40K - Session 14

A House Divided




Act 2 - The Shadow of the Abyss




Chapter 3 - What Sleeps Below




Part 1 - The Secret of Cyrix




For three weeks the party waited for word on the fate of their comrade while the fleet of Roa Mahaka glided silently among the vast field of ruin named "The Battleground."  Those few crew members brave enough to speak to the party of the matter whispered of a battle between two brothers in the distant past, when the gates to the Koronus Expanse first opened, to determine the fate of their house and its vast trading fortune.  They had destroyed each other in the end, some said; others, however, insisted that they had fallen to a curse over this region of space that had turned allies upon one another for millennia uncounted.  Deep in the heart of the debris field, they related in hushed tones, Imperial wreckage mixed with that of a dozen other races who had fought to the death over salvage, pride, and the influence of dark powers.  Mahaka obviously put little stock in such rumors, as she kept her fleet hidden within darkened hulks of steel that glittered faintly as they twisted listlessly.  The Battleground was the primary Station of Passage in the Expanse for those who wished to remain unseen, and Mahaka valued her privacy.  The hulks would further insulate her fleet from prying auspex scans, complementing the sophisticated stealth systems her Cobra destroyers employed.  The weeks of rest and medical attention after their harrowing on the surface of Orion 9 had done wonders for the party's physical health, but little for their emotional wounds.  Marius finally summoned them down to the command center, and they hurried quite unknowingly through the halls in anticipation of any word on their friend's status.


Awaiting them in the briefing chamber, much to their relief, was Wu-10.  If his grievous injuries bothered him, he did not show it.  In fact, the injuries he had sustained had necessitated an even greater degree of conversion to augmetics than he had ever dreamed of accomplishing.  With over half of his original body being replaced he had finally crossed the Crux Mechanicus, a holy event in the life of any true devotee of the Omnissiah.  This position had earned him the title of Alpha among his fellow Skitarii (the equivalent of Captain or Major in the Imperial Guard), and had earned him access to higher quality augmetics.  He towered at close to seven feet now, and the armor plating that sheathed his body was ornately engraved with numerical sequences and algorithms considered blessed by the Adeptus Mechanicus.  Additionally, he held beside him a symbol of his new office.  A forbidding maul whose ornate head head crackled with residual electricity, set around a powerful single-shot bolter mounted to the end of the maul's shaft. Their joy however, was muted somewhat by the cyborg's laconic reaction to their happiness.  While he was proud of his new rank, it had detached him even further from his human emotions.  He insisted that he bore no ill will for the choice his comrades had made on his behalf, but his atonal reassurances did little to assuage the guilt that several of his friends held over his fate.

Marius waited patiently for the reunion to conclude before summoning them to the holo-projector in the center of the briefing chamber.  He congratulated the party on having successfully returned from Orion 9 despite the harrowing situations they encountered there.  He passed on the compliments of Roa Mahaka and Lady Aranea, but regretted to inform them the two ladies had been forced to take their leave of the fleet and return to Port Wander.  While he was unable to provide them with details, he alluded to some pressing matter discovered by one of the teams he had left there to observe and report any news relating to their ultimate goals in this isolated sector of space.  While the party had rested, Marius had put his finest interrogators to work on the intransigent Singh.  Unfortunately the man's conditioning had proven too formidable for standard methods, and his status as a blank made the use of Warp compulsion impossible.  In the end, he had relented to Singh's request.  Gruesome scenes flickered up on the holo-projector, displaying the horrific fate each of the other soldier's rescued from Orion 9 faced when Singh was finally set loose upon them.  Marius insisted that they watch, to ensure that no crucial information could be gleaned amid the terrified screams as the murderous man set about his work.  After only a few moments Cassius pointedly left the briefing chamber, refusing to reduce himself to a common voyeur despite Marius' authority.  When it was finally finished Singh turned towards a figure off the side of the holo and told them that once they have the box his captain hid that they must travel to a jungle world orbiting one of the twin stars of The Serpent's Cradle, on the western edge of Winterscale's Domain.  Once there, they must seek out an Eldar corsair known as Il'Ishanti.  When the interrogator asked how and why, Singh would only shrug, and the thunderous report of a bolt pistol ended both the holo projection and Singh in the same instant.


While the group took their seats Marius began a lengthy explanation of how his agents had used the intelligence obtained from the prisoners to piece together the location where Captain Merket had hastily exited the Warp and fired the torpedo containing the mysterious box onto the world's surface.  There was little known about the planet and its surrounding star system, other than that it had been classified as a Death World due to "bizzare weather phenomena" and a "toxic atmosphere."  It had been named Cyrix, though how, why, and by whom had been redacted from official Imperial records.  In fact, the majority of the planet's geo-auspex and historical data seemed to have been irrevocably purged from all available sources that Marius could find.  Regardless, with the testimony of the prisoners and the ship's navigational logs from the Hierophant he was convinced that the group could locate and retrieve the mysterious cargo.  He was tasking one of the Cobra destroyers, the Akan, as their escort for the mission.  Additionally, they would have to make do without the assistance of their psyker.  Manus' recent difficulty controlling his powers had given Mahaka cause for concern, and she had insisted that he endure a cycle of reconditioning by her astropaths before placing him back into the field.  He would be aboard the Akan, but would be unavailable to join them planet side until the astropaths were convinced that he was in control of himself.  He gave the party three days to ready themselves and make equipment requisitions before the Akan made the jump to Cyrix.


With preparations complete the Akan slid silently out of the detritus that concealed the fleet and fired her engines for the edge of the system, engaging her Warp drives and sliding between the folds of reality.  As before, and every jump since their incident with Shen returning from the Hermitage, the voyage through the Immaterium was ominously smooth.  Even the captain of the Akan commented to them over the vox that they had made better time than he had ever imagined possible.  Within 2 days they were in high orbit above Cyrix, staring in amazement at the vid feeds from the planet.  It was a small world, roughly the size of Mars.  Atmospheric scans had shown high temperatures at 100 Celcius, with a predominant content of corrosive chlorine.  Even more remarkable were the four identical hurricanes which covered the entirety of the planet's surface.  They spun in an impossibly synchronized direction and speed, leaving only four small windows at their 100 kilometer diameter eyes which allowed for limited access onto the surface which perfectly matched the planet's equator.  The winds blew highly concentrated and super-heated chlorine at precise speeds of 100 kmh, leaving the surface of the world a scoured.  Even a Baneblade would be stripped and eroded under such conditions in the passing of a few storms.  What little could be gleaned of the surface itself was a mass of resonant chambers and tunnels.  Whether by the impact of the ferocious winds, or some other oddity, the planet's crust was riddled with gigantic caverns and tunnel systems, Grim noted that it was more akin to a layer of fossilized coral than it was to bedrock.  The one good bit of news was that in the massive eyes of the hurricanes conditions were more amenable to short-term survival, with temperatures of a balmy 50 Celcius and minimal winds.  Short surface exposure could be mitigated with the use of sealed bodysuits and travel inside of their Taurox, though nothing would save them if they were caught by the storms.


Utilizing the Gypsy's advanced sensor systems in conjunction with the navigational logs off of the Hierophant the team was able to deduce in a few short hours the rough location of the torpedo impact.  It wasn't precise, however, as the storms interfered with even the most advanced techniques applied.  Fortunately, they had much better luck locating the source of the Adeptus Mechanicus transmission.  It was coming from beneath the ruined remains of a landing facility near the torpedo's suspected strike point, but there was a problem.  The entire surface of the planet for two square kilometers around the facility had been bombarded from orbit.  No structure was left standing, yet the signal was still broadcasting from somewhere beneath the ruins.  It was coded at high level, such that only an Arch-Magos from Holy Mars itself would have had the requisite ciphers to transcribe its content.  Grim, however, was intrigued by the possibility that some portion of the structure remained intact beneath the surface.  He spent an hour sifting through his internal data banks, comparing standard facility blueprints against the outlines of the rubble.  He was convinced, after striking upon a particular design heavily utilized for controlled research stations, that the main body of the station had somehow survived the bombardment.  And after comparing this layout to the topography surrounding the area he deduced that a nearby cavern system would likely bring them close to where the main elevator shaft would have run down from the landing structures.  They debated the merits of attempting to access the facility before going after the torpedo, given that the latter was their primary mission from Roa Mahaka, but ultimately decided that they would be best served investigating the Mechanicus signal first.  If nothing else the cavern adjacent to the elevator would give them sufficient space to shelter between runs as they searched for the torpedo.

The captain of the Akan departed the planet, headed for the auspex cover of an asteroid field cinched around the inner third of the system, while the Saturnine Gypsy remained in orbit running silent.  The team made their last minute preparations and began their descent aboard the Queen of Diamonds, dropping down the hundred kilometer tunnel of one hurricane's eye toward the planet's surface as the maelstrom churned around them.  Thanks to Grim's calculations, and Cassius' intrepid piloting, they arrived at the surface just as the eye was passing over the ruins of the facility.  Even after decades of scouring by high speed wind and heated chlorine the jagged marks of capital ship weaponry were still plainly evident.  When the Mechanicus had attempted to destroy this site, they had only stopped short of firing cyclonic torpedos.  As they followed the storm's passage they soon noted the ravine they expected to find their cavern in, it was three miles long and half a mile deep, with numerous caverns yawning from its sides.  Cass nosed the Queen inside, the edges of his ship's wings less than a meter from the oddly smooth stone at times.  It led into the rock for close to half of a mile before the bottom dropped away to reveal that the rest of the cave system.  He had to blink as his auspex scanners read back what was waiting on the floor of the cavern.  Six shuttles, all parked neatly in a row, next to crates of mining equipment.  His comrades geared up for trouble as he shut off his external lighting and glided down as silently as he could manage to the farthest end of the cave floor.

As they sealed their suits and disembarked, a palpable unease settled over them all.  They cast high intensity lights from their guns about the cave, playing their beams across the hulls of the shuttles and the neatly stacked equipment.  It had all been here for a long time, a fact which became doubly evident when they approached the shuttles.  Their systems were dead, and the trace chlorine in the atmosphere they had been exposed to had left them little more than rusted shells in the rough approximate shape of the vessels they once were.  Merrick noted, with guarded caution, the limp form of a body on the cavern floor.  It lay prone and curled halfway into a ball a hundred feet from the first shuttle.  Aurora rolled the body over, noting that it was wearing a standard suit of armor in line with typical IG design, which had a wide rent through the right breastplate and a strange tear-drop shaped puncture to the left.  The skeleton inside was so frail from exposure to the elements that it began to crumble just from the pressure of being rolled.  Looking back in a line from the shuttle and the body they saw where it had come from, nestled between the crates was a bore hole.  It was 8 feet in diameter, had smooth sides indicative of industrial laser drilling, and ran down at a precise angle to intersect with the elevator shaft Grim had predicted they would find.  They were not the first people to discover the Ad Mech signal. though this first group had not survived their foray


Descending the tunnel their guard was high, and their suspicion only deepened when they found another body halfway down the passage's length.  Unlike the other body, this one wore no tactical equipment.  It had a utility harness with various tools, notably a high power welding torch.  This was one of the miners that had likely constructed the tunnel.  They pressed on and finally reached the terminus of the mine shaft, where it emptied into a large hangar which was at the base of the elevator shaft that once accessed the landing pad on the planet's surface.  There were still a row of motion activated sodium work lights rigged along the floor, and they flickered to life sluggishly as the team spread out and took stock of what they found.  It was roughly a hundred meters long, 50 meters wide, and 50 meters tall.  It was solidly built and reinforced, likely the reason that it survived the orbital bombardment.  At the far end of the hangar were two massive blast doors illuminated by the lights, one each of them were emblazoned the cog and skull of the Adeptus Mechanicus.  Along each side of the hangar, stacked almost to the ceiling, were massive shipping crates.  Their walls were almost a meter thick of plasteel, with small holes uniformly dotting their exterior.  The shipping identifiers logged them as having originated from the Segmentum Ultima around M40.800, almost two hundred years before. 

As they approached the doors they noted that they had been corroded so heavily on their edges that they were effectively welded shut.  An odd humming seemed to surround them, imperceptible to all but augmented ears, it nonetheless filled them with dread.  The unfortunate exploration team before them had apparently discovered the same, and bored a 5 foot access hole through one of the doors.  They had, oddly, hastily welded sheets of steel roughly back over it.  Grim attempted accessing the doors external terminal pad, but was locked out for lack of clearance.  He did note, though, that it was an access code specifying identification from a Genetor magos, a sub-sect of the Ad Mech whose specialty was genetics and biological warfare.  Aurora suddenly startled, the pieces clicking into place.  The shipping crates, the dates, and Segmentum, the Genetors, and the strange wounds on the bodies.  There had been Tyranids in those crates!  And this facility had likely been dedicated to their study when they first appeared in the galaxy.  The sudden realization of what likely waited for them behind the doors brought the party alert and on guard, and they quickly made their way back up the tunnel to the shuttle.  They had already missed their window to depart, and would have to wait for another four hours for the storm to pass before they could leave.  They nervously set a guard on the tunnel mouth, and waited.  While they did, Grim turned his attention to the coded message still broadcasting from the depths.  He bolted to his feet after several hours of meditation on decoding the message, blurting at Wu-10 in techna linguis to follow him as he set a determined pace forward towards the tunnel.  When his friends demanded to know what he had found he played them the decoded message.

"This is Magos Aurelian-913 of the Genetors, this facility is compromised, and attempts at orbital bombardment have failed.  It is of highest priority that its destruction be assured in the name of the Omnissiah.  All adherents of the Machine Cult and servants of the Imperium are bound by the Treaty of Mars to see this done, lest the evil here infect the galaxy further."

Scrambling to keep pace with their Ad Mech compatriots, filled as they were with zeal at such a dire message evoking the name of their god, the rest of the party felt their hearts sink as they made their way back down to the hangar.  Once inside Grim set about detaching the welded cover with his dendrite cutter while the party loaded weapons and prepared themselves.  When the hole was cleared they stepped through one at at a time, reliant on (if not expecting) their weapon's tactical lights to reveal some snarling horror to them.  What they found in that was a grave, wreathed in shadows and silence.  A massive hall led into the complex from the blast doors, with smaller blast doors leading into adjacent laboratories and factorum facilities.  In the center of the cavernous space stood the towering forms of two Imperial Knights, slumped on their chassis and surrounded waist deep in a mass of detritus and bones.  Their chest cavities had been torn open, the awful fates of their pilots unknown but surely grim.  Grim accessed a cogitator terminal in the hall, easily obtaining secure access more readily once inside the defensive intrusion counter-measures that secured the access points on the facility's exterior.  He brought a small diagram of the facility up, and plotted a route to where the looped distress signal was broadcasting.  A secondary generator beneath the facility's main reactors, underneath the nuclear core housing in an adjacent room.

As they crept through the silent facility their creeping sense of unease only grew, the low humming doing nothing to abate their dread.  The shadows seemed deeper, more menacing.  Every errant step which nudged the dry remains of bone or claw strewn across the floor echoed like a gunshot.  Soon, as they entered the reactor housing, they were all sure they felt unseen eyes following them.  As he walked, Grim used his subroutines to analyze the history of the facility.  The secondary generator was actually the first reactor built for the facility, supplying power to the construction crews as they built and activated the different sections of the facility and brought the main reactors on-line.  It was still functional, and its been power had been routed to keep the distress signal on an indefinite loop.  It was accessed from a utility elevator on the first floor.  The three massive reactors were each housed in dome of reinforced concrete, and close to three stories tall.  The center one  was ripped open, from the outside, but it's safety measures had kicked in and shunted the core before the radiation proved a long term hazard.  The other cores were cold, but there was no way they could be brought back to life without weeks of work and a dozen tech-priests.  If he was going to get access to the facility's systems, his only hope was that the power in the secondary unit could be re-routed to feed other sections.

They descended the utility ladder beside the elevator as Vadik kept guard at the top, finding two steel access doors barring them from the housing unit for the secondary reactor.  They had been welded shut, apparently from within, and had long gouges covering them.  As Grim and Wu-10 set to prying to the doors open, Vadik caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye.  Shouldering his rifle he prepared himself, while somewhere out in the gloom a clatter of scattering debris crystallized the threat.  He voxed a warning to his compatriots below, who redoubled their efforts on the doors, as he scanned rapidly for threats.  Suddenly, three rounds from some type of weapon hissed out from the darkness, smacking into the concrete wall of the elevator shaft behind him.  At the base, Aurora watched in horror as three small squirming things clattered onto the floor.  She stomped on them as Cassius gunned his new jump-pack up to the top of the shaft to support Vadik.  He saw multiple silhouettes clinging to the closest reactor housing, which shrank back into the gloom before he could bear down on them.  Vadik slid down the ladder as Cassius reduced his lift and drifted back to the ground floor, having been voxed that the doors were open.  The party stumbled inside and hastily resealed the doors behind them, their eyes adjusting quickly to the dim light within the secondary reactor unit.  Across the wide room, six figures knelt in prayer around a seventh on a platform, himself prostrate before the cogitator he had configured to broadcast the distress signal.

They had found Aurelian-913, he had died using his dendrite to write out the story of the facility's fall in binary across the smooth concrete of the floor using his dendrite.  After looping the distress signal, he and his compatriots had terminated their own life support systems.  Grim translated as quickly as he could, annoyed at the slow way that normal speech delayed his transcription.  The Tyranids had been brought here for study in the first tendril of Hive Fleet Behemoth reached into the galaxy and consumed everything in their path.  The experiments on Cyrix had been focused on identifying genetic weaknesses that could be exploited by adapting existing biological weapons, the adaptability of the organisms to different stimuli and environments, and even on attempts at imposing control through surgical implantation.  Nothing had proven successful, and eventually a momentary lapse in security had led to the creatures burrowing out from their cells.  In the end, the facility was locked down and then bombarded from orbit to contain the threat.  Cyrix had been chosen because the facility's original intent had been to study strange xenos artifacts on the surface believed to be the cause of the strange weather patterns. It's crust was riddled with some sort of gigantic alien worms, who ravenously devoured anything they came across.  The strange humming they had detected in the facility was, in fact, auditory speakers broadcasting at a sound range which drove the worms away.  If they could reach the primary broadcast center, beneath the housing units for the Tyranids, they could shut off the signal.  The worms would destroy the facility, and any escaping Tyranids would be scoured clean in the chlorine storms on the surface.  Now they just had to get to the broadcast center, and to do that they would have to get through the things which were even now clawing at the doors...