The psionic aftershocks slammed into Cassius, but the majority of the warp-energy was diverted by his flickering Iron Halo. He didn't falter. He walked steadily toward the pulsating Neurothrope, his iron boots crunching through fungal mats.
Behind him, his battle-brothers provided a relentless wall of cover fire. Bolter shells and melta-beams hammered into the xenos' flickering psionic shield, the sheer volume of fire forcing the creature to divert its focus away from Cassius.
Gritting his teeth against the mental pressure, the Sergeant launched his final assault.
"In memory of the Gene-Father!" he roared—a battle cry of the Iron Hands lineage.
The massive steel behemoth closed the distance, shoving the barrel of his heavy bolter directly through the Neurothrope's weakening shimmering shield. He pulled the trigger. Brain matter and psychic-conductive ichor splattered across his emerald-green plate.
The crushing psionic pressure that had permeated the lair vanished instantly. The sudden snap of the mental tension was so violent that the Gargoyles Sarah was controlling suffered a form of "psychic decompression." Their brains literally cooked inside their skulls, and they plummeted from the shaft walls, dead before they hit the ground.
The entire hive node was now being swallowed by a merciless, mechanical crusher. Metal melted, rock cracked, and xenos flesh evaporated under the Magra Clan's doctrine of total annihilation. With overwhelming firepower, they were reshaping the environment into a tomb.
Cassius, ever observant, noticed the Gargoyles that had been lurking above before they fell. He didn't hesitate; he signaled his squad to rake the shadows with fire, ensuring nothing remained.
"There's no way to fight this," Raynor muttered, his voice dry.
Having received the full operational details from Sarah via their link, Raynor let out a long, shaky breath. If Sarah's lair were exposed, could she survive such an onslaught? Even with her current growth, the answer was an agonizing 'no.' Her swarm—numbering barely over a thousand—would be vaporized in minutes by such saturation fire.
The countdown to the Hive Fleet's arrival was ticking, but right in front of him sat the Imperium's most elite killing machines. A deep sense of urgency gripped his heart.
Ever since seeing the battle report of the Sons of Medusa, Raynor had become obsessively cautious. He only contacted Sarah when he was far from Cassius and surrounded by the white noise of the Hive's teeming masses. He would stop in the crowded downtown plazas of District 7, pretending to check tax notices on his data-slate while his mind dove into the System.
His fingers would slide meaninglessly across the cold screen as he wove encrypted instructions in his mind. Sarah's replies were increasingly concise, often just a system confirmation. She understood the danger; she began reducing the active range of the swarm, withdrawing her units into the deep, lightless depths of the Hive's crust.
Most of their contact was now mediated through "Maw-wyrms"—medium-sized, serpentine burrowing beasts that acted as extensions of Sarah's consciousness, moving safely through the rock far beneath the sensors of the Astartes.
Raynor could no longer risk transporting supplies directly. Resources had to undergo multiple rounds of laundering before reaching Sarah. He utilized "recycled military rations" from the black market, flesh harvested from "legal" exterminations of giant rat swarms, and xenos organs recovered by his own patrol teams.
Raynor meticulously divided this biomass into two parts.
Sixty percent was channeled back into the "official" black market. He had to maintain his persona as a corrupt, greedy official. Through the Anvil Society, these goods were converted into untraceable credits, titanium batteries, and rare weapon parts to keep his patrol team—and his own gear—in top condition.
The remaining forty percent reached Sarah through a series of cold, calculated "scripts."
Script A: The Black-on-Black Merger. Raynor would anonymously leak information to two rival smuggling gangs, convincing both that the other was transporting high-value goods along a "safe" route.
When the two groups met at a secluded pipeline junction, tension would boil over. Before the first shot was even fired, Sarah's small strike teams would leap from the shadows. They tore open the transport vehicles, devoured the biomass packages, and vanished. The survivors were left to blame each other for the "looted" cargo.
Script B: The Unfortunate Theft. Raynor arranged for Anvil Society members to escort "important supplies" through abandoned sectors known to house mutants. The team would be "attacked" by a ferocious, unprecedented mutant—Sarah—resulting in the disappearance of the cargo and the deaths of the couriers.
Raynor would then lead a formal investigation, retrieve some damaged equipment as "evidence," and write a somber report listing the deceased as "fallen in the line of duty," using the incident to apply for more Imperial equipment.
Script C: The Price of Greed. This was his coldest method. Raynor leaked information about lucrative smuggling routes he had marked as "high-risk" to greedy ringleaders.
These routes conveniently passed through Sarah's hunting grounds. As the convoys rumbled past, laden with biomass Raynor had hidden among the cargo, they were met with devastating ambushes.
Within three months, over 150 smugglers and underworld figures in District 7 were "missing" or "confirmed dead." In the Hive World, such attrition was as common as the morning smog. No one cared.
Raynor felt no remorse. The Imperium had no shortage of scum, and every life taken was a day's worth of growth for Sarah.