Black Tide

by James Swallow

  Vetcha nodded. “It’s been a prisoner here longer than any of us. I doubt the arch-traitor’s cruelty was any less towards it for its origins.” He coughed and looked away.

  “It… wants to die,” said Layko.

  “A wish we will grant,” Rafen replied, and fired.

  The zoanthrope was the last of the tyranid master clade still living on Dynikas V. The agonies it had suffered at the hands of the flesh-prey that had tormented it were unbounded; the alien’s malleable genetic make-up, the core strength of Hivemind and the key to its victory over the monoforms that infested the galaxy, had been turned against it. The being that had captured it, shackled it, had twisted the zoanthrope with sciences bonded to dark magicks and freakish sorcery. The tyranid became a slave, a breeding machine, little more than a piece of organic hardware meshed into the workings of Fabius Bile’s hidden fortress.

  If the xenos could have understood the concept, it might have experienced gratitude, or perhaps grasped the incongruity of its fate. But at the end, only one thing mattered; it wanted death, desired it more even than the great unstoppable hunger that lay at the heart of all of its kind.

  And in the seconds before its life drained away, even as the bolt shells and laser blasts ripped it open, it gave voice to a final scream of pain that echoed across the planet.

  In the halls of the prison, Brother Ceris cried out and spat blood, flares of bright actinic light flashing about the edges of his psychic hood. He crashed to the stone floor, twitching and coughing, for long seconds caught in the telepathic undertow of the alien’s death cry.

  The psionic wave of shrieking, boiling pain flashed out across the island in a radial wave, invisible to the naked eye but blazing sun-bright across the frequencies of the mind. Hundreds of kilometres away, mind-sensitive psi-slaves aboard the boats patrolling the Dynikan oceans were killed instantly, and without them the predators in the water began to drift closer, hunger-lust stimulated by the burst of hate that the scream kindled in their primitive minds.

  At the epicentre of the killing, the psionic shock touched every single thing that shared a molecule of tyranid DNA. The clouds of pheromones that had shrouded the island for so long were suddenly robbed of any potency, all power bled from them as the haze of biochemicals quickly discorporated and congealed, becoming a rain of greasy white ash falling from the sky.

  The wave of rage expanded, like finding like as every tyranid it touched was abruptly shaken into a ravening, bloodthirsty frenzy. Creatures that drifted or swam or flew were immediately aware of something new and horrible in their midst, as the mélange of pheromones and telepathic blinds concealing Bile’s island were instantly dissipated. For the swarms of the xenos, it was as if a colossal malignant tumour had manifested itself without warning in the meat of their body.

  All other desires, all other instincts were forgotten. A towering mad fury reserved for the hatred of invaders blossomed across the mind of every tyranid on Dynikas V. They smelled human meat, the spoor of the unlike, and the drives that ruled their species took to the fore.

  To attack. To kill.

  To devour.

  The alien’s death scream cut into Rafen like a ragged knife, and he threw up his hands to protect his ears. But the sound was no sound—instead it was an effect, a field of unseen force rippling about him, through him, into him.

  And then came the pain. A fiery churn in his chest that felt like liquid metal pouring down over his flesh, burning him, crisping his skin and bone into blackened gobs of shapeless matter.

  The parasite inside him was eating his primary heart; it had to be this. No other agony could be so powerful. The bolter twitching in his cramped grip, he staggered away from the smoking remains of the zoanthrope’s body and fell to his knees. Through blurred vision, he could see the others each in the same condition, every man of them clutching at himself in utter agony.

  A thin, high-pitched chorus of squealing reached his ears, filling the chamber with every passing second. The maggots. All around him, the newborn, unimplanted parasites were lashing at each other and writhing with shock, veins protruding from their glossy flanks, fluids chugging out of their lamprey mouthparts.

  The zoanthrope’s psychic death throes were killing them; as he watched, struggling to keep himself conscious, the larva-like things burst and shrivelled, vomiting clumps of black cinders into the air. Without the telepathic link to their xenos parent, they were disintegrating as the daemonic elements of their creation were lost back into the warp.

  With trembling fingers, Rafen tore open the bloodstained robes across his chest as another sickening roil of repulsion shot through him. He could see the parasite Cheyne had buried beneath his breast, squirming, pressing against the dark clotted matter of scabbed skin where his wound had healed. Then the head of the throbbing, bloody maggot burst from his flesh and hissed at the air, the fronds around its mouth waving. The Blood Angel gagged, but with steely control, he reached up and grabbed the mewling parasite. With a ripping of skin, he tore the thing from him, even as it discorporated into ashen powder.

  Rafen spat to clear the taste of acid from his mouth and moved to his comrades. Each of them was stained with the dark powder, their chests bloody and raw.

  “We… are free of them…” choked Nisos. “Free at last!”

  The Blood Angel grabbed Vetcha and helped him to his feet, waving a hand in front of his face to disperse the fog of black smoke collecting from the maggot corpses. “Bile’s prison had no need of warders, not while those things were inside us,” said Rafen. “He will not live to regret his arrogance—”

  “Above!” Layko’s shout smothered the other man’s words.

  Overhead, where the ring of gantries circled the circumference of the chamber, a hulking shadow was moving, the glow from an open hatchway silhouetting a figure as tall and as broad as a Space Marine.

  “You,” came a voice, as cold as a curse. “What have you done?”

  To the tyranids’ insectile senses, the island seemed to come from nowhere, and the shoal of krakens lurking beneath the ocean surface were suddenly assailed by the vibrations and overspill of prey, so close to them that the proximity was almost maddening.

  Their bullet-like bodies exploded out of the shallows, tentacles fanning out in all directions to capture anything that could be consumed and converted into biomass. One dithered over the capsized wreck of the patrol craft, spearing through the boat’s internal spaces as it probed for living tissue; others threw themselves on to the hull of the beached Neimos, thick ropes of cilia flooding in through open hatches to feast on the morsels of near-human meat cowering within the metal tube. In concert, their coils strangling the steel, they cracked open the submersible, shattering the space-hardened metals and opening it to the saline air.

  When they had picked the craft clean, they shifted their mass and altered the configuration of their forms, dragging themselves up the gravel beach and on to dry land, moving with steady purpose towards the gates of the fortress. They could smell the prey, and there was much of it.

  In their wake, the waves along the coastline began to froth as countless clades of lictor-sharks, ripper eels and other hungry forms came hunting for the same meat.

  “Fabius Bile!” Rafen shouted his enemy’s name with all his might. “I name you traitor!” He squeezed the bolter’s trigger and sent rounds crashing off the overhead gantry. Nisos joined him, stitching laser fire up in a blazing fan of light.

  The Primogenitor snarled as he took a glancing round, and threw himself over the rail ringing the gantry. His skin-coat fluttered open behind him as he fell, and he landed hard and ankle-deep in the mass of a pile of dead maggots.

  Rafen was already moving, reloading on the go, putting the support frame and the corpse of the zoanthrope between him and the traitor. Bile’s hand disappeared into the folds of his coat and returned with a wicked-looking weapon.

  The Xyclos Needler. Before embarking on the Tycho’s mission, Rafen had studied all the
records he could find of Fabius’ methodology and combat prowess; data had been sketchy and often contradictory, but on the matter of the traitor’s favoured weapons, there had been a consensus. Bile used a type of archeotech pistol dating back to the Dark Age of Technology, guns whose needle loads could carry a variety of lethal toxins powerful enough to fell even a Space Marine.

  The gun chattered and Rafen dodged, feeling the gust of passage as two darts as thick as his finger whispered by his head to bury themselves in the dead tyranid. Beam fire from the Tauran drew the traitor’s attention and Rafen broke from cover, looking for an angle of attack. He sensed Layko and Vetcha close by, waiting for their opportunity to strike.

  His eyes narrowed; there was no sign of the massive brass-and-steel chirurgeon device Bile often wore upon his back. The machine allegedly supplied the traitor’s millennia-old body with warp-tainted chemicals to keep him alive, and on Baal some of Rafen’s battle-brothers had learned to their cost that the device had a mind of its own. Still; without it, Bile was denied a key defence, and Rafen would accept every advantage he could get.

  “You Astartes fools!” Bile was shouting at the air. “I wanted to make you part of something great, and now you threaten to destroy everything! Why couldn’t you just be good specimens and know your place?”

  “We are not yours to toy with, whoreson!” snarled Layko. “You’ll die here in this hell of your creation!”

  “Oh, I think not!” came the retort, followed by a hissing storm of needles.

  Rafen ducked and sprinted around a stanchion, careful not to lose his footing in the mass of mucal matter and decayed maggot-skin. He fired two rounds and saw Bile take a solid hit in the shoulder that spun him around; but before he could draw a bead a second time, the Crimson Fist was racing from cover, sword blades a web of bright steel. Layko barrelled into Bile with such force that he knocked the Primogenitor off balance and out of Rafen’s sight line.

  “That idiot whelp!” snarled Vetcha.

  Rafen moved, seeking an angle, as Layko connected with Bile, smashing his swords into the traitor with wild, heedless abandon. The expression on the Crimson Fist’s face was one of madness. He was lost in the need to strike back at the man who had so tormented him.

  Cuts opening across his face and his arms, Bile roared back in anger and grabbed at Layko before the gaunt Astartes could disengage. He dragged the other man off his feet in a burst of speed and strength that Rafen would have thought impossible, and threw him bodily across the chamber. The gesture was not random; Bile tossed Layko straight into Nisos as the Tauran took aim, knocking the other Space Marine down into a wet mass of ashen slurry.

  It only took a moment to happen, but it was a moment Rafen employed with the perfect clarity born in hard-fought battle. Fabius recoiled from his attack and found the Blood Angel aiming at his head.

  “This ends now, coward,” said Rafen, pulling the trigger.

  The sound of the misfire echoed louder than any bullet. With a dull snap, the bolt cartridge mechanism fouled once again, turning the barbed pistol into little more than an ornate club.

  A cold smile creased Bile’s face as he raised the needler. “Cheyne never did take very good care of his weapons.”

  The traitor’s gun chattered; but suddenly the world was turning around Rafen as a lank-haired figure collided with him and threw him to the wet-slick floor. The Blood Angel landed hard, the old Space Wolfs weight upon him. Vetcha gasped and choked, a trio of thick silver spines protruding from his chest.

  Furious, Rafen banged the stalled bolter against the deck to free the trapped round and rose up with a roar. Before Bile could react, Rafen pulled the trigger once more and Cheyne’s weapon spoke thunder.

  The mass-reactive round struck the traitor in the cheek and blasted away a third of his head in a puff of mist. Bile’s legs gave way and he dropped into a kneeling position, black blood jetting from his ruptured face.

  Ignoring his target, Rafen bent to see to Vetcha. “Long Fang! You old fool!”

  The Space Wolf laughed. “No way… to speak to your elders, boy…” The poison in the darts was already blackening the veins visible on the surface of the veteran’s skin, but still he reached up and pulled open his tunic. There, hidden from sight, was the festering wound from a sword cut. “Poison was already in me,” he hissed. “Cheyne… on his bone blade. Better this blind wolf spends his last breath of life well, eh, Blood Angel?”

  Rafen gave a grim nod. “Aye.”

  “Tell them on Fenris,” choked the warrior. “Tell them Nurhunn Vetcha lived to see his enemy die.” The Space Wolf drew in half a breath, and fell silent.

  “Ave Imperator,” replied Rafen. He stood up, turning towards Bile. Incredibly, the traitor was still alive, his body twitching as jolts of oily fluid spurted from his injuries. The Blood Angel stepped in, touching the barrel of the gun to the ragged wound his first shot had made. He fired again, and this time Bile’s skull exploded, flinging his headless carcass to the floor.

  Still twitchy with adrenaline, Layko approached the corpse, with Nisos warily training his gun on the remains. “Is it done?” said the Crimson Fist.

  Rafen looked up, towards the circular window in the ceiling. “Not yet,” he replied.

  FOURTEEN

  “There’s no way out!” shouted one of the warriors, falling back towards the main line of the Astartes as las-fire chased him across the sandy ridge. He was a brother of the Salamanders Chapter, and his ebon countenance was set in a scowl.

  Tarikus looked up and glanced at Kilan, who gave him a grave nod, confirming the other prisoner’s words. The gathering of Space Marines were holding cover in the shadows of the cavern where the enemy had driven them, keeping the modificates out, but only barely. With too few weapons and too many warriors far below optimal fighting strength, they were hard-pressed. The Doom Eagle counted less than ten battle-brothers, and given the choice of them he would have taken only half into war. The death-agony of the parasites had freed the prisoners from the control of the New Men, but the shock had left many of them weakened. Tarikus’ hands were still dirty with the blood and ash of the maggot that he had torn from his chest.

  “As Vulkan is my witness,” continued the Salamander, “every splice left in the fortress is marshalling against us!”

  “So it’s even odds, then,” said Kilan, but his attempt at bravado fell upon stony ground.

  “On any other day, I might agree,” nodded Tarikus, “but we are few, wounded and unfit, and they are many. We can only hold the line.”

  Kilan ducked as a laser bolt streaked over his head, slamming into the stone roof. “Rot their blighted souls!” he snarled. “We cannot end like this! We are the Emperor’s chosen, and for every wound we have taken, all we have lost, we cannot die cowering in the dark!” He fired back, killing a serpent-beast slithering in on its belly. The Raven Guard glared at the Doom Eagle, his eyes aflame. “The shackles of Bile’s prison are broken! If we end here, we will die without honour!”

  Tarikus discarded one of the bolters in his hands, the weapon empty, the barrel warped and white-hot with overuse. He loaded his only remaining clip of ammunition into the other gun and whispered words of blessing over it. “Emperor, I beseech you,” he said quietly, his voice lost in the rumble and screech of the battle, “deliver us from this.”

  “What say you, kinsman?” pressed Kilan. “Your Chapter welcomes death, does it not? Shall we go out there to find it?” He stabbed a finger at the thronging mass of the enemy crowding the cavern mouth.

  “Fate will take us when it is ready,” Tarikus replied.

  “Perhaps this is that day—” The Salamander began to speak, only to be cut down by a fusillade of beams spitting from the cluttered entranceway.

  Tarikus swore hatred and fired back, killing those who had murdered the battle-brother. He was still cursing them when the pistol breech locked back with a heavy, final snap of metal on metal, the last round expended.

  “So be it,”
he said. “Come take me, then, if you dare.” Tarikus listened to the shrieks of laser bolts slashing through the air about him, the bellow and chatter of the modificates, waiting for the sound of the enemy’s hooves echoing into the cavern; but instead he caught the unmistakable thunder of massed bolters. Peering out of cover, he saw the modificates being cut to pieces by raging torrents of shellfire and the heavy detonations of krak grenades.

  Kilan surged forward, sensing the rout of the enemy as it formed, and Tarikus went with him, charging down towards the cavern mouth.

  At the entrance, the smoky light from outside was suddenly blotted out by the shapes of figures in heavy power armour, wreaths of cordite vapour clinging to them like cloaks. Tarikus saw the pointed, feral snout of a Mark VII Aquila-pattern battle helmet, the eye slits glowing red in the gloom. Unbidden, a rare grin burst out across his lips.

  “Brothers of the Imperium,” said the figure in black and ruby. “Stand to.”

  “Rafen’s comrades, I presume?” said Kilan, laughing.

  “The same. We thought you might appreciate some help with this matter.” The Flesh Tearer kicked at a dead minotal and then glanced around at the survivors. “Is this all that remains?” He removed his helm as he asked the question.

  “Aye,” said the Raven Guard. “A few others with Brother Rafen, but no more.”

  “And the arch-traitor?” This question came from a Blood Angel who stood nearby. “What of Fabius Bile?”

  “Unknown,” Kilan admitted.

  “I know you.” Tarikus studied the sergeant. “Noxx. It’s been a while since Merron.”

  “Brother Tarikus.” The Flesh Tearer gave him a wary nod. “It has. Still hold it against me?”

  The Doom Eagle shrugged off the question. “I’ll be generous if you tell me you can take us from this place.”

  A figure in indigo armour, his head crested with a psionic hood, moved into the cave, turning a penetrating gaze on every one of the freed warriors. “Our conveyance has been destroyed by the tyranids.” The psyker’s hard-edged glare passed over Tarikus and he felt the Blood Angel briefly turning a spotlight on his soul, seeking signs of weakness and taint. “We need to find another way off this blighted rock.”