Lower Hive, District 12
Over thirty thousand soldiers, the last remnants of Venomfang's forward host, had gathered in District 12.
They were not elite warriors, chosen champions, or favored servants of the Dark Gods. They were simply the ones who had survived. The lucky. The stubborn. The cowards who had run faster than the men beside them. The wounded who had been dragged along because they could still hold a weapon.
Venomfang's warp-disruption ritual had severed every channel of communication around them. Vox transmissions dissolved into static. Long-range command relays went dead. Psychic contact had become a blind, screaming pressure that even the cult's witches refused to touch.
No orders. No leadership. No certainty that anyone above them was still alive.
And yet, despite everything, relief flickered through the broken army.
For the first time in hours, no Legion troops were materializing in the middle of their formations. No squads of Thunderborn appeared from thin air to carve through men like a butcher working through hanging meat. No tanks emerged out of impossible light with their cannons already aimed.
The slaughter had, at least for the moment, stopped.
The wounded groaned in gutters and against shattered hab-walls, clutching ragged stumps, burned faces, and torn-open bellies. Their prayers to the Ruinous Powers went unanswered. Some begged for aid. Others begged for death.
"Move now! Retreat!"
"Kill the wounded! We leave no one behind for interrogation!"
The remaining officers scrambled to impose something that resembled order. Some units were directed toward the Upper Hive access routes. Others were given the dirtier task of ensuring no dying comrade was left alive for the enemy to question.
Loyalty had no place here.
Men too slow or too broken to move begged for mercy. Their pleas were answered by lasgun cracks, bolt pistol roars, and the flat, efficient work of combat knives.
Some officers decided even that was taking too long.
Incendiary grenades followed.
Flames rolled through the wounded. Uniforms caught. Armor plates blackened. Hair, skin, and cloth burned together in a greasy stink that crawled through the air and clung to the throat.
Only once the dying had been silenced did the survivors break ranks and flee.
The retreat was anything but orderly.
Some squads were deliberately misdirected by officers who wanted fewer mouths slowing the column. They were sent marching into abandoned hab-zones, where collapsed corridors, dead lumens, and sealed transit doors would finish what the Imperials had started.
Other soldiers turned on their own commanders, abandoning them to the rearguard while they forced their way ahead. Cowards lived longer. Traitors lived longest, if no one caught them.
Despite the chaos, every survivor clung to one desperate hope.
Reach the Upper Hive. Escape the killing ground.
Find someone still capable of issuing orders.
As the distance between them and the war zone of the Lower Hive widened, some dared to believe they might make it. A few even began to smile.
Then a recon drone appeared overhead.
"Aircraft! Aircraft!"
"We're fucked!"
Panic tore through the column. Men stumbled into one another. Some threw themselves against walls. Others dropped their weapons as if an empty hand would make them less of a target.
A few began wailing openly, certain the end had finally arrived. Before full hysteria could consume them, a booming voice echoed from a portable loudspeaker mounted on a command carrier.
"Their teleportation has been disrupted! They can't reach us immediately!"
The words struck the fleeing army like a drug. Fear dulled. Breathing slowed. Men looked up at the drone and did not immediately see death.
Hope returned. Thin, desperate, and poisonous, but still hope.
The soldiers pressed onward, clinging to the last chance left to them.
Then the front ranks stepped into a broad clearing and stopped.
At first, only the men at the head of the column hesitated. Then the flanks slowed. Then the center stalled as bodies pressed against bodies, each man demanding to know why the fool in front had stopped moving.
Those in the rear cursed, shoved, and raised their weapons.
Then someone turned around. And saw the truth.
Fissures of white light tore open behind them.
Soldiers appeared. Tanks appeared. War machines appeared.
The First Legion had arrived.
They had never stopped hunting. The teleportation had not been disabled.
It had only been delayed.
The heretics had been allowed to run. Allowed to panic. Allowed to hope.
Now they were surrounded.
Eiken's regiment completed its teleportation drop in perfect formation. Infantry squads materialized behind layered gravitic shields. Leman Russ tanks settled onto cracked ferrocrete with their engines already growling. Combat drones unfolded above the line, auspex lenses burning through smoke and dust.
Eiken surveyed the battlefield with clinical detachment.
Thirty thousand survivors stood before him in broken clusters. They had no stable formation, no command rhythm, no artillery support, and no will left except the animal need to live.
"They look like a herd of refugees, not soldiers," Duncan murmured over the vox.
Eiken did not disagree.
"Everything we've fought so far has been their vanguard," he said. "If their main force shows up next, we're in for a real fight."
Duncan scoffed inside his Leman Russ.
"That's a problem for later. For now, let's deal with the vermin in front of us."
He tapped his gunner on the shoulder.
The gunner nodded, adjusted the battle cannon by a few degrees, and fired.
The shell screamed across the clearing, apparently aimed at one of the grav-shield drones hovering above the enemy ranks. The drone's field flickered aside at the exact moment the shell reached it.
The round passed cleanly through.
Then it dropped into the center of the terrified horde.
Detonation.
Men vanished inside the blast. Bodies folded, burst, and disappeared beneath dust, shrapnel, and fire.
Then the rest of the tanks fired.
Then the infantry opened up.
Lasgun volleys lanced through the air in disciplined waves. Explosions gutted entire squads. Heavy weapons tore fleeing men apart before they could scatter. Drones tracked officers, banner carriers, vox-men, and anyone trying to organize resistance.
Eiken watched without anger.
This was not a battle.
This was a purge.
The heretics had no cover.
No coherent formation.
No chance to resist.
They were slaughtered.
....
Underhive Fortress
With the teleportation cycles complete, Qin Mo finally allowed himself a brief moment of stillness. Not rest, not truly, but enough time to sit, remove his helmet, and let the fortress's systems continue their work without his direct attention for a few minutes.
Klein sat opposite him with a tactical slate balanced across one knee. The display was crowded with moving icons, projected casualty estimates, and supply indicators that were already changing as the First Legion's automated logistics adjusted to the new battlefield.
They were preparing to discuss the next phase when the door swung open.
Grey entered, dragging a prisoner behind him by the back of his collar.
The man hit the floor hard, rolled onto his knees, and stayed there, breathing in ragged bursts. His hands shook so badly that the cuffs around his wrists rattled.
"Got myself a deserter," Grey grunted. "Might be useful."
Qin Mo stood and looked down at the prisoner with cold disinterest.
The man wore the tattered uniform of the Talon II Planetary Defense Force. His identification tags confirmed it. His face was a map of old scars, recent bruises, and dried blood, but his eyes held nothing except fear.
"P-please… d-don't kill me…" the man whimpered, pressing his forehead almost to the floor. "I'll tell you anything you want! Anything!"
Qin Mo exhaled slowly.
"You're willing to talk," he murmured. "But I have no reason to believe you."
He had no intention of trusting anything a Tzeentch-tainted deserter said under pressure. Truth, lies, half-truths, panic, implanted memories, daemonic influence, any of it was possible. Listening to him would only create more problems.
Grey glanced down at the prisoner, then back at Qin Mo.
"So? What do we do with him?"
Qin Mo did not hesitate.
"I just need him alive."
He crossed to a nearby storage crate and retrieved a modified teleportation stabilizer. The device was small, ugly, and unfinished-looking, a collar-like band of layered metal, focusing pins, and crude soul-anchor circuitry designed for one purpose.
Klein's expression tightened the moment he saw it.
"You're testing that on him?"
"Observing the result," Qin Mo corrected.
He fastened the stabilizer around the prisoner's neck. The man began sobbing harder, but did not resist. Fear had already emptied him of courage.
Qin Mo activated the dimensional transporter.
The prisoner vanished into a white dimensional tunnel.
A heartbeat later, he reappeared on the other side of the room.
His body remained intact.
His mind did not.
The stabilizer had preserved flesh, bone, organs, and baseline neural structure. It had not protected the soul from the transition's deeper pressure. Whatever had returned was breathing, blinking, and biologically alive. It was no longer a thinking man.
Exactly what Qin Mo wanted.
Without hesitation, he attached a neural interface to the prisoner's skull. Thin needles unfolded, found insertion points, and sank through skin with precise mechanical clicks. The prisoner did not react. His eyes stared at nothing.
Grey frowned.
"Can we extract his memories?"
Qin Mo allowed himself a faint smirk.
"Smart man." He put his helmet back on. The seals locked with a hiss, and his voice shifted into the colder register of command. "Read his mind."
The fortress AI responded instantly.
["Analysis complete."]
["What information are you seeking?"]
Qin Mo chuckled once.
"What do you think?"
["Talon II is an industrial world. One hundred and twenty years ago, a cult began spreading among its manufactoria, lower military formations, and administrative auxiliaries. Designation: The Order of the Omniscient Mind."]
["The prisoner lacks classified military data. He was a low-ranking soldier and not included in strategic briefings. However, his accessible memories contain extensive information regarding cult practices, recruitment patterns, devotional symbols, command rumors, and battlefield behavior."]
Qin Mo processed the report in silence.
One hundred and twenty years.
Not a sudden infection. Not a recent outbreak. A deep-rooted corruption old enough to have burrowed through families, regiments, factories, and bureaucracies.
Then another thought struck him.
"What about Talon III? Any sign of heresy there?"
["The prisoner possesses no direct information on Talon III."]
Qin Mo's gaze hardened behind his visor.
"Give me military intelligence."
["Affirmative. Based on extracted memories, the enemy force operating here was a vanguard formation. Their objective was to eliminate both our army and Tyrone Hive's remaining Planetary Defense Force elements. This objective was inferred by the prisoner from troop movements, officer conversations, and target selection. It was not explicitly stated in his orders."]
Klein leaned back, his face grim.
"So Talon II is already infested."
Qin Mo removed his helmet and set it on the table with more force than necessary.
"Talon II is not infested," he said. "Talon II is compromised."
The distinction settled over the room like cold dust.
Infestation could be cut out if found early enough. Compromise meant the rot had institutions, supply chains, officers, factories, and time.
Klein rubbed a hand over his face.
"Emperor preserve us. How long is this war going to drag on?"
Qin Mo said nothing at first.
He looked at the mindless prisoner, then at the tactical slate, then at the fortress walls around him. The system was falling apart one world at a time. Genestealer cults. Tzeentchian corruption. Noble treachery. Abandoned soldiers. Hidden wars beneath cities that pretended they still had governments.
He hoped Talon III would not turn out to be another heretical nest.
Because if it was…
A system-wide extermination campaign would be inevitable.
And Qin Mo was not interested in prayers or luck.
If necessary, he would develop a weapon capable of delivering an Exterminatus-level purge.
One that would end this war permanently.