What had been said before? When the Deathwatch set its sights on a planet, the Orks might actually be the easiest Xenos on that planet to deal with!
Not because Orks were easy to fight, but because Orks never played dirty!
Or at least, unlike Genestealers, they did more than just play dirty!
Standing in the center of the rebel camp, Sith tilted his head back, his lips slightly parted as he stared at the enormous portrait of the God-Emperor before him.
The Four-Armed Emperor was a common tool Genestealers used to infiltrate the Imperium of Man.
They twisted faith in the God-Emperor to beguile the Imperium's suffering citizens.
Genestealers were advance scouts originating from another great enemy of humanity, the Tyranids.
They primarily acquired planets for the Tyranids by assimilating worlds, stealing technology, and fomenting rebellions.
Thus, when a planet's Genestealer population reached a sufficient size, it often meant another terrifying Xenos enemy, the Tyranid Swarm, was about to arrive.
And the Deathwatch's primary task was to counter Genestealer infiltration of Imperial Worlds.
"No wonder every rebel here fights to the death without retreating. Controlled by Genestealers, it's hard to say whether these rebels even have minds of their own anymore!"
Sith helplessly looked away from the Four-Armed Emperor, his eyes full of speechless frustration at running into bad luck with every step.
After all, there was an enormous difference between 1.5 to 2 billion rebels and 1.5 to 2 billion Genestealers.
Kill a hundred million or so of the former, and the rest would collapse.
But the latter...
You had better hope your ammunition reserves outnumbered them.
"Orks outside, Genestealers inside, and Chaos on the way."
"For Vigilus to end up with nearly ten billion people still alive, Calgar must have commanded pretty well."
Sith muttered complaints with his head lowered, but he had barely lowered it before he immediately looked up toward the front again.
His eyes were full of anticipation.
Daviro strode out, but instead of immediately taking the elevator back as Sith hoped, he spoke:
"Confirmed. The rebellion in this Hive City was instigated by Genestealers."
Sith glanced at the Four-Armed Emperor hanging high behind Daviro, feeling even more speechless about him.
Did that need so much time to establish?
Sith did not voice his thoughts, but Daviro's next words completely dashed his hopes.
"According to the intelligence we've collected, we need to head to the lower hive. There seems to be a Genestealer branch there."
"We can gather intelligence there on the corruption across all of Vigilus."
Just as Daviro finished, a violent explosion came from outside the fortress.
The veterans atop the walls also opened fierce fire outward.
Looking away from the distant flames that lit the entire ceiling of the Underhive red, Sith suppressed the urge to curse, merely raising his sidearm and speaking through gritted teeth:
"Which way?"
Flames, bolts, lasers.
Amid the dense, towering illegal structures of the vast, deep Underhive, Genestealers surged endlessly from above, below, and every direction.
At the center of the endless Genestealers, a squad unleashed a skyful of firepower as it charged madly toward the lower hive beyond the passage.
Sith cut down a Genestealer that suddenly burrowed out of the ground with a single slash.
Seeing its completely mutated appearance, no longer human at all, Sith worked his trigger even more furiously.
"Genestealer Hybrids are showing up already!"
Genestealers had ranks too. Beyond the humans they controlled on the outermost fringes, there were higher-grade units such as Genestealer Hybrids, Aberrants, and Purestrain Genestealers.
And each successive rank brought a qualitative improvement in combat power.
Aberrants, for instance, were not even inferior to Astartes in strength alone.
And the closer they came to the lower hive, the higher-grade the Genestealers appearing became.
Sith shouted a warning to Daviro, who swung his Chainsword, cleaving a fearless mortal apart in a spray of blood.
Yet rather than respond to Sith's warning, Daviro abruptly looked deep into the passage, as though he had finally found the target of his mission, and suddenly broke away from the squad, racing ahead.
The other Deathwatch warrior followed close behind, and the two previously tight-knit groups actually became separated!
Sith stared in shock as Daviro charged ahead alone, unable to stop himself from drawing a sharp breath, his face flushing red for once.
"Commander, what do we do?"
A veteran hurriedly asked at the sight, while Sith gritted his teeth and steadied himself, blasting apart a Genestealer Hybrid that suddenly leaped out of the darkness beside him.
"Follow them!"
What could they do besides follow? Daviro had the elevator control codes!
Sith gritted his teeth and fought at the very front. With Daviro gone, he now pushed the squad to full speed.
Ever more densely packed Genestealers filled the surrounding darkness. They seemed to have realized what Sith's group of humans intended and were frantically transferring defenders from elsewhere.
They fought in the darkness for who knew how long, not even noticing when they entered the lower hive.
As Sith pulled his saber from the eye of a massive Aberrant, he finally raised his arm amid the crash of its falling body.
The squad immediately stopped advancing. After all that fighting, the hundred-strong force they had set out with was down to just ninety.
These were veterans of a thousand battles. Although only ten had died, the loss still pained Sith.
But Sith had no time to dwell on his losses, because up ahead in the darkness, a group of Genestealers fled a corner in panic. Where they had gathered, an Astartes lay on the ground, his chest completely caved in.
Sith nodded to the medic beside him. The medic hurried over, performed a brief examination, then simply shook his head.
Sith let out an involuntary, trembling breath. The surrounding Genestealers had already almost formed an ocean, and now another Astartes had died!
He stepped forward and opened the faceplate, only breathing a little easier once he confirmed it was not Daviro.
Gunfire never ceased around him. Sith glanced around, then looked in the direction the dead Deathwatch warrior had fallen.
"That way!"
At Sith's words, the veterans immediately followed him onward.
But as they approached that area, the previously surging Genestealers around them gradually stopped pursuing them, instead pacing restlessly beyond a certain boundary.
The veterans exchanged glances, then all looked at Sith.
Looking at the deep darkness before him and the deathly silence within, utterly unlike outside, Sith gritted his teeth and loaded a fresh magazine into his sidearm.
Sith led the way inside.
The dark lower hive held no light at all.
Underfoot was soft, rotten sludge of some unknown substance.
A strange smell lingered in the surrounding air, neither quite pungent nor quite musty.
The veterans moved cautiously, their muzzles covering every direction in the darkness, guarding against any enemy that might be hiding within.
But as they stepped through the mush beneath their feet, the first thing to break the deathly silence was a roar that cut off abruptly:
"Iron Within, Iron Without!!!"
Sith abruptly looked toward the sound.
Daviro had removed his damaged helmet and leaped up, raising his Chainsword high to bring it down on a blurry figure in the darkness.
But Daviro's roaring expression froze on his face as a strange spatial fluctuation held him suspended in midair.
At the same time, fear actually began flickering in Daviro's previously furious eyes.
The sight made the veterans' gazes sharpen. Then a wave of heavy rot swept across them, and an inexplicable whisper sounded directly in the depths of their souls:
"What are you afraid of?"
A floating creature with an enormous head slowly drifted out of the darkness.
And at the sight of the Tyranid Swarm's specialized psychic unit, Sith began cursing furiously in his heart.
They can already hatch swarm units directly. Apart from the spire, everyone in this Hive City has probably become a Genestealer!
And not just this Hive City. Who knows how many Genestealers are hiding in the darkness of the Hive Cities across Vigilus?
But Sith had no attention to spare for the other Hive Cities now. He simply watched the psychic Zoanthrope draw closer and prepared to receive a psychic attack.
Yet no psychic attack came. Perhaps its battle with Daviro and the other Deathwatch warrior had temporarily exhausted its psychic power.
The Zoanthrope instead kept blowing waves of heavy rot toward them, launching mental attacks against Sith over and over.
But as the Zoanthrope confidently approached and repeated its question several times, not only Sith but even the veterans remained expressionless. It finally sensed something was wrong and stopped.
Beneath that enormous head, it even displayed confusion that would never exist in lower-grade swarm units.
Feeling how laughably feeble this mental attack was against his own hundredfold willpower and that of the soldiers under his command, Sith raised his blade and finally glared at it:
"What are we afraid of?"
"We're afraid you'll run!!!"