ALL NOVEL Far Future Ch. 349 – Bringing in the Law
How could I not invite Axiom in to this wonderful battle for the fate of the mortal world? I had such a good track record behind me of making use of them; why mess with a winning formula?
The tech around me began to writhe and grow new body parts, which didn’t exactly reassure the undead technicians. Axiomatics brought in to oppose their ideological opposites found a perversion of the Laws of Nature of this realm all about them, and went right to work.
I was moving pretty quickly as the tech around and behind me started to come alive, and some pretty powerful Axiomatics began to manifest. As they did, they naturally messed up all the important stuff going on around here, and generators began to shut down and go offline as their monitoring equipment, power relays, fuel cables, and field containment equipment all got up and walked away. Emergency venting sent a lot of very hot and radioactive plasma shunting out this way and that... not as bad as an explosion, but things were still pretty bad.
Mah Fuzzy dutifully informed me that the shields over the central gates to the Imperial Throne were down, and artillery fire was now crashing directly against the material of the doors.
The Warped forces were very excited when they saw the plumes of fire lighting off, wondering who was responsible, and even more excited when the incoming cannon fire was actually exploding against the walls and gates.
Alas for them, the locking mechanisms were technology, too, and that wave of Axiom swept out and over them, and suddenly them doors weren’t locking any more. The lifting mechanisms of the great bars tore free from within, the sides, and underneath them, pulling up massive cables and pulley systems, power conduits and high-torque engines as they did so. Whole sections of the golden gates detached and fell over them to form sculpted metal armor, while wall cannons slid out into chests and arms.
Looking more robotic than robots, and certainly more so than Demon Engines and Necromechs, the Axiomatic Constructs lifted their gun arms as purloined power cores lit to life, and with a crystalline shriek of very hard and sharp energy, joined the fight.
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I watched one of the great turbocannons still pounding out shots at the bombarding Warp ships suddenly shimmer. The necroborgs maintaining it all hesitated, their Booles going crazy with suppositions.
Then cables writhed and disconnected, turned into tentacles. Conduits hardened, turned into edged weapons, and drove down like great impaling spikes, even as massive amounts of voltage went flying in all directions.
I watched the circuit boards and control panels begin to rearrange themselves, and the great barrel of the gun start to move a bit quicker as the animating spirit took over the controls. It was definitely more accurate than the necroborgs had been, and shooting faster as it began popping off at the very distant Warp ships.
The necroborgs probably didn’t appreciate it, as emplacement after bank of guns rippled, destroyed their controllers, and took over the shooting. That was nice, right up until some of them warped their mounts, turned around, and started shooting into distant locations of the Palace, under its shields, with murderous accuracy.
I discretely removed myself from the area of this happening, definitely amused at all of this. The Emperor had likely arranged to ward off ‘natural’ Axiomatic manifestations, but ol’ Sama, she wasn’t going to let Him have His way of things...
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The way was open before Briggs, it was just across a landscape of war-machines blowing the shit out of one another in catastrophic explosions of power cores making energy mushrooms, fusion beams evaporating matter, and kilotons of steel and harder things beating on one another, all with a din in the 150+ decibel range.
Any normal human would have ruptured eardrums by now, and be unconscious from sonic shock, their blood curdling in their veins as they died. Our Vajras gave us a splendid amount of Thunder resistance, so Briggs completely ignored the cacophony as he hefted his Hammer and started down towards the conflict, and the great gaping open doors beyond.
Even the Princes were rather shocked when he started on his way, but the bunch of deranged combat enthusiasts who’d followed him so far just bellowed enthusiastically and hurried after him.
All of them were Power-armored, Possessed, Warp-blessed, and a good number had laid hands on their own tanks, walkers, small mecha, or demonic engines of one kind or another. There was no mistaking the thrust of their advance as they drove towards those massive open gates, which artillery bombardments were singing through and reducing anything beyond to wrack and ruin with great enthusiasm.
All three powers on the battlefield were shooting one another with great joy, but Briggs was leading the push to the doors. Beat was pounding like a drum, or a heartbeat, somehow audible above all the din, as back-rockets and anti-grav sent Briggs leaping and jumping across the battlefield, avoiding the stray cannon-shot etching long furrows in the stony ground, largely ignoring stray energy blasts, and the combination of his DR and the best armor in the galaxy pretty much handling the rest of the stuff.
Healing Edge, thoughtfully stylized in black and pink to look rather Warped, was restoring all the Health his Fast Healing couldn’t keep up with, and he was avoiding or tanking the rest as he mashed and worked his way towards those gates. Beat crushed cannon barrels, stove in lifter fans, cracked and shattered legs and cables, split access hatches, blew engine cores, and sent multi-ton vehicles and pseudo-mechanical things flying as it crashed this way and that, faster than most eyes could follow.
The thundering of its blows was like a call-sign to the hooting Warped following him, and even the Demon Princes ended up mounting up and following the brazen thrust he was making for the doors.
The Axiomatic were coming out of those doors and engaging all comers, but the big ones were what the Engines were for. Briggs crashed into the lesser forces and sent mangled Axiomatics in all directions as he did so, Beat suddenly blazing with a shattering rainbow and crystalline aura as it did so.
“Lawbreaker!” zipped around on the Warped coms when they saw the combined Anarchic and Bane to Axiom auras on Beat, and his status as a Champion of the Warp was truly cemented, as what mortal would possibly bother with such a Weapon, only useful against manifesting Axiomatics who dared to challenge the powers of the Warp?
Even the demons who saw this were greatly impressed. I could have told them that Briggs’ Anarchic slot in Arsenal had come from fighting fanatic Imperial forces, and his Lawbane was just from being in the middle of an Axiomatic Event or two, but why delude them? With Shattering and Breaking making it horribly dangerous against Constructs, even without a Bane, Beat just looked like this terrible Weapon of Chaos come to rend and rip through any forces of Law in the way.
“Kill the Weak!” his Voice thundered out, somehow getting through the tumult and the din, basically mostly ignoring the stronger Axiomatics who would be replaced by inner promotion, and mowing a crashing, grinding path through the weaker models. He tossed the bigger ones around to be locked down by others as he rampaged through the weak, undercutting the foundations of the Axiomatic line troops.
Demons raged past him, intent on keeping the attention of the more powerful Axiomatics as he did his work, intercepting the higher Hedronics before they could actually get to him.
The casualties among the weaker Axiomatics mounted very quickly as his lead was followed, and the endless promotions of the stronger Axiomatics rapidly depleted them as stray cannon and artillery fire did their things. Soon the Tris and Quads were gone, and he was butchering the Quints, Hexas were trying to get to him, and his advance wasn’t slowing as he made it to the Gates in front of a shooting horde of half-intact but very jubilant Warped, and pressed into the city over the craters and ruins within.
The artillery fire was redirected to other areas, probably because the various Princes in their own war-chariots of various kinds weren’t too far behind him.
Briggs kept up with his casual destruction of mecha, technology, and basically one-shotting Axiomatics who came into his range, the thooming impacts of his Hammer rivaling the cannon shots outside.
Shooters came from all sides, but demons and Warped were now streaming into the place, joining the Axiom vs Undead debate inside with their own special brand of logic. Briggs and Beat lead the way, shunting off the primary path to a side hallway that wasn’t nearly so pre-sighted by the artillery, and began to rage through the waves of necroborgs and Axiomatics who got in his way.
He smashed his way through walls instead of barricades, rooms just temporary obstructions, and hasty barricades things to be taken from behind, not in front. Great Stillflight fields were soon put up to limit aerial options, but Briggs and King Gravity were old friends... and he could perform a thirty-foot standing high jump in full armor without much effort. Seeing a guy that big doing wall-hop ascents as casually as a parkour master without rocket assists impressed even the best of the Warped behind!
It did become harder and harder for them to keep up with him, but he never ran out of stuff to shoot, and soon the elites of the Demon Princes were taking over the advance from the exhausted enthusiasts who couldn’t quite keep up with him.
Raging with their own desires, and not really liking the fact some random Champion was getting ahead of them without their assistance, the Demon Princes also tore through the halls of power, each to their own advance path and style, but still keeping in touch and coordinating.
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“Undead Legions.”
It was the first time Briggs had bothered to use the Warped Coms, although he’d hacked them long ago, and was feeding the tactical data around. The Undead's, too, who might have been surprised he could interpret Necrus so smoothly.
I’d long scouted out his path for him, so he knew who was what where, so when he went back to Undead Bane and slammed into the burning black-and-green suits of Legion Power armor and their animated innards, combined with Bane of Legends for that extra oomph, he was hitting murderously hard.
They were all Lawful fanatics of the Emperor, fused to their Power Armor, with a legendary undead bloodline empowered right Over There, and Shattering and Breaking were all working fine against them. Beat went to Crystal and Fire style, and Briggs started Sun-shotting them as Beat caromed around like a demented wrecking ball.
It didn’t matter that their armor weighed as much as a small car, as they went flying with every impact. Briggs’ damage bonus from Everything is a Nail was a solid +80, and there was no armor in existence that could take that impact, especially with Banes up against Constructs and materials to blow right through such things. His bonus damage dice were +10d6 just to get started, Beat itself was at least 15-80, and Supreme Power Attack and a Might exceeding 70 were all on top of being the greatest Master of the Hammer in the galaxy at this point.
He hit them, and they and their durasteel and ceramite armor folded, Banefire blowing through them and wiping them as their armor gave way. Trying to pin him down was fruitless when he could manhandle them like children.
That didn’t mean they were stupid fighting him, it was just he was too fast to deal with. Trying to stand back and shoot just meant he blew through them at 200 mph in an Avalanche Run, and sent armored corpses exploding in every direction like they were chaff. Trying to swarm him resulted in eruptions of burning power armor in all directions, like a bomb going off, from a Holocaust of Blows.
Some Sarcophagi Golems tried to gather on him, and he smashed off their limbs, then breached their armor to set their operators to peace with rather unseemly speed. Animated Champions, Legion Commanders, and ancient heroes whose corpses had been violated moved to take him on, almost ritually as they did so, constantly trying to lure him into situations where massed fire could do the job, and finding the job taxing at best.
It was like he knew where every ambush and firepoint was, and his erratic progress was at once impossible to predict and mercilessly clear. He happily blew through floors, walls, and ceilings, having no inhibitions save progress and more killing, and made a mockery of their combat lines as they tried to contain him, and failed repeatedly...