Chương 82: Volume Two - Chapter Eighteen - The Search Begins

Alexis was feeling more than a little tense, but she supposed that the feeling was entirely justified. Being in the middle of an ork base made her rather nervous, after all. After sneaking their way out of the hangar and into the ground-floor section of Overcliff, they had quickly made their way to a small church devoted to the God Emperor.

It was off one of the main corridors, and while many of the statues had been defaced and orkish graffiti covered most of the walls, the original purpose of the room meant that it wasn't all that interesting to the greenskins. A few of the sisters reverently moved over to the altar at the end of the room and relit old candles. Another straightened a statue of the God Emperor with the help of a few Voidsmen. It felt a little pointless to Alexis, but she didn't stop them.

"Is the vox working?" she asked one of the Voidsmen. He glanced up from the backpack he had set down on a cleared altar table.

"Ah, yes ma'am," he said.

"We have a direct connection to the Broken Scale. I can't promise that no one is listening in. We have encryption running, but it's nothing too special."

"Understood. Thank you," Alexis said. She gestured, and he handed her the vox-recorder. A press on the button later and a squawk sounded through the machine.

"This is Alexis Lambda-3 of task force Snakebite, come in, Broken Scale." A few long seconds passed before a reply came in. In that time, Octavia and the Lieutenant, Greyspout, came closer.

"Snakebite, this is Broken Scale. We hear you. Over."

"Broken Scale, we've infiltrated the main search location. The site is occupied by hostile xenos. I suspect that it's a... primitive manufactorum for their war vehicles. Advise? Over." Alexis licked her lips. She really wasn't well-versed in this kind of thing. Mostly she was relying on copying others.

"Understood, Snakebite. Primary objective remains. Techseer Thale-66 Mirr advises that you search the following locations: Section B3. Section B5. Section F2. Section H1. Repeat for clarification. Over." Alexis hurried to note those down, then she pulled out a dataslate and looked at the maps they had of Overcliff.

They were dated, pulled from an archive and a lot of what they had was based on some assumptions, mostly that Overcliff was similar in layout to a standard Imperial overwatch base, which it had been when it was first constructed.

"Repeating as follows," Alexis said.

"Sections B3, B5, F2 and H1. Over." She received confirmation, then the line was cut.

"So, do those numbers mean anything?" Octavia asked.

"They do," Alexis assured her.

"B3 is the workshop. It's next to the main hangar. Not too far from here, though a ways around the hangar. B5 is the ground-level barracks. I'm not sure why we're looking there, but if Thale-66 says so... ah, F2 is five floors above. The main control room for the base and its defences. It's going to be a hard location to get to. Then H1, that's the officer's quarters, closer to the top of the base."

"And where are we now?" Octavia asked. Alexis looked over the map again and found the church they were in.

"Subsidiary church, A4."

"So, we split up?" Octavia asked. Alexis froze. That was... well, unwise, in many ways, but it would also be faster. There were other issues to take into account as well. First of all, there were too many people in their task force. When they were rushing down the corridors to get to the relative safety of the church, the Voidsmen in the lead were getting all of the kills while she could barely see anything. Second, they had a lot of ground to cover.

To properly sell the idea that they'd 'found' the STC, they'd be best off scouring a few locations. Third... she needed the points. Working together did net them more points overall, but not individually. She didn't think there was any lack of orks around either, so as long as they kept moving, they'd find xenos to kill and points to farm.

"Okay, how are we doing this?" she asked. Octavia shrugged.

"I'll take the sisters and head out, you take the rest?" Alexis considered it for a moment, then shook her head.

"Take one of the seven-man squads. They'll have a Vox-operator with them, to keep in touch. And two of the tech priests." That would split things a little more evenly. Octavia, ten sisters, seven Voidsmen, and two tech priests. That was twenty. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Alexis would have nineteen people with her as well, which was still maybe a few too many, but it would be less crowded overall.

"Okay, fine," Octavia said.

"Where did you want to go?"

"Ah... upwards. I noticed that several lights were off, with only the emergency lights on. I think I want to check on the lighting plant, and maybe the air plant as well. It should be on the way up to the Main Control Room."

"Alright. I'll do the barracks and workshop. We meet up at the top?" Alexis looked over the map, then nodded.

"I'll get the main elevator at A2 back up, if I can. That'll make the trip easier for you. But no promises."

"You'd better, that's a lot of steps otherwise." Alexis very wisely didn't comment on how the steps were harder to climb for someone with smaller limbs because she wanted to keep her new limbs in place. They split up soon after. The church was a decent ways from the nearest stairwell up, which gave her time to prepare.

"Lieutenant," she said.

"Yes, ma'am?" he asked.

"I'm setting up my servitors ahead of our group. Fire only to support them. One of the... secondary objectives to this mission is to have my servitors kill as many xenos as possible."

"I... see," he said, uncertainly. Then his eyes lit up.

"Ah. You're collecting data on how to best eliminate the orks?" That wasn't the case at all, but it was far better than any excuse that Alexis could have come up with.

"Yes, exactly, hehe," she lied. The two tech priests in their group nodded sagely. The stairwell leading up was a central feature of Overcliff. It was wrapped around the primary lift, a massive platform that could carry dozens of people up several floors. Smaller elevators were stationed around the stairwell room, those existing for personnel that had to move about and who didn't want to use the larger lift system for it. Being so central, the room was also very much occupied.

Orkish iconography hung off of every wall. New walls had been put up as well, made of pieces of scrap metal crudely welded together, and in other places, the interior walls of the base had been torn out, creating new tunnels and passages littered with trash and scrap and even a few corpses. The space was lit by torches and braziers and a few lumens plugged directly into batteries. Most of the light on the ground floor lobby was coming from a spotlight currently serving as the eye in a huge...

Alexis wasn't sure if 'sculpture' was the right term for it, since that implied some level of artistry, but the orks had created a giant orkish skull on one wall that stretched up several floors and whose mouth looked like it led down one of the central corridors. There were also, obviously, orks.

"Humie!" one of them shouted. There was a mad scramble as orks raced around and found weapons. A good dozen of them started to charge her way, with nothing more than pipes and rusty cleavers.

"K84-321, CS-3-2/11, elimination protocols," Alexis said. Her own mechadendrites rose over her back, each holding onto a standard-issue laspistol. The first ork to make it close was grabbed out of the air by K84. Then the servitor spun his pneumatic arm around at approximately 180RPM. The ork's spinning body was rammed into the next oncoming greenskin, with the unsurprising result of both of them splattering apart. CS-3-2/11 clicked menacingly.

She was upset that she hadn't gotten the first kill, so she shifted, jumping to the side and opened up with her welding plasma spear. Alexis only had a moment to gasp and duck behind the corner, pulling a Voidsman back as she did so. The welding spear rammed into a huge yellow tank at the far end of the room, one decorated with dozens of warning labels and with a big sign next to it that had an arrow pointing to the tank and the text 💀EXPOSIVE! 💀 scrawled across it. The tank, predictably, exploded.

A wash of heat blasted through the corridor, and Alexis remembered that had had been planning on upgrading her hearing at some point, but hadn't gotten around to it. When the ringing cleared, she could make out the roar of CS-3-/11's Castigator Rotor Cannon. She poked her head around the corner and winced at the destruction. The floor was coated in flames and her servitors were firing wildly above, scything through orks and gretchin alike, and likely making enough noise to alert the entire base of their presence.

Well... at least it was going to be a good point farm?