Chapter 3 – Wolf(fe)pack
Ciaphas was terrified out of his mind. Perhaps it was unworthy of him given his namesake, but he couldn't help it. The greenskins had swept away the majority of the planetary defense force and the garrison. Then hope had come when an orbital bombardment had struck the Ork camp. Everyone believed the Imperial Navy had come to rescue them and had breathed a sigh of relief.
Instead, something worse than orks came.
They'd hunted them like trapped animals, swooping down and plucking them away by the dozen. Some of the PDF forces that remained had tried to fight back, but they'd been captured easily. No one was sure where those that were taken were sent, but Ciaphas doubted he'd see any of them again.
Or he had doubted that. Now, he was quite certain he would be seeing all of them again as he struggled against his own, immobilized body in one of the large, flying vehicles of the wicked xenos. He'd thought he was safe in the alleyways. The xenos sent patrols to check different buildings at random times, so he and the others had been forced to move regularly.
The others… Cyrus, the bastard, had shoved him to the ground the moment the xenos had found them. An unwilling sacrifice so he could get away. He swore to the Throne that if he ever saw that man again, he'd kill him with his bare hands! He'd never stood a chance against the xenos with their guns. They'd shot him with a strange dart that made his body tense up so tightly that he couldn't move. Helpless, they'd dragged him away onto one of their jet bikes and flown him up to one of the larger vehicles, tossing him like a doll onto the cold metal. He'd felt something crack in his leg, but he couldn't even scream beyond a strained moan.
A cold laugh stopped his struggle as a shiver went down his spine. The voice was melodic, musical even, yet there was no kindness or mercy there. Cruelty incarnate. He could just barely move his head enough to glance at the source. He wished he hadn't.
Throne forgive him, the xeno was beautiful and handsome and horrifying all at the same time. He was tall, taller than any man Ciaphas had ever seen, with skin as pale as the moon, and wearing armor that looked like it had been fashioned from the darkness of the void itself. A long, wicked blade made of the same material as the armor rested comfortably against the xeno's knee as he reclined upon a throne. He seemed completely uninterested in Ciaphas, something he thanked the Emperor for.
Then, the xeno opened his dark eyes and turned his head sharply, looking off to the side of the vehicle, beyond where Ciaphas could look. He heard the leader say something, short and fast, in a tongue as melodic as his voice. He knew a swear when he heard one.
His fear momentarily forgotten at the xeno's actions, he craned his head as far as he could manage, though it still wasn't enough to see what had captured the attention of the wicked being. Then, he heard it, through strained ears. A low humming, not unlike the soft murmur of the vehicle he currently found himself on, but growing louder by the second.
The xeno said something else in its strange tongue, louder this time and a new roar, that of the familiar jet bikes, grew as those very machines flew past towards the source of the strange hum. Ciaphas desperately wished he could crane his head just a few centimeters more to see over the side. Had the PDF returned with reinforcements? Was it the Imperial Guard? Throne, could it be His angels?!?
Then, the sound of xenos weaponry filled the air.
Approximately 2.35~ Seconds Ago
A seemingly endless horde of his Wolffes streamed out of the ten portals linked to his base. He had quickly realized a single gate would bottleneck his forces, so he'd constructed another nine in various spots to the south of the city. He couldn't help feeling a bit giddy, despite the situation. Being in direct control of all these bots, an army of well over fifty thousand that he had created in a mere two days, it was… well, it was fucking awesome to say the least.
He watched through the sensors of his bots as they rushed into the city, some leaping up to hover in the air, all of them rushing towards the dark eldar. To their credit, they didn't panic, which was a surprise since he'd always thought of them as cowardly given how they usually only went for the weak. Though, only a few thousand of his Wolffes had emerged from the teleport gate at this point, so perhaps they just hadn't realized how fucked they were just yet.
If he could smile he would be grinning at the prospect of correcting them.
The first eldar were opening fire upon his horde, their jet bikes unleashing blasts of energized crystal shards at sufficient velocities to even pierce the precursor metal of his Wolffes. In a single volley, dozens of his Wolffes went down, many dropping like stones out of the sky as their hover engines suddenly failed. Worse still, those jet bikes were faster than his own units and would perform attack runs along his horde, darting away before any retribution could come. Meanwhile, the heavier raiders had brought their own weapons to bear and inflicted even greater casualties. Lances of darkness rushed forwards and consumed scores of Wolffes, leaving nothing behind but scorch marks or the occasional limb.
Yet, he was confident.
It started with those dark eldar that had been on the ground in patrols, probably hunting for stray humans to enslave. He turned them into the hunted as he sicced his Wolffes upon them, mercilessly tearing them to shreds with their claws. It seemed the disassemblers had been overkill, at least for this faction. Dark Eldar armor wasn't exactly the strongest, favoring speed and dexterity over toughness. At least, when they wore armor. He'd come upon several wyches who, while certainly deadlier than the other units in melee and trickier to face, went down even faster under his claws.
Perhaps it was his experience with the orks, perhaps it was the knowledge of just how much these beings deserved their deaths, but he found he didn't mind being the deliverer of their bloody and savage doom as much as he should have. The blood and guts seemed rather mild in comparison to the extremely detailed and rapid decay he had perfect clarity of even now thanks to his new nature.
While he lost as many Wolffes to the infantry as he did to the jet bikes, even more to the wyches, far more were already streaming out of the teleport gates to replace them and take righteous vengeance for their fallen brothers. Several Wolffes remained beside the corpses, hard at work disassembling the weapons, armor, and everything else the drukhari had on them, barring the clothes. He wasn't so merciless that he wouldn't leave them with at least some dignity in death (their being shredded to ribbons didn't count).
Even as he sent more of his units into the air to flank and encircle the jet bikes and raiders, he had quickly become more interested in the new technology he'd acquired rather than the battle.
Dark Eldar technology was not as insane as ork tek, at least not in the same way. It was definitely strange if one wasn't aware of the… proclivities of the Drukhari and their preferred pastimes. Beyond even the various torture implements that had been seemingly added to even the most innocuous of items, the technology itself was… odd, as though it, or he, were missing something vital. Some level of understanding that he just didn't possess, a fundamental component to the construction of this technology.
It didn't take much to figure out what that was when he studied the corpses of the dark eldar more closely. He'd had to disassemble one of said corpses, something that brought back memories of screaming orks, but it had been worth it. Their armor was connected to their body's neural network. Not as extensively or obviously as that of a space marine, there were no ducts in the skin for the armor to latch onto. It was subtler than that, microscopic in scale. It melded the two into a single being, like that saying about having your sword become an extension of your arm, but sort of literal in this case.
While he could use and even replicate the weapons and equipment, he'd need to modify it to work with his systems. That was fine, he'd planned to modify it anyways to better integrate with his units. And now, he had ranged weapons!
He quickly crafted a new design. He wanted to get his full focus back to the battle as soon as possible, so he chose to hold off creating anything particularly spectacular. He lightly modified the splinter rifle, making a functional rifle that utilized fabricators to produce the crystal ammunition. He changed the design a bit as well, since he didn't really like the look of the weapon, making it a bit sleeker and less covered in the spikes that were apparently considered the height of Drukhari fashion. Then, he made a bot to carry said gun, a simple humanoid two meters in height. The simple frame looked like it could have been a large man's armor. He based said armor off his memories of the Phase 1 Clone Trooper armor and dubbed it the Rifleman.
He was in a rush and originality was never his strong suit, shut up.
That finished, he changed his production lines over to the Rifleman, allowing them to finish up a final batch of Wolffes before they'd begin producing his first ranged soldiers. The entire process of designing a weapon, new bot, and altering his factory orders took less than a second.
He loved accelerated thinking.
As an afterthought, he added a speaker to the Riflemen, allowing them to speak. Specifically, they would speak with the voice of the clones from the Clone Wars. If he was going to make a Star Wars design, he was damn well going the full mile.
It would take around a minute for his assisted factories to produce a bot of the new design, along with its gun. He'd been surprised at it having the same construction time given how much larger the new bot was than the Wolffe, until he realized that the addition of the hover engine in the melee units had drastically increased the cost. Still, live and learn he supposed.
With his next wave of soldiers being constructed, he returned his full attention to the battle. He wished he still had a mouth so he could grin at the sight.
Meanwhile
Draenei cursed again under his breath, directing the jet bikes to once more flank the encircling robot-gremlins and push them back. There seemed to be no end to the tiny terrors as they streamed out of the forest by the thousands. They were like orks in a way, just tiny, with incredibly sharp claws, and the ability to fly. They weren't as loud as the orks at the very least, but their silence was more disconcerting than anything else.
His forces on the ground had been the first to fall, unable to escape the claws of this new foe as the jet bikes and raiders were. Now the horde's full focus were on him and his hovering units, flying up towards him in a completely inelegant and ridiculous looking way.
He wasn't sure where these things had come from, but he was certain they belonged to whatever had been watching them through those aircraft. He'd thought it was just some group of Mon'Keigh trying to spy on them until they left, he hadn't expected this! How could he have expected this!?!
More dark lances and splinter rifles fired, consuming another swathe of the robots, yet it was clear that it wasn't going to be enough. They were steadily losing ground, losing places they could run to. They were being encircled, above and below. There were simply too many of them.
The sound of a familiar eldar's violent screaming drew his gaze. Drazhan had been caught by a group of the tiny robot-beasts. Yet, rather than vivisect him as they had so gleefully done to those on the ground, they instead had grappled and tore him from his bike, holding him up in the air. A cloud of blue light had enveloped him and appeared to be the source of his screaming as he was bleeding profusely all across his body, his armor and flesh melting away as though in acid.
Nanomachines, Draenei realized. He'd used them himself for both killing and maiming. Whoever had sent this force appeared intent on both. He could respect that, at the very least, and appreciate the fine taste of whoever was attacking them, but he was not interested in allowing the same to be done to him.
"Withdraw to the Screaming Flesh," he commanded simply. His raider was the first to bank upwards and speed into the sky, followed soon by the rest of his remaining forces as the corsair far above began to descend into the atmosphere to allow them to reembark.
Draenei looked back upon the carnage far below, savoring the despair one last time. He only wished he could have witnessed in person what was about to happen.