Member
Interrogator Stanislaus Di Felice
[CLASSIFIED] Site "Gravestone"
[CLASSIFIED] Site "Gravestone"
"Inquisition, identif-!"
The stormtrooper sergeant's yelling was interrupted by a violent cascade of small arms fire. Munitions slammed against and ricocheted from Crusader Mellem's suppression shield mercilessly. Many of the concentrated shots that missed or bounced from the shield slammed into the three leading team members: Enginseer von Toor was struck mostly harmlessly, the damage being reduced to sparks between excessive augmentation and armour, but the less comprehensive carapace armour of the crusader and the stormtrooper offered less protection. What shots did not find flesh directly bruised and battered through armour, affecting almost exclusively limbs with due thanks to the suppression shield.
But that was only the first volley. The gunfire continued, pounding the crusader back through the doorway. Half of a burst from a boarding shotgun - some ricocheted, some direct hits - struck into Agletdinovas side, prompting cries of pain to seep through his teeth. His cuirass took the force of the blow about as much as his ribcage. Lifting his meltagun to take a snapshot, Agletdinova fired through the gap between the suppression shield and the frame of the door at one of the robed men with a boarding shotgun, which he barely missed. Wisps of smoke even rose from the robes of the shotgunner from the proximity of the blast.
By all accounts, it was a textbook ambush: both well-positioned and well-executed. A quick glance between Stanislaus and Bruna established that quite promptly.
"Fury, zero-two!" yelled Stanislaus, as the stormtrooper and the enginseer both peeled back into cover. Parasha pressed up the column as she snatched a stubpistol into her off-hand, where she swiped a grenade from the air tossed underarm to her from the jogging Sister Hellenboldus. As Parasha lifted a finger from her pistol to grasp the pin of the grenade, Hellenboldus ducked behind the crusader, narrowly avoiding the torrent of gunfire to take up a position on the other side of the doorway.
Only the rattling of the grenade lever betrayed the greater meaning of Stanislaus' theatrics.
"Rejoice!"
The live grenade, nursed to within mere moments of its detonation, flew elegantly live a dove over the suppression shield and through the doorway. Its detonation, which wreaked havoc before it could even hit the ground, was not elegant. With synchronized fury, as the explosion racked the room, Hellenboldus tilted around the corner to present her left forearm, a sliver of her helmet, and the barrel of her combiflamer. From the darkness came holy light: light from the flamer of the firearm and light from the cloaked men in the left half of the room, many of which set ablaze by the sister's judgment. It was almost poetic: for their crimes, they would be used as live, burning torches to illuminate the path for the inquisition.
While gritting his teeth, Agletdinova peered from the doorway to fire a second time at the same shotgunner he missed. The sheer heat of the blast turned the recovering shotgunner from cloth to ash in mere moments.
"Inject!" the Sergeant ordered as he put a hand to the crusader's shoulder and leaned in towards him. With thunderous footsteps and now strobing flashlights, the party pushed into the room.
Crusader Mellem, Sergeant Agletdinova, and Enginseer von Toor stormed the flaming left side of the room like hammers. The suppression shield endured the brunt of scattered gunfire while the trio descended onto their quarries. In their own ways, the power sword and meltagun were elegant. One cut cleanly through flesh and armour alike, scattering blood across the flame-lit walls, while the meltagun simply turned men to ash. The Omnissian power axe, on the other hand, was not nearly so subtle. What men were not simply cleaved in two were splayed open in a churn of blood and gore. One assailant managed to evade a strike from the haftstrike, only to have his robed grasped by the servoarm and crushed like mere fruit. The enginseer didn't even break his stride.
The survivors of the blast on the other side of the room, as well as the assailants still in position in the centre, found little mercy themselves. As the wrecking ball of men swept through the left side of the room, Hellenboldus and Stanislaus both took position on either side of the doorway. Disciplined firing arcs .75 explosive bolter fire did horrible things to men and marines both - but in this case, as the duo rained bolter fire and literal fire both on the robed assailants, it was especially horrible to men.
At the rear of the party, Parasha took her second stubpistol in her main hand as she knelt by the navigator and the autosavant. It was an honoured role to be trusted with the rear of the advance, even if it was not a glamorous one. Meanwhile, Birgitte hammered furiously at her cogitator-tome, document all accounts of the battle that she could perceive while Bruna stood still, steeling her focus. Her duty, much like Parashas, was likewise underappreciated: it was her task to mask Stanislaus' presence from the warp, lest malign beings interrupt their blessed work. Notably, one was absent from the rear guard.
The last shotgunner, who had to fumble to thumb a slug from the shotgun sling to the shotgun, lifted his firearm to level it with the exposed stormtrooper sergeant. Had he not glimpsed a glimmer of movement and a splash of blood from where his two comrades once were, he may have even finished the deed. Instead, he twisted about to present the shotgun at the flurry of movement, where the muzzle flash illuminated open air. It was only the faint breath on the assailants neck that betrayed the Third Thorn, as she plunged a power sword through each arm and forced the voidsman to a kneel with a knee to the back.
The last assailant averted his gaze when faced with harsh strobing light, to only be slammed to the floor next to his crucified comrade with a blast from the suppression shield. The sensory assault that was burning flesh, strobe lights, and the lingering shock of the suppression shield, only added to the horror of what felt like a vice bearing down onto his skull, or a drill being driven through his head. It was no doubt made worse by his own hands taking his firearm before him, acting on their own accord before his very eyes, and lifted towards the crucified robed assailant. Fighting the malign force only made the vice grips on his head clamp tighter. From the corner of his sight, seemingly too controlled by the malign force, a man in witch hunters robes slowly strode into the room, shadowed by three other figures from the hallway, with a hand clamped in a fist while an assembly of men formed a permit around the event.
Mechanic whirring in the hallway prompted the stormtrooper sergeant, who was already mended by Parasha while in the defensive harbor, to yell:
"More activity, Interrogator, presumably hostile!" he called, keeping his aim focused on a doorway. "Make it fast!"
"Very well," sighed Stanislaus, as he stepped up to the two half-live robed assailants. Through his psychic will made manifest, he forced the downed assailant to point his autogun square at the crucified assailant's face. "Redeem yourself now, or you will kill him by your own hand. Who do you work for, and which direction are the engines from here?"
Meanwhile, as the complete Inquisitorial retinue settled into their defensive harbor, von Toor began his pace around the inside of the harbour, scouring through the corpses of men for voxbeads or documents, or any other useful tidbit that he could read or tap into.