The Ten Rings moved through the gamma-saturated air in tight arcs, each one catching the light from the contamination itself, and punched through the nearest mutant gamma monster in sequence. The creature came apart at several points simultaneously and went down.
Nolan and the two Raven Guard champions had reached the nuclear plant's main entrance. The augur systems in the Starfire Glory were flagging the ambient radiation levels in terms that were becoming difficult to read past without noticing: the gamma concentration in this area was well beyond what the instruments had been designed to treat as a normal operating range.
The heavy protective door at the entrance had been a serious piece of engineering. Thick steel, reinforced, with the kind of locking hardware that was built to contain things rather than keep people out. It was open. Whatever force had pushed it open from the inside had done so at a speed that had bent the hinges rather than opening them normally, and the door stood at an angle that suggested it would not be closing again without significant repair.
The mutant gamma monsters that had been wandering in the area found the open door the same way they found everything: by instinct, and without intelligence. They came from within a kilometer's radius and they came in numbers.
The two champions opened up with their boltguns. Explosive rounds cut through the first wave and the second, each detonation producing overlapping fragmentation patterns that the champions were placing with the methodical efficiency of warriors who had been doing this exact kind of work long enough that it required very little conscious thought. Nolan pulled the Heart of the Furnace from its mounting at the hip of the Starfire Glory and used plasma to address the energy-type mutant gamma monsters whose biology made bolt rounds significantly less effective: the plasma simply consumed them in a way that kinetic explosive rounds did not.
The entrance was eventually quiet, or as quiet as a space that was covered in bolt-detonation residue and the remains of a significant number of mutant gamma monsters could be.
The champions swapped magazines. The Heart of the Furnace was venting heat.
Nolan stepped over the threshold and deeper into the entrance corridor.
David's voice arrived on the vox before he had taken ten steps.
"My lord. Thor successfully established direct contact with the Soviet mutant command structure. The Inquisition has been granted formal operational authority to act within the contamination zone."
"Understood. What else?"
"The mutant official forces are mobilizing rescue assets, but the gamma radiation's effect on mutant biology is severe enough that any rescue operation relying on mutants as the primary workforce will sustain heavy losses. Separately, their command authority revealed certain classified information to Thor regarding the Chernobyl facility."
"Tell me."
"The underground prison has been using the power plant's output to maintain containment on its high-priority inmates. The most dangerous detainee was classified by the Soviet mutant system as Alpha-level. His designation is A Bomb. His real name is Rick Jones. He was captured several years ago after an uncontrolled incursion into Soviet territory, at significant cost to the forces sent to apprehend him." David paused. "According to data I extracted independently from available network sources, Rick Jones was a former colleague and close associate of Dr. Banner. The nature of his condition is almost certainly related to the same gamma event that produced the Hulk. What we are now dealing with is a Hulk-equivalent individual operating in a fully uncontrolled state, with no governing intelligence. I recommend treating him as equivalent to an Alpha-level psyker threat regardless of how the Soviet classification system was calibrated."
Nolan stopped walking.
He held up a fist. The champions halted behind him.
"David. Time to Helicarrier arrival over the zone?"
"Approximately thirty minutes. The White Scars combat team and two Knights are cleared and ready for teleport deployment to your coordinates on request."
"Tell them to accelerate. The longer Rick Jones operates without containment, the larger the contamination footprint becomes and the more of this country we lose."
He turned and moved back toward the entrance.
Two Astartes against a Hulk-level gamma entity in a narrow underground corridor was not a calculation that favored the Astartes. The geometry of the space worked entirely against them: no room to use the Ten Rings effectively, no angle for the Raven Guard to leverage their mobility, and nowhere for the Starfire Glory's kinetic storage to discharge that would not also bring the ceiling down. When the Knights and the White Scars arrived and the engagement could be moved to open ground, the situation changed.
He was three seconds from the entrance threshold when something in the Primarch's secondary senses registered the approach before any instrument confirmed it.
Heavy footsteps from deep in the passage. Large mass, significant speed, not coordinated movement but the charging movement of something that was using all of its size as a weapon. Nolan got his feet set and turned.
The creature that came out of the darkness was approximately five meters tall, brown-furred, and shaped like a bear in the same way that a Leman Russ tank is shaped like a wheeled vehicle: technically accurate but missing several relevant distinctions. The flesh proliferation had reached it the same way it had reached every flesh-type mutant in the facility, clusters of irregular growth across the body, but whatever this creature had been before the containment failure, it had apparently absorbed enough of everything around it to still be moving, still be aggressive, and still be entirely devoid of anything resembling rational thought. Its eyes were bleeding red light. It was coming at full speed and showed no sign of intending to slow down.
The champion closest to it had time to bring the boltgun muzzle up and draw the power sword from the backpack mount.
The bear paw hit him anyway. The energy field around the paw was red and hot and moved at a speed that the boltgun round, which was still traveling when contact was made, could not account for. The champion went backward hard, the Starfire Glory's augur registering the impact force as deeply unpleasant before the Terminator plate absorbed the kinetic transfer.
The second champion disappeared into shadow and reappeared at the creature's flank, lightning claws deploying from the gauntlet mounts, the disruption fields crackling blue as they drove into the creature's side. The claws went in. The creature absorbed them. The disruption field discharge that would have ended most organic opponents simply produced a sound like tearing and a visible reaction that was somewhere between pain and annoyance.
This was the Demon Bear, and the Demon Bear had been classified as an Alpha-level inmate of the underground prison for reasons that were now self-evident. The thing had consumed other mutants. It had absorbed their capabilities. Attacks that would have been lethal to any individual component of what it currently was were not lethal to the composite.
The second champion was knocked into the wall by the return paw strike, the impact driving him through the concrete and leaving a hole several meters across in its wake.
Nolan had the Dawnbringer in both hands.
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