Aspasia's squad followed Aescarion through the ruins. 'Rufilla's secured a landing zone for Black Two,' voxed the Sister Superior as she hurried over the rubble. Aspasia was a true veteran, older than Aescarion who was no young woman herself. Her power maul steamed with the caked blood burning in its power field, and her armour was pocked and smouldering with bullet scars.
'Casualties?' asked Aescarion.
'Three Sisters lost, commended to the Emperor. Tyndaria lost a hand. We can fight on.’ replied Aspa-sia.
'Good.' Aescarion voxed all the Sisters within range. 'When Black Two is down the whole strike-force will advance southwards! This area is held by the Septiams and we will have to go through them first. Aspasia, I want you to the fore. With flame shall the unholy be cleansed.'
Aescarion switched her vox-receiver through the Guard frequencies, tapping into the tangle of transmissions blaring from all over the city. It was a chaotic mess, with two major regiments in the city and a third, the Gathalamorians, trying to coordinate artillery strikes that more often than not killed as many Guardsmen as Septiams.
Snatches of battlefield communication filtered through static. The Stratix regiment were pushing hard, butchering their way through the ruins of the residential areas in a tide that swept towards the centre of the city, the senate-house and temples.
The Jouryans, Aescarion knew from the sketchy reports she had got from the Jouryan rear echelons, formed a massive wedge thrust deep into the heart of the city as far as the Enforcement Division barracks. It was a wedge tipped by the Space Marines, who had arrived so suddenly nobody knew who they were or why they were here. To reach that position the Sisters had to get through the battle lines to the cluster of temples that cast a shadow onto the edge of the residential district, then through the heart of the Septiam defence to reach the Arbites precinct.
The roar of engines drowned out the transmissions as the shadow of Black Two passed over the road. It turned and descended, back ramp dropping and squads Tathlaya and Serentes jumping into the edge of the ruins. The Valkyrie swivelled to bring its chin-mounted guns to bear and blasted hundreds of rounds into the buildings opposite, scouring the upper floors clean of the sharpshooters. Boltguns blasted at the few Septiams still in the area, the return fire scattered and feeble. The Sister carrying Squad Serentes's heavy bolter paused at the threshold of the ruins and sent a volley of shots across the road, and Aescarion spotted broken figures flailing in a ground-floor window.
'Move out!' ordered Aescarion. Squad Aspasia broke cover under Rufilla's fire, sending sheets of flame in front of them as they moved off through the ruins, aiming to flush waiting Septiams into the teeth of Rufilla's guns.
Black One and Black Two were gone, soaring up away from the vulnerable position over the road. The Sisters were alone - but that was when they always fought the best.
THE UPPER FLOORS of the barracks building were infested with the enemy, toting weapons stripped from the precinct's armoury, many wearing patchy ill-fitting armour over their hunched bodies. Sarpe-don didn't care about them. Everything he cared about was beneath the building.
Blue-white light flared in the confined basement stairwell as Sergeant Luko's lightning claws leapt into life. Squad Luko was in the front with Sarpedon, and Squad Hastis would form the rearguard to see off any Septiams coming down from the upper floors.
The door at the bottom of the stairwell was of massive plasteel, with a huge mechanical lock. Sep-tiam City was like any other place in the galaxy, with its own criminals and petty heretics. This was where they were kept, and such people could not be allowed out.
'Mine.’ said Luko with some relish. 'Back me up, men.' The sergeant lunged forward and punched both sets of claws into the metal of the lock, the talons sparking as they bored into the metal. He planted one foot against the base of the door and tore the whole locking mechanism out, ripping a ragged hole in the door, spitting with molten metal.
The door swung open and Squad Luko trained their guns into the darkness behind. Sarpedon hung back as they moved into the darkness beyond the doorway, keeping his force staff drawn. His autosenses peeled away the dark to reveal the grim grey plasticrete walls of the cell block beyond, glowstrips on the ceiling burned out, floor and walls stained with age and blood.
'We're in, no contacts.’ came a vox from Squad Luko. Luko himself followed, his lightning claws casting flickering lights across the walls.
There was no sound from inside, just the rumble of battle from above. But the place stank: of sweat, decay, rotted filth. Sarpedon's engineered third lung kicked in to filter out the worst of it but it was still the stench of pure death.
The prison held two hundred inmates, mostly in solitary confinement, in cells fronted with tarnished steel bars. The first rows of cells were empty - they must have been released when the plague's madness had first gripped Septiam City.
Karlu Grien was probably among them. But Sarpedon had known that before he had come to Septiam Torus, and he had come anyway. There was always hope, no matter how slim.
'Kitchens up ahead.’ voxed one of the Marines from Squad Luko.
'Move in.’ said Sarpedon. Nothing moved in the shadows. The Marines trained their guns over the insides of filth-spattered cells. Sergeant Luko pushed through the large double doors into the kitchens, with long benches and tables beneath a high ceiling. Lines from Imperial psalms were carved into the plasticrete of the walls and ceiling and a pulpit stood at one end of the room where the preacher of the Enforcement Division would inform the inmates of the gravity of their sins as they ate. Like the rest of the prison the place was empty, with the kitchens ransacked and pages of devotional texts torn up and lying around the pulpit.
Luko glanced at the auspex scanner he carried, checking the layout of the brig. The Enforcement Division barracks were based on a Standard Template, the same as thousands of similar buildings on frontier and low-population worlds. 'Cell 7-F.’ he said. 'Through this room and to the left, in the moral criminal wing.’
Karlu Grien was a moral criminal, a tech-heretic, guilty of making forbidden technology. He had been stationed on Septiam Torus to oversee the refining of the Soulfire crop, but what he had seen on Stratix Luminae had driven him to dabble in dark things and the Enforcement Division had locked him up. If he was still down here, he would be in cell 7-F.
'We've got movement.’ voxed Sergeant Hastis from outside the kitchens.
'Karraidin?' voxed Sarpedon to the squads on the plaza above. 'Do we have hostiles coming in behind us?'
'None, commander.’ replied Captain Karraidin. 'We've got them pinned down.’
'Hastis, get your men into this-'
Sarpedon was interrupted by a terrible sound, a dozen voices screaming at once, and a hideous cracking like hundreds of breaking bones. Hastis yelled an order and bolter fire roared, but the screams grew louder in reply. Luko rushed up to the door into the area, ready to take on anything that came through the door that wasn't a member of Squad Hastis.
Three Marines burst through the door at once, running backwards and firing into the corridor on full auto. They were followed by something Sarpedon could only think of as a wave of flesh, a tide of melded human forms, dozens of bodies welded into a single wall of muscle and breaking bone that erupted through the door. Twisted faces leered from the mass, hands reached and organs pulsed through rips in the taut skin. Every mouth was screaming, an atonal keening that cut through even the roar of gunfire. The stench it carried with it would have been enough to knock out a lesser man, and even Sarpedon felt it driving him back from the beast.