"Fifth defensive layer breached!"
"Tenth layer breached!"
"Fifteenth layer breached! Drill temperature critical! Cooling system overloaded!"
"Don't stop!" Vilen's voice rang like clashing metal, cutting through all the noise. "Keep drilling!"
"Eighteenth layer breached! Nineteenth! Twentieth-"
"Bang!"
With a muffled boom, the assault craft stopped dead. The immense inertia hurled everyone forward, and their harnesses creaked under the strain.
"Drill bit fractured. All twenty defensive layers penetrated. Current depth: two thousand eight hundred meters below the surface. Distance to target: approximately two hundred meters."
"Open the hatch." Saul unfastened his harness and stood.
The assault craft's forward hatch slowly opened under hydraulic power. A wave of scorching air rushed inside.
Beyond the hatch lay a tunnel roughly ten meters in diameter, forcibly bored by the assault craft's melt-through drill. Its walls still glowed dull red with rock and alloy that had melted under the intense heat and had yet to cool. Large chunks of rubble and twisted metal fragments littered the ground, while steam hissed from countless cracks.
At the end of the tunnel, roughly two hundred meters away, they could just make out an immense alloy wall shimmering with pale blue light.
That was the final line of defense protecting the T'au Core Command Center.
Saul was the first to step out of the assault craft. His boots struck the scorching rubble with dull thuds.
Vilen followed close behind, his Guardian Spear already in hand, its power field humming softly around the tip. Thirty-six Shield Guards streamed from the three assault craft like a golden torrent, swiftly forming a standard assault formation in the tunnel.
The Sisters of Silence walked in the middle of the formation. The moment they appeared, the air in the tunnel seemed to grow heavier. An invisible sense of emptiness radiated from them.
"Large numbers