‘Expecting trouble?’ asked Ludd.
‘Security is elevated,’ replied Sindre, ‘the Urdeshic Palace issued an amber status advisory for Eltath this afternoon. The skitarii are a precaution. We’re lucky to have them. Few remain on Urdesh these days.’
The skitarii were the martial division of the Cult. They were as tall as the adept wardens, but seemed bigger because of their armoured mass and their breadth of shoulder. They were skitarii of the Cult Mechanicus Urdeshi, and wore the traditional double robes: short black coats over longer red mantles. Little of their original organics remained. Their augmetic hands were bare metal claws, clutching weapons across their chests. Their faces were silver masked, polished to a mirror sheen. Green pinpricks glowed in the deep recesses of the eyeslits. Four carried archeotech firearms across their chests: antique galvanic sleetguns. The other two – members of an officer caste, denoted by the intricate etching that covered their steel craniums – brandished black metal staves that were a metre and a half long, plainer versions of the ceremonial staves the adept wardens carried.
Without breaking stride, Etriun waved his actuator, and opened a massive golden blast hatch, then a second, and then a titanium iris valve six metres in diameter. Cold, sterile air blew out at them. They descended a metal ramp into a grand laboratory hall. Polished chrome workbenches gleamed in pools of stark, directional light. Each bench was equipped with manipulator robotics: long, delicately articulated alloy limbs that curled over each work surface ready to activate and begin work. They looked like huge metal whip-spiders clinging to the end of each workstation. They were dormant, shut down, limbs raised and splayed like hands raised in greeting.
‘Access crypt K of the Gnosis Repository,’ Sindre said to a trio of waiting adepts logis.
‘Crypt K is released and waiting,’ one replied in a synthesised voice.
Sindre led them across the lab. A compression hatch parted with a pneumatic hiss. What lay beyond resembled a detention bay. The deck was underlit and the general light levels were low. Thick pipework ran along one wall, connecting to a complex junction of ducts and vertical pipes at the far end of the bay. Massive hatches lined the other side. Light beading around each hatch glowed red, except for one hatch towards the far end, where the beading shone green.
Etriun entered the bay, followed by one of the skitarii officers and one of the warrior-caste. Sindre followed with Pasha’s team. The other skitarii remained on the lab side of the hatch.
‘Wait,’ said Sindre. ‘This is the Gnosis Repository. The crypt-safes contain their most precious relics. The versenginseer will perform the retrieval.’
The Ghosts halted. Etriun shuffled and approached the green-lit hatch. He hauled on the rail, and the crypt door swung open on galvanic hinges. Etriun paused for a moment, staring into the crypt, bathed in the soft white light that streamed out of it.
His actuator buzzed.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Sindre, stepping forward.
Las-bolts tore out of the open crypt, hitting Etriun in the thigh, groin, chest and head. He wobbled backwards, and fell against the wall behind him.
‘Throne alive!’ Sindre yelled. ‘Close the crypt! Lock crypt-safe K!’
More bolts whickered down the length of the bay. A second shooter, out of sight in the ductwork at the far end. Sindre was hit in the upper chest and hip. He squealed and fell onto the lighted deck. The skitarii warrior beside Elam took four hits and spun around hard, sparks and fluid spraying from its body. It recovered and swung back immediately to re-aim. Gerin, the Ghost to Pasha’s left, took a bolt in the face and collapsed on his back. He did not recover.
‘Suppressing fire!’ Pasha roared. Her side arm, a heavy Tronsvasse service pistol, was already blasting. The Ghosts opened up, raking the length of the Repository with assault fire. The two skitarii began unloading their weapons, advancing steadily. The damaged warrior fired its ancient galvanic. The sleetgun spat hails of micro ’chettes down the length of the bay. The officer’s stave juddered and pumped out invisible bursts of force that rippled the air. Ducting at the far end crunched and buckled.
There was no cover. Multiple hostiles were concealed at the opposite end of the long chamber. The entire length of the bay lit up with a furious cross pattern of exchanged fire.
Ludd ran to Sindre, clamped his hand around the man’s gouting chest wound, and started to drag him backwards. Wall panels shattered. A las-round went through Ludd’s sleeve. Sindre was staring up at him, eyes wide, his mouth gaping. The shot had gone into the top of his chest, almost at the base of the throat. He was soaked in blood.
‘Where the feth are they?’ Pasha yelled, jerking as a las-round clipped her shoulder plate.
Elam was hollering into his link.
‘All sections! We are compromised and taking fire! Intruders inside EM Fourteen! Repeat intruders inside EM Fourteen!’
Two figures emerged from the open crypt hatch. They were hard to see. The bright light shining out of the crypt seemed to attenuate them, making them seem eerily tall and unnaturally slender. One was using the open hatch as a shield and shooting a lasrifle at Pasha’s group. The other dashed across the walkway, grabbed Etriun’s body and dragged it back into the crypt. The skitarii officer drummed a pulse from its stave that dented the crypt hatch. Somehow, the slender man behind it braced it open. He returned fire. The las-bolt hit the skitarius directly in the left eye. There was a minor implosion inside its gleaming chrome skull. It wavered, and dropped to its knees so hard that it cracked the clearplex panels of the underlit floor. Three more shots found it, and blew out its neck with such force, its almost-detached head swung around at a wild angle and hung sideways off a stump of fractured ceramite vertibrae. The stave clattered from its hands. It did not move again.
The fire rate from the far end of the Repository increased. Within moments, two more Ghosts had been killed by las-bolts.
‘Back! back!’ Pasha bellowed. ‘We are dead in the open!’
They backed towards the laboratory hatch, making their own cover with streaming las-fire. Ludd was dragging Sindre. Trooper Setz ran to help him.
The remaining skitarius did not retreat. It advanced steadily and remorselessly into the storm of shots. Its sleetgun whined as the voltaics cycled to power, then cracked as the galvanic charge launched a cloud of micro dart rounds. It got off four shots and almost drew level with the open crypt before sustained las-fire finished tearing it apart. It fell, its robes ablaze.
Pasha’s survivors backed into the gleaming lab space. Shots shrieked after them. Elam and Kadle stood in the hatch frame and hosed with full auto while Pasha found the activator for the compression hatch and slammed it shut. The four skitarii who had remained in the lab were advancing, match-step, towards the hatch.
‘Wait! You, wait!’ she yelled at them. ‘They just cut down two of your kin! And four of mine! That’s a kill zone in there!’
The skitarii halted. Binaric code bursts snapped between them.
Ludd and Trooper Setz dragged Sindre to one of the chrome benches and laid him on it. They left a long trail of blood all the way back to the hatch. Setz tried to maintain compression, while Ludd opened his field kit with bloody fingers.
‘Keep him still!’ Ludd cried.
‘How the living feth are they in there?’ Pasha demanded, storming towards the nearest adept. The adepts logis in the lab seemed to have frozen in disbelief. A logic problem had made them cycle.
‘We do not understand,’ one said. ‘The Repository space is secure. There cannot be danger within a secure space–’