“The Dragontamer’s ritual will never succeed, scion of a false god! You think you can seal us away? As long as there is life in this galaxy, we will live, and one day there will be nothing save the mark of the eight-point star, Aenarion Ulthanesh!”

“Really? Then tell me, soul-dreg of the Primordial Annihilator. Why are you cowering?”

-Fragment of Aeldari scroll taken from the razed City of Kyandros, titled ‘Saga of Aenarion the Defender’. The historical significance of this remains unknown.

M24. 231

Outside the Shinikiku System

A starship hovers silently through the void. If one squints closely enough, they would identify the hull as wraithbone, if they could peer past the layer of flesh and eyes. In front of it was a rapidly expanding portal of psychoplastics and crystal, a still-forming gateway to the labyrinthine dimension known as the Webway.

In the interior of the ship, two long-eared humanoids reclined on couches of shimmering leather, their images reflected by the mirror-like walls of the room. One of them was fully naked, all of the skin covered in tattoos made of the blood of a long-extinct species. The other was scantily clad in see-through fabric, with tiny tentacles instead of hair wriggling on the scalp. Cowering in the corners of the room were dozens of slaves, desperately trying not to move or make a sound, lest they attract their masters’ attention.

“Time to put the cattle to good use.” The tattooed Eldar said lazily, tracing a line of purple smoke in the air. The smoke swirled briefly, before darting into the mouth of a young human girl huddled in the corner. Her screams filled the room as the other slaves looked away, the chemicals in the smoke slowly dissolving every cell in the body. Within a few minutes she had turned into a puddle of gore- a relatively quick death on this ship.

The tentacled Eldar beckoned another slave forward, this one a Tarellian male. “Hrm. You’ve always lacked imagination, Sylvyn. Really, how… unrefined of you- her pain was a pitiful morsel.” Tell me, dog, how does it feel to be trapped in your own body, with every sense amplified?” The Tarellian stared at him, his expression locked in a visage of horror, the collar on his neck paralyzing his body.

“Nevermind, I can taste your feelings! It’s delicious. Come closer, I won’t bite…” The Eldar grabbed his arm. “Actually, on second thought, I will.” the Aeldari leaned down, revealing razor sharp teeth, and with a quick movement, bit a chunk off his shoulder, fur and all.

The alien’s eyes widened to a degree which in other circumstances would be called comical as the Tarellian finally screamed, the collar allowing it. The Eldar spat out the bloody hunk of meat. “Eeugh. Not really that delicious.” He grabbed a rod-shaped device from his belt. “Mother always said that meat is best cooked.” An unusual amount of drool poured out of the sadist’s mouth, as he began to blowtorch the Tarellian’s arm. Howls echoed in the chamber as the smell of cooked flesh filled the air.

“And done!” The Eldar ripped off the cooked flesh right off the bone, exposing the bone underneath, as the Tarellian howled himseslf hoarse, the drugs secreted by the collar keeping him awake.

“My turn!” The other Eldar stomped over, tattoos glowing as a sphere of black fire materialized in her hand. “You think that my imagination is lacking? I think you will change your mind once you witness the Mantra of the Eight Despairs…”

At the same time, another ship hurtled through the Warp, zeroing in on its prey. Its teal blue paint job is accented by a warm gold, mute red lines running along the hull of its frame. Roughly three hundred meters in length, the Corvette-class Federation military ship prepared for battle as it closed in on its target.

Two hours earlier, an Eldar ship had appeared out of nowhere in the Shinikiku System, attacking an asteroid village and fleeing with hundreds of captives. The Spirit of Eternity was the closest military vessel, and upon receiving the broadcasted emergency signal, had immediately began to hunt down the Aeldari slave-ship. Time was of the essence- if it was allowed to escape into the Webway, then those captured would be beyond rescue and face a fate worse than death.

“They’ve stopped. Probability of Webway Gate creation is 96.7%. Permission to engage?”

“Permission granted. We only have one chance before they slip away- give them everything we’ve got.”

The Spirit of Eternity flew out of the Warp right in front of the half-formed Webway Gate, launching a full broadside on the Aeldari battleship, tri-sunfury plasma annihilators nova cannons and adrathic lances firing repeatedly. Caught by surprise, the first volley smashed into the Aeldari ship, overwhelming its force shields and gouging holes in the hull. Recovering, it disappeared in a flash of light, reappearing upwards and countering with a salvo of pulsar lances. Most were displaced to the warp or their energy displaced across the length of the carrier, but one did make it thorough and carved a scar across the Federation vessel's chassis. With the ambush over, the battle began in earnest.

The scar from the pulsar lance began to heal as omniphages crawled over it, knitting plasteel and adamantium together. STC manufactorums began to produce fully automated drones and gunships, thousands of them flying out of the hangar doors. Gun ports and hanger doors by the hundreds dotting the ship's hull opened up, unleashing hundreds of laser lances, plasma blasts and railgun flechettes towards the xeno ship. Within one of the smaller hangars, actually usable for humans and not being used to create manned starcraft was a Hermes-Class Dropship, which would be taking a few hundred human soldiers into the heart of the enemy ship. These soldiers were the Solar Operators, the rank-and-file of the Federation human military force. Enhanced with countless gene-mods and standing well over seven feet, each was armed with a plasma rifle as their standard weapon. They were clad in the signature symbiote hardsuits of the Solar Operators, the opaque black armor rippling like liquid with movement and shrouded by the translucent haze of an ion shield.

There were other weapons of course, gamma blasters to destroy vaporize ship bulkheads, phosphex burners for decimating hallways filled with Eldar defenders, and photon beamers for showing the knife ears who had the better dark matter weapons. Alongside them were hundreds of disposable combat androids, controlled by the ship’s AI, armed with volkite repeaters.

Soon, the shuttle was launched into space. Each lance from the Eldar ship destroyed tens of frigates and droneships the moment they connected, Eldar psychomaton fighters and interceptors met those of the Federations' head on. Hundreds of drone starships on both sides were annihilated every ten seconds, while both ships exchanged fire like a game of chess, projectiles being countered by Federation shield-drones or suicidal Warp beasts. Through the web of deadly ordnance the manned shuttle flew, exploiting a hole in the psychomaton fleet’s defenses and latching onto the Eldar battleship. Inside the shuttle, two heavily armored breaching robots hefted massive power swords glowing a brilliant, blinding white, and began to carve through the hull.

Spoiler: Appropriate music

The squad entered a corridor of dizzying mosaic colors, psychic energies coursing through the walls. The Solar Operators split up; one team was to rescue as many captives as possible, while the other team was to destroy the ship’s power systems.

And so they began to fight their way through the corridors of the ship. Plasma rifles left behind charred corpses, armor being a non-factor as true to their predictions most of their targets were bare of clothes and protection. Remote-controlled phosphex turned rooms into cinders, the living flame barely under control as it devoured all in sight. Photon beamers left nothing remaining of psychomatons, those behind them or the walls behind both. But that was not their main foe, it was the properly prepared defenders and the angered dead returning. Soon, the colorful forms of Eldar combatants met the blue-grey forms of Federation troops, psychomatons in bone-white plate wielding Soul Disintegrators, Sunrifles, Sharding Blasters and Ossefactors, with the Eldar using their formidable psychic gifts.The fighting was quick and brutal, the hardsuits of the humans resisting most of the damage but, with the exception of the sun rifle, a single wound, no matter how small it may be, was a death sentence for a Solar Operator, since Eldar attacks directly damaged the mind and soul, or were laced with so many neurotoxins that they overwhelmed a Solar Operator’s gene-enhancements, causing an agonizing death.

The dead rose from the ground as horrifying parodies of their former selves, the ship’s defensive systems pumping them full of Warp energy as they became animated monstrosities. Extra appendages burst out from their torsos, the flesh rapidly mutating into cancerous blobs as they lashed out with arcane lightning, becoming puppets of the ship. But all paled compared to the fate caused by the Ossefactors, voices screamed in agony and pain as bones and ribs grew at disturbing speeds, tearing through the flesh of the afflicted while neutralising the pain-nullification gene-mods of Federation soldiers. If that weren't enough, limbs erupted from the walls to grab and rip apart any caught within their grasp, wraithbone constructs fueled by the slaughtered dead bringing their own weapons to bear.

The first team fought their way to the slave quarters. Blowing the doors in, they came face-to-face with a Tarellian seizing on the floor, with two Eldar watching the display with rapt interest. In a heartbeat the team opened fire, bolts of superheated plasma punching through the hastily conjured telekinetic shield conjured by the two and incinerating them by the spot. The Solar Operators hurried to the captives, hastily attaching teleportation beacons to them, which quickly activated and teleported them to the medbay in the Spirit of Eternity to check for any unwanted surprises left inside them by their captors. Task accomplished, they hurried to another portion of the ship.

The other team, facing heavy resistance, had deployed a teleportation beacon, and now endless waves of combat robots teleported in, all controlled by a single Iron Mind. In the Spirit of Eternity, hundreds of them were being produced by STC machines by the minute, ready to wage battle the moment they stepped into the teleportation chambers. Made of unfeeling metal, they ignored the Ossefactors and psychic attacks, charging at the enemy with power swords or drowning thm under unending waves of volkite fire.

Slaughtering their way to the generator rooms, they came face to face with a sorcerous shield of energy blocking their way. One of the robots put down another teleportation homer, and seconds later four of its kind materialized, carrying an Atomizer Cannon. The Cannon secured itself to the ground automatically with its tripod feet, before firing a nonstop stream of heavily irradiated particles at the gate. Seconds later, the shield flickered and failed, revealing the host of psychomatons waiting behind. But the cannon didn’t stop firing, melting their wraithbone bodies from within and reducing the psychomatons into puddles of atomic slag.

The Solar Operators marched in. In the center was a massive cube of crystal, drawing in raw power from the Warp itself to power the ship. Grimly, one of them attached a hand-sized device to the crystal, before transmitting a message to the rest of the Solar Operators.

Every human onboard the ship disappeared, right before the fusion bomb detonated, shattering the power crystal and releasing a destructive blast of empyreal power, ripping apart a Warp Rift in realspace. The Aeldari ship was destroyed from the inside out, the hellmouth devouring it in a storm of witchfire as the Solar Operators reappeared on the decks of the Spirit of Eternity.

The Captain of the ship watched the screens displaying the soldiers cheering and celebrating, before staring at the Warp Rift and the Webway Gate, both now rapidly shrinking without an energy source to sustain them. He then saluted to the brave soldiers who died aboard the imploding and exploding ship. it was not going to be in vain, he thought to himself.

“Are you intact, Eternia?” he asked to the air.

A sultry, smoky female voice answered back, seemingly from nowhere. “I am fine, my love. It was only a mere scratch.”

“That’s good to hear.” The Captain consulted the dataslate. “How many did we save?”

“Five hundred and seventy-two captives.” The female AI in charge of the ship’s operations reported. “They’re in the quarantine zone right now- we don’t know what nasty failsafes the Eldar implanted in their bodies.”

The Captain sighed. “Still too late to save the other three hundred.” He rubbed his eyes. “At least we put them out of their misery.”

“You did the best you could, dear.” Nanomachines rose up from the floor, coalescing into a silver female figure that wrapped its arms around the Admiral from behind. “You can’t save them all.” Her fingers began to wander on his chest. “Maybe I could cheer you up?”

A ding sounded from the command console, the Captain looking down and scanning the message, his face changing from lustful to cold seriousness. “I’d love to, but maybe later? We’ve got orders from one of the Fleet Admirals themselves. It says that we’re going to a new location in preparation for a muster.”

“Where?”

The Admiral looked at the coordinates, double-checking before letting out a long exhale.

“Cadia.”

Author's Note: Finally, some bolter porn! Originally this was going to feature unkillable regenerating robots and Blank soldiers, but I decided to leave that out because of plot hole problems and reserving future content. Credit to Enforcer Hankus, who came up with the original piece of text that I used to make a reaction in the TTS thread, and later on was further modified by me to become this, with permission.

Next up, Codex on the Solar Operators.