"Whoosh!"
The roar of engines tore through the murky air as a dozen silver-grey meteors raced through the hive city's tangled, rubble-strewn lower passages at breakneck speed, skimming just above the ground.
Ding Xiu crouched low over the streamlined chassis, his piercing gaze fixed through his Helmet Visor on the rapidly shrinking distance on his tactical map and the increasingly clear, shrill explosions and screams ahead.
Fierce winds laden with Smoke, blood, and Ozone battered his Power Armour.
His metal fingers tightened unconsciously around the handlebars, his knuckles paling slightly with the strain, while his other hand hovered over the hilt of the Power Scimitar at his waist, a legacy of the grasslands of Chogoris.
"Ten kilometres... five kilometres... one kilometre..."
He read out the navigation data under his breath, his voice cold and clear over his Helmet communicator.
His squad gave no reply. There was only the roar of engines and the occasional clipped tactical confirmation over the Communications Channel.
The distance reached zero.
Like a silver-grey dagger, they plunged into the edge of the Skull Regiment's defensive sector.
The Defense Line, once made up of sandbags, trenches, and makeshift fortifications, had become a slaughterhouse of flesh and steel.
Severed limbs, melted and twisted weapon wreckage, blackened, smoking shell craters, and thick, dark-red blood everywhere, almost soaking the ground through.
The air reeked of rust and burnt flesh, so heavily it was nauseating.
And at the centre of this scorched earth paved with death, a towering figure clad in heavy xenos armour and wreathed in an ominous psychic glow was running rampant.
A Rangdan Overlord.
Every swing of the enormous xenos Greatsword in its hand, blazing with purple energy flames, traced an arc of destruction.
Wherever its blade passed, desperately resisting Skull Regiment soldiers, makeshift cover, and even abandoned