Although an Untouchable has a powerful effect on psykers—and is especially effective at suppressing daemons
Kain's null field was even stronger than that of a typical Untouchable, with a wider effective radius.
But that didn't mean he could act with absolute impunity.
Cannon-fodder-tier enemies would collapse in droves when he unleashed his "Haki" without restraint, but daemons weren't all cannon fodder.
The kind of daemon that could actually hurt an Astartes couldn't be simply driven off by a null field. Even so, it did leave them moving like they'd drunk themselves senseless—staggering like a vicious, hungover brawl. They weren't that hard to fight in that state.
The problem was, there were a lot of them clinging to the gunship.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
The impacts kept coming in rapid succession.
The Thunderhawk's cockpit canopy had long since become a useless slab—you couldn't see anything through it anymore.
Right now, it was like a fighter jet plowing headfirst into a flock of crows so dense there wasn't a finger's width of air between them—until the whole airframe was smeared in gore, warped into a "flesh aircraft."
What they were hitting, of course, were corporeal daemons. Even when the autocannons shredded them, the sheer density meant chunks still slammed into the hull like a hail of meat.
If you looked closely at the Thunderhawk's interior, you could see a three-stage change taking place in real time.
It was as if time itself had been accelerated—metal surfaces were rusting, rotting, corrupting at a terrifying pace.
And if you looked closer at the "rust," you'd realize it wasn't inert. It was becoming like a microorganism, as though it were gaining life—turning sticky, starting to wriggle.
Like primitive single-celled life.
Worse, that "evolution" was visibly fast. The rust was multiplying, swelling, turning into blood-red flesh, spreading bit by bit as if it meant to colonize the cabin walls.
Like something left too long in storage, finally blooming over with fungus—except this growth was meat.
At the same time, the Thunderhawk's systems flagged abnormalities: the air composition was changing.
It was as if the inside was being terraformed into an environment where flesh could thrive.
This was the corrosion of raw Warp energy leaking out—trying to turn an inorganic war machine into a living, meat-bound organism.
And this was with Kain's Untouchable nature suppressing it. Without that suppression, the transformation would be even faster.
"For the Emperor, for the Imperium!"
A voice—ragged, almost torn to shreds—rang out.
Bang!
A gunshot echoed through the bay, and a body hit the deck. A PDF soldier.
For mortals, the closer they got to a Warp rift, the more brutally the Immaterium ate into them. Their bodies and minds were both subject to corrosion.
He'd still looked human not long ago—now changes were beginning to show.
And his mind was changing too: turning manic, craving slaughter, craving blood, yearning to spread terror.
Before his soul could fall any further, he'd shouted his last and put a round through himself.
And it wasn't the first corpse.
The PDF who hadn't been overtaken yet began stripping ammunition from fallen comrades and loading it onto themselves. Some of the charges were from Kain—bunker-buster bricks, the rough equivalent of C4.
Except the yield obviously wasn't in the same universe as C4.
One brick could blow open even the thickest plating on a Dreadnought—this was the kind of explosive Kain used for "grave-robbing" demolition work.
If it went off inside the Thunderhawk, one mistake could bring the gunship down.
And that was just a single brick.
Right now they were carrying over a hundred—Kain had basically emptied half his armory.
And the PDF's purpose in carrying them was simple.
They intended to become human bombs.
No one had ordered it. This was their own decision.
They knew that in the coming slaughter against the daemons, their combat power would be negligible—so they would make their final contribution count.
Thnk—!
Steel bit into flesh.
A PDF trooper drove a knife into his own thigh, using pain to keep himself lucid.
Then more gunshots.
A Salamanders Astartes executed several soldiers on the deck—men who weren't fatally wounded yet.
Once Kain stopped actively suppressing his null aura, those men hadn't been able to withstand it. They'd passed out instantly.
Now they still hadn't woken, twitching like people trapped in nightmares—jerking and spasming in their sleep.
Physically, Kain could reduce how much Warp power damaged the flesh.
But mentally—no, spiritually—that was harder to shield.
Non-Untouchables cast a reflection in the Warp. The closer they got to the rift, the more clearly that reflection showed—and the more easily daemons could notice it.
Suddenly sensing something, Kain snapped the Thunderhawk into a hard roll.
A difference of less than a millisecond—and a storm of metal screamed through the space the gunship had just vacated.
He was the pilot, of course. Right now he was the only one fit to fly—everyone else was varying degrees of "airsick" and half-conscious.
"Bearing…!"
The callout came immediately. The Astartes on weapons didn't hesitate.
Orange-lit shells spat out with long, blazing tails, like lances of laserlight ripping open masses of flesh.
Boom—!
A hit.
THUD!
A heavy impact—something smashed into the Thunderhawk's hull, followed by a rapid series of blows.
Like living in a cheap apartment with thin ceilings—someone upstairs is brawling so violently it feels like the whole floor is about to cave in.
The truth was simpler: at some point, Salamanders had moved to the exterior of the gunship and were fighting on the hull itself.
And their opponents were Night Lords Astartes.
The collisions, the roars, the shouted insults—everything carried through the plating into the cabin.
BAM!
Another tremendous hit. The Thunderhawk screamed, metal protesting; the frame had to be badly warped now.
Then came an even greater impact—not another strike, but ground contact.
The Thunderhawk kissed the earth hard.
It skidded, tearing a furrow more than a hundred meters long through the surface before finally stopping.
Straight ahead—less than five kilometers away—there was a strange light source, like some device had begun to activate.
That was the target. The thing that had to be destroyed.
Five kilometers, to an Astartes, was practically arm's reach.
But that was only true when nothing stood in the way.
Now, pairs upon pairs of lights—brimming with malice, violence, slaughter, and blood—were closing in from all sides.
It was time to kill.
(End of Chapter)
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