Uriel roared in pain, but kept his grip on the beast’s ribs. He pulled himself to the armoured plates of its shoulders and drove his sword into its neck. Black blood spurted and the beast screeched in agony as it died. The monster’s death spasm wrenched the sword from his grip.
Before it collapsed, Uriel vaulted from its shoulders onto the glistening walls of the chamber, his fingers closing on the hardened flesh of the Norn Queen’s hide. Hordes of me scavenger organisms closed on him as he climbed, biting and clawing him. They clambered all over him, even squeezing inside his armour, their weight alone threatening to prise him loose.
Despite the pain-suppressors, his chest was bathed in agony. He batted clear the scavengers long enough to draw Kryptman’s pistol and press it against the belly of the Norn Queen.
Feeling his grip on the queen’s flesh sliding free, he pulled the trigger.
He felt a blast of unimaginable heat as the hrud mechanism activated, lancing a column of fire, hotter that the heart of a star, through the thick flesh of the Norn Queen. A fraction of a second later the pistol bucked in his hand as the shell containing the gene-poison fired into its body.
He dropped the pistol and felt himself sailing through the air as he finally lost his grip on the queen’s hide. Uriel twisted as he fell, splashing into the slimy floor of the chamber. He screamed in pain as noxious fluids spilled into the wound on his chest.
He rolled, crushing the scavengers beneath his weight and weakly tried to rise to his feet. He saw Damias destroy the creature he fought with repeated blows of his power fist. Pasanius was hauled from his feet by his blazing foe and lifted high above the ground. Henghast hacked at the beast’s legs, but it refused to die.
The beast’s claws crushed Pasanius’s silvered arm, the metal buckling under the creature’s incredible strength. Uriel reached for his sword, before realising it was still embedded in the tyranid warrior creature.
He looked up at the hissing shape of the Norn Queen’s head and felt a terrible despair flood through him.
The gene-poison had had no effect on the monster.
They had failed.
TRASK LIFTED THE backpack, its contents spilling from the tears like glittering, precious rain. His ugly swollen features were twisted in hate and anger.
He kicked Snowdog in the ribs and again in the face.
‘You stupid bastard,’ he snarled. ‘Did you really think I was gonna take all the crap you kept shovelling me? Two years I gave you and this is all I get?’
Snowdog looked up through a mist of tears and his own swelling features. Over Trask’s ranting he could hear the door several floors below finally give in to the inevitable. He pressed his back to the wall in an attempt to push himself to his feet. Trask kicked out at him again, but Snowdog rolled aside and Trask’s boot smashed into the stone of the wall.
He howled in pain, but recovered before Snowdog could do much more than slide over on his side beside the supine Jonny. The big man was still alive, saw Snowdog. Bleeding badly, but still alive.
Not for much longer if he couldn’t deal with Trask.
Hideous screeching filled the stairs below, and he could imagine the aliens scrambling over one another as they leapt and bounded towards the upper levels. He fumbled around beneath Jonny’s body, smiling to himself as he felt metal and wood in his grip.
He twisted his head to look at Trask.
And suddenly it all made sense. The swelling on Trask’s face wept a purple pus and Snowdog knew that the lone creature that had attacked the column of refugees must have sprayed Trask with some kind of scent that drew these aliens to him like flies to shit.
He smiled at the aptness of the phrase.
‘What the hell you smiling at?’ said Trask, reaching for fresh shotgun shells.
‘You, man. It’s been you they’ve wanted all along.’
‘Huh?’ said Trask as Snowdog rolled to face him, Jonny’s hunting rifle held out before him.
‘You want him?’ he yelled to the aliens below. ‘Well, here he is!’
Snowdog fired the huge rifle, feeling the monstrous recoil crack yet another rib. The impact hurled Trask back down the stairs, a huge portion of his torso simply blasted away by the shell. He crashed down onto the landing below, his body a mangled mess. Tyranid beasts swarmed over the landing, but halted at Trask’s body, hacking and slashing it to shreds.
While the scent of whatever was on Trask was keeping the aliens busy, Snowdog used the rifle as a crutch and painfully got himself to his feet. Briefly he considered trying to lift Jonny, but quickly dismissed the idea as insane.
He heard more footsteps above him and laughed in relief as Tigerlily and Lex sprinted downstairs.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ yelled Tigerlily.
‘Later,’ said Snowdog as he fought through the pain and climbed the stairs. Between them, Tigerlily and Lex managed to lift Jonny and the battered foursome limped up the final set of stairs to the top level of the medicae building.
Snowdog had never been so glad to reach somewhere in all his life.
‘Where’s Silver?’ he said.
‘She’s safe,’ said Tigerlily, pulling him onwards. ‘Come on, the entrance to the caves isn’t far. Let’s get the hell out of here.’
‘Best idea I’ve heard all day,’ said Snowdog.
LESS THAN TWENTY Space Marines remained. Heroism the likes of which Learchus had only read about in history had kept them alive for nearly forty minutes, but the end was drawing near. Horrified men of the Guard watched the Space Marines’ last stand from the District Sextus wall, unable to help them. Learchus would not have wanted their help anyway.
This was a glorious battle, a fitting way for any servant of the Emperor to meet his end. He and Chaplain Astador fought back-to-back, killing aliens with ferocity and skill.
A mound of alien corpses surrounded the Space Marines, hundreds deep, and the shrinking ring of fighting warriors stood atop the mound, battling like heroes of legend.
Another warrior fell, dragged down by alien claws and Learchus felt the spirit of the martyr move within him. As he hacked down another hissing beast, he began to sing, a rousing hymnal from the dawn of the Imperium, a battle song to stir the hearts of all who heard it.
Astador joined him and soon every one of the Space Marines was raising their voices to the heavens in praise of the Emperor as the tyranids closed in for the kill.
PASANIUS KICKED THE guardian beast in the face, crushing its skull and pulverising its brain as Henghast finally drove his sword through its guts. Its claws spasmed and released him. He fell to the floor with a splash.
Uriel saw the golden hilt of his sword protruding from the corpse of the warrior organism. He struggled to his feet to
reach it, wishing no more than to die on his feet with a weapon in his hand. He wrenched it from the dissolving flesh of the beast and limped to stand beside Pasanius and the gore-streaked Damias and Henghast.
The four Space Marines stood with their weapons facing outwards, ready to fight and die like men. Hissing creatures closed in on them, fangs bared and claws poised to strike.
A sudden, violent tremor shook the chamber and a tormented, animal wail built from behind Uriel. The smaller creatures dropped to their haunches in terror as the throat of the Norn Queen, silent for hundreds of years, gave voice to a screech of unimaginable pain.
Its body convulsed, tearing free of its egg sac and mucus-hardened limbs fused to the walls broke with the violence of the spasms. Huge tears in the queen’s belly ripped open, mutant growths erupting from every one. The queen’s flesh boiled and ripped as her evolutionary genome was thrown into anarchy and stimulated beyond all control by Magos Locard’s gene-poison.
Every creature in the chamber took up the wailing screech of agony as evolutionary imperatives were passed through the gestalt consciousness which linked every creature in the hive ship and every creature connected to the overmind.
The chamber shook, the very structure
of the ship screaming as every creature was driven into a frenzy of uncontrolled mutation.
Uriel watched as creatures convulsed so violently they snapped their own spines, frothing at the mouth with aberrant growths and genetic deviancy.
‘It’s working!’ shouted Uriel as portions of the chamber erupted in white-hot fluids and acidic slime fell from the ceiling in enormous clumps.
‘Aye, it worked,’ agreed Pasanius, cradling his mangled arm, ‘but let’s get out of here before it claims us as well.’
The Space Marines fought their way through the rapidly disintegrating chamber of the Norn Queen, the aliens jerking spastically as they died.
Uriel felt a tremendous sense of vindication as they fled the chamber, knowing that he had made the right choice to lead this mission.
He never saw the javelin-like spine shoot from the carapace of the Norn Queen as it slashed through the collapsing cavern. The two-metre barb hammered through his back and exploded from his stomach in an explosion of ceramite and flesh.
The jagged missile passed clean through him, juddering in the necrotising floor.
He slumped forward, the pain beyond anything he had ever felt before.
‘Uriel!’ screamed Pasanius.
He looked down at the wound. Strange that there was no blood. A hard red scab formed around the exit wound, but there was no blood. A sluggish feeling permeated his body and a sharp pain blossomed in his left side, spreading throughout his body.
Pasanius lifted him from the ground.
‘Damias, you’re an Apothecary! Help him!’
Uriel felt his vision grey, his limbs becoming heavier and heavier.
He couldn’t understand. He’d been hurt worse than this before and not felt like this. He saw his heart rate spiralling downwards in the corner of his visor.
‘Bones of Corax,’ swore Damias. ‘It’s phage-cell poisoning. It’s sending his Larraman cells into overdrive and his blood is clotting throughout his body!’
‘Then do something about it!’ bellowed Pasanius.
Uriel felt their words fading and tried to open his mouth, but his vision greyed and he felt his hearts stop pumping as they clogged with coagulated blood.
He closed his eyes and the pain went away.
LEARCHUS KILLED ANOTHER tyranid creature and started another verse before he realised that the attacks were not coming with the same fury as before.
In fact, they were not coming at all.
The alien beasts thrashed in violent fits, their screeching roars rising to new heights. He saw packs of creatures turn on one another, slashing each other’s bodies to red ruin without cease. Thrashing monsters filled the plaza, howling in pain as the overmind died, their bodies unable to survive the psychic shockwave of its death.
Tyranid organisms scuttled and ran through the streets of District Quintus, howling in berserk fury and falling on one another in an orgy of senseless bloodletting.
The Space Marines forgotten, the tyranids tore themselves to pieces.
Before any of the larger creatures were able to regain control, the sixteen surviving Space Marines made their way towards the wall of District Sextus. Very few creatures opposed them and those that did attacked with no cohesion or purpose and were butchered without mercy.
THE INTERNECINE SLAUGHTER continued throughout the rest of the day, the defenders watching with elation as the alien menace that had threatened their world for so long tore itself to pieces.
As night drew in and the temperatures plummeted, whole swathes of organisms perished as they succumbed to the freezing temperatures, unable to seek shelter without the control of the hive mind to direct them.
Some creatures survived, larger creatures with a degree of autonomy from the hive mind, and soon they accumulated small packs of desperate beasts, taking refuge in the warmer parts of the ruined city.
Night finally closed on Tarsis Ultra as a speck of light descended from the heavens, a battered Space Marine gun-ship, its wings dipped in mourning.
EPILOGUE
PASANIUS SAT ALONE on the ruins of the District Quintus wall, staring out into the white expanse of the plain before the devastated city. Stripped of his armour, he wore a simple chiton of blue cloth and cradled his silver arm close to his chest. He watched as a transport flashed overhead: returning from another ruined city with more bad news no doubt.
It had been six days since their return from the dying hive ship and Pasanius had spent much of his time in prayer, offering his thanks for their victory and his sorrows for those who had fallen in battle. There were so many dead, so many prayers to say. The vast chamber of the mosaic held a candle for every soldier dead or missing, and the glowing light from the crystal dome was visible from the far end of the valley.
Among the honoured dead was Sebastien Montante, his spine-pierced body discovered on the ruins of the very wall Pasanius now sat upon. His body lay in state in the Imperial palace and the priests of this world were already calling for his beatification. Pasanius knew it probably wouldn’t be long before Sebastien was made into a saint and he chuckled,
thinking how amusing the Fabricator Marshal would have found that idea. Saint Sebastien, it had a nice ring to it.
Colonel Stagler’s body had been found by his men atop a mound of tyranid creatures, his frozen corpse brutally hacked to pieces. His men did not mourn him. He had died in the Krieg way and that was enough. With both Stagier and Rabelaq dead, Major Aries Satria of the Erebus Defence Legion assumed control of the Imperial Guard forces until such time as a more senior Guard officer could be appointed.
And such a time would not be long in coming. With the destruction of the hive ship, the Shadow in the Warp had lifted from the Tarsis Ultra system and a flood of astropathic communiqués were received by those telepaths who had not been driven insane by the tyranids’ infernal psychic noise.
Imperial Navy vessels were less than a week away, ponderous battlecruisers and vast transports bringing in fresh troops to bolster the weakened defences.
The Mortifactors had left Tarsis Ultra yesterday, Chaplain Astador offering to take the mortal remains of the fallen Ultramarines and inter them within the ossuaries of the Basilica Mortis. Learchus, who had taken command of the surviving warriors of the Fourth company, had politely, but firmly, declined.
Inquisitor Kryptman and the Deathwatch still prowled the ruins of the city, gathering alien carcasses for Magos Locard to study. The gene-poison might only have worked on this hive fleet, but there was still much to learn about the tyranid race.
Volunteer kill teams were being assembled to hunt down the surviving tyranid monsters that had gone to ground in the depths of the ruined city and caves of the high valleys. The shadow of destruction had been lifted from this world, but Pasanius knew that there would be trouble with the tyranids for many years to come if his experiences on Ichar IV had taught him anything.
The winds from the plain were cold and Pasanius extended the silver fingers of his right arm, the metal gleaming and pristine.
Already more than one tech-priest had commented on the skill of the artificer who had repaired his bionic arm following the battle on the hive ship.
Pasanius shivered, closing his eyes as he tucked his arm inside the fabric of his chiton.
He could tell them nothing, because there had been no artificer.
The arm had repaired itself.
THERE WAS PAIN. He supposed pain was good, it meant he was still alive.
Uriel opened his eyes, gummed with so long spent unconscious. He blinked away the residue and tried to push himself upright, but fell back, exhausted, unable to do much more than turn his head.
He lay on a sturdy bed in a stone chamber with a vaulted roof. It was warm and he felt a comfortable numbness that could only be the result of pain balms. He pulled back the sheet to look at his bandage-wrapped body. Scars crisscrossed his chest and he could feel the ache of recent surgery. Whatever had happened to him, it had been serious.
Uriel d
rifted in and out of consciousness for several hours until he was aware of a figure standing beside his bed, adjusting a drip feed attached to his arm.
He tried to speak, the words coming out as little more than a hoarse croak.
‘You’ll find it hard to speak for a while, Uriel,’ said a voice he recognised as belonging to Apothecary Selenus. He managed to say, ‘What happened?’
‘You were poisoned by tyranid phage cells that attacked the Larraman cells in your bloodstream. The poison caused your blood to clot on a bodily scale and your hearts failed, clogged with agglomerated blood. Clinically, you were dead, but the Deathwatch were able to get you back to the Thunderhawk in time for Brother Damias to administer a massive dose of anticoagulants and begin infusions of fresh blood. Pasanius almost killed himself providing you with enough blood to keep you alive long enough to get you here. You are lucky indeed to have such a friend as he.’
Uriel nodded, trying to take in the information, but drifted off into unconsciousness. When he awoke again it was to see a man in the uniform of the Erebus Defence Legion with his arm in a sling sitting beside him. He wore a Space Marine purity seal pinned to his breast.
‘You’re awake,’ he said, standing and extending his hand.
‘Yes,’ managed Uriel. ‘You’re—’
‘Pavel Leforto, yes. You saved my life in the trenches.’
Uriel smiled in recognition. ‘You saved mine too as I remember.’
‘Yes, well, I was lucky with the missile launcher. On any normal day, I’d probably have hit you,’ said Pavel.
‘Well, thank you anyway, Pavel.’
‘You’re welcome, Captain Ventris. Anyway, I just came to say thank you, but I have to report to my unit now. You know, plenty more work to be done,’ said Pavel.
Pavel came to attention and saluted before turning and marching from the room.
Uriel watched him go, thinking back to the picture of his family Pavel had had when he had lain injured.
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