There was more marching around than I had imagined. By the time we reached the strange passage my feet were throbbing and my calves were aching. It didn't help that the surface of the planet was so friable, as if the rock itself had grown tired of holding itself together and disintigrated into smaller chunks at anything more the the lightest brush of boots or equipment. No one actually fell, but the idea that the whole planet seemed about to crumble set us all on edge. The portal by contrast was almost terrifying in its solidity, its alien metal seemed to plunge into the very core of the planet, like an ancient eldritch skeleton that the flesh of this world was only now begining to flake away from after eons of extreme dessication. Suffice to say, I didn't care for it.

"I feel, like maybe this isn't such a great idea," I opined but that was more nerves than any serious notion that we should stop at this point. Hadrian lifted the key and slid it into some appature I couldn't see from my vantage. For a moment nothing happened, though it seemed that the strange green pulsations grew slightly more intense. Then, like a distant gathering sunrise the runes flashed and blazed, growing so bright I had to shut my eyes and wish I'd worn a throne dammned helmet. There was a sound too, or something like a sound, a kind of weird eerie wail that pushed on the skin like a stormfront or a psywave that was just about to form. There was a sudden and tremendous outrush of air, it blasted out, whipping up grit in an obscuring curtain that stank of something metallic and alien that made me grab for my rebreather. As quickly as it had begun it was over and I could see the outline of a portal wide enough for three groundcars to pass through. The dust filled air sucked in and out around it in a series of unstable currents, settling slowly to the ground.

"I guess we..." One of the Guardsman beside me snapped sideways and collapsed, connected for a moment to the track of burning dust a long las had carved in the floating dust. One of the PDF troops caught me in a tackle from behind as a second bolt ripped through the space I had previously occupied. Everything was chaos. Two guardsman dropped down beside me, I thought they had been hit until one unfolded the bipod on some kind of belt fed weapon. It ripped out a burst of fire at something I couldn't see, vast star shapped muzzle blasts reflecting dizzingly. Hot casing scattered over my arm smouldering against the fabric of my dress. Someone was screaming about auspex contacts and I managed to get to my feet just in time to see a dozen landspeeders, big green and gold house models were screaming towards us in a phalanx, trailing pieces of camo-netting and anti-auspex screen behind them like streamers. Weapons fire flashed from nose cannons and pintle mounts. Bolter rounds exploded all around me and I squirmed behind a boulder. Las fire was cracking all around me as our own troops returned fire, scrambling for what cover they could. I saw one of the guardsman decapitated as he tried to drag a fellow into cover, then the world shook as Lazarus fired his trans-uranic arquebus. The lead vehicle folded up into a fireball that raced along on its own momementum for a few seconds before it hit the ground and went up in a secondary blast that scattered components over half a kilometer of desolation. The blast knocked a second speeder into a third, the second speeder regained control but the third veered right in an increasingly wide circle. I saw the crew try to bail out a second before it slammed into one of the stone spires, the resulting exposlion shattered thousands of pounds of monolith into gravel in an instant.

I lifted up my las pistol with a notion to do something, though what I thought I was going to do against millitary grade armored speeders I dont know. They were coming on at a tremendous rate, lifing vast rooster tails of dust for miles behind. Gunfire roared in both directions and I saw another speeder come appart in a storm of small calibre hits, its frontal armor and engine cowling peeling away like a sandcastle in the rain.

"They aren't going to be able to turn..." I started to say, though no one could hear me over the din, but as soon as I had said it I realized they werent planning on it.

"Down!" I screamed, and it was more than just a word. Every guardsman and pdf trooper involuntarily threw themseleves to the dirt a second before the twelve or so surviving speeders ripped past overhead, the jetwash shoving us hard enough into the dust that my ribs creaked. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw Hadrian on his back, somehow having managed to get his pistol free and fire a trio of shots into the underside of one of the vehicles. It pitched up onto its side, clipped the entrance and cartwheeld through the portal after its fellows in a spray of prometheum and debris. I managed to get to my hands and knees and get a good look at the portal for the first time. Beyond the great entryway stretched a collossal corridor a hundred feet tall and nearly as far across. Great pillars covered with glowing green runes stretched off into the distance beyond the limit of my eyes. The landspeeders raced away, seeming to move very slowly for the tremendous turn of speed I knew they had. They had been waiting for us to open the door. And now they were inside and ahead of us.

"Frak," I muttered.