'Good luck, brothers.’ said Salk, knocking the worst of the gore off his chainblade before heading into the foetid gloom to gather the remains of his squad.
'Wait!' said Solun. What... what's yours?'
'My what?'
'Your mutation. We are all changing, that's why we are here.’
Salk thought for a second. To tell the truth he had been ignoring it. Pretending to himself that it wasn't real. 'Karendin says it's metabolic. My body chemistry is changing. I don't know the details.’
'And it's getting worse?' Solun was going into shock and his voice was faltering.
Yes, brother. It is.’
So is mine. It's my memory, you see. I can... remember things. I'm starting to remember things that I never learned. Ever since the Galactarium... please, we have to finish this. Even if we die trying, we can't turn into one of these creatures.’
'Don't speak, Solun.’ said Pallas. 'Drop into half-trance, you're in shock.’ He looked up at Salk - his face was streaked with mutant blood. 'Get to Graevus. Don't wait for me, I'll make it if I can.’
Salk nodded once and sprinted into the gloom, the deformed monstrosities of Stratix Luminae closing in from the darkness around him, and the secret of survival somewhere below.
THADDEUS HIT THE floor of the Chimera APC as it roared over piles of wreckage, storm trooper driver grinding the gears as the vehicle almost overturned trying to scale the unexpected obstacle.
Tanks are ruptured.’ said the driver from up front. 'Bail out!'
The rear hatch swung down and Thaddeus jumped out, followed by the Pilgrim, who showed agility beyond his ragged appearance as he scuttled down the wreckage to ground level.
Towering twisted piles of wreckage had turned the barren tundra into a maze. The sound of battle came from all directions: hellguns and bolters, the booming amplified voices of cultist taskmasters, storm trooper sergeants yelling orders. A couple of storm trooper squads were nearby trying to clear out a cordon to mount another push - the vehicle column had broken up completely, the APCs rendered all but useless by the rapidly changing, lethal environment.
Thaddeus snapped off a couple of autopistol shots, knocking down a couple of cultists who had taken up a firing position high up in the closest wreckage. He saw as they fell that they were Guardsmen, damned souls whose will had proven too weak and who had been corrupted into the service of Teturact. This was the worst kind of evil, the kind that took dutiful Imperial citizens and turned them into the tools of Chaos.
'Sister! Colonel! What's our situation?'
The vox was a mess of warped static. Sister Aescar-ion's voice came through first. We're not going to be able to break through here, inquisitor. We're facing some kind of... moral threat. Heresy and daemonology.'
'Sarpedon?'
'I think not. Witches, inquisitor. We have lost many already'
'Fight on, Sister, I will see if there is another way'
Thaddeus couldn't raise Colonel Vinn at all. The storm troopers were moving forward, battering their way towards the facility with volleys of hellgun fire, but they could not move fast enough to keep from being surrounded. Thaddeus recognised the advancing hordes from the battlefield reports that had come in from all over the warzone - vastly superior numbers, most of whom were barely sentient and so felt no pain or despair, who could be defeated only by killing them all. The same armies that had carved out Teturact's empire were here on Stratix Luminae, and they wouldn't be any easier to kill.
Thaddeus and Pilgrim ducked into cover as lasgun fire spattered towards them from ex-Guardsmen traitors duelling with the closest storm troopers.
'Do not feel sympathy for the Soul Drinkers.’ said the Pilgrim, as if reading Thaddeus's mind. 'Evil will always fight with itself. Just because Sarpedon batdes this same corruption does not mean he is our ally'
Thaddeus looked over the twisted hull fragment he was using as cover. He saw heretics crouched in the wreckage, swapping fire with the storm troopers - hellgun blasts took off heads and ripped torsos apart but there were just too many of them.
'We cannot make it as one.’ Thaddeus said.
'The strikeforce was never anything more than a decoy.’ replied the Pilgrim. Though you may be loathe to admit it, it was only us who could face Sarpedon. Let them fight, it takes the eyes of our enemies away from us.'
Thaddeus looked at the Pilgrim, its hooded face I as sinister as ever, its grinding voice like a warning in his head. 'Not without Aescarion.’
Teturact's witches are here. There is much power in them, I can taste it. If Aescarion is facing them then she is lost. We are the only hope.'
Thaddeus gripped his autopistol tight, sweating in spite of the freezing cold of Stratix Luminae. Aescarion was as loyal a Sister as he could hope to have on his side, and the storm troopers were some of the best-trained troops the Ordo Hereti-cus could field. But men like Kolgo had taught Thaddeus that even loyal citizens like these were secondary to the ultimate goal of doing the Emperor's will. If they had known, they would have understood.
'Agreed.’ said Thaddeus. 'We two can slip by when a hundred are halted. Lead the way, Pilgrim.'
The inquisitor and the Pilgrim moved quickly towards the facility, always keeping the wreckage between them and the concentrations of enemy troops, leaving the strikeforce to draw away the enemy while they searched for their true quarry.
Whatever Sarpedon wanted, it was in the facility. And that was where Thaddeus would find him.
PERHAPS KARRAIDIN WAS dead. Perhaps Solun was, too, trapped and all but helpless on the floor above. It didn't matter. What mattered was that the future was below them, trapped in the festering heart of an evil that had grown unchecked for a decade. Salk still lived, along with a handful of his squad. Grae-vus and many of his Assault Marines, too, along with Techmarine Lygris and Apothecary Pallas. It would have to be enough, because they had one chance and this was it.
Techmarine Lygris, covered by the bolters of his brothers crammed into the corridor behind him, had opened the control panel of the blast doors and was rewiring the security circuits. The data-slate showing the scrawlings from Karlu Grien's cell was his guide - the diagram was the most secret thing the mad adept had known, the key to the blast doors fitted to the containment floors after the facility had been hurriedly sealed.
A fountain of sparks burst from the door controls and the doors juddered open, smoke pumping from the corroded servos.
'Cover!' yelled Graevus and the bolt pistols of his squad were levelled at the opening doors as Lygris scrambled back and drew his own pistol.
Salk watched as he prepared to enter the place that had almost killed Captain Korvax ten years before.
The floor of the facility's second underground level was gone, eaten away as if by acid, a ragged ring of blackened metal all that remained. In the centre, where it would have been bisected by the floor, was suspended a huge sphere, corpulent and rotting, seething flesh pulsing between the rusting metal plates. It hung from the ceiling by a web of raw tendons and rained a steady shower of filth down into the lowest level below.
It was there, at the deepest point of the facility, that the containment had failed and where the worst of the corruption waited. The released mutagens had knitted the raw tissue into a thick pulsing mantle of flesh that lay over everything like a blanket, rippling like water, boils as tall as a man spurting hot pus like geysers, the remains of hulking biocontainment units like islands surrounded by bleeding scabs and writhing proto-limbs.
In the centre, breaking the surface of a small lake of brackish blood rained down by the sphere above, was a structure that Salk guessed was a control room or tech-shrine. Thick cables snaked away from it, and the windows now clouded with corrosion would once have looked out across the whole containment floor.