Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-One
The frenzied violence continues for six hours as neighbours, gangs, Penitents, and Sororitas attack every armed individual. Blood flows down the streets, seeping into cracks within the stone and metal of the Hab-Fanes and Spire of Intoxicants, pooling like rain.
Within 30 minutes of the outbreak, Penitents start breaking into homes and pillaging the measly belongings of the inhabitants, murdering and raping those who resist. Those securing the exits actually follow their orders, gunning down anyone who attempts to escape. They still loot the corpses, stripping bodies and stacking belongings in great piles, but so long as they don’t try to walk off with any of it, their actions will count as securing enemy weapons for disposal.
The Sororitas are far more disciplined, gathering at the scrap shrines, and tenebrous temples, creating islands of calm among the chaos. People flock to their aegis, taking shelter behind their steady bolter fire and crackling volkite incinerators.
Gradually the violence peters out, whatever fury and resentment that fueled it reduced to a hollow, ashen corpse.
With the Imperial vessels secured and preparing for departure, those Heralds not required to secure the docks move into the Hab-Fanes and Spire of Intoxicants in a ferocious tide of steel and light. Few have the means to injure them and they put down the last of the violence with brutal efficiency.
Penitents are rounded up by the thousands and forced to disarm before being escorted back to their shuttles and locked inside. I am not looking forward to overseeing 17,000 public executions. Feeling particularly irritated by the absolute grox show, I compose a message to Fleet Marshal Lonceta Ridel asking her to ensure each skull is pristine and to turn them into Servo-Skulls so that they may serve the people they have wronged for a few more centuries after their deaths.
While double checking my message I realise that while I might appreciate an elegant punishment, it isn’t going to work. Not only is having one’s skull turned into a Servo-Skull seen as an honour by many, the residents will probably just shoot and vandalise them as a form of catharsis, then loot the remains.
The same would likely happen if I turned these pillagers into traditional Servitors and I refuse to use such substandard automata myself. I could turn them into Skitarii with obedience chips, but that would be slavery, a practice I abhor for its cruelty and inefficiency. Some might even view Skitarii conversion as a reward as I would be bringing these heathens closer to the true flesh, granting them capabilities that they do not deserve.
I really don’t want to waste 17,000 bodies though. The Imperium often turns a blind eye to looting as those resources often end up being traded for Munitorum credits, or used in the war effort by desperate soldiers. It is a capital crime though, as is sexual assault, during a military operation.
As much as I hate to show ‘leniency’, I change my message to Lonceta, requesting that the looters are to be spared execution and labelled as grade three criminals, then sent to the Penal regiments, replenishing the losses the Penal Infantry have sustained in the void ship boarding actions.
The murderers and assaulters are slated for Kataphron conversion. I regret not having an Automata Auxilia to supplement my Battle Automata regiment, because if I did, I could have sent them instead of my far more valuable Heralds in the first wave of reinforcements to the station. Sure, the loss of that Class Three D-POT is about two and a half months’ production of my exo-womb capacity, but the Acolytes, Aeronautica crew, and Warforged are far trickier to replace, requiring years, even decades of additional service and training.
I send the message then watch the data feeds as Homes are raided for a second time. My Heralds confiscate any weapon more advanced than a club or knife, leaving everything else untouched. They even hand out ration vouchers for each weapon they take. The stolen goods are returned to each home, the Machine-Spirit within each undersuit having no trouble in recognising each item and its original owner.
The vouchers won’t make up for the disruption in their lives, but normally they would get nothing as giving compensation means admitting fault. Imperial officers might be brave enough to face hoards of tyranids, but asking them to stand before a tribunal while a Commissar stands to the side polishing his gun is far more challenging!
A quick search reveals Raphael is responsible for the vouchers and I fire off a message, confirming my approval. We enticed people with food and water to work for us at the Receiving Yards, so a variant of this plan is no stroke of genius, but I am pleased to see my people follow my methods without my input.
With the situation back under control, I turn my attention to the Space Marines tearing through the Red Schola.
The trading area within the Red Schola bears a resemblance to the promenade on Distant Sun with small, colourful shops, neon lighting, cafes, a theater, and many other businesses. The difference, however, lies in what they are selling. Shop fronts have large pict viewers in their windows displaying slaves for sale, all dolled up and barely dressed, or oiled and naked holding the tools of their trade, from quills and cogitators to guns and needles. Every trade and body type is available like some demented version of an Argos catalogue.
Shattered glass and broken bodies lie strewn across the street. Slave soldiers, cultists, and clients, all look much alike with their still chests and unblinking eyes.
Space Marines drive Penitents ahead of them through the streets, combing through the bodies for unexploded ordinance and other traps. Squads of Penitents storm through the wrecked shops, flushing out survivors, many of whom attack on sight.
I recognise the stiff actions and terrified faces of these slaves as individuals who’ve been subjected to near unbreakable conditioning, forced to defend their masters and their property. It doesn’t matter that there is nothing left to defend, or that the Penitents and Space Marines could save them, only that the order has been given. They must attack, and thus all are slain upon the hour of their liberation.
The Space Marines and Penitents work through the shops and streets, working towards the Red Schola’s docks. As they pass through warehouses, training facilities, and manufactorums, cultist attacks drastically increase in frequency. These are not the rabble that have disrupted movement across Footfall, but far more disciplined traitor guardsmen.
With scratched off Aquilae and ripped regimental patches, the traitor guardsmen repeatedly ambush the Penitents from grimy windows and filth strewn alleyways. More often than not, the Penitents survive, their undersuits absorbing the las and autogun fire, much to the surprise of both sides.
Barricades cover intersections, armed with heavy weaponry that quickly disabuses the Penitents of their supposed invincibility. Between the ambushes and the barricades, Odhran recognises the traitor guardsmen’s tactics as delaying actions and the Space Marines step in, determined to deny the enemy time for their schemes and traps.
Under Odhran’s leadership and Lir’s reinforcements, the Space Marines have picked up new tactics and equipment.
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Rapiers, self propelled weapon platforms, trundle alongside the jogging Astartes. Fitted with Mark Ⅲ Marwolv Pattern quad-linked multi-lasers and crewed by Barghest Auxilia, the Rapiers put out a truly outrageous amount of lasfire. The Marwolv Pattern has two barrels per gun and a multitude of firing options from ‘low power’ continuous automatic fire to ‘hot-shot’ three round bursts.
Upping the power level to a multi-laser, a light anti-armour gun, is one of the sillier designs Rósín’s A&A teams have produced. With eight barrels it can keep up a constant stream of three round bursts and the guns coordinate to ensure that every shot hits exactly the same spot.
The original Mark Ⅰ that I designed could bore through power armour with its three round burst; it already counted as a light anti-armour weapon thanks to its auto-aim features, when used in conjunction with MOA armour, and its high precision. Making a quad-linked lascannon and integrating the auto-aim features would have been far simpler, but Odhran likes the higher rate of fire from the multi-laser and proceeds to prove why as the Rapiers fire upon the barricades.
Rather than punch holes through the barricades, giving the traitor guardsmen hiding behind scrap filled crates and ferrocrete barriers a chance to survive, a pair of Rapiers sweep across the obstruction, imitating a pair of dowsing rods and slicing through everything like an industrial laser cutter.
The pseudo-beam weapon is utterly unstoppable. Not only does it partially melt the barrier and instantly vaporise the poor sods behind it, the beam continues unobstructed, into the warehouses either side of the street, bringing down their walls, blocking the Space Marine’s advance. The warehouses then catch fire and a round of secondary explosions take out what little remains.
Be they traitors cowering behind crude fortifications or lurking within buildings, all are dead, the entire street demolished by a couple of sweeps by this new weapon.
The Penitents totally lose their shit and run away screaming. Some of them trip over rubble or run into walls, their eyesight damaged by the bright light because they weren’t wearing their helmets. Astartes are left awkwardly shuffling from foot to foot, realising that for the first time, they may have discovered what too much dakka looks like.
Odhran tries to scratch his cheek through his helmet, then quickly coughs into his fist. A few of the Space Marines shoulders are shaking as they hold back their laughs. Odhran starts pointing and barking orders and the Space Marines spread out looking for another route.
Traitor guardsmen make several attempts at ambushing the marines and taking out the two Rapiers but each attempt fails, the rockets and grenades intercepted by the munition swatters I love to add to all my vehicles.
Every barricade the Space Marines encounter after their display is unmanned and they quickly reach the docks. Splitting up, the Space Marines board the Havoc Class Merchant Raider, Orion Class Star Clipper, Heavy Imperial Transport, and Tarask-Class Merchantman.
The Merchant Raider immediately surrenders and a squad of marines secures the bridge without trouble. The few Penitents who held their ground are sent to search the ship, looking for obvious signs of corruption and find nothing with their casual search. Neither do the Machine-Spirits in their undersuits that the ignorant berks know nothing about.
Boarding the other three ships is far trickier as they are more than happy to shoot up the docks with their CIWS. Though not many can fire due to the angles required, the Space Marines are stumped for a few minutes until they get the dock’s own defences online and destroy every visible turret on the massive ships.
The Rapiers are lost in the scuffle, but it matters little as the Space Marines still have three Dreadnoughts, all of which are a new pattern JK-404, Tech Marine Balor Roan, Engineseer Prime Talliel-Iota-5 and I ‘refitted’.
They’re based off the Castraferrum Pattern Mark Ⅴ and the few pictures and descriptions I have of the unreleased Redemptor Pattern Dreadnought that no one will see until the Primaris Marines enter the scene. These new designs can accept the cyberbrains and bio-pods we put the injured marines into. They’re six metres tall, 50% taller than the Castraferrum and half a metre taller than the Redemptor.
They’re also slimmer than before as marine entombed within requires far less space, as does the newer, and thinner, composite armour taken from the Rogue Pattern Power Armour with its distinctive hexagonal patterning.
Proper hands and arms, like my Vanguard Armour, let these Mark Ⅰ Geist Pattern Dreadnoughts wield huge power swords and power shields, partially restoring the skill and agility that the marines had when their bodies were whole. Oversized bolters and other guns are also possible, depending on the mission, making them far easier to reconfigure than the Castraferrum.
Two shoulder mounted weapons provide additional long range options, the default being a self-guided sabot, or explosive shell, fired from a miniaturised Eradicator Cannon, a type of cut down Nova Cannon used on a Leman Russ variant. The other shoulder mount holds a Havoc Missile Launcher. These fancy weapons are all courtesy of the Barghest armory.
Two, twin-linked, Marwolv pattern lasguns on ball turrets, one on the chest and another on the back, can shoot infantry and incoming munitions with equal ease.
Warded hulls and bio-pods, as well as Rósín’s miniaturised Field Bracing, reinforce the Dreadnoughts by a significant degree. Volkite emitters poke between dense slabs of armour capable of sending out brief bursts of thermal energy that can clear the hull of unwanted passengers and sticky explosives like a cloak, or spread out in a ring that will incinerate most infantry standing too close to the war machine.
Repulsor systems in their legs spread out the weight of the machine over a large area, much like Knights, making the Dreadnoughts surprisingly quiet. Neither do they waddle like a duck. Instead, their gait is smooth and eerie, almost as if they are gliding, rather than walking.
That isn’t the only addition I made to fit the Geist theme though. These Dreadnoughts have a Ruby Stealth Coating and Brigid’s modified Displacer Field for Cyber Mastiffs. Yes, I did make invisible Dreadnoughts with a controllable, short range teleport.
I can’t wait for the day they face down a squad of Eldar Warp Spiders and stomp their shocked, arrogant faces into the deck.
While equally ridiculous as they are terrifying, the Mark Ⅰ Geist Pattern Dreadnaughts have a few drawbacks. Their height makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to support Astartes in smaller spaces. Neither can they fit in the hold of a Thunderhawk. They have to be carried by the transporter variant outside the hull like a tank.
The Eradicator cannon is overkill and, if not properly braced when fired, can tip the Dreadnought over, which is why the Dreadnoughts have four large mechadendrites on their back, both for bracing and helping the machines pick themselves back up if they do fall. They’re handy for field repairs, object manipulation, and extra melee attacks as well.
Last is the overclocked micro-fusion reactor that powers them, or as Talliel-Iota-5 called it when he saw the design, an Atomantic Power Generator, that I lifted from my Vanguard Armour. Bless his little steel heart, he cried when he saw it, with all the original engineering data laid before him. Not only are reactors a complex bit of kit, but the overclocked version explodes quite spectacularly when breached. You also can’t refuel them with low grade promethium and other combustibles like the Castraferrum.
Mine don’t blow up to the point of instantly vaporising the pilot and their surroundings like the Great Crusade Era Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought does, but any infantry standing nearby are going to regret it; unlike the Castraferrum, the Geist makes for somewhat risky cover for Space Marines sheltering in the shadow of their entombed veterans.
The Barghests adore the design, especially as the Astartes can be removed from them and placed in a Servitor frame like my more extreme Warforged do when they need to take a break from being a big stompy robot and socialise in a civilian setting.
Raphael, referencing our previous discussion on what I could stick Verlin inside, took one look at a completed Geist and snorted, saying, “At least it doesn’t look like a Knight.”
That was good enough for me, so now the Barghests have a sacred dozen of the frames. As Space Marines and their three Dreadnoughts slip aboard the Cultists’ void ships, a bubbling, feral glee rises up my chest, my anticipation for the destruction of these demon worshiping arseholes and the field trials of my designs reaches new heights. I don’t even fast forward through the footage.
This moment needs to be special.