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"These are the weapons we have made. The weapons we must keep. Techpriest-junior, ignite the rad-incense. Runepriest, are the spirits asleep?" Talos's arm indicated only vaguely towards the people as he spoke to them, and speak he did for it was clear one of them was unmodified enough to require it. Calling them a 'techpriest-junior' was a compliment, for they hardly seemed to have replaced any of their form at all, and they certainly bore no red robes. 

"Yes, brother-foreman." Incense burners would be brought out, Talos igniting his with the plasma igniter of a mechandrite, swinging the censer back and forth slowly. The irritating, purifying stench of the chemical concoction within the skull shaped vessel would fill the air, and the small group would descend, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the foundry. Security doors would pull aside as if a sea parted, until finally, in a reinforced blast room at the centre of the facility, they would halt. "Brothers. Bear forth the weapons we have created. Do not wake them." A hymn of tranquillity would start throughout the room, red robed figures carefully lifting out dozens of warheads and aligning them carefully for inspection.

It was not difficult to see what kind of weaponry they were. Each and every warhead had an angel-like trefoil emblazoned on the side of it, and the Magos' in built Geiger counter would imperceptibly begin to tick up as more of the weapons were unveiled. [i]"Behold brother,"[/i] Talos would electronically send. [i]Blessed Atomics.[/i]

[hr]

Stanislaus would have sensed the briefest of hesitations in the two men, but almost as one they acted. It was a small move; so tiny, so innocent... And so difficult to stop. A push of the lounge, a crunch of the jaws, and their lives would slip away, the foam around their mouths the only sign of what they'd done. That, of course, simply intensified the mysteries of this site. Specially operating armsmen, with night vision goggles and fanatical devotion enough to kill themselves for the cause on a remote black site in the upper atmosphere? Their voxbeads were no use either- they ran on a closed circuit with each other and nothing else. It was like the whole station had been designed to blind invaders. The men and women carried little on them; extra ammunition, flak jackets, one or two held explosives they had clearly been cautious to use for fear of damaging the hull of the ship. Whatever personal effects they had lay elsewhere aboard the ship, the room that the squad found themselves in scorched and shot apart to the extent that it was hard to tell what its original purpose was.

No further sound came from the hallway. The whirring was still there- a constant, steady sound, without interruption or pause, but there was no tramping of feet, no half-muffled orders, not even a whisper to imply that there were more of these shadowy armsmen preparing to push the squad out of their temporary respite. Of course, it wasn't as if they needed to; for the moment, the Tombstone was still firmly in enemy hands, and the only way that would change was if Stanislaus' forces made it so.

[hr]

[b]"ARBITERS BROUGHT THEIR BITCHES!"[/b] One of the enforcers howled out a warning, and suddenly the cyber-mastiffs were receiving an awful lot of attention. An enforcer in bulkier armour and with a tattered cape around his shoulders would level a plasma pistol towards the two baying mechanical hounds. The magnetic field spooled up with lethal energy, but just before it could be released the officer would stumble, half-decapitated by an exitus round to the neck. The assassins hadn't quite given up their position just yet it seemed. Nonetheless, one man was not the entire resistance against these invaders. More and more small arms fire would be poured onto them, and a particularly enterprising individual would scoop the plasma weapon up, hunkering down and firing until the monoblade punctured his sternum. 

Then, came an unusual command. [b][i]"PULL BACK. OUTER WALLS HAVE BEEN LOST. WE'LL HOLD THE SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE!"[/i][/b]

[i]"That's our cue to be entering the facility. Our thanks for penetrating the first line."[/i] XXIII's words came smooth over the vox, and then the channel fell silent once more. Alpha, Beta and Gamma now had mere minutes left before their lives were ended... But if they weren't careful, so did the arbites and guard.