BOOM BOOM BOOM.
The heavy logging gun roared to life.
Physical bullets sprayed from the weapon's rotating barrels in a continuous stream, each round the size of a man's thumb, designed to punch through armored vehicles and fortified positions. They crossed the distance to Nolan's position in a storm of metal death, hundreds of projectiles converging on a single target.
The impacts rang like hammer blows on an anvil.
Bullets slammed into the ceramite steel shell of the Six-Armed Iron Cavalry Terminator with tremendous force, each hit releasing a spray of sparks that painted the air in brief orange stars. The sound was deafening, a continuous metallic thunder that drowned out everything else. Nolan felt the vibrations through his armor, the Uru-gold skeleton absorbing kinetic energy that would have shredded a lesser suit.
His metal helmet turned with smooth precision, tracking the source of fire.
Nolan's reaction was immediate. His fingers moved across the Terminator's internal controls, activating systems that had been dormant. The refractor field came online with a high-pitched whine, invisible force projectors creating a bubble of bent space around his armored form.
The effect was instantaneous.
Bullets that should have struck his armor instead hit the refractor field and exploded in mid-air. The invisible barrier caught each projectile and redirected it, sending rounds spinning off at wild angles. Sparks multiplied as the deflected ammunition ricocheted in every direction, some striking walls, others hitting the ground, creating a chaotic sphere of reflected death around Nolan's position.
Las-bolts joined the barrage.
Brilliant crimson beams lanced through the air, dozens of rebels firing simultaneously. They hit the refractor field and detonated in spectacular fashion, each laser exploding into expanding spheres of light and heat. The air itself ignited around Nolan, turned into plasma by the sheer concentration of energy being absorbed and redirected.
Then the servo arm moved.
One of the four mechanical limbs mounted on Nolan's power backpack rotated with hydraulic smoothness, swiveling on its mount to bring a weapon to bear. The gauss blaster's internal mechanisms hummed to life, ancient Necron technology charging capacitors that shouldn't exist, building power that defied conventional physics.
Green light began to glow inside the weapon's barrel.
Not the warm green of living things, but the cold, lifeless green of death itself. The color of entropy and dissolution. The gauss blaster's distinctive hue that marked it as something alien, something beyond human comprehension.
Without hesitation, Nolan opened fire.
The weapon launched its bombardment in a continuous stream.
Green energy beams crossed the space between Nolan and the rebel firepower point in fractions of a second, each shot leaving a glowing trail in the air. They moved faster than bullets, faster than las-fire, moving at speeds that made mockery of human reflexes.
The metal bunker protecting the heavy logging gun stood no chance.
The gauss fire didn't just penetrate the barrier. It unmade it. The beams struck the metal and the very atomic bonds holding the material together simply ceased to function. Steel transformed into a cloud of disassociated particles, each atom breaking free from its neighbors, the entire structure dissolving from solid matter into green-glowing gas.
The combatants inside shared the same fate.
Human bodies caught in gauss fire didn't bleed or burn. They just stopped being. Flesh became particles. Bone became dust. The rebels manning the heavy logging gun were reduced to clouds of green-tinged atoms that continued to escape into the air, dispersing on the wind like phosphorescent smoke.
The heavy logging gun itself vanished in the same fashion, tons of metal and ammunition converted to atomic vapor in the span of a heartbeat.
One moment there was a fortified position. The next, there was only empty space and a lingering green glow.
Behind Nolan, David moved like thunder given form.
The ancient Man of Iron carried the three-meter regimental banner on his power backpack, the Salamanders' colors flying high above the carnage. His two metal palms gripped the phased sword, C'tan technology humming with barely restrained power. Green light bled from the blade's edge, reality itself bending away from a weapon that could cut through anything.
David charged the rebel front line with astonishing speed.
He moved like a real Astartes, or perhaps better. His reaction speed far exceeded that of ordinary Space Marines, processing combat data at rates that would shame even enhanced human physiology. Each footfall was perfectly placed. Each movement flowed into the next with mechanical efficiency that looked almost organic.
If Nolan in his Six-Armed Iron Cavalry Terminator was a firepower fortress, immovable as a mountain, standing his ground and dealing death at range...
Then David was something else entirely.
He dodged through the rebels' firepower coverage like a flexible, active Eldar agent. Las-bolts passed centimeters from his armor, missing by margins so thin they seemed impossible. Bullets tracked his movement and struck only empty air where he'd been a microsecond before. The Man of Iron anticipated fire patterns, read targeting solutions in the way weapons moved, and was already elsewhere before triggers were pulled.
David crashed into the rebel position like an armored battering ram.
Bodies scattered. Men went flying. The sheer kinetic impact of a power-armored warrior moving at full sprint was enough to break bones on contact, even without weapons involved.
But David seemed unwilling to kill.
The phased sword danced in his palms, moving with blinding speed, but he'd rotated the blade to present its flat side rather than its cutting edge. When rebels got in his way, he simply slapped them aside with the weapon. Each impact sent men tumbling, armor dented, ribs cracked, but alive. Incapacitated rather than executed.
It created chaos in the rebel lines.
Their formation collapsed as David tore through their positions. Officers shouted contradictory orders. Soldiers fired wildly, hitting their own comrades as much as the enemy. The organized defensive position devolved into panic and confusion, everyone trying to track the green-armored nightmare cutting through their ranks without actually killing them.
And that chaos gave Nolan perfect shooting conditions.
He raised both weapons simultaneously.
The bolter in his left hand. The Heart of the Furnace in his right. Both weapons tracked separate targets, Nolan's enhanced perception letting him aim independently with each hand. His fingers found triggers. He squeezed.
The storm began.
Bolter rounds hammered into rebel positions in controlled bursts, each mass-reactive shell exploding on impact, turning cover into shrapnel and soldiers into meat. The Heart of the Furnace joined the barrage, plasma spheres streaking across the square in brilliant blue-white arcs. Six shots became twelve. Twelve became twenty-four. Gork and Mork's blessing turning the revolver into an endless fountain of superheated death.
The blue plasma tide rose like a wall of nuclear fire.
It rolled across the rebel position in an expanding wave, consuming everything it touched. Men vanished in the flames. Equipment melted. The very air ignited, temperatures spiking to levels that turned carbon dioxide into plasma. The tide covered the entire area, so bright it washed out all other colors, turning the world into a hellscape of blue and white.
When the firing stopped, Nolan's weapons clicked empty.
He moved with practiced efficiency, hanging both guns on his belt without looking. His hands reached back over his shoulders, gripping the handle of the weapon mag-locked to his power backpack.
The Blood Scythe came free with a whisper of displaced air.
Green light blazed along the Warscythe's curved blade, the decomposition force field active and hungry. This was Necron technology at its finest, a weapon designed to unmake matter at the molecular level. Combined with Antarctic vibranium's natural properties, it could cut through anything in the Imperium's arsenal.
Nolan drove forward into the remaining rebels.
The ones who hadn't collapsed. The ones still fighting despite their position being overrun, their comrades dead or dying, their chance of survival approaching zero. They raised weapons with shaking hands. They fired without aiming. They died where they stood.
The massacre was cruel and crazy and absolutely thorough.
Nolan moved through them like death personified, the Blood Scythe singing through the air in precise arcs. Bodies fell in pieces. Limbs separated from torsos. Heads tumbled from shoulders. The blade moved too fast to see, just green afterimages traced through space, and wherever it passed flesh parted like water.
The battle ended.
Silence fell across the hive square, broken only by the hiss of cooling metal and the soft patter of blood dripping from Nolan's armor.
But something felt wrong.
Nolan stood among the mutilated corpses scattered across the ferrocrete, the Blood Scythe still gripped in his palm, and looked down at the faces of the dead. His eyepiece cycled through their features, cataloging details, searching for answers to questions he hadn't fully formulated yet.
These rebels had resisted to the last person.
They'd fought with discipline and determination. They'd held their positions even when defeat was certain. They'd faced death without breaking formation.
But there was something about their expressions.
No fear. The faces frozen in death showed no terror, no panic, no desperate last-moment prayers to the Emperor. Instead, Nolan saw something that looked almost like... glory. The kind of expression soldiers wore when they believed they were dying for something righteous. And beneath that, relief. The peaceful acceptance of death that came from thinking you'd served your purpose.
"If they were not rebels," Nolan muttered, his voice barely audible inside his metal helmet, "I thought I had seen a famous star army."
The words hung in the air for a moment, unheard by anyone but himself. A fleeting observation that raised more questions than it answered. These rebels fought like Imperial soldiers. Died like Imperial soldiers. Showed the same fanatical devotion to duty that marked the Astra Militarum's finest.
So why had they turned traitor?
Nolan shook his metal helmet slightly, pushing the thought aside.
He turned and drove the Six-Armed Iron Cavalry Terminator toward another position in the hive square, his heavy footfalls echoing off empty buildings.
DONG DONG DONG.
The sound of his approach was unavoidable. Three meters of ceramite steel and Uru-gold alloy moving across ferrocrete, each step a minor earthquake. Magnetic boots locked and released with mechanical precision, creating a rhythmic thunder that announced his presence long before visual contact.
Behind metal bunkers covered with bullet holes and laser burn marks, movement stirred.
Two figures emerged slowly, timidly, their postures screaming caution and fear. An Astra Militarum soldier wearing old carapace armor that had seen better days, scratched and dented from years of service. And beside him, a bald woman wearing what looked like a psychic amplifier around her skull, the metal device clamped tight against her temples.
Before Nolan could speak, before he could ask who they were or demand explanation, the two looked at each other.
Some silent communication passed between them. A shared understanding. A mutual decision reached in the space of a single glance.
Then, without hesitation, they placed their hands on their chests and knelt on one knee.
"Angel!" Their voices overlapped, speaking in unison. "Thank you for saving our lives!"
Nolan looked down at them through his eyepiece.
The Astra Militarum soldier caught his attention first. Purple eyes. Not the common brown or blue of most human populations, but a distinctive violet that marked him as coming from a very specific world. Those eyes were blinking rapidly, betraying nervousness despite the formal posture.
Nolan spoke before thinking, the question emerging automatically.
"Are you a Cadian?"
The response was immediate and electric.
The veteran's entire demeanor transformed in an instant. His back straightened like a steel rod had been inserted into his spine. His shoulders squared. His chin lifted. The timidity that had marked his expression vanished, replaced by fierce pride that burned in those purple eyes.
"The 423rd Cadian Regiment! Hassan, the gunner of the 2nd Armored Company!" The words came out parade-ground loud, sharp enough to cut glass. "Cadian stands firm!"
The traditional response. The declaration every Cadian soldier learned before they learned to walk. A promise and a boast and a threat all wrapped in three words.
Nolan slowly shook his metal helmet, acknowledging the answer.
He remained silent for a moment, then moved his gaze to the bald woman kneeling beside the Cadian. His eyepiece focused on her, scanning for threats, cataloging details.
"It's your turn." Nolan's voice carried through the vox-grille with mechanical distortion. "Huh?"
His words cut off mid-sentence.
Something had changed. Nolan's enhanced senses, sharpened by Primarch genetics and the Emperor's blood flowing in his veins, detected a shift in the air around him. A ripple in the fabric of reality too subtle for normal perception.
A psychic wave.
Very hidden. Carefully controlled. But there nonetheless. It emanated from the bald woman like heat from a fire, invisible but tangible to those with the senses to detect it. She was scanning him. Reading him. Peering past the ceramite steel and Uru-gold to see what lay beneath.
Nolan's reaction was instant.
His hand clamped around the Heart of the Furnace at his waist, fingers finding the grip with practiced ease. His other hand tightened on the Blood Scythe, the Warscythe's weight shifting as he prepared to swing. Every muscle in his enhanced body tensed, ready for combat, ready to strike down a psyker who'd dared to probe his mind without permission.
But before he could move, the psychic wave vanished.
The bald woman retracted her power with desperate speed, snapping it back like a fishing line being reeled in. She raised her drooping head slowly, her single visible eye wide behind the psychic amplifier clamped to her skull.
Even with the device shielding her abilities, dampening her connection to the Warp, it couldn't stop the extreme shock that flooded across her face.
Her mouth opened. Words tumbled out, unbidden and uncontrolled.
"This is impossible! Lord Angel, you are the original..."
"Whatever you see or know, if you don't want to die, just let it rot in your stomach!"
Nolan moved faster than thought.
His hand raised with blinding speed, bringing the Blood Scythe up in a smooth arc. The Warscythe's blade, still glowing with green decomposition energy, settled against the side of the bald woman's shoulder with the precision of a surgeon placing a scalpel.
The gesture cut off her words mid-sentence. The threat was absolutely clear. One twitch of Nolan's wrist, one flex of his servo motors, and her head would separate from her body before her nervous system could register pain.
The message: speak of this and die.
The bald woman's expression changed rapidly, cycling through terror, understanding, and desperate calculation in the span of a heartbeat.
Then she threw herself fully to the ground, prostrating herself before Nolan's armored bulk.
"Thank you for your generous forgiveness!" The words came out rushed, breathless, nearly incoherent with relief.
She pressed her forehead to the ferrocrete, abasing herself completely. Her voice rose in pitch, taking on the tone of someone who'd glimpsed salvation and was clutching at it with both hands.
"Respected Angel! As a humble psychic, I ask you to save us and the innocent people in this hive city!"
Nolan held the Warscythe in place for a moment longer, letting the threat linger.
Then he withdrew the blade with smooth control, pulling it back to a neutral position. His metal helmet shook slightly, a gesture that might have been acknowledgment or dismissal.
"You don't need to tell me about this," Nolan said, his tone calm and measured. "That's why I'm here."
He let that sink in for a beat. Let them understand that he already knew his purpose, that begging him to help was redundant.
Then his voice shifted to command.
"Now, you need to tell me what happened in the hive and why the rebels started this rebellion!"
The words came through the vox-grille with absolute authority. Not a request. Not a suggestion. An order from an Angel of Death who expected immediate compliance.
And compliance came.
The Cadian corporal named Hassan and the female psyker named Lucy began talking, their words tumbling over each other in their haste to explain. They painted the picture from their perspective, limited and incomplete but honest.
The Tetim Hive.
Located on the Adoma homeworld, the industrial heart of the Mobian system. One of the most important manufacturing centers in the entire sector. The kind of world where entire continents had been converted into factory complexes, where billions of workers labored in endless shifts to produce the war material that kept the Imperium's military machine functioning.
This hive was special.
It was one of the worlds where Leman Russ tanks were produced.
Not just any tanks, but the main battle vehicles that formed the backbone of the Astra Militarum's armored divisions. Thousands rolled off the production lines every month, shipped to war zones across the sector, the galaxy. Losing this hive would cripple the Imperium's ability to wage mechanized warfare in the region.
But something had gone terribly wrong.
The Sixth Mobian Regiment had just evacuated to the hive for renovations. Battle-hardened soldiers, loyal servants of the Emperor, returning from the front lines for rest and refit. They should have been the hive's protectors, its garrison force while they recovered.
Instead, they'd launched an attack on the imperial forces.
No warning. No declaration. No demands. One day they were loyal soldiers of the Imperium. The next, they were rebels, turning their weapons on their own allies and attacking positions they'd been assigned to defend.
No one knew why.
That was the part that kept repeating in Hassan and Lucy's explanation. No one understood what had triggered the rebellion. No manifestos had been issued. No grievances declared. The Sixth Mobian had simply... turned.
What was certain was their strategic objective.
They'd chosen to occupy the lower hive location of Tetim. The massive underworks where raw materials were processed, where power systems kept the entire complex running. They'd fortified those positions with professional military efficiency, using their training and equipment to create defensive zones that would be nightmares to assault.
From there, they'd repeatedly launched continuous attacks on the middle nest.
Targeting the central manufacturing areas where the Leman Russ production lines were stored. Trying to seize or destroy the very facilities that made this hive worth defending. Every assault pushed deeper into Imperial-held territory, testing defenses, probing for weaknesses.
The Planetary Defense Force had responded with desperate measures.
To protect the necessary production lines, they'd forcibly closed part of the passages between the middle nests. Sealing entire corridors, cutting off access routes, creating artificial chokepoints. They'd abandoned the lower hive entirely, writing off everyone trapped down there as acceptable losses.
Then they'd rebuilt defensive positions in the middle nest, preparing for a siege.
As for the unlucky Corporal Hassan and psyker Lucy and the others who'd been fighting in this square...
They were casualties.
Not in the sense of being wounded or killed, but in the sense of being expendable resources. The Inquisitor who'd come to investigate the rebellion had thrown them into the hive as disposable scouts. Convicts, psykers, Ogryns... the kind of people the Imperium considered barely worth the air they breathed.
Their mission: investigate the rebels' movements. Gather intelligence. Report back if possible.
The unspoken subtext: die in the process, because your lives don't matter.