Fighting With Faith- Forty-Fourth Entry

Master Cultist Barnel watched in disposed sympathy as his adjutant slumped to the floor. His head lolled awkwardly to one side, blood pooling out the other.

The reason for his death was simple: The supposedly strategic deployment of the Carnifexes had failed- a whole company of Asat Guardsmen now rampages the Generatorium!

How incompetent! How foolish! Barnel snapped to himself after his third execution within the hour. He sighed inwardly, casting his gaze across the sea of swarming figures. Running, scuttling, hobbling about. The battle had turned for the worse.

Yes, that damn Titan may be down and out, but its demise was not brought in good time. It had taken down along with it at least a third of the walls, along with many other artillery and ammunition emplacements. Cultist squads, Tyranid broods and mutant bands now fought aimlessly through blasted corridors and overrun hangers. Still, those Chimeras kept coming; disgorging troops by the hundreds and pummeling through fortified and barricaded positions by its own means.

Damn those Imperials! To hell and back!

“Massster…” Barnel’s trusted assistant, Kaweit, hissed from behind.

Barnel turned, to be confronted with his brood-kin.

“Enemies in the Generatorium must be denied entry…we must do sssomething…” Kaweit added, before turning his attention to a cultist.

Barnel hesitated. Never once in his glorious life had he been faced with such dire consequences! What if he failed? No, he will not- he must not fail! The Hive Mind overwhelms all eventually.

Finally regaining his thoughts, Barnel commanded, “Alert all available forces within a two hundred metre radius to fall back to the Generatorium. Including whatsoever available Biovore or Carnifex broods. We shall counterattack from the Generatorium.”

Kaweit nodded obediently and strode away, efficiently relaying the orders to the rest of the forces on the battlefield to his lesser adjutants.

“Kaweit…” Barnel called.

The grim face of his brood-kin stared back, expression well tuned to the tense atmosphere.

“We go into battle once more in the name of the Hive Mind.”

“Covering fire down the hallway!” An unknown person yelled down the cramped and debris strewn corridor, of which Starut still recognised as a fellow cultist.

Reacting from training and experience, Starut leaned out of the doorway, along with the rest of his squad as they took positions along the lengths of the corridor and trained their weapons on the stairwell door.

Glow globes hung suspended on shuddering ceilings, oscillating wildly about its position, casting erratic hues of dim and wild, bright light in the corridor.

From where Starut was, through the shifting haze of yellowish glow globe lights, he could vaguely make out several figures of Asat Guardsmen and cultists engaged in brutal close combat. Other figures emerged from doorways along the corridor, similarly training their weapons at the mêlée unfolding at the stairwell.

Upon seeing backup, a cultist yelled for his squad to fall back from the mêlée, snake crawling over corpses and rubble as bullets and lasbeams whizzed above them.

Starut began to open fire, gesturing for the rest of his surviving squad to do the same. Within the first minute, at least a dozen of the unfortunately exposed Asat Guardsmen were shot down; bullets and needles impacting against their feeble body armour, blowing thick chunks of flesh and muscle off their bodies.

Blood spurted onto walls, floor, and even onto the Tyranid horrors that leapt onto them from behind, through some unseen vent that they were crawling through for an ambush.

Seeing that this minor skirmish was won, Starut leaned back into the room and studied the Biovores that were still obediently firing load after load of Spore Mines into the dwindling enemy convoys. It was then he realised how badly wounded they were.

Numerous cuts, gashes and even bullet holes were visible on their hides and carapaces. Try as he might, Starut couldn’t bear to ignore such pain and agony the Biovores must be enduring at the very moment while they dedicatedly carried out their orders

As though answering his plea, Shaolsen’s radio crackled to life. Starut leaned forward, eager to hear whatever was about to be broadcast.

At first, unmistakable static permeated the radio broadcast. Starut grimaced, giving Shaolsen a frown before turning his attention swiftly back to the radio as a voice came through the static.

“…to the Generatorium immediately. Repeat, all units within two hundred metres of the Generatorium are to fall back to the Generatorium through chamber one to six. Units assigned with broods are to take extreme caution to ensure the minimum, if not nil causality of their brood. Life unto the Hive Mind.”

As though in response, a massive detonation blasted down the corridor, sending bodies, rubble and shards of deadly shrapnel flying through the air. Several bits ricocheted off walls, spinning haphazardly into the tight confines of the room Starut was in.

A thin, unnoticeable blade whizzed past Starut, drawing a thin line of blood out of his right cheek even before he could react to the pain.

As though on cue, a mighty war cry rose down the corridor, echoed by hundreds of others throughout the warehouse, and on the blasted landscape around the warehouse.

Starut listened intently, his throbbing eardrums still trying to recover from the blast.

A minute passed, then two. His hearing now returned to normal, Starut recoiled in horror at what he heard.

The Guardsmen were storming the warehouse, and they were coming for him.