In a brilliant, deafening display of pyrotechnics, the entire front of the east wing was demolished. Glass and stone screamed into the air and rained down around the building. The samurai heading for the gates, or where the gates had once been, narrowly managed to avoid being crushed by what was left of the walls.
Tom was already heading in after them, assault cannon leveled at the main doors to the building. He raced past the remains of the gate guards, almost tripping in a slippery smear that turned out to be what was left of a guard dog. The combination of barking and gunshots from his left told him that any remaining canines were rapidly becoming extinct. Peeling off to the right, he took aim. Gunther, abandoning the launcher, had had the same idea on the other flank. The two shots hit the doors simultaneously, the wood and metal disappearing in a firestorm. It was impossible, in the mayhem, to see whether anyone was inside. The ork squad heading for the doors paused and lobbed in a couple of concussion grenades just in case, then quickly ducked down and covered their heads.
Continuous machine-gun fire from the HKs was streaming into the smoke-filled hall when the ground itself seemed to tremble. As Serrin watched, the second ork
squad raced away from the west side of the building, but they didn't quite make it to complete safety before the out-building collapsed in on itself.
Frag me, he thought. Those guys may not have had any experience with explosives, but that went off pretty well. He continued to survey the scene, looking for enemies the raging orks wouldn't see, anything emerging from the shadows. He hadn't cast a single spell in anger, knowing he had to hold on to every ounce of power he had.
Far below them, Luther saw Martin's message. He reacted slowly, drawing himself up out of his focusing, and then he saw the images Martin was relaying to him, the destruction of the buildings above him, orks storming the hall, in through the doors now. Two of them were mown down by the remotes covering the hall, but when the screens went blank, he realized they must be using explosives or grenades to blast their way through now. The fury and destruction of it snapped him into a cold, controlled rage.
Luther began his spellcasting. He'd been ready for something like this for a long time. The relay focuses were in place. It wouldn't ruin the barrier; no other mage could cast even the most trivial spell inside it.
Tom felt a chill of intuition flicker through his body. He screamed to Serrin to get inside the building, his voice slightly distorted through the respirator he'd donned. The elf hesitated, unsure; the orks who had gone in were lying riddled with lead from the automatic guns inside. Tom grabbed the elf and forcibly dragged him inside as the corpses erupted from out of the ground.
When one of the orks blasted the ragged, rotting figures lurching toward him with his shotgun, the thing exploded in a brilliant ball of fire, drenching the screaming ork in fire and acid. His fellow, ten yards behind, gawked in disbelief until he discovered that these things didn't have to be shot up. They exploded of their own accord. He went down as a charred, blistered, reeking corpse. And then he rose up again, still on fire.
About a half dozen of the raiders were inside the monastery. They knew anyone outside was dead or as good as
dead, and the things now trapping them in here would surely come in after them. There wasn't going to be any escape.
Torn emptied a clip from his Panther assault cannon down the hallway. "Frag everything and ask questions afterward!" he screamed. Serrin saw blood on the troll's broad shoulders. He prayed it was only a superficial wound, or better yet, not even the troll's blood at all.
"Where the frag are we going?" Serrin shouted above the cacophony. With everyone wearing respirators, it would have been hard enough to communicate even without the hellish din.
"Frag knows. Just blow everything away." Tom wasn't really listening. He was berserking, Serrin realized.
Gunther was muttering something about a flamethrower being really useful as his clip emptied into an amorphous body of men ahead of them. Tom still had rounds in the Panther, and he used one. The shock wave nearly blew them backward, but whatever had been on the business end of the shot certainly wasn't like the corpses outside. The figures lay in a broken, shattered heap after the hit.
"Behind us," Kristen yelled as the first of the things from outside lumbered in after them.
"Don't shoot!" Serrin screamed to her, having seen what had happened when the outside orks had tried it. "Just keep moving!"
Tom switched to his H amp;K, hefting the machine gun and ripping an arc of bullets into the distance as they ran forward. From behind them came an appalling scream. Serrin turned in time to see one of the few remaining ork samurai staggering backward, his throat a brilliant red scar from ear to ear. The grinning dead thing with the garrote around his neck pulled harder and harder. Serrin hadn't the time to take in the concealed doorway the thing had appeared from before he drilled it through the forehead with a precision shot. Sometimes you just get lucky, he thought.
The zombie went right on grinning and yanked the ork's head clean off its body. Then the creature sank down on top of the headless corpse, twitching and gibbering, splashing itself in the fountains of blood pouring from the neck.
Serrin forced vomit back down his throat. Half-blindly, only needing to know that Kristen was still there, he raced after Tom and Gunther. Mathilde looked back at him and urged him on with a desperate gesture. The elf had to grit his teeth against the scream of pain in his leg.
They rounded the corner and ran straight into the path of Martin crouched behind his control rig. His shotgun disposed of Gunther with a blast that exploded the samurai's chest into a mass of bloody, ragged flesh and protruding shattered bone. But Tom had already leveled his H amp;K and blown Martin against the far wall. A limp rag doll with a shattered torso, the body slid down the wall, smearing it with a huge streak of brilliant blood. It then lay slumped and broken on the floor, the head lolling almost comically to one side as a trickle of blood dripped from red-purple lips.
I can't risk assensing but I've got to find him, Serrin thought desperately. Where the frag is Luther?
Tom was hammering at the far wall, ramming his fingers into the elevator buttons. The elevator didn't respond.
"Stand back," the troll yelled.
"No! No! We'll never get down there if you blow the thing to hell!" the elf shouted at him. Mercifully, the troll hesitated. He seemed at last to be calming down a little. That made Serrin a lot happier. Sharing an elevator with a berserking troll wasn't the most inviting prospect in the world.
"Must be isolated," Serrin mumbled, trying to figure out the bank of displays where Martin had been working. "Where are the fragging controls?"
He looked over the console in dismay. There were thirty screens, mostly blank now, and enough keypads to keep him busy pressing them for hours. "Oh drek."
As the elevator doors hissed open, Tom was inside before Serrin had time to realize they were being operated from below. Worse still, everyone was inside before they realized it, thinking that Serrin must have something brought off a fluke at the controls.
Gas filled the elevator as it sped downward. Serrin desperately cast a barrier for them; if gunfire came streaming into the cramped elevator when the doors opened below, they'd be rats caught in a trap. Their respirators bought them safety until the doors opened. Then they poured out of the elevator and paused for half a second, trying to take in where they were. Serrin sensed Mathilde strengthening herself, magically boosting her reflexes, he guessed. He would have followed her example if he'd gotten the chance.
The passage led only one way, straight ahead to a pair of open metal doors gleaming with brilliant metal and glass. Tom had his machine gun aimed to blow away whatever was in front of him, but his finger couldn't even reach the trigger. They all stood, stupidly, frozen. Serrin could feel the immensity of the thing, paralyzing his mind, holding him in its hand and amused by their hubris.