Ten regiments of the Mordian Iron Guard spread across the front lines.
The Blyek battle tanks, painted jet-black, bore striking red-and-white markings on their turrets.
The Mordians, who lived under an eternal night, preferred vivid colors for their uniforms and war machines.
The tank engines thundered as they advanced over the scorched earth, blackened by orbital bombardment.
Artillery crews loaded and fired the battle cannons, raining shells down on the slave armies several kilometers ahead.
A Rangdan overlord roared in fury, hidden fortresses shed their camouflage, and compact Shadow Blasters emerged to counterattack.
Waves of radioactive electromagnetic bombardment struck several tanks, leaving dark, smoldering imprints across the cratered terrain.
But such horrors could not shake the iron resolve of the Mordians. The armored columns pressed onward without hesitation.
The 1st through 10th Regiments of the Iron Guard formed the main strike force, their Blyek tanks upgraded with superior weapon systems.
Companies One through Five opened fire with plasma cannons, destructive beams lanced through the air and smashed into the fortress' energy shields.
The sky erupted in booming detonations. Companies Six through Ten followed up immediately, their tanks unleashing twin multi-barrel melta weapons.
The searing beams, invisible to the unaugmented eye, burned across the iron bastions, melting steel at a rate visible even from afar.
Metal flowed like molten tar, twisted and deformed.
Behind the collapsing fortresses came waves of enslaved humans, driven by neural collars. They burned to ash as they ran, freed at last from their wretched bondage through death.
Inside a Vostroyan-pattern Rhino Command Vehicle, Bukayo studied the holoscreens around him and thought to himself.
'The Mordians are performing better than I expected. Not only have they crushed several of the overlord-led slave armies, they're systematically dismantling the enemy fortifications.'
'If the Rangdan xenos don't want the situation to collapse completely, they'll have to launch a full-scale counterattack soon.'
As if on cue, more Rangdan slave troops poured out from the tunnel systems.
A rat-headed Rangdan overlord, hunched and nearly three meters tall, led a host of warriors into the counteroffensive.
The overlord opened his fanged maw and let out a piercing psychic scream directed at a Blyek battle tank.
The mind-shock wave tore through the tank's armored shell, echoing within the steel hull.
The Mordian crew winced in agony, but they didn't falter, even as blood seeped from their ears, they kept firing at the slave army.
Seconds later, the gunner manning the starboard melta barrels could endure no more; he clutched his ears, though it did nothing, the scream reverberated directly within his mind.
The Rangdan overlord clenched his claws, and suddenly two Blyek tanks swiveled their turrets, and fired on their own allies.
In the command vehicle, Bykayo watched grimly as numerous Rangdan psykers appeared, unleashing waves of psychic power upon the Iron Guard lines.
Their strange and potent energy tore through over forty Blyek tanks in an instant, blasting a hole in the front line.
Cunningly hidden among the slave hordes, their dispersed formation made counterfire nearly useless.
"Deploy!" Arshavin barked.
"Summon the Legio Astorums!"
Waiting in reserve, the Astartes armored vehicles and Titans roared to life, engines howling as they charged forward.
The Warlord-class Titan Heart of Fearlessness was the first to reach the battlefield.
Its machine-spirit bellowed in fury as the colossal cannons locked onto the Rangdan overlord.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The overlord's personal energy shield was torn apart. Raising one claw, he projected a telekinetic force field, with the other, he thrust forward violently.
A telekinetic blast slammed into the Titan's void shields, which flared and flickered under the impact.
The overlord's invisible hand pushed hard, and the Heart of Fearlessness staggered back, its void shields collapsing under the strain.
The Titan's machine-spirit roared in defiance, both its arm cannons continuing to pour relentless fire into the alien's barrier.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Explosions thundered in rapid succession as shells shattered the invisible psychic shield.
With a final shriek, the Rangdan overlord's body was torn apart, shredded into nothing by the storm of fire.
The Legio Astorums arrived at the most critical points of the front, while the Third Chapter of the Shadows of Order engaged the Rangdan main force in brutal close-quarters combat.
Within the Third Chapter's lines, Chief Apothecary Mikael darted across the battlefield, fulfilling his duty as battlefield medic.
Unlike most Apothecaries who bore white armor, those of the Shadows of Order wore black.
Their right pauldrons bore the variant sigil of the High Helix, a pair of outstretched black wings.
Since his ascension to "Vampire", Mikael had come to despise the traditional white armor of other Apothecaries; its brilliance under light made him feel… uneasy.
The "Vampire's" ethereal Dark Wings granted him speed beyond that of any in the Shadows of Order.
He darted across the field, sometimes leaping high into the air, sometimes gliding low, a blur amidst chaos.
His sharpened senses picked out the scent of blood amid the stench of alien flesh, machine oil, and the metallic tang of Astartes blood.
Below, fifteen Thunderwolves and forty-one Catachan Wolves sprinted across the wasteland, weaving between explosions.
An overlord raised his staff, a pillar of flame shot skyward, hurtling toward Mikael.
The Vampire's black phantom wings flared, he dove sharply downward.
His left arm was unarmored, instead encased in a flexible gauntlet crafted from the chitin of a Catachan devil.
At its tip was an opening, allowing his real hand to extend outward.
His claws elongated unnaturally, covered in cryptic runes and intricate patterns.
With a swift motion, the "Corrosive Claw" struck, raking across the overlord's energy shield.
A deep gouge appeared instantly.
The Vampire's hand slashed again and again, in moments, the shield was webbed with cracks.
Sensing the opportunity, he commanded his wolves to charge.
The overlord hurled jets of flame; a Catachan Wolf was engulfed, yet it did not falter, smashing headlong into the rising wall of fire.
The pack attacked from all sides in a coordinated assault.
Claws tore through the air, teeth ripped away chunks of flesh.
The overlord screamed in rage, lashing out with fire again and again, slaying wolf after wolf.
But the beasts were too agile, his flames could never strike more than one at a time.
For every wolf he killed, several others tore into him in turn.
Even as they burned, the wolves' ferocity didn't fade, they always managed to leave their mark before collapsing into ash.
THUD!
The Rangdan overlord fell, torn apart by the relentless wolves.
The pack had lost one Thunderwolf and twelve Catachan Wolves, the survivors, all wounded, howled and regrouped.
Chief Apothecary Mikael was already tending to the fallen of the Shadows of Order.
He knelt beside a wounded brother, activating the bio-scanner mounted on his forearm. The surgical tendrils on his back moved with precise, mechanical speed.
Moments later, he helped the Astartes to his feet and handed him a vial of green serum, a stimulant brewed from Catachan flora, which numbed pain and restored temporary strength.
The Vampire caught another scent, blood.
He turned and saw a fallen Shadows of Order warrior lying in a pool of crimson. A Rangdan overlord crouched beside the corpse, curiously pawing at the armor.
Mikael sprinted toward him, retrieving gene-seed was his sacred duty.
He raised his left arm, and a black shadow enveloped the overlord, coalescing into intangible "Abyss Shackles".
The xeno froze, bound in place.
Mikael's gyrinx, raised its paw, launching a telekinetic strike that shattered the overlord's energy shield.
With a howl, the wolf pack surged in, pouncing upon the helpless foe.
The Chief Apothecary's surgical limb switched to a bone saw, cutting open the fallen brother's armor to recover the precious gene-seed within.
.....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
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