As Mesarine and the Adept led them deeper and deeper into the Alcazar the level of ostentation decreased. Eventually they came upon a pair of heavy iron doors. Ancient in appearance, with a historic cogitatior unit built into one side. Munitorum crates had been stacked across the door, each marked with the symbol of the cult, clearly the Xenos worshippers had been unable to open this door and so had ignored it. The Adept gestured towards the door and Estevez started throwing aside the crates, scattering supplies and ammunition across the corridor. John and the other two troopers dropped to one knee and kept overwatch while the passageway was cleared enough for the Adept to approach the cogitatior. It's blue glow illuminated them now, obvious in the darkness, it wouldn't take much to spot them.
Out in the gloom, beyond the range of their helm lenses Jhon thought he could see movement. Not enough to fire his weapon, not enough even to call out. It felt as though the whole Alcazar was alive and that the walls were moving around them. He heard Mesarine's whispered voice in his voxbead "Hold your nerve troopers. Remember that the Emperor rewards the patient and punishes the reckless''. If she hadn't joined the Medicae Militarum she would have made a good Commissar, John thought. Even that thought of the regimental Commissariat was enough to make his back straighten and his grip on his rifle to tighten.
Jhon didn't see the first of them. Suddenly a stab of Hellgun fire lanced out, resulting in a strangled scream from the darkness. Then out of that darkness John could start to see human-looking cultists running at them. It was a long corridor but they were running hard, crazed and heedless of the oncoming fire. Jhon fell into a firing rhythm, killshot after killshot, piling up corpses which the heedless fanatics began to trip and fall on.
It reminded Jhon of the Scholam Firing Range where as a child he had been drilled endlessly in how to pick his targets and breathe out steadily as he pulled the trigger. Back then the Abbott's had only given them a brittle, bolt action lasgun which stood almost as tall as his seven year old self. The weapon was low power but still gave off a massive kick when he fired at the target servitors. He could also still remember the pain when he was hit by one of those rifles during the live fire exercises.
His Hellgun was much more effective now and they were making short work of the oncoming hoard. But Jhon had started to see that between the cultists moved larger things, not full genestealers themselves nor as large as the brute that had ambushed him earlier, but much closer in Xenos horror. Bulbous heads and additional limbs topped with vicious claws, despite their bulk they moved with unnatural speed, weaving between their human cattle. As the crowd moved closer these more elite fighters broke clear of the pack, and pounced through the air directly towards them.
The first one was sliced into four cleanly cut pieces by simultaneous las beams. The charred pieces fell to the floor with a wet thud. Two more were then cut down in quick succession. But as more and more of them leapt from the oncoming crowd of cultists they started to reach their line. Their bayonets were no match for the mutated talons that this new breed had and so John and the other troopers continued to fire point blank into their snarling faces. In response the Acolytes slashed out and loosed blooms of flame from crude industrial Flamers. Just as Jhon managed to remove the legs from another with a close range shot, he heard a sickening scream from his left. One of their attackers surged forward with a huge rock cutting saw that they had clearly stolen from a Manufactorum production line. Their surviving plasma gunner tried to smash the weapon aside but it's mass drove the spinning blade forwards and into the center of the trooper's chest. The blades tore through her carapace armour, flesh and bone in seconds.
Jhon couldn't bring his weapon to bear against this new threat. His rifle was still jammed in the ribcage of the chittering, slashing beast-thing in front of him. Neither Estevez, Mesarine nor the remaining trooper were able to either and so Jhon fully expected that the next thing he heard would be the spinning blades cutting through the air towards him. Finally the thing in front of him fell dead and he frantically tried to swing his rifle. Just as he looked around and saw the giant saw coming towards him, it's bearer's head disappeared in a flash of blue light. Jhon's head snapped round and saw the Tech Adept, the end of one of his weapon arms smoking and creating a toxic smell in the air. Jhon couldn't believe it, the Adept was just standing there calmly by the open door, apparently just waiting for them to notice. "The way is clear for us to continue" the Adept rasped through its vox emitter. That was followed by Mesarine's voice yelling at them to "Go!".
In short order the five of them remaining backed their way through the huge ceramite door. The Tech Adept went first, initiating the command to close the door immediately. Mesarine the last through, hacking away with her chainsword and covering herself in stinking purple-black blood. Estevez, Jhon and the other trooper fanned out into the new room, breathing hard into their respirators with the physical exertion of hand to hand combat. The room was dark and so they quickly reactivated the lumens on their suit's shoulders. They bathed the room in yellow light and it became clear to Jhon that while there were no threats here, they had stumbled into an even greater horror than the Xenos worshippers that they had just escaped from.