“Do not weep for me, brother. Can you not hear them cheering?
The Siege is almost over. We have held our post.
Soon the Emperor will wipe away the traitors like the tide against sand.”
—Attributed to Brother Lucius, 014.M31
The monster burst into the chapel, his chainsword roaring into life.
He was fast—too fast. Far faster than any Gue’ron’sha Mira had seen on the gunnery deck.
He appeared first in front of Korso, who barely avoided the incoming blow by scrambling through the monster’s legs.
“Open fire! Bring him down!” Eldi shouted.
Pulse fire washed over the Gue’ron’sha. His black-painted armor boiled and scored beneath the impacts, but the shots failed to penetrate.
He moved again.
This time he was in front of Kriitan. Kriitan dove backward, scrambling to reposition—but the monster’s boot came down on his back before he could rise. A pistol was raised, aimed calmly at Sholt’s head.
“Traitor! Villain! Kinslayer!”
Mira’s auto-translator scrolled the words with a few decs of delay as the monster screamed them.
“I do not know why you betrayed us. Why you slaughter us. Why you wage war against your own kind. But I know this—”
Pulse fire struck his back and shoulder, blue plasma splashing across ceramite as Eldi opened up with her pulse burster.
“Contact! First La’rua engaged by a Gue’ron’sha—request imme—”
The monster drove his boot through Sholt’s chest.
A sickening pop signaled the end.
Then he was moving again.
He crossed the chapel in long, crushing strides and tore Eldi’s weapon from her hands. Eldi drew her pistol and fired repeatedly into his helm.
He struck her aside as if she were a mild annoyance.
Eldi’s body flew across the chapel, struck the far wall, and collapsed into a twisted, blood-slick ruin. Nothing about the angles her limbs now held appeared natural.
Mira roared in defiance and fired his pulse-grenade launcher directly into the monster’s chest.
The impact staggered him.
Only for a moment.
Then the monster was on Mira.
A massive hand closed around his throat and lifted him from the deck.
Mira kicked uselessly at the air, clawing at the monster’s fingers as his lungs burned. His body screamed in protest, biology refusing to accept what his mind already knew—
Korso fired again and again, pulse bursts slamming into the monster’s helm. The ceramite finally cracked, black-scoarched fragments and gilded laurels breaking away to reveal the snarling face beneath.
The monster flicked his chainsword once.
Korso was bisected at the waist. The two pieces fell separately, wetly, as if unsure which of them was supposed to die.
Mira hammered his fists uselessly against the monster’s arm as his vision narrowed and dark crept in at the edges. His lungs burned. His thoughts scattered. All he could see were the creature’s eyes—burning with a hatred so vast it barely acknowledged him.
Then the roar came.
Not blood. Not pain.
Boost jets.
Commander Longsun hit the monster like a meteor, the impact shaking the chapel and tearing Mira free. He hit the deck hard, sucking in air that tasted like ozone and blood—nectar beyond price.
Longsun did not hesitate.
His pulse cannon thundered, hammering the monster backward in a storm of light. The Gue’ron’sha rolled with the impact, coming up with a bolt pistol already barking.
Explosions bloomed across Longsun’s shield as the rounds struck, the energy field flaring violently. The monster lunged, chainsword screaming down—
Longsun kicked the arm as it bit into the ground.
The weapon skidded across the chapel floor in a spray of sparks.
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They collided.
The monster seized Longsun’s battlesuit by the chest plate, fingers digging in, trying to tear it apart by sheer strength. Longsun struck him again and again with the barrel of his cannon, hydrolics screaming their own fury.
The monster did not react.
Mira scrambled upright and ran to Eldi’s body. The bonding knife lay amid the ruin of her armor. His hands shook as he tore it free and turned back.
Mira leapt.
His fingers slipped on scorched ceramite. He clawed for purchase, boots scraping uselessly, then hauled himself up—off the monster’s thigh, onto the pauldron.
He raised the blade and drove it down into the gap at the monster’s neck.
The monster roared in pain and anger at the defiance of these traitor scum.
Mira was hurled away. Longsun was released. The monster turned fully toward Mira, spitting curses, hatred pouring from him, the auto translator logged the unknown words and forwarded them to the watercaste.
Pulse fire struck the monster’s back—two La’rua, Skysword among them.
Longsun struck again, a brutal blow with the cannon’s housing. His command override flared across Mira’s HUD, his voice shaking Mira to the bone.
“Run,” Longsun ordered.
“Run, damn you. Run.”
Skysword seized Mira and dragged him into the corridor as the sounds of battle swallowed the chapel behind them.
Longsun fired his jets, pulling away from the Gue’ron’sha and falling back behind the two remaining La’rua. As he moved, he sent a single command burst to his bodyguard teams.
Converge. Forward of the ruined gunnery deck.
The monster burst from the chapel behind them.
He did not pursue immediately.
Instead, he tore into the Fire Warriors in his path—ripping, crushing, slamming bodies aside with chainsword, fist, and boot. Armor shattered. Limbs folded the wrong way. Pulse fire died in wet, choking sounds.
When nothing remained moving, the Gue’ron’sha turned.
And resumed the chase.
Longsun ran.
He pivoted only long enough to fire controlled bursts from his pulse cannon, each impact staggering the monster for a heartbeat before it surged forward again. The distance between them closed inexorably.
Then the deck erupted.
Kroot burst up through hidden access panels, springing from below like carrion beasts unleashed. Arrows and crude slugs slammed into ceramite as they hurled themselves at the monster, hooked blades snapping out from rifle muzzles as they closed to tear and rend.
They scored blows.
They bought Longsun seconds.
It cost them everything.
The Gue’ron’sha slaughtered them without slowing—slashing, punching, stamping bodies into the deck. A Krootbird dived for his face, beak snapping, talons clawing—
It tore one of the monster’s eyes free.
The Gue’ron’sha roared and crushed the falcon in his fist, bones collapsing with a single squeeze. The corpse fell atop the growing heap of dead kin.
The monster wiped blood from his face. And continued forward.
Longsun’s sensors screamed warnings as he reached the convergence point.
Three signatures resolved through the smoke and debris—his bodyguard team, XV8 battlesuits emerging from shattered corridors and collapsed bulkheads. Their jets flared in brief, disciplined bursts as they took up positions around him.
For a heartbeat, the line held.Longsun’s sensors screamed warnings as he reached the convergence point.
Three signatures resolved through the smoke and debris—his bodyguard team, XV8 battlesuits emerging from shattered corridors and collapsed bulkheads. Their jets flared in brief, disciplined bursts as they took up positions around him.
For a heartbeat, the line held.
Four battlesuits formed a staggered arc, overlapping fields of fire, hardpoints locking as targeting solutions synced across the network. Pulse cannons whined as capacitors charged. Missile pods rotated into position.
“Engage on my mark,” he transmitted. “Focus fire. Do not break formation.”
The deck shuddered.
The Gue’ron’sha came through the smoke.
“MARK!”
The corridor vanished in blue-white light.
Pulse fire hammered the monster from every angle. Missiles detonated against ceramite, shockwaves rippling down the passage. Plasma washed over him in sustained, overlapping bursts. Longsun fed power into his shields and added his cannon to the storm.
For a moment the monster staggered. Holes had been ripped into his armor and blood dripped onto the deck. Longsun felt something dangerously close to relief.
Then, the blood stopped dripping, the monster looked up at Longsun, straightened his dislocated jaw, and kept coming.
Armor boiled. Black paint sloughed away in molten streaks. Cracks spiderwebbed across his chestplate, glowing briefly before sealing. He raised his chainsword and hurled himself forward.
He hit the leftmost battlesuit first.
The chainsword tore through shield and armor alike, chewing through the XV8’s torso in a shriek of metal. The pilot’s scream cut off as the suit split open and vented atmosphere and blood in a violent spray.
The formation collapsed.
“Hold!” Longsun roared. “Do not disengage!”
The second battlesuit fired point-blank into the monster’s face. The shot blew away the remaining eye, charred flesh spraying across the corridor.
The Gue’ron’sha laughed.
He seized the suit by its arm and ripped it free, then used it like a club—swinging the severed limb into the pilot’s own cockpit until the suit crumpled inward with a dull, final crunch.
The third battlesuit tried to retreat.
The monster leapt, engaging his jump pack.
Too late, the third battlesuit attempted to evade with his boost jets. He came down on the XV8’s back, chainsword plunging down through the reactor housing. The explosion lifted both of them off the deck in a wash of fire and shrapnel. When the smoke cleared, only fragments remained.
Longsun was alone.
His shields were failing. His pulse cannon’s charge indicator flashed bronze. His battlesuit listed slightly to the left, one actuator screaming in protest.
The Gue’ron’sha turned to face him.
They stood amid ruin—burned armor, broken suits, the dead piled around them. Fire guttered in the wreckage. Gravity fluctuated in uneven pulses.
Longsun stood his ground
“Know this,” Longsun transmitted calmly, though his voice trembled in his throat, “Regarldless of how many you kill today. Your empire will fall. It is us who will inherit the stars.”
The monster tilted his head, as if considering the words.
Then he charged.
Longsun fired everything he had.
Pulse cannon, shoulder weapons, point-defense bursts—he poured power into the attack until warnings drowned his HUD. The Gue’ron’sha slammed into him anyway, chainsword carving down through the cannon barrel and into the suit’s chest.
The impact drove Longsun to his knees.
Metal screamed.
The monster ripped the weapon free and drove a fist into the battlesuit’s torso. Armor buckled. Systems failed one by one.
Longsun felt the cockpit breach.
He tasted blood.
“All units,” he said, voice steady through the pain, “this is Commander Longsun. The ship is broken and the enemy has unleashed bezerker units. Fall back. Evacuate immediately. Do not engage.”
The Gue’ron’sha tore the suit open.
Longsun looked up at the towering figure above him, his helm had fallen away, blood soaked and clumped into his blond hair, hatred burned in the sockets that had once been his eyes.
Longsun closed his eyes and waited for the end. He had given the Empire 20 Tau’cyre of fighting. Every moment of his existence had been for the proliferation of the greater good.
And with a slight amount of effort, Shas’O Daly’mar Shasa’ng, High commander of the Samora Compliance Expedition ceased to be.
