Fear the Alien

by Christian Dunn - (ebook by Undead)

“I know how they work,” he snapped. They pushed on.

  “So, this is all about territory, right?” she said. Drusher nodded. “You saw the map. We’re entering its territory now. Its hunting ground.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Like I said, you saw the map. The thing is, we’re not talking about animal instinct. Not territory as a predator would understand it. We’re talking about orders.”

  “What? Orders?”

  “What is this place, Macks?”

  “The Commission of Works.”

  “And what’s behind it?”

  “Just rubble, Valentin.”

  “Yeah, but what was it before it was rubble?”

  “It was the main building of the Administratum here in Tycho. Before the tank shells levelled it.”

  “Exactly. The Administratum centre. Dead centre of the spread pattern. During the civil war, something was ordered to guard that vital point, secure it, defend it.”

  Macks glared at him. “A man?”

  Drusher shrugged. “Something. Something that’s still doing it. Macks, I glimpsed the killer in the Commission of Works, right after it killed Rimbaud. It was humanoid.”

  Spread wide, the line of officers entered the ruins of the Administratum. Some parts of the ruin were two or three storeys tall, held up, crippled and crooked, by the ferrosteel bars stripped through the rockcrete.

  There were weeds everywhere, flourishing. Tinsel-barb and frondwort, cabbage speculus and the limp foliage of climbing tracedy. The air was pungent with root-rot, stagnant water, mould.

  Drusher slowly circled round. Macks was nearby, riot-gun raised. He glanced left and saw Falken bending in under a broken doorway. To his right, Edvin was aiming his weapon at the overhung, plant-swathed walls.

  Levy raised his clucking auspex box. “Getting something, very weak. It’s coming from the west.”

  Falken nodded and disappeared. Macks hurried onwards. Mantagne covered her, glancing nervously up at the blooming foliage. Weapon clenched high, Roderin shuffled round through a ruined archway.

  “Getting hot now, getting really hot,” Levy called, lifting up his auspex, which was burring like a cicada.

  “Throne, it must be right on us!”

  Falken’s gun went off. Once. Twice. Then another one echoed it. Macks started forwards, running, and Drusher followed. Levy was right behind them. Mantagne rushed around to the other side of the wall.

  There was a scream. Two more shots. Three.

  Mantagne was dead. He had been sliced open from the scalp to the sternum. Blood was still spitting from his opened body, high into the air.

  “Throne!” Macks cried, turning round. She heard Falken fire again, then Edvin. “Where is it? Where is it?”

  Levy almost crashed into her from behind, following his auspex blindly. “Right there! There!”

  Macks aimed and fired, once, twice, grinding back the slide each time. She put a huge hole in the facing wall.

  Shots again, distant, from Falken and Edvin. Macks and Levy followed the sound. Pistol raised, Drusher turned the other way.

  This predator was smart. Very smart and very able. It knew all about misdirection. It could out-think any regular human and then split him open. It understood military tactics because that is what it dealt in. It had been programmed. It had been given orders.

  Breathing hard, Drusher edged round another shattered arch, his weapon braced. His pulse was racing, but this felt entirely odd. This wasn’t about his trained skills anymore. This wasn’t about an animal, whose habits and behaviours he had been schooled to understand. This was the opposite.

  So he did the opposite. Facing any hungry predator, the last thing a magos biologis would want to do is step into the open. But he did so, turning a full circle, his pistol aimed in both hands.

  On the rubbled floor before him, he saw Roderin. Roderin was dead, just like the others.

  Drusher circled again, weapon tight.

  The killer flew at him.

  Drusher pulled the trigger and kept it pulled. Eight, nine, ten rounds, the full clip boomed out of Macks’ borrowed sidearm and hit the killer head-on.

  It fell, burst open, broken, puffed pink intestines spilling from its punctured torso. A man, but not a man. A product of the civil war. Augmetically strengthened, augmetically wired, its eyes a black visor, wires stapled into its flesh, its palsied hands curled over to expose the whirring chainblades sewn into its wrists.

  The chainblades whined as they came together. Despite the rounds he had put into it, it got back up. And leapt at Drusher’s face.

  His gun clicked, dry.

  “Down, Valentin!”

  From behind him, Macks fired her riot-gun and the killer’s head burst like a tomato. The impact knocked it sideways. When it landed, its chainblades were still whirring involuntarily.

  “All right?” she asked Drusher. He nodded.

  “You were right. As ever.”

  “Glad to be of service.”

  “Seriously,” she said, leading him out of the ruins as Falken and Edvin fired shot after shot into the killer to make sure it was dead. “Seriously, Drusher, I owe you.”

  “A week’s pay, you said. I do what I do.” He began to walk away, picking his path through the rubble.

  “Valentin, I could put it down as two weeks, no one would know.”

  He shrugged. He looked back at her. “What about a ticket off this rock?” he said, with a thin, sad smile.

  “Can’t afford that,” she said. “Sorry. Budgets and all.”

  “I had to ask,” said Drusher. He sat down on a chunk of bricks.

  “Look,” said Macks. “You’ve seen how stretched things are down here. The Martial Order Division can barely keep up. We can use all the help we can get, particularly sharp, educated minds with a thing for details. What do you think?”

  “How would that work?” Drusher asked.

  Macks shrugged. “Not sure. I could probably second your services on a temporary basis using the emergency powers. It’s not much, I know, but…”

  Drusher frowned. “My teaching post isn’t much, but at least it’s safe.” He handed her back the pistol.

  “You sure?” she asked.

  “Whenever I spend any time with you, Macks, it ends up getting exciting,” he said. “Rather too exciting for a man of my disposition.”

  “Hey,” she replied, as if hurt, “I haven’t got you killed so far.”

  Drusher smiled. “So far.”

  Macks nodded. “All right,” she said. She kissed him briefly on the cheek and turned to walk back to the transporters.

  Every wrong turn destiny had ever offered him…

  And which was this? Drusher sighed.

  “Macks?” he called out.

  “Yes?”

  “Would I get my own desk?”

  Turning back, she smirked. “Valentin, you’ll even get your own couch.”

  Drusher got to his feet, and wandered down the path after her.

  FEAR ITSELF

  Juliet E. McKenna

  The lights in this basement where they’d set up their medicae station were too bright for sleep. Catmos dropped onto a spare mattress and closed his eyes all the same. He needed rest to do his duty by the next batch of wounded. Of course, the fluorestrips would be less intrusive if he rolled over to face the wall, but Catmos would no more leave his back exposed than he would unstrap his laspistol.

  He crooked an arm to shade his eyes. If he couldn’t sleep, he could escape the stifled moans, the dull reek of blood pierced by counterseptic. On Alnavik, he would look up at cold blue skies instead of stained rockcrete. To the north, the Marble Mountains held back the grinding glaciers stretching across the horizon. To the south, muted conifers cloaked the valleys running down to the coastal plain and the berg-strewn Broken Sea.

  Catmos felt the weight of the modified long-barrelled bolter in his hands, the cold ring of its magnification scope just touching his eyelid. He scanned the o
utcrops above the broad scar of the quarry. Even in this frigid air a man worked up a sweat wrestling machines that sliced the white stone like a power claw through ork armour. Waking with the spring, marble bears were drawn by the scent. Twice as tall as a man and six times the weight, their white fur was threaded with grey, all the harder to see among the barren mountains. They were stealthy despite their size, driven by unstoppable hunger after their hibernation. Their long talons could disembowel a man, slashing through chainsheet work gear. Catmos was there to stop them.

  His thoughts might return to the home he’d never see again but his ears were still attuned to the aid station. Soft footsteps hurried towards him. Not another attack. He’d have heard the emplacement’s lascannons. Something else.

  “Field surgeon!”

  A wounded man murmured at the urgent whisper.

  “This had better be good, squid-sucker, or I’ll stamp on your tentacles,” growled Catmos.

  Mathein stifled a chuckle. Catmos moved his arm, glad to see the young orderly was finally learning to take a joke.

  “Commissar Thirzat has arrived with a squad of cadets.” As Mathein jerked his head towards the entrance stairs, the harsh light glinted on his bionic right eye. A muscle spasm rattled the augmented fingers of his replacement arm.

  He was nervous. Hardly surprising. Catmos didn’t recall this particular commissar but he knew the breed. He got to his feet, stripping off the stained meditunic covering his mottled-grey uniform. “I’ll make sure everything’s in order.”

  He headed for the rear storeroom he had claimed for the medicae support squad. His two junior surgeons, Etrick and Tind, were snoring on the floor, exhausted. Etrick’s orderly, Haux, was wearily opening a ration pack. Catmos retrieved his data-slate and quietly closed the door.

  Turning, he saw a Guardsman in the room opposite, shoving lasgun powerpacks into the recharging rack. The man’s hands were shaking. He dropped a pack and swore as he bent to retrieve it.

  “Not that one.” Catmos stepped forwards to take it. “The casing’s cracked.”

  The last thing they needed was men injured by their own weapons exploding.

  The youthful Guardsman looked at him numbly before blinking as if he’d just woken. “Sorry, sir.”

  Catmos recognised him now. The medical support squad he commanded had been attached to Captain Slaithe’s company before. “It’s Nyal, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.” Nyal’s face slackened with dread. “What happens when the tyranids come back, sir?”

  “We fight,” Catmos said steadily.

  Hollow-eyed, Nyal grimaced. “We killed hundreds today and they kept on coming.” He glanced at the charging lasgun packs. “What if they cut the power? What happens when the heavy bolter and mortars ran out of ammo? We can’t recharge those. The Sentinels—”

  “We’re being reinforced,” Catmos reassured him. “A commissar unit has arrived.”

  “Oh.” Nyal didn’t look entirely relieved.

  Suddenly, the walls of the narrow corridor seemed to press in on Catmos. He couldn’t face the breathless basement until he’d had some fresh air.

  “You’ve more powerpacks to collect?” He nodded at empty slots in the rack.

  “Yes, sir.” Nyal squared his shoulders.

  “Come on then.” Catmos headed up the emplacement’s rear stair. Their boots rang on the newly installed metal, the sound echoing off the older stone walls.

  As Nyal hurried inside the circular tower’s middle tier, Catmos went onto the railed balcony. Above his head, the lascannons hummed, alert. He gazed out over the courtyard of this six-pointed star-fort, relic of the planet’s continental wars, a century before the victors sought the Imperium’s advantages for Shertore.

  Thirty metres or so away, heavy bolters were stationed on each bastion, their crews ready to spring into action. Down in the courtyard, Guardsmen were resting: Captain Slaithe’s battered platoons and the ragged remnants of Captain Kelloe’s company.

  Catmos glanced down at his data-slate. Fifty-six dead and wounded in total. Slaithe’s company had taken heavy casualties and they had been inside the fort. Kelloe’s men had been caught outside, so more than half had fallen victim to tyranid teeth, claws and obscene bioweapons. Only Captain Slaithe’s valiant charge had allowed the survivors’ retreat to the gates.

  The surgeon gazed over the outer wall, towards the sunset’s afterglow beyond the bridge this fort had been built to defend. Those soldiers had never imagined a foe as fearsome as tyranids. He contemplated the silent, fallen Sentinels. They’d fought valiantly to cover Captain Kelloe’s retreat, flamer and autocannon obliterating countless vermin. Until they had been overrun, their ammunition exhausted. Because the tyranids could spare a hundred spawn to kill a single Guardsman.

  Only yesterday, Catmos had been enjoying this new world, enchanted by Shertore’s scented forests. Captain Slaithe was expecting an easy deployment training the Planetary Defence Force. Before dawn orders to hold this river crossing had rushed them to the star-fort.

  “Sir?” His orderly, Mathein, appeared on the stair.

  “I’m coming.” Catmos headed down.

  “Who’s in charge?” A commissar stood in the centre of the basement, glaring around.

  “Vox-sergeant Biniam, please let Lieutenant Jepthad know reinforcements have arrived,” Catmos said calmly.

  The burly vox-sergeant nodded, his scarred face impassive. Shoving through the cadets crowding the stairs, he headed for the uppermost observation platform.

  “Who are you?” Thirzat’s accent was that of the shore, like Mathein. His sneer suggested the coaster’s contempt for anyone who didn’t brave lethal storms and bergs to wrest glitterfish from shipslayer whales and killer squid.

  “Field Surgeon Catmos of the 19th Alba Marmorea.” Donning his own peaked cap, he smiled at the commissar.

  The pristine folds of the man’s greatcoat hinted he insisted on uniform regulations. Despite the balmy evening air, he wore the cape of marble-bear fur favoured by the general staff. On the other hand, enamelled studs on Thirzat’s collar indicated active service in the regiment’s most dangerous campaigns, including the bloodbath of Narthil III.

  “Captain Slaithe?” Thirzat surveyed the wounded men.

  “He died this afternoon. Borer beetles.”

  The recollection nauseated Catmos; slicing open suppurating channels drilled by the beetles, trying to pierce them with his electroscalpel before they shredded some vital organ. He had been too slow. There had been too many.

  “Borer beetles!” Commissar Thirzat rounded on the wide-eyed cadets. “Flesh worms that burrow through your nerve-fibres to consume your brain. Deathspitter maggots melting your armour. Strangler seeds, growing thorns to rip a man to pieces before he takes two steps. You must not flinch! Not if that man’s your lifelong friend, your brother. Not if he’s saved your life ten times over. You let him fall without a second glance!

  “You must not fail. This enemy won’t: the ’gaunts, the raveners, the rippers, whatever vile perversion of flesh and bone these tyranids send. If this corruption gets a single toehold on this world, every living thing is doomed.” Thirzat’s sweeping gesture encompassed Shertore, mild, verdant, fertile from pole to pole.

  “The Hive Mind seeks the utter destruction of humanity!” the commissar roared at the cadets. “Tyranids will slaughter every man, woman, child and animal, down to skippermice hiding in ditches. They are fearless, merciless, unrelenting. Their sucking weeds will wither every tree, every shrub, every blade of grass. They won’t stop till every last scrap of bio-mass is rendered down in pools of living acid. If you fail, your death will be the ultimate treachery, nourishing the loathsome monstrosity that spawned them.”

  Even under the harsh fluorescents, Catmos could see the cadets pale. Whatever they’d learned in their schola progenium lectomms, now they faced the murderous truth of battle.

  “So we will not fail,” Thirzat growled. “You will man this emplacemen
t and shoot down tyranid spores before they spew their poisons in the air. You will destroy tyranid pods so no more perverted beasts pollute this planet. You will slaughter the vermin already here. We will secure this agri-world for the Imperium, to the eternal glory of the God-Emperor. You will count your life well spent if that’s the cost of doing your duty!”

  A wounded man lying on a sensor-blanket moaned. “No!”

  The commissar loomed over him, plasma pistol in hand. “What did you say?”

  “Not again.” The casualty tried to shield his face. Stinking pus oozed through the dressings on his arms as his fleshworm wounds broke open.

  “You refuse to serve?” The plasma pistol whined in Thirzat’s hand. “You know the penalty for cowardice?”

  “Only when facing the enemy. He’s on an aid station mattress.” Catmos stepped so close that Thirzat was surprised into a pace backwards. “Judge him by his actions. He was wounded fighting to save Captain Slaithe. Now that tyranid poisons infect his blood and brain, you cannot read cowardice in his ravings.”

  “We’ll see about that,” hissed Thirzat. “Out of my way, surgeon!”

  As the commissar gestured with his pistol, Catmos had no choice but to step aside.

  Bending over the wounded man, Mathein looked up. “I’m sorry, sir.” Soft-footed as ever, he had come up unseen behind Catmos. “He’s unconscious.”

  “Who are you?” Thirzat demanded.

  Not about to let his junior face the commissar’s wrath, Catmos answered. “Corporal Mathein. His service as a platoon medic was so distinguished that the Officio Medicae took a special interest in his recuperation after Narthil III.”

  “I just did my duty, like the rest of my squad, Stone Bears, every man of us.” With a crooked smile of embarrassment, Mathein quoted the Alba Marmorea’s motto. “Never Found Wanting.”

  Catmos saw Thirzat’s wolf-pale gaze take in the young man’s augmetics and the Medallion Crimson stud on his collar. He only hoped the commissar didn’t see the glistening hypo-needle still protruding from Mathein’s mediplas thumb.

  Thankfully, voices sounded on the stairs.