The Cyber Mastiff growls and shifts its body, ready to dash off.

Gently scratching its head, I say, “Go back down the corridor and put the bomb in the improvised rec room, then protect our rear. I don’t want to get flanked or lose our mission objective so late in the game. If all our signals go down, set the bomb, then make for the hangar and beam a report back to Torchbearer.”

The mastiff barks, its electronic voice underlaid with static and beeps. It nuzzles my hand then stalks off.

Clovis hesitates at the entrance, “It’s safe, isn’t it Lord?”

“It should be, that’s no excuse to be careless though. You have your orders. Get on with it.”

Clovis’ hands shake as I stride past him. I forge through the ruined room, pushing aside fallen Servitors with my feet, and sit on the Throne Mechanicum. Brian flies around me as I lean my pipe against the throne, then he shoots off, resuming his scan of all the cogitator racks, cataloguing their condition.

Clovis directs the Penitents through the room in pairs. Sharp cracks of heated air echo between the stacks as the Penitents methodically shoot every Servitor in the head. They’ll be at it for a while, so I set them out of my mind and connect to the Throne.

The first thing I do is set myself up as the Omnissianic Congregator, the senior administrator for The Barber’s Blades primary Machine-Spirit. To my surprise, my authority is actively contested by something in the systems. It’s not scrap code or a hostile Machine-Spirit. I’ve never seen anything like it before. The only certainty I have is that it is xenos in origin.

I bear my will upon the hostile code, strangling its resistance and cutting off its escape. Right before I can delete it, the code disappears. Dozens, then hundreds of energy signatures appear on my auspex. The room fills with screams, shouts, and thuds, then all of the Penitents' undersuits stop transmitting. With nothing left to oppose me, I gain full control of the local systems and enable remote access.

Reaching around the back of my head, I rip out the dataspike and jump to my feet. Crackling balls of energy and crystals slip from between the stacks, hovering in the air like a swarm of Chinese lanterns. The xenos are as spherical and most are as wide as an average man is tall. There are thirty-three specimens who are twice as large whom the smaller ones congregate around.

I grab my pipe and frown as the xenos slowly close in on me. I’m not afraid, precisely, but these aren’t good odds, even for me. My powers are dangerous to me, more than usual anyway. My body is running at 25% of its maximum output and some underlying damage still persists. Standing around worrying will not bring me victory, however.

Dashing to the left at the lowest concentration of wisp like creatures, I trigger the powerfield in my hands, letting the shimmering energy field spread over the pipe and swing at the xenos.

My first strike is met with an unnatural resistance, the xeno’s network of crystals and energy pushing back against my powerfield and physical strength. I persist and with each rapid strike the crystals within its mass shatter with a hideous chime, as if broken glass could wail. Once enough of the xeno has been carved from the sphere, I detect a much larger crystal and strike it. The wisp turns to dust and another immediately fills its place.

Using my remote access, I call for reinforcements; I am hit by a wall of errors that flashes through my mind in a confusing blaze of red text. A rare fleck of green and a small swathe of yellow is quick to follow. Clunking mag-boots and grinding doors filter through the wail of dying wisps as I plough through them like an Ork in an Imperial chapel.

The xenos are quick to strike back, their bodies crackling with a distinctive zzt-tk-tk-tk noise as whips of warp lightning strike at me, rebounding off my conversion field. Most are glancing blows as I desperately weave between their whirling attacks.

The xenos are well coordinated, almost hive-like, or prescient with their strikes and a minute into the combat, two heavy strikes smash me in the chest. The whips have little weight or force behind them and are almost magnetic in their effect, trying to latch on and pull me towards them. I am too heavy and strong for the whips to inconvenience me. The severe drain on my conversion field is more concerning.

Controlled bolter fire streams into the room as the revived Space Marine Servitors pick off the wisps with the booming detonation of implosion rounds. The wisps fare particularly poorly against the bolters, their concussive effect rippling through their bodies and obliterating their vital crystals even on a near miss.

The Xenos’ numbers are overwhelming and my conversion field fails. The whips fall upon me like rain and are repelled by my wards. My mechadendrites flash out intercepting blows with plasma cutting tools and adamantium needles but slowly, my wards are worn away too. As my void skin is stripped from my body, slivered armour shimmers, reflecting every bright whip and flashing mechadendrite. While I take many strikes, I manage to keep the enemy from hitting any joints; my body is quickly covered in dents and scratches.

Three minutes into the fight the bolter fire peters out. My conversion field has circled twice. Approximately a third of the enemy remains and I am finally able to traverse the room somewhat. The Xenos continue to swarm me, however.

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A whip from one of the larger xenos lashes at my face. I have nowhere left to dodge, so I intercept the whip with my left arm. My outer wards fail with a shower of sparks. Rather than grab or shock me, the whip sinks into my true flesh, filling it with ravenous tendrils of power that strip it of Machine-Spirits, consuming all data within.

The limb goes dead and I snarl, bringing my pipe down on the tendril and severing it. I focus on defence for a few moments as I replenish the missing Machine-Spirits, then renew my offensive as I push towards the exit.

Crystal snow swirls around my feet as I dash, dodge, and leap between whips and wisps, my fist and pipe shearing crystals in an improbable display of violent gymnastics. I’d much rather set my feet and fight as I feel terribly silly as I scramble around like an Aeldari.

Halfway to the exit I take a strike on my back. The whip burrows into my body and wraps around my armoured braincase only to recoil as the additional wards I have around my noggin flare with a bright, blue-white glow, draining the energy whip of Warp energy and forcing it to unravel. It does, however, slow me enough that another strike manages to grab one leg, then the other.

My limbs go dead and I am brought before one of the larger spheres. More tendrils sink into my body and try to overwhelm my defences.

Brian, either enraged at the loss of so much data, or deciding this counts as a Hail Mary moment, fires his micro-missile at the line of wisps between me and the exit. While his logic is questionable, his aim is not.

The missile detonates, cracking the veil and birthing a hungry black sphere that consumes everything within it. I fall to the ground as the tendrils holding me up collapse.

My eyes widen in horror as the vortex of Warp energy swirls half a metre from my face. Before it can expand, shrink, move, or multiply I pour Warp energy into my third-eye and yell at reality until it realises I’m not in front of the sphere of ending, but rather at the far end of the corridor. The Cyber Mastiff is a convenient beacon.

Power rushes through my soul and something inside me breaks. I black out for a brief moment.

When I come to, my mechadendrites have turned into feathered serpents and are attacking the Cyber Mastiff. They’re somewhat trapped beneath my fat arse and the mastiff makes quick work of them, ripping into them with its powerclaws and biting their heads off.

As I restore my body’s systems from backup again, I observe the vortex through Brian, who has swooped up to the ceiling, cackling like a demented halloween decoration.

Vortex grenades are usually the size of a large fist. I managed to pack one into a self propelled device the size of a heavy bolter shell. That required me to sacrifice some control components and it shows as the tank sized vortex sweeps around the room and multiplies, not once, but three times until there are twelve spheres ravaging the room.

The wisps are consumed by the Warp without resistance. Four manage to flee the room and the Cyber Mastiff guns them down.

Thunderous crashes reverberate through the vessel as the cogitator racks tumble into the room below. Plasma conduits spray super heated elements into the room alongside tonnes of coolant. Steam billows down the corridor towards us and the Mastiff leaps on top of me, sheltering me from the worst of it.

Its frame heats up and its fur burns away, but the mastiff does not falter as it growls at the mist. A spare power pack on its body detonates and the mastiff yelps and whines as it is tossed through the air, then crashes into the ground and lies still.

The mix of ammunition and plasma in the cogitator room also triggers several explosions and a fire breaks out, destroying many of the wisps who avoided the vortexes. A shrill alarm wails through the ship and the fire suppression systems kick in, dousing the room in foam. Most of it disappears inside the vortexes.

Plasma cuts off as safety valves seal up, followed by the open door and the environmental sustainer. The air is quickly consumed and the fires are snuffed out and the alarm cuts off.

Finally the vortexes start disappearing and in less than ten seconds, they’re all gone. Some two score of crystal wisps have survived the carnage and Brian is quick to highlight them in his auspex with a hateful hiss of Lingua-Technis.

My systems finish reinstalling and I stand. Reaching around to the base of my spine, I rip the Warp flesh from my body with a yell. It shouldn’t hurt, but it does. Sacred blood dribbles from my back, staining the remaining rags of my clothes with grey, metallic fluid.

The Cyber Mastiff wakes up and it trots over, then rears up and licks my face. It barks, growls and yips.

“Yes, I am fine. Thank you for saving me. Is your bio-pod still intact?”

The mastiff barks an affirmative.

“We’re going to finish off the enemy and rescue that stupid skull.”

The mastiff barks again and bounds ahead of me. It sniffs the dead marines and I pick up one of their bolters, then search them for more ammo and end up with nine rounds total and a single krak grenade.

Even as Servitors they went down swinging.

Next I check the room they came from and recover two large boxes of ammo, netting me another two hundred and forty rounds. I reload all of the magazines and stick them to my metal body as if it were power armour.

Using my administrator privileges, I override the door and immediately start firing, coordinating with Brian’s data to mechanically shoot two rounds at each wisp in the now open space. Crystal wails pound at my damaged psyche as each wretched xenos implodes with a cacophonous bang. I can’t hit the last six from where I am as they are hidden behind the wreckage on the floor below.

I take a running leap onto the most sturdy looking pile of debris sticking out of the next deck down. My right hand punches through a decking panel and I grip the beam beneath. With my other hand I fire the bolter, taking extra time between each shot as the ridiculous weapon nearly rips itself from my grip.

The last wisp shatters and Brian comes swooping back down from a vent.

++Victory!++

Ah, yes. Everyone is dead. That definitely counts as an Imperial victory.

What a destructive little berk.