NOVEL NEXT B2 Chapter 33
The comms channels screeched with the chaos of undisciplined yells, barked demands, and the wails of the dying or soon to be dead.
Some battles still raged like infernos across the Old Guard battleship, the lower decks filled with slaughter.
Angar tried to focus, but each scream was a reminder of his need to rush.
Seconds after connecting to the comms, as his group surged forward, an invite to a leadership channel flashed in his HUD, likely forged by the Gulson fighters who'd survived their reckless docking.
A Hierarch Pumatay held the reins of the channel, coordinating the scattered boarding parties. He'd heard her name before, fourth in command of the Sanguineous Sisterhood.
She sent Angar an objective tracker, a glowing marker highlighted in his visor, pinpointing the Neuronaut's lair deep in the ship's aft.
The relentless pace left no time to pause, and no chance to level up.
As the group blazed through the ship, war-machines struck in smaller groups, sending volleys of plasma sizzling through the humid air, and flechettes scrapping metal. Fewer and fewer Soldier-caste Reptiloids appeared alongside them.
Taking on the brunt of battle, his hammer humming in his gauntlets, he led his ragtag force through the ship's guts. They left corridors and stairwells slick with strange ichor, war-machines' parts squelching under their feet, as the air grew hotter and thicker with the filthy stench of Reptiloid.
They descended four stairwells of serrated bio-metal, pushing further aft. As they did, some strange feeling that had lurked at the edge of Angar's understanding grew, turning into a psychic pressure, an invasive presence probing, resisted by the slippery spot in his mind.
They descended three more decks, pushing further aft as the air turned moister and heavier, the psychic presence in his mind intensifying with every step.
Another deck up, and they veered aft again, the corridor widening into a fortified chokepoint, the walls coursing with blue-veined conduits casting strange shadows.
A force of about four hundred, mostly Ierne troops, held positions far up the artery, some building barriers or clearing away war-machines and Reptiloid carcasses. At the end was a massive, sealed door, a slab of bio-metal pulsing with crystalline tendrils.
The air here reeked of sweat and fear, mingled in with the sharp bite of scorched alloy, and Reptiloid rot from recent combat.
About thirty Sanguineous Sisters in crimson exosuits anchored the defense, one set among every barricade lining the artery. A handful wore cheap, light power armor with grinding hydraulics beneath exosuits.
One Sister stood out, kneeling near the door. She was larger, wore no exosuit, encased in a nice Vindicator suit painted crimson, marking her as Hierarch Pumatay.
She and a handful of others scrambled to attach breaching charges to the door.
As Angar rushed forward, trailed by Simo and a few veterans, the rest of his force melded with the other defenders.
The Hierarch stood and turned, removing her helm with a hiss of depressurized seals, revealing a shaved scalp etched with scars, and dimly glowing bioware circuitry pulsing beneath her skin.
Four men stood and turned with her, three in power armor. Strangely, one of those, wearing an extremely expensive Stalker set, wielded only the hilt of a two-handed energy-blade.
They unhelmed, exposing weathered faces, while the fourth, in a more formal version of Ierne's green-and-yellow military garb and a peaked cap, stood stiffly.
Angar disapproved. Tradition dictated leaders unhelm, but that was for peaceful meetings. Removing helms in an Old Guard battleship was foolishness, and a death sentence if the hull breached.
He kept his helm on as he hurried forward. The Hierarch's eyes narrowed as disappointment flashed across her scarred features. "God and Empire, Sir Angar," she said in a loud, raspy voice. "I'd hoped you'd be closer to the Second Realm, Child. I cannot guarantee your safety against a Neuronaut."
Her words marked her as one of the rare few who could sense relative power. He was glad his helm hid his youth, as she'd be further disappointed by his age. "God and Empire, Hierarch," he replied, nodding to her companions, their unhelmed faces studying him. "Nor can I guarantee your own. I thought the Neuronaut was engaged?"
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
"It was," Pumatay said. "Or the two Enforcers guarding it were. Six of us entered before this door slammed shut. There's no way to hack it and the bio-metal heals faster than our plasma-torches and charges can burn. We're prepping a mass breach with every explosive we've got, hoping to tear a hole large enough that some of us can slip through before it heals."
Angar nodded, planning, the psychic pressure clamping his mind harder, glad he hadn't used his phase charge yet.
Technically, Crusaders outranked all. In reality, with so few reaching the second Realm, he should give deference to a Hierarch. If any of the men with her were Paragons, then them too.
He knew the explosives wouldn't work. As a Neuronaut's Neural Dominion faltered when engaged in direct combat, every second counted, and explanations just time wasted.
"I'll attempt to open the door from the other side," he said, gripping his maul tighter as he prepared. "If I fail, continue with your plan."
He stepped toward the door and phased through, emerging into a vast, empty chamber, the floor almost quivering beneath his boots as he appeared.
A powerful stench of unholy Reptiloids infused the air, and dimly glowing blue conduits snaked across the ceiling, with walls of scaled obsidian flashing red under blinking emergency lights.
The chamber was a barren and long cavern, save for another massive door a few hundred meters ahead, its bio-metal surface identical, sealed tight.
Then he noticed six bulges on the ground. Looking closer, there were six corpses slowly being dragged into the biomechanical floor.
The psychic pressure tightened, but that defiant part of his mind pushed it back on its own, and he scanned for a control mechanism.
He spotted a glowing blue button with a crystalline surface pulsing like a heartbeat embedded beside the door. He slammed his gauntlet against it.
Right before touching it, a sound like a thousand blades unsheathing at once split the stillness.
The door screeched, slowly moving upward while the far door rippled, then ruptured violently. Bio-metal peeled back in jagged, petal-like shards.
From the breach, a swarm of Old Guard horrors surged out. A dozen Reptiloid Warforms, Worker-caste berserkers encased in hulking mechsuits bristling with missile pods, a railgun, and other weaponry, charged forth. Behind the visors, slitted eyes glowed with the cold, electric fire of Neural Dominion.
Above them hovered a trio of Guardrones, each segment of their bodies sprouting a lance blazing red, crackling with arcs of plasmatic energy.
And at the rear, two nightmares emerged in the form of Reptiloid Enforcers, elite troops, colossi of flesh and circuitry twice the size of a Warform, their cranial lattices throbbing with living conduits.
Each form sprouted six arms, two lashing plasma whips that hissed like vipers, two massive clubs sizzling with electric fury, and two pulsating fusion cannons that warped the humid air with their charged hum.
Angar's heart thundered, but his anticipation blazed hotter, a Holy fire stoked by the promise of a glorious battle.
As he squelched his comms, ending all the distracting chatter, a metallic screech echoed through the chamber as the door behind him crashed closed.
He spun, seeing that only Simo, one of the veterans accompanying him, Hierarch Pumatay, the Stalker-armored swordsman, a power-armored soldier, and the officer in Ierne's garb had rolled under in time.
One of the power-armored men with the Heirarch and another veteran were crushed beneath the door, spraying blood and gore across the nearly writhing floor.
The Guardrones struck first, their lances unleashing searing plasma beams that lit the chamber in blinding crimson.
Angar dove, the floor blistered where he'd stood. He rose, slammed the door's button again, but the panel was inert, no longer glowing.
"Focus on the others while I take the Enforcers," he barked out.
He triggered Ground Current, dissolving into a surge of charged particles, the air crackling with static as he vanished.
He reappeared amid the Warforms, Geomagnetic Phenomena erupting in a storm of forking lightning.
The bolts stunned most of the berserkers, staggered them, freezing the railguns mid-aim. His Trivident Maul swung, its head warped with a graviton pulse, bashing the chest of a mechsuit apart, sending its inhabitant stumbling backward over four meters.
A free use of Ground Current carried him to the two Enforcers. Lightning bolts ripped down into each, but they stood undamaged. Neither hesitating a split second before plasma whips lashed out like solar flares, so fast Angar could barely register what happened.
He blocked one with his hammer, and barely avoided two others, but one coiled around Angar's arm, searing deep into his armor's plating, the heated metal blistering the flesh beneath.
He roared, yanking back as he activated Lightning Strike for protection.
Pulling with all his might, he snapped the whip in half, the part wrapped around his arm turning into gray ashes as four sizzling clubs slammed into him at the same exact moment.
His HUD flashed warnings of damage both he and his suit took. The force hurled him backward like a meteor, crashing into a Warform, the collision rattling his teeth as he fell to the deck.
His vision blurred and stars danced in his eyes, but there was no time for that.
He rolled as four one-meter wide, blinding fusion beams of blue-violet energy, crackling with electromagnetic tendrils hit the floor where he'd landed.
They exploded, sending shards of bio-metal spraying out, pelting his armor, filling the air with the stink of molten biomechanical alloys.
As he stood, a Guardrone's volley hammered into his back, sending a searing scream through his nerves.
All three drones circled above, their lances raining crimson death, scorching the deck around him as he dove and rolled, his tripod-foot skidding across the ground as the Enforcers charged in.
A sudden blast rocked a Guardrone, sending its segmented body spinning out of control, crashing down in a shower of sparks and flame. He'd bet that was Simo's doing.
Then the Enforcers were upon him, unyielding, unleashing a frenzy of plasma and steel.