A sheet of flame ripped across the front of the Mechanicore fortress. Huge chunks of rockcrete and ouslite came tumbling out, crunching like a landslip across the apron. The blast shock flattened the security fences, tearing the chain link apart, and blew in the back of the guardhouse.
As the concussion dropped, pebbles, grit and flecks of stone began to fall with the rain.
‘Get into it!’ Kolosim ordered. The chosen tactical squads hurried from cover, weapons ready. Debris was still fluttering down. Smoke blanketed the site, and numerous fires were burning. The Mechanicore’s main gate zone was a mass of broken slag and buckled rebar.
The huge blast doors themselves were still entirely intact. They were simply lying on the ground.
‘Nice job,’ Kolosim commented as he clambered over the rubble on the heels of the point team. Chiria followed, lugging her short-snout rig and ammo hopper.
‘I knew a truck load of hi-ex would have its uses, sir,’ she replied.
Needs must, Kolosim thought. Bray and Armin had spent almost twenty minutes trying to cut an entry in the main doors. The Cult Mechanicus built things to last, and on top of that, EM 14’s systems had suffered a catastrophic collapse, so there had been no joy trying to rewire the circuits either.
Kolosim had been urgently considering other potential entry points when Chiria had tapped him on the shoulder and simply pointed to the bomb truck that the Sekkites had tried to drive into their lines.
He had said, ‘Oh, what the feth. Breach it.’
The point teams slithered and climbed in over the rubble, moving through the heavy haze of smoke and dust with weapons up and sweeping. Primary lights and environment were down, but self-powered auxiliary lumen banks had come on, illuminating the interior hall with a soft, blue glow.
Bray had tac lead. He threw hand signs, fanning his entry team wide. They left the edge of the rubble and the blast area, and crossed a marble floor covered with in-blown grit and lumps of rockcrete. The Ghosts moved from pillar to pillar, bounding cover. Vadim’s squad moved in at their heels, then Kolosim with the heavier weapons. Kolosim signalled his own squad wide, then moved up to join Bray and Caober.
The hall ahead was large and silent, a long chamber like the nave of a temple. Back-washed smoke from the entry blast was collecting in the high ceiling space. Kolosim looked around.
A fight had torn through here in the last hour or so. The walls and floor were scarred with bullet and las strikes. He saw several Mechanicus weapons servitors, dead and blown out, plus the bodies of half a dozen Tanith troopers.
It must have been hell, trapped in here when the machines turned.
Caober pointed. Several of the automata had been shot out and wrecked, but several others seemed intact. They had just shut down and died. Kolosim edged close to one and inspected it. Black goo, like treacle, was seeping out of its casing. It had burned out from within, its cogitator and biomech processors dissolving into mush.
‘Like the thing outside,’ Bray remarked.
‘Same here, sir,’ called Vadim. He was examining systems built into a wall – a data duct and a row of monitor screens. Tarry black slime oozed from all of them.
‘Kolosim to Arcuda,’ Kolosim said into his bead. ‘Entry achieved.’
‘Copy,’ Arcuda’s voice replied. ‘I thought I heard you knock.’
Arcuda had taken charge of the companies inside the Mechanicore. Pasha and Elam had already descended into the ducts and, like Obel and Criid’s hunter squads, they were out of comm range. Word was, Theiss was dead, and he’d died in the first few minutes. Kolosim had warned Arcuda once it had become clear he was only going to force entry by unsubtle means. Arcuda had pulled all Ghost forces clear of the entry hall.
‘Moving in by squad,’ Kolosim said. ‘You still got actives?’
‘It’s quietened down a lot,’ said Arcuda. ‘A few bursts, so watch yourself. But the frenzy is done. I think they’re all dead, or dying.’
‘It true about Theiss?’
‘Yeah. We’ve taken a beating. Big purse.’
Kolosim winced. Big purse. The euphemism stung. The Militarum had bastardised it from Munitorum jargon, an assessment term used in action reports and logistical summaries. Big purse was actually ‘big perc’, the cover-sheet abbreviation for ‘big percentage casualty rate’, indicating forty-five per cent losses or higher. To Kolosim it always sounded like some thieving bastard had got away after a brutal mugging.
‘We’re going to need medicae and med-vac soon as,’ Arcuda reported.
‘Working on that,’ Kolosim replied. ‘Links to high command and Eltath Operations are still down.’
‘Another big hit?’ Arcuda asked.
‘Can’t say. Hoping it’s just technical feth. But shit’s kicking off all over town.’
‘No way the palace has been hit,’ said Arcuda.
‘You’d think,’ Kolosim agreed.
The teams moved forwards again. Kolosim stuck tight with Vadim and Caober.
‘What’s the plan,’ Kolosim asked into his bead. ‘Do we start extraction?’
‘Cas-vac yes, soon as you can,’ Arcuda replied. ‘But otherwise we secure the feth out of this place. The operation’s still live down in the ducts. No signal yet, but we need to be ready to support. Or block anything that tries to come out.’
‘Copy that. Key me in.’
‘We’ve covered all the possible duct exits,’ replied Arcuda, ‘but we haven’t reached Turbine Hall One yet. That’s where Criid and Lunny went in. That’s closer to you.’
‘On it,’ said Kolosim. ‘We’ll lock that up.’
He followed the advance in. More automata wrecks. Dead tech-priests and adepts, some of whom had been shot apart or torn limb-from-limb. The Mechanicus had turned on itself as well as its guests. Black slime spattered the floor and was sprayed up some walls. Most of it leaked from the machine dead, but some of it was oozing and dripping from the building itself.
There were more dead Ghosts too. Men and women Kolosim knew well, lying where they had fallen, buckled and twisted. Some had died instantly from massive wound trauma. Others had died slowly, alone and in pain, caught in the open. Blood trails demonstrated that.
‘Feth this,’ Vadim muttered.
‘How do we know they’re dead?’ Bray asked.
‘Throne, look at them!’ Kolosim replied.
‘Not ours, sir,’ said Bray. ‘The Cult Mech.’
Kolosim hesitated. Feth of a time to think that thought. They looked dead. Servitors and priests, cold and still, leaking black shit onto the floor.
They’d been infected by something.
But they had never been alive in the first place, not in ways Kolosim or his Ghosts understood. Cult Mechanicus were pretty cold and still at the best of times. How could he tell? The shot-up ones, sure, but the others? They knew a frenzy had overtaken them, a killing bloodlust. Then they’d shut down and dropped, spewing the black goop everywhere. Was that death? Or was it just another phase? Inertia? A dormant state while the infection progressed to the next stage?
Kolosim looked around and swallowed nervously. There were hundreds of dead Cult Mech personnel and servitors littering the halls and arcades. He could see forty alone from where he was standing.
What if they were about to come back? Switch the feth back on? Wake up and resume their kill-frenzy?
He’d just walked two full companies in amongst them.
‘Feth,’ he breathed.
‘What?’ Caober asked.
Kolosim fumbled for his bead.