What Hides In Darkness (40K)

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

"Yes, we must move on if we wish to penetrate this facility" Crassiros says, switching to the kill-team's channel, "but not too quickly for the normal humans. I suggest you find some syn-skin and use it to seal the rents in your armour. Their masters seem intelligent enough to use chemical weapons. Brother Mal, scout ahead. Rause, follow in case he needs support. Everyone else, prepare to advance again," he adds, and, switching back to the shared channel of both marines and Inquisitors, takes up position to cover Mal as he moves ahead, "Anyone notice anything new this time?" he asks.

[Pcm979]

Rause acknowledged Crassiros's order, then quickly gave Brother Damon a once-over. After a moment he got the other Marine's attention and, with a fluid movement, plucked a glue gun shaped synth-skin applier from his belt and tossed it to him.

It was over in a second. He swivelled around to cover Mal, swapped his Bolter's clip for a fresh one, and as a final touch snapped one last shell in through the ejector port.

Let them come.

[SirNitram]

"Plasma-type weapons. The interior is sufficient for Dreadnought-class walkers." Mal reported to the question of things being new. He waited a moment for the wraithbone to grow itself back from the few near-misses that had scorched it, and crept forward, cradling one of the alien pulse weapons as he did so, seeking to get as far forward as possible without exposing himself to any side-corridors before he could see in.

[GeneralTacticus]

As the last drone stopped twitching and the shooting finally died down, Mertok emerged from cover to take stock of the situation. He shook his head – another bloodbath. Two of his remaining Janissaries had been killed outright by pulse fire, and the other two, while alive, wouldn’t be going anywhere but a sanitarium bed for a good while. Fortunately, they still had the Stormtroopers; by his estimate, a little under three quarters were still alive and able to fight. Even so, at this rate they were going to run out of troops long before they reached their objective.

Still, there was little he could do about it but fight to the best of his ability and hope the Inquisitors and Astartes knew what they were doing. So long as they won through, every life lost here was blood well spent.

- - -

“Aside from the new heavy weapons,â€

[Cynical Cat]

Halima encoutered several shielded minds further down the passage and then the angry roar of a trained and alert psyker. A blast of telepathic energy surged through the warp, smashing into like a blast of gale force wind.

[GeneralTacticus]

Halima reacted instantly, yanking back her psychic probes and filling herself with the power of the Warp. “Psyker!â€

[Cynical Cat]

Halima's probe was shredded by the power on the other side. Another wave of psychic force, this one stronger than the previous but not a telepath assault, pulsed through the passage. Debris and shrapnel began to shake and rattle. The air began to churn as the more and more power gathered in the warp.

[GeneralTacticus]

Halima’s mouth tightened as she felt the gathering power. No more testing. The temperature around her dropped by at least twenty degrees as she drew yet more power; shards of ice gathered on her robes, and Theda’s breath steamed in the sudden chill. Eyes glowing, she unleashed the gathered power. Hundreds of razor-sharp knives slashed through the Warp, peppering the Xenos psyker and the power it was summoning. An eyeblink later, the real strike arrived: a blazing lance of telepathic energy, driven at the psyker’s heart while it was – hopefully – distracted.

Even as the blow struck home, Halima was readying another, psychic hood crackling with arcana energies.

[Cynical Cat]

The warp knives were absorbed and consumed by the growing currents of warp force surrounding the inquisitor and the Astartes. The lance blasted through, but the psyker seemed to be able to take it. The currents grew and so did their manifestation in real space. Electricity arced from corpse to corpse and tiny spheres of ball lightning danced in the air.

[SirNitram]

Alone in that he was uneffected.. Or even able to notice the pulses of psykker force.. Was Mal. Only as the effects became physical did he realize the group was under fire. The Pariah-Marine hefted his ill-gotten pulse rifle and slunk forward, trying to triangulate where the assault was coming from.

[Charon]

Vibius hefted his Bolter, reloading it as he moved forward. If it was one thing you did not want to give a psycher it was time. Especially when you did not know how powerful it was.

He glanced at Mal and then moved himself to better triangulate where the assault was coming from.

[GeneralTacticus]

As her telepathic lance struck home, Halima noticed something odd about the way it splashed off the Xenos psyker’s mental wards. After a moment, she realised what it was – this was not just a lone psyker, but several working in concert.

Well, that explained a few things.

Before she could make use of this discovery, however, there was the small matter of whatever blasphemy the Xenos were preparing to unleash upon them. Hurling another telepathic lance down the corridor to keep the psykers busy – this time making an effort to focus it on a single target – she turned her attention to the warp currents building around her and the Astartes. Drawing on her telepathic talents and her developing knowledge of Daemonology, she formed warp energy into a spinning wheel studded with razor-sharp blades – a psychic buzz saw. As her second lance struck home, she turned it upon the growing psychic effect surrounding her, slashing at the threads of power that connected it to its creators.

[Cynical Cat]

The warp vortex consumed Halima's pinwheel construct, tearing it apart and adding its energy to its own. Lightning crackled through realspace, arcing from wall to wall and the bodies of the dead began to shudder and twitch. An unearthly moan sounded as several metal struts bent.

[GeneralTacticus]

Halima muttered a curse. Clearly, attacking this thing psychically wasn’t going to help. Draining all her power reserves into one final strike at the distant psykers themselves, she gestured to Theda.

“Your limiter!â€

[Cynical Cat]

Thede's deactivation of her limiter stilled the warp manifestations nearby. Then a gaping hole of impossible colours opened behind her. Her limiter was torn from her body and into the breach and then her skin pealed back from her muscle and and was torn from her body, along with her clothes. Thede's mouth opened in a scream as strings of muscle detatched from her body and then her limbs were ripped from his torso and the sucked into the vortex along with his screaming head and torso.

Corpses and dropped weapons began to slide foreward to the all devouring vortex. Pieces of shrapnel and debris flew through the air towards the all consuming maw. A stormtrooper who was too close to pull away screamed as he was sucked into the vortex. The Astartes and inquisitors, encased in massive and bulky power armour with strength augmenting machinery, could feel the vortex's pull. It was growing.

[SirNitram]

"Sod this!" Bellowed Mal, finding traction and charging forward. He couldn't sense the Psykker, but he was falling back on Space Marine Creed Number Seven: Kill Xenos Until The Problem Resolves. Hurrying away from the vortex, he sought the hiding places the psykker would be huddled in, preceeding himself with grenades.

[Charon]

Mal wasn't the only one to now charge forward. Grabbing a few grenades off his belt Vibius charged forward, passing by the heretical marine thanks to his armor Vibius looked for signs of Xenos psykers. Dropping his bolter so he could have a hand carrying the grenades and one to bring up the storm shield he scanned the passageway for signs of Xenos.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

Crassisos shot Thade in the head as she was sucked piece by piece into the portal to hell. He had to do it twice, in fact, the first shot permuted by the attractive force of the vortex. Normally, it wouldn't do much good, but with a 'soulless' pariah, it was an effective mercy killing. He let the gun hang again, and made a grab for Inquisitor Toran with his now free hand, picking the Inquisitor up by the scruff of the neck as though she were a rabbit, and with no greater difficulty, he began running away from the portal, noting with some surprise that she and the storm bolter, for that matter appeared to be hanging down, towards it. Which was very bad. With an effort he lifted her further - it doubtless hurt, he considered briefly, in a rare momant of empathy - until she was a little way ahead of him. "Hold on!" he snapped, and began doing his level best to power away along the floor which his sense of balance told him was at an apalling incline when his reason said it was level. He would need to begin holding onto something soon, were he not to be destroyed. With a loud - to him at least - ping, the marine's storm bolter's strap threw some sort of rivet, and it dropped into the warp. He cursed. Loudly and profanely.

[GeneralTacticus]

As Crassiros unceremoniously hauled her away, Halima allowed herself perhaps half a second of shock at Theda’s grisly demise before Inquisitorial training reasserted itself. This thing had to be stopped, or they’d all suffer the same fate. There would be time to remember Theda later, assuming there was a later.

First things first – a telekinetic shove carried both Crassiros and her to a somewhat safer distance from the growing vortex. That done, she now had to deal with it somehow. Striking at it directly hadn’t worked – the construct merely dissolved the attacks and absorbed their energy into itself. Attacking its creators seemed equally futile – they were strong enough to shrug off her attacks until the vortex consumed her.

There was one thing she could try, though. When she’d first tried to learn it, it had required more finesse than she’d possessed, and she’d never quite got the hang of it – but that had been over a decade ago, and she knew the theory. In any case, there was no alternative she could see.

Steeling her mind and banishing distractions, she braced herself behind a large girder at a hopefully safe distance form the vortex, in case this backfired. Uttering a heartfelt prayer to the Emperor to watch over His loyal servants in their hour of need, she began taking warp energy and hardening it, as though creating a mental shield – except that this “shieldâ€

[GeneralTacticus]

Halima gave an internal sigh of relief as the tubes began draining warp energy from the vortex, and reality around her conspicuously failed to unravel. As the vortex's growth began to slow, she released some of the drained energy to dissipate into the Warp; the rest, she held back for her own use. She couldn't dispel this thing by herself, but she could buy time for the Astartes to do something, and she'd have uses for the stolen power later.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

Hefting Inquisitor Toran out of the way, as before, more like a sack of potatos than an esteemed inquisitor, around one of the corners of the corridor, Crassiros felt himself sliding back as he allowed himself a brief pause. He could stand against this suction indefinately. Unfortunately, the floor couldn't and rather than standing still, he was moving back as the ground broke under him, his heavy boots gouging little trenches in the dirt floor as he slid. He slapped one into a rail and proelled himself around with the Inquisitor.

"Squad. Report! Mal, any contacts?"

A Stormtrooper's howl joined the cry of air rushing past into the hole in space that seemed to fill the chamber as he was sucked into the warp, thrashing like a beetle being sucked down a latrine.

Not a pleasant image.

He looked at Hamila, "Mind if I borrow your gun?" he said, nodding to her storm bolter, "I'm going to shove it up some alien-psyker."

[Cynical Cat]

The praetorians brought their weapons to bear as the Marines advanced on their position. These drones were larger than the others, with thicker, black armour. Instead of suicide telepathy circuits they were equiped with psi blockers. Instead of pulse carbines, they carried long barrelled plasma rifles. The weapons were slightly less destructive than their Imperial equivalents, but they also possessed a short recharge time and still retained a fearsome punch. They aimed at the advancing Astartes and unleashed short bursts of intense blue-white fire.

Behind them, five figures in heavy power armour, their outline distorted by refractor fields, retreated from battle zone. Without being fed by the xenos pysker, the vortex began to slowly disapate.

[SirNitram]

"Heavy contact, heavy contact." Mal said without passion into the vox as he spotted the considerable resistance and ducked behind cover as the blasts flashed around him. He may have been slower without his armour, but he was a damn sight more agile. "Don't suppose any of that tank's still working to clear out this little infestation? I count heavy plasma drones, xenos with power armour and refractors." He reported before squeezing off a burst from his stolen pulse rifle, answered by plasguns. He needed one of those.

[GeneralTacticus]

“Feel free.â€

[Charon]

Vibius came to a halt as the heavier guard came into view. Bringing his shield up he dropped into a more covered position behind a giant drill as the white-blue shots began to eat through, searching for a sign of their prey. Vibius quickly replaced the hellfire rounds with kraken and slung his gun into a ready position. He cradled the two grenades in his free hand. With a swift motion he threw them into the ranks of the heavier guards and got behind cover until they exploded, hopefully throwing the xeno scum off their feet. He whirled back around the drill and took aim with his bolter, blowing off the arms of the disarrayed units before getting behind cover again.

"We cannot afford to let their psykers do that many more times. And this distraction is buying them time."