Day 36, Continued
The Callidus' form quickly departs the chamber, no longer taking a more measured pace and indulging in her true swiftness, little more than a black blur to a human's eyes. Fortunate, then, that it is not a human's eyes that track her.
Like the chittering of a forest in summer, tiny legs click and small wings beat as a swarm of hundreds of insects pour out of the pod, their small forms taking flight. These were large, perhaps the size of fists with wings nearly as long as a forearm, and specially crafted for the sole purpose of tracking and following this unique foe.
With a nigh inaudible buzz, easily cloaked by the clang of machinery, the swarm departed the chamber in pursuit.
Cass had forced Brunt to sit down for a few hours now. The hangar bay was as good a place as any for a stop. That was what she had told him and he'd been too exhausted to argue. Too pained by his arm.
She grit her teeth at the sight of his arm as she changed his makeshift bandages. It had swollen, becoming a puffy, bright red and the wound itself was leaking a yellow fluid she didn't recognize. The sleeve she'd used to wrap his arm had almost soaked through with the stuff. She replaced it with one of her own, but she wasn't sure that was going to do much.
It was spreading, she knew that much. It had swelled a lot in the last day, even as Brunt as gotten weaker and weaker. As it was, neither of them was going to get out of here. He'd only get worse from the infection and she… Well, between her bouts of nausea and city filled with monsters and, from what explosions she'd seen, an active war, she wasn't sure she'd be able to get them both out… Though, who knew what 'out' even meant. Out of the spires? Of the hive?
She looked down at her stomach, which had yet to show any signs of the child growing inside it. "You really showed up at the worse time, you know that?"
"Huh?" Brunt's voice was slurred with exhaustion, his head lolling over to look at her with half-dazed confusion.
"Don't worry about it," She said, shaking her head. He was leaned up against one of the hangar doors. She sat next to him, on his good side, resting her head on his shoulder. They hadn't had many chances to just… rest, she realized.
Almost unbidden, her gaze drifted down to the last weapon they had between them, an autogun. It had less than four shots left and they had no spare ammunition for it.
If… If there really was no chance for them to escape… Would it be better?
The priests said the God-Emperor embraced the faithful after death, while the rest were tormented in eternal damnation for their sins. Neither Cass or Brunt were faithful.
The priests had also said that both she and Brunt were creatures of darkness and evil. She didn't think that was true, so the priests could probably be wrong. Maybe they were wrong about what happened after death?
Her hand ran over the autogun. Two quick shots… But then what?
Her hands wrapped around the grip. The weapon was light enough that she could hold it up with one hand. She didn't aim it, just studied it. Her eyes ran over the grooves, the cuts, the small patches of rust and grease. The trigger.
Two quick shots…
Brunt's good hand reached out and grasped Cass by the wrist, surprising her not only with the action, but the strength he still had. He looked at her, a hint of clarity cutting through the exhaustion in his eyes, and shook his head.
The clarity faded and his grip weakened. His hand fell away and he leaned back, panting hard as some new pain reasserted itself in the forefront of his mind. Cass was about to set the gun aside… when the doors they'd come through opened and Death stepped inside.
Death was tall, taller than either Cass or Brunt, and clad in a skintight suit made of a glossy black material. Red hair was tied back in a braid that fell past her waist and it reminded Cass of the whips some of the mobs that had once chased her had sometimes carried. She held in her hand a strange device, made of gold and wreathed in some strange light that flickered and died as the woman turned to look at them. On the same arm, she had a wrist-mounted sword that glowed an unnatural green.
Red eyes turned to stare at Cass, transfixing her with their glare. A shiver crawled along her spine and made her throat tighten. It was only the presence of Brunt that kept her from curling up into a ball at the sight of her own Death.
Raising her autogun, Cass fired off a shot, but it went wide. Death did not flinch. She just started walking, slowly, weapons down at her sides. Cass fired another shot, this one much closer, but still no reaction.
A third shot fired and this one zipped right past Death's neck. There wasn't so much as a twitch in reply. She kept coming.
The fourth shot flew true, aimed right between the eyes of Death. Yet, with preternatural swiftness, Death simply tilted her head, and the shot flew past without so much as scratching her.
Cass' gun arm fell down and she leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes as she took comfort in her last moments with Brunt, preparing for the killing blow.
But it never came. She heard the footsteps of Death halt in front of her, yet no sword ripped through her flesh, no gunshot pierced or burned her. Opening her eyes, Cass looked up and saw that Death had crouched in front of her.
"Please come with me, ma'am," Death said in a voice that seemed unaccustomed to politeness. "I am here to help."
The Callidus didn't really feel emotions anymore, not enough that they might interfere with her missions, but she still could find satisfaction in securing her quarry. Whether that was to kill them, as was often the case, or to capture them, as she was more rarely ordered to do. Yet, never in her three centuries as an assassin had she ever been told to treat a capture target with the utmost civility and to ensure no harm befell her through action or inaction. And not just physical harm, as had been impressed upon the Callidus repeatedly, but spiritual as well. Even small things, like causing her discomfort.
This was a very strange mission for her. For all of them.
She could see the confusion and mistrust in the eyes of the blank in front of her, even as she shifted slightly in front of her companion. The Callidus could have used another form, but that interaction would likely have had no benefit given these two seemed to be the sort that only trusted one another. It may have even been worse, since they had most likely led lives in fear of the faces of other humans.
Speaking of the man… He was not necessary, but the Callidus suspected the target would object to leaving him here. Killing him to remove him as a factor would likely damage the spiritual wellbeing of the woman, so that was not acceptable. There was also the fact that he was wounded, which was clearly causing the target distress…
"We can provide medical treatment to him," The Callidus said, nodding towards the only semi-conscious blank. "As well as to you. You just need to come with us."
Traces of desperation and hope crossed the target's face, but also suspicion. "Who… who are you?" She said, after managing to swallow her fear.
"My name is Sulla," The Callidus lied. "I was sent to help."
"… Why help us?" The target asked, even more suspicion in her voice.
"I can explain everything once we're safe," The Callidus lied again "I'm going to call down a landing craft with a few of my associates. I swear in the name of the God-Emperor we will protect you with our lives."
That last part was the truth, at least in the case of the target. The man's life was not so highly valued.
The target looked uncertain, but glanced at the man, who seemed entirely unaware of the Callidus' presence, occupied with trying to stay even partially concious. Her face softened and the Callidus knew she had her.
"Alright," she nodded. "I'm… Cass."
The Callidus didn't particularly care but nodded anyways. She thought about using the polymorphine to allow her masked face to smile, but decided that might be more disturbing than comforting for the woman in front of her. The assassin rose, just as the Vindicare's voice crackled through her personal vox, unheard by any but her.
"The Malum PDF is sending around a thousand troops your way."
"We're in a hangar, can you reach us in time?" Her response was equally as inaudible to the two blanks.
"We're a minute out, but if they come to the surface they'll have a line of sight on us while we extract."
"Plan?"
"Dropping him now."
Tide watches as the newest pod he's built, this one made entirely of biomass, slipped out of reality and off towards its target. He'd preferred to use metal tubes before, as those being seen by an enemy could at least be assumed to be some technological form of teleportation. Bilogical pods, mostly made of a chitnous material he'd gotten from genestealers, were also weaker in terms of durability. However, the presence of, at minimum, two assassins meant he needed more versatility. His mask was going to have to slip, at least a little.
Hence why his Spartan was using such a pod as the Neural Transit was readied. However, the Spartan was not the only one about to be slipped out of reality. If he'd sent the Spartan alone, the Vindicare would have taken care of him easily enough from afar with that overpowered rifle of his. Hence why he needed to deal with the Valkyrie that auguries told him was rapidly descending towards the hive spires of Whiro, where the Callidus and, based off the sense of his insect trackers, two other humans were present. He could only hope they weren't also assassins.
Two already seemed like overkill for… whatever reason they had for coming here. Catherine Ellen didn't know why they were present either, only figuring out the Vindicare was there after the assassin had saved her, either purposefully or by chance, from the Ork Warboss. If anyone should have know why, it would have been her.
Which meant there could be more, but that would just be insane. Sure, Monstrum had a lot going on. Between the Orks, the Chaos uprising, and the genestealer cults he could certainly see a single assassin being deployed, maybe even two if one pushed it. But anymore would be…
Shit, was he the reason for them being here? That couldn't be it, right? He'd gotten here a little over a month ago, or at least only woken up then. It took years and years to deploy an assassin, didn't it? There was no way anyone had foreseen his coming, right?
He really needed to learn more about psychic powers and their limits. Purilla's experience was useful for that, but she was a specialist for reading minds and souls, not a seer.
Regardless, his countermeasures for both the assassins had just been sent off. With any luck, they would be able to last for his main force, around a thousand puppet soldiers, to reach the Callidus and whoever she was with.
Following a similar path as the one the Callidus had taken, thousands of boots stomped against rockrete as they sprinted forwards with a speed that humans could not possibly have reached. And then…
Tide watched as an object dropped from the Valkyrie, a small pod. Auguries swiftly scanned the device, as he was afraid at first it was a bomb, but he was relieved to see there was only a small, if relatively powerful, chemical mix contained within it. Oddly large for such a weak explosi-
Wait a minute.
What few aerial defense weapons he had, he opened fire on the pod, but it was too late. The drop pod landed, crashing through the first layers of rockrete with just enough force that it came to a stop just in front of his PDF forces, which skidded to a halt a few meters away.
The doors of the drop pod exploded open, smoke obscuring its sole occupant, the source of the chemical signature. Claws wreathed in lightning crackled in the billowing, grey clouds and a soft growling filled the corridor.
The Eversor Assassin stepped free and into the light, a look of mad glee in its grinning skull mask.
Shit.
Far below him, the Eversor leapt into action. Perhaps it was wasteful to use him on what was essentially a distraction and a one-way trip… But the mission came first.
Suddenly, there was a flash of light that confused the auspexes in his rifle and the Vindicare's head snapped up to look out. Shedding strands of strange light that was of a color he couldn't quite place yet seemed vaguely purple, a pair of Lightning fighter craft, a common Imperial Guard air superiority pattern, had appeared as if from nowhere. Their engines roared to life, just in time for his auspexes to regain their senses and notify him of their presence. The wing-mounted lascannons of the Lightnings glowed hot with the energy building inside them.
"Hold on."
That was the only warning from the pilot that he got before the Valkyrie took a sudden dive at top speed. If the Vindicare were anything besides what he was, the sudden acceleration would have killed him in an instant. His harness strained against the wing, barely enough to keep him from having his spine snapped in two, augmetics or no. Several of his ribs cracked where the straps constricted his chest. Even over the roar of engines he could hear the steel fiber of the harness rip, just a bit, from the force of the sudden movement, and he knew it wouldn't be able to take another movement like that. Neither would he.
One of his hands left his rifle, which remained locked in a death grip with his other hand, and undid the harness, releasing it in a moment. He was horizontal, so he began to fall forward, but sheer strength allowed him to pull himself into a crouch instead. His free hand slammed against the hull with enough force to rattle his bones, even as he sent mental commands through neural links to the machine spirit of his suit, magnetizing his hand to the hull in an instant. He kept his rifle tight to himself.
"Where'd they come from?" He asked, not a hint of anything but pure calm in his voice.
"Teleported in," Came the raspy voice that would have made some humans shiver in terror just from hearing it. It was equally as calm, even as the pilot flew the Valkyrie with the skill of an ace of aces, dipping and diving about like a bird, avoiding the lasfire of the pursuing Lightnings. In spite of his internal augmentations, the Vindicare found he was growing nauseous an almost novel feeling. "Don't know how."
With all the sudden changes in direction and acceleration, even the Vindicare couldn't have made a shot with only one arm free to aim his rifle. Had this been the enemy's intent, to keep him from assisting the assassins on the ground? If so, it was a poor plan.
Neither of them would need him.
The Callidus watched as the Valkyrie began to draw closer… Only for a blinding flash of light to suddenly cross the sky, masking the teleportation of two fighter craft into the air that immediately engaged in a dogfight with the Valkyrie, which began to duck and weave, doing the best that it could to evade its hunters.
"What's happening?" The target, Cass, asked, struggling to keep Brunt from slipping off her shoulder. "Are those… things with your friends?"
"My associates will be fine," The Callidus replied. She wasn't as sure as she sounded though. The Valkyrie wasn't a lander, not an air superiority craft like the Lightnings were. The pilot was skilled, but the craft had limitations.
Another thought occurred. Without the shuttle and the Vindicare, and with the Eversor engaged on the ground with the PDF, far away from her, she was effectively operating on her own.
Which was probably the intention.
The Callidus whipped around, just as a shift of air buffeted against her. Landing with the sound of a loud clacking sound, an egg-shaped object roughly the size of a battle tank dropped onto the hangar floor, shedding the same off-purple light as the pod of black-armored troopers and the Lightnings had. However, where those had been metal, this was made of a dark black chitin. A few grooves in the egg's shell ran up its sides.
"What is that?" Cass asked, her fear no longer on the Callidus. "Sulla?"
"Hide yourself," The Callidus ordered. The egg gave off a loud craaack sound as the shell seemed to shudder as some internal locks, if such a term could even be used on something so obviously organic, released. Upper sections of the egg opened, like the blooming of some mutated flower, revealing a fleshy interior that seemed very much alive.
Standing within that interior is a being that almost appears made of some kind of black, flesh-like skin. However, under that skin, she sees the familiar shape of power armor. It is vaguely reminiscent of the black carapace armor of the not-soldiers she'd fought earlier. The armor was covered by something that seemed almost alive. Another layer of protection? Perhaps flame resistant? The membrane is a deep black, a match for the Callidus' own suit. However, even its visor seems to be covered.
It does not seem obviously armed, but the being reaches towards the small of its back and draws out a strange looking device. At first, she thinks it a bomb of some sort. Only when it activates, does the Callidus recognize it.
Twin plasma blades burn to life, like the claws of some beast pointed in the same direction, a small gap between them. Perhaps it is of xenos make or simply an unusual design, but the Callidus recognizes the Sollex-Aegis energy blade for what it is.
Her phase sword emerges from its gauntlet. She gives no salute in response to the one given by the warrior before her.
