Chương 38: Chapter Thirty-Four - Route to the Forge

She didn't have nearly as much time to rest as she would have hoped, but a few minutes was better than nothing. It was at least long enough that she got KYS to look over the others and apply some bandages and suture a few wounds. Alexis really wanted to armour up her friends. They were just not tough enough to endure prolonged fights, especially not against enemies that seemed to be increasingly tough. But time didn't allow her that luxury.

A few minutes after leaving that weird Sister of Battle, Octavia, to her own devices, Alexis found herself called over to rejoin the 14th Platoon. This time they were paired up with three others, so she was no longer the only tech priest representing the Mechanicus. There were two others, one of which she recognized. Alexis gave Red-C61734 a cheery wave, and the Tech Acolyte returned the sign of the cog along with a very faint bow of the head.

The other she didn't know, but they didn't seem willing to even try talking to her, and she was a little weary of reaching out and poking them to start a conversation. She had been burned a few times for trying. The Mechanicus was not an organization that attracted extroverts. She instead checked over her servitor friends one last time, only to realize that 054-648 was low on rivets.

"How many points do I have left?" she muttered.

"Including your last genestealer kill, you are at 607 points." She frowned. Wasn't she at... 601 earlier? That plus one kill was 611, right? Only... no, maybe she had misread the number earlier? She did that a lot. Shaking her head, she dismissed the thought and spent a whopping two points on ammunition for her foam launcher and 054-648. That left her with a cool 609 points. After that, she looked over the platoon. They had started with a decent number of soldiers. They were down to about two dozen now.

That big ogryn fellow was still there, as was the lieutenant, and the sergeant as well, though he now had a bandage wrapped around his head and had one arm in a sling. That wasn't stopping him from barking out orders. She filed in at the back of the platoon, and soon enough they were off. The next stop was through the same door that the genestealers had blown up, through a corridor that was left almost entirely unlit and which smelled like burned hair and old grease.

Rubbing at her nose, she stepped over the threshold into the passages, then helped her friends over the lip. The formations were a little confused. Two platoons stuck to the sides of the wide passageway, a passage which had a very slight downwards slope to it. In the centre was the mixed group, led by that strange and very loud Sister of Battle.

"Come on out, mutants!" she shouted into the dark.

"Step into the light of the God Emperor, and we will show you his fire!"

"Fire and faith!" a number of Voidsmen and sisters shouted, and Alexis almost giggled at the way the little sister, Octavia, jumped at the shout and looked back with wide eyes. Alexis flicked on the lumen on her foam sprayer, then turned up the strength of the blinkenlights on her servitor's armour. It wouldn't illuminate much, but it might help her friends avoid friendly fire. The large group moved forward.

A few of them cracked these small lumensticks that started to glow a bleary red and tossed them aside so that their path was soon marked by glowing red spaces every few dozen steps.

"Contact ahead!" someone called out. Their light flashed onto a figure in the dark. A moment later three-dozen lasrifles spat red beams through the dark and the figure was summarily executed.

"Hold!" Octavia shouted. She clipped that big bolter of hers to her armour somehow, then moved up to the body.

"Not a genestealer. Watch your fire!" Oops? Alexis felt a little bad, but also, anyone sane wouldn't be wandering the ship at a time like this. If ever there was a moment where hiding was appropriate, it was now. They continued to move forward, and eventually her platoon was made to peel off to check the inside of a large warehouse. They moved in with professional grace, kicking in the door, then stomped in, each Voidsmen covering the one ahead.

She hadn't even had her turn to enter before the room was cleared, with only a couple of Genestealers found hiding in some dark recess. She was getting the impression that either there were fewer of the mutants left on the ship, or they were properly dispersed. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Or maybe they were waiting somewhere for a final big push?

Somehow, she ended up walking alongside Red-C61734, the Tech Acolyte giving her a strange look with his one mechanical eye.

"Enquiry: What are you doing here, Alexis Lambda-3?"

"Ah, helping?" she said.

"Statement: Your assistance is appreciated. That of your combat servitors, more so. Observation: Yours seem to have been blessed by the omnissiah, for their arms and armour are of greater quality than I recall."

"Uh, yeah, you could say that," Alexis said.

"I've been working hard to help where I can, and I guess the Omnissiah has blessed me."

"Observation: Your arm is new."

"Yup!"

"Enquiry: Where did you obtain it?" he asked, his fleshier eye narrowing. Alexis looked away. She wasn't a good liar, so...

"Oh, look, we're moving! We should keep going."

"Consternation: Be that way, then," he said. He glanced over at his own platoon, which was, in fact, moving forward.

"Statement: I will rejoin my group. Warning: If you are afraid of divulging your patron, then you may want to find new robes to cover your gains. Personal Objective: I will rise above my station as Tech Adept; I will become a warrior of the Omnissiah. Observation: As someone on a similar though diverging path, Future-Servitor-Underseer Alexis Lambda-3, it would behoove us to stay in touch and form a tentative alliance, especially in times such as these."

"Thank you," she said after a moment's thought.

"I'll keep that in mind!"

"Suggestion: Rising in the ranks of the Mechanicus is as much about who you know as it is about what you know. Proverb: The Omnissiah guides, the Magos blesses." She did the sign of the cog and bowed her head a little. She wished there was time for a bit more chatting, but there really wasn't. Alexis continued to watch over her friends and the platoon. Eventually they needed her help up front to unlock one of the side doors, but the moment that was done, she was shooed to the back where she'd be out of the way.

They didn't even want her servitors doing any real work. She suspected that the Voidsmen-at-arms felt like they had something to prove, and this kind of room-clearing work was exactly what they had trained for. They were, admittedly, better at it than she was, though she was learning a lot just by looking at them work. Strange. A day ago, the thought that she'd be frustrated by not having enemies to shoot at would have been entirely foreign to her.

Now she legitimately was annoyed that others were 'stealing' her kills. Funny, how that worked out. Or maybe it wasn't all that funny. She winced as she watched a pair of Voidsmen being carried away in bodybags from another platoon. Word came down the line that the Genestealers had placed improvised explosives in a few spots, and a door had blown up, taking out a couple of men. Traps. She wasn't prepared for that kind of thing.

She and a bunch of others froze as something skittered overhead, but pointing lights up only revealed ducts and large pipes, any one of which could be hiding a Genestealer.

"Fuckers are in the walls," Sergeant Auscion grumbled.

"It's going to be months to clear this whole place out." They were approaching a long stretch of corridor with more doors off to the left and right, but one large set of double doors in particular was drawing her attention.

'FORGE 44' was emblazoned across a plaque, one covered in grime and rust. The air here smelled like iron and coal dust and faintly of oil. Alexis wasn't at the very front, so she missed some of the discussion going on there, but judging by the way people were pointing at the ground and at the many traces left there of people coming and going, this was definitely an important space. A voidsman flashed a light across the door. There was art on it.

A figure that may have been the emperor, only he had no eyes, and his head was tall and covered in ridges. He was sitting upon a throne of skulls and tentacles, and a ship that Alexis recognized as a Cobra-Class, the same as The Broken Scale was moving towards the not-Emperor's embrace. There was definitely the impression that this was it, the end of the line, the last bastion of the enemy. Octavia moved to the front, then reached over towards a large handle that would open the old doors.

"Everyone ready? This is it! God Emperor be with us all, because we're about to put an end to these mutants and heretics."