‘Lead forth, oh mighty Kol Badar,’ said Marduk, his voice thick with sarcasm.
The Word Bearers moved out onto the ice, leaving the guild city, with its subterranean tunnels and claustrophobic chambers behind. They had not seen any further sign of the enemy, either Imperial or eldar. The storms wracking the landscape had not abated. If anything, it seemed that they had increased in intensity, furiously whipping ice and snow across the flows.
‘How long?’ asked Marduk. He spoke using his inter-vox rather than attempting to roar over the howling winds.
‘Ten minutes,’ said Kol Badar. ‘Thirteenth, form a perimeter.’
Under Sabtec’s crisp orders, the warriors of the 13th coterie, both old and new members, moved into position, weapons at the ready. It was probably an unnecessary precaution, for the chance of attack within the next ten minutes was unlikely, but having heard the reports of the dark eldar attacks from Sabtec, Kol Badar was taking no chances. Marduk also knew that it did the warriors good to have a duty, something to occupy them.
‘The only certainty in a warrior’s life is death,’ was an old adage, though Marduk knew that such a statement was inherently false. For mortals, yes, death came for every soul eventually, but for one of the blessed warriors of Chaos, death was no certainty. Likely, but not certain. One could always be raised to daemonhood, and then one might live for all eternity, a demi-god worshipped in one’s own right.
Something stirred within Marduk, and he felt the presence of Chaos writhing within him. He had long become used to the bizarre sensation, and it gave him comfort to know that he was not alone.
‘Incoming!’ roared Sabtec suddenly, his crusade-era helmet angled skywards.
There came a whistling sound overhead, and the warriors scattered as something large came hurtling down through the gale.
Marduk threw himself to the side as it came smashing down and struck the moon’s surface just metres away, sending snow and chunks of ice flying into the air, and sending warriors of the Legion sprawling. The First Acolyte rolled smoothly, coming up to one knee with his bolt pistol in his hand.
Had it been an explosive shell, he would be dead, but the thing that had struck the ice was no shell, nor was it an orbital strike… at least not one of Imperial origins.
At first, Marduk thought it was an asteroid, but now he saw it was something fleshy, something organic.
It was like the giant seed-pod of some fleshy fruit, and it had smashed a crater four metres deep and eight metres in diameter. Steam rose from it, and even as he watched, the tip of the roughly spherical shape peeled back, flopping down onto the ice, revealing a shapeless, quivering skin-sac the size of a Dreadnought.
Veins branched across this lump of living flesh, and shapes within strained to be released.
‘What in the name of the true gods is that?’ asked Burias curiously, stepping carefully towards the pulsating shape.
‘Careful, icon bearer,’ said Kol Badar.
The skin of the shape bulged and Marduk could make out the shape of a xenos head straining to escape.
‘Tyranid,’ he hissed, just as the first of the hive creatures burst from its embryonic birth sack. The death of the world has arrived, he thought.
Claws ripped through the film of skin and foul waters erupted from within, bio-fluids gushing out. Clouds of fog rose as the warm liquid melted through ice and snow.
Bolters began to fire, tearing gaping rents in the sac that gushed hot liquid. These amniotic fluids were pinkish and thick, like glutinous syrup. Inhuman screams burst from the spore as the bolts ripped through it.
Then the first of the creatures leapt from within, launching itself directly at Burias, four slender, bladed limbs poised to impale him. The blades of its two forelimbs were the length of swords, and though the creature was smaller than the genestealers they had encountered in the hulk on the ocean floor, the similarities were marked.
Burias swatted the creature aside with the holy icon of the Host, breaking its back, and it slid through the ice and snow, carving a furrow, until it came to a halt at Kol Badar’s feet. It snarled up at the Coryphaus, struggling to stand on its powerful hind legs, which would not respond. It hissed, and tried to stab at Kol Badar, but the Coryphaus planted a bolt in its head that ended its struggles.
Marduk fired, his round screaming less than half a metre past Burias’s head to detonate in the chest of another of the creatures as it scrambled from the crater. The rest of the Host opened fire as more of the creatures leapt from the spore, their weapons ripping the creatures apart, spraying sickly ichor across the snow.
Another mycetic spore screamed from the heavens and smashed into the ground ten metres away, and then another.
‘How long?’ asked Marduk, his bolt pistol bucking in his hands as he killed another of the leaping tyranid creatures.
‘Five minutes,’ said Kol Badar.
More of the creatures ripped free from birth-sac as the sides of the spores flopped open, and they launched themselves at the Word Bearers, covering the distance over the snow in powerful leaps.
‘Close ranks,’ roared Kol Badar, and the Word Bearers formed a tight circle facing outwards, with Darioq-Grendh’al in the centre. Weapons barking, ripping the first of the leaping tyranids out of the air, smashing them backwards as their flesh and chitin was torn apart.
Another spore crashed down nearby, its impact spraying Marduk with snow and ice. One of the warrior brothers sent a missile screaming from the launcher braced against his shoulder into the fleshy pod as its sides flopped heavily to the snow. The missile detonated inside the convulsing birth-sac, lighting it up from within for a moment, and the mass of creatures inside could be seen clearly through the skin of the sac enclosing them. Then the sides of the pod were ripped apart, and the high-pitched screams of the dying tyranids echoed through the gale as they were consumed in flame and shrapnel.
The missile launcher was tossed aside, its ammunition spent, and the warrior drew his bolt pistol and combat knife.
Marduk blasted the head of another creature into pulp and tracked his pistol skywards as one of the xenos creatures leapt high into the air. It descended towards him, sword-bladed arms lancing at him, and he fired. The bolt took the creature in the chest, passing through its chitinous exoskeleton before detonating, creating a head-sized crater of ruined flesh. Still it fell towards him, its brain not yet registering that it was dead, its every instinct willing it on to kill.
Marduk swiped it out of the air with his chainsword, ripping the toothed blade through the creature from neck to sternum, but one of its arms stabbed into his chest, biting through his power armour and embedding itself in his fused ribcage.
Slashing with his chainsword, Marduk sheared through the tyranid’s elbow joint and it fell dead at his feet, its forelimb still protruding from his chest. He had no time to remove it, as a wave of the tyranids swarmed out of the storm.
Shouting a warning, Marduk held his fire until the tyranids were closer. The creatures from several of the spore-pods must have banded together, for this brood numbered perhaps thirty individual aliens. However, they did not move as individuals; they moved as one single living organism, with synchronicity that could never have been matched by even the best drilled veteran coterie of the Legion.
Without any obvious form of communication, the swarm of aliens turned as one, angling towards the Word Bearers, their movements precise and almost robotic. Marduk saw that these were a different sub-species from the leaping aliens, though they were similar.
More hunched, these ones scuttled forwards bearing what might have been projectile weapons in their forelimbs, though in truth the weapons were merely extensions of their limbs, fused to them, as much a part of the creature as the rest of their vile bodies.
Bolters and heavy weapons roared, ripping the first of the creatures apart in bloody explosions, but they continued scuttling forwards, oblivious or uncaring of their fallen. Their bio-weapons pulsed, the fleshy projectile tubes
contracting sharply with peristalsis. Marduk felt something splatter across his left arm plates, and hissed in pain.
Looking down, he saw a mass of fleshy grubs boring through his ceramite vambrace and into his flesh, and he swatted frantically at them, trying to dislodge them. He squashed dozens of them as they scrabbled for purchase on his armour, but several of them were already too deep for him to easily remove, burrowing into the muscle of his forearm, squirming within his body as they feasted on his flesh.
Focusing his mind, he pushed away the pain and discomfort, and killed two of the tyranids with his pistol. He saw one of the 13th coterie fall to the ground, screaming in agony as a mass of writhing flesh-worms burrowed through his helmet, clogging his respirator and boring through the lenses covering his eyes, gnawing their way through his skull and into his brain.
A flamer roared, bathing the tyranid brood in burning promethium, and they screamed in inhuman torment as their bodies were consumed. Bolters tore through the survivors, but still more clambered over the bodies of the dead to fire their living ammunition into the tight circle of Word Bearers. More snow was kicked up as another spore slammed down into the ice.
Marduk ducked his head as a stream of beetles was spat towards him. Several wriggling bugs struck his right shoulder pad, painted black in mourning for Jarulek, but he squashed the voracious feeder creatures before they could bury themselves in his armour and flesh.
A second putrid stream of voracious organisms spat past Marduk to engulf Darioq-Grendh’al. An orb of energy appeared around the corrupted magos, and the coruscating electricity of the potent conversion field fried the tiny creatures.
The magos turned heavily towards its attacker as the flickering energy field disappeared, and Marduk sensed anger surge through the daemon inhabiting the ex-priest’s flesh. Darioq-Grendh’al planted his feet, bracing himself as the two servo-arms over his back stabbed forwards, their forms blurring as they were altered by the power of the warp. Metal re-formed and a pair of fleshy tentacles joined with the servo-arms, forming a cable, part organic and part mineral, pulsing with energy.
A pair of incandescent beams roared from the re-formed servo-arms, and the power of Chaos screamed in Marduk’s ears.
The beams struck the tyranids, and half a dozen of them were engulfed in an inferno, hissing and writhing as their flesh mutated. Tentacles tipped with chitinous barbs burst from within the tyranids, ripping through their flesh and thrashing out through eye-sockets and mouths, turning the xenos beings inside out. Within moments, all that remained of the tyranids struck by Darioq-Grendh’al’s fire was a thrashing mass of tentacles.
‘Impressive,’ said Marduk with a smile as Darioq-Grendh’al’s servo-arms moulded back to their usual form.
‘Two minutes,’ shouted Kol Badar as yet another spore-pod slammed down, crushing a handful of tyranids beneath its impact. This pod was much larger than the others, and powerful forms larger even than an Astartes warrior struggled to free themselves from within it.
‘To the north-west, move!’ roared Kol Badar as a trio of giant tyranid beasts ripped free of the skin of the large spore-pod and reared up to their full height – easily twice that of a normal man – and another brood of smaller creatures swarmed from the howling winds, angling towards the Word Bearers. More pods slammed down from the heavens.
‘Move, Grendh’al,’ said Marduk, impelling the creature with his voice of command, and though the daemon resisted him, its will was overpowered, and it reluctantly turned to do as it was bid.
The Word Bearers carved through the hordes of lesser tyranids like a spear through water, smashing them aside as they drove forwards. A warrior stumbled as maggot-like organisms splattered across his armour, acidic life-fluids melting through his armour plates and burning into his flesh. Marduk lifted the warrior back to his feet, supporting him with one arm as he fired.
Spotlights tore through the darkness and the swirling snow, and the hulking shapes of Land Raiders appeared through the whitewash of fog and ice. Incandescent lascannon beams stabbed from side-sponsons, scything through tyranid organisms that hurled themselves at the Word Bearers, symbiotic bio-weapons spitting. Heavy bolters scythed through dozens of the xenos beasts, ripping them apart with their high calibre rounds.
The Land Raiders came to a grinding halt before the warriors of the XVII Legion, growling like daemonic beasts, their hot breath steaming from exhaust stacks. The frontal assault ramps smashed down onto the ice, and the warriors of the XVII Legion stormed inside the gaping interiors of the immense steel beasts.
Sabtec relieved Marduk of the wounded warrior he was supporting. The warrior was reciting the Doxology of Revilement, focusing on the words to alleviate the pain of the bio-acid melting through his armour and flesh. As he passed the warrior into Sabtec’s care, Marduk spun around standing in the door of the Land Raider as the last of the warriors of the Host stamped forwards.
The larger tyranid creatures they had seen clawing their way free of their spore-pod were stalking towards the Land Raiders, their tails thrashing. Each pair of upper arms ended in scything blades, and their secondary pairs of arms moulded into long-barrelled bio-cannons. A swarm of the lesser tyranids raced towards Marduk as the assault ramp began to close, and he fired into the pack, dropping two of them.
Lascannon beams made the air crackle with electrical energy as the twin-linked side-sponsons of the mighty Land Raiders fired, and one of the large tyranid creatures was vaporised. The other two lurched forwards, discharging their long-barrelled bio-weapons towards Marduk even as the swarming horde of lesser xenos raced towards him.
The bio-weapons ammunition splattered onto the assault ramp of the Land Raider as it rose, spraying acid across the thick metal that began to hiss and bubble. A drop splashed onto Marduk’s chest plate, burning a hole through his armour and searing his flesh, but he ignored the wound and slashed with his chainsword as the lesser tyranids launched themselves onto the Land Raider’s chassis.
Heavy bolter fire ripped two of them to shreds as the Land Raider lurched into reverse, but two of them hurled themselves through the closing aperture as the assault ramp hissed closed, and Marduk killed the first, impaling its head on his chainblade, the whirring teeth ripping its skull apart. Sabtec killed the second creature, slamming its bestial, xenos face into the side of the Land Raider again and again until it was an unrecognisable, bloody pulp.
More of the small tyranids scrabbled at the assault ramp as it closed, but then the assault ramp was sealed, severing several stabbing blade-arms that fell to the floor inside, leaking foul-smelling fluids.
Marduk slumped down into one of the seats, breathing hard.
Only then did he realise that he still had the bony blade-arm of one of the creatures protruding from his chest. He ripped it clear with a sharp movement, and tossed it to the floor alongside the pair of tyranid corpses.
The Doxology of Revilement was still being recited as Sabtec tore the melting breastplate from the warrior of his coterie who had been splashed with bio-acid, and the champion sprayed a black film over the wounds.
‘First Acolyte,’ said Kol Badar over a closed channel from the other Land Raider.
‘Go ahead,’ said Marduk.
‘The tyranid invasion may have covered half this world already,’ said the Coryphaus. ‘I feel that it would be inadvisable to proceed to the drop-ship’s location overland. We do not know the numbers of the xenos between here and there.’
‘Agreed,’ said Marduk.
‘I suggest that we order the ship to launch, to meet us half way.’
‘Understood. See that it is done,’ said Marduk severing the connection.
Bloody and battered, Marduk pulled his helmet from his head and stowed it in the alcove above him.
At last they were leaving this doomed Imperial backwater planet, he thought, and he smiled, exposing his sharp teeth.
A month, maybe two, and he would be back on Sicarus, returning in glory.
The
Land Raider rocked as tyranid bio-weapons struck its armoured hide, but still Marduk grinned.
Glory would be his.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dracon Alith Drazjaer of the Black Heart Cabal strode down the dark corridor, his thin lips curled in distaste. He moved with the supple, arrogant grace of a born warrior. A pair of heavily armoured incubi bodyguards walked warily on either side of him, the sweeping blades of their punisher glaives lowered.
They passed dozens of cells, all crammed with wailing, wretched slaves, many of whom had already felt the ministrations of the haemonculus Rhakaeth, or soon would.
The wretched creatures were mostly human, but there were other lesser species packed into the crowded cells as well: tall, reptilian k’ith; kroot mercenaries; stony-faced demiurg; as well as eldar, either those of Drazjaer’s dark kin that had fallen from his grace, warriors of his rivals, or his deluded craftworld cousins.
The cells closest to the haemonculus’s operation chambers were filled with his experiments, and these blighted creatures filled the corridor with their sickly cries. Humans with their spines removed flopped impotently on the floors of cells, while others that had had their legs replaced with muscular arms whooped in insane rage, hurling themselves against the invisible barrier separating them from Drazjaer. They were thrown backwards as energy arced across the barrier, accompanied by the stink of ozone.
Other twisted monstrosities had insect-like eyes, more than one head, or random limbs sprouting from their bulbous stomachs. Some had leathery wings grafted to their backs, and others pulled themselves across the floor of their cells with flipper-like appendages where human hands had once been, their lower bodies shrunken and wasted, like the malformed legs of a foetus not yet reached its term.
Some of the abominations scratched at faces that were already torn to bloody ribbons, and all cried out for death. Still others flexed overgrown muscles, fan-like webs of skin opening up beneath their arms, while others appeared almost normal, with just minor enhancements, such as arms that ended in glittering blades, or had sharp ridges of bone running down their craniums.
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