Mesarine turned back to 87Quark "so how do you propose that we get out of this room Priest?" They could all hear the scrabbling on the other side now, several meters high as if the things on the other side were piled up on top of each other. "There are no other exits, Tempestor Churgeion '' the Adept replied matter of factly. Mesarine turned to the squads, "Estevez, Phall, prepare your remaining grenades, frag and krak. Link them to a single charge". The two of them prepared two full bandoleers of grenades while Jhon readied his weapon. There was no way of knowing what Xenos horror was about to fall upon them.
"Now!" Mesarine shouted as she executed the final rune on the door's control pad, it started to swing open. As first flicking and twitching claws reached through the opening Mesarine brought her chainsword down and severed them. They fell to the floor, still twitching, but more quickly took their place. Estevez and Jhon opened fire on full automatic, rather than stabbing out single beams, the Hellguns pulsed like lasguns, but at a much higher rate. There was no need to aim, only to point their weapons into the breach and pull the trigger. "Phall! Fire!" he heard from Mesarine and Jhon's eyepieces dimed as an overcharged blast of plasma shot past him and into the gap. It melted a hole right through the throng and passed out onto the other side of the tunnel. Jhon picked up Estevez and Phall's grenade brace and hurled it into the breach. It sailed through the whole and snagged across several blades and claws. There was no time to take cover, they had to keep firing or else they would be overrun.
Jhon looked straight into the blast, it certainly would have blinded him if it wasn't for his lenses. The concussive shock wave ripped through him and pulled at his armour. The cultist's bodies seemed to bulge towards them as the mass was pushed by the explosion. Pieces of their foul mutated bodies impacted against their armour as the fragmentation tore through them. It looked as if the blast had annihilated everything on the other side of the door, but they all knew better. One brace of grenades wasn't enough and Mesarine ordered them all through the breach, guns blazing and bayonets spearing at close range. Jhon lost count of how many he killed, stabbing and stabbing. His Hellgun firing the entire time, burning his hands even through his gloves, with the heat it generated.
As Jhon emerged through the corpses and wounded he sped up and realised that he needed to run to keep up with the pace of the other troopers. The Tech Priests weren't exactly running, but the Genator moved swiftly on his cluster of mechandrites and 87Quark's legs seemed to move with an unnatural pace that wasn't matched with the movement of his torso. As they ran back through the palace, the glorious decoration and lavish wall designs were replaced by industrial pipe work and steam vents. The passageways got narrower and they were forced to slow down to check the angles and swing their rifles into the corners and the paths that crossed them. Limescale seemed to have crusted it's way over every wall and pipe, giving an almost Xenos appearance to the obviously neglected workings of the palace.
Eventually the passageways seemed to converge and opened out into a circular chamber. It wasn't very wide but it's roof stretched up until it was lost into darkness, it seemed to be a ventilation shaft or a heat sink. The symbols on the walls suggested that the cult had been there first, grisly trophies had been hung from chains along the walls and strewn across the floor. Jhon observed that there were four exits from the room and each of the squad spread out into a distributed guard pattern, their training kicking in automatically. As they waited, the silence was broken by a voice, it was deep and guttural and seemed to have a stutter that broke up every tenth word. "You should not have come here Imperial lackeys." The voice was echoing around the circular room. "My ... Magos gave you a choice and you chose poorly. ... could have joined with our glorious father and been ... of the coming of the Star Gods, but you ... never see that wonder now."
The voice coalesced into a single point as he emerged from one of the doorways, a faint yellow light behind him. At first he looked like another of the cultists. Bald, his head had a more noble bearing and was set within a large industrial-looking gorget. He wore a long yellow coat, dirty with industrial grime and bulging oddly at his right shoulder. When he spoke again the voice came from his throat, thank the Emperor he wasn't a psyker. "My brothers joined together ahead of our God's arrival, but it was you…" he pointed at them accusingly "you drove us to take up arms, to throw off our Imperial oppressors and lead the downtrodden people of this world into the arms of the new and glorious Lords of the Stars". "You have all been witness to the power of our message, even the debased Governor of this world gave himself willingly to our Father. We are not unkind, you apostates can still share in the blessing and be one with our father." The cult leader's eyes flicked up inadvertently at the last second, almost imperceptible but enough. Jhon turned and looked up in the same direction. Just in time to dive out of the way of a huge talon driving towards his head.
A three meter long chitinous blade swiped at the air, followed by a roar as the thing behind it emerged from the shadows. He'd seen the thing before, from a distance; across the gulf of the huge throne room. The bloated genestealer had seemed huge then when it sat upon the Governor's throne. Now, up close, it was enormous. Jhon could see it's bulging brain and felt the nauseous feeling of the psyker beast that he'd felt earlier. Jhon felt it's glowing yellow eyes boring into his soul. It smiled a hideous grin that showed three rows of long needle-like teeth. Jhon tried to pull up his weapon, he tried to run but he couldn't move. He was scared, but that wasn't the reason he couldn't move. He felt his training, he knew what he should do and it killed him that he couldn't obey. He could almost hear the Drill Abbotts from his childhood yelling at him to move. The thing had frozen him. He couldn't move his head and so he couldn't see where the thing flicked out it's claws, behind where Jhon stood. He understood better when the thing brought it's claws back to its mouth, clearly holding the slack and bloody head of Estevez. It's long tongue uncoiled and supped speculatively at Estevez's spinal column.
Estevez had always been so alert, so aware and so cunning. But now what struck Jhon was now stupid and and surprised his expression seemed, slack and dead as it was. The massive Genestealer dropped his head and hefted it's bulk forward into the room. It used it's secondary arms to move through the industrial cabling. As it walked towards them, calmly, it let out a sound that was obviously laughter. Jhon heard it in his ears and his head and it made him feel sick. He still couldn't move so his weapon remained slack. The thing moved past him and approached the Genator. Jhon noticed that the power holding him in place weakened slightly, he could turn his head.
The massive Genestealer regarded the Genator, who also seemed to be frozen. It reached out with its more human-like hands and sifted through the Priest's mechandrites, testing them. As Jhon watched, the cultist leader took up a position next to the beast, his back arched in rapture as the thing placed a massive hand sensitively on the back of the cultist's head. A much deeper, more alien voice emerged from deep in the cultist's throat. "I wanted to thank you Machine Man." The Patriarch was speaking through it's servant. "You brought me to this world, so rich and bountiful with Life. The people here were ripe to receive my blessings, to await the coming of the hive mind." The voice that came from the Genestealer, through it's vassal, was powerful and compelling. "You have now outlived your usefulness to the Hive Machine Man, you will not witness the great arrival."
Just as the claw was coming down Jhon heard a cry of mechanised anguish. 87Quark threw himself forward. He was obviously less in the thrall of the thing's psychic might as less of him was human. The Adept lunged with a cog toothed axe, his mark of office, and the blade buried itself into the thing's chitinous hide. It roared in pain and broke off from it's lazy attack on the helpless Genator. Reeling round it slammed the junior priest away using it's more human-like hand. The diamond hard claw tips still shredding 87Quark's robes and cutting deep into his cybernetic torso. The blow slammed him into a stone wall where he fell in a lifeless heap.
But the beast's concentration had been broken and Jhon felt control over his body return. It also gave the Genator a chance to bring up his weapon, some sort of gatling needler, set into one of his larger mechandrites. A flurry of thin laser beams flew from the weapon, each conveying a fine needle filled with mutagenic acid. The barrage hit the Genestealer in the chest, causing it to stagger back in pain. The Genator looked both fascinated and shocked, presumably this had just disproved any number of learned data slates and theorem.
Jhon followed Mesarine towards the first door out of the chamber. You couldn't really grab the withered body of the Genator but Mesarine pushed at him to get him moving with them. Phall backed towards the door more slowly, firing her plasma gun into the monster and the now discarded Cult leader. Blinding blasts shot across the room, cutting down the cultist immediately and leaving him twitching and half melted on the floor. Although the bolts seemed to miss and almost bend around his Lord, a few managed to clip it's claws and chitin, none of them finding their mark. Jhon ran; behind him he could hear the Xenos roaring and the high pitched wine of Phall's plasma weapon as it went into a critical overheating cycle. The weapon eventually ignited and illuminated everything as if lightning had struck the tunnel behind them.
Mesarine ran alongside him; it was just the two of them left now from the original drop. Two Valkyries full of Tempestus Scions had been whittled down to just the two of them. But the Genator was still alive, he was still their Objective Alpha and as long as he was alive their mission could still be accomplished. Jhon's muscles were burning as he ran, his legs were going to give up soon. He pulled two of the auto-injector Stimms from his thigh pocket and stabbed them into his arm.
The Stimms filled him and renewed the energy in his legs. Mesarine didn't seem to have the same problem and kept a steady pace, chainsword in hand. The Genator of course didn't show any sign of slowing, he slithered along, more like an insect than a human. The tunnels were dark behind them just a bundle of roars and chittering and what sounded vaguely like laughter. All of it sounded as if it was getting closer.
As they turned a corner in the darkness Jhon's heart lifted as he saw light ahead of them. He didn't know if it was the Stimms or the hope of escape, but it made it easier to run and the whole group seemed to pick up their pace. In a short time they emerged out into the light properly. They were back on the surface.
Emerging out of what seemed to be a vehicle maintenance port at the base of the Alcazar's walls. They were back in the Imperial Civitas district, but Jhon had never been happier to see a semi-ruined riot-hit cityscape. Except they weren't alone; misshapen cultists seemed to be walking down every street, displaying themselves openly and marking their obscene symbols on more and more walls. They smashed any Imperial iconography that they found, or showed great glee at setting explosive charges, contributing to an ongoing deep booming noise to seem to be coming from every direction.