Chapter 172: The Swarm of the Plague-Flies
The PDF's "Counter-Audit" had been brutal. A standard regiment of three thousand men can liquidate a sector's worth of enemies before they are eventually consumed. Kian's convoy soon hit a logistical wall: the boulevard was choked with a mountain of the dead. Dead PDF regulars, scorched Chimeras, and hills of pulverized Poxwalkers.
The Pox-corpses were already entering the "Melting Phase." Their bodies were semi-liquefying, fusing with the marble tiles and plasteel walls. Yellow-green spores and jagged, fleshy ferns were sprouting from the ribs of the fallen, aggressively converting the environment into a Nurgle-garden.
Reno's survey crawler skidded to a halt near the lead truck. He voxed the Canon-Preceptor.
"Lord Canon, the road is dead. The wreckage is too dense for the haulers. We have to proceed on foot. The target is twenty kilometers ahead."
"So be it," the Canon's voice crackled over the vox. "We shall walk the Path of Thorns. Disembark!"
Kian hopped out, checking the charge on his heavy-barrel Lasgun. He turned to Reno. "My boys have the range. We take the vanguard. Your Guild enforcers cover the rear and watch the pipes. Deal?"
"Deal," Reno grunted, racking his shotgun.
Kian looked at the Canon. "Lord, the infection is airborne here. Don't let your priests get too close to the 'Laughing Ones.' We clear them from a distance."
The Canon nodded, turning to his forty Battle-Purgators. "Brothers! The warriors of the Throne shall clear the way! Let us provide the Spiritual Shield! Chant the Litany of Iron Will!!"
The clergy sheathed their swords and raised their brass censers and flickering candles. Sister Theresa stood in the center of the formation, clutching the golden Imperial Shrine.
As they began the rhythmic, bass-heavy chanting, a faint golden shimmer—the Imperial Resonance—bleed out from the group. It wasn't as vast as the ritual at the Well, but it created a hundred-meter "Sanctified Bubble" around the squad.
Kian watched a cluster of Warp-spores on a nearby wall shrivel and turn to grey ash the moment the Canon's aura touched them. The "Holy AoE" was effectively a biological cleaner. Kian didn't need to waste his Purgation Salve; the High Bishop's presence was enough to keep the "Nurgle-Debuff" at zero.
The squad began their march, moving with disciplined, rhythmic strides.
They covered ten kilometers, moving past the limit of the PDF's advance. Here, the corpses were fewer, but the living rot was thicker. Poxwalkers emerged from luxury hab-units, their vacant smiles glinting in the dark as they shambled toward the squad, murmuring blasphemies.
"Targets acquired! Burn them down!" Kian roared.
BIP-BIP-BIP-BIP!
The staccato shriek of twenty Lasguns filled the street. The Voss Guard moved in a rolling firing line. With near-zero recoil and Kian's Master Ballistics, it was a headshot gallery.
The Poxwalkers were bloated and slow. They were "Tier-1" trash mobs compared to Kian's elite gear. One by one, their heads erupted into steam and scorched bone. The Voss Guard pushed forward, a wall of black ceramite and ruby light.
Suddenly, Kian's Mental Clarity (40) pinged. A massive spike of "Aggro" was coming from a side-junction.
"Halt! Frontal threat!!"
From the darkness of a transit tunnel, a black cloud erupted. It looked like a localized hurricane at first, until the sound hit them—a deafening, wet thrum-thrum-thrum of millions of wings.
Plague-Flies.
They were the size of a man's fist, their iridescent wings vibrating with a frequency that made the soldiers' teeth ache. A swarm of over a hundred thousand insects, a living storm of contagion, was barreling toward the squad.
"Gas! Mask seals check!" Ash shrieked, fumbling with his rebreather.
Kian reached for a bottle of Sanctified Spirits, intending to create a fire-wall. But before he could strike his lighter, a thunderous roar echoed from behind him.
"ABOMINATION!!" the Canon-Preceptor bellowed, his voice amplified by his armor's vox-array. "RECOIL BEFORE THE MAJESTY OF TERRA! GET BACK TO THE FILTH THAT SPAWNED YOU!!!"
The forty priests intensified their chant, their voices reaching a fever pitch.
Kian watched as the golden aura around the squad flared, expanding with the force of a psychic shockwave. The Plague-Flies hit the barrier and didn't just stop—they detonated.
The interaction between the Warp-spawned insects and the concentrated Imperial Resonance caused the flies to smoke and burst into black sparks. They fell from the air like a rain of soot, covering the street in a thick, crunchy carpet of dead chitin.
Within seconds, the "Black Storm" was silenced. The buzzing stopped.
The Voss Guard let out a roar of triumph. They looked at the Canon-Preceptor with a new level of fanatical respect. The "Old Man" wasn't just a mission objective; he was a walking Artillery Battery of the Soul.
"Keep moving," Kian commanded, his voice steady. "We're almost at the gates."
They reached the Alpha Filtration Hub. It was a massive Spire-tip structure—a circular tower of reinforced glass and lead-shielded plasteel that pierced the clouds.
But the entrance was a nightmare.
Surrounding the base of the Hub was a sea of Poxwalkers. Their numbers were impossible to count—at least a hundred thousand. They formed a writhing, giggling moat around the facility.
Kian looked at the horde and shook his head. "We can't breach that, Eminence. Even with the sun-guns and the aura, we'd be buried by the weight of their bodies before we reached the door. We need a PDF regiment or a macro-cannon strike to clear a path."
The Canon's brow furrowed, his hand tightening on his staff. "Is the Purgation to fail at the threshold? I can sense the Great Daemon within. If we do not silence the source, the Hive is lost."
"Patience," Reno said, stepping forward. He checked his mapping slate. "I'm the Overseer of the Taps, remember? I know this tower better than the heretics."
He pointed to a small, nondescript maintenance hatch hidden beneath a transit bridge. "A Sump-Vent. It's a bypass for the repair-servitors. It leads directly to the sub-basement under the primary filtration tanks. We can enter from the Sump and take the service lift to the Core."
Kian looked at the hatch, then at the tower. "And once we're in?"
"The Hub is a fortress," Reno explained. "If we reach the Central Control Node, we can cycle the internal blast-doors. We lock the tower down, sector by sector. We trap the heretics in the side-chambers and vent the atmosphere, or we just hunt them room-by-room."
Kian smirked. "Divide and Conquer. My favorite meta."
"Lead the way, Reno. Let's go dive into the belly of the beast."
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