Soul Drinker

by Ben Counter

  Dreo was a hell of a shot, one of the best in the strike force. He had just brought down a creature that the rest of his squad had hardly been able to see. But it was guts, not a good eye, that made Dreo officer material, and it was guts that would win this battle.

  Sarpedon watched Dreo turn to head back below decks. Suddenly the sergeant paused and stared back out to sea. He took off his helmet, exposing himself to the polluted air, squinting into the fog-shrouded distance.

  The vox crackled and an alert rune lit up.

  'Commander, we have a sighting.'

  'Dreo? Give me details. A ship?'

  'I think calling it a ship would be far too kind.'

  There, brother. See it?'

  Zaen peered from the stern of the Ultima into the murk, in the direction that Keldyn was pointing. There was little more than a smudge of darkness deep into the brown-black gloom that rose and fell with the swell of the waves. It was maybe five hundred metres from the Ultima, and closing. 'Just.' he said.

  The rest of Squad Luko was emerging from below decks to join the fire-team on the stern of the Ultima, even as the gen­eral alert runes were beginning to blink on the eyepieces of their helmets. The sergeant had the blades of his power claws folded back and was loading the bolter fixed to the back of his gauntlet. Brother Griv was lugging a missile launcher, one of the few heavy weapons the strike force had. Soul Drinkers rarely used heavy weapons, preferring to use speed and sur­prise, but even the proudest commanders admitted they had their uses.

  'Griv, hit them as soon as they're within range. And aim low.' said Luko. Griv took up position at the edge of the stern, with the ship's wave boiling beneath him. There were several more squads up on the deck now, checking their weapons and pulling loose deck equipment into crude barricades. Captain Karraidin, resplendent in one of the few suits of ter­minator armour the Chapter owned, stood proud amidships, watching the Marines under his command ran through the mind-drills and wargear rites to prepare themselves for the fight.

  The enemy ship was close enough now to pick out some details. It was a strange bloated shape, something that should never have been seaworthy. Splintered masts stabbed up from its deck like stumps of rotted teeth, and a filmy darkness played around it as if a permanent shadow followed it. Zaen thought it might be interference in his helmet's auto-senses – but when he heard the low, dark buzzing he realized it was a swarm of insects drawn to the ship as if to a ripe corpse.

  Zaen was very aware his primary weapon, a flamer, would be of no use in a long-range firefight such as one they could expect here.

  Take mine.' said Griv, who was loading the rocket launcher. He handed his own bolter to Zaen.

  'My gratitude, brother.' said Zaen as he took it.

  'I want that back, Zaen. And you'll owe me for the bullets.'

  The all-squads vox-frequency crackled into life. 'All points, this is Graevus! We have sighted another enemy ship.'

  'Understood, Graevus.' came Karraidin's voxed reply. 'You handle yours. We'll deal with this one.'

  'You heard the man.' said Sergeant Luko, nodding at Griv. 'Blow them out of the water.'

  Griv shouldered the missile launcher and fired.

  The missile streaked over the waves and slammed into the ship, a ball of flame erupting from just above the waterline. It was close enough now to see something pouring out of the hole in the hull, lumpen and semi-liquid.

  'Throne of Terra...' whispered Keldyn.

  Cargo? Ballast?

  No. Maggots.

  The enemy ship lurched forward as if affronted by the attack. Return fire thudded from its bow, large-calibre and low-velocity. Shots peppered the sea in front of the stern and a couple impacted on the hull. The Ultima was made of sterner stuff than that, though.

  'Sergeant Luko, give me a range.' voxed Karraidin.

  'We'll be in bolter range in thirty seconds.' replied Luko.

  'Good. You give the word.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  Griv had another missile loaded and had the launcher up to his shoulder, drawing a bead on the lower prow.

  A black shadow was thrown over Griv and several Marines of Squad Luko. Too late. Zaen realized it wasn't a shadow but the wings of some immense gliding creature that had slammed onto the deck. It shrieked as bolter-rounds tore through it from underneath, its skeletal head jabbing down­wards, beak seeking Griv.

  Zaen dropped the bolter, tore his flamer from its holster on his back and pumped a gout of flame over the beast, hearing it howling in pain. There was a flash of near-blinding light as lightning claws sheared its head clean off. Another flying creature was diving towards the prow but bolter-fire tore it to rags as the Marines underneath the first creature hauled its body over the stern.

  There were flies in the air now, turning the sky darker, a storm of tiny black bodies. The enemy ship yawed closer and Zaen was not surprised to see it was festooned with human body parts nailed to the hull. The hull bulged hugely amid ships like the abdomen of a huge insect, the splintered boards barely holding together, as the pulpy white mass of maggots poured through the missile rent and plunged foam­ing into the sea. Shadowy shapes flickered at the deck rail, half-glimpsed crew with no form of substance as if the hor­ror of the ship had sucked the reality from them. They were of no consequence, Zaen felt, they weren't the threat here. It was the ship that was the enemy, bulging with malice, its hull limned with tattered mould like the rind of an old fruit, des­iccated limbs and wizened heads nailed to its prow. Bolter range.

  'Fire!' yelled Zaen and the fire line assembled on the stern opened up as one, their bolters sending a layer of hot shrap­nel shrieking into the enemy ship. Shells tore the deck apart, shredding the splintered wood at waist height, ripping cover apart, felling the masts like rotten oaks. Vaguely humanoid figures jerked and came apart. A great tear opened up in the wall of flies, like a dark cloud blown away by the wind.

  In the time it took him to put down his flamer and take up Griv's bolter, Brother Zaen had a closer view the river of mag­gots and bile pouring from the hole in the enemy ship's hull. There were a dozen runes flashing warnings in his peripheral vision - atmospheric tolerance levels exceeded, lethal toxins measured, infectious agents present - all set off by the con­centrated foulness inside the ship.

  This time Griv got another missile off and shattered the enemy ship's hull on the waterline, so the ship would scoop up water as it advanced and be dragged prow-first down­wards.

  Something erupted from the new rip in the hull. Not a limb, not a tentacle, but something both jointed and flexible, tipped with a slavering lamprey's mouth, an ugly mottled grey and studded with barnacles. The pseudopod lashed out and Zaen heard, even above the massed gunfire, the crunch as it crashed through the hull of the Ultima.

  'Damnation, what is that thing?' shouted Keldyn.

  'I don't care what it is, I want it dead!' came the reply from Luko, even as a Marine from Karraidin's veteran squad arrived at the stem and fired a superheated blast from his melta-gun into the rubbery flesh of the writhing limb.

  But the monster in the ship had got a grip on the Ultima now and was dragging itself closer. Its stench was so great it was clogging up Zaen's helmet pre-filter and the reek of rot­ting flesh and excrement was getting through the auto-senses. What kind of monster survived sealed in the hull of a rotting hulk of a ship, wallowing in maggots and filth?

  The Chaos kind. The great enemy had many faces, and this was one of them - the monstrous and deformed, mindless and destructive. They called them Chaos spawn, and they were constantly mutating, idiot engines of destruction. It stood to reason that one of them should have made this ugly world its home.

  Zaen lent his fire to those of his brothers, sending shells into the hull of the enemy ship and hopefully into the body of the monster it contained. The return fire was feeble - the humanoid crew were mostly dead or thrown off their feet by the violent lurching as their ship was dragged through the waves towards the Ultima. It was the beast tha
t formed the real threat.

  Above the gunfire pouring into the body of the ship there was a shriek of tearing wood. The whole side of the enemy ship was rent open and - something - erupted outwards, bloated and foul, its sagging flesh bubbling into new shapes. A massive spasm cast it out of the plague ship's hull, ripping the deck open, and across the closing distance between the two ships.

  It was huge, the size of a spacecraft shuttle. Impossibly, the horror thudded wetly onto the starboard deck of the Ultima. Two squads were trapped beneath its immense bulk - some were mashed into the hardwood of the deck, some dragged themselves out with help from the battle-brothers, others were stuck fast but had the freedom to point their bolters and empty their magazines into the heaving flesh.

  The beast reared up in pain, half-limbs reaching from its guts and dashing Marines aside. Zaen ducking the flying bod­ies and flailing tentacles, stepping round to the beast's exposed side and sending spurts of flames over its blistering skin.

  He saw Luko's claws flashing and a tentacle as thick as a Marine's waist fall charred to the deck. He saw Karraidin, like a walking tank in his huge terminator armour, punching a power fist into a descending globe of flesh and bursting it like a bubble of pus. He saw Marines lining up on the opposite side of the deck and forming a firing squad that sent a sheet of hot bullets carving deep into the spawn's body, soaking the deck in something watery and brown that might have passed for blood. He saw the black-armoured form of Chaplain Iktinos and the power that fountained off the crozius he swung into the boiling flesh of the spawn.

  The flesh flowed back over the wounds and the beast kept changing, horns of bone shearing out from its side and spear­ing Brother Keldyn through the thigh.

  'Pin it down! Keep it pinned!' shouted Karraidin over the din as a mess of toothed tendrils lashed against his massive purple armour.

  As the bullets poured into it and blasts of energy weapons bored deep into the spawn's hide, Zaen realized it really didn't feel pain or fear, or any of the things that might drive it back. It would soak up the bullets until every Marine was dead, and then it would nest in the hull of the Ultima until it drifted upon another meal. Keldyn screamed as the flesh flowed over him like water and sucked him up into the belly of the monster.

  Sometimes, thought Zaen, a stupid enemy was the most dangerous of all.

  The beast thrashed and knocked half of Squad Vorts into the ocean as the Ultima pitched wildly. Zaen's flamer and a plasma gun from Karraidin's squad razed another layer off the spawn's skin, but entrails that spilled out plastered them­selves across the wound. The serf-labourers - barred by the Chapter from combat in all but the most dire circumstances - were clambering up from the hold with power spanners and crowbars, ready to die alongside their masters.

  The Soul Drinkers would have to kill this creature bit by bit. Before it did the same to them.

  VARUK WAS IN the hull, screaming at the Marines assisting him to swing the Hellblade around so they could lend fire to the Ultima. Sarpedon could hear him from the deck - but he was more intent on listening to the screams over the vox as Karraidin and Luko desperately tried to keep the spawn at bay. He could see the scattering of muzzle flashes and the pulse of energy weapons, and the rearing amorphous mass that had swallowed up a large chunk of the Ultima.

  'Moving now, commander.' said a breathless Varuk as the prow of the Hellblade turned towards the stricken Ultima.

  'Good. Keep us at half bolter range, I don't want it taking us down with it. And I want a ten-man reserve to take men out of the water.' Sarpedon switched a channel. 'Dreo?'

  'Commander?'

  'You are in fire command. It'll be mayhem on the deck but the target is large. Go for the central mass, we'll have to bleed it dry.'

  'Understood, commander. Kill it for the Throne.'

  'Kill it for the Throne, sergeant.'

  Sarpedon tried the vox-channels for the Ultima again. Iktinos was chanting on the all-squad channel, bellowing prayers to inspire any Marine who tuned in. Karraidin was leading from the front but most of his squad were dead and only his terminator armour had kept him alive for this long. Luko was in close, too, skirmishing his squad around the monster's flailing limbs and hitting it where it hurt. Even over the static he could hear Luko's lightning claws slicing through flesh, and the growl of the squad's flamer.

  But even without the vox he could pick out the tortured howls of the Ultima's hull as it began to break apart.

  'Sarpedon to Graevus. The Hellblade is moving to support the Ultima. What is your situation?'

  'One ship, closing fast.' replied the gruff-voiced Graevus. 'Full of troops, heavily armed. We're taking fire and gearing up for boarding.'

  'In short, then, your situation is excellent.'

  'Never better, commander. Graevus out.'

  SERGEANT GRAEVUS HEFTED his power axe in his altered hand and switched to the all-squads vox.

  'Here they come, lads! We don't just sit here and take it -you follow me and board 'em back!'

  The assault squads cheered throatily. The Soul Drinkers had long claimed excellence in spaceship boarding actions and that included defence, where the preferred tactic was to let the enemy do the hard work in closing with you and then launch a counter-boarding action to cut down the attackers and lay into the vital crew. This would be no different in prin­ciple - confined spaces, fearsome enemy, and woe betide any man who went overboard.

  The Chaos ship bore out of the mist and they saw it wasn't a ship at all. It was a sea monster, an immense shark perhaps a hundred and fifty metres long, a gargantuan living corpse with dark blue-grey skin covered with scars and bite marks, tiny blank cataracted eyes and a mouth big enough to swallow a tank and filled with sword-like teeth. The middle section of its back had been hollowed of flesh leaving the ribs exposed, between which stood the readied ranks of Chaos shock troops on a deck of desiccated organs. The shark's massive ragged tail propelled it forward through the waves towards the Lakonia.

  The enemy boarders wore armour of black iron and carried vicious billhooks and halberds, with swords sheathed at their sides. Their bodies were misshapen and every one had its face covered, as if to spare the universe their ugliness. They would have looked like backwards savages from an evil-hearted feu­dal world were it not for the haloes of sickly energy that played around the power weapons of their leaders. There were perhaps two hundred of them packed onto the beast-ship.

  Pistol fire crackled towards the Lakonia. Graevus ignored it. The few that hit were turned away by the power armour of the Soul Drinkers, one hundred and thirty of whom were ready to take whatever the enemy could throw at them and then throw it right back.

  Graevus saw Tellos leaning out over the water, first in line, daring the Chaos vermin to take him on. He was unarmoured from the waist up, but somehow he seemed twice as deadly as any Marine - the determination in his eyes, the shocking pallor of his skin, the keenness of the blades with which he had replaced his lost hands.

  Close now. He could see the swarms of mites living off the shark-ship's eyes and the chunks of metal and bone embed­ded in its raw, pink gums. The beast slewed, presenting its side to the Lakonia as it made the final approach. The warriors on board grabbed the polished ribs to lean out over the side, ready to catch the Lakonia with the hooks of their halberds and drag her close enough to be boarded.

  Close enough.

  'Fire!' yelled Sergeant Graevus and a hundred bolt pistols erupted. The warriors were better-armoured than they looked, perhaps clad more in infernally tough hides and resistance to pain than in mere iron. Half a dozen fell, torsos pulped by the bullets, and two more were rent open by the blasts of plasma pistols.

  Tellos was the first off me Lakonia, as Graevus and everyone else had known he would be. He leapt the gap between the ships, whirling as he went and decapitating the closest hulk­ing warrior with his trailing blade, shearing the arm clean off another. His teeth were bared, but Graevus felt it was through joy and not anger. Tellos loved a go
od fight. That, at least, had not changed.

  For the few seconds that Tellos was alone on the shark-ship, maybe twelve of the enemy were cleaved apart, stabbed through the gut, sliced through face or simply pitched over the side to sink. The blades were extensions of his body as Tellos fought with a swirling, lightning-fast style, a swing that parried the blow of one attacker while taking the head off another. The Chaos troops clambered over the falling bodies of their dead to get close, and died in turn.

  The shark-beast slammed into the side of the Lakonia, the hard wood gouging rotting flesh from its side.

  'Charge!' yelled Graevus, and leapt over the side.

  The Assault Marines charged as one, chainswords biting deep into the first enemy they found, slashing down the first rank of Chaos warriors like a hurricane felling a forest. The beachhead forged by Tellos let those nearer the prow thrust deep into the mass of Chaos troopers, running past their gore-drenched sergeant to lay into those warriors reeling from his attack.

  Graevus landed with a dozen Assault Marines at his back, the dried loops of the monster's compacted entrails spongy beneath his feet. There was a mass of black iron all around him and a hundred halberd heads stabbing down at him. He blocked one, pivoted, swept his power axe one-handed up into a soldier's torso and clove a grimacing face-wrought visor in two. Chainblades lanced in from behind him and carved limbs and heads away. The Soul Drinkers yelled their battle-cries and the Chaos warriors howled in anger and pain, punctuated by the report as a bolt pistol was brought to bear and the hideous grinding of chainsword teeth against bone.

  Graevus paused and glanced around to see a bolt of Chaos-stuff lance down from a flying figure's finger and explode deep in the seething mass of combat towards the prow. The flying creature was humanoid but cloaked in ragged shadows, and was held aloft by a near-solid halo of flies. As Graevus watched, Tellos reached up and hooked an elbow over the shark-beast's spine, using it to lever himself up level with the magician. Tellos lunged and impaled the magician on his hand-blades, ignoring the black lightning that arced into him from the magician's hands, and held him aloft and helpless.