by Various
Roth signalled for a halt and lower. Sinking to a wary crouch, he squinted into the cavern with his plasma pistol primed. He took in the vastness of the cave, its immensity dwarfing the colossal docking hangars of Imperial battleships. Before him, towering colonnades of ice buttressed a vault ceiling of shimmering white-blue. Arroyos of melt water reached like veins across the cavern floor and forked through the grooves of snow dunes. Roth couldn’t see a damn thing.
‘Bastiel,’ he hissed, almost at a whisper. The huntsman hurried to him, keeping low to the ground.
‘Sire, what did you find?’
‘Nothing. That’s the problem. See what you can make of this.’ Roth showed the huntsman his chiming auspex.
Silverstein lowered his Exitus rifle and scanned the cave, optiscopic eyes whirring and feeding data. He achieved a lock-on almost instantly.
++Solitary target, stationary. Height 1.5 metres. Mass density approx. 40–50kg. Target identification: Female, human 98% – Female, xenos 57% – Humanoid, other 36%. Target distance: 298.33 metres. Status temperature – ALIVE+++
‘Sire, I’m reading what appears to be a lady sitting on a snow dune, about three hundred metres to our front. What would you like me to do?’ Silverstein asked.
‘Nothing yet. Good job Bastiel.’ Roth then turned around to face Sergeant Clais Jedda and clicked once for his attention. ‘Sergeant, were there any women in the patrol which was lost here?’
The sergeant shook his head. ‘There aren’t any women in the Assault Pioneers, sah.’
Roth chewed his lip, a nervous habit he had never quite shaken off. Finally, he stood up and gave the hand signal for his team to do likewise. ‘Bastiel, we’re going to press on as before, but I want you to cover that target with your rifle. Make sure it never leaves your sights and tell me what you see. Clear?’
‘Clear, sire.’
With that, the team resumed its cautious advance, prodding through the snow. The ship’s ice mesa loomed closer and so did the lone figure at its base.
‘Sire, it’s definitely a woman. She’s seen us too and she has stood up.’ They were less than two hundred and fifty metres away now.
‘What do you see Bastiel? Tell me what you see.’
‘She’s young; I’d say no more than thirty standard. She has a weapon too. Some sort of polearm. Could be a secessionist, sire.’
Two hundred metres and closing. Roth’s eyes darted across the icescape, seeing a possible ambush behind every crest, every ridge. Despite the relentless cold, Roth was suddenly very glad for the frictionless trauma-plates that hugged his body.
‘She’s looking straight at me sire,’ reported Silverstein.
They were within one hundred metres now and Roth no longer needed Silverstein’s relay to see the young woman on the snow dune. He could tell she was slim, made slimmer by the brocaded sapphire silks that cascaded down her frame. Where the broad painted sleeves ended, her forearms were tattooed with verse after verse of war-litanies. She was unmistakably a Blade Artisan.
‘Kill her!’ urged Sergeant Jedda.
‘No! Stand down!’ Roth turned and snapped ferociously at the Guard squad.
Ahead, on the crest of the dune, the Blade Artisan had anchored her weapon in the snow: if not a sign of peace, then at least a gesture of armistice. The weapon was as exactly long as she was tall. It was a thin glaive, half of it leather-bound staff, half of it straight blade.
‘Come forth and announce yourself,’ she commanded firmly.
Roth was wary but recognized diplomacy as the greatest faculty at his disposal. He emulated her gesture by inserting his plasma pistol back onto its shoulder rig.
‘I am Inquisitor Obodiah Roth of the Ordo Hereticus, and these–,’ he said, gesturing to the men behind him, ‘–are servants of the God-Emperor.’
‘Tread lightly, inquisitor. I am Bekaela of the Blade and this ship is mine to guard.’
‘Was it you who slew the soldiers, who came here two days past?’
‘Nül. The ship killed them.’
At this reply, Roth heard the thrum of lascarbines as the Guardsmen racked their weapons off safety. Their blood was up and unless Roth could extract some straight answers soon, the situation would be out of his hands.
‘Blade Artisan, these men will shoot you soon, unless you tell us what happened.’
Bekaela did not seem at all daunted by his warning. ‘Shoot then, if you wish. But I have foresworn my oath to the Sirene Monarch. I have no quarrel with your soldiers.’
‘Very well then. What lies in that ship?’
‘Nothing. Everything. Sixteen moons ago, they came here to Sirene and claimed to be the Monarch’s children – his scions.’
It was not an answer he had been expecting. The Sirene Monarch, Roth knew, had been a cultural figurehead of Sirene, a tradition that harked back to the pre-Imperial history of the planet. It had been the Sirene Monarch who had renounced Imperial dominion and ousted Lord Planetary Governor Vandt. Pre-war records had shown that when the isolated Imperial outposts and missions had been overrun, the natives certainly had no access to interplanetary travel and there had never been mention of the Monarch’s offspring.
‘Scions?’ Roth asked.
Bekaela nodded. ‘Yes, his children came in this ship, sixteen moons ago. The Monarch embraced his children and welcomed them home. It had been a grand ceremony; many clan-fighters had feasted there. I know because I was there too.’
‘The Sirene Monarch has been in hiding ever since the war began, if not dead,’ Roth countered. He could sense something poisonous was at work on this planet and part of him did not want to believe it.
‘He is not dead. I know where he hides,’ Bekaela said.
That was almost too much information to digest at once. Since the beginning of the campaign, Imperial forces had been driven in relentless pursuit of the fugitive Monarch, slated as the spiritual leadership of the guerrilla insurgency. Hundreds of aerial bombing runs, thousands of infantry patrols had all amounted to nothing. But now this.
‘Why would you give us this information?’ Roth pressed.
‘Because, I’ve seen what lies in that ship and if they are the Monarch’s bloodline, then he is no Monarch of mine!’ she proclaimed.
It only dawned on Roth then, that Bekaela was not guarding the ship from intruders. She was guarding against whatever lay within from getting out.
Sergeant Jedda, however, was not one to be convinced. ‘It’s a trap. That witch probably gave my boys the same speech before they got off’d,’ he growled. His men chorused in assent.
Roth was not so quick to make his conclusion. The significance of her story, if true, was far too monumental to dismiss. His duty as an inquisitor compelled him to investigate deeper. Stepping forward, slightly away from his team, Roth summoned a subtle wisp of mind force and gently probed her mind. Bekaela tensed visibly from the intrusion.
‘What did you just do?!’ she hissed.
‘I was testing your intentions.’
‘Don’t do that again, or I’ll kill you and make it painful.’
Roth nodded sincerely. He would not. Besides, he already knew all that he needed to know. She was telling the truth, on both accounts.
‘My team and I, we must explore this ship.’
‘Then I will come with you,’ she said. Her tone brokered no argument.
‘So you are willing to aid us?’ Roth mused. ‘As an ally?’
‘No. I hate you. But I will help my people. They do not know what I know. I’ve been in that ship.’
‘What’s in there?’ Roth asked.
‘You will see,’ was the answer.
The ship was alive.
Or at least that was what Roth first thought. Wet ropes of muscle and pulsing arteries groped and twisted along the walls and mesh decking of the dormant ship. The air was n
auseatingly warm and humid. It was as if something infinitely virulent and shapeless was incubating within the cruiser’s metal chassis.
Roth’s team had entered via a breach in the ship’s hull and found themselves in a disused maintenance bay. Banks of workbenches lined the walls where raw tendrils of flesh had begun to creep over them. In the upper-left corner of the ceiling, an enormous balloon of puffy flesh expanded and contracted rhythmically like a monstrous lung.
Further exploration of the ship’s corridors, deck and compartment revealed only more of its pulsating innards. The deeper into the heart of the cruiser they progressed, the thicker the infestation. The walkway that led to the ship’s bridge funnelled into an orifice of ridged cartilage. They could see no further, as a pink membrane of tissue expanded over the entrance.
‘Do you know where we are?’ Roth asked Bekaela.
‘Nül. I have never been beyond the first compartment. This place is cursed, it’s all bad following.’
Roth was not sure the Blade Artisan’s prognosis was the correct one, but it was apt enough. He moved toward the membrane, careful not to step in the pools of semi-viscous liquid that collected on the deck plating. He holstered his pistol and was in the act of gingerly reaching out to touch the organic membrane when all three auspexes in his team chimed simultaneously. Roth froze.
‘What’s the reading?’ he asked.
‘I’m getting multiple rapid movements converging on this corridor intersection,’ one of the assault pioneers reported.
‘Yes sir, I’m getting the same readings,’ another trooper echoed.
Roth about turned, drew his pistol and trained it on the inflamed flesh cavity that was once a t-junction.
‘Readings are too fast. I suspect we’re just picking up latent electrical currents from the ship’s circuitry,’ a third trooper added. They waited in tense silence.
‘Trooper Wessel, double time ten paces back and get me a new reading. We could be standing under an electrical hub,’ Sergeant Jedda barked.
With his eyes on the auspex and carbine hard against the shoulder, Trooper Wessel approached the intersection. He peered into the gloom, sweeping his auspex about to get a better reading.
The thing slashed out of the darkness so fast it severed Wessel’s spine and bounded off his corpse. Streaking through the air in a shower of blood, it landed on another trooper crouched within the corridor and eviscerated him too. An eruption of wild las-fire crazed the spot where the thing had been, but it was moving again.
‘What the hell is that?’ Roth shouted at Silverstein as his plasma pistol unleashed a mini-nova of energy down the corridor.
The huntsman tried to get a lock on the creature as it slammed into its third victim. He barely registered the profile of its blurring outline.
++Target analysis: Xenos, Hormagaunt. Subspecies: Unknown. Origin: Unknown. Hivefleet: Unknown – Data Source: Ultramar (745.M41)+++
‘Tyranid,’ Silverstein replied. With a spectacular shot that anticipated the creature’s next running leap, he blew out its skull carapace with an Exitus round.
Another two shapes shrieked into the corridor, straight into the storm of fire laid down by Roth’s team. The inquisitor aimed his pistol, ready to fire when it seemed like the world exploded behind him. The membrane plugging the ship’s command bridge burst, and from the darkness surged a monster so tall it was almost bent double in the corridor. From its segmented torso, four bone scythes connected to hawser cables of muscle slashed like threshing sickles. As an inquisitor, Roth was privy to knowledge otherwise deemed heretical for others. Yet knowing the enemy and its power sometimes replaced ignorance with fear. Roth recognised the thorny frame of sinew and plate hurtling towards him and froze in shocked awe.
It was a genestealer broodlord and it was on him so fast he had no time to react. The only thing that saved him was Bekaela’s glaive singing through the air to intercept the beast. The Blade Artisan pirouetted with a twirling downward stroke that severed one of the monstrosity’s upper limbs. In reply, the tyranid speared her into the wall with a battering ram of psychic force.
Roth wasted no time in engaging the broodlord. He activated his Tang War-pattern power gauntlet and moved inside the broodlord’s guard with a thunderous right-hook. The creature snaked back its torso with serpentine grace, evading the blow and swept in with its three remaining hook-scythes. Roth ducked, feeling an organic blade skip against the frictionless shoulder plate of his armour.
They fought on two separate planes. While their bodies raged, so too were their minds locked in a psychic duel. The tyranid was much stronger, its mind a tidal wave of raw, seething force. Roth was not a potent psyker, but what ability he had, he utilised well, sharpening and tightening his will into a poignard of deliverance. Although the broodlord’s mind was like the staggering force of a blind avalanche, Roth’s was the clean mind-spikes and mental ripostes of a Progenium-trained psychic duellist. It was like a death struggle between the kraken and the swordfish.
On the physical plane, Bekaela struck again. She was barely conscious and fought purely from muscle memory. Spinning her glaive like a lariat she hoped she was aiming for the right target. The paper-thin blade sliced deep into the broodlord’s flank, snapping through the corded muscle. The creature shrieked at a decibel so high, the ship quavered in empathy.
It was exactly the distraction Roth needed. Sensing the sudden gap in the genestealer’s mental defences, Roth tightened his will into an atom of focus and surged through the slip in its psychic barrier. Once through, he exploded into a billion slivered needles, expanding infinitesimally outwards.
The broodlord died quickly. With it, the last of the hormagaunts in the corridor lost all synaptic control and were literally disassembled by gunfire. Yet as it expired, the broodlord’s mental shell collapsed, plunging Roth into its mind, like a spearman breaking through a shield wall headlong through the other side. Roth was utterly unprepared for what happened next.
He saw a hive fleet, at the furthest edges of his mind’s eye. He saw it looming larger, so ravenous and hungry. He felt, no, heard the psychic song that was drawing it closer, like a pulse, like droplets of blood rippling outwards in the ocean. The song was coming from Sirene Primal, a poisonous ugly sound that drove spikes into his psyker mind. A swansong. All at once, it fell into place like a crystal fragmenting in rewind. He saw the ship, and its genestealer brood, the children of the Sirene Monarch. He saw their minds pulsing in unison, calling to their hive, calling for salvation. The psychic vacuum shut down his nervous system and Roth’s heart stopped beating.
‘Sire! Can you hear me?!’
The voice wrenched Roth back into consciousness, wrenching him to the surface like a drowning man. The first thing he saw was Silverstein, the yellow pupils of his bioscope implants wide with concern. Had it not been for the huntsman’s voice, he would have died standing up.
‘Sire? You look bloodless,’ said the huntsman reaching forward to steady Roth. The inquisitor, in a daze, brushed Silverstein off and fell against the cartilage tunnel, sliding down to his knees.
‘Kill it… kill him. Find him. Kill him,’ he murmured weakly.
‘Kill who?’
‘Kill the Monarch,’ Roth called, a little louder as he pulled himself up.
‘The Monarch. Father of the brood.’
Beyond the Sephardi ranges, Imperial artillery was pounding the mountains to rubble and the rubble to dust. The steady krang krang krang of the batteries sounded like thousand tonne slabs of rockrete in collision. In the tomb-vaults below the mountains, deep within the arterial labyrinth, billions of ancestral caskets tremored under the brutal bombardment. Finally, down amongst their dead, the Sirene Monarch’s hidden legions would make ready for their last battle.
The assault on the Sirene tomb-vaults had started before dawn. To their credit, Imperial high command had been quick to react, with L
ord Marshal Cambria personally overseeing the mobilization of a quick reaction force within six hours. Inquisitor Roth’s discovery had hammered a shockwave through the campaign’s war-planners and they were eager to seize the initiative. The stalemate, it seemed, was about to be broken.
By the time the Sirenese sunrise had tinged the night sky a bruised orange, Assault Pioneers of the Montaigh 45th had breached the tomb underworld. Combined elements of the Kurassian Lance-Commandoes and five squadrons of the Eighth Amartine Scout Cavalry, alongside three full battalions of Assault Pioneers had been committed to the operation.
It was all a decoy. The decisive strike of the assault had been the insertion of a kill-team directly into the Sirene Monarch’s last refuge, once secessionist forces were pre-engaged. Led by Inquisitor Roth and guided by Bekaela of the Blade, a platoon of Montaigh 45th and a squad of bull-necked Kurassian Lance-Commandoes had penetrated the cerebral core of the tomb complex. Precision breach charges rigged up by airborne sappers had seen to that.
The kill team now prowled beneath a monolithic vault of basalt. According to Bekaela’s hand-sketched schematics, which Roth had committed to memory, it was the Monarch’s atrium. The walls were so thick and black with age they seemed to absorb sound and light. Of the distant sounds of combat, Roth heard nothing. Even their long-range vox-sets were dead.
It was the oceanic silence that unsettled him most.
The atrium was so very still, dark and quiet. A white bar of sun lanced from the soaring heights of the ceiling, laying down a smeared ghostly light. But it wasn’t just the silence that was unsettling, there were those damned pools of water too, Inquisitor Roth seethed to himself. There was water everywhere.
From enormous bowls to dishes, troughs and ponds, basins and urns, everywhere Roth looked he saw stagnant bodies of water stretching into the deepest shadows of that chamber. Most of the pools had developed a slick surface of green algae, and others were scattered with pale lotus blossoms; all of them sat stagnant and silent.