Chapter 148: The Price of Paradise
Seeing that no one was paying attention to him, Kian Voss signaled his men to begin a tactical withdrawal.
He didn't just bolt blindly into the open. The area near the Grand Sump-Lift was crawling with the 9th Regiment's "Pre-Guard" veterans. Those men were wound tight; if they saw a squad moving away from the front, they'd assume cowardice and turn Kian's boys into target practice before asking for identification.
Instead, Kian used his heightened perception to navigate a side street, leading his twenty men toward a high-end boutique.
"Into the shop! Move!" Kian hissed.
The twenty soldiers piled into the building. It was a luxury clothing and goods store, its interior smelling of synthetic perfumes and expensive fabrics.
"Seal the doors. Get away from the windows and huddle in the back. Keep the vox-gain low!"
The squad obeyed, pulling the heavy curtains shut and retreating into the storeroom. Egghead and Ash hovered near Kian, their hands white-knuckled on their autoguns.
"Boss," Egghead whispered, his voice cracking. "What's the endgame here? We can't hide in a closet forever."
Kian pulled out a Lho-stick and lit it, the orange cherry glowing in the dark. "We wait. We let the 9th Regiment and those 'Laughing Ones' grind each other into paste. Once the dust settles, we move."
"Back to the lift?" Ash asked.
Kian shook his head. "Negative. The 109th and the 9th have the lift locked down. We go back that way, we're deserters. We need a 'Back-Door.' We find a local survivor—someone who knows the maintenance shafts or the private service elevators that lead to the Mid-Hive. The Spire always has a way for the rich to escape; we're going to borrow it."
A young private in the corner began to shake, his helmet rattling against the wall. "This... this is treason. We're deserters! If the Enforcers catch us, they'll execute us. They'll purge our families and throw them into the Sump—"
Egghead whirled around and delivered a sharp slap to the private's helmet. CLANG.
"Shut it, grox-brain!" Egghead snarled. "Even if you stay and fight, you're dead. You think the families of the dead get treated any better than the families of deserters? At least this way we might actually see them again."
Kian exhaled a plume of smoke, looking at his men. "He's right. But there's a bigger reason you don't want to be out there."
The soldiers leaned in.
"You saw those monsters," Kian said, pointing his Lho-stick toward the street. "Those aren't just 'mutants.' Those are Poxwalkers. They carry a daemonic virus. I don't know what these Spire-Lords were playing at, but they've allowed a full-scale Warp-infestation to bloom in the heart of the Hive."
The squad turned pale. Even for the uneducated PDF, the word "virus" combined with "Warp" was a death sentence.
"Everyone on this tier is already a 'ghost,'" Kian continued. "I guarantee you, even if the 9th Regiment wins the day, they won't be allowed to leave. The high command will declare a total quarantine and move in with flamers to 'sanitize' every soul that touched the Spire-air. You stay with the 9th, you end up as a pile of ash."
"Are... are we infected too?" Ash asked, his voice trembling.
The squad's tension hit a fever pitch. Kian chuckled, a sound that brought a strange sense of calm to the room.
"Relax. I greased you all up with the Sanctified Salve before we left. You're currently emitting a resonance that makes you a 'Null-Zone' for minor viruses. As long as you don't go hugging a Poxwalker or drinking the sewer water, you're clean. You're the only safe men on this entire floor."
It was a lie, or at least a partial truth, but it acted like a high-grade sedative. The soldiers settled down, their faith in their "Saintly" sergeant overriding their fear.
With the immediate panic suppressed, the men began to wander the shop, their curiosity finally getting the better of them. This was the Upper Spire—a world they had only seen in pict-scrolls.
One soldier picked up a small, colorful bag from a shelf. It looked like a luxury snack—processed grain-wafers flavored with real spices. He tore it open and popped one in his mouth.
"Throne... this is delicious! It tastes like... actual food!"
His eyes drifted to the price tag on the shelf. He froze.
"Two... two hundred scrips?" he whispered. "For a handful of crackers? I could buy a week's worth of amasec for that in the Sump!"
Other soldiers were checking the racks. Ash walked over to a wine display. One bottle stood out: a deep red vintage featuring a label of a woman disrobing.
Ash couldn't read the High Gothic script, but he recognized the numbers. 3,000 Agri-Scrips.
"A whole month's combat pay," Ash muttered, staring at the glass. "I bleed for thirty days, and I'm worth one bottle of Spire-swill?"
A heavy, bitter silence filled the store. The soldiers looked at the luxury around them—the silk drapes, the golden trimmings, the 200-scrip snacks. They realized for the first time that the world they were dying to protect viewed their entire lives as less valuable than a single afternoon of aristocratic recreation.
Kian watched them from his corner, his expression unreadable. He knew this feeling. It was the "Gothic Awakening."
The Imperium was a machine that ran on human suffering, but it was also a machine with a broken transmission. The gap between the dregs and the elite was so vast it wasn't a "social hierarchy" anymore; it was a species-level divide.
With society so deeply fractured, it takes only a little incite from the minions of the Evil Gods to find a multitude of people—living in utter misery and desperation—willing to pledge their allegiance to Chaos.
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