Part 8: Sept Sillons
"As we know all of the cultists are here, we'll wait for our boss, Kyriakos." you decide. "He'll arrive in about 40 minutes with two other specialists, all three should be competent in combat."
"A few more guns won't hurt. Not that we wouldn't had any issue dealing with those freaks, of course" says Navarro, trying to hide his nervousness behind his usual bluster.
"We have beaten them in the city already, we will do the same here. I am waiting for our boss not because I didn't think we were unable to win, but rather because they're going to want to police the site themselves." you say, trying to reassure him and the other enforcers.
Turning toward the map, you check where the road goes after passing in front of the compound "Pradier, if you turn around and take left at the last crossing, you should be able to arrive on the other side of the mining compound." you explain, "With you there the cultists won't be able to escape that way. When we attack, move in from the other side."
"Understood. But my squad is understrength and..."
"If you take three enforcers from Cordier's squad and have Telemacus accompany you, you should have enough."
Pradier assenting, you turn towards the other officers: "Have a few enforcers keep watch, but the rest can take a rest until Kyriakos arrives, I think he'll waste no time before attacking.", before breaking off the meeting.
While you wait for Kyriakos' arrival, with Electryos off preparing a makeshift landing strip, you join the enforcers resting in the vehicles, also checking your weapons, in the hope of avoiding the same mishap as last time you used the grenade launcher. As you work, reciting a litany of maintenance, it starts raining, casting a grey pall across the landscape, even as the light continues to decline with the sunset.
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With a tire screech, a primitive model of plane leaving behind a trail of greasy smoke comes to a stop at end of the makeshift strip. From it exits a trio of figures, that you recognize from the times you worked with the Inquisitor's team: Phyron's broad, built like a grox and with a temper to match, covered by an heavy carapace armor; but even the thick plates can't hide the augmentics replacements to one leg and one arm. He's covered with bandolieres of explosives and ammo of different colors, a chainaxe strapped to his tight and is carrying the biggest shotgun you've ever seen. On the other side is Namari, tall and lanky, much more lightly armored with some kind of mesh armor sporting braces of throwing knives, carrying a slim sword on her waist and a silenced auto pistol at the ready, her angular face set in an air of indifference. And between them is Kyriakos, leaning on a heavy cane, ensconced in an armored longcoat, his inquisitive eyes surveying the situation in front of him. He appears unarmed, but his coat can hide a few surprises, much to the dismay of those who underestimated him.
"I take it you've been waiting for us before assaulting the compound?" starts Kyriakos after you summed up what you've done since disembarking from the train.
"Yes. As we had foiled their ritual in the city and obtained intelligence placing all the remaining cultists in the compound, we assumed it would be safe to wait for you."
"Don't assume, you'd just make an ass of you and me." interjects Phyron, "Well, us in this case." he adds with a glance towards Kyriakos.
"You're just happy you get to blow some shit up, Phyron." says mockingly Namari.
"As if, I'll have to drag your sorry ass out of the fire. Again."
"Get inside a burning hab-block once..."
"Hey, it's not as if you never bring up that one little accident with a boat."
"Stop it, both of you." Cuts Kyriakos, quickly staring down at the pair, before continuing "Situation can still go all klyboh on us. Balda, the enforcers are ready to attack, right? So we get moving. And show me that intelligence you talked about."
The discussion finished, you all board the van, to go from the landing strip to where the rest of the group is waiting, further down the road.
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"How's the hired help, Balda? Not too defective I hope." asks Phyron, while you drive.
"They're adequate, like how you'd expect enforcers to measure against blood-crazed cultists. But I fear that they being too close to a botched summoning back in the city..."
"Has condemned them? That might be your first time having to execute loyal citizens, but you'll have to understand it's better this way, both for them and us." cuts Namari, with the air of indifference of one who has done enough time to stop caring about it.
"I was going to say they're shaken." you answer with a shrug. "But I can't really say if we really need to execute them all, yet. Though in all cases, there's two wounded enforcers left in the city we'll have to grab too."
"You know where they are, right?" asks Kyriakos, looking up from the papers you had retrieved previously.
But before you answer, you become aware of a sound, like a single note played on a brass instrument, at the edge of your perception. Looking at the others, you see that they've heard it as well, with Kyriakos shouting:
"Horus! Floor it, we need to attack now!" He composes himself, checking an esoteric device taken from inside his coat, before continuing "You shouldn't have waited Balda, the cultists are trying something. The aetherscope is... well, it's usually before something
wrong happens."
You nod, calling Electryos and Telemacus on your comlink and giving them the signal of attack. As you get closer, the rain suddenly stops, as if whatever is happening in the compound is pushing the clouds away. When you cross the limit, you are wracked by tremors of nausea, but you don't stop driving.
Soon after, you arrive at the compound to see that Navarro and Cordier have attacked. Navarro's squad, accompanied by Electryos, has driven their APC right next to the compound and engaged the cultists whereas Cordier's squad is farther away, moving on foot and firing as they go. The fire from both squads had been accurate and some of the cultists have fallen, but the survivors are firing back at the enforcers with pipe guns and laslocks, though so far all the enforcers are still standing. From the opposite direction, you see the second APC, carrying Pradier's squad and Telemacus, moving toward the compound.
You stop the van halfway between the two squads but as you exit the vehicle, the brass note reaches a crescendo and blood-red flash momentarily blinds you, accompanied by a shockwave that throws you to the ground.
As you rise, you turn towards the compound and one of the buildings has exploded, broken by the transgression against nature that took place in it: bodies lay in a pool of blood, surrounded by cultists chanting. And in the middle, the Materium is torn in a breach that writhes and twists, dripping smoking blood and offal on the ground. Even if both enforcers and cultists have recovered from the shockwave, no one makes a move, transfixed by the spectacle unfolding in front of them. From the breach first comes a clawed hand, grabbing the edge of the portal and dragging itself through it, until on the surface of Brocante steps a daemon: an humanoid shape, looking like pitch given angry form and let loose upon the world, its brow stamped with Khorne's symbol, a jagged and cruel blade in hand.
But as soon the daemon step forward, it is greeted by ruby-red ray from a hellpistol sporting a purity seal, held in Kyriakos' hand. With a wordless roar, the daemon starts rushing towards you, backhanding a cultist that didn't get out of the way fast enough, while everyone else spring back into motion. Behind it, the breach closes, so at least you should have to deal with only one daemon.
"Men of Brocante, send back this hellspawn whence it came from! For the Emperor!" shouts Kyriakos, who continues to shoot at the daemon and the cultists who have joined its rush. Navarro's squad, alongside Electryos, has regrouped and resumed firing, like Phyron, Namari and you, but Cordier's squad is in disarray, enforcers clawing their eyes out or in shock, overwhelmed by the daemonic intrusion. Some of the charging cultists fall, but the moment they and the daemon are about to hit the Navarro's squad, Pradier's APC ram into the charging group, sending a pair of cultists to the ground, but the daemon avoids the vehicle, beheading an enforcer whose head rose from a hatch. The APC then veers of course and ends in the ditch that runs along the road, where it is set upon by the surviving cultists.
The daemon continues towards Navarro's squad, where it starts a bloody dance among the enforcers, who try to retaliate, but fail, their shots going wide and their strikes avoided, except for Navarro, who manages a solid hit with his shock maul, sparks spreading over the daemon, which responds by a vertical cut, beheading him. The daemon successfully grabs the head flying in the air, holding it aloft while shouting in a gutural voice: "
Skull for the Skulls Throne!"
You then see Electryos speared by the daemon, his body falling limply on the blood-stained ground. A few shots land on the daemon, but it is unfazed and continues his slaughter, shedding the blood of the enforcers for its dark god, until Phyron hits it with what must be an incendiary shell, setting it on fire, but that only seems to make it angrier. At the same time, the fight around Pradier's APC is finished too, enforcers and cultists apparently having killed each other.
Having slaughtered Navarro's squad, the daemon sets upon you, leaving behind the two APCs and a pile of bodies. You try to slow it down with grenades, imitated by Phyron and you have the satisfaction of seeing it stumble. From behind you come a few more shots, apparently Cordier's squad had rallied, despite how their colleagues got massacred in front of them.
"Get ready! The Emperor protects!", says Kyriakos while continuing to shoot.
As the daemon gets closer, both Namari and Phyron draw their melee weapons, while Kyriakos and you stay back, hoping to score a few more hits with your weapons; you also realize that'd you only be a hindrance to the two acolytes. From closer, the otherwordly nature of the daemon is even more visible, with his snarling face the very essence of bloodshed and eyes that shine like furnaces. Its blade is long, covered in hooks and barbs, designed to rip and tear, as to shed as much blood as possible, but in the current fight it had failed to do so far, with both Phyron and Namari parrying and avoiding the daemon's angry attacks, even scoring a few hits themselves.
Your blood thumps against your temples, as you are filled with a primal urge to join the melee yourself, but you restrain yourself, trying to find a way to shoot without hitting your allies. From what you can see, the battle had taken its toll on the daemon, its body pockmarked with impacts, but it hasn't stopped yet: after evading another swing, Namari throws a brace of knives at the daemon, but it just digs back the knives from its flesh before throwing them back at her, sending her to the ground from the impact. Phyron moves to try to cover her, but he overextends and the daemon punishes this mistake by slashing his augmentic leg, sending him on the ground in a shower of sparks and hydraulic fluid. But before the daemon can attack the fallen acolytes, Kyriakos draws a blade hidden in his cane, before plunging it in the back of the daemon and it seems it's enough, as it finaly disipates with a snarl, leaving behind a pool of blood and offal.
As the horror in front of you disappears back to the Warp, a weight pushing on your mind, body and soul is lifted, like clearing away a film that was on your eyes. At the same time the rain resumes, diluting the blood spread across the landscape in a muddy mix. For the first time in your life, you have faced a denizen of the Warp and you had survived. You feel
[] Proud of beating back a daemon, of doing your duty as a member of the Inquisition
[] Horrified by what you've seen, of witnessing a neverborn walking the Materium
[] Relieved that you've survived such trial when many didn't
[] Write-in
The fight finished, Kyriakos sends a quick message to the inquisitor, before going to check the compound, accompanied by a severely limping Phyron. The enforcers from Cordier's squad, even if the daemon didn't reach them, are visibly shaken, with one of them completely catatonic, but you managed to enlist one to take care of Namari, while the rest, including Cordier, accompany you to check if there's any survivors from the fights that took place in front of the compound.
Navarro's squad is dead to the last man, their bodies cut in pieces by the daemon. Only Electryos survived, his augmentics having slowed the flow of blood from his wound until help could arrive. From Pradier's squad, two have survived, mangled in the fight that took place in the APC and Telemacus is dead, his body torn apart by weaponized mining equipment. The wounded are dragged to the van, where they are taken care with the meager medical supplies and capabilities at your disposal.
A few minutes later, Kyriakos exits the compound and announces that reinforcements are on route to relieve your group. With the situation stable enough, the question on what to do with the surviving enforcers is going to be raised. How would you answer it:
[] Even knowledge that daemon can enter the Materium is enough to warrant execution, so witnessing it happen shouldn't leave any doubt about their fate.
[] They witnessed a daemon, didn't turn mad and tried to fight. Maybe that's enough to get inducted in the Inquistion, after some rigorous trials.
-[] Write-in additional arguments for sparing them
AN: Note that asking to recruit the surviving enforcers isn't a guarantee, but you can increase the chance if you give convincing arguments in favor.