The traitors screamed and died, the flesh on their bones being torn apart, and being stirred by the decomposition force field and thrown into the air.
Azrael drew his weapon, protecting himself while crippling another traitor.
A scarred traitor screamed at him and lunged at him with a bayonet. The Grand Master dodged the attack and slapped the other man in the face with his backhand, shattering the skull and even piercing another with flying teeth.
The face of a clumsy soldier fumbling with the activation spike of a stun hammer.
The traitor screamed in pain, dropped his weapon, and covered his tattered face.
Azrael clamped the man's head between his hands and squeezed hard, crushing his skull.
"Coward, repent."
He growled lowly while throwing his twitching body into the fleeing traitors.
Five more muzzle flashes blinked at Azrael from behind the barricade, and as the gunshots of the disoriented traitors rang out, he saw the nearest of them.
The Truth Watcher jumped over the barricade and fell on a traitor covered in blood. His ribs were broken under the impact and cracked into internal organs.
Azrael kneed the enemy in the face, pressing the traitor's skull to the deck.
When he stood up, he walked straight through the barricade, slashed his sword into the charred supply box, then reversed the movement and gutted the traitor hiding behind the bunker.
Blood and guts splattered on his helmet, and his visual sensors adjusted to allow him to see through the flesh.
To his right, a skinny traitor turned and ran, and Azrael threw a dagger.
The blade pierced the traitor's back and penetrated his chest. When the blade hit the floor, the man leaned forward.
Azrael turned around to see Belial slamming his fist into a screaming man's chest, then stamping his boot on another man's head, stamping it into dirt.
"Front."
The Dark Angel's progress was smooth. It only took them ten minutes to cross the passage and enter the former core of Attica's hive.
In order to control this area, Azriel divided the team into three parts, one led by him, one led by Beria, and the last part led by Sappho.
Now the core of the former hive city has become a huge maze of ruins. The Dark Angel's goal is also very simple. Although it has undergone huge changes, the basic structure of the governor's district has not changed. All roads only lead to three places.
.
Governor's Office Building, Astropath's Hall and Temple of the Machine.
As long as the three places are controlled, no matter which direction the enemy comes from, they must meet the dark angels who are waiting for them. They are equivalent to inserting a knife into the enemy's heart.
Everything went well at first, until Azrael received a message from Belial after taking control of the Governor's Office Building.
"A team is missing?"
Azrael bent down and looked at the corpse of the fallen angel. There was a large hole in the charred breastplate of the fallen Space Marine. The flesh and armor around the wound seemed to merge into one, and black stains rolled out from the wound.
, like a net.
"Melta weapons or mixed high explosives."
The Chief Pharmacist spoke into his helmet's data recorder, recording his findings.
"The high penetration indicates a close-range explosion."
A probe was then removed from the apothecary and inserted into the wound.
At this time, a brother from the Seventh Company, while the detector analyzed the angel's blood, lines of biometric identification and biological data scrolled on the pharmacist's helmet-mounted display.
There are also traces of other human flesh on it, fused with the power armor. It is obvious that a traitor gave his life to bury his crime.
"Supreme Master, I have to recover the gene seeds now."
"Of course, brother."
The pharmacist lowered his head.
"Emperor, a loyal servant's duty has come to an end. Please grant him peace."
On his breastplate he made a symbol of the constellation Aquila, for of all the duties the apothecary had to perform, this was the most important and the heaviest.
Only in death does duty end, an axiom that might apply to a soldier of the Imperial Guard or a nun, but not to a son of an angel.
In death, the Space Marine has one thing left to pay, and that is that the gene-seed implanted within him must be returned to the Chapter, ready to be received by the next generation of aspirants.
Only by harvesting the glands can the Angels continue to survive, without the precious gene-seed they will be unable to fight against the enemies of the Emperor.
The apothecary reached out with his extractor and thrust the bladed tube into the slain man's neck, and as the end closed around the first gonad, a surge of energy rippled along the length of the blade with a wet hiss,
The gland is sucked into the duct through the blade.
A green icon flashed in the corner of the pharmacist's helmet display, indicating that the gland had been safely recovered and frozen for shipment to the gene bank.
Then he started his bone drill because the second gland would be harder to reach.
"What's going on, Beria?"
The grilled mouthpiece on Azrael's helmet did little to filter out the annoyance in his voice.
They stood amid the embers of the battlefield, the mutilated corpses of traitors scattered on the floor like the graffiti of a madman.
"A tactical team lost contact while going to reconnoiter the D12 area. When we found them, there was only one body."
"Where are the other bodies?"
"What?"
"There are ten brothers in one team, and we only found one. Where are the others? They must be somewhere."
"This is strange, Grand Master, but we don't have time."
Sappho turned to the monitor.
"The enemy is advancing from all directions. Their vanguard will be in contact with us within eighteen minutes. We are too deep and there is no friendly cover around us."
"Then we must seize the time, we must find them, we must retrieve their gene seeds and mourn their deaths."
"What if their remains are not here? What if they, like the ashes, have been carried away from here by the violent storm?"
Azriel's tone was non-negotiable.
"Then we will mourn their loss and the loss of their genes, but first we have to check everywhere and we have to be sure."
Ezekiel, the director of the battle group's think tank, stood beside the corpse for a long time, then silently opened a holographic map. After a while, he said hoarsely:
"Here, only over 600 meters away from the Viceroyalty, are the ruins of Attica's cathedral. I think they should be there."
Azriel watched for a while, then the interrogation priest said:
"A trap."
"If we leave the Governor's Region, the enemy will choose to fight us here."
Sappho pointed to the hologram of the compound spinning in the air between him and the think tank director.
"I feel like this is a more likely target."
Azriel studied the hologram and acknowledged that the Chaplain was right, that an attack along the broad avenues of the main corridor would be suicidal if the troops were sufficient.
But if you leave this area, the situation will be different.
Could this be a trap?
"I'll take someone to take a look."
Finally, Beria said these words firmly.
"If they are there, then it is up to me to bring them back, life or death."