Chapter 344: Side Work, Part 5
The gate to Red Zone One slid open, and beyond it lay pitch-black streets, a jumble of stone and steel-plated housing units, and a dead, empty silence.
Kian raised the Governor over comms. "Governor, get the lights on in Red Zone One. It's too dark in here."
"My lord Inquisitor, the power's been running this whole time. If the lights aren't coming on, the bulbs themselves must be damaged."
Kian took that in, then turned to address his men.
"Everyone, shoulder-lamps and weapon lights on. Advance slowly, keep a barrel pointed at every angle, every corner. Horror movies love this exact setup, pitch black everything, then bam, jump scare in your face."
The squad lit up their shoulder-lamps and weapon lights, cutting through the darkness, and formed a defensive perimeter with every position covering an angle as they advanced toward the housing blocks ahead.
Kian took point himself, leading the group to a row of container-style housing units.
The heavy iron door was shut, secured with an electronic lock.
Kian glanced back at the local civil official, who wore a breather mask and an oxygen tank so he could operate alongside them in the low-oxygen zone.
At Kian's nod, the official stepped forward and swiped his ID card to unlock the door.
The lock blinked green, the door swung open, and a dozen beams of light swept the interior.
A family of four lay on the floor, breathing shallow but still breathing. The low-oxygen environment had put them into a half-conscious state, barely alive but not dead.
Kian gave a hand signal, and the guards behind him moved in, stripping each of them down completely for a thorough inspection. Fingernails, teeth, pupils, every fold of skin.
A full sweep turned up no sign of infection, so Kian led the group on to the next unit.
Another swipe of the card, another door opening, this time revealing a family of five on the floor.
This time Kian didn't bother sending anyone in to check. He raised both arm-mounted weapon racks and fired all four lasrifles at once, reducing all five of them to scattered meat.
These five were third-generation hybrids. Traces of the Tyranid strain were still visible on the surface, a pronounced ridge along the forehead, faintly pointed ears, and most tellingly, not a hair on their heads.
First, second, and third generation Stealers were easy to spot at a glance, clearly not baseline human. Only the fourth generation passed convincingly, and even then it took a careful inch-by-inch check of the skin to catch the keratin patches or the telltale ridge on the forehead.
Kian kept leading the sweep from unit to unit, and ran into essentially no resistance anywhere.
The oxygen was simply too thin. Stealer and human alike were stuck in a dazed, low-oxygen stupor, lying motionless on the floor to conserve what little air their bodies could use.
By the time his forces reached the core streets of Red Zone One without hitting any resistance at all, it was safe to assume there wasn't going to be any.
To speed things along, Kian contacted the Governor and asked him to send more manpower to help with the door-to-door checks.
The Governor sent in twenty thousand PDF troops, breather masks fitted, to help clear the remaining units.
These void-born locals stood well over two meters tall, some pushing past two and a half, an imposing sight on paper.
In practice, though, they were paper tigers. One solid kick and they'd snap a bone.
Kian noticed their lasrifles were running some kind of power-reduced variant, output even lower than the weakest setting on a standard weapon. Curious whether the thing could even kill anything, he had one of the PDF troopers fire a shot at an open wall to demonstrate.
The trooper fired at an iron wall, and all it left was a small scorch mark.
A standard lasrifle on its lowest setting could at least punch a small hole clean through sheet metal. A scorch mark? What was this, some kind of pocket pistol?
A Stealer wrapped in a bit of scrap plating thick enough could shrug off a direct hit from one of these things without much trouble.
No wonder the Governor was willing to pay out an entire interceptor to have this handled properly. These void-born soldiers were genuinely useless in a fight.
"Ah, it's fine. Small is cute too."
Kian patted the trooper on the shoulder, consoling him.
The local PDF trooper looked down at his own undersized weapon, then up at the oversized cannons mounted on Kian's armour, and his face fell.
"My lord, our bodies may be weak, but our fighter pilots are first-rate!"
The trooper seemed to have taken the comparison a bit personally, and launched into an unprompted explanation.
"My lord, we're born and raised in low-gravity environments. Out in the void, there's often no up or down, no fixed direction at all. You surface-dwellers are strong, sure, but in an environment with no up or down, you disorient fast. We're children of the void, though. Space is our home. We don't need north, south, east, or west to function. That's exactly what makes us natural-born fighter pilots."
That actually gave Kian something to think about. He'd need to recruit a few pilots from this world while he was here.
Void-born locals lived their whole lives in an environment with no fixed orientation, which meant zero disorientation once they were in the cockpit. If he ever got his hands on more fighter craft, he couldn't afford to have the hardware sitting idle waiting on trained pilots. He needed combat-ready crews the moment the ship became available.
He tossed the trooper a pack of cigarettes for the tip, then led the group on to the next sector.
Red Zone One took only two hours to fully clear, mostly because there was no resistance at all. Ordinary citizens and Stealers alike lay dazed on the floor throughout. His men walked in, checked at their leisure, and killed anything that turned out to be infected.
With the local PDF pitching in, progress was excellent. Before long, Red Zone One had gone fully green, the ventilation shafts began pumping air back in, and the dazed locals slowly started to come around.
Kian let his men rest for three hours, then led them on to Red Zone Two.
Red Zone Two went the same way as Red Zone One. No resistance in the low-oxygen state, cleared in just a few hours, and the zone was declared green and liberated.
That left only the last stop: Red Zone Three.
Kian had a feeling this one was going to be the boss room. He didn't open the gate carelessly this time. Instead, he had his men stand down for a full day to recover their strength.
While he was at it, he had the Governor bring over the hundred plasma projectors he'd promised, kitting out the troops on-site, making sure everyone got their pre-battle buff before the real fight began.
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