Bzzzz...
The Drukhari pirates' sailship hummed as it glided closer like a ghost, pressing itself tightly against the underside of the corporate flagship.
The other vessels hesitated, afraid to fire their shipboard batteries at such close range and risk hitting the flagship.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
More Raider skimmers burst from the sailship and descended upon the flagship like a starving wolf pack pouncing on a lamb.
The high-speed anti-grav assault craft fired grappling hooks into the flagship's hull, then used cutting beams to breach its outer armour or airlocks.
Squads of several dozen Drukhari pirates then boarded the vessel through the openings.
"Capture or kill every human you find. Try not to leave too many wounds. We need their skins intact!"
The xenos pirate captain barked the order.
Whenever possible, they still preferred taking their victims alive. That way, they could bring the humans back and slowly torture them with their instruments.
They raised their splinter weapons and fired upon the sailors who had failed to reach shelter in time, sending them collapsing to the deck in nerve-shredding agony.
Screams echoed everywhere.
The sound brought the Drukhari pirates even greater pleasure, spurring them into a frenzy. Exquisite suffering was their sustenance.
Some of the pirates grew so excited that their methods became increasingly vicious.
They seized fleeing sailors and precisely plunged their blades into the backs of their necks, ripping out their entire spines while they were still alive. The twitching vertebral columns were then strapped to the pirates' bodies as trophies.
The Drukhari knew perfectly well that these feeble humans could do nothing against them except scream in terror.
As for the combat automata responsible for moving cargo, the pirates sliced through them with ease. Even the defensive heavy stubbers accomplished little.
"To the bridge," the pirate captain rasped, his voice sounding as though his throat were clogged with bloody phlegm.
They needed to seize control of the flagship as quickly as possible. Once they did, they could pick off the other cargo vessels one at a time and plunder all their goods and living cargo.
More than a hundred Drukhari pirates rushed toward the bridge from different sections of the ship.
They intended to help the Haemonculus seize the bridge first, then take their time slaughtering every human aboard.
Boom, boom, boom!
However, as the Drukhari passed through the ship's chapel plaza, they were met by a storm of bolter fire.
A remarkably powerful storm.
Caught completely off guard, they took the full force of the opening barrage and suffered several casualties.
Fortunately, they were experienced warriors. They reacted swiftly, forming a defensive perimeter and using nearby cover and distortion fields to protect themselves from the intersecting lines of bolter fire.
"How is this possible?!"
The xenos pirate captain stared at the large number of Space Marines gathered in the chapel plaza.
The Space Marines were arranged in one chevron formation after another, unleashing a terrifying volume of fire.
Worse still, more Space Marines appeared in the passageways behind them, cutting off their retreat.
"Which Chapter do these human transhumans belong to? Why don't we have any information about them?"
The xenos pirate captain was baffled. The human Space Marines before him were extremely strange, unlike any he had encountered before.
Their armour's heraldry seemed almost too deliberate, as though they were imitating something. They did not look like proper Space Marines at all.
To put it simply, their armour resembled expensive security uniforms with stars mounted on the epaulettes.
They looked like blatant knockoffs.
In truth, these were specially commissioned security warsuits into which the Gantz Industrial Group had poured an enormous sum of money. They were exceptionally capable examples of a new generation of power armour.
"Are these xenos questioning our strength?"
The security captain and his warriors noticed the doubt in the Drukhari's eyes and immediately took offense.
They might be corporate security personnel, but they had been trained according to Legion standards.
Twenty years as Legion neophytes, Legion brothers for life.
These security warriors had simply been born at the wrong time. Because the available positions were limited, they had been unable to remain within the Legion.
After leaving, they had become corporate security personnel. They could no longer call themselves Astartes, nor could they address His Majesty the Savior as their gene-father.
It was the greatest regret of their lives.
Even after becoming corporate security, however, they had maintained the schedules, training regimens, and living habits they had learned during their years as Legion neophytes.
They were also fond of imitating the combat doctrines of the Legion's Astartes, particularly classic offensive and defensive formations such as the Muscle Mountain.
No matter how many years passed, their failure to remain in the Legion would always be a painful wound in their hearts.
"Security warriors?"
The xenos pirate captain extracted fragments of memory from one of the sailors and grew even more confused.
Curious, he asked, "Whose army do you belong to, and who is your gene-father?"
They needed information about their enemies. Only then could they gain even greater pleasure from defeating and torturing them.
Unfortunately, those words amounted to a naked provocation, trampling wildly across the security warriors' greatest sore point.
They completely lost their tempers. Anyone who did not know better might have thought they were Blood Angels succumbing to the Black Rage or the Red Thirst.
"What an unforgivable insult!"
The security captain and his warriors erupted in fury, squeezing their triggers so hard they practically struck sparks from them.
A storm of bolt rounds, heavy weapons fire, and melta blasts poured into the Drukhari, overwhelming their defenses and bringing down several more pirates.
The xenos could hardly believe it. Their enemies were far stronger than they had anticipated.
By now, they were convinced that the guards aboard these vessels truly were human Space Marines.
There could be no mistake.
"For the Savior!"
With that battle cry, the security captain led his warriors in a charge.
No matter what anyone said, the great Primarch of Hope, His Majesty the Savior, could be considered half a gene-father to them.
Inside the Empire, if someone called them security warriors, they would accept it without complaint. But when facing xenos, they were genuine gene-enhanced warriors and true Space Marines.
They, too, were Angels of the Empire!
Their gene-seed was far superior to the degraded, defective strains used by the old Imperium. It was even better than the gene-seed once possessed by many Astartes Chapters.
The only reason they had failed to become Astartes was that the Empire's standards had risen.
They could still fight. They could still slay xenos. They could still offer their loyalty to the Savior!
The security captain led his warriors into the xenos ranks, engaging the Drukhari pirates in brutal close combat.
Then, more and more security warriors came flooding in, joining the mass assault against the xenos raiders.
What?
"By the shadows!
"Is this really a merchant vessel? Why are so many Space Marines stationed aboard?!"
The Drukhari pirates were completely dumbfounded by the brutal counterattack.
They had merely attacked an unremarkable Imperial merchant vessel.
Anyone seeing the battle might have thought they were assaulting the capital of an Imperial sector. Why else would it feel as though they had kicked open the door to a Space Marine nest?
These Drukhari pirates had long operated in remote sectors and completely lost touch with the present state of the galaxy.
They had no idea how powerful the human Empire had become.
And these were merely corporate security forces. If they encountered a formal Astartes army, they would face firepower far more terrifying than this.
In truth, the Empire possessed an almost incalculable number of corporate security warriors, in accordance with its policy of maintaining military reserves within civilian society.
Then, beneath the Drukhari pirates' shocked gazes, the corporate security force deployed more than a dozen Centurion Devastator warsuits.
The Centurions' formidable firepower immediately suppressed the entire battlefield, preventing the pirates from even raising their heads.
"Die, xenos!"
Wielding a blessed, master-crafted power sword, the security captain fought with increasing ferocity, cutting down several Drukhari pirates in rapid succession.
He even slew an alabaster-skinned, black-eyed Incubus.
"I am an Angel of the Empire, and I am the nightmare of xenos like you!"
The security captain had always held himself to the standards of an Astartes, and he reveled in the slaughter.
It felt as though he were fighting alongside the Legion itself, pouring thunderous wrath upon xenos and heretics in the Savior's name.
Sizzle!
Without warning, a cold and malevolent attack tore through the security forces. Two security warriors were struck by twisted claws, and acidic slime immediately began eating through their armour.
"Scream for me, frail souls. I want to hear the timbre of your voices. I shall turn every last one of you into a work of wailing art."
An ancient voice drifted across the battlefield, accompanied by what sounded like the screams of countless souls. It sent chills through everyone who heard it.
"A Haemonculus?"
The security captain looked up and froze.
He sensed a profound threat.
The newcomer was a Haemonculus Ancient, an extraordinarily rare opponent. It was difficult to imagine why such a being would accompany an otherwise ordinary band of xenos pirates.
A grotesque assemblage of flesh floated into view, drifting with sickening slowness and perverse elegance.
Malicious acidic slime coated everything in its wake. Nearby machinery began to malfunction, while the lights flickered erratically.
The Haemonculus Ancient's body had been modified to an extreme degree. His unnaturally elongated spine extended behind him as a long, prehensile bone tail.
Several slender arms carried scalpels, syringes, and unknown weapons formed from acidic crystals.
His entire body was a ghastly white. Luminescent blood could be seen flowing beneath his skin, accompanied by a nauseating pumping sound.
Even his sewn-shut eyes somehow observed everything taking place across the battlefield.
His expression was one of rapture.
Without anyone noticing when it happened, the Haemonculus Ancient vanished from sight.
A moment later, he appeared before one of the Centurion warsuits.
It was as though he had always been there, hovering amid the smoke as the writhing bone tail behind his pallid body silently reached forward.
The Centurion Devastator had only just raised its melta weapon when the tail coiled around its arm like a venomous serpent.
A muffled crunch of twisting metal followed.
In an instant, both the Centurion's arm and its melta weapon were mangled. Steam rose from the corroding metal.
"Damn you!"
The warrior inside the Centurion roared and swung his power fist, its passage sending a shock wave through the air as he struck at the twisted xenos before him.
The Haemonculus merely tilted his head, effortlessly avoiding the blow. A scalpel mounted on one of his slender arms then stabbed precisely into the sealing groove at the neck of the Centurion warsuit.
That was one of the armour's weakest points.
Shhk!
The blade slid silently into the composite layers of plasteel and ceramite, producing a teeth-grating scrape.
Such materials could not withstand the weapons of a Haemonculus Ancient. Only Legion-grade armour reinforced with molecules of True-One alloy might have resisted.
The Haemonculus moved another slender arm.
A syringe glowing with sickly green light stabbed into the newly opened breach and injected something into the armour.
Yet no scream followed.
Only rapid, hoarse breathing came from within the Centurion warsuit.
It was not poison.
It was a catalyst that magnified every sensation carried by the nerves without limit, sent the victim's flesh into violent spasms, and kept their mind perfectly lucid throughout the ordeal.
"Ugh!"
The Centurion warsuit immediately went rigid. A tightly suppressed groan escaped from within the helmet, but the warrior was powerless to resist.
"Don't move. You'll damage the specimen..."
The Haemonculus spoke as though soothing a patient while swiftly disabling the warsuit's remaining joints.
A trace of sick rapture appeared on his stitched face as he savored the warrior's pure agony.
Afterward, the Haemonculus retracted all his arms and floated toward the other Centurion warsuits.
It was as though he had merely crushed an insect underfoot.
The security warrior inside the first Centurion remained trapped in unbearable agony, no longer capable of threatening the xenos pirates.
The Haemonculus Ancient's arrival reversed the course of the battle, filling the Drukhari pirates with renewed confidence.
They immediately launched a counterattack.
This was why they had refused to retreat, even in the face of the corporate security force's formidable firepower.
Given enough time, a Haemonculus Ancient could destroy a small Chapter of human gene-enhanced warriors.
Their immense strength and bizarre methods were enough to make even the human Empire's greatest warriors wary.
"Savior protect us. We can't allow this to continue, or we'll fail to protect the ship..."
The security captain's expression turned grim.
From the moment they put on the corporation's shoulder insignia, the foremost duty of every security warrior had been to protect corporate property.
Whether that meant guarding the entrance to a corporate headquarters, patrolling an industrial complex, or protecting a corporate cargo ship, it was their responsibility.
After all, corporate property was also Imperial property.
"Chief Surveillance Officer, request authorization for special security tactics. We must eliminate these xenos pirates!"
At the security captain's command, the chief surveillance officer stepped forward.
Faint electrical arcs flickered in his eyes, while a thin layer of frost spread across the floor around him.
Possessing formidable psychic power, the surveillance officer was responsible for monitoring all relevant information within the security force. His duties included watching the surveillance systems and sensing unknown whispers.
This allowed him to detect danger before it struck.
When necessary, surveillance officers could also use their psychic powers to resolve a threat, provided that their actions complied with the Imperial Security Warrior Regulations.
Now, for example, the chief surveillance officer was about to implement special security tactics, an emergency method for dealing with xenos threats taught to them by the Ordo Xenos.
Of course, after using such tactics, they would have to submit to an Inquisitorial review to determine whether their actions had complied with regulations.
It was troublesome, but they had no other choice.
Otherwise, the corporate transport fleet would fail to deliver the first shipment of components commissioned by the Forge World of Voss Prime. The Gantz Industrial Group would also lose its crucial follow-up contracts.
This was business involving the construction of one hundred thousand warships.
And that was only for a single voidship Forge World, or rather, a single star system.
If the partnership proved successful, the corporation might secure contracts from other Imperial voidship manufacturing regions as well.
After all, the Gantz Industrial Group was far from the only supplier listed on the supply-chain platform. Countless industrial corporations were watching this contract.
None of them wanted to fall behind during the Empire's explosive wave of industrial expansion and be forced to watch their competitors grow ever more powerful.
The corporation's chairman also hoped to make an outstanding contribution to the Empire's total war against the Necrons.
He could then travel to the Royal Court and accept the commendation awarded to an Advanced Corporate Enterprise. He might even be granted an audience with the great Savior himself.
What greater honor could there be?
Once the security captain made his decision, the surveillance officer removed a gemstone wreathed in murky light from a sealed container.
He crushed it in his hand and constructed a Warp ritual array.
Bzzzz!
An unspeakably malevolent pulse spread from the Warp array, engulfing the entire chapel plaza.
In that instant, every living creature within the area realized that some terrifying power had marked them.
"Have you lost your minds?!"
The Haemonculus Ancient, who had been attempting to torment more security warriors to death, suddenly realized what was happening and shrieked.
All his former elegance vanished.
He was panicking.
"How can this be? Was this a trap meant to lure in Drukhari from the beginning?"
The xenos pirate captain and the other Drukhari were so terrified that they nearly pissed themselves. Their bodies began trembling uncontrollably.
They felt as though the humans had baited them into an elaborate sting operation!
(End of Chapter)
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