The last of the overloading Iron Legion frames detonated in sequence, the Ark reactors going critical in overlapping bursts that sent shockwaves rolling outward through the street-level mass of Nurgle walkers and consumed the Death Guard caught inside the blast radius in pillars of white-hot release. Debris fell across a wide area. The smoke that rose from the multiple detonation points was dense enough to cut visibility to near zero at ground level.
When it cleared, the count had not improved.
More Death Guard had stepped out of the surrounding streets, filling the space left by the ones that had gone down. The walker tide was replenishing from side streets as fast as it was being pushed back. Tony looked at the numbers on his visor, took a breath, and made the decision a clear-headed person makes when the situation has exceeded the resource on hand.
He pushed the Iron Armor's repulsors to full vertical and climbed.
The city fell away beneath him. He kept climbing until the altitude readout confirmed he was beyond effective range of the Death Guard's bolt weapons, then leveled off and turned for the city's edge. The Iron Legion armors still operational down there were already gone in any practical sense: Jarvis would manage whatever remained. The mission right now was survival and information delivery, and Tony Stark had spent enough time in proximity to Nolan's operational culture to understand that retreating with good data was not the same thing as losing.
On the ground below, something moved out of a flesh foundry that was still cycling through whatever process produced the things it produced. A large figure in green Terminator armor, the abdomen distended beyond the plate's original geometry, the air around it dark with plague flies that moved like a living shadow. It knelt to one knee before the Death Guard around it. Not an Astartes. Something that had been the architecture behind all of this.
"The last struggle of ignorant mortals." The voice that came from it was low and wet and entirely pleased with itself. "This world will return to the benevolent father. And I... will be crowned king."
Tony was already past the city boundary and building speed.
"Jarvis, push all of it to David. Video, telemetry, the full intelligence packet. Then get the armor oriented toward Nolan's last confirmed position."
Tony settled into the flight posture and let the armor handle the routing while he talked.
"How is the development progress on the armor delivery system? I think Veronica is the right name for it. Adds some variety to your general demographic." He did not wait for a response. "Those Death Guard are something else. I knew Nolan's Astartes were capable, but seeing what the opposition looks like when it gets serious is a different experience entirely. Jarvis, we need to accelerate the upgrade schedule. Power weapons on the Legion as standard. Heavier long-range loadouts across the board. Reditus will help because we have an existing relationship and he enjoys the engineering problems. We handle the application development, he handles the materials."
He turned something over while he flew.
"We still have Nolan's Centurion Heavy Armor, don't we? The one we borrowed and never returned?"
"That is correct, sir."
"Leave it. If he wants it back, he can ask me directly." The idea that had been forming since he watched the first Iron Legion frame fold under a power scythe stroke arrived with the kind of clarity that usually meant it was going to consume the next several months of his life. "I want the next generation purpose-built. Anti-Astartes configuration. Everything optimized for engagements against ceramite plate and whatever is underneath it. That is the next project."
The Iron Armor found the Taurus convoy on the road below, a column of vehicles pushing hard across broken terrain, dust rising from every wheel.
Tony came down into formation alongside them and matched speed.
He told Nolan everything he had seen, efficiently and without editorializing. Nolan listened with his helmet still on, the visor aimed at the road ahead, and when Tony finished he responded with the tone of someone confirming a suspicion rather than receiving a surprise.
Based on the production data recovered from the flesh foundries he had already destroyed, the Death Guard presence in Lucknow was unlikely to exceed company strength. What Tony had observed from altitude confirmed that. The Chaos Astartes were equipped with power armor and melee weapons; the bolt weapons were relatively scarce and heavy fire support was absent entirely. A force in that state had a window of vulnerability, and windows closed.
Nolan opened the communication channel to the Stormtrooper company and the Wehrmacht Guards and told them to increase speed.
Then he passed the coordinates of Lucknow to David's command center with a request to coordinate fire support from the local official forces: a blanket bombardment to degrade the Death Guard's positional advantage before the ground assault reached contact range.
The convoy pushed on.
An hour later, the horizon ahead flickered with the light of incoming fire. Shell bursts and rocket impacts walked across the forward edge of Lucknow in a sustained rolling line, each detonation kicking up columns of smoke and debris from the rotten ground cover that had spread across the city. The bombardment had weight to it. It lasted less than ten minutes.
Nolan looked at Tony.
He contacted David.
The answer was not a failure of official cooperation. The local mortal forces had committed their available ammunition in full and run dry. Resupply was twenty-four hours out at minimum. The cyclone missiles distributed to the Stormtrooper company and the Lamenters before departure were similarly spent from the engagements already fought. The next batch was not close.
The fire support plan was finished before it had properly started.
Nolan considered the situation for a moment and let it go. Waiting on resupply meant waiting on the Death Guard to finish whatever they were building in Lucknow. The calculus there was not complicated. Speed mattered more than fire support margins, and he had two full Lamenter companies, a Stormtrooper company, Wehrmacht Guards, and the people currently sitting in and on the vehicles around him.
That would have to be sufficient.
Ten kilometers out, the walker tide appeared on either side of the road and ahead of it, the density of a city-scale infection spreading outward from Lucknow's edge in every direction. The ocean of plague walkers extended to the horizon in the late morning light, moving with the slow collective pressure that defined Nurgle's foot soldiers at scale.
Tony looked at it from above the vehicle column. Thor had his Terminator gauntlets loose at his sides. Professor Hulk was watching the distance with the calibrated attention of someone running threat assessments behind a calm expression. Every Lamenter in the convoy had a weapon out or a hand on one.
Nobody slowed down.
The Taurus assault vehicles' engines climbed in pitch as the accelerators went to their limit, the roar of each vehicle building into something that merged with every other and became a single sustained sound that felt like it was coming from the ground itself.
Nolan drove his armor upright and put one magnetic boot on the hood of the lead vehicle. The Warscythe came up in his hand, the blade extended, and the faint green luminescence along its edge caught the light.
He filled his lungs.
"For humanity!"
The convoy hit the outer edge of the walker tide at full speed.
"For the Emperor!"