As Mikhin had remained silent regarding Angar's plans, he turned to him with a probing gaze. "Your thoughts, Sergeant Optio?"

Mikhin locked eyes with Angar, his expression a mask of grim realism forged in countless battles. "In all candor, Sir, I wouldn't wager on your odds against these forces. I've witnessed the Centaur's fury in a live-fire drill, and it's annihilation incarnate."

Angar grunted. "Understood. I'd hear your opinion on my plan itself."

Mikhin paused, weighing his words like a general assessing an army, before replying, "I'll merely state my relief that your vision includes Kondune as a modern imperial city."

Angar nodded curtly, the sentiment resonating deep within. That part of the plan was a given. The thought of filthy Kondunean stock defiling the future warriors of this world churned his guts.

Then he berated himself for falling back into old prejudices and thoughts. He was to rule all of the planet, all its people his own, treated fairly, justly, equally. But some a little more equally than others.

"You know they'll take half your newborns once a Cloisteranage opens?" Angar asked, probing, testing the depths of Mikhin's resolve.

"I do," replied Mikhin, unflinching. "But the Cloisteranages and Genitoriums will swell the population of Kondune to numbers unimagined."

Angar grimaced, inwardly recoiling at the notion, wondering how any soul could surrender their own blood so willingly.

He surveyed the host assembling before him, his pulse quickening with the savage thrill of impending carnage, a hunger awakening in his veins, one he had to contain.

The battle would happen at a cleared area near the off-world encampment.

Word had raced through Kondune. Throngs of the city's denizens had spilled from the gates, those curious, bloodthirsty, or wanting to witness a spectacle.

They formed crowds along the crests, their eyes wide with the promise of witnessing these strange machines in action, the imperial might of their new masters.

A fleeting stab of guilt pierced Angar's chest.

The army arrayed as he'd assumed, as noble forces were trained, in a formidable battery, the sulfurous winds whipping banners of gray and brown.

At the vanguard loomed the colossal Centaur mecha, its seventy-five-meter frame bristling with weaponry and crewed by scores of soldiers, positioned to shield the Scutum Dei mobile generator directly behind it.

Flanking the Centaur and bolstering the generator's defenses were squadrons of Bellator Rex main battle tanks, their heavy cannons trained forward, interspersed with agile Malleus Impium anti-infantry walkers that prowled the lines like mechanical predators.

Behind this armored core, ranks of imperial troops formed disciplined cohorts, infantry in heavy armor advancing in tight echelons, supported by Ferrum Sanctum personnel carriers disgorging reinforcements.

In the rearguard, batteries of Ignis Mortis artillery hunkered down, their long barrels elevated to rain devastation from afar, while skirmishers and recon Vindex Sacerdos skimmers darted along the flanks to probe for weaknesses and ambush.

The Centaur mecha was a behemoth, its quadrupedal chassis supported by four thirty-meter-long piston-driven legs armored in layered plates, each limb terminating in massive, clawed stabilizers that could crush stone and tank alike underfoot.

Its heavily fortified forty-five-meter-long hull formed the squat, equine body, a sprawling, bunker-like fuselage riddled with secondary weapon emplacements, ammunition bays, and access hatches for its crew of scores.

Protruding from the hull's foresection rose a telescoping superstructure, a collapsible tower segmented into two articulated tiers, capable of extending skyward in combat configuration.

Atop the upper tier sprawled a broad, reinforced platform, serving as the 'shoulders' of this mechanical monstrosity, where twin artillery cannons, gargantuan, hydraulically articulated appendages resembling colossal arms, pivoted with lethal grace.

Crowning the assembly was the mecha's personal shield generator. It was a vast, discoid emitter array, a circular form crackling with the static of its energy fields, projecting shields that could deflect most types of ground assaults, even artillery.

When fully deployed, the tower segments elevated, the platform extended, the cannon-arms splayed, and the generator aglow, the superstructure somewhat resembled a humanoid torso fused to the bestial hull below, making its name an obvious choice.

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The flag atop the encampment's main spire dipped low, declaring the army ready, primed for slaughter.

"Board the shuttle," Angar commanded Mikhin and Yuuga. Once the pair had clambered aboard, he struck the hull twice with a resounding thud, cuing Len to take off.

The craft's departure was his signal to Fen, his readiness affirmed.

Fen had insisted Angar commence the fray from a hundred and fifty meters distant from the vanguard.

The reason for that was easy to figure, as it positioned him squarely within range of the Centaur's anti-infantry flak batteries, as well as all anti-infantry weaponry of the Bellator Rexes and the Malleus Impium walkers, ensuring a swift victory, and inglorious erasure.

The battle would erupt with every weapon locked on him, sights aligned for instant obliteration.

That was fine.

Angar assumed his mark, the ground vibrating beneath him with the distant rumble of idling engines. An airhorn's wail shattered the tension from the encampment, unleashing the storm.

At the horn's first note, he exploded forward in a blur of raw power, his digitigrade implants propelling him in predatory bounds that devoured the distance, claws rending furrows in the sulfur-crusted earth as weapon systems whirred and barrages erupted in a symphony of annihilation.

He ran canted, beams, shells, and explosions chasing his shadow. Energy lances scorching the air behind him while flak rounds detonated overhead, birthing deadly blooms of shrapnel that gave no chance to evade.

The fragments ripped through his d'klar hide and scales, peppering him, biting into his hard, armor-like skin. Some pierced deeper, drawing beads of blood, but not deep enough to matter.

One lodged right into his Visio Aeterna implant, but it didn't destroy it, and his cybernetic eye kept functioning without issue.

Angar dove, rolling out the storm and veered sharply, changing direction, undeterred. An explosions tore craters into the ground of his prior path, the blast wave nearly bowling him over.

With an unarmed Power Level of 87, Ground Current's reach spanned 133.5 meters. He had surged past that threshold near immediately, the gap still closing with ferocious inevitability.

Past the hundred-meter line, as more and more weapons' discharge began threatening him with injuries not so easily shrugged off, he invoked the Ability.

Each leg of the Centaur had an armored lip near its apex, a fortified ledge where twin anti-boarder turrets stood sentinel, manned by soldiers.

He had no thirst for needless blood this day, but as he materialized atop the lip in a corona of crackling lightning, Geomagnetic Phenomena forking through the air, the bolts lanced unerringly, incinerating both sentries in blasts of charred flesh and ionized agony, their screams lost to the thunderclap.

The access hatch atop the ledge stood sealed and bolted, a thick barrier of reinforced alloys he'd never be able to break through.

Angar phased through it like a specter of wrath, materializing within the mecha's bowels.

And to his mild astonishment, directly in the command nexus, the throbbing heart of the beast, be it dubbed bridge or whatever a mecha's equivalent was. He figured there'd be doors and walls, like in a ship. There were a few, but it was mainly open space.

There was at least a second and third floor, but no true ceilings, just poor grating.

Dozens of men and women in crisp uniforms swarmed the chamber like frenzied insects, darting between humming consoles, holographic displays flashing tactical overlays, and banks of arcane controls governing the colossus' every twitch.

As soon as Angar appeared, it was like Mammon himself returned, and the crew lost their minds.

Only the captain and his executive officer bore sidearms, holstered badges of authority.

Angar absorbed twin lances of superheated plasma against his leonine forearms, the resilient skin burning but shrugging off the pain as he charged, then lunged.

He seized the captain's weapon in one hand, and held the man himself in an unbreakable vise, one claw poised at his jugular, the body twisted as a living shield against the XO's drawn weapon.

"Discard your sidearm and hail Lord Dikaiosyne on open channels," Angar demanded.

The XO's pistol clattered to the grated deck with a hollow ring, her face now a pallid mask of terror, her body as rigid as a corpse in rigor.

The crew mirrored her paralysis, frozen in dread, every eye bulging at the intruder who had breached their impregnable fortress.

A young operator lunged for a console, his fingers nearing an alarm before a plasma burst tore through his chest, dropping him.

Angar's glare froze every other soul, his small concern for resistance evaporating. These were no true soldiers, merely noble troops.

As if to underscore the point, a warm trickle of urine cascaded down the XO's legs, pooling on the deck in a pungent testament to her broken resolve.

Should Fen cling to his pride and refuse submission, he'd have to order his troops to attack this mecha.

Unlikely, given the Centaur's staggering value, eclipsing the combined worth of all the other vehicles and machines of war, maybe including all the prefabs too.

But if obstinacy prevailed, Angar harbored no doubt he could bend this crew to his will, force these frightened men and women to turn this mecha upon Fen's forces.

Angar had felt that earlier pang of guilt because he knew this wouldn't be much of a fight.

The Konduneans interrupted their day, wasting their time trudging out here to witness a spectacle that lasted only a split second for them, and even that fleeting glimpse proved terrible entertainment, devoid of the prolonged bloodshed that would've made the trek worth it.

He looked around. This wasn't all the crew, and there had to be forty here. There were at least twenty more elsewhere in the mecha, if not thirty. He was well over his penance, his soul now safe from damnation again.

"Lord Dikaiosyne seeks audience, Sir," one of the console operators stammered in a voice quivering voice. "He requests your presence at headquarters."

Angar released the captain, setting him down with deliberate care, offering him the sidearm back.

Kondune was his now, conquered easily, not through rivers of blood, its assets now sworn to him. Or would be in moments.

Next up, the betrayers in the northern hemisphere. Not slaughtering them all would be his most difficult task.

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