Chapter 143: Weapon
The Colonel and Neos, following Lin's directions, went to the weapons workshop to collect their arms.
Those underhive dwellers who knew how to handle weapons had been reorganized and put through three days of training. Their high degree of obedience meant they had already grasped the basics of discipline and technique—at the very least, they no longer shot their own comrades when they pulled the trigger.
As for the remaining underhive dwellers who had never touched a weapon before, they would need a much longer period of training. Still, before long they too would gradually be committed to the battlefield.
Thanks to the Felyne advance scouts, Lin had already mapped out part of the situation in the lower hive and the midhive.
The daemons' tracks had already appeared in the midhive. They toyed at will with the unarmed civilians, dragging these commoners onto their altars and trading the souls of the masses for greater power from the Warp.
The remaining Planetary Defence Force still guarded the upper hive, standing by and watching this tragedy unfold, wholly indifferent to the state of the midhive.
If that steward was the mastermind behind it all, then what about the planetary governor? Could he possibly be unaware that the profane force of Chaos, swelling with every sacrifice, would in the end drag every idle bystander down into ruin along with it?
Either this planetary governor was the steward's puppet, dancing on his strings, or the governor was merely feigning idiocy while pursuing some scheme of his own. Lin leaned toward the latter.
Whatever plan that governor had, Lin could not, like him, turn a blind eye to the state of the midhive.
Three days of preparation was enough. The iron and blood of the battlefield would help these men finish their final training. That was why he had dispatched the Colonel and Neos to his assistant, to collect the weapons meant for the underhive dwellers.
Sweat ran down the groove of the Colonel's spine and into the waistband of his trousers, yet the tense Colonel didn't even dare to draw a deep breath here. He stared at the towering, red-robed giant before him—a full three meters tall—and felt a tension welling up inside him, one laced with a sense of imminent danger.
This "apprentice" of Lin's—no matter how he looked at it, something about the whole picture felt off.
He'd heard that members of the Adeptus Mechanicus all adored augmenting their own bodies... but this giant, who hid his entire frame beneath a red robe—wasn't his build just a little too exaggerated?
William's gaze swept over the weapon this Tech-Priest had forged. Unlike the usual refined Adeptus Mechanicus style, all scented with incense and holy oils, the lump of metal on the workbench looked like the deformed offspring of a gatling gun stuffed into a rocket launcher.
Three unnerving barbs were welded onto its barrel, and the Colonel half-suspected that before this weapon ever fired, it would first skewer its own wielder to death.
"This is the weapon we'll be using next?" he asked uncertainly.
"Wotz da shrimp shakin' about?" Evil Sun spat, his saliva reeking of sulfur, and thrust an iron-hook of a fingernail out from his red robe, poking the Colonel's breastplate. "You little shrimp, ya can't even bang as loud as me one o' me farts!"
"But this weapon..." Staring at the exposed length of green arm, William didn't dare probe any deeper. "How exactly is this thing supposed to be used?"
"Call it da 'Boom-Boom-Krakka-Kannon'!"
Even though its inner workings had become more scientific, Evil Sun clearly still couldn't let go of the wasteland aesthetic peculiar to Ork weaponry. "See dat? Ya gotta whack it like dis! You shrimps always usin' dat... dat wotzit manual?"
He yanked out half of the "Imperial Weapon Operation Guide" that Lin had handed him earlier from behind his backside. Its yellowed pages were smeared with grease. "Bah! Too scratchy even fer wipin' me arse, it'd give me haemorrhoids!"
William felt the acrid stench of burning scrap iron flood his nostrils. He didn't dare voice his displeasure, but beside him Neos had already taken hold of the Boom-Boom-Krakka-Kannon.
First he kicked the stock, sending the gear that served as a safety catch popping out. Then he punched the bolt, setting the weapon into a ready-to-fire state. Under his handling the six barrels began to spin madly, the weapon's heat vents roaring like a dying beast, and the sudden torrent of shells tore the sheet metal off the workshop wall outright.
The Colonel gaped at Neos, who had learned to operate the thing after a single demonstration. Evil Sun, however, burst into applauding laughter and slapped Neos hard on the shoulder. "You're a proppa lad! I likes ya! Someday you're gonna grow inta a right big 'ard boyz!"
"This thing really does hit hard," Neos agreed, sliding his fingers off the smoking firing mechanism. The whole barrel now glowed a red-hot crimson, yet the Colonel noticed he was somehow completely unharmed. "The firepower, at least, is fierce."
"Zackly! A good weapon's gotta sing! Da more mad ya go, da more dis beauty gives ya!"
Still, the Colonel couldn't accept it. Even though Evil Sun had innovatively added something like a safety catch into an Ork weapon, this thing was still far too advanced for him. "We're taking this onto the battlefield? They look so unreliable!"
"Big enough, loud enough, mad enough! Dat's true art! Only wiv dese can ya kill dem howlin' ghosties!" Evil Sun stressed. "Dat rusty scrap o' yours can't even make a Gretchin cry—in front o' me it ain't even fit ta be called junk!"
He opened up the storehouse, revealing the weapons piled full inside.
"Come wiv me, an' haul off all dis scrap!" Evil Sun said, tossing them a bucket of paint mixed from blood and rust flakes as he went. "Don't fergit ta paint 'em red! Da second boss says yellow's more dakka, but I reckon red makes da bullets go faster!"
And just like that, the Colonel and Neos wound up with a heap of weapons for no clear reason.
Though the weapons looked unreliable, their method of use was simple and clear—simple enough that even the underhive dwellers, who had only been through basic training, could figure out how to use them. Once every underhive dweller had received a weapon, Lin gave a brief mobilization speech for this war.
"Now that the upper hive has already been swallowed by chaos, only we remain as the flickering spark among the stars!" His gaze swept over each and every underhive dweller. "I won't preach any grand doctrine about the good of mankind. But if you want to change your own fate, then let it begin right here!"
Words like "for the Emperor" were too distant for these underhive dwellers, who had never once felt the Emperor's blessing. Neos was the first to raise his hand, crying out, "For humanity!"
It was a good bit of guidance. Here under Lin, well-fed and well-watered, the underhive dwellers wore looks of pride. For the first time they felt proud of their own species. "For humanity!"
The program locking down the elevator was nothing but a decoration before Lin. With a snap of his fingers he banished the machine-spirit daemon nesting within it and rebooted this bridge connecting the lower hive and the underhive.
The underhive dwellers boarded the elevator with tension and anticipation. Before them, the Astartes had already boarded the Thunderhawk gunships ahead of time, heading for the elevator's landing point.
The circling Thunderhawk gunships made a preliminary sweep of the daemons entrenched at the landing point, and the Astartes then set down there to carry out a more thorough clearance. But no matter how they cleansed it, the air here was thick with a cloying, rotten-sweet stench.
The energy of the Warp had already wrought a fairly pronounced corruption upon the material universe. Fighting here for any length of time was bound to inflict irreversible effects upon mortals.
Ayash surveyed all of this with satisfaction.
Up in the upper levels, Governor Egrimm had gone back to his revelries and debaucheries, leaving the greater affairs to Ayash to manage. And down below, where the ritual had already begun, the Warp ritual was itself a barrier that sealed off all things mundane.
Of course he had noticed what that Adeptus Mechanicus sage was up to, but he did not think these underhivers with their newfound weapons could hold out for long under the corrosion of the Warp's energy.
Fishing out a pile of weapons from who-knows-where, then goading a swarm of underhive scum into coming here to throw their lives away—did that make him think he could beat him?
Though the idea of pleasing the God of Trickery by offering up cultists of Nurgle, the sworn enemy of the Changer of the Ways, had already failed, if he could instead offer up half a hive city, he would win an equally exalted commendation.
Underhive cannon fodder? Nothing more than extra sacrifices to be added to the pile!
He spread his arms wide, as if welcoming his own victory. "Then let this ritual become grander still!"
Behind him, M'Kachen, his face concealed, let out a low sneering laugh. "You cannot stop them."
"?" Ayash turned his head, not understanding what he meant. "Why?"
M'Kachen, who had personally experienced that terrifying power, offered no explanation. To this mortal before him who yearned to become a Daemon Prince, he had no intention of laying everything bare.
Why not let this mortal, who so wildly presumed to control everything, witness it with his own eyes—and thereby become part of the board as well?
In the changing futures he could not glimpse the figure of that man. Yet, through the movements of those around him, he as a great daemon could draw inferences about what was to come.
"When facing an entity capable of ruining the ritual you laid before, there's no harm in making a few more preparations, is there?" was all he said.
The mirror before him began to ripple like the surface of water struck by a stone, and at last, under the great daemon's psychic power, it resolved into the projected images of two Space Marines. "You need new weapons."
One of those figures was not unfamiliar to Ayash. It was the Night Lord who had been outside his plans, yet whom he had, over the past two days, submitted as an additional piece of evidence to the Pavonis Inquisitor.
"Traitor Space Marines?" Ayash frowned, unable to fathom what M'Kachen was scheming.
"By rights, you ought to call them warriors who have given themselves to the Empyrean. Though they... hmph, never mind, there's no real harm in calling them traitors either."
"What do you mean?" Ayash sensed something odd in this, but M'Kachen brushed the subject aside with an offhand stroke.
"Letting those lesser daemons incite and stir up those civilians will never please the great Changer of the Ways. You must make this ritual grander still. Use the souls of those mortals to summon my true form into the material realm, and I will naturally slay all those meddlesome Space Marines, making them the sacrifices for your ascension into a Daemon Prince, and at the same time drawing this planet back into the embrace of the Changer of the Ways."
"But before that, if you do not wish the ritual summoning me to be disrupted once again by those running dogs of the False Emperor, then you must bring these traitor Astartes under your command."
Ayash grasped his meaning. "You're saying we treat them as our weapons, and use them to buy time for your summoning ritual?"
M'Kachen nodded.
"This does not accord with our original plan."
"Anticipating the sudden uncertainties that arise within such a plan is itself part of the plan—is that not precisely the essence of the Way of Change, my dear Ayash?"
The reasoning was, indeed, sound. But watching M'Kachen, who had never once shown his face since the failure of the last underhive summoning ritual, Ayash always felt something was not quite right about this. Adding an element outside the plan into the plan left him with a faint, nagging unease.
The Tzeentchian camp had never lacked for mutual deceit and intrigue, and Ayash had never fully trusted this great daemon. Yet turn it over as he might, he still felt this was the only road he could take.
"Then how am I supposed to strike an alliance with this band of Astartes?"
"I will assist you, of course."
Watching the underhive dwellers advancing triumphantly, Malik and Efron exchanged glances for a moment, faces blank.
"Did we do something wrong?" Malik asked.
"We shouldn't have," Efron denied, though his tone was equally hesitant. "Guiding those Imperial Fists to disrupt the sacrifice ritual, exposing the Inquisitor's purpose, then having them break into a low-to-medium-intensity clash with the Tzeentch cultists..."
"You don't actually think this one-sided beatdown counts as low-to-medium intensity, do you? The Raid Commander's order to us was to manufacture suitable chaos and conflict, but if one side's strength overwhelms the other by too much, that chaos will be snuffed out in no time."
The plan to guide the Imperial Fists to discover the additional eye of the circle had been devised by Efron. There was a sharp edge to Malik's words, and Efron, naturally, felt displeased.
"How was I supposed to know it'd turn out like this!" he growled. "Then you tell me—how did those Imperial Fists manage to trade fire with the Nurgle cultists and the Tzeentch daemons and still walk away entirely unscathed? And where did they conjure up five hundred thousand weapons for those underhivers to use?"
Malik naturally couldn't answer that either, but acid-tongued sniping was carved into his very bones. "At least I wouldn't let a meticulously woven snare-net choke my own throat."
The Fallen Angel, feeling his honor defiled, wanted to lift the hilt of his sword and give the man opposite a savage blow, but in the end he restrained the impulse and let out a deep sigh.
"Let's just think about what we do next," he said wearily.
That the enemy could now advance so triumphantly with such power was no surprise. But the question before that was—how had they managed to remain entirely unharmed before a great daemon, and even drive that great daemon back?
They had watched with their own eyes how that ritual completed its preparations to shift from seven to nine, so naturally they also knew that the ritual circle was meant to summon an entity of the Changer's Lord-tier rank.
Asking themselves honestly, neither of the two could guarantee they themselves would emerge from before that great daemon unscathed. To make everything just right, they had deliberately controlled the timing, so that the Imperial Fists would confront the great daemon while it had not yet fully entered the material universe—that way the Imperial Fists could still banish their foe by disrupting the ritual.
The early phase of this plan had been executed quite perfectly; only the outcome had gone awry. They had assumed the great daemon would inflict around a hundred casualties on the Imperial Fists. Who could have imagined that now a full three hundred of them were charging upward with five hundred thousand armed civilians?
Debating whose fault it ultimately was would be meaningless. What mattered was how to steer the plan back onto its proper course. Since manipulating the situation had already failed, the only plan the two of them could think of was decapitation.
Cripple the enemy's command layer and you could plunge the foe into deep chaos—and this tactic was exactly the sort of thing these elite warriors were best at.
But the enemy were fierce ones who could drive a great daemon back. For the two of them to go for a decapitation was far too reckless; they would have to borrow momentum to pull it off.
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