The smoke of battle had not yet fully dissipated, and the air was thick with the stench of charred flesh and burning fuel.
Gamma-9 was busy directing the guards, using shovels to push corpses into a nearby waste pit or wielding pliers to salvage usable screws and plates from the scorched wreckage. Andy didn't participate in this low-end labor. He stood beside an overturned armored pickup truck, his foot firmly planted on a Skinner driver who hadn't quite breathed his last.
The fellow had been lucky; the previous volley from the heavy stubber had only shattered one of his thighs rather than tearing him in half. But his luck ended there.
"Pah!" The driver, a brutish man who remained defiant despite having only half a breath left, spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto Andy's metal leg armor. "Boss Blood-Fang is dead... but this ain't over!" he snarled, his eyes full of madness. "The other warbands will turn you lot into—"
Crunch.
Andy applied a bit of pressure. The hydraulically driven metal sole directly crushed the driver's remaining healthy kneecap.
"AAAGH!!"
The scream instantly drowned out the clanking sounds of the scavenging operation. Andy remained expressionless; he lacked the basic patience for a biological entity that provided no value other than noise.
"Where is your lair?" Andy's voice was as calm as if he were asking for directions.
"Go to hell! You—"
Crunch—
This time, it was the wrist. Andy's movements had a certain rhythm; for every bone he crushed, he asked the question again. This straightforward method of physical communication proved highly efficient. In less than thirty seconds, the driver, who had been so tough moments ago, completely broke down. Wailing through tears and snot, he confessed everything he knew—and several things he didn't even intend to.
According to him, the Skinners' lair was located thirty kilometers away at Abandoned Chemical Processing Station No. 12. There were fewer than thirty people left guarding it, mostly the old, weak, and infirm, as the main force had been wiped out in the suicidal charge against Andy's shelter.
Having secured the coordinates, Andy increased the pressure underfoot.
Squelch—
The driver's chest cavity collapsed, and the world became quiet.
Andy turned and picked out a relatively intact modified jeep from the scrap heap. Its windshield was shattered, and a piece of rebar was skewered through the hood, but the engine was still stubbornly running. Andy hopped in, tore off a string of dried human ears hanging from the rearview mirror, and smashed a skull welded into the center of the steering wheel.
"Damn it, the aesthetics of these idiots are literally anti-human."
Andy was beyond exasperated. Case in point: that moronic skull was positioned directly in front of the driver's chest. In the event of a sudden brake or collision, it would have skewered the driver's torso instantly. Andy shifted into gear and slammed the pedal to the floor. The jeep roared out of the shelter's gates.
To cut the grass without removing the roots is to invite the spring wind to bring it back to life. This ancient proverb applied just as well in the Warhammer universe. If he didn't take this opportunity to wipe out the Skinner gang's nest while their main force was gone, the survivors would soon join other gangs or sell Andy's coordinates to even more dangerous players. More importantly, a gang lair occupied for years was a massive resource vault. After years of raiding, they were bound to have stockpiled plenty of good stuff.
The thirty-kilometer journey took only half an hour for the stripped-down jeep. Abandoned Chemical Processing Station No. 12 appeared on the horizon. The environment here was even harsher than near the shelter; yellow toxic mist drifted through the air, and the ground was dotted with multicolored pits of chemical waste. The so-called Skinner lair sat beneath a massive, rusted distillation tower.
Even from a distance, Andy could smell an incredibly complex odor—the stench of rotting corpses mixed with a pungent, acidic chemical tang. Fresh corpses hung at the entrance, and several newly-skinned human hides swayed in the wind. A few Skinners on guard duty were dozing by the gate, armed mostly with rusted pipes and machetes. The elites had all died with Blood-Fang; only the dregs remained.
Andy didn't slow down. He mashed the throttle into the floorboards.
BOOM!!
The jeep's reinforced bull bar smashed right through the fragile chain-link gates. The massive commotion sent the guards jumping to their feet. Before they could even see who the intruder was, Andy had already hoisted the twin-linked heavy stubber with one hand—he had propped the beast on the passenger seat during the drive over.
THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD!
The heavy thuds echoed again. The 12.7mm rounds tore through the narrow courtyard. There was no suspense. It was a one-sided slaughter; the thugs who tried to resist were like paper before the heavy machine gun.
Five minutes later, the gunfire ceased. There wasn't a single living soul left standing in the chemical plant. Andy hopped down, carrying the smoking gun, and stepped over the carpet of corpses into the factory's internal workshop.
The scene inside would have made any normal person vomit. Hooks were everywhere, draped with human skins. Workbenches were piled with half-processed limbs, and a mountain of skulls sat in the corner. But Andy's electronic eyes didn't linger on these grotesque sights; instead, they locked onto several massive concrete vats. The vats were filled with a thick, yellow-green liquid that was bubbling away.
"No way..." Could it be?
Andy walked to the edge of a vat and stirred it with an iron rod.
[Composition Analysis: Industrial Sulfuric Acid (65% concentration), Chromium salts, Formalin, Tannic acid.]
Exactly. These were tanning pits! To preserve their twisted trophies and keep the human hides flexible and rot-resistant, the Skinners had to use professional tanning processes. And tanning leather required vast amounts of acid and chromium salts. These mindless brutes had unwittingly established a fairly professional chemical tanning production line.
These three massive pits of industrial sulfuric acid, though mixed with some organic impurities, would become the most critical raw material for manufacturing smokeless powder and primers after simple distillation and purification!
Andy continued further inside to the rear warehouse. The discovery here surprised him even more. Dozens of blue plastic barrels marked with skull symbols were stacked in the corner.
[Item: Industrial Saltpeter (80% purity).]
This stuff was usually used for making explosives or fertilizer. The Skinners had clearly been using it for homemade bombs. Now, they belonged to Andy.
He had the acid, the saltpeter, and the starch. Once these three components were combined, Andy could hand-craft nitro-starch explosives—standard propellant.
Andy immediately hailed Gamma-9 via radio. "After you finish clearing the field, bring everyone and every empty barrel and vehicle we have to Chemical Processing Station No. 12. There's a cache of strategic materials here that needs recovery."
After arranging the transport task, Andy entered a separate room on the second floor. Judging by the decor, it was Boss Blood-Fang's private office. Andy casually swiped a jar containing an eyeball off the desk and began rummaging through the drawers.
Since there were so many chemical raw materials here, there had to be a supply chain. A bunch of illiterates like the Skinners couldn't possibly produce sulfuric acid and formalin themselves. Soon, Andy found an oil-stained electronic data slate. It looked old, its screen covered in cracks. Andy extended a data probe directly into the interface. After a simple brute-force bypass, a transaction log popped up.
[Trading Partner: Plague Doctors (Beak Doctors).][Transaction Content: Provide 500 fresh living livers, 20 Type-AB blood slaves.][Exchange Materials: 20 barrels of industrial sulfuric acid, 10 barrels of saltpeter, 5 crates of analgesics.]
Watching the records, Andy's processor whirred at high speed. So that was it. The reason the Skinners were so keen on killing and capturing people, aside from their twisted hobbies, was simple: they were raw material suppliers for the organization known as the "Beak Doctors." They provided meat and organs, while the doctors provided chemical materials and medicine. It was a complete black-market industrial chain.
Andy's gaze fell on a metal badge beside the data slate. It featured an eerie design: a pale skull with a long avian beak, representing the mask of a plague doctor from ancient Terra. Andy picked up the badge and weighed it in his hand.
Just then, a new unread message popped up on the data slate.
[From: Beak Doctor (Agent).]
[Time: Today 18:00.]
[Message: Is the cargo ready? Meeting at the usual place tonight. We need more hearts this time; the test subjects are being consumed rapidly.]
Andy checked the time: 16:00. Two hours until the exchange. A cold arc curved at the corner of Andy's mouth. Ball had just warned him not to provoke those bio-monsters, but now, the opportunity had delivered itself to his door.
These doctors controlled vast amounts of medicine and advanced chemical technology—maybe even an antibiotic production line that only existed in Andy's imagination. Rather than waiting to be attacked later, it was better to strike first.
Since Blood-Fang was pushing up daisies, perhaps the seller in this transaction could use a change in management?
Andy tucked the beak badge into his waist pouch. Outside, the sky had darkened, and a dim yellow toxic fog blanketed the deathly quiet chemical plant.