Duvette led the survivors back the way they had co.
Without the Abominable Intelligence's containnt field to stabilize the structure, the space around them had beco unstable again, the corridors shifting and rearranging in the ways the rest of the hulk always had. It made everything slower.
The unit moved at a walk. No one had anything faster left in them.
Every breath coming through the helt filters was heavy with exhaustion. Duvette checked the bolt pistol's magazine: three rounds. He looked at the others. Finn's lasrifle energy indicator was cycling red. Anderson's ltagun had barely anything left in it. Between them all, there were still a few explosive charges remaining, enough for one more fight if sothing forced the issue.
They would need the fight to be brief.
The only person who might have known the way back without the map lay face-down on a Battle Sister's power-armoured back, arms hanging limp. Juno Karol's black Inquisitor's coat had darkened from the blood soaked into it, the hem dripping as the Sister moved, leaving a broken trail of dark red spots in the dust behind them.
She had lost enough blood to kill a standard human twice over. Whether it was so form of physical modification that kept her alive, Duvette neither knew nor particularly cared to investigate. He noted the fact and moved on.
He was not worried about finding the way out.
In his vision, the holographic map from the Grand Strategic Display Module held steady. Blue-white lines traced the structural geotry around them, and though certain sections shifted and warped even as he watched, the path itself updated to compensate, continuously re-routing around whatever the hulk's spatial instability changed. A clear route extended from where they stood to a pulsing marker in the distance.
The assault boat.
He had already tested the function briefly after they found it. A hundred Emperor's Wrath spent to anchor the assault boat's location in the system. The map had updated imdiately, producing a winding but navigable blue line that corrected itself in real-ti as the space around them changed. It reminded him, in a way he did not want to think about for long, of the way a Navigator moved through the Warp using the Astronomican as an anchor. He set the thought aside. This was not the ti.
"Stay close," he said into the channel. "Don't fall behind."
The unit pressed forward. They moved through a section of narrow maintenance passage that felt familiar from the initial descent, the walls pressing in on the shoulder guards of the carapace armour. No one slowed.
They found enemies.
A cluster of Genestealers ca through the ventilation shafts in the ceiling ahead, purple bodies twisting out of the grates with the boneless ease of creatures that had evolved for exactly this kind of confined space. They screeched and dropped to the floor, six limbs scoring deep gouges in the tal with each landing.
The soldiers raised what weapons they had.
"Conserve ammunition," Duvette said imdiately.
He drew the chainsword and went first.
After the daemon, a Genestealer was a comprehensible problem. He ca in without slowing and drove the blade up from below in a diagonal cut, the spinning teeth eting the first Genestealer's chest and abdon and forcing through with his weight behind it. The fluid that ca off was hot and foul and covered the front of his armour, and the Genestealer was finished before it had fully registered what had hit it.
The three Battle Sisters moved in behind him.
They fought in powered armour with a precision and speed that ordinary soldiers, however experienced, did not match. In the confined passage, where angles of fire were limited and the fighting compressed to close range, they found solutions that ca from a different level of training. Their bolt rifles fired at distances asured in ters, each shot taking a head or a chest center, and they moved between positions with an efficiency that did not require communication between them.
Seven Genestealers. Seven kills. The fight was over before the unit's ammunition situation had aningfully worsened.
Purple blood pooled in the depressions of the floor grating. The unit stepped over the bodies and kept moving. No one paused to look at the dead.
The route took them through a collapsed section. The ceiling had co down across most of its width, exposing the tangled pipe and cable networks of the deck above, and the floor was covered deep in stone fragnts and tal wreckage. The passage through it was barely wide enough.
Duvette went first, climbing over the debris, finding the footholds, and reaching back to pull the next soldier through when the rubble shifted underfoot. The Battle Sister carrying Juno used the power armour's strength to clear the sa obstacle in a single movent, Juno's arms swinging as she did. The blood still dripped, marking the stones below them in a broken line.
They kept moving.
After a ti that had no clean asurent, Duvette stopped.
Ahead was sothing recognizable.
The assault boat's hull sat embedded in the tal wall where they had left it, its forward section driven deep into the Eternal Lant's outer armor plating. The lta-cutting ring at the bow had long since cooled. Around the entry point, great irregular masses of solidified tal slag clung to the hull, the liquefied armor from the entry burn that had flowed outward and frozen imdiately in the void, encasing the front section in a shell of hardened material as dense as the plating it had co from.
They had made it back.
Duvette turned to the formation and allowed his expression to carry a surprise that the minimap had not given him the opportunity to genuinely feel. The Battle Sisters could not know about the map. "It seems our luck held," he said. "We're here."
No one cheered. Everyone was too depleted for celebration. Twenty-six people looked at the assault boat in silence, and what was in that silence was not triumph. It was simply the recognition that this was the way out, and that they were in front of it.
Two problems remained, however.
He walked closer and examined the hull carefully. The slag that had ford around the entry point had hardened to an extre density, the material fusing the boat to the outer hull of the Eternal Lant as effectively as any chanical clamp. Getting the boat free would require breaking that seal.
And once free, soone had to pilot it.
He called everyone together. Twenty-six soldiers, three Battle Sisters, one unconscious Lord Inquisitor. They gathered in a rough semicircle in front of the assault boat.
"Two problems," Duvette said, his voice carrying in the empty space without the helt. "First, how we get the boat clear. Second, who flies it."
He looked at Anderson.
The big man reached up and scratched the back of his helt, thinking for a few seconds. "First problem," he said. "We use what's left of the explosives."
Anderson indicated the tactical belt at his hip. The last few frag grenades and two prothium incendiaries remained attached to it. "We fix these to the slag where it's holding the hull. Set them off. We don't need to destroy the material, just fracture it enough that the boat can pull clear. Loosen it a little and the engines should do the rest."
Duvette nodded. "And the second problem?"
A brief silence from the formation.
Then the Battle Sister who had been carrying Juno spoke. Her voice ca through the helt's speaker in a flat, composed tone. "We can pilot it," she said. "My sisters and I. This is not a significant difficulty for us."
Duvette looked at her. The helt was sealed and her face was not visible, but the certainty in her voice was clear enough to read without it.
"You're sure?" Duvette asked.
"Yes," she said. "I have flown an Aquila lander and an Arvus lighter. The Shark's operating systems are similar in their fundantals."
Duvette did not ask further. He nodded.
"Then that is how we proceed," he said. "Anderson, take two people and set the charges. Take your ti. Do not damage the hull."
Anderson acknowledged, called two soldiers by na, and the three of them began removing the remaining grenades and incendiaries from their belts and moving toward the slag mass around the assault boat's embedded bow.
Duvette turned to the rest.
"Everyone else, board the boat," he said. "Check your harnesses. Prepare for impact."
The formation moved. Two columns, boarding up the assault ramp in sequence, the familiar interior closing around them: the long, narrow space with its two rows of heavy restraint seats on each side. Soldiers settled into their positions and laid what remained of their weapons beside them, then pulled the harness buckles across and locked them.
The three Battle Sisters boarded. They laid Juno across the front-row seats and secured her with the harness straps, one Sister producing another stimulant injector from the power armour's storage and pressing the needle to the side of the Inquisitor's neck.
The drug went in. Juno's body twitched once. She did not wake.
Duvette took the seat beside her. He looked at the Lord Inquisitor's pale face for a mont â€" her right socket had been roughly bandaged, a basic field dressing, the bloody hollow no longer exposed. He looked away and took in the cabin.
Everyone was strapped in.
Anderson's voice ca through the channel.
"Commissar, charges are set. Ten-minute tir." A pause. "We're coming back now."
Seconds later, Anderson and his two soldiers ca through the assault ramp at a run, dropped into their seats, and locked their harnesses.
"Done," Anderson said, between breaths.
Duvette nodded.
"Close the ramp," he said into the channel.
From the cockpit, the Battle Sister pilot engaged the control. The assault ramp's hydraulic system ca to life with a low resonance, the chanical components engaging, and the ramp rose slowly and settled into its closed position with a solid impact that sealed the interior from the outside. The ambient sounds of the Eternal Lant cut off entirely.
Inside: only the circulation system's quiet hum, and the sound of breathing from the helts.
After a mont, the Battle Sister's voice ca through the channel into every helt.
"Ready," she said. "Detonation in thirty seconds."
Duvette tightened his grip on the overhead restraint bar.
He closed his eyes and counted in silence. Thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.
Ten. Nine. Eight.
Three. Two. One.
The explosion ca through the hull as a deep concussive sound, felt more in the chest and the seat than heard, the armored hull transmitting the shockwave rather than isolating it. The boat shook. The seats vibrated. The harness pressed hard across every person's chest.
It lasted approximately five seconds.
Then the shaking stopped.
"Hull is loose," the Battle Sister reported. "Preparing to reverse."
The engines started.
A deep vibration built from sowhere in the boat's fra, growing steadily as the systems ca to power. Duvette felt the thrust arrive behind him, pressing him back into the seat. Through the observation port at his side, the tal wall of the hull breach began to slide backward â€" slowly at first, centiters, then a handspan, then half a ter.
A hard jolt ran through the fra.
"Clear," the Battle Sister said.
The thrust increased sharply. The assault boat reversed at maximum power, the fra shaking from the output, tal sounds audible from outside before the engine noise drowned them out entirely.
Duvette watched through the observation port. The close dark tal of the Eternal Lant's outer hull gave way in an instant to pure black void, starlight at distances too great to register as anything but points. No walls. No corridors. No structure of any kind.
They were out.
The assault boat reversed for several hundred ters before the engines dropped to idle and the hull steadied, the vibration settling into the low hum of normal operation, the boat hanging motionless in the void with the vast irregular mass of the Eternal Lant at so distance behind them.
No one in the cabin spoke.
Duvette released the restraint bar. His palm was wet. He leaned back in the seat and let his lungs clear themselves slowly.
They had done it. They had co out of the Eternal Lant alive.
He felt no particular elation.
The Soul of the Legion's HUD displayed its number in the upper left of his vision without inflection or ceremony.
[Total Strength: 26]
Fifty had gone in. Twenty-six had co out. Twenty-four soldiers were left inside that structure, in whatever space their remains had drifted to, to be taken apart by Genestealers or absorbed entirely into the Warp when the hulk slipped back into the Immaterium. There would be no recovery of them. There would be no burial. The Eternal Lant would close around them and take them away and that would be the entirety of what their deaths looked like from the outside.
Duvette reached into the inner pocket of his commissar's coat and drew out a collection of identity tags. Cold pressed tal, stamped with nas and numbers. These were what remained of the n who had followed him into the hulk and had not co out of it. Twenty-four nas on twenty-four tags. Only these proved that the courage had existed at all.
He held them for a mont. Then he put them back.
A significant cost. He closed his eyes.
The engine hum persisted in his ears, steady and unchanging, like a lody with no resolution.
****
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