Chapter Text
The ancient metal halls of the old bunker dripped with condensation and let drops of water hit the ground in rhythmic tones, each drop echoing in concert with another and filling the entire empty space with a quiet chorus of sound. The silence that permeated the space around the dripping water was ruptured by the sound of boots echoing in the darkness, and the inky blackness was punctured by the light from several electric torches that cut through the blackness in slow swings, hitting the rusted old walls and painting the world in color for brief moments in time. The squad of guardsmen that were grouped together, looking around in the cone of lights produced by the torches, weren't sure what it was that they were supposed to find. The cacophony of sounds that echoed dimly from everywhere kept them on constant alert, and the newest among them jumped at every single noise that they came across.
"How long do you think this stuff has been here?" One of them asked as she looked up at the ceiling that was pockmarked with rust and the occasional vent. "It looks ancient..."
"I don't know why Halbrecht even wants us here," another complained as he tripped over a raised floor panel, swearing angrily as he caught himself before he fell. "This place is a dump!"
"A dump that is likely filled to the brim with old tech. Wish that tech-priest had stuck around. He'd know what we were looking for," their squad leader spoke next. "Besides, if Governor Halbrecht wants us to scour this place from top to bottom, then that's what we do. So, shut up and keep looking." The wide hallways before them began widening further into a massive atrium where their footsteps echoed off of the immensely high ceiling, the sound reverberating from every corner of the room as it bounced off of the vaulted ceiling’s high walls. Whatever had once been in the massive hall was long gone. "Break off. Search any rooms you find. I want to know what this place was used for. Conroy, take the left. Denis, take the right. Mercer..."
Denis watched as her squadmates all dispersed around the atrium and followed suit, her torch leading her to one door at the far right of the atrium. She pulled it, and the metal slab initially refused to budge. She holstered her torch briefly and seized the bar handle with both hands, giving it a forceful yank with a grunt. The rusted door swung open and found herself faced with a narrow hallway. With a brief glance back over her shoulder, she pulled her torch again from her belt and entered into the dark space, careful to leave the door open behind her as she did for what little good it did. Besides the occasional flash of light from the torches of her fellow squadmates, no light followed her as she crept inside of the room, watching carefully as her feet maneuvered around tangles of old cords and wires that threaded their way along the metal floor. The place was massive, and the metal floor eventually gave way to a grated catwalk that was suspended over a twenty-meter drop. Beneath her, all she could see was massive pipes that stretched on in the dark chasms beyond the reach of her light. She almost tripped down steps on the other side and found herself in a decently sized room. It looked like it had once been a monitoring hub of some kind with old cogitators riddled with dials and rust.
She stepped further into the room and looked around at the empty chairs, strewn about as if the people who had once sat in them had scrambled out in a hurry. She wondered what could have caused their flight as she saw tins for food scattered across the table with rusting silverware. Whoever they were, they had left in quite the hurry to have left so much of their belongings behind. What perplexed her was how little professional items remained. there were no signs of manuals, no cogitator logs resting nearby. Nothing. It was as if the place had been stripped bare of anything that could have told them what this place used to be.
Her mind bitterly remembered the Cadians and the Tech-Priest with that barking Master Sergeant. The Priest had been odd, always twitching and speaking to the machine spirits, coming in with edicts from the Ministratum and Inquisition to take whatever they wanted without asking. Pelamon may have been some backwater jungle shithole, but it was still their home, yet in came those vultures acting like they owned it all. The Adeptus Mechanicus felt entitled to everything she saw before her despite the fact that the Martian vultures had likely never heard of this place until the report got back that this facility, deep under the great lake, she was sure, had been uncovered and pumped clear of water. The moment they heard of it, an Imperial edict marked with the sigil of the Inquisition and stamped by some bigwigs from Terra and Mars deemed that they would not be allowed to touch the place until they had their pick of what was there. Damn the thought that it could assist the people of Pelamon.
And then there were the Astartes. Fat lot of good those Imperial Fists had done to aid the governor. The sheer thought that they had approached them to perhaps give some muscle, to reinforce their authority of their own planet, just to be looked square in the eye by the steely eyed Captain like they were inconveniencing him, and being flatly told "No"...
It all made her prickle in anger as she kept passing through the room, eyes falling on faded, unreadable old wall signs. She knew that it wasn’t her place to be angry, not her place to question the lauded Angels of the Emperor or the oh so lauded tech-priests of Mars with their Skitarii and their mechanical limbs, but it didn’t stop her from being angry about how little the powers that were seemed to care. She decided to turn her thoughts instead to the building to try and keep herself focused. Whatever this place had once been, it was enormous, and it had been human built. That was enough for her. Denis only wished that they could control it themselves without the various cogs of the Imperial machine constantly taking and stealing from them every time something came up. It was bad enough that they had a whole sector quarantined because they found some old Eldar ruins once upon a time. It had shut down a mining and resource gathering expedition by a whole week. Had the Inquisitors even bothered to apologize for the inconvenience? Were they reimbursed for the collapsed mines or the money lost in compensation for the delays? Of course not. She never expected those fancy Terrans to ever do anything for them this far out. Not that Halbrecht's attitude ever helped much with that, but still...
When she ascended and descended a small segment of stairs, she found herself in another impossibly long, dark hallway. She aimed her torch down into the blackness, the light just ceasing to illuminate anything after a point, and she sighed. It looked like it was going to be another massively long walk into pitch blackness. Of course, it would be. Why wouldn't it? Then, the light of her torch began to flicker as she started down the hallway.
"Not now," she mumbled and gave it a shake. The light steadied again, but not before a long metallic thud echoed from the far end of the hall. She snapped her torch to it and held her breath. The space was completely silent now save for the dim echoes of the thud still ringing dully off of the metal walls. She took another step forward, and the light of her torch began to flicker again. Only this time, when she swore and gave it another shake, the light completely went out, leaving her in thick, inky darkness.
Her heartbeat picked up as another loud metallic sound reverberated in the distance, only much, much louder this time. She smacked the torch, swearing as she fumbled furiously with the canvas bags on her belt as she hunted for a spare charging pack when there was the sound of clanking metal somewhere down the long hallway before her. She froze, heart hammering in her ears, as she slowly forced herself to raise her eyes to the sound of the noises. For a moment, there was nothing, and she almost let out a breath of relief until there began to be red pinpricks of light that sparked up in the distance. At first, it was one set... Then two... Then three... One after another, sets of glowing red eyes began emerging in the distance, the shapes and sizes varying, but eyes all the same.
Her breath caught in her throat as the eyes stared unblinking at her from the end of the hallway. She could only think of one thing to do as she reached for her lasgun and slowly began to back away down the hallway, hoping against hope that she could remember which turns she took to make it back to her squad. She couldn’t think of anything else to do save for one thing. She prayed. " O Immortal Emperor, have mercy on us, miserable unworthies that we are. O Master of the Galaxy, protect your flock from the Alien . .. " She kept backing away, her voice coming from her lips in a breathless whisper as over a dozen sets of glowing red eyes seized her in their vision. " We are your warriors and we are servants of Thee. We stand free from Blindness of heart ..." Her heart hammered loudly in her ears more like the thumping of a massive hammer than that of a human organ, and she could barely manage to suck in enough air as she struggled to keep herself from turning around and putting her back to the still unblinking red lights before her and run away as fast as her legs could carry her. She fought the urge to scream as her lips moved quickly in a nearly silent prayer, her voice rising in pitch but staying low in volume as a cluster of red eyes and a single green one manifested before her as well, and another like it joining it followed soon by another two. " O Immortal Emperor, have mercy on us, miserable unworthies that we are. .." She began repeating the prayer breathlessly as she gulped in air in short, dry bursts as she remembered that soon, there would be a corner she would have to round, and that was when something stopped her.
The entire hallway was hit by a blast of freezing cold air. The entire space had been damp and humid, bordering on stifling, and the sudden freezing draft of air cut through her thin jungle fatigues and bit her to the bone. It was a cold unlike any she had ever felt in her entire life, and her sweat felt like it froze in an instant on her skin, hardening and hurting as she tried to wipe it away as quickly as it could before the ice droplets pierced her skin.
That was when she felt a chunk of ice lump in her throat and her eyes widened, skin prickling, and she knew that something was very, very wrong. Then came the eyes. They flashed open in the darkness glowing a brilliant bright blue, and she swore that small arcs of lightning began jumping across some surface that she could not see as something else began to glow in the distance as well. The lines were too tiny to make out what they were, and their glow was too faint, but everything inside of her stomach was screaming at her to run, her primal instincts shrieking at her to leave as quickly as she possibly could, to save herself.
She felt her stomach drop when a deep voice spoke, its booming, grating, gruff tones taking up seemingly the entire space as it thundered out from the end of the hallway. "Kill them all."
Almost before the voice finished, all two dozen sets of eyes rushed forward at once, and Denis finally felt her resolve shatter and let out a scream as she spun and sprinted from the hallway, weaving through corridors as the sound of metal on metal, of iron footsteps and scurrying metal spider legs pursued her. " Captain !" She screamed so hard that her voice broke. " Run !" She hoped that they would hear her, that they would be able to make it, and she slid around the corner into the atrium with the thundering footsteps drawing closer with every passing heartbeat. She saw her squad running towards her as she felt an unbidden tear slip down her cheek, adrenaline pushing her faster than she had ever run before, " Run !"
She didn't know what was behind her, but the looks of terror on the face of her Captain and the rest of her squad told her everything that she needed to know. They spun around with screams of their own and fled towards the long hallway out.
It was a straight shot. There was no closer exit, and as her heart beat like a war drum and her lungs screamed for air, she heard the footsteps stop and the entire space fill with the sound of rifles loading, all before they were met from behind with the thunderous sound of bolter fire.