Droplaug, Imperial-held cargo module
In the end, they found it almost by accident.
The twisting warren branched off into pump stations and rumbling air handlers and stripped-out chambers, several of which had been taken over by squatters and converted into grubby dens of blankets and empty ration cans. But after perhaps a kilometre the decorations above the bulkheads changed from imperial aquilas to mechanicus cog skulls, and after creeping down a wide flight of stairs they found themselves in a long corridor, and at the end of the corridor was a shrine to the machine god.
Something bulky and tall and cylindrical had been erected inside the shrine. Plug cables snaking from its rearside had been jacked into a number of the surrounding cogitators, and its front was festooned with panels and dish-shaped receivers. A tech-priest stood in prayer before the machine, a green sash across his red robe marking him as a shipboard enginseer. His human hands were folded into a cog, while spidery machine arms hooked over his shoulders to glide across the panels like a church pianist working an organ. Except the song of this organ was shill, teeth-itching bursts of static, and its music spelled death for the soldiers trying to hold the cargo deck.
A Navy officer who wore flak instead of a heavy armsmen’s void suit was hovering by the priest’s shoulder, presumably urging him to hurry, though his shouts were drowned out by the hellish binary drone. Two fully-armoured armsmen stood guard and it was they who reacted first, bellowing a warning as they swung their heavy shotcannons to bear.
Droplaug’s bikers fired first, sending tube-launched grenades spinning down the narrow vestibule. A deafening triple-bang rocked the section, and shrapnel cut the four imperials over like the sweep of a scythe. The tech-priest twitched onto his back, slopping intestines across the floor, and let out an awful static-distorted wail before his augmetic arms clawed up like those of a dead spider and went still. The officer pawed at the hole where his right eye had been for half a second before dying with a ugly shudder. One of the armsmen lived just long enough for Droplaug to saunter over and crunch her axe through his armoured faceplate.
“That’ll be that, then.” one of her companions commented gruffly, as he jerked the one unsevered cable out of its cogitator and inspected the smoking ruin of the machine the cogboy had been tending.
Droplaug fiddled with her vox, trying to re-establish a line to Herkja or Hassek through the intervening layers of iron. All she got was static, though she could still hear the heavy thuds of Herkja’s demolitions through the walls. That she hadn’t caused a catastrophic structural failure and ripped some section of the hull open to hard vacuum was a small miracle. Over the distant rattle of explosions, she could just make out the blast of shotguns and the steady, overlapping sizzle of las-weapons. Something else too - something that kicked and barked with percussive force.
It almost sounded like bolter fire.
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Patriot-held cargo module
“Frakking hell!” a Menoth infantryman complained. “They never gonna get tired of shooting at us?”
His grievance was directed at the armsmen who were lurking at the far end of the linking spar. They had pushed the imperials back from the cargo conveyors; back further beyond the transfer lifts that sank cargo away into the berths below; and finally out of the module entirely, along the four narrow umbilicals that linked them to an adjacent power module. Judging by the clashing hues of metalwork along the corridor, the generator section had originally belonged to an entirely different ship. At the end of the umbilicals the imperials had turned and so their pursuers had halted, neither side willing to make a suicidal rush along the long, narrow spars that joined their module precariously to the next.
There was nothing but dead and crippled men in the five hundred metres separating the Patriots from the imperials, and a squad of Anarkos’ rangers were keeping the imperials bottled up beyond the far bulkhead, but every minute or so an enemy armsman would break cover and snap a burst of laser light their way, or try to dash forward to one of the carved arches ribbing the hallway.
The skitarius behind the infantryman didn’t answer his question, only reloaded his rifle and sent another galvanic round zipping down the spar. It was stalemate, but that was sufficient for the current directive - they merely needed to push the imperials back until the mercenary kill-teams had done their work.
Back in the cargo module, turned into open killzone by the deactivation of the barricades, Jarn and Donovan could only wait. The Nebulas had taken their leave: Tarran’s squad to the besieged eyrie spire to chivy the astropaths there to safety, and the rest to hold open their escape route back towards the hanger bays. The Patriot ships were coming to pick them up, or so the vox messages from the eyrie promised.
Jarn was more interested in receiving a message from Herkja or Droplaug, but while his vox operator continued to curse and slap at her bulky handheld, it was instead Starolf’s unit that came pounding out of the smoke-choked side tunnels. They were accompanied by a column of red-robed figures, with a few bewildered-looking menials scattered among them. Most of the unaugmented, overalls-clad menials had their hands up and were casting scared looks at the brutal Jotunhel mercenaries, but the tech-priests walked in unconcerned silence. Starolf shot his commander a sly grin as he waved the prisoners past.
“Tribune Anarkos.” a voice clipped over Donovan’s earbead vox, untroubled by the poor signal that plagued the cruder Jotunhel sets. “Squad Kappa reporting. Enemy combatants pinned down beyond the connector spar. Intercepted audio indicates enemy reinforcements inbound. Request order update.”
Objective secured: Disrupt Imperial command module
New objective: Evacuate the Glom
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