Salk glanced down the trench and saw other Soul Drinkers doing what they did better than almost any other force in the galaxy - close-quarters battle, cold and fast, toe-to-toe with the enemy where they were safer than anywhere else in the battle.
Salk checked the icons again - it was Brother Vaeryn they had left behind, his life-icon flickering to show great blood loss and trauma.
Vaeryn, come in.’ voxed Salk.
'Lost a leg, sergeant.’ came the crackly reply.
'Can you fight?'
'Fight but not move. I'll have to do my bit from here.’
'Fates be with you, brother.’
The Emperor protects.’
Maybe they would be able to pick up the stricken ? Marine on their way back out of the facility, but Salk doubted it.
Heavy bolter fire was still streaming down, throwing up chains of explosions along the rear parapet of the trench. The sudden whine of a heavy weapon and a bright orange explosion on the roof of the facility told Salk that his was not the only Soul Drinkers squad moving on the facility. Salk took the brief respite in firing to look up over the parapet at the facility - one corner was down but there was still a dual heavy bolter mount facing them, along with the small arms fire streaking down from either end of the trench where heretics were trying to win back their defences by firing blindly down from both corners.
A plasma shot ripped down the trench on cue and blew another three men into the air at one end of the trench, Krin's shot freeing half the squad to fire up at the remaining weapon mount. Bolter shots spattered against the plasticrete of the building and a gunner's shattered body tumbled off the roof.
Salk led the charge over the rear of the trench and into the next, vaulting over makeshift barricades to cut down the few cultists huddling for cover from the bolter fire. Salk could see the blast doors now, through the web of tracer fire and the gauze of falling earth from the explosions now bursting all around the facility.
The towering form of Karraidin appeared as the captain strode towards the facility, storm bolter firing. Small arms shots bounced off his thick armour as the Marines around him snapped off shots at the roof, bringing down more and more shooters. Salk ran forward again and his squad met Karraidin's in the shadow of the facility as the last fire point was cracked open by a well-aimed frag grenade. Salk saw •that Apothecary Pallas and Techmarine Lygris were with Karraidin's squad - Lygris, Salk remembered, had suffered severe wounds early in his career and now wore a near-expressionless mask of synthetic flesh instead of a face.
'Well met, brother.’ said Karraidin with a grin creasing his battered features.
Salk drew his squad up in cover around the blast doors. 'I'll get grenades. We'll blow the door.’
Karraidin just walked up to the doors and, the power field around his gaundet flickering to life, punched his power fist into the metal. Arcs of light jSpat as the field ripped through the metal and Kar-.’raidin tore great strips from the door until he had gouged a hole large enough for even him to walk through.
'Squad Graevus, where are you?' voxed Karraidin.
'Got tied down, we're on your heels. Solun's with us.’
Salk saw Squad Graevus heading through the wreckage of the defences, the white diamond of Graevus's power axe blade shining.
Karraidin switched to the vox for all the squads and specialists under his command. 'Spearhead, we've made the facility. We're going in.’
The captain ducked through the ragged hole and ^nto the facility Salk followed, chainsword drawn.
The first thing that hit him was the smell, a stench so awful that it almost made Salk reel. It would have been enough to drive back a normal man and even with a Marine's constitution Salk felt his additional organs and filters kicking in to prevent the stench from leaving him nauseous and dizzy.
His autosenses rapidly adjusted to the darkness. The first floor was the security station he remembered from Korvax's pict-recording, the shattered automated defences spilling metal entrails onto the floor, stark plasticrete construction pocked with bullet scars.
Where the cargo elevator had been there was now a solid metal slab with a security console nearby, blocking the way down.
'Can you get through it?' asked Salk.
Karraidin shook his head. 'It's wired. Probably to blow if it's tampered with. Get a techmarine up here.'
Lygris came to the fore and began to work with the security console. 'Time to see what Adept Aris-teia taught us.'
Squad Graevus and Techmarine Solun were entering through the breach. Solun hurried up to help Lygris input the complex code that Aristeia had provided them with. Solun's mem-gear made quick work of the complicated algorithms that generated the entry code, but even so there was a painful delay as the techmarines worked on the interface.
The few minutes were agonising. Cultist counterattacks came to the breach and were swept away by pin-sharp bolter fire from Squads Karraidin and Salk. Lasgun shots spattered in from ex-Guardsman cultists and Salk drew his men up in front of the console to shield its delicate working with their bodies from any stray shots. This could be it -Sarkia Aristeia could have been mistaken or lying and everything would end here, on this Emperor-forsaken snowball of a planet which had nothing to give them.
A Space Marine never gave in to despair, but in those moments Salk felt the enormity of the task weighing on him - the Soul Drinkers were finally free after thousands of years of servitude to the Imperium, and now a tiny thing like Aristeia's memory would decide if they survived to use that new freedom.
'Done. Stand back!'
A spiral crack appeared in the slab and slowly it opened, segments fanning open like an iris. Half the Marines pointed their bolters into the growing hole in the floor as corroded motors strained to open a hatch that had been sealed for ten years. A thin, stinking fog coiled up from below and Karraidin held up a hand to fend it off while his sensors adjusted. Salk glanced at his squad's auspex to see what was beneath them, but there was just a mass of static swirling. They knew it was a four metre drop into the floor below, but that was it. There could be anything down there.
'Graevus, do you object to having the point?'
'It's what I'm here for.’ replied Graevus. He hurried up to the opening with his squad. It was absolutely pitch black inside.
'Cold and fast, we get in and we secure whatever we find. Karraidin, get the specialists in afterwards, if there's anything in here I don't know how long we can hold it off. Squad, move!'
Graevus holstered his bolt pistol to hold his axe two-handed, then dropped into the hole. His assault squad followed him rapidly, each man dropping into the unknown with weapons drawn.
'Damnation!' came a vox almost immediately, half-scrambled by interference but definitely Grae-vus's voice. 'What is... Get down here, everyone, I can't...'
Static howled over the vox. Without pausing Salk jumped in after the squad, knowing that his squad would be right behind him.
He landed on something hot and soft, squirming and undulating beneath him. Something twisted past his face and his autosenses picked out a tentacle, as thick as a Marine's waist, squeezing the life out of one of Graevus's Assault Marines before cramming the remains into a giant circular maw big enough to swallow a tank. Yelled orders and cries of pain were everywhere, along with the roaring of something inhuman that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
Salk's squad were dropping in all around him. He flicked the selector on his bolt pistol to full auto and dived into the fray.
SARKIA ARISTEIA GULPED down the pure, freezing air, trying to get the stink of mutation and burning flesh out of her lungs. She stumbled from the open blast doors and fell to the ground, grazing her palms on the frozen earth. It was ruination outside the facility, with the tech-guard defences reduced to rubble and heaps of pulverised earth. Barbed wire was wrapped around broken bodies of men and eldar. Corpses lay everywhere, their blood already freezing hard - Sarkia even saw the armoured form of a fallen Marine. Plumes of smoke rose from craters and, as Sarkia looked up at Stratix Luminae's pale blank sky, she saw the twirling contrails of the Soul Drinkers Thunder-hawks as they returned to their ship in orbit. She had seen them fight, and by the Omnissiah they were awesome, a head taller than the tallest normal man, fast and ruthless, deadeye shots and ferocious in hand-to-hand. Truth be told they had scared her more than the quick, skilful eldar. She supposed that the Soul Drinkers had saved her life from the alien menace, but it was a hollow feeling.