The miasma of death and putrefaction was even heavier here. The recycled air was thick with the all-pervading essence of evil. Other things were moving amongst the leprous rabble, things that had no right to even exist: the sickly physical manifestation of the Plague Lord's gifts, their long-fingered touch granting their victims those same gifts with virulent efficiency.

Iron-Father Gdolkin carried out a swift scan of the chamber to assess the situation.

'Captain Thrask.’ he said, flicking open the channel to the Iron Hands' tech-guard allies with a synapse-thought. 'If we can get you and your men to that command tower, will you be able to restore operation of the generarium to the bridge?'

W-We can try.’ Thrask replied uncertainly.

'You can try?’ Gdolkin challenged, not liking the doubt in the tech-guard's voice. Doubt implied weakness and weakness led inevitably to failure.

'Put it this way. It'll be the best chance we have if great Gehenna is to complete its mission in time.’

Then so be it. Your objective is to climb that tower and restore control of the generarium to the bridge.’ Gdolkin stated coldly. There would be no debating the matter.

And with that the Iron Hands threw themselves at the enemy again, bolter, chainsword, axe and fist laying waste to the heretics before them.

With a cry of, 'For Ferrus and Medusa!' Librarian Melchor, his bald head and psy-sensitive hood crackling with lambent lightning, turned on a Plague Marine with slime dripping from its breathing tube and, in a blaze of magnesium bright light, obliterated the disease-ridden abomination with a single blast of thought.

Sergeant Erastus and Battle-Brother Taudis gunned down a heretic censer-bearer, his robes daubed with mind-warping sigils that spoke of new and traitorous allegiances. The smoking censer shattered on the iron floor of the chamber in a cloud of foul green fumes that choked the stale, ozone-tinged air.

Fundare, also from Erastus's squad, doused a squealing, shrieking plague-thing, its malformed body sporting only a single eye and a single horn, its bloated gut a mass of suppurating pustules. The abomination was sent screaming across the hall in a blaze of fire, gouts of blackening orange flame flying from it and igniting the filthy robes and clothes of other turncoat acolytes and troopers.

Yet another of the relentless Nurgle Marines loomed large before Gdolkin. The Iron-Father let out an involuntary gasp. Even he had seen few sights as appalling as this one. The Lord of Decay might grant his servants a repulsive aspect, but he did not so readily accompany such gifts with mutation. However, this was not the case of this debased Plague Marine. The Nurgle worshipper's head had changed into that of a facet-eyed fly, a tubular pink tongue as long as the haft of Gdolkin's power axe darting from an obscene insect proboscis.