"How many points do I have left?" Alexis asked.
"Twenty-Eight."
She continued down a corridor, sweat sticking to the back of her robes as she walked through a space that was filled with hot, stuffy air. The junction where she'd found those bodies came up ahead, and she paused there, taking it in.
It was a four-way intersection. There were two small metal barricades, the type that were standard with the Imperial guard. Basically just metal plates that could fold into thirds for easy transportation. A few sandbags were resting on the floor as well. Mostly, however, there was just a heap of bodies on the ground.
"Okay," she said. Then, after taking a deep breath, she continued. "Okay. First thing's first, I need another Command Co-Processor. If CS-3-2/11 is going to help, then I want them in our network."
New Purchase: Command Co-Processor
Points Reduced to: 13
That was a painfully low number of points, but she grabbed the little box, opened it, then moved over to install the device into the base of her newest friend's neck. It wasn't long before she felt another faint awareness joining their group. CS-3-2/11 was a bit different than the others.
054-648 felt very stalwart and calm. K84-321 was aggressive, and wanted to crush and move. KYS was quiet and surgical. In contrast to all of them, CS-3-2/11 felt angry, sullen, and dangerous in a calculating sort of way.
Alexis patted the combat servitor on the head. "We'll get you a weapon soon," she promised. She had disconnected the heavy arc rifle already, so she just needed to replace that with something from her tool catalogue.
That'd have to wait, because thirteen points wasn't much.
She checked the corridor again. "How long until they're here?" she asked.
"I estimate that you have approximately three to ten minutes."
That wasn't long at all. Alexis decided to get to work right away. She directed her friends to grab bodies and move them back. She found a lasrifle and a few packs for it, then set those aside for her own use, then she pulled up her goop gun and started to spray.
She had an idea for how to lay things out, and that meant several layers of defences. The first was a set of lines across the ground, sprayed while she walked. They ballooned outward, growing into lumps of hardened foam that were about shin-high.
That was going to be her way of slowing their charge down, hopefully.
Then she backed up behind the barricades and started to spray the walls. She paid particular attention to the wires and pipes above, sealing spaces where the mutants might, if they were sneaky, come in from above. She even plugged over a vent.
The walls grew inwards, successive layers of foam expanding outwards along both sides and above, then she ran out.
"I need more," she said. "And maybe ammo for 054-648's rivet gun as well?"
New Purchase: Sealant Tank
Points Reduced to: 12
New Purchase: Industrial Type 087 Rivets
Points Reduced to: 11
She didn't like how low those numbers were getting. She liked the howl that echoed down the corridors even less.
Alexis reloaded herself, set the box of rivets off to the side within easy reach for when 054-648 would need them, then she moved her friends into position and continued to spray.
It only took another minute for her to have things more or less the way she wanted. Using the existing barricades, she had a slit from which 054-648 could shoot down the corridor, and the rest of the space was sealed up at a slight angle, leading anyone that wanted to get to her into a funnel that she placed K84-321 at the end of.
She was just considering where to place CS-3-2/11 when movement caught her eye. She spun and felt her heart skip a beat as she saw the end of the corridor filling. Genestealers, men and women dressed as menials, with tools and makeshift weapons, were coming around the corner at a dead sprint. They looked pale, their skin clammy, their eyes wild and delirious.
They locked onto her and her friends, and several of them screamed, noises that she wasn't aware a human voice box could produce.
Alexis stumbled back a step. "G-get ready!" she shouted.
She ducked down behind the barricade to the left, picked up the lasrifle she had found, then poked it through the slit in the barricade. She sighted down the barrel and squeezed the trigger, jumping a little at the unfamiliar recoil.
She had never fired a gun before. This was a first for her. She had also never truly been all that strong when it came to worship, and yet words tumbled through her lips all the same. "Omnissiah, guide this machine."
Her shots splattered on the first wave of enemies, but they lacked the punch to kill them outright. Still, it made some stumble, and others fell.
"Let its spirit wake in wrath."
054-648 joined in. His gun opened with a strong ker-chunk, followed by a hiss of escaping gas.
His rivet punched through the chest of the foremost genestealer with so much strength that the man was folded in half in mid-air and sent flying into his allies behind.
"Let every round be counted."
Alexis continued to fire, finger squeezing down the trigger. She only moved to shift the spray left and right, to share the red beams across the entire group.
Then her gun ran empty and she pulled it back, fumbling with it.
KYS's arms spun around, shoving a second lasrifle into her grip while taking the first away. She let the servitor help, and was vaguely aware that KYS was reloading the first behind her.
"Let every spark be sacred."
054-648 kept firing, but switched to smaller rivets. These merely punched holes into the enemy that she could fit three fingers into before moving on to strike those behind. A few on the side were pinned to the walls where they scrambled and screamed.
"Let flesh fail before blessed steel."
The tide reached K84-321. Rather than bowl him over, the servitor set his legs and met the first of them with a powerful, full-bodied punch, his pneumatic gripper ramming into a genestealer's face and taking its head off its shoulders.
She forgot the next line in her prayer, so she simply started over. "Omnissiah, guide this machine."
She had expected ten, twenty, maybe a dangerous thirty enemies. There were more.
She gasped as one of them launched past K84-321. It was stabbed by his saw, which cut a long furrow into its back, then KYS spun around and stabbed it with her own surgical saw.
The pause in her lasfire allowed a few more to approach unimpeded, and she cursed her distraction before opening fire again. There were fewer coming!
The fight wasn't even in its first minute, and yet she felt like it had been an hour or more.
A larger genestealer, one so big it might have been an ogryn, charged over. He weathered her lasfire, ignoring the burns. He only flinched as 054-648 shot a half-dozen rivets into his side. Then he reached K84-321 and rammed into him with a bellow.
Then K84-321 was thrown off his feet, and she gasped.
The servitor managed to grab onto one of the bigger genestealer's arm and wrenched it, but the big guy just used that as leverage to punch down at K84-321.
She spun, firing into the monster even as she screamed. He flinched, lasfire burning at his face even as rivets stabbed into him from behind.
Without much ceremony, the monster died and she knelt down to help K84-321. There were barely any of them left! They were winning!
Then she felt a scream in her mind, her friends warning her.
Alexis spun and on reflex, threw her arm up to block as something burned down at her.
There was a low crack, a shot of pain so searing hot and immediate that she almost blanked it out.
Then KYS was there, stabbing her rotating saw into an enemy multiple times.
Alexis stumbled back. In her periphery, she was aware that the corridor was mostly a charnel house now, none of the enemy lived.
Her main focus, however, was on the way her arm was bent. at a ninety degree angle, robes ripped, and blood gushing out around the white-white shape of her protruding bone.
***