10 Isstvan lll (Part 1)

Opening up a space-time portal, Mesa was transported across space and time to Isstvan 3 in the year 005.M31, i.e. the opening battle of the Horus Heresy. Looking up at the sky, he saw hundreds of ships dotting the sky and the fact that the planet is not dead rock floating in space, indicated that the Imperial attack on Isstvan 3 hadn't yet started or was underway and the virus bomb attack was imminent. As for himself, Mesa had transported himself to a vast grassland plain roamed by grazing animals that looked like saurian from Earth ancient past on the northern continent. In the far distance he could see a vast mountain range in which the capital of this world, the Choral City, was located and by extension, the site where the battle would take place. Suddenly his armor picked up on a faint whistling sound that was followed soon after by faint impacts. And from what his armor could pick up, he didn't hear any telltale explosions, which meant that the ships launched their drop-pods filled Space Marines. Looking up at the ships in low orbit, he could see the contrails of thousands of drop-pods and gunships coming down on the city for the Space Marine legions to take. This also meant that Mesa had arrived at the very start of the Battle of Isstvan 3.

"Hmmm… I wonder how long it will take before the virus bombs are dropped." Mused Mesa as he sat down and used the Time Stone to see into the future when the virus bombs would be dropped. From what he could see, he saw that the virus bombs would be dropped in 3 days' time.

With that information in mind, Mesa decided to do some major reconnaissance before heading out. So he sat down where he was and deployed a barrier over himself that shielded him from ordinance and detection from the ships above. After that, he opened up a portal in deep space, far beyond any of the Space Marine ships and from this portal he had Serene Bias send out billions of specially designed Recon Sentinels to scout out the planet including its geography, the troop dispositions of both opposing forces and most importantly, the positions and identities of the ships in orbit. Once they did their jobs, they'd disappear back into the Hub. These Recon Sentinels had been designed by Serene Bias' creator and had an extra feature that allowed them to go into stealth mode that made virtually invisible to sensor scans. And if anyone on the ships looked outside and saw these Recon Sentinels, they'd very likely ignore and think of it as space junk.

So with the Recon Sentinels doing their work and their intel being directly uploaded into his armor for his ancilla to collect and process, Mesa had some time to spare. So he just sat there playing with the grass, transmuting the grass into these little golems made of grass and having them wrestle against each other. Meanwhile, his armor started to pick the sound of battle in the distance. While this was going on, he took out the crystal from his inventory and infused it with Profound Energy to locate the second crystal. The reaction it gave was a focused beam of light, much like a laser, pointing in the direction of the Choral City, which means the second crystal was somewhere in that whole mess.

Eventually his train of thought turned to the Hub and how he didn't like that name. So he asked JARVIS whether it was possible to rename the Hub. And its answer was an affirmative. With him being the owner and master of the Hub, he could rename it to whatever he wanted and the name change would take immediate effect. So he sat there thinking about a suitable name for the Hub whilst his little grass golems were duking it now using little grass made Napoleonic era cannons. Eventually, he looked up at the peaks of the mountains where he spots banks of mist that haven't yet been blown away by the combat. Those banks of mist give the inspiration he wanted.

"Asora!" Mesa suddenly yelled out.

["JARVIS, I know the new name I want to give the Hub. From now on, the Hub will be renamed to Asora"] 

*DING ['Very well sir, the Hub is hereby renamed to Asora.']

"Guys, a quick question. Should we help out the Imperium?" Asked Mesa to his dragon companions.

"No! Fuck them!" The Heavenly Dragon roared out that faintly echoed in the distance.

"Alright, point taken." Said Mesa a bit taken aback by their vehemence. "Honestly, I don't want to fight for the Imperium either, I was just curious about your opinions."

And so Mesa waited there. With the Recon Sentinels busy for at least 6 hours and the intel streaming into his armor, he was free to do what he wanted for now. So with that, he used the Mind Stone to cast a wide net of telepathy all over the planet and look through the people's minds. Unlike the forceful telepathy he used on the Black Ship to read the mind of that Sister of Silence, this was a passive use. Those who had it used on them would not even notice it, unless they were a well-trained psyker. This use of telepathy would not entail Mesa reading their minds and extracting information from. This use of telepathy would be like Mesa standing right next to them and experiencing all that was happening to them with them. Another thing he did was suppress all his emotions to avoid giving himself away to his victims. Because if he showed any emotions during this telepathy, then his victims would be suspicious and would make it harder for him to spy on them. Though he could simply break through their mental defenses, but avoiding their suspicion whilst spying on them was far easier. 

So when he started to spy on the combatants, he noticed patterns. With the Emperor's Children for instance, he noticed that fought with meticulously coordination between squads and their heavy weapon and air support. The World Eaters had a very laissez fair approach to war and hurled themselves at the enemy to butcher them with their chainswords and chainaxes. And from the looks of the metal cables coming out of the bottom of their helms and the ceaseless roaring and shouting, the Butcher's Nails were hammering in their skulls and aggressively fueling their rage.

The Death Guard on the other hand were massed in great infantry formations and kept putting fire on the enemy and grinding them down whilst slogging through their return fire and shrugging it off. The Sons of Horus in Mesa's opinion were the best of them. They fought with the aggression of the World Eaters, but with flexible coordination between their squads and their heavy weapons and air units. And most importantly, with controlled aggression.

But it was what he saw with the Isstvanians that set his gorge rising, but he kept his emotions under control. For the vast majority of them, he saw people who were understandably fed up and angry with the Imperium's tyrannical rule, but it was the minority of the Isstvanians on the battlefield that were clearly tainted by Chaos. He could feel an utter wrongness emanating from them, this aura of pure malevolence. And watching them fight, they were clearly no longer just human. The way they took enjoyment in the battle, the way they were killed by the Space Marines with a smile on their face and still kept coming. Having seen enough, Mesa cut the telepathic link he had established with these Chaos tainted Isstvanians. He decided to keep the telepathic link with the Space Marines active to ensure a constant stream of real time intelligence.

'Slaanesh.' Mesa said this name with utter disgust and pure hatred. Though he had no stake in this war and cared nothing about the end results, he resolved himself to target Chaos. If it meant giving a little push here and there to inconvenience the Chaos forces at the least and outright hinder them, then all the better.

It had been more than six hours since Mesa had started his telepathic links to all the combatants. And by now, the Recon Sentinels had finished their work and the vast majority of them were transported back to Asora by Mesa, save for a few hundred he kept. These would be loitering over the battlefield to provide overwatch for him.

Now that it was time to get to work, Mesa stood up and teleported away from where he was a moment ago just to suddenly appear in the trenches surrounding the Choral City and right behind three Sons of Horus Space Marine with chainswords and who were surrounded by dozens of Isstvanian corpses in various states of mutilation. Turning around, the three Sons of Horus Space Marines were momentarily taken aback by Mesa's sudden appearance and his massive size and golden armor. But this did not last long as one of them charged him with his chainsword while the other two aimed their bolters at him. The one Space Marine charging him hadn't even taken three steps before appeared before him, and faster than the Space Marine could react, Mesa punched his head clean of his body. The head, being nothing but a slurry of shattered bones and torn meat inside of a ceramite helmet, flew at one of the Space Marines, who just taking aim at Mesa with his bolter, and hit him in the head, knocking his head back and disrupting his aim at Mesa. Next thing he knew, Mesa appeared behind him, grabbed the top of his head, yanked it back and shoved a pistol down the soft seal of his gorget and fired three round into his chest. Next thing he knew, the immense pain from these point blank shots passed and he lost control of his body as he fell down to the ground, unable to comprehend what was happening to him before losing consciousness. What happened to him was the ionized particles from Mesa's Z-110 Boltshot pistol disintegrated his body inside his armor, leaving it as an empty shell. The other Space Marine turned around and aimed his bolter at where was standing, but was instead shot 5 times in the chest, 3 times in the head and 2 times in the throat by Mesa. This Space Marine was dead, his body disintegrating before he had even hit the ground.

Looking down at these three dead Space Marines, Mesa had a sudden epiphany.

'I should collect these Space Marine Power Armors and have them analyzed. Though I know they're inferior to anything I have, it can't hurt to know more about the enemy's capabilities.'

Though he did not have long to muse on this thought. One the loitering Recon Sentinels warned him of an incoming artillery shell on his position. Looking up at the sky, his armor had immediately picked out the artillery round in question. With some quick calculations, his armor told him the trajectory of the artillery shel; and told him when and where to shoot down the shell. Pointing his hand into the sky, he forms a ball of ki energy in his hand and at his armor's insistence, fires it into the sky and destroying the artillery shell. Next thing he did was put away his Boltshot pistol and exchange it for Z-130 Suppressor rifle and kill the Isstvanian soldier that tried to run to an unattended Heavy Bolter gun emplacement and fire upon him.

"This is gonna be a looooooooooooong day." Said Mesa to himself in resigned exasperation and sent the Heavy Bolter to Asora along with Space Marines' power armors and their weapons for Invariant Bias to analyze, whilst he continued on his search for the crystal.