The breach swallowed them.
The corridor beyond was narrow and industrial, walls layered with conduit bundles and prayer-inscribed plating. Emergency lumens flickered overhead, casting long, broken shadows that shifted with every step. The air smelled of burned insulation and old machine oil.
Cătălin moved first, weapon low, shoulder brushing the wall. Every sound echoed too loudly here—armor joints, breath through filters, the faint crackle of damaged power lines.
Daniel covered the rear, heavy bolter angled down the corridor. "This wasn't looted," he murmured. "Someone meant to come through here."
They advanced another ten meters.
Something scraped ahead.
Cătălin froze and raised a fist.
From a side passage, an ork lunged—smaller than a boy, skin scarred and eyes wild, clutching a jagged blade. It didn't even have time to scream. Cătălin stepped in and struck once, hard and precise, dropping it against the wall.
The noise carried.
Boots thudded. Voices barked in guttural tones.
"More," Daniel said.
They came in ones and twos at first, emerging from maintenance shafts and side hatches—straggler orks, armed poorly but desperate. The corridor filled with muzzle flashes and ricochets. Daniel fired short, controlled bursts, the bolter's roar contained by the narrow space. Cătălin pressed forward, forcing the fight closer where ork numbers meant nothing.
An ork hurled a crude grenade down the passage.
"Down!" Daniel shouted.
The blast shook the corridor, tearing cables loose and plunging the lights into darkness. Emergency red lumens snapped on a second later.
Too late for the orks.
Cătălin surged through the smoke, a dark shape in red light. The fight collapsed into seconds—close, brutal, efficient. When it ended, only the hum of damaged systems remained.
They paused, listening.
No more movement.
Far ahead, deeper in the complex, something thumped—not a footstep, not machinery, but a distant internal pressure release. Old systems reacting to intrusion.
Daniel glanced forward. "That sounded… deep."
Cătălin nodded. "We're close to something important."
They resumed their advance.
The corridor began to widen, ceilings rising, walls giving way to reinforced bulkheads marked with warning sigils and access codes burned away by explosives. Whatever had come through here before them hadn't been orks—and had known exactly where to go.
At the far end, a heavy internal door stood half-open, bent inward.
Beyond it, darkness waited.
Cătălin stopped at the threshold, chainsword steady, senses sharp.
"Contact likely," Daniel said quietly.
Cătălin nodded—and stepped through.