Chương 39: Chapter Thirty-Five - The Battle of Forge 44

Alexis shifted her weight from one foot to the other, eyes on the back of Octavia's head, and her mind cycling through the faint feedback she could feel from her friends. The breaker was tripped, the doors juddered, then with a loud squeal of metal on metal, they slowly opened. The inside of Forge 44 wasn't as dark as Alexis imagined. Instead, she found herself raising a hand to cover her darkness-habituated eyes.

There were several strong lumen strips hanging from the ceiling near the entrance, and further in, a few foglights, all of them pointed right at the entrance and at the group sitting out there.

"Hit the fucking deck!" the sergeant screamed. Alexis didn't have a clue what he meant. She didn't have time to figure out that something fast rammed into her from the side and she was slammed into the ground. She scrambled for a weapon, but then realized that the form above her was KYS. The servitor had even dragged K48-321 down as well, and C-3-2/11 was kneeling just ahead.

What was-- There was an ungodly scream and Alexis slammed both hands over her ears as a noise not unlike an uneven grinder chewing through steel blasted into the room with so much force it made the deck shiver. In that same instance, the air was filled with smoke and gaseous spurts of blood were ejected out of the perforated corpses of very dead Voidsmen. She squinted, turning over to see what was going on, only to gasp. There were two large guns within the forge, each one locked in place on a swivel mount.

She couldn't count the number of barrels they had, not with the way they were projecting metre-long plumes of flaming smoke and spinning so fast that they blurred, but it was definitely too many. The gunmen behind the weapons shifted them from side to side, sweeping through the open doorway. Anyone that hadn't hit the deck was dead. All except for Octavia. The woman had her sword up and was holding onto it even as rounds spat sparks and flicked off of her heavily armoured chest.

A sphere around her head glowed a golden-yellow with intermittent flashes. She was screaming. Alexis was about to say something when she felt it. A link severed, a small warning sent across her MIU. She swallowed, then refocused.

"CS, take those out!" she shouted before pushing KYS off of her. Alexis grabbed her foam launcher, shifted over onto her back, and fired. The spray flew across the room and splattered onto the nearest of the guns a few dozen feet into the space. She didn't think it did anything, at first, then the gun got gummed up and with a horrid tearing, the welded case at the back exploded apart, throwing the gunner back. The other didn't fare so well when CS-3-2/11 fired a lance of pure plasma into the emplacement.

When that mostly just burned the sheet-metal shielding at the back, she shifted her arm and lit the man operating the gun on fire. That did it. The constant roar of both guns went dead in an instant. Peace. For a second. There was an unholy screech that blasted out from the back of the room, dust rising then being flung back even as the nearest corpses to the entrance were shredded apart. Then the horde came.

Three dozen raving mad lunatics, with crude autopistols in one hand and long, serrated knives and clubs in the other. They were armoured as well, their chests covered in steel plates held together by rivets and ugly welds, their faces hidden behind metal masks that made them seem like rabid animals with long fangs and many horns.

"Fraks!" the sergeant yelled from where he was pinned on the floor. There weren't many who listened, but enough of them did. Four grenades flew up on short arcs, thrown out by men who were prone. They clinked off the ground, then almost as one, they went off with a cacophonous boom that shook the walls.

"Retreat!" the sergeant yelled.

"Fuck that!" Octavia shouted above him.

"For the God Emperor!" Alexis wasn't sure if the Sister of Battle was right, but... well, if they ran, it was a long, long corridor, lit only by red flares, and angled slightly upwards. Could the survivors handle a quarter-mile run while being chased by fresh lunatics? Worse, there was a taste in the air. A tang like salt and rancid meat. Psykers. She recognized that blasting attack from right after the guns went down. Checking to the right and left, she was happy to see that some platoons weren't hit as hard.

They simply weren't standing before the entrance when it opened, and were spared from being mowed down like cattle.

"Kill them all, dammit!" Octavia yelled. Then she was in the thick of it, her chainsword swinging around in a wide arc that took off the head of the most eager of the genestealers. The surviving sisters of battle shouted, rising up into the melee right behind her. And that was enough. The men on the ground found their bravery once more, and soon lasfire started to flicker through the air, sometimes smashing into steel plates and leaving orange-hot marks behind, other times finding flesh and burning through it.

More grenades flew, and Alexis winced at the crack-bang that left her ears ringing for a few long seconds and which made her teeth rattle. She picked up her own lasrifle, brought it up, and then fired into the rushing crowd. The melee expanded as the Genestealers and Voidsmen-at-arms found themselves fighting up close. The Genestealers, again, had the advantage. Armour meant that blows from swung rifles bounced more often than not, and only a few of the Voidsmen even had bayonets to affix to begin with.

Plus, they had pistols. Cheap ones, that more often than not jammed after a few hasty shots, but that made a big difference. It added noise and flashes of bright light to the chaos. Alexis didn't know what to do once her lines of sight were blocked by the backs of Voidsmen, so she focused on the near. She helped K84-321 to his feet, then looked over to 054-648. He was... Alexis blinked a few times, looked away, then blinked some more. It wasn't the time for tears.

"K-KYS, check on him," she ordered. She received a message through her MIU, more of an impression really. A shrug of the shoulders and a 'I can't fix that.'

"Just do it!" she shouted, and the servitor flinched back, then scrambled away. She sniffed, then stumbled back as a Genestealer that had been tangled in the fight nearby crashed onto the ground next to her. She almost ran for a moment, then he started to rise, and she couldn't let him. Alexis scrambled over and stomped down with her foot, pressing the man into the ground before she started to bring her lasrifle around.

Hard, calloused fingers grabbed her by the calf and she was suddenly swept off her feet, landing on the deck back-first with a hard blow that knocked the air out of her lungs. The Genestealer spun around onto his front. He had a machete. Long, rust-covered iron, serrated from the middle-down, the edge wicked sharp. His mask had fallen off and... he was just some guy. A thirty-year-old nobody that she might have crossed on any of the decks in this ship, but his eyes burned with hatred in a way she could feel.

He raised his knife. She brought her mechanical arm around, grabbed him by the wrist, then using the arm's superior strength, she crushed the bones in his wrist. He yelled. She caught the knife he'd dropped with her fleshy arm, and rather clumsily stabbed him in the neck with it. Turning to the side, she let the corpse drop, then climbed to her feet. There was warm blood coating her flesh hand. Not her own. Alexis wanted to vomit. A Voidsman off to the side was doing just that.

He was bent over double and spilling his rations across the floor. Then a Genestealer ran by and clubbed him across the face. The chaos was only growing as the fight, which for a moment had a front line of sorts, devolved into a dozen separate scuffles instead. A person here, two there, all of them fighting for their lives. Alexis rolled onto her feet, found her lasrifle again, and shot two Genestealers in the back in quick succession.

They weren't as armoured there, and even if her hits didn't kill instantly, it was enough to shove them forwards and off their feet for the voidsmen fighting them to take them down. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. She looked over to the left, having been turned around a little in the scuffle, and discovered K84-321 covering her flank while CD-3-2/11 was further back a little, only occasionally firing into the crowd to take out lone targets.

Octavia was still near where she had been this whole time. The tide was breaking on her. Well, her and the Sisters around and behind her. The shorter woman was barely visible past the milling fights, but what Alexis saw of her was... a lot. She was dancing. She moved with quick, fluid motions, sword sweeping through enemies and lopping off limbs and necks, combined with the occasional kick or elbow strike. And when space cleared up around her, up came that massive bolter.

Its roaring booms were audible even over the screams. Even the faster four-armed mutants weren't quite quick enough to take her down. They'd score strikes on her armour sometimes, but they were glancing blows at best. Alexis watched as one of them tackled Octavia, only for the woman to spin with it, letting go of her weapons--which... floated? --and throwing the genestealer to the ground. She backed up to regather her weapons, not even bothering to kill the Genestealer when her allies could do the job.

Then the dance ended. Octavia stumbled, then clutched at her head, face turning ugly. Alexis panicked, looking around for something and... there they were. Two figures, in robes not too dissimilar to those of her own priesthood. They were standing off to the sides and slowly approaching, guarded by a few Genestealers each. Their hands were outstretched, as though grasping for something. Octavia retched and her entire body contorted. The air smelled like salty blood.

Alexis did the math impossibly quickly, but she wasn't very good at numbers.

"Kill those two!" she shouted to her friends. CS-3-22/11 spun and fired, a lance of plasma darted across the room and singed the backs of a few Voidsmen on the way. Only it slammed into a half-dome of force as the Genestealer magos raised its other hand and warded the blow. K84-321 charged, shoving others out of the way, only he was soon bogged down by the Magos' guards who leapt over at him. He was crushing them, but it was taking too long. Alexis's jaw hurt.

"V-vyper, I need a tool," she said.

"Certainly." The voice was so cool, calm, and detached, it was like a splash of water on her face.

"Uh... anti-psyker... something!" New Purchase: Long-Range Communications Recalibration Remote Points Reduced to: 655 She caught the tool out of the air, then stared at it. It was a small black rectangle, with a few dozen buttons on it, each one with a tiny label above. Her eyes were swimming too much to read it.

"Second button on the second row. That'll turn all local signals off and on again." Alexis jammed her thumb on the button while pointing the remote forwards. Instantly, the far Magos gasped, stumbling onto one knee. Octavia crashed onto her knees. There was blood all over her face, from her nose, ears, eyes. But she blinked, muttered something, then-- Alexis felt her heart beat sideways as Octavia grabbed something out of the air. A familiar little device that she pushed to her mouth and sucked a breath out of.

A moment later, the device was tossed aside and Alexis stared as it spun across the ground and was caught in the corpse of a Voidsman. A Nano-Regenerative Suite. Octavia was... Octavia was roaring as she rushed the confused Magos. He raised his arms, the air shimmered, then his arms were gone as Octavia's chainsword swept through them. A moment later she punched the man in the face so hard his nose ripped out of the back of his skull. Alexis swallowed, then focused on the rest of the fight.

Things were still more or less even, though she was vaguely aware of reinforcements--good ones--arriving as the other nearby platoons rushed into the melee. They could win this! She grinned as CS-3-2/11 fired a second searingly-bright beam and it ripped into and through the second Magos. Their psykers were down! They had thi-- K84-321 flew across the room, spinning through the air, one leg detached from the rest of him. In his place stood a monster.

One claw shaking off the metallic remains of her servitor's hip joints, in the other was the pierced-through remnants of the Sergeant. The thing scanned the room. It was twice a man's height, though that didn't show so well with the way its back was curved. It was covered in a thick, deep blue carapace, one which was opened at the front to expose a brain larger than Alexis' entire torso. It pulsed. A dozen bolts of lasfire bounced off of thin air on the way to the beast. Another psyker?

"Dammit!" Octavia shouted.

"That's the boss! Fuck him up!" She started to run back, but was still a ways off. So, in her stead, the other Sisters of Battle rushed in. The Patriarch tossed the corpse it held at one of them, throwing her down, then its eyes narrowed and the other two were blasted back with a wave of psychic force.

"Tech Priest!" one of the girls, the one who'd always been close to Octavia, shouted. She was looking right at Alexis.

"Use that weapon again!" She noticed? Alexis scrambled, rising the remote at the monster and pressing the same button again. The Patriarch flinched, but before any shots could hit it, it was simply gone. It jumped up so rapidly that it was more of a blur than anything, and it simply clung to the ceiling, upside-down, eyes scanning the room. Then they alighted on her. The thing launched itself down.

Alexis tried to move back, but it would be far too slow and-- She was, once again, tackled to the side, only this time it wasn't KYS, but that same Sister of Battle. Alexis felt a splatter across her face, and she came face to face with the gasping woman a moment before the claws through her chest shifted and she was thrown away and off of Alexis to flop on the ground like a discarded ragdoll.

"Jeanne!" Octavia shouted. She was still running. Alexis stared up into the face of the monster. She stood, legs shaking, hands questing for a weapon but... where had those gone? Where was KYS? Where was-- The Patriarch swooped down, and rammed his arm upwards from below. Alexis wanted to scream, but nothing came out of her. The thing's clawed hand punched into her in the fork of her legs, ripped up and into her bowels, then shredded its way out.

She collapsed, vaguely aware of her right leg being over there instead of where it ought to be. The Patriarch made a noise that could only be a chuckle. More lasfire, more deflection off of thin air. Octavia was there, at last, swinging her sword down hard. Only it, too, glanced off of the air, and she was off-balance for a moment. The mutant flicked its arms forwards, almost catching her head except for that golden glow that protected her.

The Patriarch continued to laugh as they traded blows, hers flicked off empty air, his left deep scratches on her armour. Alexis knew who was going to win this, and it wasn't her side. Then she saw it, next to her discarded leg and a large pool of blood that may well have been her own. The remote. Her body was too weak to move. Her mechanical arm, blessed with the certainty of steel, was not. She shifted it over, wrist spinning around, and grabbed the remote. Then she turned and pointed it upwards.

Octavia swung, and the hissing blade of her chainsword bit into nothing and was deflected. The Patriarch cackled, his massive brain glowing within its armoured carapace. Alexis pressed the button.

"Now!" she gasped. There was a split second where both he and Octavia realized what was happening. She grinned, and instead of bringing her sword around, lifted her bolter--up until now, it had been useless against him--and pressed it under the beast's neck.

"Think on this one, why don't you?" Octavia pulled the trigger and the Patriarch's massive brain painted the ceiling. Alexis giggled and continued to stare at her leg, all the way over there.