by Guy Haley
‘Cease fire!’ shouted Erwin.
The last bolt round banged out of a gun and rushed down the hall, detonating with a flash some way away. Then all was still. Piles of xenos bodies confronted them. No more came. Fyceline smoke merged with the greasy metal vapours occasioned by their entry.
Erwin lowered his storm bolter and pushed a dog-like alien over with his boot. Two of its four arms were missing. Yellow ichor dribbled from the wounds.
‘’Gaunt strain,’ he said. He looked down the way towards the main section. Very much like the spinal corridor on his own ship, it was forty yards across and almost as high. Tracks for ship trains ran down the middle, and the ceiling was crammed with hundreds of pipes and conduits as dense as a rhizome mat. There was a screeching coming from a corridor off the way. The ship shook to the discharge of its guns and the impact of tyranid spores. ‘Where are the Angels Numinous?’ he said. He switched his vox to unciphered broadcast. ‘This is Captain Erwin of the Angels Excelsis. If our brothers of the Angels Numinous are present, declare yourselves. We have come to retrieve you from the ship.’ He got only static back in reply. ‘Auspex,’ Erwin said. ‘Give me a life form scan.’
Sergeant Orsini unclamped a handheld auspex from his leg and keyed it into activation. Its gentle pinging robbed some of the fury from the muffled noise of war.
The sergeant sent the results directly to the captain’s sensorium.
‘There are concentrations of life ahead, my lord, I would say the enemy,’ said Orsini. ‘Nothing else. Minor returns on fixed organisms to either side of us. Gun deck servitors, I would guess.’
Erwin made a thoughtful noise. ‘We shall head to the command deck and secure it. Someone is still aboard this vessel, directing its operations. Forward!’
They ran down the spinal corridor, covering the mile and a half to the main hull quickly. The life signs were concentrated around the juncture of the ship’s neck and its stern command section.
Erwin ordered his men to slow as the glowing red indicator of enemy life signs drew close on his cartolith.
Sure enough, they saw the foe with their own eyes soon enough. A bulkhead hid the first of them, but on passing they were confronted with a tyranid boarding spine dying in the wall. It was a large ship-animal, the heavy armour to its fore generously provided with tubules for the venting of acid. Its foreparts looked like a spearhead, designed to penetrate its target, with the ridged, layered armour plates covering it acting as barbs to prevent it being drawn out. Now it was aboard, it had lost its predatory sleekness. Its head had been flung open into four quarters after penetrating the vessel, an action that appeared to have been fatal to the beast itself. The armour had opened along seams that were cracked and splintered in a way that meant they could never rejoin, and the skin and muscles underneath were torn. Tentacles hanging from the interior flopped weakly against each other, not even attempting to grasp the Space Marines. Mucous dripped from its torn gullet. The thing had no guts of its own; the fleshy cavity where its internal organs should have been was occupied instead by transit bladders hanging from gristly fibres. What it had transported was impossible to judge. Acid leaked from ducts, melting a wide hole in the floor and sending up a choking smog from the dissolving metal that stirred in the ventilation systems. The auspex indicated there were more of the spines hanging from the wall further along.
Erwin slowed his men. ‘Something is moving in this mess. Be prepared.’
Guns clacked as the Angels Excelsis pulled their bolters into sighting position. Erwin moved forward slowly. His helmplate display blinked up cautionary amber screed as acidic fog condensed on his armour. There was enough corrosiveness left in the fumes to damage his battleplate’s soft seals, if he remained in it too long.
‘There!’ shouted Achemen. Bolt shots followed his word.
The fog came alive with screeching shapes. Multi-limbed xenos nightmares poured forward. Their horrific appearance was made all the worse by a superficial resemblance to humanity.
Brother Golus of squad Achemen filled the corridor with promethium. There was no time for restraint – he emptied the entire flask of his flamer. Genestealers fell back covered in fire, arms flailing, and their screeches were horribly human. The genestealers were the worst of the enemy’s weapons, infiltration biomorphs who perverted the breeding cycles of the creatures they came across. Most of those Erwin had fought had shown the mark of human genetics, from their noses, perpetually wrinkled in hate, to their grasping hands. They ran in a hunched parody of men. Erwin’s gorge rose at this perversion of the sacred Terran form.
‘Hate the alien,’ he pronounced, shooting down a purple-faced monster as it came at him, clawed limbs outstretched.
Genestealers were harder to kill than ’gaunts. Their bodies were toughened inside and out to withstand combat. Their armour was thicker, their organs more deeply buried. The lower pair of arms carried huge, human-like hands, capable of ripping away a Space Marine’s helmet in one strike. But what made the creatures most dangerous were their upper claws, a trio of conical spikes with monomolecular edges. No other tyranid biomorph was more suited to tearing through ceramite. Even the thick plates of Terminator armour offered little protection against a well-placed blow.
To standard power armour they were deadly.
A genestealer sprang off its powerful back legs, upper claws outstretched to disembowel the captain. Erwin slashed with his power sword, cleaving three of the four arms from the monster’s body. Still it lived, crashing into him, severed arms weeping thick blood. Its taloned feet scraped at his armour, scoring the paint and scratching the metal beneath. The remaining upper claw swept around in an attempt to punch through Erwin’s eye-lenses. Erwin opened fire, and the beast lifted back at the last moment, spine breaking apart from within and showering viscera all over its broodmates.
Erwin shook the corpse free from the end of his gun, and held aloft his sword.
‘Slay them all! Once they are dead, the way is clear! Purge the alien! The stars belong to mankind!’
The genestealers would not die easily. They were wickedly fast, dodging blows that should have hit, and responded with devastating speed. Brother Agnaras clove into the chitinous exoskeleton of one with his chainsword, only to be eviscerated by another as the toothed blade bucked and roared, stuck fast in the corpse of his victim. A genestealer fell from the ceiling, landing on Brother Chrysto of Achemen’s squad. Chrysto staggered backwards, firing behind him as the genestealer embraced him in all four arms, then wrenched off his head, an insolent sneer on its hybrid features. Blood spouted high from Chrysto’s neck. The scent made Erwin’s spittle run down his chin. His desire to get at the blood and lap it up sharpened his reflexes even while it clouded his mind with rage.
‘Slay! Slay! Slay! By the Blood! By the Great Angel!’ He shouted the Chapter war cry, his storm bolter bucking ferociously in his hand as it let out a stream of mass reactives, blasting genestealers away from his warriors, and laying low those loping through the chemical fog towards the fight.
‘Death! Death to xenos! Honour the Emperor through your slaughter!’ bellowed Erwin. He ran at a genestealer about to decapitate one of his embattled brothers, and cut it clean in half with a single blow.
He was so focused on his brothers that one of the foe almost took him unawares with a charge from the side. It was already wounded, a bolt crater in its stomach bleeding freely, but it was not weakened, and it barged Erwin off his feet. The captain twisted, landing on his back, sword across his front. The genestealer pounced on him as he struggled to get upright. One huge, humanoid fist closed around his right hand; long fingers scrabbled for his sword hilt. He could have sworn the thing smiled at him as it flicked the power stud of his blade, killing the disruption field. It kept Erwin’s hand tightly gripped in its own, preventing him from reactivating his weapon. The thing bared black teeth, its hollow tongue emerging from its maw and smeari
ng saliva across his helmet. Erwin wrestled with it, bracing its lower hands with his dead power sword, but it was far stronger than its wiry body suggested, and the combined effort of his muscles and armour could not shift it. It drew back its upper claws, ready to strike.
The thing shook to a triplet of bolt impacts. Still hissing, it fell sideways from his chest. Achemen came to his side. Firing his bolter one-handed into the jerking body of the genestealer, the sergeant extended his other hand to Erwin. The captain let his storm bolter hang by its strap and grasped his second’s wrist; his stabilisation jets blasted heated vapour to help him stand.
‘Careful, captain,’ said Achemen, then he was away again, bolter barking death.
Erwin howled with outrage. The thirst tightened its hold over him, goading him into closer quarters with his enemy. His sword crackled with renewed power, and he swung it in wide arcs as he charged into the foe, its shining edge blurring into an electric crescent with the speed. Several more of the creatures fell to his wrath before the combat calmed, and the enemy backed away from his rage. They hissed and snapped at him, but they would not come near. Stealthily, they withdrew into the chemical fog.
Achemen’s bolter banged behind him. The shattered remains of a genestealer fell from the ceiling, splashing black blood over the party.
‘My lord, the tyranids are retreating!’ shouted the foremost Space Marine.
Shouts of astonishment and rapid boltgun fire followed the genestealers’ unexpected withdrawal.
A brief burst of gunfire, another, then silence. The Space Marines broke forward to fall in line with their foremost brother, guns up, repairing a formation disrupted by combat.
‘They are wiser than the rest of their kin,’ said Achemen.
‘Cunning is not wisdom,’ growled Erwin. He was struggling now to contain the thirst. He forced it back. He had to concentrate. If he gave in, he would doom his warriors to a glorious but pointless death. He steadied himself with the appropriate catechisms.
‘Nor is rage,’ said Achemen. ‘What are your orders?’
Six mortis runes pulsed on Erwin’s helmplate. White and red armoured bodies lay among the numerous alien dead.
‘Withdraw the dead from this fog, or their gene-seed may be lost. We will retrieve the bodies on our return. Erect a teleport homer, in case we do not come back this way.’ In all likelihood the bodies would be lost should they attempt to teleport them back, but a slender chance was better than forfeiting the gene-seed for sure.
His men moved into action, not needing to be told who would perform which task; they smoothly broke into two groups, one covering, the others dragging their dead brothers from the mist. One Space Marine took a pack and tube from his waist. In seconds he had removed a homer’s components from its packaging and erected the machine. A red light blinked on top of the pole, and a sense of disquiet emanated in pulses from its humming body.
‘Complete, my lord.’
‘We press on to the command deck,’ he said, pointing through the fog. ‘Keep your guard up.’
The ship shook to a massive impact. Achemen glanced back towards the prow. ‘That was no explosion.’
‘We must hurry,’ said Erwin. ‘Scan for survivors. Once we have reached the command deck, we return to the Splendid Pinion. I will not lose my own ship.’
They ran past the bodies of the other tyranid boarding spines. Erwin found the technology aberrant, if it could be termed technology. Whatever creatures had been devoured to make the spines had been enslaved in the most profound and total way. There was no denying their efficacy, however. The spines had hit the void ship precisely enough to avoid the gun decks lining the neck, then chewed and melted their way through yards of armour to reach the corridor before dying in a frenzy of disgorgement. Past the last creature the acid fog cleared, and they came to the heavily protected approach to the command tower. Heavy bolter emplacements tracked them as they walked by. Imperial signum codes broadcast by their armour were all that protected them from the mechanisms. Fragments of flesh hung from every surface. Chitin cracked under their feet. In that space the tyranids had been so thoroughly obliterated it was impossible to say what manner of beast the remains had come from.
Ahead lay the adamantium doors leading into the command deck. A large siege beast slumped dead against the acid scarred metal, its cranium cored out by lascannon beams.
‘Form a cordon. Sergeant Orsini, get that door open.’
‘Yes, captain,’ said the sergeant. He hurried to the door, mag-locked his weapon to his thigh and took out his auspex. He held its head towards the door centre. ‘The machine-spirits are in communion, my lord.’
The ship shook violently again. The Space Marines staggered as it was pushed off course.
‘We should leave now!’ said Achemen.
‘Being my second gives you no right to question me,’ said Erwin. ‘Open the door!’
The auspex chimed. Giant pistons in the walls hissed and the doors opened following their complicated sequence, each layer peeling back and revealing another that opened at a different angle. The first slid sideways, the second diagonally, the third vertically. Before they had retracted fully the Space Marines ducked through, ready for whatever they might discover.
Silence greeted them. Servitors worked mutely. Machines made their quiet noises. The oculus was closed. The only sign of battle was the deck trembling to the firing of guns.
Erwin and Achemen advanced ahead of their troops. Orsini ordered the rest of their party to spread out.
‘There is no one here. We have risked our lives for a decoy!’ said Achemen in disbelief. He marched his way to the enginarium station. The mindless servitors ignored him. ‘Their warp engine is damaged along with the main motive drive. Brother Erwin, they left this ship behind on purpose.’
‘Of course there is no one here. This is an obvious diversion.’
The Angels Excelsis raised their guns, training them unerringly on the source of the voice.
A warrior in armour the colour of drying blood stepped out from among ranked cogitator banks. His power sword was inactive, but ready. With him were five heavily armed Chapter serfs, their faces covered with full mask helmets, and a spindly navigator almost as tall as the Space Marine. His limbs were so thin a strong draught would break them. The reinforcement braces at his joints were probably the only things keeping him upright. His hands were overly large and the fingers webbed, his forehead covered with a black bandana.
‘Declare yourself!’ said Erwin.
‘Sergeant Hennan, of the Angels Numinous.’
‘What are you doing hiding here?’
‘Waiting to die,’ said the warrior. ‘Someone had to oversee the servitors so they kept up a good rate of fire. My plan was to surprise the enemy when they boarded. Instead I have surprised an impetuous rescuer who does not know how to listen to orders.’
‘Captain Asante is not my commander,’ said Erwin.
‘Then you should have paid attention to good sense, captain,’ said Hennan. ‘Respect should have made you hearken. Now you have put your ship in danger when only this one would have been lost. Our main drive malfunctioned, damaging the warp engine in the process. There was no choice but to abandon it. Had the others delayed to shelter this ship, they would have been lost, as you will soon discover. Everyone else left. You are too late, Captain Erwin.’
‘What about the serfs?’ said Erwin. ‘And him.’ He pointed his gun at the navigator. ‘Why is he still here?’
‘These men were of the same mind as I,’ said the Angel Numinous. ‘Best to die in honour than flee in shame. My navigator here–’
‘I may speak for myself, sergeant.’ The mutant had a high, sexless voice. There was a hint of pain to it. As a psychic being, such close contact with the hive mind would be causing him great discomfort. ‘I am pledge-bonded to this vessel. I cannot leave, by the law
s of my house.’
‘That is a waste,’ said Achemen.
‘So is throwing away your ship and company attempting to rescue an obvious decoy vessel,’ said Hennan.
‘Your ship has served its purpose. Come with us, we can at least save you.’
‘I vowed to end my days here. I will not break my oath.’
Erwin had little to say in reply. He was shamed by his impulsiveness. There was only one way he could see to regain his honour. He and Hennan stared at each other.
‘You need not lose your ship,’ he said.
‘Asante did not see it that way,’ said Hennan.
‘The situation has changed.’
‘We can die together?’ said the sergeant.
‘We can live together,’ said Erwin. ‘Are your other systems still operational?’
‘More or less.’
‘Then we can make a break for the warp,’ said Erwin. ‘We can open the rift with our engines, you can follow us in. You have your navigator still. Once inside the immaterium, you will be able to follow us and re-emerge when we do.’
‘What he says is possible, though difficult, sergeant,’ said the navigator. ‘It is a chance. We should take it.’
‘I appreciate that you have an overwhelming desire to live if you can, Navigator Meus,’ said Hennan. ‘But we will never make it to a safe distance from Zozan. We will be overtaken.’
‘Who said anything about a safe distance?’ said Erwin. ‘We can translate here.’
‘You are impetuous, captain. The mass interference of all these tyranids will rip our ships to pieces.’
‘It might.’
‘It almost certainly will.’
‘It is better than dying,’ said Erwin.
‘So you would trade the certainty of saving one ship for the possibility of saving two. Consider there is also the possibility of saving none.’
‘If my ship runs now, we will probably lose it anyway,’ said Erwin.
‘The probability of your survival alone is higher than our survival together,’ said Hennan.