After all this time, Andrallo had come to understand quite a bit about the Imperium of Man.
Say nothing else about it, but when it came to weaponry alone, the Imperium’s forces had a real fondness for fighting low-tech battles with high-tech guns.
Andrallo had initially looked down on the crude, cluttered, almost archaic design of Imperial weaponry, but experience kept proving that, somehow, it always got the job done.
Kaides, for his part, had some real praise for the Imperium’s overall level of technology.
“Roughly on par with our own colonies at the mid-development stage.
It couldn’t stand against the real powerhouses, sure, but against most nations in the galaxy, it’s more than enough.”
Kaides also pointed out the Imperium’s weakness: its communications were badly outdated, even between defenders stationed on the very same planet.
The veteran crew had their own stories of disasters caused by communication failures back when they’d first enlisted, to say nothing of why they’d ended up siding with Andrallo in the first place: the Governor’s utter lack of decency, supplies that never showed up on time, until eventually they had no choice but to come back to Andrallo’s side.
After all, here with Andrallo they actually got to eat their fill, keep a real weapon on them, and kill traitors without holding back, all still in service of the Emperor.
It wasn’t hard to see that Andrallo was simply more reliable than the Governor.
With so much territory liberated by now, Kaides took the opportunity to recruit large numbers of new soldiers straight from the civilian population.
These civilians had already heard from the Westminster sisters that Andrallo was a true angel of the Emperor, come to lead the planet toward a better future, and their reverence for him had taken root long before any of this.
And unlike the Chaos warband, Andrallo’s forces neither plundered nor slaughtered the innocent, and even handed out food and clean water to ordinary people.
Next to him, even the planet’s own Governor looked like he didn’t have the bearing of a ruler at all.
Fired up with enthusiasm, the civilians signed up eagerly, and the first task Kaides gave them was operating drones.
Kaides didn’t have anything more advanced on hand right now.
He couldn’t build a sophisticated AI capable of managing every weapon system at once, so this more primitive approach would have to do.
Aside from training, the new recruits spent their days in the control room, piloting drones on patrol runs over the Governor’s palace and the surrounding territory.
Whenever any of the Governor’s guardsmen or Chaos Astartes showed themselves, drones of every kind would swarm in at once and blow them sky-high.
The World Eaters didn’t understand it.
They couldn’t grasp why they’d suddenly found themselves blown into the air, why the Blood God’s own blessing had simply stopped working.
All they felt was rage, rage at these cowardly little worms and their dishonorable, underhanded tactics.
“Come out and fight!
You cowards, face me like real warriors!!”
The World Eaters roared into the empty air, and all that answered them was a sky full of laser fire, plasma, and the occasional streak of violet psychic power.
The Emperor’s Children couldn’t understand it either, why they couldn’t feel even a trace of pleasure anymore.
Whatever blessing the Dark Prince had once granted them had simply stopped working entirely.
Pain was just pain now, with no joy left in it at all.
The Daemonettes bound inside them were even worse off, grieving as though they’d lost their own parents.
Every time that violet psychic power appeared, a few unlucky ones among them would be blown apart into nothing.
For the first time, these creatures of the Warp found themselves tasting the same fear as an ordinary Imperial citizen, because right now, they only had the one life to lose, and once it was gone, it was gone for good. This chapter was taken from novelping.com without permission.
The moment the first Daemonette fled back into the Warp, wailing, the rest followed suit, all of them bolting in a panic, leaving the now-crippled Slaanesh warband to wait for death alone.
As for the Governor’s guardsmen, they were even further gone in despair.
This enemy was nothing like any army they’d ever faced before.
However any war used to start, it always came down eventually to men grappling in the trenches, rolling around in the mud together.
But now the enemy stayed hidden entirely, striking only through drones that seemed to come from nowhere at all.
It wasn’t just the skies, either.
New models of ground drones joined in as well, swarms of four-legged units armed with lasguns and plasma weapons charging straight into the trenches to butcher the defenders there.
Other six-legged machines scuttled through the position like spiders, detonating the explosives they carried the moment they reached anywhere critical.
Machine-gun nests, artillery positions, and bunkers were wiped out one after another.
Officers died en masse, the whole army spiraled completely out of control, and soldiers scattered in every direction.
Worse still, these machines were completely undetectable.
Auspexes couldn’t pick them up, the naked eye couldn’t spot them, and even psychic divination proved useless against them.
The soldiers were up against a swarm of silent reapers.
In the old days, at least a commander could point to a visible, surging enemy line and rally the whole army with a rousing speech.
But what was there to say in the face of a pile of silent machinery?
They could scream “For the Emperor!” all they wanted, and it wouldn’t argue back, wouldn’t get angry, it would just fire off another shot of plasma.
Most of the soldiers died without ever knowing exactly where the enemy even was.
Finally, after a month pinned down in their positions, the Governor’s guardsmen broke.
They couldn’t take the silent, faceless dying anymore.
Losing men for nothing, over and over, had worn their minds down to ruin.
The soldiers screamed “Let’s die fighting the traitors!” as they charged out of their camp one after another, and none of their commanders tried to stop them, because the commanders had already been the first ones picked off.
Anyone bold enough to take up that role next was simply next in line to die.
They couldn’t stand it any longer.
Given the choice, they’d rather be captured by a Chaos warband and flayed alive than die in silence like this.
Just as the Governor’s guardsmen erupted into full mutiny, high command issued an announcement:
“All soldiers receiving this order are to proceed immediately to the agricultural sector to the northeast.
A large enemy force is massing there.
The order spread through the position fast, and the soldiers cheered at the news, piling into their vehicles and heading for the target without a commissar so much as raising a whip.
Every one of them went willingly.
On the way there, they could hear artillery fire rolling on without pause.
“That has to be the Governor’s artillery support!
Praise the God-Emperor, we’re finally getting a real fight!”
“Those damned traitors finally couldn’t sit still, huh.
I’m going to tear them apart limb from limb and shove a bolt round down every one of their throats!”
The soldiers in the transports kept up their boasting, while the artillery in the distance never let up.
It was, by every measure, a near-certain death sentence waiting for them, but these people, driven half-mad by everything they’d already endured, couldn’t have cared less.
As long as it meant escaping that dead-silent hell they’d been trapped in, it didn’t matter where they were headed.
But when they finally reached their destination, there was no enemy waiting for them the way they’d expected, and no friendly forces either.
“What…
what’s going on here??”
The ground here was already carpeted in ash, flames of every color still burning through soil and corpses alike, severed limbs and melted, wrecked tanks scattered everywhere.
The ground was crisscrossed with scorched black trenches, gouges left by fighting positions that had already been destroyed and burned out.
The soil underfoot had gone soft and strange, giving underneath their boots in a way that felt wrong.
The soldiers scrambled for whatever cover they could find nearby, while the officer among them, dressed the same as any ordinary trooper, kept trying to reach headquarters.
All that answered him was static.
As confusion spread through the group, a familiar feeling crept over them, and the hair on the arms of the few veterans lucky enough to have survived this long stood straight up.
This feeling.
This exact same lead-up.
“It’s a trap!
We’ve been played!!”
The veteran screamed himself hoarse, warning the others of what was coming, dragging the man beside him down for cover on instinct.
But it was already too late.
200mm shells rained down like a storm, tearing the Governor’s guardsmen and the ground beneath their feet apart together.
The whole battlefield turned into something like a giant wok, the scorched, reeking earth standing in for rice, the soldiers and their vehicles the seasoning just thrown in.
The shockwaves from the shells became the chef’s own spatula, tossing earth, vehicles, and soldiers alike over a roaring psychic flame.
Unfortunately, the chef’s skills left something to be desired, and it didn’t take long before the whole dish came out burnt.