The Marines hadn't bothered with the survivors. An Adeptus Mechanicus ship would probably come, carrying adepts that would use Sarkia and the other survivors to seal the facility and label it Interdictus. The work they were doing there had been revolutionary, even Sarkia knew it. But it had been dangerous, and even if the eldar raid had been a coincidence (it couldn't be, the aliens had to have known what they were doing here and come to stop or steal it) the mutagenics could easily have got out of hand. Now the containment around the primary samples had been breached - Sarkia might be killed and incinerated to prevent contamination, or she might be interrogated until she gave up what little she knew about the program in an investigation into possible corruption or incompetence. It all depended on the unknowable, logic of the Archmagus in charge.
Something stirred in the entrance, moving out of the shadows. Another survivor? A few tech-guard and adepts had survived, Sarkia was sure she had seen old Karlu Grien hobbling out of the wreckage below. But no... it was a survivor, perhaps, but not one she wanted to see.
It was naked, humanoid but not human. It was so emaciated it couldn't possibly be alive - pallid skin stretched taut over a vestigial ribcage and a stringy abdomen. Its limbs were too long and it had too many fingers and toes, which had too many joints apiece. It looked too weak to stand but it strode confidently out of the blast doors and into the light. Its face was no face but a knot of hanging skin, with a pair of stern triangular eyes that glowed faintly. It looked at her, once, and Sarkia could feel the menace, like a lasgun beam right into her soul, burning those eyes and that nonexistent face into her mind forever.
It looked at her like she looked at cells under a microscope. In that moment she knew what it was - one of the experiments from the lowest level, perhaps a success, perhaps a failure. The adepts had been trying to unlock the human genetic pattern so they could halt, reverse, or create mutations at will - this was one of the things they had made. By the way it moved without enough musculature to support itself, Sarkia presumed that it was one of the psychic creations she had heard rumoured darkly by the menial staff.
A wave of revulsion rolled over her and she scrambled away into a half-collapsed trench as the creature walked by, forgetting her as it looked out over the remnants of the defences and the gory relics of the battle. She could feel its hatred and corruption, she could feel her very soul becoming filthy with its presence. She fought the urge to vomit, to grab sharp chunks of frozen soil and scrape herself bloodily clean.
She tried to tear her eyes away but couldn't, as the creature lifted off the ground and shot towards the sky, leaving behind an invisible but powerful stain of hatred and corruption that Sarkia Aristeia would never be able to wash off.
HE WAS BORED by this world, where the sum of living things wasn't even worth the effort of killing. Filled with the hatred of life that was hard-wired into a soul that should never have been born, Teturact looked up at the darkening evening sky, took hold of his feeble body with his awesome mind, and flung himself up towards the heavens.
He could feel life out there. And life meant death, and death meant power, and power was the closest thing in the universe to the sacred. For Teturact had known, since the moment he had been born in a test tube crammed with mutating clone-cells, that he was a god, with a god's power and a god's ambition. Now he just had to let his worshippers know they had to worship him, and as he plunged through the vacuum towards the teeming life-light ofStratix, he knew exactly how to make them kneel.
THE HELL WAS lighting up the sky. The psychic circuit raged around Sarpedon's body, cold fire against his skin, and he felt as if his blood would boil trapped inside his armour. He poured every last drop of his willpower into the Hell, the unique power that had brought him into the fold as Chapter Librarian a lifetime ago. The same power was now drawing stern spectres of order and justice in the sky, throwing down lightning bolts of purity at the hordes pouring from crashed landers and fallen piles of bodies. The nalwood force staff was hot in his hand and Sarpedon had to force back the Hell, rein it in before it demanded all his focus and blocked his capability to lead his Marines.
He let the psychic fire die down to a bearable level and clambered up onto the pile of wreckage he was using for cover, climbing to a vantage point where he could get some overview of the battlefield. A short distance away Squad Dyon was taking ranging shots at distant groups of enemies, and nearby Librarian Gresk was leading the prayers of Corvan's assault squad as they prepared for the counter-attack they would soon drive into the heart of the enemy. Sarpedon looked out over the battlefield at the force his Marines were facing and though he did not accept despair, he got some idea of the sheer scale of the fight to come.
Traitorous Guardsmen jumped from Valkyrie transports so twisted with corruption that they looked like huge flying beasts. Shambling dead groped their way from drifts of broken bodies and were whipped into advancing waves by cadaverous taskmasters. The sky was thick with falling debris, and Sarpedon knew the force had already lost Marines to the wreckage dropping from orbit. He could not begin to estimate the numbers of Teturact's army He knew that a battleship could hold upwards of twenty thousand crew, but there was no telling how many cultists and living dead could be crammed into the same space.
The Hell was throwing some of the enemy back, forcing the still-sentient troops of Teturact's horde to falter as they charged. But the dead and the fanatics kept coming, and with each passing moment a hundred more emerged, formed huge bloodthirsty mobs, and advanced.
The Soul Drinkers were drawn up in a rough defensive circle around the facility. The barren tundra had become a landscape of broken metal and dead bodies, where the Soul Drinkers' superior firepower mattered less than brutal close combat. Several squads were already fighting hard within the ^position, hunting down and crushing the pockets of attackers that fell close to the facility, and already there were tales of brutality and bravery being written in the bloodstained maze of wreckage.
Sarpedon held the front and Iktinos the rear, and it was from the far side of the facility that Sarpedon could see the flashes of psychic fire from the Librarian Tyrendian. Two fighters were still airborne and functioning as a mobile reserve, but Sarpedon knew they could not stay in the air much longer. All he could see of Sevras and Karvik's fighter was a pall of smoke hundreds of metres away. If anyone had survived, they would have to fend for themselves.
Sarpedon dropped back down to the ground as the first lasgun shots from the advancing horde spanged off the twisted metal around him.
'Range?' he asked of the closest sergeant, Dyon.
'Give the word and we can give them a counter-volley'
'Let them get closer. I want rapid fire, we need to thin them out, not scare them.'