Chương 54: Chapter Fifty-Four

No matter how much I want to take prisoners, I need to see to myself first and there's no way I can drag two of them and a dog through a company of bloodletters. Bloodletters are lesser demons of Khorne with red skin, elongated skulls, curling horns, and clawed feet who swing two-handed, burning, undulating blades.

The sword design, called flamberge or flammenschwert, is associated with useless, showy swords and they look just as ridiculous as one would think with a hilt of four, inwardly curving horn-like spikes, spiked pommel, and yet more asymmetrical curved spikes at random points on the blade. With the lines disrupted from my crash, the bloodletters and the Herald of Khorne charge the tau, mostly shrugging off a punishing fusillade of pulse rifle fire.

Their absurd blades carve into fire warriors severing limbs and piercing chests. Reality bending gouts of blue blood spurting from every wound. Demonic trickery ensures the spikes never get stuck or hinder the blades and their wielders from executing artistic parries and other elegant martial feats. Above the tau lines hover the three unknown battlesuit. The large, five metre suit has a square chest, a massive curved jetpack with stabilising fins and three big intake vents peaking over the shoulders.

Two large weapons, a triple barrelled phased plasma-flamer and an EMP discharge cannon, are built into its arms. The pair of smaller suits are half the size with a single intake jetpack, twin-linked burst cannons and photon grenade launchers. All three suits target the Herald of Khorne, a bigger bloodletter with multiple horns. The EMP cannon achieves nothing. The photon grenades and burst cannon are similarly useless, though they do slow the herald's charge.

The herald finally gets close and jumps at the hovering suits. The big suit hovers back and unleashes its phased plasma-flamer. I've no idea what the 'phased' descriptor is for, but it's clearly doing something as the herald's skin blisters and melts like wax. The herald swings its sword, somehow getting in four strikes on one of the smaller battlesuits in zero point two seconds. Despite having nothing to push off, the final strike is a massive upswing that partially cleaves the battlesuit.

Both the suit and the herald plummet six metres to the ground. Bloodletters crawl in through the large rents in the hammerhead's frame and I set my nanites upon them. A great, silver tide converges on each border, rapidly dissolving their pseudo-flesh. The demons burst into iridescent smoke that flows into me, recharging my implants. The cyber mastiff crawls from its perch and into the cabin, then stands in front of me and barks at the demons. They don't try a second assault. I check my HUD and my surroundings.

One minute to go. Corporal Moredelg has reached friendly lines.

"What's the big suit?" I don't get an answer.

"You know, I could always give that fabulous machine a really insulting name in my archives. It would spread across the Imperium, trivialising the earth caste's essential and inspiring work."

"XV109 Y'vahra," growls the co-pilot.

"Thank you, and its companion suits?"

"XV9 Hazard Close Support Armour."

"Wonderful. Today is your lucky day. I can't take you with me and I'm not going to murder prisoners or hand them over to the demons, not even if you're body snatching xenos performing experiments on human psykers." I point at the bloodletters beyond the hull.

"It's a self-correcting problem. Unless," I laugh, "your forces are up to the task." Between the demons and my own troops, two thirds of the fire warriors are dead and the reinforcements have ceased.

"I have my doubts." I pat the cyber mastiff's flank and vox my intentions to Commander Muire, "Time to go, girl. We're pushing for our own lines." Pulling the tau from the wreck, I mutter, "For the Tau'va," and toss them back to their own lines. Their slim and slight bodies sail through the air fourteen metres, yelling and flailing. The co-pilot and tank commander slide and tumble another five metres then stop. They leap up and sprint for the last of their lines.

Jumping from the hammerhead, the cyber mastiff and I rush for the wrecked manta fort. As I approach the kataphrons make a final charge and the special weapons teams abandon their positions. Commander Muire and her support staff disembark from the chimera. The remaining two hundred and twelve guardsmen group up in platoons of thirty-six. A silver hovering swarm surrounds me as I run, unmaking demons before they can reach me. I arrive at the fortification and join the fifth, understrength platoon.

My countdown hits zero. The ground shakes and the lights switch to a dim yellow. A mind piercing tone echoes through the room followed by a calm, persistent voice, "Dome breach." It's followed by another teeth rattling beep, then the message repeats. I trigger a pulse through the warp with a teleporter beacon. Demons howl and the platoons fade from the materium with bright, blue-white flashes, one platoon every twenty seconds. A minute in and three platoons down, the demons are pressing the kataphrons hard.

They're tough and have close range arc claws, but they're pretty clumsy and the bloodletters are scraping them while taking minimal casualties. Water gushes into the dome from one of the entrances. I expect all the fighting has compromised the domes' damage control systems, that, or the torpedoes force was multiplied by the enclosed domes and the weight of the water, focusing the blasts beyond what I have accounted for. Another platoon flashes out.

The XV109 Y'vahra battlesuit finally banishes the herald and turns its supporting fire on the remaining bloodletters. Between the kataphrons, fire warriors, and battlesuit, they finish off the demons. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. All their strength flows to me. Regrouping, the tau fend off the last thirty kataphrons. Two new hammerheads enter the hangar riding the floodwaters and pick off the kataphrons.

The handful of surviving fire warriors, including the screaming hammerhead commander I traumatised, rush for a drier exit. The co-pilot is dead. The Y'vahra covers the fire warriors with its shielded bulk, somehow spiking its energy output and projecting an impressive energy shield, though I can see its systems overheating on my sensors. As they reach the exit, warp lighting overwhelms half of them as eight, hybrid tau, demon hosts swarm over them from behind.

The Y'vahra swings its bulk around and the fire warriors scatter. It immolates the demon hosts. The tank commander picks himself up and drags two other fire warriors to their feet. I teleport out. Expecting the worst, I keep my eyes shut and turn off my sensors. Instead, I feel nothing as I am zapped through the warp. ++You can open your eyes, Aldrich. ++ Auto-senses turn on and I look about. I'm back on the Distant Sun.

"Well that was needlessly dramatic." I hurry off the platform and accept the check up by the medic and armourer, who help me out of my damaged gear and scan me. I really don't need it, but it's the policy I helped establish with Thorfinn for this operation and ignoring it would set a bad example. Two hours later, I visit the guardsmen and women at their temporary quarters, visiting each recombined platoon to thank and congratulate them for a job well done.

Instead, I end up listening to most of them say a few words about their dead friends, or sit in silence holding their hands. Exhausted after a day in the torpedo, thirty-five minutes of furious combat, then five hours of quiet talk, I return to the captain's suite and, for the first time in weeks, sleep. The Imperium, as far as I know, doesn't bother writing condolence letters as most guardsmen fight so far from home there's no way anyone would receive them.

Commanders are so embroiled in war, they rarely have time to reflect and they oversee so many soldiers there's no way they know their troops. As I pace in front of my desk and dictate to a couple dozen auto-quills simultaneously. I realise they're missing the point. Writing condolence letters is difficult. Writing condolence letters makes me cry. I continue until I am done. The process leaving me drained, yet oddly content as if I have lanced a burden I did not know I carried.

I'm still upset, but now my mind turns to ways I can further improve the odds in other conflicts, both so I do not have to write more letters, but also ensure victory. Taking a few notes, I endeavour to discuss further enhancements with my staff, then turn to myself. The golden skull glows in my mind, bloated with death and promised power. First, I select Hyperweave Musculature, further improving my strength and toughness. Next is Armoured Organs, Reinforced Vascular Network, and Advanced E-WAR suite.

The last is particularly expensive and I have just enough for one more module. My mind flitters over the options and a few stand out to me. Krork Energy Application: harvest krorks and their debased kin for their unique psychic energy. There's a whole tree of upgrades attached to it and all of them come with warnings as dire as the modules are useful. It isn't any good by itself and I've no orks to harvest so I set that option aside. Navigator Conversion looks promising.

The data I have collected from both the Clubhouse and the Tau, as well as interacting with Quaani and the psi-errants has pushed successful conversion to an estimated sixty-eight percent. I don't want to be a navigator, but as I have to learn how something works before E-SIM will apply the upgrade, I could use this to create my own navigators and create a house loyal to me. Maybe.

External Core is another major upgrade, providing a way to maintain a separate linked instance of myself inside a cogitator and massively enhance my computing power. It requires Immaterium Infrastructure first to keep the core close to me with a stern warning I should construct an Immaterium Bastion if I am going to hide more stuff in the warp. Rephrasing the question, I consider what I am lacking, rather than what I would like to have. What do I absolutely need? Are there strengths I am underutilizing?

My genetics work is weak and additional knowledge may help with the mutants. Regenerative Hormones might help and I need to pick up Rejuvenat Gland before age defeats me. It's no primarach immortis gland but it is one of the prerequisites to an equivalent adaptation. Organ Redundancy appeals to me as well.

Hyper Intelligence is a requirement to unlock the most challenging and powerful modules, and I will need it if I don't take the Polymer Tissue Replacement, an upgrade that I am less leery of than I used to be; I care less about imperial tech-priests yelling heretek at everytime I walk near, because I am absolutely certain some of the pugnacious bastards are going to do so anyway.

Polymer Tissue Replacement isn't compatible with psyker upgrades though and I'm not ready to commit to a side just yet, no matter how robust it will make my grey matter against shockwaves or how unwise becoming a psyker is. I am already strong and tough and the upgrades I just selected should be enough in that category for now. Personal shields, ones not linked to my armour would be a good next step. E-SIM is based on nanites and there is definitely more I can do with them.

My Warp and Weft module that I use for external manipulation of the environment works best with a stock of materials but my body has limited space and I can't afford to shove stuff in the warp, nor stock more nanites. I would love to use it more but they're just too slow to be constructive with, like flash-forge cover or tarantula turrets on the battlefield, or accelerate the production of core components for the Iron Crane.

The nanites' powerfield, however, is a fabulously flexible deconstruction tool and I do use it for that. Out of combat though, it just makes me a glorified recycler. There are big machines for that which are faster and handle bigger quantities of scrap. There must be a solution somewhere among all these upgrades and I run a query. I get a hit: Subspace Anchor. It's more limited in capability and cheaper than the Immaterium Infrastructure, but I still can't afford it as it's linked to the krork tech-tree.

How frustrating! After a cup of disappointing tea I am hit with an epiphany. Humanity's defining trait is its tool use. E-SIM is an internal tool that creates other internal tools and I realise how blind that thought has made me. Our first tool after we slithered and grew from the primordial ooze was the hard and humble rock. Every culture I know about it has sayings about rocks, uses rocks, and later, memes on rocks, some people even write stories where the protagonist is a rock!

It is no wonder then, that I am so dense. My interactive menu brings us a new category, now that I actually thought to ask the question. External Modules. Self-recrimination hammers at my psyche, then I remember that I am a new and improved human and blame the eldar instead. It feels good.