By dawn, Catmos was confident nineteen more men were safe from paralysing terrors, Nyal among them.
“Thank you, Mathein.” As the orderly escorted the patient out, he carefully closed the door. Then he hurled the starchaser at the storeroom wall. It shattered, useless fragments bouncing everywhere.
Those men might be safe from their fears but what could save them from being eaten by lictors? What use could twenty more lasguns be against numberless tyranids? Were his night’s endeavours a waste of time? Was Commissar Thirzat right?
Catmos was too exhausted to decide. Still, there was nothing of the tyranids’ insidious dread about his apprehension. He knew it for clear-eyed understanding of their mortal peril. But as his mother always said, if he understood his fear, he could fight it.
Leaving the storeroom, he saw Biniam hunched over the caster. The vox-sergeant looked up at Catmos and briefly shook his head.
The lascannon on the tower’s upper tier opened fire. Everyone in the basement froze.
Catmos swiftly assessed the bedridden patients, counting those who could handle a weapon. He beckoned to a sergeant waiting with the men fit for the ramparts.
“Ask Lieutenant Jepthad for thirty lasguns or pistols down here,” he said briskly.
“Not sure if we have that many to spare, sir.” The sergeant’s bleak face told Catmos how truly dire their situation now was.
“Field surgeon?” The skin around Mathein’s augmetic eye was pale and taut, the other sunk in a bruise of weariness.
“Come with me.” Catmos went to the resuscitrex. He flicked switches and the machine hummed ominously.
Mathein looked at him with misgiving. “What—”
“If the tyranids overrun the emplacement, give the most seriously wounded the Emperor’s benediction,” Catmos ordered. “A jolt stops a beating heart as surely as it restarts a dead one. Anyone capable of holding a weapon must save a shot for themselves.” Unlocking a panel in the resuscitrex, he removed two glass vials. Drawing the contents of one into a hypostick, he handed the other to Mathein. “This is for you. Pruscyan. Quick and painless.”
“What are you going to do?” Mathein asked, alarmed.
Pocketing the lethal hypostick, Catmos walked towards the storeroom. “If this is the last day I see, I’ll die with a weapon in my hands.” He found his own kit, mismatched reminders of decades of travel and war. There were still a few things he’d brought from Alnavik.
“What’s that?” Mathein looked wide-eyed at the unfamiliar weapon.
“A long rifle.” Catmos checked the ammunition before offering his hand. “It’s been an honour to serve with you.”
Mathein stepped back, shaking his head. “I’ll find a lasgun.”
“You will stay here and save our patients from the enemy,” Catmos said sternly.
The young orderly would be safer in the basement, if by some caprice of the uncaring universe, any of them lived through this day. Then there would be wounded to treat, Catmos reminded himself. He wasn’t about to spend his life for no purpose, while that duty remained.
Mathein nodded, unable to speak.
Catmos hurried away up the back stairs though. He couldn’t face walking through the wounded.
Heavy footsteps rang on the metal steps behind him. He turned, levelling the long rifle.
“Stone Bears!” Biniam held up his hands in mock surrender. “Where are you going, scat-face?”
“I’ve done all I can for the wounded ’til this battle’s over, one way or the other.” Catmos scowled. “You should be on the vox.”
“Listening to dead air?” Biniam shook his head. “I’ll die with a gun in my hand.”
“Come on then.” Catmos turned and they headed upwards.
The warm sunlight on the topmost platform mocked their fatigue. This high above the reeking tyranid dead, fallen thick as autumn leaves as far as the eye could see, Catmos realised forest scents were sweetening the breeze. He took a deep, fragrant breath then looked down into the compound.
Not all the mortars were manned this time. Lacking ammunition or trained crews? Ammunition, Catmos guessed, seeing Otharen standing by one, lasgun in hand, ready to defend it or take over firing, depending on how the fight went. At least all the heavy bolters on the thrusting bastions were crewed. But how long before they emptied their remaining magazines? They couldn’t hold these walls with valour alone.
“Here they come.” Biniam readied his lasgun.
Leaping, scything tyranids attacked from all sides. No matter how many the wall-mounted heavy bolters cut down, more followed. They flung their bony hooks, scrambling up the twisted sinews linking the living grapnels to their bodies. Once up on the ramparts to right and left of the gates, they hurled themselves at the bolters. For every five shot down by the Guardsmen desperately defending the weapons, ten more followed.
These were different beasts to the previous day’s assailants. Their carapaces thicker, they clutched stubby symbiotes that spat seemingly insignificant glittering showers. The Guardsmen screamed in agony out of all proportion to their tiny wounds. Dropping their lasguns, they clawed at their faces and scraped their hands against the rockcrete, not caring as they spilled their own blood. Then racked by sudden convulsions, every man fell to lie rigid and helpless.
Some toppled from the ramparts, making no effort to save themselves. Catmos winced as skulls shattered on the paving. Others sprawled broken-legged, splinters of bone piercing their clothing. Those lying stiff on the ramparts were ripped to pieces by the tyranids. But the bolter crews on the neighbouring bastions swiftly turned their fire on the vermin, to deny those weapons to the enemy as well as avenge their comrades. The bolter to the left of the gate exploded, the remaining ammunition deliberately detonated in a Guardsman’s dying defiance.
Biniam was cursing, repetitious, monotonous as he fired shot after shot with his lasgun. Catmos rested his long rifle on the platform’s rail and carefully took aim at a sturdy tyranid with a blotched head. It disappeared from his reticule in a shower of slime.
Below, the lascannons on the tower swivelled on their mounts. Taking his eye from the scope, Catmos searched the sky. He couldn’t see any of the flying vermin today. The defence lasers hummed and Catmos realised they were levelling at the ramparts on either side of the gate.
The lascannons opened fire, sweeping from one side to the other. Because no friends were holding those forward walls, any Guardsmen still alive was a helpless victim of the tyranids’ paralysing, agonising poisons.
“With me! With me!”
Lieutenant Jepthad was down in the compound with a squad of veteran Guardsmen. They took a stand between the tyranids leaping down from the ramparts and the single-minded mortar crews still clustered in the centre, firing salvo after salvo aimed just outside the gates. Shoulder to shoulder, the Guardsmen didn’t flinch, steadily pouring las-fire into the chittering, flailing beasts. The compound paving was littered with broken chitin and slick with ichor spewed by dying tyranids.
The gates abruptly disintegrated in a cloud of black dust. No explosion, it was a sigh of defeat. The deadly pall swept into the compound and Guardsmen caught up in it collapsed, choking, unable to even gasp a last curse.
As the dust settled, a new horror stood in the entrance. One clawed hand held a monstrous sword of blackened bone. The other brandished an obscene lash, whips of living muscle twisting around each other, tipped with razor talons.
Biniam swore.
Was it the same tyranid warrior as yesterday? Catmos couldn’t tell and it really didn’t matter. He found it with his scope and saw murderous purpose lighting the amber eyes beneath the fanned chitin plates protecting the creature’s head.
He recalled the commissar’s words. The big ones know what they’re doing. Thirzat was shouting something else now but Catmos couldn’t make it out over the din of battle.
The tyranid warrior brandished its sword and threw back its head, shrieking. Every creature in the compound answered
with a cry of bloodlust. The sound went beyond simple hearing, lacerating every Guardsman’s resolve. The tyranids resumed their attack, even more deadly than before.
Biniam’s voice shook. “Kill the big ones, the commissar’s saying.”
He had the weapon to do that and crucially he had the skills. Catmos concentrated and drew a long breath. Exhaling till his lungs were empty, counting his pulse to fire between heartbeats, he gently squeezed the trigger. He missed. Of course. The breeze.
“How far off?” Biniam demanded.
“No idea,” Catmos spat. Pain in his shoulder from the weapon’s vicious recoil was nothing to the lash of failure.
“I’ll spot for you.” Biniam snatched up his magnoculars.
Catmos shot a second bolt.
“Three marks off to the top-right,” Biniam advised. “Wait! No shot!”
Through his scope’s narrow view, Catmos saw Lieutenant Jepthad attacking the tyranid warrior.
The monster brandished its bony sword. The officer dodged the black blade, but was lashed by the living whip. He flung up his arms to defend his face. Merciless loops tightened round his chest, squeezing the life from him, dragging him towards the beast’s glistening fangs.
Guardsmen racing forwards to his aid were forced back by a slavering wave of lesser tyranids. The lieutenant wasn’t struggling in the whip’s coils now. Arms hanging limp, he was dragged towards the massive creature’s lethal talons.
Catmos steadied the long rifle. His whole universe was the view through the scope. One bolt would release Jepthad to a merciful death and still kill the monstrous warrior.
He frowned. He could see Jepthad’s face. The officer’s eyes were alert. The creature stooped, dagger-toothed mouth gaping, reptilian tongue tasting the air. Jepthad’s hands were still free. Captain Slaithe’s power claw crackled with blue lightning. With a convulsive effort, Jepthad brought up his arm and drove the coruscating blades deep down the tyranid’s throat.
The monster died with a screech of agony that sent a shiver of uncertainty through every single tyranid. Guardsmen still fighting in the compound seized their chance and took every shot they could.
But Catmos saw a new horror. The habitents covering the pits of the dead were heaving. Serpentine tyranids ripped through the fabric with twin pairs of rending claws. Scattering rotting limbs and heads, they undulated across the paving. As the Guardsmen ran to attack, the creatures reared up on a thick twist of their muscular tails or used the pincered end to murderous effect. One man lost a foot, his boot cut clean through.
Catmos spared a moment to wonder if that’s what the lictor had learned, when it had devoured poor Talwhit’s brain. This new way to get inside their defences, which it shared with the Hive Mind that spawned it.
The wriggling tyranids fanned out across the compound, some heading for the mortar crews now standing back to back, some attacking the Guardsmen still desperately trying to reach Lieutenant Jepthad, half-crushed beneath the fallen monster. Others writhed towards the steps that would take them down to the basement and the wounded lying there.
Catmos recognised a voice shouting defiance down below. A Guardsman planted himself solidly in the tyranids’ path. It was Otharen, rallying as many men as he could, his lasgun firing steadily. As long as he was standing, the wounded would be defended.
Surely that was Nyal beside him? It was hard to tell, with every man in armour and helmet, but the tilt of his shoulders was familiar.
The young Guardsman ran forwards, dodging the slashing talons of a ravening tyranid. Firing his lasgun one-handed momentarily kept the foe at bay. He had a tube-charge in his other hand. Letting his lasgun hang loose on its sling for an instant, he twisted the tube’s cap and threw the explosive hard into one of the pits. Corpses and tyranids alike were blown to pieces.
But Nyal didn’t retreat. Cutting the tyranid still menacing him down with a final lasgun shot, he twisted the cap of a second tube-charge.
Catmos’ heart pounded, his pulse counting off the seconds of the fuse. Then Nyal stooped and threw it, long and low, aimed right into the far end of the pit. This time the explosion was muffled, the compound paving buckling and then sagging as the tyranid tunnel was destroyed. Catmos allowed himself a breath of hope. Until he realised a second tyranid warrior stood in the ruined gateway.
Raising a massive weapon in its middle claws, it fired a metallic stream of crystals at a lascannon. The weapon exploded in a deluge of sparks. Its crew fell backwards screaming, shining acid stripping flesh from their hands and faces, eating away bone beneath.
Thirzat led a squad down the tower steps, his power sword levelled straight at the creature. The men charged towards the warrior. Otharen and the mortar crews followed, lasguns blazing. Lesser creatures invading the entrance died in droves.
No, Catmos decided. The tale of this day’s heroics belonged to Jepthad, even if no one lived to tell it. He rested his rifle on the rail, focussed through the scope and carefully judged the breeze. This time his first shot sent a deuterium bolt through the warrior’s eye.
He reached into his pocket for the deadly hypostick. “Pruscyan. Enough for two.”
“Keep it for another day.” Biniam’s magnoculars tilted upwards.
Down in the compound, the tyranid incursion had lost its deadly purpose. Commissar Thirzat was rallying the surviving Guardsmen to secure the gate. Bolter crews on the bastions were holding their own. The tower’s lascannons angled downwards, blasting open the tyranid tunnels to reveal countless twisted corpses.
The breeze shifted and Catmos smelled the scorch of ozone. He looked up to see pinpricks of light piercing the cloudless blue as thrusters fired. Drop-pods screamed through the fragrant air. As the Guardsmen holding the compound began cheering, the Praetors of Orpheus landed on all sides beyond the walls. Tyranids scattered in every direction. None was fast enough to escape the righteous fury of the Space Marines and their murderously accurate fire.
PROMETHEUS REQUIEM
Nick Kyme
The hangar gaped like an open wound in the side of the ship, festering with rust and warp corrosion. It belonged to the Glorion, an ancient vessel from the long-dead KappFrontier Wars and was just one in a conglomeration of almost a hundred. Ruined cathedra mashed together in the violent act of joining, jutted alongside broken spires, shattered domes and the cleaved remains of many-tiered decks. The union of once-disparate vessels was as incongruous as the product of their fusion. Now a single drifting mass, such abominations were commonly referred to as “hulks”.
The Implacable was an insect compared to this behemoth and its landing stanchions touched down on an area of deck plating capable of harbouring an entire fleet of gunships. Ten armoured figures stepped out from the embarkation ramp. They moved slowly. Not because of the massive Terminator suits they were wearing or because of the inertia of the zero-G, nor was it because their boots were mag-locked to the deck plating. They were wary. Hulks had ever been the province of alien creatures, hiding in the dark forgotten recesses, stirring from a deep-space slumber. But it was more than that. This amalgam, its many-hulled body ravaged by claw marks, colonised by strange bacterial growths and seared by solar wind, had been to the Eye. Spat from the warp like a birth mother expelling its nascent spawn, it had emerged back into the realm of real-space after almost a century’s absence.
“I can smell the reek of the warp.” Praetor’s voice came through the comm-feed in Tsu’gan’s helmet. Though he couldn’t see his face, Tsu’gan could tell his sergeant was scowling.
More than smell alone, the hangar walls bore visual evidence of the hulk’s taint. In the glare from the halo-lamps spearing out of his armour, Tsu’gan picked out traceries of void-frozen veins and oddly shaped protuberances. Gaps in the bizarre growths resembled mouths, flash-frozen in distended hunger. The aberrations stained every vertical surface and ended in slurries of fossilised biomass that collected against the edges of the deck.
“Flamer.” Praetor’s order was c
lipped, undercut by barely checked disgust.
Brother Kohlogh stepped out of formation and doused the wall in purifying fire. Like a match held to a stack of oiled timber, the flames raced across the tainted mass, devouring it to the eerie report of sibilant howling, just discernible above the heavy weapon’s roar.
Tsu’gan watched Emek make the sign of Vulkan’s hammer across his breast. None of the Firedrakes did it, but then the Apothecary was not one of them and more superstitious than most. He caught Tsu’gan’s gaze briefly, held it, then looked away as Praetor drove them on. It was obvious he wanted to be off this ship as soon as possible. He had good reason.
The empyrean was a shadow realm, a world overlaid on reality like a dirty film of plastek. Fell creatures swam its tides, given form by fear, envy and a desire for power. They were parasites that preyed on the weaknesses of man. An old word gave them substance. Daemons they were called. No ship, hulk or otherwise, that had plied the warp could ever be wholly untouched by the experience. Daemons and their influence had a way of lingering…
“Makes your skin crawl, eh, little-wyrm?” asked Hrydor over a closed channel.
Tsu’gan’s jaw clenched and he bit back his anger.
“Address me as Tsu’gan or brother,” he hissed.
Hrydor laughed loudly for everyone to hear. A giant, even amongst Terminators, he carried their squad’s heavy weapon, a brutal assault cannon etched with kill-scars.
Praetor sent a crackle of energy up the haft of his thunder hammer to better survey the darkness. It also lit the green of his battle plate and deepened the shadows in the folds of his drakescale cloak.
“Keep it down, brother,” he said.
Hrydor nodded but wasn’t done.
“Stay eager, little-wyrm. You and I shall fight together very soon.”
The magma lakes below Mount Deathfire on Nocturne were cooler than Tsu’gan’s ire at that moment.
Aside from the tainted growths, the hangar was empty.
“How far to the Proteus? asked Praetor.
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