“She’s close. I can feel her.”
A flashing rune on Tsu’gan’s retinal display identified the speaker.
Brother-sergeant Nu’mean. His impatience, uncharacteristic of a Salamander, was obvious even in his implacable Terminator suit.
Praetor turned, shifting his bulk.
“Are you a Librarian now, brother?”
“I am a Firedrake.” Nu’mean answered curtly. Not as deep-voiced as Praetor, but with an edge that could cut ceramite. “And I know my own ship. She is near.” He stomped ahead as the already-freezing temperature dropped further.
“Emek,” Praetor ignored his fellow sergeant for now, “how far?”
Unlike his predecessor who’d been all thin-faced cynicism, Emek was optimistic and curious.
After you’ve pulled a few more gene-seeds from your dead and dying brethren, your mood will change, brother, thought Tsu’gan, his voice bitter even inside his head.
Emek was consulting an auspex array built into the gauntlet of his smaller power armour. “Based on ship schematics, approximately five hours through the Glorion’s tertiary decks until we reach fusion-point and the Protean’s aft section.” He looked up from his calculations. “That’s dependent on a straight route through the vessel—no encounters, clear terrain and re-establishing gravity.”
“Soon as we locate an active console you can set to work on that third condition, brother,” said Praetor. “The other two we’ll deal with as necessary.”
Every Terminator had a chainfist on his left hand, invaluable when exploring hulks where bulkheads and debris could make progress difficult. That was for condition two.
“Thermal scans from the Implacable suggest resistance will be light. The xenos are still largely dormant.”
Storm bolters, an assault cannon and the heavy flamer in Nu’mean’s squad dealt with condition one.
“Then let us hope that remains the case.” Praetor’s attention switched back to Nu’mean, who’d taken up an advanced position with his squad. For the moment Praetor was in command, but soon as they reached the Protean the other sergeant would take over. It had been agreed. Nu’mean had his atonement and would bear the responsibility of it alone. It was the Promethean way. “You are certain he’s here?”
“I know it in my blood.” There was a growl to Nu’mean’s voice. “He is here, still inside the ship.”
“A century drifting the warp tides, he might not have survived.” Praetor’s normally booming voice softened. “We may be searching for a corpse, brother… or something worse.”
Nu’mean let the words hang in the air then stared beyond Praetor, his gaze alighting on Emek.
“He is alive, held in cryo-stasis just as I left him.” He paused, about to add something. The hard veneer almost cracked when he turned away again.
Praetor gave a final glance to Emek, flanked by two green bulwarks of armoured ceramite—they were two of Nu’mean’s squad, Mercurion and Gun’dar. Power armour was formidable protection on most battlefields, but this drifting space hulk was no ordinary battlefield.
“Keep him safe.” Praetor didn’t bother to hide it in a closed channel. The Apothecary knew the risks. Praetor glared again at Nu’mean.
Subtlety was not a trait that Herculon Praetor held in any great regard. The mission was still his for the moment. His voice was thunderous and commanding as he took the lead, “Firedrakes, advance on me.”
The muzzle flare from three storm bolters fired in unison lit the grimace on Praetor’s face as he threw the xenos off his storm shield. Acidic vital fluids hissed against his armour as he crushed the creature against the wall.
The corridor was tight. Pipes and thick cabling hung from the ruptured ceiling where the genestealers had clawed through. Deck grating, half-corroded by xeno-blood, clanked underfoot. At least the warp taint was no longer present. At least… it was not visible. Hard gravity from the Glorion’s malfunctioning systems kept the Firedrakes grounded. Recently revived air-scrubbers re-oxygenating the deck allowed Praetor to remove his battle-helm. Suspensor readings in retinal displays showed maximum lift capacity. Manoeuvring was tough. Tsu’gan tasted salt on his lips, his face covered in battle-sweat, secondary heart pumping to cope with the additional physical stresses.
The xenos showed no such difficulty.
Two bounded up the short corridor, jostling for position. Three Terminators faced them—Tsu’gan, his sergeant and Vo’kar—two more including the assault cannon were staggered behind them. Though Hrydor’s heavy weapon was silent, Invictese’s storm bolter barked between the front line’s shoulder plates. Nu’mean’s squad clustered behind them, guarding the rear.
Tsu’gan sent a burst into the creatures, rupturing the ribcage of the leader and ripping off a limb. The second got close enough to leap, its long muscled legs propelling it easily off the deck plate and into the air. The chainfist embedded in its torso cut its screeching to a strangled mewl and the genestealer’s clawing lacked strength and purpose as it raked Tsu’gan’s armour.
“Good little-wyrm!” said Hrydor. The flare from the storm bolters lit up the corridor like a tongue of fire. Tsu’gan felt their heat. Three xenos exploded against the fusillade. “But look, there are more!”
Hrydor gestured with his chainfist. Roughly thirteen xenos corpses lay scattered around the Terminators for no losses or injuries. It was a vanguard, nothing more. The beasts were half slumbering, still not fully out of hibernation. Up ahead, a high-pitched keening presaged another wave.
The genestealers scurrying across the deck were easy kills. They bucked and jerked against the combined fire. Too late, the Firedrakes realised these were just sacrificial. Others—clinging to the ceiling and walls, bodies low to present a smaller target—reached them in force.
Tsu’gan staggered as he took a glancing blow to his battle-helm. The internal display crackled with static for a second then returned. The beasts were fast, much faster than the others. He swept his chainfist around, hoping to connect, but the genestealer had scurried over him and onto his back.
Pain sensors in his suit flared an angry red and Tsu’gan cried out. Flesh hooks from the ’stealer’s maw punched against his armour joints, seeking a weakness. He couldn’t reach to grab it, so thrust backwards instead. A satisfying crunch of bone resounded when he made contact with the wall. Barely recovered, his enhanced body pumping pain-regressing chemicals into his bloodstream, another sprang at him from its perch on the ceiling. In the darkness, despite his occulobe implant, he only just saw it.
Praetor’s thunder hammer shattered it in mid-flight, the electrical discharge shocking the air and illuminating the xenomorph’s death scream like a frozen pict-capture.
“Firedrakes, advance!” he boomed, mashing another with a punch of his storm shield.
Staccato bangs of bolter fire told Tsu’gan his brothers were with him as he raked the corridor ahead. Through combined effort, the Firedrakes had almost wiped out the second wave and used the brief respite to gain some ground. A wider corridor section loomed ahead, some kind of maintenance bay with old machinery strewn about like metal carcasses. The extra room allowed Nu’mean’s squad to rank up alongside Praetor’s.
Praetor raised his fist as they fanned out: three in front, sergeants to the centre with two behind, including heavies. “Halt here.”
The dying echoes of gunfire faded until a tense silence, undercut by the dulcet movements of the Glorious extant systems, resumed.
“We should proceed,” said Nu’mean, making his impatience obvious.
Praetor nudged one of the ’stealer corpses over. Feeder tendrils lolled from its mouth cavity like ribbed tongues. Before the sergeant went to his comm-feed he noticed a faint light dying in the creature’s eyes. It could’ve just been an illusion, brought about by the intense conditions of the ship. Praetor activated the feed.
“Apothecary?”
“Still here, my lord.”
“The xenos are done,” Nu’mean persisted. “Why del
ay?”
“He’s been waiting for almost a century, brother—a few more hours won’t make any difference,” Praetor countered. “Besides, they are still here. Waiting.”
It was obvious the other sergeant didn’t like it.
Tsu’gan remembered Nu’mean from before when he’d first teleported to Prometheus, the lunar space station and domain of the Firedrakes. The brother-sergeant had been the first to meet him. He had a weathered face with a long scar running down the right side that tugged at his lip and pulled it up into a permanent snarl. The right eye was slightly dimmed, and a small well of black infected the blazing red. A blade of red hair, shaved into an arc, fed across the right hemisphere of his skull. It put Tsu’gan in mind of a streak of flame. Despite the heat of the proving-forge and the gate of fire, the welcome had not been warm. Judging by Nu’mean’s present demeanour, the years in-between had not softened him.
Praetor turned his halo-lamps to full glare and aimed them at the corridor section ahead. Ragged hoses hung down like vipers. Somewhere out of sight a steam valve vented. According to Emek, they were maybe an hour from the fusion-point and the Protean.
Like his battle-brothers, Tsu’gan followed his sergeant’s example. At first, he saw nothing except ravaged metal, broken pipes and cables like spewed intestines rudely lit in harsh magnesium-white. Then something stirred at the edge of the cone of light, creeping slowly along the penumbra.
“In Vulkan’s name!” Tsu’gan roared and his battle cry became a chorus with his brothers.
Like limpets attached to the hull of an ancient ship, the genestealers broke off from the walls and fell into a loping run. At the same time the grates in the ceiling crashed down and a steady stream of creatures poured out.
As Tsu’gan swung his storm bolter around, he was reminded of Nocturnean lava-ants mustering from their hive to repel an invader. Except here the lava-ants were larger than a man and their nest was a rotten hulk floating in the depths of space.
Every shell struck a xenos body. Limbs and gore exploded outwards in a series of ghastly blossoms, but the genestealers kept on coming.
“Something drives them!” Tsu’gan snarled, and went to take a back step when he felt a pauldron locked against his, stopping him.
Praetor was beside him, a ceramite rock in the face of the advancing alien tide.
“Only forwards, brother. Resist. Our will is greater.” Then he turned to another Firedrake. “Hrydor, give us some breathing room.”
Moving from Praetor’s right, Hrydor stepped forwards and triggered the assault cannon.
The air was instantly filled with the whine of its spinning barrel, spitting high-velocity shells at a phenomenal rate. Strafing left and right, Hrydor rejoiced loudly, singing litanies of the Promethean Creed as he eviscerated clusters of genestealers starting to clog the corridor.
“Seems we’ve stirred the nest, brother-sergeant,” he said.
Tsu’gan heard Praetor mutter. “And I know of only one way to cleanse it… Nu’mean.”
The other sergeant nodded, gesturing to Brother Kohlogh.
“Burn it!” cried Nu’mean, and the Firedrake brought his heavy flamer to bear.
Liquid promethium ignited on contact with the weapon’s burner, engulfing the corridor section ahead.
Despite the heat, some of the xenos were still determined to attack.
“Ve’kyt, Mercurion!”
Two more Firedrakes stepped to at Nu’mean’s order, exploding the flame-wreathed bodies staggering from the conflagration with precise bolter rounds. In a few more moments, it was done.
The sounds of screaming persisted long after all the genestealers were dead, rendered to ash in the heat of the flamer’s irresistible blaze. Smoke palled the air like a death shroud.
“What’s that noise?” asked Emek. He’d moved up to the rear rank and no longer needed the comm-feed to be heard.
“Have you ever broiled crustacid or chitin?” asked Hrydor, allowing the barrel on his assault cannon to spin and cool before shutting it down.
The Apothecary shook his head.
“It’s air, brother,” Tsu’gan snapped, a little impatient at Emek’s apparent naivety, “escaping from between the joins in the carapace.”
“Well, little-wyrm, it appears there is more to you than wrath and thunder.”
Tsu’gan wanted to smash the front of Hrydor’s battle-helm into his face but resisted. Instead, he walked slowly to Praetor who pressed his hand against the wall while two of Nu’mean’s squad checked the way ahead was actually now clear.
“Brother-sergeant?”
“Do you know what I feel when I touch the wall of this ship?”
Praetor’s eyes were hard like granite. Since joining the Firedrakes, Tsu’gan had seen a different side to the sergeant. On Scoria, fighting against the orks he had been almost ebullient, bombastic. Now, he was dour and withdrawn. N’keln dying on the cusp of victory had changed him, just as Kadai’s murder had changed Tsu’gan. Dead captains had a way of doing that to their fellow brothers-in-arms, even those not of the same company.
“I feel sorrow.” Praetor frowned. “Something lives inside this ship, in its every fibre. It is neither Salamander nor genestealer, nor any physical thing I can touch or slay.” The sergeant kept his voice low. “That bothers me, greatly. Place your hand against the wall, brother, and feel it,” he added, stepping aside.
Tsu’gan’s reply was barely a whisper. “I do not wish to, my lord.”
On their previous mission to the shrine world of Sepulchre IV the Firedrakes had faced an almost invulnerable foe. Fighting it had cost lives; brothers. The weight of that loss, futile as it had been, hung around Praetor’s neck as tangibly as the gorget of his armour.
“Very well,” he said. His gaze lingered on Tsu’gan a moment longer before he lumbered away to convene with Nu’mean.
“Pain is everywhere, brother,” he added, his back turned. “Embrace it in the fires of war or run and let it be your master. I can’t make that choice for you.” Then he was gone, leaving Tsu’gan to ponder his wisdom.
The fusion-point was where an old enginarium deck had breached what sensors and ship schematics suggested was the Protean’s medi-deck. That was good. It meant the cryo-stasis chamber would be close by upon entry. Not so good was the several thousand kilograms of debris preventing a direct burn, hull-to-hull, through to the next vessel.
Such a problem might prove an impasse to common explorators or even fellow Astartes. Terminators had no such issue.
“Heavies guard the rear,” said Praetor, “Everyone else… cut her open.”
The sound of revving chainfists ground the air before the two squads went to work hewing and sawing.
“Apothecary, stand clear,” he added. “Don’t risk your cargo, brother.”
Emek nodded, checking the vial embedded in his gauntlet. The chemical solution sloshed benignly within.
“If we can locate a blast door or even a sealed bulkhead, I might be able to unlock it from here. It’ll make our progress swifter.”
Praetor nodded to the Apothecary before wading in with his thunder hammer.
Emek looked again to the vial. A small injector needle on the end would guarantee delivery of the solution, which was red and faintly luminous. Emek knew little of its origin, but he knew it was potent. Scarcely fifty millilitres resided in a clear armourplas tube the size of the Apothecary’s thumb.
So much, resting on so little a thing.
They found the door. It was a disused service hatch in the Protean’s aft that led to a short maintenance conduit and the ship’s medi-deck. Only wide enough for one Terminator at a time, entry was fairly slow. It did give Tsu’gan and the others first in the line a chance to reconnoitre their surroundings, though.
Unlike the Glorion, the old Salamander strike cruiser still maintained a flickering power grid. Lume-lamps cut up the dark in trembling flashes, revealing a gloomy interior. Gunmetal was scorched black in places from an old fire,
long dead. Soot carpeted the deck underfoot and shifted like a torpid sea every time one of the Firedrakes moved. Ash clung to rafters and crossbeams like grey fungus.
They had emerged into a large, hexagonal room. Five of its sides branched off and terminated in a console, making the room some kind of hub. There were glyphs and icons crafted into the walls. Sigils of the Salamanders—the flame, the serpent and the drake’s head—glittered wanly against the Terminators’ halo-beams. The light above was hexagonal too and its design echoed outwards concentrically.
Emek was poring over a green-lit console as Tsu’gan approached him.
“Don’t wander too far.”
“You worry too much, brother. I can look to my own protection.”
Tsu’gan snorted derisively. “Did the Ignean breed that insolence into you?”
The Apothecary had once been one of Dak’ir’s troopers, the one that Tsu’gan referred to as the Ignean. A snarl at the thought of the former sergeant sprang unbidden onto the Firedrake’s face.
Emek declined to answer. Even now, engaged with new assignments, there was still acrimony between the battle-brothers from the old tactical squads.
“What are you doing?” Tsu’gan snapped when he realised the Apothecary wouldn’t be baited.
“Checking emergency systems are online.”
“And?”
Emek turned. “Even after a century, everything seems to be working. The cryo-stasis chamber is intact. Ships like the Protean were built to last.” He paused, looking Tsu’gan in the eye. “Does it annoy you that I am privy to elements of this mission that you are not?”
Tsu’gan clenched a fist and the servos in his gauntlet seemed to growl.
“Your curiosity will get you killed one day, brother. Or perhaps worse… perhaps it will dent your optimistic spirit and break you.”
Tsu’gan was walking away when Emek spoke to his back.
“Is that before or after you’ve burned yourself to ash in the solitorium?”
“What do you know of it?” Tsu’gan stopped, and snapped at the darkness.
“When I took on Fugis’ mantle, I took on his notes and data from the Apothecarion too. Your name is mentioned.”
Fear the Alien Page 8