Chapter 34: The Name That Should Not Be Provoked
The sheer, brute strength Godzilla displayed on the battlefield was enough to make the Imperium's mortal auxiliary troops think of the god-machines—those towering Titans of metal and wrath that could carry entire cathedrals on their backs like decorations.
But even in the shadow of such raw power, the Chaos Space Marines did not falter.
They had seen Titans before. Some of them had once marched alongside them. In the days when the XII Legion still bled for the Emperor, when the World Eaters still had daemon-forged Titans of their own. But now? Now, they fought alone—bereft of leadership, their Primarch a creature of rage rather than command.
The traitor assault began to falter. The tide of Chaos was ebbing.
In a dimly lit command bunker behind the lines, a vox-operator's voice cut through the static.
"Commander, is the channel still clear?"
"Still holding, Sergeant. What's the situation at the front?"
"The heretics are pulling back. We've repelled them—for now. But something else, something massive, is moving with the xenos. Bigger than a Warlord Titan."
The room went quiet. Someone exhaled sharply.
"This isn't your first Titan, soldier?"
"I've seen three," the sergeant replied grimly. "During the war with the Eldar. They brought two of their own. It was... it was a massacre."
"Name?"
"Sergeant Randall, sir."
"Well, Sergeant Randall," the commander said, "we're pulling you back from Position Three. The other flanks are collapsing. Fall back to the spire sector and establish a new perimeter. That's an order."
"Yes, Commander!"
So now, we finally had a name. Randall. One of the many, many mortals who might not live to see another sunrise.
But names were luxuries. There wasn't time for sentiment.
The retreat of Chaos forces meant something new was coming into view—something that could fight back the warp-tainted tide. And for the first time, the Lizardmen beheld the humans up close.
Isis stood atop the broken ruins of a manufactorum tower, eyes glowing with restrained psionic power. Her mind swept across the retreating Imperial forces, reading fear, urgency, and a deep familiarity with the terrain.
"Hmph," she muttered. "You humans run fast."
Indeed, the Imperial withdrawal was swift—frighteningly so. Even with just a handful of operational troop transports, they moved through alleys, maintenance tunnels, and sewers like they'd rehearsed this very scenario.
"Track them," she instructed a nearby Chameleon Stalker, cloaked in the fractured light.
She had no illusions about the Imperium. She had read enough thoughts to understand their doomsday doctrines. If they lost this city, they wouldn't try to reclaim it—they'd try to vaporize the planet.
And Godzilla couldn't fly.
If this planet was destroyed, Godzilla would be left adrift in the void, vulnerable in ways the Lizardmen could not afford.
She glanced back at the towering figure moving through the haze of battle. "Come on, old one. Time to get to the fourth ritual site."
Meanwhile, far behind the lines, the command spire of the regional garrison flickered with emergency lights as a new group entered—blue-armored giants, their pauldrons marked with the sigil of Ultramar.
"Commander," barked Sergeant Carrion of the Ultramarines, "why have we been pulled off the line? The front is crumbling under daemon pressure. We don't have time to waste."
The commander said nothing. He merely gestured to the holo-projector, which flickered to life.
A grainy, chaotic battlefeed rolled across the screen.
And then they saw it.
A monster bigger than any bioform of the Tyranids, tearing through Chaos lines like they were made of paper.
Carrion's eyes widened. "By Guilliman's breath… My Five Hundred Worlds…"
His voice trailed off in disbelief.
"You recognize the creature?" the commander asked.
"I thought it was a Tyranid, but… no. It doesn't match their patterns. No biomass reclamation. No synaptic control behavior. And we've had no Tyranid incursions in this sub-sector recently."
"Correct," the commander replied. "Intelligence has classified it under a provisional name. Godzilla."
Carrion blinked. "Godzilla?"
"Yes. And this isn't the first we've heard of it. Captain Sicarius brought back data from a fringe world some time ago. A world that fell to a Tyranid splinter. But the Tyranids weren't the ones who wiped out the xenos."
The commander leaned forward. "It was this. And Sicarius left us a message. Just one line."
Carrion nodded, already knowing what it was.
"Don't mess with Godzilla."
A few in the room exchanged uneasy glances.
"Do we have orders to engage the xenos?"
"Negative. These Lizardmen haven't attacked us. Most of the city is already lost anyway. Until they give us a reason, we don't open fire. Not unless you want the Inquisition bringing an Exterminatus upon us all."
Carrion muttered something under his breath, then stiffened. A vox transmission screamed to life in the command chamber.
"This is Position Six! We've been breached! Khorne Daemon inbound—I repeat, we've got a Bloodthirster—oh Emperor preserve u—"
The line dissolved into screams and crashing stone, followed by a roar that shook the foundation of the tower.
Carrion's face hardened. "A Greater Daemon. Here."
The holomap confirmed it. Position Six turned crimson, then spread like a bloodstain toward the city center.
"We're all going to die," someone whispered.
On any other battlefield, a Greater Daemon would be enough to cripple the morale of an entire world. Even Macragge, fortress-world of the Ultramarines, would take the threat seriously.
Only eight such daemons were summoned on Terra during the Horus Heresy. That was Holy Terra. And one of them was here now.
The tide was about to turn again.
Far above the battlefield, a new presence stirred.
A skeletal figure stood on a broken spire, his polished necrodermis body glinting beneath the city's failing artificial sun.
A staff topped with an exotic glyph rested in his clawed hand. Red warp-light glowed in his eye sockets. He gazed down at the carnage below with something resembling delight.
"So rare," Trazyn the Infinite whispered to himself. "So precious a collection."
For even a Necron Overlord, the appearance of a Bloodthirster on the physical plane was no trivial matter. They were rarer than an honest Rogue Trader and more destructive than an Ork Waaagh.
And Trazyn was already calculating how best to preserve this moment.
*********
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