Editing Female Primarchs (section)

=== Ferrus and Phoebe (Fulgrim) Fight Against the Diasporex ===

The hull of the xenos station melted away as the assault claws punched in and disgorged their deadly occupants. Immediately the forces of the tenth and third legions were assailed by fifty Diasporex marines, alien lasrifles punching holes through armor, cybernetics, and flesh. The Astartes responded in kind. Bolters pounded through the enemy. Meltaguns seared bodies through bulkheads. Though both sides took casualties, only one fell screaming.

Phoebe and Ferrus leapt from their own transport and immediately rushed down the wide hangar with their command squads, small arms fire plinking off their masterwork armor harmlessly as they thundered into the foe.

Phoebe rushed one human combatant and decapitated him, ignoring his pitiful weapon. One xeno tried to tackle her and plunge a knife through her power armor, but as he went for her legs she had already spun around and shattered his face with a knee. She swung at another, and another, and launched into a dance of war, her sword whirling, plunging through hearts, severing limbs, cracking armor plates, ending lives. Phoebe reveled in their cries and longed to feel their lifeblood against her skin.

The last human standing rushed at Ferrus from behind, bellowing a war cry and brandishing a power axe. Phoebe cut his legs out from under him just as he was about to try the same to the Gorgon. Ferrus turned only as the man was shot dead by one of his guard. As they locked eyes through their visors, Phoebe uttered an absurd giggle, which Ferrus returned as a hefty laugh.

Just then, more defenders rushed through the main passage, weapons fire splitting the air again as heavy bolters tried to cut them down. A multi-melta erased one of the Gorgon Terminators beside the Primarchs, forcing them to take cover. Grenade launchers peppered their armor with shrapnel. Laser beams and plasma blasts pressed in on the Astartes.

"We need to get up there!" Phoebe shouted through her vox.

Ferrus nodded and keyed to his gunners, "Cover us!"

The remaining bolters pressed the defenders near the siblings into their own cover.

"Now!" Ferrus shouted.

With inhuman speed for their massive armor, Phoebe and her Phoenixes vaulted up the steps to the Diasporex position, and immediately began sowing mayhem and terror in the ranks of the foe as their spears and swords ripped apart flesh. The Medusans came close behind, crushing any opponents in heavy armor with their cog-head axes, thunder hammers, and even their fists.

As the special weapons of the Diasporex were silenced, the Iron Hands breacher squads began to advance, and the last of the resistance was eliminated with mass-reactive shells.

"We should press on quickly to the command center," Phoebe voxed to Ferrus.

"You go ahead. Take the hidden passage we scanned earlier," he replied, "and we will plunge into their thickest defenses to draw them away."

Phoebe sighed. "Don't waste your lives on our account. We should fight together."

"Our troops are already doing the same in the rest of the station. Hurry! Finish this menace once and for all," he urged.

Beneath her helmet, Phoebe smiled at his chivalry, and turned to her Terminators. "Let's go," she said.

---

With the majority of the Diasporex occupied by the other Astartes, the Phoenixes made it through the hidden passageway (really more of a maintenance shaft) handily.

Phoebe waited for her Terminators to catch up over the section situated above the bridge. As they strode in, she set down a meltabomb and stepped back.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Ready, my lady," they responded in unison.

Phoebe turned back to the bomb and hit the detonator.

With a ''thoom'', the melta charge pressed the bulkhead down and out, splattering a Diasporex officer beneath it. The Emperor's Children flew through the gap.

"Wait!" came the cry from the xenos captain, but combi-bolters were already firing upon the alien and human crew, mass-reactive bolts punching into unarmored flesh and detonating, or--at best--passing all the way through the victims to scatter shrapnel over the whole bridge compartment.

Within a minute, it was done. No defenders came, as they had all been drawn off to stop the diversionary attack.

The xenos captain, though shot in the gut, was still breathing.

"Do you have any last words, alien scum?" Phoebe asked, gunsight on his head.

"We only wished... to be.. left alone."

Without a thought, the bolter ended his life.

But Phoebe took too long to process his message. She realized something, and the gun fell from her hand, innocent.

Just then, Ferrus opened the main door and entered. The distant echoes of fighting were dying down behind him as he strode up to his sister.

"That's their leader?"

"Yes."

"Hm. Looks like he put up a fight, eh?" he said, glancing at her fallen bolter.

Phoebe was silent for a minute and looked at the floor. "No."

Ferrus just stared at her, expression hidden inside his helmet.

"Phoebe," he said at last. She looked up at him. "They were a threat to the Imperium."

"He was unarmed. I assassinated him. Murdered him."

"An alien. Impure. Destined to harm us, harm humanity."

"They had humans in their crew."

"Thralls corrupted to serve them!"

"He said they only wanted to be left alone."

"A lie."

"What did they do to us, Ferrus? What would they ever do?"

"Phoebe. There is still a fight to be had. We must finish the rest of these scoundrels. They are trying to kill your sons as we speak! You should be protecting your legion! You love to fight, anyways."

Phoebe took off her helmet and took a deep draw of death and blood in the air. She looked around for a minute, saw her own work, and put the helmet back on.

"Let's get this over with."

---

Phoebe no longer reveled in their cries, for she had indeed felt their blood on her hands. But she moved with perfect art and blessed their deaths with grace, and was silent for a long while while the prisoners were gathered and shipped off to the labor camps.

[[Category: Warhammer 40,000]][[Category: Stories/Warhammer 40,000]]