This is the bonus chapter for reaching 250 Powerstones.
--
Aru Hive - Periphery of the Adeptus Mechanicus Branch.
Kleman Aru was a bit smarter than Buhale.
He didn't stack all his forces at the main gate. Instead, he had set up layered defense lines across the various levels of the hive.
More importantly, he had called in support from the Order of the Omnissian Mind.
Thirty Combat Servitors were deployed in the plaza outside the Mechanicus branch.
These steel constructs were piloted by low-level lobotomized servitors and equipped with rotary las-cannons and power claws.
They had been transferred here by the Order of the Omnissian Mind during the battle of the Aru Industrial Zone, and had never been recalled due to the ensuing chaos.
In the center of the plaza sat five Predator tanks.
They were Kleman's personal collection.
Their 120mm smoothbore cannons were enough to pose a threat to the vast majority of armored units.
"Let the Crimson Dawn come," Kleman stood atop the high tower of the Mechanicus branch, looking down at the plaza through the observation window.
Beside him stood the representative of the Order of the Omnissian Mind, a Tech-Priest named Cathellan Land.
"Your Combat Servitors, plus my five Predators," Kleman said confidently, "are more than enough to ensure we can comfortably continue living in this hive."
Cathellan Land didn't answer.
Half of the Tech-Priest's face had been replaced with mechanical augmentations. His bionic eye stared up at the sky, his thoughts inscrutable.
Perhaps he was calculating whether his cooperation with Kleman was the correct choice.
Suddenly, the bionic eye staring at the sky contracted sharply.
"Incorrect."
Cathellan's voice carried the rasp of grinding metal. "Surprise attack. We must leave."
The instant his words fell...
High above, the massive silhouette of a heavy transport aircraft slowly materialized.
It launched seven drop pods.
The drop pods streaked across the sky, landing squarely in the center of Aru's upper hive.
The impact caused a massive explosion of sound, kicking up a thick cloud of dust.
Five Contemptor Dreadnoughts slowly stepped out of five of the pods.
But it wasn't Astartes that emerged from the other two...
It was five Tech-Priests.
They wore crimson robes, their mechanical bionics glinting beneath the fabric.
Two of them carried multi-meltas mounted on their shoulders. The muzzles were already charging, emitting a high-frequency hum.
The other three held strange, exotic devices. They were [Psionic Jamming Emitters] redeemed from the System shop, specifically designed to counter the psychic control networks used by the Mechanicus.
The Crimson Dawn had a crystal-clear understanding of the enemy's preparations, all thanks to the intelligence provided by undercover players planted within the hive.
"In the name of the Omnissiah..." Cathellan attempted to activate the Combat Servitors.
Unfortunately, it was far too late.
"Activate."
The Crimson Dawn Tech-Priest player, [The Last Scourge Mechanic], issued the order calmly.
The three jamming devices activated simultaneously.
An invisible wave of psychic interference expanded at the speed of light, sweeping across the entire plaza.
In that instant, every single Combat Servitor froze simultaneously.
The red lights in their optical sensors flickered erratically. Their motive joints let out harsh screeches of grinding metal, and the barrels of their rotary las-cannons drooped uselessly.
Their psychic control links had been forcibly severed. These steel constructs had been reduced to scrap metal.
"How is this possible..." Cathellan's bionic eye flashed frantically.
He had never seen this kind of technology.
A form of psychic interference specifically targeting the control of Machine Spirits—it was entirely outside his understanding of Mechanicus technology.
And right at that moment, the other two Tech-Priests opened fire.
HSSSSS!!!
Two blinding white beams of melta energy tore through the air, precisely striking the turret rings of the five Predator tanks.
The metal armor was instantly vaporized by temperatures exceeding five thousand degrees. The structural connection between the turrets and the hulls was completely severed.
CLANG!
The turrets slid off the hulls, smashing heavily onto the ground.
The tank crews inside scrambled to escape, but the residual heat of the melta beams had already ignited the ammunition racks.
In the next second, all five Predators detonated into massive fireballs.
The shockwaves flattened everything within a thirty-meter radius.
Up in the tower, Kleman was thrown to the ground by the blast. His eardrums ruptured, Blood trickling from his ears.
He struggled to his feet, looking out the observation window at the plaza...
And he saw a vision of hell.
One hundred and fifty Astartes stormed through the main gate, the roar of their bolters merging into a continuous thunder.
The paralyzed Combat Servitors were smashed apart one by one by power fists, the mangled remains of their servitor pilots spraying from the ruptured armor.
Ten Eversor Assassins moved through the battlefield like phantoms.
Wielding neuro-gauntlets and executioner pistols, they specifically hunted down officers and defense personnel.
Every single person they targeted met a horrific end—either ripped in half by adamantine claws or executed with a point-blank shot to the head.
But what drove Cathellan to absolute despair were the five Dreadnoughts.
They didn't even participate in the frontline combat. Instead, they marched straight toward the main gates of the Mechanicus branch.
They drove their power claws into the seams of the doors, their hydraulic systems whining at maximum output...
CREAK... SCREECH... BOOM!!!
The three-meter-thick alloy doors were violently torn open.
The automated defense turrets behind the doors barely had time to raise their barrels before they were vaporized by melta beams.
"No... impossible..."
Cathellan slumped to the ground, muttering to himself.
He watched those Astartes charge into the branch. He watched his fellow Tech-Priests being forced to the ground.
He watched the servitors being purged one by one, and he watched all his treasured technological equipment and data-slates being roughly confiscated...
Kleman lay on the ground in a daze. Then, he saw an Astartes in Imperial Fists livery walking up the stairs toward him.
The heavy clank of power boots against the metal stairs sounded like a death knell.
Kleman wanted to run, but his legs were too weak to stand.
He wanted to beg for mercy, but his throat couldn't produce a sound.
He could only watch as the door was kicked open. Watch as the two-meter-tall giant walked up to him. Watch as the power fist was slowly raised...
"Kleman Aru."
"You're under arrest."
--
Holmes Hive - Knight Armor Hangar.
Kaia Atens stood within the cockpit of his Knight armor, his fingers flying across the control panels.
It was a Questoris-class Knight Errant, twelve meters tall. Its primary weapons were a thermal cannon on its right arm and a reaper chainsword on its left.
While it couldn't compare to a true Titan, in the confined environment of a hive city, it was an undisputed engine of war.
Behind Kaia stood three more Knight armors—Armiger-class squires.
This was the absolute entirety of the Atens Knight House's military assets in Holmes Hive.
"Let those mud-crawlers see," Kaia sneered over the vox-net, "what a true machine of war looks like."
He looked through the external pict-feeds at the area outside the hangar doors.
The Crimson Dawn forces had already breached the core of Holmes' upper hive and were currently slaughtering Holmes' defense forces and PDF.
Five Contemptor Dreadnoughts, one hundred and fifty Astartes, and those incredibly irritating Assassins.
But Kaia wasn't panicked in the slightest.
Knight armor held a crushing advantage over Dreadnoughts. They were superior in every aspect: size, firepower, and armor.
Not to mention the Knights' ion shields, which were more than capable of deflecting the vast majority of solid projectile attacks.
"All units, listen to my orders..."
Kaia's words abruptly cut off.
Because he saw that those Astartes... hadn't deployed into an assault formation.
They had split into five groups, thirty men to a squad, each accompanied by a Dreadnought.
And then they started... digging holes?
"What are they doing?" a Knight pilot asked in confusion over the vox.
Kaia was equally dumbfounded.
He watched the Astartes use their power fists to smash deep craters into the ferrocrete floor.
He watched the Dreadnoughts bury some sort of cylindrical devices into the holes. He watched the Tech-Priests fine-tune the settings on the devices...
And then, he understood.
"EMP? They think they can paralyze us with electromagnetic pulses?" Kaia burst out laughing. "Fools! Knight armor is heavily electromagnetically shielded. Standard EMPs are utterly useless..."
His laughter turned into absolute shock in the very next second.
Because when those devices activated, they didn't emit an electromagnetic pulse.
They emitted a psychic wave.
This was the secret weapon the players had devised to counter Knight armor, inspired by the terrifying power of the Khorne force field demonstrated by the Blood letter Lord during their previous battle against the Knights.
VRRRRRRMMM...!!!
An invisible ripple of psychic energy expanded outward from the devices. It was some kind of... suppression? Interference?
Kaia couldn't explain it, but he could immediately feel the energy readouts on his Knight going haywire.
The shield generator alarms blared first... Energy output unstable. Shield integrity fluctuating by over thirty percent.
Next were the weapon systems.
The charge rate of the thermal cannon dropped precipitously, and the fire-control system for the reaper chainsword began lagging severely.
But the most fatal issue was the neural linkage in the cockpit.
Kaia felt his consciousness connection to the Knight become thick and sluggish. Every single command took extra time to transmit, and the Knight's feedback became incredibly dull.
"They're jamming the Machine Spirits!" a pilot shrieked over the vox.
Machine Spirits... the Mechanicus term for the faint consciousness born within complex machinery.
While the Machine Spirit of a Knight was weak, it objectively existed and was deeply bonded to the pilot.
And now, having been disturbed by some external force, these Machine Spirits... were displeased.
"Charge! Break out before they completely paralyze us!" Kaia roared.
The four Knight armors engaged their heavy strides, charging toward the hangar doors.
Every step they took shook the earth.
But the Crimson Dawn forces were already prepared.
The five Dreadnoughts fired simultaneously.
Specifically, their shoulder-mounted missile launchers.
SWOOSH-SWOOSH-SWOOSH-SWOOSH...!!!
Twenty armor-piercing missiles streaked toward the Knights, dragging trails of white smoke.
These missiles didn't target the heavily armored front plates. Instead, they specifically aimed for the joints... the knees, the elbows, the shoulders.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!!
A chain of explosions erupted.
The Knights' ion shields blocked the majority of the shrapnel, but the kinetic impact of the missiles still placed immense stress on their joint structures.
And far more lethally, the Astartes began to climb.
Thirty Astartes in White Scars livery engaged their jump packs, swarming one of the Armiger-class Knights like a plague of locusts.
They landed on the Knight's surface, magnetically locking themselves to the armor plating, and then began...
Frantically dismantling the Knight armor.
Power fists smashed into the protective casings of the auspex sensors. Melta guns were shoved into the gaps of the joints and fired point-blank. Chainswords chewed through external cabling.
"Get off! GET OFF!"
The Armiger pilot frantically commanded his Knight to thrash and roll, desperately trying to shake off the fleas, but with the Machine Spirit displeased, his controls were as slow as a grox.
There was absolutely no way to shake off these incredibly fast White Scars Astartes.
One of the Astartes slowly crawled his way to the top of the cockpit hatch.
He pulled out a melta bomb, slapped it onto the hatch, and activated it.
HSSSSS... BOOM!!!
The Armiger's hatch was melted completely through.
Before the pilot could even trigger the ejector seat, a power-armored hand reached in, grabbed him, and hauled him out, tossing him to the ground like a piece of trash.
The Armiger crashed to its knees, completely dead.
The other three Knights weren't faring any better.
One was swarmed by five Dreadnoughts. They took turns tearing at it with their power claws until its leg joints were utterly destroyed, leaving it paralyzed on the ground.
Another tried to sweep the area with its reaper chainsword, but the ammunition feed kept jamming under the displeased Machine Spirit. Eventually, several Tech-Priests melted straight through its power core with their melta guns.
Now, the only one left standing was Kaia's Questoris-class Knight.
"Bastards! BASTARDS!"
Kaia's eyes were bloodshot. He commanded the Knight to raise its thermal cannon, aiming it at the Astartes currently dismantling his comrades' machines.
But before he could fire...
While struggling with the jammed Machine Spirit, he was focus-fired by the five Dreadnoughts and five Tech-Priests.
Over fifteen armor-piercing rounds struck home within three seconds.
The ion shield shattered. The optical lenses exploded... Every single auspex and targeting sensor failed simultaneously.
Kaia's screens dissolved into static.
He lost all external visual feeds. The entire Questoris Knight was instantly paralyzed.
And right at that moment, he heard the whine of hydraulics.
Very close. Right outside the cockpit.
Kaia jerked his head up, looking out through the observation slit of the hatch...
A Contemptor Dreadnought had clamped its power claws around the edge of the hatch.
The hydraulic systems engaged at maximum power.
CREAK... SCREECH... CRACK!!!
The hatch was violently ripped open. Blinding light poured into the cockpit, illuminating Kaia's deathly pale face.
A power-armored hand reached in, grabbed him by the collar, and hoisted him right out of the pilot's seat.
Kaia found himself staring into a cold, unfeeling face.
An Astartes in Salamanders livery.
"Kaia Atens," the Astartes said. "You are formally under arrest on charges of illegal possession of military-grade war engines, defying the orders of the Planetary Governor, and conspiracy to commit armed rebellion."
"In accordance with Article Thirty-Seven of the Provisional Military Administration Regulations of Aurelian IV..."
"You are under arrest."
--
Next Bonus chapter at 550 Powerstones.
Wanna read ahead right now?! Join Patreon.com/AHumanMadeMOFO to read 20+ chapters ahead for the price of a single happy meal and support me if you wish.
There is also a special 40% discount event going on for yearly subscriptions, which means you get 4 months free out of 12! (If you are worried about me being inactive on Webnovel, don't worry—I have been uploading consistently since 2024.)