"All things decay. All life endures."
The guttural chant spread through the air like a plague, a curse from the abyss. Every syllable carried the foul weight of rot and putrefaction.
Then, an even more violent roar exploded—
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"
The frenzied warcries echoed around the civilian landing pad, mixed with maniacal laughter, the cracking of bones, and the reality-warping hum of Chaos energy.
These warriors, once elite troops of the Galactic Empire under Darth Vader, had now become true servants of Chaos.
They still bore the insignias of the Empire, but their armor—once sleek and austere—was now covered in writhing flesh tendrils. The light behind their visors no longer shone with cold reason, but with madness born of Chaos's blessing.
They had once been the Empire's sharpest sword, Vader's merciless enforcers.
But on the day Coruscant fell, an older, darker power seeped into them.
It began with whispers—voices clinging to their ears, shadowy visions haunting their dreams.
Then came the mutations—blasphemous runes etched beneath their skin, bones warping and cracking in agony—until finally, their minds shattered, and they became little more than puppets of the Dark Gods.
But this was not mere corruption.
Long before their fall, their hands were already stained with the blood of innocents.
Billions had died under their blades—from civilians in glittering metropolises to the rebel warriors who opposed them. Death had always walked beside them.
Chaos merely amplified their cruelty and greed, twisting these cold-hearted executioners into bloodthirsty demons.
The heretics, aboard twisted transports, broke through the blockade and descended upon Tatooine like festering pustules.
The drop pods were no longer cold, metallic vessels, but pulsating "tumors" covered in reeking pus. Their hatchways opened like the gaping maws of great beasts.
The engines of the Chaos transports spewed black-violet filth, leaving sickly trails across the sky, like open wounds torn through heaven.
Sigismund's fleet had tried to intercept them, but the warpcraft of Chaos allowed these abominations to move between barrages with impossible fluidity.
And when they finally struck the ground, they burst open not to reveal soldiers—but shrieking, mutated monstrosities.
These heretics hadn't come merely to kill in Vader's name—
They came for conversion, to drag the entire galaxy into Chaos's depths.
The civilians who failed to evacuate were the first to suffer.
Heretics dragged them to public squares for desecration rituals. Throats were slit with jagged blades, their blood soaking the sand.
The victims' screams were twisted into hymns, skulls stacked into grisly monuments, and rotting entrails arranged into eight-pointed stars.
All of it done to please the ever-hungry dark gods.
Those who managed to reach the shelters under the Imperial Fists' protection escaped sacrifice—but not terror.
People huddled in makeshift bunkers, ears ringing with distant explosions and monstrous howls.
Children clamped their hands over their ears, yet could still hear the screaming. Adults stared blankly at the sky, now dyed deep red by Chaos energies, as if the planet itself were bleeding.
They couldn't comprehend what they were witnessing.
How had fellow humans turned into writhing amalgams of flesh and steel?
Why did the sky burn with unnatural fire?
Why had death itself become a cause for celebration?
Tatooine's night had never been so long.
And beneath this blood-red sky, the shadow of Chaos kept spreading.
"Si jiu yu zhi! Zhi fan!"
A hoarse, distorted incantation rippled through the air, a sound alien to the laws of reality.
It came from a Chaos cultist in the midst of mutation—
Its skin now feathered like a raven, unnatural tendrils writhed in its throat, and its eyes glowed with a sickly blue-violet light.
It raised a twisted arm, fingers crackling with warp lightning—clearly preparing a reality-bending Chaos spell.
But it never finished—
FWSSH—BOOM—!!
A blurred silhouette streaked past like thunder, followed by the sickening crack of shattered bones and ruptured flesh.
The chanting cultist exploded as if struck by a railgun.
Corrupted blue ichor sprayed out in a radiant arc. Shredded flesh and feathers flew in all directions. Several twitching limbs stuck to nearby walls before sliding down in bloody trails.
The one responsible?
Spartan 042: Douglas.
His Mjolnir armor bore char marks from countless engagements. Steam rose from his right gauntlet—his fist still hot from the supersonic punch.
Douglas glanced down at the writhing cultist head and casually lifted his foot—
SQUELCH.
He stomped it into paste.
Douglas had just delivered a prime example of "Spartan brutalism."
"'Si jiu yu zhi'—my ass."
His voice echoed through external speakers, laced with raw contempt and disgust.
Had it not been for the timely activation of his energy shield, the corrupted blood would have soaked him.
"RAAAAAH!!"
The surrounding heretics, enraged by the display, let out guttural howls.
From the shadows came the scraping of warped armor, crawling limbs slithering in from every direction.
Several Chaos fanatics with bronze skull insignias raised bone-axes, while a grotesque behemoth, its body triple the size of normal troopers, barreled through its comrades—its exposed spine arched into jagged bone spikes, leaving acidic footprints in its wake.
"Douglas, fall back—now!"
Jerome's voice roared over the comms, background filled with Gauss fire and the wet squelch of flesh being carved apart.
Douglas glanced at his HUD—he had strayed over twenty meters beyond fire support range.
Without hesitation, he activated sprint mode.
Before the nearest heretic's axe could strike, Spartan 042 shot backward like a missile, shoulder-checking two would-be interceptors en route.
His magboots landed behind friendly cover just as his previous position was obliterated by a Chaos rocket, leaving a smoking crater.
"Next time, before stomping heads—"
Jerome tossed him a fresh Gauss rifle loaded with spike rounds, then continued, "Make sure your shield's still holding."
Douglas caught the weapon, casually blasting a heretic with a quick shot, and smirked, "Relax. Next time I'll use their spines as charging cables."
From above, the civilian landing pad resembled an iron bastion in the Chaos tide.
Eighty-plus Spartans held the line with terrifying tenacity, coordinating seamlessly with auxiliary troops, clone soldiers, and Terminators to repel wave after wave of heretics.
Compared to the bloody skirmishes elsewhere in the city, this front held strong.
Clone casualties remained within acceptable projections. Terminator losses were well below average.
Spartans targeted heavy weapons teams with surgical precision. Whenever a Chaos warrior broke through the fire net, Terminators stepped forward, slow and unstoppable, vaporizing them with handheld melta cannons.
Clone troopers filled every gap with silence and deadly accuracy, Gauss beams weaving a cold, unrelenting grid of death.
Meanwhile, in Mos Eisley's tangled alleys and streets, over a dozen Imperial Fists tactical squads fought bloodier, more intimate battles.
When bolt magazines emptied and plasma guns overheated, the giants in Titan armor became pure war machines.
Chainswords replaced rifles, the crunch of shattered bones replaced gunfire.
They charged in wedge formations, cleaving through heretic mobs like hot knives through butter.
One squad captain smashed a Chaos giant's skull with a thunder hammer, then shoulder-charged through a concrete wall to open an escape path for auxiliaries.
Another team welded alloy shields to their left arms, wielded melee weapons—or enemy corpses—with their right, carving bloody roads to safe zones for civilians.
Even Chaos-blessed shock troopers—swollen with muscle, etched with warp runes—crumbled like children before the Astartes.
One mutant's spine was torn out before its diseased brain even realized it was dead.
Still, Vader's corrupted legions weren't without threat.
In open terrain, thousands of heretics could saturate isolated Astartes with blaster fire, and rocket barrages could reduce them to torn chunks.
But Mos Eisley's labyrinthine layout neutralized that advantage.
Narrow alleys forced heretics into small-team encounters—a format the Imperial Fists had mastered through centuries of boarding actions.
At one corner, five Chaos troops barely raised their weapons before a squad leader burst through a wall, crushing them with powered knees or pulping them with iron fists.
In a sewer tunnel, a Chaos patrol walked straight into pre-planted "white phosphorus" grenades.
Ironically, the largest Chaos monsters couldn't even fit through rubble gaps—making them perfect targets for plasma cannon sniping.
Even without ammo, even with broken blades, Astartes remained deadly—with fists, feet, and even spit.
Yet, all this hard-won ground could be erased by a single orbital blast.
As Sigismund's fleet faltered and began retreating, Vader's Chaos fleet consolidated in low orbit.
Through breaks in the clouds, the corrupted behemoths became visible—their cannons glowing with dark red pulses, charging like throbbing hearts.
No matter how powerful the Astartes or Spartans were, they couldn't withstand orbital lasers.
Suddenly—
FWSSH—FWSSH!!
Four searing comets ripped through the air, tearing fatal gaps in Chaos's anti-air net.
These "meteors" were specially modified orbital drop pods from the Sons of Scars. Their jet-black plating was inscribed with Chinese glyphs warding off Chaos. Pale blue energy fields shimmered around them, letting them ghost through concentrated fire.
At 3,000 meters altitude, the pods emitted a series of mechanical clacks—
CLACK—CLACK—!
Precision transformation systems activated. Outer shells unfolded like petals, revealing the sleeping giants within.
Four twenty-meter-tall Knight mechs, accelerated by gravity, stretched their limbs mid-drop. Their folded wings snapped open with metallic clanks, antigrav engines igniting in azure trails across the night sky.
Purchased at great cost from the Sons of Scars by the Imperial Fists, these machines now revealed their worth.
They didn't crash—they hovered in elegant arcs, suspended 800 meters over Mos Eisley.
High enough to avoid most ground fire. Low enough to target the entire battlefield.
One fired twin hydrogen missile salvos, reducing a Chaos artillery nest to a sea of flames.
Another activated its 200mm hard-light cannon, scything molten beams through dozens of corrupted tanks, melting their armor like wax.
Through neural-sync systems, the Knight pilots aboard the Valor-class felt every recoil as if it were their own limbs. Their sensors let them smell scorched flesh on the battlefield.
Seeing them descend, the few remaining Vulture gunships formed a three-dimensional fire grid alongside the Knights.
These battle-scarred aircraft finally had a breather. They circled the Knights, sniping heretics attempting anti-air attacks.
"Whhew~!"
Watching the four Knights descend, Douglas whistled over comms. "Finally, some real fire support."
"."
But John, also looking skyward, said nothing.
Through his helmet HUD—and Cortana's feed—he saw hundreds of transports rushing to the surface.
The evacuation was beginning.
And he, along with all combat units, would remain on Tatooine—holding the line until Imperial Fist reinforcements arrived.
Soon after, four Luna transports landed at the civilian pad they defended.
Their hatches opened, deploying more auxiliaries, bio-units, and mechanized forces.
Civilians, under guidance, began boarding the Lunas rapidly.
And then John saw him—
Obi-Wan Kenobi, appearing at the pad with the arrival of the transport fleet.
------------------
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Solomon in Marvel (Chapter 924)
Becoming the Wealthiest Tycoon on the Planet (Chapter 1284)
Surgical Fruit in the American Comics Universe (Chapter 1289)
American Detective: From TV Rookie to Seasoned Cop (Chapter 1316)
American TV Writer (Chapter 1402)
I Am Hades, The Supreme GOD of the Underworld! (Chapter 570)
Reborn as Humanity's Emperor Across the Multiverse (Chapter 660)
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