The central warehouse was almost gone.
Its roof had fallen into the interior, while two walls lay across the freight yard. Several steel columns remained standing at uneven angles.
The flesh remained with them.
Thick sections covered the collapsed supports and continued into the adjoining buildings. What appeared thin from outside was several meters deep in some places, packed through the lower warehouse and the spaces below the loading floor.
Some of it still moved.
Raptor Two passed over the eastern side.
The artillery opened another section there.
Instead of exposing ordinary foundations, the impact revealed more tissue surrounding the lower supports. It extended through a service corridor toward the next warehouse and disappeared below another concrete slab.
"Two. It keeps going."
Raptor One banked toward the northern side.
"Confirming. Central structure isn’t the whole thing."
Hans watched both feeds.
Another part of the complex shifted.
A damaged wall farther north buckled outward as the tissue behind it contracted. Pieces of concrete fell into the service road, revealing another mass attached to the building interior.
The same movement appeared through a warehouse almost a block away.
Matilda enlarged the full site.
"How many structures?"
"Four visibly connected," Raptor Two answered. "Possibly more below."
Raptor One crossed the western freight yard again.
"Make that five."
Hans stared at the wrecked complex. The previous Hives never looked like this after an artillery strike. Those were bodies wrapped around structures.
This thing had turned the structures into part of its body.
Another Hellhammer salvo struck the southern side.
The impacts removed another warehouse and opened a long section of freight yard, but the biological markers around the complex remained dense.
Kimmy’s voice entered from Bastion One.
"Hans."
Hans looked toward her channel.
"It is still there."
"Can you tell how much?"
A short pause followed.
"No. But..." Kimmy struggled to find the right words. "It doesn’t feel like one small place anymore."
That matched what the aircraft were showing.
Hans returned to the operational display.
The company was still advancing. Behind the marked site, the million-strong mass continued moving through Ironford while the shorter psychic intervals kept driving more movement into the surrounding approaches.
He was not going to spend the rest of the morning peeling away one warehouse at a time.
"How much of the site do we still need?"
Matilda studied the exposed sections.
"For recovery?"
"For anything."
She understood.
"Nothing essential."
Hans looked back toward the freight complex.
"Then stop treating it like a building."
Matilda opened the operational channel.
"All strike elements, prepare for a full attack on the marked complex."
The acknowledgments came from across Ironford.
The six Hellhammers began receiving new fire zones.
The Striker sections changed position around the company while their crews prepared the Hellfires they still carried.
Raptors Three and Four finished their current attacks and climbed away from the outer breaches.
Five through Eight remained above the airborne contacts, waiting for the strike window to open.
Across the ground formation, Missile Infantry received the marked freight complex through their targeting systems.
Hans watched the ruined warehouses disappear under another layer of smoke. This one needed everything they could put on it.
Matilda gave the artillery several seconds to finish their solutions.
The air package moved at the same time.
Raptors One and Two widened away from the freight complex. Three and Four approached from farther south, while Five through Eight began leaving the upper-air fight in pairs as the remaining airborne contacts were pushed toward the outer sectors.
The Strikers changed formation below them.
Five Apache sections separated around the freight complex, staying clear of the artillery approach while their Longbows and thermal sights picked through the sections already opened by the first bombardment.
On the ground, the Missile Infantry moved forward with the platoons.
Their launchers turned away from the airborne contacts.
HEAT missiles loaded.
Hans watched the friendly positions settle around the target.
The Hive answered with another pulse. He ignored it.
"Ready?"
Matilda checked the feeds.
"Ready."
Hans looked at the freight complex.
"Destroy it."
Matilda opened the operational channel.
"Full strike. Execute."
The Hellhammers fired first.
All six guns discharged across several seconds, the reports reaching the company one after another while their shells climbed over Ironford.
The next rounds were already being loaded before the first salvo reached the target.
Raptor One entered from the northwest.
"One. Weapon away."
The internal bay opened for only a moment. A missile dropped free and accelerated toward the exposed western section of the complex.
Raptor Two came from the south.
"Two. Away."
Two impacts struck almost together.
The first entered through the wrecked warehouse and disappeared into the mass wrapped around its lower supports. The second hit the collapsed loading floor where the flesh continued underground.
The Hellhammers arrived immediately afterward.
Six 203-millimeter shells landed throughout the freight complex. The central warehouse vanished under the impacts.
Concrete, steel, and biological tissue erupted from the compound. One of the adjoining buildings folded through its middle before another shell struck behind it and tore the remaining wall apart.
Raptors Three and Four entered while the artillery crews began their second salvo.
Three selected the northern structure. Four took the eastern side. Their missiles crossed the smoke and entered sections already exposed by the artillery.
Another mass opened.
The tissue inside was thicker than the layers visible from the air. Flesh filled most of the lower floor and continued through broken concrete into the structure beside it.
Raptor Three climbed away.
"Still active."
"Four confirms."
The Strikers were already approaching.
"Need more firepower, boys?"
The first Apache section crossed the western side of the compound. Four Hellfires left the pair in quick succession, each missile selecting a separate exposed section before striking through the torn buildings.
The remaining sections followed from different sides. Each pair released four Hellfires into the exposed biological masses.
Twenty Hellfires struck the complex before the Strikers widened away again.
The freight complex disappeared again.
Hans could barely see the target through any of the aircraft feeds. Biological markers disappeared in clusters as the strikes landed.
The Missile Infantry fired from the ground.
Launchers rose across South One and South Two.
The HEAT missiles climbed over the leading Vanguards and turned toward the sections marked by the aircraft. More launches followed from Third and Fourth Platoons as their firing angles cleared.
They did not spread their shots across the entire compound. The exposed masses took them.
Missiles struck the tissue left visible between artillery impacts, punching into sections that the larger shells had already torn open.
The six Hellhammers fired again.
"Second salvo away."
Another set of shells crossed above the company.
Raptors Five and Six entered next.
Their air-to-ground missiles left from separate approaches, followed several seconds later by Seven and Eight coming in from the west.
Raptor Seven looked at the ruined compound through his targeting feed.
"That’s a generous target."
Eight answered from farther behind.
"Try not to miss it."
"I would have to work at that."
Both weapons left their bays. The missiles entered the smoke.
Almost immediately afterward, one of the impacts triggered something deeper inside the industrial compound.
A second explosion pushed outward from the northern service block. It was larger than the missile strike that preceded it.
Part of the damaged building lifted before breaking apart, followed by a short burst of fire spreading through the wreckage. Several nearby containers rolled across the yard while another section of roof collapsed into the crater forming beneath it.
Raptor Seven climbed away.
"That one wasn’t mine."
"Claim it anyway," Eight replied.
The next Hellhammer shells landed. The freight yard disappeared under dirt and pulverized concrete.
For several seconds, the aircraft feeds became useless.
Smoke covered the visual feeds. Dust rolled through the surrounding roads, while the biological picture inside his Virtual Radar broke into scattered concentrations.
Then the impacts stopped long enough for the aircraft to look again.
Raptor One returned first. The freight complex was barely recognizable.
Nothing recognizable remained of the central warehouse. Two neighboring buildings had collapsed, and most of the loading yard had become overlapping craters filled with steel, concrete, and torn black tissue.
Raptor One reduced his angle.
"Checking."
His camera crossed the center. Something moved inside the largest crater. The flesh itself contracted.
A wide section near the bottom pulled inward, exposing another layer below it before expanding again through the rubble.
Raptor Two caught the same movement from the other side.
"Two confirms activity."
Hans’s Radar still showed biological mass underneath the destroyed compound.
It was less than before, but still far too much. The ground around the crater shifted.
A section of broken freight track lifted several centimeters as tissue underneath it tightened. Then another part moved farther east.
Raptor One gave a quiet whistle.
"You have got to be kidding me."
The Hive was still alive.
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