"This is the longest three minutes in my damned life, cogboy!" Kevin shouted before he plugged the end of his lasrifle into a fresh hole in the door.
There was a muted flash of red light, and then a genestealer screeched on the other side.
Things weren't going so well, Alexis realized. They had closed the door, locking it down in the hopes that if they were quiet, the genestealers would simply pass them by.
That hadn't worked. She had even committed a minor bit of tech heresy and destroyed the lock, preventing the door from being opened from the exterior. That had gained them a minute or so, but now the genestealers were back, and they were ramming a power axe into the door.
It was the kind of tool designed explicitly for breaking through bulkheads in an emergency. Their use of it to smash through a door was technically appropriate, but she was certain that it was, nonetheless, wrong in some way.
Kevin pulled his rifle back before any of the genestealers could do anything. "So?" he shouted back.
"Explanation: I'm doing my best. Suggestion: Use your corpse to block the entrance. It will slow them down and cease your distracting prattle."
"C-can't we all just get along?" Alexis asked, then she eeped as a particularly loud bang sounded out, and a second hole was punched into the door.
She could spray it down. In fact, that was kind of her plan. But that would also mean that when it came time to go, their path would be well and truly blocked. She hadn't even tested the liquid that undid the foam to see how quickly it acted.
Moving closer to the far wall, she observed Anthony and Red-C61734 at work. "The pressure's not climbing," Anthony said. He was focused on a set of dials that she suspected would tell them when the great hydraulics for the doors were going to function.
Red-C61734 didn't even reply, he simply continued to twist knobs and flick switches, trying to coax the machine to work while muttering a binharic chant.
"Is it going to work?" she muttered. It earned her a look, but she ignored that.
"Scanning... No. The two of them are unaware of certain modifications brought to the machine. They are ignorant of certain bypasses put in place to circumvent previously damaged areas, and haven't turned on some of the tertiary engines required for the hydraulic system to function."
"Ah," she said. Then, lower. "Can you... can you show me how?"
"Certainly. Though you may want to put on a show about it, if you wish to evade suspicion."
A show? She supposed she knew what that meant. Taking a deep breath, she interwove her fingers together in the sign of the cog and bowed her head. "Oh, great and powerful machine spirit, I beseech thee, guide my fragile hand and allow me command of your great engine, permit me on this day to empower your grand hydraulics that the sacred oils may flow once more."
"Good enough. Notice panel AGT-3. Flick the second, third, and fifth switch. Turn the dial to your right with the red tag twenty degrees anti-clockwise."
She moved up, almost bumping into Red-C61734, then did as Vyper asked.
"Query: What are you doing?"
"I don't know," she said.
"Incredulous Addendum: Are you stupid?"
"A little! But what you were doing wasn't working. Just... I'm doing what the machine spirit is telling me to!"
It had the benefit of being true! She listened to Vyper's next directions, tapped a few buttons, held onto another for precisely three seconds, then pulled down a lever that required all of her weight to move.
The cogitator flicked to dark for a moment, and she could almost feel the anger of both Tech Acolytes with her. Then it came back to life, with a lot more green on its panels.
Alexis spun a wheel three times, then paused. "Hydraulics?" she asked.
Anthony jumped, then looked at some dials. "Rising!" he said. "I don't know what you did, but it's working."
"Query: How?"
"Like I said, the machine spirit told me," Alexis replied. "We don't have time, uh, just... okay, this one, and this one." She flicked two little switches and there was a faint rumble underfoot.
"The doors are closing," Anthony said. "Praise the Omnissiah, we have done it!"
She grinned ear to ear, then lost some of that smile as the voidsmen cursed. "Good! But now we're all gonna eat it," Kevin said.
There were more holes in the wall, and from the small amount of light escaping the room, she could see flashes of angry faces on the other side, genestealers scrambling for purchase at the edges of the door.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Right, she'd done it, and now was going to be torn apart for her efforts. "I'd really rather not die," she muttered.
Current Points: 150
"Oh, right!" A few of the others glanced her way, but she just opened her satchel and started to look through it, mostly to gain some time. "What would work to take out all the monsters on the other side?" she subvocalized.
"There aren't terribly many options for tools that function that way. Though if we allow some creativity... I have three options."
She nodded eagerly.
"The first is a small pest-control fumigator. It would allow you to pump neurotoxins into the next room. These would be effective, but expensive, and perhaps hard to explain. Then next is a radiation decontaminator. A unit that flashes high levels of radiation to clean an area. Lethal, but only slowly. You also risk irradiating yourself and the others with you. Finally, a single-use option, an emergency coolant can. Essentially, a canister that has a tab that, once pulled, gives you a set time before it creates a coolant burst. This would be lethal to most living organisms."
She mulled over her options before shrugging. "That last one?"
New Purchase: Type 004C Emergency Coolant Canister
Points Reduced to: 145
A can appeared in her satchel. It was rather heavy, and covered in a ring of cog-like protrusions. One of those looked like it was designed to move, with increments of time engraved on it.
"I have something!" she shouted before raising it up.
Almost instantly it was snatched away by Red-C61734. "Query: What is this?"
"Looks like a frak grenade to me," Kevin said.
"Don't be foolish, an acolyte wouldn't be wandering around with that," Anthony said.
"Ah, actually, he's not far from right?" Alexis said. "It's a sort of grenade? Tool? A grenade tool. Just... activate it and toss it on the other side? It's a coolant dispersal unit, for, uh..."
"It's designed to cool engines and industrial equipment that have exceeded their thermal load and are about to fail catastrophically."
"It's an emergency cooling thing," she replied. "Once it's out, we might be able to escape?"
"Better than dying," Kevin said. He gestured, took the tool from the Tech Acolyte, then looked it over. It wasn't long before he had it primed and the tab pulled. Then he flung it through the largest of the holes in the door.
The genestealers continued to attack, the door continued to fall apart.
Then the grenade went off.
Kills Confirmed: 7x Genestealers
New Point Total: 215
Alexis felt it in her lungs, when across her entire body as she was hit by a wave of air so cold it made her sweat turn into little icicles across her skin and her eyelashes grew heavy with frost. She was one of the furthest from the door, except maybe for KYS on her back.
The others were hit even harder, and she heard Kevin gasp and shift awkwardly. Ice broke at his feet as his boots came unstuck from the floor.
"By the throne," he said.
"W-we need to move fast!" Alexis said. "That only hit those on the other side. More might come!"
Opening the door proved a little complicated, but it wasn't anything that concentrated lasfire couldn't fix. It made steam waft off the metal, but that was enough to heat the mechanism up so that they could shove it open. K84-321 did most of the heavy lifting there.
In the corridor were a dozen frozen genestealers. Some, those nearest the grenade, were dead. Others had shattered like they were made of glass.
"Move!" Kevin snapped.
They did so, and she winced as the other Voidsmen, Tobi, smacked a genestealer in the chest with the butt of his rifle, shattering it.
Kills Confirmed: 1x Genestealer
New Point Total: 225
Huh... she paused at the end of the corridor. "054-648, shoot the bodies," she said.
Kills Confirmed: 4x Genestealers
New Point Total: 265
Neat!
"Let's go, girl!"
"C-coming!" she eeped before sprinting after him, her servitor friends in tow.
It was probably a good time to retreat, and then maybe she could find a spot far away from everyone to spend some points and just... decompress for a minute, she really needed it.
***