The barrels of the five Basilisk Heavy Self-Propelled Artillery guns finally lowered after nearly thirty minutes of relentless bombardment.
The barrels' muzzles glowed red-hot, heat shimmered above the metal, and the air reeked of acrid gunpowder.
It was a peculiar smell, produced by the plastic explosives in the 160-millimeter high-explosive shells burning alongside the Cult of the Machine Thought's specially formulated psy-stabilizers.
Each high-explosive shell was loaded with a warhead containing psy-stabilizers and psy-suppressant dust.
"These warheads contain psy-suppressant dust developed by the Cult of the Machine Thought based on certain ancient STC fragments. In theory, it can disrupt Warp energy structures. It's an experimental product that hasn't been fully perfected yet."
The aim was to use the fire of Imperial order to violently neutralize and suppress the taint of the Warp's disturbances.
"Sir, bombardment data compiled."
Inside the command vehicle, half the adjutant's face was a metal panel. Data streams scrolled rapidly across his one-eyed display:
"Five Basilisk Heavy Self-Propelled Artillery guns fired approximately 250 standard high-explosive shells, 30 cluster shells, and 20 incendiary shells.
"Ammunition expenditure: 87%."
"Barrel wear: average remaining lifespan of fewer than 200 shots per barrel."
"Coverage: the entire Industrial Zone 3 of the Crimson Bright Wasteland and a two-kilometer buffer zone around it."
"Estimated kill rate: over 99% against living targets without heavy armor."
Capas Arar stood atop the vehicle, his mechanical eye scanning the smoke-shrouded area ahead fifty times per second.
The metal muscles on the mechanical half of his face formed a smile befitting a senior merchant guild official.
"Excellent."
His voice, processed through a synthesizer, was as steady as a precision instrument in operation:
"Pests should be dealt with using the most effective disinfectant."
"Orders: First and Second Armored Squadrons, advance. Sentinel Mech formations, cover both flanks."
"Infantry battalions, follow and sweep up the debris."
"Before noon, I want to see this land covered in the merchant guild's banners, planted atop the corpses of those traitors and heretics."
The orders went out.
The steel tide surged forward once more.
Thirteen Leman Russ Tanks advanced slowly toward the heart of the industrial zone in a standard wedge formation, their tracks crushing the still-steaming ground already plowed by artillery fire.
Fourteen Sentinel Mechs strode out on their mechanical legs, spreading across both flanks of the tank formation. Their sensor arrays operated at full power, scanning every suspicious shadow.
More than six thousand Alru Infantry advanced in skirmish lines, three to a group, the muzzles of their lasguns trained warily on every corner where an enemy might be hiding.
The soldiers spoke in low voices over their tactical helmet comms:
"Third Squad, western ruins cleared. No signs of life."
"Seventh Squad, enemy Heavy Bolter Cannon wreckage found in the east. The gunners' bodies... uh, most of them are in pieces."
"Psyker squad reporting: Warp readings in the area remain abnormal. We recommend—"
"Recommend my ass."
Capas cut off the Psyker's channel coldly. "Some Warp disturbances after an artillery barrage are normal. It's just residual energy."
He had absolute confidence in his troops' equipment.
What kind of firepower did a Basilisk bring to bear?
A standard high-explosive shell had a kill radius of fifty meters.
More than 300 shells, in a saturation bombardment.
Forget flesh and blood. Even armored vehicles should have been reduced to heaps of scrap metal by now.
Those rebels? Those Chaos Cultists?
Those... strange freaks?
Heh.
Against the merchant guild's steel and fire, they were all trash.
The smoke gradually cleared.
The first thing to come into view was a landscape utterly transformed.
The once-towering Cooling Towers of the Refinery and the nearby buildings were gone.
In their place was a crater over a hundred meters across. Molten metal wreckage lay piled at the bottom, glowing a dull red.
The raw-material warehouse district had become a scorched black pit.
The East District's pretreatment production line, the West District's Transport Station, the North District's workers' dormitories...
All gone.
Quite literally gone.
The bombardment had flattened, shattered, and melted everything.
That was the beauty of Imperial heavy firepower.
If one bombardment couldn't solve a problem, fire another.
If that still wasn't enough, your guns weren't big enough.
"How's the sweep going?" Capas asked.
"The First Squadron has reached the former Refinery's central area. No organized resistance found."
"The Second Squadron has cleared the East District. A small number of rebel stragglers were found and eliminated."
"Sentinel Mech formation reporting: an unusual concentration of energy detected in the West District. We are—"
A piercing burst of static suddenly crackled through the comms channel.
Then came a shout.
"What is that?!"
"Target sighted! Central area of the former Refinery!"
"The Emperor preserve us... they're still alive?!"
Capas's mechanical eye snapped into focus.
His vision zoomed in, piercing the smoke that had yet to fully disperse.
He saw them.
At the edge of the enormous crater, space writhed and began to reform.
Like a reflection in a warped pool of water, an image gradually sharpened from a blur into something solid.
The Lord of Change and Mystery, a creation of Tzeentch.
One of its heads had clearly lost nearly half its mass, but starlight shimmered in the gap.
The many eyes on another head were dim and cracked, oozing luminous blue pus.
Only the third head remained intact.
It was covered in wounds, yet its psychic aura—the force with which it pressed down on reality and twisted logic—was many times more powerful than before the bombardment!
Along the edges of its wounds, space folded in on itself, stitching them shut.
The second figure took shape far more violently.
A Bloodletter, the embodiment of Khorne's fury.
Its left arm was gone from the shoulder down. No blood flowed from the stump; instead, crimson energy like boiling magma spewed forth.
A terrifying, transparent hole pierced its chest. Blood-red flames licked its edges, and its scorching innards throbbed in plain view.
Yet it stood firm as a mountain.
The fire in its single eye was no longer mere bloodlust. It had become a kind of savage satisfaction.
It abruptly threw back its damaged head, pointing its great fleshy axe toward the smoke-obscured sky. A battle cry made of pure psychic force and ruptured air crushed across the battlefield:
"Blood for the—Blood God!"
"Skulls for the—Skull Throne!"
At its roar, the bodies strewn and buried beneath the steel across the battlefield—rebels, Alru soldiers, overseers, workers—suddenly began to twitch.
Blood that had not yet been vaporized welled from their wounds, forming streams that an unseen force drew toward the Bloodletter!
With every stream of blood that entered it, its wounds healed a little more, and its power grew a little stronger!
The smile on Capas's face froze completely.
The red light of his mechanical eye flashed wildly as his processor worked at full speed, trying to analyze the scene before him, which defied every law of physics.
"Impossible... the bombardment data... the psychic-neutralizing agents..."
"Bombardment data... theoretical fatality rate: 99.97%..."
"No psychic shield could withstand a saturation attack of that magnitude..."
The adjutant's voice trembled. "Sir, their Warp readings... they're increasing exponentially!"
"Something underground is feeding them power!"
Capas jerked his head down.
On the tactical display, the curve of the underground psychic readings shot upward like a drug-fueled maniac!
It wasn't rising steadily. It was climbing straight up!
The readings instantly surpassed the previously recorded peak by three times, then five, then ten—and they were still climbing!
"Underground..."
Data from an eighty-year-old file flashed through Capas's mechanical brain.
District 7.
The Arar Family.
Psychic nexus.
Chaos ritual.
"Shit."
For the first time in his life, the merchant guild general—renowned for his composure and absolute rationality—spat out a purely emotional word with the half of his mouth that was still flesh and blood.
He understood.
He understood everything.
Ren's rebellion, Siclaman's uprising, even those strange workers who had appeared out of nowhere...
They had all been bait.
It had all been for today, for this moment—to create a sacrifice on this land, where ancient Chaos ruins lay buried, large enough, bloody enough, and filled with enough despair and death.
A sacrifice.
The bombardment had killed tens of thousands.
The energy generated by those deaths, the waves of fear, pain, and despair, had raised a tsunami in the Warp.
And that tsunami had swept away the seal the Imperial Psykers had placed eighty years ago over the ruins of District 7.
Now the ancient Chaos energy beneath the ground was pouring out like floodwaters bursting through a dam.
And the two demons stood at the flood's very heart, mouths open, drinking their fill.
"All units!!!"
Capas's voice boomed across every channel, its sharpness for the first time beyond the synthesizer's ability to conceal:
"Highest-priority targets! Concentrate fire on the two Warp entities at the edge of the crater! Regardless of cost! Now! Immediately!"
"Psyker squad!"
"Abandon all other missions!"
"Suppress the underground energy leak nodes with everything you have! Attempt to establish a counter-psychic barrier!"
"We cannot let this continue!"
Too late.
All three heads of the Lord of Change and Mystery turned toward them at once.
All nine arms lifted simultaneously.
Its nine arcane objects—the staff, grimoire, dagger, hourglass, quill, mirror, and others—erupted in blue light that pierced the heavens!
Its intact head spoke, its voice tripled, brimming with endless mockery and delight:
"Knowledge... grants foresight."
"Your bombardment... your slaughter... your victory..."
"It was all part of the plan."
"The winds of change have risen."
"Now, the Wheel of Change turns here, and the Book of Destiny opens to a new page!"
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