As I lash out with my hammer, I send Aife another telepathic message, “I remain functional, Lieutenant, and can hold my own. I will remain out here in the centre and attract all the attention I can. Be quick with the counter assault, the main enemy is yet to show itself and they’re already causing trouble.”

  I detect that Aife wishes to reply and deepen our connection.

  “Magos, you are cut off. We have been beset by tunnelers and they are occupying our reinforcements. I urge you to retreat.”

  One of my mechadendrites deploys a MOA shield, guarding my back. The other three combat mechadendrites slice anything else that comes at me from behind with plasma cutters, adamantium needles, and a hellfire pistol.

  “If I do that the retreating Heralds will be swarmed and we will lose our breach. I will likely be the only survivor.”

  A handful of scenarios flash through Aife’s mind then I pick up a wave of admiration and determination.

  “Acknowledged Magos, hold fast.”

  I reach out to Alpia, “Sweetpea, how do you and your brothers fare?”

  “Dad! I’m so glad you’re ok! Dominita is protecting us, but I’m spent. I can still shoot my gun though. The service corridors are full of reinforcements, so I can’t make it to the shuttle. Domhnall is sending automata. All four of us are together. We’re using our mag boots to crouch on the ceiling and Dominita has stretched herself up like a bulwark so we can use her as cover. She’s lost her neutrino vox relay though. That Warp Lance was a direct hit! There’s a bunch of Raveners here, but they’re not doing well against our weapons. It’s easy for us to win when we have more appendages than they do!”

  “Good. Don’t stop those prayers and protect each other well.”

  “Love you, Dad!”

  “I love you too, Alpia.” I cut the connection.

  My many minds help me glide between the Tyranids with ease, slaying a handful of xenos every second. The spores and gases slowly spread out into the cleared area and thin out. I finally get a good look at the major Tyranid forces.

  Towards the bow of the vessel, at the edge of the room, is an unusually large Zoanthrope. Like the Venomthrope, it hovers in the air, kept aloft by its psychic might. The xenos is almost all head, with a long, triangular skull, layered in thick chitin. Behind the extended, shield-like forehead is a massive brain, floating in a clear sack that radiates huge amounts of heat. A rainbow-like shimmer of Warp energy surrounds the Zoanthrope, keeping the gases and toxins away from its vestigial body and crooked limbs.

  In the centre of the room, perched atop one of the massive fusion generators is a Tervigon, a towering tyranid with six, spear-like limbs and multiple vents along its armoured back. A huge sack hangs beneath its body, pulsing and wriggling with growing Gaunts that are squeezed out every few seconds alongside a torrent of fluids.

  Both elite xenos are synapse creatures. Slaying them will temporarily cut the Tyranid swarm from its galaxy wide Hive Mind, turning them feral and uncoordinated. There might be other major synapse creatures on Dying Light, but even if they are, killing these two should create enough of a disruption for us to recover our advantage.

  I try shooting the Zoanthrope with my bolt pistol, but the creature is guarded by Warriors that block my shots. They die, but it’s a total waste of my witch bolts.

  The air is too corrosive for me to use my nanites, so I draw heavily on the Warp and spread it around me in a grasping mist that disrupts every Tyranids within five metres of me. They trip over each other, miss their shots, and whiff their blows. My spell, Psycho-Kinetic Mist, interrupts the flow of xenos towards the Heralds just enough for them to secure their retreat, killing dozens of Gaunts and a couple of Warriors as they run.

  Having guns you don’t need to reload is really handy!

  The Zoanthrope is quick to respond and starts to shake. A small purple dot manifests in front of its head. If it hits me I might be disabled, so as much as I would like to continue to disrupt the Tyranids, I cannot.

  I trigger my displacer field and teleport behind the Zoanthrope and smash its brainsack with my hammer. The hammer’s crackling powerfield skips off the xenos’ protective field. Annoyed, and quite scared, I trigger a command.

  ++Implant output set to one hundred percent,++ intones E-SIM.

  I’d love to be all dramatic and say that the world slows to a crawl then I perform some super awesome combo, but that doesn’t happen. My perception of time does not change. Time is always slow to me.

  Instead, I just move faster and repeatedly slam the barrier with my power hammer while my volkite incinerator and the hellpistol mounted on my shoulder blasts away. Honestly, I feel more like a techno-barbarian than a highly accomplished Tech-Priest, but there is very little that is elegant about smacking xenos with a hammer. It does work though. In less than a second, the barrier fails, brains explode absolutely everywhere, and the Zoanthrope drops like a rock.

  The Zoanthrope’s control over its power fails and the purple dot detonates. Rather than cause even more carnage, the energy ripples outwards and crashes against my mental protections bombarding me with a series of images.

  A vast room, stuffed with stacks of cogitators all covered in sorcerous symbols that surround a pit, lined with fleshy nodules. Mutated Humans, covered in sorcerous symbols and ill-fitting rags toss Tyranid bodies into the pit.

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  An altar floats above the pit, crackling with flame and lightning. Upon the altar is a half metre statue. The symbols on the altar belong to Tzeentch, but the idol has a distinct pull to it, one I recognise from E-SIMs tracking of the entity.

  I really didn’t expect to see Balphmael of the Horned Darkness, Bad Penny, again. I’m not sure what a part of Bad Penny is doing bound to an idol on an altar to Tzeentch, but I doubt it’s a cooperative agreement.

  Recovering from the vision, I repeat the same trick with the Tervigon and teleport in front of it, pulp its skull, then use my final short range teleport to return to my position, ten metres in front of the corpse wall.

  That was not as difficult as I thought it would be. Using my new body in a simulation, or training against others clearly has not worked to help me internalise just how different I am now.

  The Tyranids all freeze for a moment, then many of them drop, the psychic power holding them together fading with the death of the two synapse creatures. I’m not sure which of them was supporting the frenzied, injured bio-forms, but that doesn’t matter as I killed them both.

  With a brief pause in the action, I finally have enough space to use my heavy arc rifle and shoot many xenos at range like a sensible person. Meanwhile, my mechadendrites reload my bolt pistol for me.

  ++Returning implants to power saving mode. Performance capped at twenty-five percent,++ says E-SIM.

  “What do you think that vision was about?”

  ++Unknown. I can tell you that, unless he is being hidden by one of the big four, that’s almost certainly the last piece of Bad Penny.++

  “Good. I thought we had already got him all at Kinbriar, but then, I never bothered to confirm it either.”

  ++You had more pressing concerns and the turmoil in the Warp after being sent back in time meant any possible confirmation of Bad Penny’s termination was, at best, dubious. Even now, I would need you to touch that statue to be absolutely sure. An uncontrolled vision is inadequate.++

  “Fair enough.”

  Automata pour from the corridor, unleashing a furious barrage of destructive red light.

  The first Automata to step into the genatorium look exactly like Heralds. Underneath the armour though are Servitors configured for combat, rather than labour. Their organic brain has been replaced with a distributed combination of organic circuitry and cogitators based off of a Kastallan, who are about as smart as a dog.

  Underneath their void armour, their Void Skin has been swapped to warded armour plates and their bodies are more mechanical, using pistons, wires, and servos to move, rather than woven electro-muscles.

  Unlike Kastallans, these Automata don’t have the program cartridges that hold specific behaviours and mission parameters. These cartridges need to be updated manually every time you want to change orders from assault target A to defend position B, to move to location C. While this method does inhibit Kastallans from being subverted, it’s not an efficient solution.

  Instead, these hybrid Automata can choose how to complete a mission, then automatically return to base or handler once their objective is complete, without having to be reprogrammed to do so. They will also return if they can’t work out how to complete their objectives with the parameters they’ve been issued. They won’t just shut down or blindly chase objectives that no longer exist like Kastallans sometimes do.

  Kataphrons are smarter, but I don’t like how my production of them is tied to the availability of violent criminals.

  The Automata can accept new orders verbally from a Human in the field, so long as the Human has the correct security codes, but the Automata can’t accept updates over vox or the noosphere and must be locked in their storage cradles to receive mass orders, or any other changes or their programing. The Automata have to be unlocked from storage manually too. There is no central control for the mass release of murderbots. They can’t even move while locked in place.

  Once they are unlocked, the Automata aren’t networked beyond their own squads and can only send data about what they are doing, and where they are, to a central node, rather than receive further orders remotely.

  As for why the Automata look like my Human troops, rather than me using Kataphrons or Kastallans, there are three reasons. First is logistics, second is deception, and third is ergonomics.

  All our armour and weapons are the same size and it saves a huge amount of space in manufacturing when we don’t need multiple dies and moulds to outfit everyone. Sharing many parts with labour Servitors and cybernetic augments also helps with manufacture and maintenance. No specially trained personnel or bespoke machines are required beyond the adepts and Servitors who already build our mechanical workforce.

  Servitors make excellent decoys, especially these combat variants, and it gives the Stellar Corps the option of placing Heralds and Servitors into mixed squads, drastically reducing casualties. Our simulated war games imply we can expect a forty percent decrease in Herald casualties with mixed squads.

  Ideally, we would have each Herald control four Servitors, rather than keeping Automata separated in dedicated squads like we do at the moment. That would mean each squad only has three Humans, rather than fifteen. It’s going to take many real life battles before we can properly implement the changes though.

  Simulations just can’t predict the instincts and values of xenos and Machine-Spirits handle unpredictable scenarios poorly. If and when they fuck up, I’d much rather they only get destroyed, rather than put Heralds at risk.

  Right now, the restrictions on the Automata make them too inflexible in the missions that they can complete and we are unsure if that is ever going to change. On the other hand, the objectives they can complete using their dedicated squads take almost no Human casualties at all.

  One would think it would be zero, but there’s always something. Like commanding officers getting pulled out of position by fleshy tendrils, or backstabbed by Eldar. You know, if someone felt like pointing mechadendrites at a statistical anomaly.

  I clear my throat.

  Last, The built environment of void ships is much more friendly towards humanoid robots of moderate size. I want murderbots that will always fit in the space of the enemies they are chasing, not get stymied by a narrow door like a bad horror movie.

  The Automata reinforcing me fire at the Tyranids with uncanny precision. Every Gaunt is shot through the head without a single miss. Each Warrior is gunned down by coordinated fire from two Automata going for the head and heart. Volkite incinerators wash over the bodies, turning everything to ash, cleansing every spore and purging the toxins in the air as the Automata advance into the room.

  Heralds are typically just as accurate, but their coordination is far less mechanical.

  Tyranids leap from the wall and ceiling, only to be hit with micro-missiles, fired from the underslung launchers on the lascarbines.

  The blasts scatter flesh that rain upon the heads of the Automata. They dodge most of the heavier pieces, but a few Automata are knocked over, creating gaps in the line that the Tyranids fail to exploit, their local coordination to the Hive Mind still tenuous from the loss of their synapse creatures.

  Warhammer 40k Lexicanum, , and . I've also enjoyed opinion pieces such as: , The via Gamespot, and . While not strictly 40k, they are good for inspiration and IRL explanations.