Old Faces, New Threats

The Munitorium bay was a cavernous hole carved into the northern side of Capital Spire. The troopers had taken to calling it "The Gulch." The Gulch was serving as the drop-off point for the Imperial forces deployed to Meridian. The floor of the bay was teeming with activity, trucks steadily moving in and out of the Gulch, laden down with munitions.

. Merrick and the Daredevils were busy loading their gear into the recon vehicles. Merrick looked up to see the Artemian company approaching them. He recognized some of their faces. A grin crept across his face when he saw the man leading them. The dark skinned man shook his hand and returned the smile.

'Good to see you again, Corporal,' said Merrick.

'That's actually Sergeant now, sir,' corrected Roland. 'Artemian policy. If your officer is killed in action, you automatically assume his post. If you survive the engagement, the promotion is made official.'

'Huh, doesn't sound very efficient. You could end up with someone like Castille in charge.' Merrick let the disdain for that name drip from his words. "Just don't get your head ripped off, alright?"

Roland smiled. "I'll do my best sir."

The recon group's vehicles included Salamanders, bikes, and several Tauros jeeps, all coated with the blue grey pattern the Artemians wore for urban combat. The Kydoran Sentinels stood in stark contrast, with a garish yellow paint job better suited to irradiated deserts than cityscapes.

Remer and Vornas were lifting a multi las power pack onto the Salamander, chatting. "Looks like we get to fight with the boys in blue again, eh Bor? Fancy that, a mixed gender regiment, you don't think that one lass recognizes me, do you?"

"Which one?" muttered Vornas, grabbing another pack. "The tall leggy one who planted her boot in your face, or that little raven haired girl that took a shine to old Gren?"

"You know the one, that Fayden gal. Ellie, Elle, or something like that."

"So the second one," said Vornas. "Who also punched you in the stomach, and isn't interested in the slightest."

"That's just what you think, Bor. One day you will see I'm right."

Vornas scoffed. "The day that happens is the day you will get Connor into bed."

"Sooner than you think, Vornas."

"Whatever."

Hurst emerged from the driver's cabin. "Pack it up, we're moving out in five minutes," he said. "Don't want to keep the cultists waiting any longer than we have to."

The Artemians loaded onto their vehicles and began to head out. Merrick clambered into the back of the Salamander, closing the hatch behind him and cloaking the squad in darkness. The scout pulled them into line behind the others. The driver called back to the Daredevils over the vox. "The name's Torvin. I hope you don't mind, but I've been told to tell you to hold onto something."

Before Merrick could respond, the engine revved, the Salamander lurching forward and knocking him off balance. Torvin let out a whoop as they veered around the corner of the Gulch, one set of treads in the air. Capital Spire slowly leveled out into the flat expanses of the Dead Zone. The convoy had passed from the safety of the spire into an open warzone.

It was midday by the time the group reached the site of the attack. The endless roads and suburbs of the upper hab spires were monotonous but deadly. Every street could be an ambush, every city block a potential trap. It was slow going until they reached the highway. Up here above the sprawl, they were more exposed, but the Guard's air superiority kept them relatively safe.

The convoy came to a stop in front of the scene, fanning out to cover the entire road. Torvin pulled the Salamander to a stop beside one of the twisted Sentinels. Merrick and the Daredevils filed out of the darkened cabin onto a sun scorched expanse of asphalt. The Artemian Captain dropped from his vehicle and began issuing orders.

"Get to work pulling whatever you can from the cockpits," he said. "Have you got a tech specialist, Vendolanders? We can share the data."

Hurst stepped forward. "We don't technically have a specialist, but there's nothing a knife and some steady hands can't handle. I'll get started on the first Sentinel."

The pilots were still inside, their corpses trapped in the crushing metal embrace of their smashed cockpits. The cultists were too lazy to haul them out, but they had taken the time to carve sigils and unholy glyphs into their exposed skulls. Hurst steeled himself and crawled in.

The smell was terrible. Rak beetles had already begun boring into the poor soul's body, secreting a foul smelling odour as they did. Hurst flipped out his combat knife and slid the blade into a crease in the console, prying the auspex scanner loose. Pulling himself out of the wreckage, scanner in hand, he moved onto the next sentinel, doing the same.

The sun was sweltering, the light reflecting heat off of the rockrete surface of the road. Hurst sat in the shadow of Torvin's Salamander, and started working on the scanners. Using his knife like a screwdriver, Hurst pulled the casings off. Stepping inside the Salamander, he connected the exposed ports of the scanner to the vehicle's onboard cogitator. A blue light emanated from the vehicle's video screen.

"Right, what have we got, Waddy?" said Merrick, looking over Hurst's handiwork.

"I thought you'd stopped calling me that," muttered Hurst. "Still, I think we've got something. I'll start the playback."

The video screen showed a somewhat garbled transmission of the Sentinel's recordings. The squadron had come to a halt along the highway, where they were confronted by several vehicles. The squadron leader was calling to them, when the whole scene became backlit by something behind the convoy. Moments later, the image began shaking from the impact shockwaves of a missile barrage. The camera turned tail and began moving swiftly along the highway after three other Sentinels. The image cut to static soon after.

Hurst unplugged the scanner and set it on his lap. "Well, that explains what happened to them. Now all we need to do is find out why, and where those trucks were going."

Modren carefully pushed his sentinel over the rubble strewn across the highway. The weakened surface was cracked and depressed where years of wear had taken their toll. Modren was itching for a fight. He wanted these pricks to pay for spilling Kydoran blood. Fresh tread marks lead away from the site, leading towards the large hab block dominating the southern length of the highway. This could be it.

He spoke into his vox. "Dragoons 16 and 17, report back to Command. We've got a potential lead on the target's source."

The pilots signed off before peeling away from the squadron. "The rest of you, follow my lead. No sense in leading our allies into a death trap without scouting it out first."

The rest of the sentinels continued to drive towards the Hab block. The Dead zone had been left to decay during the Black Legion's invasion, and the continued insurgency had left the region to languish without recovery efforts. The hab block was pockmarked with gaping holes and crumbling buttresses, exposing its innards to the harsh sunlight.

The squadron came to a stop on an outcropping overlooking the building. Modren powered up his auspex and began a scan. The whole area was supposed to be abandoned. Of course that wouldn't stop urchins crawling in wherever they could. But then, urchins didn't carry high grade military equipment, like the ones that were sounding alerts across his console. They'd found them.

"Not the smartest if they didn't decide to relocate after pulling a stunt like they did." remarked Hurst. "I doubt it's Vandis troops. They're too smart for this. It's probably just a cultist cell, or they're offworlders like us and don't know the territory."

Hurst passed the binoculars over to Roland. The Artemian pressed them to his eyes. "What am I looking for, exactly?"

Hurst angled the binoculars for Roland. "See that entrance, between the two winged buttresses? That's where the Kydorans saw their signatures. Lots of munitions in there. Merrick, give me the map, would you?" Merrick passed the hololith chart to Hurst. "Here we are, Hab Block Altis. It looks like this was one of the PDF munitions dumps from the Coalition War. It's been abandoned for nearly six years according to Imperial records."

"Could they have found something inside?" asked Roland. "Was anything left behind?"

"Possibly," said Merrick. "The Vendoland Regiments were moved in after the war to aid in the recovery efforts, but we never did find every cache. We were dispersed over the subsector. Look at all the good that did us."

"I've got movement," said Kippler, not looking up from his scope. "Three, second floor, just passed by the crumbled section."

"Can you ID them, Soras?" said Hurst, peering over the lip of the outcropping. The sniper shook his head.

"Too fast to tell," he said. "No heraldry though. The Cultists like big spikes and I didn't see any."

Merrick spoke. "Roland, vox Captain Dalton. See what he wants done."

Alek pulled up his Vox kit, handing the caster to Roland as he dialed in the frequencies.

"Captain, this is sergeant Emol. The Vendolanders have confirmed the Kydoran's suspicions. They don't appear to have any outer defences, but the interior may be set up for an ambush. What are your orders?"

"Send the Daredevils in first, then follow at your own discretion," said Dalton. "I don't want this getting out of hand, so we will lock down this Hab Block if we have to."

"Understood Commander, Sergeant Emol out."

"Hey, Sergeant Hurst, I have a question."

Hurst sighed. "What is it, Private Remer?"

"Well, I don't act like I'm a military genius or anything, but a sergeant is a non-commissioned title right?"

"Yes."

"And Sergeant Major is the highest non-commissioned title you can get, right?"

Hurst rolled his eyes. "Yes, what's your point, Private?"

"Well, it was just on my mind sir, but how did you manage to get into that officer's dinner last night? I thought you needed to be a ranking official."

"If you must know, Private, General Derim invited me."

"Oh." said Remer, somewhat subdued.

"Did my answer disappoint you somehow, Private?"

"Well," started Remer. "It just seems rather boring, really. We were having bets on how you managed it. Kippler guessed that you'd tampered with a servitor to put you on the reservation. Vornas was betting on bribery."

"And what did you think, Remer?" said Hurst icily.

"I was guessing that you broke into a grox pen, set them loose in the kitchens, thus causing enough chaos that the servitors would be called to help the chefs capture all of them before they eat the entrees. After that, you would knock a lieutenant unconscious and steal his uniform, but the uniform is too small! So your commanding officer comes up to you and demands to know what you are doing, and reprimands you for uniform violations, but you head butt him and steal his uniform instead! Then you break into the dinner and nobody's the wiser. It's the perfect infiltration!"

There was an awkward silence as the squad kept walking. Hurst eventually spoke. "Just how drunk were you three last night?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," mumbled Remer.

"Remer, if you put as much effort into practical things as you did with your imagination, you'd be the next Patron Saint of the Imperial Guard."

"Much obliged, Sarge."

Hurst rolled his eyes again, and clipped on his gas mask. Merrick just chuckled and kept walking. Annoying as Remer could be, his eccentricities could be amusing. Merrick thought back to one of his earlier stories. Something about Space Marines riding on bears, whatever the hell those were.

A side entrance to the Hab Block presented itself. It was a small door, no bigger than a maintenance hatch, the same dull grey colour as everything else on Meridian. Flanking the door were Remer and Vornas. Kippler had his Long Las trained on the entrance, while Hurst applied the detonator. The device burst, blasting the door off its hinges and propelling it inwards. Vornas lobbed a flash bang inside, and the Daredevils piled in.

The room was clear. Steadily moving through the smaller antechambers, Merrick's men delved deeper into the abandoned Hab Block. The hallways were dimly lit by the emergency lights, and the air was filled with dust. They could hear voices and the sounds of machinery in the distance. The squatters were close by. Merrick put Kippler on point, scouting ahead with his long las for any incoming opposition. Kippler peered through a doorway leading to the machinery workshop, and raised his hand. Merrick sidled up beside him. "How many?"

"About twenty, working on one of those big industrial transports." whispered Kippler. "Maybe six guards, the rest look like workers. They're loading something big into the cargo hatch."

"Even if these aren't the guys we're looking for, they're still stealing Imperial tech. That's enough reason to shoot them." Merrick pointed at Vornas and Remer. "Knock on the door for me fellas."

"Right boss, should we go in with the witty one liners, or the other witty one liners?"

"Remer, right now, you could use your mouth as an improvised explosive device for all I cared, just get in there!" snarled Merrick.

Remer and Vornas looked at each other and shrugged. Vornas kicked the door down and Remer fired a pair of krak grenades into the shop. The room was suddenly filled with a web of Las discharges as the Daredevils stormed the room. Two of the engineers were bisected by the furious fusillade, and the rest dived for cover. The security guards, obvious in their experience, immediately dropped behind cover, blind firing with their autoguns to discourage the Grenadiers.

The workers broke from their hiding spots, making a run for it. Kippler managed to snipe two of them as they popped their heads out from behind boxes. Merrick flipped a work table, spilling its contents over the floor. Alek dove behind it, but not before stepping on a nail thrown from the workbench. He gasped sharply with the pain, but to the boy's credit, he didn't drop his gun this time. "Alek, on three, we push!" bellowed Merrick over the gunfire. "One, two, THREE!"

Using the table like a battering ram, Merrick and Alek charged towards the security guards makeshift bunker of boxes and workbenches. The table shielded them from the autogun bursts, leaving a trail of dents across its metal underside. The battering ram worked, breaking up the nest of guards. Merrick and Alek threw the table at them, using the temporary distraction to blast them at point blank.

In the midst of the firefight, several of the workers had scrambled for the transports. A large industrial hauler's engine was revving up. Hurst, flanked by Remer and Vornas, raced over to the Hauler. Two engineers were shot dead and the trio clambered onto the truck's cargo container. The truck burst forward, knocking them off balance. The three Daredevils fell backwards into the open hatch as the truck made a run for it.

"Kippler, driver, now!" shouted Merrick. Kippler brought his long las to bear, but it was too late. The truck smashed through the flimsy garage door and left the three remaining Daredevils in the dust.

"Shit! Shit, shit, shit!" yelled Merrick. He pulled Alek to his feet, and jammed his vox bead into his ear. "Captain Dalton, we've got a problem. A truck just pulled out of here carrying three of my men."

Dalton responded immediately. "We've got units in pursuit, Sergeant-Major. Stay where you are and secure the Hab block. My squads have been meeting resistance in key areas."

"Like hell I'm going to leave my squad on their own!" cursed Merrick.

"That is an order, Sergeant-Major. Stand down."

Merrick killed the vox link and spat at the ground. "Well now what?" he said.

Kippler stepped forward, shouldering his gun. "As you said, boss. Like hell we're leaving them behind." He nodded to the back of the shop.

The workers that hadn't made it to the truck had been running for the back of the shop. Merrick saw why. "Oh, I like your thinking, Kippler."

"You know they'll probably court marshal us for disobeying orders, boss," Kippler pointed out.

"Feh, he's not my Captain, is he? Let'em try."