Boss Marsters walked around the chamber as everyone separated by squad. Gunderson started his strenuous climb up the steps dragging Holland on the stretcher and Samuel joined what remained of his squad.
“I wonder which passage we’re going to end up taking, they all look the same,” muttered Ben to Samuel and Abasi Hondo, one of the Reaper veterans from a different fleet who had mustered out as part of Tango Platoon to fill out the positions opened in Squad Ulanti by their casualties on Vorhold. “We’re flying blind here.”
“Your com-bead is open, Takeda, though you make a fair point,” said Boss Marsters as he approached the marines. Averting his eyes, Ben mumbled an apology.
“We have five passages to choose from, and each one of them is crawling with gun spiders and who knows what else. We have enough squads to push two down four passages. Last passage has to be one squad. Prybar, that’s on you. Take Hondo from Squad Ulanti to replace Holland. Get it done, marines.”
With that the assembled marines began moving out as Boss Marsters called out squad marching orders and directed them to push forward into their respective passages.
When the passageway for Squad Hyst was pointed out, Samuel shouldered his rifle and started cautiously moving forward, with Ben at his side and the rest of the squad following them. Samuel noticed just as he entered the passage that he’d ended up being assigned the one that had the glyphs with all of the stacked bodies and the lone figure.
The sight of those glyphs was burned into his mind, and he found it very difficult to shake off the sense of dread that crept steadily into his awareness. The marine took a deep breath and loosened his death grip on the rifle, doing his best to find his battle calm as he reminded himself that he’d survived everything the universe had thrown at him so far.
Ben caught the movement first. He squeezed the trigger of his heavy machine gun to send a salvo of rounds down the passageway and into the chest of a gun spider that had been attempting to flank them by clinging to the ceiling during its approach.
The marines followed Samuel’s lead as he sprinted forward, keeping his rifle at the ready, not wanting to be caught in the kill zone and suffering the same fate as the gun spiders that first attacked them. The squad poured out of the passageway and into a smaller chamber, also covered in glyphs from ceiling to floor. Ben’s heavy machine gun cleared out two more gun spiders as the rest of the squad bracketed them with rifle fire and drove them into Takeda’s cone of fire.
There were two archways leading out of the chamber, one sloping up and another sloping down. Samuel paused in his advance to study the glyphs, hoping that he could find something more to go on besides which way was up and which was down. As he pondered, another gun spider attacked from the downward sloping passageway, managing to score a few grazing hits on Hondo before Ben’s heavy gun tore it apart.
“Prybar?” asked Bianca in between bursts of fire. She and Hondo drilled a gun spider that burst, gun firing, from the shadows of the upward sloping passageway.
“Tricky room to get caught in if they come at us with more than one or two at a time,” Samuel spat.
“Aye, Boss,” agreed Hondo through gritted teeth as he swiftly injected himself with stimulants and emptied a tear-away packet of sealant over his minor wounds. “Not enough guns to hold it from two sides.”
“Down it is, then,” grumbled Samuel, annoyed that he was essentially making a flip of the coin as to which passage might lead to the center. Now that they were inside the ziggurat the angles seemed all wrong, going down felt like it might actually be up. His body was betraying him, and he could see it in the posture of his squad, the physics was wrong here.
They encountered more gun spiders as they traversed through a number of smaller chambers. As they went deeper into the ziggurat it felt to all of them as if they’d fallen into a whirlpool of sorts. The deeper they went, the more they felt they were going on a lazy spiral leading them towards the center, but not necessarily downward. It was as if the ziggurat was tremendously larger on the inside than it was on the outside.
After a grinding journey and multiple minor injuries, they felt they had finally reached the bottom, or at least the core; their senses could no longer be trusted. The passageway emptied into an enormous, high ceilinged chamber.
It became obvious to Samuel as he stepped out, that apparently all the passages ended at this chamber as other marines appeared in the openings that ran around the perimeter of the huge room. Fewer marines exited the passageway system than had entered it, and there were several more walking casualties like Harold. Samuel assumed the other groups encountered just as much resistance as his squad had. Samuel could see that Harold had taken some hits on his side and shoulder, though the rest of the squad looked none the worse for wear.
On the opposite side of the chamber, Samuel could see that many of the other squads had emerged from the passages and in moments three platoons of Reapers closed in on the center of the chamber. For a moment they all just stood and stared, every marine frozen in horror at the sight before them.
Hundreds of stone tables, made of the same material as the rest of the structures in the city were lined up across the floor, and upon each table lay the broken corpse of a penal legionnaire. Protruding from each of their clavicles was a thin black cable that snaked down the tables and across the floor in dozens of neat rows.
“What the…” Someone’s voice crackled in Samuel’s com-bead.
Samuel, Bianca, Hondo and Ben moved down the rows, aiming their weapons first at the tables, then the walls and ceilings. Samuel looked to his right and saw Boss Ulanti and Spencer Green moving up as well. Further down the line were Harold and Jada Sek, the former of which had slung his heavy machine gun and was holding his service pistol.
To a man, every eye followed the lines of cables, every weapon gradually aiming toward the raised structure they led to.
The cables leading from the legionnaire corpses flowed up the terraced steps, slowly merging with each other until there were no more than a few dozen larger cables that reached the center of the platform.
Atop the platform, made of the alien stone, was an item that could only be described as a throne. Seated in the chair was a humanoid machine that appeared to be made of an amalgamation of wires, metal plates, and pale flesh. Its face was bestial and savage looking, and disturbingly, reminded Samuel of Ben’s grim visage, a death’s head image that he knew would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life.
The cables plugged into the back of its monstrous head, making it appear to have a flowing mane of hair instead of cords connecting it to all of the dead legionnaires.
Samuel was the first to reach the platform and as he placed his boot on the first step he could see a pulse of green hued energy pass through the stone steps and up to the throne.
The cyborg’s eyes snapped open and burned a brilliant yellow, as if its eyes were actually heat vents for some furnace deep within its body and not lights at all. The marine felt as though it stared straight into the core of his being, and had heard his inner dialogue.
Opening its mouth, an inhuman, ear splitting sound roared from it, causing the marines to cover their ears and draw back.
All across the chamber the hundreds of cables attached to the legionnaires broke loose, falling to the floor with a clatter and every corpse sat up in unison. The cyborg’s voice boomed once more and the animated legionnaires climbed from their tables and stood.
The machine stood from its throne, the segmented cables breaking away with angry hisses, as the monstrosity rose to its full height, towering over the Reapers at nearly ten feet tall.
The corpses stood motionless, the aim of the marines wavering between the legionnaires and the cyborg.