Warhammer : Machinist and The Exile

The platoon advanced, boots thudding over blood-slick metal and scorched deck plating. Corpses lay thick across the path. Traitors, imperials, and even the scattered remains of Shinobi operatives from earlier rescue mission.

Many of the dead bore marks of the warp's touch.

Bloated flesh, fused limbs, blackened wounds still steaming with unnatural energy. Others were little more than burned husks, eyes glassy in death.

"Sir, should we recover the arms?" With a hesitation, a trooper asks, pausing by a heap of ruined weapons.

Rail weapons and monomolecular blades lays among them.

"Negative, those are warp tainted. leave that to psykers to clean them first." Khor shook his head, giving the corpses and weapons a last glance before moving on.

Braken grimace at the corrupted bodies of his fellow exile. Yet with steady step, they keep moving forward.

Trooper Narek, an assault trooper takes point at an intersection. As he turned at the intersection he halted.

He gasps and momentarily faltered seeing a sentry gun trained straight at him. Yet the gun is unmoving.

"Narek! What is wrong?" Vallerian, one of the two platoon members carrying las repeater ask. Concerns in his voice.

"Ah nothing…just got scared a bit seeing a sentry gun at your face." Hadrak waves his hand signalling everything is alright.

"Remember, the cybership has disabled sentry and most of the fortress defenses. We just need to worry of its occupant." Braken vox all member to remind them.

The group once more move deeper until the meet a chamber that has loud ritual like noises.

Braken halted at the edge of a scorched bulkhead, raising his wrist-mounted command interface. A line of encrypted code scrolled across the display, handshaking with the Cybership's active datalink.

"Feed stable. Live mapping in progress," he voxed, his tone flat.

A photorealistic holomap bloomed in mid-air, projected from the device — a clean, high-definition render of the chamber ahead. Every surface. Every corpse. Every heat signature. Enemy positions shimmered as crimson-red silhouettes, the lone towering mass of a Traitor Astartes outlined in ochre.

Braken adjusted the zoom with a flick of his gloved fingers, enhancing the overlay. Details resolved with brutal clarity. Fallen Shinobi operatives sprawled among the debris, their distinct black matte harness rigs and Machinist-forged weapons stripped by the cultist rabble.

He spotted a pair of cultists wearing shinobi masks hefting monomolecular blades, their crude grips betraying ignorance of the weapons' lethal design. Another knelt over a stolen railcarbine, his filthy hands scrabbling at the weapon.

Braken's gaze narrowed. The weapons' biosignature locks remained engaged, confirmed by the holomap's data-tags.

[User not recognized. Weapon status: DEACTIVATED.]

The railcarbine is dead weight. The monomolecular blades, without their phased edge function, were little more than sharp slabs of steel.

He marked them with HUD tags. Priority targets.

"Chaos scum scavenged Machinist wargear," Braken voxed to Khor. "Weapon sytem locked. No active functions. Blades still cut."

"Copy that," Khor acknowledged, his voice cold.

Braken gave a final sweep of the photorealistic render. Hundreds of pings packed into the chamber. A 83 meters distance pathway between them and the traitors littered with empy weapon and ammo cache.

The perfect kill zone.

"What should we do sir?" Khor ask as he crouch near his commander.

Enhancing the HUD to zoom in, some cultists are doing sacrifical ritual trying to summon daemonic reinforcement. The runes are starting to lighten up indicating the ritual is already underway.

He cut the display, face hardens. "Set firing positions. Cultist rabble with stolen relics die first."

"Hassan, you take out those cultists in my mark" Braken said as he marks the ones leading the ritual in platoon HUD.

The platoon marksmen nods and get in position.

He then points at the pathway that will become a choke point. "Vallerian and Tanaka, set up your las repeaters to create kill zones here and the rest cover you two."

"Roger. Moving to position." All members answered while moving to their designated location.

"All in position sir, waiting your signal." Khor vox in.

"Engage now!"

Hassan who has aim his weapon at a ritual leader pull the trigger.

Hassan's lasbolt streaked through the gloom, striking the lead cultist's head. It detonated in a spray of bone and brain. The ritual backlashed instantly, arcs of warp-light bursting the sacrifices on the altar in a shriek of unreality.

The cultists panicked, shrieking, milling, before one pointed at the causeway.

"There! Death to the false Emperor!"

"For Chaos!!"

Hurried footsteps echoes fill the hall.

"Let them get closer, cluster them more." Braken voxed coldly.

The swarm came on armed with rusted blades, clubs, pipes, and the occasional stolen autogun.

"Open fire."

Vallerian and Tanaka, shot at the human wave chargin at them. their las repeaters turned most of the charging cultist to corpses.

More and more cultist appears carrying salvaged weaponry. Those carrying autogun or lasgun are considered the lucky ones among the bunch.

Most of the cultist are ragtags group who would just charge in with large number.

"Braken Platoon engaging swarm of cultist." Braken repots to the division channel.

[Acknowledged, do you need reinforcement?] the vox operator ask.

"Negative, we will hold. Standby for update." Braken reports as he shot a cultist.

Even with great number, disorganized crowds and chokepoint deny the heretic numerical advantage.

Range weapon rounds snapped past, ricocheting off cover. One shot struck Braken's shoulder plate, scoring ceramite. Another splashed against Khor's pauldron. The return fire was merciless — precise lasgun shots vaporizing heads and torsos in neat bursts.

"Hadrak, load the launcher! Now!" Khor orders as he the minimap indicate the traitor astartes approaching.

The heavy thumping from power armor approaching could be faintly heard among the loud sounds.

With trained movement, Hadrak pull out the safety cap from the missile before loading it to the launcher tube.

"Launcher loaded." Hadrak report as he put the launcher in his shoulder, ready to fire.

"Backblast clear." Hadrak announced as he glanced at his back.

It doesn't take long as the target gets into view.

The Traitor Marine emerged from the mob. Towering, 2.3 meters of warped ceramite, cracked crimson lenses locking onto the Exile line.

His bolter raised, the first burst tore through three men void-armored torsos pulped, bodies flung back like ragdolls.

Hadrak was among them, falling with the missile launcher still slung across his shoulder.

Khor shouted through the vox. "Marine breaching! Incoming!" as he changed his target to the chaos marine.

Braken didn't hesitate. He dove toward Hadrak's body as another bolt round chewed through the cover beside him, snatching up the launcher. Its auto-targeter was still active locking on the astartes.

"Firing!" Braken roared, bracing the crude, RPG-like tube on his shoulder. The warhead spat flame and smoke, racing through the choke point.

It struck the Astartes square in the torso. A bloom of fire, shrapnel, and pulverized meat ripped through the chamber, the shockwave flattening nearby cultists.

Through smoke and debris, the towering figure staggered, armor hanging in ruin — its bolter still rising. A las-round from Branek's weapon punched through its exposed helm, dropping the giant

"First squad, advance! Finish the kill!" Braken ordered, teeth clenched. He didn't look at fallen's body. There was no time. Their data has been automatically updated.

Khor's vox came through, cold and detached. "Marnen, Hadrak, Riev, Tolsen down. Bio-markers offline. Combat assets null."

"Copy."

The squad surged forward, as they kill anyone with a life sign.

Their adrenaline pumping forces their sense to peak human performance. Their neural pathway sent signals slightly faster than normal human.

They quickly moved in a defensive position after entering the chambers. Some leftover cultist got quickly liquidated.

"Chamber clear!"

The rest of the platoon moves in stepping on the piles of corpses. Barnek saw the stolen shinobi weapons amongs the dead.

"We take 15 minutes break, rehydrate and recheck your ammunition." Seeing the chamber has no more hostiles forces the Barnek relax slightly.

Survivors slid into cover. Helmets cracked open just enough for water bulbs. The squad who'd lost men retrieved their fallen's tags and ammunition and nothing more.

Their eyes and emotion show slight pain, yet none spoke.

"Division Command, this is Branek. Chamber secured. Hostile resistance neutralized. Four combat assets lost. Proceeding to 9th infantry battalion rendezvous point." Branek vox the division.

[Acknowledged. Good work, Branek Platoon. Continue advance.]