The mutants were advancing... or rather, a vast wave of mutants was surging forward at terrifying speed, like a flash flood and a tsunami.
They had once been human, or at least some kind of living beings, but now they had mutated into things that were barely recognizable as human at all. Some mutants had extra arms growing from their bodies.
Some had skin that was pitted and rough, covered in scales or fur like reptiles. Some had almost no skin left at all, while others had grotesque, hideous flesh. Many had sharp teeth, mouths in the wrong places, or multiple mouths. Their muscles bulged unnaturally, and some had tentacles instead of arms.
Their teeth were sharp. Sharp enough to pierce power armor.
Many deranged Space Marines roared and charged into the mutant horde, tearing several of them apart into nothing but shredded flesh before being surrounded and ripped to pieces by the swarm.
In the distance, he saw one Space Marine swinging a chain sword and slaughtering mutants in a frenzy, only to be seized by a huge mutant and torn in half in a horrific display.
Were these Space Marines just as mad as the mutants, or perhaps even more so? Still, the sight had become all too familiar to him by now.
The Space Marines who could still fight without succumbing to madness immediately formed up and created a crude defensive line. Heavy bolters and autocannons were positioned in proper firing locations. Land Raider transports and Predator tanks appeared at regular intervals to provide long-range heavy fire support.
Bill was one of those who still retained his sanity and had not rushed forward to die. He now stood beside Rafa. There were also several other Space Marines from his company nearby, such as Ricardo, Lysanthus, and Caius, along with others he did not know.
"These mutants are really numerous, aren't they? The Emperor really sent us here to die," Ricardo muttered with a dark chuckle. Even in this terrible situation, he kept his boltgun, a Phobos-pattern weapon, aimed at the line of mutants rushing toward them. Bill smiled faintly and replied at once.
"Don't say that in front of the other Legions," Bill half-warned.
The friends around him laughed immediately, and soon Bill laughed along with them as well. They knew very well how the other Space Marines, and ordinary humans, viewed them. Mad warriors and cannibals—that was probably the best description for the Space Marines of the Ninth Legion.
"If we say it, what can they do to us? Scold us? Challenge us to a duel? But Ricardo is right, isn't he? The Emperor sent us here to die. We are nothing but disposable augmented humans... unlike the Space Marines of the Fourth Legion. We are just far worse than they are," Caius added, speaking a painful truth. Every time they were deployed to a battlefield, it was always an extremely dangerous one—frighteningly so. Once, they had even been used as target practice by techno-barbarians.
"Enough, Caius! In another 200 meters, those mutants will be in killing range," Lysanthus said, warning his battle-brothers. His heavy bolter swayed slightly with the movement. Everyone turned toward Lysanthus and nodded as if to say they understood, though they were still quietly amused.
"I just hope nobody dies for some stupid reason this time," Bill said casually, with a hint of concern. There were not many people he knew well enough to talk to, but he understood that in this brutal war and these savage battles, loss was inevitable. At the very least, if one of his comrades had to die, he hoped they would fall to the enemy's hand, not because of his own madness.
Not long after the mutants had torn the crazed Space Marines apart, the horde drew closer and closer until they finally entered killing range.
And at that moment, every weapon opened fire at once. The roar of bolters, autocannons, and other weapons thundered continuously, as if lightning had struck all at once. Muzzle flashes erupted again and again as the boltguns in the Space Marines' hands fired small armor-piercing rocket shells into the mutants, killing them from within.
The mutants at the front exploded instantly, followed by more and more of them as they ran over the corpses of their fallen kin, only to be pierced by bolter or autocannon rounds that burst through their bodies and shattered their twisted organs from the inside.
No matter how many mutants fell before them, the countless others behind them showed no sign of stopping. They continued to pour forward, running over mountains of corpses and closing in ever more tightly.
Then, when they had come within range, a faint whine—barely audible above the gunfire and mutant screams—cut through the battlefield. It was a soft sound, like a plasma weapon charging.
Vrrrzzzz... Phew!
Suddenly, short streaks of shimmering blue-white light burst from the strange weapons carried by some of the Space Marines. And when those blue beams struck the mutants' bodies, they turned to dust in an instant. The mutants did not even have time to scream in pain like victims killed by conventional weapons.
Bill raised his disintegration gun, aimed, and fired rapidly and expertly at every mutant within range. Each time he pulled the trigger, another mutant disintegrated into dust. Some mutants, or certain forms of them, were so resilient that a single bolter round could not kill them, but the disintegration gun reduced them to dust with a single shot no matter how thick their armor or muscle mass was.
The disintegration gun was a weapon of Dark Age of Technology origin. It could destroy a target at the molecular level in an instant. Anything struck by that weapon would be reduced to dust. Although it did not have the rapid rate of fire or the sheer volume of shots of a boltgun or other conventional weapons, its destructive power was on an entirely different level from a boltgun. And if such a weapon malfunctioned, the danger was on an entirely different level as well.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The heavy bolters and Phobos-pattern boltguns continued to fire without pause. Brass casings were ejected rapidly and endlessly until the ground beneath the grey-armored Space Marines and the surrounding area was covered in spent shells. Their barrels began to glow red with heat. Slaves and attendants hurriedly carried ammunition from the transports to the Space Marine firing line, moving with desperate speed and fear.
But even though the Space Marines killed the mutants from afar and piled their bodies into mountains of mangled remains, the horde still showed no sign of slowing. They kept rushing ever closer to the Space Marines' firing line.
And at last, the brutal close-quarters battle began.
Bill shot one mutant with multiple arms while struggling to keep himself from falling into the same madness as the Space Marines who had already charged into the horde. But the smell of blood and other foul scents still drifted into his nose, even through the air filters that protected him from toxins and pollution. The scent was maddening, stirring his hunger even further.
He wanted to drink blood, wanted to tear the mutants apart with his bare hands, but he clenched his teeth and forced himself to keep fighting.
He fired again and skillfully switched his weapon's power source, but he had no power cells left. Fortunately, several of his comrades were still standing. Rafa drove the butt of his weapon into a mutant's face before firing point-blank at it.
Bang!!!!
Its twisted body exploded into pieces.
Lysanthus swung his heavy bolter like a club. With the weapon's weight and the tremendous strength of a Space Marine, he was able to smash a giant mutant so hard that it was lifted off the ground. His comrades and the other surviving Space Marines fought ferociously.
Then Caius was struck badly by a massive mutant with enormous tentacles. One of the tentacles slammed into the center of his body and hurled him into the air for a brief moment before he crashed down into the mutant horde, nearly twenty meters away from the Space Marine firing line and melee line. Bill saw it only for a split second before turning back to the battle in front of him. He did not need to guess that his comrade would be torn apart by the mutants in an instant, with no chance for help.
"No! Damn it!" Lysanthus shouted when he saw one of his battle-brothers fall into the mutant horde. He knew just as well as Bill that there was nothing he could do to save him, so he unleashed his anger and hatred on every mutant he could reach, careful not to lose himself to madness first.
Bill secured his valuable gun to the magnetic lock on his leg, then bent down and picked up the chain axe of a fallen Space Marine whose head had been torn off by a mutant. In his other hand, he held a chain sword.
He threw himself into the savage, bloody melee and killed every mutant within reach of his chain sword and chain axe. There was no grace or style to his attacks. They were pure brutality. Every slash and strike claimed at least one mutant's life.
Bill swung the chain axe and decapitated one mutant, then spun and drove the chain sword into the torso of another mutant that was about to strike him from behind with its claws.
He lifted the mutant's body with one arm, pulled the chain sword free, and used the chain axe to cleave it in half in midair.
By now, Bill's armor and the armor of many other Space Marines, once grey, were drenched in blood. Their grey armor had become blood-red, making them look like demons born from a nightmare.
He slammed the hilt of his sword into a mutant's face, then brought the axe down in a diagonal blow that split the creature in two, all while dodging attacks from several larger mutants with terrifying claws.
His movements were astonishingly agile for his size. Every time he managed to evade an attack, he struck back with speed, ferocity, and violence. The chain sword and chain axe in his hands roared hungrily, their adamantine blades spinning and spraying mutant blood and flesh in a frenzy as they ripped through bone and crushed the unlucky mutants before him.
The Space Marine firing line was now growing increasingly chaotic. The area was filled with mutants and Space Marines locked in fierce combat, and the pile of corpses kept growing. Some Space Marines had been killed, but they still managed to hold the line.
Bill glanced and saw Rafa, Lysanthus, and Ricardo fighting the mutants with their melee weapons. Though he only looked for a split second, he felt a little relieved that his comrades were still alive... though he could not help worrying as Ricardo hacked wildly through mutants with his chain sword, reducing them to minced meat.
Clink.
He felt something, and then his HUD displayed damage to the armor on his right shoulder. The cause was a mutant with a huge mouth in the center of its body, which had bitten down on his shoulder guard. Its bite was strong enough to crush the armor, and several of its teeth had broken through, damaging the black carapace beneath.
Bill shook it loose, then stomped down on the creature's torso until it went still.
But while he was focused on that mutant, another massive mutant swung a fist directly into his face with full force. The impact was so powerful that his helmet was knocked away.
His handsome face was exposed directly to the atmosphere of this world. Strange odors and the thick stench of blood struck him full in the face.
Bill gritted his teeth, dodged the attack again, then drove his chain sword into the mutant's torso and twisted to the side, tearing its body in half at the waist. A great spray of fresh blood splattered across his armor and face.
Bill struggled to endure the hunger surging through him.
Saliva began to spill from his mouth, and his fangs lengthened slightly, but the smell of blood and the intensity of battle made it impossible to resist for long. He roared like a wild beast and charged into the mutants in a frenzy, slaughtering them mercilessly.
At that moment, Inhidor Akurion, the First Captain of the Ninth Legion, issued an orbital strike order to support the Space Marines advancing from the surface, so that too many of his legionaries would not die before they reached the fortress battle in the dark tunnels filled with mutants beneath Neptune.