totally black, like twin pools of crude oil. The Changeling Queen’s horn flared more brightly, its energy building, and then after several seconds it dimmed again to a level that merely produced light for everyone.

“Oh, yes. It’s here,” Chrysalis said, still smiling.

“What? Where?” Rainbow looked behind her nervously and saw Serith approaching through the corridor.

“Here. Inside this hapless wretch,” Chrysalis stamped a hoof on her prisoner’s chest. It didn’t flinch. “I can feel it. This… Patriarch. Like a shell around the pawn’s mind. Impenetrable. Cold. But… alive.”

Erin shuddered. “Alien witchcraft… the most vile heresy.”

“Oh no, not at all. But you’ll see the most vile heresy in all its magnificent glory soon enough.” Serith said, having come close enough to join their conversation. Twilight followed him closely, while everyone else trailed behind them in a long cluster. Pinkie Pie took up the rear, walking backward while she splashed the floodlight back and forth across the tunnels behind them.

“So he’s here already, is he? Good,” Serith said conversationally, walking ahead of Twilight and standing in front of the prisoner. “Hello, Patriarch! We’ve dispatched your pawns and marched on your territory. Your every desperate defense and ambush has been repelled with ease. One further matter remains to be resolved: where are YOU?”

The hostage didn’t respond immediately, its soulless eyes gleaming in the light. When it did, its voice was obnoxiously loud and discordant, as if the hybrid had lost all sense of volume and tone control.

“The Imperium approaches! They dig deeper by the hour! Even now, they reinforce against your escape! What trifle is this?!” the hybrid groaned.

“For us, dealing with you probably is just a needless distraction from evading the Imperial military,” Twilight admitted, “but for you, the situation is somewhat more dire.”

“You will be buried here with the rest of us,” the cultist said. It was probably intended as more of a sneering dismissal, but it sounded strained and awkward instead.

“This is unproductive. Serith?” Twilight’s horn lit up, providing another source of light over the helpless prisoner. “Take what we need.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” the Sorcerer said, his hands blazing with light. A similar light sparked over the forehead of his helmet, and the lenses of his visor pulsed. “Now, little pawn… let’s find out precisely-“

The hybrid’s gun discharged, and stub slug struck the knee hinge in Serith’s right leg. The boot slipped and Serith stumbled, teetering badly and then falling to one knee.

A moment of surprised silence followed the crash of metal against stone. Serith hadn’t fallen apart or anything so dramatic as that, but he could hear more than one of the ponies trying to choke back laugher behind their vox grilles. Chrysalis was less restrained, and she giggled openly at the sight.

“Okay, that was his last bullet,” Erin said. “Probably. Are… you okay, Lord Astartes?”

Serith suddenly lunged forward, seizing the hybrid’s head between both hands. He stood up, lifting the prisoner by his skull, and Twilight and Erin quickly backed away. Chrysalis kept giggling.

“No more banter, then,” Serith hissed as a glowing mist poured from his gauntlets and helmet grille. “Give me your thoughts, slave.”

Light pierced the hybrid’s eyes, and an agonized sound came from behind clenched teeth. It started to squirm and thrash as best it could within the cocoon, and Erin and Suuna turned away from the sight with a grimace. Byron peered intently from behind his gas mask, absolutely fascinated.

Serith forced the hybrid to stare directly at his helmet, and the brilliant, otherworldly energy flooded straight from burning retinas to ruby lenses. Sparks danced in the intervening space, spinning around the winding columns of power. The hybrid shook, and the strands of webbing nearest to his face began to burn and fray.

“The Patriarch is reacting!” Serith shouted. “It is attempting to extinguish this pawn!”

“Can you stop it?” Twilight asked. “Or speed up?”

“The more I intensify this process, the faster it dies! The faster it dies, the less likely I succeed!” Serith shouted back.

Twilight’s horn flashed brighter, and an aura of violet spread over the prisoner’s torso. “Fluttershy!” she barked.

“YEEP!” Fluttershy jumped straight out of her cloaking field, appearing in the air and then falling back to the ground clumsily. “Y-Yes?”

“His heart is slowing down! Inject a stimulant, now!” the Princess ordered.

“Oh, er, h-how much should I use?” she asked nervously as she approached the writhing cocoon.

“All of it! Just juice him!” Rainbow Dash shouted helpfully, having only the slightest idea what was going on.

Fluttershy squeaked and jammed her narthecium injector into the hybrid’s back. The gauntlet emitted a loud hiss, and one of the colored tubes drained of fluid.

“CLEAR!” Twilight shouted. Then she zapped the hybrid with a jolt of purple electricity.

The prisoner screamed, and its body shook even while Serith kept its head fixed in place. Veins bulged and darkened, and more tears started erupting throughout the webbing that entangled the Genestealer cultist. The pulsing flow of light continued, and a grim laugh came from the Chaos Sorcerer.

“The body rebels against the mind trying to snuff it out. Good. GOOD. Give your secrets to me, wretch! Only then may you expire,” Serith taunted.

“This is quite awful enough without the running monologue,” Rarity grumbled.

“Wait, what’s happening now?” Chrysalis felt a tingle run down her horn. It was a completely new sensation, and she took a cautious step away from the Sorcerer and his victim.

“RrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRAUGH!!” the cocoon ripped apart around the hybrid, freeing its two upper arms, and suddenly a pair of daggers lashed out for the Iron Warrior. The blades plunged into either side of Serith’s gorget, slipping under the helmet and piercing the thin connective layer of metal beneath.

Serith’s focus didn’t waver, and the flood of light and power didn’t stop. “Pathetic. Now die.”

The energy flow suddenly reversed, and arcs of red burst around Serith’s gauntlets. A faltering, gurgling cry came from the hybrid, and its eyes rolled back in its head before a wreathe of smoke rose around it.

“It is done,” the Sorcerer said, releasing the body. The hybrid slumped to the ground, its eyes pale and empty. “I have the way forward. The alien’s nest is well-hidden, but not far.” He took up his force halberd again and pointed it down the hall.

“Does the Patriarch know what you did?” Twilight asked.

“Yes. It was not possible to hide my intentions while scouring away the pawn’s thoughts,” Serith didn’t sound displeased.

“Fine. Equinought Squadron, lets move out!” the Princess commanded before racing down the hall.

The others followed after her, most of them paying the Sorcerer no mind. Byron, however, hesitated and pointed up at the Astartes psyker.

“Uh, my Lord, you have a little, um…” he pointed to his neck awkwardly.

“Hm? Oh. Right.” Serith reached up at his neck, and then grabbed one of the daggers wedged in-between his helmet and gorget. He tugged it free, and then tossed it on the ground before pulling out the other one.

“Are… you okay?” Byron squeaked. Erin was watching as well, and still had her weapon aimed at the dead hybrid. “The… The blades went into your… your throat. Didn’t they?”

Serith laughed, not deigning to answer the deserter. He turned to follow Trixie, who was escorting Suuna just ahead of Pinkie’s Dreadnought. Trixie made a quip about splitting headaches, but it was mostly drowned out by the echo of heavy, metal-clad footsteps through the darkness.

Erin started to follow them, but Byron caught her eye. He glanced in the other direction, into the gloom of the tunnels they had come from.

“… We can still turn back, you know,” the explosives expert said. “There’s still time. They don’t need us. There are many other ways out, and the Skulkers will be occupied now.”

Erin turned to face the darkened tunnel, still slick with the blood of the slain cultists. She reached down toward one of the bodies, taking a pair of autogun magazines that were clipped loosely to the corpse’s belt.

“I suppose we do have a choice, don’t we? Insane eldritch maniacs, alien subversives, or throwing ourselves onto the mercy of the Emperor, blessed be His name. We could even try to hide out and secure passage off-world with some petty smugglers or something. It’s not like we don’t know what we’re getting into now.” She reloaded her new autogun and then turned around, heading in the same direction as the others. “I’ve always liked ponies, though. You coming?”

Byron Hess sighed, his shoulders slumping. Then he rushed to follow her.

Author's Note:

Phew! Barely managed to churn this out before the end of the year! It would be pretty embarrassing to only have 5 chapters (counting the Gears one) in a year! At least this bumps up the average to one every two months

Comments

[Venerable Ro]

Marching onwards, into the dark. Equinoughts ho!

[Emperor of Jurai]

Why must I read chapters so fast....I am like a damn addict that just burns through his fix in mere moments before his body screams for more. THIS IS AGONY BEFITTING OF 40K AND I COMMEND YOU SIR!

[Mishkiel]

Thanks for the Christmas present, my dude. Made me grin.

[Neece]

"I’ve always liked ponies, though. You coming?”

A righteous reason if I ever saw one

[RanmaChaos]

Thanks for another excellent chapter

[Arzoo]

Hmm, kind of feels strange for Twilight to be so explicitly vengeful. But she is changing a bit so perhaps that's not too shocking.

Good to see she consulted Serith on the whispers, though it's still suspicious. Is she being manipulated?

[Uros]

Now Christmas is complete. Hopefully the bolter bullet that kills the patriarch has 'Krampus is coming' etched in.

[Sarraceno]

great stuff as always

11092025
not necessarily... throught the books she has quite developed a pragmatic side of her personality she didn't knew it was there. She would gladly return to try her old ways, but galaxy is showing her what kind of luxury she (and all Centaur III inhabitants by extension) lived all her life. Its quite understandable that she no longer fools herself, she's still the good mare she always been, but understands that in her situation violence is the only way to make at least some things right. In this story beggining, Twilight would had the mother of all freakouts in the same situation

[egooo]

So, is it just me, or is Twilight (and possibly everhpony else) is getting weird whispers not just to kill the tyranids, but specifically so they don't evac out of the place asap?
They were all about leaving until the extraneous thoughts started intervening.

I have a feeling that the artifact Suna's holding, or the daemon that possessed Trixie, are involved.

Blackstone though...
...Wanna bet the Tyranid Patriarch is sitting on top of an entrance to a Necron tomb, with artefact somehow keyed to it? :'V

Nice chapter, really good timing to help me handle RL right now, too.

[Mix-up]

Well, looks like something is already happening to Twilight seeing things ahead or time or seems to know things that is way beyond just leaps of logics. I wonder if one of those two companions are actually agents of something else, thought I don't think they are with the cult. I think it's actually a good thing that they are hunting down the patriarch as it would limit the chances of the Tyranid Splinter fleet coming their way. I wonder what is happening to those two demon twin children we saw before.

[Hey its that Pony]

Great chapter and Christmas update!

It's nice to see that deep down, Twilight still just wants to help people. Dest made the best call in that situation though and Twilight probably knows that, even if she doesn't like it.

So we're dealing with blackstone? Oh my, that will be worth the trip.

So much cool stuff happening and now they're on a monster hunt. Fantastic.

11092228
I pretty much agree with this outlook on Sparkle. She has come a long way from the naive bookworm she was to burgeoning warlord she's becoming. She's got the diplomatic/aggressive negotiating skill down pretty well and has developed a healthy bloodlust to go along with it.

11092240

...Wanna bet the Tyranid Patriarch is sitting on top of an entrance to a Necron tomb, with artefact somehow keyed to it? :'V

Oh, now that would be quite the nasty surprise. And an excellent distraction.

[egooo]

Hm.
On second thought, the whispers remind me of another concept oft linked to alicorns...

May Twilight be, in fact, going Nightmare Midnight Sparkle from the sheer stress of the past years, warp influence, and continous failure to actually help all the "innocents" dying around her recently?

Not even becoming Evil per se, but a lot less peaceful and a lot more preferring of ruthless methods if they get here to the goal of "peaceful lives" for those she considers innocent.
...Which may or may jot include the said innocents being forever slaves to the chaos warband. But hey, they are alive, that's a win in the grim darkness of the future!

[Hey its that Pony]

11092637
Oh. Oh my.

I hadn't considered that.

That could be a fun plot twist. I imagine the Iron Warriors might prefer that Twilight over the normal one. At least at first before the drawbacks began to become apparent.

[Shoggoth]

Great chapter as always. A nice holiday gift with fun and violence!

Equinought Squadron grows in power. The real question is how much collateral damage will have occurred by the end of it all.

And if they dig into a Necron tomb, because 9th ed Necrons are hilarious.

[PuppetXMaster]

a kastellan! my favorite

[Muffinsforever]

Heck yeah, good chapter.

[Sarraceno]

11092637

May Twilight be, in fact, going Nightmare Midnight Sparkle from the sheer stress of the past years, warp influence, and continous failure to actually help all the "innocents" dying around her recently?

Honestly, i don't see that happening. My take? i don't know how familiar are you with the lore about chaos, but i can tell you this. Twilight is taaaainted with chaos, no matter she doesn't pay lip service to the powers, chaos "corruption" doesn't work like that. What would mean for her? can be nothing or everything... i wouldn't be surprised at all if she developed certain "extras", warp stuff can be quite subtle. And as for her general attitude? not gonna lie, she's not that far from canon Twilight, she can be quite brutal, the real difference being this Twi is expected and often encouraged to unleash herself.

for the rest in your answer, 100% what's happening

[N4rwh41]

Yes, Twilight. Cave to your wrath. Embrace it's warmth. Drink deep, and ascend to become the Chaos Princess you were always meant to be!

[Scratchpad]

I suspect the phrase, "by the purple pirate pony" will become a regular phrase for me when among friends.

[SFaccountant]

11092025
She was expecting to make lots of new friends on this mission and the Tyranids COMPLETELY ruined it! >:c

11092240

...Wanna bet the Tyranid Patriarch is sitting on top of an entrance to a Necron tomb, with artefact somehow keyed to it? :'V

Oh man that would be SO cool and crazy and totally throw off everyone and no that's not it at all so please lower your expectations

11092249
Killing Genestealers is always morally correct!
And the children weren't daemons, they were hybrids

11092251
All she wants to do is help, but everything just wants to kill her!

11093050
It's not as marketable as friendship, though.

[Mix-up]

11093109

Killing Genestealers is always morally correct!
And the children weren't daemons, they were hybrids

I was talking about the twins that talked to Serith a few chapters back

[N4rwh41]

11093109
Not with that attitude it isn't! All we need is a few more of those CNN infomercials and all the little ponies will be worshipping Chaos! :D

Also, BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! I FEEL THE WARP OVERTAKING ME! IT US A GOOD PAIN! DO YOU HEAR THE VOICES TOO?!?!

[SFaccountant]

11093115
Yes, the ones in the sanctuary tunnels in Chapter 7. Those were hybrid children born to infected refugees, not daemons or daemonically possessed people.

[Mix-up]

11093202
understood

[Sarraceno]

Love how Chrysalis is actually having FUN with all of this

[Aroddo]

A Christmas gift!
Great as always!

[TinyPlaidNinjas]

Erin speaks great sense. We like ponies too

[Booster Spice]

They now have the first codes for accessing The Tyranid Network, just need stellar class power at least to burn the nodes?

[UrsaMajor]

Huzzah

[DR-Fluffy]

Just in time for Christmas!

[geomease]

Who is speaking to twilight? Are the daemon lords poking the purple princess pony? Tchzneech was actibg earlier with the attifact. Perhaps it was meant to create a psychic connection to Twilight.

What a wonderful holiday gift you gave us! Great chapter as always.

[Sarraceno]

11110748
Small detail here, Dest is a Possessed, not a daemonhost. Possessed are somewhat simbiotic (more or less, depends on the host, and the daemon), think of Venom but nastier. A Daemonhost... is a very different thing and potentially more lethal, its just a neccesarily powerful daemon caged in a flesh body, completely annihilating the original host. The victim is dead, and the daemon is caged i the remains. And as for why Dest is still playing chaffeur, i can see some reason. First, he's not originally an IW, so he's not completely trusted, and is the reason he's been padlocked to driver position, add that he's possessed which makes him have no peers in the 38th and also EVEN MORE distrusted (best usual case of IW and daemon interaction is pretty much the IW poking with a metaphorical pointy stick into the demon).... he's also apparently jinxed... so yes, he's pretty much paired with the ponies because the rest of the IW prefer to have him at an arms lenght

[SFaccountant]

11111385
He was going to be the Dark Mechanicus's plaything until they had to let him out to help fight off the Orks. After that debacle, Kaelith... declined to recover his asset.
He could probably get into a special assault unit with his new power, regardless of his origins, but Dest has never been one to take initiative much and he prefers to hang out with ponies anyway

[Sarraceno]

11112699
He's a smart one after all

[Notrab M]

How many races from 40k are you planning to integrate into your universe? So far (if I'm remembering correctly) there's Humanity(sorta), the Tau, Da Orks, the Tyranids, and the Space Marines(technically). Sooooo, 5 out of 7 or 9? Am I forgetting anyone?

[SFaccountant]

11129441
The Eldar have made an appearance, although they haven't been in a combat yet. They will probably appear as a main opponent at some point.
There have also been plenty of Chaos Daemons, which are a faction related to Chaos cultists and Space Marines but still a technically distinct "race."

Not sure about Necrons.

[PonyofEntropy]

Just now getting caught up. Great update!

[Arzoo]

The voices could be whispers from the Patriarch, but the context makes me suspect at least some of it is really a Daemon talking to Twilight.

[ABitterPill]

11131837

I still say the next orchard of the Apple family's farm will be destroyed by an awakening Necron Tomb complex.

[Sarraceno]

11194458
I also picture the mane 6 mutating or corrupting in the long term... And somewhat like you said. And i'm completely sure Twilight is already touched by chaos... Lets recap a bit... In the throne room she literally began to break the elements by literally pushing a chaotic "death wave' spell through them, and through pure hatred, of all things... Then she just plunges herself into the Warp, willingly (and so do the other 5)... She literally implants a daemon in the imperial fleet and by torturing the device by breaking it nonetheless... And then we have a literal offering to the Harvest (Kataris)... And if that wasn't enough we have the deal with the Harvest, favor per service, by begging to spare her in return for the return of Solon... Which is by any means a daemonic pact... And a fulfilled one at that...

[Sarraceno]

11194944
And the best part is how he tries hard and absolutely fails at hiding it

[ABitterPill]

11194414

Please, use it if you want! I would love to see it!

And we all know they're going to make it back some how. Who knows, maybe Pinkie "leveled up" while in the underhive and decided to "take recall button as a trait", inexplicably teleporting them back to the Harvest. It's completely impossible and more than a little insane, and thus for Pinkie Pie it's completely reasonable and possible, no matter how much the laws of both the material universe and the warp scream "No you can't do that!"

Additional random thought: If RD played BFG, she'd play Orks, because they like going faster, ramming into things at full speed, and have big red buttons on the bridge to accomplish exactly that. She may hate them for all they've done to Equestria, but she definitely matches their playstyle.

[ABitterPill]

11194984

Agreed!

[ABitterPill]

I wonder, is this the beginning of a friendship between Erin and Chrysalis? It'd be interesting if it was, since she's the only one treating Chrysalis semi respectfully. I'm still not convinced Chrysalis is in this wholly for herself. She seems unduly motivated. Yes she is having an absolute blast of a time with all the new power she's been given, but she's also doing her damnedest to actually do her job.

Twilight is definitely having a moment of Chaotic corruption going on. It's either from the warp, or the Artifact. Saying she "wants them all to die" is pretty dark for her. It happened during the Ork invasion of Canterlot and it's definitely happening again now. Pretty soon our little Sparkle will have her very first mutation. *sniff* They grow up so fast.

The Artifact has Blackstone in it... interesting. The Cadian Pylons are (since this is an AU and Cadia hasn't exploded (yet)) made of Blackstone and of Necron construction, but so are the Talismans of Vaul/Blackstone Fortresses. The Cadian Pylons are negatively charged and block warp effects while the Blackstone Fortresses were positively charged. That the artifact rebuffs the magic/psychic abilities of unicorns suggest it is negatively charged, but that it was used as a psychic beacon tool suggests it is positively charged... or perhaps the blackstone within it is of neutral charge at the moment? I get the feeling that Artifact is far more significant than has been as of yet revealed, FAR more significant...

Thank you very much for the chapter. Looking forward to the next!

[SFaccountant]

11195032
They DID let her pilot the Gargant when they (briefly) took it over...

[boronium]

still as enjoyable a read as ever

[Dragon Turtle]

I'm really impressed how your story and fight scenes can still hold tension, even when the one of the party (which is at what, 13 now?) is a shape-shifting that can now go between any mech she wants.

[SFaccountant]

11412597
I'm glad to hear it!
Hopefully I can keep it up