The lift car sank into the cool, dark earth. Outside the car, drill striations marred the dirt and living rock as they continued down, shielded with cave-in mesh and supported with a trussed framework of sturdy iron girders. Inside, the squad took concealed firing positions behind equipment stacks at the back of the car. Just ahead of him, Girard watched Stern's squatted form as the yellow flashes of the rotating beacon lights danced across the space. Down and down they went, and all the while the grinding of the lift echoed into the darkness. Such was the dark and monolithic underbelly of the Imperium's infrastructure.
The lift came to a halt on the lowest floor. They now sat at the edge of a rocky cavern, roughly hewn with las-cutters and melta charges. The door ratcheted open to reveal another sprawling, equipment-strewn atrium; every man scanned the floodlit space beyond for threats. The uneven bedrock floor, scattered with drifts of shale and pulverized rock, was crisscrossed with snaking power cables. They fed power to floodlight towers from squat, chugging generators, their operation breaking the otherwise tomb-like silence. Plastiflex bags of reeking refuse stood off to one side in lumpy heaps, beside a curving track occupied by rail carts the size of a chimera chassis. At the fore, flanked by access control bunkers complete with firing slits and biometric cam-scanners mounted to their exteriors, a towering blast door stood open. The meters-thick door hinged to the left, revealing a yawning abyss as the adjoining tunnel complex was revealed.
"Watch your arcs. Man's never more desperate than when cornered." Stern whispered. "Streeter, Veidt, check those carts – if I were a sump-sucking coward, that's where I would hide."
Girard swept his hand left, and the two hustled over to check for surprises. When none were forthcoming, the squad continued through the blackness beyond the blast door, with the Lieutenant at the lead. As they passed the threshold, the rock underfoot gave way to a grilled deck. The surface reached 20 meters across and was anchored a meter above the floor of the tubular tunnel ahead, providing easy footing for work crews. The clunks of booted feet echoed into the conspiratorial silence of the tunnels as they advanced inside.
The stormtroopers each fitted bulky, optic-clustered autosense visors over their eyes, replacing the darkness with a grainy wash of green and black. A chorus of high-pitched whines signaled the activation of the devices' simplistic machine spirits, and each man blinked in the sudden artificial brightness. The armsmen fitted their own optics; it was clear that the lieutenant needed no such assistance. Now able to view his surroundings in detail, Girard cast his gaze about the tunnel. Anchored to the ceiling were cable bundles, some as thick as a space marine's torso, and slim glow-strip tracks sat dormant at the apex. As they advanced, the decking branched away and led through smaller circular portals drilled into the walls. These entrances led ever deeper into the labyrinthine complex and were abandoned without exception, and even the respectable abilities of their visors were insufficient to pierce the gloom within.
"The frak is everyone?" Streeter mused, pivoting to the left mid-stride as he covered an open portal with his rifle. Veidt piped up from beside him:
"Silence, they may still be in and among us, now." He hissed. Their journey continued until the tunnel veered right, and their autosenses bloomed with light – a subtle gradient that would be otherwise imperceptible to their unaided eyes.
"Generarium is up ahead, and the stacks just beyond that. Not far, now." Lieutenant Maksachova whispered, a trace of excitement creeping in despite herself. The squad left the blackness of the main arterial tunnel into a wide-mouthed cargo staging zone marked with yellow and black hazard chevrons. Another set of toothed blast doors stood partly open revealing the chamber beyond, too small for vehicular traffic but space aplenty for a man. They slipped through the gap, fanning out across the wide landing beyond.
While the scale of the sublevel's construction had all the monolithic qualities expected of important Imperial installations, the generarium complex utterly defied the perceived limitations of subterranean architecture. A vast, cylindrical space opened before them, its upper reaches shrouded in eternal shadow over a kilometer above. The gloom was oppressive here. Every surface was cast in a bleak grey scale, untouched by natural sunlight. Running the circumference of the space were mezzanine networks of catwalks, loading ramps, bulk hauler lanes, and crew habs – an ancillary city lurked beneath the star port, unknown to its previous patrons but essential to its continued function. Beyond the ringed catwalk-city was an unknowably deep chasm that dominated the scene, out of which rose the generarium proper. Four tubular cooling towers rose up from the depths, fitted with track lighting on their flanks that still blinked faintly into the blackness below. Reaching across and through the square arrangement of rockcrete towers was a robust latticework of gantries and catwalks bridging the gulf of space. A gentle hum suffused the complex, carried on a steady breeze heated by the fusion chambers far below. The stormtroopers looked out across the abandoned subterranean city, a tense unease hovering just at the edges of perception.
"The access corridor is – stand by – there, across the span and to our left arc. We should move quickly." The lieutenant said, glancing up and down the dizzying paths that led around the circumference. Wulfie tucked his own auspex away and narrowed his eyes, scanning ahead. His body tensed, and his head turned to a fixed point in a sudden double-take.
"There, right there. Movement on the far outer rim." Wulfie dipped into an instinctual crouch as he pointed across the generarium complex. The entire squad crouched low, optics trained on the spot in question. Wulfie was right: at the edges of their effective range, columns of infantry surged out of darkened portals and hustled at double-pace toward nearby loading ramps similar to their current vantage point. Running parallel to the regular platoons of traitor infantry were gaggles of the black-suited Saevos shock troops.
"Guess they were still expecting orbital bombardment, cowering down here like they are. We moving to engage?" Stern flexed his grip on his hellgun. Girard shook his read.
"Negative, leave them to the 88th; our objective is behind them. We get in, secure the stacks, get the Lieutenant her prize, then we get back after it if need be." He pointed to the cooling towers at the chamber's center. "The outer ring is a tactical nightmare – we go straight, through the towers and all the way across. The faster we're through, the better." The squad watched motionlessly through their weapons' optics as the distant enemy troops filed into adjoining tunnels, racing to meet the air assault platoons in battle high above. Girard knew little of the locally raised Valparaiso regiment with whom they now fought; the Elysians' addition to Battlegroup Lambda was a recent one, and he desperately hoped that the local Tempestus guardsmen would be able to hold the enemy at bay long enough for them to complete their mission here.
Girard rose to his feet and led the squad at an urgent pace. They raced down the rockcrete ramp, across the tread-plated observation catwalks and down to the chasm-spanning walkways. There was a weapon trained at every conceivable angle of approach; none dared to let their guard down in the face of the claustrophobic jumble of habs, arbitrator stations and workshops. At Girard's pace, they soon passed beneath the immensity of the generarium towers. A constant rumble emerged from the unknowable depths below their rust-pitted catwalk, and had Girard had the time to gaze over the railing, he may have seen the subtly blacker shapes moving about in the darkness. Instead, the squad gained the other side quickly, with Girard at the front following Lieutenant Maksachova's lead.
His men left the narrow catwalk and immediately fanned out into a defensive formation. They veered left, covering the approach to an unassuming tunnel dug through the rockcrete slabs of the far wall. In the gloom, Girard only just glimpsed bronze-plated molding on the corners of the tunnel entrance, whose entire surfaces were las-engraved with shoals of hexamathic proofs. They reassembled into a tight, tactical forward column as they entered the pitch black embrace of the access corridor. Beside him, Girard watched as the lieutenant cuffed her left sleeve, exposing several inches of bare, ivory flesh. A perfect circle of blue light swelled just beneath the surface, no bigger than a one-throne piece. It appeared within a triangular arrangement of chrome inload studs on the underside of her arm, which gleamed in the frosty under-glow. She kept her stride and with each step she took, lumo-strips worked into the corners of the floor stuttered to life. Girard winced at the blinding glare and swept his autosense visor up and away.
Wall-mounted monitors lining the rectangular tunnel winked on, their screens black but still casting the faintest illumination. As the floor strips lit the tunnel, previously unseen security doors hissed shut behind them. An emerald stream of code slid up the screens in unison, geysering biometric data and ident-sequencing. The flaring lines of code winked out, and were replaced by text the color of cherry-red embers.
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INITIALIZING AUTHORIZATION HEURISTIC
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STAND BY
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|| uName: maksachova_kseniya_yelena ||
uDesignation: NavInt, battlefleetDesignation: Tempestus / astra_mil_ad-hoc_aux
access_auth: [omicron/vrm/tempestus_nav/navisNobilite_aux] = true.
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Welcome to Site 06
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"And we're clear." She said, rolling her sleeve back over her gleaming inload ports and dropping out of her cautious and tactical posture. Girard blinked.
"You're sure about that, are you?" he said, the shock of her hidden abilities only stalling him for a heartbeat. He shared a glance with Solly before he hustled up beside the lieutenant, weapon still at the ready.
"I am. Anyone – anything, without the proper inloaded authorization would trigger the security fail safes – and I assure you, that would be extremely unpleasant." She pointed along the flat and featureless slabs of steel deck plates. Fixed to the corners at regular intervals were cylindrical, copper capacitor coils. The coils thrummed with deadly power, ready to unleash the full load of their accumulated electrical energy on any intruders – perceived or otherwise.
"I'll defer to your judgement, then. In the future – if you'd be so kind – I'd like a warning, next time you commune with the Omnissiah." Girard said tersely. If the lieutenant noticed his mounting irritation, she gave no sign of it.
"Duly noted, Sergeant."
The squad maintained their defensive posture despite the lieutenant's apparent ease. Sliding blast doors of burnished gold lined the access corridor, remaining sealed as Site 06's slumber faded. The lumo-strips continued to blaze a linear trail until they reached their terminus further ahead. In the adjoining chamber, a single spotlight shone down from above on the gold-veined marble floor, and an exquisitely etched security portal twice the height of a man. Glossy, white enameled paneling rose up to the ceiling, and the security portal was flanked by slender columns of similar construction. Ribbons of las-engraved text and numeric sequences covered every square millimeter of the portal, and at its center was a bas relief of the Icon Mechanicus.
"At last," she breathed, cuffing her sleeve again to reveal her small, circular electoo. Girard's men rallied around them, waiting for her to work her tech-sorcery on the doors. Girard stared uneasily at a bulbous cluster of optics jutting out above the doors on a pivoting pintle mount, which now followed him in time with his movements. The lieutenant stepped up beside the ornate framework surrounding the door, cast from what appeared to be a single sheet of lustrous steel. She produced a small device from her webbing: she grasped the featureless, triangular silver rod in one gloved fist, no more than one handspan in length. She stood on her tiptoes and slid the device into a random crevice in the framework that would have completely escaped Girard's notice. The entire squad flinched as spidery lines of light rushed out from the insertion point, working across the entire surface like ripples in a geometric pond. As soon as the light filled every visible crevice on the frame, it bled away in an instant. She took a knee in a strange move of subservience, turning her exposed arm upward to display her electoo to the optics cluster.
"Ave Deus Mechanicus," she whispered, eyes screwed shut as the optics swiveled silently toward her kneeling form. A rich proclamation of techna linguis rushed from the very walls of the chamber, and the security portal eased open with a speed that belied their unassailable bulk. Girard and his men assumed positions on either side of the portal, readying for room-clearing maneuvers as the armsmen rushed to the lieutenant's side.
"So much for warnings eh, G?" Wulfie growled, taking position behind Girard, who nodded and swiftly approached the sailors.
"Ma'am, with respect, the mission's not over. Locked up or not, we clear this room like any other." He said softly enough that her men wouldn't hear. She blinked suddenly.
"Yes, yes of course." She drew her weapon again, shaking off her wonderment for the moment.
After such a long and bloody journey, the data stacks did not disappoint. A sprawling rectangular chamber stretched open before them with a classically vaulted ceiling, its powdery white furnishings lit as brightly as a medicae operating theater. Towering rectangular pillars of glossy, pearlescent enamel the size of lance batteries rose up in tidy ranks, maintaining holy symmetry with scarcely a micron's deviation. A faint haze rose from the large and luminous tiles that comprised the floor, lending a surreal and divine air to the place. At chest level the enameled housing of the towers ended, revealing a stripe of matte black cogitator inputs and interfacing stations, with status indicators that blinked in polyrhythmic sequences. Above these interfacing ports, the cog-and-skull emblem of the Icon Mechanicus was embossed onto each tower, leaving no doubts as to the identity of this chamber's owners. Girard and his men wove through the geometric forests of these towering data repositories, unwilling to declare the area secure until their own, mere mortal eyes could confirm it themselves.
"I want Streeter and Veidt posted on the entry portal. The rest of you, sound off if you reach a barrier or the far wall." Girard voxed, scanning his own sector of fire with a tirelessness not unlike that of the Martian priesthood that once occupied this space. Like ghosts, 2nd squad descended into the Mechanicus vault.
Girard passed among the humming pillars, noting wider spacing as he continued deeper into the stacks. Presently, he passed around a tight cluster of such pillars, arranged as part of some fractal and unfathomable architectural sequencing, and came face to face with a data tower far larger than the rest. It stood at the center of the chamber, flanked by marble-sheathed cogitator stations trimmed with gold leaf. Rigid cabling and conduit clusters sprouted from a wide ribbon of the black interfacing ports. The immaculate splendor and geometric precision of his surroundings were ultimately lost on Girard in that moment, however.
His gaze stopped at a cluster of figures at the center of the chamber, hunched around a collection of boxy, spine-encrusted crates. His heart skipped a beat, and a cocktail of terror and adrenaline surged through him. Tall, athletic, and long-limbed figures huddled together, their bodies sealed in armor of oily blackness and adorned with wicked spikes and grisly trophies of war. Their peaked and sweeping helmets concealed their fleshly features, save for one. As Girard fully cleared the concealment of the closest data towers, the frighteningly pale head turned in eerie unison with its helmeted comrades. For one heart-stopping moment, human and xeno gazed at one another, their mutual shock at one another's appearance warping into disgust and hate. The xeno's lip curled to reveal teeth filed to wicked points, and Girard moved without thinking. With the speed of a champion competitive marksman, he snapped his weapon up to bear and fired.
Instead of collapsing under the impact, intended for center-mass, his target was already darting up and away with a speed that bordered on the supernatural. The bolt glanced off the creature's leg armor, carving out a superheated gash and sending it tumbling end over end into its equally alien machinery. Its helmeted compatriots reacted to the assault with augmented shrieks from their helmets, sending waves of nausea through Girard's guts and blurring his vision for the briefest moment. He became a creature of instinct: cold, tingling adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream, and hypno-didactic threat responses activated to supplement his own combat training. He dropped to a knee and pivoted his rifle in a perfect path that aligned it with the closest, truest threat to his life.
"Contact! Xenos witch contingent at danger-proximity! Consolidate forward, fire fire fire!" Girard bellowed into his headset.
At once, 2nd Squad pelted through the data towers on a collision course with their foe. A storm of gunfire erupted all around the chamber as the xenos scattered like sump roaches under a lamp caster. Girard fired a surgically precise three-round burst through the center of one xeno's chest before it could fire its own weapon, its armor plates flaring with orange rings of multiple impacts. It collapsed to the glowing floor tiles, clutching at its wounds as a pool of brackish blood vented from its chest. With no time to waste, Girard rose up and sprinted back through the stacks, homing in on the helmetless xeno. Behind him, he heard the slicing impact of alien rounds peppering the ground he had occupied a moment before.
"The frak are they doing here?" Veidt spat, adding to the eruption of incredulous anger over the voxnet. The stormtroopers darted around the data towers, joining battle with the debased xeno warriors. Accenting the snap-crack of las-fire was a ghostly hiss and crystalline splintering of xeno weaponry.
"Mind the data towers! Emperor's sake, check your fragging fire!" Lieutenant Maksachova bawled over the din of battle.
She tucked herself behind one tower, and her armsmen followed suit. She scanned the frosty whiteness of the chamber, terror pounding through her augmented nervous system and dulling her own preternatural nerves. Wulfhausen shot past ahead of her, his hellgun ripping the air apart. Against these acrobatic alien warriors, the small contingent had no time to dig in; this foe had to be taken head-on and without delay, if there was to be any hope of survival. Girard circled back through the towers, firing wild bursts down the rows as the xenos slunk, slid, and pirouetted away from the stormtroopers' gunfire. Fear of death was a distant afterthought, for those that knew of their cruelty – indeed, to be taken alive by such masters of cruelty and consummate torturers, death was a blissful alternative.
Lieutenant Maksachova chanced a peek around her cover, clutching at her stubgun and struggling to accept the fact that she was now utterly out of her depth. Her harried musings were cut short by a startled gurgle behind her. She spun 'round in time to watch Verenti stumbling back from the disemboweled body of his comrade. Armsman Mesh crumpled to the floor, body sliding apart and sluicing blood and viscera across the tilework. The deep crimson splash on the luminous surface cast the immediate area in a baleful glow.
The warrior responsible for Mesh's brutal demise lunged forward, launching Verenti from his feet with a whiplashing pivot kick to the gut. It spun in a graceful arc, sheathing its blade in a flash and bringing its long and angular rifle down on the lieutenant. She brought up her arm to deflect the bone-crushing swing and met the weapon with the muscular portion of her forearm. The rifle bent along the point of impact, drawing a grunt from between her gritted teeth. If it was shocked at her impossible resilience to such a blow, it gave no sign. In one fluid motion it drew itself back into a fighting stance, blade in one hand, as it slung the damaged weapon. She staggered back into the aisle, firing a desperate burst of stubgun rounds at center mass. They glanced harmlessly off its seamless armor, impacting against the surrounding towers and ricocheting through the chamber. She backpedaled away from certain death, only to watch the xeno absorb a flurry of las-bolts from somewhere further down her right arc. It crashed to the floor, its entire right side a smoldering wreck.
Elsewhere in the data stacks, Postigo and Veidt were locked in a white-knuckle game of cat and mouse with one of the remaining warriors. Postigo slid to a stop, sensing, rather than seeing, the warrior spin from behind cover and power forward without losing momentum. With a leap of feline grace, it plunged a curved blade toward the base of his neck. Postigo spun 'round at the last possible moment, and the blade meant to sever his spinal column instead skewered his shoulder. The blade sunk in with a sickening squelch, the monomolecular edge of the weapon carving effortlessly through his thickly muscled flesh. Postigo roared in pain, and fired his weapon into the floor in an involuntary spasm. Veidt, unhampered by an alien blade in his shoulder, raised his carbine and shot it in the face.
Postigo collapsed to his knees, holding the blade steady with his functioning hand, lest its lethal edge cut deeper. Girard, Solly, and Venn threaded between towers, struggling and ultimately failing to maintain fireteam cohesion. Girard drifted forward, away from his comrades in his hunt for the helmetless alien. After tense moments of searching amid the racket of close quarters battle, he laid eyes on his prey. It trudged into his aisle, clutching the ragged wound in its leg. A smear of lurid ochre powder coated its lips and nose, and the muscles in its neck bulged with drug-fuelled power. Where it may have possessed incredible speed and strength before, this warrior's body was now driven to the very pinnacle of its abilities with the powdery inhalant. Girard was no stranger to the combat drugs utilized by the Dark Eldar raiders – such enhanced troops could butcher entire squads of trained guardsmen with their bare hands, and did so as a matter of sport. The xeno let out an howl of atavistic fury as its veins bulged and ran a horrid purple tint, all pain from its wound forgotten as it very nearly teleported in his direction. It raised its blade, a long and curved falcata etched with foul alien runes.
"Oh damn it all," Girard hissed, scarcely able to draw his knife before the xeno closed with him.
With deft footwork, Girard tucked away from the first strike, which by all accounts should have hacked him in two. This creature may have had speed and impossible strength on its side, but it was still mortal, and the tremendously powerful psychoactive drugs made it sloppy. Now strategically placed to the left of the lunging warrior, he brought his knee up into the xeno's ribcage, halting its advance before it could reverse the strike. Its forward momentum was suddenly arrested, and it let out a wheeze of shock as it buckled for a fraction of a second. It tumbled aside, transferring the momentum with acrobatic grace. It planted its feet, glassy eyes wide with astonishment at what approached rival skill. Once more, Girard found himself moving without thought. He followed with a savage push-kick, which the xeno deflected with a casual swipe. He was ready for such an elementary defense and countered a swift right hook.
The warrior reversed its swipe and batted the punch away with a force that nearly snapped the bones of his forearm. He grunted in pain, vision doubling as the electric shock of the impact radiated through his arm and into his shoulder. It slid into his guard, and hammered a flurry of sharp-knuckled punches into his midriff, driving the wind from him. Debilitating agony radiated through his bones like a bomb blast and before he could counter, a spinning elbow strike landed against his jaw. A fuzzy thud reverberated through his skull and stars exploded across his vision, driving him aside as one of his molars detached. Rather than crumple under the creature's assault, the stinging clarity of pain allowed him to rally.
With Girard seemingly on the ropes, the xeno's guard was finally compromised. He turned his sidelong stumble into a lightning quick pivot and reset his stance. In a blur of blood-soaked polycam, he pistoned his other arm upward, combat blade in hand. The carbide-steel edge gouged up through the soft tissue under its chin, and hot alien blood flooded down his gloved fist and soaked his sleeve. Blood sprayed from between its filed teeth, and its eyes rolled madly in their sockets. Girard wrenched the blade out, gripping his foe by the gorget and ramming it against the closest data tower. He reversed his grip and hammered the blade through the top of its shaved skull and stirred the weapon like a soup ladle. The exotic blade slipped from its spasming hand, and the creature thrashed as it collapsed. Such was the power of its drugs that the body fought on, flopping grotesquely on the floor, its eyes swirling in separate directions as it gurgled pathetically. He drew his pistol, and drained its power cell into the twitching corpse to ensure that it was, in fact, thoroughly dead.
Chest heaving from exertion, Girard staggered back against a data tower, raising his pistol and scanning his surroundings for the remaining warriors. After a moment he gagged, spitting his dislodged tooth away; it clinked and skittered happily across the body-strewn tiles. Only then did he notice that the sounds of gunfire had ceased, and the hum of sacred electronics reasserted itself. The floors, walls, and ceiling bore criss-crossed las burns and were studded with the purple slivers from the xeno weapons. Beside him, a sharp cracking sound startled him: lodged within the glossy white enamel of the data tower, a single splinter round had landed scant inches from his head during the fight. With the jerky motions of a time lapse vid, the splinter round was squeezed out of the enamel like an invading foreign body. No sign of a puncture was left behind, and it retained its smooth, seamless perfection in spite of the ferocious battle that had raged around it.
[] [] []
"Report! Who've we lost?" Girard shouted, his own voice startlingly loud as the adrenaline faded. The wonders of the self-repairing enamel were all but forgotten. He pushed himself up and away, blinking in the haze of ozone, gun smoke, and reeking xeno blood. His heart still hammered against his ribs, a tingling rush suffused his limbs, and his hands began to shake.
As though in reply to his question, a plaintive cry sounded from two towers to his right. He turned to follow the sound and stopped as he saw the lieutenant standing in his path. She clutched at her arm, staring dumbfounded at him, her face a mask of horrified disbelief. She had just witnessed a human – albeit a highly trained and expensively outfitted killer – defeat a heathen Drukhari warrior in hand-to-hand combat. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Girard stomped past her and toward the sound of the cries, obliterating her questions before they escaped her lips.
"I'll be speaking with you in a moment," He spat. He pointed his knife toward her for effect, before sheathing it and taking off at a run. After a half dozen thrumming towers, he skidded to a stop. Stark was knelt down, gripping the bloody stump of Streeter's arm, hacked free below the elbow by one of the xenos' weapons. He worked a swirl of his cauterizing foam over the wound, swiping away the excess with the flat of his knife. "How is he?" Girard asked. He watched Streeter's head roll slack, his brow furrowed as he stared into his lap and murmured softly to himself. He watched Stark bite back a caustic retort, before replying.
"Stable enough, for now. He won't go far without medicae intervention, and the pain blockers won't last long, not with a wound like this." He said, testing the tightness of Streeter's tourniquet.
"What in His holy name just happened? What are they doing all the way down here?" He added, sparing a precious moment to meet Girard's gaze.
"I mean to solve that mystery in just a moment, rest assured." He replied, willing his heart to be still now that the violence was past. Behind him, Wulfie stepped up with Streeter's forearm clutched in one massive fist.
"Stacks are clear, nothin' here but us and the bodies. Venn's on the door with Kris, by the by," He said, passing the severed appendage to Stark before gesturing toward the entrance. "Any other wounded?" Girard asked. Wulfie paused, then sighed.
"One'a the armsman didn't make it. Abele's got a blade in his shoulder, but Doc got it sorted straight away. Don't look like it was poisoned, either." He paused, shaking his head. "Bastard of a fight, eh?" Stern rounded the corner, eyes still scanning the stacks for hidden enemies.
"On me, Solly." Girard said flatly, before turning to the other hulking stormtrooper: "You, too." Girard assumed he would find the lieutenant beside the largest data tower at the center of the stacks. He threaded his way through the looming repositories of data, taking in the view with more leisure from a position of relative safety. His theory proved correct: he crossed the open space surrounding the central tower, finding her and the surviving armsmen doing their best to dismantle the spined xeno machinery. With great sweeps of her arms, the lieutenant was ripping the scaly cable bundles away from inload ports like a wild animal clawing away a probing parasite. Though he could only guess at the purpose of these devices, none of his guesses were particularly pleasant.
Lieutenant Maksachova rose from a low squat and turned about, sensing the stormtroopers' arrival. Armsmen Verenti and Delk continued their work, grimacing as the slippery cables squirmed convulsively in their grip. She took a half-step back at the group approaching her, raising a placating hand as her words caught in her throat.
"If you knew," he jabbed a blood-soaked finger at her, squaring his shoulders as he stomped across the gap. "If you knew about them, and said nothing, Emperor help me I'll–" he hissed.
"Sergeant, of course we had no idea! We're on the border marches of the Vermillion Sector, a wilderness zone. Imperial control of the region has been tenuous at best since M38. There was no way to predict-" she began. The hint of a terse, scripted explanation only stoked the seething fire in Girard's guts.
"To hell with your clearance sanctions, you talk us in on what the frak is going on, and you do it now. I'll gladly take the Commissar's lash, if that's my fate. But the truth is out, and where these bastards are concerned, we'll only be lucky once. You need us." Girard planted his feet, waiting.
The armsmen had paused during the confrontation, and wisely kept their hands away from their weapons. Delk looked to his lieutenant with weary and tear-streaked eyes, all too aware of the gravity of such a demand. She put her hands on her hips, weighing the decision carefully. She blew out a great lungful of air, and gave a decisive nod.
"Very well, but augmetic failsafes won't allow a full disclosure to you, or your men. I am sure you understand," she said.
"Try your best."
"The Vermillion Sector, which at last estimate is composed of 117 star systems, suffers from repeated xenos and archenemy incursions. It's a galactic hinterland, and neither Battlefleet Tempestus or Battlefleet Pacificus can settle on who should be sorting it out. The entire sector is just crumbling away from the Imperium, and it's only getting worse. Now, worlds outside the sector – worlds like Knossos, a world on the Florian Bulwark – are losing contact one by one. We're all together still, yes?" She took a breath. Verenti turned from the silent audience, clearly in no state for a re-hash of mission parameters, and returned to his work.
"Now, did Naval Intelligence have strong indications of these slavers and raiders operating across the sector and beyond? Of course we did – they're slippery bastards, but their own arrogance helps us more than they know. But to run face-first, catching them red-handed as they tinker with a Mechanicus data vault?" She paused, struggling to articulate the ludicrous odds.
"Then we know the truth. Knossos is under xenos control, and who knows for how long?" Solly cursed, shaking his head. The lieutenant shrugged.
"Is it? You and your men know these witches better than many – is being complicit with human traitors, bent on planetary rebellion, a true goal of theirs? I do not think so." She countered. Girard exhaled through his teeth, his rational mind returning by degrees.
"This certainly departs from the script, doesn't it?" He murmured.
"Don't mistake me, gentlemen: without you, my team and I would have been dead the moment we set foot in this place. Perhaps worse than dead. But do not mistake me for a fool, either - had there been any indication of xenos activity, we would not be the only force storming this place." she gestured around at the corpses littering the stacks. Behind her, Verenti planted a foot against the façade of the central data tower, and with a grunt he wrenched out the last of the xeno cables.
"Well, the vault is secure and the day is ours. Where do we go from here?" Girard asked. It would take time to process the new information.
"I'll still need to gather what we travelled all this way to retrieve. This vault, there are few like it in this sector in terms of sheer scale, and whatever records we retrieve will give us a tremendous edge in the battles to come – of that, there can be no doubt." She said, revealing her stud-laden arm and taking a step toward the closest cogitator terminal.
"Free and clear, ma'am. Ready for mass exload." Verenti announced. She placed a hand on his shoulder, before stepping past and fastening a thick cable to a lower stud.
"Thank you, Aldo. Sergeant, you asked for a warning before my next communion? Consider yourself aware. I daresay I will be out of commission for a time, while I work my way in." She eased herself down, cross-legged at the foot of the cogitator and looked over her shoulder. A second stud on her arm was fixed with a cable as well, feeding into a brick-sized data module.
"Aldo, if you please?" Verenti took a knee, gingerly lifting the first cable from her forearm and plugging it into an inload port near the base of the tower. At once, her head went slack, and Verenti held her upright, lest she pitch her forward onto her face. He returned to his feet, itching idly at his moustache.
"She's done this sort of thing quite a bit, you know. Never with something this size, mind." He said quickly, at once eager for distracting conversation, and simultaneously too rattled by recent events to sustain it.
"Just hope she can grab what she needs before more trouble comes knocking." Stern replied.
Verenti and Delk stood alongside the stormtroopers as Lieutenant Maksachova sat motionlessly at their feet, communing with the leviathan that was the data vault's collective machine consciousness. One minute elapsed, then another. Girard frowned, noticing a slow drip of blood trace a path down from one nostril before pooling precariously on her upper lip. He called out over the voxnet:
"Any movement outside?" He asked.
"Negative. This place is a tomb." Veidt crackled back.
"Noted. One last sweep, then strap up; once the lady's finished, I want to be far away from this place." He announced. Another several minutes crawled past, dominated by the constant thrumming. The vault was secure, its outer extremities checked and re-checked while Streeter was moved to the central data tower. There, the rest of the squad set up a defensive perimeter. Presently, the lieutenant flinched, reached up with her cabled arm, and hastily unplugged herself out of the cogitator terminal.
"Holy Throne, what a chase," she panted, suddenly winded by her exertions. She scrambled to her feet, removing the cable from her arm and slipping it back into her webbing. Girard sensed the urgency of her movements, and voxed his marching orders to his men, readying them for rapid exfiltration. She accepted her stubgun from Delk, checking her magazine load as she turned to address Girard.
"Sergeant, this is a big victory for us. More than worth the struggle to achieve it. Let's make our way to the surface." She breathed, unable to conceal the pride in her voice.
"Let's not uncork the amasec just yet, ma'am – there's still the matter of the garrison above us." he cautioned. The lieutenant stared a moment, puzzled. She shook her head, as though clearing herself from a heavy daze.
"Forgive me, the data grab was quite taxing, and we have spent a great deal of time out of orbital comms range. Thanks to your comrades, the orbital batteries covering this hemisphere fell shortly after we entered the sublevels. There was nothing remaining to restrict full surface mobilization; Perjed's Landing is ours." She regarded the disbelief settling across the men's faces and gestured around the towers surrounding them.
"Her reach is, without a doubt, significant. I for one vote to discuss the finer points of machine intelligence at a later date" She said.
"Couldn't agree with you more, ma'am.
[] [] []
The doors to the lift car ratcheted upwards, revealing the pulverized corridor that 2nd Squad had left behind. They blinked in the late afternoon sunlight, still painfully bright after emerging from the gloom. The sun began its own descent, casting a rich, summer haze of pastel hues across the hilly woodland landscape. Distant crackles of heavy weapons fire still echoed from the surrounding forests, now far beyond Perjed's Lending. Along the liberated flight lines, sweeping and oblong shadows slid across the expanse of grass and rockcrete, the telltale shapes of bulk landers and troop ships. Beside the nearest private shuttle hangar to their left was a tidy trio of dull grey troop landing ships. These squat and oblong vessels ferried the hordes of Siege Breaker guardsmen to the surface and even now the streams of heavy infantrymen, clad in their sleek and menacing carapace armor, were setting up strongpoints around the star port and performing rapid sweep-and-clear maneuvers on the remaining structures. Ponderous mass-freight vessels eased themselves onto the flight lines like bloated insects, bearing the bold white stenciling of both the Labor and Siege Auxillia Corps. These olive drab monstrosities disgorged their teeming masses of men, abhumans, cargo vehicles and construction tracks through retracting portions of their fuselage, setting the industrious drones loose upon the star port.
The lieutenant was right: Perjed's Landing was won.
Back in the concourse proper, Veidt and Johannsen hauled Streeter out of the lift, steadying him as he trudged forward with his severed arm in hand. The pain inhibitors were holding, for now. Ever vigilant, Postigo trudged cautiously at the middle of the group, arm wrapped in a field expedient sling and his spare hand brandishing his pistol. The edges of the lodged blade had been cut carefully away and braced by Stark's ministrations, but would still require medicae intervention to fully remove without permanent disfigurement. He cast an appraising gaze across the previously cleared battlespace; even with such a dangerous wound, his death dealing potential had scarcely diminished.
"Eyes up, let's not get caught unaware – Solly, open a channel to the Justicar, let them know the primary is secured." Girard called out, matching pace with the lieutenant.
He stepped over the same, bloody-faced corpse from earlier in the day, glancing out the windows to his left. The scream of aircraft engines heralded the swooping approach of the Valparaiso 133rd's support fighters as they gave chase to fleeing traitor forces. They streaked over the outer buildings, the bass hum of their assault cannons thrummed angrily over the landscape. Girard smiled as his squad advanced, knowing full well the kind of high-explosive death being visited upon the routed enemy.
Presently, the squad came to a halt. Stern, currently on point, gave the signal without a word; every man darted toward the closest cover or concealment available, readying themselves for yet another fight. Instead of traitor infantry or teams of Saevos butchers however, the deep woodland greens of the air assault troops emerged from around the bend in the concourse. A full assault platoon swept into view, moving in tightly disciplined concert with one another. Alerts echoed down the passageway and the individual elements stood down, lowering their weapons and advancing as comrades in arms.
"Hail, Elysians! What news, from below?" One of them called out from the advance guard, his voice a craggy baritone. Solly rose drew back up to his full height, bristling at the lieutenant's terse warning in his vox bead:
"Not a word, Corporal." She whispered.
"Mission accomplished, but we have wounded – has the forward medicae element arrived?" Solly responded.
A wolf-lean and fair-skinned fellow stepped from amid the knot of riflemen at the fore, clutching a dark lasgun against his lightly armored chest. Like the Elysian troops, they too had foregone the bulky shoulder pauldrons and heavy greaves of traditional regiments. They seemed to share the 'lighter is better' doctrine, and it suited them well. The man ran a hand through his sweat dampened hair. Though he had not committed Valparaisan rank insignia to memory, Girard knew the platoon sergeant type well.
"Aye, among the first, aft'r we clear them tower gunners. Landed 'round the back, between 'ere and the generators." He explained, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.
"Then we will take our leave – Emperor guide you, friend." Solly said with a natural air of comradely respect.
Choruses of The Emperor protects! echoed back and forth between the two groups as they passed one another, each unit resuming their own missions with a rote sense of purpose. As the sun made its descent between the wooded foothills of southern Vidal, another little corner of Knossos was under Imperial control.