Reclamation (40k Short Story)

[Jaenera Targaryen]

Disclaimer: I do not own Warhammer 40,000 it belongs to Games Workshop.

Reclamation

Part I​

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

They came without any warning, any challenge, any greetings.

Soros had once been an agri-world of the Imperium of Man, but one which had since been forgotten as a result of clerical errors within the bureaucratic machinery of the Administratum. Centuries passed since the last contact was made with the Imperium, and in that time, even the grip of Imperial doctrine and dogma slackened over the world’s populace.

Then came the Tau, and with offered gifts of technology to sweeten their words, brought their own doctrine of the Greater Good to Soros. The people of the world, having largely forgotten the teachings of the Ecclesiarchy, took to the Tau’s insidious ideology, with those who spoke against the xenos’ influences being silenced one way or another. Within a decade of the Tau’s first arrival to Soros, the Imperial Governor and his aristocracy had been dispossessed, and in their place, a council composed of Humans and Tau of various castes came to rule over the world, under the leadership of one of the Ethereal Caste.

Only then did the Inquisition learn of Soros’ continued existence, with investigation revealing its loss amidst the clunky workings of the Administratum. But while voices were raised calling for Soros to be brought back into the fold of the Imperium by force, other voices spoke out against it, pointing out how such an endeavor could quickly escalate to full-scale war, the resources for which were sorely needed on other fronts against much greater threats than the Tau. The Tyranids, for one, and the Necrons for another. The savants of the Inquisition also pointed out how in the past centuries, the bureaucratic machinery of the Administratum had made good on the loss of Soros’ resources, and while it galled the lords and ladies of the Inquisition to allow xenos to continue to usurp one of the Emperor’s domains indefinitely, needs must.

Centuries passed once more. The rule of the Tau and the Greater Good sank further into Soros’ society, until it became all but forgotten that the Imperium had once ruled over the world at all. And even when it was remembered, the Humans of the world who now gloried in the name the Tau gave for them, gue’vesa, they spoke of the Imperium’s rule as a dark age, one of fear and ignorance, where the Tau’s rule was one of enlightenment and liberty.

Then on the edges of the system, reality tore open, ships pouring forth from the depths of the Immaterium. As soon as their carriers were clear of the Warp, squadrons of Furies launched from the decks of Dictator cruisers, one after another.

The Tau had a sizeable defense force in-system, as they too faced down the specter of the Great Devourer looming over the whole of the Eastern Fringe. But Soros lay far from any septs in the path of the Tyranid Hive Fleets, and so the force here was only small, expected only to fight against smaller splinter fleets, and never full-on Hive Fleets or Battle Fleets.

Two aging Hero cruisers, along with a quartet of Defender escorts…

…against an Ark Mechanicus, ten cruisers of varying classes, and sixteen Sword Class Frigates.

It was a lopsided match, but even then, the Tau still fought with all the ferocity of rats backed into a corner. The Heroes moved to flank the Imperial Fleet, while the Defenders swept forward to intercept, six Swords likewise speeding forward to meet the Tau escorts.

However, Newton’s Chariot had the honor of firing the first shot of the battle, its prow Nova Cannon launching a salvo over millions of kilometers of empty space, and exploding at relatively-close proximity to the Tau cruisers. Both ships immediately took damage, thankfully nothing critical, and yet the Tau had yet to enter the range to open fire.

But not for long; gravitic launchers on the Tau ships began launching drone missiles, while Barracudas and Mantas poured from their hangars, along with squadrons based from Soros’ orbital docks. But like in the contest of ships, the Imperium simply had more, Furies swarming the Tau’s attack craft two to one.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Aboard Newton’s Chariot, Archmagos Veneratus Zofia von Karbelnikoff noted her fighters’ seizing air supremacy in a matter of hours with cold satisfaction. Tau Manta Bombers and drone missiles were formidable things, but by holding back on her own bombers, and instead drowning the enemy’s carrier aviation and torpedo attacks with fighters, she could force a gun battle, something that played to the Imperial Fleet’s innate strengths.

This battle was as good as won.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As the fleets’ leading escorts closed with each other, they locked on their sensors, and opened fire. Both sides attempted to destroy the other ship by ship, giving them the advantage of concentrating their fire. The Tau fired first, a pair of railgun salvos striking a Sword frigate over distance of over a hundred thousand kilometers. The first salvo collapsed the frigate’s shield, while the second punched through the ship’s adamantium armor and deep into its vitals.

Fire exploded across the ship as its engines and other primary systems failed, the wrecked frigate beginning to drift through space, its surviving crew struggling to hold on, praying to survive until the battle was won and they could be rescued.

The other Swords returned fire, lasers lancing through space against two Defenders. Tau shields managed to hold off the first hits, but more was on the way. One Defender’s armor held, the other failed, its reactor going critical in a catastrophic explosion that destroyed the ship and killed its whole crew. It wasn’t the only one, though, as the prayers of the burning Sword from the earlier exchange went unheard, the ship’s reactor finally going critical and blowing it apart.

Again, the Defenders fired on the Imperial escorts. This time, while they managed to take down a Sword’s shield, its armor held, and then it was the Imperial escorts’ turn to fire. Once more, another Defender went down, left adrift across the battlefield in flames.

The remaining Defenders fired once more, determined to fight to the bitter end. They managed to knockout a Sword’s shield, but no more, before the Imperial ships fired back in their turn. A Defender exploded from the Imperial onslaught, and this time the explosion caught the last remaining Defender in its area of effect. With the escort’s shield still down from the latest exchange, the blast set the ship ablaze, even as the burning Defender from earlier suffered a jump drive malfunction, causing it to implode into the Warp.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Astropaths across the Imperial Fleet trembled as they heard the screams of the Tau amidst the laughter of demons, as the surviving crew of that escort were dragged into the Warp. Heedless of the xenos’ fates, the Astropaths began to pray, seeking to cleanse themselves of any taint from this brief brush with the evil within the Immaterium.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Even as the burning wreck of the last Defender burned itself out into a lifeless husk adrift in space, the cruisers finally closed to engage. Well, the Tau thought the Imperials were still out of gunnery range.

They were wrong.

They thought that the four Lunars and two Dictators facing them were like those they expected to fight. But these cruisers did not fly under the banner of the Imperial Navy. No, they flew under the banner of the Mechanicum of Mars, and the Omnissiah was kind and generous to those that followed his teachings.

Plasma-boosted weapon batteries lashed out at ranges greater by half than the macrocannons of the Imperial Navy possessed, and pummeled the Tau cruisers before they could return fire. And while their broadside lances still had the same range as those of the Imperial Navy, Mechanicum cruisers sported a dorsal lance with range comparable to those on battleships.

The first salvo from the Imperial cruisers immediately crippled one of the Tau Hero cruisers, cutting its speed in half and knocking out much of its weapons and other systems. Realizing that discretion was the better part of valor, the cruiser’s captain immediately engaged his jump drive, retreating from the battlefield.

The last Hero still fought on, struggling to enter gunnery range and return fire. It did so under fire, plasma and lance hits crippling the Tau cruiser like its sister ship had been, and suffering critical damage in the process, with its prow railguns and gravitic launchers literally shorn off the ship. Left with only its ion cannons, the Tau cruiser knocked out a Lunar’s shields, but couldn’t get off any more shots before the Imperial cruisers opened fire once more, and barely able to recharge half its shields.

Fires exploded across the ship as plasma hammered the Tau cruiser, and then the Imperial cruisers fired their lances. And by this point, the Imperial cruisers were in range to use their broadside lances as well.

They gutted the last Hero, leaving it adrift and in flames, while closing in on the now defenseless planet. The Tau cruiser eventually exploded, even as the Imperial ships launched salvoes of torpedoes against the orbital dock. Defense turrets blazed away, struggling to shoot down the incoming ordnance, to no avail. It took six torpedoes to gut the orbital dock, over twenty more zooming past and away into interplanetary space, wasted ordnance to overwhelm the orbital dock. As for the dock itself, it drifted across high orbit, leaving a trail of burnt-out debris in its wake, Imperial sensors finding no trace of life inside the wreck.

Having gained control of orbit, the Imperial Fleet settled into orbit, fighters launching to escort the transports beginning to enter atmosphere, while bombers flew towards the lone airbase guarding the planet’s capital city, the Mechanicum’s objective in this campaign. Tau Barracudas closed in to intercept, but found themselves running into a gauntlet of Fury Interceptors.

Ground-based defense turrets opened fire, but again in vain, Starhawk Bombers dropping plasma-based ordnance on the airbase. They left the airbase a glowing, radioactive crater, even as the Starhawks moved on to conduct strikes against key targets in the city: logistics facilities, communication nodes and hubs, transportation links, military infrastructure…

…and to the south, Imperial transported landed one after the other, battalions of Legiones Skitarii marching out of five of them, the Warriors of the Machine God come to claim His venerable servant’s prize.

The battle for space was won. Now, the battle on the ground began.
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A/N

Just a short story I wrote a while back starring our friends from Sacred Mars, the Adeptus Mechanicus.

 

[PsihoKekec]

Omnissiah wills it!

 

[TyrantTriumphant]

Of all the factions in 40k the Mechanicus is definitely my favorite. It's always good to see a story starring them.

 

[novussa]

go tau screw the imperium escpecily the toaster fuckers.

 

[ATP]

So,Mechanicum would not innovate,but rob somebody who did so.Very....IoM.

 

[Jaenera Targaryen]

Disclaimer: I do not own Warhammer 40,000 it belongs to Games Workshop.

Reclamation

Part II​

Even as the Imperial forces assembled to the south of the capital, the local Tau defense force prepared to fulfill its duty. Shas’el Por’co, the Fire Caste Commander, quickly decided on the Kauyon as opposed to the Mont’ka, given the overwhelming superiority of numbers that the Imperium’s forces enjoyed.

Instead, the Tau and their gue’vesa allies would wear down the invading forces, with the goal of holding out until reinforcements could arrive. That would take time, months at least, given the limitations of Tau FTL capabilities, though the commander was sure help would arrive. The orbital dock had managed to get off a distress signal before it was destroyed, and he also knew that one of his ships had managed to retreat from the battle, bringing further word with it of the Imperium’s aggression towards the planet of Soros.

Predicting the enemy would strike at the capital, and use its position as the center of the planet’s groundside communications and transportation network to further their conquest of the planet, Shas’el Por’co quickly concluded they could not hold the city indefinitely. They could contest it indefinitely, but holding it was out of the question.

That said, even nominal control of the city would not be given up without a fight, along with its environs. The greater part of the planet’s available Fire Caste Warriors were sent south, to hold the rugged ground through which the roads south passed through coming to and from the city, and through with the Imperials had to pass. There’s was to buy time, bleeding the Imperium out while limiting their own losses, before withdrawing once the evacuation of the city’s civilians was complete.

Or failing that, to avoid becoming entrapped or overrun.

The remaining Fire Caste Warriors were dispersed across the city, to support the Gue’vesa Auxiliaries that would form the bulk of the Tau’s defense once the Imperium’s forces reached the city. There’s was not to contest the city street to street or house to house, but to again delay and bleed out the Imperium’s forces, before going to ground and continuing to defend asymmetrically, preventing the Imperium from consolidating its occupation, and leaving them vulnerable to when Tau reinforcements arrived.

Finally, the Crisis Suits available were organized into a tactical reserve, under Shas’el Por’co’s direct command, for strikes against targets of opportunity.

As for the Imperium, it took them the rest of the day and the whole of the night to finish preparing for the advance on the capital. Once, it had borne the name of Jonesburg. Now, it had been renamed, given the uncouth xenos name of Shal’ele. And within an hour of the solar primary’s rising come the following morning, the Legiones Skitarii marched north.

The Tau had expected their coming, Pathfinder teams providing reconnaissance support for their fellows to the north. The Imperium also knew of the Tau holding rough ground further north, thanks to orbital support. Proposals for lance strikes and heavy bombing were brought up, only to be vetoed by the Archmagos, who was unwilling to ruin the infrastructure needed to get men and materials from the landing zone to the city, at least until the city was also in Imperial hands.

For three days and two nights the Legiones Skitarii and the Fire Warriors fought over the approaches to the south. The latter had expected to face Imperial Guardsmen, and found themselves unpleasantly surprised to find their expectation completely ruined. The Skitarii’s cybernetic augmentations and heavier armor gave them superior durability against the Tau’s pulse weaponry, with the former also giving them better aim than the Tau, despite the latter’s use of markerlights. However, it was the weapons of the Skitarii that proved the Fire Warriors’ greatest disadvantage.

Skitarii Vanguards came equipped with radium carbines, and coupled with their Alphas’ use of phosphor weapons and omnispexes, allowed them to match the Tau in volume of fire. A very unpleasant surprise for the Tau, who were used to overwhelming Imperial Guardsmen with volleys of pulse rifle fire. And that was before the radiological effects of radium weaponry was factored in, more than half of the Tau’s casualties coming from radiation poisoning.

By the end of the first day alone, the Tau had taken sixty per cent losses, with only the smart missiles their Devilfishes carried allowing them to prevent a breakthrough by the Skitarii. And that was before factoring in the contributions of Ironstrider Ballistarii to the battlefield, their twin-linked cognis autocannons outright murderous against Tau infantry. Even Devilfish found them formidable, with more than Devilfish finding their hulls torn to bits by the sheer weight of fire from the Balistarii’s autocannons. This forced Shas’el Por’co to send additional Fire Warriors from the city to reinforce the lines to the south, as the evacuation of civilians had yet to finish.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Earth Caste medics grimly covered the dead Fire Warrior’s body with a sheet, the latter’s body pockmarked with burns, sores, and even tumors caused by exposure to excessive amounts of radiation. Had the warrior survived the battle, he would have to take numerous medications to stay combat worthy, and once the invasion had been foiled, would still have to take indefinite leave to recuperate from the damage down to his body. Years even…

…but that was not what had killed him. No, what had claimed the life of the valiant warrior had been a shot from one of the machine-man warriors who carried oversized and clunky pistols. It had been a solid projectile, burning hot and slow, cruelly sticking to the warrior’s chest before melting through not just his armor but also his body, literally cooking his internal organs before burning itself out. The medics had done the best they could, but the phosphorus round had fragmented, and the warrior had been brought to them too late.

Even trying to remove the fragments would have compromised his internal organs, with the best they could do simply making the dying warrior comfortable. And with his passing, to give him some measure of dignity.

As they hurried on to the next set of battle injuries, the Earth Caste medics grimly reflected on the barbarity of the gue’la Imperium. Radiological weapons and phosphorus incendiaries…

…what civilization would use such horrible weapons, and yet claim itself civilized?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The evacuations themselves were under attack. Orbital surveillance had exposed them to the Imperial Fleet, and Archamagos von Karbelnikoff immediately dispatched Skitarii Rangers and Sydonian Dragoons to ‘intern’ the evacuees. That was bad enough…

…except the evacuees were escorted by gue’vesa, and more than a few of the more martially-inclined refugees fought alongside the gue’vesa against the Skitarii when they arrived.

When Archmagos von Karbelnikoff received the news, she was furious. It seemed that the taint of xenos corruption had consumed the world’s Human inhabitants, and the vast majority of them were already damned. With that in mind, she invoked her wartime authority as the ranking member of the Adeptus Mechanicus present, and passed swift judgment.

All Humans aged eleven standard years and above were to be executed, along with all xenos civilians. Those Humans aged below eleven standard years were to be granted mercy, and interned as previously-ordered, for deprogramming and just perhaps, a chance at redemption and a return to their blessed place in the Omnissiah’s grand design.

She also dispatched additional forces to the outlying communities, the Skitarii Rangers and Sydonian Dragoons now supported by Kataphron Destroyers. The Kataphron Destroyers proved especially devastating against Pathfinders and Gue’vesa Auxiliaries taking cover inside the vast fields of wheat and other cereals in the rural areas, the servitors’ plasma culverins and cognis flamers allowing them to start massive firestorms to literally burn out the xenos and their dupes, to be chased down and picked off by the Sydonian Dragoons, or hunted like base animals by Skitarii Rangers.

Meanwhile, on the third night of the battle for the approaches, Archmagos von Karbelnikoff dispatched a force of Sicarian Infiltrators to seize a pair of hills to the west of the southern road. The Sicarians were assisted by Skitarii Rangers, a number of whom received trans-uranium arquebuses to knock out the enemy’s transports, neutralizing their artillery and immobilizing the Fire Warriors.

The attack went off like clockwork, the Sicarians’ specialized augmentations synergizing with the cover of dark to allow them to infiltrate the xenos lines without being detected. Many of the senior Tau commanders were dead, either torn apart by flechette blasters or electrocuted to death by taser goads, before the alarms were sounded, and by then the rangers were in position.

Some of them stayed at extreme range, using their arquebuses to knockout the enemy’s transports, and then at other targets of opportunity. Others pressed forward to join the battle, picking at the cracks the Sicarians had opened up in the Tau lines, and tearing them open. While not quite able to match Fire Warriors’ volume of fire like their vanguard counterparts, the rangers could outgun them, with the superior penetration of their galvanic rifles.

The Tau fought hard, but after midnight had been forced to withdraw from the contested hills, and giving the Imperium the advantage of high ground over the battlefield. Immediately, the Archmagos dispatched reinforcements, predicting that the Tau would attempt to retake the hills, or at least contest them long enough to allow the rest of their troops on the lower ground to retreat in good order.

She was right.

Shase’el Por’co was determined to retake the hills, or at least keep the Imperium from using them for another day, to finish the evacuations, no matter how…ineffective, the latter was becoming. And so he assembled his battlesuits, along with a crack force of Fire Warriors, to deploy via Devilfish to follow through on the battlesuits’ counterattack.

As the solar primary rose over the capital and its environs, the Tau attacked…

…right into the teeth of Imperial gunnery.

The Mechanicum had worked round the clock in the pre-dawn hours, bringing in prefabricated equipment and setting up Aegis Defense Lines, to allow the Skitarii to bunker down behind proper fortifications. Onager Dunecrawlers had also been moved up, with the Archmagos herself prepared to descend from orbit accompanied by her honor guard should it be needed, able to arrive on the battlefield in plus/minus twenty minutes.

She need not have bothered. Fully a third of the Crisis Suits were shot down by Imperial anti-aircraft artillery, and those that managed to get on the ground found themselves scattered and attacked on all sides by entrenched Skitarii.

Shas’el Por’co himself was among the first to die, as he unfortunately landed right in the sights of an Onager, which short work of him and his XV-8-05 Enforcer Armor, with a single shot from its eradication beamer. That’s not to say that the Tau didn’t give as good as they got, as the relatively-close nature of the battlefield allowed the Tau to use the fusion blasters which their Crisis Suits each had a single one, typically paired with a burst cannon.

Even entrenched and with heavier armor than Imperial Guardsmen, Skitarii had their limits, many of the Machine God’s warriors laying their lives down in the line of duty. But they had the advantage, and after losing half of what they had left, the highest-ranking Tau left ordered the mission to abort, boosting out and away.

With the hills secure, it took several more hours to consolidate the Imperial positions, in which time the Onagers were reequipped, this time with neutron lasers. The Tau across the battlefield also began to retreat at this time, but they couldn’t finish before the Mechanicus could finish reequipping their Onagers, allowing the Onagers to savage them with long-range artillery fire. Hundreds of Fire Warriors died in the retreat, their flanks harried by more Ballistarii, these ones equipped with twin-linked cognis lascannons to simply blow apart Devilfish.

The road to the capital was now open, but at a cost. Over a hundred Skitarii and Sydonians were dead, and hundreds more injured, though the latter could be repaired within a couple of days at most. Dozens of Balistarii had been lost, along with a number of Sicarians. It took hours for the Archmagos and her attendant tech-priests and tech-priestess to finish poring over the streams of data funneling into the noosphere, but at the end, the losses were judged as acceptable in light of the greater prize they sought.

The onslaught would continue, and the Mechanicus would not be denied their prize.
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A/N

Sing praise to the God of All Machines...

 

[PsihoKekec]

So the Tau made their plans with Guard in mind, probably having no previous experience with Mechanicus and Mechanicus gave them no time to digest the new experience and correct their plans, which means the Tau suffered much higher casualties in the first phase of the battle, putting their plan to contest the control of the world for months in jeopardy.

 

[TyrantTriumphant]

I wonder why the Mechanicus has chosen to conquer this planet. The servants of the machine god are neither prone to charity or sentiment, this invasion probably serves some larger purpose.

My guess is either they think this planet has some archeotech or these particular tech-priests have xenarite tendencies and want samples of Tau technology.

 

[Jaenera Targaryen]

So the Tau made their plans with Guard in mind, probably having no previous experience with Mechanicus and Mechanicus gave them no time to digest the new experience and correct their plans, which means the Tau suffered much higher casualties in the first phase of the battle, putting their plan to contest the control of the world for months in jeopardy.

To be fair, how common is it for the Mechanicum to go to war (against the usual enemies of the Imperium)? Usually, their forces are kept back to protect the Forge Worlds, or accompany the Exploration Fleets into uncharted space. It's really rare for Mechanicum forces to fight alongside regular Imperial forces outside of a crusade or defending strategically-vital worlds.

And even then it's usually the Legiones Skitarii and the Collegia Titanica who other Humans fight alongside. It's even rarer for the more...esoteric, branches of the Martian military to actually fight alongside regular Imperial forces. Those include the Centurio Ordinatus, or the dreaded Legio Cybernetica.

 

[ATP]

IoM is both genocidal and stupid,but we arleady knew that.Question is - what is so important for them to fight at all?
P.S Tau win,even if they lost planet.Now there would be no human stupid enough to welcome IoM.

 

[DocSolarisReich]

…what civilization would use such horrible weapons, and yet claim itself civilized?

Oh you sweet summer child... Bless your heart!

 

[novussa]

is it wrong that i am rooting for the tau to win this.

 

[PsihoKekec]

Yes it is, thou shall not suffer xeno to live.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

is it wrong that i am rooting for the tau to win this.

Nope! I certainly am!

 

[novussa]

Nope! I certainly am!

For the greater good. Beacuse this bloody invasion only serves to make things worst. Hello chaos and tyranids are probaly eating popcorn while watching this.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

For the greater good. Beacuse this bloody invasion only serves to make things worst. Hello chaos and tyranids are probaly eating popcorn while watching this.

Chaos May be munching popcorn, but the 'nids are eating Macragge...I hope.

 

[Jaenera Targaryen]

Disclaimer: I do not own Warhammer 40,000 it belongs to Games Workshop.

Reclamation

Part III​

The first the gue’vesa knew of the Imperium’s approach on the city proper was the trembling of the ground underfoot, and the buildings around them. It started out small, so small they shrugged it off at first, only really noticing when the rumbling was enough to visibly jolt pebbles and other small objects in their surroundings.

By then, there was dull rumble in the air, as of powerful engines roaring with life, and the whining of servos as they moved mechanical limbs through the air.

Over five hundred gue’vesa manned the ad hoc fortifications to the city entrance to the south, trenches zigzagging across the landscape, autocannons emplaced to setup crossfires, and supporting the massed lasgun volleys the gue’vesa would throw out from the trenches. More autocannons were emplaced in the buildings behind, the gue’vesa’s role to slow down the enemy entering the city.

At least, that had been the plan.

Considering what the Mechanicum had brought to bear in the past days, it was questionably for how long they could delay the Imperium’s drive into the city.

As the ground’s shaking continued to worsen, men in the observation posts directed their sights in the direction of its source. At first, there was only shadows looming on the horizon, towering over the land and wreathed in a strange haze, but as they moved ever closer to the city, the details steadily coalesced.

“Emperor preserve us…” a gue’vesa fearfully breathed as his face paled, the man’s defiance and disdain of the Imperium born of prosperity under the Tau and their Greater Good crumbling in the face of what was coming.

As if on cue, thunderous blasts echoed from the distance, and causing the men to stumble about in a subconscious response. For the war horns of the Mechanicum did not limit themselves to frequencies within Human hearing, but above and beyond it. And at a certain frequency of infrasound, it triggered something in those Humans who heard it.

Something primeval…something that dated back to before the dawn of Human civilization, when prehistoric Humans still went about in skins with tools made from unpolished stone, on the grassy plains of Old Earth…something they had inherited from the long-extinct primates of the homeworld…

…a subconscious, and questionable response to the growling of predators as they closed.

Blinding light lanced overhead, bleaching the colors from their surroundings. A loud shrieking echoed across the battlefield, that of air displaced by a turbolaser’s firing, even as waves of hot air blasted all around.

Then the light faded, even as buildings behind them crumbled to the ground in a shower of broken and molten debris.

But that was just a ranging shot. With another thunderous blast of its war horns, the Warlord Titan Full Hadron calibrated its volcano cannon, its princeps and moderatii working in sync with the god-machine’s spirit to unleash the Omnissiah’s wrath on His foes. Simultaneously, the escorting Reaver Titans also did likewise for their volcano cannons.

They fired as one, four blindingly-bright beams simply obliterating the feeble defenses the Tau’s dupes had erected before them. And still the Titans marched on, escorted by phalanges of Securatii, what the gue’vesa seen as a strange shimmering nothing more than the interactions of the air with the Titans’ void shields, as well as the Secutarii’s collectively-empowered mag-inverters.

Chanting echoed through all frequencies, the Secutarii Hoplites’ focusing themselves for the battle to come with prayers to the Machine God.

From the weakness of the mind, Omnissiah save us.

From the lies of the Antipath, circuit preserve us.

From the rage of the Beast, iron protect us.

From the temptations of the Flesh, silica cleanse us.

From the ravages of the Destroyer, anima shield us.

From this rotting cage of biomatter, Machine God set us free.​

• Chants of the Journeyman, Verse III/w

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The Tau were not unaware of Titans. They’d encountered them before, if rarely, and had learned to use aircraft against them.

But with the Imperium enjoying overwhelming air supremacy, the Tau had no way to challenge the quartet of Titans that spearheaded the Mechanicum’s advance into the city. It was like breaking an egg using a hammer.

The Titans simply smashed through whatever defense the Tau could bring to bear, entire habitat blocks simply reduced to slag by their turbolaser destructors and volcano cannons. That, or reduced to smoking rubble by gatling megablasters. Attempts by the Tau to desperately concentrate smart missile fire on the Titans simply ended in failure, their void shields easily proof against such light artillery.

Crisis Suits attempted to get in close, aiming to use the Titans’ size against them, and take them out from below and close, were they couldn’t effectively fire back. Not a bad idea, but Titans weren’t unescorted.

Virtually all the Tau’s remaining Crisis Suits perished in a single sortie, meeting their fates by the arc lances of the Secutarii Hoplites escorting the Titans through the city.

In the Titans’ wake, the rest of the Mechanicum followed and spread through the city. They fought street to street, Skitarii Vanguards supported by Ironstrider Ballistarii rooting out the Gue’vesa Auxiliaries and Fire Warriors trying to bog them down in asymmetric warfare. Where the enemy retreated into the undercity to escape their just retribution, Sicarian Ruststalkers pursued them into the darkness, screams echoing and blood splattering beneath the ground as Human renegades and Tau alike fell to the Sicarians’ chordclaws.

No mercy was shown, with any attempt at surrender being met with a volley of radium or plasma. This led the Tau and the gue’vesa to drop any and all restraint either, but that did nothing against the mind-locked Skitarii, nor would it change the outcome.

Even the coming of night only served to slow the Imperium’s assault, Sicarians combing the areas already taken by the Mechanicum to root out stragglers, while Skitarii Rangers forged ahead, finding weakpoints or making them for the following day’s attack.

The solar primary rose, and with a thunderous blast of the Titans’ war horns, the Imperium renewed their attack. This time, the Archmagos herself led the way, towards the city’s administrative headquarters, accompanied by her honor guard: three maniples from the Legio Cybernetica, Kastelan Robots marching in an implacable wall of metal and ceramite, twin-linked heavy phosphor blasters simply burning away anything and everyone that stood against them.
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The Archmagos was a monster, the dying gue’vesa thought to himself.

Like the rest of the priests and priestesses of Mars, she claimed to be Human, but what Human towered over four meters tall, with a body composed completely of metal, with even her face sculpted with the lower features of a skull, while the upper half showed only darkly-polished glass, a visor-like sensor array coldly – soullessly – regarding the world around her with a mechanical objectivity?

What other horrors did her body have, concealed beneath her voluminous red cloak and hood?

He received no answer, only dying with a wet squelch beneath a Kastelan’s feet.
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Like so many of those who reached her rank and lived for so long at the top of the Martian hierarchy, Zofia von Karbelnikoff was more machine than woman. In fact, her whole body was mechanical, with only parts of her brain remaining organic. Two point five per cent, to be specific, centered around her brain stem, useful only to anchor her soul to her body, just shy of one step of committing the techno-heresy of the Protean Protocol, by which the ancient masters of the Dark Age of Technology had sought to achieve immortality, and some say, godhood itself.

And in so doing, may have caused the Iron War that brought down Humanity’s first great interstellar civilization, and paved the way for the Age of Strife.

Not that von Karbelnikoff actually planned to take that final step. She had reached the limits of her ability to shed weak flesh in favor of strong metal, enough to keep her alive and well for over three hundred Terran years, and many more in the future, in which to pursue the Quest for Knowledge.

Not bad for the scorned bastard child of a rogue trader and a concubine, and who once had to endure the withering scorn of the man’s legal wife every single day. Said legal wife ended up reduced to a servitor in the end, relegated to waste recycling duties…truly, the Omnissiah’s justice saw and reached all.

Here and now, though, the Quest for Knowledge was ongoing. Renegades and heretics alike fell screaming as her volkite blaster reduced them to charred skeletons, or slowly burned to death with shots from her phosphor serpenta. Her mechadendrites carried both weapons, her ‘normal’ hands instead carrying a two-handed power axe. A single swing from said weapon could kill multiple enemies, as a group of renegades had found to their fatal dismay when they had tried to rush her.

Fools…

…typical of those who lacked conviction and faith, turning from the Omnissiah’s Light to embrace xenos heresies.

Von Karbelnikoff screeched in binary, damning the souls of the fallen to dissolution even as they fell, whether to her or to her robotic guardians. Reinforced blast doors barred her way into the xenos’ council chambers, but a single blow from her mechanical fist had it crumpling like thin tin.

The room was empty.

Von Karbelnikoff screamed in binary, even as she stomped over to a terminal and slammed probes into its ports, tearing through the xenos’ pathetic excuses for firewalls, launching machine curses left, right, and center, while draining data streams through sanctic filters into the noosphere for analysis.
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By the end of the second day, the Mechanicum had effective control of the capital, though renegades and xenos still held parts of the outer city. The Mechanicum didn’t bother to waste their time with rooting the enemy out on the ground, having achieved their primary objective. Instead, they just had the Titans blast them into oblivion.

Meanwhile, servitors were brought in, ripping apart the ground of the memorial park commemorating the planet’s first settlement. Deep they dug into the ground, heavier equipment being brought in over the night, as they dug deeper and deeper, a full five hundred meters before finding what they came for.

A bunker made with adamantium-reinforced permacrete, with ceramite interior paneling. Careful excavation took days to finish, and finally, Archmagos von Karbelnikoff had what she came for.

Even the local ethereal having escaped with the rest of the council to an unlocated bunker elsewhere on the world was nothing in comparison. With their prize in hand, the Mechanicum left, but not before leaving the Tau with a parting present.

When the Tau reinforcements arrived five and a half standard months later, they found the planet devastated by orbital bombardment, only single-celled bacteria left of its once thriving ecosystem. Worse, one of the planet’s moons had been deliberately destabilized, spiraling in to collide with the planet within a matter of decades.

Soros was lost, with the Tau lacking both the technology and the resources to save it. Bitter at their impotence, they retreated back into their space.

A century later, and the Archmagi of the Mechanicum of Mars finally released Archmagos von Karbelnikoff’s prize from Soros out of quarantine. Forges on Forge Worlds across the galaxy received the necessary data, taken from the newly-updated archives of Mars’ STC library, and began production with prayers to the venerable memory of the late Archmagos who had rediscovered and reclaimed the STC.

What did they produce?

The Hanabishi Electro-Chef 20,000.
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A/N

And so it ends.

 

[PsihoKekec]

Kind of wasteful to completely destroy a habitable world if there is no taint of chaos. But on the positive side, a great step was made towards pulling the Imperium out of the culinary dark age.

 

[novussa]

A Waste of life and rescources so in line with imperial policy. The tau Will not forget this Witch Will only cause futher conflict that imperium cant afford. All for a chef. So 40k stupid toaster fucker.

 

[TyrantTriumphant]

I guess that's why it's called the Quest for Knowledge and not the Quest for Useful Knowledge.