Rep'talal

Rep’talal
An Age of Iron story
by SFaccountant

Chapter 1
Rep’talal

****

Ferrous Dominus – sector 22 guard barracks
Twilight Sparkle’s room

“Captain Herate was master of the Heart of Vengeance. An Imperial Lunar-class war cruiser. A monstrous weapon of destruction commissioned over one thousand, two hundred, and thirty standard solar years ago. A leviathan containing thousands of crew and weapons capable of stripping entire planets of life.”

A gilded nameplate, fashioned in the shape of the Imperial Aquila, was propped up on a shelf at the end of the room. The name “Herate” was acid-etched into the plate in blocky serif font.

“Records stripped from her databanks reveal a machine that had seen the deaths of hundreds of enemy warships. Orks primarily, but it also recorded confirmed kills on Eldar raiders and Necron assault craft. So many enemies took their last breath before their vessels were pierced by the purifying energies of her lances.”

An augmetic hand reached up and drew a slithering mechadendrite under the nameplate.

“All of it undone by the machinations of the Dark Mechanicus, Warsmith Solon, and a pony.”

Dark Techpriest Gaela took a step back from the shelf. “You have come so far, Sparkle. It was not so long ago that you quailed at the thought of slaying another and shouted pleas for mercy and peace at your foes. No longer. Tau, Ork, daemon, and now even man and Astartes have fallen before you. I could not have imagined such an outcome when I first encountered you and your entourage, but I find this progression… optimal.”

Twilight Sparkle sat on the floor behind Gaela, trying her best not to blush. “Well, I can’t really say I’m happy to be a Chaos Lord’s weapon, but I owe Warsmith Solon a debt. We all do. I… wish that didn’t involve so much fighting and killing, obviously, but if that’s what it takes to protect Equestria, then I won’t back down!” Then she grinned, looking up at the Dark Techpriest. “Are you proud of me?”

Gaela said nothing at first, turning her head back to stare at the alicorn. The glare from her augmetic eye met with Twilight’s.

“Pride, like all other emotions, is an expression of weakness and a failure,” Gaela explained tightly. “However, your current level of performance has far exceeded expectations. We are satisfied.”

Twilight smiled and stepped closer, placing a hoof on the plating of Gaela’s leg.

“I’m not going to hug you,” Gaela said firmly.

“Come onnnnnnn,” the mare goaded, fluttering her eyelashes.

A servo arm twisted around and pushed Twilight’s hoof away. She pouted and backed off.

“So… that covers the nameplate. We all know about the nameplate. Cool. That’s very neat.” Spike was standing behind Twilight, looking mildly confused. “Are we going to cover the power sword at any point? Because I’m still not clear on where that came from.”

Said power sword was mounted on the wall above the shelf. It was larger than the average weapons of such design, and had a half Chaos Star at the guard. That embellishment, plus the curved serration of the blade and the ghoulish face carved into the pommel made the allegiance of its previous owner perfectly clear. It was a Chaos weapon. Specifically an Iron Warrior’s, judging by its colors.

“… Guys?” Spike asked after several seconds of silence. “Seriously, what even happened? I just know that we suddenly had some new Warsmith and because of that me and Gaela were locked up and then a day later they announced that Solon was back and Kaelith let us go without saying why and then everyone’s just acting like nothing even happened? And Twilight has a power sword now? A used power sword?”

“I told you what happened, Spike. Solon was deposed by Kataris, who shot me. Then Solon gave me a new eye and he sent me back to the ship. Along the way I found that power sword. And now Solon is in charge again,” Twilight explained in a tense monotone. She and Gaela were still facing away from him, staring at the trophies on the wall.

“But that… I mean… what happened to Kataris?” Spike asked, touching the tips of his claws together anxiously.

“Who cares?” Twilight asked, unable to keep her face from twisting into an annoyed sneer.

“Any number of things can happen to an individual in the Eye of Terror. It is a place where reality falters before the violence and insanity of the Immaterium. Such sudden losses and upheavals are tragic, but inevitable,” Gaela said calmly. “Besides, nobody liked Kataris anyway.”

Spike looked like he wanted to ask further questions, but an alert turned on the cogitator built into the wall. Twilight glanced over to check who it was, and then pushed the button to connect the speaker with a flicker of magic.

“Hi Rarity!” she chirped, trotting over to the device. “What can I help you with?”

“Good morning Twilight, darling… or so I would say, but it’s hardly very good. Such a dreary day out today, isn’t it?” bemoaned Rarity’s voice.

“The weather report says to expect acid rain for the next three days, unfortunately. I feel kind of bad for the new mercenaries; they finally get to see our world after living in the Eye of Terror and the whole city is being drenched with poison.”

“Ugh! Say no more! And we’re no better off for being cooped up with them. The ‘new guys’ have a great deal to learn about friendship if they’re going to work for this fleet!” Rarity sniffed. “But anyway, I was hoping you could do me a favor, darling. Your power armor is still freshly repaired, while we had to dump all of ours onto the Warsmith as soon as he came back.”

“Right, I heard,” Twilight nodded. “You girls really had a rough time while I was gone! I still can’t believe Chrysalis assembled an uprising that managed to actually break into the fortress!”

“Oh, yes, it was terrible. I’ll sleep better at night knowing that Voidsong’s sentence was more permanent this time around.” A sniff came from the vox. “But as I was saying, we dropped off our armor suits four days ago and still haven’t received any word on their status! It normally takes him less than twenty-four hours to fix and polish them!”

Gaela turned toward the cogitator, her eye narrowed to a slit. “Do you think the Warsmith has no priorities greater than servicing your personal wargear?” she asked, her voice icy.

“Oh. Gaela, you’re there too. Good. I’ve been trying to contact Solon directly to ask about this, but it hasn’t worked. I think there may be something wrong with my vox system,” Rarity explained.

“There’s nothing wrong with it. Warsmith Solon clearly does not want to hear your demands,” Gaela countered. “This is unsurprising. The Warsmith has been working on some special project in the heart of the manufactorum since our return. All exterior contact has been limited. Your vox logs would not be granted any priority.”

“Can you fix that for me?” Rarity asked.

Spotting the signs of rising irritation in the Dark Techpriest, Twilight quickly interjected. “Rarity, you want me to stop by the forge and check up on your armor, right? I can do that.”

“Thank you, darling!” Rarity said, sounding extremely relieved. “I would have gone myself, but you know I have a hard enough time with this city’s air when it isn’t raining toxic sludge. I really don’t want to go outside today until I have my armor back.”

“I understand. Goodbye, Rarity.” Twilight’s horn flickered, and the button to end the call depressed.

“Spike, wait here. I can get some servitors to carry the armor back in the rain.” Twilight started walking toward the door, and her armor appeared in a flash of blazing purple. “Gaela, do you want to come?”

The Dark Techpriest nodded mutely and followed, her helmet sliding up over her head and locking into place with a thought. Soon they had left for the hall, and the security door slid closed behind them.

“She destroyed a CRUISER? Like, an actual giant enemy space ship?!”

Spike jumped in surprise, and then whirled around toward the unexpected voice.

Dusk Blade rolled out from under Twilight’s bunk and then hopped up into a standing position. He spent a moment to stretch out his legs and wings, and then glanced over at the new trophy rack that was bolted onto Twilight’s wall.

“I can’t believe they actually sent her to do something so dangerous! I can’t believe it WORKED!” marveled the thestral. “How did she do it? How big a ship was it?”

“What the hay are you doing here?!” Spike snapped, ignoring the stallion’s questions. “How long were you hiding under Twi’s bed?! How did you do that?!”

“Trade secret,” Dusk assured the young dragon, raising the claw tip of one wing up to his lips in a shushing gesture. “For real though, did she just teleport onto the bridge and magic the crew to death? I’m guessing not, but I dunno how she would really do something like that.”

“Dude. Listen. You have to stop doing this. Popping into our room all the time like this is really creepy, and it scares Twilight,” Spike warned.

“Pff! Twilight Sparkle has all sorts of unfortunate feelings about me, but I’m pretty sure FEAR isn’t one of them,” Dusk scoffed. “Even if I were some kind of threat to a cruiser-vanquishing Element of Magic in hyper-advanced space armor, she’s the one pony I could never bring myself to hurt. I’m pretty sure she knows that much.”

“But you can’t just-“ Spike paused mid-retort. “Wait, the ONLY pony you wouldn’t hurt? Really? What about Princess Luna?”

“HA!” Dusk barked. “If I had a reason I’d put her down before she knew what was happening! You remember that she used to be an omnicidal maniac, right? I don’t owe her squat!”

He chuckled lightly, and then suddenly sobered. “I mean, it would have to be a really good reason, though. Like, her turning back into Nightmare Moon or something.”

“Uh huh…” mumbled Spike, slowly stepping further away.

Dusk turned his head up, scratching at his chin with a wing tip. “Then again, I suppose it would depend on what she actually wanted to do as Nightmare Moon. Like, eternal night would be really cool for a week before the entire planet started dying. But if she just wanted to overthrow Celestia, I could get behind that.”

“Seriously?!” Spike asked, visibly shocked.

“Well, sure. I mean, I have no particular loyalty to sunhorse either aaaaaaand I probably shouldn’t be telling anyone this.” He coughed and started walking toward the exit. “Anyway, good talk Spack. Don’t tell anyone about this, okay? Remember, I know where you sleep!”

“My name is SPIKE,” the dragon retorted with a glare.

“Okay, yes, fine. See you later! Whether you like it or not!”

****

Ferrous Dominus – Manufactorum complex

“Interesting. According to the forge datastacks, there’s been a gamma-level quarantine in effect on all sub-levels below the munitoriums. Most relevant data is restricted, but the quarantine was engaged the very day we arrived back in Ferrous Dominus.”

Gaela tapped several icons on a hololith display, and then a socket opened up next to the access cogitator.

“A quarantine? Why? Did a Nurgle infection get out of control?” Twilight asked, double-checking her pressure seals.

“Negative. Gamma-level quarantine is precautionary lockdown, not a reactionary measure. It’s most often used to protect the facility from dangerous experiments and secret projects. It ensures that any failures are quickly contained or purged before the subjects – and ideally, any knowledge of the experiments – leave the manufactorum’s sub-chambers.”

Gaela moved a servo arm in front of the socket, and then plugged a metal probe inside. A humming databurst passed through the servo limb, and several lights on the cogitator turned green.

Gaela took a step back as the massive security doors of the inner chamber started to rumble open. “It seems I am still allowed access into the quarantine zone. Keep alert and switch to your armor’s air supply.”

Twilight seemed alarmed. “Do you expect we could be attacked? Even down here?!”

“I do not,” the Dark Techpriest answered. “But any time data is withheld, danger should be presumed. Surely I don’t need to tell you of the potential threats lurking even within places we consider ‘safe.’”

Entering the quarantine zone revealed little. The machinery was largely silent in the alcoves and specialized facilities that lined the halls. Autoturrets swiveled back and forth in a tireless vigil, searching for potential targets. Shrines to the Machine God, corrupted and twisted with icons of Chaos and daemonic fetishes, sat quietly in the gloom.

Only the central laboratorium was obviously active. Power regulators and diagnostic screens hummed and flickered along the wall that separated Gaela and Twilight from whatever grand experiment was being conducted within these great metal walls. The screens offered slightly more data than the barren halls; at a glance Gaela was able to determine that some of them were measuring a flow of chemicals to the laboratorium necessary to mix oxygenated stasis gel. Not an important solution for mechanical work or containing daemons, but extremely useful for working on living organisms.

“Fascinating…” the cyborg mumbled.

“Gaela, do you think maybe we shouldn’t be here?” Twilight asked, suddenly sounding anxious. “I know that I sort of have a reputation for barging in on the Warsmith whenever I want, but if he’s doing something really… wait, what was that?”

The purple mare twitched toward a sound from deeper in the hall. It sounded like someone talking, but there was another blast door in the way and she couldn’t identify the voice or make out the words.

“It’s to your credit that you begin to understand the importance of the Warsmith’s affairs relative to your own petty desires,” Gaela said. “It would seem we’re not the first to intrude upon his labors, however.”

She stepped up to the next door and plugged in a metal spike just as before. A heavy clunking noise came from within the barrier, and then the armored metal slats cracked open.

“’Tis entirely necessary! We shalt be thy sword; this We hast agreed upon, and We shalt uphold our sacred bargain. We merely desire a proper chariot with which to execute thine orders.”

Princess Luna stood in front of a particularly heavy gate, speaking into an access cogitator. She was wearing her daemon armor, still slick with the poisonous liquids from the storm outside, but her helmet had withdrawn for the moment. Her expression was slightly distressed and impatient; whatever the conversation was about, it wasn’t going her way.

“I shaid no, Princessh.” Solon’s voice poured from the console vox with a distinctly disapproving tone. “Thish ish no shimple requesht. I have granted you shufficient weaponsh to enforce my will, which you have deployed to my shatishfaction. That ish enough.”

“Nay!” Luna retorted, her expression heated. “This armor hath proven sufficient to slay the troublesome Orks and various scoundrels of this world, but greater dangers await us, do they not? Shouldst We take to the stars to do battle under thy banner, We require a worthy vessel!”

Twilight tilted her head to the side, uncomprehending. She and Gaela were approaching, and making enough noise that Luna couldn’t have missed them, but the Princess of the Night paid them no attention.

“You may have a tank or a gunship,” Solon said, clearly exasperated. “I can even deshign a shuperior transhport for you if you wish. But you’re not getting a void ship.”

Twilight and Gaela immediately stopped, their eyebrows rising over their respective organic eyes.

“Wherefore NOT?” Luna huffed, banging a boot onto the floor.

“Shipsh are not the shame ash armor shuitsh!” Solon replied. “We do not have the reshourcesh or infrashtructure for building entire void shipsh! And I’m not giving you one of the shipsh asshigned to my other captainsh! Could you imagine the humiliation of loshing shuch a posht to be replaced by a pony?”

“Then may We acquire such a vessel after having aided in seizing the required constituents?” Luna asked.

“No! That’sh far too much raw material to shpend on shomething like thish! Do you have any idea how mad Shliver would be?!”

“Sliver?! Thou fears the protests of thy second?!” Luna shouted, her voice rising.

“Well, I mean, it’sh more that I dishlike publicly dishagreeing with hish… ah…” Suddenly Solon seemed to realize that he was flailing, and his voice rose in equal measure to Luna’s. “I don’t owe you further explanationsh, Princessh! The anshwer ish no!”

“Unacceptable!” Luna shouted angrily. “Thou hast not seriously considered our petition!”

“I’ve had enough of thish! Return to Nightwatch immediately!” Solon demanded.

“Thou canst tell us what to do!” Luna complained, stamping her hooves some more. “Thou art not our REAL father!”

“What doesh that have to do with anything?”

Before the argument could continue, Luna suddenly felt several of the neural links in her power armor turn inert. The mini-servos became unresponsive, and the armor’s weight seemed to multiply instantly.

“What? How? Wherefore-“

Gaela planted a boot onto Luna’s flank, and then kicked the immortal mare over. Luna squeaked and fell onto the floor into a heap of metal and distressed pony.

Staring down at the Princess with an icy glare, Gaela tapped a button on the console. “Warsmith Solon, this is Techpriest Gaela. I humbly apologize for the interruption, my Lord. Twilight Sparkle and I have come to retrieve Equinought Squadron’s battle armor."

“What? Oh! That! Yesh, that’sh done. I shupposhe I forgot to shend them. Here.”

With a loud whir and clunking noise, a gate along the wall shifted open. The five suits of Centaur pattern armor – those belonging to Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Big Mac – were scattered among several discarded tools and pieces of scrap plating. Several of them were still plugged into wires and hoses at points and the suits, though clearly repaired, lacked the usual layer of reactive polish Solon normally added after fixing them. The wargear gave a strong impression of having been worked on and then immediately abandoned once the job was basically complete.

“Shervitorsh are reshtricted due to lockdown; you’ll have to move the armor via mag-lev,” Solon explained. “Wash there anything elshe?”

“May I ask what you’re doing down here?” Twilight replied before Gaela could end the conversation. “I think we were expecting to begin operations again, but the moment we arrived back on-world you locked yourself in the manufactorum. We don’t have any new orders, do we?”

A laugh came from the console. It was a hearty, pleasant chuckle – though still hard on the ears due to the vox distortion – but Twilight still felt a slight chill at the answer that followed.

“We’ll be on our way shoon enough, Princessh,” Solon replied. “But there wash shomething… shomeone, rather, that shimply couldn’t wait. Farewell.”

“Hold! Warsmith!” Luna barked, standing herself up with some difficulty. “We art not done with-“

Gaela tapped a button and slid a hand across the input screen, and the entire console went dark in an instant.

“Sparkle, there’s a mag-lev cart in the alcove across the hall. Use that to carry the armor and we’ll get it to the rest of your squad,” Gaela commanded.

“Techpriest! We demand thee restore function to our armor postehaste!” Luna shouted, her horn starting to glow.

The engineer-cultist turned her head slightly, as if only just remembering the alicorn was still in the room. She said nothing. Luna squinted against the glare of Gaela’s optical sight, and her horn quickly dimmed.

“P-Please,” the lunar Princess stuttered, suddenly feeling curiously cold and helpless under the Techpriest’s gaze.

“Hmph.” Gaela pointed at her, and then a soft whir came from the alicorn’s power armor as its systems booted up once more. “There. Now get out. This area is under quarantine and you are not authorized.”

Luna felt a great deal of relief once her armor plating again responded to every twitch of her muscles. The brief moments where the suit was disabled out of spite made it feel like a prison rather than protective wear. This might have invited some introspection or at least greater caution if inflicted upon a different pony, but Luna didn’t give it a second thought before rushing to Gaela’s side.

“Wherefore didst thou interrupt us? We were petitioning the Warsmith! Acquiring thy armor was not a matter of great urgency!” she protested.

“And yet, so much more important than your ridiculous request,” Gaela mumbled. A mag-lev cart, pushed by an aura of purple magic, floated into place next to her. “To think, after you’ve been gifted so much that you’d demand a void ship of the Warsmith. Absurd.”

“Absurd? Doth the fleet not expect us to take to battle on distant worlds?” Luna asked.

“Affirmative. And you’ll be given a metal closet on the Harvest of Steel to lay in until we get there, like everyone else.”

Luna grimaced at the Dark Techpriest. “Surely it wouldst aid the fleet greatly were We to possess our own vessel…”

“It would aid the fleet greatly to possess a score of battleships, too. But material constraints are what they are. We do not have the resources, and if we did we wouldn’t spend them on something so frivolous.” Gaela sneered. “I’m sure you can badger the Warsmith into granting you a larger room within the Harvest.”

Twilight finished stacking the armor on the cart, and then took hold of the cart with her magic to push it along toward the exit. Gaela followed her, and after a moment of frustrated pouting, so did Luna.

“What then of the fallen void ships on our world? One such vessel lay just outside the walls!” Luna pressed. “Might those husks provide the necessary components and material?”

“You’re not LISTENING,” Gaela said, causing Luna to flinch away at the acid in her voice. “We don’t have the means to make a void ship. Our Mechanicus contingent is already quite busy salvaging the wrecks for scrap. But even if we scraped up enough usable wreckage, the hull superstructures have been shattered quite beyond repair; if we COULD build you a ship – and I must reiterate again, WE CANNOT – then it would be faster and safer to construct a completely new frame than try to restore those. Our current facilities, mighty as they are, simply do not possess manufacturing capabilities of that scale. If you want a vessel built from garbage and hammered together with whatever tools are at hand, only the Orks can help you.”

Luna sighed, hanging her head. “So thou requires the seizure of a void ship intact before We might claim a vessel of our own?”

“This occurs with some regularity in this fleet, given our eternal task of piracy, but even after such a capture it is traditional for the Iron Warrior leading the boarding raid to claim ownership unless the Warsmith has other plans. I would not expect you’ll get the chance to take one for your own. And, of course, the craft must be usable,” Gaela explained. “Vessels of xeno design are often impossible for humans to pilot. Necron constructions, for example, frequently lack obvious interface mechanisms and basic life support.”

“You can pilot Tau ships, though,” Twilight interjected. “You didn’t have much trouble using them against the Lamman Sept when they arrived.

Gaela nodded. “True. Tau technology, while often lacking in durability and ease of maintenance, is relatively conventional in its functions and usage. The number of captured engineers is also helpful.”

“Right. Since the only intact, unclaimed ship in the system is a Tau ship, we could probably use it, then,” Twilight continued.

Gaela and Luna halted, staring at the smaller alicorn. Twilight’s pace faltered uncertainly at the sudden attention.

“Wh-What is it? Did you forget?” she asked.

“Of what dost thou speak?!” Luna shouted, her eyes lighting up. “An enemy warship? Unclaimed, you say?”

“Yes. So you did forget?” Twilight asked. “During the fleet battle against the Tau an enemy warship was… um… well I’m not sure what we did to it, actually,” she admitted, furrowing her brow. “But it wasn’t wrecked. I’ve checked the system hololiths and it’s still there, locked in an orbital sequence. I don’t think we’ve touched it since the battle.”

Luna’s eyes lit up further. Gaela’s expression soured.

“Ah. Right. That one,” the Dark Techpriest murmured. “That vessel is also non-viable.”

“What? How?” Luna demanded. “It meets thy requisites, doth it not?”

They passed through the gate at the edge of the quarantine zone, and a klaxon blared briefly before the armored doors slammed shut behind them. A moment later the area was flushed with a white mist, covering the armored figures with disinfectant.

“The Tau vessel in orbit does not meet all the technical requirements, as a matter of fact,” Gaela explained after an extended silence. “Calling it ‘unclaimed’ is… misleading. Chaos has claimed it.”

“Thou art Chaos,” Luna reminded her blithely.

“It shouldn’t come as any surprise to you by now, but some aspects of Chaos don’t get along with the rest of us.” Gaela took a moment to shake the disinfectant mist from her robes. “To reclaim the battlecruiser would likely require a horrific toll in lives, and our ultimate success is not guaranteed.”

Luna and Twilight shared a skeptical glance, and then turned to face the Dark Techpriest.

“Gaela, what exactly happened to the ship? I know it was subjected to some kind of weapon, but during that fight it was attacked once and then… nothing. It just stopped. All the pict-captures showed no hull breaches or obvious system failures. Which makes it ideal for capture and retrofitting, obviously, but…”

Gaela grunted in annoyance and leaned on her axe. “The secrets I am about to tell you are not particularly well-kept; it is widely understood that the Harvest of Steel possesses fearsome weapons an order of magnitude more dangerous than mere macrocannons. Still… it’s common practice to withhold these particular details, so I must insist that this information not leave these halls.”

The mares perked up, intensely interested.

“Yes, of course! My lips are sealed!”

“We shalt carry thy words in the deepest confidence, Techpriest!”

Gaela looked doubtful, but she continued anyway. “The weapon used on the Tau battlecruiser is a Warp rift. The weapon causes a string of dimensional fissures along a controlled corridor when it interacts with matter, exposing an affected ship interior to Warp space without the ‘clean’ breach generated by Warp engines.” She paused to consider her next words. “The effect, as I understand it, is… subtle, at first. Much like within the Eye of Terror, the reality bleed first manifests in non-obvious ways. Then the daemons arrive.”

Twilight flinched, and Luna quirked an eyebrow.

“The most obvious and consistent result of the rift, of course, is the proliferation of daemons within the vessel and the subsequent slaughter of the crew. To that end, the weapon is best understood as a sort of boarding mechanism. Any vessel without sufficient defenders to stave off the incursion will inevitably be butchered to the man, and the void ship left empty and adrift… aside from the boarders, of course.”

“So the ship is infested with daemons! That’s why we’re not salvaging it?” Twilight asked.

“That’s the simplest understanding,” Gaela said evasively.

“So it is a mere contingent of fell monsters that lay between us and our void-borne chariot?” Luna asked with a grin. The Iron Gauge lifted off her shoulder pads, and one gauntlet slammed into the palm of the other. “If it is but strength of arms that is required to seize the vessel, then We shalt cleanse the beasts ourselves!”

Gaela shook her head. “It is likely that is not all that will be required.”

“What do you mean?” Twilight asked. “I’ve fought daemons before, and while they’re… disturbing enemies, they’re not that difficult to overcome.”

“As I said, the eventual convergence of daemonic intruders is merely the most direct tactical application of such a weapon. There are often… other effects,” Gaela warned. “As the crew’s final moments of terror echo through the Warp and the denizens of the Immaterium stalk the halls, the very bulkheads start to change. The craft may not be viable for long.”

“What do you mean? What happens to the ship, exactly?” Twilight asked, tilting her head to the side.

“Warp corruption inflicts all manner of bizarre conditions, so it’s difficult to say,” the cyborg continued. “I have never witnessed such conditions myself, as the 38th Company long ago stopped trying to board and seize ships targeted by the rift. If I recall the records correctly, conditions upon the inflicted vessels were often so inimical to life that the ships had to be scuttled after being taken at a great cost in lives. That Space Marines devoted to Chaos had such difficulty in securing voidcraft from daemonic elements should provide some estimate as to the sheer degree of danger involved.”

The mares looked at each other, weighing the Techpriest’s words carefully.

“With such danger, t’would be unwise to go alone,” Luna decided. “We shalt require a boarding party.”

“Well, the other girls have their armor now, so we should be able to help,” Twilight said with a nod.

“Are you being serious?” Gaela sighed.

“We shalt not let this opportunity pass,” Luna said decisively. “The craft abides the prerequisites thou listed.”

“Probably,” Gaela corrected.

“And it’s been months since the ship was attacked with the rift! The daemonic infestation is probably much weaker by now, if they’re still there at all!” Twilight added.

“There’s absolutely no data relevant to past uses of the rift that suggest that’s true,” Gaela pointed out.

“We shalt require transit. The Iron Warrior known as Dest can pilot yonder gunships, correct?”

“Since it’s a Tau ship, we should bring along some Xenis troops. Like that one Tau lady that’s scared of Applejack. And maybe an engineer? Oh! Did that one alien that Rainbow Dash yells at survive the last attack? We should bring him along!”

Gaela groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose with a servo claw. “You’re going to get all of us killed.”

Luna and Twilight paused in their conspiring, turning toward the Dark Techpriest.

“Us? As in, the Company back here on-planet?” Twilight asked in concern.

“No. Us, as in the boarding party,” Gaela clarified. Twilight seemed surprised at this, for reasons she couldn’t imagine. “I’m coming with you, of course. I should be able to determine if the void ship is still suitable for refit before you’re hopelessly overrun and there’s still opportunity for retreat. It would be embarrassing to perish for the sake of a mission objective that was never possible.”

“Really? That’s why you’re coming along?” Twilight asked, arching her eyebrow. She seemed unconvinced, and her mouth twitched into a smirk.

“What are you insinuating?” Gaela demanded, glaring icily at the purple pony.

Before Twilight could answer, a large black gauntlet clapped onto Gaela’s shoulder.

“Well met, Techpriest!” Luna said gleefully. “Thy wisdom in navigating the perturbations of the darker powers shalt be of considerable aid! As well as thy zeal in battle!”

“I can’t believe we’re really going to risk near-certain death so that you can have your own void ship,” Gaela grumbled.

“Ha! Surely thou hast wagered thy life for more feeble reward in the past. ‘Tis something of a habit amongst the thralls of Chaos,” Luna noted. Then she galloped ahead, racing toward the exit. “Sparkle! We go now to our daily rest, so that We may take to battle refreshed after raising the moon! We leave the preparations to thee!”

“You’re demanding our aid so that you can claim your own ship and you’re not even going to take the time to…”

Gaela trailed off as the door creaked shut behind the Lunar Princess, who had ignored her entirely. Soon the sound of ceramite-clad hooves faded into the distance, leaving Gaela and Twilight truly alone.

“I am beginning to dislike that one,” the Dark Techpriest grumbled.

Twilight chuckled and started pushing the cart of armor forward again. “Don’t let her bother you. Luna is… self-absorbed, certainly, but she means well. So far giving her the weapons she’s wanted has definitely worked in the Company’s favor!”

“I hope you, at least, appreciate how tenuous this mission is. The Iron Warriors will not provide additional support. If the daemonic corruption is particularly bad, we may have to transmit a request for them to bombard and destroy the ship. We are outnumbered by an unknown factor, and have no reports on a combat environment likely to be extremely hazardous.”

Twilight’s expression sobered. “That’s true. I’m sure it won’t be easy, and as always we’ll be at serious risk.” Then she brightened again. “That’s why I’m really glad you’re coming with us! With you along we can handle anything!”

“Your faith is…” Gaela paused to sort through the various adjectives that jumped to mind. “Warranted,” she eventually decided, “but it is still my professional opinion that this is a stupid mission and we’re all going to perish.”

“Okay, I’ll let the girls know!” Twilight chirped, heading for the exit lift. “Thank you, Gaela! I’ll send you a vox when we’re ready to deploy!”

****

Ferrous Dominus – sector 24 landing platforms

“Okay, y’all gonna have to explain this t’me again. We’re goin’ where to do what, exactly? The message just said ‘Rep’talal Recovery’ and Ah don’ really know what that is.”

Equinought Squadron had assembled in the lander lots, all of them armed and armored in their repaired suits. Pinkie Pie was in attendance, deep within the heavy shell of her Contemptor Dreadnought with Rainbow Dash perched on her shoulder. The acid rain from earlier had lightened to a drizzle, although the hours of exposure left an oily tarnish over the already none-too-clean structures.

Twilight craned her head up, staring into the slowly darkening sky. “We’re going to be boarding and securing a Tau battlecruiser so that Luna can claim it as her personal void ship.”

“Ooh, neat!” Pinkie said brightly.

“Um… a void ship? For Princess Luna?” Rarity was more circumspect. “I’m confused. There’s a space vessel lying around within reach that the Iron Warriors haven’t seized already?”

“Yes! Remember the orbital battle against the Tau when their main fleet arrived?” Twilight asked.

“Of course! A falling space ship nearly crashed through Cloudsdale, a transport rig smashed into Applejack’s orchard, and Tellis spent DAYS hunting down the savior pods for laughs!” Rainbow Dash flew in a circle over the group as she recounted the incident, giggling, and then landed on Pinkie’s walker once more.

Twilight coughed. “Ah… yes. I suppose a lot happened during that battle after all, so it would make sense if you forgot some of the details. It’s kind of complicated, and a full explanation would involve divulging information that’s kinda-maybe secret, but basically the crew of this ship was killed during the battle without harming the ship itself. That makes it perfect for clearing and refitting!”

“Ah have several additional questions,” Applejack said bluntly. “If’n this empty hunk o’ space goodies has been floatin’ around the planet ever since that battle, why didn’t the Company ever take it themselves?”

“That’s a good question!” Twilight said brightly. “The Iron Warriors generally don’t salvage ships under these specific conditions because it’s so dangerous as to be unproductive!”

“Dangerous? For Space Marines?” Rarity asked, alarmed. “How? What exactly are we securing this ship from?”

“Daemons. Presumably,” Twilight answered after a moment of hesitation. “Remember those monsters that came out of the Dark Portal? It’s them. Probably.”

“What, those guys?” Rainbow scoffed. “They’re no big deal! This’ll be a breeze!”

“What do you mean ‘probably?’” Rarity pressed. “For that matter, how did this ship come to be infested by daemons?”

“They have a means to… well… I guess you’d consider it a curse,” Twilight said hesitantly. “They, uh, curse the ship, and then it fills up with Warp monsters. Or at least, that’s Gaela’s best guess as to what we’re heading into.”

“But it’s been months since that battle, right?” asked Fluttershy timidly. “You don’t think they’re still up there, do you?”

“Well…” Twilight tilted her head to the side. “I have some personal experience with daemons, and my understanding is that they don’t operate under ordinary biological restrictions such as needing food, water, or respiration. They do have their own, mostly theoretical, restrictions when they manifest a physical combat form in the Materium, but…”

She trailed off for several seconds. “I don’t really know what to tell you girls. I don’t know what we’re going to find up there. But whatever it is, the Iron Warriors don’t think it’s worth the risk to face it.” She straightened. “But this is hardly the only mission we’ve taken on that an Iron Warrior wouldn’t. We’ve faced KNOWN dangers greater than a bunch of stranded Warp spawn, and with Princess Luna and Gaela by our side, NOTHING the daemons can throw at us can stop us!”

“Yeah! Ha ha! Let’s get ‘em!” Pinkie Pie whooped and swung her power fist in the air, while Rainbow Dash did an aerial backflip.

The other ponies seemed less enthusiastic.

“Okay, Ah hear ya, but… y’know, those other missions were IMPORTANT. We didn’t have a choice,” Applejack explained. “This time we’re goin’ to face certain doom so Princess Luna can have her own space buggy?”

“Yeah, but so what?” Rainbow retorted. “Did you forget that we’re PIRATES now? Fighting for space booty is our job!”

Rarity produced a resigned sigh. “I suppose you have a point. And it IS rather nice to embark on a mission where failure and retreat are an option, for once. It’s rather tiresome to always have the future of the world resting on our shoulders.”

“Don’t take this mission lightly, girls. But trust me when I say that daemons CAN be beaten. They’re an… unconventional enemy, even more so than Orks. But they have their own weaknesses. Keep your focus and stay together, and everything should be fine!” Twilight said.

“Ooh! Ooh! I see Desty!” Pinkie’s Dreadnought jumped up and then landed with a teeth-rattling crash against the ferrocrete while she pointed toward an entry gantry.

Princess Luna marched toward the others with her head held high and four bipedal figures behind her.

Dest and Gaela were geared for combat, with the Possessed warrior carrying a boltgun and an ammo belt slung over his shoulder. Gaela had her normal power axe – as well as her integrated ion cannon in her arm – but also carried a grenade launcher attached to her gun arm by a heavy external clamp.

Behind them were two smaller figures wearing boarding armor: environmental suits fitted with numerous ceramic plates for deflecting incoming fire while being completely sealed and pressurized in case of hazardous environments. Each of them carried pulse carbines, although one was clearly more familiar with the weapon and carried a grenade bandoleer as well. The other was weighed down by a backpack and additional small tools on his belt.

“Hey, Fennin!” Rainbow Dash barked suddenly. “YOU SUCK!!”

The boarding suit with the backpack stopped, looking up at the pegasus. “Really? Are we still doing this? I feel like we can retire this act.”

“I’ll stop shouting it when you stop doing it,” the mare retorted.

“I saved Ferrous Dominus just a week ago!” Fennin complained.

“We ALL saved Ferry D a week ago!”

“I fixed the entire defense network! You killed a handful of griffons!”

The other figure in a boarding suit suddenly turned and shoved Fennin in the shoulder. “Would you stop letting the horses bait you? It’s a long trip and a small compartment.”

“I concur. You’re not too important to eject into hard void on the way if you get too loud,” Gaela grunted. “Fennin, Jerriha, prepare to board. You will act as the team rearguard.”

Dest stopped in front of the ponies and crossed his arms over his chest. “It seems you’re ready. We can depart immediately.”

“Yer flyin’?” Applejack asked.

“Yes. No other pilot would accept such a mission. I have clocked additional simulation hours with the Stormraven, so I will be able to dock properly with the target vessel. Probably,” Dest confirmed.

“Hold,” Luna ordered, one of her gauntlets flying up and holding its palm flat. “Be this the entirety of our party? A mere ten warriors?”

“Affirmative. For a given definition of ‘warrior,’ of course,” Gaela said, casting a glance at Fluttershy. “Additionally, while Pie will be of considerable assistance when establishing a beachhead within the hangar of the target vessel, she will be unable to aid us further. Tau Voidcraft interiors are frustratingly compact and movement within the crew compartments will be heavily restricted for a Contemptor-class Dreadnought.”

“Our ships aren’t compact, YOUR ships are absurdly inefficient in design! Who needs empty halls large enough to march an assault walker through?!” Fennin groused.

“We do right now,” Dest said.

“It’s hardly a design flaw that our vessels are inconvenient to Chaos boarding parties!” the engineer retorted.

“Enough of thy prattling,” Luna announced with a snort. “Although We hast the utmost faith in the courage of the Elements of Harmony and the efficacy of the Warsmith’s weapons, We wouldst be well-served with another few companions.”

“Well, Ah invited Daniels to come with us like Twi asked, but when Ah said the word ‘Rep’ta-somethin’ he just laughed and walked away,” Applejack said. “He mentioned that ship before, Ah think. Ah reckon he has some idea what’s up there, and he don’t like it.”

“Should I go invite Tellis?” Rainbow Dash asked, jumping up in the air.

“NO!!” shouted multiple ponies in response.

“Oh, c’mon! Tellis would be great at this!” the pegasus pressed.

“We’re not inviting Tellis!” Twilight hissed. “I’m not going on another mission with Tellis! This is a serious endeavor and we don’t need him hurling us at enemies and setting things to explode or uploading Chaos cogitator viruses for fun!”

Luna tilted her head to the side, and one the black gauntlets came around to rub her chin. “Thou sayeth the mercenary Daniels knows something of this quest, but hath refused to aid us?”

“Yeah. There’re lots of other mercs, o’course, but Ah don’t trust none of ‘em like Ah trust Daniels,” Applejack affirmed. She heard a sniggering noise from above, and shot a glare up at Rainbow Dash.

“Indeed! It hath been decided, then!” Luna declared. Her horn started to glow, although there was no immediate magic effect that anyone noticed.

“What’s been decided, now?” Pinkie asked, swiveling from side to side.

Rather than answering, Luna teleported away in a flash of brilliant blue magic.

“… Oh, my. I have a bad feeling about this,” Rarity mumbled.

“I’m telling you guys, when we’re up in the space ship and surrounded by angry daemons, you’re going to wish I’d brought Tellis along,” Rainbow Dash warned.

“It’s going to take a lot more than angry daemons before I’m willing to bring that fanatic along again,” Twilight grumbled.

“My personal assessment is in agreement. We will be venturing into an area with a great deal of sensitive and important objects. While Lord Tellis would excel in slaying our opposition, I do not trust his restraint around so many buttons,” Gaela muttered.

Another pulse of blue energy came from the spot where Luna had vanished. After a few seconds and another flare of light, Luna reappeared. Daniels flashed into the air at the same time, yelping angrily before dropping onto the ground.

Wyatt Daniels, who was wearing pants and a tank top and little else, scrambled to stand up and shield himself from the rain. “BLOODY HELL!! I TOLD YOU, I’M NOT-“

A patch of blue magic briefly covered his mouth, muffling him. Luna cleared her throat, and then addressed the others. “One more, then.” Without another word, she vanished again.

“Daniels! Here, allow me.” Twilight quickly generated an energy bubble over the man’s head to protect him from the rain. “Yeesh, did Luna find you in the barracks? She didn’t even let you get completely dressed, did she?”

“There’s a boarding suit and weapons in the transport,” Gaela said blandly. “He will be able to fight.”

“Now you listen here, you…” the mercenary took several deep breaths, calming down. “No. This is not happening. I’m not going up there.”

“Daniels, now, Ah know the Princess was, uh, a little rough witcha, but-“

“No, AJ,” Daniels said, cutting off the farmer. “I’m not going. You know that I’m not above taking on suicide missions with you girls, but this is something else entirely. You all can do what you’d like, but you won’t be dragging me into it!”

“I am unsure as to why you think you have a choice,” Gaela mused. “You work for the 38th Company, mercenary. You do not choose your missions.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s true,” Daniels admitted, pointing to the Dark Techpriest. “But you don’t choose my missions either, and neither do the pones.” He shook his head. “Sorry ladies. I’m staying home for this one.”

Then a large gauntlet bearing pointed claws and numerous small, irregular spikes clapped onto his shoulder, nearly staggering him.

“I believe I am authorized to choose your missions, Wyatt Daniels,” Dest rumbled. “You will not be staying home for this one.”

A strange noise, like a cross between a cough and a whimper, came from the mercenary’s throat. Daniels hung his head.

“Is anybody else the slightest bit curious as to why a soldier who snuck into an enemy base with only a handful of equines for support is so reluctant to board a particular derelict?” Fennin asked, raising a hand. “An aversion to void combat? A disproportionate fear of daemonic enemies?”

“I too am slightly curious,” Gaela admitted. “The 38th Company stopped running reclamation missions on rift targets ages ago. Your fear is… rational, to say the least, and suggests personal experience. Have you boarded such a vessel before?”

Before he could answer, another blue flash came from behind the group. Luna appeared in the air, her wings spread grandly, and another armored pony materialized beneath her.

“Huzzah! Our strike force hath grown!” the Lunar Princess shouted happily.

“Big Mac?! Ya went and dragged Big Mac into this?!” Applejack asked, suddenly incensed.

“Aye! What better soldier to aid our incursion than the mighty Ironside?!” Luna said cheerfully, swinging a gauntlet up above her. “No other ponies boast the requisite weapons and armor for such a task!”

“What about those Nurgle mares? You know, the ones that used a zombie plague around Ponyville? They seem quite capable,” Rarity reasoned. “Trixie, too.”

“We meant aside from them,” Luna said dismissively. “’Tis no matter. Macintosh has agreed and we art ready to depart to the merciless void!”

“Erm…” Big Mac raised a hoof, as if considering an objection. Luna raced by before he could, though, and then Dest barked a command that spurred the others into action.

“Board the Stormraven at once. We make for the battlecruiser Rep’talal immediately,” the pilot snapped, pointing to the gunship in question. “May the Chaos Gods bless our ascent, and deliver victory to their chosen servants. Iron within! Iron without!”

****

High orbit over Centaur III – Stormraven gunship
Approach vector: Tau derelict Rep’talal

“It’s a fascinating construct, isn’t it? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen this particular pattern before. You can see the deployment hangars, and the upgraded turrets look to be a design built for speed as much as firepower. Not a specialty of Tau naval engineering.”

Gaela’s smaller hand was held over a briefing hololith in the middle of the passenger compartment. The Rep’talal was a squat, triangle-shaped ship with an oversized engine block and a body that tapered to a saucer-shaped prow. Super-heavy railguns ran through the length of half the ship, and other cannon turrets were scattered on the top and bottom. The hololith locked on to several points of interest and drew little blocks of text next to them to highlight areas of damage, important systems, and possible breach points.

“It’s a prototype vessel. Part of our… I’m sorry, part of Lamman Sept’s shifting military focus to mainly fighting the Orks and Tyranids.” Fennin leaned over closer to the image. “Some of our newer battleship designs possess this saucer section in the front, but they’re typically connected to an elongated superstructure that presents most of the vessel mass and boasts enhanced broadsides.” He snorted. “Unfortunately, the wide, flat length of exposed hull, combined with an unimpressive sub-light speed, seems to invite CERTAIN opponents to ram into it. A slightly smaller main warship, with bigger engines and more flexible fire points, was deemed necessary. This design has the firepower to shred large vessels at long range, and the speed to STAY at long range against dedicated pursuit.”

He sighed, slumping back in his seat. “It shouldn’t have been deployed so early, of course, but Voidsong was quite insistent on getting every available asset combat-ready for the Emerald Dawn project. This was hardly the most dangerous experiment she took to the field.”

“A glorious craft! It shalt serve its new mistress well!” Luna proclaimed, leering over the hololith with her helmet retracted.

“What are those things on the hull? They look like… burs, almost. But made of metal.” Rainbow Dash squinted at the hololith.

“Those are boarding pods. Ork design, it looks like,” Jerriha answered. “Makes sense; when the Orks arrived there was a battlecruiser in passive orbit and perfect condition that didn’t engage them. Naturally they sent a boarding crew to seize the ship before they engaged the Company.”

“And they’re not the only ones. I found the cargo lander that fled Ferrous Dominus during the changeling assault. It docked without apparent difficulty,” Gaela explained.

“So… there are Orks and Tau on the ship, as well as daemons?” Fluttershy asked nervously.

“It is most logical to conclude, given that the Rep’talal has not altered its orbit since it was boarded, that there are no longer Orks or Tau on the ship,” Gaela said blandly.

Fluttershy gulped loudly enough for it to resonate from her vox grille.

“I don’t suppose we can finally get an explanation of what we’re heading into from the only person here who’s actually been on one of these incursions, can we?” Jerriha asked, nudging her head toward the front of the compartment.

Daniels had put on his boarding suit and was slouching in his seat while silently clutching a boarding shotgun. His personal weapons, stolen from the very Fireblade sitting next to him, had been left in Ferrous Dominus when he had been suddenly seized and teleported away, so he’d been equipped with the guns on hand.

“I haven’t seen any records of a rift derelict reclamation in over sixty standard Solar years,” Gaela said, eyeing the mercenary suspiciously. “Occasionally the Company uses such vessels as target practice and salvages the wreckage, but that obviously wouldn’t involve a boarding crew. Are the records incomplete, soldier?”

Daniels stared at her tightly for several seconds, and then stared at the floor between his boots. “… I don’t know anything about the records, or how the Iron Warriors normally handle these things. I was assigned to a boarding party some three years ago, but it wasn’t a reclamation effort. It was a snatch job.”

“Ah. That might be in a more obscure operation database, then,” Gaela mused.

“No doubt,” Daniels grumbled. “It wasn’t supposed to be a major deployment. Some Techpriest wanted some trinket on an Imperial escort that had been shot with the… whatever-it-is during a fleet engagement. I don’t know who the Techpriest was or even what he was after. It was supposed to be quick, easy, and on the sly; we cut into the ship just a few rooms away from where our objective was supposed to be. We had an Iron Warrior for leadership, and twenty men besides. It should have been a breeze, even with daemonic resistance.”

There was a loud creaking noise from the shift in weight as every power-armored figure leaned forward curiously.

Daniels fell silent for several seconds, wetting his lips before he continued. “So… it went like this. We landed our assault boat and cut our way through the bulkhead and emptied into our beachhead room. The place was slick with blood and bodies, but there was only one daemon. We gunned it down before it could so much as snarl at us and took firing positions. The Iron Warrior came in after the room was secure and scorched a hole in the blast door with a combi-melta.”

Daniels sighed deeply. “He kicked the pile of dust that used to be the daemon on the way to the breach, laughing. ‘Useless beasts. There’s a reason Chaos has chosen man as its heirs to this galaxy,’ he said, before waving us forward. The next room was another grisly mess, but what was more interesting was a huge, fleshy tube that ran across the ceiling. It looked like a stretch of intestines used as a fuel line, and it pulsed and wriggled like a living thing.”

“Oh, gross!” Rainbow Dash interjected, sounding excited. “Then what happened?”

“We didn’t pay the creepy tube much mind, being used to weird, semi-organic Warpstuff in our ship. That was our mistake. This wasn’t our ship, and whatever it had become, it objected to our presence. As we passed through the room, the tube twisted and swelled, and then breaches opened up suddenly under it, aimed at us. Jets of searing plasma blasted into our unit, killing most of us instantly. The Iron Warrior was hit directly, his armor and resilience giving him enough time to snarl some kind of curse before he died.”

Luna winced. “’Tis an unfortunate tale, but it shalt be a warning to us all. We can take nothing for granted within the confines of the derelict!”

Daniels continued; evidently his story wasn’t over. “The survivors turned away from the heat and bolted for the exit. The mission was over; there was no way we were continuing with just a few men and anyway, no one who survived knew exactly what we were here to find.” He paused, turning his head to face the others. “But when we turned around, the blast door was whole again. There was no breach.”

“Oof. I know that feeling,” Twilight mumbled. “How did you get out?”

“The Iron Warrior blasted a hole in the door with a combi-melta. He kicked a pile of dust that used to be the daemon on the way to the breach, laughing.”

“Er, Wyatt, Ah think ya covered this part already,” Applejack interrupted.

“I know. I knew it back then, too,” Daniels said grimly. “My thoughts were fuzzy at the time and I was coming down from a panic, but as the Iron Warrior beckoned us forward I followed. Looking around, the squad was all here, obviously unburnt and alive. Some seemed hesitant, as I was, but our training took over and we moved in to position. Into the room with the strange tube along the ceiling.”

“Temporal distortion,” Gaela hissed.

“As we passed through the room, the tube twisted and swelled, and then breaches opened up under it, aimed at us. Once again I watched most of the squad die, and once again I and the other survivors bolted away. Once again we found ourselves staring at an undamaged blast door. Once again the Iron Warrior stepped forward, kicking aside the dusted remnants of the daemon.” His hands tightened around the shotgun. “Again I followed the Chaos Space Marine into the breach, scared and confused. I could feel myself losing my mind. Every time I turned my gaze elsewhere something would shift and change. Sometimes in major, obvious ways, like the time looping, and sometimes in other ways. Faces in walls that would recede and vanish. Blood splashes changing on a second glance. Corpses turning their heads to stare at us while we rushed past. I don’t know if any of it was real. I don’t know if even matters what was real or not, under those conditions.”

“How’d ya get out?” Applejack asked, gaping.

Daniels pursed his lips. “I don’t know how many times I followed that Chaos Marine into the breach, but eventually one of the other survivors started screaming and turned away after the Iron Warrior breached the door. The Marine stared at him, surprised to see a man that had just gunned down a daemon suddenly cowering for no obvious reason. I spoke up after that, stuttering and sweating about having already breached the door and the jets of fire beyond.”

“Couldn’t you have gone along with him but done something to avoid the fiery tube thingy?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Unlikely. Iron Warriors typically do not accept tactical advice from cannon fodder,” Gaela grunted. “In addition, time loops tend to create their own sort of bizarre inertia, sweeping victims along the same path until they show sufficient resistance.” She shrugged. “The phenomenon is poorly understood, of course. It’s nigh impossible to replicate for experimental purposes, and many victims don’t escape the experience to provide data. This is my first time hearing a first-hand account.”

Daniels shook his head. “The Iron Warrior hesitated after seeing several men start begging him to flee, thinking there might be something to our cowardice. He warned us that if we didn’t explain ourselves he’d shove us out into the adjacent halls to distract any daemonic enemies. We weren’t doing a very good job convincing him, but he wasn’t killing us and he wasn’t burning to death.” Daniels paused. “Then, after a few seconds, he DID start to burn to death.”

“What?! Unfair!” Rainbow Dash shouted.

“The squadmates that had already died started writhing and screaming, their bodies slowly burning away for no reason. Patches of the Iron Warrior’s armor started to glow and disintegrate, and he howled angrily and began thrashing about. Me and the other survivors watched, horrified, as they simply died the same death as before at perhaps a tenth of the speed, screaming in agony the entire time.”

“Bizarre inertia,” Gaela mumbled.

Daniels took a deep breath. “Then we turned away to run. But rather than seeing the breach from assault boat we saw an undamaged blast door. The Iron Warrior stepped forward and burned a hole in it with his combi-melta.”

Gasps came from the ponies, and Fluttershy whimpered fearfully.

“I’d had enough. I turned on my heel and saw the exit back to the assault boat, rather than another barrier waiting to be breached. I ran. The others that had survived the loop joined me. The Iron Warrior noticed, and without any explanation as to why his troops were abandoning him he reacted as angry Chaos Marines are wont to do. We were chased by bolter fire back to the landing craft, the living cut down by a man who was dead but didn’t yet realize it.”

“Savages,” Jerriha spat.

“Only two of us managed to get into the assault boat alive. The pilot was reluctant to leave, since as far as he knew we had just breached the hull and then tried to run, so we forced him to take off at gunpoint. We left the ship, and the rest of the boarding party, behind and never went back for them. For all I know they’re still there, obliviously marching to their deaths over and over again. Hell, the men that died trying to escape might have joined them. I could barely imagine a worse Hell.”

Daniels leaned forward, staring more closely at the hololith in the compartment. “So if you’re wondering why I’m a not thrilled about heading into a rift derelict, it’s because the last time I did the bloodthirsty daemons were by far the least terrifying hazard.”

Silence dominated the compartment after he finished speaking. Fluttershy was quivering visibly in her seat, while Luna’s earlier enthusiasm and eager confidence was gone now. Only Twilight and Gaela didn’t seem overly disturbed by the tale, as they were both more fascinated by the concepts behind Daniels’ story than concerned with the potential dangers.

The compartment’s vox caster turned on.

“We are making our approach vector into the Rep’talal docking bay. There’s a great deal of Orkish junk, but I think I see a path. We’ll dock next to the mass lander. Prepare for deployment,” said Dest from the cockpit.

“So… we’re really doing this? After listening to all that, we’re really going to try to clear out a monster-infested battlecruiser with a dozen soldiers?” Fennin asked with a groan.

“We hast come this far. We shalt not retreat before so much as glimpsing a foe,” Luna declared firmly. “The hazards of the derelict may not be surmountable with mere fury and iron, but we possess other means. If the challenges prove insuperable, or we suffer losses, then we shalt withdraw with haste!”

“It will likely be too late by then, but establishing retreat conditions are a good idea,” Gaela mused, pulling back her hood. Her helmet whirred into place, the plates shifting and locking around her head. A hiss issued from within as it pressurized, and then she pulled her hood up again. “Prepare for deployment. We proceed to the Rep’talal.”

“Dark Gods save us,” Daniels grumbled, cocking his shotgun.

“Your ‘Dark Gods’ are the ones that turned it into a twisted charnel house to begin with,” Jerriha retorted.

“Trust not in thy fell gods nor the fickle entreaties of fate, compatriots!” Luna’s helmet engaged, the dozens of tiny metal plates sliding up from her gorget and clicking into place to rapidly enclose her head. “’Tis valor and friendship that will win the day and see us home safely!”

The other ponies engaged or put on their helmets, sealing their armor as the gunship started to shake.

“Stick together and take it slow!” Twilight said, jumping slightly when the crew compartment jostled. “If you see something unusual, don’t-“

The gunship suddenly jerked to the side, and Twilight yelped as her head was flung into Applejack’s shoulder plate. “Ow! What’s going on?!”

Then the entire vehicle flipped onto its side, and the shrieking of scraping metal and frightened mares filled the compartment.

****

Rep’talal – launch bay

The Stormraven gunship groaned, its frame straining against the cargo container propping it up on one wing. A massive pink Dreadnought hung from its magnetic winch, awkwardly flailing against the flight harness sitting on its side.

After a few seconds, the embarkation ramp cracked open. It didn’t get very far before it bumped against a fueling pylon and ground to a stop, leaving an opening of barely four feet between the ramp and the gunship’s hull.

Several heavy clunking noises came from within the crew compartment, as well as some muffled cursing. Finally, Gaela poked her head out of the opening, looking over the hangar interior.

“… The area is secure. Probably. There are some questionable objects in here, but they appear non-responsive.” She kicked the embarkation ramp to get a few more inches of clearance, and then hopped out onto the floor.

Rainbow Dash came next, squeezing the metal wings of her flight pack through the opening before landing next to the Dark Techpriest. One by one the pirates emerged, settling in the embarkation bay of the battlecruiser. They had landed at the far side of the hangars, the interior of which remained separated from hard void by a humming atmospheric shield. Several Tau shuttles were parked in the bay, as well as the mooring clamps and loading bridge of the mass lander, which was too large to fit inside. Several Ork boarding shuttles were also parked in the bay, having landed as part of the greenskin reclamation efforts.

Dried bloodstains decorated many surfaces, and Ork weapons and gear were scattered around the floor. No bodies were among them, however. Instead, many large green blobs, like diseased blisters, were clustered in various spots around the hangar bay.

“What… happened…” Fennin groaned painfully as he reached the embarkation ramp, holding a hand to his stomach. “I… I think I need to vomit.”

“Do it in the crew compartment,” Gaela demanded while she wedged her power axe into the magnetic winch still attached to Pinkie’s Dreadnought. “This area may yet have airborne contaminants. Don’t exit with your armor unsealed.”

Fennin quickly ducked back into the Stormraven, and soon the sounds of violent retching came from the hold.

“Ugh! Really? We have to fly back in there, you know!” Rarity complained.

“It’s extremely unlikely that regurgitated nutrient gruel is the most unsanitary fluid we’ll contend with on this mission.”

Gaela succeeded in detaching the winch, and Pinkie dropped onto the deck with a crash that caused the nearby Stormraven to shake. A moment later Fennin staggered out of the crew compartment.

“So does anyone know what happened?” Pinkie asked, standing her walker upright. “Everything was going fine, and then suddenly BAM! WHAM!”

“No doubt some debris was clustered too tightly for a safe approach,” Gaela explained. “Between the cargo lander and the boarding pods, there were several obstructions complicating the flight path.”

A ceramite boot crashed into the embarkation ramp, forcing it open further. Then Dest squeezed out onto the deck, his armor squealing against the gunship’s frame.

“There was no debris in our path,” the Possessed Astartes admitted. “I just hit the ceiling on the way in. I’m still not very good at this.” He dropped down onto the floor, and then quickly snapped up his boltgun. “Is the area secure?”

“Affirmative. Kind of.” Gaela turned back to the room, and her optics whirred. “It appears the airlock to the mass lander has been breached. There are clear signs of combat, and yet no corpses. I wish to inload the lander’s flight logs before we proceed.”

“Very well! We shalt hold the area whilst thou studies the remnants of those unfortunates who came before us!” Luna declared dramatically.

“So is no one else going to ask about the big green things in here?” Rainbow Dash mumbled, pointing a leg at one of the bizarre, boulder-shaped objects.

“One hazard at a time,” Gaela said while she crossed the landing bay toward the lander.

The team marched along the edge of the loading bay, giving the strange blobs a considerable berth. The room echoed with the heavy footfalls of power armor and the pounding gait of a Dreadnought, but after several minutes they reached the lander’s docking bridge without incident.

“Mercenary, escort me. The rest of you, hold perimeter,” Gaela ordered while walking up to the airlock.

The door had been torn open, obviously from the inside, and the gaping hole was just big enough for something human-sized to push its way through. The sharp edges of the sundered metal had some sort of film on them, but Gaela barely gave it a glance before she stepped through.

“There are many harmful contaminants here. Ensure your armor remains sealed,” the Dark Techpriest warned before she disappeared into the vessel.

“Well, this’s goin’ okay so far… ain’t it?” Applejack asked hesitantly.

“Eeyup.”

“I was rather expecting to be mobbed by bloodthirsty monsters as soon as we landed. Would any such creatures even know we’re here right now?” Rarity asked.

“Doubtful. Daemons probably can’t operate our internal surveillance systems,” Jerriha said. “Orks probably could, though. So that’s more evidence they didn’t manage to clear out the infestation, if you needed any.”

“Daemons detect prey primarily through proximity, with their extra-dimensional awareness. Their conventional senses are poor,” Dest rumbled. “However, in an enclosed space such as this, it is likely they will sense us before we sense them.”

“On the topic of surveillance systems,” Fennin interjected as he tapped rapidly against his engineering tablet, “I’ve looked over the Rep’talal’s flight logs.”

“Yes? Did you learn anything interesting?” Jerriha asked.

“Not really, no. Nothing that we couldn’t have already guessed. The Rep’talal engaged the Harvest of Steel, was subject to a heavy bombardment, and then there’s just a lot of screaming.” Fennin sighed. “I did get an accounting of the ship subsystems though, and they’re in excellent condition. The security systems have been damaged, unsurprisingly, but power, life support, engines, robotics, and nearly everything else is in working order. With no crew to direct it the battlecruiser is just holding orbit and trying to maintain function with minimal energy drain. It even has enough fuel left to make it back to the core systems if we wanted.”

“Delightful!” Luna barked. “Then this endeavor may yet bear fruit!”

“Sure. Anyway, I’m not sure if there’s any useful information gathered by the cores since they took over operation of the Rep’talal, but I can open or close any doors you wish with remote access, at least. Or vent particular sections of ship.” Then Fennin’s eyes narrowed. “Oh? This is odd…”

“What? You catch sight of some bad guys?” Applejack asked.

“No. I just saw that this battlecruiser has a containment flag. Zeln-6.”

That made no sense to the ponies or Iron Warrior, but Jerriha immediately rounded on the engineer. “What? A psyker? Here?”

“Yes. A powerful one, probably. There are some codices I’d need to override to learn more. That could take a while.” Fennin shrugged.

“I was under the impression your people don’t keep psykers,” Dest said. “Why was this one on board?”

“I can’t say for certain without breaking into the classified files, but probably research. The Lamman Sept keeps a number of psychic labs in operation. It’s how we pulled off that little stunt in Canterlot.”

“Do it,” Dest commanded. “If there are psykant artifacts aboard this craft, I want to be forewarned.”

Fennin nodded, and then sat down on a stray crate. “Okay, fine. The slice will take a-“

Jerriha suddenly leaned closer and slapped the engineer on the shoulder, almost knocking him over. Fennin shouted in alarm, raising his tablet like a shield.

“Hey, c’mon Jerri. I hate him too but you can’t just hit Fennin for no reason,” Rainbow Dash chided.

“I wasn’t hitting him, I was hitting THIS.” Jerriha scuffed her foot along the floor, knocking something under Fennin into better light.

It was the body of a dead wasp. A large, twisted wasp smeared with dried gore and bearing a trio of spots on its abdomen, arranged in a triangle.

“Oh dear,” Rarity said. Her plasma gun and power sword practically jumped into the air, humming with energy.

“Nurgle wasps,” Applejack hissed. “Dagnabbit!”

“M-Maybe if we don’t bother them, they’ll leave us alone?” Fluttershy asked nervously.

“Perhaps, but that is not the norm with daemonic beasts,” Dest admitted. Then he touched a claw to his helmet. “Techpriest, are you almost finished? We may have contacts.”

“Would the possible contacts have to do with plague insects?” Gaela asked. “The lander is full of wasps and parasitic grubs. No combat threats as of yet. I’ve just begun the data exload.”

“Good. See if you can seal the-“

A sudden, ear-piercing shriek rolled through the launch bay.

The scream had no clear origin, and seemed to bypass the helmet and sonic dampers to stagger every one of the ponies and Tau holding position outside the lander. Rarity, who was still levitating her weapons, briefly lost her concentration and let her sword and gun clatter onto the deck while her vision went hazy.

Only Dest didn’t flinch, being quite used to sudden, obnoxious noises from within his mind. “That was psychic transmission. Prepare to engage!”

A burst of static came from the vox as Gaela cursed in Binaric Cant. “Engage? Have you confirmed the presence of… Oh.” The sound of a shotgun blast bled through the transmission. “Apologies, my Lord, but we have incoming. I’ll need to concentrate.”

“Do you require our assistance?” Dest asked.

“Negative. The mercenary is making plenty of noise, I’m sure they’ll attack him first. I can escape if I need to.” Another shotgun blast was heard, and then the transmission ended.

“G-Guys? Guys! I think I know what that weird scream did!” Rainbow Dash said, pointing a leg at the large green sacks. They were pulsing and twitching now, like eggs on the verge of hatching.

“Steel thyselves! Applejack, to the fore! Miss Pie, protect our line of retreat! Ironside, elevate thyself and find a clear attack path!” Luna’s Iron Gage jumped off her shoulders, and the gauntlets crashed into each other with a great burst of sparks. “Face us, daemon! Face oblivion as the Tau, Ork, and changelings before thee!”

“This is going to be DISGUSTING,” Rarity moaned.

A scythe-tipped limb ripped free of one pod, punching through the thick, rubbery surface in a burst of foul goo. Then it sliced down, cutting a wide gouge. Wriggling grubs spilled onto the deck in a pool of filthy slime, while wasps clumsily emerged from a higher point of the breach.

Lumbering from the vile cocoon came a twisted, diseased monstrosity swollen with growths, seeping wounds, pulsating tumors, and sharpened spikes and blades of bone. It was an Ork, or at least it had been some time ago, but its current form was so badly misshapen that it would have been nigh impossible to tell without the scraps of torn cloth that bore the distinctive clan symbol of the Bad Moons. Taking an awkward step forward into the widening pool of offal around its pod, the infested creature turned its sunken, milky eyes to the invaders.

A single round from a butcher cannon ended the thing, blasting apart its torso. Blackened gore splashed across the filth puddle, and the explosive shock wave instantly flattened the nearby grubs and wasps.

“They’re coming! Shoot the pods while they’re still emerging!” Twilight shouted, charging her force harmonizer. “Applejack! Torch the ones nearby, before they break free! Pinkie, take out the furthest ones near the blast doors!”

The blaze of gunfire was immediate, with bolter, plasma, cannon, and pulse fire raking the mysterious, disgusting sacs. A wash of flame swallowed the nearest pods, causing them to shrink and wither into a dead, blackened husk. Heavy slugs pounded the sacs further away, punching through the glistening skin before gutting the interior with hot shrapnel. Luna and Twilight attacked as soon as their own weapons were charged, briefly overwhelming the sound of the others with the fierce shriek of psionic weapons. Beams of purple and blue cut across the bay and punched into the pulsating cocoons, and they burst apart in great splashes of brackish fluids and pulverized parasites.

The rate of gunfire could hardly up with the sheer number of pods, and before the glimmering light from the magic beams had faded several infected erupted from their resting places. With tortured moans and gasps, the creatures lumbered through the pools of filth and larvae toward the boarding party, claws and spines outstretched.

“C-Can we r-retreat yet?” Fluttershy yelped, invisibly.

“Retreat? Because of some second-rate Orks with the space flu?” Rainbow Dash scoffed, firing a burst of shuriken into an infected alien. It promptly crumpled in on itself, falling apart into a pile of wet, squirming flesh. “I know it’s gross, but we can handle this! These things are nothing!”

“I concur,” Dest growled, detonating another infected with a bolt round to the head. “The enemy is a minor threat. We have sufficient means. Hold position! Kill them all!” He let the spent magazine of his boltgun fall to the deck, and then hurled a fireball at the closest target. The diseased greenskin was consumed by flame in seconds, and it quivered violently before issuing a short screech and falling over.

A horrified shriek again filled the launch bay. This time, however, the sound was far more corporeal, and had a distinctly feminine tinge.

Dest whirled on his heel to see Rarity rearing up and kicking in a panic. “Are you damaged? Calm yourself!”

Rarity fell back to all fours. There was a streak of dark fluid splashed over her visor, and she started scraping her front legs against her helmet to try to brush it off. “It’s on me! They got the cocoon slime on me!” she wailed.

“It’s not on ya, it’s on yer helmet! Wouldja cool yer apples?” Applejack shouted. Her gravity lash snapped onto one of the infected and then hurled him toward the edge of the bay, throwing him out into hard void.

“What if it's corrosive, Applejack?! Somepony get it off!”

Dest started to turn away, but he hesitated when he saw a second splash of brackish slime on Rarity’s back. The unicorn surely hadn’t noticed; despite her protests, power armor was very effective at shielding against chemical hazards, and the slime didn’t register as a threat to his scans. It did make him wonder where the slime came from, though.

Dest looked up.

“ABOVE!” he barked, swinging his boltgun up and releasing a burst into the cocoon on the ceiling. The mass-reactive shells ripped the pod apart, and Rarity released an even louder shriek as a torrent of putrid ooze, writhing maggots, and pulped bio-mass fell on her.

“OF ALL THE WORST THINGS THAT COULD HAPPEN!!” the unicorn lamented loudly, thrashing about in a panic.

A particularly large lump of rotting flesh landed next to her, and then it started to move.

“THIS IS!!” Rarity continued, plunging her power sword into the infected monster.

“THE VERY!!” The crackling blade twisted, and then cut away sharply, slicing off what was probably the creature’s head.

“WORST!!” Rarity’s plasma gun fired a single shot into the wobbling mess that remained, cooking its swollen organs from within.

“THIIIIIING!!!” Her weapon swung around, and a spread of plasma bolts cored two more infected. It lurched to the side, snapping a shot at another monster that had been mostly dismembered by Rainbow’s shurikens and burning a blackened hole in it. Then it flipped to the other side to take out a pair of infected staggering out from behind an Ork assault boat.

The gun whistled and crackled, and vapor started blasting from its flex sheathing as the weapon’s heat buildup became too much for the coolant to suppress. The plasma gun started to glow brightly, and in an instant it was sent flying toward yet another lumbering monstrosity.

It exploded on contact with the creature, generating a sphere of white-hot fire around the weapon’s fusion core. The infected was vaporized, and the slime trail oozing behind it was baked to a crisp.

“… Is that it?” Pinkie Pie’s voice was the first thing to break the silence that followed Rarity’s destructive fit of horror. Her Dreadnought swiveled back and forth, and then tilted back so that she could get a good scan of the ceiling for any more pods they might have missed. “I think that’s it! No more contacts! We’re done!”

“You can’t be serious,” Jerriha muttered, still looking back and forth between the various corpses in the launch bay. “That was way too easy.”

“EASY?!” Rarity shrieked, rounding on the Fireblade. “Look at what they did to me!” Her armor was, by now, extensively smeared with the unspeakable fluids from the bizarre cocoons. “This armor was just repaired! I can’t even take the helmet off now!” she wailed.

“Oh, hush. We’ll hose you off in the hangar embarkation airlock. There’s a sanitation chamber for cleaning questionable cargo,” Fennin assured her. He spotted Gaela walking out of the cargo lander and raised a hand to greet her. “Techpriest, did you get the data?”

“Affirmative,” Gaela replied, walking down the embarkation ramp at an unhurried pace. Daniels was behind her, with a few streaks of dark gore splashed across his legs. “It seems our local Nurgle ponies are responsible for this infection, if I’m parsing the data right.”

“What? You mean Phage Squadron?” Twilight asked with a gasp.

Gaela’s servo arm snapped forward, grabbing a nearby wasp out of the air and crushing it within the metal pincers. “Affirmative. They infested the lander before it escaped Ferrous Dominus. The Tau thieves managed to vent most of the resulting parasites at an altitude they couldn’t survive, but several bodies had already been infected and abandoned within. When they abandoned the lander, the insects eventually escaped and, apparently, found several Ork corpses within the launch bay.”

“Okay, I’m ready to go home now,” Fluttershy squeaked, quivering on the floor. There were still several wasps buzzing about the launch bay, although they gave the intruders a wide berth. Large as they were, the infected insects were little threat against the pressurized armor suits.

Dest snorted. “So then the lumbering meat sacks were little more than breeding grounds for these vermin. What a tiresome obstacle.” He turned to Fennin. “When we proceed within the ship, run an atmospheric venting cycle for the launch bay. A few minutes of hard void should dispose of the rest of these parasites.”

“We’re still going?!” Rarity gasped.

“But of course!” Luna proclaimed. “Such paltry opposition shalt not stay our hoof! Wouldst that all our enemies were so feeble!”

“It is highly unlikely that these parasites are the most dangerous things in the ship,” Gaela mused. “For starters, they’re mostly our fault. I concur that we haven’t encountered sufficient opposition to justify retreat, though.”

“Then we march onward!” Luna proclaimed. “Engineer! Lead us to thy decontamination chamber! We too hath some filth to be cleansed.” She shook one of her gauntlets, which had a crust of dried gore on it.

“Okay, fine.” Fennin led the way toward the exit, stepping gingerly around the splattered and scorched bodies that used to be infected enemies. “As we discussed earlier, the interior space isn’t large enough for a Dreadnought to navigate. The insane pink horse has to stay here.”

“Aww, but I wanna come!” Pinkie said. “I don’t have to stay in the Dreadnought, you know!”

“Yes, you do,” Dest said firmly, stopping and turning toward the assault walker. “This is our only line of retreat if we must fall back, and it must remain secure. Under NO circumstances are you to depressurize your walker’s environmental seals.”

“AWWWWW,” Pinkie complained, stamping a foot on the deck. Daniels nearly fell over from the impact, and the other ponies quickly edged away to give the massive walker more space. “FINE. But you’d better stay in vox contact the whole time!”

“I will endeavor to do so, but can guarantee nothing,” Dest assured her, walking up to the Contemptor. “Daemonic trickery and Warp interference often disrupt communications. But we will return.”

The power fist on the Dreadnought suddenly scooped up the Iron Warrior, practically mashing him against the walker’s torso. “Okay, Desty! Wuv yoo!”

The Possessed Marine reached up to pat the Dreadnought’s helmet. Then Pinkie released him, and Dest turned on his heel to march back to the others.

“We advance,” Dest said firmly, pointing a razor-edged claw at the exit. “Apple, you’re spearhead. Shy one, ready a stun grenade in case of ambush. Engineer, you may proceed when ready.”

Fennin looked over at the door. Then he stared at his tablet. Then he turned to Jerriha. “So we’re all just going to pretend that didn’t just happen.”

“Yes. Shut up and open the door,” Gaela said coldly. Fennin immediately went to work, linking his engineering tablet with the access console.

Dest seemed unbothered. “Perhaps your pony would be more obedient if you displayed more affection, Techpriest,” the driver said.

“Yes! You’re right!” Twilight said excitedly. “… Although I’m pretty obedient already.” She paused. “Also, obedience isn’t necessarily a virtue that we should strive toward as friends and warriors-in-arms.” Another pause. “And I wouldn’t really say I’m ‘her pony,’ even if-“

“Got it!” Fennin announced, speaking much more loudly than necessary as the hangar airlock opened. “Hurry now! Into the chamber for a sanitation cycle! The hangar will be depressurizing momentarily!”

Daniels cocked his head. “Shouldn’t you just run it after we’re through the-“

Jerriha suddenly shoved him forward into the sanitation chamber, nearly causing him to trip over Fluttershy. The boarding party quickly scurried into the next room, and the blast doors slammed shut behind them with a sharp hiss.

“Goodbyyyyye! Try not to get stuck in any mind-destroying evil traps!” Pinkie Pie shouted, waving the hand of her power fist.

A moment later a giant wasp landed on her visor, filling the viewscreen with its pulsating underside.

“Eugh. Rot Blossom really needs to get these things under control.” Pinkie gagged briefly before flicking the wasp off her helmet with a giant metal finger.

Two more insects immediately landed on her visor to replace the one that had just been removed. With an annoyed sound, Pinkie raised the Dreadnought’s hand to remove them again.

She stopped short. It was hard to see past the bugs on her helmet, but it looked like there were several of the wasps on her power fist now. They were crawling over the knuckles and up the heavily armored sleeves, nibbling on the armor edges and poking at the joints.

“Uh… h-hey, guys?” Pinkie said, a nervous squeak entering her voice. “Can you come back real quick and run the flamer over my mech? I think the bugs found out I have candy in here.”

Static sputtered from the vox system.

“Hello? Twilight? Desty?!”

Scraping sounds came from behind her as wasps crawled into the space between the Dreadnought hull and its engine block. Buzzing noises started becoming audible within the cockpit of the assault walker, and Pinkie’s fur stood on end.

“Dest! Luna! Gaela! Tau people! Can anyone hear me?!” Pinkie shouted, banging a hoof against the cockpit. “The bugs! They’re trying to-“

*Warning! Depressurization sequence activated. Warning! Void exposure imminent,* droned an alien voice from above.

The atmospheric shield flickered and then vanished.

Air rushed out of the hangar bay and into the void, sucking along the lighter objects and blasting them off the deck. Within seconds a cloud of hundreds of swollen wasps tumbled through empty space, their frozen bodies glittering in the light of Centaur’s star.

****

Rep’talal interior

Rarity yelped as she was flung into the hall, her greaves scraping wildly on the deck to keep her upright. A sheen of moisture covered her power armor, and a cloak of steam curled around her.

“What are you doing? We’re still in hostile territory!” the unicorn complained, whipping her head back and forth.

Gaela stomped out of the adjacent room, her power axe in one hand and Rarity’s power sword in the other. “You’ve been cooking yourself in the sanitation cycler for twenty-four-point-seven-one minutes,” she spat. “Stop complaining and get on with the mission.” She stabbed the sword into the floor plating in front of its owner, causing a sharp cracking noise as the disruption field broke through the bulkhead.

“Careful with that!” Rarity yelped, tugging the blade free with her magic. “You’d think a Techpriest would be a little more gentle with a weapon like this!”

“I don’t want to hear that from you after you destroyed your plasma gun like it was a common munition. Do you think such devices are expendable?” Gaela loomed over the mare, causing her to flinch back. “If your wargear fails, you perish. Your feeble sorceries and asinine commitment to social affection will not save you from the dangers of the void, equine.”

“Well, it can fer a little while. Twi saved us more’n once when the armor wasn’t good enough,” Applejack corrected. “But Ah think we get yer point, Gaela.”

A great metal hand clapped onto Gaela’s shoulder pad. “We understand thy grievance, noble Techpriest, but We ask thee restrain thine ire,” Luna stepped past the cyborg into the hall, peering at the bulkheads. “We art not safe here.”

The walls and floor were well-lit by track lighting along the walls and ceiling, so the Rep’talal possessed none of the gloom that seemed to be integral to human ship design. The interior was compact and comfortable, with noticeably lighter gravity settings and an aesthetic more akin to an office than a warship.

That interior was painted liberally with dried gore. Tau blood, which emerged blue but dried to a crusty dark gray, stained the floor in a manner that suggested bodies had been dragged through the vessel. The walls had slashes of brown over it, suggesting a more traditional blood hue; Ork fluids, most likely. Dents and nicks could be seen on the walls, and bullets and casings were scattered about the floor.

This made it all the more interesting that there were no bodies.

Fennin made a disgusted grunt while he worked on his tablet. “This place desperately needs a maintenance cycle. I’m surprised the Fio’o didn’t run one as soon as he got inside. He’s a complete and utter germaphobe.”

“He was probably distracted by… other matters,” Jerriha mumbled, glancing at a number of pulse burns on the wall.

Gaela pushed Luna’s Iron Gage off her shoulder and then kneeled down next to a bulkhead. “These blood patterns and burn marks suggest both groups of boarders were subjected to a furious assault the moment they cleared the hangar. Quite odd that we are not.”

“What do you mean? We were attacked before we even got this far!” Rarity retorted.

“Not by daemons. The infestation was a hazard of our own making, and the insects were given time and bodies to incubate only after the turncoat Tau abandoned the lander,” Gaela explained, standing up again. “I’m reading no aural or visual disturbances. Energy readings are within ordinary thresholds. Zero potential contacts. Engineer?”

“Well, I don’t like the way the ventilation shafts have their coverings torn open like something clawed its way out of them, but I am likewise reading zero contacts within the vicinity,” Fennin admitted, shifting a few steps further away from the vent in question. “There’s definitely movement within the ship, though. We aren’t alone in here, as expected.”

“Pinpoint the nearest daemon,” Dest commanded. “If their packs will not hunt us, then we will hunt them.”

“Lovely. Let’s see…”

The rest of the boarders waited on alert as Fennin mumbled to himself and tapped away on his personal device.

While he waited, Dest walked up to a vent and stared at it, trying to imagine the size and relative power of something that could navigate the space and still tear through the metal covering.

Yeesh… do you smell that? Gnarly, Vel asked suddenly.

“Hmm?” Dest turned his head left and right, seeing nothing except for his allies and the gore-streaked bulkheads.

Huh. I guess you don’t really smell the way I do. Anyway, I’m picking up some SERIOUS fear reek. I’ve been getting some of it ever since that scream in the hangar bay, but now it’s gotten way worse.

“That’s just Fluttershy,” Dest said, surprising the others by talking to nobody at all. “I imagine she always smells like that to you.”

Nah bro, it’s not her. I’m talking daemon-stink. Real thick.

Dest recoiled slightly in surprise. “Daemons? Daemons feel fear?”

No. Vel paused. Well, I mean, yes, but really no. Kind of.

“Elaborate,” Dest said flatly, turning his gaze to the ceiling.

“What… What is he talking to?” Jerriha whispered, slowly creeping away. “Is he-“

“Be silent,” Gaela interrupted. “Continue your work. Stay on your guard.” She waited patiently for the Iron Warrior to finish.

Okay, it’s like this: we don’t really have emotions. It’s more like we ARE emotions. Right?

“Which emotion are you?” Dest asked curiously.

That’s… rrrrgh. After a moment, the voice continued. It’s not always a clear-cut thing, dude. Not all of us are just a big ball of anger or lust or whatever. I’m complex, you know?

“But currently you’re sensing the presence of many fear-daemons?”

Uh… maybe? Like, I don’t know what I’m sensing. Never smelled anything like it. I don’t think fear-daemons are really a thing. What would you call them, Pissletters?

Dest grunted, lowering his gaze again to stare down the hall. “Does this information have any clear tactical application? Will the daemons flee in terror once we are set upon them?”

Oh, no, nothing like that. We don’t really have what you guys call the “flight” part of the fight or flight response. They’ll definitely try to kill you, but they’ll be more desperate than angry while doing it.

“Sub-optimal,” Dest grumbled. “Yet this may mean they are more reluctant to engage.”

He turned to face the others, and most of the boarding party backed up a step. “Our enemies seem to be the manifestation of terror itself.”

“… Like, meaning they’re super scary?” Rainbow asked after a pause.

“Possibly. My personal daemon expert isn’t especially helpful,” Dest said, tapping his helmet with a claw.

Heh heh heh… Pissletters.

“Shut up, Vel,” Dest growled. “We should proceed. Engineer?”

“Yeah, okay. I’ve got a bead on a pack of… things to the aft near the cargo stores. They’re the closest targets. After that there’s-“

A crackling noise came from the track lighting above, and it flickered briefly before turning off entirely. In an instant the hall was plunged into total darkness, broken only by the many glowing visor lenses of the boarding team’s helmets.

“Power failure,” Gaela mumbled. “Engineer, is the main reactor still functional? Or perhaps the enemy is setting up ambush, thinking us frightened of the dark?”

Fluttershy made a terrified squeaking noise.

Fennin grunted in frustration, quickly swiping away what he had been working on. “No. This is definitely a main reactor failure. If it were a local grid problem the circuit re-route would have happened fast enough to keep the lights on.”

“We ain’t gonna really have to fight monsters in the dark, are we?” Applejack groaned.

“We hast no qualms,” Luna said, sounding quite chipper about the prospect.

“Ah don’t mind it as much as y’all will if’n Ah start blastin’ fire everywhere without seein’ what Ah’m shootin’ at,” Applejack snorted. “But Ah hate the low-light vision on this thang. Everythin’ just turns into reddish blobs blurrin’ together.”

A gentle hum came from above, and then the lighting came back on. It was noticeably dimmer than before, and Gaela immediately noticed that the access panel for the room they had just left was still unpowered.

“Backup generator has kicked in. We’ll still have basic lighting and life support, but most other systems will require a directed power link or secondary energy source,” Jerriha said. “If anyone else is having second thoughts about this mission, now would be the best time to turn around.”

“No.” Dest started walking toward the aft, his boltgun held loosely in his hand. “We have our first target. Search and destroy. Then we will determine how to find our next target.”

“Huzzah!” Luna cheered, prancing ahead of the other ponies. “With flame and iron, We shalt cleanse the foul daemon from our vessel!”

“That’s easier said than done. Particularly if we’re on backup power,” Fennin griped. “The Rep’talal isn’t as uselessly huge as human ships, but there’s still a lot of room in here for hostiles to hide. If I can’t connect to the sensor network, rooting them all out will take days.”

Luna’s Iron Gage shifted, and one of the gauntlets placed itself around her helmet with its thumb under her chin and the index finger across her vox grille, in imitation of a human’s thinking pose.

“Rep’talal ‘tis a poor name,” Luna decided while she plodded down the hall. “If this vessel shalt serve us, then it requires a title of great prominence and nobility.”

“The name means ‘Swift Certainty’ in your language,” Jerriha interjected. “Or at least, that’s as close as I think you’ll get. It’s not a perfect translation.”

“If we had another pony ship we could call one of them ‘Love’ and the other ‘Tolerance’,” Daniels said with a chuckle. “But we only have the one, so how about ‘Friendship Express’?”

Luna grimaced. “We desire a name with greater… how doth the youth put it… ‘edge’ to it.”

“A typical designation would best reflect the fleet origin,” Gaela said. “Secondary and tertiary references would favor the shipyard or its system of intended operation, respectively.”

“Somethin’ like ‘Sword o’ Centaur,’ maybe?” Applejack asked.

“Eeyup,” Big Mac agreed, startling several people who had forgotten he was there.

“Oh! I have an idea! Call it ‘Rainbow Cruiser’!” Rainbow Dash said, nodding her head eagerly.

“I rather like the translated name. ‘Swift Certainty’ has a sort of understated dignity to it, don’t you think?” Rarity asked.

Dest was still taking point as they advanced, but he briefly raised a claw before interrupting. “I like the name ‘Friendship Express’.”

“How about ‘Moonship’?” Twilight asked.

The boarding party stopped moving, and several people groaned.

“What? What’s wrong with ‘Moonship’?” the young Princess asked, sounding slightly hurt. The others started moving again, several of them shaking their heads.

“I guess we should be glad it’s not gonna be your ship,” Rainbow snickered. “What would you call it then? Twiboat?”

“No!” Twilight protested. “… I mean, that wouldn’t be my first choice, at least. I think I’d go with ‘StarSparkle’!”

“Please, stop,” Gaela implored the mare.

Fennin shook his head and finally put away his engineering tablet, concluding it was useless to him at the moment. “You’re all rather relaxed considering our current situation.”

“Our situation is near-optimal,” Gaela retorted. “We’ve encountered only weak resistance and inconveniences, and suffered no casualties.”

“We were attacked by infectious monsters, we’ve lost power for no apparent reason, and you all seem to have forgotten that inexplicable psychic scream that alerted the infected to our presence,” Fennin complained. “If nothing else, it’s a bleak omen.”

“’Tis it!” Luna suddenly said brightly, snapping the fingers of one gauntlet. “Omen! This vessel shalt be henceforth referred to as the Omen!”

“Huh. That ain’t bad, Princess!”

“Eh, I still like Rainbow Cruiser better, but okay.”

Fennin made a frustrated noise and was about to complain further, but he suddenly found himself staring at Dest’s upraised, open palm.

“Be silent,” the Iron Warrior hissed, “we approach our prey.”

The pirates slowed to a crawl, and Applejack shouldered her way to the front of the group. The hallways were narrow, making it difficult to form a firing line with a larger squad, but the ponies being considerably shorter than the various bipeds allowed the latter a clear line of fire over the party’s vanguard.

“Ah’ll blast the floor at their feet when Ah see ‘im, and then y’all blast the varmint,” the farmer said grimly, a puff of flame spurting from her weapon.

“Could we actually NOT start any fires inside the ship, please?” Fennin asked with a groan. “Particularly when we’re on emergency power? I don’t remember if fire suppression is a system-critical function, and I’d really rather not find out the hard way!”

“Fair point. Applejack, restrict your flamer usage until we’ve confirmed tactical necessity,” Gaela whispered, taking up a stance with her axe. “Stand by for target verification.”

Luna almost shivered with excitement, her gauntlets squeezing into fists and sparking with magic.

The sound of footsteps was audible as soon as the party stopped to listen. Not the awkward tread of misshapen daemons, however, or even the gentle plodding of infantry across deck plating. These were heavy, sluggish steps, not much different from those of Dest or Gaela.

“That… That sounds almost like…” Jerriha mumbled to herself under her breath, and her heart raced.

Ahead of the boarding party, at the next intersection in the hall, a Tau XV88 Broadside battlesuit staggered into view.

No one fired, surprised as they were to see a Tau weapon still walking these halls. In addition, the battlesuit didn’t take notice of the pirates, lurching forward with its heavy, broken gait.

The suit was badly damaged. One leg sparked and sputtered with every step, and much of the armor on the front of the torso had been stripped away. A deep cleave bisected much of the suit’s head, rendering that component useless, and the massive railgun – the signature weapon of this battlesuit class – had its barrel torn open.

“Contact, Tau battlesuit. Pattern XV88,” Gaela murmured, speaking for the purpose of recording the encounter. “Extensive damage to exosuit systems evident. Hostility unclear. Orders?”

Dest glanced over at her, and then back at the battlesuit.

It lurched from side to side, as if looking around. But the light in its sensor head remained dark, and its dead gaze passed over the boarding party without obviously noticing them. Its gun bounced loosely in its grip, as its elbow joints had been damaged, but the deadly weapon never turned to aim at the pirates.

Sounds came from within the battlesuit: something between a moan and a mumble, and unintelligible to most of the boarders. But not all of them.

“He… He said ‘area secure, moving to next checkpoint,’” Fennin explained, his voice shaking slightly.

*Shas’ui! Report!* Jerriha barked, her pulse carbine trained on the battlesuit. *Are you part of Voidsong’s contingent? What happened to the others?*

The battlesuit turned toward the boarding party. Weapons hummed and fingers tightened around triggers, but none fired.

With a clear view of the front of the suit, they could see that a hole had been punched into one side, through the main armor layers and down into the suit’s substructure. A four-fingered hand, sheathed in the common materials of Tau flight suits, hung out of the hole limply.

*Soldier! Identify yourself and power down your battlesuit or we WILL open fire!* Jerriha commanded in her native language.

The battlesuit turned away started walking down the hall. *It’s quiet. Where did they all go?* the pilot murmured, his voice barely escaping from the ruptured armor. *Comms are still damaged…*

“Uh, okay…” Daniels lowered his shotgun, shaking his head. “Are we really going to gun him down? Poor sod doesn’t have a clue what’s happening, but I don’t think this one is infested.”

“Can’t we just walk past ‘im?” Applejack asked. “He ain’t botherin’ us none.”

“Unwise. We don’t know what happened to the pilot or if it may become hostile under different tactical conditions,” Gaela noted. “In addition, we are here to clear this vessel of obstruction. You don’t want something like this stalking the decks when you’re trying to work.”

“Apple. Seize it by the foot, then pull its legs out from under it,” Dest commanded. “Sparkle, help me cut the battlesuit open when it falls. We’ll remove the pilot directly, with minimal harm.” He mag-locked his boltgun onto his hip.

“Ready!” Twilight said, her harmonizer flipping around and extending an energy blade.

“May We be of aid?” Luna asked anxiously, the fingers of the Iron Gage wiggling.

“Just keep your guard up and your sorcery ready,” the Iron Warrior growled. “This stinks of a trap. Apple! NOW!”

Applejack’s gravity lash whipped forward, latching onto the right leg of the XV88 battlesuit. It promptly blasted sparks from every joint, and a loud squeal came from the knee. A sharp tug pulled the leg back, and the battlesuit wobbled comically before teetering forward and crashing face-first onto the deck.

Dest was on top of the battlesuit in an instant, pinning down its arm under a knee before stabbing his talons into the body. The force harmonizer stabbed into the suit’s back, loosening it enough that Dest could pry the entire ventilation unit off the rear of the armor.

The rest of the boarding party watched in grim silence as the pair performed their strange surgery, blades crackling with power and shrieking against the damaged armor of the battlesuit. The mumbling of the pilot didn’t stop; if anything, it became louder and more agitated. But with the suit on its face and the noise of Dest’s work, Fennin and Jerriha couldn’t make out what was being said.

Dest’s shoulder-mounted blades punched downward, and then he ripped away a piece of the battlesuit’s internal frame. Reaching in, he seized the soft, quivering body within and yanked it out. It was attached to the suit interior by several cables, and Twilight gingerly slipped her energy blade in from the side to cut them loose.

Dest held up the battlesuit pilot in front of the speechless pirates, staring at the trembling body in his claws. “I think I see the problem,” he said dryly.

The pilot’s eyes were gone. His face had been cut up badly, as if from a series of razors, and the sockets where his eyes had been were reduced to empty holes ringed with dried gore. The process had clearly not been done gently, yet the alien’s body seemed largely unharmed otherwise.

“We… We should leave,” Jerriha said, swallowing the bile rising in her throat.

“Why?” Gaela asked, pointing her axe at the pilot. “This soldier is clearly damaged beyond recovery. Let us destroy it and move on.”

“What do you mean ‘why?!’ Look at him!” Fennin shouted, already backing away.

“I see it,” Gaela said, sounding annoyed and somewhat perplexed. “I don’t see a threat worthy of-“

The blinded pilot screamed.

Omen

View Online

Rep’talal
An Age of Iron story
by SFaccountant

Chapter 2
Omen

****

The Tau pilot, its eyes gouged out and its body held up like a limp doll, screamed. It was not a scream of terror or pain. It didn’t even seem like a willful reaction to being seized and threatened by armed intruders. It was a scream of heart-stopping madness, and it echoed in the pirates’ ears and wormed its way into their muscles.

The pilot howled toward the ceiling, his voice continuing to rise in pitch and volume. His jaw and lips stretched like rubber, far beyond what should have been physically possible. The bulkheads seemed to tremble underfoot, and as it reached its apex the unearthly shriek pierced the hearts of the boarding team.

One by one, the pirates collapsed. Fluttershy gasped and fainted almost instantly, followed by Rarity a moment later. Rainbow Dash fell like a stone, her legs buckling the moment she landed. Applejack shouted defiantly while her vision spun, only to hang her head when she fell unconscious seconds later. Big Mac too passed out while standing up, his helmet lumens flickering softly. Daniels staggered to the side, holding his head, and then slumped against the wall. Fennin and Jerriha seemed to go still for a moment, and then simply fell over. Gaela fell to one knee, a blast of static escaping her vox grille. Then her arms fell limp, and her power axe clattered to the floor.

Twilight and Luna froze, feeling a sense of overwhelming dread seize them, as if claws of ice were trying to physically crush their hearts inside their chests. Their horns lit ablaze with magic, instinctively pushing back against the malevolent energies, but otherwise the mares could only gasp as darkness threatened to swallow their senses.

Still, they remained conscious, so they were the only ponies to witness Dest snarling and tearing the Tau pilot in half.

“Damnable witchcraft!” the Iron Warrior shouted, still holding the upper half of the alien. The Tau pilot didn’t stop screaming, so he threw the soldier’s torso onto the floor in front of him. His boot dashed the howling alien across the deck a moment later, finally silencing the debilitating shriek.

Luna sucked in a deep breath, suddenly feeling the paralyzing sensation vanish. Twilight stumbled backward and started coughing and wheezing.

“What… What…” Luna couldn’t quite get the words out, and her heart leapt into her throat when she realized most of their party was lying on the floor.

“Psychic attack,” Dest hissed. “Such powers can extinguish a weak mind in an instant. This was a trap after all!” His hearts thundered in his own chest, reacting furiously to the attempt to silence them. To stun an Astartes with an act of psychic will was difficult, particularly when that Astartes was empowered by a daemonic spirit, but even the Iron Warrior felt badly weakened by the experience.

“Extinguish… OH NO!” Twilight’s eye bugged out, and she whirled around to check on the others.

A wet growl came from down the hall. Beyond the fallen ponies and aliens was a hook-limbed daemon creeping low to the floor, its maw drooling a slime trail underneath it. Twilight let out a wordless shout and fired a magic bolt from her horn, blasting the monster to the side and hammering it against the wall.

“Daemons! There are daemons too!” the young alicorn screamed, rushing over to Gaela.

“Confirmed.” Dest spotted another creature on the other end of the party, coming down the opposite end of the hall, and he snatched his boltgun from his hip. “Either attracted by the scream or here to take the bodies of those incapacitated.” His gun bucked in his hand, and the daemon lurched backward while mass-reactive rounds punched into its torso. “Are our companions dead?”

A graph showing Gaela’s pulse popped up on Twilight’s visor, and she felt her knees weaken in relief when she saw that it was still tracking a heartbeat, albeit a very weak and unsteady one. “I think they’re still alive! Gaela! Gaela, wake up!”

A separate window appeared over her augmetic display.

Circulatory organ in critical state. Adrenaline surge administered. Neuro-electric pulse imminent.

The Dark Techpriest suddenly recoiled as if she had been punched. Staggering backwards, a stream of Binaric Cant sputtered from her helmet while she glanced left and right.

+Situational awareness restored. Warning: Combat systems engaged. Threat level omega. Target identification request.+

A hungry growl came from down the hall. Three more daemons raced toward the pirates, their bladed limbs and claws glinting in the dim light.

+Target priority designated. Cleansing.+

Gaela snapped up her gun arm and a trio of fragmentation munitions burst from her arm. They struck the lead daemon and blasted it apart in an instant, and then swallowed the remaining creatures in a cloud of hot razors. All three of the monsters vanished into brightly-colored flames, their enraged screams silenced under the sounds of explosions.

“Macintosh! Macintosh, We beseech thee, speak to us!” Luna shook the stallion furiously with the Iron Gage, nearly throwing him off his hooves.

After a few seconds a crackling noise came from his chest and the cyborg pony flinched. Big Mac looked up in bewilderment, blinking repeatedly as he stared into the crimson slits of Luna’s helmet.

“Eee… whuh?”

“Ironside! Thou art lucid?” Luna pressed, holding his head up to look her in the eyes.

The sudden bark of a boltgun and another grenade explosion caused Big Mac to jump in shock. Dest and Gaela were holding each side of the hall, but a steady stream of daemons were racing toward the mostly comatose intruders.

“Wake the others! We take to battle!” Luna’s Iron Gage sparked with energy, and the Iron Skull on her chest gleamed even brighter.

“They’re trying to overrun us!” Dest snarled, spearing a daemon on his free hand when it tried to sprint past. “Keep them back!”

Another monster dashed up to the Astartes, leapt up onto the wall next to Dest, and then ran across the bulkhead past the stabbing scythe-limbs of the pilot. With a feral screech it leapt toward the insensate ponies, talons reaching out to plunge into Rainbow Dash.

A great black gauntlet seized it around the neck mid-jump. The daemon flailed its razor-tipped limbs, scraping them against the weapon, but its efforts proved useless. It was flung onto the ground onto its back, and then a second fist slammed down onto its head.

“PERISH, FOUL BEASTS!! THE NIGHT SHALL SCOUR THIS CHARIOT OF THY FILTH AND CLAIM IT FOR OUR OWN!!” Luna bellowed, firing a beam from her horn and slicing another daemon in half.

Daniels jerked awake at the shout, blinking rapidly and instinctively clutching his shotgun. “What? What the hell was that?! Where am I?!”

“Get up and fight,” Gaela said simply, not deigning to answer his questions. An autoloader swiveled another fragmentation shell into her launcher, and a laser beam fired from her servo harness with a shrill whine.

As one daemon fell before the crimson lance, another one bounded along behind it, leaping up onto the wall and then jumping off with talons outstretched. Daniels fired his shotgun, blasting it in the chest, and the Warpspawn missed its landing.

Gaela’s axe came down, cleaving the monster’s head from its shoulders. Her boot kicked what remained back down the hall before it could began to dematerialize, knocking over another daemon that was struggling to get up.

“We are Chaos,” the Dark Techpriest snarled, raising her grenade launcher again. “Denizens of the Warp will serve, or they will meet oblivion like any other enemy.”

The fragmentation shell launched into the staggered creatures, and they vanished in a cloud of fire and steel.

Applejack finally came to her senses, the blurry mix of targeting and alert runes slowly crystallizing from an indistinct, reddish fuzz. Big Mac stood over her, the stallion’s expression hidden behind the mask of metal plates and crimson glassine. He didn’t need to say a word, and neither did Applejack. The farmer stood up fully, feeling the heft of her armor beyond the servo-motors that empowered her.

Taking in the sound of fighting, she started to turn to face the largest concentration of oncoming daemons. Her gaze happened to cross over the insensate bodies of their Tau assistants as she did so, and she stopped short at the sight above them. A pale tentacle riddled with veins and barbs was snaking down from one of the ruptured air vents, stretching toward the closest immobile bodies.

“Hey! Above the grays! Watch out!” Applejack shouted and bolted toward the aliens, tilting her flamer up above them.

The blast of fire missed the Tau, swallowing the tentacle and the air vent above it. A furious screech issued from within the vent, and the tendril – still burning – dropped onto the Tau boarders below.

“Erm… Twi! Little help?” Applejack asked.

“With what?” Twilight stood over Rarity, who didn’t seem to be getting up. She quickly turned her head to fire a magic bolt down the hallways that Gaela was covering. “We’re really busy right now, Applejack!”

With another howl a small, lithe body suddenly burst from the ventilation shaft, its body wreathed in fire. The daemon landed on Fennin’s chest, promptly sinking its claws into the engineer’s leg.

Fennin screamed, lurching upright. The monster bounced onto the floor at Applejack’s feet, and a blazing talon whipped around and slashed at the nose of her helmet. A boot slammed into it in retaliation, knocking it on its back.

“WHAT’S GOING ON WHAT IS THAT THING WHY AM I ON FIRE?!”

“Stop yellin’ and get fightin’!” Applejack shouted back, jumping at the burning daemon. The creature bounced away with uncanny agility, and her hooves crashed onto the deck mere inches behind it. Her tail shot forward over her head, scorpion-like, and struck the daemon again.

“I WARNED YOU NOT TO START ANY FIRES IN HERE!!” Fennin shrieked, scrambling away from the burning tentacle. His boarding armor was fire-resistant, like any hazard suit, but the heat still worked its way through the insulation layer to sear his skin dangerously.

“Ah think we have bigger problems than that!” Applejack shouted back, chasing after her current target.

The daemon flipped back upright, and for the first time she realized that the little burning monster had no distinguishable legs. Rather, it possessed seven arms, joined at seemingly random points on the fleshy blob that was its body. Some propped the thing up, some pushed sharply against the floor for locomotion, some whipped and stabbed defensively, and all were tipped by razor-edged talons that burned without being consumed by the flame.

Applejack pounced and the daemon rolled, slipping away from the ceramite-clad hooves.

“Somepony help me pin down this varmint!” she growled, kicking at it again. It scrambled away, bouncing and sliding, keeping just inches ahead of the mare.

Then it suddenly bolted toward Fluttershy, who was still lying unconscious on her side.

“FLUTTERS! FLUTTERSHY, MOVE! IT’S GONNA-“

A pulse blast struck the Warpspawn in the side, throwing off its attack and causing it to trip just inches from its prey. The daemon rolled to bring a new pair of claws onto the deck, but then a second pulse bolt struck it in the core, stunning it.

Applejack reached the flaming terror, landing on it with both front hooves. Spine-riddled bone and twitching muscle was crushed under her greaves, and then the false matter evaporated. The flames that clung to the monster fell away into showers of sparks, bouncing across the deck before winking out harmlessly.

The farmer sighed in relief. “Thanks, Fennin.”

“My name is Jerriha,” Jerriha grumbled, slowly pulling herself up. Her pulse carbine was in her hands, while Fennin’s still lay on the floor. “How many contacts?”

“TOO MANY!” Daniels shouted back. His shotgun bucked wildly in his hand, knocking back another scythe-limbed terror.

“What’s our path of retreat?” Jerriha demanded.

“None.” Gaela fired her last fragmentation shell down the hall, obliterating the monster that Daniels had stunned. “We fight or we die.” Her servo arm swiveled downward and clamped onto a lever on her arm, and after a sharp twist the grenade launcher fell away. Then the augmetic split open at the end, revealing the mouth of her ion cannon. “Most likely both.” A slowly building whine came from her arm, and flickering blue flames sprouted from the exhaust vents on her servo harness.

“Tau’va take me, I hate you psychotic apes,” the Fireblade snarled. “Fennin! Pick up your gun and help me form a firing line! Princess Purple, stop nudging the other ponies and help kill things!”

“But… if I can wake them up…” Twilight hesitated, looking down at Rainbow Dash. The pegasus was curled up on her side and kicking, like she was having a bad dream.

“They’ll get up on their own or not at all!” Jerriha fired a burst past Gaela, cutting down a daemonic hound sprinting toward the pirates. “You’re probably worth more in a fight than the pegasi anyway! Move!”

“Hey! HEY!” Fennin shrieked, jumping back against the wall. “ABOVE!! LOOK OUT!!”

A ceiling plate shook and cracked, and the track lighting built into it started flickering for no obvious reason. Then it went out and the entire plate fell loose. It landed on Big Mac, which barely startled the placid stallion. The shrieking daemon that fell a moment later was a very different matter.

It was gaunt and bipedal, with pale skin stretched over a human-like skeleton, giving it the appearance of a naked, emaciated man. Except, perhaps, for the eyeless, earless head full of needle-like teeth, the long, curved talons on its hands and feet, and the many ink-black eyes dotting its torso like blisters.

Claws raked at the daemon’s perch before anyone could react, tearing long, burning gouges in Big Mac’s armor around his barrel and the back of his neck. The stallion bucked hard, throwing the monster off, and it rolled across the deck while being chased by a panicked string of pulse blasts.

“Lead it! Lead it! You’re going to shoot one of us, Fennin!” Jerriha shouted, taking a moment to aim her own carbine. A burst of energy flares caught the monster in the side, tearing half of its body apart in an instant.

The daemon collapsed onto the floor, flailing, and then twisted its eyeless face toward the Tau that had hit it. Its mouth opened and its tongue shot out like a bullet, stabbing a dagger-like bone shard into Jerriha’s leg. She fell over, snarling curses in her native language while trying to line up another shot.

Instead, Big Mac’s hooves came down on the daemon’s head, crushing it to a pulp that rapidly burned away to nothing. The monster’s tongue and its projectile tip vanished as well, leaving the Fireblade clutching her wound tightly.

“Medic! Where’s our medic?!” Jerriha shouted.

“S-Still asleep!” Fennin stuttered.

“Then wake her up! Go! I’ll cover the ceiling breach, but I’m bleeding!”

A monstrous howl rolled through the bulkheads, and the lights flickered overhead.

Another daemon rounded the corner at the end of each corridor of the ambush zone.

Huge beasts of seething muscle and rock-like skin, they barely fit in the cramped, utilitarian corridors of the ship. Enormous arms, extending from points that could barely be described as shoulders, clambered across the deck awkwardly, digging gouges into the deck plating with long scythe-like claws. Their heads consisted of a gaping mouth full of teeth atop a mound of hard muscle and little else; if the Warpspawn had any eyes, they were hidden among the wide variety of small, hideous malformations dotting its hardened flesh.

“War daemons. Try to destroy the limbs first,” Gaela ordered, raising her ion blaster.

“Hark! Mayhaps a worthy foe hast emerged!” Luna’s Iron Gage tossed aside the evaporating body of a hook-limbed monstrosity, which hit the wall with a wet slap. The gauntlets turned to face the larger daemon, and small orbs of energy coalesced within their palms. “Back to the void with thee, daemon!”

To her surprise, Dest jumped over and slapped the Iron Gage down. “Do NOT fire heavy beam weapons within a void ship!” the pilot admonished. He quickly turned his bolter on the new attacker, firing burst after burst of blistering explosives into its armored hide. “There are many sensitive systems and deceptively weak bulkheads! Do you wish to take this vessel intact or not?”

Luna brightened in an instant. “Aye! Well met, Lord Dest! We shalt smite this wastrel with greater care!”

One of her gauntlets pointed an index finger at the daemon, and a whip of dark blue lightning shot out of the end. The monster flinched and howled, its body covered by a web of crackling power.

Dest heard his boltgun click empty and tossed the weapon aside, sprinting for the stunned Warpspawn. The claws on his gauntlets lengthened, spikes started poking through his armor, and his shoulder-mounted scythe blades twitched eagerly in anticipation. He tackled the daemon – twice the size of even a possessed Astartes – and slammed it against the bulkhead wall while his blades searched for a soft spot.

Hey! I think I figured it out! Vel said suddenly. Okay, so you know that fear stench from before? It was ALL over that gray zombie bro. But-

“Not now, Vel!” Dest shouted, digging his claws into what he estimated to be the daemon’s throat.

The monster hurled him away with a shove, and the Iron Warrior’s greaves scraped loudly across the deck as he skidded to a stop. Slashing talons followed him, rending long tears in his armor but failing to reach the twisted flesh underneath.

A black fist shot into the gap between the combatants, hammering the daemon in its jaw. The monster reeled, and then smacked the weapon aside, knocking it across the floor. Flames suddenly puffed from its mouth, flickering from green to blue to white, and then a beam of blazing energy fired down the hall.

Luna was surprised enough that she didn’t raise a barrier in time, and the beam scorched a line of eldritch fire across her helmet cheek, partially burning through the plating. She whinnied in pain and reared up, her horn sparking angrily.

Dest charged again, but this time the daemon met him head-on, and little worse for wear due to the previous attacks it had suffered. Talons slashed through the air, and the Iron Warrior struggled to avoid the long, flailing limbs in such a narrow space. Then the beast surged forward, ramming straight into the Astartes and pinning him against a wall.

Okay, is now a better time? This is kinda important, bro.

The daemon lunged to bite, but Dest grabbed onto its head, straining to keep the enormous snapping jaws at bay. “Would it aid in the defeat of this creature?!” he shouted.

Uh… no, not really…

“Then it can wait!” Dest snarled, right before driving a knee-spike into the daemon’s jaw.

Across the hall, a steady stream of munitions and energy bursts sprayed against the other war daemon, covering its hide with heat flares and small explosions. The daemon held its arms together, stacked in front of it like a shield, and slowly trudged into the torrent of heavy bolts, ion blasts, pulse surges, and heavy shot.

A burst of magic missiles briefly added to the barrage, hammering the monster with glittering orbs of purple light. They exploded into dazzling swirls of color, but didn’t seem to inflict any more damage than the rest of the weapons.

Gaela’s ion blaster screeched, launching shot after shot of crackling energy bolts into the war beast. Steam puffed from the heat sinks, and electric arcs whipped between the claws of her arm.

“This is useless. Our ranged weapons do not seem to be effective.” A laser fired from Gaela’s servo harness, drawing a scorched line across the daemon’s face but doing little else. “Tactical shift proposed. Sparkle, immobilize target. Daniels, grayskins, prepare grenades!”

“Can a photon grenade even affect that thing?” Jerriha demanded, leaning against the wall while she switched firing modes.

“Uncertain. Attempt it anyway!”

Twilight’s horn pulsed, and then whips of purple energy spun out from the tip and disappeared into the ether. Seconds later, chains of glowing lavender burst from the walls and deck around the daemon, latching onto random points on its twisted body and going taut. The Warpspawn lurched backward, confused, and then started struggling against the bonds.

“Shield your eyes!” Jerriha fired her photon grenade while Daniels hurled a fragmentation grenade at the daemon’s feet.

The strobing flash exploded against the monster, and Gaela’s visor briefly blanked to avoid seeing the stun pulse. Then the fragmentation grenade exploded, tearing at the monster’s legs and underbelly.

The Dark Techpriest bolted forward, activating the power field on her axe. The daemon, not obviously hindered by either grenade, pushed forward, straining at the mystical chains.

“Dark Gods, guide my blade!” the engineer-cultist chanted, beginning a long overhead swing that pushed her arms’ servomotors to their limits. “Omnissiah, grant me strength!”

The axe came down in an arc of scarlet, slicing through the daemon’s hide with contemptible ease. The beast’s right arm came off with a sharpened crack, and ribbons of crimson energy stung at the wound. Chains that hung in the path of the blade exploded into purple sparks, loosening the daemon’s other arm.

With a hollow roar, the Warpspawn shattered the rest of Twilight’s spell and lunged for the Dark Techpriest. Its shoulder rammed into Gaela’s chest, shoving her against the wall, while steel-rending talons swiped after her. A servo arm snapped forward and struck the incoming hand, grabbing and twisting, and the daemon tore it from its socket for her trouble.

“Gaela! Hang on!” Twilight activated her force harmonizer, generating a humming energy blade. The Apple siblings galloped past on either side of her, smashing headlong into the daemon’s legs.

“Damn it, Techpriest, get away from it!” Daniels yelled while his shotgun blasted another shot into its hardened skin. “AJ, don’t just run at the thing!”

Grumbling that no one was listening to him, he removed the empty magazine and was reaching for another one when a pulse shot zipped over his head.

“HEY! What’re you-“

“Above! Above! Another one from the ceiling!” Jerriha shrieked.

Daniel didn’t get the chance to react to her words before something landed on his back, striking him in the back and side with blades that punched through the boarding suit and into flesh underneath. He hit the ground belly-first and tried to roll, but the daemon on top pulled the other way, rearing back talons to land the killing blow.

A wave of force suddenly pushed by him, like an intense wind, and suddenly the weight on Daniels’ back was gone. Rainbow Dash yelled a battle cry and zoomed over his head, but the mercenary didn’t stop to thank her. He rolled onto his side, seeing the gaunt, multi-armed daemon that was sliding away from him, and then brought up his shotgun while still lying on the ground.

One blast to the chest pulverized the daemon’s torso, and then Rainbow Dash crashed into the remains, smearing it across the bulkheads. Daniels pushed himself up again, struggling against intense pain from his lacerations, and quickly turned his weapon on the hole in the ceiling plating.

Another daemon, this one covered in chitinous scabs and bony thorns, started clawing its way from the ceiling only to take a shotgun blast to its cyclopean head, stunning it. A pair of pulse shots drove it back, hissing angrily all the while.

“Somebody do something about that ceiling panel!” Jerriha shouted, her aim sweeping back and forth. She could hear the sound of claws scraping within the ductwork, and the track lighting frequently flickered irregularly along the ceiling.

“We’re a little busy over here!” Applejack shouted back, slamming a boot into the war daemon. Claws slammed down over her, carving deep gouges into the top of her armor that nonetheless failed to pierce the layering.

“Rarity! Are you awake?!” Daniels shouted, suddenly groping around his shoulder to unfasten his grenade bandoleer.

“Ugh… B-Barely,” the unicorn mumbled, swaying back and forth on her hooves.

“Grenades! Pull the pins! Hurry!” Daniels ripped the belt free and held it out.

Rarity’s horn flickered, and with a weak grunt she did as instructed. A snaking blue glow danced over the explosives, and the grenade pins all slipped free and dropped onto the floor.

“Wait, wh-what do you think you’re doing?” Jerriha demanded, pressing her back against the bulkhead wall.

Daniels didn’t bother to answer, hurling the entire belt into the open duct above him.

“Take cover!” Fennin shouted, dropping to the floor and covering his head.

A rapid string of a half-dozen detonations tore through the ducts above the intruders, and several more ceiling bulkheads came loose and fell to the deck. How many daemons came with them was hard to say; the Warp-birthed flesh within the ducts had been thoroughly pulverized and shredded before tumbling onto the floor with the rest of the debris. Prismatic flame and psycho-reactive vapor mixed with the mundane fire and dust of the collapsed ducts, and the final angry howls of the victims inside them slowly faded to give way to the clashes at each end of the hall.

Gaela’s axe buzzed furiously as it bit into the hardened shell of the war daemon’s hide, sprouting bursts of bright crimson arcs around the cleft in the monster’s shoulder. Her servo drill stabbed forward, punching into the daemon’s skull, and critically pushing back the snapping maw that reached out eagerly for the Dark Techpriest.

Gaela kicked away, tearing her axe free, and then barely avoided being knocked over as Big Macintosh was sent flying in her general direction. The stallion slammed into a wall upside-down and then dropped down onto his head. Deep wounds had been carved into one of his augmetic legs, and one of his helmet horns had snapped off after he had stabbed it into the beast’s leg.

The daemon slammed its remaining fist down onto Applejack’s back, which seemed to do more obvious damage to the deck plating underneath the mare than it did to her. A purple force blade darted in over the farmer before it could strike again, plunging into what could barely be considered its neck.

“It’s so tough!” Twilight complained as her blade quivered and sunk deeper into the false muscles and bones of the daemon. “Aren’t there any vulnerable points? You already put a hole in its head!”

A spray of shuriken scattered across the war daemon’s chest, each ultra-sharp blade digging nearly an inch into its hide without apparent effect.

Gaela’s optics pulsed, and a building whir came from within her arm. “Focus a psionic pulse on the harmonizer cross. On my mark, release and then remove the weapon.”

Applejack bucked at the war daemon, staggering it, and then jerked back when it grabbed her tail. “Hey! HEY! Don’t touch that! Don’t-“

The monster flung Applejack like a flail, slamming her into one wall and then swinging her around into the other. Then it dropped the stunned equine, and its talons reached down toward her helmet.

The force harmonizer, still stuck deep in its neck, sparked dangerously.

“Discharge!” Gaela yelled before she bolted forward.

The harmonizer cross seemed to explode in a blast of purple energy, blowing open the wound and knocking the device away. The war daemon reeled, staggering backward, and a feral howl erupted from its twisted jaws.

Gaela’s power axe ripped into the daemon’s neck at the same point the harmonizer had, hewing deep. Even so, the hardened flesh in its path was far too much to cut through, and reinforced by thick trunks of bone. The axe stopped, still buzzing with power, and the war daemon reared its claws back.

Gaela let go of her weapon and stuck her ion blaster into the wound. The capacitors popped up along the length of the barrel, buzzing with energy and glowing a bright blue.

“RETURN TO YOUR MAKER, WARP-BORNE WRETCH!!” the Dark Techpriest roared, overloading the weapon. A blue-white flash came from the ion blaster, flooding the injury and overcharging the disruption field around her power axe. The field expanded suddenly, sending spikes of atomizing crimson in all directions deep in the monster’s torso.

The war daemon came apart all at once, its limbs falling away from a rapidly disintegrating body. They seemed to crumble into sand, and that sand in turn deflated to a cloud of colored dust, spreading through the air into nothingness.

Gaela’s power axe clattered to the deck, trailing smoke and wychfire.

“It’s down! It’s finally down!” Twilight cheered. She pulled her force harmonizer to her, and then turned around. “Now to take care of the othe-“

A loud crunching noise came from the remaining war daemon as the gauntlets of the Iron Gage crushed its head between them. A sizzling hiss came from the weapon’s disruption fields, and the defeated Warpspawn started to disintegrate.

Dest was behind the daemon, and he kicked over its body as it fell apart. The Iron Warrior had clearly taken the brunt of the abuse from the monster, with deep tears and bloody gashes over his armor, but the wounds were already regenerating and his armor layer regrowing. The driver took a look around to ensure the area was secure, and then held a finger against his head.

“Now you may speak,” he said to Vel.

“Uhm… well, I’m awake now, so… is anyone hurt?” Fluttershy asked.

Fennin and Jerriha both raised an arm. Daniels, who was partially buried under fallen ceiling panels, pushed one off of himself, rolled over, and then held up an arm. Fluttershy quickly scurried over to him first, her manipulator arms unfolding from her chest.

“What even happened back there?” Rainbow Dash asked with a shudder. “I remember… that Tau battlesuit, I guess, and then things are hazy…”

“It was some sort of psychic trap that used the Tau as bait,” Twilight hissed. “It nearly paralyzed all of us. Only me, Princess Luna, and Dest were able to resist it. After that the daemons moved in.”

“We got them, though, so… is that it? Are we finished?” Rarity said hopefully.

“Not a chance,” Gaela snorted. She was repairing her own armor, using a laser torch to re-attach the servo arm that the daemon had torn off. “This was merely a fraction of the horde that would have been necessary to silence a vessel of this size. It’s possible we’ve dispatched their mightiest combatants by slaying the war daemons, but even that is doubtful.”

“So then what’re the other critters waitin’ fer?” Applejack asked.

“Most likely they’re waiting in ambush around more traps.”

The ponies groaned.

Then Dest turned around to face the group. “I have news. The deranged creature in my head has identified our foe.”

“Hark! We were under the impression we merely faced numerous nameless scoundrels!” Luna declared. “Thou suggests We face an opponent of great infamy?”

“That is the case, unfortunately,” Dest grumbled. “Earlier, Vel noted that this place reeked of psychic fear-stench. The victims patrolling these halls with their eyes stolen seem to be the source, not the boarding daemons. The attacking daemons were entirely unremarkable to him, but Vel believes these puppets to be the work of…”

He halted, and then put a finger to his helmet again. “… We can’t pronounce that. Yes, fine, but THEY cannot... It doesn’t matter!” He grunted in frustration, and then looked up again. “Let’s call it Gharrl. It’s a crude translation of its true name, and will exert no power over the beast, but it will do.”

“And what is ‘Gharrl,’ exactly?” Twilight asked, intrigued.

“A lesser daemon lord. One that does not obey the four Great Powers of Chaos, or any other lesser power for that matter. It is known for not killing its enemies, but devouring the eyes from them in a perverse psychic ritual, leaving the victim a terrified, tormented shell of its former self reliving its final hours over and over. In such a state, they are little more than puppets, and can be used for all manner of profane purposes, evidently.” Dest growled lightly. “We can expect more such victims. I advise we eliminate them on sight.”

“Wait, hold on…” Fennin asked nervously while Fluttershy carefully stitched together his cuts through the hole in his boarding suit. “Why are you speaking like we’re going to keep going? We’re turning back, right?”

“Why would we do that?” Gaela asked, sounding genuinely perplexed. “Our efficiency thus far has been exemplary, even in the face of a prepared opponent. The vessel is showing minimal signs of Warp corruption and internal damage. This operation is proceeding far better than anticipated.”

“And this talk of daemon lords eating people’s eyes doesn’t make any difference to you?!” the engineer asked, his voice increasingly shrill.

Gaela cocked her head to the side. “Your concerns are irrational. This daemon lord’s unique behavior is no more lethal than that of the other Warpspawn that have attacked us. Besides, we can replace eyes.” She tapped the visor of her helmet.

“I believe Fennin’s POINT is that the enemy is more capable and well-prepared than we’d hoped,” Jerriha said tightly. Then she looked over to Twilight. “What say you, Sparkle? Are you really going to stride headlong into whatever else this monster has waiting for us? Is this empty hulk really so important a prize?”

“No way are we retreating!” Rainbow Dash said, answering before Twilight could. “These daemon weirdoes caught us with our guard down and they barely scratched us! We’re gonna thrash ‘em!”

“Barely scratched YOU,” Fennin retorted hotly.

“Okay, fair. I AM a better fighter than you, after all,” Rainbow admitted, grinning.

“We were both unconscious, you mutant avian! It was sheer chance the freaks got to me first!”

Luna frowned beneath her helmet, and then calmly thumped the knuckles of the Iron Gage against the deck. “Praythee friends and allies, grant us thy attention,” she said, breaking the argument between the Tau and the others. “We believe we hast come too far to withdraw now upon the first signs of serious resistance. However, if we face a dreaded foe capable of dispatching much of our party at whim, mayhaps a change of strategy is warranted.”

“What did you have in mind?” Twilight asked, sounding somewhat skeptical.

“We shalt hunt the daemon lord ourself,” Luna announced, gripping one gauntlet into a fist in the air. “Our magic shalt protect us from the beast’s fell sorcery, whilst the rest of thee may remain out of harm’s way!”

“So your strategy is… to split up,” Jerriha deadpanned.

“It is not entirely absurd. Concentrating so much power in one area makes us difficult to overrun, but it slows our progress and leaves us more vulnerable to Warp trickery, not less.” Gaela’s ion blaster ejected a burnt-out capacitor onto the floor, and acrid smoke puffed from the component slot. “However… we need more data. The name of this daemon and its feeding habits are insufficient to form a battle plan.”

“I concur. But it seems Vel cannot track anything with the fear-stench of Gharrl’s puppets around,” Dest rumbled. “As always, the daemon proves himself so CLOSE to being useful, and yet…”

Fennin groaned. “All right, fine. If we’re going to do this, there should be a primary access terminal a few rooms down, next to the armory. I can rip some system data collected from before the power failure and maybe look into the core status while we’re there.”

“Objective logged. Have all recent injuries been treated?” Gaela asked.

“Yeah. I’ve got a gaping hole in my boarding suit which I’m going to regret if we depressurize, but Flutters did a decent hash of it,” Daniel said, rolling his shoulder.

“Luna, we have point. Apple, you have the rear,” Dest commanded. “Destroy any contact on sight. Protect the engineer. Advance!”

****

Rep’talal (reclassified: Omen)
Armory deck

The dim lighting flickered on and off within the armory lockers, briefly illuminating the rows of reinforced storage cells and the heavily armored blast doors on either side. Cracked holes in the track lighting sputtered sparks each time, spilling showers of golden particles over the gore-streaked, muscle-bound body standing in the middle of the room. Light from the sparks briefly danced across the dirty metal bolted to the body’s ramshackle armor and the remains of a twisted, broken choppa. The ceiling lights weakly filled the room, briefly illuminating a green, snaggle-toothed head gaping in the darkness. The jaw hung slack, drool sliding freely from one side, while the top half of the face was hideous valley of lacerations digging deep into the eye sockets.

The light winked out again, mercifully engulfing the maimed Ork in darkness.

A thumping noise came from one of the doors, and it started to open. The Ork stirred, his cloying breath heaving through injured lungs. Fingers encrusted with dried blood tightened around the choppa’s handle. Within the chaotic sea of absolute terror that had consumed the alien’s soul, a distant but familiar impulse emerged.

Enemy.
FIGHT.

The Ork’s jaw twitched up into a half-grin, and it drunkenly turned around. A battle cry bubbled up its throat; a howl of glee and bloodlust twisted into a poisonous shriek to still the heart.

Before it could scream, bladed talons of adamantium scythed into the Ork’s neck, slicing through flesh and bone in an instant. The wail seemed to hesitate as the disembodied head tumbled to the deck, like a wheeze slowly building up into something more. The separation of lungs from larynx didn’t silence the Warp-blasted creature, but it was enough to delay the alien’s screech for a few precious seconds.

Then a small blue orb struck the Ork’s head, reducing it to a small black scorch mark across the floor.

Luna strode into the armory behind Dest, her Iron Gage pointing a single smoking finger forward like the barrel of a gun. “Be this the extent of our opposition? A single greenskin?”

“A single psionic trap,” Dest corrected, holding up the decapitated body. Flames burst from his hand, and then he tossed the burning corpse away. “It seems the Orks met much the same fate as the Tau.”

“Hey! HEY! What did I tell you about starting fires in here?” Fennin complained while he and the others start filing into the room. “Especially when we’re on emergency life support! If just one of the oxygen cyclers are taken off-line, then-“

“Then you should check to ensure that is not the case,” Dest interrupted firmly, pointing a claw to a terminal at the side of the room. “There is your cogitator. Get to work. We will protect you.”

Biting back a retort, Fennin trudged over to the system terminal, briefly flinching away from a burst of sparks overhead. The screen had dried blood splashed over it, but seemed to be otherwise untouched by whatever carnage had enveloped the room. It was, however, also completely dark.

“Blast! It’s unpowered! We have to find a power source,” Fennin groaned.

“Seriously? Shouldn’t this system be able to tap into the emergency grid?” Jerriha asked as she and Daniels took up defensive firing positions just outside the room.

“I don’t know. This IS a prototype hull design, so I don’t know what standards its system redundancies operate under. Naval engineers, bah.” Then Fennin narrowed his eyes toward the entrance. “Then again, it might be because SOMEONE hurled a belt of explosives into the upper bulkheads. You could easily destroy a primary conduit that way.”

“Oh, sure, it was definitely my grenades and not the hundred or so daemons that have been tunneling through your ship for weeks,” Daniels scoffed. “Don’t blame us humans for your shoddy workmanship. That ventilation shaft came apart like it was made of hardboard. I’m sure your electrical work is rubbish too.”

“Our ships are made to take explosives from the OUTSIDE, not the INSIDE!” Fennin snapped back.

“An oversight you might want to look into. Maybe someday you’ll even be able to survive simple boarding tactics.”

Fennin started to snap at him again, only to have Gaela interject first. “Cease your bickering. Fennin, can you repair the conduit?”

“Well, no, not from-“

Gaela interrupted again. “Very well. We’ll use a secondary power source.”

“Do you have a spare battery? A weapon pack won’t do the job,” Fennin warned.

“Something like that,” Gaela murmured, beckoning with her gun arm.

Big Macintosh lumbered forward and looked up at the tech-cultist. Then Gaela kicked him squarely in the chest.

The stallion barely budged, but his chest plating fell open a moment later. Then Mac’s chest hatch popped open as well, and Gaela leaned down to reach into it.

“Yer usin’ Big Mac’s cyber-guts as some kinda power supply?” Applejack asked.

“Affirmative.” Gaela pulled out a power cable with a sparking node on the end. “Do you object?”

“Not really. Just don’t overdo it, okay? Ah’m pretty sure he needs that juice to live,” the farmer warned.

“Eeyup.” Mac stared down at the cable in mild concern.

Gaela pulled the cable behind the terminal, and after a few seconds of cracking and buzzing noises a rising hum came from the system. The screens began to glow, and one by one they started to fill up with Tau symbols.

“Commune with your device,” the hooded cyborg commanded as she stood up. “Inform me if you require further technical solutions. I’m going to go scavenge fresh capacitors from your weapons.”

Fennin bit back a retort and went to work, setting his engineering tablet on the base of the terminal screens.

“… So, uh… putting aside the Ork that was waiting for us here, this area seems very… bloodied?” Twilight observed, her voice slowly rising to a squeak.

Streaks of gore and weapon impacts were everywhere over the walls and floor. Many of the munitions lockers had been opened, some of them by force, and discarded energy cells and bullet casings were scattered liberally across the room.

“This was surely the site of more than one pitched battle on this vessel,” Dest explained. “First, the Tau would have retreated here to try to repel boarders. The Orks would have likewise sought out this room for looting purposes.”

“It looks like they didn’t get very far,” Jerriha said grimly. “The storage seals to the main weapons supply are still intact. We have a complete weapons cache. The battlesuit racks aren’t empty either. Not all the pilots made it here in time.”

“Such is the fury of the Warp rift,” Dest intoned.

The Fireblade shot him a glare. “You might consider more conventional means of assault in the future, if this weapon of yours turns ship interiors into crazy extra-dimensional charnel houses. You are pirates, after all.”

“We need excuse nothing,” Dest retorted. “We won.”

While Jerriha fumed quietly, Twilight cautiously interjected again. “Okay, but as I was saying, there was obviously a lot of fighting here, but… no bodies.”

Dest glanced around again, as if to confirm her observation. Most of the others looked at Twilight strangely.

“Well, yeah. They’ve all had their eyeballs eaten or been infested by bugs and been turned into space zombies, right?” Rainbow asked.

“No, Sparkle is correct,” Dest said, his talons lengthening in irritation. “Those victims would have been captured alive, or ambushed by the daemon lord itself. What of the other victims? Many crew and intruders would have been slain in combat against less discriminating enemies, yet the only bodies we’ve seen are those in thrall to Gharrl or Nurgle. Where are the corpses?”

“Eaten?” Daniels guessed.

“Daemons can eat – Gharrl does, clearly – but I believe most do not experience hunger as we understand it or require physical sustenance for energy. Besides, I’d still expect remains of some sort. The corpses have most likely been moved,” Dest concluded.

“I can think of no reason for daemons to amass corpses in one place that isn’t extraordinarily profane,” Gaela remarked while her servo arm tore a component from a fusion blaster.

“So whaddya think they’re doin’?” Applejack asked.

“Daemons sometimes build constructs out of the fresh bodies of their victims. Idols of gore, fused with Warpfire into various hideous things.”

Fluttershy instantly engaged her cloaking device, winking out of sight.

“Other times they take bodies to a central location and flay them of skin, or remove the bones. I am uncertain as to what purpose this serves, if any. Daemonology is not my area of specialization.” Gaela plugged the component into her gun arm, and a buzzing noise came from the capacitor. Arcs of bright blue danced between the claws of the augmetic briefly, and then she tossed the rest of the weapon away.

“So you DON’T think they’re taking the bodies to use as more of those… screaming trap things?” Rarity asked.

“Negative. The creation of a subservient psychic thrall requires specific conditions that a dead body cannot fulfill.” Gaela turned back to the rest of the party. “The parasites we encountered on the loading deck could make use of such carrion, but those were the creation of a living cultist, and not aligned with our targets. Nor were there enough infected to account for all the Ork boarders, much less the original Tau crew.”

“So we’ll definitely be stumbling upon a horrifying pile of corpses at some point during this mission,” Daniels affirmed.

“Affirmative. At least disposal will be quicker with most of them in one place.” The Dark Techpriest swiveled a servo arm forward with several shifting needles on the end. “I am ready to begin repairs to damaged boarding suits. Sparkle, Dash, maintain perimeter watch.”

“While you’re doing that, I think I’ve found our target,” Fennin said. He was tapping away rapidly on his engineering tablet while occasionally reaching over to touch something on the console screen. “It’s very hard to make sense of the data; we mostly use drones for internal sensor readings and they’ve all gone into standby due to the power loss. But there’s one location experiencing such massive energy fluctuations that its been causing intense surges and outages through the power network, even on the backup generators. By logging the frequency and intensity of various points-“

“You can pinpoint the anomaly source,” Gaela finished while her servoweave stitched up Daniels’ suit. “We have our daemon lord.”

“Correct! It’s coming from the bridge, which is nice and dramatic.”

Luna’s horn sparked immediately, and her visor lenses pulsed with energy. “Huzzah! Then We shalt take to battle at once! Mark thy quarry, smith!”

“I’m… I’m not a…” Fennin shook his head. “Whatever. Fine. Inloading the coordinates and routing.”

“It will be quite dangerous, and the presence of traps is likely,” Dest rumbled, “I will join you in the assault.”

“Well met, Lord Dest! Together the beast stands nary a chance against us!” the Princess of the Night cheered.

“Are you sure you two will be able to handle it on your own?” Rarity asked. Big Mac also took an anxious step forward, pawing at the deck.

“Aye. Our minds art protected from the perfidious magics of the foe. We fear that it should snuff the life force from thee with its mere gaze, and We could not protect thee,” Luna explained somberly.

A hand of the Iron Gage floated over to Big Mac, lifting the chin of the stallion’s helmet.

“’Twould avail us nothing to free this vessel from the claws of the daemon only to lose our dearest allies in the attempt. We implore thee, await news of our glorious triumph!”

The augmented stallion snorted, and then nodded his head silently. The Iron Gage gently patted him on the cheek of his helmet, and then withdrew. The other ponies watched in mild confusion, uncertain what to make of the brief gesture.

“So are we holding position here while you two head off to either heroic triumph or painful, agonizing doom?” Daniels asked.

“Of course not. Engineer, map a route to the Omen’s main reactor and determine the cause of the power failure, if possible,” commanded Gaela while she repaired Jerriha’s armor. “We must restore communications and basic navigation if we are to dock the Omen with our maintenance satellite.”

“Way ahead of you,” Fennin replied. “The shutdown was caused by damage to a major regulator array. With no crew response, eventually the reactor created enough dangerous particles to force a safety protocol shutdown.”

“A relatively simple repair, then.” Gaela looked up to Dest. “I estimate the reactor shall be functional again by the time you return, Lord.”

“Erm… does it seem a little odd to anyone else that this damage knocked out the power JUST after we boarded?” Rarity asked.

“Our arrival definitely agitated the Warp-borne,” Gaela admitted. “It may be no coincidence. But that does not change our objective.”

“Also!” Fennin continued. “You remember that containment tag I mentioned earlier? I cracked the personnel file attached to it! This ship was carrying a human psyker named Kyleth Jackson!”

“So you did have one of the Black Ship's prizes here after all. Intriguing," Dest mused.

“This feller is like a human wizard or somethin’, right?” Applejack asked. “Like Serith?”

“Lord Serith isn’t very human anymore, but yeah, that’s the gist of it,” Daniels explained. “Kind of surprised it’s a human, but not very. The Tau don’t have any psykers from their own race.”

“That’s a shortcoming Lamman Sept has sought to compensate for. And certainly the Imperium’s liberated planets have been all too eager to give their gifted children to our diplomats rather than the fabled Black Ships.” Fennin slid a finger across a display monitor, and an image of a fairly young man in a blue and black jumpsuit appeared. “We study the psykers to further our understanding of the galaxy and the myriad ways other species exploit it. Jackson was somewhat popular among his fellow subjects for adapting better than most to life in the labs and socializing well. If I recall correctly, psykers rarely endure more than a few years of our experiments without going insane or fatally burning themselves out.”

The horned ponies in the room stared at him with expressions ranging from horror to contempt.

“And this is supposed to be… BETTER than what this ‘Imperium’ does to them?” Twilight asked.

“Yes,” replied Gaela, Dest, Daniels, and Fennin simultaneously.

“Okay, cool, but what does any of this have to do with our job here?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Psykers are prized prey for daemons, and also marginally better at combating them. If we can locate the body, we may find something interesting,” Dest suggested.

“In addition, I’m interested in the research data,” Gaela added. “After restoring power, we should locate the psyker labs and secure its research and artifacts.”

Jerriha tugged on the fabric of her boarding armor, testing the strength of the repair. “Wonderful. Some fifty years of backbreaking, dangerous research, all for nothing,” she sighed.

“Better it work to our benefit than be lost entirely within a daemon-infested hulk.” Gaela completed the repairs on Fennin’s boarding suit, and then yanked Big Mac’s power cable free of the armory console. The cord wound its way back into the stallion’s chest cavity, and then he quietly pushed the access plate closed.

“Then We tarry no longer!” Luna shouted, rearing up briefly. “Soon the last of the daemons shalt lay broken at our hooves, and the Omen be free of their vile presence.” She glanced over at Dest. “Aside from thee, of course.”

The Iron Warrior ignored her, tapping the side of his helmet. “Objective waypoint is logged. Farewell Sparkle. Keep the rest of the boarding group alive in our absence.”

“Of course! Good luck!” Twilight said cheerfully, raising a leg and waving goodbye.

****

Rep’talal (reclassified: Omen)
Navigation Center

The steady, sluggish thump of plodding battlesuits filled the navigation center as the mutilated victims of the Rep’Talal shuffled across the deck.

Before the massacre that had emptied it, the navigation officers of the Air Caste used the room to plot courses on the hololithic star map projected from the large round table in the center of the room. Given that Tau vessels couldn’t translate fully into Warp space, inter-system travel was a major endeavor and involved extensive planning of their intended route. The latest star maps and records of solar anomalies, as well as countless overlapping arrays of gravitational fields, all had to be accounted for as well as the more mundane matters such as available supplies and fuel. Contingency routes needed to be planned as well, given the abundance and general hostility of alien life. The Tau considered themselves the inheritors of a galaxy teeming with opportunities and lost souls waiting to be united under their banner, but the vastness of space also contained untold horrors and unfathomable dangers.

The eyeless psychic thralls shuffling around the deck seemed proof enough of that. Orks trudged from corner to corner, their bodies twitching while broken shootas and gore-streaked choppas scraped along the floor at their feet. Tau of various castes sat at the navigation table, babbling nonsense to themselves in the dim light. A trio of Crisis battlesuits patrolled the room in awkward, lurching steps, occasionally brushing by the Orks without apparently noticing them. All of the battlesuits were heavily damaged, with torn extremities and shattered sensor arrays, and each one had a hole carved or punched through the main body into the cockpit.

A wisp of black smoke slithered across the floor like a serpent, seeping into the room and slowly expanding.

None of the lurching thralls noticed the incursion, even after bits of crimson light pierced the shroud. A pair of hefty metal gauntlets emerged from the darkness, blue energy arcs dancing between their fingers, and they reached out toward the listless aliens seated around the table.

“Hark, feeble victims of blackest sorcery! Deliverance hath arrived! Be cleansed!”

Lightning flashed from the Iron Gage, striking the Tau seated around the table and bouncing from one thrall to another. The bodies quivered and disintegrated, burning down to ashes and scorched bone before the puppets could scream. A few stray lightning arcs struck the sightless victims patrolling the room, causing them to collapse onto the floor in quivering heaps.

The others patrolling the circuit stopped, and then slowly turned around.

Dest sprinted past Luna, slamming into the nearest battlesuit. His talons punched through the splintered cockpit armor and skewered the pilot inside, and then he incinerated the body with a burst of daemonflame. Gouts of crimson fire billowed from the cockpit breaches, and the battlesuit toppled onto the deck.

Luna shot a few more magic bolts, felling three more Orks, but there were too many of the horrifying thralls. Their jaws stretched open in symphony, and Luna shifted focus to defense as a soul-chilling wail filled the room.

A quiver ran down her spine, followed by a feeling of growing paralysis. Her vision spun, her stomach churned, and the minor concentration necessary to hold the Iron Gage aloft wavered. Still, she remained conscious, and her heart didn’t stop. The supernatural bodies of the alicorn and possessed Astartes resisted the psychic shrieks, but not without difficulty.

“HRAAAAAUGH!!” Dest hurled aside the battlesuit that hung on his talons, smashing an Ork against the wall. He raced to another greenskin thrall and slammed his gauntlets together over its head, obliterating the Ork’s skull and silencing it at last.

“Cease thy howling!” Luna demanded, throwing the Iron Gage forward desperately. They bumped into a battlesuit, and then they felt around the edges of the torso for the cockpit breach. After a few seconds they found it, gripped the open edge, and then tore the entire frontal plate of the battlesuit open.

“We demand SILENCE!” the Princess shouted, punching one fist into the cockpit and reducing the pilot to a pulp.

At last the scream petered out, and Luna felt the ringing in her ears stop. Dest also seemed to relax instantly, and some of the spikes that had sprouted up on his shoulders and back started receding as he tossed away the bodies he had decapitated.

The respite didn’t last long. A daemon rushed into the room, brandishing bladed limbs and spiked tendrils. A magic bolt cut it down, but three more scuttled in behind the first.

“The hordes advance! Just as before, they await the howl of the daemon’s puppets!” Luna’s Iron Gage fired another beam into the group, and another monster fell to the deck.

“Good. I prefer the conventional weapons of fire and claw to that infernal screeching.” Dest hurled himself into the first enemy, his talons seizing its arms. His shoulder blades descended on the daemon’s head a moment later, tearing through its face and neck all the way down to what passed for its sternum. He flung the disintegrating body into the remaining enemy, and then descended on it before it could recover.

A tendril snaked down from a ventilation shaft, a pincer claw at the tip opening up while it approached the Iron Warrior from behind. A great black gauntlet seized it first, and then pulled back sharply.

The vent broke apart, and a slimy, spindly daemon flopped onto the deck in a gurgling heap. Dest turned on his heel and slammed one boot down on the Warpspawn, smearing it across the floor.

A furious roar heralded the next wave of daemons, which started flooding into the room from the bridge access hall. Crawling, lumbering, slithering, scuttling; the nightmares manifest seemed to represent every twisted physique imaginable in a tide of misshapen monsters. Bony spines and blobs of corrosive venom leapt out ahead of the horde, splashing across Dest’s chestplate.

The Possessed Astartes spread his hands before him, and daemon flame blasted into the oncoming Warpspawn. Most faltered in an instant, stumbling as their bodies started to crumble away, but a few of the bulkier monsters shouldered their way forward through the fire. Reaching the front of the pack, the daemons were quickly cut down by sword-like talons, and each fell before it could raise a claw against the intruders. Dest was a blur of flashing blades and swirling fire, every inch of his body a lethal weapon.

An even larger form shoved its way into the hall, its thick hide protecting it from the remaining flames. A lumbering battle daemon thundered forward, a guttural snarl escaping its drooling maw.

Dest kicked away another victim and punched his blades down into a struggling daemon, tearing it in two. He flung the remains at the new, larger daemon, but the creature didn’t flinch away. The disintegrating body bounced off and was promptly trampled under the monster’s tread.

“Pilot! Withdraw!” Luna ordered. Her Iron Gage hovered in the air, clenched into fists and aimed toward the oncoming enemies. Magic swirled around the gauntlets, and a flickering blue blaze gathered around the wrist braces.

Dest dove away, and one fist blasted forward like a cannon shot. It impacted the daemon with similar force as well, punching through its carapace and bringing its advance to a halt. The other gauntlet launched, crashing into the daemon’s head. The Warpspawn keeled over backwards, and its body swiftly joined the scattered flames underfoot.

“Clear. For now,” Dest announced, looking around the room. His talons started shrinking, along with many of the other spikes and blades that had emerged from his armor. “The bridge lies ahead.”

“Aye! Let us finish this!” A black gauntlet slammed down onto the deck while Luna trotted forward. “We tire of slaying screaming thralls and hapless beasts! Face us, Gharrl!”

The other hand reached forward, and it touched its index finger to the door leading to their destination. A hissing spark appeared, burning deep through the point of contact. Then the gauntlet dragged the finger down, slowly cutting through the door.

“… The entrance isn’t locked,” Dest pointed out. “It simply closed automatically once the daemons stopped pouring through it. We do not need to cut through it.”

“We cannot simply prance into the enemy’s lair like lost vagrants,” Luna insisted, halfway through burning open the barrier. “The purging of a villain’s bastion requires verve! Panache! This is to be a deed of heroic destruction, not mere disposal!”

“If you say so,” Dest mumbled, waiting patiently for her to finish. “Regardless of what happens, it has been… enjoyable to conduct this purge among your warriors.”

“Aye! And thine assistance hath been a great boon to us, Lord Dest!” Luna cheered. “With such prowess, ‘tis a wonder thine army hath found any foe that couldst defy thee!”

The Iron Gage finished cutting through the exit, and then the black gauntlets threw the doors open. Luna dashed into the bridge, her horn flashing with power.

“Gharrl! Thy end hath come! Thou shalt be cast back into the purgatory that spawned thee!” Luna shouted, keeping her voice uncharacteristically restrained. Having her ears recently battered by supernatural shrieks had made her slightly more understanding of how obnoxious it could be.

The bridge was a wide-open space, much larger than most of the rooms they had encountered and explored since leaving the docking bays. It consisted of two levels, with a number of command consoles, seats, and projection devices scattered around an upper platform centered around three large command seats. The caste markings for Air, Fire, and Earth were inscribed in each seat, with the Air seat, presumably belonging to the ship’s captain, in the middle. Luna briefly recalled that there was supposed to be another caste in the Tau’s Sept hierarchy, but couldn’t remember anything about it and so brushed the thought aside. Around the raised level of the bridge was a trench of sorts, boasting an unbroken line of terminals and consoles all along the outer perimeter.

The entire bridge was messy with dried blood and damaged from blades and bludgeons. It was here, after all, that the daemon incursion had begun, its command crew butchered at their stations. Like the other areas of the ship there were no corpses, either.

Princess Luna entered hesitantly, looking back and forth. The daemons had been nesting in this place, judging by the horde that had emerged to attack them, but she didn’t see any enemies. Surely the daemon lord hadn’t raced out with the others and been dispatched in a blast of fire, had it?

Dest entered the bridge more cautiously, and then pointed a talon off to the side. “There. The freak thinks he’s hiding from us.” His hand shuddered and swelled, twisting into a serrated crab claw. “We’re not hapless prey bumbling into your web, monster! Submit to the scions of Chaos or be slain like the rest of your horde!”

Nothing happened for a few seconds, and then, suddenly, a figure leapt up from behind a row of consoles and perched atop them. It was humanoid, with pale, rubbery skin stretched tight over a tall, hunched skeleton nearly eight feet from head to toe. Four arms spread from its torso, each one ending in a long, curved, sword-like claw. A large central eye dominated its face, black as pitch, leering at the intruders from over a mouth of needle-like teeth. The daemon possessed several other, smaller eyes, set all around its head like a spider. It was a large abomination, if not significantly smaller and frailer-looking than the war daemons they had already overcome.

To Dest, its form reminded him somewhat of the Slaaneshi monstrosities; the lithe, sensuous daemons possessing caressing hands on one side of their bodies and cruel hooked talons on the other. But there was nothing alluring or exotic about this Warpspawn, and it bore the sigils of no Gods. It was a crass, wretched thing, stinking of death and misery.

Luna did not spend nearly as much time observing the enemy. With a wordless shout, she fired a bolt of black lightning from the Iron Gage.

The daemon moved, and the lightning bolt missed, crashing into a bank of control consoles and causing several of them to light up. After-images split away from the body in multiple directions, and the daemon became a blur of faded, flickering copies contorting themselves out of the projectile’s path. Luna blinked, perplexed. She had never seen a creature dodge an attack in such a bizarre fashion before.

“Don’t falter!” Dest growled, rushing to flank the daemon. His crab-claw spat small, shimmering fireballs across the bridge as he ran, exploding across the consoles where their prey awaited.

The daemon blurred again, its body contorting in impossible ways as it leapt onto another control console. Whether a trick of bending light or bending reality, it bounced from alcove to alcove while avoiding every projectile.

“Thou canst evade us forever!” Luna proclaimed, her horn charging with more magical power. “Begone, wretch!”

The Iron Gage released a spread of lightning arcs in the daemon’s direction, striking numerous consoles and causing them to turn on and then immediately blow out from the power surge. The daemon itself tried to bend away, but as the Princess designed there was no escape from the crackling whips of power. It fell to the ground with a shriek, bright blue flames scorching its flesh.

“I have him!” Dest announced, leaping atop a weapons control station and crushing much of it under his greaves. With another jump he was above their prey, his blade-edged claw snapping for its head.

The daemon’s body blurred again, hazy mirror images spreading out in all directions. Dest’s claw struck the deck, carving a deep tear through the bulkhead plating.

The Iron Warrior looked up, searching in either direction. He whirled around to look behind him. His target was nowhere to be seen.

“Lord Dest? Didst thou dispatch the foe?” Luna asked. She didn’t have a good view of where the daemon had landed, but it was hard to imagine the possessed Astartes missing such an easy strike.

“No! It… moved. Blinked, perhaps. I know I didn’t hit it,” Dest snarled. “Vel! What is this? Where is it?”

Dunno. I think he gated out.

“Gated? What does that mean?”

Er… you know, like your ships do? He bounced to the Warp, bro! He out! You won!

“It… retreated? After suffering a single attack?” Dest scoffed. “I was under the impression daemons were not subject to such cowardice.”

“Indeed,” Luna agreed, frowning. One of her gauntlets floated up under her neck to stroke her chin. “This doth not feel like a victory. Mayhaps… hm?”

A small crimson spark appeared in the air in front of the alicorn, sizzling softly. Luna cocked her head to one side, curious.

Her visor interface went red with alarm sigils. Warning screed flashed in front of her, but it all came too quickly for her to read.

A blade emerged from the ember hanging in the air, stabbing for the startled pony. Were it not for the completely incidental position of the Iron Gage, it would have surely sunk into her neck, but instead it scraped across the gauntlet and plunged into Luna’s chest. It punched through the hardened plate with only minor difficulty, slicing through the frame and into the flesh underneath.

Luna gasped in pain, recoiling. Her horn started blazing with power, preparing to unleash waves of destruction in desperate retaliation.

Then the blade pulled back into the glimmering breach, vanishing from sight. A wash of Luna’s blood splashed across the deck; a fan of bright crimson painting the dull, flaky gray that remained of massacres long past.

“Princess! What happened! What was that?!” Dest demanded, sprinting over to the equine.

“The… The daemon!” Luna gasped. “The caitiff strikes from hiding!” She staggered backward, her head whipping left and right. A patch of shadowy fog curled up from nowhere and seeped into her armor breach to stem the bleeding.

“Vel! I thought you said the beast fled!” Dest snarled, circling around Luna while searching for any sign of their foe.

… What’s a “caitiff?”

“Vel! Concentrate! I am no expert in fighting you Warpspawn!” the Astartes shouted.

Well, yeah, but if you were then I probably wouldn’t be here now, so-

“VEL!!” Dest shouted.

A red flare appeared in the air next to Dest’s head.

“Pilot! Flee at once!” Luna directed.

Dest was moving before she even started speaking, diving away from a blade that was aimed to punch through his visor. The curved talon pulled back into the breach and vanished, the red light winking away in an instant.

The Iron Gage punched through the air, swinging through the space directly under the point at which the attack had emerged. The second gauntlet soared by a second later, at another angle. Neither of them struck anything.

“What is this? Yonder beast doth not appear before us, yet it attacks at will?!” Luna said angrily. Before she had thought the daemon had somehow moved invisibly, or with uncanny speed. With a clear look at its attack while trying to skewer Dest, she could only conclude that its body wasn’t actually here.

“It strikes from the Warp!” Dest concluded. “We cannot harm it there! But how? I’ve never heard of such an ability!”

Probably a result of that rift thing. The barrier between the realms might be weaker than normal because you guys messed with it. I feel kinda tingly, myself. Incoming, by the way.

Another four sparks appeared in the air, and Dest dove under them and hit the deck rolling. One by one the scythe-blades swung down after him, slicing through air just inches behind its target.

“The embers mark the point of assault!” Luna declared, bringing her Iron Gage close.

“I NOTICED!!” Dest retorted, jumping to his feet. One of the blades struck his backpack, its edge shrieking against ceramite before it ripped open a coolant valve. “Do something! You’re the psyker! The Warp is your specialty!”

“Aye! Come hither, Lord Dest! We shalt protect thee!” Luna ordered.

The Iron Warrior sprinted back to her, his greaves pounding against the deck and a rapid sequence of daemon blades swiping after him. When he reached Luna he turned on his heel, sliding to a stop by her side.

Luna’s horn lit aglow, and a dome barrier enveloped them. Immediately Dest noticed crimson flame brushing against the edge of the shield in the direction he had come from. They burned across the face, causing ripples over the barrier surface, and then started crawling back and forth, as if seeking a weak point.

“Huzzah! The foe is foiled!” Luna cheered. “This barrier’s circumference traverses the dimensional veil! It cannot reach us here!”

“Yes. Good,” Dest mumbled, his eyes fixed on the flickering red energies dancing across the shield’s exterior. “Can you use it offensively? Turn the same cross-dimensional energy into a weapon?”

Luna grimaced. “’Twould be… unwise to attempt such an experiment now, out of desperation. Such magics are not used lightly. The repercussions may be calamitous.”

“More calamitous than an endless assault from an enemy we cannot harm?” the Astartes asked.

“Aye. The most likely consequence We anticipate wouldst be a lasting breach in the dimensional veil, not unlike the weapon that deposited these fiends to begin with.” Luna shook her head. “With time and an adequate laboratory We could devise such a spell without harm, but We dare not lash out so carelessly now.”

“Hmph. I’d not considered you to be the cautious type,” Dest grunted.

“We shalt consider that a compliment,” the Princess said curtly. “But even the most destructive sorceries of Equestria art practiced ritual requiring extensive study. We shalt face this creature with what artifice We hast at hoof!”

“Fine. Do you have any other ideas, then?” Dest noticed that the traces of red were no longer present around the barrier. Evidently the daemon had given up and was considering its next move, as they were.

“Mayhaps. If this wastrel treads the realm between realms, then We can reach it.” Luna looked back at the entrance. “However, We must withdraw from yonder beast’s nesting grounds and the reach of its claws. We cannot maintain a barrier whilst We enter the world of dreams.”

“World of dreams. Sure. Why not,” Dest grumbled. “So what should we do? Can you move this shield or are we running?”

“We can, albeit with difficulty,” Luna said, turning around. “We shalt retreat past the charting chamber, and then… dost thou hear that?”

Dest did, in fact, hear it: A sizzling noise, just like the ones that had before preceded this daemon’s trans-dimensional attacks. It was coming from somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t pinpoint where.

“It’s attacking! Be ready!” Dest shouted.

Luna shook her head. “Fear thee not, Lord Dest. The foe cannot pierce our barrier, no matter what manner of trickery it-“

A sword-like talon shot up from the floor, and Luna’s eyes bulged as it punched through her armor and stabbed into her abdomen. An angry shriek of pain erupted in her head, stunning her, and the magic energy of both her horn and the barrier winked out.

“Damnable equine, I TOLD you!” Dest shouted, spotting several more red spots opening up beneath the mare. He grabbed Luna’s wing and wrenched her away from the blade that had punctured her, spilling another fan of blood across the deck.

The other blades emerged from the Warp breaches, scything up through the air and then falling back quickly. Another flickering red light appeared in the air next to Dest’s knee, but the Iron Warrior was already bolting away with Luna under one arm.

“Stay with me, psyker! I don’t like my chances of fending off this creature alone!” The driver raced across the bridge, his greaves leaving divots in the deck and smashing chairs aside. Glimmering crimson lights seemed to trail him through the air, appearing and winking out of sight in an instant.

Luna coughed, and a bit of blood spat out of her vox grille. “W-We art well! ‘Tis but a t-trifle!” she insisted, her voice shaking.

With a few blinks, Dest brought up Luna’s biometric scan. “… He got you in the lung,” he said grimly, vaulting over a terminal and smashing through the monitor screen on top of it. “My kind have organs to spare, but I imagine you need all of those.”

Luna snarled and spread her wings, pushing herself free of the Astartes. “Enough! This fiend Gharrl shalt not-HACK!” She promptly stumbled and started coughing, shielding herself with the Iron Gage.

Gharrl? Why is she talking about Gharrl? Vel wondered within Dest’s thoughts.

“Yes, we KNOW that’s not the daemon’s true name, just…” Dest trailed off, and then brightened in epiphany. “His name! We have his name!”

“A-Aye. Of what import is this?” Luna asked.

“A daemon’s name holds power over it. Many of them guard that knowledge jealously, as I understand it,” Dest explained.

A red flicker came from the air in front of him, and he lunged instead of dodging, parrying the daemon’s blade against his own talons.

Uh, but, dude-

“Hear me, daemon lord, for I invoke your true essence!” Dest said, batting aside another strike from the Warp. “Emerge from your hiding place, and face me in open combat…”

The next sound that emerged from the pilot’s throat was completely incomprehensible to Luna, sounding like a twisted groan interspersed with clicking noises. It made her stomach churn slightly just to hear it, though as her magic was still trying to plug the holes in her torso it was hardly the greatest bodily discomfort the mare had to endure.

The blood-colored embers flared brighter at the utterance, drawing across the air in front of Dest in strange, wavering patterns.

Dude? Dest, bro, listen, that-

“Not now, daemon!” Dest snarled. His arms bulged, and new spikes burrowed up from the gleaming ceramite while the talons on his arms lengthened. “Face me, Gharrl! Iron within! Iron without!”

All four arm blades suddenly stabbed out of the Warp at once, skewering Dest through the torso. Blood gushed down the Iron Warrior’s back, and a pitiful gurgling noise escaped his vox grille.

Luna gaped in shock, and then sent the Iron Gage flying toward her ally. The gauntlets clamped on to one of the blades, trying to pull it free of Dest’s body.

“Th-This… was not… how that was… supposed to go…” Dest said, grabbing onto one of the blades himself and trying to draw away from it.

One of the daemonic limbs stuck in his chest suddenly twisted to the side, causing a fresh spray of blood to paint the deck at his feet. Then the blade slipped out of Dest’s chest and reared back to slash at the Chaos Marine’s head.

“Halt, daemon!” Luna shouted, grabbing the loose limb with the Iron Gage and holding it in place. “Thou thinks to ignore us?! Come hither, and test thy sword against the power of the night!”

The arm-blades still stuck in Dest suddenly withdrew from his body, eliciting another pained grunt from the Chaos Space Marine. Two slipped back through the Warp breaches, while the other twisted about and stabbed between the fingers of the Iron Gage. With another twist it pried the gauntlet loose enough that the last limb could escape, and they vanished into the sparkling crimson flames.

“I hope you actually have a plan,” Dest gasped, stumbling toward an alcove. Blood and oddly-colored sparks leaked freely from the holes in his armor, although the plating was slowly working to seal itself over his wounds.

“Steel and flame art our plan!” Luna shouted, rearing up and kicking her legs. “If thou cannot outwit the fell beast, then We shalt overwhelm the mongrel with sheer power!”

“That’s not a plan,” Dest advised.

A sword-arm pierced the veil between dimensions, only to be seized by a great black gauntlet before its point could graze Luna’s armor.

“We have thee!” she gloated, giving the blade a sharp tug.

The blade failed to move much, but as it did another limb emerged and plunged toward Luna’s head from the other side. The other gauntlet blocked it, taking a firm hold before it could withdraw.

Yet another blade emerged, and Luna had no more weapons to block it with. Her horn pulsed just before the edge met her neck, freezing it within an aura of dark blue.

When the fourth limb came, Luna could do little but dodge. Luckily, none of her means of immobilizing enemy weapons affected her own movement, but even so, the daemon’s Warp-born weapons struck like vipers. The blade’s point scraped across the cheek of her helmet, slicing the ebony metal apart and dragging showers of sparks across the mare’s chest plate.

The hit was nothing serious, especially compared to the wounds she had already suffered, but it was enough to shake her concentration. The telekinetic field weakened around the other blade, and it swung awkwardly across Luna’s wing, tearing through the armor plate far enough to sink into flesh.

Luna released an angry whinny, jumping back from the scythes cleaving through the dimensions. Rather than follow her, the limbs turned on the Iron Gage, quickly stabbing into the fists and levering open their grip. Within seconds all four sword-arms slipped back into the Warp, their departure marked by sizzling red spots in the air.

Luna’s horn flared brighter, and her jaw clenched. The eyes within the golden helm carved on her chest pulsed brighter in angry sympathy. Blood, adrenaline, magic, and cataclysmic fury flowed through her body in a heady mix, and reality started warping around her. Ripples flowed outward through the deck, like a pond that had been disturbed by a pebble, and several of the Omen’s control consoles turned on by themselves.

“Princess? What are you doing?” Dest asked in concern. He was still leaning on a console, although he had one arm propped up in case he needed to defend himself.

“THOU HAST TASTED THE BLOOD OF A PRINCESS, MONGREL!! NOW THOU SHALT KNOW THE FLAVOR OF OUR WRATH!!” The Canterlot Voice shook the bridge with its volume, and all of the screens that had previously turned on immediately shattered.

Her shouting was answered by a flicker of crimson floating in front of her: four sparks twinkling in the dim lighting, each hovering equidistant from the mare’s snout. At once, the blades emerged from the Warp like bolts loosed from the gun barrel, each poised to skewer an equine skull at a different angle. A blinding flash filled the bridge, the light so intense that Dest’s visor automatically cycled its vision modes.

When it stopped showing various useless colored blobs and returned to default filters, Dest could see the daemon’s blades frozen and quivering in the air, the tips just millimeters from Luna’s face. The mare’s head was exposed, her helmet having either withdrawn while he was blinded or been broken apart by the might of her sorcery.

Luna’s eyes flashed solid white, illuminating the bridge better than the track lighting overhead. Her horn was ablaze with power, its core a spike of pitch within a boiling aura of bright blue, which itself was circled by a spiraling thread of bloody crimson. Matter deformed freely nearby, with shattered consoles warping, shards of glass floating off the floor, and the deck plating cracking under the mare’s hoof. Crimson fluid wept from the eyes of the Legion symbol on her chest, while cruel laughter echoed faintly from nowhere.

“WE TIRE OF THY GAMES, SCUM,” the Princess growled. The daemon’s limbs shook from the reverberation of her voice, wrenching back and forth but unable to budge their sword-tips. “THOU WILST NOT COME TO US FROM THE SEA OF CHAOS? THEN WE DUEL IN MY REALM.”

She pounded a single boot on the floor, and the ground exploded.

Dest was quite surprised to see it, if too badly injured and mystified to do anything about it. The deck surface seemed to peel away, rising off the ground in ruddy, colorful shards before withering away into mist. The ground underneath was dark and earthen, and riddled with tiny points of light. The air changed as well; a strange, greenish fog billowed out from Luna and quickly swallowing up the stale oxygen mix of the ship’s bridge. Consoles and displays turned into mirrors or colorful sections of lighting, winking on and off according to some silent rhythm. Within seconds the bridge was no longer perceptibly the inside of a starship, but more resembled some sort of alien cave. The stench of death still hung in the air despite the notable absence of the gore that decorated the real bridge. It was cloying and sticky, and elicited an excited thrill from the daemon in Dest’s head.

Most importantly, the strange mist exposed the hidden body of the daemon. Lidless black eyes devoid of all emotion stared at the Princess. The daemon’s mouth was equally expressive, its needle-lined jaw opening and closing without a sound.

“THE NIGHT COMES FOR THEE.”

A black metal fist slammed into the daemon, finally breaking the magical hold on its limbs and hurling it across the netherscape. It recovered admirably, stabbing one blade in the ground and dragging to a stop, but the moment it halted the other half of the Iron Gage struck it with a wide backhand.

“WHAT AILS THEE, DAEMON?”

It flipped around and darted forward, only to run into a thread of lightning coursing between the two gauntlets.

“’TIS THE BEST THOU CAN DO?”

The daemon turned on the Iron Gage itself, punching a blade through the palm of the nearest one. The gauntlet simply grabbed onto the limb and spun in the air, throwing the entire monster onto its side.

“LITTLE WONDER THOU HIDES BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF THE IMMATERIUM.”

The other gauntlet slammed down on Luna’s victim, while the impaled weapon pulled away. Rather than the blade releasing the Iron Gage, the limb came off at the shoulder.

“THOU ART A MERE RIPPLE IN THE SEA OF MAGIC. AN ABERRATION BORNE OF HATRED AND BEDLAM. A GALACTIC ERROR.”

The Iron Gage descended on the wounded daemon before it could get up, punching and grabbing at its arms. Whatever uncanny agility it had possessed before was either exhausted or impossible under the conditions, and the creature was rapidly dismembered, its other blade-limbs torn off or crushed.

“WITNESS US, MONGREL. IN THIS REALM OF DREAMS, WE ART ASCENDANT.”

The Iron Gage seized the daemon by the head, dragging its brutalized form closer to Luna. Once it was just a foot away from the alicorn’s hooves, the gauntlets tilted its head back so it could stare at the Princess.

“GAZE UPON THY RECKONING.” Luna’s mane had turned from a starlit pool to a veil of shadows, covering most of the mare in darkness. Her eyes still shone furiously while they stared down at the Warpspawn, and her horn was a roaring torch of eldritch power.

“DOST THOU KNOW FEAR, DAEMON? LET US INSTRUCT THEE.“

Black lightning surged around the Iron Gage, and then both gauntlets fell on the daemon like hammers. The daemon was smashed flat, its body almost instantly corroding to ash and twinkling sparks. Rather than simply disintegrating, however, the remains were instead sucked into the mouth of the golden relief on her chest, its eyes flaring ever brighter. An airy whistling sound swallowed the senses, as if a powerful wind were blanketing the area, but Dest could feel no such breeze.

The dream realm rapidly unwound itself, with the previous visions of surfaces warping and peeling away happening in reverse. Material reality asserted itself, and within seconds Luna was standing over a section of badly dented deck plating, her breath heaving.

Luna’s eyes and mane had returned to normal, although the Princess still possessed a decidedly manic, imperious expression while she stared down at nothing. Her eye twitched, and then her head snapped upright.

“Pilot!” Luna called, “let us rendezvous with the others at once! We demand coupling!” she shouted, her lip curling up into a snarl.

Dest finally pushed away from the console still slick with his blood and walked up behind the Princess. “…… What?”

“We… We must ensure the others art unharmed! ‘Tis what We meant,” she said, pausing to catch her breath and calm down. “Though We hast bested Gharrl, and doubtless freed his many puppets from malicious control, numerous hazards may yet remain. Once thou art sufficiently recovered, we depart.”

Dest paused slightly, turning his head to the side. Then he looked back to the mare. “That wasn’t Gharrl.”

Luna blinked. Then she cocked her head to the side. “Pardon?”

“That was not the daemon lord Vel expected. Hence why my gambit didn’t even phase it,” Dest grunted. “Vel claims he doesn’t even know this daemon.”

Luna blinked again. “But… the xeno smithy confided that THIS was the lair of our target.”

“Yes, well, these things happen, and it isn’t as if the Tau have much experiencing fighting daemonic incursion. Whatever it was that you killed certainly seemed powerful enough to warrant the confusion, anyway.”

Luna grimaced, looking unreasonably disappointed. “So then there art no daemon lord aboard the Omen? This unusually wily dastrel is all?”

“I said the daemon you destroyed was not Gharrl. I didn’t say Gharrl wasn’t aboard,” the Iron Warrior explained. “I can’t say I trust Vel more than Fennin, but he claims the stench he encountered earlier is very thin here.”

An uneasy silence settled in the bridge. A droplet of sweat rolled down Luna’s head, settling into the cut across her cheek.

Her helmet suddenly engaged, enclosing her dirtied face within a glowering mask of ebony. “Sparkle! Sparkle, We must speak with thee!” she shouted into her vox.

Crackling static was her only reply.

“Techpriest Gaela? Fireblade? Farmer?” Dest pressed a hand to the side of his head while he cycled through the vox channels. Each one failed to link without explanation.

“Macintosh! Please, Macintosh, We implore thee!” Luna said, her voice sounding increasingly frantic.

Dest turned to the Princess. “You can contact Sparkle with your sorcery, correct?”

“Incorrect,” Luna replied ruefully. “We hast no spells for such a thing that do not require some degree of preparation. We had not anticipated this!”

“What of your teleport, then? Can you bring us to the reactor?”

“Were it so simple! We do not even know where this reactor is!”

Exasperated, Dest returned to his vox link. “Engineer? Fennin, come in! Rainbow Dash! Obnoxious white pony!” He banged a fist against his helmet, as if hoping to knock the vox system into working order. “Rifleman, respond! Pink-“

A moment after selecting Pinkie Pie’s vox link, the static bursts were suddenly replaced by a loud, thrumming beat that caused Dest to recoil in surprise.

“Desty! Yay! You’re back! It’s been really lonely around here!” Pinkie Pie shouted, her gleeful voice barely rising over the techno music playing in the background. After she spoke, there was a series of new drum-like noises that seemed to clash with the rhythm; Dest quickly recognized it as rapid cannon fire.

“Pie! We’ve lost contact with the others! Are you engaged?” Dest asked.

“Just a little!” Pinkie chirped, a heavy thumping noise interrupting the lighter, faster thumping noise thrumming around her. “Are you guys almost done? The gunship is still a-okay!”

Luna connected to the vox link as well, and immediately winced from the noise. “Pinkie Pie! What bedlam encroaches upon thee? A daemon of great power still stalks this vessel! ‘Tis he among thy foes?”

“Dunno! I don’t think so!” Pinkie replied cheerfully. “There’s no big daemons or anything! A few little ones, but it’s mostly Tau zombies! They’re kinda different from the zombies in the hangar, but-”

“Destroy the grayskins first!” Dest insisted, shouting to be heard over the background noise. “They have a psychic scream ability that can debilitate mere mortals!”

“What? OH! So that’s what they’ve been doing!” Pinkie laughed while a rapid series of booming noises again broke the techno rhythm within the walker. “I thought it was weird how their mouths were getting all stretchy and stuff! I couldn’t hear them over the music, though!”

Dest sighed, though Luna couldn’t tell if it was in exasperation or relief. “Hold the area as best you can. We’re moving to assist!”

“Okie-dokie-loki! Byyyyye!” The vox link terminated, finally silencing the music rumbling inside their helmets.

Luna looked over to him anxiously. “What of the others?”

“The others are out of contact. We don’t know exactly where they are or if they’re even threatened. We assist Pie and kill anything that gets in our way.” Dest’s talons grew longer while he spoke, and then he dashed for the exit. “Move out!”

****

Rep’talal (reclassified: Omen)
Engineering deck

The hefty green body slumped to the floor, its neck stump splashing blood across the gore-streaked deck.

“Area secure. AJ, Jerri, take point. Watch the vents, ladies.” Daniels kept his shotgun aimed squarely at the twitching Ork corpse while he spoke. “Fennin, what are we looking at, here?”

Applejack stomped through the entrance, passing by Daniels with Jerriha following closely. Gaela and the other ponies stood by the entrance with weapons bared, and after a few more seconds Fennin entered the room.

He recoiled almost instantly, gagging at the sight of the floor. “What in the name of Aun’va happened here? This place looks like more of a charnel house than the armory!”

Dried blood of both Orkish and Tau hues ran across the floor in long streaks, almost covering it from corner to corner. Rotting gore caked most of the room so thickly that the deck felt spongy underfoot, even while wearing heavy armor. Like the rest of the ship interior there were no actual corpses (other than the one Daniels had just made), but this area was easily the bloodiest room they had encountered yet.

“Okay, I know it’s a mess, but what IS it?” Daniels asked again.

“This… This WAS the main reactor’s monitor station. If the reactor is compromised, critically damaged, or needs to be detonated to scuttle the ship, this is where you would do it.” He turned his head at the sight of the large monitor above the main control station. It had a hole punched through it, while more viscera decorated the input tablets below. “They might have attempted that last option, but it looks like they didn’t make it.”

“The damage means we’ll have to diagnose and repair the reactor from inside,” Gaela said. Then she opened a vox link. “Lord Dest? We’ve reached the main reactor.”

Static greeted her.

“Lord Dest? Are you reading me? Princess Luna, respond,” Gaela tried again, to no avail.

“Oh no. You… You don’t think…?” Fluttershy quailed.

“Hold on a minute,” Twilight said, cycling through her own vox links. “Linking to Applejack.”

The farmer turned around to stare through the ruby slits of her visor. “But Ah’m right here.”

“Yes, and despite that, I can’t establish a link. Our vox is dead.” Twilight shook her head. “So it doesn’t mean that Dest and Luna failed.”

“Dreadfully bad timing. Can we use the ship systems to contact them? Or… track them, or something?” Rarity asked.

“Not on emergency power,” Fennin grumbled.

“Then we repair the reactor,” Gaela said decisively. “Rifleman, Fireblade. Take point. The ponies are to sweep the room with you. Fennin, begin analyzing the damage as soon as you enter.”

“Ah… Yeah… About that…” Daniels was at the reactor blast doors looking over the room.

“What?”

“I think I know what we’re going to find in the generator room,” the mercenary said, pointing to the walls. “Look at how little collateral damage there is in here. The console is broken but there are no ammo casings or energy burns on the walls. There was no firefight in here.”

Fennin looked around at the walls briefly, and then turned back to Daniels. “Okay, so… what?”

“If there wasn’t a lot of fighting in here, then where did all this blood come from? The trails stretch out into the halls in all directions.” the mercenary asked. “Either they were moving victims from the reactor room to the rest of the ship, which would be a strange place for most of the crew to die, or…”

Gaela’s gun arm shifted into combat mode. “Acknowledged. Same formation plan as before. But this time I go first.”

“Gaela?!” Twilight gasped.

The Dark Techpriest stomped up to the reactor room door and pointed her axe at the access console. “Engineer. Open it.”

“This is probably a bad idea, but it’s a bad idea in ways that aren’t appreciably worse than the rest of this endeavor, so whatever,” Fennin mumbled while he used his override codes on the door access.

With a swipe of his hand over the touchpad, the locks disengaged. The blast doors protecting the reactor room cracked, and then slowly yawned open. The pirates all had their helmets engaged and sealed, for which they were thankful, as the air that rushed out of the reactor room was visibly discolored.

The interior of the reactor room was a long chamber bigger than a hoofball field, with several deep pits in the middle situated beneath enormous generator pylons that still hummed and glowed faintly with their charge. The facility was three stories tall, with ladders and lifts leading to platforms hanging over the bottom floor where the vanguard entered. Small machines were everywhere and servo arms with all manner of emitters and devices hung from the ceiling and platforms. It was a familiar sight to Gaela, and she could instantly identify the key components.

She was also not unfamiliar with the sight of many, many dead bodies piled on the side of the reactor room, although at least the Chaos vessels had the good sense to move them before they posed too great an obstruction. Many had been moved into ritual circles, their bodies and dismembered limbs forming the lines of runic marks. Others had been arranged in inexplicable and gruesome ways, like being propped up along a wall or piled onto a particular device. There was no obvious pattern or sense to how they had been stored, but it was clear that the corpses had been toyed with extensively since expiration.

“Good gravy, that’s a lotta Tau,” Applejack gulped, stopping dead as soon as she entered the room.

“A fair number of Orks, too. Even a few humans,” Daniels mumbled, moving to take cover behind a coolant tower. “And all of them…”

“Had their eyes ripped out, yes.” Gaela zoomed in on a random corpse, casting the bloody gouge over its face in high detail.

Jerriha walked up to some railing and leaned against it, taking deep gulps of air within her environmental suit. “For some reason… when the daemon’s feeding habits were described earlier, I got the impression it only ate the eyeballs of living creatures that it made into thralls.” She fought back the bile rising in her throat and turned to face Gaela again. “I suppose that doesn’t really make sense, in retrospect?”

“No, it does,” Gaela reassured her. “Daemons feed on the pain and terror of their victims more than any physical matter they ingest. It’s unlikely Gharrl receives much satisfaction from devouring the eyes of the dead, if any.” She shrugged, the bulbous metal shoulders of her armor rising and falling. “He probably doesn’t realize how it works himself. Many daemons don’t understand the Materium any better than you understand the Warp, and random dimensional rifts rarely dredge up the intelligent sort.”

“Oh… Aun’va help me,” Fennin moaned, his body wobbling as he held his stomach. “I… I need to vomit again…”

“I advise you do it with your helmet on, if you must. This area may not be safe to breathe,” Gaela warned.

“So, uh, wh-what do we do?” Twilight asked anxiously.

Her and the other ponies stood near the entrance, looking over the carnage with awe and fear. They’d seen death of this scale before – participated in it, in fact – but there was something uniquely grotesque about this mass grave. Aside from the desecration of the bodies, there was… something else. A feeling in the air that set the equine’s fur on end.

Gaela, for her part, paused to consider the matter. “Rarity, hold the entrance. Watch for any incursion from our rear. Rainbow Dash, check the upper levels for anything unusual. Fluttershy!”

A squeak of surprise came from the empty space between Rarity and Twilight. “M-M-Me?”

“Your visor possesses superior bio-augurs. Sweep the bodies to ensure they’re all dead.” Gaela gestured to the corpse piles and arrangements around the reactor room. “Any one of these could be a living thrall waiting to attack when our guard is down. We may have to burn them here.”

“No! No burning!” Fennin interrupted, suddenly recovering from his queasy spell. “What did I tell you about lighting fires in the ship?!”

“The risk differential is considerably less than that of a chorus of daemonically infested slaves,” Gaela countered. “Besides, surely you have excellent fire suppression systems in your reactor chambers.”

“Of course we do! Because it has the most sensitive and important equipment! NO FIRES!!” Fennin insisted.

“You’re not giving the orders, alien.”

“Why did you even bring me along if you’re just going to ignore my advice?!”

“Because it saves me the tedium of having to dig through your ridiculous coding strata in order to get anything to work in here.”

“Oh, DO NOT get me started on bad code!”

While the engineers argued, Fluttershy nervously went about her assigned task, walking toward the middle of the reactor room while scanning the corpses. One by one, her targeting reticule centered over each body, quickly cycling through a series of vision modes to determine body heat, movement, and neuro-electrical activity within a second before bouncing over to the next one. The effect was a rapidly shifting cascade of colored filters, which was disorienting but at least masked all the gore.

After several minutes of this Fluttershy got the sense that Gaela’s caution was wasted. The piles of dead were, in fact, entirely dead, and didn’t register any parasitic infestations substantial enough to register on her visor like the infected in the hangar did. Still, there were a LOT of corpses, and she wanted to be thorough. She turned away from one corpse pile to check the nearest collection on the other side of the chamber.

Her view panned over the nearest reactor pit, and her visor beeped and added a marker.

“Wh-What? What was that?” Runes flashed in the corner of her visor and numbers scrolled across her view screen in an incomprehensible data string.

Hesitantly, she crept up to the edge of the reactor pit. Her visor kept filling with more data and warnings, but most of it didn’t make sense to the mare. She’d seen more than a few battlefields by now in her power armor, and the readings she was picking up were completely new.

Reaching the pit’s edge, she leaned out to peek at the bottom.

“I hardly think you have scope to lecture me on the safety of voidship design while we wade through the heaps of your dead,” Gaela said blithely, glaring down at Fennin.

“This isn’t a safety matter! You summoned a daemon horde into our bridge!” he shouted back.

“Daemon containment is definitely a safety matter. You won’t survive long aboard the Harvest of Steel with that attitude,” she retorted.

A shriek of terror snapped them out of their argument, and they whirled about with weapons primed. Fluttershy was cloaked, of course, so they couldn’t see more than a distorted shimmer above the ground, but the panicked clambering of ceramite greaves over the deck plating indicated where she was easily enough.

“Fluttershy! What happened? What’s wrong?” Twilight asked, her force harmonizer already charging for battle. “Did you find a hidden thrall?”

“Th-Th-Th-I-I-I-Ca-Ca-“ Fluttershy was reduced to a stuttering wreck, and she collapsed face first onto the floor. Her armor briefly flickered into the visible spectrum from the impact, and then shifted back.

Readings started popping up on the other armor visors, each of them locking onto a body floating out of the reactor pit and bracketing it with their targeting systems. It was a human body. Mostly. A thin, ragged man with a tall build and half-shaven head, with the unshaven portion of his hair hanging long over one side of his face. He wore medical scrubs that were torn and blood-spattered, much like his body.

On the man’s back was a daemon. It possessed a twisted, slug-like body that clung to the human’s waist and stooped over his shoulder. Sharp hooks riddled its skin, many of which were firmly sunk into the body it had mounted. Tentacles wrapped around the man’s waist and over his eye sockets, obscuring them from view, and tracks of dried blood streaked down his face like tracks of tears. The daemon’s head possessed a single eye - bright yellow with a vertically slit iris - that studied the intruders with carnal intelligence. It’s mouth was small and tube-shaped; hardly as intimidating as the massive, fanged jaws of many other daemons, but quite sufficient for what Gaela guessed was its own unique, grotesque feeding habit.

Every weapon centered on the daemon-infested man, but none fired. Gaela’s targeting brackets encircled the man but it simply didn’t occur to her to shoot. She just stared blankly at him through her visor optics, trying to decide on a course of action but unable to reach any worthwhile conclusion. As if the possibility of violence was being suppressed in her mind.

“What… What’s happening?” Twilight grunted, her horn flickering dimly.

The sound of a weapon hitting the deck came from behind. Twilight turned around just in time to watch Daniels crumple to the floor. It was not unlike the effect of the psychic shrieks from before, but… it felt different. More subtle. Less violent. The shrieks were sudden shocks, like being gut-punched. Whatever was happening now was the equivalent of psychic noise, choking and smothering the will of those nearby.

“Kyleth… Ja… Jackson,” Fennin managed to gasp out before he slumped to the deck next to Daniels.

One by one the pirates collapsed, and even Twilight felt her knees weaken. She tried to feed energy to the harmonizer, to turn it toward the daemon and its host, but her thoughts kept going fuzzy and her concentration slipped. After a few seconds the force harmonizer fizzled and dropped to the floor.

“Come… on! Wake up… everybody!” The words came uncertainly to her lips; she had to sound out every syllable and force it through.

It also didn’t seem to help. The ring of metal hitting metal came from the platform above, which was no doubt from Rainbow Dash losing consciousness. The daemon glanced up, narrowed its eye, and then stared back at Twilight.

Kyleth Jackson floated to the deck, his bare feet finally touching the floor and relieving him of the effort required to maintain his own levitation. The tendrils around his body writhed, and the man wobbled unsteadily for a moment. The daemon’s eye shifted colors, turning a rich gold while it stared at Twilight.

“This one… stronger. Fear… taste it.” Kyleth spoke in a soft, terrified whisper, his sentences broken by uncertainty and the physical limitations of his possession. “Only… one eye? Unfortunate.”

Twilight felt her heart rate jump, and a bit of her mental fog cleared. She could feel the psychic claws of the daemon closing around her thoughts, trying to choke off her magical senses. She was still conscious, though, and mobile. She was pretty sure the daemon would have put an end to that if it could.

“Stay b-back! Leave us… alone!” the armored mare stuttered, trying to reach her weapon with her thoughts. Her horn casing flickered weakly, like a light bulb in its last moments.

Kyleth started approaching, his gait unsteady. The daemon’s eye stayed focused on Twilight, and it shifted colors again, from gold to a pale green.

Twilight’s vision in her left eye suddenly turned to static, while her right started to blur into a reddish wash of color. She felt the psychic presence push harder, forcing something past her defenses. It plunged into her thoughts like an insect’s sting, delivering its poison and withdrawing in an instant.

Her vision in her right eye returned, but she was no longer in the reactor chamber. She was on her back, holding her hand – her hand? – up in terror as a daemon lunged at her and chewed it off. Pain and terror surged through her, and she squeezed her eye shut.

Twilight opened her eye again, but this time she was watching as a shoota loosed a furious and futile burst into the face of a war daemon. Her green arms – what? – felt hot against the machine gun, and when the monster reached arm’s length she moved to club the daemon with her gun. The war daemon’s claws reached her first, punching into her chest and scissoring off a shoulder. Pain surged through her body, and she flinched.

One blink later, she was watching a screen while blood-soaked monstrosities pounced on Tau crewmen, tearing them down and eviscerating them one by one. She tried to move. Warning icons flashed around her constantly and weapons trackers auto-locked on the pack of Warpspawn. But she didn’t fire. She wouldn’t fire. The thought slipped through the cracks of her mind. A tentacle burrowed through the cockpit seal, worming its way toward her face…

Memory after horrific memory played in her mind, each one a crystal clear image of a victim’s last moments. The sights, sounds, and smells bombarded her as if she was there, to say nothing of the feel of each brutal maiming. With every vision the pain of the last one lingered, a shadow ache followed by more shadow aches, rapidly wearing down the last of her resistance. Twilight knew it wasn’t real – to her, at least – but that insight didn’t help her. The death kept coming, tormenting the young Princess and obscuring her real-world senses.

Kyleth Jackson lurched forward, his daemonic master pushing him onward and guiding the blinded psyker’s steps. Twilight squirmed and moaned, still standing but entirely helpless under the daemon’s gaze. Tendrils slowly unwrapped from the man’s waist, preparing for the Warpspawn’s next meal.

“No… No more… please.” The man’s whimpers were answered with a mild growl from the monster on his back, and he continued walking forward. The psyker raised a hand toward Twilight Sparkle, and the armored pony lifted off of the floor, her legs hanging limply in the air.

“It hurts so much… not another one…” Kyleth begged. With a wave of his hand, Twilight floated closer, and he took another step toward the intruders.

And then stubbed his toe on an invisible hunk of metal sitting on the floor in his path. Kyleth gasped, windmilling his arms before falling flat on his face. The levitation holding Twilight in the air instantly failed, dropping her in a heap just a few feet away. The daemon on Kyleth’s back was just as shocked, even as it delighted in the brief jolt of pain the ran through its host. It quickly shifted about, its eye narrowing at the pony-shaped shell of metal flickering in and out of sight behind it.

All at once, Twilight’s senses returned. The violent memories blurred away to nothing, and the phantom pains vanished. Her augmetic eye cleared the static from her vision and then rebooted, once again showing the desecrated interior of the reactor room in perfect detail.

Despite the sudden return of her faculties, Twilight spent a moment gasping breathlessly, her heart still thundering in her chest. She’d never been so terrified, even on the dozens of occasions she’d been injured by deadly enemies or the time she’d actually watched the vital signs of her friends go flat. It was a whole new level of fear that she’d never imagined: actual death, multiplied and injected straight into her stream of consciousness.

Then she saw the daemon snake a tentacle around Fluttershy’s neck.

“FLUTTERSHY!! WAKE UP!!” the Princess screeched, her fear washing away in an instant.

The force harmonizer jumped up off the ground and spun toward the daemon, its blade appearing with a sizzling crack. The daemon, in turn, glanced at the incoming weapon, and its eye turned blue.

The harmonizer was suddenly deflected away, as if it had struck an impenetrable wall. Its blade carved a deep gouge into the deck, and then fizzled away to nothing as the weapon bounced across the floor.

“GET AWAY FROM HER!” Twilight roared, galloping forward. A magic beam shot from her horn, striking the daemon in the side. It didn’t seem to wound the monster, but its massive eye turned full attention back to Twilight while Kyleth finally pushed himself upright again.

“Peace now… then pain,” the psyker babbled, raising a hand toward Twilight.

The alicorn Princess was suddenly hurled to the side, as if she had been hit by a truck mid-gallop. She bounced and rolled, and then slammed into a coolant tower.

Jarred but still conscious, Twilight immediately pushed herself up. The psychic attack had come so fast and strong that she barely had time to defend herself, but she was no longer hindered by the constant psionic noise. She wasn’t sure if her senses had adapted or concern for friend had sharpened her focus, but now wasn’t the time to dwell on it.

The daemonic parasite lifted Fluttershy off the ground, holding her up by a tentacle. Kyleth released an unintelligible whimper and then twitched a hand toward the unconscious pony, his blinded face turned away.

A series of cracking and shrieking noises came from Fluttershy’s armor, and Twilight watched in growing horror as her helmet came apart. Piece by piece, the plates and components were pushed, pulled, and then ripped away by an invisible force before dropping to the gore-stained deck.

“No! Put her down, you monster!” Twilight shouted, moving toward the psyker again.

Kyleth gestured toward her, the movement so swift and casual that she almost missed it. Twilight’s horn casing blazed, and a bullet-like bolt of invisible, telekinetic force crashed against a magic barrier. The attack was undone, and she fired her own bolt of force at the psyker; wreathed in a spinning cloud of shimmering violet.

Kyleth raised a palm in front of the projectile, and it struck his hand and vanished without a sound. The man’s arm promptly went limp again, hanging loosely while he shivered in pain.

Fluttershy’s nose wrinkled as it was exposed to the fouled air of the reactor bays. Still, she didn’t wake as the last pieces of her visor popped loose and bounced away on the floor. Another tentacle slipped free of Kyleth’s shoulder and then snaked toward the mare’s face.

“FLUTTERSHY!!” Twilight’s eye flashed solid white, and she switched spells. “WAKE!! UP!!”

Kyleth raised a hand again, forming a barrier of sheer will to block the attempt. It was not enough. An aura of bright purple consumed the pegasus, sending shoots of warmth into her nerves.

Fluttershy’s eyes shot open, and she sucked in a deep, greedy breath of air. She promptly began coughing as she was bombarded with the vile stench of the room, oblivious to the monster holding her in the air.

“Fluttershy! MOVE!!”

The pegasus jerked to attention, startled, and then she finally got a good look at the creature that held her. The daemon’s eye shifted color again, turning its original yellow, and a hiss escaped from its misshapen mouth.

Fluttershy screamed and started flailing, kicking blindly at the tentacles and thrashing her head left and right. A photon grenade fired out of her launcher, shooting straight up with a soft pop and then immediately detonating on a particle damper hanging overhead. The daemon flinched from the flash, its eye recoiling and turning blue. Fluttershy – who had never fired the weapon without her helmet and its autosenses – was also blinded by the burst, which only leant more terror and confusion to her panicked flailing.

“Fluttershy, get loose! Don’t let it touch your face!” Twilight shouted, firing another blast from her horn. Kyleth intercepted the attack with infuriating ease, waving his hand in front of the purple missile and dispelling it.

“No no no no no nononononoNONONONO-“ Fluttershy thrashed harder, her flight pack igniting and pulling her away from the daemon. It lashed out with another tentacle, seizing her foreleg and dragging her closer in response.

“Get AWAY!” she screamed, swinging her forelegs and accidentally stabbing her narthecium gauntlet into Kyleth’s shoulder.

The psyker barely flinched at the sudden punctures, but the gauntlet promptly began an injection cycle, flooding the man’s body with a mix of serums before Fluttershy pulled it out again. Fluids spurted from the needle array on her greaves, splashing across the daemon even as it tried to reel her in closer.

“Keep fighting it, Fluttershy!” Twilight shouted, firing another magic bolt. Kyleth intercepted that projectile as well, and the Princess fired again. Were the situation any less dire, and were she not afraid of falling under the suffocating influence of the psionic noise all around her, Twilight surely could have concocted a more clever tactic, but in her desperation she simply hurled magic bolts at her target again and again, hoping that somehow one of them would get through.

And then, on the fourth try, one of them did.

Kyleth Jackson groaned, and his head lolled to one side. The missile of crackling psychic power blasted by the man’s head, passing closely enough to singe his ear before slamming into the daemon on his back. The Warpspawn reeled, shrieking, and its tentacles holding up Fluttershy immediately withdrew to wrap more tightly around its host. The pegasus broke away and flew to the far side of the reactor room, far out of the creature’s grasp.

Fluttershy then clipped a coolant tower and crashed, probably because she was still blinded by her own stun grenade. Still, she was out of the immediate reach of the daemon, and Twilight allowed herself a moment to calm her own panic.

The daemon turned its eye on her, blood-red and trembling.

Before the Princess could attack again, the psionic noise around her increased five-fold, and she clenched her teeth against the pain throbbing in her skull and horn. Multiple tendrils of malevolent energy approached invisibly, their evil resonating in her mind’s eye. More memories of misery and death positioned themselves around her psychic defenses, like daggers seeking a gap in a suit of armor.

Then the noise weakened. Several of the tendrils melted away, as if the psyker was losing focus. The psionic attack began to falter entirely. Twilight blinked in surprise at the sudden relief, and noticed that the daemon seemed even more agitated, snarling at its host.

Twilight’s optics zoomed in on the psyker. His gait was sluggish, and his head kept tilting drunkenly to one side and then the other, as if he was nodding off to sleep. Granted, he had been badly mutilated and possessed to some degree by the monster on his back so it was hard to say what his “normal” behavior should have been, but after a few seconds her optics added a scan marker that surprised her.

“Chemical sedatives? Oh! The narthecium! Fluttershy must had dosed him with some painkillers by accident!” Twilight gasped.

Her horn started to build up its charge, the purple circuit tracks blazing with power. Twilight reared up, and a brilliant corona blasted outward from her body, enveloping the unconscious intruders. Violet arcs of energy lashed between them and Twilight’s horn, one by one, filling her friends’ minds and bodies with invigorating magic.

“Wake up, everyone! This is our chance! Please! I need you to WAKE UP!”

System reboot confirmed.

ERROR – psionic corruption detected; initiate protocol 7-2-c.

Neural reroute confirmed. Memory core 1 and 4 quarantined for repair.

Initializing combat engrams…

For the second time that day, Gaela returned to consciousness with a jolt, snapping up her power axe and surging upright. Her targeting relays found Kyleth Jackson and his parasite immediately, but the Techpriest wasted no time studying his form or speculating on tactics.

“Die, scum.”

A sharp whine came from her servo harness, and the heavy laser swiveled around to face the target. Gaela aimed at the psyker, just off the center of his chest, with a trajectory that would spear both man and daemon. Her cannon arm also engaged, splitting at the mouth while electric arcs flashed between her salvaged capacitors.

The daemon’s eye flashed blue, it’s gaze turning toward Gaela. With a high-pitched shriek the laser fired, striking a translucent barrier that refracted the beam away from its target.

“Daniels! Applejack! Big Mac! Rarity! Get up! You have to wake up!” Twilight could see the others stirring, but none of them jumped into full awareness the way Gaela had. “Fennin! Jerriha! You too! Come on!” She felt like she was forgetting someone, but the situation was too dangerous to second-guess herself. Her magic reached out to Applejack, surrounding the farmer with a soft violet aura.

Gaela’s ion blaster screamed as it released a trio of crackling bolts at the psyker, only for each of them to curve off-course and striking random machines in the room. The daemon snarled and whipped a tentacle against its host, angrily spurring Kyleth to action like a lazy mount.

It worked, and Kyleth flicked a hand in Gaela’s direction. The Techpriest suddenly staggered backward as an invisible force slammed into her shoulder, almost knocking her over entirely. The impact force was similar to that of a heavy bolter, albeit lacking in the armor-piercing qualities that made that ammunition so deadly.

“Pain… calm… nice… so tired…” Kyleth mumbled, pointing at a lifter nearby. The piece of moving equipment, easily at least half a ton in weight, swiftly lifted off into the air and then sped straight toward Gaela while she was lining up another shot.

“Oh, no ya don’t!” Applejack’s gravity lash locked onto the lifter, freezing it in place just a few feet from its target. Gaela spared the machine barely a glance before unleashing another salvo of energy blasts at the psyker, but the result was as useless as before.

“Energy-based weaponry is ineffective! Attempt kinetics!” the Techpriest shouted, continuing to fire regardless.

A shotgun blast followed her request, announcing that Daniels was conscious and had found his shotgun. The flechette burst struck the deck near Kyleth’s feet, carving a black streak into the floor but failing to disturb the psyker.

“Aw, c’mon! That nutty magic field works against all our guns?” Applejack complained.

“No… No, wait… that was me. I missed,” Daniel groaned, his hands shaking while he crouched in front of Jerriha. “Gimme a minute… head hurts…”

“Not to make light of the very serious combat stress and surely detrimental side-effects of being repeatedly rendered unconscious by psychic assault but WE MAY NOT HAVE A MINUTE PLEASE HURRY!” Twilight finally located her force harmonizer partially buried in a pile of corpses, and she pulled it free with a sharp tug of telekinesis.

The thunder of a heavy bolter finally joined the storm of violence streaming toward the infested psyker, indicating that Big Mac had recovered sufficiently. The heavy bolt rounds passed through the psychic refraction field with a hollow thud, visibly slowing on their approach before stopping dead in the air just inches away from Kyleth’s chest. Several pulse shots also joined in the barrage, only to suddenly bend off-target and then spin into an orbit around him.

“It seems kinetics are indeed ineffective,” Gaela said curtly, “we’ll have to engage at melee range!”

“You want us to try to stab that thing to death?!” Fennin asked incredulously before loosing another burst from his carbine.

“Not YOU, no. You are to get the reactors running again!” Gaela ordered.

“Why would-“

“No arguing! We don’t have time!” Twilight cut off the alien as her force harmonizer flew by her head and then activated its melee blade. “CHARGE!”

Twilight, Gaela, and Applejack surged ahead, with Daniels, Jerriha, Rarity, and Big Mac stumbling to shake off their exhaustion and catch up. The thunder of metal-clad feet and hooves pounding across the poly-ceramic deck filled the reactor room, along with the hiss of energy fields from multiple power weapons.

The daemonic parasite reviewed its assailants, the bullets and energy bolts still frozen in the air or orbiting around it. Then its eyeball turned red.

The heavy bolter shells and flechette bursts, previously frozen in the air, suddenly accelerated toward the oncoming warriors with shocking speed. Several of the heavy bolter shells hit Gaela – the largest target by a fair margin – and the Techpriest stumbled and lost her momentum against the barrage. The energy bolts came next, accelerating rapidly and shooting free of their orbit to fling themselves into the oncoming soldiers. Daniels and Jerriha promptly dove for cover, while the ponies faltered under the pounding of crackling pulse blasts.

“Keep going! We can’t let up!” Twilight shouted, yelping briefly after a glowing blue bolt struck her flight pack hard enough for her to feel the searing heat against her wing. “I’ve got you!”

With the psyker only a dozen feet away, Twilight sent the force harmonizer spinning toward the daemon on Kyleth’s back. Kyleth, still moving somewhat drunkenly, lifted a hand, and a metal crate flew off the floor to intercept the harmonizer before it could reach his Warp-borne controller. With a sizzling hiss, the harmonizer sliced the crate in half, but spent its momentum. A piece of bent piping flew after the first object, striking the harmonizer cross and knocking it off its attack trajectory. Another finger flick sent the pieces of metal trash sailing back toward Twilight like they had been fired from a cannon.

A power sword stabbed toward the psyker from the other side, but with an errant thought a cable snaked around the weapon’s grip and pulled it down to the floor. More trash floated off the deck and flung itself at the boarding party, following the hail of energy and mass-reactive bolts with a barrage of much less lethal but more pervasive detritus. Kyleth slowly retreated as he kept up the barrage, every twitch of his hand flinging more junk across the room.

“It’s just wasting our time!” Twilight complained before a spanner slammed into her visor. “Oof! It’s trying to hold out so that the psyker can recover fully!”

Applejack kept plowing forward despite the barrage, her armor shaking and sparking against the tools and garbage hammering against her body. “Ah have had about ENOUGH of yer mind games!” she snarled. Her approach became sluggish, as if she was trying to push through a powerful wind, but she still advanced.

“Don’t you dare use your flamer!” Fennin warned. “No fire! I warned you!”

“Ah don’t take order from you!” Applejack snapped, releasing said weapon upon the enemy.

The tongue of fire that emerged was much shorter and more subdued than normal, no doubt due to whatever obscene and inexplicable defenses were protecting their foe. It didn’t even really touch Kyleth, sputtering out before it could graze the psyker’s skin. The residual heat seemed to have a significant effect all its own, however, and Kyleth screeched and recoiled in a manner that seemed very distressing to the daemon on his back.

“HA! How do ya like them apples, ya dirty, daggum-“ A coolant hose popping loose interrupted her gloating, and the farmer shouted in surprise as a jet of billowing, freezing mist blasted over her. The flamer was extinguished instantly, and most of her joints froze as stray moisture turned to ice.

Daniels fired another shotgun round, only to growl in irritation as it slowed to a stop and then reversed course to slam into Big Mac’s chest plate. “This is ridiculous! We can’t touch that thing! We have to fall back!”

“If we fall back, then it recovers! If it recovers, we perish!” Gaela said defiantly. Another laser blast came from her harness, only to be refracted uselessly into the wall.

Twilight tried to clear her mind despite the storm of detritus and the panicked shouting of her friends. There had to be a way out of this. A tactic or spell that would swing victory in their favor. If she could only find a way to stun the daemon, or maybe just surprise it…

“DEATH FROM ABOVE, EYEBALL FREAK!!”

Rainbow Dash’s flight pack ignited at the last second, and the daemon didn’t even have time to blink before the pegasus slammed into it with a rocket-assisted kick. Kyleth promptly tumbled to the floor, eliciting another gasp and a whimper from the psyker.

“Rainbow Dash! Yes! Thank you!” Twilight said, almost shedding a tear. “It’s distracted now!”

“So I should shoot it, right?!” Jerriha asked, her pulse rifle aimed at the writhing mass of daemon and pony.

“What? No! You’ll hit Rainbow Dash!” Rarity complained.

“If we can’t fire on it now when its vulnerable then what was the point of this?!”

Gaela snarled and dashed ahead. Twilight saw, and then her horn began to glow again. Every attack – magic or mundane – that they had tried had faltered before the daemon’s defenses. Perhaps another way…

Rainbow kicked and thrashed against the daemon, but swiftly started losing ground after the initial shock of her assault. The Warp-borne creature was much tougher than it appeared, and its tentacles moved with uncanny dexterity to lash and tug at her legs. The hooks that adorned the daemon’s flesh scored and stuck to her armor in a dozen places at once, like little grasping claws.

But all of that seemed like a petty annoyance once the monster turned its eye on the mare.

A blinking orange eyeball stared into Rainbow Dash, and her senses practically melted away. Her vision split into a dozen spinning mirror images, her head throbbed, and her heart rate became erratic. Her ears started filling with incomprehensible shouting from a hundred different voices, the smell of choking smoke seemed to fill her helmet, and she tasted battery acid on her tongue.

Rainbow stopped trying to hit the creature and fired up her flight pack and impulse blasters in a panic. The pegasus burst away from her opponent with such force and speed that she almost brought the parasite with her, pulling it into the air for a dozen feet before she ripped free entirely and left it behind. The last tentacle connecting the daemon to its host was torn free as well, and Kyleth Jackson gasped painfully as the suffocating, sadistic will was finally lifted from his own.

The moment the mare was clear, a pulse blast slammed into the side of the daemon, pitching it to the ground. Shotgun and heavy bolter fire followed after it, tearing away bits of flesh in flaming bursts. The daemon shrieked, and its eye flashed blue.

A telekinetic barrier blocked the next volley of projectiles, appearing as a blurry streak in the air that sent the incoming fire wildly off-course. It was a much tighter and more active defense than it had used when it was attached to the psyker, and its assailants noticed. The daemon propped its slug-like body up on its tentacles, and then started scurrying back toward Kyleth Jackson even while the constant fusillade poured into its shield.

Gaela stepped in its path, power axe crackling and a shining halo of purple energy around her hood.

“To the black circuit, the ley conduit that links flesh, soul, and iron, I submit!” the Techpriest shouted, capacitors crackling on her back. “As I am one with the machine, so I am one with Chaos! Protocols of slaughter, sing a hymn to destruction!”

The daemon surged forward, its eye turning red. The kinetic barrier blasted forward ahead of it, compressing to a fist-sized point of force before crashing into Gaela’s chest.

The psychic energy collapsed in a purple flash, taking the halo of magic along with it. Gaela didn’t budge. The daemon tried to adjust its approach, but it was too late.

Gaela’s power axe chopped into the daemon’s side, ripping through a tentacle and lodging in its body with a sizzling crack. Her servo drill followed after it, stabbing for the monster’s eye, but it contorted out of the way while whipping its tendrils around.

The daemon seemed to shift and reform its anatomy in an eye blink, with new tentacles emerging and swatting away the servo limbs threatening to tear it apart. Gaela’s fist wasn’t so easily deflected, and her free arm punched the Warpspawn to the deck before she ripped her axe free.

Suddenly, several of the bony hooks along the daemon’s body shot out at Gaela, bombarding her with a spread of sharpened spines not unlike a shotgun blast. One such hook punched into the augmetic array on her helmet, piercing the outer lens and cutting through the actual optical beneath it.

Gaela swung her axe again, grazing her opponent, but the daemon rolled with uncanny agility, snaking a tentacle between her legs. It raced along the floor, extending far longer than any physical extremity could, and reached the emaciated psyker rolling on the floor while covering his eyes with his hands.

A power sword suddenly whipped across the deck, neatly severing the tendril. The daemon’s eye trembled in rage, and then blinked to the side. A silver blur briefly materialized into Rarity, and the unicorn offered the monster a brief nod. Then her sword speared forward, piercing the daemon’s eye.

“Finish it! Now!” Rarity shouted.

Gaela’s power axe bit into the daemon again, carving through Warp-borne flesh and psychic deflection fields. The monster hit the floor, and then its eye shifted colors again.

A purple flash exploded around the Techpriest as Twilight’s magic dueled with whatever ill effect the daemon intended. Armor plating bent and her robes tore apart under the currents of force and the chaotic mix of energies, but Gaela was singular in her purpose. She drove a metal fist into the daemon, then grabbed hold of the power sword lodged in its iris.

Gaela wrenched both power weapons free, splashing bizarre and miscolored gore across the floor of the reactor room. Then she punted the psychic horror into the reactor pit from whence it had emerged. The daemon dropped below the edge of the pit, vanishing within the silo-sized hole.

Gaela promptly dropped to one knee, power weapons laid gently to either side. “Machine God, empower the holy vessel. Let the power of the stars swell within the bellows and give life to this galleon of iron and its titanic blades of fire! Flame, light, current, glorious kinesis!” She idly wrenched the bone spike from her damaged optic and flicked it away, heedless of the fluids that seeped from the breach.

A thrumming noise came from within the pit. Cabling started to hum all around the room, while the generator core hanging above hissed from the sudden injection of fluids.

Suddenly, the sounds of awakening machinery were obscured by a feral shriek. The daemon rose out of the pit, slowly levitating under its own power. Its eye was a rich, swirling mix of green and aqua, surrounded by a circle of whipping tentacles like grasping flagella. Its earlier wounds were no more, and even the many bone hooks in its flesh had regenerated.

The monstrous eye twitched from one invader to the next. Most of the humanoids and ponies met its gaze silently. No one moved to dodge or even fire a weapon. Out of those that weren’t even paying attention to the Warpspawn, Fennin was twisting a dial on the control panel near the back of the room, and Gaela was still kneeling.

“One more body to the flames. One more altar to the Black Engine is born,” the Techpriest intoned. “Ignition.”

The bottom of the reactor pit opened up.

A bright blue-white beam no thicker than a lamp post shot upward into the generator crucible. It sliced through the daemon’s back directly, and its dark veins turned a bright red as the Warpflesh crumbled.

The daemon’s eye lingered, trembling, even as the mass around it burned to ash and vanished. There was a final distortion in the air, a last, hopeless attempt to wield its formidable psychic might against the interlopers and drag them back with it into the realm of Chaos.

The attempt failed. The daemon’s eye melted into bright orange sludge. This too evaporated before it even touched the floor, banished back to the Empyrean.

More that one person heaved a weary sigh after the last traces of the Warpspawn vanished.

Rainbow Dash was not one of those people. “I TOLD you guys we should have brought Tellis. He would have taken that guy down EASY.”

“Yes. Probably by hurling us at it,” Twilight grunted. “I just went through something like thirty cruel, painful deaths being shoved through my brain and I’m not sure having him around would have been better.”

“Is it… Is it over? Truly?” asked a dry, rasping voice.

Kyleth Jackson sat on the deck, quivering. His hands still covered his mutilated face, and he could barely move due to the extent of his other wounds. Despite being unable to see, he twisted his head about, jaw agape with wonder.

“Gone… finally… Didn’t think… Didn’t hope… The voice…”

Then a mechanical claw clamped onto his shoulder.

“Two bodies to the flames,” Gaela snarled. Then she hurled the terrified psyker into the reactor pit.

“Okay, THAT was unnecessary,” Jerriha snapped as the man was vaporized within the thermal column. “Don’t you make use of psykers? You didn’t have to kill him!”

“He had already been utterly broken by the daemon, in body and soul. It was a act of mercy,” the Dark Techpriest retorted.

“YOU committed an act of mercy?” Fennin asked with a snort.

“If you want some mercy too I can yet provide, grayskin.”

Twilight gasped, thankfully cutting into the conversation. “You guys! I’m picking up Dest’s vox link! We’re connected again!” She blink-clicked the rune, practically prancing as the comms system connected properly. “Lord Dest, we’ve secured the power core! Fennin is bringing main power back on-line, but we had to dispose of a daemon first. A really strong one!”

Twilight paused while the Iron Warrior responded. Behind her, Big Mac pushed the still-frozen Applejack closer to the reactor where she could warm up.

“… Yes, it was… Kind of small, with a large central eye and VERY strong psychic capabilities… Okay… Yes, they are.”

After another pause, the young Princess gasped and turned to her team. “You guys! That daemon was the daemon lord Gharrl!”

“We KNOW,” everyone else replied.

Twilight blinked. “Oh… was it-“

“It was the bodies. The bodies with their eyes plucked out,” Daniels said, gesturing to the piles of corpses behind her. “And then we found only one daemon. What did you think we were fighting?”

“Well… okay, yes. I suppose that it was unlikely to be a COMPLETE coincidence. It’s just that Fennin seemed so sure it was in the bridge, and this daemon was… well, never mind.” Twilight coughed and shook her head. “Anyway, let’s set a rendezvous point so we can begin another sweep.”

“No need,” Gaela interjected.

The hum of the reactors grew louder as more of the systems came on-line. Servo-limbs craned over the pits and plugged into generators and deflectors. Cables that had been damaged sparked from the fresh current surging through them.

“We’re receiving drone sensor telemetry now. The network is reading null movement aside from us, and the energy surges have ceased,” Fennin explained. “We’ll need to have boarding teams give the vessel a full sweep just to make sure, of course, and probably do a purge of the air ducts entirely, but I see no indication of further enemy presence.”

Gaela tapped the side of her helmet. “Princess Luna, make your way back to the bridge. We’ll need to contact the Iron Warriors for additional support and a temporary crew to get this ship to the orbital docking port. The Omen is yours.”