Chapter 22: Energy Furnace Battle
"Enemy attack!"
The psychic warning rippled through the minds of hundreds of xenos elite warriors.
Seeing Omega vanish and charge directly toward him, the Rangdan warlord raised his psychic staff, constructing a force field for defense.
As a psyker of the Rangdan species, the reaction was correct. Against a Primarch like Omega, it was a fatal mistake.
Omega closed the distance at full sprint. The psychic force field's crushing pressure, capable of immobilizing lesser warriors, barely slowed him.
The power bayonet mounted beneath his bolter shimmered with disruptor energy.
The warlord realized his error too late, raising the crystal skull to assault his opponent's mind.
Crack!
The power bayonet struck, not piercing the skull but batting it from the warlord's grasp. Blue flames roared in the skull's eye sockets, building toward detonation.
The psyker staff slammed into Omega's chest.
Both combatants stood within the powerful force field. Using Primarch strength, they hurtled past each other. Just before the crystal skull could detonate, the bayonet carried it forward.
'Fool. Proximity doesn't matter,' the warlord thought, watching Omega close to the volatile artifact.
Whoosh!
As both warriors skidded to a halt, an object flew through the air, landing with perfect accuracy into the gaping maw of the bio-construct fused to the gate.
Omega's form remained outside, still within the psychic field.
BOOM!
Catastrophic psychic contamination erupted from within the creature. Blue light engulfed the surrounding Rangdan warriors and both combatants.
Agonized screams filled the corridor, punctuated by a monstrous shriek. The parasitic creature merged with the gate, its consciousness obliterated by the skull's detonation, thrashing in death throes.
Psychic pollution ravaged the minds of nearby elite warriors.
Within the force field, Omega locked down his mental defenses, condensing his presence to its most resistant state. Beside him, the Rangdan warlord grimaced, shaking his head, preparing to strike down his opponent with an incantation.
Everything happened in heartbeats. Omega's mind was far stronger than his enemy anticipated. Both attacked simultaneously.
Omega fired a burst at the warlord, but the shells hung suspended in the field, drifting forward slowly.
The Rangdan warlord smiled coldly, launching his psychic assault at Omega.
Omega fired frantically. His vision filled with hovering bolt rounds, frozen mid-flight.
BOOM!
The psychic attack struck the suspended ammunition instead. The explosion triggered a chain reaction, every hovering round detonated at once.
Under the violent blast, Omega used the momentum to draw a master-crafted power sword. Its potent disruptor field made the blade devastatingly lethal.
He'd prepared specifically for this mission.
Closing for a swift cut, the psyker staff met the power sword with a clash of energies. Both warriors became visible through dissipating smoke. Omega's swordsmanship was swift and relentless. The warlord fell into a defensive posture.
A psychic lance stabbed toward Omega's mind.
Before the Rangdan could verify the effect, a lightning-fast slash carved across his chest, he desperately parried, catching the blade in a trembling stalemate.
A sword wound opened across the warlord's torso. Green blood flowed freely. The Rangdan realized he'd severely underestimated his opponent.
In flawless Gothic, he demanded, "Human, what are you? Even an Astartes captain's mind cannot withstand continuous psychic assault!"
"You are—"
BOOM!
The dying bio-construct's flesh erupted outward. Writhing spikes lashed at every living being in the corridor. Dense flesh-spears accompanied by a psychic shriek engulfed everything.
The scream struck the Rangdan warlord. Flesh-spikes pierced his armor.
One misstep meant death. Omega ignored the wail and countless spikes hammering his plate, seizing the opening instantly. The Rangdan's head flew from his shoulders. Before the body fell, flesh-spikes ensnared it.
Omega swiped his blade, severing spikes embedded in his armor. The power sword swept in blurred arcs.
With the warlord's death, the corridor descended into chaos, the maddened bio-construct, mentally-afflicted Rangdan warriors, and Omega in a three-way melee.
The flesh-spikes couldn't easily kill the elite warriors. Seeing the combatants couldn't finish each other quickly, Omega took action, cutting down psychically-compromised xenos one by one.
After eliminating over sixty warriors in under ten minutes, Omega found it surreal how efficiently he'd slaughtered such formidable opponents.
Time was short. He ignored the remaining compromised warriors and swung his sword in rapid arcs, cutting through the bio-construct's thrashing tentacles as he advanced. Finally, he struck down the maddened creature.
Without an access key, Omega used his power sword to cut through the heavy door. The master-crafted blade blurred, slowly carving gaps in thick alloy.
When he'd cut about a meter through the nearly two-meter door, massive Rangdan reinforcements charged down the corridor.
An unexpected scene unfolded: the remaining elite warriors, still reeling from contamination, charged at their own reinforcements, causing widespread slaughter among their own kind.
Omega finally carved through and entered the reactor chamber. Elite xenos guards inside fell swiftly to his blade.
He beheld the fortress's core reactor. A miniature black sun condensed within an impossibly intricate containment device.
Powerful energy, even through multiple layers of shielding, was dazzling and terrible.
Surprised the fusion core was black, he muttered, "Looks like Nuclear fusion with unknown elements. Dark matter? Antimatter? Hmm, no time to study it now."
Moments later, the reactor began losing containment, releasing massive amounts of energy. The entire shield of the tens-of-kilometers-long fortress collapsed. Many energy weapons failed simultaneously.
From his flagship, Alpharius grew excited.
Waves of human troops landed on the fortress. Hundreds of thousands of xenos defenders remained aboard.
Both sides began a savage battle for control.
In the corridors, Omega carved a path toward extraction. "Now there is no need for stealth."
He'd intended to obliterate the reactor, but his hasty sabotage only caused containment failure, not detonation. He lacked weapons powerful enough to destroy the device.
But energy leakage alone produced terrifying effects. As he fought through corridors, energy like molten plasma surged through passageways, vaporizing creatures in its path.
Omega sprinted away. 'Even if I am a Primarch, it doesn't mean I will gamble with my life.'
An hour later, Omega reached the upper levels and found his company. With their Primarch joining them, the surrounded Legionaries were saved.
Seven days later, xenos forces on the fortress were eradicated. Omega led the surviving warriors back to the flagship.
With the massive fortress captured, the tide of the war shifted completely. But both sides fought to the death; neither fleet retreated. The battle continued relentlessly.
Three months later, the Rangdan fleet was reduced to just over a hundred warships. The xenos army on the fourth planet didn't cease fighting, seemingly unaffected by naval defeats above.
Omega and Alpharius no longer personally managed the void battle, leaving it to company commanders.
Instead, the twins traveled via Thunderhawk to meet the Primarch of the First Legion—Lion El'Jonson of the Dark Angels.
[End of Chapter]