The lightning claw went through the metallic skin like it was not there.
The subject had been modified to be difficult: the skin had hardened to something approaching a light alloy in texture, dense enough to turn standard rounds, and the pain receptors had been suppressed or overridden enough that wounds which should have stopped a person were being processed as inconveniences. None of that mattered to a weapon with a disintegration force field active on its edge. Tyberos drove the claw in and the other one came across in the same motion, and what had been one of Hydra's secret weapons became pieces of it distributed across the immediate area.
He shook his helmet, trying to clear the eyepiece of what had accumulated on the lens.
The fortress interior was not recognisable as a building anymore. Every horizontal surface had been covered by the attrition of the last hour. The Astartes guards were working through a cluster of superpowered subjects near a bank of burning Hydra vehicles: rapid tissue regeneration on one, full body metalisation on another, and in the middle of both a third whose magnetic field manipulation had gotten entirely out of control and was now generating a spinning storm of metal fragments that was causing as much damage to the Hydra soldiers caught in its radius as to anyone else. The guards had learned to work around the edges of it, letting the storm do their work for them while they handled the others.
The Warscythe came through the storm from a low angle, spinning in Nolan's hands, and split the magnetic field user from hip to shoulder in one pass. An Astartes guard stepped in immediately behind the strike and his boot came down on what remained, and the metal fragment storm lost its coherence and clattered across the floor in a hundred separate pieces.
Thor and Tony came through the fortress's upper apertures at roughly the same moment, the shock beams and the thunder working the remaining subjects in the upper corridors, and the engagement noise shifted down in intensity as the numbers shifted.
Nolan drove the power armour to Tyberos's side and looked across the interior.
"Doom's forces are through the rear. Hydra released these subjects because their command structure is breaking down: when you stop having tactical options, you reach for whatever you have left, regardless of whether it can be controlled." He glanced at a subject still moving in the far corner, one of the guards moving toward it. "I do not expect anything that significantly exceeds what we have already seen. Strucker cannot come back from this."
"These psykers operate on instinct rather than intent." Tyberos's voice was lower than usual, directed at Nolan rather than the wider space. "In our home territory, that kind of uncontrolled power use would be a serious warning sign. Chaos follows where the Warp is disturbed. A fast resolution is the correct approach."
"Agreed."
David came back from the battlefield's edge with something in its hand. Nolan saw the metal collars before he could ask: several of them, silver-cased, marked with the evidence of where they had come from.
"My lord. These are Hydra's control devices for the subjects. Their function is suppression: inhibiting the triggering of the power, keeping the subject in a state where they can be directed rather than merely contained." David paused. "The subjects themselves, based on the physical profiles I have assessed: these were children, not long ago. The trafficking acquisitions that Strucker's faction was running. This is where the missing children went."
The inside of the helmet was quiet for a moment.
Nolan thought about the investigation records. The numbers David had compiled. The column in the data that had read as an accounting line and was actually something else entirely.
"There is nothing left to say about it now," he said. "Let Hydra's destruction and Strucker's death be what we offer them."
He picked up the Warscythe.
Behind him, Tyberos spoke to David in the flat and entirely serious tone of a man stating a fact that he considers self-evident.
"For the majority of uncontrolled psykers, granting death is an act of mercy. It is for their own good as much as anyone else's."
He activated the Terminator and followed Nolan back into the fighting.
The last of the superpower subjects fell to Nolan's Warscythe some minutes later, a regenerator who had taken a significant amount of punishment before the blade found the angle that finished it. He stood over the body and watched it go still. The body was adult-sized now. It had not started that way.
He did not explain any of this to Tony or Thor. They were dealing with their own section of the fortress, and there was nothing they needed to know right now that would help them do it.
The explosion sound from deeper in the fortress reminded everyone that the structure still had more interior to account for.
Nolan reorganised without stopping. They had linked up with Doom's element coming in from the rear, the dark green cape visible above the Defence Force soldiers moving through the corridors, and Doom was already moving forward when he saw Nolan and immediately changed course.
"Lord Primarch." He came in fast, the words precise. "An elite Hydra team, escorted by additional superpower subjects, has descended to the underground level of the fortress. The man in the centre of the escort matches Baron Strucker's description. I was delayed by subjects I could not immediately disengage from, and the corridor teams I sent after them have gone silent. The underground level is not mapped."
"We know where the target is. That is enough."
Nolan turned. The orders came out clean and fast.
"Doom: take the Intelligent Control Corps, the Defence Force, and the Astartes vanguard and clear everything remaining in this fortress. Every Hydra soldier. Leave no one."
"Thor, Tony: hold the upper fortress. Any superpower subjects that try to break through the perimeter, you contain them. We cannot have loose variables in the city."
"Tyberos and I will go underground and deal with Strucker."
Agreements from every direction. Doom was already turning. Tony's faceplate dropped. Thor tightened his grip on Mjolnir in the way he always did when he was about to move somewhere with intent.
Nolan activated the power armour and stepped toward the corridor that led down.
Tyberos moved up beside him, both lightning claws live, the azure disintegration fields casting faint moving light on the walls. David went ahead of them both, its eyes pulsing as it tracked through the available sensor feeds, already building the picture of what waited below.
The three of them went down into the dark.
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