Chapter 312: The Chainsword

The Governor’s extended kin, who resided in the habitation spires adjacent to the Audience Hall, stood upon their tower balconies and terraced viewing galleries, gazing down upon the battle erupting far below.

To anyone with eyes to see, it had long been obvious that since Anruida’s first arrival on Beisu I, Anton had been preparing to overturn the table and reveal his hand. It was not fear of losing power that drove him, but fear that the planet’s absorption into the Talon-controlled sector might fail, exposing his compromises and hidden allegiances to outside scrutiny.

As a result, the forces stationed atop the spire had been placed on full alert from the very beginning. Household troops, PDF detachments, and privately contracted enforcers had been pulled from garrison duty and positioned along access causeways, lift platforms, and external buttresses. Heavy weapons and armoured vehicles were deployed almost immediately, their firepower brutal, overlapping, and overwhelming by any mortal standard.

At the opening of the engagement, the three Thunderborns and the lone Space Marine were engulfed in a storm of gunfire. From every firing slit, barricade, and vehicle mount, weapons roared in overlapping fields of fire. Their silhouettes blurred amid the constant streams of tracer rounds and flashing impacts, giving the illusion that even such elite warriors had been pinned down by sheer volume of fire.

But it was only an illusion.

The Thunderborns’ gravitic shields intercepted all solid projectiles and low-output energy weapons with ease. As for Chen Ye, though lacking a grav-shield, his Adeptus Astartes power armour was more than sufficient. He advanced at a steady pace, unconcerned by the impacts ringing from his plate, needing only to evade the occasional las-burst; the rounds from autoguns and industrial stubbers left no more than shallow scratches upon his ceramite plating.

Anruida, who wore neither power armour nor carried a grav-shield, was no less impervious. His reinforced endoskeleton alone could withstand the barrage, to say nothing of the advanced nanotechnological repair reservoirs housed within his body, capable of sealing wounds almost as quickly as they were inflicted.

Only melta weapons and plasma arms posed a genuine threat to the four of them.

Yet such weapons were exceedingly rare in this remote system. On Beisu I, their possession was restricted to senior officers, household champions, or Mechanicus-sanctioned specialists. Fewer than twenty individuals possessed them on the field.

Those twenty were regarded as the spire’s final hope. They hid among the ranks of ordinary soldiers, their distinctive weapons disguised beneath cloaks or stowed within vehicle hulls, or concealed themselves beneath the tracks of armoured vehicles, silent and waiting.

Even as their comrades were torn apart by dazzling energy beams, limbs severed and bodies disintegrated by weapons far beyond their understanding, they did not act rashly. They watched patiently for a moment of distraction, a turned back, a lapse in awareness, waiting to strike the Thunderborns or the Space Marine in ambush.

But not everyone on this battlefield relied on sight alone.

A weapons-detection pulse swept across a five-kilometre radius in an instant, scanning every armament present. The pulse cut through armour plating, vehicle chassis, and human flesh alike, categorising energy signatures and threat profiles with machine precision.

All weapons capable of threatening the strike force were immediately marked within the Thunderborns’ tactical vision. Once a single Thunderborn identified a target, the data was shared seamlessly among them all.

The Thunderborns exchanged brief glances, no words were needed, and in that heartbeat decided who would neutralise the melta and plasma bearers.

Grey wrenched his chainsword free from the abdomen of a Genestealer-tainted officer and immediately activated bullet time. The battlefield dilated around him, sound stretching into a dull roar as the world slowed.

He plunged into the enemy ranks.

Those hiding beneath armoured vehicles were annihilated by searing beams from his shoulder-mounted cannon. Those masquerading among common soldiers were impaled clean through by the roaring teeth of his chainsword, the weapon’s howl drowning out their final screams.

All of it occurred in mere moments. To outside observers, only a black blur could be seen streaking across the battlefield. Wherever it passed, every bearer of melta or plasma weapon fell dead, their last hope extinguished before it could be brought to bear.

With the last effective countermeasure eliminated, the battle devolved into a one-sided purge.

Anruida and Chen Ye turned their attention to hunting down officers, particularly those exhibiting signs of xenos taint, while Grey and Yoan focused on destroying armoured vehicles and cutting through the remaining infantry.

Even amidst the fighting, Anruida found time to open a private channel with Grey, transmitting all the noble family heraldry he had previously collected, along with the identities and histories they represented.

Grey’s Thunderborn warship still hung in low orbit above Beisu I. Not every noble house had dealings with the Genestealer Cult, so the spire could not simply be obliterated wholesale. However, precise and controlled orbital strikes were well within acceptable limits.

And so, those who had been watching the battle as if it were a spectacle soon found themselves unable to remain mere spectators.

From the heavens descended impossibly thin crimson lances of light. Wherever one struck, a catastrophic explosion followed. Entire family estates, foundations and all, were blasted skyward, their inhabitants reduced to shattered remains mixed with pulverised stone and debris.

Void-hardened windows across the spire cracked or shattered as shockwaves rolled through the upper levels.

When a residential district was confirmed to house only families connected to the Genestealer Cult, the Thunderborn vessel increased the output of its lance batteries, transforming the entire district into a sea of fire.

Less than half an hour after the battle began, the mortal soldiers defending the spire collapsed into rout. Their morale shattered completely.

The Genestealer officers leading them broke even faster.

For every Genestealer Grey slew with his chainsword, purestrain or otherwise, the remaining cultists would hear agonised, inhuman screams echoing within their minds. As the slaughter continued, hallucinations began to plague them.

Images overlapped with the battlefield before their eyes.

A man wielding a chainsword, lifting the severed head of a Genestealer Patriarch upon its blade.

A man wielding a chainsword, executing kneeling Genestealer captives in a single sweeping motion.

Had Grey and the others been able to see these visions, they would have recognised them instantly.

They were propaganda posters from the Talon Sector.

Years earlier, such images had been everywhere. Though Qin Mo had not, in truth, raised the Patriarch’s head upon a chainsword when he slew it, the posters depicted it so, and ninety-nine percent of the Talon’s population believed that version of events to be fact.

Across the entire sector, it was universally believed that the chainsword wielded by the Lord of Talon was something extraordinary, a relic that had become a symbol of history itself.

The reverence and belief of hundreds of billions could not affect Qin Mo directly. Yet it could, and did, imprint a peculiar metaphysical resonance upon the weapon he had once used in the underhive. Belief, repeated endlessly across a sector, carried weight within the warp. Now, across the sector, countless minds believed that this chainsword had been created for one purpose alone: the extermination of xenos and heretics.

Only a scattered few knew that it had once belonged to a disgraced PDF Commando who met a shameful end.

Neither Genestealers nor humans are immune to the warp’s influence.

And so, when the chainsword was wielded in open slaughter, the psychic backlash caused the Genestealers to break faster than any human force ever could.

The battle ended swiftly.

Anruida began incinerating the corpses and collecting noble sigils as evidence of guilt, while the others gathered to discuss their next move.

“We must capture the Governor,” Grey said grimly. “Then kill him.”

Chen Ye and Yoan both nodded, but the White Scars Space Marine suddenly considered an alternative.

“Your warship is already in orbit,” Chen Ye said. “Why not simply shatter the spire? Whether the Governor is hiding there or any other traitors, all would die.”

“There are innocents still in the spire,” Anruida replied, approaching after finishing his collection. He archived the scan results and transmitted them to Yoan and Grey. “Without conclusive evidence, we cannot kill them alongside the traitors.”

“We are not here to dispense justice,” Grey agreed, “but we still cannot condemn the innocent with the guilty. That would damage the image of the Talon Sector and undermine our wider plans.”

He paused before continuing.

“We want Beisu I to follow the same path as Talon II, traitors eradicated, those who resisted rewarded, and the planet firmly aligned with sector governance.”

Chen Ye nodded silently.

He understood now that these people were here for the Talon Gate Project, not merely to fight a single battle. Unlike him, they could not simply complete their mission and return to their Chapter.

For them, brute force alone was not enough.