Chương 57: Chapter 55: The War for Ur-Haven Part 6

POV: Lord Arken Drakios Arken Drakios studied the unfolding void battle from the Argent Drake's bridge.

"Lily, how bad is it?" He asked over the Vox. They had nearly lost Captain Bolaar and his entire first scale when the Sky Scourer went up. Lily had been monitoring the ship closely after the detonations.

"Overall? Awful. For us specifically, it could be worse. We've been keeping our Gellar fields up constantly as ordered. That alone has helped blunt the worst of the manifestations. Despite that, we have minor incursions on all decks, in addition to the enemy Astartes forces assaulting the ship. The manifestation phenomenon will fade soon, but the poor system ships are being overwhelmed by daemonic entities.

The Lady and the Hammer don't have the robust internal defenses we do, and both are struggling to keep up with the tide of horrors." Arken sighed, "Vox Master, hail the Lady and the Hammer. Order them to leave the area of concentrated warp energies at their best speed and regroup once they've secured their vessels." Checking the hololith display, he could see the Purest Shadow was still moving forward.

"Helm, plot an intercept course for the Prophet of Distortion. They must be running out of cards to play if they were foolish enough to do something this desperate." The daemonic forces were indiscriminately hindering both sides. The amount of fire the ship was taking had lessened greatly, but so too had the once coordinated fire from the defenders. He was considering their next step when one of the auspex operators called out, "Sir! Movement from the Space hulk, it's accelerating!

It's heading straight for the Halo!" Arken studied the infographs and noted its steep acceleration; it had nearly doubled its original speed, but was still slower than most cruisers. And it was headed straight for the Halo.

"As much as it pains me to admit it, we can't do anything about that right now. Weapons prioritize the other enemy vessels still firing." The enemy still had several dangerous ships that remained operational. Most had been caught in the radius of the warp detonations, but a few vessels like the Blood Moon that kept to the periphery had managed to avoid it.

"Major Milo, mobilize additional squads of House Guards and have them report to the bridge, and man all the access routes. Send the Felinid scouts and one company of the Guard to reinforce the Princeps at the Teleportarium. Tell them they have permission to bring two Chimeras and the Leman Russ Punisher using the elevators. There should be room for them."

"Yes, Sir! What should we do about the enemy Astartes?" Milo asked.

"I trust the Star Dragons will handle that issue personally. Make sure they are kept informed of the movements of the boarders." He said before waving a hand to dismiss Milo.

"Weapons! Make ready and load the Melta Torpedoes!" Arken called as he glared imperiously at the display that marked the Prophet of Distortion.

"Eligael is not the first to underestimate the tenacity and ferocity of the House of Drakios, only to meet their end, and by my will, he shall not be the last." —------------------------------------------------------- Location: The Argent Drake Lower Decks In the dark, forgotten waste tunnels of the lower decks, where rust outweighed purpose and barely a soul had walked in decades, the veil thinned. The bulkheads wept slime that allowed the vermin to form the shape of glyphs no one remembered.

Vents hissed with no pressure. A trio of rats began to gather. They waited for something. And then, in a heatless flash of wrongness, it arrived. The air folded. Not violently, but like silk being pulled through rusted teeth. A shape squeezed into reality where there should be none. A twitching, hunched monstrosity. Flesh stitched with warp-tubing and ribbed with rusted armor plating. Its tail dragged behind it in loops of barbed wire and spiked bone.

Horns curled up from a half-metal, half-skull head crowned by a corona of green flame. It hissed its name. Vrr'tkss, Claw of the Gnawing God. A lesser daemon of Chaos Undivided, but favored by the Horned One, the Verminlord of Shadows, Disease, and Betrayal.

"Gnnnk-skk-hole breach-tunnel-tunnel! Ship soft-flesh–mine now, nest soon, yes-yes! Horned One watches!" It chittered, the sound grating on the ears like a rusted nail on a chalkboard. Its presence poisoned the air. Wraiths surrounded it. Not real daemons. Just reflections. Echoes of its hunger. It had plans, it would move, avoiding major corridors, and follow maintenance shafts and steam lines. It would study the ship like a predator sniffing at the bones of its prey.

Seek places where spores of the warp could fester into full-blown infestation. It would not conquer. It would corrupt! Only there was something that watched it from the shadows. A small man-thing figure crouched in the mouth of a nearby tunnel. A man-thing spawn. It held a whistle to its lips and blew a high-pitched keening note. It should have fled in terror! Why did it not flee? Vrr'tkss felt confused. Its ears picked up the patter of man-thing feet.

More man-things arrived, bigger, older, taller, and Vrr'tkss drew to his full height and snarled, yet they did not recoil or cower! The man-things grinned, a dangerous manic expression that put Vrr'tkss ill at ease. The man-things all drew long knives and began to chant.

"Rat! Rat! Rat!" The lead man-thing with the greatest hat amongst them bellowed, "We kill!" The rest answered with a thunderous howl, "The Rat!" and as one, they all leapt fearlessly at Vrr'tkss. Blades bared with the fervor only seen by true fanatics. Vrr'tkss's schemes would die with it as it experienced what it was like to be swarmed and fell from a thousand cuts from dozens of sanctified knives.

—---------------------------------------------------------- POV: Star Dragons Librarian Astrovas Astrovas had not expected their return to the Argent Drake to descend into chaos so quickly. The battle through the Sky Scourer had gone well, but the sudden warp core detonation nearly caught them in its lethal embrace. Now, while the warp phenomena persisted, daemons poured from the air itself, crawling from the walls and gaps in reality, as the warp pushed its way into the ship's sanctum.

His brothers had moved without hesitation, joining the fight alongside the ship's defenders, and of course, the little Princeps was here in the thick of it. Her mere presence seemed to infuriate many of the nearby daemons. Venerable Baldos fought nearby, a towering engine of vengeance. His once pristine chassis now bore considerable damage and new scars, but his movements were still precise and purposeful. Astrovas could feel the controlled fury burning within his sarcophagus like a quiet, disciplined storm.

Alongside the fury was a strange sense of contentment, an almost zen-like serenity as he enjoyed the purging of the vile daemons. Without pause, Baldos seized a shrieking Screamer of Tzeentch by the twin tusks that framed its twisted maw and wrenched it apart in a single brutal motion. The daemon's form scattered in a flash of unreal light, and its essence was gone, but only after soaking everyone nearby in glowing blue-green ichor.

Astrovas caught sight of a pile of fallen Traitor Astartes nearby, electing not to question the origin. He could faintly sense the lingering presence of the warp portal. Many had fallen under the onslaught of the Princep's retinue. Their corrupted power armor twisted and inert, perforated with holes. One began to shift, as something sought to inhabit it from beyond. Astrovas narrowed his eyes, readying his mind to purge it should it rise.

The Princeps was well guarded, but much to his surprise, she had moved to engage the daemons in melee, a far cry from her response when she first met one of the warp spawn. She was proving to be much more effective than he anticipated. Her Axe swings grew quicker and more refined the more she continued to fight. Whatever combat routines she employed, they were adapting rapidly. She was beginning to match Astrovas' pace, her blows landing in concert with his own.

Their force weapons sliced through warp-spawned forms, sending them back to the immaterial hell that birthed them.

"Fighting retreat! Move toward the elevators!" Captain Bolaar's voice carried through the din of combat. The tide of minor daemons was beginning to falter, but more powerful entities now stalked the perimeter, sensing weakness, testing their formation, and the room's defenses, looking for opportunity. As the wards directed them away from other parts of the ship and shunted them out into the Teleportarium.

Astrovas turned just in time to intercept a Veiled Deceit daemon, a shadow-wrapped figure of impossible angles and silent malice. With a burst of psychic pyromancy, he incinerated it before it could vanish into the ship's deeper decks. Their forces were slowly falling back toward the vehicle elevators. Combat automata laid down suppressive fire as the Guard and Astartes consolidated their position.

From the corner of his vision, Astrovas watched Captain Bolaar and his Terminator elite engage and destroy a pack of Beasts of Nurgle, their bloated forms collapsing under precise firepower and power weapons. Though they held the advantage for now, the toll was building. Minor wounds were accumulating, and ammunition stocks were running low.

Still, the enemy came: Daemonettes, Bloodletters, Plaguebearers, Pink Horrors, Furies, and other daemonic entities, a cacophony of nightmare forms drawn from every foul corner of the Immaterium. One particularly persistent Flamer of Tzeentch fixated on the Princeps, materializing multiple times to hurl waves of warpflame at her. Each time, her guard cut it down with ruthless precision, but it kept returning, more frenzied with each manifestation. Astrovas gritted his teeth, his armor slick with ash and sweat.

The battle was far from over. It was minutes later when the deck shook. The Argent Drake growled in protest against the vermin that dared claw their way into her. The Argent Drake's internal vox barked through static, "Enemy breach confirmed inside Teleportarium. Daemonic entities present. Standby for counter-response. Emperor guide our hand." Then came the grinding screech of rising lift plates. Three massive vehicle elevators settled into place, the tremor scattering the first wave of minor daemons.

The doors slid open. From the first lift came a Chimera, followed by Guard infantry who stormed out in disciplined ranks, hellguns and bolters firing with practiced volleys. Plasma bursts turned Furies into greasy ash mid-flight. From the second lift came the second Chimera, and a squad of heavy weapons specialists hauling autocannons and grenade launchers. The third transport disgorged a flamer team, who wasted no time in turning the bubbling floor into a roaring inferno.

One Daemonette screamed as her flesh boiled and sloughed from bone, her death orgasmic. Then the Leman Russ Punisher rolled forward from the middle lift. Gunmetal grey, its treads scarred from previous battles, its command hatch still bearing the Drakios crest. The Punisher Gatling Cannon spun up with a growl that turned into a scream, the scream of ten thousand bullets being born into holy war. BRRRRRRTTTTTT! The Punisher scythed down a whole rank of Bloodletters, tearing through flesh, bone, and brass.

The deck was slick with warp-blood. Plaguebearers absorbed round after round, but even their unnatural resilience buckled beneath sustained fire. Ichor steamed on the floor as their corpses hissed into the Immaterium. Sergeant Jari Su was behind cover, next to him a man with a vox-caster slung over his shoulder stood stoically, shouting orders between bursts of las fire.

"Suppress left! Redirect fire! We've got warp-spawn climbing the walls!" Suddenly, a Pink Horror exploded in a flare of warp-light and two Blue Horrors erupted from it, giggling as they darted into the ranks. One melted a trooper's face with a flame-blast before a bayonet pinned it to the bulkhead. Astrovas overheard one of the felinid officers approach Nicole.

"Ma'am! We need to ask you to fall back! Your forces and the Astartes should take the elevators down to replenish ammo and handle injuries. We'll hold the line."

"Fine. But I'm either coming back or sending reinforcements." She told the officer as she shouldered her axe.

"That would be appreciated, Ma'am." He said politely before he flicked one of his ears as one of the nearby daemons screeched. Nicole thankfully agreed, Astrovas watched as she moved her Automata out of the firing lines while letting most of them spend their remaining ammunition into the field of horrors before entering the center lift. Nicole and all of her guards following suit. Astrovas and the Star Dragons moved into another lift.

He noted Baldos came with them in a clear attempt to avoid Nicole for a few more minutes. —-------------------------------------------------------------------------- POV: Archmagos Akellonon Doll Doll scuttled his way through the primary maintenance corridors inside the Argent Drake. Having heard about the chaotic mess in the Teleportarium, he could only shake his head. Luckily, Nicole was safe, and the Star Dragon's forces had suffered no major losses.

He was headed for the Gellar Field generator with a small cadre of his personal Skitarii, clad in thick red robes that bore the heraldry of The Lathes; they looked no different than normal tech priests or other Skitarii at first glance. His numerous mechanical legs clicked softly with each step, and he bent forward to avoid smacking his head on a low-hanging light fixture. He idly logged a maintenance request within the Noosphere to fix the issue without a thought.

A few minor daemons attempted to waylay his progress, but his guardians swiftly dealt with them. Doll reached the well-defended junction outside the single entrance to the Gellar chamber and paused. His auspex pinged, and he turned expectantly towards one of the dimly lit corridors.

"Will you keep me waiting, or do you require additional time to process my presence?" Doll called out in a bored tone.

"You trespass on my ship." Doll stood there, and a sniper shot rang out, zipping down the corridor only to plink off his refractor field.

"Foolish." While his Skitarii took up covering positions on either side of the hallway, Doll stood in the middle, his imposing figure unimpressed with the attempt. He imperiously tapped a finger against his Omnissian Axe, and behind the two squads of enemy Astartes, a series of bulkhead doors slammed closed, cutting off any hope of escape. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

He rolled his bulky metal shoulders, and two ballistic dendrite arms emerged, one was an ancient, sleek Reclamator rifle, the other was a large, odd-looking weapon. It was blocky with exposed wires, heat syncs, and a single barrel. It was a personal project he had recently made great strides in repairing, thanks to Nicole's Forge Frenzy inspiration. A man-portable Graviton Imploder. The sound of numerous power-armoured boots running on the deck echoed towards Doll as their enemy finally revealed themselves.

A small squad of Terminators, along with a large group of Black Legion Traitor Astartes. All were aiming their weapons towards him. Doll's mechanical red eyes scanned the group, and he hummed.

"Only eight of your suits are worth salvaging. A pity." He spoke aloud as he highlighted the eight units he had deemed worthy of reclamation in his tactical display.

"Die, Mechanicus dog!" One of the Terminators opened fire, but a moment later, a deep, resonant thrum filled the air, followed by a horrendous crunch and a gush of bodily fluids that splattered the nearby Astartes, the ceiling, the walls, and the floor. Where the Terminator had stood was a watermelon-sized ball of compressed metal and flesh. The barrel of the Graviton Imploder was glowing a soft purple as a thin stream of steam radiated from the muzzle.

The Reclamation Rifle fired at another, the thin, invisible beam striking the closest viable Terminator in the head. The beam ignored the armour and metallic implants and devastated the flesh beneath. The Astartes went slack like a puppet without strings, and a moment later he/it fell to the ground. The power pack attached to the rifle was instantly depleted, but Doll's dendrites had already removed and replaced it before the body hit the floor.

"Kill him now!" A Terminator, one that Doll's internal logs and auspex readings identified as one of the Scourged, screamed. The field crackled as it was struck by hundreds of projectiles, mostly bolts and plasma fire, filled the previously dim hallway with flashes of light. One of the Terminators charged Doll, and another managed to avoid a direct hit from his Graviton rifle, unfortunately, it still compressed half his torso and one of his arms, viscerally ripping his body into bloody chunks.

The Reclamation Rifle took careful aim each time it fired. Due to the extensive costs associated with firing the weapon, for every single shot, Doll triple checked the advanced predictive ballistics calculations to ensure the chance of missing a lethal shot was all but impossible, with a rounding error of a hundred thousandth of a percentile.

In mere seconds, more than half of the Black Legion sapper team had been annihilated, their black and brass war-plate shattered and their transhuman forms torn apart like wet parchment. The corridor echoed with the dying crackle of discharged bolters and the tortured screech of failing power armor systems. Smoke coiled thick in the air, lit only by the pulsing red emergency strips lining the ceiling. The decking was littered with limbs, smoldering cabling, and the occasional twitching torso.

The air stank of promethium, ozone, and cooked flesh. Through the carnage strode the last of the traitor Terminators, his ancient power armor scarred by centuries of heresy and inscribed with blasphemous runes. His thunder hammer, crackling with coruscating energy, rose overhead as he thundered toward his target. Doll did not react.

Clad in his worn crimson robes and surrounded by the silent vigilance of his mechanical limbs, he stood motionless, his head slightly bowed as if in prayer, as he continued processing the calculus of combat. His eyes cast faint halos of crimson against the dark and smoke-filled corridor. Just as the hammer descended in a thunderous arc meant to sunder flesh, bone, and ceramite, a massive servo arm unfurled from behind Doll's back.

With explosive speed, it lunged forward, intercepting the strike in a sudden, jarring impact. The hammer met the servo arm in a burst of sparks and electromagnetic shriek, but the arm held fast, built not primarily for combat, but for shipyard-scale lifting and precision manipulation of armored hulls. It absorbed the entire force of the blow with a groan of compressed pistons and whining gears. Doll still hadn't moved a single step back from the blow. Not a twitch. Barely a tremor graced the mechanical limb.

A heartbeat later, the jaws of servo limbs spread wide. The first jaw struck like a pincer into the gap beneath the Terminator's pauldron, bracing beneath the underarm joint. The second jaw slipped with surgical precision into the crook of the traitor's neck, just beneath the edge of the gorget where the ancient armor's segmented plating was weakest. With a deafening crunch, both arms contracted in unison towards the central chest cavity.

There was no scream, only the hideous sound of collapsing ceramite and the wet pop of ruptured internal organs. The Astartes' limbs spasmed once, then went limp as the reinforced spinal column snapped under the pressure. Blood and hydraulic fluid sprayed in equal measure before the massive corpse slumped to the deck in a broken corrupted heap. From beneath Doll's robe, a slender mechadendrite slithered forth, thin as a whisper, nearly invisible in the haze.

It oriented in a blink, locking onto one of the last surviving sappers who had slipped behind a debris pile and was feverishly keying in activation sequences on a set of melta charges. There was no warning. No light. Just a flash as a laser no thicker than a hair extended, and a moment later, one of the charges cooked off. The resulting explosion vaporized the traitor instantly, leaving only a brief flash of incinerating heat and a blackened scorch mark where the heretic had stood.

The remaining melta charges were slagged in the blast, rendered useless. Doll's optics dimmed slightly as his internal systems recalculated the threat matrix. Silence returned, broken only by the soft clicks and whirs of his mechadendrites folding back into their housings. Slowly, he raised his head and surveyed the ruin with cold, mechanical detachment. The corridor fell silent. Doll tilted his head in satisfaction, already requesting cleanup and reclamation teams via the Noosphere.

His weapon arms retracted back into his body as his Skitarii confirmed each kill by systematically double-tapping the fallen heretics. A minute later, Magos Xor rounded the corner, clad in the crimson armor of the Venatorii. He took in the aftermath.

"It seems I'm late. My apologies, Archmagos." Doll waved him off.

"A trifle. Think nothing of it. I've marked eight units, three Terminators, and five others for reclamation. The rest must be destroyed or scrapped. If you seek combat, Xor, the final boarding team remains pinned a few decks away. The Teleportarium situation is stable, and Nicole is secure. The rate of Daemonic manifestation is declining. I shall proceed to the main reactor to ensure it remains free of taint."

—---------------------------------------------------- POV: Magos Zeta 9-Kane Zeta looked around his command center, the Halo had been hit hard by the Daemonic manifestations despite the Gellar fields that had been installed to cover the station. Thousands were running amok in the outer ring. The local defense forces were struggling to keep up, even with the aid of his Skitarii. The command center flickered with cold, pale lumen strips, casting jagged shadows across cogitator banks and brass-framed data-screens.

Magos Zeta 9-Kane stood unmoving at the heart of it all, wrapped in his crimson robes, mechadendrites weaving slowly through the air around him like the arms of an arachnid. The Halo had suffered greatly. Despite the station's Gellar fields, a majority were either refurbished, salvaged, second-hand, or new from the forges and added at significant cost. The tandem warp core detonations had ruptured the veil. The generators struggled to keep the protective fields up under the intense strain.

Warp-things howled through the outer ring, tearing into hab-blocks and power nodes. Thousands of defense personnel, servitors, and other automata were already dead or destroyed. Thousands more fled or fought, driven mad by the shrieking unreality that now pulsed through their corridors. His Skitarii, ever precise, held their formations, but even they were thinning under the relentless tide. And now another pressing threat presented itself.

A fresh klaxon screamed to life, an urgent double-tone that had not been heard for some time. Zeta 9-Kane's augmetics whirred softly as he interfaced directly with the station's data-spires, streams of tactical and orbital telemetry pouring into his mind in crisp, color-coded logic. The truth struck like a hammer to the cogitator core. The Space Hulk. Derelict in form but monstrous in momentum. The cursed hunk of fused rock and ship debris drew nearer by the second.

He watched through Auspex feeds as it sheared through the void, its outer surface studded with towers, broken cathedrals, craters, and half-dead engines, some left smoking as they fired one final time to give the necessary acceleration for this final assault. It struck the heretic Strike Cruiser along its path and tore a kilometer-long section of the vessel's prow clean off in a single grinding impact. No deceleration. No deviation. Then it obliterated a Raider like it was a naught but bug on a windscreen.

One of his overwhelmed system ships followed suit moments later. He projected its trajectory with brutal clarity. The outer ring of the Halo would be devastated. At least one of the station's primary arms, likely the eastern span, was at risk of complete structural failure. A flicker of calculated regret passed through him. His beloved station was a ravaged, mauled thing beset by foul warp creatures and traitors. He said aloud, his voice rendered in a flat, synthesized monotone.

"All nonessential personnel are to be rerouted to internal transit nodes. Maximum containment protocols." He hesitated, only for a microsecond, but for him, it felt like an eternity.

"Seal every bulkhead possible. Overload the reinforcement servos in advance. Prepare fallback zones." His mechadendrites twitched in an involuntary expression of tension.

"We require volunteers." The words were heavy as he spoke.

"At least one tech-priest to remain in O-9. They are to maintain Gellar integrity and direct servitor operations. If the field collapses, that quadrant becomes a breach point. Containment is paramount." He paused, calculating.

"Estimated survival probability post-impact. Two percent." A quiet hung in the command center. Even the servitors paused for the briefest flicker of a cycle. Somewhere, deep in the station's Vox-net, the screams of the dying bled through static. A brave Adept near the generator answered the call. Zeta 9-Kane committed their name to memory. Zeta 9-Kane let out a low, mechanized sigh. Somewhere beneath all the steel and code, a sliver of the man he once was still felt the weight of every number he uttered.

There was hope, the warp phenomena was dispersing, and deep behind the mess of ships and debris the Argent Drake and Purest Shadow had begun their pincer assault to cut off the head of the snake. —-------------------------------------------------------- POV: Nicole I walk briskly off the elevator, leaving my Automata in their idle states in a secondary chamber, in the hands of some Tech Priests and servitors who will replenish their munitions, clean them, and check them over.

I quickly catch up to my target and call out.

"Baldos!" Before he can slink off. Baldos halts and slowly turns around, the rest of the blue-armoured Astartes part around me like water. I put my hands on my hips and frown up at the dreadnought.

"I do hope your vengeance was worth all the damage you have sustained." I say curtly as I give Baldos a full spectrum scan with my auspex.

"It was. The damage is only moderate. There are still foes to crush and repel." Baldos states as he flexes one of his claws, the other sputters and makes a whining noise. I smile.

"I believe your brothers have things in hand. They are more than capable of handling the remaining traitors. You are going to a repair bay…" I look around at Bolaar, Astrovas, and the rest to see if anyone dares contradict me. To anyone watching, it might look comical as an entire squad of Terminators and Astartes, including several dreadnoughts, shy away from the stern glare of a little girl.

"Ahem, yes, Princeps, we will rearm and hunt down the traitors. The injured will head to the Apothecary. We need to secure the prisoners and shall leave Baldos in your care." Bolaar says as he walks off. Baldos' shoulders slump at the minor betrayal. While that exchange happens, I find the source of the malfunction.

"Is that a chunk of skull and half a brain?" I ask Baldos.

"Yes, it is the skull of my foe. Before he transmuted himself into a daemonic abomination. I crushed his skull with my fist!" Baldos declared proudly.

"Sterile biological specimen container now!" I screech in binary at the closest Tech Adept, who drops what they were doing and sprints off. I carefully use my dendrites to extract the skull and grey matter, doing my best to avoid further contamination with the other human, Astartes, and daemonic remains splattered on Baldos's claws.

"What do you want that for?" Baldos inquires as I pry it free.

"I want some… specific information. I will likely need a volunteer Brother willing to use their Omophagea to see if it has the information I want. I intended to extract it from the prisoners as well, but your foe is much more likely to know what I seek, or rather not know it if we still have time." I mutter as the Adept returns and I secure the specimen.

"Don't worry, I can save the skull, maybe fashion some kind of trophy out of it for you if you like."

"I… would like that." Baldos admits.

"Good. You. Repair bay. Now." I say, pointing my finger down the corridor.

"You can freely kill any of the daemons that manage to slip in on the way." I offer in concession.

"We're just going to perform a quick and dirty part swap. Both arms in totality, your shoulder and chest plates, and the left leg plate. If you hurry, we might get you combat-ready for the big finale."

"Finale?" Baldos asks me, confused. I flash a vulpine grin.

"The Argent Drake and the Purest Shadow are about to finally engage Eligael's flagship. Lord Drakios has played his cards well." I say as I pass the specimen case to one of my Thallax. Baldos increases his pace to a brisk lumbering trot towards his repair facility.

"You should have said that earlier, littlest one! Let's go!"