Day 36

Cass sucked in one grueling breath after another. The air had grown hotter and she thought initially they might be nearing a forge, which would mean danger. However, the truth of it was made clear soon enough.

A door slid open with the clicking of gears and whirring of cogs, revealing something strange and unfamiliar in comparison to the endless labyrinthine halls and corridors they came from. Cass had always been able to see the other end of the corridor in the hive, unless it was particularly dark or smoggy. Such was not the case now.

Expanding outwards, seemingly endlessly, was the vastness of the outside world, so huge it nearly made Cass sick just looking at it. No, wait, Cass realized as she doubled over and began to puke. It's just the baby.

They'd found a small hangar bay with its doors left open, not that either Cass or Brunt were aware of what a hangar even was. It was empty, not that it really mattered since neither had so much as seen an aircraft, let alone knew how to fly one.

Brunt lagged behind her, holding his wounded arm tightly against himself. He nearly stumbled when he saw the outside world. They'd both seen it only once before, many years ago. It'd been how they'd met, in fact, each running from mobs of murderous Imperials. They'd nearly killed one another over a hiding place, before the ones following them had neared and forced them to share the spot, rather than risk drawing attention with some kind of fight.

In the end, both were quite pleased they had not killed the other. More than that, they were shocked to find someone not only who was like them, but who did not inherently detest the other for reasons that had never been clear to either.

Neither had ever been particularly religious, the God-Emperor hadn't ever done them any favors after all, but they came close to true belief after that time, when they'd huddled together below the shadow of an Imperial Saintess' statue, even as the two disparate mobs mistook the other for some kind of uprising by the impure and attacked. It had been hours before the last of the dead and wounded were dragged off by servitors for recycling and Cass and Brunt had dared to emerge. Only then would either realize that there was no ceiling they could see and both had clung to the ground in fear of falling upwards into the billowing clouds of ash and smoke above.

They'd spent some time after that together. It had been… difficult, at first, learning to trust one another. Neither had slept much the first few nights, unable to get used to the idea of being near another person while so vulnerable. Eventually, exhaustion had taken them over and they'd slept deeply that night.

Of course, that was all years in the past. The recent… uprising? Invasion? Whatever had happened to Whiro, it had become a more dangerous place for both of them, and a bit of that tension had returned, though this time, none of it was directed towards each other.

Cass reached out to Brunt and held the arm that hadn't been scratched. "Is it alright?" She asked. "I can change your bandages?"

"I'm fine," Brunt said, waving her off even as she saw him holding back a grimace of pain. "Just… tired."

He was tired, but he wasn't fine. That much was obvious. If his wound had gotten infected… There wasn't anything Cass could do to help him, not without the proper tools. A new kind of nausea, one unrelated to the pregnancy, threatened to overtake her.

If… If he wasn't helped, if the infection spread, his arm would have to go. The best way to go about that would be…

Well, it would be a lasgun. Not exactly an easy find in this place, but not impossible either. They didn't have many other options. Nothing down here was clean, especially not any bladed instruments. A lasgun would take his arm off easily enough and… make sure there wasn't any bleeding afterwards.

The shock might kill him though. They didn't have any drugs to dull the pain either. Not many medicae stations left after the genestealers first swept through here.

Cass shook her head clear of the dark thoughts as Brunt passed by her and began looking for a way further down the spire. They'd need to find a lasgun first and if those things weren't coming around looking it wasn't likely one was going to just fall out of the sky. They'd need a miracle and Cass and Brunt had never seemed high on the God-Emperor's list of priorities.

But if she did nothing… Cass watched as Brunt seemed to feel some fresh burst of pain from his arm, coming to a stop and gritting his teeth tightly in an attempt to not cry out. After he settled, he looked her way to see if she noticed. She had, but something else had drawn her attention.

Far across the city, near its edge that gave way to an endless black ocean, the tunnel that stretched out to another hive was ablaze.

If it could have, the Brood Mind would have sneered as the explosives erupted along the tracks closest to the hive called Whiro, the tunnel collapsing onto the train in a thunderous clamor of tearing metal and volatile gases igniting. The train, which had only just begun to slow, buckled as it derailed, the separate cars that housed countless soldiers of the Enemy flipping off the tracks, some taking others with it, while some with steel wires connecting them snapped like a blade of grass being torn. That sneer of the Brood Mind's would have fallen away quickly, however, at the realization that the mammoth construct, for all its size, did not contain the bulk of the Enemy's forces, nor had the trap ensnared the other trains, which were spaced apart, presumably in expectation of something like this.

Which meant…

The Brood Mind's scouts, the quickest of those few tens of thousands of drones that it had reluctantly taken from its defense of the other tunnel, swarmed towards the burning wreck, even as the far-off screech of metal wheels scratching metal tracks indicated the deceleration of the other trains, reaching them even over the din of secondary explosions.

However, there were no screams. That, in and of itself, was unsurprising. The Enemy's forces never screamed, at least not in pain or in death. Only as means of intimidation or, it suspected, in mockery. However, there were also no survivors, pulling themselves from the wreck. As bad as it was, if it had been filled to the brim with soldiers, there should have been survivors. Certainly, the Enemy's forces should have been able to handle it better than the species the drones were a part of, with their strange abilities that even now the Brood Mind did not understand.

And yet, as its scouts passed fearlessly through fire and wreckage that even now was still settling in some areas, they found no bodies, no enemies rising to attack, not even a sign of the train ever having been occupied by anyone. Some sections couldn't be accessed, of course, buried under rubble or covered in flames, sometimes both, but there were plenty of areas that were empty.

The Brood Mind shuddered with powerful, alien emotions that sent some of its weaker drones to their knees under its psychic weight. A moment later, like puppets with their limbs being dragged into every movement, they rose again, their eyes clouded over.

The scouts hid themselves amid the rubble, even as the last sounds of the screeching wheels died down, leaving only the crackling of fire and the still-settling wreckage to drown out any other sounds. The drones readied their weapons, even as the Brood Mind set the rest of its forces into action, making final adjustments to its rapidly-prepared defenses.

In truth, it had half-expected the opening trap to fail, though not through such a mundane trick as an empty train. It had prepared some explosives in the past in order to collapse the hive Malum, but had used up most of them in the retreat from that first disastrous battle with the Enemy. That it had produced more had first been done in the intent to launch another attack at some point, only for everything to fall apart.

The expectation of failure had been more that such a method likely wouldn't have stopped the assault. The Enemy had never used such methods before. While it had shown theh cleverness to avoid defenses, it had never bothered with transportation. Why did it even need the train?

Perhaps it had been meant as a battering ram of sorts. There had been no indication of the train slowing and it'd been nearing the point where it wouldn't matter if it had screeched to a halt or not. But if it was a battering ram, why not fill it with explosives instead to produce an even greater effect? Had the Enemy not considered that? Was it not a ram at all, but simply unfamiliarity with the control schemes then that caused it to not slow down in time?

What kind of trap was this? Why was it even bothering with the trains when it never had before? Was this even really an attack by the same Enemy that had attacked the last two hives?

The Brood Mind had dug in, the Enemy had to have known that. Even with only a paltry force guarding the entrance, that area was in corridors that had been secured on both ends. No ventilation shafts for tiny bioforms to crawl through, guarded by filtration device-equipped drones who possessed weapons that mad such long hallways killing zones, even for such creatures as the Enemy had fielded before, along with a myriad of other hastily-prepared traps. A swarm would not avail it this time.

Right?

Corren felt the explosion more than he heard it, the shuddering of the train as the one in front of it was blown apart by mines the enemy must have planted in preparation for their attack. The second thing he felt was the sudden shuddering of his own train as it began to slow down rapidly, the wheels screeching as they ground to a halt far more quickly than was normally recommended.

Some of the Guard managed to keep their seats, others were nearly thrown bodily from them, not expecting the sudden deceleration. The Malum PDF faired no better or worse. Shockingly, the black-armored soldiers in the back who were standing kept their footing with a simple shift of their weight, seemingly not even stumbling. The casket they guarded shuddered but seemed to adjust to the sudden change in speed easily enough.

He felt Sulla grab his arm to steady herself, her fingers digging in painfully into his flesh even through his uniform, even as he grabbed the seat under him in an attempt to not go tumbling across the ground as some of his fellows were.

"What's happening?!" Sulla hissed, after a rather colorful, and slightly heretical, string of harshly muttered curses and oaths.

"NO IDEA!" Corren replied, louder than he had intended, nearly yelling. Even then, it was barely enough to be heard over the sound of screeching metal. It was only as the train came to a halt that Sulla released her grip. Those who had been thrown from their seating rose, all seeming fine save for what would almost certainly be a few painful bruises.

By the time they'd come to a stop, some were already starting to stand, others lying on their backs, stunned. However, the black-armored soldiers were already on the move, the casket floating between them as they marched in formation towards the exit.

"Malum Urban Cohorts, disembark and move out." The orders came across the vox-speaker. The PDF rose, still shaking off the jitters of the sudden halt, before following the black-armored ones.

The PDF was moving out first? That should have been the Guard's role, why were the Malumites being given priority?

In truth, Corren already had a likely explanation. The commander of this task force, that Marcus Agrippa, was a Malumite. More than that, he was a PDF colonel. He likely wanted to give his own troops a chance to prove themselves and, through their efforts, show himself to be worthy of the command he'd been given.

Politics. Corren was quickly learning to be sick of them.

It was a few minutes before the second order came down, long after the PDF troopers had disembarked and the sound of distant autogun fire began to grow louder and louder.

"Imperial Guard, disembark and move out." It was a simple order, basically the same as the first had been. Likely, they would receive further and more detailed instructions once they were off the trains.

Or so Corren initially thought.

He stepped out into the tunnel and his eyes widened. He had been near the middle of the kilometers-long train, but he still had good enough eyesight to see ahead at where the train in front of them had been. The train that was currently a burning wreck, half-buried under the tunnel that had collapsed on top of it. The train he had been on seemed to have only narrowly avoided crashing into that wreck, stopping just short of it.

The PDF's forces were ahead of him, marching forward into the sound of autogun fire on the other side of that wreckage. There were tens of thousands of men in front of him, each in a Malum uniform. However, the black-armored troopers were not among them, but had remained by the train car, alongside the casket.

The sergeants quickly got the Guard into formation, readying them to move out at once. And then… they waited.

They waited for a long time. Meanwhile, more PDF, each dressed in Malum uniforms, kept marching past his platoon and the black-armored soldiers.

Some of the Guard kept throwing them sidelong glances, especially after the first hour passed. Sulla, who had ended up beside Corren perhaps out of sheer luck, especially seemed to be eyeing them suspiciously.

"Who are they, do you think?" She whispered to him and he narrowed his eyes even though he didn't turn his head. Talking was not allowed and if a sergeant heard them they'd both be punished for her indiscretion.

She got the message and shut her mouth. Corren couldn't help but wonder himself, though, even as his fingers idly, secretly, played with the holster strap on his plasma pistol. He had been allowed to keep it, much to the jealousy of some of his compatriots.

He had never been good with just standing around and he was very bored. However, no other orders were forthcoming. Then, just as the second hour passed him by…

"Guard is to move forward and secure the tunnel entrance."

Finally!

"ODST Units to support the Guard."

Support the Guard? Like they needed it? Corren felt a bit of scorn for a moment, but as he watched the so-named ODST unit start forward with that same prowling walk he had seen from Belleric, he decided he was fine to have them with him. However, he did wonder if the casket was some kind of weapons cache, as they brought it with them.

It was another hour before the Guard had assembled and begun preparing its defenses, apparently left to its own devices by higher command. At first, Corren had been kept busy assembling defenses, finding choice pieces of scrap metal to erect barricades, but after they were completed, he was one of the poor bastards chosen to guard them. And then he was bored again, resolving himself to watch the ODST's as they seemed to be on high alert, ensuring everyone gave them, and their casket, a wide berth.

Perhaps he shouldn't complain, given what he went through during his first battle. Still, he was stuck here, meanwhile more and more PDF were continuing to march past and-

Wait. The sound of autogun fire had not gotten louder or quieter except for when they had approached the entrance, when they had gotten closer to the source. Which meant the lines weren't moving much. Despite that, hundreds of thousands of PDF troopers had already funneled past them.

A coil of dread settled into his stomach. The enemy probably had defenses. Were the troops being constantly sent forward just being… thrown into some kind of meat grinder?

Maybe he was alright with not being sent forward.

"ODST units, move forward in preparation for breakthrough."

Did that mean they were close to winning? Corren had no idea, he had never been in a siege before. Almost immediately, the ODST's started forward and Corren blinked in surprise as they left the floating device behind, now unattended even by servoskulls, which had disappeared at some point he hadn't noticed.

For thirty minutes, he resisted the temptation, contenting himself with furtive glances. However, when his sergeant seemed to be distracted, Corren couldn't help it. The thing almost seemed to be floating towards him and, despite his silent scolding of Sulla earlier, his curiosity was getting the better of him.

He stepped over to the coffin, coming side-by-side with it. He was almost certain now that it had floated closer to him. It was large and looked well-armored, plated in metal coated with silver paint. The emblem of the Mechanicus stared at him unblinkingly and he wondered if the glowing red eye in it was really just an emblem or some kind of camera.

And then, emitted by a vox he hadn't seen it had, came a ghostly command.

"Unseal the hushed casket."

The casket gave a hiss of escaping air as internal latches came undone and fog poured down its sides. Dim lights flickered within that haze, like spirits dancing in a graveyard mist. The door swung open with the clicking of gears and yet more fog combined with the darkness to obscure his vision of anything more than the silhouette of what was contained within. It was tall, easily passing two meters in height, but clearly shaped like an armored human. Then, like a beacon being lit, a silver visor ignited.

A gauntleted hand whirred and clicked softly, almost inaudibly, as it reached out and grabbed the edge of the casket, pulling the rest of the body into the dim light of the tunnel. The armor was the same red as the Mechanicus, but it lacked almost entirely for decoration save for the Cog Mechanicum emblazoned upon its shoulder pauldrons and silver numbers on the left side of its chestplate, which were simply four zeroes in stark white paint.

The armored warrior took a few steps forward, seeming to right itself in an instant. It scanned its surroundings, its head swiveling slowly from the left to the right, before coming to a stop on Corren. The Guardsman felt his blood freeze, yet strangely also felt a swelling of hope. The warrior's voice was deep and confident.

"I need a weapon."