‘They hadn’t when I left,’ she said, which was hardly encouraging, although I supposed if anything from the freezer got out of hand the Apothecary would be more than capable of taking care of it. ‘But then hardly any of them had revived.’
I felt a sudden lurch in the pit of my stomach, which might have been due to the vast vehicle getting under way again, although somehow I doubted that. ‘How many were you trying to revive?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice level.
‘Only a handful of the less dangerous ones,’ Kildhar said, as though there was any such thing where tyranids were concerned. ‘As we had the opportunity to acquire some live specimens of this generation, I felt it might be instructive to have some of the historical ones active to run some comparative tests on.’
‘And Sholer went along with this?’ I asked, scarcely able to keep the shock and horror from my voice.
Kildhar was definitely improving at the nodding thing, probably due to the practice she was getting. ‘He took a little persuading,’ she said, ‘but I was able to convince him the risk was slight.’ Maybe she really did think that, but this was a woman who’d been keeping genestealers as house pets for the last sixty years, so I could hardly be blamed for finding her advice on safety matters a little less than reliable.
‘I hope they’re more secure than your ‘stealers were,’ I said, a little more waspishly than I’d intended[151], but the magos didn’t seem to take offence at the remark.
‘All possible precautions are being taken,’ she said, leading us into the lounge area where the harvester crew could rest between shifts. I have no idea how many would normally be on board[152], but there were a couple of good-sized dining tables at one end, next to a galley from which appetising aromas seeped, displacing the rather more earthy one of my aide[153]. Come to that, I probably didn’t smell all that fresh myself. Luckily the only other people in sight were cogboys, who’d probably had their sense of smell removed as surplus to requirements, or labourers so used to working on the surface that Jurgen and I were no more olfactorily offensive than everything else in their daily routines. All of them gave us a wide berth, which was fine by me[154]; right then I was in no mood for idle conversation, and remained so until I’d got outside a plate of something hot and steaming, and enough recaff to float a small battleship.
Kildhar disappeared as soon as Jurgen and I were ensconced with our rations, no doubt eager to resume poking hormagaunts with sticks, or whatever else it was she got up to with them, leaving us to eat in peace. I can’t pretend either of us felt particularly deprived of her company, but once I was feeling reasonably human again I tapped the comm-bead and asked where she was, partly because I was feeling robust enough for a proper briefing now, and partly because I didn’t entirely trust her out of my sight for too long.
‘I’m on the control deck,’ she informed me, much to my surprise, as I’d have wagered pretty heavily that she wouldn’t be parted from her precious specimens under any circumstances. She then compounded my astonishment by giving me quick, concise directions to the location, which my aide and I lost no further time in following.
TWENTY-ONE
The control deck was on the highest level of the great machine, and was fronted by an armourglass window taller than I was, allowing its captain a panoramic view of the landscape across which it was travelling. I can’t deny that the sight was a spectacular one, the barren desert undulating beneath us like an ocean of sand so far below that we might almost have been flying, like the Reclaimers’ Land Speeder, which kept circling us at about the same height[155]. From up here, I could see clear to the distant hive, or back the other way to the curve of the horizon, where the low-lying haze of a far-off sandstorm echoed the slabbed ramparts of the habs and manufactoria like a phantom mirror.
‘Hard to believe something that size and so solid could ever fall,’ Yail said, as I gazed thoughtfully at the looming ranges of serried rockrete. He was back in his Terminator armour, which showed several new gouges in the ceramite, and towered over everyone else in the echoing chamber as he strode majestically through the quincunx of control lecterns between us, the thralls manning them scuttling out of his way like nervous sump rats; and who, in all honesty, could blame them?
‘We both know it will, if the ’nids get enough organisms on the ground,’ I told him, and he nodded.
‘True,’ he rumbled. ‘With tyranids, it’s always about the numbers.’ For a moment my imagination filled the sand below us with teeming horrors, and I shuddered at the idea, before Yail went on with quiet confidence. ‘With us, however, it’s strategy, and our faith in the Golden Throne. I know which I’d rather rely on.’
‘Well said,’ I agreed, because it’s always wise to concur with over two metres of genetically enhanced super-warrior encased in the toughest power armour known to man.
‘I prefer to rely on the power of the intellect,’ Kildhar said, ambling over after concluding her conversation with the landship’s captain. Whatever the substance of it, he seemed far from happy. ‘Surely the most powerful weapon with which the Omnissiah has seen fit to gift us.’
‘One you’re clearly better fitted to wield than I,’ I told her, since it probably wouldn’t help to express my true opinion at this juncture. ‘How are your researches progressing?’ As soon as I finished speaking, I realised my mistake. I’ve never yet met a tech-priest who didn’t take a generalised enquiry of that nature as an excuse to launch into a detailed exposition of their particular obsession. If they’ve got augmetic lungs or a vox-coder they don’t even need to pause for breath, and can drone on for hours[156], but fortunately Kildhar had neither, and I was able to get a word in after only a couple of minutes. If my eyes glazed over in the interim, I was at least able to plead fatigue from our trek across the desert, although I doubted she’d even noticed. ‘In terms a layman can understand,’ I added, at the first opportunity.
The qualification seemed to take her completely aback, and she stopped babbling to stare at me blankly, like a servitor faced with a problem not covered by its programming. ‘We’re following up several promising lines of enquiry,’ she told me after a prolonged pause.
‘Such as?’ I prompted.
‘The sub-molecular re-alignment of neurotransmitters in the brain tissue of organisms under the direction of the hive mind offers some intriguing possibilities,’ she offered at last. ‘Of course it’s difficult to reproduce these conditions in the analyticum, without thawing out the hive node recovered from Nusquam Fundumentibus, but Apothecary Sholer is adamant that we should not attempt to do so.’ This last in a faintly pettish tone, which made me strongly suspect that she’d been advocating just this course of action, and been overruled in no uncertain terms. Clearly Sholer was by far the less reckless of the two, and, despite my considerable doubts about the wisdom of their research in the first place, my opinion of him grew markedly warmer. ‘We have had some success with cogitator simulations, however, which lead us to believe it might be possible to interfere with the control mechanism.’
‘You could jam the influence of the hive mind?’ I asked in astonishment, with a sudden flare of hope. If that were possible, it would hand humanity an enormous tactical advantage, turning the vast, unstoppable armies of the tyranids into mere swarms of mindless, instinct-driven beasts. Still hellishly dangerous, of course, but far easier to oppose and overcome than a cohesive whole driven by a malign intelligence.
‘In theory,’ Kildhar said, ‘although finding an effective method of doing so would take a great deal more study.’
‘Which we don’t have time for,’ I concluded.
‘Regrettably, that is the case,’ she agreed. ‘Barring an unexpected breakthrough, I would estimate the necessary research to take a further two to three decades.’ By which time Fecundia would either have been long since saved by conventional means, or reduced to a barren cinder lost in the wake of a reinvigorated hive fleet large enough to consume the entire Gulf region.
‘Our best course
of action would be to maintain the blockade,’ Yail said firmly. ‘If the Navy can inflict enough losses, the tyranids will be forced to withdraw in search of easier prey.’ He plodded to a hololith tank in the corner, which I strongly suspected had been set up with the intention of briefing me, as the familiar image of Fecudia and the starships in orbit about it appeared as soon as he activated the device. ‘Until they establish a beachhead on the surface, they’ll be unable to replenish the biomass they’re losing. It’s simply a matter of holding on, until the tipping point is reached.’
‘If we can,’ I said, studying the tactical display carefully. ‘They’ve a lot of ships in reserve, and every one of ours they cripple opens up a gap in our orbital defences. Once they’ve poked enough holes, they can start landing in force.’
‘We saw off their first assault,’ Kildhar said, as though she’d been manning an air defence turret personally. Yail and I exchanged a look.
‘That wasn’t an assault,’ I explained, as carefully as I could. ‘They were simply probing our defences. Getting some scout creatures down was just a bonus.’
‘Lucky so many of ’em came down in the desert,’ Jurgen said. ‘If they’d hit the hives, there’d have been a real mess to clear up.’
‘Some of them did,’ Yail replied. If he was startled by my aide’s sudden interjection, he hid it well. He manipulated the hololith again, and a rash of contact icons appeared across the face of the planet. ‘Luckily, the Lord General had anticipated the contingency, and the Imperial Guard contained the incursion.’
‘He’s good at that,’ I said absently, studying the display with a growing sense of disquiet. As I’d have expected, the majority of tyranid icons were in or near the main population centres, homing in on the greatest concentrations of biomass, but there was a small cluster in the desert, right about where we were.
The palms of my hands prickled again. I couldn’t have said why, but something about that little group of contacts struck me as sinister. It wasn’t unusual for tyranids to go to ground in the wilderness areas of prey worlds, of course, biding their time until they’d built up their strength by hit-and-run raids – I’d observed the tactic at first-hand on far too many occasions – but off-hand I couldn’t recall a single instance in which they’d done so while simultaneously striking at far more tempting targets. The landing sites in the desert were definitely too close to one another to be purely random, which meant that the hive mind; which sent them must have had an objective in mind.
And there was only one possible target out here which made any sense. ‘Regio Quinquaginta Unus,’ I said, only half aware that I’d spoken the thought aloud.
‘It’s over there,’ Kildhar said, with a faint air of puzzlement, gesturing in the direction of the huge slab of armourglass surrounding the bridge. ‘You should be able to see it by now.’ And indeed I could, the blocky six-sided structure rising out of the sand in the distance, almost as I remembered it on our first approach. Except that this time I was looking up at it, even from this tremendous height. It loomed over the harvester, a man-made mesa, so imposing in its solidity that, for a moment, I began to wonder if it could possibly really be under threat, despite my previous encounters with the ravening hordes of the hive mind, then reason reasserted itself. I’d seen far more formidable fortifications than this breached by the endless tide of malevolent chitin, and complacency in the face of the tyranids never ended well.
‘There’s something here the hive mind wants,’ I said, setting out my reasoning as swiftly and concisely as I could.
Yail nodded thoughtfully. ‘I concur,’ he said, after a swift glance at the hololith, digesting the tactical information at once. We both looked at Kildhar, who stared back at us blankly.
‘I have no idea what,’ she said. ‘I study their physiology, not their mental processes.’
‘In pursuit of which, you’ve collected a small army of the things,’ I said, scarcely able to credit that someone so intelligent could be so dense.
‘But they’re inert,’ Kildhar protested.
‘For now,’ I said, remembering how readily the ghastly creatures had revived from their frozen tomb on Nusquam Fundumentibus.
‘Whatever their objective,’ Yail said, ‘taking live specimens inside the shrine would be extremely inadvisable. We would simply be doing the hive mind’s work for it.’
‘That goes without saying,’ I agreed, and Kildhar’s face hardened (apart from the metallic parts, which were hard enough to begin with).
‘The whole purpose of gathering them was to run tests, in the hope of finding a weakness we can exploit. Unless we take them to the analyticum, that would be impossible. I must insist they be delivered as intended.’
‘And I must insist we refrain from doing anything so completely frak-witted!’ I snapped, turning away. ‘You can run it by Dysen if you want, but I can tell you right now what he’ll say. And so will the Lord General.’ Actually, knowing Zyvan, what he’d say would almost certainly require a little discreet redacting before being laid before a wider audience, but there was no point in going into that now.
‘I will consult Apothecary Sholer at the earliest opportunity,’ Yail said, and there, to the satisfaction of no one, the matter rested until we reached the shrine.
‘Your analysis of the tactical situation seems perfectly sound,’ Sholer said. It had taken him some time to finish up whatever he was doing in the lower depths of the installation, and I’d taken the opportunity to have a hot bath and send what was left of my uniform to be laundered. Despite my preference for a complete change of clothes, there wouldn’t be time to arrange it, and I fully intended to depart aboard the first shuttle to make it down here in any case. Despite a lingering dampness about both my hair and greatcoat, neither of which had had time to dry fully, simply having both free of the majority of the sand they’d acquired over the last couple of days made me feel a good deal more comfortable and optimistic.
‘I’m glad you agree,’ I said, taking an appreciative sip at the mug of recaff Jurgen had handed me before departing in search of some food to go with it. The steel-walled meeting room was a trifle chilly, and the lingering dampness hanging about me intensified it. We must have been close to the refrigerated vault where the creatures transplanted from Nusquam Fundumentibus remained entombed.
It was a small gathering, just the Apothecary, Yail, Kildhar and myself. Dysen had sent a vox message to convey that whatever we decided was fine by him, but carefully worded so that if it all went ploin-shaped no one could claim that he’d actively supported it, and Zyvan was too busy to be contacted at all, not entirely by coincidence I strongly suspected.
‘The magos, however, also has a point,’ Sholer went on, almost making me choke on the bitter liquid, ‘and makes a persuasive case.’ He paused, glancing across the room at Kildhar, who was seated rigidly on one of the metal chairs around the central table, trying to pretend she was interested in the data scrolling across the pict screen in front of her. She was the only one sitting; as I’d observed before, the Adeptus Astartes seldom did so, while I’d found the blasted chairs uncomfortable enough before, let alone now, while the memory of hours in the saddle was still so fresh in my mind, and elsewhere. She looked up, meeting Sholer’s gaze, with an expression of pleased surprise. ‘Although on balance, I’m bound to agree with Commissar Cain and the brother-sergeant. The risk of allowing infiltrating organisms within the sanctuary is too great to take.’
I disagree,’ Kildhar said, keeping her voice tech-priest neutral with an obvious effort. If I was any judge, she’d rather shy the data-slate she’d been reading at his head. ‘The specimens you revived remain secure. The same precautions should be sufficient to keep the fresh ones confined.’
I felt a fresh prickle of unease. ‘Just how many ’nids did you thaw out?’ I asked, doing a rather better job of hiding my feelings than Kildhar had managed. ‘Just out of interest.’
‘Eleven hormagaunts,’ Sholer replied at once, in a manner I
felt to be excessively casual, given how lethal the creatures were. ‘They were clustered close together in the ice, so I inferred that they were part of the same brood.’
‘A reasonable deduction,’ Kildhar said, with clear approval, ‘which should help us to compare like with like.’
‘And where are they now?’ Yail asked, with a glance at the door as though he expected a swarm of gaunts to start ripping their way through it at any moment. When a Space Marine in power armour[157] starts looking uneasy it’s never a good sign, and I had to suppress the impulse to reach for my weapons.
‘The holding pens on the lowest level,’ Sholer said. ‘They are perfectly secure, I can assure you.’
‘Like the genestealers were?’ I asked, perhaps a little less than politely, but under the circumstances I was prepared to forego the niceties.
‘The two aren’t remotely comparable,’ Kildhar said, a trifle testily for someone who was supposed to be beyond obvious displays of emotion. ‘Genestealers are capable of abstract reasoning, particularly the hybrids. They could have planned their escape, overcome the security precautions by using their intelligence. Hormagaunts are just instinct-driven beasts.’
‘Unless the hive mind is directing their actions,’ Yail pointed out.
‘That can’t be the case, there were no synapse creatures accompanying them,’ Kildhar said impatiently, as if that should have been obvious to everyone.
‘Could they have been pre-programmed, though?’ I asked. ‘Like servitors?’
‘An intriguing notion,’ Sholer said, cutting across her indignant denial. ‘There’s no record of any previous instances of such a case, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.’
‘You’re all just jumping at shadows!’ Kildhar declaimed, giving up any pretence of remaining calm. ‘If we’re ever going to stand a chance of overcoming the hive fleets, not just here but across the rest of the galaxy, we need to stay shortout dispassionate!’ She took a deep breath. ‘I apologise for the unnecessary vehemence of my remarks.’
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