"Alright." Grey nodded with resignation. He truly didn't believe there could still be civilians in that settlement. After all, there were enemies entrenched within, likely heretics devoted to some corrupted cult, the kind of filth reminiscent of the cultists of the Lord of Wisdom.
Even if the residents hadn't already been slaughtered by the heretics, there was the plague. How could anyone possibly have survived?
But if Phoros believed there were civilians still alive, perhaps there really were. After all, he was a Chapter Master.
"What's your specialty?" Phoros asked, his voice calm, though his eyes were already scanning the perimeter.
"I'm good at destruction," Grey replied plainly, his honesty blunt, carrying neither pride nor shame.
"Then you're staying out here." Phoros turned and gestured toward his squad. His battle-brothers were already assembled, ready and awaiting his command.
Phoros quickly issued his orders, ten Astartes would breach the settlement, locate and extract any remaining civilians.
Unlike many commanders, Phoros didn't simply send his men in, he led them in person.
And it quickly became evident why he had the confidence to insist on this rescue op.
The ten Space Marines spread out as they advanced, approaching the settlement from different angles. Their speed was astonishing, their movements eerily silent despite the massive power armor they wore.Grey couldn't fathom how Astartes could move so fast encased in such bulky ceramite plating.
In the blink of an eye, the Astartes reached the outer buildings and began breaching from multiple directions. Walls crumbled under their fists, doors blown apart with precise charges, windows shattered as armored forms poured inside like phantoms of death.
This was no stealth mission, Phoros never intended it to be one. As soon as they entered, firefights erupted throughout the compound.
Phoros himself scaled a two-story building. His ascent was effortless, his armor gauntlets biting into masonry as though it were soft clay. Before the cultists inside could even react, his right hand brought up a bolter. The weapon roared with mechanical fury, each short, controlled burst of mass-reactive shells detonating inside unarmored flesh. Heretics exploded into fragments of bone and meat, the air choked with the coppery haze of atomized gore.
For those too close for ranged fire, he drove his power spear through them with lethal efficiency.
His movements were fluid and lethal, ducking, sidestepping, and weaving between strikes. It was not wild slaughter, but a dance of death, every pivot and thrust calculated with grim artistry. Each stab of his spear was precise, not just brute force butangles and momentum to maximize damage with every thrust.
Every time Phoros impaled a cultist, he'd use the dying body's weight to drive through the next, skewering multiple enemies in a single motion.
The power spear wasn't particularly long, but Phoros made it work. The first heretic was impaled and pushed forward, the second caught on the blade, forming a grotesque chain.
Once the last heretic dropped, Phoros yanked the spear free from the corpses and gave it a quick glance. The weapon hummed faintly, alloyed metal catching flickers of light from burning promethium nearby.
This weapon was part of the resupply Qin Mo had arranged, a gift forged from an alloy resembling adamantium. Unfortunately, they hadn't yet figured out how to activate its disruptive energy field, so the weapon hadn't unleashed its full destructive potential in that battle.
Setting the spear aside for the moment, Phoros moved to the window.
A moment later, one of his battle-brothers smashed through a nearby wall and emerged. Spotting his Chapter Master watching, the Astartes simply shook his head.
Phoros understood without needing words.
No civilians.
He sighed and immediately lifted his bolter, firing at a structure two hundred meters to the right. The gun roared like thunder, its recoil a familiar rhythm against his gauntlet.
The bolt round roared from the muzzle, its exhaust igniting behind it as it accelerated in a second stage of propulsion. It struck a heretic carrying a melta charge mid-stride, detonating on impact and reducing the traitor to a cloud of limbs and gore.
With that threat neutralized, Phoros continued advancing through the settlement, moving alongside the same battle-brother who had just completed a sweep of one district. They stalked through the ruins together, systematically eliminating any exposed enemies they encountered.
Whether through windows or by blasting through walls, they chose whatever route brought them fastest to the settlement's center.
Eventually, the ten Astartes regrouped at the central square.
PDF turning traitor was no surprise. Hadn't the same thing happened in the Talon System?
The plague clearly had ties to Chaos as well.
After a quick mental summary, Grey commented, "See? Told you there wouldn't be any civilians."
"Confirmed, yes," Phoros said. "But what if there had been? A child, perhaps no older than five, hiding near a window… hearing nothing but the distant echoes of heretics screaming, the pounding of boots approaching. The child clings to whatever thread of hope remains, waiting for someone, anyone to rescue her. If we had simply bombarded the settlement outright, that child would've died before the heretics even reached her."
Grey nodded. That logic was… actually pretty solid. Still, he added his own reasoning:
"My power armor already scanned the whole compound. It picks up all biological signatures and identifies targets, hostile or non-hostile. So…"
Phoros didn't criticize him for not mentioning this earlier. He merely held to his belief:
"Equipment isn't always infallible. And if it fails, the price is something you can't ever undo."
Grey had expected that kind of answer. He didn't argue further, no point in debating the reliability of gear Qin Mo personally had crafted by hand.
He turned to the nearby units and began issuing orders.
"Ogryns! Move to my position. Face the settlement, raise your right fists, your gauntlets will begin firing."
"Ratlings! Pick off any hostiles trying to escape the settlement. No survivors."
With commands given, Grey turned toward the soon-to-be-bombarded ruin, reaching behind his back and retrieving a biomass extractor.
Same kind he'd used down in the Underhive, to harvest samples from a heretic warlord.
"Lute know how to shoot! Lute not dumb!" bellowed the largest of the Ogryns, stepping forward and clenching his left fist toward the settlement.
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