CHAK-CHAK-CHAK—!
The bolt pistol's hammer slammed into Nyx's gauntlet with each percussive discharge. Mass-reactive rounds screamed from its muzzle, precisely reducing the three thugs cowering behind a corroded steel frame to an atomised crimson suspension. Osseous fragments and pulverised viscera rained upon the unctuous substratum.
This was the eighth manufactorum Nyx had liberated. It was, thus far, the most obstinate.
The interlocking fields of crossfire had been meticulously premeditated. Incandescent las-bolts flooded the facility from every conceivable azimuth, their passage sizzlingthrough the atmosphere and leaving the acrid reek of carbonised particulates in their wake.
"Alpha Element — secure the leftward command elevations!" Nyx's delivery, transmitted via tactical vox, was absolute.
The instant his utterance concluded, a premonitory auspex-scream lacerated the channel:
"Contact! Hostile heavy weapons element deploying for suppression! "
The armoured bulkhead on the manufactorum's upper gallery ruptured with a sonorous detonation. Four modified, multi-barrelled heavy bolters extended from the aperture. Their muzzles condensed with lethaleffulgence.
Nyx's pupillary apertures underwent microscopic constriction.
"Suppressive fire. Prepare for decapitationstrike."
The instant of his injunction, his four transfigured champions — arrayed in their newly-fabricated power armour — had already catapulted themselves from cover.
Their trajectories scintillated through the fulgurative atmosphere. Their boltguns chanted their percussive litany, methodicallyextinguishing one hostile fire-point after another.
This was an engagement that, in strictly tactical terms, did not require the Primarch's personal intervention.
Nyx was, however, intimately acquainted with his four 'senior sons'.
If unrestrained, these four gentlemen were highly likely to catapult the entire manufactorum — and a substantial segment of the adjacent underhive — into orbital particulate.
"Sevatar. Decapitate the hostile command echelon."
Curze's subauditory injunction emanated from the ambient shadow.
Sevatar, receiving his gene-father's directive, inclined his cranium with almost imperceptibleacknowledgement. He then elevated himself from his crouched posture and dissolved into the umbra.
Curze's temporary intervention was not fortuitous.
Throughout this engagement, he would employ his own calibrated criteria to identifyand appraise suitable candidates from the Resistance complement for prospectiveinduction into the VIII Legion reserves.
Both were Primarchs. Nyx, however, manifestly occupied the preponderance of the Resistance's affective allegiance. This was, Curze conceded, inevitable — the Resistance's complement was substantial, and the queue of aspirants for Nyx's personal equerry retained had accumulated to an estimation of several tens of thousands.
Curze could, at present, only secure the residual.
"The consignments of specialist armaments we have introduced into the hive have evidently attracted considerable syndicate attention." Curze's regard traversed the facility. Thugs infested every aperture, every interstitial crevice, with the multitudinousfecundity of orthopteran vermin.
"It appears the preponderance of syndicate elements currently operational within the underhive have concentrated themselves at this venue."
"Numerous. Indeed." Curze's delivery, issuing from the umbra, was tinged with predatoryanticipation. "Nyx. Assist me. These specimens shall serve as calibrationexercises."
A Primarch as tactical augmentation.
This affective state — comprehensive security — was irreplaceable by any strategic formulation.
Nyx's maxillofacial configuration elevated into an approbatory rictus. He withdrew his recently-fabricated power sword from its dorsal scabbard. The grip's disruption-field generator emitted a satisfying ascendant modulation. An azure blade of coherentenergy lacerated the atmosphere.
I am the tempest incarnate.
His passage was annotated by the precise, economical disassembly of syndicate personnel. His bolt pistol continued its percussive recitation in his sinister grasp; each discharge perforated the thoracic cavities of multiple adjacent hostiles with surgicalaccuracy.
Within instants, a vacuum of negative pressure had been excavated at the manufactorum's periphery. The surviving thugs recoiled in abject terror; only sporadic, ineffectual las-bolts ventured to challenge the goldenphantasm.
"DEPLOY* the heavy ordnance!"
A syndicate sub-commander's delivery was raucous, desperate. His vocalisations were saturated with terminal frenzy.
Instantly, three armoured weapons platforms recalibrated their armament orientation. They discharged their payloads of high-explosivemunitions with complete disregard for the residual syndicate personnel still occupyingthe kill-zone.
Detonation of these ordnance-stores would be sufficient to excavate a topographicdepression of continental proportions.
Interdiction — immediate.
Nyx's assessment was instantaneous, absolute.
The high-explosive payloads did not, in isolation, constitute a credible threat to his corporeal integrity. Their collateral effect upon the Resistance elements emplaced behind him, however, would be catastrophic.
Magnetic field rotation: 50,000 horsepower!
The azure disruption-field enshrouding his power sword underwent instantaneouschromatic recalibration. Golden fulgurations crackled along its incandescent blade.
Nyx committed himself to a direct, oppositional trajectory. His velocity exceededthe ballistic parameters of the incoming ordnance.
His power sword inscribed a fulgent arc upon the atmosphere.
SHHK——!
The acoustic signature was that of gossamersubstratum undergoing painless bifurcation.
Every incoming high-explosive projectile was bisected with surgical precision. Their detonation fuzes were simultaneouslydissected and rendered inert.
At the distributed epicentres of the engagement, the Captain and his battle-brothers were equally demonstrating their martial proficiencies.
Blazing Hatred had employed his 'Hatred Hammer' simulation to perforate the lateral armour of a weapons platform, reducing its occupants and their appurtenances to a homogenous particulate suspension.
The Captain had committed his chain-blade to the dismantling of a heavily-armed syndicate defensive phalanx. Its dentition, engaging osseous substrata, emitted a piercing, atonalkeen.
Within the battlefield's umbral interstices, Sevatar translated himself with phantasmalfacility.
His objective was unambiguous: the polyarchic command echelon coördinating the syndicate's defensive operations.
"ANNIHILATE** them! None shall DEPART!"**
A syndicate commander bellowed his exhortations, entirely insensate to the proximity of his existential terminus.
Sevatar emerged from the shadow with subauditory grace. His lightning claws perforated the commander's thoracic cavity with the facility of calefacted laminar implements bisecting chilled dairy lipids.
"You..."
The commander's regard descended, with incredulous deliberation, to the fulguratingtalons now occupying his anterior thoracic compartment. Haemorrhagic fluid escaped his oral commissures.
Sevatar inclined his helm to the commander's auditory meatus. His delivery was subauditory, exclusive:
"'Night Haunter' sends his regards."
The commander's termination did not, however, induce the disintegration of syndicate morale.
It precipitated their terminal derangement.
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!* "
A frenetic vocalisation erupted from within the throng. This initial exhortation was immediately amplified by scores of additional voices, each invoking the proscribedappellation with progressively escalatingfervour.
They surged towards Nyx and his warriors with the irresistible momentum of a tectonic event, entirely insensate to their own existentialpreservation.
"This is... lamentable."
Nyx's exhalation was barely perceptible. His power sword, however, did not hesitate.
Within instants, more than a dozen additional thugs had been added to the accumulating corporeal stratigraphy at his feet.
His articulations were precise, economical. Each offensive movement adhered to the optimal trajectory for martial engagement. There was no redundant expenditure of kinetic energy. No superfluous commitment of momentum.
This perfect martial technique — denuded of affective investment, uncontaminated by hesitation or recrimination — did not, however, transpire without observation.
Within the Warp's profundity, upon the Brass Throne, Khorne scrutinised the slaughter with obsessive, insatiable avidity.
His ocular organs — incandescent with the immemorial conflagration of universal conflict — traversed every articulation of Nyx's transhuman corpus with unblinking, uninterrupted fixation.
This perfect martial technique. This termination of sentient existence without the slightest perturbation of affective equilibrium.
It was driving the Blood God insensible with desiderative frenzy.
"Nyx... Nyx... NYX!"
Khorne's ululation propagated throughout the Brass Citadel. Each syllabic ejaculation was saturated with unassuageableconcupiscence.
Though he had never formally enrolled Nyx within his devotional registers, the Eleventh Primarch had already supplanted even the August Saint Giles as the principal object of Khorne's libidinous martial fantasy.
"WANT..."
Since his initial registration of Nyx's existence, Khorne had found it impossible to divert his regard from the golden Primarch.
He recognised this affective state. He had previously experienced it only in relation to his accursed rival.
This was the sensation of authenticgratification.
"He still requires... augmentation..." The Blood God's murmuration was involuntary, compulsive. The Brass Throne trembled with the intensity of his affective investment.
"When he has attained... maturation... He shall deliver unto me satisfaction exceedingthat wretch's...!"
"HOW** LONG...?!"
His interrogative detonation perforated the membrane separating the immaterium from the material cosmos. It descended, with catastrophic velocity, upon the ancient vesseltransiting the Warp's turbulent profundity.
The Nightfall shuddered. Every auspex, every tactical display, simultaneously experiencedcatastrophic dysfunction. The cloying, ferruginous effluvium of freshly-spilledhaemorrhagic fluid pervaded every compartment.
The Night Lords amplified their pre-existingsanguinary propensities under the stimulus of this atmospheric contamination.
The one who should, by all precedentialindices, have been the most profoundlyderanged among them, was, however, entirelycomposed.
Within the most recessed chamber of the ancient vessel, the Night Haunter inscribednumerical cipher upon the bulkhead with his own ungual extremities.
SHHK——!
The piercing friction of keratinous substrate upon ferrous alloy resonated throughout the claustrated compartment.
It was, simultaneously, an acknowledgementof the Blood God's interrogative, and a reminder directed inwardly.
"Soon..."
His delivery resonated from his laryngealcavity with subauditory profundity.
His digital extremities traversed the freshly-inscribed cipher. He registered, with comprehensive clarity, that his rejection by his past iteration was progressivelyattenuating.
Like his children — he, too, would, in due course, return home.
Simultaneously — upon the battlefield of the material cosmos — Nyx's martial interventionwas approaching its terminus.
He stood at the epicentre of an accumulatedstratigraphy of syndicate mortality. The disruption-field enshrouding his power sword emitted its satisfying, subauditorymodulation.
The residual thugs — those who yet retained sufficient cognitive function for self-preservation — commenced their disorderedegress.
"Exterminate."
Nyx's final injunction was affectless, absolute.
This engagement had secured for the Resistance another critical production facility.
For Nyx, however, it was merelyprolegomenon.
He registered, with comprehensive clarity, that a tempest of unprecedented magnitudewas approaching.
Aboard the Nightfall , the Night Hauntercompleted his terminal preparations.
He elevated himself from his recumbentcrouch. He addressed his Raven Prince, who had maintained his vigil throughout this protracted interval.
"Sevatar... Communicate to the entire Legion our imminent translation..."
"...To Nostramo! "