Chapter 138: Photonic Purgation
The Tox-Mother stood atop a rusted shipping container, her pale skin illuminated by the sickly green glow of her chemical vats. She looked across the vault floor, her eyes narrowing as she performed a mental tally.
Kian Voss had barely a hundred and fifty men. She had over three thousand.
Even with their superior Grade-4 armor, the ratio was twenty-to-one. In the claustrophobic corridors of the Sump, sheer mass was a tactical absolute. The Mother was confident. She had the numbers to soak up every bullet the Voss Syndicate possessed and still have enough "meat" left to drown them in a tide of jagged blades.
"Advancement protocol: Total Saturation!" she shrieked through her vox-augmented throat. "Crush the upstarts! Feast on their marrow!"
The three thousand Chem-Wraiths, high on a lethal cocktail of hormones and Tox-Stimms, let out a collective, dissonant howl. They surged forward, a tidal wave of grey flesh and rusted iron, their footsteps sounding like thunder in the cavernous vault.
Kian Voss watched the wave approach through his turret's periscope. He didn't blink. He had spent three cycles preparing for this "Audit."
"Shiv! Engage the High-Lumen Luminators!" Kian barked over the vox.
Suddenly, five massive Astra-Pattern Searchlights—the kind used by Hive-Spire defenses to track high-altitude bombers—snapped to life.
The beams didn't just illuminate the tunnel; they were weapons of pure light. In the pitch-black environment of the Sump, the brilliance was absolute. The Chem-Wraiths, whose eyes were genetically adapted for the dark, were hit by a wall of photonic energy.
It was like staring directly into a solar flare.
Thousands of junkies shrieked in agony, clutching their bleeding eyes as their retinas were scorched. The charge faltered. The tide of meat came to a grinding, stumbling halt as three thousand men were rendered combat-blind in a single heartbeat.
"Now," Kian whispered, his hands gripping the spade-handles of the Wrathful Lumberer. "Let the Machine Spirit sing."
The Armored Rail-Destroyer roared.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!!!
From the rounded turret of the small train, the water-cooled 20mm barrel erupted with a tongue of blue-white fire. Simultaneously, the four other Lumberer-teams on the flanks unmasked their weapons.
Five heavy autocannons began raking the "Fatal Funnel" of the central conduit.
The 20mm rounds possessed a terrifying kinetic profile. At this range, a single slug didn't just stop a Wraith; it bored through ten men in a straight line before losing momentum. The charging horde was turned into a pressurized gallery of biological failure. Heads vanished; limbs were detached and sent spinning into the rafters; torsos were pulverized into a fine red mist that hung in the air, illuminated by the searchlights like a gory fog.
The first wave was deleted in seconds. The sheer volume of fire was so high that the ground was soon slick with a slurry of viscera and mud.
The four standard Lumberer-teams eventually paused, their gunners struggling to haul fresh seventy-five-round drums into the receivers. This gave the Hounds a momentary breath of air.
"PUSH!" the Tox-Mother screamed, her voice cracking with desperation. "THEIR BARRELS ARE RED! PUSH THROUGH THE DARK!"
She turned to her elite mercenaries—Spire-reject gunners with hand-tuned sniper rifles. "Kill those lights! Snuff the sun!!"
The mercenaries fanned out, finding elevated positions among the container stacks. They were professionals. Crack-crack-crack.
Half of the searchlights exploded in a shower of glass and sparks. With the blinding glare fading, the surviving Wraiths found their vision returning. They shrieked and resumed the charge, fueled by a suicidal combat-rage.
But the Wrathful Lumberer on the train didn't stop.
Kian's fingers had left the trigger-plates. The seventy-five-round belt had long since run dry. But the weapon's Furious Machine Spirit, fueled by the bottle of Sanctified Spirits Kian had poured into its receiver, was now in a state of self-sustaining homicidal ecstasy.
The gun kept firing.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!!!
The reticle stayed locked on the center of the horde. Kian watched in awe as the weapon ignored the laws of the Materium. No brass casings were ejected from the port; the weapon was consuming the very energy of the Emperor's blessing to manifest its own ordinance.
Kian walked the stream of fire from left to right. The "Unstoppable Cycle" trait was in full effect. He raked the container walls, the 20mm shells tearing through plasteel and flesh with equal ease. The front line of the Hounds wasn't just being shot—it was being erased.
"Ballistics check," Kian muttered, glancing at his HUD.
[Ballistics Proficiency: 150
→\to→ 172]
[Machine Spirit Resonance: 85%]
The four other gun teams finished their reloads and rejoined the fray. The combined fire-power was overwhelming. The three thousand Wraiths weren't even reaching the Voss perimeter; they were being turned into a carpet of red pulp three hundred meters out.
The Tox-Mother watched the slaughter with a face like death. She turned to her mercenary sharpshooters. "Target the armored warriors! Kill the men in black!!"
The mercenaries focused their fire on Kian's infantry. High-caliber solid slugs began to ping off the Grade-4 Carapace plates of the Voss Guard.
One recruit took a round to the shoulder, the impact spinning him around. He let out a shriek of pain as his HUD showed a "Blacked-out" limb.
"MEDIC!" Shiv roared over the vox.
But Kian had already trained them. The wounded man's teammate grabbed him by the collar and dragged him behind the armored hull of the Rail-Destroyer. He didn't check the wound; he simply pulled a Regen-Bolt from his pouch and slammed it into the wounded man's neck.
The "Liquid Miracle" surged. The recruit's breathing stabilized instantly. His bones began to knit with a wet crunch, and he was back on the line, leveling his autogun within seconds. In the Underhive, Kian's soldiers were effectively immortal as long as they had a stimm in their pockets.
Kian, sensing the mercenary snipers were becoming a nuisance, rotated the Destroyer's turret toward the high containers.
"You like long-range games?" Kian whispered, his hand hovering over the controls. "Let's see if your cover can handle an 'Unstoppable Cycle' of high-explosive 20mm."
The Wrathful Lumberer turned its glowing barrel toward the mercenaries, and the sermon of death resumed.
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