We rumbled along the corridors, the alien geometry of this facility's construction was thankfully without much in the way of curvature. In fact the floor was so smooth, it made the chimera's dimensions look completely lopsided. Every movement of the track made me realize how clumsy and imperfect the design of the armored vehicle was. What sort of civilization would make a labyrinth such as this? Our travel lasted for thirty standard minutes, I calculated, before we found anything beyond an oddity. 

I heard the crack of machine-gun fire from an accompanying chimera through the thick hull, the thunder of the heavy bolter supplementing the rattling fire in varying iterations. It could have been a mile away or mere meters to our right, but when our own chimera began firing we shuddered in our seats. I should have gotten in the front of the vehicle to better direct the driver, but as it was I sat in the back along with Emmaline, Lazarus, and Sergeant Rhadvek's squad. Briefly I believe I heard men calling out from outside the vehicle, and through the small visor, the red flash of lasers blended with a strange, green light that flashed like lightning. 

"Chaos spawn!" The sergeant cursed,, flipping his lasgun to full auto, telling the men to take positions at the firing slots. The men did as they were told, aiming their lasguns at a 45° and aiming at whatever non-friendly they could get into their sights. A few of them began cracking off lasbolts, but even as they did I could see the confusion and fear in their eyes. 

"It's not just chaos spawn," I told them cryptically. 

There was a bright flash of green, and a deafening silence followed by a concussive force and a fiery light from the right slots. The men on that side fell back, panting and blinking from their eyes trying to dim the light they had witnessed. 

"They...they destroyed Chimera C!"  

"Everyone out!" I ordered, getting to my feet and slamming my fist onto the bulkhead door trigger. Immediately there was whirring and the back end of the chimera began to lower, revealing an iron-grey ground littered with dead men and stragglers who fired past our position from behind odd, gleaming obelisks uniformly placed along the path. Even as I stepped out, an eldritch lightning bolt of green warped into one of the men flanking the Chimeras. I watched in horror and fascination as the trooper was stripped atom by atom before my eyes, leaving naught but the barest flecks of cloth on the ground. 

"Hadrian!" Emmaline cried in my face. 

"Move! Behind the pillars!" I cried. The bolter rounds were unimaginably loud, but I was thankful we had them. I rolled out of the cover of the chimera and gauged what lay ahead, and what I saw was pure pandemonium. 

The room was an immense chamber, with larger obelisks planted to frame the central causeway towards what looked to be a full-sized pyramid that doubly served as a throne. Atop it was a lone figure, twice as tall as a man and built like a statue who watched the fire fight below with cold eyes. Before the figure were the cultists, or at least some of them, crouched behind pillars and a central, rectangular 'fountain' that housed what looked to be pure plasma at the center of the walkway. They fired lasbolts and grenade launchers, but not at us. 

From the darkness, within nooks of pulsating green light, emerged those [i]things[/i]. Taller than men and made of metal, they walked in monotonous but strangely animated steps. There were dozens of them, some close by and stepping over the corpses of our guardsmen. They were machines, but I could tell that was not the full extent of what they were. Burning in their breast and behind their eyes were their lifeforce; an alien form of what might have passed as a soul, or what was left of it. It glowed the same green as their weaponry and architecture, only deeper in hue. A few of them lat scattered and broken, shattered by grenades or bolter rounds, or the relentless fire from the heavy stubbers. But even then I saw one, its metal body broken, reanimate and crawl toward its severed lower half. 

Before it could, a shot from the trans-uranic arquebus reduced its steel form to fragments. I turned and looked at Lazarus, who watched with rapt fascination. I could tell he fired on instinct, and was loathe to harm these things because of the questions they might answer. But he was my ally, and in the end I knew I could count on him. 

"Push forward!" I roared, rounds erupting from my combat shotgun. Four shells burst one of the skeleton-machine's apart, pressing forward at the head of my men to have them follow in my wake. "Fire until there's nothing left of the xenos! Kill the cultists! For the Emperor!"