Chương 60: Chapter Fifty-Two - Clearing

Octavia had some minor regrets. For example, she currently regretted paying negative attention during the one or two lessons on squad leadership. It wasn't like she ever expected to lead anything. Maybe one day, in the distant future, she may have the seniority to lead a team of cooks in some faraway mess hall, but the likelihood of her leading a Battle Sister Squad was pretty much nil. Now she was walking down a wide corridor on the medicae deck with a dozen sisters behind her.

Most of those were novitiates, but a few were full-fledged sisters taken from the Palatine's personal guard. Behind them was a group of some twenty-odd voidsmen, also presumably under her command. Actually, she wasn't sure about the latter, but when she said 'move' the lieutenant in charge had repeated the order, so that made her feel like she was probably in command. Fortunately, there was Alexis who was toddling along with her little killclade of scary murder servitors.

She was the only one here that wasn't treating Octavia weirdly, which she genuinely appreciated. Judging from the looks from the sisters, they were waffling between treating Alexis with complete indifference, seeing as how she was just a member of the Mechanicus along for the ride, or they were giving her the stink eye for being too casual with Octavia. It was kind of funny, so Octavia chose to do nothing about it.

They reached the section of the medicae deck that was sealed off and guarded by several teams of tired-looking Voidsmen. Octavia paused for a moment, then spotted someone with enough medals to look important. She stomped over to them, aware of the two sisters that had peeled off the rest to follow her. Then Alexis walked over, her little pointy feet clicking on the decking.

"Hey," Octavia said before pointing with a thumb past the barricade.

"How's the situation?" The man stood taller and nodded once, one hand on the pommel of a sword by his hip.

"Ma'am. The situation is under control for the moment. We've sealed all of the other exits using emergency lockdown protocols and a squad is stationed at each with a Vox-operator. We're checking in on each one of them every five minutes. Air and water exchange for this section were shut off as well."

"Any sign of the enemy?" Octavia asked. The man hesitated for just a moment before nodding.

"We've seen them poking their heads out from around the corners, ma'am. If anyone goes in there, they'll be meeting some resistance all the way."

"Good to know," Octavia said. She turned to the sisters next to her. Delegation was important, right?

"Can you two, ah, ensure that everyone is aware to expect ambushes."

"Oh, and remind everyone that with the air circulation off, we might find pockets of stale air," Alexis said.

"The Voidsmen will be fine, but I'm not sure about the sisters."

"Our faith will carry us through," one of the older sisters snapped.

"You can breathe faith?" Alexis asked innocently. Octavia snorted.

"It's fine. If we notice that the air is a problem, I'll do something about it. Come on." She checked her bolter, made sure it was fully loaded, then she did the same with her almost-a-melta and finally she gripped her chainsword in one hand and shifted her shoulders around, stretching them. Time to make a point. She was positive that the sisters accompanying her were spies, of a sort. The Sororitas was big on gossip, of course, but this felt like a level deeper than that.

Some of the sisters with her were just zealous and wanted to burn the heretic, the mutant, and the enemy from the warp, but some, she was sure, were here to judge her. The voidsmen moved some barricades aside, and Octavia stepped through. The corridor ahead stretched on for a while, leading onwards all the way to the end of the cordoned-off section. She knew that the end of that area was a large theater of some sort. A space reserved for meetings of the directors and for exhibitions of some sort or another.

If the enemy wanted a large staging area, then that was what they'd be using.

"Small warp presences along the sides," Alexis said as she looked down at some Mechanicus gizmo.

"A much, much larger and stronger one up ahead." She reached to the sides of her robes and pulled out a helmet which she slid on before pulling her hood on. Too bad, the helmet hid her cute little button-nose.

"Let's check it out," Octavia said. She walked forwards with a sure, fast stride, which was about a normal walking pace for all the rest. They were ambushed the second they walked into the first four-way intersection. Men with skin sloughing off of their muscles and with long, protruding horns jutting through their skin stumbled out from both sides. They had sticks, bits of metal, some knives and saws and scalpels. Not a single proper weapon in sight. Octavia grinned.

"I'm taking left," she said as she turned on one of her new augmentations. The Perception Dilator came on with a click that she felt rather than heard, and in that same moment, the world slowed down. She felt slower, more sluggish, but everything around her was moving as though fighting through the thick sludge that the sisters called Recaf. She took a few seconds to judge her enemies. There were some twenty of those plague-ridden former Voidsmen and medicae, more or less evenly split on both sides of the corridor.

Between their legs were twice as many little daemons as there were men. Little smiling freaks, with small, rotund bodies covered in grease and pustules and what may very well be literal shit. Her first move was to kick one of the little guys that had rushed in ahead of the pack. Her foot, its strength improved by her generalized muscle enhancer, met the nurgling boot-tip first. It exploded apart, like a large zit being squeezed too hard. In the same motion, she brought her bolter up.

Her spinal nerve augmentor was running hot. She felt like a hundred warm spines were poking her gently down the length of her back from the nape of her neck to her tailbone. It allowed her to stop her bolter right as it was aimed at the face of the nearest plague victim. She squeezed the trigger, then shifted to the side. She could actually see the bolter's gyrojet round light up and speed ahead. She fired a second time, then a third, only sparing one round per enemy. Then her Perception Dilator clicked in warning.

She had a second more of use before it shut down. Her thumb flicked her bolter onto full-auto, and she moved her second hand onto the top of the gun, pressing it down even as she squeezed the trigger. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Her perception returned to normal even as she swept the gun left and right rapidly, emptying out the rest of her magazine in a spray of bullets that splattered the front row of nurglings.

She let her gun drop, and it hovered in the air while she grabbed her chainsword and swept into the melee, the weapon hissing like an aggressive snake. Some ten seconds later, she turned around to check on the far end of the corridor, but Alexis had taken care of that side pretty well. KYS was idly stabbing a plague-ridden idiot in the eye socket with a scalpel and Alexis was standing behind her, two laspistols held over her head by her mechadendrites. That big, bird-looking robot, CS...

something or other, had its gatling gun still spinning, but all that came out of it now was smoke. The entire corridor was a charnel house. Not that Octavia's side was much better. Kills Confirmed: 40x Nurglings 20x Poxwalkers New Point Total: 499 Octavia glanced back at the others, but the sisters were still bringing their guns up and moving into what cover they had.

"Well... come on, we don't want to waste all day," she said as she grabbed her bolter out of the air and then flicked the magazine out to the side.

"Anyone got a spare mag?" Someone tossed her one, and she thanked them with a grin.

"K84-321," Alexis ordered.

"Burn the remains." Not to be outdone, the sisters moved up and lit up the other bodies. Octavia suspected that some of them were a little miffed that their thunder was stolen so casually, and by a member of the Mechanicus at that. She giggled, which earned her a few looks from the others.

"Ah, sorry, just... doing the God Emperor's will makes me so happy?" Yeah, that'd work. She skipped down the corridor, and Alexis laughed before running to keep up with her.

"Should we give the others a chance?" Alexis asked.

"And miss out on points?" Octavia asked. She liked seeing the numbers go up. It was fun. Besides, it meant that she could buy better stuff. She was thinking of getting one of those Paragon Warsuits. Or a jetpack. Or both? They continued onwards, with Alexis occasionally pulling out her little auspex device and the sisters and voidsmen checking every room they passed, in case it missed anything.

Whenever they found anything that looked even vaguely cult-ish, they'd light the room up, washing it in holy fire before moving on. The cleanup later was going to be a real pain, but that was someone else's problem. Finally, they made it to the space where Alexis found the largest concentration of warp-based fuckery.

"This is a lot," Alexis said as she stared down at her little gadget.

"We have a lot of guns," Octavia said. She wasn't concerned, not even as they came onto a pair of double doors that turned rusty as they approached. When she walked up to it, dark, pulsating skin started to appear, covering the doorway and staring at her with a hundred glaring eyes. Her anti-warp stuff was revealing a lot of crap that hadn't been visible, and the fact that it was there at all was concerning. Her boot smashed into the doors, ramming them open and revealing a large theater.

There were seven rows of seats, all set in a slight curve towards an open space at the bottom of the room, one where she imagined some medicae professor might stand to give a grand lecture. Instead, there were some three dozen poxwalkers shambling about, and a dozen or so little nurglings sleeping on the chairs, or toddling about. At the base of the room was a field laboratory of some sort, with great big vats connected to a machine that looked cobbled together from large rusted barrels and several spherical...

things. She wasn't sure what it was, but it wasn't even trying to disguise its warp taint. No proper machine was covered in so much flesh and had so many little eyes growing out of it like pustules. A man stood by the machine, a head and a half taller than all the rest and covered in the tattered remains of a long medicae coat. He spun, then his face, which was flattened strangely, contorted into a vile grimace.

"Fuckers! You come at a terrible time, servant of the dead emperor."

"I tend to do that," Octavia said as she stepped into the room. Alexis's servitors hopped up onto some of the seats and the biggest one stomped into the room next to Alexis herself. Then the sisters and Voidsmen spread out at the back of the room.

"So, are we gonna have a big speech before we beat the shit out of each other or..." Octavia started, then chuckled as the man roared and flung an arm forwards. Her wreath glowed, and a golden shield appeared before her, stopping a pair of scalpels from stabbing her in the face.

"Guess not!" Octavia laughed as she charged across the room and raised her bolter. She kinda forgot that she had set it to full-auto, so the recoil had her spraying everything but the big daemon-possessed freak yelling at her. Bolter rounds plinked off of the big machine behind him, busting through the steel and spewing gases towards the ceiling. Octavia tossed the bolter aside, bashing a nurgling in the face with it before she pulled out her chainsword.

Lasfire filled the room with streaks of red and yellow, then Alexis's servitors joined in, and the roar of gatling fire drowned out any of the shouting from the poxwalkers and other freaks around. She reached the big guy with a swipe of her sword, then ducked back as he returned the attack by flinging two tentacles at her, both of them ripping out of his sides with a violent burst. The fight would have been impressive if the big guy didn't flinch as a spear of blue fire rammed into the machine right behind him.

As it was, the distraction let Octavia slip into his guard and stab him in his forward leg, chainsword ripping out his knee. He fell forwards, and she pulled her melta free from her hip and shoved the end of it into his chest. She almost gagged at the weird squelch that came from that.

"Alright, enough of you," she said as she pulled the trigger. The man went down screaming. Kills Confirmed: 17x Nurglings 24x Poxwalkers 1x Plague Surgeon New Point Total: 733 Not bad, she figured, for one afternoon's work. Now... what the hell was she supposed to do about all of this obviously-tainted shit? She shrugged.

"Girls! Burn it all down. I don't even want ashes left."