'The others have our backs,' said Korvax. 'Sergeant Livris, your squad has the point. Veiyal, with me. Advance!
Korvax levelled his bolter and followed the Assault Marines as they charged into the darkened heart of the outpost...
The air was close and Korvax recognised the smells that got through his helmet filter - gun smoke, blood both alien and human, unwashed and terrified men. His autosenses adjusted quickly to the darkness and Korvax saw tech-guard bodies lying where they had taken up fire points near the blast doors. Automated guns hung limp and shattered from the ceiling, and a gun-servitor lay dismembered on the makeshift defences.
The blast doors led into a single large, low room with a smouldering rectangular hole in the floor where a cargo elevator had once been. The security stations that covered the blast doors and entrance chamber were heavy constructions of ferrocrete with firing slits and automated guns - Korvax saw tech-guard bodies slumped at the fixed heavy stubbers and blood spattered across the walls and floor.
'They've been shredded, captain,' voxed Livris, who was moving rapidly into the entrance chamber with his assault squad.
'Shuriken fireV
'Something else'.
Korvax's squad moved in behind the Assault Marines, training bolters on the dark corners that pooled where glowstrips had failed.
Livris peered over the edge of the cargo lift, auspex scanner in hand. 'Do we move in, captain?'
'Go, Livris. Cold and fast!
Livris dropped down the smoking hole, followed by the assault squad. Korvax could still hear the gunfire from outside as Squad Veiyal held off the remains of the eldar forces from the blast doors. If the xenos had got inside, they were doing a good job of hiding it - hardly any sound seemed to filter from the outpost's lower floors.
'It's a lab floor,' said Livris. "Wait, the auspex is...'
Gunfire erupted below. Chainblades chewed into metal.
'Squad, with me!' yelled Korvax and followed Squad Livris onto the floor below, power sword hot in his hand.
The darkness below was punctuated with strobing muzzle flashes. Heavy gothic architecture was crammed into the low-ceilinged lab floor, with ornate workstations covered in complex machinery and webs of glass tubing. Korvax saw tech-guard and lab personnel still living, and many more lying dead slumped on seats or consoles. Tech-guard were taking cover and firing almost blindly with lasguns.
Korvax couldn't see the enemy. Squad Livris were sending out suppressive volleys of bolt pistol fire and Kor-vax's tactical squad lent their own fire, spitting explosive bolts in all directions.
A battle-brother's scream ended in a choked-off gurgle, and in the flash of gunfire Korvax saw him fall, a shining web of silvery filaments billowing over and through him, slicing through armour plates, coiling into armour joints and unravelling to shred the flesh and bone inside.
Korvax got a glimpse of the aliens - they had heavier armour suits than the warriors Korvax had fought at the barricades, with a large carapace over the back and large, thick forearm plates that helped support massive weapons with spinning barrels that wove spirals of bright threads. The eldar aimed and a bolt of filaments shot out, bursting against one ofLivris's Marines and reducing his pistol arm to a mess of loose armour and shredded muscle.
Korvax fired but too late, the eldar had disappeared, winking out of existence with a clap of air rushing into the space he left behind.
'Teleporters!' yelled Korvax as gunfire continued to spatter across the darkened lab floor. A surviving tech-guard screamed as an unseen enemy shredded him with a monofilament burst. Something flitted into view and disappeared, almost catching Sergeant Livris with its lethal web.
Korvax kept his head down and moved past his battle-brothers, trying to gauge the angle he would take if he were trying to kill as many of them as possible. He had to trust the alien attackers would be too distracted by the other Marines and their gunfire to notice him until it was too late.
He backed up against a pillar, listening carefully, trying to filter through the din of bolter and lasgun fire. He heard, very close, the burst of air as something materialised on the other side of the pillar.
He lashed round the pillar with his power sword and felt it cut through something, armour plate and flesh, not deep but enough to impose a split-second of pain and confusion. The eldar warrior turned in surprise, the emerald eyepieces of its conical helmet staring out at Korvax as the Space Marine grabbed it by the throat with his free hand.
He hauled the alien off its feet and slammed it hard into the pillar, then powered it up into the ceiling so the carapace on its back hit the low fluted roof. The carapace fractured and blue flashes of escaping energy confirmed Korvax's suspicion that the carapace housed the teleport-jump device. Korvax lifted the xenos again and, before it could bring its flailing gun to bear, plunged his power sword through its chest. The flashes of the sword's power field illuminated the several warriors who jumped in to surround Korvax, perhaps half-a-dozen of them, moving to kill the Soul Drinkers' obvious leader and avenge their fallen.
Livris's Assault Marines jumped the eldar from behind, chainblades glancing off carapaces. Livris himself beheaded one and Korvax took another, breaking its leg with a stamp of his foot and cutting the alien clean in two. The surviving xenos jumped again, flitting out of reality not to surround the Marines but to flee.
Korvax pulled his sword from the remains of the eldar at his feet. He saw a couple of surviving tech-guard still hunkered down amongst the equipment. There was a technician, too, a woman in an adept's robes, peeking terrified from beneath a lab bench, doubtlessly not knowing whether to fear the aliens or the Soul Drinkers more.
Korvax walked over to the closest tech-guard and hauled him to his feet. The man's face was laced with blood where he had caught the edge of a filament burst and the barrel of his lasgun was warped, overheated from continuous firing.
'Are there any more?' asked Korvax sternly.
The tech-guard nodded and pointed to the far end of the lab floor, where a set of doors had been blown off their mountings leading to a dark corridor beyond.
Korvax dropped the tech-guard and led his Marines into the corridor. It was low and close, too narrow for two Marines to stand abreast. The air stank of something rotting and biological, and his helmet pre-filter was flashing up warning runes to mark the toxins it was keeping out of his system. The corridor sloped downwards and curved sharply back on itself, leading towards the next floor down.
Korvax looked down to see the floor ankle-deep in milky fluid, swimming with scraps of muscle tissue. It reflected the wan light from ahead, filtering weakly from the entrance to the next floor down. Normally security doors would have sealed off the lower floor, but they were open now.
Through the doorway Korvax glimpsed drifts of shattered glass and thick ribbed cables lying across a floor awash with the fluid, the drainage channels clogged with clotted wads of flesh. Glass cylinders three metres high stood in rows along the length of an enormous hangar-like room, some intact and full of fluids, others shattered.
Korvax slowed, edging towards the entrance, ready for that shuriken shot or energy blast. The eldar down here would have heard the battle above, they would know the Soul Drinkers were coming.
'Any movement on the auspexV he voxed.
'Nothing,' came the reply.
The first body Korvax saw was slumped over the shattered remains of a cylinder, its abdomen impaled on jagged shards of curved glass still stabbing up from the cylinder's base. It was an eldar, in a blue armoured body-glove with the helmet removed. The features of its slender, angular face were slack in death, its large dark eyes open. A shuriken pistol lay by its limp hand.