Chapter 223: Hello, Xenos, Your Scourge Has Arrived (Part 3)
Thick green mist clung to her ankles. She lifted her foot, watching the vapors cling to her shoe, then reluctantly drip away.
This was a weapon personally formulated by Lord Mortarion—one that wouldn't corrode the equipment of the Death Guard, but would drive their enemies to perish in suffocating agony.
As a member of the Hound of Hades Hunting Unit, this was her first time experiencing a real battlefield: explosions, shockwaves, thick blood, the howls of xenos. Her mind was dazed, but as the gunner of a Hadeshound, her hands never ceased their work.
Sweat trickled beneath her gas mask. Her eyes itched, but she could only shake her head and force them open wide. Then she pressed the barrel against the xenos' throat—fire, fire!
Sticky liquid sprayed from the cannon barrel with a hissing breath. Through the narrow scope, she saw those towering beasts rot under the shells, flesh dripping down.
The Death Guard advancing beside the Hadeshound mercilessly harvested their heads.
This was hell—they had created hell.
She mechanically repeated the actions the tech-priests had drilled into her back at the training grounds.
When the order for [Rest] was finally issued, she still had her head pressed against the scope like a quail, nervously awaiting the next command.
[Come out and breathe, little ones. Good work.]
A Techmarine outside tapped the vehicle with a wrench—dong, dong—the muffled clang echoing through the pipes and metal.
Once the battle was confirmed to be over and they were allowed to dismount, the crew all clambered out.
In the cramped space of the tank, she hadn't noticed her legs were shaking uncontrollably, her muscles were stiff, and her protective suit drenched in sweat.
[Twenty-five. Not bad. You helped kill at least twenty-five xenos. Your toxin tanks were also the most depleted.]
The Techmarine lifted them down like chicks and began inspecting the vehicle. To her relief, aside from the commander—a slightly unhinged old man—everyone else looked just as ragged as she did. They crowded together, leaning against the Hadeshound, listening to the roar of the Techmarine's drill.
Even through the thick protective suit, the alien planet's breeze brushed against them. She looked up—cold, tiny white flecks were falling from the sky.
She had never seen such a thing.
Her homeworld had never known such sights.
She looked into the distance.
The enemy corpses lay silently, rotting on the ground.
In the depths of the mist, occasional gunshots echoed, and the steady, reassuring march of the Death Guard rang faintly.
She watched it all as if waking from a dream.
This was their doing, they had made this happen.
"Praise the Lord of Death," she whispered, unable to stop herself from caressing her faithful Hadeshound partner behind her.
The solid feel of the metal reassured her. This massive companion made her feel safe. A surge of pride rose in her chest. She suddenly remembered some scattered phrases from training. Feeling slightly guilty, she added,
"Praise the Lord of Death. Praise the Lord of the Underworld."
The Reaper gave them salvation; the Lord of the Underworld granted them strength. Without the Reaper and the Lord of the Underworld, she—once a slave of Galaspar—would never have stood here. Perhaps she would still die on some alien battlefield, but the very act of marching to war had given her life meaning.
Life and death now carried value. They were no longer just corpses floating in Galaspar's polluted rivers.
Names and faith themselves carried magic. As she muttered the Lord of the Underworld's name, she found herself—whether by instinct or design—looking toward the heart of the battlefield. A jolt of revulsion surged through her like an electric shock, then vanished as quickly as it came.
She thought she saw a towering figure in the mist. Blinking in confusion, it disappeared again.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Wraith Knight glided silently through the fog. At the very center of the battlefield—where the fighting was fiercest and the soil soaked so deeply in blood it resembled a springtime field—Hades wordlessly examined the corpses.
None of them. Not yet.
In the end, Hades shook his head, signaling the two Wraith Knights to withdraw from the area. The unrelated Death Guard and Hadeshounds were all at the battlefield's periphery, unable to witness their actions.
[No signs of psyker corruption detected.]
There was a brief silence on the other end of the channel.
[Hades, return to the ship now. Follow this route. The others have already been redeployed.]
[Mortarion, during your engagement with the enemy fleet, did you find any trace of psychic power?]
[No. In fact, this species has virtually no understanding or control of psychic abilities. They only use the Mandeville Point for basic navigation.]
Both of them fell silent. Finally, Hades spoke hesitantly:
[If it's not the xenos, then we'll have to look among the humans of this system for answers.]
Mortarion let out a rasping sigh, almost like a lament.
[That is why I so despise those who make use of psychic powers.]
The Primarch looked up at the massive map above the command deck. The entirety of the Rust system was laid out, a dizzying swirl of fleet engagements in progress.
But there was good news, since the enemy had underestimated the speed and scale of the Imperial reinforcements, the Death Guard had already secured the outermost two planets of the system, and had seized control of the Mandeville Point.
Aside from the garrison forces deployed beyond the system earlier, they had not encountered fierce enemy resistance. The main strength of the Mekanic was still pressing the attack on Rust's primary world, rather than turning back immediately to face the Death Guard.
The enemy wanted to devour Rust and then counterattack. If they turned back now, they would risk being crushed between the Death Guard and the Mechanicum. With their backs to a forge world, the tech-priests could swiftly replenish their war resources, making them even harder to defeat.
So the xenos had chosen to seize the forge world first; its immense production capacity would bolster their future counteroffensive.
The closer one got to Rust's primary world, the more formidable the enemy fleet's defenses became.
Mortarion calculated that if the primary world of Rust fell, the situation would deteriorate even further.
Though the Primarch had little fondness for those tech-priests who casually worshipped their Machine God, they did in fact need a fleet—one that could reinforce the primary world of Rust. The Mechanicum on Rust was barely holding on; the fact they had survived this long was already a miracle.
Mortarion pondered silently.
At that moment, the doors of the command chamber opened behind him, and Hades strode in, tiny crystals of toxic gas still clinging to his armor.
Hades removed his helmet, staring intently at the screen. After a moment, he spoke:
"We need to reinforce the primary world of Rust."
"Just one fleet is enough—as long as the main world doesn't fall, the Death Guard's fleet can slowly tear apart their defenses from the outside."
Mortarion raised a hand, cutting Hades off. Hades looked at him in confusion.
"In your opinion, who should lead this fleet?"
"I should."
Hades answered without hesitation. "This fleet needs someone capable, and of this group, I know the Mechanicum best."
Mortarion was silent for a moment.
"That is assuming we don't encounter that small vessel again."
Hades froze, looking down in frustration to think.
That was true: the warp scans were still incomplete, but Rust could not be allowed to fall.
Hades did not believe either Garro or Vorx could manage working alongside the Mechanicum for this mission.
Any tactical mistakes born of misunderstanding could be fatal—and those oil-worshippers might even deliberately sacrifice the Death Guard for victory. That sort of thing was far from unheard of.
"The Endurance currently has three Wraith Knights, two hundred and thirty-two blanks, and fifty-seven lexmechanics. I'm giving you command authority over them, Mortarion. That should be enough."
Even in the most extreme situation—gathering all those blanks together and killing them to trigger their anti-psyker null fields in death—enough to expel a Greater Daemon back to the Immaterium instantly.
Hades had established the blanks' unit partly to complement his own operations, and partly so the Legion would have a permanent force they could rely on rather than constantly depending on him alone. Even if Hades' abilities were currently overpowered, before the Horus Heresy had even begun, this Death Guard blank unit could already be considered one of the best.
As long as The Endurance didn't jump into the warp of its own accord, suddenly suffer a psychic seizure while entering the warp stream, and simultaneously kill every Navigator on board while flailing around blindly—which, incidentally, was exactly how the Death Guard in the lore once blundered into an ambush and became corrupted—then this blank unit would be enough to handle warp-based entities in the physical universe.
Why was that so screwed up in the lore? Don't ask. Let's just say Calas Typhon was exceptionally persuasive in tricking Mortarion, but Mortarion now would not make such a stupid mistake. The Primarch understood the dangers of the warp far too well to do so, and was reluctant even to enter the Immaterium for travel, much less let his fleet blunder through it.
The barriers of the physical world could be trusted—barring places designed in advance with altars, ships like The Endurance would not be easily corrupted by the warp.
Well—except for that one time Hades screwed up. Ahem. It's a total accident.
Besides, Hades could sense that the physical barrier at the outer rim of the Rust system was not thin—on the contrary, it was quite healthy. But in the depths of this star system, at Rust's primary world… Hades couldn't be so sure.
Generally speaking, the higher the death toll and the heavier the mental oppression, the more likely the warp was to twist reality.
Mortarion glanced at Hades, then began laying out the fleet's plan.
"Your judgment is that The Endurance won't run into trouble?"
Hades spoke hesitantly. "Hard to say, but the warp connections here are not tight."
Mortarion paused for a moment.
"Then you will go, Hades."
Then Mortarion added slowly, in a quieter voice, "Sometimes I really have to wonder whether you're one of the Mechanicum or the Death Guard. Maybe authorizing you to go to Mars was a mistake."
Hades protested in alarm, "I'm Death Guard, Mortarion, you have to believe me! Look, I barely even talk to the Mechanicum these days!"
Though in his mind, Hades couldn't help but picture being surrounded by a bunch of forge-world tech-priests on the Mint Forge-Satellite.
Mortarion wore an expression of "you're not fooling anyone" and then issued the deployment order.
"The Fourth Horseman is already prepared, with warriors from the Seventh Company. Hades, you can take command of it. In three Terran hours, we will cover your entry."
"If you need the strength of the Zero Company, take them with you."
Hades waved his hand. "You need them more than I do, Mortarion. Let them secure the stability of the main fleet."
"Very well."
Mortarion did not argue.
"Commander Hades, I order you to lead the Seventh Company to reinforce Rust's primary world. All authority over the Seventh Company, the Fourth Horseman, and its attached ships is transferred to you. Act at your discretion, and take them."
Hades was already striding toward the doorway, raising his scythe as he offered a brief salute in response to Mortarion.
"And make sure you come back alive."
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