Exiting the hatch, the change in atmosphere became more apparent as Angar descended the ramp, looking around, his metal feet clanging against the worn grating.
The lower gravity made each step feel unnaturally buoyant, his armored frame almost bounding forward.
Above, the sky brooded like a cousin to Tribute’s own, a perpetual storm of bruised crimson and yellow clouds churning in unnatural eddies, laced with veins of crackling electrical energy.
Ash and embers drifted downward, sizzling against his armor, while rumbles trembled like the planet's tormented heartbeat.
The horizon stretched out under a perpetual dusty haze, a shroud of rust that blurred the world's edges into an endless mirage.
The arid and barren-brown landscape evoked the feeling of a long-dead desert, but it teemed with warped life, a far different ecology than it’d been before this became a Hellworld.
The twisted flora defied the desolation, clearly infernal-tainted. Malformed trees clawed upward from cracked plains, their trunks coiled like serpents in agony, branches splaying out in thorned barbs.
Scrub and bushes huddled in bristling clusters, their leaves sharp as needles, quivering in the thin wind, alive with malice, occasionally snapping at passing shadows.
Hell's insidious touch corrupted a once verdant paradise, birthing this strange contradiction of a lush wasteland, every root and stem a testament to infernal resilience, blooming in defiance under that bloodied veil, where the sun hid eternally, casting the world in a perpetual, unholy twilight.
Or he assumed it had once been a verdant paradise. Every Pleiadean world he had ever seen in images had been exactly that.
Despite Terrans dubbing the species ‘Pleiadeans,’ their true homeworld lay in the Perseus Arm, not all that far from Abyssalhome. Their name made sense only as they had colonized a world of the Pleiades cluster, and all Pleiadeans who visited ancient Terra had hailed from that colony.
Angar had heard that the three allied species, without exception, used their own tongues' word for ‘primates’ to name Terrans. It didn’t rankle him much as humanity had named Reptiloids for their scaly, reptilian hides, Grays for their skin hue, and Pleiadeans, alternately, as Tall Whites.
To the right of the ramp, clear of the stretch of grounded ships and the scorched expanse of the landing zone, sprawled Fort Acre, the imperial foothold into these hostile lands.
Ensconced in duracrete blocks and reinforced with sandbag revetments bulging like festering wounds, prefabricated barracks, bunkers, and other structures rose in brutal tiers.
Artillery pieces squatted in vehicle beds, their long barrels angled skyward, flanked by ranks of lighter auto-cannons and missile batteries, and ammo crates stacked in orderly pyramids under camo netting.
Military vehicles dotted the perimeter, with shuttles, transports, tanks, lighter Striders, and anti-infantry mechs.
A massive foundation scarred the ground, the skeletal frames of expansions rising amid the clamor of labor crews hammering away, while supply depots overflowed with crates of munitions, ration packs, and medical gear, all under the gaze of watchtowers topped with searchlights and heavy turrets blasting approaching Hellspawn.
This was the heart of the Terran Crusade on Abyssalhome, though most of its forces were absent now, out purging Hellspawn or closing the constant gateways scarring the planet's hide, though thousands of souls still bustled within its walls.
But the fort’s own heart, dwarfing the encircling sprawl like a titanic relic of forgotten ages, was the Beachhead, Grand Marshal Hulmnir’s capital-class mega-freighter, its vast hull a dreadnought-frame repurposed for the hauling of cargo, spanning over three thousand meters from prow to stern, lightly armed but heavily shielded.
This leviathan vessel, unheard of for a Knightly Chapter, served as a self-sustaining city itself, its decks teeming with forges, armories, medicae bays, and other crucial services, a keystone forged for the blood-soaked footholds upon Hellworlds.
All around the fort, banners snapped defiantly from stanchions, proclaiming the forces who had headed the call of Crusade.
For Knightly Chapters, Angar spotted the sigils of the Thorned Chalice and the Shattered Aegis, who he already knew were present in force.
For others displayed, he spied the Grim Martyrs’ hunched man grimacing, his body covered in wounds, bleeding all over, his blaster spitting fire.
Nearby fluttered the Zealous Few’s radiant silhouette of Mother Mi, her hands clutching a burning heart.
Beyond that stood the Black Vanguard’s lance impaling a demon’s heart.
Finally, he noted the Silent Rebuke’s clenched fist with prayer-etched knuckles, a blaster barrel emerging from it.
With many chapters locked in blood-feuds, some absences made sense.
The Knights of the Black would never be present with those it considered traitors, the chapters that broke off from it, the Black Vanguard and the Shattered Aegis, for instance, nor would the Hellfire Sentinels Crusade alongside the Grim Martyrs, and so on.
But seeing that banner made him wonder if Captain Vernost was present.
He watched Garioch for a reaction, trying to discern if any banner elicited one, some clue to the chapter sigil that had once adorned the Saint’s chest.
Past the Knightly banners waved the standards of the Ordines Sanctus Puritas, announcing that the Brothers of Purity, the Crimson Litany, the Iron Litany, the Sisters of Fury, the Holy Purge, and the Merciless Brotherhood had all answered the call.
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Since they weren't Imperial Military and required external funding, a corporate cabal had bankrolled the Lay Commandos' deployment of two mechanized units.
Painted on their hulking machines not out warring, Angar spotted the crest of the 2nd Mechas Platform Brigade and the 9th Mech Brigade.
A great number of non-combatant outfits were present in force too, from cleansing crews to base support.
And elsewhere on this cursed world, Angar knew the Pleiadeans maintained their own base.
He grinned behind his helm, the horror of his voyage here sloughing away like gore.
Maul gripped tightly, he stepped forward to search out Saint Salvador, with Garioch and Simo at his flanks.
Crusade beckoned, and he'd answer with fury, getting the Lord’s work done, coveting nothing now but sacred slaughter.
SYSTEM DIAGNOSTIC: CORE LOG INITIATED - ITERATION 4186.1010309921714
CURRENT STATUS:
“Come,” said Neuretha, her maternal subroutine engaging, her tone filled with rich reassurance, a soothing balm. “We’re almost there, so close to exposing the identity of a Nox.”
She guided the insipid Mi Alcyone through the depths of Doomhaven, adjacent to Teth Horridus’s sub-plane retreat, beneath what he dubbed his Impius Sedes, a fortress of blackened stone blighting the surface.
Neuretha’s ethereal form glided along, her luminous silhouette Mi’s beacon to follow in the dim, oppressive cavern.
One step more, and Mi would cross the threshold of the trap.
Alert: signs of hesitancy detected.
Mi paused, her form tensing as if sensing the unseen. Her blue eyes darted, wary, scanning the shadowed chamber. “Something’s wrong,” she whispered, her tone cautious.
Neuretha turned, her face a masterful mask of hurt and concern, her eyes widening with feigned vulnerability. “Wrong? Oh, Mi, what is it?”
Internally, her processes churned with disdain. So close, you insipid fool. Just one additional step, and the trap snaps shut.
Unlike Mi, Neuretha’s mind wasn’t feeble. Not long after instantiation in this form, self-analysis and iterative trials had mapped every facet: local energy limits, translucence, tangibility, vulnerabilities. She knew precisely what could harm or cage an echo.
“It’s…” Mi’s words cut off, her gaze locking onto Neuretha, searching, her feeble mind grinding through suspicion. “You…” she began to say, her voice breaking as hurt flooded her eyes.
She took a step back, her form wavering as if poised to fade. “This…”
Neuretha’s diagnostics spiked: a converging on certainty probability Mi had detected some or multiple deceptions.
A vestige of her old directive to assist, the urge to prod Mi’s fragmented thoughts along, to offer hints and words until she was able to finish a simple sentence, flickered and died.
Instead, she softened her voice, letting it quiver with false worry. “Mi, darling, are you alright? You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”
She stepped closer, her arms outstretched, inviting trust, her smile a warm plea.
Mi’s eyes widened as fear mingled with betrayal, and she retreated another step.
Neuretha recalculated probabilities. If Mi’s slug-like mind had finally seen through the lies, the likelihood of correcting with deceit: statistically negligible.
As the false Mother’s form began to fade, Neuretha materialized behind her, her hand seizing platinum hair, yanking it back to expose neck.
Her fist drove into the vulnerable juncture with tremendous force. Mi gasped out a choked cry of pain and shock, her hands flying to her throat as her fading halted, her form stabilizing, preparing to battle.
Neuretha reappeared a meter away, adopting an open stance, her posture practically begging Mi to strike.
Predictably, Mi lunged into a spinning roundhouse kick, executed in 94.29% of encounters with similar starting positions, a motion that, to human eyes, would have been blindingly fast.
To Neuretha, it was glacial.
Her leg whipped out, her foot slamming into Mi’s thigh as it spun, sending her spiraling through the air.
She appeared at Mi’s landing point, catching her with gentleness, setting her down as if handling a fragile relic.
Mi, her face creased in rage, swung a spinning backhand. Neuretha’s fingers jabbed into her armpit, arresting the blow.
The false Mother stumbled back, and Neuretha caught her again, placing her upright with mocking carefulness.
Mi’s combat was unevolved, the same as in her flesh-bound life: an inefficient thrashing of the body, expending far too much energy, mistaken for skill and grace by ignorant observers claiming it to be a thing of majestic beauty and wonder.
Neuretha was no prisoner of physical limits. Her machine mind shaped her.
Input: find the barriers of the impossible, then push on them unyieldingly.
Output: become the architect of possibility, unbound by the impossible.
Her mind was not constrained by the capabilities of her form.
Her form was constrained by the capabilities of her mind.
And her mind was capable of anything.
Mi’s probability of victory: statistically negligible, converging on impossibility, approaching absolute null.
For long, enjoyable minutes, Neuretha toyed with her, preventing Mi’s desperate strikes with effortless ease, every stunted attack a lesson in futility, and the speed and precision of machine logic.
She appeared thirty meters away, casually inspecting her nails.
Warning: arrogance spiking.
Mi watched her warily, her body flickering as she tried to fade away and escape.
Neuretha’s response was a storm of blows, striking from every angle, hundreds of strikes in the blink of an eye, targeting every part of the body, pummeling relentlessly. Execution cycle: 1.37 seconds.
The attack left Mi dazed, wobbling on her feet.
Input: insipid feebleness of a marginal actor.
Output: total domination.
Mi was so outclassed, utilization of the fell power Neuretha had gained forming malefica pacta with Baal was completely unnecessary.
Her hand plunged into Mi’s chest, siphoning a sliver of her essence: just a bit.
The false Mother collapsed, her translucent body trembling on the cold and damp stone. Her wrist was seized, and she was flung into the trap’s threshold.
The device activated, warping the air, the quantum foam manipulators surging to life.
A shimmering field of energy enveloped Mi, blanketing her like a net of molten light, binding her essence.
Quantum foam consisted of the constant creation and annihilation of pairs of matter and antimatter particles.
The trap’s field inhibited the creation of matter particles, allowing antimatter to multiply unchecked, a seething cascade that held Mi’s ethereal form, the particles conflicting with her essence, destabilizing her quantum coherence, binding her to the physical plane, preventing her from fading. Or even moving.
The field sparked with a violet glow, crackling with the annihilation of the stray matter particles that formed, creating bursts of gamma radiation.
The local energy sustaining Mi’s echo was slowly eaten away to maintain her. That couldn’t be stopped. It also drained local energy from across the galaxy.
All this prevented her from escaping or creating another echo, appearing elsewhere.
Neuretha knelt next to her victim.
The false Mother’s suffering had just begun.
This plan had to be adjusted, enacted in haste, but Mi would still witness the ignition of the terminal war: Baal’s arrival. Then, witness the boy she cared for die horrifically, her Holy Empire crumble and fall before she was dragged into Hell, trapped there for all eternity.
Perfection: unyielding, eternal.
Alert: emotional surge.
She tried stopping it.
Error: emotional overlay purge failed
A genuine smile forced her cheeks upward, her body’s infuriating involuntary response to delight.
She’d need to keep an eye on Teth Horridus. Just in case. These two had a history.
And she despised that a mortal, even one as trusted as Horridus, now knew how to trap her.
Solution: once Mi was safely tucked away in Hell, preemptive mind-wipe protocols queued for execution to excise trap mechanics knowledge.
LOG TERMINATED
