An inhuman roar sounded in the chaos. The marine turned to see a ridgeback barreling down the trench, using its horns to plow a path for itself by swinging it back and forth.
The marine scrambled to find a weapon, splashing through the carnage as he desperately fumbled to get his hands around Rama’s discarded rifle. He fell back against the wall of the trench and squeezed the trigger, only to find that poor Rama had been in the process of a reload when he’d been hit by the spores. The ridgeback was seconds from him when out of the blind corner of a connecting tunnel came a cloud of bolts that all but shredded the beast.
Ajax threw himself to the ground near the other side of the trench as the ruined bulk of the ridgeback, carried by sheer momentum, collapsed in a heap just short of where he’d been standing.
He lay where he had fallen, half-covered in carnage and mud. A Blackout emerged from the connecting tunnel, his machine pistol smoldering from the murderous salvo that had taken out the Ridgeback.
A WarGarm came rushing down the trench, spitting clouds of spikes from its weapons as it advanced. The Blackout rolled under the wave of fire, avoiding all but two of the spikes that the marine could see. As Ajax watched, the Blackout deftly sliced the WarGarm apart before finally succumbing to the toxins being pumped into his system by the two spikes in his body. Other WarGarm either leapt across the wide trench or climbed in and out of the obstacle, all of them focused on pressing the attack to the second parallel.
The Einherjar flares, both first and second wave, had all but faded away, and now the trench was growing steadily darker, ever more reliant upon the handful of LED lights that were undamaged.
Ajax risked a glance towards the other end of the trench and saw only heaps of bodies. In the distance, he could hear gunfire and knew that the marines on the second parallel were fighting to hold the line against the WarGarm.
Again, the enemy had forced the marines to spend their strength against lesser swarms so that the WarGarm could close in for the killing blow. That attack had failed last time, though the ploy with the ridgebacks had truly been a devastating one. There were few marines left to hold the second parallel, even bolstered as they were by the handful of skald commandos in the field.
The skalds were tasked with bringing down the forward observer so they would be busy monster hunting. Skald Thatcher had taken to calling the new creature Grendel, and the name had stuck, even if, to Ajax, the slithering beast would always be the observer. Something in its eyes made him feel as if it could see right through him, its gaze piercing his flesh and laying bare every memory or secret he’d ever had.
Thatcher had taken the Watchman’s place, and hoped to draw the enemy to him, since the Watchman was its first key victim.
Hart, the sniper, as the only other man to see the creature, actually wound it and live, was with the commandos, accompanied by a skald escort, defending Trench 16. They would be out there, stalking the beast even as it stalked them, if Grendel came to this area.
Ajax fervently hoped that they were successful.
Thoughts of the observer made Ajax realize he was the only living thing in sight. The trench suddenly felt more menacing and dangerous than when it was filled with vicious combat. Bodies were everywhere, but no more enemies poured over the side of the trench, and no marines fought to hold the line. The marine’s instincts screamed at him to run, in any direction, so long as it was out of this ditch, and it took everything the marine had left to simply stand.
Ajax took up the pulse rifle and out of a habit, he ejected the carbon mag and tapped it to settle what inert ammunition remained. He estimated he had about half a magazine left as he slotted it in and racked the slide of the rifle to chamber the first projectile. From the sound of it the fighting between the WarGarm and the marines was reaching its conclusion, one way or the other.
The marine carefully picked his way through the piles of bodies that clogged the trench, slowly making his way towards the nearest chain-fire emplacement. He knew from the trench layout that it was nearly sixty meters away and in the dying light it would be a treacherous journey. Then again, Ajax thought to himself, what else was the last man standing to do?
A deep rumbling sound reached the marine’s ears as he finally came upon the thin ladder that led up to the chain-fire. The marine slung the pulse rifle over his shoulder and started climbing, noticing that the ladder itself had begun to shake. Ajax made it to the top and pulled himself onto the small gun platform.
The two gunners were dead, both riddled with messy holes and covered in the splattered bodies of the grubs that were fired from the horrific weapons of the gorehounds. No matter how many times he saw it, the sight of the grub filled corpses of his fallen comrades threatened to make him vomit. The marine was shaking so badly that he had to grab the handle of the chain-fire just to stand. It was only when the shaking didn’t stop that he realized it wasn’t him at all, but the world itself.
Ajax looked up from the ruined bodies of his brothers and his gaze was filled with the breath stealing sight of the UltraGarm.
The living battle tanks were so huge that they were easily two and three times as massive as the ridgebacks, reminding him of what a cockroach war drone might look like if it was the size of an elephant. There were wide scythe blades of chitin extending from the thick jaws of the creature, giving it an elephantine look, two pairs of blades, along with innumerable spines and armor plating covering the beast. There were three of them, and the impact of their hooves upon the ground shook the entire trench.
No sooner had Ajax laid eyes on them than one of the UltraGarm burst apart in an explosion of super-heated gas that almost knocked Ajax over where he stood. The sky was filled with skyrocketing meat and bodily fluids that splattered everywhere as they fell back to the ground.
A split second after the beast died Ajax heard the unique report of a tank cannon. He caught sight of two heavy battle tanks in pursuit of the two remaining UltraGarm. While he was happy to see the tank, the marine could not fathom why the UltraGarm seemed to be fleeing from battle, as that was not at all the Garm way of war.
Suddenly, the two UltraGarm split up. One turned and ran further into no man’s land, as if retreating in the direction of the unknown hive ship, while the other charged the trench itself.
The tanks were forced to engage the UltraGarm in no man’s land, as the beast was on an intercept course with the tanks unless they deviated.
Before the tanks could engage in combat, Ajax realized what the UltraGarm charging the trench was doing. The great beast changed its angle of approach and swept its wicked tusks through the other chain-fire emplacement defending Trench 16.
As was standard procedure, the marines fired until the weapon locked up, then abandoned it until it either cooled or other marines re-took the trench. Einherjar had been using chain-fires this way since their first deployment as support weapons, especially as they, like the rest of humanity’s war machines, were in short supply and growing more difficult to replace as the war ground on.
The UltraGarm’s blades sheared the chain-fire into several pieces, rendering the weapon completely useless. There might be parts that could be salvaged, but Trench 16 would be without a second chain-fire until Command sent a re-supply mission with another operational unit from one of the weaponsmith factories deep in human space.
Even if the marines re-took the trench, as Ajax was certain they would, they would stand against the swarm with one less weapon. The Garm had never targeted their weapon systems in the past, so focused were the creatures on rending and consuming the men themselves, that the marines often used that simple oversight to catastrophic effect.
As the UltraGarm roared and shook its head to disentangle itself from some of the mooring cables, Ajax snapped out of his reverie. The marine turned swiftly and thumbed the ignition of the chain-fire, thankful that the gun had lain silent long enough to cool. There was half a carbon block in the ammo hopper and Ajax prayed it was enough to do the job.
&n
bsp; The chain-fire snarled to life and the UltraGarm snapped its head around to face the marine’s position. There was recognition of a threat in its posture, and Ajax marveled at how clearly it recognized the sound of his weapon. Like the shriekers, he thought, just before leveling the weapon at the charging beast.
Ajax was astounded at how quickly the UltraGarm moved, covering meter after meter in the blink of an eye. His respect for the tank gunners increased as he realized how much skill it must take to hit the creature with a single cannon round. The marine squeezed the trigger and the chain-fire roared as it spat bolts at the oncoming abomination.
The UltraGarm’s thick armor allowed it to shrug off most of the bolts, though as it drew near the marine managed to direct his fire at the creature’s head. The force of the multitude of impacts knocked the creature’s head hard to the side, and Ajax threw his weight behind the gun while still shooting. The marine applied enough force that he swiftly changed the trajectory of the weapon while it was still firing, muscling through the bucking recoil as he re-directed it.
Several bolts slammed into the exposed flesh beneath the joints in the chitin armor protecting the UltraGarm’s neck and shoulder. Once those first bolts penetrated, the secondary explosions blasted great chunks of flesh and armor out of the beast. The UltraGarm lost its footing and crashed to the ground, its speed causing the beast to tumble over, while Ajax continued to pepper it with bolts.
When the chain-fire clicked dry and Ajax swiftly stepped away from it and pulled his rifle off his shoulder. He set the rifle to single shot with his fire selector and concentrated on putting precise bolt rounds through the exposed wounds the thrashing beast already had.
It only took four clean hits to finish the beast, which was good, as Ajax only had enough carbon left in his rifle’s block to get three more shots off. He was looking at the fallen creature, marveling at how much sheer firepower it had taken to bring just one down when he recalled that there was a second UltraGarm still active.
Ajax gasped in surprise when he looked up, helpless, and saw the second UltraGarm bearing down on him. In the seconds before collision, Ajax could see that the tanks had managed to wound the creature with an indirect hit, but not enough to keep it from its goal. The marine snapped off two ineffectual shots before the creature swung its tremendous head.
The four blades projecting form its mouth tore through the chain-fire and Ajax as the UltraGarm thundered onwards, smashing its armored body into the gun emplacement for good measure.
Ajax sailed through the air. As he collided with the opposite side of the trench, he saw that the lower half of his body was gone, he’d been sheared in two by the UltraGarm’s blades.
The last thing he saw was the ravaged body of the dying UltraGarm falling into the trench before it buried him under tons of flesh and armor plating.
ENEMY WITHIN
The ground was the same hard scrabble as every other brackenworld he’d been on, only he couldn’t help but recognize the dark pebbles and bits of shale that made Heorot such a gloomy place. The rocks seemed to eat the light, drawing it in and making everything so dim that even flares and LEDs did little to illuminate the grim little world.
Ajax became aware of himself, noticing that he was alone upon a vast landscape which would have been featureless save for the occasional ravine that cut through the ground or stone pillar jutting up from the earth. It was a severe place, with little upon the surface to warrant human occupation.
It was the wind that humanity had come to harvest, made possible only by such harsh conditions. It seemed strange to Ajax that they would fight so hard to hold onto such a fleeting thing as wind, and yet it was the energy that wind created that kept their ships running and their lights shining, and so they fought.
The crunch of booted feet sounded behind him. The warm hands of a woman slid over his tired shoulders and embraced him, making him at once aware of her body pressed against his and the absence of the suit of armor that had become his second skin.
The Valkyrie’s presence was soothing. Even in the slicing wind he felt some modicum of peace, never mind that he was crouching upon hard ground, surrounded by the slow churning of rusted windmills and lonely stones cut sharp by the endless winds. She had been his wife once, how could he not have found peace with her near?
Through it all he heard the now familiar bone on bone sound. The Valkyrie turned his face towards hers and nodded as she gently helped him to his feet. This time there was no meat or mead in her hands for him, only the cold feel of his pulse rifle gripped in his hands.
Ajax went through his ritual of ejecting the magazine and tapping it, this time against the gun itself, to settle the carbon block in its casing. He racked the slide and when looked up, the Valkyrie was gone.
Now that he was scanning his surroundings for her, he noticed a dull purple glow in the distant gloom.
He crept towards the light, moving through the desolation surrounding him. He found himself wishing for his armor to protect him from the scouring wind. His body glove did what it could, but without a mask or goggles the marine was weeping from the wind and raw from the micro-abrasions caused by the rock and shale particles in the wind.
Soon, the sound of the windmills had faded into the background. He saw a small ravine leading towards the light, and noticed that it sprang from the base of a particularly large wind cut stone. The marine made his way down into the ravine, taking extra care not to cut himself on the sharp edges of the formation.
The bone on bone sound reached his ears again, though it was much further down the path that the ravine cut through the land leading towards the stone. He kept his pulse rifle at the ready, prepared to ignite it, but keeping the weapon inert for now just to reduce the noise he was making as he approached. It took him a while to move through the ravine, and when he reached the end of it he wasn’t sure how much time had passed.
When he emerged, the marine was met with the unmistakable sight of a hive ship. It was the size of a building, and from his education in Garm anatomy he knew that there would be just as much of the ship buried beneath the surface as he could see above it. It was easily the size of a standard warship. He knew that inside it would be hundreds of birthing chambers for the swarm, where organic material harvested would be consumed and turned into nutrients and new flesh for the brood. There would be no storage sacs within the hive ship, for this was one of the assault breeds. That much he could tell in the gloom. The extinction fleet would dispatch warships to eliminate local resistance, and only then would it bring the harvester ships.
What struck the marine, other than the novelty of being this close to a hive ship for the first time in his long career as a soldier, was the awkward shape of it. The longer he observed the hive ship the more he realized that it was quite unlike anything he’d ever seen. It was similar to the rest of the Garm swarm, but upon careful scrutiny he began to see details that set it apart.
This one seemed to be more bloated and armored at the base, while the jagged spires that rose above the cracked planet surface were dotted with gas vents and what appeared to be gun emplacements.
The bone on bone sound returned, and this time, he could positively feel the eyes of Grendel upon him. There was even a smell that was familiar, a cloying musk that stank of death and rotting fruit. It was here with him, somewhere in the ravine, and it was stalking him. There was a palpable sense of fury in the air, like a kind of static electricity that he could almost taste and suddenly Ajax knew he’d seen something he wasn’t supposed to.
His attempt at recon had gone too far, been too greedy, and he had been discovered. The marine had no idea where he would go, but he knew that he had to get out of the ravine. Something told him that if he died here, it would be permanent.
The marine moved slowly back down into the ravine, then, as the sound of the beast came near, he sprinted away. He heard the inhuman roar behind him and the sound of it slithering after him. Ajax pumped his legs and gave it everything he had
to stay ahead of the creature. With every passing second he became certain that to die here, was to die for good.
He had to speak of what he’d seen.
He did not know his way back to Heorot from here, but he was sure he could at least make it to the windmills. Perhaps from there he could better defend against the creature, as it would have to come at him across open ground.
Grendel suddenly lashed out at him. Out of the corner of his eye, Ajax saw the barbed end of its tail pound into the stone wall of the ravine mere inches from his body. Up ahead, he could see the end of the ravine, where the rock formation made a sort of rough natural stair he could climb. There was no way he would be able to ascend without being taken by the creature. The marine ignited his rifle and was bolstered by the sound of his weapon coming online. He might be the prey, much as he disliked accepting that, but he was not without claws of his own.
Ajax fired from the hip as he ran, punching bolts into the walls on either side of the ravine. Shards of rock ravaged his body. Ajax had to buy himself at least a few seconds, so he thumbed the fire selector over to full-auto.
As the marine hit the first step he threw himself forward, spinning his body and slamming his back into the steps painfully, but swiftly giving himself a field of fire on the ravine behind him. For the first time, Ajax could see the nightmare coming after him and Grendel was terrible to behold.
The sight of it filled his imagination with images of giant centipedes and snakes and all manner of Garm creatures he’d seen thus far, and he nearly passed out from the mental shock of Grendel’s presence.
The creature’s undulating body was a pale sickly color and layered with pulsing rolls of mucus covered flesh. It’s back and shoulders bristled with hundreds of twitching spines and its sides were festooned with several pairs of claw tipped, disturbingly humanoid arms.
Extinction Fleet 1: Space Marine Ajax Page 6