Aramus could only shrug, the movement obscured by his heavy power armour such that his shoulder-guards only bobbed fractionally on either side. 'I don't know, sir.' He paused, and then added, 'When I saw that the thing had… well, had hatched, though, I thought you should be apprised immediately.'
Thule nodded. 'You thought correctly, sergeant.' The captain ran his gaze around the darkened warehouse, thoughtfully. 'We are only some hundred metres or so from the shipping depot in which I've made my headquarters. With all the effort we've put into strategising against the orks beyond the city walls, I'd never have dreamed that we'd have to consider such a threat from within the township itself.'
'Have there been any reports that might suggest a xenos sighting, sir?'
Before Thule could answer, there was a scraping sound from behind them, and the noise of crates being toppled.
The two Blood Ravens whirled around, impossibly fast, Aramus with his bolter raised and ready to fire, Thule with Wisdom coruscating in his gauntleted grip.
The pair of men who stood at the warehouse entrance saw the bolter trained on them and the power sword drawn against them, and likewise saw the aggressive poses of the Space Marines who held them. Stricken white as ghosts as all the blood fled their faces, the two men shot their hands up into the air in an attitude of surrender.
'Don't shoot!' shouted one of the men, who wore the finely-wrought robes of a member of the Argus Township gentry, a corded belt straining over his prodigious belly. Here was a Calderian who had not missed many meals when the foodstores of the general populace began to run empty.
'Noble Astartes, we present no threat,' the other said, as calmly as possible. He was dressed flamboyantly in a brocade jacket with epaulettes on each shoulder, knee-high boots, a duelling pistol in a lacquered holster at his hip, and an augmetic patch over one eye. No Calderian, whether gentry or otherwise, this was an off-worlder, a rogue trader by the look of him.
'Stand fast, sergeant,' Captain Thule ordered, pointedly not sheathing the power sword Wisdom. The captain turned his baleful gaze on the two men. 'What is your business here?'
The Calderian flustered, flapping his hands overhead like tethered birds attempting to take wing. 'Th-this… this is my business,' he managed, with some difficulty.
Captain Thule raised the point of Wisdom until the tip of the power sword was aimed directly at the Calderian's heart. 'You waste my already-too-precious time. I'll ask again, what is your business here?'
The Calderian, a guilty look on his face, glanced to the rogue trader beside him, seeking assistance.
'What my corpulent friend is attempting to explain, proud sons of the Emperor,' the rogue trader began, his tone oily and obsequious, 'is that he is the master of this warehouse. This place is, as he inelegantly attempted to phrase his response, his business.'
Captain Thule was quickly losing what little patience remained to him. Though it was something of a break in etiquette, Aramus stepped forward to address the pair, in large part out of a desire to spare them testing the captain's patience and thereby earning his ire. 'Have you a ship, man?'
The rogue trader inclined his head in an abbreviated bow. 'Humbly,' he said, without a trace of humility in his tone, 'that felicity is mine.'
'Then why are you here?' Aramus indicated the warehouse, and the township beyond, and the hordes of orks beyond the city walls. 'Why have you not fled?'
The rogue trader glanced in the warehouse-master's direction. 'My companion here has retained my services to escort him from this world to some safe harbour, but expressed a desire to salvage a few items of value - both commercial and sentimental - from the warehouse before quitting the planet.'
Captain Thule took a step forward, his gaze boring into the warehouse-master. 'As master of this place, you are responsible for what is stored within.'
It was not a question, only a bald statement of fact, but the warehouse-master still stammered a reply in the affirmative.
'What do you know about that?' Captain Thule said, swinging his power sword around and thrusting its point towards the container and the hatched xenos egg within.
The warehouse-master and rogue trade exchanged a glance, neither willing yet to speak.
'Answer!' Thule boomed, brandishing Wisdom.
'I— I— I…' the warehouse-master stammered.
'You,' Thule said, pointing to the rogue trader. 'What is your role in this?'
'Well, you see, Noble Astartes,' the rogue trader began, waving his hands as though conjuring his words from thin air, 'I am only lately arrived on Calderis, and so surely I can't be expected to…'
Before the rogue trader could finish his prevarication, there came a sound of screeching metal from the far side of the warehouse.
Annoyance boiling over, Thule turned to see who this new interloper might be. What is it now?
It was at that moment that the tyranid warrior leapt from the shadows of the darkened warehouse, talons scything and toxins dripping from its gaping maw.
SERGEANT THADDEUS HAD seen Sergeant Merrik fall before the ork mechanised walker, but been too far away to do anything to help. It had been only a short while since Sergeant Avitus had relayed Captain Thule's orders to prepare for withdrawal, and with their extraction almost within sight, Thaddeus had made a private vow that no other Blood Raven would fall on Calderis if he could help it.
The spacefaring orks, led by the blood-faced Warlord, were proving a much deadlier enemy than their feral cousins had done. So long as he had kept his chainsword whirring and his feet moving, and so long as he was able to face off against the feral orks singly and not in large numbers, Thaddeus had been reasonably assured of escaping serious injury. Only the primitive explosives which the feral orks lobbed at him, whether lashed to the end of spears or configured as crude grenades, had given the enemy much in the way of ranged attacks, and so long as Thaddeus was constantly aware of the greenskins in close quarters, ready to parry any of their attacks with his chainsword, he maintained the upper hand. And with his jump pack, he had been able to leap away, if the numbers of orks in close range ever proved too many for him to overcome.
Out on the open deserts, though, facing the more sophisticated orks of Gorgrim's horde, there were countless variables more to consider at each passing moment. No longer was he able to contend himself only with those orks close enough to make close combat attacks, only occasionally having to dodge or outrun the crude explosives lobbed his way; now, facing off against the artillery and energy cannons and heavy weapons of Gorgrim's horde, Thaddeus found himself facing possible danger from all sides, at all times. And if he found himself overwhelmed by numbers, he could not simply leap away, for fear that he would, like Brother Renzo, simply be shot out of the sky before ever touching down again.
All of which, of course, made the withdrawal to the extraction point that much more complicated a proposition. There were fourteen Space Marines of the Blood Ravens Chapter still standing and fighting against Gorgrim's horde by this point.
Thaddeus swore on the name of the Great Father, Azariah Vidya, that he would see all fourteen of them reach the extraction point. And even if he couldn't get them all out alive, it was worth his life to die in the attempt.
AVITUS AND HIS Devastator squad manned the walls. The sergeant itched to join the action against the spacefaring orks out in the desert, and had done since Sergeant Thaddeus had first voxed back word of their discovery, but Thule had ordered the Ninth Squad to safeguard the township until the last possible moment.
Though Avitus was a Blood Raven, and knew his duty, the assignment rankled. What did he care about the safety of the quavering inhabitants of Argus, much less of the snivelling desert-dwellers who had taken refuge there? He knew all too well that the Calderians would not hesitate to sacrifice the lives of Argus and the rest of the Space Marines, if it meant even a few moments more life for themselves. He had learned the real value that the common citizens of the Imperium placed on the Adeptus Astartes back on Kro
nus during the Dark Crusade, and never again would he be fool enough to place undue value on the lives of normal men and women.
Sergeant Cyrus and his Scouts had been dispatched to gather and protect the aspirants selected to accompany the Blood Ravens back to the Armageddon, and had now likely already reached the space port to the west of the city, preparing to depart in the Thunderhawks. When Thule had been called away by Aramus, who had discovered something of interest in his search through the city, Avitus was tempted to quit the barricades, and withdraw to the extraction point himself. But he was a Space Marine, and given his orders he would fulfil them to the best of his ability, however odious the task might be.
So now he waited for the word from Captain Thule, for leave either to proceed to the space port for extraction or else join Thaddeus and the others in the action against Gorgrim's horde, for the moment busying himself with picking off feral orks as they attempted to scramble up the township's walls.
But when the next vox came from Thule, it was not the word which Avitus had been expecting.
Captain Thule's next communication was a single word, one which brought a chill even to the spine of a hardened and world-weary veteran like Sergeant Avitus.
It was a word that could conjure nightmares, and brought back memories of the titanic struggle against the norn-queen that had cost Avitus his jaw and most of his throat.
'Tyranid!'
ARAMUS LOOKED ON as Captain Thule parried the tyranid's rending claw with the power sword Wisdom, the energy that crackled along the blade's length sending up sparks as it rebounded against the diamond-hard chitin of the monster's claw.
'Captain, to your left!' Aramus shouted, then fired a stream of bolter rounds at the tyranid's torso as Thule leaned out of the line of fire.
Against the chitinous armour of a tyranid, even a relative juvenile such as the warrior who faced them now, the bolts were all but ineffective. Aramus cursed himself for not bringing hellfire rounds to the planet's surface - with a mutagenic acid vial at the bolt's core, the rounds would at least have stood a chance of doing some significant damage - but no one had anticipated the presence of the Great Devourer's offspring lurking on Calderis.
'For the Emperor!' Thule shouted, charging the tyranid once more, power sword swinging through the air in a whirling blur. The tyranid warrior leapt aside with blinding speed, its movements impossibly fast thanks to the adrenal glands that pulsed on its back, launching a salvo of diamond-hard spines at Thule from its spinefist as it went.
The tyranid was barely mature, having only recently hatched, but was already a fearsome monster. Tyranids passed quickly through their juvenile stages, and in short order were already all but unstoppable killing machines. This one had evidently been skulking around the shadows of Argus for days, picking its prey carefully as it grew, perhaps dining upon a stray animal or two until it had grown large enough to begin to cull the weaker members of the unsuspecting refugees who crowded the streets of Argus Township.
And if one or two, or a handful, or even a dozen or more refugees went missing over the course of a few days, who would notice? There were so many crammed into the township, and confusion ran so high, that families and groups were continually being separated from one another. And even if they had noticed the loss of one of their number, to whom would they raise the alarm? Their leaders and politicians had already fled from the world, most of them now safely on board the ships of Admiral Forbes's Battlegroup Aurelia, and the Blood Ravens had concerns of their own to occupy their attentions.
'Aramus!' shouted Captain Thule, his power armour already dotted with toxic-laden spines that had buried themselves in the ceramite, but none of which had, as yet, pierced through into the flesh beneath. 'Flanking manoeuvre.'
Aramus didn't waste time or breath in acknowledgment, but sprang into motion. He had a frag grenade in one fist, his bolter in the other, and while he wished fervently that he had heavier weaponry, or perhaps even a krak grenade or two, he knew too well that wishing was not going to alter the odds one whit, nor magically change the contents of his personal armoury.
Of the warehouse-master and the rogue trader, there had been no sign since the moment after the tyranid warrior attacked. Aramus hoped that they had gotten clear, and had not been hit by an errant spine disgorged by the tyranid's spinefist - or, in fact, by any errant weapons fire from Aramus's own bolter - and that perhaps they had already reached the space port and the rogue trader's own vessel. The two men were hardly exemplars of the Imperial population, both seemingly of a low and somewhat devious nature, but any human lives lost unnecessarily to a xenos enemy stung Aramus's sense of responsibility, and if the two were to escape with their lives, the dangers which Thule and the sergeant now faced might not be in vain.
Aramus waited until Thule had pulled away, then lobbed a frag grenade at the warrior. The grenade hit the ground between the tyranid's rear limbs, and the resulting blast was directed upwards into the warrior's lower body. The shrapnel pitted and cracked the tyranid's chitin here and there, with an evil-smelling ichor oozing out from between the cracks, but aside from some minor surface damage the warrior seemed not to be significantly injured.
Still, they had succeeded in cracking the tyranid's armoured shell, and if they could do that, it meant that they might be able to do real harm to the body within, as well.
'Stand clear!' Captain Thule ordered, waving Aramus back. 'I shall take the battle to it!'
Wisdom was like a living thing in the fist of the Blood Ravens captain, the energy that coruscated along its blade leaving streaked traces in midair, so swiftly did Thule swing it through the air. Even in the face of daunting odds, Aramus could not help but admire the technique with which Thule bore the blade, or the strength that powered his swings and thrusts.
When the warrior had first attacked, Aramus had offered to call for additional Blood Ravens to assist them. But beyond making his initial, curt announcements to the others that a tyranid had been spotted in Argus, Thule had refused to call on the others again. They had already lost four of their brothers in the preceding days to the orks, feral and otherwise, and it was Thule's opinion that the rest of them would be needed to successfully complete their mission and escort the aspirants off of Calderis. If the price of that success was to be the lives of Aramus and Thule himself at the rending talons and tusks of this tyranid, then that was a cost that the sergeant and captain would have to pay.
CAPTAIN DAVIAN THULE closed with the monster, lunging forward, Wisdom whistling through the stale air of the warehouse. In close quarters as they were there was little opportunity for feints and evasion, and subtly was seldom of much use against a tyranid in any case. What mattered most in a contest against an offspring of the Great Devourer were speed and strength.
Had Thule and Aramus been properly armed, a contest against a single tyranid warrior would have been no contest at all. Enough well-placed hellfire rounds and a krak grenade would have been sufficient to fell the inhuman beast. But the Blood Ravens had come to Calderis armed for a conflict with orks, little expecting a need for the weaponry and tactics developed over the long years of the Tyrannic Wars.
With a wordless, keening cry, the tyranid met Thule's power sword with one of its forelimbs, and though Wisdom managed to sheer off the chitinous tip of the warrior's claw, the remaining portion of the limb was left no less able to strike.
Wisdom shifted in Thule's grip, and the captain swung the power sword backhanded at the tyranid's thorax, but before the blade impacted the warrior was able to fire the barbed strangler which was fused to one of its middle limbs, the seed-pod vomited from the muscled tube at speed. Just as Wisdom was rebounding off the tyranid's armoured skin, the seed-pod struck Thule's sword-arm at the shoulder, sticking in place as though held by the strongest of adhesives. Before Thule had realised the seed-pod had stuck, it had already begun to grow to maturity, impossibly fast, spreading out in all directions with blinding speed, shooting out hooked tendrils that wrapped thems
elves around his neck, shoulder, and sword-arm, binding as tightly as any forged manacles.
'Captain!' Thule heard Aramus shout.
Thule struggled to break free of the barbed strangle or to shift his power sword to his free hand if he could not, but having gained a momentary advantage the killing instincts of the tyranid warrior would not relent. The spinefist bound to the warrior's other mid-limb fired another salvo of diamond-hard spines, which at this close range grouped together over an area no more than a few centimetres in diameter at the centre of Thule's abdomen, just below his sternum. The spines buried themselves in the ceramite, some of them a centimetre or more deep, and together sent cracks spidering through the outer skin of the captain's armour.
Thule heard Aramus's bolter firing, again and again, saw the muzzle-flashes from the corner of his eye, but already his vision was becoming obscured as the barbed strangler continued to grow and wrap itself around Thule's helmet.
The warrior swung down its massive rending claw, punching directly at the worst of the spidering cracks on Thule's abdomen, once, then again, and on the third impact the claw punched through the cracked ceramite and buried itself in the muscle and soft tissue within.
As the warrior drove its claw deeper and deeper into Thule body, captain and tyranid were pulled only centimetres apart. Through the sliver of vision afforded to Thule through his barb-obscured eye slits, Thule could see the pits and cracks on the tyranid's carapace where Aramus's bolts had struck true. It looked like the crater-pocked surface of a moon, oozing foul ichor.
The barbed strangler had all but immobilised Thule's sword arm, and the claw impaling him prevented him from moving to either side, but if he could only manage to shift Wisdom in his grasp a fraction, and then…
Captain Thule reached out with his free hand and grabbed hold of the tyranid's upper body.
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