40 Thousand Reasons

Chapter 181: Smell

While empathically directing my fleet to protect Midgaria and coordinating the defenses of the Hive World, I kept an eye for more surprises.

Surely the invaders couldn't have gambled everything here, with so few forces. Sure, they had brought thousands of ships and billions of troops plus untold numbers of demons, but the Chaos defeat was certain now.

My fleet had already changed their focus on the Dark Mechanicus ships, our corvettes and fighters engaging the less-shielded escorts while my cruisers and battleships fired the Nova Cannons at the larger heretek ships.

Even a corrupted Ark Mechanicus could only take so much punishment after all, and a hundred Nova Shells were its maximum limit. Its durability was almost as strong as my own upgraded Singularity battleship, so not bad at all.

The other Rogue Traders split off to defend the other celestial bodies, Frostheim and its moon Svellgard, both ice worlds with little population or technology. Space Wolves liked their recruits to be feral and barbaric, it seemed.

Meanwhile, Janice plowed ahead on board a gigantic Cathedrium battleship, literally a flying cathedral in space, but the size of Mount Everest. The Adepta Sororitas also loved flamer weapons, as huge torrents of burning promethium splashed over demons flying about and incinerated them in sanctified fuel.

Was it ridiculous to use giant flamers on a spaceship? Certainly so!

But, it was also strangely effective, so perhaps it wasn't completely stupid.

Jets of oxygen fueled the streams of holy fire, keeping the promethium burning. I kinda suspected it still shouldn't have worked, except by some miracle.

Yet, miracles were the trade and business of the Sisters, aided by the Emperor himself as he probably had fits of giggles on his Golden Throne.

Then an Aquilla-shaped turret turned towards a Silver Tower and fired a bright golden beam, exploding the Demon Engine and purging everyone inside.

"I think that was a ship-sized psylance." Amberley observed with astonishment.

I nodded in agreement while observing the device in my tesseract view. A hundred Silent Sisters were linked into that weapon as controllers, while a thousand psykers were used and drained as (possibly unwilling) power batteries. Hard to say with those neural cables driven deep into the psykers' skulls. The setting was strangely familiar though, and I recalled Trazyn had a weapon array looking similar to this one, on his own Blackstone Fortress.

So this is what the Emperor has given my daughter. The schematics for a Psi-battleship weapon, just in case she had to blast apart something stronger than Greater Demon.

The psylance fired again a minute later, burning out a hundred more psykers and obliterating another Silver Tower.

Not too shabby, this improvised Anima Sinistrum.

Magnus turned towards Ahriman with one eye glowing red. "You didn't predict this, did you?" he asked in a furious voice.

"...It is only one ship, my lord. I'm more worried what Lancefire might produce next." the Rubric Sorcerer answered in a dignified tone, while dodging a Tyranid claw without even looking behind him. Then a blast of Warpfire immolated to poor Tyranid creature.

"Leave now! I'll deal with the nuisance myself." the psyker Primarch commanded while holding his hands upwards and unleashing a torrent of lightning at the encroaching Tyranids.

A dozen Psych-out grenades detonated around the two of them, suppressing their psyker powers with phase-iron shrapnel and Pariah ash.

"I'm getting aggravated!" Magnus shouted while pushing a Warp shield around himself to block my sneak attack.

I countered with a firing squad of Zoanthropes and Maleceptors, while releasing a dozen Broodlords among the Thousand Sons. The lesser Chaos Marines stood no chance against the hungry bio-titans and hundreds of his precious sons were ripped to shreds before Magnus could recover from fighting the Zoanthropes and crush the Broodlords into meat paste.

"Aghhh! I'm going to rip your skull out, damn cheater!" the traitor Primarch howled enraged.

More Tyranids then!

Keep the idiot busy, while Janice reduced the Silver Towers to burning confetti.

But sadly, this was 40k and things would always get worse.

Ahriman vanished somewhere, and more Warp Rifts opened above Midgardia, revealing a trio of green Greater Demons and trillions of lesser demons descending on the poor planet.

I countered with more Tyranids on one side of their landing area and Orks on the other, filling the surface of Midgardia with extra combatants to keep the demons busy.

Plasma torpedoes and Nova Mines helped counter the demons a little, killing millions for every warhead, but my stores of munitions were not infinite like the demons were.

Again, I had to shift the focus of my fleet to target the Warp portals, a trio of battleships and a hundred cruisers for each of them.

But if this was the fallback plan, a trio of Nurgle Great Demons...it was not enough.

The population of the Hive World vanished into my labyrinth, denying Chaos its victory, as they appeared to try some kind of plague attack and sacrifice the humans to their gods.

I had enough room to resettle these people someplace else in the Eastern Fringe, and I doubted the locals would mind surviving the demon attack.

Regiment by regiment I began extracting my troops from Midgardia as well, as the situation became untenable.

But I left the Titans a chance to prove themselves, and each of the Emperor-class fired their Annihilator Cannons at the Greater Demons, blowing up one and wounding another.

Good enough, for now. And extracted!

The automated turrets continued firing, while Orks and Tyranids fought the hostile wildlife and the demons among clouds of toxic gas and blazing fires caused by plasma munitions and our orbital fire support.

A deadly plague began spreading over the battlefield of Midgardia, but it did not affect the battle in the slightest. In fact, with local lifeforms dying the Tyranids were free to target more demons.

"The Tyranids seem quite effective against demons. And the same for these Orks with Necron weapons." my Inquisitor companion remarked in a wry voice as we observed the results of the battle on the hololith screen.

I smiled and began charging the Immaterium beam again. Quarter strength this time, Machine Spirit. No point draining myself too much, not when I still had to deal with Magnus somehow.

"My reserves of xeno auxiliaries are almost depleted, Lady Vail. I hope I can find a decent number of Orks or Tyranids somewhere, and replenish them." I answered in a coy voice.

Captain Semnai snorted and sat beside me to observe the combat from my viewpoint. "I hope you get lucky and find some Tyranids somewhere, my lord. Like there aren't trillions of them everywhere!"

"Yes, yes. But those Tyranids aren't here, are they? Now I have to use my hidden cards, and I detest showing my hand too soon." I grumbled back and brought the two Pariah Sisters behind me.

"Is it time, Lord Pef?" Dessima asked with a composed voice, ignoring the gasping Inquisitor.

"We'll hunt the Greater Demons first and close the portals. Don't unleash your full strength if possible." I ordered as I moved the two minus-Omega Pariah next to their targets.

Sister Dessima landed beside the Bloodthirster on Valdrmani, and simply kicked the Greater Demon in the back before the monster could react. As the demon howled in pain with a meter wide hole going from back to front, the Dark Angels and Space Wolves nearby took advantage and battered the weakened demon with relic maces and Power Swords, while the Silent Sister held the demon in her nullification range and blocked its powers.

At the same time, Sister Ordela fell sword first on top of the Nurgulite Greater Demon on Midgardia, while her left arm psilancer fired a stream of nega-psi bolts at the other wounded demon.

A couple of sword slashes later, both women vanished from their former location and began appearing near the Warp portals all over the Fenris system, their very presence forcing the rifts to close in a second.

Just then, I fired the Immaterium beam at Magnus and his traitor sons.

Everything alive for a dozen kilometers fell dead, even the animated armors lost their souls and crumbled to the ground, beside millions of Tyranids and cultists.

Only Magnus the Red survived, and just barely. He was desperately trying to hold a psychic shield around himself, while down on his knees and wailing in pain.

Probably for the best I didn't use half-strength on the beam then. It seemed the Tyranids had exhausted him, and his reserves were at an end.

A minute later, I arrived beside the traitor escorted by my two Pariah amazons and a certain blonde Inquisitor.

"He looks pathetic. Mutated and distorted, while crying in defeat." Amberley observed while Dessima and Ordela kept their armored boots on their prey's shoulders.

A second later, Janice teleported beside me, still floating a palm over the ground as to not dirty her silk shoes.

She wore a long silver dress and seemed immune to the presence of the Pariah or Magnus, the long white-silver hair framing a young looking face with violet glowing eyes.

"So what's the plan now, dad? Kill the traitor or what?" Janice asked in careless voice.

I laughed out and patted her hair. "Why would I kill the idiot, my dear? Who will stand on the Golden Throne then?" I asked rhetorically and kicked Magnus in his red eye.

The Warp eye burst into smelly ichor and yet it smelled like victory.

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