Although an Untouchable has a powerful effect on psykers—and is especially effective at suppressing daemons
Kain's null field was even stronger than that of a typical Untouchable, with a wider effective radius.
But that didn't an he could act with absolute impunity.
Cannon-fodder-tier enemies would collapse in droves when he unleashed his "Haki" without restraint, but daemons weren't all cannon fodder.
The kind of daemon that could actually hurt an Astartes couldn't be simply driven off by a null field. Even so, it did leave them moving like they'd drunk themselves senseless—staggering like a vicious, hungover brawl. They weren't that hard to fight in that state.
The problem was, there were a lot of them clinging to the gunship.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
The impacts kept coming in rapid succession.
The Thunderhawk's cockpit canopy had long since beco a useless slab—you couldn't see anything through it anymore.
Right now, it was like a fighter jet plowing headfirst into a flock of crows so dense there wasn't a finger's width of air between them—until the whole airfra was sared in gore, warped into a "flesh aircraft."
What they were hitting, of course, were corporeal daemons. Even when the autocannons shredded them, the sheer density ant chunks still slamd into the hull like a hail of at.
If you looked closely at the Thunderhawk's interior, you could see a three-stage change taking place in real ti.
It was as if ti itself had been accelerated—tal surfaces were rusting, rotting, corrupting at a terrifying pace.
And if you looked closer at the "rust," you'd realize it wasn't inert. It was becoming like a microorganism, as though it were gaining life—turning sticky, starting to wriggle.
Like primitive single-celled life.
Worse, that "evolution" was visibly fast. The rust was multiplying, swelling, turning into blood-red flesh, spreading bit by bit as if it ant to colonize the cabin walls.
Like sothing left too long in storage, finally blooming over with fungus—except this growth was at.
At the sa ti, the Thunderhawk's systems flagged abnormalities: the air composition was changing.
It was as if the inside was being terraford into an environnt where flesh could thrive.
This was the corrosion of raw Warp energy leaking out—trying to turn an inorganic war machine into a living, at-bound organism.
And this was with Kain's Untouchable nature suppressing it. Without that suppression, the transformation would be even faster.
"For the Emperor, for the Imperium!"
A voice—ragged, almost torn to shreds—rang out.
Bang!
A gunshot echoed through the bay, and a body hit the deck. A PDF soldier.
For mortals, the closer they got to a Warp rift, the more brutally the Immaterium ate into them. Their bodies and minds were both subject to corrosion.
He'd still looked human not long ago—now changes were beginning to show.
And his mind was changing too: turning manic, craving slaughter, craving blood, yearning to spread terror.
Before his soul could fall any further, he'd shouted his last and put a round through himself.
And it wasn't the first corpse.
The PDF who hadn't been overtaken yet began stripping ammunition from fallen comrades and loading it onto themselves. So of the charges were from Kain—bunker-buster bricks, the rough equivalent of C4.
Except the yield obviously wasn't in the sa universe as C4.
One brick could blow open even the thickest plating on a Dreadnought—this was the kind of explosive Kain used for "grave-robbing" demolition work.
If it went off inside the Thunderhawk, one mistake could bring the gunship down.
And that was just a single brick.
Right now they were carrying over a hundred—Kain had basically emptied half his armory.
And the PDF's purpose in carrying them was simple.
They intended to beco human bombs.
No one had ordered it. This was their own decision.
They knew that in the coming slaughter against the daemons, their combat power would be negligible—so they would make their final contribution count.
Thnk—!
Steel bit into flesh.
A PDF trooper drove a knife into his own thigh, using pain to keep himself lucid.
Then more gunshots.
A Salamanders Astartes executed several soldiers on the deck—n who weren't fatally wounded yet.
Once Kain stopped actively suppressing his null aura, those n hadn't been able to withstand it. They'd passed out instantly.
Now they still hadn't woken, twitching like people trapped in nightmares—jerking and spasming in their sleep.
Physically, Kain could reduce how much Warp power damaged the flesh.
But ntally—no, spiritually—that was harder to shield.
Non-Untouchables cast a reflection in the Warp. The closer they got to the rift, the more clearly that reflection showed—and the more easily daemons could notice it.
Suddenly sensing sothing, Kain snapped the Thunderhawk into a hard roll.
A difference of less than a millisecond—and a storm of tal scread through the space the gunship had just vacated.
He was the pilot, of course. Right now he was the only one fit to fly—everyone else was varying degrees of "airsick" and half-conscious.
"Bearing…!"
The callout ca imdiately. The Astartes on weapons didn't hesitate.
Orange-lit shells spat out with long, blazing tails, like lances of laserlight ripping open masses of flesh.
Boom—!
A hit.
THUD!
A heavy impact—sothing smashed into the Thunderhawk's hull, followed by a rapid series of blows.
Like living in a cheap apartnt with thin ceilings—soone upstairs is brawling so violently it feels like the whole floor is about to cave in.
The truth was simpler: at so point, Salamanders had moved to the exterior of the gunship and were fighting on the hull itself.
And their opponents were Night Lords Astartes.
The collisions, the roars, the shouted insults—everything carried through the plating into the cabin.
BAM!
Another trendous hit. The Thunderhawk scread, tal protesting; the fra had to be badly warped now.
Then ca an even greater impact—not another strike, but ground contact.
The Thunderhawk kissed the earth hard.
It skidded, tearing a furrow more than a hundred ters long through the surface before finally stopping.
Straight ahead—less than five kiloters away—there was a strange light source, like so device had begun to activate.
That was the target. The thing that had to be destroyed.
Five kiloters, to an Astartes, was practically arm's reach.
But that was only true when nothing stood in the way.
Now, pairs upon pairs of lights—brimming with malice, violence, slaughter, and blood—were closing in from all sides.
It was ti to kill.
(End of Chapter)
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