Chương 57: Chapter Fifty - Get the Flamer

Alexis wasn't even aiming as she pushed Vena through the door, both laspistols she had acquired held by her mechadendrites firing every other-second into the room. Once out in the corridor, she pointed back the way they came.

"Run!"

"On it, yes," Vena said before she took off. When she got moving, she really moved! Alexis turned to her friends.

"We're running too, come on! CS-3-2/11, take the rear, burn anything that follows us." She received an affirmative warble from her friends and then they were moving. Alexis glanced back over her shoulder after a while at the sound of something smashing into a wall with a wet splat followed by a chorus of giggles. Those weird little monsters were out, smiling and laughing as they tripped over each other and rushed down the corridor. Some were unarmed, but a few had small, rusty knives.

Then the second nurse stumbled out of the room, followed by a trio of shambling former-Voidsmen. CS-3-2/11 paused, set her feet, then opened up with her rotary cannon, shots splattering the smaller targets across the corridor walls. Then she followed up with the welding spear, unleashing a beam of blue-white flames that jumped the temperature in the passage up several degrees.

"Alexis?" Vena asked.

"Right! Go go go! Full speed everyone!" Alexis called back. KYS shot past her, and then she had to run because squeezing past K84-321 was going to be tricky. They made it to the end of the passage, where Vena was waiting.

"This way? Back to the entrance?" Vena asked.

"Sure," Alexis said. She gulped in as much of a lungful of air as she could manage before taking off, her servitors arraying out behind her. They made it all of three dozen steps before they noticed a problem. The passage they had come down from was blocked by a trio of Voidsmen.

"Halt!" one of them called out.

"We heard there was a disturbance and--" He didn't finish that sentence that KYS leapt ahead and crashed into him, surgical tools stabbing in and out of the man's body with rapid thumps. Alexis winced. They could have been allies! It was a little too late to find out. The other two were pulling out guns and so she fired at them. Her aim was... rather atrocious. She had a good sense of where her mechadendrites were, but that didn't necessarily extend to knowing where the laspistols they held were aiming.

Vena fired a few shots as well, and soon the corridor filled with criss-crossing beams of reddish light. Eventually they tagged a second guard, and then KYS leapt on the third. Alexis jumped over the temporary barricade they had set down, then looked one of the guards over. She let out a relieved sigh when she noticed the blurred-out mark on the man's upper back.

"Were they..." Vena asked.

"Yup, cultists," Alexis said with a thumbs-up.

"Totally okay to kill! No need to sweat over it!"

"Okay. Give me a minute," Vena said.

"I'm going to try something similar to what I did with the Genestealers."

"I suspect that the same tactic won't work quite as effectively. Sad as it is to say, this current foe has a significant leg up when it comes to biological warfare. Still, a targeted attack might work, at least temporarily, and I would like to study this new foe's adaptability." Alexis didn't know exactly what they were on about, but she understood that they were going to be staying here for a moment. So, she moved K84-321 to the front, with CS-3-2/11 just behind the barricade.

KYS flung herself up onto the ceiling and started to clean off her tools, so Alexis left her to it.

"Vyper, points?" she asked. Kills Confirmed: 3x Nurgling 1x Poxwalker New Point Total: 149 That was it? But they'd fired so many rounds! Those cultists and the little monsters were tougher than they looked, then.

"I think... wait, Vyper, can you handle two conversations at once?" she asked with a glance to the side, where Vena was chatting in low tones.

"No worries. I can handle a decent number of simultaneous conversations." Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"Ah, okay, then. I need a new tool for K84-321. We have that over-the-shoulder mounting point that we haven't used. I was planning on something more... ranged, but I think this situation calls for fire."

"Fire is generally effective against organic foes. If you're looking for a tool, how about a light deforestation canopy-clearing system? It should cover a decent amount of space. Only forty points!" Alexis nodded. She didn't know what that was, exactly, but the cost seemed in line with what she was willing to spend, and she trusted Vyper to give her something good enough for the job at hand. With her nod came the completed purchase.

New Purchase: Type 257 Defoliation Device Points Reduced to: 109 The device came in a large box which Alexis immediately opened. It looked, to her eyes, like a pretty normal heavy melta.

"K84-321, I'm going to need help lifting this thing up," she said. It was half as long as she was tall, and even if it had the right kinds of connectors and everything pre-installed, that didn't mean that it was going to be all that easy. In-the-field maintenance was always a high-risk activity. She had K84-321 hold the defoliation tool up and over his right shoulder, then got to work screwing it in and plugging in the various connectors that went into a panel on his back.

"I'm ready," Vena said.

"Uh, give me three minutes," Alexis said as she focused on her work. She vaguely saw something fly by as Vena threw it across the corridor. It clinked, then started to spray something into the air.

"It'll take a while to react... speaking of a while, where are they?" That was a fair point, where were the enemy? They had spilled out of the room in a hurry, but ever since they'd come here, she hadn't seen any of them.

"Disregard that," Vena said. Alexis finally looked up. The defoliation tool was only half-installed, but she figured that she might have to hurry up that last bit because those little nurgling creatures were spilling out from around the bend, stumbling over each other and rolling across the ground, often leaving green-brown smears across anything they touched. They walked through the vapourous cloud that whatever Vena had bought made, and continued to stumble ahead.

The former Voidsmen came in after them, shambling along at a pace that wasn't much faster than a slow walk.

"CS-3-2/11, take them out," Alexis said before returning to her work. The corridor filled with the whoosh-hiss of the welding spear firing, then the roar of an angry chaingun. The enemies that were hit popped like ripe meat balloons. The rest, however, continued to charge ahead on their stubby little legs. Alexis was impressed, both by their lack of fear in the face of certain death, and by how incredibly slow they were. She slipped the last connector into place, then jumped off of K84-321's back.

"Okay! Field test time! Aim ahead, fire on full." K84-321 sent a silent affirmative through their MIU connection before he shifted his new tool up and over his shoulder where it locked into place with a satisfying clunk. The pilot light flicked on, and then the corridor filled with a wall of liquid fire. The fire continued for several long seconds, then K84-321 shut it off. A few of the little monsters were still alive, somehow. Cooked, and venting smoke, but still alive.

She raised her mechadendrites and used them as target practice. The last few somehow made it all the way to K84-321, who stomped down on them with a wet squelch. She winced. That was going to be a pain in the butt to clean out. Kills Confirmed: 11x Nurgling 3x Poxwalker New Point Total: 160"We should move," Vena said.

"We need to decontaminate, then report all of this to Claire. Probably the rest of the ship as well."

"Yeah," Alexis said. It was almost first bell; their little adventure having taken more time than she expected. That meeting was only hours away.

"Let's get out of here. I need about six showers and a nap."