The skald's light moved along the wall to illuminate dozens of hands that had been affixed to the wall with what appeared to be an industrial boltgun. They moved in patterns that made Ajax's mind reel, as if the alternating spirals and lines of the pattern were emanating a sort of psychic vibration. Skald Omar's eyes were wide as he took in the sight of it.
"And when the gods grew too bold, the great wolf Fenrir snapped his jaws to swallow the hand of Tyr," spoke Omar, loud enough for them all to hear, but seemingly to himself.
"Skald, look!" cried Ford.
The assembled warriors followed the beam of light from his rifle to see a small pool in which one of the sizeable snail-like garm was bathed in a slimy, clear fluid.
The marines added their lights to his and as they did so, a low growl began to build in the room.
Ajax felt the psychic pressure increase rapidly. He knew the alpha garm crouched above them in the darkness. He did not know with his conscious mind where the beast was, and yet his instincts screamed at him to act, so he did.
"Garm above!" shouted Ajax as he toggled his rifle to full-auto and sprayed the darkness up and ahead of him with bolt rounds.
His light moved across scaffolding, rig equipment, and several platforms, kicking up sparks and slag as the fusillade chewed through the metallic terrain. While his salvo might have been undisciplined, the alpha garm's terrible form was partially revealed in the sharp illumination of sparks and the sweeping of the rifle's mounted light.
It was menacingly huge, crouching upon a platform with mighty claws and bedecked in scything blades, and as it leapt out of the light, Ajax caught a glimpse of the telltale bio-weapon protruding from its back. It was as if the garm had found a way to cross-breed the UltraGarm with the ridgebacks to create a beast that had the features of both and a size somewhere in the middle.
The roar it made with its double-hinged jaws thundered through the rig interior, so loud that the audio-dampeners inside their helmets, which kept the marines protected from the report of their own weapons, were nearly overwhelmed.
Ajax squeezed the trigger again only to find that he'd overheated the rifle. He knelt to vent the heat, but he knew that it would be seized up for several critical moments. As one, the rest of the assembled warriors opened fire, filling the darkness of the rig interior with the strobe of seven mighty weapons spitting death. Fenrir was fast, much nimbler than its biological predecessors, and the Einherjar tore apart the rig as they chased it with punishing fire.
"Hold fast, brothers!" bellowed Jarl Mahora over the command channel, and Ajax realized that the swarm must have crossed into the clearing. "They die on the wall! No garm gets through today!"
Sharif screamed and Ajax looked up to see the marine shorn in two by the scything blades of the beast as it galloped past him.
He saw, in flashes of muzzle flare, that the withering fire of so many rifles had taken its toll on the beast. As it came around to fatally gore one of the skalds, its cloven hoof pulping Ford's right leg, Ajax knew it was going to take much more to put it down. He slung his rifle and slid his pistol from its holster, knowing that while the sidearm could do little to pierce the beast's thick hide, they would still hurt.
The beast suddenly halted and changed direction, swiftly plowing through Ford as the man attempted to get out of the way. Yao was somewhere behind Ajax, and the marine had apparently decided that killing the beast was worth the risk of turning the rig into an inferno. Ajax heartily agreed with the sentiment, and he continued to pelt the beast with his pistol as the distinct sound of Yao's grenade launcher met his ears.
Fragmentation grenades, set with micro-timers to airburst, suddenly blossomed with fire and fury around Fenrir, and the beast howled in pain. More explosions rocked the rig interior and blasted great chunks of meat from the creature.
Silas was consumed in the blasts, his body punished by shrapnel and the concussive force from the grenades. Ajax looked behind him to see and hear Yao screaming, though Ajax could not tell if it was that he'd given into the black or that he'd slain a brother with friendly fire.
Ajax felt the monster crying out for its swarms, and felt the surge of the enemy press against the waves of death already being visited upon them. It haunted Ajax how he was able to feel not just the alpha garm, but now some abstract elements of the swarms of lesser garm organisms also.
Fenrir charged through the strobing light of muzzle flares and mounted lights towards the pool, and Ajax realized what it was about to do.
Fenrir scooped the garm snail-like creature from the pool and held it tightly in its multi-hinged jaws, though instead of immediately chomping it, the beast turned and fled.
Without thought, Ajax sprinted after the monster and saw that it was rushing down the sloped loading dock towards the roll up metal bay door. The door had been shredded by shrapnel from Yao's grenades, but even moderately intact he knew that the thing would go through it like paper.
The marine pumped his legs and pushed himself as fast as he could go, thinking less about what he was going to do when he reached the beast, and more about simply catching up to it.
Pulse rifles barked behind him and he saw Fenrir stumble as multiple bolts ruined one of its hind legs. The opportunity presented itself and without thinking, Ajax leapt upon Fenrir's back and plunged his trench spike into the meat between the creature's massive shoulders.
Fenrir roared in frustration and agony, but managed to regain its footing and tear through the bay door. Ajax's combat armor kept him from being sliced apart by the ragged edges of the cheap metal, but it was all he could do to hold on as the creature sprinted across the rig plaza. The beast's jaws snapped and Ajax heard the sound of the snail's body being pulped and cursed. All of this death and the alpha garm still got what must be the critical component of their radical evolution.
Angered by what felt like the futility of it, tired of being one step behind, Ajax began firing with his pistol. His rounds didn't do much, but fired right into the thing’s body it they certainly got the monster's attention. The beast roared and started slamming its side into buildings and shipping containers as it ran in an attempt to knock Ajax away. He held fast, though only barely.
"Alpha garm approaching from the rear!" shouted Hart over the command channel. Ajax heard the report of his rifle just as the behemoth shuddered from the impact of a massive sniper round.
Ahead, Ajax could see the wall of the compound. Behind the thin barriers of wire and sheet metal the marines of Hydra Company held their ground against swarms of gorehounds and ripper drones. These weren't ideal defenses, though the open ground had made for an excellent killing field. Since the brood had only weeks to grow, the swarms were not very large compared to what the marines were used to fighting. Without air support from shriekers or artillery from the ridgebacks, it was all the ripper drones and gorehounds could do to take out what few marines they could before being mercilessly gunned down.
Fenrir was weakening, Ajax was sure, but its size and momentum would be enough to carry it through the barricades. Several marines attempted to flank it, and though they hit it with a few shots, Fenrir was deadly with its bio-weapons, and the beast left corpses in its wake, cleaved and bloody.
Ajax lost his grip and fell, smashing against the wall of a shipping container just before the creature reached the marine perimeter.
He rolled onto his stomach, looking up just in time to see Jarl Mahora appear from the ranks of marines who were focused on battling the swarm. The hardened veteran walked towards the charging beast, revealing that he had a pulse rifle in each hand. Majora pulled the rifles tight into the crooks of his elbows and squeezed the triggers.
The rifles were on full-auto, and as Fenrir bore down on him, Mahora unleashed a hurricane of bolts. The alpha garm's body was reduced to a hulk of burning meat, though its momentum carried it right over Mahora. The veteran's body was transfixed by one of the bio-blades, but even as he was dying, the man spewed curses and blood on his enemy, drawi
ng his pistol and firing until finally he collapsed.
Ajax pushed himself to his feet and unslung his own pulse rifle. He was limping from what he assumed was a broken leg, his breath was short and painful enough to indicate many broken ribs and he could only hold the rifle with his right hand as the left was broken. He might not be able to do much, but after what he'd just witnessed, he knew that it was the duty of the Einherjar to press on.
Soon his iron sights were filled with the bodies of ripper drones, and though they might have failed to discover whatever it was the garm were up to on Khal, they'd certainly wipe them off the face of the forest moon.
SHAPESHIFTERS WALK ALONE
Loki breathed deep and slow, allowing the fetid air of the subterranean lair to fill his multi-chambered lungs. Though filtered through several membranes that had developed in his nose and mouth, the stench of offal and refuse was thick in his awareness. He found that the smell no longer offended him, so fascinated was he by the degree to which he could perceive the delicate minutiae of sensory input he was now capable of processing. His clawed fingers clicked against his knees as he remained in his full lotus position, a meditative posture that had always served him well in his former life as Skald Thatcher.
Just as he thought of himself as someone different, his body had evolved to reflect that inner change in the physical realm. His stocky frame had spent months changing since his immersion in the pool. Without his meditations, the process would have been unbearably painful.
The green fluid secreted by the creatures he'd taken to calling garm whelks, as they reminded him of the lightning whelk snails on Tarsis Prime, had ignited a radical change in him. Certainly, the Usurper had influenced his awareness, and he understood that the fluid was a sort of mutagenic cocktail that directly affected the DNA of anything it came in contact with. At the will of the hive mind this muta-gene could make and unmake bio-systems.
It was a messy process, one filled with suffering and dead ends as much as it was an evolutionary success. It was less like science and more of a wild expression of nature.
Loki stretched his elongated arms wide and flexed his clawed hands. The trial and error of a millennia of adaptations, scaled to the individual level and guided by the hive mind. At least that was how it had started, in the seemingly distant days of Grendel, the first of the muta-garm and the catalyst for the awakening of the Usurper.
Loki had to concentrate on the names he'd chosen for the garm and the hive mind, as the psychic presence was slippery and cunning. Always, it sought to dominate him, even if they operated as allies of a kind. Unless, of course, thought Loki grimly, he was already the pawn of the swarm. He slowly extended his legs and stood to his tremendous new height. Always, he wondered if his decisions were his own or those of the Usurper, which had become an ever-present force in his mind, even if it seemed to lack much in the way of its former vitality.
The Alpha Hive Mind had continued its purge of the Usurper. Even during these short months, Loki became strongly convinced that the fledgling hive mind survived only thanks to the efforts of himself and the men of the Angrboda. Where the Usurper was hidden, Loki could not fathom, and he was beginning to suspect that whatever was left of the garm intellect and psychic presence was present now only in its children.
Jormungandr was dead, as was Fenrir, their broods shattered and run to ground. They had served their purpose, indeed, though he was beginning to understand that the garm were not without awareness of the loss of their swarms. He'd felt the shockwave of Jormungandr's death while still en route to the forest moon, and it was the explosive end of Fenrir that had sent him to his knees but yesterday.
Still, he felt the Usurper in the back of his mind, somewhere in the shadows, whispering to him of terrible things.
Loki was only vaguely humanoid now, more so without his armor, which he had taken to wearing less and less as he explored his vast new array of sensory capabilities. Balor had been sorely tested to modify the Einherjar armor to accommodate his master's rapidly evolving form, but had risen to the occasion. Balor was a master craftsman, one of the best in the All-Father's army before defecting alongside the others of Thatcher's veteran force.
Loki strode to the corner of his chosen chamber and began the lengthy process of donning his modified combat armor. There was a fight coming, he could feel the psychic shivers of Ajax projecting himself like a drag net across human space. Loki might have the discipline and control to mask his own presence, but Hel had reached maturity. She might be the greatest of the muta-garm spawn he'd rescued from the dying hive ship, but she was still a wild and alien thing. While Loki could intentionally reduce his own psychic emanations, a skill learned by skald training and perfected by his daily struggle for independence with the Usurper, Hel was incapable of such levels of thought and intent.
Grendel had been both a catalyst and an anomaly, Loki had come to believe, and none of the beasts since that nightmare creature had entered the world were its equal. Unless, of course, one counted Loki himself, who in his current form was something of a bastard child of Grendel and his human parents, as much as he was a product of the body forge now warped by the garm muta-gene. This was a thought that the former skald had considered several times.
Regardless, Hel was not yet ready to make her journey, and it would not take long for Ajax to ping on Hel's presence upon this urbanized world. It was possible that the dense population of Tankrid could obfuscate her presence from the Bloodhound for a time, the hero marine had proven himself adept at finding the children Angrboda left in its wake. Just as well, thought Loki as he slid his hand into the armored glove crafted to accommodate his clawed fingertips, it was time to face the Einherjar at long last.
Let them gaze upon the architect of doom, snarled Loki inside his mind, a sentiment shared by the presence of the Usurper the moment he expressed it. The former skald's shoulder pieces had been elongated to rise up to either side of his helmet, which allowed his now advanced hearing to not only pick up audio, but echo locate in the darkness of the Tankrid underworld. Loki's helmet now had seven ocular ports cannibalized from the spare marine helms in the Angrboda's equipment locker, one for each of the sensory organs that had sprouted from his face.
The hideous warrior leaned down and picked up a heavily modified firearm, which was now a combo weapon capable of toggling between the pulse rifle that served as its base and a conventional sub-machine gun. They fought men now, not just the garm, and a forward-thinking warrior carried weapons suited to his purpose. The torcs of his fallen comrades and those murdered in their escape from the Bifrost jingled upon Loki's chest, and he ran a sharp, armored finger over them. There would be more still, to hang upon him before this journey was ended.
As he checked the magazine of the rifle and re-inserted it, Unferth entered the chamber. Unferth, like the others, still maintained the bulk of his human traits, and it was only the small details that gave away the warrior's subtle adaptations. The skalds and other men who had survived the battle for the hive ship were as yet untouched by the muta-gene itself. Over time they had become deeply in thrall to Loki's psychic influence and delicately warped by Loki's spoor upon them, as the garm substance had only recently been perfected. It was a delicate process of determining the ideal form of the substance and the appropriate delivery system. Much had been learned by the trials and errors of those who had gone before. The broods of Jormungandr and Fenrir were sacrifices upon the altar, now it was time for his own brood to do the same.
"Tankrid deputies have begun probing the tunnels several districts over," reported Unferth, "According to our local sources the city powers occasionally conduct purges of the various undesirables that live here. It will not take them long to realize that there is nobody left to purge."
"The swarm needs a few more days to mature. If Hel feels threatened she will hatch them early, before their adaptations are fully developed, and we will have lost our chance to harvest the weapon," responded Loki as he made to leave the c
hamber alongside Unferth. "Have the men patrol the edge of our domain, if it looks like the deputies will cross into hive territory eliminate them. Stealth kills would be ideal. If we are lucky and it takes them another day or so to reach us, those deputies will be our field test before the Einherjar arrive. I can feel Ajax searching and have no doubt he will soon be at our door."
Unferth turned sharply at the door and went down a tunnel that led towards the central hub. The skalds were adept warriors, and Loki had perfect trust that they would do as asked.
Loki continued down the passage adjacent to his personal chamber, and soon the narrow tunnel widened, opening to a massive drainage exchange. Mucus had been used with great effect to create hardened resin barriers that directed the flow of sewage throughout the chamber in such a way as to allow the egg chamber to co-exist with a functioning sewage system. It would not do to have the local municipality noticing that their system was not functioning, and so long as it flowed, then none were the wiser as to the horrors being bred beneath the mega-city streets.
Loki walked into the chamber and leaned over one of the eggs. It was so very near hatching, and he could see where the hide of the shell was growing thin, a sure sign that the nightmare inside was nearly ready. The former skald then let his multiple eyes come to rest upon the resin breeding pool that Hel had created just to the side of the chamber. The stinking sluice of partially digested human corpses rippled as umbilical cords drew nutrients from the bottom of the pool and fed them to the clutch of slightly less developed eggs near the top of the stack.
Not all of them would be hatched and ready when the Einherjar came, thought Loki to himself with a surprising tinge of sadness, but with a hard fight between the marines and this chamber perhaps enough would be ready to make a difference.
Space Marine Loki (Extinction Fleet Book 2) Page 12