Through the god's-eye view provided by [Shared Awareness], Lawson watched Number Two and Number Three inside another abandoned cargo bay.
Lying across their path was a solid slab of ablative steel armor that had been torn from the chassis of some heavy armored vehicle.
The dark gray chunk of metal weighed close to six hundred jin.
Numbers Two and Three found the balance points and lifted together.
"Up!"
The instant the armor plate rose half a meter off the deck, the system's judgment took effect.
[Subordinate Deathsworn have triggered a joint resource recovery command.]
[Adamant Steel Reserve: +0.45 cubic meters.]
The fact that Deathsworn could cooperate to lift large masses of metal that a single man could not move immediately doubled Lawson's efficiency in acquiring adamant steel.
He did not waste time thinking about it. He immediately ordered Numbers Two and Three to continue sweeping the surrounding compartments.
It did not take long before the adamant steel reserve was sufficient.
[Consumed: 200 Life Points, 2 cubic meters of adamant steel.]
[Exchange Sequence: Catachan Jungle Fighters x2.]
Two more burly Catachans appeared.
"Loyalty!"
"You're Number Four. You're Number Five."
Lawson gave the next order.
"Link up with Numbers Two and Three. Spread outward across the outer decks in a fan formation. Collect every usable piece of metal. Search for any weapons and ammunition left behind by Imperial forces."
"Yes, sir!"
Lawson lowered his head and inspected their current armament.
The energy indicator on Number One's M-G short-pattern lasgun had already gone dark.
Without spare charge packs, the thing was now less useful than a sturdy crowbar.
As for Lawson's own Locke-pattern boltgun, it only had two rounds left.
They needed firepower.
If six men tried to fight greenskins with chain-axes using nothing but six Fangs of Catachan, they would not survive three compartments.
Lawson shifted his attention to the [Scrap Yard] tab on the system panel.
That cloud of lesser heretical psychic residue stripped out during the purification of greenskin Life Points was clearly larger than before.
The gray mist rolled inside the force field, and deep within it he could vaguely make out twisted greenskin faces howling in silent rage.
[Item: Lesser Heretical Psychic Residue (Minor Aggregated State).]
[Use: Unknown.]
Lawson closed the panel.
"Come on. We move too."
He slung the boltgun back across his chest.
They had to find replacement ammunition, and they had to find weapons with more killing power.
Lawson and Number One advanced down a corridor coated in thick dust and some unidentified slime.
"Pull that cable down. Right, tie it to that broken gear shaft."
Even as he moved, Lawson kept directing the setup of more lethal traps.
Numbers Two, Three, Four, and Five, scattered across other decks, were doing the same thing by instinct, reshaping their surroundings into killing grounds.
Suspended weights.
Serrated tripwires hidden in the dark.
Bottomless pits cleverly disguised.
In these narrow, dim corridors, such purely physical traps were no less deadly than a grenade.
Lawson's brow furrowed deeper and deeper.
"Something's off..."
He crouched at a four-way junction and dipped a finger into the thick layer of dust on the floor.
No bloodstains.
No shell casings.
No scorch marks.
"The Eighty-Eighth Assault Detachment had seven thousand men. Even if they were nothing but green recruits who'd never seen blood, getting butchered by greenskins should still have left bodies everywhere and mountains of spent charge packs and shell casings."
And yet, aside from the scattered signs of battle on the wreck zone of Deck Seventy-Seven where they had first landed, this whole area was as silent as a dead city.
Where had the Astra Militarum corpses gone?
And where had all the lasguns, heavy bolters, plasma weapons, and logistics ammunition they carried ended up?
Lawson thought back to the greenskins they had encountered earlier.
Quite a few of those Ork boyz, besides their patchwork junk-metal armor, had Astra Militarum dog tags hanging from their waists. Some even carried brutally modified Imperial chainswords.
Lawson issued an order to Number One, who was closest to the previous battlefield.
"Retrace the original route. Try to bypass that blast gate through the overhead vents or the lower waste channels. See if you can find the path the greenskins used after looting the battlefield, or better yet, find where they're stockpiling the weapons."
"Understood."
Roughly forty minutes later, Number One's mental signal came back.
"Sir, I couldn't find a route around the blast gate. That area's terrain collapsed during the chain of explosions earlier. The physical passage is completely sealed. But..."
Number One's field of vision streamed into Lawson's mind.
He was lying flat on a thick crossbeam.
Below him, in the passageway, a small greenskin patrol was shambling forward. It consisted of two fully grown Ork boyz leading more than twenty gretchin.
"Takeout delivered to the door."
Lawson issued his orders at once.
"Number One, fall back slowly. Draw them to Junction B-4. Everyone else, converge on B-4 immediately and prepare an ambush!"
Ten minutes later.
Junction B-4.
From less than fifty meters away, Number One deliberately kicked over an empty metal oil drum.
"WAAAAGH! Humie noise! Over there!"
The two Ork boyz immediately started waving their choppas in excitement and rushed toward the sound with a pack of chattering gretchin.
The instant they charged into Junction B-4, Lawson, hidden in the shadows behind a support pillar, pulled the trigger.
Boom!
The Ork boy at the very front did not even have time to turn its head before the .75 caliber bolt struck its right temple with perfect precision.
The entire upper half of its skull vanished in an instant, becoming a cloud of blood mist and bone fragments.
[Life Points +7]
The other Ork boy went berserk.
"WAAAAAGH!! Damn humie!"
It raised its large-caliber shoota and prepared to hose down the direction Lawson had fired from.
At that exact instant, two black shapes dropped from the vent grille directly above it.
Numbers Two and Three.
Number Two's Fang of Catachan stabbed viciously into the armpit of the Ork's gun arm.
The wide serrated blade sank into flesh, severing the brachial nerve bundle and several major tendons.
The Ork boy's right arm went limp, and the heavy shoota clanged onto the metal floor.
At the same moment Number Three landed, he slammed straight into the Ork's chest.
His Fang of Catachan thrust upward from below, punching viciously into the underside of the Ork's jaw and driving straight into the brain.
The blade shredded its brain matter, and the tip even burst out through the top of its skull.
[Life Points +7]
With the sudden deaths of the two adult Orks, the remaining twenty-odd gretchin descended into panic.
Numbers One, Four, and Five burst out from the shadows.
Chop.
Thrust.
Slit throats.
In less than thirty seconds, all twenty-something gretchin were wiped out.
From Lawson's first shot to the fall of the last gretchin, not even a full minute had passed.
"Clear the battlefield. Fast."
When they finished searching every corpse, Lawson's brow furrowed again.
"Broke bastards."
Other than the Life Points credited by the system, there had been no tangible gains.
Those junk-guns in the Orks' hands were unusable for humans.
Lawson ordered everyone to withdraw at once.