DONG DONG DONG.
Nolan drove the Six-Armed Iron Cavalry Terminator forward with thunderous steps.
Each footfall shook the ground, magnetic boots locking and releasing with mechanical precision. He quickly stepped onto the broken wall, using the elevated position for better firing angles, ceramite steel climbing rubble that would have been impassable to normal humans.
The four servo mechanical arms behind his power backpack all raised instantly.
They moved with synchronized fluidity, each limb swiveling on its mount to bring weapons to bear. Targeting solutions calculated. Firing solutions locked. Power cycled to weapons systems that had been idling, waiting for this moment.
The gauss blaster hummed with lethal charge. The multi-barreled melta glowed cherry-red with building heat. The ion rifle's capacitors whined as they reached firing threshold. The storm bolter's barrels spun up to speed.
Whether it was the Necron technology or the Imperial weapons, all of them launched simultaneously.
The bombardment was continuous and overwhelming.
Green beams of gauss energy crossed the distance in microseconds, striking the speeding train traction head and atomizing metal into clouds of disassociated particles. The multi-barreled melta followed, streams of superheated matter washing over the locomotive's surface, melting armor plating like wax under a blowtorch.
Ion beams added to the barrage, spiral coils of electromagnetic energy punching through whatever the gauss fire hadn't already unmade. And the storm bolter hammered mass-reactive rounds into vulnerable points, each explosion chewing through structural supports.
The train kept coming, momentum carrying it forward even as it disintegrated.
At this moment, the local defense forces scattered.
They moved with practiced urgency, breaking from their positions around the elevator, seeking cover anywhere they could find it. Behind support pillars. Into doorways. Flattening themselves against walls. Everyone trying to get out of the locomotive's path, knowing that being caught in its trajectory meant instant death.
Only the fanatics stood their ground.
They did not even wear carapace armor, just robes and faith, utterly vulnerable to the kind of impact the train would deliver. But they did not care about possible casualties. Death in the Emperor's service was glorious. Survival was secondary to duty.
They kept shouting prayers, voices raised in religious fervor.
"The Emperor protects! The Emperor provides! The Emperor destroys His enemies!"
The words overlapped, building into a chant that echoed through the lower nest's toxic atmosphere. And while they prayed, they raised weapons.
Whirlwind missile launchers settled onto shoulders, targeting systems locking onto the approaching locomotive. Heavy stubber guns braced against hips, barrels tracking the moving target.
In coordination with Nolan's actions, they opened fire.
The bombardment covered the sky.
Missiles streaked through the air in dozens, leaving contrails of white smoke. They impacted the train in cascading explosions, each detonation adding to the cumulative damage. Heavy stubber rounds chewed through already weakened armor, finding gaps, penetrating deep.
The train traction head was still hundreds of meters away when the bombardment finally achieved critical effect.
The locomotive's structure, already compromised by gauss atomization and melta heat, simply couldn't withstand any more punishment. Support beams snapped. Axles sheared. The entire mass of burning metal began to deviate from its forward track, momentum redirected by uneven damage.
Then it rolled.
The train tipped sideways with ponderous inevitability, tons of metal toppling like a felled tree. It struck the ground with tremendous impact, ferrocrete cracking beneath the weight. Then it kept rolling, tumbling end over end, sweeping toward the surrounding buildings with unstoppable force.
The locomotive crashed into a structure and stopped, wedged between collapsed walls, flames licking from ruptured fuel lines.
However, before Nolan could feel any comfort at averting the immediate threat...
Footsteps echoed through the darkness.
Not the organized cadence of soldiers. Not the purposeful rhythm of people moving with intent. These were different. Irregular. Stumbling. The dragging shuffle of things that moved without coordination, driven by something other than conscious thought.
Dense waves of footsteps, countless feet scraping across ferrocrete.
Low roars came one after another in the dim light.
The sounds were inhuman. Guttural moans mixed with wet, bubbling growls. The noise of vocal cords that had rotted partially away, air passing through corrupted tissue, creating sounds that made enhanced Astartes biology recoil in revulsion.
Then they emerged from the dark shadows of the lower nest buildings.
Nurgle zombies.
One by one they staggered forward, revealed by the scattered emergency lumens and the fires from the crashed train. Their skin was festering, flesh hanging in rotten strips from exposed bone. Pustules covered every surface, swollen with disease, occasionally bursting to release streams of foul liquid.
Wisps of green mist clung to their bodies like shrouds.
The fog moved wrong, too thick, too purposeful. It poured from open wounds and gaping mouths, billowing with each shuffling step. The color was the same sickly green Nolan had seen on the train, the signature of Nurgle's corruption made manifest.
The zombie tide emerged from every shadow, every doorway, every gap between buildings. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. An endless wave of walking corpses animated by Chaos corruption.
At the same time, Nolan's enhanced vision caught movement behind the corpse tide.
The rebels with better equipment were hiding there.
Using the Nurgle zombies as mobile cover, as expendable shields. They waited for opportunities, darting between positions, setting up firing angles. Then they launched counterattacks in the direction of the suppression troops, las-bolts and solid rounds streaking over the heads of shambling corpses.
Nolan's jaw clenched behind his helmet.
He quickly glanced at the scene through his eyepiece, tactical overlays painting threat assessments across his field of vision. The numbers were bad. The tactical situation worse. They were facing Chaos corruption on a scale that could consume the entire hive if not stopped here.
"Mobian Sixth Regiment! You really deserve to die!"
The words emerged as a roar, amplified by his vox-speakers, carrying across the battlefield with fury and condemnation. These soldiers who'd suffered injustice, who might have deserved sympathy, had chosen the worst possible path. They'd embraced Chaos. Become the very thing the Imperium existed to destroy.
Nolan turned without looking back, his voice booming toward the forces behind him.
"Everyone gather up! Listen to my orders!"
He needed them focused. Needed them fighting. Needed them to understand what was at stake.
"For your families! And for the thousands of civilians in the hive, we must defend the entrance to the passage connecting the middle nest!"
Let them hear the stakes in terms they could grasp. Not abstract duty, but the concrete reality of everyone they knew dying if this position fell.
"Chaos has corrupted the rebels and the residents of the lower nest! We can't let them pollute the entire hive again! This is our innate duty!"
His voice rose to a shout on the final declaration.
"For the Emperor!"
The battle cry echoed off rusted metal and crumbling stone.
Nolan's words had just fallen when he moved.
He drove the Six-Armed Iron Cavalry Terminator without hesitation, launching a fierce charge toward the vanguard of the Nurgle corpse tide. No more covering fire. No more defensive positions. Just direct assault into the heart of corruption.
His heavy magnetic boots repeatedly stepped on the ground.
Each impact sent shockwaves through the ferrocrete, cracks spiderwebbing from his footfalls. He accelerated with shocking speed for something so massive, servo motors screaming with the effort of moving three meters of armor and weapons.
The Heart of the Furnace was already tightly grasped in his palm.
Vulkan's gift, blessed by Ork gods, ready to unleash plasma fury. The weapon thrummed with barely restrained power, capacitors charged to maximum.
And the Blood Scythe surrounded by green light completed his arsenal.
The Warscythe's decomposition field blazed with Necron energy, the curved blade hungry for matter to unmake. Antarctic vibranium edge ready to cut through anything Chaos could produce.
"For the God-Emperor! For the Lord Angel!"
The fanatics erupted in unison.
Almost all of them shouted the deafening, crazy cry simultaneously, hundreds of voices merging into a sound like thunder. Their eyes blazed with religious ecstasy, fear completely burned away by faith's fire.
Holding simple melee weapons, they followed Nolan without hesitation.
Chainswords revved. Power mauls crackled. Even improvised clubs and sharpened metal bars were raised high. They launched a desperate charge toward the Chaos enemies in front of them, knowing most wouldn't survive but caring only that they died well.
After a very brief hesitation, most of the local defense forces made their decision.
They couldn't match the fanatics' suicidal courage. But they could still serve. Still fight. Still hold the line that needed holding.
Everyone immediately set up airtight fire defense lines around the entrance of the giant elevator.
Methodically. Professionally. Years of training overriding terror as they established interlocking fields of fire. Heavy bolters positioned for enfilade shots. Las-cannon crews calculating firing solutions. Missile teams loading warheads.
Temporary fire fortresses rose from the rubble.
Sandbags and ferrocrete barriers. Overturned equipment creating firing positions. Every advantage of prepared defense brought to bear against the approaching tide.
Whirlwind missiles took off one after another.
They rose on pillars of fire, accelerating skyward before arcing over toward their targets. The missiles launched blanket bombing toward the rebels hiding behind the Chaos enemies, trying to root out the humans controlling this nightmare.
Facing this threat from Chaos, everyone had no choice.
Whether for the Empire or for themselves, this position could not fall. If the corruption reached the middle nest, reached the upper spires, the entire hive would become a Nurgle breeding ground. Billions dead or worse than dead.
The stakes were absolute.
Nolan crashed into the zombie tide like a meteor strike.
The Blood Scythe swept through the first rank with a sound like tearing silk.
The blade, surrounded by green decomposition energy, cut through Nurgle zombies with contemptuous ease. It opened their rotten and smelly swollen bodies, bisecting corpses that barely registered the damage before collapsing. Diseased flesh parted like water. Corrupted bone offered no more resistance than air.
The Warscythe swept across a large area, clearing a dozen zombies in a single arc.
Bodies fell in pieces. Limbs separated from torsos. Heads tumbled from necks trailing streamers of green mist. The corpses hit the ground and began to dissolve, Nurgle's corruption unable to sustain animation when the host was dismembered.
The next second, Nolan raised the Heart of the Furnace.
His palm brought the plasma revolver to bear on the Nurgle corpses rushing toward him, shambling forward with mindless hunger. His finger found the trigger. He pulled hard.
The weapon erupted.
Plasma balls exploded from the Heart of the Furnace in rapid succession, each shot multiplying through Gork and Mork's blessing. Six became twelve. Twelve became twenty-four. The barrage was continuous and devastating.
In an instant, the plasma formed a tide.
Blue-white fire rolled across the battlefield like a tidal wave, consuming everything it touched. The Nurgle zombies within dozens of meters were caught in the inferno, their corrupted flesh unable to withstand temperatures that rivaled stellar cores.
They melted in the blink of an eye.
Bodies liquefied, running like wax, collapsing into pools of bubbling organic matter. Then even that burned away, leaving only wisps of black smoke with a fishy smell that made breathing masks scream overload warnings.
At the same time, the ion rifle behind Nolan's power backpack activated.
It automatically launched sniper mode, targeting systems identifying priority threats. The weapon's machine spirit, ancient and efficient, calculated trajectories that compensated for toxic atmosphere, heat distortion, and target movement.
Spiral ion beams lanced out across extremely long distances.
They crossed hundreds of meters in fractions of a second, electromagnetic coils leaving glowing trails through the air. Each shot was perfectly placed, accurately hitting Chaos rebels who tried to control heavy firepower.
A rebel manning a heavy bolter took a beam through the chest. His torso simply ceased to exist, upper and lower body falling separately.
Another preparing a missile launcher died with his head vaporized, the warhead he'd been loading falling safely inert.
A third attempting to coordinate fire teams exploded as the ion beam ignited ammunition on his person, taking three nearby rebels with him.
At this moment, Nolan fought with terrifying effectiveness.
Wearing his Six-Armed Iron Cavalry Terminator, he actually held back most of the enemies on the battlefield with his own strength. The Blood Scythe carved paths through the zombie tide. The Heart of the Furnace burned away entire sections. The ion rifle eliminated threats before they could form. The gauss blaster atomized any concentration of enemies.
He was a one-man army, a walking catastrophe, an avatar of the Emperor's wrath made manifest in ceramite and fury.
However, at this time, the fanatics following him were dying.
Their casualties became more and more serious with each passing minute. Bodies fell in growing numbers, zealots cut down by las-fire they couldn't dodge, overwhelmed by zombies they couldn't all kill, dragged down by sheer weight of corrupted flesh.
Even though the fanatics were never afraid of sacrifice, their courage never wavering, each one willing to trade their life for even a single enemy's death...
But the corpse tide of Nurgle zombies was almost endless.
For every zombie destroyed, two more shambled from the darkness. For every position cleared, corruption refilled it within moments. The tide was self-sustaining, feeding on itself, growing stronger with each Imperial casualty.
Even the fanatics who fell to the ground and died would rise again.
Nurgle's corruption worked quickly, especially in this toxic atmosphere saturated with disease. A zealot who fell with las-burns across his chest would twitch moments later. His skin would pustulate. His eyes would glaze with unnatural green light. Then he would rise and join the chaotic carnival, turning on his former comrades with mindless hunger.
It was a nightmare feedback loop that threatened to consume them all.
A dazzling explosion of fire erupted nearby.
The multi-barreled melta behind Nolan's power backpack had detected a threat approaching his blind spot. It suddenly spewed out a terrifying stream of hot molten magma, temperatures high enough to vaporize ceramite in sustained exposure.
The stream caught a rebel carrying a melta bomb.
The traitor had been trying to get close to Nolan's back, planning to detonate the weapon at contact range, willing to die if it meant taking down the Astartes. But the servo arm's targeting was faster than human reaction.
The rebel melted completely, transformed into wisps of escaping steam in the span of a heartbeat. The melta bomb he'd been carrying went with him, vaporized before its detonator could trigger.
Nolan, who seemed indifferent to the danger, continued his rampage.
He desperately harvested the Nurgle zombies that kept pouring toward him, the Blood Scythe never stopping, never slowing. Each swing claimed multiple kills. Each arc of the blade cleared space that immediately filled with more corpses.
But even his superhuman endurance had limits. Even Terminator armor couldn't fight forever without support. And the fanatics were being ground down, their numbers dwindling despite their courage.
Nolan opened a vox-channel, his voice cutting through the chaos.
"David! Tell Inquisitor Glendir to take over the command of the entire hive in the name of the Inquisition! Send more troops to the lower nest immediately!"
He needed reinforcements. Needed firepower. Needed bodies to hold the line while he drove deeper into enemy positions.
"Also, send all the crusaders and fanatics down to me! If the Caliph Bishop does not listen to the advice, then send him to see the Emperor!"
No more political games. No more institutional rivalry. This was survival, and anyone who prioritized power over duty could die.
Nolan didn't finish his words before David's response came.
The mechanical voice emerged from the vox-speaker with characteristic calm, utterly unbothered by the sounds of battle bleeding through the channel.
"Received, my lord."
A pause, then David added information that changed everything.
"The head of the Caliph Bishop is in the palm of my hand. According to the information he accidentally disclosed before his death, he has been informing the rebel leadership. His original intention was to use this to turn this hive into a church world."
The confession was delivered matter-of-factly. David had executed a high-ranking Ecclesiarchy official on his own initiative, extracted intelligence through whatever means he'd employed, and was now reporting the results like any other tactical update.
Nolan's response was immediate.
"Then he will not die unjustly!"
The bishop had been a traitor. Had actively aided the rebellion, fed them intelligence, helped them plan their attacks. All in pursuit of personal power, dreaming of transforming an industrial world into a theocratic state he could control.
His death was justice, not murder.
"David, when you and the Inquisitor are mobilizing the troops that can be mobilized in the nest, any person who resists or disobeys orders will be punished as a heretic!"
Nolan's voice hardened to adamant certainty.
"Shoot without mercy!"
No more hesitation. No more political considerations. Anyone who refused to fight Chaos was, by definition, serving Chaos. And the penalty for that was death.
Nolan returned all his attention to the battlefield in front of him.
He danced the Warscythe back and forth in his palm, the weapon moving in figure-eight patterns that created an impenetrable zone of death. Any zombie that entered the Blood Scythe's reach simply ceased to exist, dismembered before its corrupted nervous system could register the attack.
At this moment, many Nurgle zombies had penetrated past the zealots' positions.
They'd pushed through gaps in the defensive line, exploiting casualties and weak points. Now they briefly exchanged fire with the Planetary Guard's fortified positions, shambling into las-bolts that burned holes through putrid flesh.
The defense force's continuous firepower blocked their progress.
Heavy bolters chewed through zombie formations. Las-cannons vaporized entire groups. Flamers painted arcs of purifying fire that set corrupted bodies ablaze. The prepared positions held despite the pressure, disciplined fire creating kill zones the zombies couldn't cross.
But the fanatics were in trouble.
Nolan, wearing his Six-Armed Iron Cavalry Terminator, immediately changed his direction. He couldn't let the zealots be overwhelmed, couldn't afford to lose their ferocity and faith. They were too valuable, too important to this fight.
He charged toward their position like a hot knife cutting through butter.
The metaphor was literal. The Blood Scythe and its decomposition field made molecular bonds irrelevant. Nurgle zombies parted before him like water, bodies falling in pieces, the path cleared through sheer unstoppable violence.
Nolan passed through numerous waves of corpses, leaving devastation in his wake.
He launched support operations toward the fanatic believers who suffered heavy casualties, his massive armored form appearing in their midst like divine intervention. The surviving zealots rallied around him, their morale restored by his presence.
A few minutes later, the team of fanatics had regrouped.
They'd pulled back from untenable positions, consolidated around Nolan's protective bulk, caught their breath and reloaded weapons. Casualties were severe but not fatal to unit cohesion. They could still fight.
And Nolan, who once again became the spearhead of the attack, led them forward.
They continued to charge in the direction of the rebels hiding behind the zombie tide. Not toward the endless corpses, which were symptoms rather than cause. Toward the humans controlling this nightmare, the real source of the corruption.
Compared to the endless tide of Nurgle zombies shambling mindlessly forward...
These heretics who betrayed the Emperor and humanity were the real culprits of this Chaos invasion!
They'd made the choice. Opened the door to corruption. Condemned their own world to damnation in pursuit of revenge or power or whatever justification they'd told themselves.
Nolan must try his best to eliminate these guys before they caused more trouble!
His charge drove deeper into enemy territory, the Blood Scythe clearing the path, the regrouped fanatics following in his wake. Behind them, the Planetary Guard held their positions. Above them, reinforcements were hopefully mobilizing.
And ahead, the traitors of the Mobian Sixth Regiment waited, unaware that the Emperor's judgment was coming for them in green ceramite and righteous fury.