Predator, Prey

by Rob Sanders

  Thane considered that it might simply be lack of resistance that was driving the creatures on towards them with such speed. Fortunately, the Akbar promethium fields were all but deserted during the season of the Noxtide. Hardy caravans of nomadic workers and their families had migrated east to the Sheldrahc and Pharad fields, leaving automated jack-wells and photovoltaic harvesters under the seasonal supervision of crisp-skinned servitors in stone bubble-bunkers. Thane could only imagine what havoc the enemy were wreaking there or further east in the Great Basin and Tharkis Flats, where it was the time of the Yielding and Terra’s tithe was due.

  That was Seventh Captain Dentor’s problem, although vox-chatter seemed to indicate that things were not going well. In the desert darkness, cursed with an exposed position, defending hundreds of thousands of nomad-civilians and supported by an ill-equipped promethium fields militia, Dentor and his company-brothers were at the heart of a swiftly-unfolding slaughter.

  The auspectoria confirmed, however, that of the invader forces raining to the Eidolican sands from the attack moon, the vast majority had converged on the Alcazar Astra – the fortress-monastery of the Fists Exemplar Space Marine Chapter. Post-formation, the Fists Exemplar had been assigned to watch over the Rubicante Flux, a warp storm that plagued the Abra Sector. Manifesting in Imperial space on the outskirts of the Segmentum Solar and uncomfortably close to Ancient Terra, the Rubicante Flux was sporadic in its eruptions, visiting occasional space hulks, mutant incursions and renegade Space Marine hosts on the surrounding systems. The newly formed Fists Exemplar Chapter was given responsibility for garrisoning the storm-wracked region of wilderness space afflicted by the rapidly appearing and disappearing Flux. For this duty, they were equipped with the Alcazar Astra: a heavily-armed star fortress that had done good service for the Fists Exemplar’s parent Legion, the Imperial Fists, in the Volgotha Deeps during the dark days of the Heresy. Chapter Chaplains maintained that the star fort was a gift from Rogal Dorn himself.

  That had been until the Rubicante Flux’s most recent encroachment. Although the eruption lasted mere hours, the rift event was colossal in magnitude – wrecking subsector shipping, disrupting communications and heralding the inception of numerous doomsday cults across the Imperial worlds of the region. The eruption’s most ambitious victim, though, was the Alcazar Astra itself. At the time the star fort was being transported through the neighbouring Frankenthal System by Chapter tow-tenders and monitors, only to be blown off course and into the gravitational embrace of Frankenthal’s star by the storm shock wave. Through the skill of Chapter Master Dantalion and his castellan-commanders, the Alcazar Astra was guided towards the star’s nearest planet and beached in the black sands of Eidolica. Grounded, the fort was forever without hope of feeling again the cold kiss of the void on its armour plating. Three of its four ancient engine-columns had been destroyed in the impact. The secrets of the plasma-drives’ construction had been lost to the weaponsmiths and Techmarines of the Chapter, and so the beached star fort had become a planetary fortress.

  All Fists Exemplar Space Marines gave thanks for that day and for their first Chapter Master. Oriax Dantalion had survived the Heresy but had lost his life in the fortress-monastery’s crash landing. Many Space Marines of the Fists Exemplar Chapter believed themselves and their gene-seed saved that day for some greater purpose, perhaps involving the vagaries of the Rubicante Flux.

  Standing atop the ramparts of the fortress-monastery – the shattered superstructure of the Alcazar Astra half buried in black sand, its mighty baroque architecture and cathedral towers askew but still reaching for the void – Captain Maximus Thane awaited his enemy. As the monsters roared their way through the darkness, the captain’s heat vision clouded with colour. As they got closer, the hulking creatures seared red, their hot rage edging up the brute length of their cool-blue weaponry.

  Thane felt the clunk of priming mechanisms through the armour plating beneath his boots.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ Apothecary Reoch observed.

  Machine-spirits were stirring. Ammunition was being autoloaded. The mighty defence lasers of the star fort were pointed uselessly at the open sky, their wrath already directed with futility at the pockmarked darkness of the attack moon’s surface. Upon becoming a grounded fortification, the Fists Exemplar had worked hard to adapt the Alcazar Astra for a possible land assault. From the tactical oratorium, First Captain Garthas had ordered the mounted gatling blasters and mega-bolters cleared for action. Over the vox-channel, Thane heard Eighth Captain Xontague report targets on Transept South, followed swiftly by Fifth Captain Tyrian on Transept East. As both Ninth Captain Hieronimax and Kastril, the Scout Company captain, simultaneously called in enemy signatures from Fortress-Monastery North, it became obvious that the alien barbarians were to employ tactics no more ambitious than overwhelming the Fists Exemplar from all sides simultaneously. Thane felt combined respect and hatred for his enemy rise up the back of his throat like bile. With their sheer numbers, the xenos invader could afford such a wasteful strategy. It could and probably would work for them. Thane promised himself that he would make the mindless foe pay for their thuggish overconfidence.

  The captain turned to Brother Aquino. Ordinarily the Fists Exemplar Space Marines left their armour unpainted. It was Chapter tradition and requirement, although the conditions on Eidolica swiftly gave the ceramite plate a sooty, chromatic sheen, the same bronzed quality possessed by the nozzles and muzzle-guards of company flamers and meltaguns. Through the captain’s infrared filters, Aquino’s armour appeared dark blue, his company banner a ghostly trapezium cut out of the sky. Thane nodded to the grim, aged standard bearer, prompting him to call in their own sightings.

  Sergeant Hoque approached along the void rampart. The infrared outline of the veteran’s armour was rent and battle-beaten from an earlier reconnaissance out on the rocky dunes. Hoque moved from Space Marine to Space Marine, personally lending his affirmation or disapproval of positioning, stance and weapon readiness. With fraternal love and opprobrium, the sergeant smacked helms with his gauntlet and pointed out beyond the barrels of boltguns with ceramite fingers.

  Across the vox-channel, Thane heard Techmarines offer litanies of forward assistance and shell clearance before First Captain Garthas gave the order to open fire. The crenellated nests, gargoyles and statues into which the mega-bolters and gatling blasters were built shuddered to the rhythmic cacophony. The weapons’ fire crashed about the false-colour shapes of Sergeant Hoque and the Space Marines of the Second Company, their gaping barrels wands of hot brilliance through the infrared filters.

  Captain Thane stared out across the dark sands. Scarlet silhouettes, jagged and ungainly, formed a closing wall of hulking forms. Spikes and serrations decorated the muscular giants, while the shapes of brute-bore barrels, monstrous hackers and mechanical claws promised butchery to come. Thane felt the exhilaration of the gunfire reverberate through his being, and he watched with no little satisfaction as mega-bolter shells ripped through the oncoming foe, tearing the monstrosities to hot shreds of flesh and turning the barbarian front lines into clouds of red mist. Line after line of the monstrosities fell as the autofire reached deeper into the enemy ranks.

  And then, one by one, he felt the guns about him thunder to emptiness. Almost immediately the routine of reloading began but in the calmness that followed, with the chatter of the guns still carried distantly on the breeze, Thane had opportunity to witness the xenos recovery. Holes in the vanguard closed rapidly, with beasts almost crawling over each other to be at the forefront of the slaughter. They stamped through the demolished carcasses of their fallen and howled their alien derision and delight. Within seconds, the impact of the barrage was imperceptible.

  ‘Well, isn’t that a thing,’ Reoch said.

  ‘Are you seeing this?’ Maximus Thane voxed through to the tactical oratorium.

  ‘I am,’ First Captain Garthas responded grimly. Tha
ne heard him speak to an oratorium officer. ‘Launch the gunships.’

  As the mega-bolters and gatling blasters resumed the futility of defensive fire protocols, Thane’s plate registered the heatwash of afterburners as Thunderhawks and Storm Eagle gunships blasted from the unsealing launch bays behind them. As the craft screamed their fury above, Brother Aquino’s banner thrashed and twirled. Thane watched the Fists Exemplar craft blaze away, the cool blue of their armoured hull plating bright against the deeper blue-black of the Eidolican skies. Only their triple engines glowed searing white and left a chromatic scale in the trail of their afterburners.

  The formations streaked away: bomb-laden Thunderhawks flanked by lower, strafing Storm Eagle gunships. The screaming spectacle was met with celebratory gunfire from the savages. They couldn’t see the aircraft, but they could hear them. Unleashing their brute weaponry at the heavens, the beasts raged at the approaching thunder. They were rewarded with swooping passes from the Storm Eagles, who cut through the bestial throngs with vapour blasts from their prow multi-meltas and thick beams of searing light from wing-mounted lascannons. As the gunships weaved and strafed clear, the Thunderhawk formations dropped their incendiary bomb payloads. The desert-world night seared with blinding explosions that turned swarms of monstrous xenos into fields of death.

  While even the most sizeable monsters were vaporised at the heart of the detonations, many thousands of surrounding beasts were set alight. This was exacerbated by the promethium that had drizzled over everything from the ruptured wells. Soon the dark desert sands were a dance of blinding colour and it was difficult to make out the enemy from the inferno that had engulfed them.

  Switching from infrared back to regular spectra, Maximus Thane saw the midnight dunes lit up in a sea of flame. Against another enemy such a devastating strategy would have been a game changer. There were few species that were not susceptible to violent changes in temperature. Most forms of flesh in the galaxy burned in the fires of battle, and ork flesh should have been no different. But as Thane watched the beasts storm towards him, illuminated by the flames snaking about their scraps of armour and brute forms, it seemed to make little difference.

  Apart from in size, the greenskins didn’t seem any different in physiology than other savage clanbreeds the captain had fought. Perhaps it was size alone that made the difference, Thane mused. As great, hulking monsters sculpted from leathery skin, gnarled bone and muscle, the Fists Exemplar captain reasoned that perhaps there was less need than usual in this sub-species for a complex nervous system and a brain that could interpret the intense agonies of being burned alive.

  Stampeding through the flames, the enemy charged on. Fear didn’t slow their advance. Pain didn’t show on their snaggle-tusk faces. Death was an end beyond the simple imaginings of such creatures. They swarmed and they stormed the Alcazar Astra. The desert roared with flame. Alien war cries filled the air. The void bastion crashed with the fire of gatling blasters. Among the pure havoc of battle, with the fortress-monastery’s crooked spires reaching up beyond the ring of fire and the sea of thundering green flesh beyond, Second Captain Maximus Thane and his Fists Exemplar stood as calm, still and impassive as the decorative gargoyles about them. The statues would do little to ward off the evil approaching the Alcazar Astra today.

  ‘You’ve studied xenos physiology. Any advice?’ Thane put to his friend. ‘I’m opening a channel.’

  The Apothecary angled his bone-white helmet to one side. ‘If you must,’ Reoch replied with little appetite for the duty.

  ‘Second Company,’ Thane called across an open vox-channel, ‘stand by for the Apothecary’s observations.’

  ‘On average,’ Reoch broadcast, ‘the enemy appears larger than the feral specimens we exterminated on Borksworld. Those on Konrax were mere runts to these monsters.’

  ‘And?’ the captain asked as Reoch’s enthusiasm for the task trailed off further.

  ‘Their ability to soak up the impact of our weaponry will be considerable,’ Reoch warned. ‘Still, I doubt the increased thickness of a larger skull will resist the blessed path of our bolt-rounds.’

  ‘So headshots are the order of the day,’ Maximus Thane agreed.

  ‘And night,’ the Apothecary mused, looking up into the deep sky.

  ‘And at close quarters?’ Thane pushed.

  ‘A larger biped opponent presents vulnerabilities at the throat and abdomen,’ Reoch told Second Company. ‘But don’t bother with the loins. Go for the legs. Dismembered specimens brought down to the sand will present a much greater range of kill-sites and vulnerabilities. This is all I have,’ the Apothecary signed off.

  Thane gave Reoch the blank glare of his faceplate and closed the channel. The Apothecary stared back.

  ‘They’re your men,’ Reoch stated, allowing his optics to burn beyond his friend, through Sergeant Hoque and his defence formations and out across the green savagery that rolled on towards them like a furious formation of agri-world rotary threshers. ‘Talk to them… while you still can.’

  Thane’s head fell to a solemn nod. He looked to Sergeant Hoque. Behind the veteran, the flame-swathed hulks stomped on towards the Fists Exemplar. Uncouth weapons – hacked, torched and sharpened from heavy-metal scrap and hull plating – came up like a jagged forest of death. Brute gunnery, barrels gaping wide, chugged lead at the Alcazar Astra. Elated weapons fire, wild and pathetically out of range, had afflicted the sand and sky for some time. The monsters could barely contain their exultant ferocity on the final, teeming approach, however, and metal slugs sang off the star fort’s void plating in an aimless barrage. In the shell storm, occasional ordnance found its mark amongst the cover-blessed Fists Exemplar. For the most part, the jubilant boom of greenskin weaponry at rapidly closing range was simply an ear-splitting distraction.

  ‘The company is cleared to load, sergeant,’ Thane said.

  ‘Second Company, ready weapons!’ Hoque reiterated across the open channel. Fists Exemplar Space Marines took sickle magazines from where they hung mag-locked to their belts and loaded their Umbra-pattern boltguns.

  ‘Maximus,’ Mendel Reoch said, with an unusual, modulated softness. ‘Talk to them.’

  Maximus Thane allowed his mind to drift back to Charnassica. To that first day, stepping off the Thunderhawk ramp and into the blood-slick earth of conquest. He remembered his young body, the power and possibilities it offered. He relived the rawness of his black carapace and the sting of his interface plugs. He ached with the presence of the Emperor in his hearts, the nearness of the enemy, the imminence of his first kill, the cold beauty of battle into which he had been dropped. He had been a full brother of the Fists Exemplar mere days, yet there he was – a living, breathing instrument of the Emperor’s will. He had everything he needed to prosecute that will on the battle lines of Charnassica, yet what would he have given for the warmth of words in the darkness of his helmet at that moment – words freely given in the fortification of the soul.

  ‘Second Company, this is your captain,’ Thane said into his helmet vox-feed. As he spoke, the invader monstrosities closed, growing in apparent size and ferocity. ‘We face a dangerous foe. Warlords unreasoning stand at the head of an enemy innumerable. Doubt not the threat they present. Take no comfort in past experience with the green plague. These monsters are a beast-host we have never faced, wielding technologies undreamt of.’

  The thunder of alien footfalls struck the void plating, where the fallen fortress-monastery of the Fists Exemplar met the blacks sands of Eidolica.

  ‘Trust in your commanders. Trust in your training. Trust in the plate on your back and the weapons in your gauntlets. Trust in the noble history of your Legion and the legacy of your primarch, knowing that it is through his wisdom that you stand here today: a brotherhood, a Chapter, exemplars of your kind. Know that I am with you. Know that First Captain Garthas is with you. Know that the spirits of Chapter Master Alameda
and Chapter Master Dantalion – the chosen of Dorn – fight at your side.’

  The beast hordes entered optimum range. The killzone beckoned. Thane felt his men lean into their boltguns. He felt them pick out their first targets. He felt the singular will of one hundred superhumans: their unbreakable faith, the pride in their purpose, their sharp hatred of the xenos.

  ‘Most of all, know that it is the Emperor’s blood that flows through your veins and He will not let you fail. Eidolica is His. It is Imperial sand and dirt. It isn’t much, but it belongs to humanity and as such it is not the Fists Exemplars’ to give away. I know you will do your best. I know you will make your Chapter and your Emperor proud. Give all you have in His name, as He has given for you. Bring all your genetic gifts, your talents and abilities, to bear. Live through your plate. Be one with your weapons. Fulfil, my battle-brothers, the purpose for which you were ultimately created.’

  In one fluid movement, Thane slammed a sickle mag home into the breech of his own Umbra-pattern boltgun. The Umbra was a venerable pattern, thought of as uncouth and archaic after the necessities of the Heresy. Despite lacking the finesse and refinements of other patterns, Thane found the Umbra to be a reliable and reassuringly bombastic bolter. A Chapter workhorse of a weapon.

  ‘This is Maximus Thane, captain of the Second Company, Fists Exemplar Chapter. The order is given…’

  Thane leaned into the boltgun and picked out the first of the unfortunate green beasts to die: a pale monstrosity, brutally etched with scars and jangling with rings, tribal trinkets and piercings.

  ‘Fire.’

  SIX

  Terra – the Imperial Palace

  On the Feast Day of Deliverance, it was traditional for the Senatorum Imperialis to restrict its meetings to the Imperium’s most urgent business. The Imperial Palace was lifted by evensong; blessed incense was burned by the brazier and both Adeptus Custodes and Astartes attendants were required to adopt ceremonial attire. The cavernous halls and corridors of the Palace were decked with reverential tapestries and flocks of winged cherubim read from endless scrolls the lists of fallen notables and petitionaries. Prayers and benedictions were offered and armies of planetary ambassadors admitted in rotating attendances to witness ritual silences, followed by volley shots and a salute issued by honour guards of decorated Lucifer Blacks.