Mesarine signalled to one of the troopers to get the door open. They should have had the command override codes, but they had either been changed on the panel wasn't working. The trooper glanced at Mesarine and with her nod he maglocked a krack charge to the door and functioned it. With the ringing still fresh in his ears from the low thudding blast Jhon moved in with the rest of the unit. They moved fast down a long dark tunnel, the lumens on their rifles swung left and right as they moved. Mesarine's auspex clicked away in the background, sensing for any life signs ahead of them.
Despite the tension none of them were spooked. There was no blind firing into the darkness, no jittery reactions to rats. Jhon and the rest of the unit were used to these conditions, the Scholar Progenium had prepared them after all.
Jhon thought back to those times, when the Drill Abbot's had dropped each of them into that pitch dark maze under the Progenium grounds. Each one of them alone, half naked and only carrying a combat knife. They were all given a choice; to feel their way across the rough brick walls in complete darkness or risk the wider passages that had the faintest illumination from above. The risk, they all knew, was that their fellow students were also down there in the dark. The Abbot had told them that if they emerged with another cadet's Ministorum medallion then they would be given extra rations. Those who didn't emerge with a medallion would be sent back down to get one.
John remembered the brutality of some of the cadets. How they whooped and shouted in the darkness. He knew then that that would never be him, he wasn't a berserker. He felt fear, alone there in the darkness but he held true to his faith in the Emperor to keep him alive. It was the same faith that he held to now. The same faith that kept him to his duty as a Scion, despite the death of his comrades and the fact that he was in his city which seemed to have exploded with madness and Xenos filth. Back in the Progenium trials he had tried to stay as quiet as possible, he stuck to the darkness and stayed out of the way of the violence. But he knew that that wasn't an option for him now.
Mesarine guided them with her auspex and they all stopped dead when she held up her arm for them to halt. She gestured forward and her voice came over the helmet vox "Movement ahead. Estevez, check it out." Estevez skulked off ahead and rounded a corner, beyond which the light was brighter and sickly purple.
It hadn't been long until Estevez called back to the rest of the unit. "Move up, quietly. There is something here that you all have to see. Keep low, don't let them see us." Without discussion they moved out in single file, at a half crouch and with their weapons drawn. Jhon reached the balcony railing they crouched behind,, took off his vox unit and set it carefully down beside him. He made sure to mute the unit to prevent a stray transmission from giving away their position. Slowly, carefully, Jhon reached up to look over the balcony with the rest of his squad, into the sickly purple light.
What Jhon saw horrified him more than anything else he'd seen in the damned city. It was as bad as any of the foul demonic blasphemy that he'd witnessed from the most debased heretic. It was a congregation, like a corrupted parody of a Ministorum prayer rally. Men, and things less than men, knelt in tightly packed rows down the centre of a long room. Yet more knelt on stepped gantries set around the edges of the room. They were built from crude scaffolding that had been brutally hammered into what had been beautiful Imperial Gothic architecture. Jhon could see that the congregation all seemed to be murmuring to themselves or chittering with strange clicks and twitches. They were all praying, towards the position usually occupied by the Ecclesiarch. Jhon forced himself to drag his eyes up to the high altar at the centre of the throng. It was a Genestealer which sat at the centre of their devotion.
But it wasn't like the Genestealers that they had fought at the scaffold. It wasn't like any Genestealer that Jhon had seen in pic captures or mission briefings. This monster was four or five times bigger than those Tyranid combat organisms. It was swollen and bloated, thick musculature replacing typical lithe agility. The thing sat like a spider in the center of the once great room, hunched over on what had originally been a throne. The grand seat was buckled and broken under its enormous bulk. The thing seemed to be thinking, it's head bowed and it's grossly fleshy brain pulsating at the sides of its head. Jhon felt a prickly sensation or heat at the back of his skull. Jhon knew that that meant that there was warp witchery, the over bloated beast was a psyker.
As he watched a tall man emerged from behind the throne. It was obvious that he had once been rich and morbidly obease. His gaudy Planetary Governor's uniform was filthy and hung off of his now emaciated frame. This was Governor Maastricht, Objective Alpha, he had been kept prisoner of these Xenos worshippers. Jhon looked back over at Mesarine, looking for orders. Her face was still, watching the scene and her jaw was set hard. Jhon looked back, he could see that the Governor wasn't bound, he didn't even seem to be under guard. Jhon increased the magnification on his mask and saw a wide smile on the Governor's face. He had a wide eyed and vacant look which seemed to suggest that there was nothing more going on behind his eyes.
The Governor floated across the stage in a dream state, coming to a halt in front of the brooding massive Genestealer. He should have shown fear, he should have run. If he had been a true servant of the Throne he would have thrown himself at the beast in an attempt to kill it. But he did none of these things, as they watched he slowly unbuttoned his rich velvet tunic and stripped to the waist. His doughy eyes remained fixed on the Genestealer as he walked forwards and lowered himself to his knees before it, as if in supplication to an Imperial Shrine. The smile was still clearly on his face as he stared up into the needle teeth.
Jhon didn't know if the Governor was a prisoner, if he was under the influence of Xenos mind powers. Or, for the Golden Throne, that he was in league with these degenerates. The question was rendered moot as the giant Genestealer leaned it's huge bulk forward and brought it's hideous face level with the Planetary Governor's. The Governor's face and it's dull smile disappeared in a mist of blood and bone fragments as a second equally hideous mouth shot out from the things maw with the apparent force of an autocannon.