It didn't take long for them to become separated, in the smoke and darkness. Estevez wasn't responding. Jhon tried him on the private channel over and over, nothing. His eyepieces were attempting to compensate for the gloom, but he couldn't see a thing. He could hear things moving around him and there was more screaming to his east, but he couldn't pin down its source. He could barely make out the readout on his wrist, he reached up and activated his shoulder mounted light.
Something immediately hit him hard in the waist and brought him down with a crash. He fumbled for his knife or his laspistol but his vox gear got in the way. There was a loud crunch as something heavy punched out his light and he was once again in darkness. Jhon tried to make a report of the attack but a hand was clamped over his mouth. He assumed it was one of those hideous purple tinted claws he'd seen earlier, only it wasn't, it was a Munitorum issued tactical glove. His attacker spun around and Jhon saw that it was Estevez, helmet-less and with his finger pressed to his lips. Jhon nodded agreement and Estevez took his hand away. Jhon could see why he hadn't been responding, Estevez had clearly lost his helmet and his kitbag to the ragged looking gash down his right pauldron. He was covered from the waist down in black diseased looking blood. It didn't seem to be his own.
Estevez crouched like a cat and made a series of hand movements that Jhon recognised as combat-cant. He followed Estevez as quietly as he could under some plasteel tubing and into what appeared to be a ruined Ministorum temple. They both instinctively made the sign of the Aquila as they crossed the threshold. Inside they crouched low behind a pew and Estevez gestured to carefully look round and into the main hall. Tentatively Jhon took the instruction and moved his head slightly round the leg of the pew to get a better look.
At first it looked like civilians sheltering under the temples alter to the Emperor. They were pleading, seemingly for His deliverance. But then he saw that they weren't pleading to the Master of Mankind; they were pleading to the Xenos worshipers who were advancing on them from the other end of the hall. In the light from the burning candles they seemed enormous. They weren't rushing as they had been out of the tunnels earlier, they were moving slowly, almost shambling towards the fifteen or twenty civilians; who could have easily run away if they weren't apparently trapped against the temple wall. Jhon could also see that many of the terrified group seemed old and infirm, some were even children.
Jhon raised his rifle, but instead of joining him Estevez pushed it back down slowly, he motioned to look around the other side of the pew. Jhon stared in horror, the shadows he had originally put down to perspective were actually much more reflective of their real height and size. All Xenos worshipers were vile but these creatures were also deformed mutants. Jhon could see that some had three arms, some oddly bifurcated faces, some viciously barbed tails. All of their muscles seemed to be swelled to grotesque proportions, so much so that their pallid skin seemed to be tearing open in places. It seemed as if someone had stapled these creatures back together.
There didn't seem to be any intelligence behind their bulging and weeping eyes. Unlike the crazed Heretics that they'd seen so far, these beasts stared blankly and drooled openly. They roared and moaned as they closed on the civilians. Jhon dropped back down from the horror and signalled Estevez "We have to report this in" he signed "we've got time, if the patrol can make it to us then we can save them.'' Estevez stared at him hard before nodding and motioning for Jhon to follow him. They moved back out of the temple and he unhooked a smoke grenade from his gear and threw it into the gap between the monsters and their prey.
He could hear the wet roars of frustration behind him, as the trolls tried to smash the new prey. Instead they only found that they were lost in the thick white smoke that the grenade produced. Estevez didn't stay to watch and had already disappeared ahead of him and Jhon had to watch his feet carefully to ensure that he didn't stumble in the artificial fog. He tried to use his wrist mounted auspex, he could see the cluster of transponders in the distance but there was no sign of Estevez, he must have found a way to turn off his tracker. Jhon didn't need to make it all the way back, he didn't need to find Estevez, he just needed time to broadcast. Jhon dropped to one knee and pulled himself into the alcove of an abandoned kiosk. It was the sort of place where citizens could get news from the front, straight from the Department Munitorum and therefore free from heresy or deceit.
Jhon listened and could hear the guttural, almost pained, shouts of the monsters in the distance. They seemed to be coming from all around him. He gripped his rifle tight and whispered into his helmet vox activation stud. Using his wrist mounted control he tuned to the Mesarine's channel and instinctively keyed in the encryption code. "Dvorak to Command. Dvorak to Command. We have Imperial citizens surrounded by Xenos beast forms. I need support on my position." No response. "Repeat. I need support, approximately 30-40 Imperial Citizens in mortal danger". There was no response in his ear, just a gentle background hiss and what sounded like far away voices speaking in a language he didn't want to know.
He set aside his rifle and unhooked his vox unit from his backpack. Setting the unit down in front of him and taking care to lay down the shroud of insulation that he always carried. He took care to boost the power of the unit, hoping to cut through the physical and electronic fog. "Dvorak to Command. Dvorak to Command. Please respond?. Nothing. Jhon tried again, modulating the frequency slightly, "Dvorak to Command. Dvorak to Command. Please respond? Urgent request." His heart leapt when he heard Mesarine's clipped, brittle tone coming back to him. "I read you trooper, report." Jhon could hear the sounds of lasfire in the background, but also the rattling report of a heavy stubber - no trooper in their unit was carrying one of those.
"Trooper. Report!" Mesarine's voice came over the vox again, before he had a chance to gather his thoughts. Her voice took him back to the Sororitas at the Schola Progenium and made him feel very small indeed. "Ma'am. We have Imperial citizens surrounded by Xenos beast forms. I need support on my position." There was a brief pause. "Request denied Trooper. Return to the column or proceed to Objective Alpha."
Jhon was stunned. Perhaps he hadn't made himself clear, he leant into the vox thief horn and raised his voice higher than he dared. "Ma'am, please confirm? There are approximately 30-40 civilians, they have been cornered Ma'am, they're in mortal danger. Please provide support". There was no pause this time. "Did you just question my orders Trooper?" She didn't wait for an answer and he knew better than to try and provide any anyway. "I do not have time to deal with insubordination Trooper. Return now or move to the objective. If you question my orders again then I'll report you to Commissar Vandev on our return. Or I'll execute you myself.
He acknowledged her orders of course, it was his training, he couldn't have stopped himself if he had tried. But when he'd cut the connection he sat back against the wall. He was stunned, it was his duty to the Emperor to follow orders, but how could the Emperor leave his loyal subjects to that fate? With a heavy heart, Jhon reverently repacked his vox unit and hefted it back onto his back. Then, in the cruelest irony, the smoke cleared in front of him and he could see back to the temple. He could see the quivering purple flesh on the beast's chest. Some of which had been covered by what looked like chitinous plates sprouting along their right arms. He looked on in horror; he'd thought that they were Xenos at first, that they had landed on the planet as part of the Ork invasion. But the brute he was looking at, around it's lopsided waste, was what looked like Civitas-issue workwear, soiled and shredded where it still clung to the distended flesh.
He took three deep breaths, to try and steady his aim, he lined up the beast's head in his crosshairs, he tried to pull the trigger. Nothing. He tried again, his finger wouldn't move. The psycho-indoctrinated training he had received since he was an infant effectively prevented him from doing anything that would disobey a direct order. Without thinking he let out a shout of frustration, his complete impotence in the situation. That was when he spotted the other figure sheltering in the temple, behind the four beasts. He looked like an Imperial Civitas Medicae, with his white coat and Churigen's. But there was something terribly wrong with him, his eyes looked almost entirely black and his bald head seemed to be summeted with strange ridges of bone. The Medicae had heard him. He looked straight in John's direction and silently pointed. Three of the Xenos, or mutans, or demons continued to rend apart the helpless civilians while one began to lumber directly towards him.
Jhon ran. He ran as fast as he could, he let his rifle hang from it's shoulder strap and bang painfully against his knee. He jumped pipework and stumbled on fallen masonry without knowing very well in which direction he was going.
The roar followed closely behind him, echoing off of the walls around him. He ran harder and could feel the sheen of sweat forming under his mask and making the seal rub against his skin uncomfortably. After two attempts Jhon was able to grab the laspistol from the holster at his hip. It wasn't much but he was able to snap off a few shots over his shoulder. Another roar of frustrated pain was the only hint that any of his shots had hit their target. He was shouting into his voxlink now, trying to find Estevez, Mesarine, anyone from his unit so that he wasn't alone out here. "This is Trooper Specialist Dvorak. Hard contact. Please relay the nearest Imperial position. Repeat, hard contact. Please acknowledge receipt." Even he was surprised that he was keeping up proper vox discipline in this situation.
He couldn't tell if he was hearing garbled voices in his ear, or just the crazed Xenos chatter. He wanted to believe that he was close, that he could get away from the thing that he could hear getting closer. That was when the rubble he was scrambling over gave way and his foot fell between the broken masonry. His ankle twisted badly and he was thrown onto his face, his teeth slammed together painfully and the wind was forced from his lungs. He wasn't going to get up quickly so he scrabbled for the rifle laying next to him. He pulled it up and turned onto his back in the same motion, pulling the strap painfully into his shoulder. He lay there for a second before he heard a glotteral, phlegmy laughter coming from the mist in front of him. Accompanied by the scrape of a heavy object along the rockcrete.
His finger locked down on the Hellgun's trigger, he kept firing but he closed his eyes, expecting the crushing blow to send him to the Emperor's right hand. The space behind his eyes filled with white light and his skin felt like it was energised. His ears were ringing but he couldn't hear the laughter or the roaring anymore.
This was it. He'd passed beyond the firmament and he knew that when he opened his eyes he would be before the Golden Throne. He could still feel pain, but it seemed so numb and far away, he wasn't scared by it anymore - nothing more could hurt him. He was excited, everything the Ministorum had promised him had arrived and he would be rewarded for his service. Bracing himself, shaking with adrenaline, he opened his eyes to see the Emperor.
It was dark. It was just as dark and grey as the world had been before he'd been killed. He could see the same smoke in front of him. He was still lying in the mud and rubble that had been there before. Jhon propped himself up on his knees and looked down. Where the charging beast had been before now there were three of four huge chunks of burnt meat. He could see vestigial claws still twitching along the more chitinous limb. The ringing was still in his ears so he was surprised when armoured boots ran past him on either side. He shook his head as he realised what had happened, the column must have heard him and shredded the monster with a fusilade. The light and energy that he'd seen and felt must have been plasma discharge.
He'd been saved, they'd diverted to recover him. Mesarine appeared, standing over him, her face obscured by her Tempestor Mask. Even through the glowing green lenses he could feel her hard stare. "Are you injured Trooper?" He just stared. "Trooper! Are you injured, do you need medical attention?!" He shook his head slowly and she walked off without another word. Cuthbert came up behind her and helped him back to his feet. Jhon's ankle ached painfully but he fell back into his position in line. Mesarine came back over the command channel to underscore his thoughts "All units, we are behind schedule. Proceed directly to Objective Alpha".