Overfiend

by David Annandale

  Fore and aft of the fire, well beyond the damage wrought by the Brute, in zones structurally sound, regions that were still refuges, massive doors closed, locked, sealed. Here, the frames were perfect. The barriers were absolute. Many crew members saw the doors shut. More than a few guessed what was about to happen.

  An exterior voice intruded on Ha’garen’s focus. It was Ba’birin’s. ‘Brother, what are you doing?’ His hand was on Ha’garen’s shoulder. Information about the grip and its pressure reached Ha’garen’s mind as pure data. He did not feel the tug. His awareness of his physical self had been reduced to information, and was no more visceral than the electrical impulses down which his identity travelled and through which he acted. He redirected enough of his self to answer Ba’birin.

  ‘I am acting to save the ship,’ he said.

  ‘There are large numbers of active personnel signals in those sealed areas.’

  The monitor, Ha’garen realised, must be displaying what he was calling up. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘We must extract them,’ Ba’birin insisted.

  ‘We cannot,’ Ha’garen said. He completed the procedure.

  Explosive bolts fired, blowing wide hatches and doors. Valves burst open. Across a third of the length of the Verdict of the Anvil, the ship opened itself to the void. Its atmosphere was stripped away, sucked out with a burst of smoke, oil and flame, and puffs of water crystal. The fire was robbed of its breath in an instant. So were the trapped humans. Their deaths were quick but agonised. Their jaws widened, desperately grasping for the absent air. Some held their breath, and their lungs exploded. They were, perhaps, the fortunate ones. The others remained conscious longer. They had time, so much time, ten eternal chrono-ticks to know what was happening to them, to suffer the foretaste of hell and understand that there would be no rescue. They had not been abandoned. They had been sacrificed. Tick, and tick, and tick, and their chests heaved with the effort to fill empty lungs. Their muscles locked, and then began to convulse. Water vapour expanded and their bodies swelled, and still the unlucky ones did not pass out. When they did, their bodies lived on for more than a minute.

  Some of the dead were sucked from the ship by the decompression. Most remained where they fell. Ha’garen had killed the atmosphere but not the gravity. The bodies in their thousands would wait for disposal. They were a carpet of dead matter.

  But the fire was out, killed as quickly as the humans. The Verdict’s machine-spirit calmed.

  Ha’garen withdrew from the ship’s being. He retracted his mechadendrites. Ba’birin was staring at him, horror etched deeply into his obsidian features.

  ‘In Vulkan’s name, what have you done?’ the sergeant whispered.

  ‘I preserved the ship.’ Ha’garen was not boasting. He was speaking a simple truth.

  ‘You have killed thousands of fellow Nocturneans.’

  ‘I saved many thousand more.’ He wasn’t trying to defend himself. He was simply giving Ba’birin all the information.

  ‘And there was no other alternative? You acted without thinking.’

  ‘That is not true.’ Ha’garen had examined every possible course of action, and had chosen the best alternative. When he was part of the machine circuit, his thoughts were quicksilver lightning. He had weighed the costs of his action carefully. He knew exactly what he had done, down to the last tortured serf. He also knew precisely what the cost would have been if he had done nothing, or even waited a few more seconds.

  Ba’birin shrugged, not convinced. ‘Remember the human, brother,’ he said as he turned away. ‘If you forget, you will kill us all.’

  Mulcebar read the tally of casualties and damage. The numbers were grim, but could so easily have been worse. A large area of the ship was sealed off and would remain so until the Verdict could return to Prometheus and dry-dock for repairs. But the ship could pursue. It could fight. It was responding to commands from the bridge once more. Its machine-spirit was snarling softly, eager for retaliation.

  There was a mission to complete.

  ‘Bring us back to our pursuit heading,’ Mulcebar said. When the helmsmaster nodded, the captain added, ‘Get me that ork.’

  The Verdict of the Anvil was wounded, but not hobbled, not crippled. The predator could still hunt, and the duty of the Salamanders was now twinned with the ship’s thirst for vengeance. A rage for the wounds and for the dead permeated the walls of the vessel, and Mulcebar wasn’t sure if he was feeling his own anger and that of his men, or picking up the Verdict’s own fury. Perhaps there was no distinction to be made. The engines flared the searing white of that fury, and the Verdict powered forwards, building momentum as it closed on its prey.

  The prey that it must not kill. The prey against which it could use little more than speed and void shields. And a lethal injection of warriors.

  The kill kroozer had put some distance between itself and the Verdict. Though the battle with the escort had been brief, there would have been time for the flagship to reverse course and engage with its wounded enemy. Mulcebar was surprised that it had not. He was also concerned. For orks to avoid, or at the very least ignore, an obvious scrap, they had to be focused on something else that was extraordinarily compelling. Some lure, whether instinct, intuition or perverse chance, was calling that ship onwards. He wondered again about the secret the Salamanders were chasing. Did the orks know what was enhancing their planetside forces? He thought not. But it didn’t matter, if the mere existence of this power was enough to draw them on.

  The Verdict gained, but slowly. The speeds of the two ships were almost identical. Urgency and rage granted the strike cruiser just enough of an edge to close with its prey. Every moment saw the ork monster drive deeper into the system, and the window for the mission close a little bit more.

  Then Mulcebar saw an adjustment in the kroozer’s course. It was beginning a starboard turn. ‘Got your attention at last,’ he muttered. The enemy ship was coming around to meet them with its heaviest guns and strongest shields. ‘Helmsmaster,’ he said aloud, ‘let us give the greenskins what they are clearly wanting. Set course to meet their turn.’ He opened a channel to the torpedo deck. ‘Boarding party, prepare for launch.’

  The Verdict began a starboard correction as well, moving on a diagonal to its original heading. The lumbering kroozer finished its turn. A hook-jawed leviathan, it surged forwards to meet its rival. The two predators closed with each other, one eager to devour, the other intent on purging its opponent from within. When the kroozer’s guns began their bombardment, Mulcebar stifled the impulse to respond in kind. ‘Evasive manoeuvres,’ he ordered. ‘Get us within range, helmsmaster. Batteries open fire. Target only the enemy’s turrets.’

  Phanes took the Verdict to port and down. Against an attack ship, the move would have been pointless. Against the beast that was the kroozer, the Verdict’s agility was blinding. Some of the ork shots hit, but most went wild. The void shields held. The kroozer’s turrets spun, fighting to reacquire their target. The Verdict’s batteries blazed at the kroozer. The show of firepower was spectacular, but barely more dangerous than a fireworks display as the Verdict’s targeting concentrated on turrets and the thickest shielding. A few of the ork guns were silenced. There were plenty more, and as the vessels drew nearer to one another, it became impossible for the orks to miss. The barrage pressed the Verdict’s shields hard. ‘Torpedo decks,’ Mulcebar voxed. ‘Status.’

  ‘Ready for launch,’ Ba’birin’s voice came back.

  The ships were upon each other. ‘Do it now,’ Mulcebar told Phanes.

  The helmsmaster straightened the Verdict’s course. The two behemoths slid by each other, unleashing hellish broadsides. The Verdict took strong hits on the port side. Most of the ork shells struck the damaged area, but Ha’garen had quarantined it so completely from the rest of the ship that a few more gaping rents in the hull were beneath notice. The Verdict’s own gun
s still fired to spectacular effect, causing only minor damage but blinding the enemy’s eyes with constant las and plasma flashes. The blaze of ordnance was cover. In the midst of the exchange of fire, while the ships passed the length of each other like ancient, three-masted privateers, the boarding torpedoes launched.

  Mulcebar watched them go as Phanes shot the Verdict of the Anvil out of the kroozer’s range. The kroozer tried to turn around, but by the time it did, the Salamanders would be well under way. There was no catching up possible.

  The torpedoes had almost reached their target when a servitor announced, ‘Contact.’

  Mulcebar looked at his own screens. He saw no other ships in the vicinity. ‘Is there any confirmation?’ he called out.

  An officer had run to the servitor’s augury station. She looked at the screen, then back up at Mulcebar. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Perhaps an anomaly caused by the damage.’

  Mulcebar frowned, dissatisfied. ‘Keep watch,’ he ordered. ‘Inform the boarding party.’

  Minor explosions erupted in the kroozer’s flank. They were close together, a concentrated burst of two pinpricks. They were the sparks of Vulkan’s hammer striking the anvil, bringing the war to the orks.

  Chapter Three

  The boarding torpedo was a blunt instrument whose uses were as varied as they were sophisticated. Though it was crewed and had enough fuel and engine power for limited manoeuvres over short distances, its action was still one of the most basic of warfare. It was a projectile. It was an object launched to hit other objects as hard as possible. Its uniqueness among other projectiles, its sophistication, came in the fact that it caused most damage after its initial impact as the living weapons it carried stormed the passageways of its target. From that uniqueness sprang its versatility. Should the strikes concentrate on a single entry point or be spread out, engaging the enemy on multiple fronts? Hit from one side for a spear-point thrust, or from both flanks, trapping the foe in a ceramite fist? The answer depended on the ship and the objective. Was the vessel a known quantity whose layout could be factored into planning? Was the objective one of total annihilation or more surgical?

  This ship was unknown. It was the creation of a species whose approaches to technology were in equal measures crude and enthusiastic.

  And the mission was grotesque.

  But there was a mission, and so there was a strategy. The mission was search and rescue through hostile, alien territory. The strategy was the use of a concentrated, mobile force. And so the boarding torpedoes drove into the centre of the kroozer’s port flank.

  For Ha’garen, the line between machine and flesh was blurry at best. There were times when he saw no distinction at all. Was there an essential difference between his mechanistic implants and prostheses, and the organs that had transformed him into a Space Marine? He didn’t think so. The hands of the Mechanicus hovered over both. Neither was natural. What, beyond the medium of construction, distinguished his eyes that saw radiation above and below the wavelengths of visible light from the neuroglottis that broke taste and smell down into component, identifiable parts? Nothing. Flesh and metal, bone and ceramite, the physical was the physical. The body was the body.

  So when the vulcan-drills of the boarding torpedoes parted metal, they were parting flesh. The torpedoes were blades sinking into the body of a living enemy, and then sealing the entry wound. There was nothing of mercy in the healing; it merely permitted the deeper, more lethal wounds that would be inflicted subsequently by the transported Salamanders. There was an aesthetic to this form of attack, a perfect fusion of the organic and inorganic in form and function that he found pleasing. The very act of waging war in this fashion was a tribute to the Omnissiah. The focus of the hammer blow was an obeisance to Vulkan. And the war itself was a sacrament to the Emperor. There was a trinity of worship simply in the manner in which the squads had arrived on the ork ship. This simple truth was so clear, it was a wonder it was not visible to all. But he did not need to see Ba’birin’s face beneath his helmet to know that the lesson was lost on him. Ha’garen could read distrust in the microscopic changes in the other Space Marine’s posture whenever Ha’garen was in his field of view.

  There was more than distrust. There was anger, running deep. Ba’birin still did not see the necessity of what Ha’garen had done on the Verdict of the Anvil. He saw Ha’garen disregarding any consideration of the flesh in his effort to save the machine. He was wrong. Ha’garen’s judgement was sound.

  Are you sure? What are you?

  The Salamanders disembarked in a large cargo bay. The ceiling was high, like those of the Verdict, but there was none of the Imperial ship’s majesty here. The walls did not rise to ribbed vaults that lifted the eyes in awe. Instead, there was an irregularity to the space that offended the Techmarine. There was a morality for the constructed, and there was none in evidence here. The walls were of different heights, varying by as much as a metre even on a single side of the room. The ceiling dipped and sagged overhead like an iron tarpaulin. Worst of all, Ha’garen couldn’t shake the sense of grotesque improvisation. The space’s function was the result of chance and opportunism. It was not big because it was a cargo bay. It happened to be big, and so it was a cargo bay.

  He was disgusted, in the sense that every bit of technical data streaming to his consciousness revealed their surroundings as corrupted. Not by Chaos, but by incompetence. He was not surprised. This first glimpse of the interior of the ship matched what he had seen of the exterior during the torpedo’s approach. Though the kroozer had an impressive, bestial solidity to it, there was little overall planning to its design. Its shape, not unlike an elongated ork’s skull, was not produced by careful design. It was the inevitably ramshackle work of many hands guided by single-minded aggression. The greenskins could not help but produce a machinic embodiment of themselves: brutish, stupid, ferociously dangerous and hard to kill. There was no system, no logic to the construction. There was only instinct.

  The Salamanders were surrounded by vehicles in various states of construction, disassembly and experimentation. Some looked intact, awaiting the signal to deploy. Others had been dissected, seemingly by a drunk and blind butcher. Engines had been removed and scavenged with no thought as to how they might be replaced. Wheels, tracks, chassis, weapon mounts and unidentifiable scrap littered the floor, some in mounds that rose higher than the intact vehicles. The scene was an engineering disgrace. But for all the heaped junk and parts, for all the haphazard placement of the transports, bikes and tanks, there was also menacing force. The ork way of war was sloppy, and at first glance seemed alien to any recognisable concept of strategy. But it was devastatingly effective. For every vehicle in pieces, there was one ready for battle, and another being rebuilt into something even more deadly. And there were numbers. In this single cargo bay, stacked and parked any which way, there was enough transport and heavy support to annihilate an entire company of Imperial Guard.

  The space was lit by guttering glow-globes. Light a shade of filth and rust slicked the room, glinting dully off metal. The vehicles and scrap piles cast jagged shadows. Some of the shadows moved.

  Orks had been at work when the torpedoes burst through the hull. Several had been pulverised by the vulcan-drills. The others had regrouped at the far end of the bay and were charging forwards, roaring with anger that intruders had invaded their territory, and with delight that an unexpected scrap was at hand. They came in a straight line, a wave of snarling barbarism, leaping over obstacles that might have served as cover in their eagerness to reach the Space Marines and start the killing.

  The Salamanders obliged. They didn’t seek cover any more than did the orks. ‘Brothers!’ Ba’birin called out. ‘Purge the savage greenskins from the sight of the Emperor! Let them feel the fire of Vulkan’s judgement!’

  ‘Into the fires of battle!’ Neleus cried.

  ‘Unto the Anvil of War!’ the squads chorused. Ha
’garen unleashed the battle cry with as much force as any, his vocal cords grating from the unusual strain. He rarely raised his voice above a monotone now, relying almost exclusively on his helm vox-caster to deliver the volume he needed, whether in discussion with his battle-brothers or reciting liturgical verse over a damaged machine. But in this moment, in this surging birth of battle, he was a Space Marine above all else, and the passion he felt for war surprised him in its fire.

  The fight had been too long in coming. Anticipated while the other Chapters carried out their missions, held off again while the void-ships engaged in their lethal dance, its glory tainted by the nature of the mission, the struggle was nothing as simple as a military tactic. It was a need, a reaffirmation of nobility and purpose.

  And a battering ram of vengeance.

  The Salamanders marched into battle. They were a steady, measured, implacable advance. They were a fist of ceramite, flame and bolter-fire. Neleus and Ba’birin led the two squads as a single whole, twenty Salamanders moving forwards like an adamantine piston. Both sergeants carried combi-flamers. They formed the blunt end of a terrible spear, and fanned a spread of burning promethium before them. Fuel drums and pools of spilled chemicals ignited with the ferocious whoosh of a sudden gale. The orks poured into the fire. The front ranks were consumed. The mob coming up from behind pushed over the bodies and broke over the rock of the Fifth Company. The Salamanders continued their advance, hammering the orks. They husbanded their ammunition. They knew they would be needing it the further into the ship they drove, wading into a sea of orks. They used the initial blast of bolter-fire to complement the wash of flame. A horizontal, explosive hail turned the greenskin charge into a storm of rancid meat. Through the storm came still more orks, laughing at the spectacle of their fellows’ deaths even as they hurled guttural curses at the Space Marines. The momentum of their rush, though, was lost. They couldn’t simply bound over vehicles. They had to avoid flaming slicks and red-burning wrecks. They had to fight past their twitching, near-dead comrades and tangling stumbles of the barely-more alive. The single-minded tenacity of the orks kept them coming when a lesser foe would have been exterminated, but even a slight bleed-off of speed and energy was enough for the Salamanders to exploit.