Chapter 501 - Far Future Ch. 211 – The Marines Have Better Things to Do (1/2)

The Sun Strike came with it, and blew Battlemaster Chaerus' skull apart in an explosion of whiteness whose bloom didn't quite reach the ground.

Squad Five saw her grab their Battlemaster's armor by the girth with her Shield-bearing off hand, halt its fall, and then use it as cover as she raced towards them, accelerating as if she wasn't holding onto something weighing more than a standard hovercar. The corpse of their commanding officer whined and cracked as their desperate shots of gyros, explosive rounds, tracers, and even a ripping plasma beam shot tore into the armored corpse, but didn't find her.

They were all unhelmed, and could see her moving, and the five Tails that rose up behind her and discharged at the face of the Legionnaire swallowing her and Chaerus' corpse in a fusion stream, while the rest of the squad spread out to get arcs of fire on her.

The Legionnaire on the left screamed and collapsed, a burning Spike in each eye and his nose. Her hip-anchored spidery arms aimed two hand crossbow-like Weapons to the Legionnaire moving left, one bending behind her back in a manner impossible for natural arms, and a combination of violet laser fire wound in deadly spirals of banefire to the Warp and that deadly unwhite vivus danced up his chestplate to his head, where a Bolt of force from each autobow joined the lasers in blowing his revealed head apart.

Chaerus' corpse was hurled right into the Legionnaire with the howling torcher, and a Sunstrike ripped the length of the demonic burning weapon, right into the flux of its power supply.

The explosion of that fireball was hot and very intense, and could have easily taken out a tank as it blew the two marines of Squad Five apart, and Chaerus' corpse into pieces. The burner was half-eaten away by the blast, and the vivus riding the edge of it starting nom-noming deeper.

The last Legionnaire slammed into the wall of a grocery store there, wavered for a moment, and then slowly locked in place as his systems went off-line. The burns from the Torcher were minor, but the Soulsword inserted into his face where its wielder had ridden the explosion right into him was not.

Squad Eight, coming in from a parallel street, swore and activated their jump jets, aiming to get airborne and pick this woman off from above as she turned around from the last of Squad Five.

The jets on their back went off, but they were there for propulsion and speed; they couldn't actually lift a ton of bioengineered combat mutate and his massive power armor off the ground... and their anti-gravity wasn't working.

She was coming at them very quickly as they opened up with lines of gyro and tracer fire, her Shield taking the hits, and the first Legionnaire of the Eighth Squad died as multiple ballistic rockets bounced his way and blew his upper torso and head apart. The heavy gunner with the autocannon blazing in his hands clamped his helm back down, and instantly lost sight of her as she veered left. He sprayed wildly, missing her.

The Legionnaire on the left saw all those Tails and arms point his way, and didn't get his helm down before the barrage slammed into him and took his grey matter and offensive threat away with them.

The one on the right, moving to pincer her with cross-fire, crossed his arms in front of him as her Sword swept his way and released an ebon, gold-edged arc from the point, up in front of him instantly. He screamed as the Sharding bit into the psychically-buttressed durasteel, and his hands spasmed, only maglocks making certain he didn't drop his gyrifle. He brought them back down as he backpedaled, using his jets for additional speed, but she was right there keeping pace, her Sword flitting back and forth as if weightless, shooting out more of those unnatural cutting, piercing arcs.

Trooper Roolla watched as her Tails and false Arms rotated. Druzga the heavy gunner spun around, his helm flying off so he could see her, the screaming armor-piercing rounds of his auto-cannon gibbering demonically as they chewed up the scenery, all those limbs oriented directly onto him. The hugely armored heavy weapons Legionnaire turned around to see all those things pointing directly his way.

As his autocannon swept towards her, all the Tails and Arms fired at once, converging on the same screaming point. A foot away from her, the trail of devastation and hungry demonic bullets whined by as they failed to reach her. The headless Druzga's corpse settled in place as his armor balanced itself automatically, his finger staying clasped on the trigger of his autocannon.

A bar of furiously burning unholy bullets screamed and swerved slightly from their paths, trying to get to her, but mostly they just shot down the street and began to reduce some plascrete walls to spraying shards of debris. Nothing behind them was going to survive them, if anyone was stupid enough to stay there.

Trooper Roolla knew he had to shoot her if he wanted to live, just as his gyrifle whined in protest as it as was cut in two, there was a dangerous spark, and he had just enough time to look at it in alarm, hear the demons inside it wail as vivic energy shot through it, and the ammo feed detonated.

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I watched the Legionnaire's copious Compressed magazine of gyrockets go off as Bane conducted Sundering and Breaking through his weapon, the Possessed magic proved to be tasty to vivus, and it blew off all at once, tearing off both his forearms, sending some violently impelled shrapnel through his armor as alchemistry and psychic feedback had puppy-kittens, and the concussion wasn't a small thing, either.

Lots of said shrapnel pinged off my skin fifty feet away, and more of it was gently shunted aside as it approached me, streaks of unwhiteness shooting through the air and putting pockmarks into everything solid around me.

The big Legionnaire's autocannon was still shooting, two feet to my left. My ranged assets retargeted, and flashed once, blowing it apart, and the feedback of all that Compressed ammo cooking up through his feederbelt blew the hulking corpse and power armor of the brute sideways and past me in a burning arc of shrieking demons getting eaten and vivus nom-nomming away on them.

Warp sorcery usually took on the aspect of Possession of devices when it came to enchanting arms and armor, and the Legionnaires were no exception. They had quickly lost the Psychic templates that were automatically wrought into Legion suits of armor, probably to subtle corruption and influence by the Emperor, and so couldn't make new suits or perfectly repair the ones they had with pure technology.