Ovipositor tubes spat out streams of fist-sized, mucus-covered eggs that were manoeuvred into piles around the norn queen’s haunches by hundreds of fibrous vestigial tentacles. Here they were tended to by flat-bottomed slug-like nurturers that arranged the eggs into neat rows, their slime trails soaking nutrients into the nascent creatures within the leathery casings.
At the summit of this fleshy hill was a small head, no larger than that of a tyranid warrior, with six plates at its crest and black eyes. Slowly the head turned towards Cassius and his convoy. Glancing to his left and right, the Chaplain saw immature termagants and hormagaunts emerging from ichor-encrusted cocoons, while clusters of the fully grown creatures lurked in shadowed tunnels woven into the fabric of the spore chimneys.
Cassius had never seen the like of this horrific vision. The norn queens usually kept aboard the hive ships, and fed upon a devoured planet through massive capillary towers lowered from orbit. The plight of the hive ship had obviously forced the tyranids on board to eject in their entirety, and the norn queen had somehow survived the descent to Styxia’s surface. Adapting to this harsh environment, the brood creator had manufactured new organisms to cope with life on the surface.
‘How are we to destroy such an abomination?’ asked Sergeant Xathian.
Along with his devastators, the sergeant had disembarked from his Rhino, their heavy weapons trained upon the massive norn queen. Around them several tactical squads had drawn up a defensive perimeter, though as yet the termagants and hormagaunts had not attacked.
‘We are equipped with beacons to assist in teleportation operations,’ said Cassius. ‘Their signal can penetrate the spore-fug and reach the Fidelis, which can recalibrate her weapons augurs to the teleport signal and fire through the cloud with accuracy. Sergeant Therotius, begin a survey of the area to calculate the most suitable impact sights for orbital bombardment. I want the queen and as many funnels destroyed as possible.’
‘One cyclotronic torpedo would level this whole region, Chaplain,’ replied Therotius.
‘And render a hundred thousand hectares of farms barren for centuries, sergeant,’ Cassius said. ‘There is no point in protecting Styxia if we are to destroy its infrastructure. Bombardment cannon only.’
‘Affirmative, brother. I will assess the attack zone,’ said the sergeant.
A bolter shot rang out to the left as one of Squad Heletis opened fire on the lurking termagants. In response, several of the creatures charged into view, their weapons spitting a hail of gnawing grubs that cracked into the armour of the Space Marines.
‘Squad Octanus, provide close support to Sergeant Therotius,’ snapped Cassius. More bolt shots sounded as the Ultramarines engaged the emerging tyranids. ‘Knives, fists and swords! Conserve ammunition, brothers, there will be deadlier foes to face before we are victorious today.’
For two hours the Ultramarines fought back the increasing numbers of attackers, the buzz of chainswords and wet impacts of fists on flesh becoming a monotonous backdrop to the Space Marines work. Under the guidance of Therotius, six teleport homing devices were placed, three of them close to the norn queen itself, three more at structurally weak points on the half-finished spore towers around the beast. The norn queen seemed oblivious to their intent, unable to comprehend the importance of the knee-high transmitters with their signal arrays and blinking lights.
Cassius was in contact with the crew of the Fidelis throughout the operation, bringing the strike cruiser into position above the highlands and ensuring the weapons sensors were locked on to the correct signals. When all was prepared, the Ultramarines boarded their transports for the withdrawal.
Before the lead vehicle had travelled more than a few metres, the vox-net was alive with warnings as the vehicles’ auspexes detected a massive surge in readings. Concealed by the organic thatch-work nature of the spore chimneys, hundreds of beasts had been able to approach the Space Marines undetected. Cassius put it down to coincidence rather than design that they had chosen this moment to launch their attack, pinning the Ultramarines in place and so preventing Fidelis from opening fire.
Ordering the breakout, Cassius took hold of the Rhino’s storm bolter and laid down a curtain of fire to the left, gunning down the first waves of lesser creatures as they boiled up from subterranean tunnels criss-crossing the whole landing site. The auspex in the cabin below him was pinging wildly, registering heat sources and movement all around. Cassius swung the storm bolter in a half circle and cleared the passage entrances on the other side as the driver slammed the Rhino into motion, running over a cluster of hormagaunts that had been preparing to leap onto the front of the vehicle.
The column roared out with the fume of exhausts billowing in their wake and the thunder of bolter fire rebounding from the spore funnels. A red and white mass of creatures converged on the Ultramarines from every direction, and the crack of spike rifles and fleshborers engulfed the convoy. Heavier venom cannons smashed the armour of the vehicles, splashing highly corrosive acid into the interiors to melt through gear chains and control cables.
Half a kilometre from the norn queen, Cassius was forced to call a halt when Squad Capilla’s Rhino suffered a catastrophic malfunction. Flames and smoke burst from its transmission system, sending the transport crashing into one of the boulders scattered along the side of the volcano. At a word from the Chaplain, the rest of the column came to a stop, forming a perimeter of fire to allow the stricken Space Marines to disperse into the other vehicles.
The delay almost proved costly, as more and more of the larger tyranid constructs closed with the Ultramarines. A hulking carnifex, as large as the transports, stormed from one of the cavernous openings in the chimney foundations, bellowing bio-plasma at Squad Heletis’s Razorback. The twin lascannons in the vehicle’s turret spat back two stabs of white light as the carnifex lumbered into a charge, its claws ready to rip apart the transport. Striking the beast in the abdomen, the lascannon beams seared through its armoured plates and reinforced endoskeleton, severing a leg. More fire converged from the other vehicles, turning the fallen carnifex into an exploding mass of flesh and ichor.
Down the flank of the volcano sped the column, almost reckless in their haste to get to the minimum safe distance. They were still two kilometres short, a flock of gargoyles not far behind, when Cassius signalled Fidelis.
‘This is Chaplain Cassius. Authorisation is given to initiate planetary bombardment. Target coordinates as established. One round at each signal.’
It took a few seconds for the command to reach orbit and the reply to return. Cassius could barely make out the words over the roaring of the Rhino’s engine and the thundering of the storm bolter in his grip.
‘Please confirm, Chaplain. Our sensors indicate that you may still be in the blast zone.’
‘Open fire, in the name of the Emperor!’ bellowed Cassius. ‘Annihilate everything on that mountain!’
More than a minute passed before Cassius saw the first streak of white against the black fume of the spore cloud. Descending from orbit, the bombardment shell was little more than a directed meteorite weighing eight tonnes. Its ablative entry shielding burned off, flaring like a second sun for several seconds, and then it disappeared. Cassius picked up the dark blur twenty seconds later a few kilometres above the spore funnels.
The shell needed no high explosive. The kinetic energy of its descent from orbit was enough to generate a blast that ripped open the flank of the spore chimney it struck. Punching through the tyranid edifice into the rock below, the bombardment shell created a shockwave that rippled along the mountainside, toppling the spore funnel.
Twenty seconds later the second shell hit, on the other side of the norn queen. And then the third struck, and the fourth. Pounded from above, the volcano was breached, its outer layer of rock smashed apart, newly created fumaroles belching forth hot lava.
The fifth shot ripped through the norn queen, shreddi
ng its bulbous form from within, sending splinters of carapace hundreds of metres into the air. Around their brood-mother, the tyranids died in their hundreds as the sixth and final shot slammed into the ground, igniting gases gouting from the dead breeder-construct so that flames roared into the heaving sky, mingling with the ash and magma of the volcano’s eruption.
Borne upon the detonation’s shockwave, an avalanche of smoke, spores and flame spilled down the volcano, rushing after the Ultramarines in a towering wall. Cassius gave the order to close hatches scant seconds before the wave hit. It engulfed the convoy in a swirling mass of debris and fire, blotting out sensor signals, clogging engines and swamping tracks. Shuddering to a halt, the column was half-buried with dust and grit in seconds.
As the gloom dispersed, Cassius opened up the cupola hatch again and surveyed the damage. Several transports had been upended by impacts, tossed like stones across the mountainside. He called for a casualty report and was saddened and angered to hear that three battle-brothers had died; the main door on their Razorback had jammed, allowing them to be engulfed by red-hot ash that baked them to death despite their armour’s environment systems. Of Squad Heletis, only two Space Marines had survived. Manning their cupola weapons, they had been able to leap clear as their Rhino had been swept into a gorge by the volcanic tide.
It was clear that the convoy would be going no further. Every vehicle was bogged down, and even those still working churned their tracks uselessly through the drifts of ash, unable to gain purchase enough to pull themselves free of massive chunks of chimney wall, solidifying lava and hurled boulders.
To the south and east, the spore cloud was already dispersing across the plains, but the sight they revealed was no comfort to the Ultramarines. As far as the eye could see stretched a tyranid horde: countless enemies converging on the devastation at their landing site.
‘See, my brothers?’ shouted Cassius, pointing towards the coalescing swarm no more than two kilometres away. ‘We draw their bite from Plains Fall.’
The pattern of the attack was familiar to all – the smaller creatures coming on in a vast wave, buying time for the larger beasts to approach. The tumult of the volcanic eruption had left the convoy scattered, so it was around the five operational Rhinos and one Razorback that the Ultramarines rallied.
Cassius knew their number: sixty-two warriors, including himself. He did not think it too few for the task at hand.
‘Remember, save your shots for the largest creatures!’ he commanded. He lifted up his crozius and its head lit up with the gleam of the power field. ‘They will come and we shall slay them.’
With the vehicles acting as strongpoints in the line, the Ultramarines formed up to await the living tide that now surged up the mountainside towards them. Missiles and lascannon blasts streaked out over the horde, as the devastators targeted their weapons at the broods of tyranid warriors and carnifexes striding up the slope. Before these beasts came a surging, undulating mass of red chitin and pale flesh, scores of termagants and hormagaunts rushing heedlessly towards the Ultramarines, urged on by the presence of the synapse beasts.
‘What is it to be a Space Marine?’ asked Cassius, reciting the first line of the Macragge Catechism of Hate. He had penned the catechism himself after the defeat of Hive Fleet Behemoth and the words had been taught to the Chapter during numerous sermons since.
‘It is to be death!’ came the reply from the throats of his warriors.
To the left and right, chainswords screeched into life and knives were drawn from sheaths. Fists were clenched in readiness to greet the wall of tyranids streaming towards the Ultramarines position.
‘What is it to be death?’
‘It is to be the destroyer, the end of all things.’
‘What is it to end life?’
‘It is an honour, to be the executioners of the Emperor.’
Cassius loosened his grip on the haft of his crozius as the lead broods of the swarm converged on his position at the centre of the line. Around him, bio-ammunition exploded on the armour of his warriors but he paid the fusillade no heed – his entire focus was on the creatures in front of him. Beyond the mass of small tyranids he spied his target, a looming monstrosity thrice his own height, with an enormous crest and jutting dorsal spines: the hive tyrant.
The Chaplain took a step forwards and swung his crozius, crushing the skull of the first hormagaunt to leap at him. Around him, the Ultramarines advanced a pace, their weapons tearing through the first wave of tyranids.
‘Why do we fight?’ roared Cassius, the sentiment of every question and answer burning through the core of his being.
‘To protect the Imperium and deliver mankind from the evil of the xenos, the mutant and the heretic!’
‘What is the xenos?’
‘A blight to be purged!’
‘What is the mutant?’
‘A cancer to be excised!’
‘What is the heretic?’
‘A shame to be expunged!’
Striking out left and right, Cassius advanced, the tip of the spearpoint driving towards the heart of the tyranid swarm. To his left, the jump packs of Squad Corilinus flared as the sergeant led his warriors on a charge against a brood of tyranid warriors. To the right, the devastators took up position again and opened fire with their heavy weapons, while a constant barrage of heavy bolter, storm bolter and assault cannon fire flew overhead from the cordon of vehicles, punching a hole in the tyranid mass ahead of Cassius.
‘What is the bolter, the flamer, the missile?’
‘The incarnation of destruction, by which we bring about the death of the Emperor’s foes!’
‘What is the armour, the helm and the shield?’
‘The embodiment of our faith, our determination given form.’
The squads were firing their bolters now, cutting down the tyranids by the score, ripping into the enemy like a blade plunged into an unprotected gut. Here and there along the line a battle-brother fell, slain by the claws and fangs of the enemy or killed by the venom cannon of the hive tyrant or the bio-plasma of carnifexes, but still the advance did not falter. As a single entity, the Ultramarines pushed further into the foe, united by their hatred, bound to their fate by the words of their Chaplain.
‘Who is the primarch?’
‘Our father, our guide, our king!’
‘Who is the Chapter Master?’
‘The primarch’s regent, to whom we swore oaths, the voice of the Emperor in the mortal world.’
‘What are our oaths?’
‘The steel that binds our lives to the Emperor.’
‘What did we swear?’
‘Our lives are as nought in the vision of the Emperor, save that by them we shall destroy all foes.’
Erupting beasts of flailing, hooked tentacles appeared amongst the Space Marines, fired by the barbed stranglers of the enemy. The ground ruptured in fountains of dirt and rock as tunnelling raveners burst from below to swallow Space Marines in their gaping maws. The roar of bolters reached its climax as Cassius’s catechism came to its own crescendo, his voice a bellow above the din of weapons and screech of dying tyranids.
‘What is the fate of all foes?’
‘To perish in the fire of battle and be cleansed from the galaxy.’
‘Who will prevail against the darkness?’
‘The Ultramarines!’
‘Who are the swords of the Emperor?’
‘The Ultramarines!’
‘Who are the sons of Macragge?’
‘The Ultramarines!’
This last shout came not just from the external speakers of the Space Marines, but entered Cassius’s ear over the comm. A row of explosions tore through the tyranids as missiles streaked down from the skies, followed a moment later by the white-hot stab of lascannons and the bloody eruptions of heavy bolter fire.
&n
bsp; Plasma jets screaming, the two Thunderhawks of the Fidelis raked across the enemy, leaving swathes of dead aliens in the wake of their guns. The two converging lines of fire met around the hive tyrant. Cassius watched as the synapse creature straightened, turning its venom cannon towards one of the approaching gunships. A las-blast punched through its chest a second before heavy bolter-rounds stitched a row of cracks along its armoured plates. The fusillade culminated in two titanic blasts within moments of each other, as the gunships’ dorsal cannons both fired, eradicating the hive tyrant in an incendiary detonation.
The destruction of the hive tyrant was greeted by Cassius with a triumphant shout.
‘For the Emperor and the primarch! Death! Bring death to our foes!’
Epilogue
The Thunderhawks and boarding torpedoes of the Ultramarines blazed across the firmament, heading towards the crippled hive ship. In the lead torpedo, Cassius hunched in his seat, strapped across his chest by the massive bulk of the safety harness. His hands were fists upon his thighs and inside his helm his lips were drawn back in a snarl as he remembered the battle of Styxia.
General Arka had not only held to his oath, he had exceeded his promise. No sooner had the Ultramarines set out on their search for the hive tyrant than the Imperial Guard had sallied forth from Plains Fall, their commander showing utter faith in the Ultramarines. The lead elements of Arka’s army had joined up with Cassius’s force only three hours after the bombardment of the landing site.
Styxia had been cleansed after a further seven days of hard fighting, but Cassius had known from the moment the hive tyrant had fallen that victory was assured. Of the Space Marines who had travelled to Styxia, forty-three returned to the Chapter uninjured, and a further twenty-six would fight again for the Lords of Macragge. Sergeant Dacia had briefly been made captain of the Ninth Company, but after only three more battles had fallen against the orks of Vortengard.
Cassius turned his head to look out of the tiny viewing port in the nose of the torpedo. The sight of the hive ship filled him with disgust. There would be no respite until the tyranids were annihilated, no peace amongst the stars whilst the inhuman menace remained. Their destruction had become his purpose, and he gloried in the execution of that particular duty more than any other.
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