by Nick Kyme
As he reached the ration crate, which was larger than the shell of an armoured troop carrier, his men dispersed and took up sentry positions following his pre-prescribed orders. Secutius hung back, his squad’s formation loose and almost at ease. They sensed no threat here and yet something niggled at Pillium’s hindbrain as he tapped the massive ration crate with the barrel of his bolt rifle. It chimed dully but lighter than he had expected.
‘Quartermaster…’ His tone provided the order without him even having to give it as Olvo Sharna shuffled towards him with her attendants. Secutius followed, but his interest lay elsewhere as he interrogated the half-dark behind red retinal lenses. He, too, carried a bolt rifle, but held it across his chest, over the skull-headed eagle that designated him an Angel of Death. The muzzle was pointed down and at a slight angle, and his gauntleted finger rested against the trigger guard.
‘Can we hurry this up, brother?’ he asked over the private vox.
‘You’re eager to return to patrol?’ Pillium replied, looking askance at Secutius as he waited for Sharna. ‘Or perhaps you want a rematch in the arena?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Because apparently your capacity for shame has greater depths.’
Secutius swore under his breath, and Pillium caught the tail end of an Iaxian curse. He nodded to his brother, acknowledging the request, to which Secutius returned the battle-sign for ‘honour’.
Olvo Sharna stood before him, and Pillium looked down upon her as if she were an errant child about to be disciplined.
‘Sire,’ she said patiently.
Pillium rapped the crate with his knuckles, eliciting the same hollow resonance as before. ‘Does that sound right to you?’
Sharna frowned, pressing her ear against the cold metal of the crate as the echo slowly died away into the distance. ‘It does not,’ she admitted, stepping back again.
‘It’s sealed,’ said Pillium, gesturing to the hexagonal lock across the access hatch, where a red rune weakly flashed.
‘Let me take a look,’ she said, slightly hitching up her robes as she moved around to examine the hatch. A numeric keypad was attached to the lock. Sharna inputted the correct sequence and the light turned a pale green.
‘Step back, quartermaster,’ Pillium told her, ‘and return to your escort.’ He had one hand holding his bolt rifle up to the unsealed but still closed crate as the other reached for a hatch handle. Two other Primaris Marines had moved in behind him, one at either shoulder, weapons trained on the crate.
He shared a look with Secutius, who shifted his posture at this ready signal.
Then he thrust open the hatch.
It yielded noisily, old metal grinding against old metal and raising a cacophony of screeching. The armsmen jerked a little at the sound, and Pillium did his very best not to scowl.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
Sharna returned to shine a sodium lantern around the confines, but the crate was empty. She kneeled down, sweeping her hand across the floor. ‘It’s been utterly denuded,’ she said.
‘You sound surprised,’ said Pillium. ‘They ate the rations.’
‘They devoured them. Everything. This is protein grain,’ she said, evidently deciding an explanation was in order as Pillium’s mind began to wander back to the sound he had heard earlier. ‘It’s akin to marsh-rice, only thicker and with a higher nutritional content.’
‘What matter is the nature of the food you feed these men?’ Pillium asked, though he was already gathering his forces for further exploration into the deck.
‘It’s small enough and numerous enough that pieces are missed or simply left once a unit has had its fill. I’ve never seen a crate this size so thoroughly stripped.’
‘Perhaps they were hungrier than you thought,’ said Pillium, waving Secutius forwards.
‘But look at this…’ Sharna pointed and Pillium followed.
There were dark and grimy streaks in the metal.
‘Drag marks from fingers,’ she said, emulating the movement in one particular place and having to splay her hand wide to encompass it.
Pillium’s gaze hardened as he brought superior olfaction to bear.
‘It’s blood,’ he said. ‘Were they starving, these men?’
‘No, they received regular batches of rations.’
Still the cracking sound persisted, irritating now that Pillium couldn’t excise it from his head.
Not a fire. Not settling stanchions either.
‘Secutius…’ Pillium began, as he took hold of the helm mag-clamped to his armour.
‘I hear it too, brother,’ the other sergeant replied.
Pillium slammed on his war-helm and the seals connected with a faint hiss and a dull thud of metal against metal. When he spoke next to Sharna, it was through the rebreather grille of his armour.
‘Keep your escort close and stay behind me at all times.’
Clearly afraid, Sharna nodded mutely. The armsmen did their best to look resolute. Pillium scarcely noticed them and moved up with his squad.
Pillium and Secutius advanced quickly, their squads in tow, clearing each chamber and corridor ahead. It was done with a well-practised synchronicity. No corner or blind spot was left unswept as the half-light gloom of deck thirteen beckoned them onwards.
They followed the cracking sound. It reminded Pillium of bone, crunched and ground under intense pressure. The sound a body makes when it is crushed under the tracks of a Land Raider. But there were no battle tanks on deck thirteen. As the door to the next section split and ground apart, it ushered in the thrum of languidly turning fan blades. An artificial breeze, it carried another scent over the salty tang of human sweat. It, too, was familiar to Pillium. Thick. Metallic. It was a battlefield smell, and though ships like the Emperor’s Will had been fought over like any battlefield, it seemed utterly incongruous here.
‘Vitae…’ uttered Secutius, taking vanguard position at the threshold of the room. The targeter on his bolt rifle stabbed a red lance into the unwelcoming shadows ahead.
Pillium moved up to join him, resting his hand on the other sergeant’s shoulder guard to alert him to his presence, and engaging his night-sight.
‘I’ll take the lead here, brother,’ he said.
His vista turned a monochromatic green and he discerned a massive chamber, large metal columns flanking the entrance, lined up in ranks that disappeared past the limits of his retinal lenses.
It was a muster hall, a gathering place for armies. A ship the size of the Emperor’s Will carried entire hosts to war. This is where they would array, where the officers would inspect the instruments of their will, where the Chaplains and priests would inspire them with the rhetoric of certain victory.
The lights had been doused and it was darker here than in any other area of the deck. The cracking sound had grown louder, no longer carried through pipes and vents but here, present, and the source of it in this immense room.
And then it ceased.
Pillium disengaged night-sight and gave the signal for ‘forwards with caution’, and the two squads entered. As soon as they were past the open archway, the Primaris Marines fanned out, engaging stab-lamps attached to their bolters and panning their beams across the room.
The columns reared again, dense and pitted pillars of metal. Some had scratch marks dug into them, the same as those found by the quartermaster in the base of the ration crate. Pillium spared a fleeting thought for Sharna, a quick glance across his shoulder reassuring him she was still keeping her distance but had followed the Primaris Marines with her escort troops.
He didn’t understand why yet, but the air felt strange in the muster hall, as if it were too heavy. Inertia dragged against his body, though his power armour-augmented strength made it easy enough to overcome. The runes overlaying his retinal display blinked manically, suddenly manifesting threat alerts only to scatter, jerkily trying and failing to lock on to some invisible target. Their warning spectra went from low to high to extreme and back again with seemingly no rationa
le for each automated determination.
Baffled, Pillium stopped, halting the group at the same time, and removed his helmet. The smell hit him harder, blood scent and ammonia mixed with vinegar. At least his vision had cleared, and his eyes narrowed as his light beam struck a discarded boot.
He subvocalised a notification to Secutius, who then lit his own stab-lamp on the same target. The boot shone wetly. The curve of its toecap had a gelatinous film that could only be blood. It had been gnawed upon. Canine and molar teeth impressions distorted the leather.
From the boot, a crimson trail led deeper. Following it revealed further items. A belt. A torn epaulette. A shiny pink bone. Tendrils of skin stuck to it, threads of sinew stringing it to another piece of human skeleton.
A figure staggered out of the darkness then, staring at the stab-lamps as they fell upon him with the intensity of swords. He was naked from the waist up, his muscled body awash with red, his fingers dripping with it, barefoot and half-blinded by the light.
Sharna recognised him at once.
‘Colonel Roan! Throne of Terra, what happened?’
Pillium felt her moving forwards and put out his arm.
‘No further,’ he warned, his fingers splayed in a gesture for her to stop.
‘He’s injured. And apparently catatonic. Take those beams off him,’ she replied, moving again.
Pillium addressed one of her escort instead. ‘Secure your charge,’ he ordered. ‘You are to come no closer.’
‘What?’ asked Sharna, suddenly nonplussed. ‘That’s an officer of this ship. He needs medical– Take your hands off me! Armsman, you will release–’
‘Hold her,’ Pillium cut in, his voice enough to shut Sharna up and quell any further commotion. His beam never wavered from Colonel Roan, who had yet to react to the presence of the Primaris Marine. ‘Secutius…’
‘I have him,’ replied the other sergeant, still wearing his own helmet, his voice tinny through the vox-grille. ‘Be careful. Something feels amiss…’
‘He is but one man, Markus.’
‘One man covered in blood, Justus.’
Pillium nodded. He trusted Secutius’ instincts. They had fought together since the beginning and he was one of the few Primaris brethren he was on first-name terms with. He would rather have no other warrior to guard his shield arm. Pillium signalled to two of his men, Maxus and Eurates, who moved into flanking positions as he advanced on the horrific figure of Colonel Roan.
It wasn’t only his skin; the officer’s hair and clothes were both plastered with blood too, yet he showed no sign of injury. Pillium shone the stab-lamp into Roan’s eyes but got no response. Not even pupil dilation. Roan was breathing, but showed no other signs of life.
‘Find out whose blood this is,’ he said to Secutius, who marshalled his own squad and delved deeper into the room.
A tense silence settled for several minutes, only occasionally punctuated by the mechanised growl of Mk X war-plate and the subvocalised clicks of Secutius’ squad communing across the vox. During that time, Pillium kept his eyes on their sweeping stab-lamps slowly growing more distant. His gaze flicked back to Roan, who returned a glassy-eyed, slack expression.
‘Please,’ begged Sharna from behind a barricade of armsmen, ‘let me at least see if he’s hurt.’
Pillium was about to grant her request when Secutius’ voice rasped over the vox.
‘Guilliman’s mercy…’ He was scarcely audible at first. ‘Pillium,’ he said, louder, ‘there is something here. I do not… I cannot find the appropriate description, brother.’
‘You stay where you are,’ he said to Sharna. Then he barked a raft of curt orders and the two flanking Primaris Marines converged on Roan, keeping him firmly in their sights. Of his other two men, Odyssian remained with Sharna and her escort whilst Tiberus went with the sergeant as he swiftly moved up in support of Secutius. A stretch of empty, riveted metal deck plates stood between him and the other sergeant. On the way, Pillium caught glimpses of pink bone shards and other visceral detritus. An errant lower jaw. Scattered teeth. A dismembered foot. Though disturbing, these ragged, bloody things had not provoked Secutius’ reaction. As Pillium closed, passing the other Primaris Marines who stood in overwatch positions, he saw what had.
Flayed skin, snapped and chewed-on bone, the remnants of limbs, savaged ribcages, piled organs and hollow-eyed skulls… It all lay heaped in a disgusting mound of flesh and viscera. It stank of blood and cold, ruddy meat.
Roan’s men were here. His entire platoon. Butchered. Gnawed upon.
METAMORPHOSIS
Pillium fought down his revulsion, even as his mind rebelled at the charnel sight of the butchered platoon.
‘It must be burned,’ uttered Secutius.
‘We need answers for this horror first…’ breathed Pillium, leaning into the vox-receiver in his gorget. ‘Bind the colonel.’
Pillium heard the order acknowledged but then a moment later his men raised the alarm. Something had happened.
He turned.
Roan had collapsed and was on the floor shaking. Pillium was heading back to them when Secutius shouted a warning.
‘Wait!’
Annoyed, Pillium looked back at the other sergeant, stranded in the no-man’s-land between two decisions.
‘It’s moving,’ said Secutius, and the Primaris Marines at the far end of the hall took aim.
Then Pillium saw it. The flesh undulated as tendrils of creation wormed through its mass, stitching and conjoining.
He barked into the vox. ‘Maxus, Eurates, with me. Odyssian, do not let the colonel out of your sight.’
‘What is this, Justus?’ asked Secutius, his own men drawing in at his command.
‘I don’t know,’ he rasped.
‘Is it alive?’ asked Secutius, and nodded to Helor for him to raise the alarm on the vox.
‘If it is,’ Pillium began, ‘then we should kill it.’
Raucous bolter fire lit up the far end of the muster hall, tearing back the shadows with angry, flame-edged light. The shells thudded wetly into the flesh. A raft of small explosions rippled through it but did nothing to arrest its metamorphosis. A larger mass formed, a hulking and amalgamated body of sorts. Glistening limbs detached from it, strung with ropes of amniotic mucus. It waddled, this half-born thing, uncertain on its claw-toed feet and as large as a Dreadnought, staggering with fresh bolt-round impacts but not stopping. It grew, rapidly and exponentially, the red-rimed caul sheathing its form stretching and splitting to reveal more horrors. A prehensile tail, a trunk-like neck attached to three human skulls. Its bulk expanded further, the entire charnel pyre revealed to be one concomitant organism.
It keened, an ululating and plaintive cry of agony. The sound came not from any of its hollow, skeletal mouths but from a slit that had unzipped across its colossal torso to reveal a dark red maw filled with ranks of uneven teeth.
‘Target the limbs!’ roared Pillium, shooting out one of its knees and tearing the leg from the body.
It slumped on one leg, wallowing and floundering.
Secutius destroyed the other one and the red-fleshed spawn collapsed, trilling in pain. With a wrenching of torn skin, eight distended arms speared from the body, the fingers of the hands meshed together into talons. They raised the thing up, tottering and insectile. The torso mouth widened, two large chitin pincers pushing through either cheek, experimentally snapping open and shut. Bolt-shells still ripping chunks from its bloated body, it charged Helor who stood his ground, weapon blazing.
The spawn barrelled through the firestorm, its grotesque visage lit by muzzle flare, and bore the Primaris Marine down. His brothers flocked to his aid, even as Helor drew his combat blade, the spawn’s bulk crushing him, splitting ceramite and adamantium. A spray of blood splashed his faceplate and the scent of it drove the thing wild, pincers snapping feverishly, biting off pieces of Helor and hurriedly shovelling him into its maw.
Secutius let out a cry, part-rage, part-ang
uish. He threw himself at the spawn. They all did. Hacking and firing, levelling every inch of gene-forged strength towards ending this thing.
Pillium had Maxus, Tiberus and Eurates at his side. The four advanced in steady lockstep, bolt rifles at maximum discharge. During the fusillade, he caught a glimpse of Odyssian. He was edging towards the battle, discipline at war with the desire to protect his sergeant. Behind him, the figure of Colonel Roan arose on loose limbs like a puppet left slack on its strings…
Pillium fired, almost point-blank now. Blood spatter and stinking flesh flecked his face and armour. This thing, it would not die in any conventional way. They had to annihilate it. In his peripheral vision, Pillium saw Odyssian struggling with Colonel Roan clamped upon his back. The armsmen were backing off, two coming around with shields, Sharna screaming at the sight of it all.
He let his attention wander for a split second and one of the spawn’s legs struck Pillium across the chest and he careened backwards. One took Maxus too, who went spiralling into the shadows. Eurates and Tiberus fell back, letting off short, sustained bursts. The thing shifted suddenly, putting its bulk between him and the other Primaris Marines, and Pillium lost sight of them.
Bony barbs jutted from the thing’s forelimbs. They had raked Pillium’s torso down to the mesh under-layer. One of the input ports for his armour was exposed. A cocktail of organic narcotics flooded Pillium’s system to extinguish the pain. He was rising, bolt rifle swinging around, when he heard Sharna.
‘Help us! Throne! Please!’
Blood thundered in Pillium’s ears as he fought to reassert alignment. Odyssian lay face down, jerking in his death throes as Roan repeatedly stabbed him in the back with the bony spikes he now had instead of fingers. His shoulders had broadened too, his mouth distended and agape. Spiny teeth glistened, before his neck darted down with serpentine aggression and he bit right through the Ultramarine’s gorget.