The descent of the Legions was foreseen. Stymieing their advance was possible, with new grounds to fight over, and the monsters of the Underhive in play again.

What Urdal Goodbook was less ready to hear, was that there was a Confessor in the Lower Hive. Since the fall of House Vormir a number of Preachers had stepped up in the Lower Hive levels, calming and helping direct the masses. While most of them were from up Hive, some had, it seemed, filtered in with supplies from Hive Volg.

These were, now that their Confessor had arrived and revealed himself, driving those most faithful among the local populace into a mad frenzy.

Such misguided zeal being abused by those whose sacred duty it was to direct it in times of great need sickened Urdal. That they were coming for his students only made it worse.

“Holding the Legions when we had masses of monsters to distract them was one thing.”

Doing the same when they had their own river of sacrifices to throw back was an entirely different matter.

***

Having their fourth member back was nice. Being without had sucked, and trying to face these madmen a man down would have really, really sucked.

“Stop daydreaming, Bouncy!”

Ah, Irea. Caustic, ever dependable. Can always be counted upon to know where the enemy was coming from. Not that they needed that today.

There were coming from everywhere.

“No, really: the Undehive is killing more of them than we are. Can’t we fall back?”

“The traps set are only so effective because we are blocking easy routes. Should we clear them, this flood of fanatics will pour into the second defensive sphere.” their ever brave hunk of a leader calmly explained.

Bouncy was glad of his steady, unaffected tone. Even if she knew it was full of shit. She needed something to remind her who they were, for the abattoir around them sure didn’t help.

They had to keep moving, keep out of reach. She’d made the mistake of stopping to engage the flood of zealots once.

They’d buried her under the combined weight of their bodies and her team had to come to her rescue.

She was not making that mistake again.

Even if this made her feel like she was fighting an army of Orcs, not Imperials. They were the ones supposed to achieve accuracy through volume of fire, not Imperials.

Shows what she knew.

The teams kept running out of bullets.

Her team, as they had most of the Elites, was supposed to be back in Sanctuary, guarding it.

Instead, since this swarm descended, the Master Hunter had retreated, and sent out every Huntsman and Huntress that had graduated to stem the tide.

The guard only took short rotations, firing full auto and using heavy weapons while they were re-arming, before they had to return to combat.

All of them were being worn down by random, massed fire and minor mistakes. They’d been at this for hours already. They lost count of how many each had killed.

There were always more. Thousands, tens of thousands of them rushing to their doom, many without even the most basic filter gear to let them safely breathe down here.

“And if we’re getting worn down, how is everyone else handling it?”

***

Kiki hated the metal man. Most of all, she hated how heavy he was. Even after she cut off most of his limbs, he was still one large, noisy lump of metal. It had taken her several attempts to dig out his noise box, and she was tempted to also take his eyes.

He kept glaring at her, when she saved him from mutants, scavengers, scum and worse things.

If her Lady had not called him her guest, Kiki would have long since left him to die.

As it was, she’d barely made it out of the scrum with most of him.

Now, here she was. Stuck, back in the wastes outside the Hive, among mutants, monsters and worse things: human scum hunting her and the Magos man, all looking for quick thrones.

She’d already had to jump twice, ever deeper underground, while carrying him, to escape pursuit. It was draining. She could do it maybe two more times, but then she’d be dangerously low on aura.

As yet more skittering approached their new cubby, Kiki braced herself, getting ready to kill.

Then a beaked face appeared out of the dark and made Kiki hesitate just for a moment.

“Mom?”

Kiki knew she wasn’t that lucky. Her parents were dead.

But equally, the sound her lips made gave pause to the group of mutants trying to sneak up on them.

Slowly, with great weariness, one of the mutants leaned forward slightly and sniffed.

Then it began clicking and clacking, which set the rest of them off.

Which, no. There were not only four of them. There were fourteen.

Fighting so many while guarding the fallen sky Magos would not be easy.

“I’m sorry.” Kiki tried. “I never learned our tongue. The cold Pure took us.”

More clicking. Those looks, somehow, despite the inhuman faces? Kiki understood them: Disbelief.

“No, they didn’t fix me. They pumped us all full of cold and hot fire, knives, darkness blood and pain. They don’t help.”

Wondering, questions. Even if the exact meaning of the calls escaped her, some part of Kiki still remembered the tones. The colour of the calls.

“No. My Lady helped me. She made me Faunus. Not Pure, abhuman. Close enough for Pure to tolerate. In Sanctuary.”

That name caused a reaction. A serration, a set of repeated clicks she’d heard so many times, when she herded those mutants that still knew reason away from danger during her many patrols.

“Is that… is that my name?”

Clickety-clikc-cl-clak.

Lots of clickety-clikc-cl-claks.

And then? Wonder of wonders, the one who came forward nodded.

It was still wary… but there was something else there. Something Kiki… could smell?

Her head hurt… but it smelled like hope.

The Magos kept glaring at all of them, so Kiki slapped him silly again.

He wasn’t to bother her new friends.

***

“Not how we hoped this would turn out?”

“Oh, shut up, Gideon.”

The usual bickering between the two unit clowns drew a couple of chuckles, but the mood was hardly jubilant. After all, they’d failed their mission.

“Hey, it could always be worse. Some beasty could be using our bones to pick its teeth right about now, you know?”

“Gideon, I swear, if you don’t shut your trap…”

“So the Inquisition beat us to the big bad tech-priest, and we’re all under arrest… but how bad could Inquisitorial custody really be?”

*

The Acolyte monitoring the prison transport noted the two prisoners brawling on the floor and the comments that caused it.

Seeing as it was no worse than any other brawl between soldiers quarrelling off duty… he allowed it. The comments thrown in by the rest of the covert unit sent to secure the Fabricator Locum out of Sanctuary could contain useful intelligence.

He found their discipline lacking. This was to the benefit of the Inquisition. The last batch seized had been insufficient to establish the Purity of the people of Sanctuary, not with any certainty.

Any additions put to the Question would add to their understanding, and Nikos and her ilk could hardly know to blame them for their disappearance.

Men died all the time out in the wastes, after all.

Perhaps one might even be salvaged as an agent, if they proved pure and worthy of that trust.

***

The defence was falling back. As they had been for the past several hours. Once the Huntsman had to fall back, nearing Aura Break, it was up to the guard to man the defences.

They did not have the numbers. Traps, environmental hazards, blockades and ravines?

None of them mattered. The bloody zealots stirred to holy fervour advanced at a run on a carpet of corpses.

Frankly, the Commander of the Sanctuary Guard didn’t see what else he could do.

He’d called up the Militia to man the walls, pulled in his full surviving and active Guard to do as much as they could… but it was just not enough. Not for these numbers.

It was one thing to know that there were billions of souls living in the metal caverns above their heads.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

It was another entirely for what had to be millions of them to come down here and try to kill them all.

He did not know what to do, and the Master Huntsman was grimly silent. He was displeased, with a deep frown. They stood in their forward command post and listened to reports and his frown only deepened.

Determined, not hopeless at all, no, thus morale was holding despite all the ground they were losing, yet still.

Something had to be done. Soon.

***

The arrival of the Magus with a number of cargo servitors did not please the Mentor. The markings on the barrels they were hauling made the Commander somewhat ill.

He’d been aware, in a distant sense, that this contingency existed. But Lady Nikos had made it very clear that whoever authorised its deployment would need to answer to her, personally. That she would have very pointed questions.

“Still hesitating, Master Huntsman?” the Magos coldly asked, in his metallic voice.

“We can still delay them.” the leader of the defences of Sanctuary replied.

“For a time. You are only delaying the inevitable. The Legions will come in their wake, and then what?”

“I am aware of the facts.” Goodbook ground out.

“You simply refuse to accept them.”

There was a moment of silence.

“I supposed I already am the villain. What’s one more crime against the Life Giver?”

“You?”

“I have the authority.”

Every Guard officer watched the two of them facing off.

“She’ll never forgive you.”

“She never does.” the Magos agreed.

***

Thirty minutes later, invisible clouds flooded the cooridors under mass assault, rising from the Underhive.

Tens of thousands of the most faithful, already hopped up on various cocktails of combat drugs, and used to the difficulties of the Underhive making it hard to breathe… hardly noticed another unpleasant scent joining the already potent mixture of reeks, stenches, blood, offal, incense and spit.

Also, they were all nearly deafened by their own screams and war-chants.

But the Preachers among them, swinging around holy, drugged incense, had better gear. They had gas masks.

They noticed when their congregations started slowing down, despite the fury driving them.

They saw them collapse, choke. In tens, hundreds, thousands…

Rows upon rows, corridor after corridor… was filled with the dead, choking on their own blood.

The Crusade meant to purge this filth, this heresy?

It was struck down not by valour, not blade nor bullet.

It died in the air. From the lack of it.

Then from one side came the Sanctuary Guard, giving mercy to those still suffering, hunting the Preachers who had doomed so many innocents.

From the other came the relentless march of the Legion, denied their duty to crush the hereteks by the very same.

Neither side had any mercy for the “holy” men caught in the middle.

***

While a large part of Pyrrha longed to descend into the depths and educate the Legion in person… Lady Nikos could not afford to do so, not with the latest news.

Instead she moved for the Inquisitorial fortress, entrusting the fate of Sanctuary to her students.

***

“What is it now?” Irea growled.

“Update from the scouts.”

“I’m up! I’m up!” Bouncy burst out, as she leapt to her feet from her “meditation”. She’d been napping and everyone knew it.

“No need.” the messenger relayed.

“No need?” Irea questioned, tapping her slate. The tech-head. The messenger was already here.

“The Legion has decided to clear the carpet of corpses first, Sir!” the middle aged militia member informed them.

“Why’d they do that?” Bouncy asked, pretending to be confounded. She had some ideas but…

“Of course you’d be clueless. Look.” Irea said, turning the slate to them.

“Assessment: Preventative Measure vs Second Conflagration Trap.”

“Hah!” Bouncy barked, bouncing on her toes. “They don’t know how Semblances work!”

“That too.” Their command hunk chimed in.

The strong, silent, but not really, and more embarrassedly irradiated fourth member gave a silent nod.

“Eh?” Bouncy encouraged the talk.

“While I’m not one to speculate if Mentor Goodbook could do it…” their leader began cautiously…

“He shouldn’t.” Irea said with certainty.

Both boys pointed at her in approval.

“But they don’t know that!” Bouncy shouted, giggling.

Her laughter drew a few dry chuckles out of Moab, a more genuine bit of relieved laughter out of their leader, and even made Irea smile.

It was a total success!

They needed a bit of time to catch a breather. With a day to recover, well, more like eight hours of sleep, a bit of gorging and eight hours of meditation, most Experts and Veterans could recover about 50% of their Aura.

Elites had it much harder. Some of them had come closer to Aura break than others, but despite being the one with most remaining? Vivar had also recovered the least. Not in total, but in comparison.

Moab, as the replacement for the Quitter had yet to take a single trial, but he had potential. Still, he could go from 10 to 90% in two days.

In that same time Vivar would be lucky to recover 10%.

“The Prof and the Mentors kept telling us: just because you have more, doesn’t mean you can spend more. Be ever more efficient.”

And Vivar hadn’t been. Not because he couldn’t be, but because as both Team Leader and the only full Elite present, he’d taken on the hardest bits, the most risks, to keep the rest from Aura Break and keep them fighting for longer.

Except now, Moab was recovering what he spent swiftly… and Vivar couldn’t do the same.

“Take your time you cold things, take all the time you need. We’ll be ready for you.” Erica Hatten, or Bouncy when with her team, thought.

While trying her best not to think how slaughtering so many, for so long, had made meditating and centering much harder, and thus thanked her recovery rate since she couldn’t effectively meditate.

She couldn’t even get rid of all the blood and be clean, let alone properly “enter a state of serenity.”

Nor was she the only Huntress facing the same problem.

Not that Irea would ever admit it, but they could all access their armour’s internals. And with Dust production up and running?

They had Aura meters on a squad level.

Irea wasn’t recovering as quickly as she used to, either.

None of them were.

Except Moab, but Moab was a jerk.

Deadly with his short swords, but a real jerk.

Really, who else but a jerk would be comforted by the smell of blood?

***

After the brawl… and the beating that followed once they reached the first hidden location, the recovery team was packed back up for transport up-hive.

Which was taking a while. It couldn’t be that all this mess the Legion was causing was creating disturbances and chaos in the Hive, could it?

“How is a bunch of Inquisitorial agents to go about their business kidnapping, I mean arresting people in this mess?”

Gideon was grinning, but then, he’d been grinning all along. Even when he was getting his face punched in.

So it was quite normal for him to be grinning… and that it showed off his mostly unbroken teeth was a mere coincidence.

That he kept running his tongue over one tooth in particular was not, and his teammates knew it.

Every deniable team had their own little rituals and customs. His tooth was one of them.

See, he’d arranged, with approval from the Lady, to have just the tiniest bit of Dust added to his tooth when he got it fixed. Dust made by the Prof herself. So to feel his tooth ever so slightly pull and twitch?

“Oh, you sorry lot should have let us go when you had the chance.”

***

Their first warning should have been the blackout. But with the Mechanicus in turmoil, and these still being the floors of the lower Hive, it wasn’t exactly an exceptional event.

The volume of the entire crowd shifting, as somewhere in the distance, heavy weapons opened up was the real warning… but by then, it was too late.

The Acolyte overseeing transport never saw what hit them. Most of his men died on impact as a cargo track suddenly rammed into their vehicle, and the few lucky enough to survive it, died right after. To stubbers and flamers, after getting rammed by another truck. He managed to get to his feet in time to see how the crash had broken both trucks and seriously damaged the transport. And how a bunch of menials were attacking their escorts, while something kept cutting them down from afar.

By then, his well-honed instincts had already sent him into a stumbling run, seeking cover.

He never made it to any.

It all looked like gangers attacking another truck, the fight then escalating as another Hiver gang seized the chance to contest the prize, with the prisoner transport caught in the middle due to bad luck.

It was anything but, and the Inquisitor would know it. Proving the same to his peer’s satisfaction was another matter. There was no strange power. No red hair or armour. No rumours or any sign anything special had happened. Just a small riot. These things happen, and people get caught up and die in them all the time.

Apart from the missing prisoners, nothing linked Lady Nikos to it at all.

There was just an unknown sharpshooter and a bunch of menials and gangers.

Or so every testimony recovered in the aftermath would say.

Not that the Inquisition got nothing out of the whole affair, the Fabricator Locum having been dispatched separately, by a more secure route, with better escorts.

It gave them leverage, for House Nikos had claimed him a guest. If they could not produce him…

***

It took Pyrrha a depressingly long time to find and rescue her people. Not that she wasn’t busy in the meantime. While Pyrrha was quietly sweeping the Hive, Lady Nikos had given the go ahead for the counter assault.

Every Mechanicus on their side was rallying against the Legion… and a red streak appeared where ever it was most needed. Where the Grandmaster went, the Legion did not break. It shattered.

But despite her unreal speed, the hive was ever so very large and sprawling. And even half a Legion had thousands of heavily armed and armoured bodies to hunt down. Spread out all over as they were in each manufactorum and temple of knowledge?

That hunt required significant time.

***

They’d been given a full day of rest, as the guard skirmished with the forward scouts of the Legion. But they were coming now, and this time? This time, the young blood was staying back.

Hefting his hammer and his multi-laser, His Fury, Urdal Goodbook went to war.

This time, there would be no tricks and no innocents led astray.

Just the Skitarii Legion, and his duty to break them.

***

“What do you mean, they can’t come in? They helped me, helped us. So we help them! That’s what the Lady teaches!”

“Sorry, Huntress, I’m, I’ll check!” the militia woman fled.

Kiki growled, wanting to cut her down with her Claw. But no, the stupid militia woman didn’t deserve that.

“Nor do my new friends deserve to be stared at like they’re monsters.” she muttered, the Magos hung over her shoulders.

They needed to open up. The sooner she delivered this guest, the faster she could re-join the others and start killing bad metal men. Which was her fourth favourite thing to do.

“Maybe if I kill a lot of them, I’ll get extra points for the next Elite team.” she kept talking to herself.

The soft clicks of the mutants behind her forming an eerie backdrop to the almost felinid cat Faunus, that made even the militia officer called over hesitate.

The injured Sanctuary Guard summoned after however knew the drill: question every individual, put them in quarantine, detain them until a qualified Huntsman can clear them.

Thought he’d shared with Kiki that he’d be surprised if half the mutants survived that check. Or even a third.

Kiki didn’t care what he thought, or what the odds were supposed to be. They helped, so they’d get help.

Simple as that.

It was what the Lady would have ordered, if she was here.

***

“What took you so long!?”

“I was busy on a secret mission!” Kiki screamed back, as she fell in with her team.

“You always say that!”

“But it’s true!”

“You always say that too!”

“I hate you guys!”

“Love you too, kitten!”

“I’m not a kitten, I’m a Huntress! We’ve all graduated!”

“You’re still ~my kitten~!”

“How many times do I have to tell you, I’m not interested!”

“At least one more!”

Kiki hated her team, almost as much as she’d come to depend on them. She’d miss Team COKE once she switched to the Elite track. Who’d be around to slap some sense into them then?

“I need to find a replacement slapper.”

“Less talking more killing! Team COKE, move out!”

Long distance jumps were a pain. Flickering up close? Not so much.

And boy, were these metal men not equipped to fight in the cramped confines of the Underhive.

Their machine men did more with their flamers, than the metal men did with all their fancy weapons.

Kiki didn’t know why they were all moving in bite sized groups, but it made hit and run tactics very effective.

***

The reason why the Legion did not try to force any one crossing was two floors above team COKE and a couple of hallways over.

His students had learned to respect his hammer.

But his original team?

They feared his fire. And las weapons?

They were, if looked at from the right perspective, the fiery fury of the common man of the Imperium made manifest.

How many Imperial Guard units had fought, venerable lasgun in hand?

Most of them.

So was it any wonder then, that with a lot of faith and practice, Goodbrook had learned to add just a little bit extra to his multi-laser bursts?

Sure, he was going through his power packs the way team COKE went through sweets, but they’d been building up a supply of those power packs for just such an occasion.

Several Guards accompanied the couple of supply officers that were trying to keep up with him.

Well, more like picking up after him, and making sure reloads were never far.

He was racing around like a mad man, but at least this time, he was killing soldiers, not innocents.

His heart and soul had both balked at slaughtering such misguided, misled innocents.

But now, he could do what he’d sworn to do: defend Sanctuary. In his wake, the scorched and melted remains were all that lingered. Only at the beginning had the Legion dared properly concentrate.

It was just a chance for Urdal Goodbook to fire His Fury full-auto.

After all, with every one of his enemies so pressed together… he couldn’t miss, and every hit caused his flames to rise, jump from one enemy to the next.

Not that Urdal wasn’t being absolutely hammered by deadly return fire.

It was just… he could take it.

They couldn’t.

***

Above and below, the Legion fought.

The Legion died.

Bit by bit, clash by clash, in groups large and small… it died.

There was no retreat, and no surrender.

It would take three days of constant fighting to finally break their back, and more than a week to catch and end every last straggler.

Or at least those that didn’t outright disappear, through the work of many hands.

Long before then, as the fighting finally calmed, “Lady” Pyrrha Nikos was summoned to give account before the Planetary Governor and his Court.

It would be… quite the event.