Chapter 27: Chapter 26

The hedonistic nobility of Commorragh didn’t think much of the failed raid on the mildly curious mon’keigh system. The raiding party had been almost completely wiped out, true, but such things had occurred before, whether by poor luck or incompetence of command. That a surviving ship returned to deliver instructed by the overly confident humans to announce the declaration of war was, of course, laughed off. The pathetic crew of the messenger ship were sent off to the pain vats for a thorough debriefing, to decipher the truth from their addled rambling.

 

Powerful this Nexus might be with their starships, but the decadent Eldar of the Webway were safe from any dangers from the material realm. All they had to do now was just avoid that particular system and monitor it for future opportunities. No threats could breach the subrealm without accessing the well hidden Webway portals in Materium space. And it took far more than the mon’keigh’s primitive technology to attempt to break into any portals they found.

 

So when the alarm was sounded as the Webway portal above the twilight skies of the Port of Lost Souls was hijacked and opened, the dark citizens of Commorragh were caught completely unaware. To the stunned surprise of the guards and patrols, a shoal of sleek chrome-silver objects shot through the portal. Each thin, cruiser-sized needle pierced through patrol boats and docked raiding ships before finally burying themselves deep into the city, crashing through the surrounding port buildings and even nobles’ spires.

 

The surprise was quickly replaced by a frenzy of action as the personal armies of each aristocratic house were roused towards the invasion point, and the remaining defenses were brought online. Lance, torpedo and missile batteries vented the city’s wrath on the foreign objects with enough firepower to tear apart whole armadas, while swarms of attack boats and aerial craft were launched to conduct attack runs that sterilized the crash sites.

 

Astonishingly, the foreign crafts remained intact, their glowing shields still holding strong despite the storm of death hurled at them. It took a concentrated barrage of eleven standard minutes before the shields of one of the silver objects finally collapsed. Its sister crafts dropped their shields at the same time, and as the lances carved into their hulls, all two hundred of the invading ships detonated in a coruscating electromagnetic explosion.

 

The metaphysically laced EMP blast radiated throughout Commorragh, disrupting and shutting down huge swathes of the massive port city. More importantly, the port’s defenses were fully burnt out, and the vessels docked and idling in the ports started to fall out of the sky. Whole raiding fleets began a terminal descent towards the non-Euclidean ground closest to them. 

 

Spires were shorn through as anchored vessels broke themselves against them. Whole blocks were levelled as the sleek ships ponderously beached themselves. The Eldar on the ground desperately sought cover as disabled pleasure barges, jet bikes and skyboards rained from above, often with their doomed passengers trapped on them.

 

The damage extended beyond the docks though. The eldritch radiation disabled technomagical devices, including the locks to the pens. Agonizer collars and shackles fell off beasts and slaves alike. Stasis vaults stuttered and failed, releasing living trophies or Warp entities that often spared little time to question their surroundings. 

 

Portals between subrealms also shut down, sometimes cutting whole satellite realms loose. Oftentimes the raw Immaterium would leak in as the fragile Webway walls gave way from the violent disruption. Millions of souls were lost as reality within those severed realms collapsed in on itself.

 

For a moment, as the ancient technology of the Eldar was smothered, the great city-state of Commorragh was brought to its knees. 

 

And then the crackling portal spat out a nebula of writhing metal forms, many-tentacled and many-eyed. It spread out to blot out the already dim skies as it descended upon the city like an ominous fog.

 

And the city-state of Commorragh began to burn.

 

The Sentinel cloud crashed into the Eldar ships still falling, tearing them apart in a storm of sparks and blood. Then the robots spread out to crash into the port defenses like a tide against a sandcastle. Guns and gunners were ripped apart before the rest of the structures were violently disassembled.

 

With the immediate defenses down, the robots focused on creating a massive clearing, churning through millenia-old architecture before one of them placed a teleport beacon in the middle of the leveled field.

 

A thunderclap of displaced air later, and the massive warform of the Corrino appeared amidst the city.

 

“We are the Apocalypse.”

 

Its guns lit up the twilight skies vaporizing entire city blocks, and many denizens of the twilight realm screamed as their eyes were burnt out by the intense light show. The Apocalypse titan razed a massive swathe of the Port of Lost Souls, enough for more teleport beacons to be placed. Soon after, its eleven brother warmachines were marching alongside it to deconstruct the city around them.

 

The teleport beacons also brought in the airships Kirov, Boris and Ivan, their primitive exterior designs betraying their firepower. Floating sedately at low altitude, they joined the Apocalypse titan walkers with plasma bolts and white lasers, focusing particularly on further disabling wrecked Eldar ships.

 

The city struggled to form a defense, even with what seemed like the entirety of the noble houses and underspire gangs pouring out in full force. They faced not only the metal invaders, but the slaves and monstrosities freed during the EMP blasts as well, resulting in scattered and inconsistent resistance as the noble houses and Wych Cults had to choose between securing their loose property or defending against the approaching invaders. True to their treacherous nature, some took the opportunity to herd threats towards their rivals’ domain, or sit back as their competitors struggled to hold the line.

 

The shields of the titans and airships turned away even the most esoteric weapons of the Eldar Empire, the Sev-enhanced technomagic of the Nexus proving itself capable of defeating the wrath of an ancient civilization. Ship-grade darklight beams and even the odd void mine washed against the glowing shields, leaving barely a stain on the hulls of walkers or airships. If anything, those attacks only served to reveal the position of defensive emplacements.

 

As Eldar of Commorragh were a society that survived through slavery, most of their weapons were crafted to inflict agonizing pain on the living, while keeping them alive for the slave pits. Unfortunately, it meant that the unliving metal legion swept through the city with barely anything to slow it down. Sentinels shrugged off toxin shards and neural blasts, having no flesh or brains to be crippled. Flaying blades and barbed shock staves proved just as ineffective against the metal hulls.

 

It took too many fusion blasts, too many dark lances to bring even one of the tentacled constructs down. The price of one invader killed was high, as it often meant an entire position being overrun by the rest of the metal tide. And despite their initial assumptions, the Eldar defenders also found their haywire armaments utterly useless, the automata tide being immune somehow to advanced technology-breaking weapons of the ancient Eldar.

 

Commorragh’s subjugation still took twenty days owing to its sheer size, but the conquest was thorough. The initially isolated defenses were overwhelmed easily, but routed survivors and those nobles further away from the beachhead were able to form a respectable defense for a civilization that preferred lightning fast hit-and-run tactics. Exotic weapons from the War in Heaven were brought out, though many could not be used due to the Commorites’ weakened psychic capabilities. 

 

Those terrifying weapons that worked though bought precious time for the defenders as the unleashed power not only disintegrated whole city sectors but also tore through the Webway foundation underneath. Warpspawn poured through the breaches, slowing the invaders a little. 

 

Reality disassemblers plucked away at the fabric of existence, rendering anything caught in its wake down to subatomic particles. One such weapon was snuck into position to fire at one of the gargantuan titan walkers, and for the first time in its short existence an Apocalypse titan suffered total shield failure. It would not suffer anything more than though as Sentinels soon fell upon the crew of the disassembler cannon.

 

These weapons were the most effective tool in fending off the soulless invaders, but as potent as they were, there weren’t enough of them. One by one, by long range bombardment or sheer weight of numbers, the ancient superweapons were silenced. The losses of the robot legion seemed insignificant, and the Eldar commanders soon discovered why: Daring scouts had spied factory complexes being constructed. Small swarms of the tentacled robots fed the broken ruins of Commorragh into maws of those fabricators, and more robots came spewing out. 

 

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Day by day, the Eldar defenders fought valiantly, displaying feats of prowess that surpassed even their craftworld kin. But valor itself was not enough, and they were forced to withdraw time and time again after suffering horrendous casualties. Eventually, the nobles and gangers and gladiators of Commorragh had nowhere to run. With their heavy weapons spent and burnt out, their exquisite blades shattered, and their artisan toxins utterly useless, the last defenders of Commorragh were snuffed out.

 

The corpses of the lucky dead were carted away for standard Nexus dissection and processing, while the defeated captives were clinically delimbed before being carried off to makeshift detention complexes. Wych Cults, noble houses and even the deepest haemonculi coven were uprooted, crippled, and stored aside for later research.

 

The freed slaves were either given aid or euthanized, depending on circumstance. Healing arches were set up that eventually worked on even the most inhuman-looking aliens after some testing, while translation ritual circles were set up to debrief the liberated xenos. Vaults, armories and galleries were looted, while war factories and laboratories were studied before being razed. Everything was cataloged by the Nexus’ AIs, looking through the countless robotic eyes now swarming the Webway realm.

 

Sev oversaw the aftermath of the invasion on the top of Corrino’s carapace, breathing in the smoke and destruction of the Eldar city as he conversed with his advisors and AIs through the comms.

 

“We have gained total control of this pocket dimension,” Eva reported. The first AI summarized the data stream from her siblings with ease, providing the Nexus administration with easy, bite-sized information. “You were right, as usual. Even discounting the invasion of the now-disconnected ‘subrealms’, there is more than enough space in here to accommodate the entire population for the next century, barring spectacular divergences from current population growth estimates.”

 

Sev grinned at the news. “Great. Piper, Nat, organize the Minutemen for massive slave rehab. Cait, Sarah, prep the Companies for live-fire urban training and city cleanup. Madison, Curie, double check the translocation runes and see to the freed aliens. Gwen, Kelly, prepare the press releases.”

 

The women were used to his chuckle by now, and prepared themselves for another stage of the Nexus’ growth. Sev turned to his right, where a Craftworld Eldar grav vehicle hovered beside him, the pale-faced delegation occupying it regarding him with a mix of horror and wariness.

 

“The piracy of the decadent and corrupted is ended. No more shall the remnants of a broken empire prey on vulnerable worlds with impunity. The Nexus Unity claims Commorragh by right of conquest. Any other reaving Eldar realms we encounter will be dealt with similarly.”

 

*****

 

Lelith stalked through the ruins of her old home with no sense of nostalgia or regret. The first Nexus Eldar simply ignored the ravaged cityscape around her as she hunted down her prey. There was little visible change to her equipment ever since her change of allegiance, save for the new crystal blades in her hand and a talisman around her neck. As devoted as she was to her new god, Lelith still found mon’keigh fashion to be far too crass for her sensibilities.

 

She picked through the lone standing wall section of a ruined gang stronghold, hinted by the tattered banners and fractured graffiti on the scattered brickwork. Lelith spied a few buried corpses, but paid them no further heed. Her prize was not part of this petty group, and recent intelligence had confirmed that she was seeking a living quarry. She didn’t bother questioning why the human occultists pointed her this way. Sev trusted them, and so would she.

 

The barest of illumination on the walls cast from behind her was all the warning Lelith received, and she sidestepped to avoid a stream of envenomed crystalline shards. Idly, she found some similarities between the splinter weapons of her race and the Tiberium weapons her Nexus used; Most obviously, both incapacitated, though in different physical planes. And now that she thought about it, darklances and white lasers could be dark mirrors of each other…

 

Lelith skipped back to avoid another burst of splinter fire.

 

All this might be worth pondering upon later, but for now, she had a hunt to see to.

 

Turning to face her attacker, Lelith found a small group of underspire gangers revealed from their hiding holes within piles of broken city. She grinned with anticipation, feeling the familiar caress of danger and excitement. Not as intoxicating, but still pleasant enough that Lelith brought her crystal knives up in a gladiatorial combat stance. She would make a performance out of this, for old time’s sake.

 

She reminded herself to be careful - her quarry might be amongst these poor fools.

 

Seven splinter rifles were trained on her, but as she dashed towards the closest, not one of them were able to keep up with her. Her daggers flashed out once and Lelith pivoted on her heels to pounce at the next victim, the first ganger’s screams just starting just as his weapon and severed hands thudded on the floor.

 

After the second was dispatched by an artful slice across the elbows (no severing though - Lelith was trained better than that), the remaining Comorrites tried to swarm her with their own blades drawn. They had the advantage of numbers, but as her crystal blades cut through serrated monomolecular metal, it was clear that numbers were not going to be enough.

 

Lelith danced around her five opponents with ease, and carefully incapacitated them one by one. A sharp heel kick to break one’s spine, followed by a pirouette that slashed another’s face and cut through the fingers of a third, and five became two.

 

The remaining combatants wisely kept to opposite ends, trying to ensure Lelith remained flanked no matter what she did. It was a good idea, and almost paid off as the coordinated pincer strike forced her to parry a barbed scimitar and sidestep away from a splinter pistol’s burst, and fall back into the waiting dagger of the attacker behind her.

 

A loud crack of broken metal, along with the still unfamiliar tingle of Nexus shielding revealed Lelith’s not-so-visible addition to her arsenal. Lelith quickly lunged to stab and twist into the shoulderblades of the surprised Eldar in front of her, before spinning to dispatch his equally stunned comrade with a smash of pommels into his temples.

 

With her enemies either unconscious or incapacitated in pain, the first Nexus Eldar carefully investigated each of them with a small artifact before rising up with a smug smile. “My lord Sev, I have found my tasked prey,” she purred out.

 

Sev did not bother asking for confirmation. “Well done, Lelith. You know how to set a signal, right? Put out a ping and the Sentinels will be with you soon.”

 

Basking in his approval, Lelith did as instructed, activating the small tag hidden underneath her thin top to call out to the Nexus’ automata. Then she simply waited, making sure that her prey didn’t bleed out completely from the wounds to his shoulders. Lelith did not ponder about the significance of her quarry, or that the name Asdrubael Vect was unfamiliar to her or the other Nexus Eldar.

 

Sev had found reason to seek this one out, and he was generous enough to involve Lelith in procuring this Vect. It was good enough for her.

 

She kept an eye on the other Eldar around her, and then sighed inwardly as she debated about their continued existence. Would Sev be more impressed or less that they lived?

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