‘Too little, too late,’ said Agemman.
The First Company Terminators cut through them all, implacable, unstoppable and utterly without mercy as they closed the noose.
Once again, Agemman met the gaze of the hive lord.
This time all he saw was the reflection of his own implacable will to see the beast dead.
‘Kill it,’ he said.
The first explosion opened a seam along Final Absolution’s starboard flank. A volcanic flare of light boiled from its pitted surface, spilling out in neon-bright traceries of plasma fire.
The hive ships hung suspended alongside the dying hulk, bound to its doom by a crippling sense of emptiness and confusion. Vast quantities of radiation boiled into space, peeling the leathery void-hides from their bones like cinders in a firestorm.
The slaying of the hive lord had thrown the gestalt xeno-consciousness of the tyranids into a paroxysm of conflicting drives. By the time the most powerful minds achieved dominance of the trillions of other interlinked creatures, it was already too late to escape.
One hive ship had fought its way clear of the doomed hive lord’s ship, but its wretched, dying mass was easy prey for the guns of Valin’s Revenge. Its gutted carcass was already drifting off into wilderness space.
Secondary and tertiary detonations, minutes old, climbed to the hulk’s surface and reticulated lines of fire shone through its crazed hull as though it contained a newborn supernova.
Sicarius watched the Final Absolution’s death with a hollow mix of satisfaction and victory denied. By any definition, this was a heroic action, one to be entered into the victory rolls with pride and honour.
‘You surprised me today, Severus,’ he said at last.
‘I could say the same thing, Cato,’ replied Agemman.
‘How so?’
‘It’s no secret our interpretations of the Codex Astartes have always differed.’
‘True. Diplomatic of you, but true. What’s your point?’
‘Today you cleaved to the teachings of the Codex Astartes as I have always done.’
‘So why do I feel second guessed?’
‘I saw the opportunity and I took it,’ said Agemman. ‘There is little else to say. Had our roles been reversed, you would have done the same.’
‘Perhaps,’ allowed Sicarius.
Agemman was correct in his assessment, but for one critical fact. Only Terminators could have fought their way through to the hive lord’s nest.
‘There is no perhaps, Cato,’ said Agemman. ‘You are a great warrior, perhaps one of the greatest Ultramar has seen in millennia, but I am not yet too old to surprise you.’
Sicarius smiled. ‘Evidently not.’
‘I am the master of First Company, the Regent of Ultramar and I’m not too set in my ways to change when I need to.’
‘Nor am I,’ said Sicarius.
The enemy burst out of the smoky darkness with a raucous, insectile clatter. The swarm of hormagaunts loped towards their prey, talons gleaming in the light of fading luminal panels, driven forward by the pulsing will of monstrous overseers. There were hundreds of them, a seething mass of ravenous jaws and twitching limbs, determined to devour every scrap of bio-matter in the hive-city.
Ghaurkal Hive was the last of the great Kantipuran Hollow Mountains, and soon it, like the others, would be claimed by the ravenous servants of Hive Fleet Leviathan. The work of centuries and generations without number would be undone in hours, as the once-prosperous world of Kantipur was stripped barren and rendered down to lifeless rock by the star-borne abominations – the hive-ships of the Leviathan – which even now hung bloated and foul in the upper reaches of the world’s atmosphere.
The tyranids pelted through the battle-scarred streets of the hab-block, towards the curved rings of the broad marble steps, many metres across, which led from the cavernous hive to the broad, statue-lined avenue, then out of the mountain-hive and into the open air plateau occupied by the Rana Space port. In better times, hundreds of thousands of travellers would have moved up and down those vast steps, coming and going. Now, they were pockmarked by craters and stained by the blood of humans and monsters alike.
They were crowded with the shattered remnants of a once proud people making all haste for the dubious safety of the stars. It was these bloodied refugees that had drawn the tyranids, but as the creatures swarmed out of the darkness with ravenous intent, other, larger shapes moved out of the mass of panicked humanity to interpose themselves between predator and prey.
‘As per the established stratagem, brothers,’ Varro Tigurius, Chief Librarian of the Ultramarines, said to the blue-armoured shapes of his battle-brothers as they spread out in formation around him, moving to protect the screaming evacuees. ‘Kill the synapse creatures first. We must be quick. Time is not on our side in this endeavour.’
‘Thank you for the reminder, Chief Librarian. In the heat of battle I might have forgotten standing orders,’ the vox crackled in response.
Tigurius smiled thinly. ‘Merely doing my duty, sergeant. As are we all. Proceed at your leisure.’ Clad in azure power armour, his bald, scarred head covered by the ornately engraved psychic hood that was both a sign of his office as well as protection for his body and mind, Tigurius made for an imposing figure, even amongst the finest warriors of his Chapter. Scrolls, parchments of incalculable age and purity seals hung from his battleplate, and he clutched an ornate force staff in one hand as his other rested on the butt of the master-crafted bolt pistol holstered on his hip.
‘Proceeding.’
The response was curt, but then he hadn’t expected it to be otherwise. The Sternguard were not men to waste words, and their sergeant, Ricimer, was taciturn even for one of that elite group. He was stolid, efficient and unmoveable – in other words, the perfect choice to command the Sternguard. The sons of Dorn would have been proud to call him one of their own had he the fortune to wear the colours of the Imperial Fists rather than the Ultramarines.
A moment later, bolters began to fire in a staccato rhythm, one after the other. Hellfire rounds thudded into the wide, armour-plated skulls of the tyranid warriors, delivering their deadly payload. The creatures staggered, slewing awkwardly through the swarm of their lesser brethren. One toppled backwards, yellowish smoke rising from its crumpled skull. Another stumbled forward a few paces, the tips of its bone swords dragging along the street, before it sank down and flopped over, twitching. The last ploughed on, ignoring the oozing craters that pockmarked its skull.
‘Reinforced cranial structure,’ Ricimer said.
‘Yes,’ Tigurius said. He stalked down the steps. ‘I shall deal with it. Hold position.’ He focused his attentions on the tyranid warrior and formed a killing thought in his mind – a thought of sharp edges and deadly speed, honed to a murderous point in the fires of his righteous anger. He sent it hurtling out with a gesture and felt it strike home as if it had been a physical blow. The tyranid swayed, reared back and shrieked.
He extended his hand as if to gather the tangled strands of the thought and made a swift, twisting motion. The tyranid’s bestial frame gave a spasm, and a gout of superheated steam burst from its jaws. It sank down with a shrill wail, limbs twitching. The tide of hormagaunts stampeded around and over it, following its last command with mindless ferocity.
‘Fall back, Chief Librarian.’
‘No, I think not,’ Tigurius said, facing the tide. ‘I have fought these beasts before and I know how to send them scurrying for their holes. Hold position. Deal with any that get past me. I shall break them here.’ He spread his arms and exhaled slowly. The sutras of strength and endurance unspooled in his mind. He brought his hands together, catching his staff between them. The air seemed to congeal about him as he lifted the staff, ramming the end of it down. The pavement cracked and split, venting steam and dust. A ripple of destruction spread outwards, tearin
g the street apart. A building, weakened by alien growths, collapsed atop the rear of the swarm, burying many of the skittering hormagaunts. The rest continued on, undeterred, plunging through the dust cloud to surge towards him.
‘Come then,’ he murmured. ‘Come and die, little bugs.’ Even as he spoke, he could feel the acidic heat of the hive mind bearing down on him from behind the eyes of every scuttling shape. It was an abominable weight on his mind and soul, but he bore it gladly.
Once, perhaps, his soul might have shrunk from that great, black shadow in the warp, but now he knew its secrets. And in knowing them, he could exploit them. Through such contact, he had come to know its wants, its drives and, more importantly, its weaknesses. He could sense the patterns of control and instinct which drove the servants of the hive mind, and disrupt them with ease.
In moments he was surrounded on all sides, the hormagaunts bounding towards him and talons scything through the air. Tigurius drew his bolt pistol. He fired swiftly, placing the shots where the leaping gaunts would be, rather than where they were. The creatures fell, skulls shattered. He pivoted, sweeping his staff out in a wide arc, to smash a third xenos from the air. The reinforced length of the staff, powered by genetically enhanced muscle, pulverised the creature’s spiny shell, and dropped it to the ground in a twitching heap.
As the rest of the brood boiled towards him, Tigurius set his staff as if it were a standard, and let his fury flower to its fullest. The air before him ionised and, with a whip-crack of sound loud enough to shatter those few windows remaining in the closest buildings, his will slipped its leash. Leaping ’gaunts were obliterated, their bodies crushed beyond recognition as the cannonade of pure force hammered into their ranks. Ichor soon drenched the walls of the hab-units and street, and those who escaped the carnage scuttled back the way they had come.
Tigurius could feel the frayed pulse of primal fear that overwhelmed the creatures’ natural ravenous inclinations. Without any of the larger synapse creatures to force them on, the broods were reduced to mere animals, with an animal’s instinct towards self-preservation. He smiled in satisfaction. It was no longer a challenge to break the back of such swarms. He watched the last of them vanish into the darkness and turned back towards the steps.
‘They’re regrouping,’ he said.
Ricimer didn’t reply. The Sternguard sergeant began to issue orders, and Ultramarines moved to obey with crisp precision. Ten of the thirty who had accompanied Tigurius into Ghaurkal Hive moved to aid the evacuees in their efforts to reach safety. The rest split up into combat squads and moved out into the hab-block which extended out around the entryway to the space port. They would fan out and report any contact with the enemy.
Tigurius heard a rumble and looked up, through the shattered remnants of the immense stained-glass canopy that had covered the avenue to the space port. He watched as one of the vessels pressed into service for the evacuation lunged skyward on oscillating columns of flame. Fly swiftly, fly true, he thought.
Overhead, swirling clouds of tyranid gargoyles swooped and eddied. From a distance, the aliens looked like birds, moving with an instinctive synchronicity that eluded bipeds. They flew through the heavy, grey clouds and shot through with strands of sickly purple that obscured the sky. The vessel plunged into clouds and gargoyle swarms, rising steadily upwards and leaving the doomed world behind.
Outside of the hive, the air was thick with the black toxicity spewing from the thousands of fuming spore chimneys which had sprouted from the ground. The very stuff of the once-vibrant world was being broken down and reduced to its component parts for ease of alien digestion. Fuel for a fire that might yet claim Ultima Segmentum, unless some stroke of fortune snuffed it out.
Even here, in the last stronghold of humanity on this world, monstrous alien growths had begun to creep in and coil about the battle-scarred ruins. Many-limbed shadows moved through the upper reaches of the hive, scuttling amongst the networks of pipes and cabling which carried power, air and water to every hab-block and Administratum zone. The warble of the tyranid feeder-beasts slithered down from the upper spires, and the ululation of hormagaunts and still worse things rose from the underhive, combining to create a monstrous background cacophony.
And through it all, he felt the grotesque, singular pulse of the hive mind, watching, in hungry anticipation.
That was all it was, Tigurius knew. There was no true intelligence to be found there, only the avid hunger of an insect colony, bloated into something vast and far-reaching. The hive fleets were not enemies so much as storms to be weathered, or infestations to be exterminated. And such would be his pleasure, when the time came.
A number of other detachments of the same size and composition as the one he had led to Kantipur were engaged in similar evacuation efforts across the Gohla sub-sector. Indeed, the stratagem had been of his devising, after examining the skeins of fate and chance, and sifting through the premonitions which were his burden and his gift in equal measure. The Leviathan grew stronger with every world it devoured, and so, the Ultramarines had set out to deny this tendril of the hive fleet its provender, if possible. Starve the beast, rob it of strength and make it easy prey for the slaughter.
Exterminatus would have been easier, and had been suggested by others, with the Master of Sanctity, Ortan Cassius, among them. Burn the targeted worlds to cinders and let the swarm starve or devour itself. He knew the Blood Angels and their successor chapters were employing similar tactics in the Cryptus System. Tigurius doubted the long-term viability of such a strategy, however, and not simply because his premonitions had shown him glimpses of its ultimate futility. No, the Leviathan could be beaten, even as the Kraken had been, and the Behemoth. And if they sacrificed the very people whom they were sworn to protect, then what was the point?
Tigurius could feel the heat of every human soul still in Ghaurkal Hive in his mind. Each and every human – young or old, man, woman or child – had a tiny ember of flame within the chambers of their single heart… a flame which could burn as brightly as a sun. They were changeable things, humans, and capable of greatness, if given the opportunity. And for that reason, more than any other, Tigurius intended to make his stand and deny the Leviathan.
The Emperor made us to defend his chosen people, he thought, and that is what the sons of Guilliman will do, or we will die in the attempt.
He turned suddenly, looking out into the dark of the hab-block, and the hive-city beyond. He’d felt… something. It stirred in the dark, like an unseen shape sliding through black waters. A ripple of psychic disturbance which leeched his certainties away.
He had fought the mind-predators of the hive fleets before, and recognised their psychic spoor when he sensed it. Mind and body tense, he set his thoughts flying out over the cramped quarters of the hab-block, searching, hunting for any sign of it. The hive-city was full of swarms, mostly feeder-beasts, but worse things as well. Brute-simple warrior-broods and cunning infiltrator-species prowled the access tunnels and lower levels, in search of bio-matter to devour.
Tigurius stiffened as a lance of pain stabbed into his cerebral cortex. Even as he had been searching, so had something else – and it had found him first. He staggered, one hand pressed to his temple. A sound filled his head, swelling as if to drive out all thought and sanity. It was a scream, shrill and inhuman, and he dug his fingers into his skull, trying to marshal some defence against it. It was stronger than anything he’d yet encountered in his struggles with the hive mind.
‘Contact,’ the vox-feed crackled abruptly, and Tigurius stiffened. He recognised the voice of Geta, one of Ricimer’s subordinates. He heard the stolid crack-crack-crack of bolter fire as well. Tigurius heard Ricimer speaking swiftly into the vox, making contact with the other squads.
‘Estimate?’ Tigurius asked into the vox.
‘Many,’ came the terse reply.
‘Care to elaborate, brother?’ Tigurius aske
d.
‘Too many.’
‘Thank you,’ Tigurius said. ‘Break contact and withdraw.’ Geta didn’t reply. Tigurius hoped that meant he was already falling back with the other members of his squad. Given the situation, he might not be able to.
Tigurius frowned and looked at Ricimer, who’d joined him before the steps. Ricimer was a bullet-headed veteran of the Ultramarines First Company. He held his helmet beneath his arm, and the majority of his blunt, chiselled features were hidden beneath the rim of the armoured collar of his Mark VIII armour. The pale furrows of old scars rose across his scalp from his cheek, a reminder of a previous conflict with the scuttling hordes of the hive mind.
‘How long do we have, brother?’ Tigurius asked, without preamble.
‘There are still a few hundred left in the avenue. They’re beginning to panic,’ Ricimer said. He hefted his helmet and set it over his head, locking it in place with a hiss of pneumatic seals. ‘We need to buy time, so the crew can finish getting them aboard.’
‘Suggestions?’
‘Offhand, I’d suggest shooting the tyranids,’ Ricimer said. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of ordering Metellus and the others to fall back. Stormravens are already en route. As soon as the last human is aboard and the transports are away, we can leave as well. We just need to hold until then.’
‘And can we?’ Tigurius asked.
‘Emperor willing,’ Ricimer said. He glanced at the shattered gates that marked the entrance to the avenue. ‘Ten of us can hold that entry point, if they come in force. Less, if Metellus and Oriches get back here with the heavy flamers.’ He turned and pointed through the gates, towards the avenue. ‘Three possible strongpoints there, there and there, giving overlapping fields of fire for the gateway, allowing for withdrawal. Two more potential strongpoints at the avenue’s mid-point. Even factoring in heavy losses, a fighting withdrawal should be possible.’
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