The walls sweated blood.
It ran in oily streaks down the bulkheads, pooling around the boots of exhausted soldiers. The stink of ozone, cordite, and putrefying warp-taint clung to every breath like wet wool.
Lieutenant Darius Branek crouched behind a hastily reinforced barricade, his rifle resting across a shattered console. The bulkhead before them was scarred and pitted, las-burns and shrapnel gouging its surface. Beyond that, only flickering lumen strips and the waiting dark.
"Movement," Sergeant Khor's voice rasped over vox. "Two o'clock, main corridor."
Branek's finger tightened on the trigger. In the gloom, figures moved.
Word Bearers, their armor daubed in scripture and the blood of the innocent, strode forward like predators. Behind them came the warp-things — twisted, seething shapes of flesh and teeth, limbs shifting impossibly.
"Hold fire," Branek ordered. "Wait for the mark."
The seconds stretched.
Then the first daemon lunged.
"Fire!"
The barricades lit up in a storm of lasfire and plasma bursts. Daemons shrieked as they were cut down, but still they came. A Word Bearer charged through the fusillade, las-bolts scoring its armor. It swung a chainaxe, tearing into a Raider trooper's chest.
Branek cursed and fired, the shot punching through the traitor's helm with a burst of scorched bone.
"Breach right flank!" someone bellowed.
A shrieking horror spilled over the barricade. Sergeant Khor met it with his bayonet, driving it back. The first wave broke after a brutal minute, bodies piling high. The air shimmered with heat and the stench of burnt flesh.
"Status?" Branek voxed.
"Still breathing," Tanaka grunted.
"Left barricade's down to four men," came another report.
The momentary lull settled like a corpse blanket over the line.
"Eyes sharp," Khor muttered. "That was just the warm-up."
Branek's teeth ached from clenching. He noted again the difference in insignia — his 9th Battalion's crossed lasrifles on every pauldron, and the 15th Raiders with their dagger-clenching skull motif. Same Exile army, same war, but gods-damned different ways to fight.
Then the second wave came.
Death Guard this time — bloated, rusted giants advancing in a haze of stink and flies. Warp-beasts crawled alongside them, and Exile soldiers screamed as flesh liquefied under toxic vapors.
The Death Guard warriors bellowed in voices like grinding stone, their vox-amplifiers crackling as they called out to the defenders.
"Cowards of the False Emperor! Your walls are thin! Your bones are brittle! Come, bleed for Nurgle's grace!"
Another, hefting a rusted cleaver caked in flesh, laughed as las-shots sparked off his corroded plate.
"Death is a mercy you are too craven to claim!"
Warp-beasts slithered through the gaps. One of them, a mass of flesh and snapping maws, latched onto a Raider. The man screamed before vanishing beneath the bulk.
"Fall back to junction six!" Major Halvra's voice snapped through the vox.
Branek relayed the order. The line peeled back, lasfire covering the withdrawal. Narrow corridors forced the enemy to bunch up.
That's when the Raiders shows their fangs.
Without a word, explosive charges detonated. Corridor walls collapsed, crushing daemons and plague marines alike. Hidden monofilament wires drew shrieks as they bisected lesser horrors.
From shadowed alcoves, Raider squads unleashed with plasma and volkites, surgically clearing the survivors.
Amid the smoke, a figure emerged. Captain Hallen Varik, wearing a red barret, his armor battered and darkened by warp exposure. Volkite weapon on his hands.
"You 9th infantry boys hold the line well," Varik remarked as he approaches Barnek. His voice rough and humorless. "But no one bleeds them like us."
Branek flicked his rifle's dried magazine swiping it for a new powerpack. He met the man's gaze through his helm.
"Could've used those surprises earlier."
"When did your battalion plant those explosives, sir? We didn't see anything." Khor ask with admiration in his voice.
Branek nodded, he and his platoon has been seeing the 15th raider as nothing more than a wreck, yet those who could see fit for combat, has shown their ambush specialties.
Varik chuckled, a dry, death-haunted sound.
"There is an old Terran saying, Sergeant. A magician never reveals his secrets."
Branek allowed a thin grin.
More daemons surged forward, bloated things with mouths for limbs. Some chaos marines, word bearer, guides them.
The Exiles met them furious weapon fires.
Auto cannon, multilas, heavy bolter and lascannon emplacement roars.
The Word Bearers hurled blasphemous curses, one roaring in High Gothic. "Your souls are forfeit! Every death here feeds the Pantheon!"
Another fallen angel, helm cracked and leaking ichor, managed to grabbed a Raider by the throat and screamed into his face, "Die knowing you failed your ancestors!"
Vox channels spat overlapping chatter:
"Third barricade gone—!"
"Contact rear access vent, we're flanked!"
"Ambush net Alpha-Zeta, spring it now!"
The Raider squads moved like wraiths, detonating trip-mines, collapsing bulkheads, misdirecting the enemy into kill-boxes.
One narrow choke-point turned into a meat grinder as dozens of warp-beasts piled atop each other, trying to claw through.
Khor led a countercharge, lascarbines barrel redden at the intensity.
Branek followed without hesitation.
The Word Bearers refused to falter. Even as their numbers thinned, they pressed on, their chants growing louder.
"Let the galaxy burn!" They moved with a relentless, inhuman purpose.
A bloated Death Guard marine appeared from a brach, leaking pus and ichor, swung a rusted scythe into a barricade, bisecting two soldiers.
His vox crackled. "Death cannot stop the blessed rot. Only feed it."
The warp-things wailed, their voices a chorus of temptation and madness.
"Give yourselves to us… the flesh remembers… the soul yearns…"
The soldiers are affected by such warp influence yet no one listened…for now…
The battle line reformed amid mangled corpses. Raiders and 9th Battalion troopers stood shoulder to shoulder.
Both foces fought on with grim brutality.
Halvra's voice cut through the din.
"All units, reinforce choke-points Delta and Gamma. No retreat. Not while I draw breath."
Varik glanced at Branek. "Your boys have iron in 'em. Didn't think they'd hold this long."
Branek's face hardened. "We don't run. Neither do you."
The Raider Captain smiled behind his visor. "Good. Because they're not done yet."
In the distance, a fresh vox report.
[New contact, Emperor's Children. Multiple contacts inbound.]