Lazarus: Enmity's Edge by Gary Kloster

Author:Gary Kloster
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction: space opera
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2024-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Azmodor smashed through the heaps of machinery set against the doors to the factorum, then charged forward, bulling a path through the pieces that remained. Lazarus paused for an instant, just enough time to let the falling debris hammer onto the floor, then followed after, his command squad hard on his heels, while Squads Lameth, Hazin and Bethel followed close behind.

The factorum was a dark hole compared to the brilliance in the hall, but the auspex sensors in Lazarus’ helm married to his hyper-acute senses melted the shadows away. He could see through the dark, and he matched the piles of supplies and the great hulking machines to the detailed schematic the Fabricator Locum had given him. Away from the door, where the gris had taken things apart for the barrier, the map matched the reality of the room – except the map had no notations for where his enemies were hiding. That information was won when those enemies began firing at Azmodor. The gris had taken position on a spiderweb of walkways that hung from the ceiling, and they were using their position to slam slugs down at the Dreadnought. But the fire from their autorifles ricocheted off Azmodor’s thick armour, doing no more damage than rain.

‘Squad Lameth,’ he snapped over the vox. ‘Ascend.’

There was the roar of jump packs, the bright flare of their thrusters arcing through the air followed by the thunder of bolt pistols as Squad Lameth raked the catwalks above. The bolt pistols almost drowned out the auto­rifles and the whining ricochets of slugs smashing off ceramite armour. But then came the screaming whine of the chainswords.

The chatter of blades ripping through bodies came from above. Metal shrieked as a catwalk buckled, and then something was falling down. Lazarus sensed it before he could see it, a disturbance in the air, and dodged to the side as a body slammed into the floor. Lazarus caught a glimpse of it as it smashed into the rockcrete, a man dressed in what was left of a Reis Home Levies uniform, his body split open from shoulder to hip. Blood and organs splattered out, a gory mess spilling across the ground. But in its crimson Lazarus caught threads of grey, strings of fungal infection running through the tissue.

‘Squad Hazin,’ Lazarus said as he stepped around the mess. ‘Outer peri­meter.’ The factorum was a massive cube gouged out of Reis’ crust. Squad Hazin would have to move fast to see if the enemy was trying to flee through another exit, but they knew what to do. Squad Bethel remained with him and the command squad, moving through the equipment at his back, following the infiltration pattern he’d laid out over the schematic. They would sweep the centre of the factorum, blasting from one side to the other, where a great cage was set into the far wall – a barred prison where the mortals damned to suffer as servitors for their sins were roused from their cryo-sleep and made into the living dead, cursed to labour for the Imperium until they finally dropped.

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