A completely sealed, dark Hive City.
A broad avenue, with dense networks of narrow walkways suspended among the towering factories on either side.
Lamplight mingled with firelight.
The light fell on the walls, stretching and twisting countless human shadows.
Following those shadows revealed an endless mass of rebels, packed almost shoulder to shoulder, racing upward in wave after wave.
On the elevated walkways to either side, equally endless torrents of people surged onward.
A thunderous roar came from the top of the Hive City.
Flames blazed fiercely, and countless wreckage and structures crashed down. The tide of people below rippled like a stream struck by stones, then swiftly returned to "calm."
After the explosion, the world still held nothing but the boundless, densely packed pounding of running feet.
"Why aren't any of these traitors afraid to die?!"
Thud, thud, thud!
The bolt machine gun hammered furiously into the tide of people.
Every bolt blasted a great spray of flesh from the packed crowd.
Brunok's eyes were bloodshot, his index finger holding down the trigger without releasing it for a moment.
But watching the rebels behind keep charging fearlessly no matter how many he killed, even Brunok could not help being shocked.
"Fall back! Keep falling back! The passage is blown open!"
A soldier shouted behind him. Brunok emptied his magazine, then retreated, his enormous arms already beginning to weaken as he clung tightly to his precious machine gun.
The other veterans providing cover quickly emptied their magazines, laying down a curtain of lasfire before throwing more than a dozen grenades together.
Another explosion took hundreds of rebels with it.
When the rebels charged forward again, they found a blasted-open gate and black-clad soldiers retreating frantically toward the Hive City's spire.
In the passage ahead.
A small bolt pierced the darkness, striking a lurking sniper squarely in the head.
More bolts rhythmically pierced the silence, taking out the enemies lurking in the darkness one after another.
Sith held an officer's Bolt Pistol adapted for mortal use, firing continually into the darkness as he advanced.
Veterans followed behind him. Whenever Sith passed through an area, they immediately spread out, clearing enemies while searching for a route to the next level.
The veterans had long since become thoroughly convinced of Sith's combat prowess, and had even fully accepted it.
Only Daviro and the other two Deathwatch warriors, who were truly fighting alongside Sith for the first time, wore utterly stunned expressions.
Because if Sith had not unmistakably possessed a mortal body, this way of firing on the move, every shot precisely eliminating the greatest threat, looked by any measure like something only an Astartes could achieve!
Daviro watched Sith, his thoughts unknown, but the two Astartes behind him, whose service had been relatively short, had already completely changed their opinion of Sith.
At least when facing Sith, they now instinctively placed him on an equal footing.
The entire group halted again before a new space, and the greatly diminished force of soldiers rushed frantically in through the passage behind them.
Without waiting for orders, the soldiers immediately began searching for another route.
Behind them, Brunok's bolt machine gun, which had only briefly fallen silent, began roaring again.
Sith lowered his weapon for the moment. Rather than paying attention to whether the soldiers around him had found a passage, he merely turned to look behind him, his eyelid twitching.
Although Daviro had yet to say anything, the almost unnaturally fanatical fighting spirit of this Hive City's rebels made the bad feeling in Sith's heart grow ever stronger.
"We found the passage. The door-opening command is still wrong."
Ana ran back under the protection of more than a dozen elite veterans, her face filled with barely suppressed fury.
The command to close the gate might have been tampered with, or might even have been sent by mistake.
But when almost every door along their route refused to open, there had to be something wrong with the nobles in the spire.
Daviro did not display outright anger as Ana did. He merely gave a calm signal to one of the Deathwatch warriors, who picked up a Melta Bomb and walked toward the gate with practiced ease.
"The middle hive and Underhive have already fallen anyway. Might as well let the Orks in and have the two sides kill each other."
"Whichever side wins in the end, the nobles benefit."
Sith withdrew his gaze from Brunok's direction and calmly voiced what everyone was thinking.
This noble in the spire did not care about the Deathwatch at all, much less Sith and his 101st Regiment.
He had simply been handed exactly what he needed, using Sith and Daviro to open a passage so the Orks could enter the Hive City and purge the commoners of the middle hive and Underhive who had betrayed him.
As for Sith and Daviro...
Vigilus was already a complete mess of a war zone anyway. A few tens of thousands of mortals and a single-digit number of Astartes dying really was no big deal!
He simply had not expected Daviro to decisively choose to collapse the passage, even if it meant facing endless rebels alone.
Much less had he expected the soldiers under Sith to calmly accept their fate, staying behind to face the endless Orks alone.
Daviro did not answer Sith, although Astartes did not regard mortal lives as anything important.
But their performance along the way-not only Sith's, but that of almost every mortal soldier under him-had shown courage that made Daviro and the other two Deathwatch warriors see them in a new light.
Faced with the pointless casualties caused by the nobles, Daviro found himself, for once, unable to offer Sith an opinion.
Fortunately, another roar came from ahead. The Melta Bomb blasted the passage open, and Daviro and Sith raised their weapons almost simultaneously and immediately headed toward it.
This time, however, what greeted them was not the soldiers who had charged inside first, but the Astartes at the front being engulfed by a barrage of bolts and heavy lasfire in a passage too narrow to dodge in.
Even an Astartes in ceramite armor could not escape unscathed under such firepower.
The Deathwatch warrior leading the way fell instantly, but before going down, he fired a burst of bolts into the depths of the passage.
The "crisp" sounds of bodies bursting reached them after the barrage ceased.
Furious rebukes from a rebel officer rang out from deeper inside. At the barely visible far end, several rebels were placed directly at machine-gun positions still covered in blood and flesh.
The rebel officer looked delighted, not only because they had actually brought down an Astartes, but also because he did not believe anyone could charge through terrain like this.
But his rebels had barely taken their firing positions, before they could open fire again, when beams of lasfire suddenly streaked through the air, picking off the rebels beside him once more.
The officer was stunned, even confused, because these were not Astartes bolts, but mortal lasfire.
He looked toward the passage, only to find that more than a dozen mortal soldiers had charged in around it in those few brief seconds.
A beam of lasfire struck the officer precisely in the forehead.
Before his world went completely dark, one final trace of astonishment surfaced in the rebel's eyes.
These mortals had actually dared to continue charging right after an Astartes had fallen!
The officer was right, because although only a dozen or so soldiers had made it through this side of the passage, more than twenty veterans had been reduced to bloody pulp and left behind at the other end.
Daviro dragged the fallen Astartes into the passage. Although his front had been almost completely shredded, his chest still rose and fell, and the breathing beneath his helmet was only slightly labored.
Compared with Sith's mangled veterans, the Astartes who had taken the most fire was, astonishingly, only badly wounded.
Having witnessed the might of an Astartes up close for the first time, Sith withdrew his gaze. He paid no further attention to Daviro tending to his battle-brother, instead fixing his eyes ahead.
Because according to the map, beyond this door lay the Hive City's spire, still under Imperium control.
This was also the only door without an opening command, because according to the nobles, once they reached this point, the nobles would open it themselves.
Behind him came the frantic roar of Brunok's machine gun. Around him stood a battered force in which almost everyone was wounded, and even one of the Astartes had fallen.
But after Ana stood behind the door working the controls for a while, what Sith saw was her furiously hammering the communications console.
Withdrawing his gaze as though it were only to be expected, he heard Ana's furious voice carry across the space:
"Those stupid pigs won't open the door!"