[Kill Team] Left on Mission and Revenge

Zanatek awakens to light. Not the dull viridian of the complex's systems, slumbering on autonomous protocol for... a century, local time. She knows the moment she asks herself, interstitial system dumps reporting on the condition of her charge.

Violated. Opened. Danger.

Her awareness spreads throughout the complex, awakening monitors and enhancing their sensory sweeps. There is an intruder, adjacent to the tomb itself: injured, it releases organic waste into the chamber, and it is surrounded by the energetic echoes of a primitive translocation device.

There are others. More complex readings. They bleed low-yield radiation, traces of incendiary chemicals. They move slowly, as if they attempt stealth. They are at the doorway to the tomb.

How have they come this far? Where is Obsekh? Why has the Praetorian not alerted her?

The geomandrite stirs, uncoiling from her stasis coffin. Macrocytes, buzzing through the air, rally around her as she makes her way upwards, one molecular transition by another. No time for doors, or stairs, or allowing the physical substance of reality to impede her.

She arrives at the tomb level. Her will flickers out of her in sub-aetheryic waves. The crawlers stationed at the door power up.

It is time to kill. 

Critical Operation: Loot. The Phobos Strike Team must disable the power node controlling the tomb entrance (1), replace the stolen head of Pharekh Tekeshi in its tomb (2), and retrieve the wounded Inquisitrix Draxus (3), whose fault all this is.

 

The intruders have seized the initiative. The main door deactivates, quantum deflection resolving into mere openness, and a figure in shining crimson armour pounds through, taking up vantage just inside. Another and then another - this one wields - some sort of agricultural tool, which it holds like a sword, and it bounds forward to Tekeshi's tomb. One hand slams down into the broken blackstone, and the complex shudders. Alerts quiet. This is fine. Yet they must be punished, for the theft they committed in the first place.

 

Where is Obsekh? Why did he not prevent this?

 

Zanatek orders her crawlers into the room. Beetle-backed and braced to fire, they spit their electromagnetic hunger. One figure in red falls. Another drops to a knee beside him, administering - repair? Restoration? Medicine. That's the word. But the first macrocyte she commands into the chamber achieves a perfect headshot, and an armoured body tumbles.

There's a significant advantage to whichever team sets up in a room first. The Tomb Crawler is tough enough to take some punishment from bolter fire, but at the end of the day, the Marines' medic is in the room and my Reanimator is not. At least my Macrocyte drops four criticals on the comms operative and blasts him off the board.

 

Her second crawler has its own errand to pursue. With a moment's concentration, Zanatek opens a molecular pathway, and sends the construct forward, onto the teleport pad. This one will ensure the wounded intruder does not escape. This one will - 

 

The teleporter pad does not fire. The crawler stands, inert, aligned to engage an enemy it cannot perceive. 

I was slightly enamoured with the idea of teleporting a Tomb Crawler into that back room and messing up the two Marines who'd gone to rescue Draxus. Unfortunately, the teleport effect - much like scoring objectives - doesn't work in the first turn. That's a significant activation thrown away. It didn't even manage to mess up the Marines all that much: I had it charge, and flail ineffectively, injuring but not killing one of the lads before eating a whole lot of "we're Astartes we can bolter you twice because reasons."

The intruders' weapons are taking their toll: quantity, it seems, has a quality all its own. Zanatek closes on the relay chamber, a trio of macrocytes bobbing in the air around her. This, at least, she can secure, and her enhanced perceptions have identified a structural flaw in the wall. Ordinarily, this would be an insult: a suggestion that she had done her work improperly. Here and now, it is an advantage.

 

A macrocyte aligns itself with the fault line, and fires a single, precise shot. Livid energy courses through the blackstone, and the wall breaks - and Zanatek can see the interlopers' leader, entrenched behind the pharekh's tomb. 

In hindsight, I really overcommitted to this room - I could have sent one entire Macrocyte in here, had it turn over the objective, and had the rest swarm the main chamber early on. I'm not very good at corridor fighting.

Her constructs soar around her, and ahead of her, hungry rays devouring the curious metalloceramic substance of the intruders' armour and the meat beneath alike. She levels her tremorstave, and extends her will through the blackstone beneath her crawling limbs - to no avail. The sarcophagus' quantum shield has reactivated, distorting the substance of the chamber: in the instant it takes her to exert her intent, it has changed on a nanomolecular level, and the intruders fall back, unscathed. 

My Geomancer finally gets to take a shot, and whiffs spectacularly. Despite "killing" multiple Astartes, the wretched Medic intervened to save two of his brothers and keep the Sergeant alive against all odds, long enough to take out my second Tomb Crawler.

Triangulating her revenge takes time. Time enough for Zanatek to make contact with the would-be saviours of Mer'thyr'od, the Nephrak. Time enough for her to be appraised of the conflict that has broken out around her violated tomb. Time enough for her to make her pact with their overlord, whose singular desire to humble the intruders exceeds even her own.

 

Zanatek takes their colours, and in return, their astromancers aid her in her calculations. A quantum tunnel is established from Mer'thyr'od to one of the worlds they infest in number: from her new allies, she learns they call their settlement Tetten's Hall.

 

She will become the bridgehead. Her nodal matrix, once established, will allow the translocation of further assets. The Nekthyst technomancer has committed his own constructs to the cause, and when he arrives, the work of retribution can begin.

A surface level battle (honest). Plenty of light cover from all the craters, but a limited supply of heavy cover, concentrated around the objectives. Crit Op is Transmission, not Loot as the scorecard indicates. I don't know how that happened.

They scramble to meet her in haste. Crawlers proceed ahead of her: one strafing their line with cruel accuracy, and the other's dimensional beamer singling out the entity with the equipment she now recognises as medical. That one dies first. Kill that one, and the rest are easy prey.

 

The first crawler does fall - despite the efforts of her reanimator construct, they simply shoot too much, too fast. For a brief instant, they resist effectively. Then Zanatek's senses align fully to this world, and she strikes the ground with her tremorstave. Their leader staggers, stumbles, sinks into ground that has cracked to receive him, into dust made sharper than razors. 

It turns out that, when you concentrate your efforts on a well-placed obelisk node matrix instead of fighting in two other places and never really establishing a firebase, the Canoptek Circle is very strong. Half of Garbutt's Ass-tarts were dead by the end of the first turn, and he wasn't wildly optimistic about the chances of the others.

Only three remain. They fall back almost at once, lines of fire criss-crossing as her macrocytes advance. Zanatek fires her interstitial arrays to their fullest extent and transmits back along the tunnel: 

Location secure. Begin translocation.