Predator, Prey

by Rob Sanders

  He wasn’t there.

  Urquidex discovered that the magos biologis had reached down his stretcher-slab and unlocked the brake before hauling the tracked gurney across the laboratorium by heaving arm-over-arm on a line of cables and data-feeds. His exhausting efforts had brought his stretcher-slab over to where the last Imperial Fist had been surgically butchered and had died. Urquidex and Van Auken watched as Laurentis – his ruined mouth continuing to babble trauma-induced nonsense – placed his hand on the Imperial Fist’s yellow pauldron.

  ‘It seems that sentimentality is a disease common to your specialism,’ Van Auken accused. Urquidex ignored him and watched the magos biologis with fascination. Pushing himself off the pauldron, Laurentis snatched at the fibre cabling running between the Adeptus Astartes’ body and the auspectoria banks. Moving his smashed, skeletal digits across the instrumentation, the tech-priest fell to adjusting calibrations and auspectra frequencies.

  ‘Are you going to stand by and allow a delirious patient to disrupt the settings of your equipment, magos?’ Van Auken said. ‘He might be erasing precious data of the previous procedures.’

  ‘The Third Law of Universal Variance,’ Urquidex murmured.

  ‘The Bystander Paradox?’

  ‘Do not interfere,’ Urquidex said.

  Slamming his bloodied palm against a fat stud, Laurentis completed his reprogramming of the laboratorium equipment. The flatline feed and mortis-tone died abruptly. It was replaced with a distant, signature life sign. The very faintest beat of twin hearts.

  ‘What is that?’ Van Auken demanded.

  Urquidex walked up to the instrumentation and placed a hand on the forehead of the butchered half-priest. His chest was rising and falling with exertion and his brow was moist. His babblings continued unabated. Looking closely at the field-auspex, he discovered that the magos had set it to a broad-range scan.

  ‘It’s a fourth life sign,’ Urquidex informed him. ‘Very weak. Buried below the others.’ He began punching buttons and twisting dials on the rune bank. ‘I’m rerouting this data to the bridge. Alpha primus, if you please.’

  Through the armourglass bubble-port, Orozko was already on the observation deck vox-hailer. The feeble heartbeats continued. Nothing like the thunder they once must have been, but insistent nonetheless. Both Van Auken and Urquidex looked to the skitarii officer.

  ‘Ship augur arrays have boosted and traced the signal,’ the alpha primus said finally. ‘The life sign is confirmed as Adeptus Astartes. It’s coming from the wreck of the Amkulon.’

  ‘Holy Mars,’ Urquidex said. ‘The radiation.’

  ‘Artisan-primus,’ Orozko said. ‘Several members of your trajectorae team are on the bridge. They say that the signal betrays the trace power signature of recent trans-vectoring.’

  ‘A teleportation homer?’

  ‘Yes, artisan-primus.’

  ‘Van Auken?’ Urquidex called through the armourglass. ‘How can we have only detected this now?’

  ‘The gravitic disturbances inflicted on the system might have had an inhibiting effect on the teleportation technologies,’ the artisan trajectorae hypothesised. ‘With the removal of the affecting body – the xenos attack moon – the disturbance subsided and the vectoring achieved realisation.’

  ‘Life signs are extremely weak,’ Urquidex reported.

  The artisan-primus nodded. ‘Alpha primus – please select an extraction team from your men. The survivor must be recovered and removed from the toxic environment of the derelict.’

  ‘Yes, artisan-primus.’

  ‘Alpha primus,’ Van Auken added, ‘this is a mortis-mission. The skitarii returning from the Amkulon will be compromised and not expected to survive.’

  ‘I shall send Vanguard units. They are already radiation-compromised,’ Orozko replied dourly before leaving the observation deck.

  When Van Auken turned back to the observation port he found Magos Urquidex standing at the armourglass.

  ‘It seems that a trip to the Eastern Fringe is not required to achieve an audience with the Adeptus Astartes, after all,’ Urquidex said.

  ‘Keep this one alive,’ Van Auken said coldly, ‘and such a trip might not be necessary.’ With that the artisan-primus departed the observation deck and left Magos Urquidex to his half-priest patient.

  FOURTEEN

  Undine – submerged

  It was all but impossible to find a private space aboard the armed submersible Tiamat. Both space and privacy existed at a premium below the Undinian waves, and never more so than now, following the attack on Hive Pherusa. Commander Lux Allegra knew this better than most, but still managed to find a tiny maintenance alcove in the steam-swathed engineering compartment. A place for kneeling. For gritted teeth. For trembling hands. For tears that would not come.

  General Phifer and Admiral Novakovic had ordered the planetary defence fleet to put in at Pherusa for supplies, munitions and manpower. The greenskin invasion force had yet to reach the mercantile hive and the city boasted an impressive harbour. While the freighters and troop carriers took on contingents of Undine Marineers and recruits, sky talons drifted fuel and munitions over to Novakovic’s launch carriers and heavy monitors. By the time the skies darkened to the east, it was already too late. Without orbital augur arrays to warn the defence fleet, Phifer and Novakovic could have little idea what was coming. So much that they had witnessed of the greenskin invasion had been unprecedented. The attack on Pherusa Harbour was no different.

  Blotting out the heavens ahead of the storm of raining crash-capsules and rocks was a greenskin wing comprising an assortment of fat aircraft, flying citadels and super-heavy bombers. The colossal junkers had monstrous bellies packed to the rivets with mega-bombs and weapons of mass destruction. Their thunderous engines barely kept the bombers in the air, while their wing expanses formed runways for smaller jets and kamikaze rockets. Their bulbous hulls swarmed with kopters and mounted accreted platforms for fat cannons, launchers and macrostubbers. The bomber wing’s approach was slow and irresistible, eclipsing the sun and casting a great shadow across the ocean.

  The admiral’s Avenger formations were swallowed whole by the droning monster. The hive’s turbo weaponry and the defence fleet’s deck-mounted cannons punched holes in the swarm but could do nothing to stop the deluge of greenskin ordnance that dropped from the sky. Monitors and corvettes erupted in cloud-scraping fireballs. Multi-hulled launch carriers were blasted in two. Overcrowded transports went to the bottom of the anchorage, taking thousands of defence force guardsmen with them. Marineers. Mercenaries. Volunteers. Men and women who would have fought for Undine, now dead.

  Only the submersibles survived, carrying the decimated armada’s senior officers and staff to the same sheltered depths. When they once again ascended to augur-depth they found a harbour choked with charred hulks and the waters bobbing with bodies. Worse still was Hive Pherusa. Within hours the hive city had been levelled by the greenskins’ barrage of bombs. Now it was just a small mountain of smouldering masonry and wreckage being gradually reclaimed by the waves.

  Commander Lux Allegra only knew this because she had been on board the command submersible Tiamat when the attack unfolded. She had been summoned by both General Phifer and Admiral Novakovic, although she suspected that Lord Governor Borghesi’s gratitude had something to do with the order. It turned out to be an earned but impromptu promotion. Lux Allegra was commander no more. She was Captain Allegra now.

  She ached to be with her ‘Screeching Eagles’. To tell Gohlandr. But they were gone. By the time she reached the forward airlock, the attack had been under way. Novakovic had given the order for the submersible contingent to dive. Rocked by the hell at surface-level and the vox-reports coming in from sinking ships and vessels aflame, the Tiamat and her consorts sank to safety.

  ‘Captain Allegra to the conn. Captain Allegra to the conn. Urgent,’ t
he vox-hailer blared. For the longest time, she couldn’t make herself move. Her stomach was a knot. Her chest was wracked with a paralysing tension. Her boots felt like they had melted to the metal decking. Her mind was a pict-recording set in a loop. An urchin’s existence in the underhive. Gohlandr. Piracy; privateership; recruitment. Gohlandr. Hive Tyche. Gohlandr saving her life. The life inside her that belonged to Lyle Gohlandr. Had belonged to him. Her hand drifted to the flak armour across her belly. She allowed her face to screw up.

  ‘Captain Allegra to the conn. Urgent,’ the loudhailer repeated. Allegra’s hand fell away from her midriff. She ran the back of the other across her eyes but still found no tears there. She grabbed the support rails set into the alcove sides.

  ‘Get… up,’ the captain told herself – and she did. Her mind was numb but her legs were moving. She allowed them to take her to the submersible’s conning tower.

  There she found a rat’s nest of Marineer officers and support staff, Undinians who moved with frenetic urgency and purpose. Guardsmen and women lost in the emergency, who dared not allow themselves a moment to contemplate the unfolding destruction of their home world.

  At the heart of the cramped and darkened command centre, she found the Lord Governor. Borghesi sat in his wheeled chair in silence. Gone was the imperious triviality of petty demands. Also missing was the careless entitlement of a spireborn. The Lord Commander now felt the responsibility of one born to the spire, a man born to rule in the Emperor’s name. He looked almost as wretched as she did. He didn’t avoid her gaze. He didn’t say anything. He just pursed his lips and gave her his sad eyes.

  Phifer and Novakovic had lost too many men and too many vessels to feel any particular loss that acutely. Like their frantic personnel, they hid behind what was left of their honour and professional responsibility. Allegra found them standing about the faded hololithic representation of the Great Ocean. Hive after hive had fallen. The greenskin invaders were falling like a curtain on Undine, their descent line moving swiftly across the ocean planet. Presented as such, Allegra could see how the hive-world’s oceans had been their greatest ally, swallowing innumerable savages and filling the bellies of deep-sea megafauna. If Undine had been a world of rock and dirt, the greenskin monsters would have long since swarmed the planet.

  This fact did not make Undine’s fate any less desperate. According to the hololith, only the distant western hives of Nemertis, Arethuse and Pontoplex remained untouched by the alien war host. Several isolated patrols were still operating on the turbulent seas of these regions, including the Meridius launch carrier group and the Western Marinine base of operations, Port Squall. The base sported a Thunderbolt contingent and two Marauder wings, including the Marinine 1st and 3rd. It was towards Port Squall that Allegra assumed the submersibles were headed. She was wrong.

  Novakovic seemed to notice her for the first time. The aged admiral was dressed in his great coat and rubbers. He gave her a grim nod, and she managed an answering salute. Phifer didn’t acknowledge her at all. He was known amongst the Marineer officer corps to be a cold bastard but a competent one, and he was the only officer that Allegra knew of that had actually fought off-world. He was staring darkly at the hololith and the story it told. It seemed that the general knew the end and he didn’t like it.

  ‘You sent for me, sirs,’ Allegra said, wishing that they would send her straight back. She did not quite understand what use she could be to them. Her ‘Screeching Eagles’ were gone. Her captaincy an empty formality. Perhaps the Tiamat would reach the Meridius battlegroup; perhaps those Marineers left aboard the submersibles could support the Marinine 1st and 3rd in their protection of Hive Arethuse or make a stand at Port Squall. Hive Arethuse wouldn’t survive the swarms of hulking invaders clawing their way out of the sea. Port Squall could not hope to stand against the monstrous air superiority of the greenskin bomber wings.

  ‘She sees it,’ Novakovic said through the hololithic static.

  Phifer nodded, again without looking at the captain. His face was an unreadable mask, taut and fixed.

  ‘She does,’ he agreed in his deep, Northern drawl.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘The futility of the situation,’ Novakovic said. ‘We cannot stand against the magnitude of this threat.’

  ‘The Marineers are a planetary defence force,’ Phifer said, ‘and we have defended our fair world to the best of our ability. This is, however, an Imperial world. It is part of the Emperor’s domain. We must look to the Emperor’s faithful subjects on neighbouring worlds to aid us in this desperate hour.’

  ‘How do we know that they haven’t been invaded?’ Allegra said. ‘That they are faring any better than Undine?’

  ‘We don’t,’ the aged admiral told her.

  ‘The Lord Governor has allowed our regimental astropath to use his consular codes and send requests for aid to Zeta Corona, Farhaven and Triassi Prime. We have also attempted to contact the Mechanicus servants of the Phlogistos Forges and sent word to the Vulpius Crusade, passing through the Weald Worlds. The astropath confirmed that the Black Templars Space Marines received our request for assistance. In all likelihood, the Adeptus Astartes are en route.’

  ‘Sounds hopeful,’ Allegra acknowledged, but her voice said anything but.

  ‘The Emperor’s Angels were crafted to meet such threats as these,’ Novakovic said. ‘And the Black Templars are known the galaxy over as great enemies of the alien. Undine will prosper once again in the fires of their hatred. I pity no savage but if I did, I’d pity the greenskins that placed themselves in the Templars’ path.’

  ‘But…’ Allegra put to them.

  ‘The admiral, the Lord Governor and I have been drafting a contingency,’ Phifer said gravely.

  ‘In the event that the Adeptus Astartes do not reach us,’ Novakovic clarified.

  ‘We cannot allow the greenskin invader to take Undine,’ General Phifer said, his words those of an off-world warlord rather than the sentiments of an ocean homelander. ‘We have a responsibility to the Imperium – to the Emperor. Live or die, we must deny the alien this tiny part of the Imperium.’

  ‘I agree, general,’ Allegra told him with difficulty, her own losses still gnawing away at her soul. ‘But how might such a miracle be procured? Billions live who soon will perish. What weapons we had now sit on the seabed. The enemy is irresistible in savagery and number. They will not be denied.’

  ‘I need a small contingency force,’ General Phifer went on, ‘led by an officer of character and certitude – one who will do what must be done.’

  ‘General…’

  ‘The Lord Governor gave you as a recommendation,’ Phifer told her. ‘Your past familiarity with these waters makes you an excellent choice.’ The Marineer general focused the hololith in on a tiny island in the middle of the featureless ocean, many leagues from the major hive or pontoon communities. ‘You know Desolation Point, of course.’

  Allegra nodded. She knew it well. She’d worked as second mate on a gun-rover out of Desolation Point before operating a wrecker under her own captaincy in the surrounding waters. She had both been a pirate and a privateer preying on pirates in and around the half-mythical port. Desolation Point was the buried memory of a former life.

  ‘Apocalytic invasion or not, the Brethren will not fight for Marineers who have spent their life hunting and persecuting them,’ Lux Allegra told them.

  ‘You did,’ Admiral Novakovic reminded her.

  ‘Those that are not whoring or in their stimm-chests will have heard of the invasion over the vox-waves and taken to the high seas,’ Allegra said.

  ‘Like cowards,’ the general muttered.

  ‘Like survivors, general,’ Allegra corrected him.

  ‘Well, we will be neither,’ Novakovic said, ‘if the Black Templars don’t arrive in time.’

  ‘Which is why we need a contingency plan, captain,’ P
hifer said. ‘There is something at Desolation Point of strategic value, but it is not the good anchorage or the Brethren scum that haunt it.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Did you ever wonder,’ Admiral Novakovic put to her, ‘why the Marineers did not simply deploy Marauder wings to blast your island hideout to oblivion?’

  ‘I don’t understand, admiral.’

  ‘Desolation Point was the worst kept secret in the Sixteen Seas,’ Novakovic told her. ‘The Undinian defence forces could have taken it at any time, rather than chasing pirate skiffs all over the ocean and engaging the services of turncoat privateers like yourself.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you?’ Allegra replied, the edge of a challenge creeping into her voice.

  ‘Because your Brethren,’ Phifer said, half-spitting the word, ‘chose Desolation Point for its isolated location. Just like the Imperial Army.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir?’

  ‘Your haven of rust and corrugated scrap is built on top of an old Imperial Army depot,’ Phifer said. ‘The rocky isle was too small for hive foundations but perfect for a small subterranean installation. A storage facility for two-stage orbital munitions and planetary bombs left over from the wars of the Great Heresy. They were hidden and largely forgotten at Desolation Point until the Brethren took the island for their own.’

  ‘We could not take Desolation Point,’ Admiral Novakovic said, ‘for fear that the Brethren had these weapons in their possession and might use them against the defence force or even the hive populations. You thought you were hidden; in fact, you were untouchable. That is why piracy flourished and the Lord Governor’s prosecution of the Brethren was half-hearted at best.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of such weapons,’ Allegra told them.

  ‘It’s likely that the Brethren never discovered them,’ Novakovic said. ‘They are secured in a fortified underground depot. We couldn’t take the chance, however. We have suffered defections to the Brethren as the pirate lords have to us.’ The admiral flashed his eyes.