"Give me a moment," she told the others before falling to one knee and opening her satchel. She did so a bit behind K84-321, so no one could see what she was actually up to, and hopefully they couldn't hear her muttering. "Can I get lights? Those are tools, yeah? Something I can stick onto everyone?"
Certainly. How many points are you willing to spend on this?
"Uh...." She hesitated.
"I think no more than one each, then!"
New Purchase: Type 122 Hardened Mag-Light
Points Reduced to: 20
What she got were two tubes, with a dial-switch on the back. Pulling one of them out, she inspected it, but other than the cog motif painted around its lens at the front, it was just a tube light that fit in her hand, with a flat section that had two obvious magnets recessed into it.
She turned the dial, and then squinted as it lit up the back of the elevator shaft room and revealed what was probably decades of uncleaned dust and small debris collecting in the corners.
She clamped one light on the underside of K84-321's head, the other was clicked onto 054-648's shoulder, facing forward. It made it hard to look at either servitor, what with the light being so bright, but that was fine, because it banished the dark in a very satisfying way.
Alexis almost felt bad for KYS, but the medicae servitor spun one of her arms around and flashed on a surgical lamp. It wasn't nearly as powerful, but it was more than enough to illuminate a space around her.
"Observation: You're useful to have around," Red-C61734 said.
"Thanks! I aim to be handy!" Alexis replied.
"Alright, if we're done fooling," Kevin said. "Let's get this over with?"
The Voidsmen had small lights on their helmets, but they were so weak that it was almost a joke. Alexis suspected that the lumens they were using were the sort meant to last a thousand years without replacement and which provided just enough light to read orders off of a paper or see three paces ahead, but not much else.
Still, with all of the lights combined, the dark, foreboding passage was made... light and foreboding instead.
There was already movement deeper in, and she caught the reflection of her lights off of shiny, feverish eyes before the monsters hid.
"Straight down, then a right, left, and finally another right," Anthony said as he read off of a Dataslate.
"Suggestion: Send the servitors in first. They will shield us."
Alexis pouted a bit, but no one seemed to notice. So, she ordered her friends ahead. Technically, both of the adepts here outranked her based on seniority alone.
Both of her ambulatory servitors stepped ahead, K84-321 setting the pace with his slow, cumbersome walk. No one seemed ready to complain, however. The other tech adepts walked behind her, and behind them, the Voidsmen spread out, lasrifles shouldered and aiming ahead.
It took all of ten feet for her to hear someone laughing. "You come to our den?" a voice asked, bouncing off the walls.
She felt a very faint impression of dizziness, like she had been working next to the incense for too long. "Careful," Alexis hissed. "They sometimes have a weird mental thing."
"Emperor," one of the Voidsmen said.
"Come, come closer. Yes, into the embrace of the true emperor, that your biomass and flesh may be used to build something new, something glorious!"
"Um, mister genestealer," Alexis called out. "Please shut up?"
There was a long quiet through the corridor, then a dismissive scoff. "So be it! Eat, children!"
Alexis gasped as shadowy forms fell from the ceiling and peeled out from the recesses ahead. Men and mutants in the threadbare cloth of lower deckers. They screamed as one, and that dizziness returned, only to wash over her as a wave.
Then they were rushing closer, pipes and rusted tools raised. Alexis was about to shout some orders when she instead ducked as a smattering of bullets flew past her. Some of those genestealers were armed! Autopistol rounds clinked against the ground and she winced as a few struck K84-321. She moved behind her servitor friend.
"054, aim for the shooters!" she shouted.
He did just that, opening up with his rivet gun with a constant thump-hiss. The voidsman fired as well, lasrifles leaving glowing beams of red light that cut into the dark and slammed into running genestealers.
She poked her head around K84-321 and brought her foam sprayer up to bear. The genestealers rushing at them were lit up so brightly by their lights that they made the darkness behind them feel like an endless pit.
Alexis squeezed the trigger, and globs of foam flew up and arced down onto some of the nearest genestealers. Those that were caught tumbled and fell, splattering onto the floor and staying there. Some globs landed on the ground, then expanded, and more than one genestealer tripped over them and crashed to the ground.
Then the fight became a close-quarters brawl.
KYS's arm shot out, spearing a man in the forehead with a scalpel a moment before K84-321 grabbed them and threw the corpse back onto the rest. Her servitors started to slam pneumatic weapons into the enemy even as they weathered a few anemic blows from wrenches and pipes.
Alexis kept up the foaming, switching targets as they came closer so that they'd go down.
And then it was over.
The lasfire stopped, and she found herself blinking and staring down a dark corridor. One of their flashlights was covered in blood, casting the light in a reddish hue. She raised her sprayer and moved it around, checking on the walls and down the path, but nothing was coming.
"Is it done?" she asked.
"Observation: For now. Suggestion: Rapidity may not be amiss."
She nodded but still took a moment to check on her friends. Surprisingly, the damage wasn't bad. 054-648 was bleeding slightly from a gash on his head, and K84-321 had a few new dents, but they were otherwise fine.
The soldiers behind seemed alright too. They weren't sweating nearly as hard as she was, at least. Alexis felt like the inside of her bodysuit was all wet and gross now. She swallowed. "Okay?"
Kills Confirmed: 12x Genestealers
New Point Total: 140
That was it?
She looked over the bodies on the ground. One of the voidsmen, Kevin, shot a squirming genestealer caught in her goop, but... yeah, there really weren't that many of them. In the tight confines of the corridor, twenty people rushing at them might as well have been an army.
Kills Confirmed: 1x Genestealer
New Point Total: 150
That was a lot of points... for later. Buying upgrades now, in front of witnesses, didn't feel very wise.
"We should keep moving," Kevin said. He removed the powerpack of his lasrifle and replaced it with a satisfying ker-chunk.
Soon, they were doing just that, stomping over corpses on their way across the room, only pausing for a few seconds as Red-C61734 picked up two of the genestealer's autopistols with his mechadendrites. They were likely low on ammunition, and Alexis suspected that they would need re-annointment with sacred oils and the care of a gunsmith, but there were exemptions for picking up the weapons of an enemy.
Better to have them returned to the grace of the Omnissiah than left on the ground to rot and rust.
Arriving at the end of the corridor, they turned right, then took the next left.
The moment they did, a pair of doors behind them opened, and Alexis jumped to the side, ducking under a hail of gunfire. She pressed her hands over her ears for a moment, then screwed up her courage and picked up her foam projector.
They had come in through two doors. Doors that were relatively narrow.
She aimed down into one of them, then fired, spraying the interior, then the edges in expanding foam. Within a half minute, that entrance was blocked off entirely.
The voidsmen and her servitors took care of the rest of the ambush, though it wasn't without cost.
"Shit," Kevin said.
She turned his way, then gasped.
One of the voidsmen-at-arms was on the ground. She didn't see what the injury was, exactly, but... they were dead. There was no doubt about that. No movement of the chest, their limbs were loose, and there was a lot of blood.
"Emperor curse this whole thing," Kevin said. "I'm sorry, Seb, you were a good one."
The dead voidsman's powerpacks were taken. Anthony took his lasrifle and immediately started to murmur a rite of new acquisition to soothe the weapon's machine spirit.
Alexis just stared, at least until the group started to move again. That snapped her out of it. There were more genestealers moving around, and if they stayed, they would die.
Kills Confirmed: 4x Genestealers
New Point Total: 190
The text felt almost... rude. Not quite, but it was insensitive, maybe?
They pushed through a tight little corridor at Anthony's direction, then, finally, they came upon their destination.
She had expected QT1-4 to be a big door. That's what she'd been told, at least. Instead, it was a small room, filled with a few cogitators and a humming ventilation unit. The far wall had a bank of dusty monitors, and a few panels covered in Omnissiah-blessed blinkenlights.
"Pronouncement: This is it," Red-C61734 said. "Order: Guard the door while I apply the proper commands."
"What are we doing, exactly?" Alexis asked.
Anthony looked to her, then the voidsmen. It was a bit of a faux pas to talk of their work before the uninitiated, but if ever there was a time where it was acceptable, it was now. "From here we have control over the sacred pneumatics of the bulkhead doors across the entire Q1-4 sector of the ship. If we close those, then the enemy will only be able to move through the main passages and maintenance tunnels."
"Supposition: Our superiors wish to delay the enemy. We are in a sorry state and need time to regroup and plan for a proper cleansing of the lower levels of the vessel."
Alexis nodded. "Okay. In that case... how long will this take you, Red-C61734?"
"Conjecture: Approximately three minutes."
Kevin slammed the room's door shut. "Better make it fast, cogboy!" he said. "I can hear them rushing over."
"Ah," Alexis said. That was... not good.
***