Seraphs of the Emperor’s Judgment

Chapter 227: Reinforcements

"Since we've reached a preliminary accord, we must now address a far more pressing reality."

Sol clapped his hands together once, shifting his gaze meaningfully back to the display screen.

Armin's squad was visibly faltering. It was glaringly obvious they had completely exhausted their ammunition and were now reduced to standing back-to-back, desperately holding off the xenos tide entirely with melee weapons. Had the temple entrance not provided a natural architectural bottleneck, further compounded by the massive heaps of rubble and shattered rockcrete created by the explosive detonation, they likely would have been entirely overrun already.

And even with those advantages, their ultimate destruction was merely a matter of time.

"Relax, they won't die today."

Barely a second after Sevatar spoke those words, Soshyan noticed something completely unexpected appearing on the display screen—reinforcements.

A squad of cloaked figures suddenly vaulted out from a small, previously unnoticed access tunnel flanking the temple approach. They surged forward, wildly brandishing strange, glowing spears and crackling pistols.

Leading the charge was a figure wearing a stark white raven mask, intricately inscribed with complex, arcane runes. A voluminous cloak composed entirely of black feathers swept out behind him—and the cloak wasn't merely billowing from the air currents induced by his sprint; it appeared to be actively, autonomously undulating behind its master.

The moment these mysterious figures appeared, they leveled their pistols and opened fire on the Genestealer horde—and to Soshyan's profound astonishment, they were all wielding plasma pistols.

Caught completely off guard in the blistering crossfire, the xenos were thrown into momentary disarray, dozens of them instantly vaporized by the blistering plasma volleys.The Genestealers appeared just as bewildered by this new variable as Soshyan.

However, the brief confusion quickly dissolved. A significant portion of the horde immediately peeled away from the temple steps, charging maniacally toward the newly arrived squad, clearly identifying these plasma-wielding interlopers as the far more immediate threat.

Simultaneously, the remaining xenos besieging the Astartes seemed to completely lose whatever shred of self-preservation they possessed. Yielding to absolute, suicidal frenzy, they began throwing themselves at the Space Marines in ceaseless, crashing waves of flesh and chitin, forcing the warriors to expend every ounce of their transhuman strength and skill merely to stay alive.

Armin swept his humming power sword in tight, devastating arcs. The disruption field effortlessly sheared through xenos flesh and pulverized their armored exoskeletons.

While clean decapitations perhaps provided a more visceral sense of satisfaction, Armin deliberately kept his blade lower, optimizing his swings for maximum speed and crowd control rather than precise lethality.

His opponents came in an endless, horrifying variety—tall, squat, bloated, or emaciated, no two were exactly alike. Some charged blindly forward in suicidal sprints; others scuttled low to the ground on all fours with terrifying speed; and still others attempted to flank entirely, weaving erratically through the chaos—not to mention the countless xenos constantly slipping and stumbling over the expanding lakes of slick gore Armin was actively creating beneath their feet.

Yet amidst the overwhelming chaos of the melee, he was forced to remain hyper-vigilant for the truly deadly threats—the purestrain Genestealers, beasts possessing the horrifying physical strength necessary to tear Ceramite power armor apart with their bare claws.

He could absolutely not allow a single purestrain to slip past his guard for even a fraction of a second. Given only the slightest opening, they could inflict catastrophic, lethal trauma.

Four of his brothers were already wounded. If another warrior fell, or if Armin himself suffered a debilitating strike, the xenos would instantly swarm over them like a ravenous tide of vermin flooding a subterranean tunnel.

The sheer, crushing weight of their bodies alone would be enough to bury the squad.

"Who are they?"

Even though the desperate tactical situation afforded absolutely no luxury for distraction, Armin took a calculated risk, shooting a fleeting glance toward the mysterious newcomers.

They had already engaged the xenos in brutal close-quarters combat. Their strange, glowing spears danced through the gloom, slicing effortlessly through abhorrent flesh and chitin again and again, causing vile, purulent ichor to endlessly erupt from the multi-limbed monstrosities.

But there were simply far too few of them to truly turn the tide of this overwhelming battle.

Suddenly, an expressionless, gaunt young man wielding a modified, heavy-duty injector sprinted directly toward Armin. Anticipating an attack, Armin attempted a swift, defensive parry, but his boot snagged awkwardly on a mangled corpse at the worst possible moment.

Relying entirely on instinct, he sharply angled his chainsword, cleanly severing the attacker's arm precisely at the elbow. The heavy metal injector tumbled to the rockcrete alongside the severed limb, the chemical canister rupturing instantly upon impact, wildly spewing its contents.

Despite his transhuman reflexes and precautionary shielding, Armin still inhaled a sharp lungful of the toxic vapor.

It was a devastatingly virulent, highly concentrated neurotoxin—a dose this small would be more than enough to effortlessly kill an entire transport carriage full of baseline humans. Even an Astartes, incredibly resistant to toxins, could not simply shrug off such exposure completely unscathed.

Armin instantly felt a wave of crushing vertigo wash over him. His limbs suddenly felt disconcertingly heavy, and his knees buckled involuntarily, dragging him downward.

Fortunately, the thick carpet of xenos corpses absorbed the brunt of his fall, ensuring he merely collapsed into a thoroughly unpleasant pool of gore rather than violently smashing his helm against the unyielding stone floor.

However, the enemy instantly seized upon the momentary vulnerability.

Before Armin could even attempt to regain his footing, a shrieking horde of xenos swarmed over him, burying him beneath a writhing mountain of claws, fists, and even several beasts employing heavy, jagged rocks they had scavenged from the rubble, raining crushing blows down upon his power armor.

He desperately attempted to carve a path to freedom with his sword, but the beasts had descended into utter, suicidal madness, constantly throwing their bodies upon him—

Suddenly, the crushing pressure bearing down upon Armin noticeably lessened. The xenos pinning him began slumping over, dead or grievously wounded, as the unmistakable, heavy, rhythmic thuds of a heavy bolter and the sharper, crisper cracks of solid slug weaponry echoed sharply through the cavern.

He struggled back to his feet, sweeping his power sword to violently dislodge the handful of corpses still attempting to crush the life from him, and looked up in astonishment at their unexpected saviors.

It was a force of roughly a hundred men, led by a remarkably well-muscled individual, pouring out from a subterranean hatch that had suddenly been thrown open nearby. The moment they emerged, they laid down a blistering, sustained barrage of suppression fire—and strangely, every single one of them was dressed in the heavy, utilitarian coveralls of common miners.

"Speed it up. Those men won't last much longer, and the explosive charges the Genestealers planted are counting down to detonation."

After issuing the blunt warning, Sevatar spun on his heel and strode purposefully toward the colossal stasis-pod. Then, under Soshyan's profoundly bewildered gaze, he suddenly plunged the roaring, jagged teeth of his chain-glaive directly into the pod's armored casing.

Amidst a deafening mechanical screech and a shower of blinding sparks, the massive pod—easily twice the height of a fully armored Astartes—was violently ripped open, the jagged fissure running nearly the entire length of a man. Sevatar then jammed both his hands deep into the rent metal, violently hauling the jagged edges outward with terrifying, transhuman strength.

Accompanied by the agonizing shriek of tearing metal, the pod's outer casing was brutally ripped open. A torrential flood of semi-translucent, viscous fluid immediately gushed out across the floor, exactly like a violently ruptured amniotic sac.

Soshyan peered closely into the dimly lit interior of the ruined stasis-pod, observing a surprisingly small, pitch-black iron coffin suspended rigidly in the center by thick, heavy chains.

It was an incredibly bizarre, deeply unsettling sight.

Sevatar reached in and systematically, effortlessly snapped the heavy chains one by one with his bare hands. He then hoisted the heavy iron coffin out, effortlessly slung it onto his broad back, and rapidly secured it tightly across his shoulders and waist using the broken lengths of chain.

"Incredible psychic resonance."

Sol suddenly murmured, his tone laced with genuine, profound admiration.

"Utterly pure, blindingly bright... You have protected her exceptionally well. She remains entirely uncorrupted by the Warp. She truly is an indispensable, priceless asset."

"It would seem you've changed far more than I had initially realized."

Sevatar cast a long, highly scrutinizing glare at Sol. He then turned and retrieved an object hidden behind the ruined stasis-pod, clipping it securely to his belt.

It was a terrifying, bat-winged helm forged of deep midnight blue Ceramite, the faceplate painted the bone-white of a fleshless skull, flanked by twin, blood-red wings extending outwards from the temples—it was likely the absolute only surviving component of the power armor he had once worn with pride.

"Let's move. This entire cavern is about to be violently submerged."

The three preternatural warriors immediately broke into a sprint, rapidly vanishing into the suffocating darkness at the very bottom of the ancient temple.

"Wall?!"

Armin violently opened the throat of a lunging xenos with a backhand sweep of his blade, ignoring the hot spray of blood washing across his chestplate as he roared over the vox-net:

"Wall! Do you still draw breath!?"

Before his words had fully faded, an armored fist materialized over Armin's left shoulder, brutally shattering the face of a purestrain Genestealer attempting to blindside him.

"Still here, Captain!"

Battle-brother Wall roared into the comm-link. His left hand had been cleanly severed just above the wrist—the result of a devastating ambush by a purestrain—but he was relentlessly continuing the fight with his remaining arm, wielding his combat blade with lethal efficiency.

"We cannot hold this position much longer! We must attempt to fall back to the lower levels, Captain!"

It was an entirely sound tactical assessment. Wall clearly intended to launch one final, desperately violent counter-offensive before embracing death.

While none of them knew exactly why the Chapter Master had vanished for so long, it was glaringly obvious he must have encountered something catastrophic.

Victory was entirely impossible now. The xenos numbers were simply too overwhelmingly vast. Even the unexpected infusion of the newly arrived reinforcements was being methodically, relentlessly whittled down and consumed—though it was equally true that every fallen man extracted a horrifically steep price in xenos blood before expiring.

And as for them, as honored Adeptus Astartes, they intended to make the enemy pay infinitely more.

He felt a profound sense of pride for his battle-brothers, for his Captain—he firmly believed that this was precisely the glorious death an Astartes was forged for.

"Agreed!"

Armin panted heavily over the vox.

"Fall back to the lower levels, and then we—"

Before he could fully articulate the order, the stifling air was violently ripped apart by a gargantuan explosion.

Roughly a hundred meters to his left, a towering, expanding cloud of fire and pulverized stone erupted skyward, hurling severed xenos limbs and chunks of armor wildly in all directions.

A fraction of a second later, a second, equally massive detonation blossomed, violently hurling large chunks of pulverized flesh directly over their heads.

This second blast was far closer, causing the very bedrock beneath their boots to tremble violently.

Before the billowing clouds of thick cordite smoke could even begin to clear, three figures explosively burst through the haze, charging directly into the fray.

"Chapter Master!"

Armin instantly recognized the familiar silver-grey armor of the warrior spearheading the charge, and the incandescent, blazing red longsword clutched firmly in his hands.

"The Chapter Master has returned!!"