Chapter 37: They Want Destruction? Then We'll Give Them Destruction.
Over the course of the following standard Terran week, Ashek II, once a proud jewel of Imperial industry, became a furnace consuming lives without pause.
Marshal Blackwood's Sabbat Expedition vanguard fleet, after clearing near-orbital resistance, launched a hasty probing forced landing in conditions of insufficient tactical assessment, driven by the urgency of establishing a stable drop zone.
The fleet command had underestimated what Heritor Asphodel had built on this world.
When the troopships carrying the first fifteen full Astra Militarum regiments descended through the murky atmosphere and touched down with confidence on their predetermined coordinates, what awaited them was not scattered resistance.
Asphodel's Bane Engines, those blasphemous constructs that violate physical law and mechanical principle alike, had been waiting in the scorched earth.
These enormous, variously-formed but uniformly blasphemous machines moved against the not-yet-established Astra Militarum positions under the cover of Blood Pact cultists surging forward in endless waves. What followed was devastating.
The battle became a one-sided massacre.
Fifteen complete Astra Militarum regiments, tens of thousands of well-trained Imperial soldiers, had their entire formations erased in under three Terran days. Hundreds of Leman Russ main battle tanks and Chimera APCs never made it off their unloading platforms, melted into twisted scrap by the Bane Engines' Warp energy discharges before a single track touched ground.
The scale of that loss shook fleet command. Marshal Blackwood raged in his flagship's command room and dispensed with every remaining illusion of cautious probing. He ordered full mobilisation. Every primary asset in the entire fleet went in.
Across the atmosphere, the fires spread to every inch of the planet's surface.
Close to a million Astra Militarum soldiers were fighting through the maze of trenches and heavy manufactories against cultists advancing in human waves. Every metre of progress was paid for in hundreds of bodies.
On the plains between hive cities, Imperial armoured regiments met enemy heavy armour in direct engagement. Tracks crushed flesh. Guns tore the air apart.
At the battlefield's centre, in the domain that mortal infantry could not enter, the Titan Legion and the Knightly Houses formally engaged Asphodel's Bane Engines. Steel giants dozens of metres tall roared at each other across the ruins.
A Warlord Titan's Volcano Cannon discharged a torrent of superheated particles across the ground. Infantry caught in the beam's path were vaporised before they could produce a sound.
While the primary battle ground toward no conclusion on the frontal lines, acting on Marshal Blackwood's direct instruction, several elite Imperial Storm Trooper teams executed missions that were indistinguishable from suicide orders. Dropped from tens of thousands of metres altitude, they fought their way through complex electromagnetic interference and dense anti-aircraft fire networks to locate and destroy the anti-aircraft platforms protecting the landing corridors below.
In the midst of all of it, across the entire burning expanse of the expedition force, one unit maintained an eerie calm.
The Ash Watchers-Eisenmark 112th Armoured Infantry Regiment.
They had been given the quietest independent quarters on the Hive. In name, it was recovery time. For veterans who had just survived Eldar assassination in the bilge, the calm felt less like rest and more like the final wait before the sentence was carried out.
They knew what they were being sent to do.
For soldiers who had charged across open ground and returned fire behind tank armour more times than they could meaningfully count, the prospect of dropping from ten thousand metres of altitude directly into the enemy's heart produced a particularly unusual quality of tension. These were battle-tested veterans. Almost none of them rattled easily.
But Stroud, Anderson, Elias, Finn, and Evan were rattled.
The five of them were on the lower deck of the transport, making their final pre-drop preparations.
From the political exchange Duvette had arranged, they had been issued the most extraordinary equipment available: five sets of force-feedback power armour, the kind of hardware normally reserved for Inquisitors and Sisters of Battle, and mythical even by those standards within the broader Astra Militarum.
Stroud was getting into the undersuit with the assistance of a Mechanicus acolyte, muttering a continuous low commentary on the subject of "feet leaving the ground" and what the Emperor could do with the concept.
But as the heavy metal components were fitted to his body one by one, he had to acknowledge, reluctantly and without warmth, that this equipment was genuinely something that could keep a man alive.
The fitting process was not brief.
First: the black synthetic fibre inner suit. This specialised layer was saturated with miniature servo-motors and artificial muscle fibres throughout its structure. It provided temperature regulation and comprehensive life-support function for the wearer in extreme high-altitude environments. But its central capability was something else entirely: physical force-feedback.
When power connected, Stroud clenched his fist experimentally.
He could feel every servo-motor synchronising with his muscular movement in real time, amplifying the force being generated. The resulting increase in explosive strength was not as immediate in response as an Astartes' direct neural bond through the Black Carapace, but for a mortal soldier, what it produced was something that crossed the line of what human physiology was supposed to be capable of.
With [Flesh Engine] and [United We Stand] layered on top of this, they would be difficult to stop by almost anything short of overwhelming force.
Then, under the operation of three Mechanicus acolytes, the external defensive components went on.
Heavy ceramite and plasteel composite armour plates were locked into place one by one with pneumatic bolts. Unlike the rounded, flowing shoulder plates of Astartes power armour, the mortal version of the force-feedback suit was more modular in its design, edges angular and pronounced, carrying an industrial quality that was entirely cold.
When the full armour assembly was complete, Stroud no longer looked like a soldier. He looked like a humanoid light walker.
Finally, a heavy power jet-pack was fixed to his back. At its heart was the component the entire suit depended on: a miniature fusion reactor.
Surrounding servo-skulls intoned Binary litanies in low voices. White mist drifted from incense burners in the hands of acolytes. The power jet-pack began its activation sequence.
As the reactor came to life, the exhaust ports produced a deep hum, the sharp ozone smell of high-pressure discharge drifted through the air, and waves of heat radiated off the casing.
This jet-pack was not a grav-chute. A grav-chute managed glide and descent direction. The power jet-pack provided genuine upward thrust. Without the force-feedback armour to contain the kinetic forces it could generate, unaugmented human physiology could not have survived its operation.
Duvette stood in the iconic black greatcoat, hands in his pockets, expressionless, watching the five fully-armed figures before him.
He walked forward and let his gaze move across each face. They had all put on fully sealed tactical helmets now, their expressions hidden behind ceramite. The only indication they were present was the red lumen indicators pulsing in each visor.
Duvette gave a single nod. His voice came through the communications channel to each of them in turn.
"Brothers of the 112th. Listen carefully."
"The drop will be split into five batches. You will land separately at five designated strategic anchor points across the upper hive. I will enter the battlefield with the final batch."
He turned and pointed to the latest terrain map that had just come through from the fleet's high-power auspex arrays.
"According to current intelligence, the fleet has locked the source of the blasphemous signal. That heretic Asphodel has, with considerable cunning, connected every Bane Engine command nexus directly into the upper hive's primary Cognitor Array."
"He intends to use the hive city's Void Shield array to protect this brain. As long as it keeps running, the Titan Legion and Knightly Houses on the frontal engagement will be tied down by those blasphemous engines indefinitely."
Duvette drew the master-crafted power sword in a single motion. Blue arcs detonated across the blade.
"So our objective is exactly one thing."
He faced the five armoured figures before him and the thousands of 112th soldiers ranked in formation behind them, and let out a roar that seemed to crack the air of the deck.
"Find that Cognitor Array! Destroy it! Cut the throat of those engines!"
"They want destruction? Then we will give them destruction!"
"For the Emperor!"
"For the Emperor!!"
A unified battle cry erupted across the deck.
The veterans who had been made ready for war began moving under Duvette's lead toward the landing craft positions.