I held down the Marine from getting up, reached up to his forehead with Grym, and the healing light stayed in place, shimmering into his third eye and playing down inside his armor, out of sight. However, rippling bands of black and yellow swirled up on my chest, torso, and snaked down my legs. The Marines watching widened their eyes, including the one I was treating.

“I’m going to have to go over all of you,” I sighed, turning my head and spitting out something black and vile, that popped and burst into misting unwhite flame when it hit the ground in protest. “Line it up, all of you.”

“We don’t have a lot of time, Sama,” Briggs noted from up top.

“Yeah, and if a Warp Shift passes directly over these guys, they’re going to explode in pus and mushrooms,” I replied lazily, sending the Marine before me away and waving in the next. Under my skin, white and gold fires burned and chased the veins of infection away quickly. “Don’t worry, lads, I’ll get you out of here.”

Their faces were interesting to see at the idea that a woman two heads shorter than they were was going to be protecting the big bad eight-foot superhuman hulks in power armor.

They all had some form of infection, including the Captain, fully able to sense it when the healing psi coursed through them, and they could see it when it suddenly rippled into place across me. The guy with a facial wound could actually see bone and teeth there, and I snapped a pic with my Band to share with everyone for whenever Halloween was here, and even set the Marines aback as it was transferred over to me and burned away. Notably, my Brand stayed perfectly visible even as the whole side of my skull became a rotting mess.

“Sama,” Briggs called down, but it was really for their benefit. “There was a Warp Shift two miles out. I’m seeing... what looks like a horde of spideroids...”

I rolled my eyes. “And of course they are heading this way.”

“Of course!” he replied with flat humor.

I eyed the dozen remaining Marines with a sigh. “ETA?”

He blipped the feed down to everyone.

“Five minutes,” Captain Donnal judged instantly.

“Briggs, get us a course out of here, preferably one that takes us out of the path of the Horde. One more Marine...” I turned my head, squinted at them, and pointed, “You. If we get one-minute rests, I can do more of you after him. Captain, get them ready.”

With his walking wounded taken care of, that didn’t take much time at all. What supplies they had or had scavenged were allocated as the guy with the most hidden wounds watched as black veins snaked across my skin, and if he swallowed in relief, I didn’t say or notice nuthin’.

------------

Briggs and I didn’t really want to withdraw, as we obviously still had a long ways forwards to go, but rescuing people was great for the Karma, too. I finished up, and there was a snap as my Tails flowed back out of my back, burning with Banefire, and the Spikes popped into place on them, looking quite serpentine as they looked in all directions for targets.

Briggs hopped down from above with the crunch of a lot of weight hitting the ground, and took point without asking. The withdrawal route was up for everyone, the rough terrain around it was ghostly, showing how much it could change, and everyone followed him as he set off, while I stood in the middle of the formation.

The Captain paced me, watching me skate easily along the ground as they trotted along, keeping the pace of their longer legs without effort. He’d seen me moving, so he knew I could go a lot faster. “Why are you keeping a position in the middle of us?” he asked. His helm was back on, so I couldn’t see him frown. “With your speed, I would expect you to be further ahead, scouting.”

“Primary purpose is the safe extraction of your team, Captain. If our purpose was search and destroy, or a deep penetration, naturally I would be the tip of the spear. By putting myself into the middle of your team, my Null is available in the event we run across Wilders, Warp Sorcerers, or Demons, and I will be able to rapidly move to interdict any such attacks on your people.”

“A Null? Some sort of anti-psion field, Colonel?” he asked for clarification.

“Yes. The Commander has a variant called a Source Field. Just let it be known that if psionic or magical attacks income, either get within twenty feet of us, or use us as a blast shadow. It will have no effect on your tech. Also, don’t try to engage any anti-grav around us, it’s not going to work. We’re toting full Interdiction auras with Stillflight Fields, so the five of you with jump-jets aren’t going to be able to do much more than jump more efficiently, or break a fall.”

“Noted.” Tactical adjustments rippled out through the march line, with a subtle reconfiguration.

The Marines had 360-degree area coverage with their armor sensors, but the soup of the atmosphere restricted the range, and sending out radar or similar energies was like waving an Eat Me sign to more than a few of the natives. I dropped the visuals from my Tails into the tactical feed shared with my Band, especially the sky cover, and the clarity and range meant they were sharing and using them almost instantly, overlaying them on their own armor’s readouts for the appropriate areas.

Ahead of us, Briggs started drawing fire, and replied with the same. He blew apart a few incoming grenades, mowed down some incalcitrants, and jumped down into a trench ahead of us. Everyone was watching his feed, and our courses didn’t change.

The Marines’ job was to move fast and quiet, and not draw attention to themselves. Briggs was a fine distraction, fully able to weather what was being thrown his way, and dish it right back. I could read how impressed they were by his firepower, and the way he swatted a demon out of the way using a wrecked armored carrier, buried the thing underneath it, and then blew both apart with a sustained barrage, while sending a couple of Hammer-Shards through its underlings along scything paths, and kicking some demonlings to pulp.

Yeah, he was quite the big distraction, and he was idly weathering shit that gave even the Imperial Legionnaires pause.

Still, the plan was to move from cover to cover, while behind us the battlefield erupted in all sorts of firepower as a horde of thousands of scuttling spideroids came moving in to feast. I made faces at all the lost nexals, but as I doubted the Marines could survive getting swarmed like that, we kept moving at a tangent to their advance, letting demons and Warped have a fine and explosive time behind us. The spideroids’ limbs might be Impact weapons, but they weren’t Holy or Axiomatic, and so the demons’ Damage Reduction was going to be in full force, which would probably annoy the lot of them. They probably didn’t have the energy resistance to survive any demons blowing up in their faces, or infecting them with supernaturally potent diseases...

I did watch a flight of bombers sweep past, and a cloud of bomblets get dispersed over the horde. Hundreds of acres of spideroids were swallowed by raging firestorms, let that be a lesson to bioforms without air cover...

----------

Compared to coming in, the extraction was a lot less eventful. We weren’t shooting everything we could, and a lot of chaff had been cleared out, while elements of the battlefields had shifted and not returned new inhabitants quite everywhere.

Sure, there was the sorcerer who sent rolling flames and lightning bolts our way, but the Marines jumped behind me with disciplined speed, taking me at my word as Warp Magic exploded over me... and melted away to nothing. Two dozen guns were suddenly pointed that sorcerer's way. He and the little head sticking out of his shoulder smirked... and then all that rapid fire scythed down his closest helpers, while I covered two hundred yards in four seconds, waves of fire and lightning vanishing into nothing against my Null, shattered his protective force bubble, and cross-cut him and his demonculous four times in less than a second.

The cultists in the area were gawking as I eliminated their leader so handily, Sun Shots finding the other four Wilders among them, staggering them so focus fire from the Marines behind me could rip on through the painted targets. Everyone withdrew and retreated as the enemy staggered from the brutality of the hit.

Screams from a mile away and a lot of firing and explosions announced the arrival of the spideroids, giving them something else to focus their insanity on.

The tank battlefield was a lot less fun, given how many mechanized units were still prowling around, and although a lot of the wrecks were still there, there weren’t any more than before, making this a case of dashing from place to place while mechs and tanks dueled with one another, attempting to avoid most of them, taking out those that displayed any interest in us, and using every scrap of cover to interrupt lines of fire, if possible. The Marines had long ago used up any consumable ammo good for tank or mech-smashing, and were good little boys and watched as Briggs and I teamed up on anything daring to shoot in our direction. They were quick to move when it was time to move, and for all their looming size, very good at hunting cover when the time was appropriate.

They hadn’t survived for six months in here for no reason.

----------

With a few thousand shots of heavy laser fire and exploding Warped, the remainder of the Emerald Bulls mowed down any opposition in the gulch that led up out of the tech zone. Briggs went up first, surveyed the area, and static radio called the all clear after a minute.

They hustled up top, and there were immediate whines as first their systems started to degrade, and then were urgently shut down. Their movements instantly became much heavier and slower as they lost their servos, and they popped open their helms before their power systems failed and they suffocated in their own suits.

“If there’s any problems, pull back to the bottom of the gorge so your tech can switch on, Captain. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He nodded as he looked down at me, his rifle little better than a club at the moment, and now really appreciating Briggs’ Hammer. “Where are you going?”

“To get us some rides.” Chalice laughed in my head, and zoop, we were gone.

----

Captain Donnal blinked as the air popped shut behind me. “She can teleport?” he asked despite himself. That was definitely the Mark of a Ten Psion, although he’d long been utterly convinced by everything else the woman had shown him.

“There’s a spatial fluctuation at the borders between zones, and teleporting across it is unwise, Captain,” Briggs informed him, as he unhooked his shoulder las-mount and stowed it in his Masspack. “The Colonel is going to get some Disks, and then she can fly you all out of here.”

“Ah.” The looming unhelmed Commander, even taller than the Space Marines, was obviously an Ancient, although not as tall as many of the corrupted Warp versions Captain Donnal had seen. His armor also didn’t seem to be much affected by the properties of this area, as he moved just as easily as before.

It was definitely his first time seeing an Ancient officer, anywhere. The Warped Ancients all tended to be dumb as rocks and just as tough, while those as soldiers were used as grunts, and not much more.

The pale violet eyes, however, seemed much more intelligent, and his diction was absolutely perfect, speaking like a natural orator. Captain Donnal was cautious despite himself, especially after seeing this one’s combat prowess. He could finally see why there were terrifying stories about the Ancients in older times.

“I see your armor is not affected by the zone, Commander?” the Captain asked, interested.

“It is, Captain. I’ve lost flight, sensory, secondary defenses, and power supply to ranged attack systems. Given the threat level is reduced to TL5 level explosives and firearms, as well as phrenic mutants and demons, it is not an issue.”

“Your servos still function, Commander?” That was impressive.

“My suit only has bracework, Captain. My strength is my own. Frees up a lot of power,” Briggs replied calmly.