Grim Dark Tech Support: A Dark Mechanicum Quest

Engagement Roll:
1d6 (Base)
+1d6 (Heavy Assault Regiment)
+1d6 (Lady Czevene's Psychic Warfare)
[6, 3, 2]

It takes you a good long while to decide on your approach, but ultimately the most direct option seems like the most reasonable one. This is, you consider, presumably what the Hand of Transformation wishes you to do: engage your forces in the prepared defenses, then launch some manner of counterattack to free its fragment from your trap.

Still, barring strange precognitive powers, it is unlikely that it has grasped the fullness of your capabilities, and the psychic onslaught by Lady Czevene is likely to have left the prepared defenses in a precarious position morale-wise. It is hard to hold a position while utterly convinced doing so plays exactly into enemy plans, after all. And so, away from the senses of the daemonic fragment, you begin to plan. The plan Colonel Parlo comes up with is fairly simple: a main thrust supported by several diversionary assaults, utilizing the fact that your enemies are, by all appearances, exactly as unable to use their Vox as you are: they will be reliant on runners, which will hopefully prevent them from committing any reserves until a breakthrough is well and truly underway.

You leave the daemonic fragment behind along with Theama-Nul and a guard: the Command Salamander is going to move up once the main push commits, but until that has occurred, giving away which push is the one that is being committed to would be counterproductive.

You go with the vanguard in order to give the initial assault extra bite. The sort of insurgents you are fighting are not likely to have the sort of equipment and training able to stand up to the sort of assault you could unleash.

Of course, the Yulrasians don't either, really, but they at least have gas masks.

The Insurgents have dug in quite well, from what you can see: a well-ordered barricade studded with heavy stubbers and repurposed Leman Russ Guns, Flakboard and metal plates propped up by improvised frames welded together quite competently. It stands in stark contrast to the men and women manning them: bedraggled and malnourished, carrying a wide assortment of weaponry, from Autoguns to Laslocks to Stubbers. Still, discipline seems to have been instilled into them: they do not waste ammunition, instead targeting the Yulrasians that are moving towards them with disciplined, short bursts.

You take cover behind a burning Chimera, and consider your options for a moment. These are faithful people, fighting against a force that seems determined to, at least, not be worse than the Imperium. It is their faith in the Corpse-Emperor that is keeping them in line, along, of course, with the people with red armbands you are seeing pop up around the back: if you had to guess, these are the best approximation of Commissars they could come up with on a short notice.

Figures of authority and fear in equal measure, you consider: symbols of the faith in the Emperor and the Imperium both.
The needle that hits the neck of the woman you have selected as your target has been coated in a very specific toxin, one you distilled from a Chaos Spawn taken from the same Space Hulk you retrieved the Empyrean Mold from. It is a mutagen of the highest, purest form: the infinite mutability of the Warp distilled into a potent toxin.

It enters the woman's bloodstream without her even noticing, and within seconds, she begins to writhe and convulse.

Spawndom is a condition you are well familiar with, having caused it yourself on many occasions. It is the perfect fusion of empyrean and biology, the random energies of the warp given manifestation in the flesh of a hapless victim.

The Discipline Officer screams: the loud, wailing noise of an animal in profound and inexplicable pain more than anything ordinarily associated with humans. Then her head literally retracts, pulled into the body by a rapidly shortening spine, bones cracking as the sheer force of the mutation bends and splinters them out of the way. There is a pause, then: all across the battlefield, the guns fall silent at the sudden, horrifying display, their mind unable to comprehend what they are seeing as the woman mutates further and further. Tumors breach her skin like warts, some of them beginning to sprout long spines of bones. Her shoulders begin to bulge, muscles multiplying seemingly as random. A pair of new arms pushes from her ribs, it's hands long and studded with talons that remain slick with blood.

The Spawn screeches from a mouth that opens up where it's stomach used to be, even as a pair of enlarged, but all-too-human eyes peers outwards at the defense lies, pain and uncomprehending rage written into them in equal measure.

Then it lashes out at the nearest insurgent, ripping the man apart in a shower of gore, and all hell breaks loose.

The Yulrasians shake themselves out of their shock long before the insurgents do. "Czevene", the battlecry goes up, up and down the line, and then the Ogryn charge forwards, shields and Ripper Guns raised, crashing into the already reeling insurgents at full force. You see a runner set out, and hit him in the back with another mutagenic dart, and then the Chimeras rumble past you, Stormbolters peppering the defensive line with Bolter Fire as they get in range to bring their Heavy Flamers to bear. You continue firing for a while, seeding more of the Spawn amongst the enemy, but they are broken by this point. You see one of them dump the entire magazine of his Autogun into the Chaos Spawn that was once his comrade before trying to run, only to be dragged down by tentacles that were once arms.

Then the entire barricade becomes doused in flame, and you turn and leave, back to the Salamander and Theama-Nul: your work here is done, the line is breached. All that remains now is to track your prey.

You find Colonel Parlo standing next to the Salamander, conversing with a runner that appears to be from the Overlord's Clan, if the mutations are anything to go by. "Tell them to keep up the pressure", he says: "The last thing we want is for them to get an opportunity to dig in again."

The runner nods, and sets off, back towards the wedge of Chimeras that is even now pushing deeper into the manufactorum complex, their advance punctuated by the sound of Heavy Flamers and Stormbolters.

"It's still not moving", Theama preempts your question as you enter the command tank "Somewhere towards the center of the complex, unless I've missed my guess." He calls up a map and points out the area: a complex of what appears to be offices nestles between the manufacturing areas: easy to defend, but luckily not close to any of the rail lines that might enable a rapid flight. The Hand of Transformation, it seems, has elected to stay put even as its first line of defense failed.

That means you won't have to hunt it down, but it also means that it likely still has a trick up its sleeve.

When the attack occurs, it is almost without warning: all you hear is the brief roar of a jump pack, almost lost in the general din of combat and hiss of the Flamers ahead of you. Truth be told, you do not put it into its proper context until something large and heavy impacts the top of the Salamander with a clang of metal on metal. There is the tell-tail hiss of a power field intersecting with metal, and then something tears through the roof of the tank as though it were made of tissue paper, and you find yourself face to faceplate with a Space Marine.

The Space Marine is wearing one of the beaked Mark VII helmets, and you are unable to quite place the colors that mark it and the chest plate beneath: some sort of geometric camouflage, white and black stripes alternating to create an effect that reminds you of an ancient species of Equines you saw in pictures of the Emperor's idiotic revivification plans for Terra's lost ecosystem. Long, metallic stripes are tied to the Space Marines Jump Pack, likely meant to create a disrupting effect on any auspex that might seek to lock on to the Super Soldier, and a pair of Lightning Claws are affixed to his hands, rearing back to strike now that it has broken open the roof of the tank.

The Marine glances at you for a millisecond and dismisses you, likely taking your lack of visible armament for sufficient reason to treat you as a secondary target. Its gaze sweeps over Parlo, Theama-Nul, and Regicia as well. Within less then a second, it has identified Moro as the most threatening target within the cabin. Faster than the Ogryn can react, the Space Marine sweeps forward and down, Lightning Claws raised to deliver what is no doubt intended to be the first in a series of killing strokes.

Unfortunately for the Space Marine, you are not as harmless as you might appear.

[Surprise Attack: Eta Nu 9-35: Uses Regicia Ko-Bea's Cybernetics Score: 4d6: 4,2,4,4: Partial Success]

Monofilament Wires shoot from the tips of your fingers and arrest the downward momentum of the Space Marine. It whirls around far faster than it should be able to, leaning into the wires to prevent them from slicing through its limbs. For the second time in a day, you are slammed back with enough force to feel something inside you break, but your intervention was sufficient to save Moro's life. The Ogryn retaliates with a wild swing of the Pneumatic Hammer, but the Space Marine sweeps under it with impossible grace, rushing past the Ogryn and then leaping forward with a burst of fire from his jump pack that scorches the Ogryns armor and sees it staggering forward.

Both the Astartes' claws are raised, you see: each directed at a different target. One one side, Colonel Parlo lies, even now raising his Las Pistol to fire a bolt that is utterly ineffective against the Space Marine's armor. On the other side sits the daemonic fragment: it is unlikely a strike at this will do anything but set it free, but of course the Marine cannot know this.

If it strikes at Parlo, that will hamper the offensive and the Yulrasians as a whole. If it hits the daemonic fragment, however, you are prone to lose your means of tracking the Hand of Transformation. You raise your arm and find, to your relief, that it is still functional. You can stop one of the strikes from going through.

The other, however, is likely to find its mark.

Who do you save?

[] Colonel Parlo

[] The Daemonic Fragment