章 100: Chapter Twenty-Eight: Death in Calixis (Part XI)
Location: The Vindication, Night Lord Strike Cruiser crashed into the Rangda War-Moon
Date: 893.M30 (Moments after the Detonation)
The Wrathful Black was dead. Consumed in a massive blast. A devastating explosion, but the wrong kind. Sensors all across the Vindication's bridge all told the same story. That was not a Cyclonic Torpedo or misfired Virus Bomb. Something had burst open the Wrathful Black's Plasma Core and destroyed the ship before it could trigger its weapons.
The Vindication was holding on, its defenses keeping back the Rangda, even as the Bone Bolts fired into its hull revealed their true nature. A form of bizarre Rangda boarding craft that had disgorged Stalker-Drones and a slew of microscopic invaders into the ship's hull. Astartes' kill-teams and liberal use of jellied Promethium had so far kept the invaders at bay. The Flagship of the Expedition Fleet would not be destroyed like the Tyrannos Umbra. Crippeled and gutted, waiting for the Rangda to feast on its innards. Instead, it faced death by a thousand cuts. The number of bodies the Rangda could throw at the beached void ship was staggering.
Waves of enslaved flesh that soaked up bullets meant for more important targets. Lingering contamination of both Radioactive and Biological nature mounted everywhere the Rangda fought. Every weapon used, even the stolen bodies of the slave soldiers left a stain. Combined with the near constant attempts at infiltration and the heavier War-Forms assault, it was only a matter of time before the make-shift Imperial fortress fell. Chapter Master Fenj and his subordinates understood this, it mattered little. They just had to delay a bit longer, the Cyclonic Torpedo would be ready soon.
Fenj itched to join the melee that had started in the outer edges of his ship. Sink his lighting claws into the enemy and die properly. A privilege the chains of command would deny him. He would orchestrate the battle from within his ship's bridge. Currently, the Night Lord Master found his attention absorbed in every sensory array he had access to. Barking orders for an explanation to what had killed the Wrathful Black. Had its defenders fallen before its Exterminatus weapons could be activated? Grimly Fenj ordered the ship's Virus Bomb to be put on a timer and Dead Man's Switch. At least one of their tools of Planet-Death would go off.
An answer to the mystery of the Wrathful Black's fate came as the three Librarians aboard the Bridge, all Solomonari, cried out a warning to brace for impact. More mundane sensors followed up, howling warning about something massive coming in fast. Flak guns turned skywards and shields screamed attempting to halt the oncoming attack. They did not have to, the hab-block-sized projectile came crashing down at the edge of the Vindication's shields. Reducing scores of unlucky slave soldiers to red paste. Red-hot and twisted, the hunk of metal took a moment to be identified. It was the Wrathful Black's bridge. The Void Ship's command center ripped out of its hull and tossed like the severed head of a defeated giant. Equal parts challenge and threat. The source of which soon came into view.
Even from his command throne, Master Fenj felt the coming storm. Heavy footfalls that shook the ground, monumental roars created by something more than flesh, and the presence. By the gods of Old Earth, the presence. An alien intellect of such magnitude its cursory attention could be felt. Something of psychic power so mighty it bled soul-crushing weight. Fenj had seen his Primarch furious once. He had also touched the truth of time itself through his geneseed's gift. This was worse, so, so, so much worse. Not necessarily more powerful than his Genefather, or as all-encompassing as fourth-dimensional awareness. Instead, it was sickening and crushing, the spiritual equivalent of the radiation that ate through flesh and metal. A soul so vast and twisted it leaked alien madness like a burst fusion reactor leaked death. The true might of the Rangda had finished with the Wrathful Black, and come for the Vindication
A parade of giants crested the canyon's top, coming into view, eldritch mountains of biomechanical horror added to the overloading presence. Each stood as tall as a Capital-class Titan, but were more massive, with quadrupedal stances and wriggling movement. Rangda Macrobeests, the pinnacle of the Xenobreed's skill of biomechanical engineering. Horrors that combined the worst of nature and innovation. Sewn together by the Basemekanic crafters, each a unique work of terrible alien genius. Nearly a dozen of them marched towards the Vindication, great ursine-insectoid bodies fused with pyramidal structures that glowed with eldritch power. Each of the Macrobeest a match for all but the greatest Imperial war-machine, and they were the escorts for the true horror.
The psychic presence belonged to something else, something that defied proper description. Like the nerves and blood vessels of a dead god stitched to the ruins of a monument. A bipedal form of flesh-plastic so dense it appeared stone-like, crackling with uncontained psychic power. Tendrils of blood/nerve/psychic power swirled around it, the evolution of the Warp-Glamor weapons favored by the Khrave and other psychic Rangda breeds. Fenj and his subordinates lacked the context to describe this…."thing" it was everything horrible and twisted that made up the Rangda and taken to the highest degree. This was a House-Lord, the demigod ruler and nexus of an entire segment of the Rangda kindred. One of the ancient horrors that nothing less than a Primarch with the backing of his legion and the Legio Titanicus might beat. In the coming years the Imperium of Mankind would learn a name for the thing that faced the battered scraps of Expedition Fleet-89. Opus Jorith, House-Lord of House Jorith and Architect of War-Moons.
To the Imperials it needed no name, they knew what it was. It was death, their death, come to snuff out their lives like it had billions before. The decision was not hard, Fenj gave the order, forcing it out through constricted lungs, tight from psychic pressure. "Activate the Virus Bomb and the Cyclonic Torpedo. Only in Death does Duty end."
Through some small miracle of will, the order passed down the tattered lines of command and a silent Tech-Priest enacted the cipher of death, freeing the Life Eater from its cage. The pathogen spread through the Vindication, devouring everything, falling upon Imperial defenders and Rangda attackers with equal hunger. Deep below the crashed Strike Cruiser the Cyclonic Torpedo detonated. Its activation rites rushed, but thankfully not botched. Two tools of planet-death ignited near simultaneously. Anti-Life reducing all it touched to gaseous sludge, crust-cracking explosives rushing up with the power to rip open a world's guts. Chapter Master Tiberiu Fenj did not know which one killed him.
Death poured towards the Rangda House-Lord devouring its armies and threatening to crack open its prized creation. Thousands of lesser Rangda screamed in panic as they died. Consumed by Life-Eater, Phospex, or the Cyclonic Torpedo's wrath. Soon the War-Moon would be burst open and riddled with Imperial planet-killers. The final desperate sacrifice of the Night Lords slaying an Alien megastructure.
No, This would not do, thought Opus Jorith. These arrogant Host-Beasts had ruined a trap meant for a godling. And now attempted to destroy the Star-Stealing-War-Moon, a unique creation created specifically to slay gods. Intimately connected to the Song of the War-Moon, the gestalt nightmare called Opus Jorith felt the touch of Phospex unleashed by Martyr Company alongside the Vindication's petty defiance. How annoying, amputation would be required, repairs would take cycles. How utterly annoying.
In the time between the Cyclonic Torpedo's ignition and before it could hit the alien demigod, it stepped through unreality and stood in the heart of its power. Watching the expanding shockwave and death through a million eyes, the House-Lord started minimizing the damage. Leaving its army to die without a second thought, there was always more meat to use. Reaching into itself Opus Jorith pulled up its stolen reserves of sorceric power and started to cut. This would cost maybe a planet's worth of stolen warp-conduits, costly but better than letting the Host-Beasts poison spread.
Moonquakes shook the alien Megastructure as cables, arteries and cavern systems burst open. An entire continent of the War-Moon separated from the rest of it. Like a reptile shedding diseased skin, or a crustacean leaving an insufficient shell, the War-Moon let part of its body fall off. Pushed off into the void by mundane propulsion and the telekinetic push of Opus Jorith. The War-Moon had survived, wounded but not badly. With part of its crust gone the inflamed twitching innards of the artificial planetoid were exposed to the void. Already milky fluids dribbled over the nation-sized wound. Sealing shut important systems and preparing for triage. The War-Moon would return to House Jorith holdings and be repaired. Its colossal bulk entered the Worm-Ship, trailed by hundreds of War-barques, dragging the ruined husks of Imperial ships, ready to be put to use by the Rangda Kindred.
Location: Jörmungandr: Flagship of the Wild Hunt Legion. Dyatlov-Rho system.
Date: 896.M30
The excised hunk of planet-flesh still burned. Three years later and the Phospex still gnawed away at the forgotten piece of the War-Moon. Left behind by the Rangda, some of the only evidence of a battle had even been fought in the Dyaltov-Rho system. Some particularly brave Tech-Priests wanted to investigate, braving the Crawling Death for possible insight into the enemy. Tyric Baldurson was impressed with their mettle, but would not risk it. Besides, the Wild Hunt did not have time to tarry. The trail was already cold, and grew as bitter as Fenrisian winds with every passing day.
It had taken three years but the Imperium had done it, waging a galactic-class campaign on two fronts. Five more Legions had been called to face the Rangda and aid the VIII and IX. Already Rangda incursions were being pushed back and the Eternal Guard, the XIV Legion had implemented a basic quarantine around suspected Kindred territory. The fighting had raged for months already and the Wild Hunt had earned a great tally of new honors and shames. So many worlds had fallen, any even touched by the Rangda needed to be purged. Entire systems of compliant humans put to the sword because of a strand of errant DNA. The markers of an alien threat the likes of mortal minds could barely comprehend.
Baldurson and his legion had gained some respite from the frontlines, dispatched on a mission of utmost importance by the Emperor himself. A mission that had taken them deep into Rangda territory. Dyatlov-Rho, and the surrounding Calaxis region had been swallowed up by the Rangda, its stars haunted by horrid alien nightmares. In this journey into the dying sector, the Wild Hunt had picked up a trail. Following the ruined remnants of lost Expedition Fleets. Resupply groups that had become stranded in Rangda space. Some had even survived to be rescued by the VI Legion, and a few of those had even been spared. Having tested free of Rangda taint.
The still-burning carnage of the Dyaltov-Rho system and the records recovered from Expedition Fleet-89's few surviving members painted a grim picture. One that Tyric Baldurson had been silently hoping would not be true. But now he was faced with the ugly truth. The trail was cold, there had not been any contact for nearly four years. The IX Legion, the Dawn Angels, and their Primarch Dante Uriael were missing in action.
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