The enemy’s sudden arrival caught everyone off guard.
Andrallo released his psychic power outward, shielding the group behind him, while Kaides drew his weapon on reflex.
But the black-armored enemy had already raised the massive bolter in her hands, leveling it at everyone present.
Do I go in?
Andrallo thought.
He couldn’t use his psychic pistol, even at its lowest setting, the blast would kill everyone standing nearby.
“No other option.
I’ll just have to eat a bolt round and hit back.”
In an instant Andrallo readied himself, his left hand tightening around his blade, preparing to close the distance.
But before the enemy could fire, a silver blur appeared in front of Andrallo, its massive frame blocking out both the light and the attacker at once.
The black-armored warrior never expected the machine, which had been standing far off a moment ago, to suddenly appear right in front of her.
Her instincts screamed to retreat, but her body couldn’t respond in time.
BOOM!!!
The war-body drove a hook punch into the black-armored warrior’s side, a fist half the size of a person slamming straight into her abdomen.
Andrallo watched her breastplate and stomach armor buckle and split open, fragments of metal and flesh spraying out together, fresh, glistening intestines pushing out through the cracks in her armor like weeds.
The enemy went flying like a black rubber ball, slamming in a straight line into the factory wall.
Amid a teeth-grinding screech of twisting metal, the impact wrenched the black-armored warrior’s limbs apart, her whole body left stuck to the smooth wall like a wad of black chewing gum, blood trickling steadily down from the wound.
“Kaides!
Search the area, check for more enemies!”
Andrallo called Kaides over at once to scout.
Whoever had slipped up to their factory this quietly couldn’t have been alone.
The factory dissolved into chaos for a moment before the overseers restored order.
Following Andrallo’s command, everyone began throwing up fortifications on the spot and arming themselves in a hurry.
Looking back at the war-body, Andrallo, for the first time, got a real, visceral sense of just how powerful the thing was, even he hadn’t been able to track its movement.
“A psychic engine?
How else could it have closed the distance to us in an instant?”
“Correct, Chief.” The war-body inclined its head slightly toward Andrallo.
“The psychic power you granted me lets me disregard the laws of physics.
I’m capable of supernatural movement, a straight line isn’t necessarily the shortest distance between two points.”
By this point, both Westminster sisters had gone pale with shock, but the war-body mistook their fear for reaction to the enemy.
The display on its face shifted into a cartoonish smiling expression, and it waved at Maen and Charlotte.
“Don’t worry, ladies.
I’ll keep everyone safe!
Just find somewhere to take cover and leave the rest to me.”
It’s over.
There’s no denying it’s a Man of Iron now, Maen thought, glancing at the mangled ruin stuck to the wall, her vision swimming with dread.
A Sister of Battle decorated with fleur-de-lis, struck dead by a single blow from a Man of Iron.
There wouldn’t even be a chance to explain themselves now.
The Imperium would never let this go.
“Sister.” Charlotte jabbed Maen, pulling her out of her daze.
“It’s too late for words now.
The Sisters of Battle are already here.
No matter how much we pray to the God-Emperor, the moment they lay eyes on mutants, heretics, and a Man of Iron, our place on the Imperium’s most-wanted list is already set in stone.”
She understood exactly how powerful the Imperium was, this vast, galaxy-spanning power, for all its bloat, corruption, inefficiency, and ignorance.
But there was no denying it: the Imperium remained the strongest power in existence.
Even split in two by the Great Rift, its sheer scale alone could crush any enemy.
Maen took a deep breath.
There was no undoing this now.
She and her sister had no choice but to see this road through to the end.
“Besides…” The pale-haired girl looked toward Andrallo, who stood off to the side directing the defense.
“Even if it’s only to repay Lord Andrallo for saving my life, I’m going to help!”
Once she’d made up her mind, Maen pulled Charlotte along and went straight to Andrallo, telling him she wanted to go to the front line too.
“My lord, I know a fair amount about Imperial forces.
Take me with you, I can help everyone out!”
Charlotte nodded along beside her, her eyes bright with earnest determination.
Andrallo and Kaides exchanged a glance and decided to go along with what the sisters wanted.
Front-line forces were pulled back rapidly to garrison the factory district, and most of the war-bodies had weapons hastily fitted before heading out to meet the enemy.
When the group reached the outer edge of the factory grounds, they found the enemy already surging in like a tide.
Artillery positions in the distance thundered without pause, massive multi-turreted tanks spearheading a breakthrough of the defensive lines, infantry pouring forward in dense, locust-like swarms.
Fireballs kept falling from the sky as well, each one throwing up a massive mushroom cloud on impact, striking with precision straight into the factory Kaides had worked so hard to build.
“What’s the situation?!
What are our casualties?!”
Andrallo shouted himself hoarse into the comm, but only a handful of sectors answered back.
Everywhere else was dead silence.
He had no time left to dwell on the fighting in the distance, though, the Sisters of Battle had already charged into the factory and begun a killing frenzy.
Andrallo said nothing.
He charged silently into the enemy ranks.
The black-armored Sisters were slaughtering mutants with unrestrained abandon, bolt rounds and flame devouring every living thing in sight, when a thick bank of violet mist suddenly rolled in and swallowed them whole.
The Sisters felt an agony like drowning.
Their respirators offered no protection at all against the psychic mist, and the wax-sealed purity seals on their bodies caught fire violently.
Many of the Sisters were set ablaze by the psychic flame, burning like so many black candles.
Andrallo burst out of the mist, catching sight out of the corner of his eye of the bodies littering the ground.
The mutants had died horribly, some with their bodies and heads torn apart by bolt rounds, others burned to charcoal by promethium flame, heads and fragments scattered everywhere, a black-red slurry of blood and mud smeared across the Sisters’ armor.
Pain, resentment, rage, terror, the emotions crashed over Andrallo’s nerves like a tsunami, the final thoughts of every one of the dead pouring straight into his mind.
He’d come too late.
If he hadn’t lingered at the factory, if he hadn’t hesitated, if only…
But Andrallo felt no blame from them.
Not one of them had resented him in their final moments, if anything, their thoughts held nothing but genuine gratitude for his protection.
“Such a shame, not making it.
Guess the good days ahead just aren’t for me~”
“Mama, will Lord Andrallo come save us?”
“He will!
Just like Lord Kaides saved us before, Lord Andrallo will definitely come!”
“Praise the Emperor!
Thank You for sending us Lord Andrallo, for letting me finally live a real life.”
…
“Kill them.” A figure whose face couldn’t quite be made out stood atop a broken pillar, arms crossed, a playful smile on his lips.
“Unleash your power.
“Heretic!!
Traitor!!”
The Sister of Battle’s furious shout snapped Andrallo back to reality.
A Sister, her whole body ablaze, charged straight at him wielding a chainsword.
Andrallo swung almost carelessly.
A single strike was all it took, the Sister was cleaved clean open from collarbone to waist, blood bursting free like sea foam.
Another Sister closed in under cover of the spray of blood, swinging with everything she had, but the blow was turned aside with ease, and a single punch from Andrallo sent her head flying.
The rest of the Sisters spotted Andrallo now too, and the moment they saw the unmistakably heretical armor he wore, they raised their weapons and opened fire.
Andrallo kicked the headless corpse in front of him, sending it slamming into a heavy-weapons Sister in the distance and driving her straight into the rubble.
Violet psychic power gathered along the edge of his blade.
Andrallo moved through the crowd on a trail of psychic mist, taking a head with every person he passed.
Swing, parry, cleave, upward slash, thrust, every strike claimed another Sister’s life, and every shot from his psychic pistol wiped out an entire squad.
Their blessings had failed them.
Andrallo’s own singular power over the Warp overwhelmed the Sisters’ faith in the Emperor entirely, and under the ferocious psychic onslaught, they were reduced to a fine mist of steel and flesh.
As each Sister fell, her soul tore free of her body and streaked toward the golden Throne.
Every Sister there wore a smile as she died.
To fall in battle for the Emperor, to have one’s soul return to the Golden Throne, was the highest honor of all.
They spread their arms wide, welcoming that warm light.
“Did I say you could leave?!”
The icy voice reached every Sister’s ears, and a thread of violet light lanced into each of their souls, dragging them back.
The Sisters realized, with horror, that Andrallo’s presence had become a ceaselessly churning violet vortex, and those threads were its reaching tendrils.
The Sisters of Battle let out a deafening chorus of screams and wails, begging for the Emperor’s mercy, praying that the Master of Mankind would take pity on His children.
But no miracle came.
The Sisters’ souls were dragged into the vortex, flayed apart a thousand times over inside that psychic storm, their thoughts torn to shreds and crushed back together, until they finally shattered completely amid one last collective wail.
By the time Kaides and the Westminster sisters arrived, the battle was already over.
Blue-violet psychic flame licked at the fragments scattered across the ground, and Andrallo knelt alone before the mutants’ bodies.
“Chief…” Kaides could feel Andrallo’s fury and pain, and the grief that had sunk clean into his bones.
The artillery kept firing.
The ground shook violently, pulling Andrallo back to the present.
He looked out toward the distant enemy, his voice frighteningly cold.
“Are they the enemy?”
“My lord, judging by their uniforms, they’re likely Astra Militarum.
The shells that just landed were probably Imperial Navy bombardment.” Maen answered.
“Can they be negotiated with?”
“No, my lord.
For the Astra Militarum, there’s only victory or death.
They won’t negotiate with heretics.” Charlotte replied.
Then there’s nothing left to discuss.
Andrallo raised his right hand and pointed toward the distant tide of soldiers, every last trace of warmth gone from his voice.
“Kaides.
I’m going to kill every last one of them.
Their flesh and bones will be an offering to our dead.”
The Chief Science Officer said nothing in reply.
The war-bodies and heavy-weapons corps arriving behind him answered in his place.