The Devastation of Baal

by Guy Haley

  Xenos hooves and claws clicked on dry bone. Gunfire scythed the tyranids down. They came on still.

  The first over were a hundred leaping hormagaunts. They bounded high over the last dozen feet of the thirstwater, and landed on the nearside of the moat.

  Ordamael blasted three to nothing as they galloped the short distance to the defence line. Las-beams cracked through the air, but the creatures were too fast for the mortals to easily hit. They were almost too quick for Ordamael. Three rapidly aimed shots took down two more, and then they were on him.

  ‘By the Blood am I strong, by the Blood do I serve.’ He swung his crozius, obliterating a ’gaunt. Disruption lightning chased itself up his arms and earthed itself in the ground.

  He blew the head off another ’gaunt. A third he kicked as it leapt at him, pulverising its ribcage with his boot and destroying its organs. But there were too many, far too many.

  Tank engines roared. Armoured vehicles cut up the hundred yard gap between the defence line and curtain wall. The void shield rippled as they passed through and opened fire. Their heavy weapons mowed down hundreds of the beasts in a moment, slowing the tyranids’ screaming assault over the bone causeway.

  They were too late to save the mortals. The humans were dying, engaged at close range by creatures designed only to kill. The ’gaunts’ faces were wrinkled as if in hate.

  Do they hate us? wondered Ordamael. Do they know emotion at all? He paused, torn between running to the front to fight with the tanks and saving the humans who had fought under his command these last days.

  It is a Blood Angel’s duty to protect, he said to himself. They have served their purpose. We used them callously. I shall not abandon them now their role is played.

  Ordamael ran back towards the defence line, bolter firing. He gunned down two of the creatures. Bolt shrapnel from the ’gaunts’ deaths slew one of the mortals. ­Unavoidable. The others lived for his efforts. He vaulted the wall, gun still firing. The mortals were in disarray. Many were lying on the floor in terror, though some fought as well as they could. He banished his awareness of the blood upon the sand from his mind, though his treacherous body responded eagerly to the smell.

  His bolt pistol emptied. He ejected his magazine and loaded a fresh one as he scanned the ground between the third and second lines. There were few tyranids in the killing field. The lines of tanks were holding back the xenos. This was as good a chance as the mortals were going to get.

  ‘This line is lost. You have done your part here. Retreat. The Emperor watch over you. Take your weapons. Fall back to the wall.’

  For the final time, the mortals turned from the defence line and ran.

  Ordamael watched them go. They struggled to run in Baal’s iron grip, but enough passed through the void shield, leaving man-sized ripples. What few tyranids moved to intercept them were shot by Space Marines on the curtain wall. There were only a fraction of the mortals left, but these ones, at least, would live.

  A demolisher cannon boomed close to the moat, the vindicator it was mounted upon rocked back on its suspension by the discharge. Ordamael moved forward, intending to pick off the few creatures that got close enough to the armour to pose a threat, but, as he ran, the vindicator exploded violently, throwing Ordamael from his feet. A mighty roaring followed its demise.

  He lifted his head up, groggy from the explosion. Dozens of heavy assault beasts were crossing the bridge. A quick glance at his cartolith showed him the situation was the same at four of the five other crossings the tyranids had attempted. The tanks reversed, those with turrets tracking round to better target the approaching beasts. Two huge things that scuttled like arachnids unleashed living rounds from their massive symbiotic cannons. Bloated pods ruptured on the hulls of the tanks, covering them in oily fluids. Hurtling seeds followed from the cannon’s second barrels, reacting with the oils on the metal. The hollow thumps of implosion turned two tanks inside out.

  Then from the walls came a bloodthirsty howling, and Ordamael knew from that sound how grave the situation had become.

  Uigui and the boy were staggering through a vision of hell. Their leaden bodies refused to obey. They ran with horrifying slowness through the advancing Space Marine tanks. Flat-sided vehicles in various reds and blacks ­rumbled past them. They had their attention on the enemy, and any mortal who inadvertently got in the way was crushed flat under their grinding treads.

  The enemy intensified their screaming bombardment. Gobbets of liquid became explosive conflagrations when they hit the ground, saturating wide areas of the killing zone outside the void shield with chemical fires. The tanks shrugged off these deadly falls, but any human caught by them was immolated immediately. An acid gas wafted over the battlefield, choking those who breathed it in, growing thicker by the second.

  The boy was gibbering with fright, but he went on, dragging at his father’s unwilling arm. Uigui panted with the effort of running under such weight. The boy shoved him back as a fleshy ball hung with tentacles on its underside fell from the sky and exploded near a tank, spattering it with corrosive liquid. The nature of the swarm’s noise behind them changed, becoming deeper, issuing from a few throats rather than many. Uigui risked a terrified look back, and saw the swaying spore chimneys of monsters coming through the smoke, gas and flames. He moaned in fear. His muscles turned to water and he stumbled, but the boy dragged him on.

  The curtain wall of the second line rose ahead, its features rendered indistinct by the wavering shield. Fiery liquids slapped into the energy field and vanished in painful light. Explosive spore munitions detonated violently, leaving only ripples on the air.

  The boy wept, but pulled Uigui on, some part of his damaged mind remembering the brave youth he had been.

  A wall of violet rose up, curved and seemingly as deli­cate as a soap bubble, and yet it was proof against all violence. Uigui gritted his teeth. He did not enjoy passing through the void shield.

  Uigui and the boy plunged through. As its protective energies shielded his body great pain ripped through his soul, as if he gave up a part of what he was in exchange for survival. Something in a place beyond the blackest night howled for his immortal spirit.

  Then they were through, and the din of battle was blunted. Other mortals burst through the skin of energy in a straggling line. The curtain wall was before them – ancient, time-pitted rockcrete contrasted with the darker greys of freshly constructed parapets. Plasteel cupolas housing heavy bolters and lascannons protruded from the wall, while in the crenellations’ embrasures the hulking forms of heavily armed Space Marines crouched, their missile launchers and plasma cannons sending out a torrent of fire at the enemy.

  A small gate beckoned. Uigui staggered on, the boy dragging him when his own legs would not obey him. Safety was near, yet the night was not yet done with its terrors.

  Terrifying howls split the darkness, this time coming from ahead. A deafening scream of multiple jet engines blotted out all other noise.

  Space Marines in black came leaping over the parapets, jump packs flaring bright in the dark. They shouted incoherently as they fell towards the ground. Their movements were frenzied, seemingly out of their control.

  They dropped all around the boy and Uigui. Seeing the mortals there, one raised an axe crackling with angelic power.

  ‘Death to the traitors! Death to Horus!’ he shouted.

  There came a mighty clash of metal on metal, the boom of angels’ weapons meeting. A priest of the angels stayed the axe with the winged head of his own staff, the two weapons sparking angrily at the contact.

  ‘To the front, the enemy are not here. These are blameless civilians, caught in the perfidy of the traitors. Let them pass, let them pass!’

  And then the black-clad Space Marines were running on, shouting and roaring, and the Chaplain was with them at the fore, leaving Uigui and the boy alone.

  They staggered
on towards the gate, other Baalites with them, scattering when a boxy transport painted black with red crosses burst through, engine roaring as furiously as the warriors whose livery it shared. Uigui fell down in terror. The tracks missed him by inches, spraying up sand into his face as it sped by, another following, then another.

  He lay weeping on the holy sand of Baal, as ashamed at his cowardice as he was terrified.

  A hand tugged at his limp arm.

  ‘D-d-d-da, it’s safe now. They, they’ve all gone.’

  Uigui raised his head slowly from the dirt. Space Marines in red were coming out from the gate, helping up the few mortals who had made it back to the wall. One ran at him, and Uigui expected the end, but a ceramite gauntlet grabbed his arm, encircling his bicep with room to spare, and hauled him painfully to his feet.

  A voxmitter clicked. ‘You are safe, Baalite,’ he said. ‘You have survived.’

  The survivors were rounded up and herded within the wall, Space Marines making a watchful perimeter around them. The gate slammed shut behind.

  It was as if Uigui had stepped through into another world. Battle became a rumour of distant gunfire and beastly shrieks. Transports cut across the wide landing fields between the fortress and the wall in neat formation. Space Marines ran in well-ordered squads from one area to another.

  The mortals dropped, exhausted, near the gate, ignored by the warriors they had nearly died for.

  The void shield sparkled hundreds of feet overhead. Fire raged in the night skies. Baal Primus was a watery circle on the other side of the shield’s shifting energies, its face twinkling with the fires of war.

  Within the wall it was much calmer, but Uigui could never feel safe.

  The boy took his hand and leaned into Uigui’s shoulder. Uigui was too exhausted to object.

  The Death Company came like furies into the fight, leaping over the line of tanks holding back the tyranids with savage abandon. Their plasma pistols spat bright suns of deadly energy into the foe. A squad hurtled past Ordamael, raging, shouting at traitors that were not present. At the urging of their Chaplain, they singled out a tyrannofex that had destroyed four tanks, and they fell on it wildly. One boosted himself directly at its face, thunderhammer swinging round as he flew. The blow destroyed half the creature’s skull, but it did not fall until another Death Company Space Marine ran howling at its side, punched his power fist through its chest and wrenched out a lumpen organ. Screaming out his hatred of the traitor Legions, the Space Marine closed his fist, annihilating the alien heart in his hand.

  The tyrannofex fell forward, dead, but there were many more enormous assault beasts behind it, and they shouldered their broodmate aside into the moat and pressed on, symbiotic guns convulsing and spraying potent acids and bullet grubs over everything.

  The Death Company were legion, hundreds strong. Ordamael was equally uplifted and saddened to see so many. Giving them their blessing had been an honour. This was the curse of their blood unleashed in full. So many Death Company Space Marines fought around Ordamael that it was as if there were a Chapter of them. In their warring he saw a glimpse of the bloodline’s future.

  Ordamael followed in their wake. Upon the causeway of dead tyranids the enemy were being pushed back by the combination of heavy tank fire and the Death Com­pany’s relentless assault. Ordamael thought to direct them, but there was no need; now they were among the tyranids they fought like daemons, tearing apart the alien beasts. The ’gaunt hordes of earlier had given way to great crowds of the warrior strain. Given their numbers, it was no surprise how well coordinated the alien assault was. Waves of heavier creatures marched forward, sheltering the warrior broods with their bulk and thick armour. Shells, energy bolts and flaming chemicals showered down on the battlefield from all sides. Truly, this was a vision of the mythical inferno.

  Into the maelstrom strode Ordamael. He ignored the larger beasts, saving his efforts for those creatures that could be harmed by his weapons. He dropped tyranid warriors with single shots to the eye and smashed limbs with his crozius. The Death Company penetrated deeply into the masses of tyranids. They fought on with the most horrendous injuries. Ordamael saw one still on his feet with the front of his helmet and all the flesh beneath melted down to the bone, but they were not immortal. One by one they fell to the talons, claws and pincers of the monsters attacking the home of the Blood Angels. Ordamael sorrowed to see so many of his blood kin die. It was impossible to tell who hailed from which Chapter. In the end they stood together, one blood in death. It was how it should be, he thought.

  A lone warrior strain came at him from the night, boneswords swinging for his head. Ordamael met them with his crozius, parrying them with minimal movements. The warrior held a bag-like weapon symbiote in its lower limbs tipped with a bony funnel. A deathspitter. Ordamael filled it with a burst of three bolts, rupturing the ammunition sack and sending writhing grubs in a cascade to the ground. The warrior screamed as if it had been hurt itself and pressed its attack with its twinned swords. Yellow, slit-pupilled eyes rolled in the hilts of each weapon. The blades were white and pink, like fresh bone. In every way, the creature was repugnant. Ordamael put it down with a blow to the head that cracked its tall crest in twain.

  A wide-band vox message echoed in his helmet. ‘All warriors retreat to the curtain wall. The third line has fallen. Prepare for wall assault. Hold the second line.’

  Reluctantly, Ordamael withdrew, leaving the bloated, multi-Chapter Death Company to sell their blood, lives and gene-seed in one last glorious act of violence.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Death of the Future

  The lictor lay still as its kin beasts plummeted down from orbit. It did not move as they swept over its hiding space. It watched as the hive was repulsed from the third line, and was watching still when it fell. It bore silent witness to the slaughter at the moat. As shells rained around it, it betrayed no movement.

  Until, finally, opportunity presented itself.

  The lictor dug itself out of its hiding space silently. It kept low, hugging the slipfaces of the dunes around the Arx, never once exposing itself. As the pandemonium of war raged around it the chances of detection were infinitesimal, but the hive mind took no chances.

  The lictor scuttled through fields of wrecked tanks. It hid as Space Marine sky craft screamed overhead. At any chance of detection it froze, reducing its biological activity to the absolute minimum until the danger passed.

  The route it took was erratic, its destination concealed by wide detours and backtracking. It looked as if it were hunting for something. In reality, it knew exactly where it was going.

  Behind the wall of tyranids moving up to attack the second line it was strangely quiet. Away from the fortress eater beasts were landing and the tools of digestion being deployed, but Baal was minimally gifted with life, and the density of the digestion swarm was low. The battle swarm’s noise shushed and roared, its hissing, clacking voice punctuated by the repetitive banging of the prey’s weaponry. Some of their devices were impressively destructive, much more so than the weapon-creatures employed by the swarm. But the efficacy of individual guns was irrelevant; the hive mind had a billion for every one employed by the prey. Its weapons were not dependent on chains of supply or minerals mined on faraway worlds. They required no specialist worker caste to create. Everything the hive mind needed, it grew within itself, and the prey always ran out of bullets before the hive mind ran out of bodies.

  Still, certain prey required care, hence the lictor’s mission. The hive mind’s cell-bodies were numerous but not infinite. There was an optimal ratio of destroyed beasts to biomass harvested. Exceed it, and the consumption of a world would result in a net loss. Warrior creatures were dispensable, but the larger ships and complicated beasts cost time and organic matter to replace. If there was a way to shorten a war the hive mind would find it.

  The lictor reached its desti
nation. Sophisticated organic senses equal to any machine the Imperium could employ probed the ground, ensuring this was the correct spot.

  For days the lictor had been gathering intelligence on the surroundings of the Arx Angelicum. Its specialised brain acted as a node, gathering together sensory data from a million other creatures. They had no awareness of what they were seeing. They had no need for the data they unwittingly collected. That was the lictor’s role.

  Under the sands was an anomaly. Once, a tunnel had led out of the Arx Angelicum to a fuel tank. The tank had been removed millennia ago. The tunnel had been collapsed and forgotten. The hive mind, working through the lictor, knew none of this, and would not have comprehended the information if it had. It saw a weakness; it needed to know no more.

  The lictor’s hyper-enlarged brain pulsed magnetic waves through the sand, picking out chunks of crushed rockcrete and the outline of the tunnel’s route towards the Arx Angelicum’s walls. The fortress was so close. Its multiple eyes could enlarge the structure so much at this close range it could see every finial and carving. If it turned its attention to the seething, bone and purple sea of the war swarm, they appeared close enough to touch. Naturally, these were more human concepts that were alien to the hive mind. The lictor did not regard itself apart from its brethren. It did not regard itself at all.

  A blurred map of the underground shimmered in its magnetic sight. It plunged its head into the ground, the tentacles that made up its mouth writhing through the sand, and it tasted trace amounts of complex hydrocarbons and minerals that were not native to this prey-world. Longer range sonar soundings displayed the path of the tunnel nearly all the way to the wall. The sand was reefed with broken artificial stone. The point in the mountain where the tunnel had penetrated was smooth, capped with more false rock and refined metallic minerals.