The beast swivelled its head towards them and readied to strike again.
‘For the vengeance of my Chapter, no price is too high. I am sorry, Alpha, but that is how it must be.’
‘Then the rest of Talon Squad stands with you,’ said Karras. ‘Let us hope we all live to regret it.’
Solarion managed to put two further toxic rounds into the creature’s mouth in rapid succession, but it was futile. This hopeless battle was telling badly on the others now. Each slash of that deadly tail was avoided by a rapidly narrowing margin. Against a smaller and more numerous foe, the strength of the Adeptus Astartes would have seemed almost infinite, but this towering tyranid leviathan was far too powerful to engage with the weapons they had. They were losing this fight, and yet Chyron would not abandon it, and the others would not abandon him, despite the good sense that might be served in doing so.
Voss tried his best to keep the creature occupied at range, firing great torrents from his heavy bolter, even knowing that he could do little, if any, real damage. His fire, however, gave the others just enough openings to keep fighting. Still, even the heavy ammunition store on the Imperial Fist’s back had its limits. Soon, the weapon’s thick belt feed began whining as it tried to cycle non-existent rounds into the chamber.
‘I’m out,’ Voss told them. He started disconnecting the heavy weapon so that he might draw his combat blade and join the close-quarters melee.
It was at that precise moment, however, that Zeed, who had again been taunting the creature with his lightning claws, had his feet struck out from under him. He went down hard on his back, and the tyranid monstrosity launched itself straight towards him, massive mandibles spread wide.
For an instant, Zeed saw that huge red maw descending towards him. It looked like a tunnel of dark, wet flesh. Then a black shape blocked his view and he heard a mechanical grunt of strain.
‘I’m more of a meal, beast,’ growled Chyron.
The Dreadnought had put himself directly in front of Zeed at the last minute, gripping the tyranid’s sharp mandibles in his unbreakable titanium grip. But the creature was impossibly heavy, and it pressed down on the Lamenter with all its weight.
The force pressing down on Chyron was impossible to fight, but he put everything he had into the effort. His squat, powerful legs began to buckle. A piston in his right leg snapped. His engine began to sputter and cough with the strain.
‘Get out from under me, Raven Guard,’ he barked. ‘I can’t hold it much longer!’
Zeed scrabbled backwards about two metres, then stopped.
No, he told himself. Not today. Not to a mindless beast like this.
‘Corax protect me,’ he muttered, then sprang to his feet and raced forwards, shouting, ‘Victoris aut mortis!’
Victory or death!
He slipped beneath the Dreadnought’s right arm, bunched his legs beneath him and, with lightning claws extended out in front, dived directly into the beast’s gaping throat.
‘Ghost!’ shouted Voss and Karras at the same time, but he was already gone from sight and there was no reply over the link.
Chyron wrestled on for another second. Then two. Then, suddenly, the monster began thrashing in great paroxysms of agony. It wrenched its mandibles from Chyron’s grip and flew backwards, pounding its ringed segments against the concrete so hard that great fractures appeared in the ground.
The others moved quickly back to a safe distance and watched in stunned silence.
It took a long time to die.
When the beast was finally still, Voss sank to his knees.
‘No,’ he said, but he was so quiet that the others almost missed it.
Footsteps sounded on the stone behind them. It was Solarion. He stopped alongside Karras and Rauth.
‘So much for taking it alive,’ he said.
No one answered.
Karras couldn’t believe it had finally happened. He had lost one. After all they had been through together, he had started to believe they might all return to their Chapters alive one day, to be welcomed as honoured heroes, with the sad exception of Chyron, of course.
Suddenly, however, that belief seemed embarrassingly naïve. If Zeed could die, all of them could. Even the very best of the best would meet his match in the end. Statistically, most Deathwatch members never made it back to the fortress-monasteries of their originating Chapters. Today, Zeed had joined those fallen ranks.
It was Sigma, breaking in on the command channel, who shattered the grim silence.
‘You have failed me, Talon Squad. It seems I greatly overestimated you.’
Karras hissed in quiet anger. ‘Siefer Zeed is dead, inquisitor.’
‘Then you, Alpha, have failed on two counts. The Chapter Master of the Raven Guard will be notified of Zeed’s failure. Those of you who live will at least have a future chance to redeem yourselves. The Imperium has lost a great opportunity here. I have no more to say to you. Stand by for Magos Altando.’
‘Altando?’ said Karras. ‘Why would–’
Sigma signed off before Karras could finish, his voice soon replaced by the buzzing mechanical tones of the old magos who served on his retinue.
‘I am told that Specimen Six is dead,’ he grated over the link. ‘Most regrettable, but your chances of success were extremely slim from the beginning. I predicted failure at close to ninety-six point eight five per cent probability.’
‘But Sigma deployed us anyway,’ Karras seethed. ‘Why am I not surprised?’
‘All is not lost,’ Altando continued, ignoring the Death Spectre’s ire. ‘There is much still to be learned from the carcass. Escort it back to Orga Station. I will arrive there to collect it shortly.’
‘Wait,’ snapped Karras. ‘You wish this piece of tyranid filth loaded up and shipped back for extraction? Are you aware of its size?’
‘Of course, I am,’ answered Altando. ‘It is what the mag-rail line was built for. In fact, everything we did on Menatar from the very beginning – the construction, the excavation, the influx of Mechanicus personnel – all of it was to secure the specimen alive, still trapped inside its sarcophagus. Under the circumstances, we will make do with a dead one. You have given us no choice.’
The sound of approaching footsteps caught Karras’s attention. He turned from the beast’s slumped form and saw the xeno-heirographologist, Magos Borgovda, walking towards him with a phalanx of surviving skitarii troopers and robed Mechanicus acolytes.
Beneath the plex bubble of his helm, the little tech-priest’s eyes were wide.
‘You… you bested it. I would not have believed it possible. You have achieved what the Exodites could not.’
‘Ghost bested it,’ said Voss. ‘This is his kill. His and Chyron’s.’
If Chyron registered these words, he didn’t show it. The ancient warrior stared fixedly at his fallen foe.
‘Magos Borgovda,’ said Karras heavily, ‘are there men among your survivors who can work the cranes? This carcass is to be loaded onto a mag-rail car and taken to Orga Station.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Borgovda, his eyes taking in the sheer size of the creature. ‘That part of our plans has not changed, at least.’
Karras turned in the direction of the mag-rail station and started walking. He knew he sounded tired and miserable when he said, ‘Talon Squad, fall in.’
‘Wait,’ said Chyron. He limped forwards with a clashing and grinding of the gears in his right leg. ‘I swear it, Alpha. The creature just moved. Perhaps it is not dead, after all.’
He clenched his fists as if in anticipation of crushing the last vestiges of life from it. But, as he stepped closer to the creature’s slack mouth, there was a sudden outpouring of thick black gore, a great torrent of it. It splashed over his feet and washed across the dry rocky ground.
In that flood of gore was a bulky form, a form with g
reat rounded pauldrons, sharp claws, and a distinctive, back-mounted generator. It lay unmoving in the tide of ichor.
‘Ghost,’ said Karras quietly. He had hoped never to see this, one under his command lying dead.
Then the figure stirred and groaned.
‘If we ever fight a giant alien worm again,’ said the croaking figure over the comm-link, ‘some other bastard can jump down its throat. I’ve had my turn.’
Solarion gave a sharp laugh. Voss’s reaction was immediate. He strode forwards and hauled his friend up, clapping him hard on the shoulders. ‘Why would any of us bother when you’re so good at it, paper-face?’
Karras could hear the relief in Voss’s voice. He grinned under his helm. Maybe Talon Squad was blessed after all. Maybe they would live to return to their Chapters.
‘I said fall in, Deathwatch,’ he barked at them; then he turned and led them away.
Altando’s lifter had already docked at Orga Station by the time the mag-rail cars brought Talon Squad, the dead beast and the Mechanicus survivors to the facility. Sigma himself was, as always, nowhere to be seen. That was standard practice for the inquisitor. Six years, and Karras had still never met his enigmatic handler. He doubted he ever would.
Derlon Saezar and the station staff had been warned to stay well away from the mag-rail platforms and loading bays and to turn off all internal vid-picters. Saezar was smarter than most people gave him credit for. He did exactly as he was told. No knowledge was worth the price of his life.
Magos Altando surveyed the tyranid’s long body with an appraising lens before ordering it loaded onto the lifter, a task with which even his veritable army of servitor slaves had some trouble. Magos Borgovda was most eager to speak with him, but, for some reason, Altando acted as if the xeno-heirographologist barely existed. In the end, Borgovda became irate and insisted that the other magos answer his questions at once. Why was he being told nothing? This was his discovery. Great promises had been made. He demanded the respect he was due.
It was at this point, with everyone gathered in Bay One, the only bay in the station large enough to offer a berth to Altando’s lifter, that Sigma addressed Talon Squad over the comm-link command channel once again.
‘No witnesses,’ he said simply.
Karras was hardly surprised. Again, this was standard operating procedure, but that didn’t mean the Death Spectre had to like it. It went against every bone in his body. Wasn’t the whole point of the Deathwatch to protect mankind? They were alien-hunters. His weapons hadn’t been crafted to take the lives of loyal Imperial citizens, no matter who gave the command.
‘Clarify,’ said Karras, feigning momentary confusion.
There was a crack of thunder, a single bolter-shot. Magos Borgovda’s head exploded in a red haze.
Darrion Rauth stood over the body, dark grey smoke rising from the muzzle of his bolter
‘Clear enough for you, Karras?’ said the Exorcist.
Karras felt anger surging up inside him. He might even have lashed out at Rauth, might have grabbed him by the gorget, but the reaction of the surviving skitarii troopers put a stop to that. Responding to the cold-blooded slaughter of their leader, they raised their weapons and aimed straight at the Exorcist.
What followed was a one-sided massacre that made Karras sick to his stomach.
When it was over, Sigma had his wish.
There were no witnesses left to testify that anything at all had been dug up from the crater on Menatar. All that remained was the little spaceport station and its staff, waiting to be told that the excavation was over and that their time on this inhospitable world was finally at an end.
Saezar watched the big lifter take off first, and marvelled at it. Even on his slightly fuzzy vid-monitor screen, the craft was an awe-inspiring sight. It emerged from the doors of Bay One with so much thrust that he thought it might rip the whole station apart, but the facility’s integrity held. There were no pressure leaks, no accidents.
The way that great ship hauled its heavy form up into the sky and off beyond the clouds thrilled him. Such power! It was a joy and an honour to see it. He wondered what it must be like to pilot such a ship.
Soon, the black Thunderhawk was also ready to leave. He granted the smaller, sleeker craft clearance and opened the doors of Bay Four once again. Good air out, bad air in. The Thunderhawk’s thrusters powered up. It soon emerged into the light of the Menatarian day, angled its nose upwards, and began to pull away.
Watching it go, Saezar felt a sense of relief that surprised him. The Adeptus Astartes were leaving. He had expected to feel some kind of sadness, perhaps even regret at not getting to meet them in person. But he felt neither of those things. There was something terrible about them. He knew that now. It was something none of the bedtime stories had ever conveyed.
As he watched the Thunderhawk climb, Saezar reflected on it, and discovered that he knew what it was. The Astartes, the Space Marines… they didn’t radiate goodness or kindness like the stories pretended. They were not so much righteous and shining champions as they were dark avatars of destruction. Aye, he was glad to see the back of them. They were the living embodiment of death. He hoped he would never set eyes on such beings again. Was there any greater reminder that the galaxy was a terrible and deadly place?
‘That’s right,’ he said quietly to the vid-image of the departing Thunderhawk. ‘Fly away. We don’t need angels of death here. Better you remain a legend only if the truth is so grim.’
And then he saw something that made him start forwards, eyes wide.
It was as if the great black bird of prey had heard his words. It veered sharply left, turning back towards the station.
Saezar stared at it, wordless, confused.
There was a burst of bright light from the battle-cannon on the craft’s back. A cluster of dark, slim shapes burst forwards from the under-wing pylons, each trailing a bright ribbon of smoke.
Missiles!
‘No!’
Saezar would have said more, would have cried out to the Emperor for salvation, but the roof of the operations centre was ripped apart in the blast. Even if the razor-sharp debris hadn’t cut his body into a dozen wet red pieces, the rush of choking Menatarian air would have eaten him from the inside out.
‘No witnesses,’ Sigma had said.
Within minutes, Orga Station was obliterated, and there were none.
Days passed.
The only thing stirring within the crater was the skirts of dust kicked up by gusting winds. Ozyma-138 loomed vast and red in the sky above, continuing its work of slowly blasting away the planet’s atmosphere. With the last of the humans gone, this truly was a dead place once again, and that was how the visitors, or rather returnees, found it.
There were three of them, and they had been called here by a powerful beacon that only psychically gifted individuals might detect. It was a beacon that had gone strangely silent just shortly after it had been activated. The visitors had come to find out why.
They were far taller than the men of the Imperium, and their limbs were long and straight. The human race might have thought them elegant once, but all the killings these slender beings had perpetrated against mankind had put a permanent end to that. To the modern Imperium, they were simply xenos, to be hated and feared and destroyed like any other.
They descended the rocky sides of the crater in graceful silence, their booted feet causing only the slightest of rockslides. When they reached the bottom, they stepped onto the crater floor and marched together towards the centre where the mouth of the great pit gaped.
There was nothing hurried about their movements, and yet they covered the distance at an impressive speed.
The one who walked at the front of the trio was taller than the others, and not just by virtue of the high, jewel-encrusted crest on his helmet. He wore a rich cloak of strange shimmering mate
rial and carried a golden staff that shone with its own light.
The others were dressed in dark armour sculpted to emphasise the sweep of their long, lean muscles. They were armed with projectile weapons as white as bone. When the tall, cloaked figure stopped by the edge of the great pit, they stopped, too, and turned to either side, watchful, alert to any danger that might remain here.
The cloaked leader looked down into the pit for a moment, then moved off through the ruins of the excavation site, glancing at the crumpled metal huts and the rusting cranes as he passed them.
He stopped by a body on the ground, one of many. It was a pathetic, filthy mess of a thing, little more than rotting meat and broken bone wrapped in dust-caked cloth. It looked like it had been crushed by something. Pulverised. On the cloth was an icon – a skull set within a cog, equal parts black and white. For a moment, the tall figure looked down at it in silence, then he turned to the others and spoke, his voice filled with a boundless contempt that made even the swollen red sun seem to draw away.
‘Mon-keigh,’ he said, and the word was like a bitter poison on his tongue.
Mon-keigh.
The Alien Hunters
Andy Chambers
To be Unclean
That is the Mark of the Xenos
To be Impure
That is the Mark of the Xenos
To be Abhorred
That is the Mark of the Xenos
To be Reviled
That is the Mark of the Xenos
To be Hunted
That is the Mark of the Xenos
To be Purged
That is the fate of the Xenos
To be Cleansed
For that is the fate of all Xenos
– Extract from the Third Book of Indoctrinations
In the empty vastness of the void, a tiny sliver of metal drifted with its crystalline gaze fixed on distant stars. If it were taken from its setting, this artificial satellite would seem large to a man. To a man it would appear as a gnarled tower of steel and brass at the centre of vast spreading sails of silver mesh, like the overgrown stamen at the centre of an unnatural flower. But here in the emptiness between stars it was less than nothing; a tiny and unnoticeable mote on the face of the universe.
Hammer and Bolter Presents: Xenos Hunters Page 28