He knew he made the human uneasy. He was familiar with the effect his appearance had on unaugmented mortals. The equations in his mind that mimicked biological thought patterns reached no answer to rectify this adverse effect, and he was not certain it was – technically speaking – an error to be corrected. Fear had its uses, when harvested from others. This was a lesson he had learned from his association with the Night Lords.
The tech-priest acknowledged the human now with an inclination of his head. The serf was one of the chosen, and deserved a modicum of respect due to his position as artificer for First Claw’s armour and weapons.
‘Septimus,’ he said. The human started, while the servitors worked on.
‘Honoured adept,’ the slave nodded back. The corridor they occupied was low and claustrophobic. First Claw were busying themselves elsewhere, patrolling nearby chambers.
‘Do you know why you are here, Septimus?’
Septimus didn’t have an answer.
Deltrian was an ugly thing of darkened metal, fluid-filled wires and polished chrome – a metallic skeleton complete with its circulatory system, and wreathed in an old robe of thick weave, the colour of blood in the moonlight.
It must have taken a perverse sense of humour to reforge your own body over the decades into something that looked like a bionic replica of some pre-Imperial Terran death god. Septimus didn’t share the joke, if indeed it was one.
For the moment, Deltrian’s eye lenses were deep green, likely cut from emeralds. This was by no means a permanent feature. Often, they were red, blue or transparent, showing the wire-works behind, linking to a brain that was at least partly still human.
‘I do not know, honoured adept. The masters have not told me.’
‘I believe I am able to make an approximate analysis.’ Deltrian laughed, buzzing like a vox slipping from the right frequency.
There was a threat buried in that. Irritation made Septimus bold, but he kept his hands from resting on the two holstered laspistols at his hips. Deltrian might be favoured as an ally from the Mechanicus, but he was just as shackled in service to the VIII Legion as Septimus was.
‘Feel free to enlighten me, honoured adept.’
‘You are human.’ The skinless creature turned its death’s-head grin away to regard its servitors once more. ‘Human, and unarmoured in enclosing ceramite. Your blood, your heartbeat, your sweat and breath – all of these biological details will be detected by the predatory xenos species aboard this hulk.’
‘With all respect, Deltrian,’ Septimus turned, looking back at the long corridor they’d walked down, ‘you’re deluded.’
‘I see you and I hear you all too well, and my engineered stimulus array is comparable to the senses of the genestealer genus. My aural receptors register your breathing like a world’s winds, and your beating heart like the primal drums of a primitive culture. If I sense this, Septimus – and I assure you that I do – then you should know that the many living beings sheltering on this derelict sense it as well.’
Septimus snorted. The idea of the Night Lords using him – one of their more valuable slaves – as bait, was…
‘Contact,’ voxed Talos.
In the distance, bolters began to bark.
V
The Eldest stirred from the cold, cold darkness of the nothingness that was as close to sleep as its species could know.
A faint pain echoed, faded but troubling, in the base of its curved skull. This weak pain soon spread with gentle insistence, beating through its blood vessels and twinning with the creature’s pulse. The pain cobwebbed down the Eldest’s spine and through its facial structure, emanating from its sluggish mind.
This was not the pain of a wound, of defeat, of a hunter denied. It did not eclipse the hunger-need, but it was even less welcome. Its taste and resonance were so very different, and the Eldest had not felt such a thing for… for some time.
Its kin were dying. The Eldest felt each puncturing hole, each ravaged limb, each bleeding socket, in this echoing ghost-pain.
In the darkness, it uncoiled its limbs. Joints clicked and cracked as they tensed and flexed once more.
Its killing claws shivered, opening and closing in the cool air. Digestive acid stung its tongue as its saliva ducts tingled back into life. The Eldest drew a shaking breath through rows of shark’s teeth, and the cold air was a catalyst to its senses. Its featureless eyes opened, thick ropes of drool slivering down its chin, dangling from its maw to fall in hissing spittle-droplets on the decking.
After dragging itself from the confines of its hiding place, the Eldest set out through the ship in search of the creatures killing its children.
It smelled blood in the air, heard the rhythm of a prey’s heart, and scented salty sweat on soft skin. More than this, it sensed the buzzing hum of living sentience, the brain’s fleshy electricity of emotion and thought.
Life.
Human.
Near.
The Eldest clicked to itself with bladed mouth-parts, and leaned forwards into a hungry run, bolting through the black passageways with its claws hammering on the metal.
Kin, it sent silently, I come.
VI
Lucoryphus and his team were not slowed down by the presence of a human or a tech-priest. Nor did they rely on lobotomised servitors to breach obstructions. Instead, several of Lucoryphus’s Raptors were armed with melta guns, breathing out searing surges of gaseous heat intense enough to liquidate the metal it blasted.
As a pack, the Bleeding Eyes – still growing used to their new designation of Ninth Claw – moved at far greater speed through the amalgamation of twisted ships. Unlike Talos and First Claw, Lucoryphus and his brothers had no specific target. They scouted, they stalked, they sought whatever of worth they could find.
And so far, that had been nothing at all.
The boredom was made bitter by the fact that had they been heading deeper in search of the conjoined Mechanicus vessel at the hulk’s core, Lucoryphus was sure the Bleeding Eyes would have been there by now, and on their way back out.
Vox was increasingly erratic as Ninth Claw pressed ahead of their brothers, and Lucoryphus was fast losing patience with First Claw’s progress. The initial hesitations had come from their human slave holding them back. Then their tech-adept had forced them to lag behind while he – while it – bled information from various databanks and memory tablets in the ships First Claw was cutting through.
‘Vaporiser weapons,’ Lucoryphus’s hissing voice carried over the vox, ‘Melta-class weapons. No cutting. No cutting servitors. Much faster.’
Talos’s reply was punctuated by the dull juddering of bolters. ‘Noted. Be aware, we’ve encountered an insignificant genestealer threat. Minimal numbers, at least in this section. What is your location?’
Lucoryphus led his pack onwards, through spacious corridors, each of the Raptors hunched and loping beast-like on all fours. The construction of these passageways was utterly familiar.
‘Astartes ship, Standard Template Construct. Not ours. Throne slaves.’
‘Understood. Any xenos presence?’
‘Some. Few. All dead now.’ The cylindrical engine housings on his back idled in disuse, occasionally coughing black smoke from vent slits. ‘Moving to enginarium. Vessel still has partial power. Some lights bright. Some doors open. Ship not ancient like others. This is close to hulk’s edge.’
‘Understood.’ More bolter fire, and the dim sounds of other Astartes cursing as Talos replied, ‘These things are stunted and weak. They seem almost decrepit.’
‘Genestealer xenos present for many decades. No prey, no strength. Beasts grow old, grow frail. Still deadly.’
‘It’s no struggle, yet.’ The chatter of bolters began to die down. ‘Report status every ten minutes.’
‘Yes, prophet. I obey.’
On four claws, the once-human stalked on, his slanted eye lenses following the contours of the walls.
The corridor at last opened up into
a large room, blissful in its dark silence, populated by towering generators and a wall-mounted plasma chamber that still – against all expectations – emitted a faint orange glow from the volatile cocktail of liquids and gases roiling in the glass chamber’s depths.
Without needing orders, the Raptors spread across the engine deck, moving to consoles and gantries, taking up firing positions to cover the room’s exits. Several of the pack let their thrusters whine into life, boosting their way up to the higher platforms.
With difficulty, Lucoryphus fought down the urge to soar with them. Even in the confines of the ship’s interior, he ached to leave the trudging discomfort of the ground behind.
Indulging a little, he cycled his turbines live with an effort as simple and natural as drawing breath. The kick of thrust carried him across the enginarium, to land in a neat crouch before the main power console. Eight dead servitors lay scattered around the controls, reduced to figures of bone and bionics.
One of Lucoryphus’s best, Vorasha, was already at the console, his curving finger-talons clicking at the controls.
‘Plasma chamber depleted,’ Vorasha’s voice slithered from his helm’s snarling speaker-grille. ‘The power has bled from the chamber over decades, yes-yes.’
‘Restore it.’ The Raptor leader emphasised the order with a short, sharp sound somewhere between a shriek and a whisper. ‘Do this now.’
Vorasha’s talons clicked on keys and worked levers. ‘I am not able to do this. Most of the vessel is lifeless. Can send power from section to section, yes-yes. With ease. Open bulkheads too dense to burn through fast. Cannot restore all power to all sections.’
Lucoryphus’s reply came in a keening, aggrieved tone. ‘Many redundant sections. Kill power in them. Then we move.’
‘It will be done,’ said Vorasha, and began to divert what little power remained in the ship’s blood vessels, forcing it into the sections that the Bleeding Eyes Raptors had to cross. At his estimate, Vorasha was going to be able to save them almost an hour of burning through locked bulkhead doors on their way through the ship.
‘What is this ship?’ Lucoryphus asked, his faceplate turned to the ceiling, seeking any indication of allegiance or identity.
The answer came from one of the others. Zon La found a body no more than ten seconds after his leader had asked the question. Armoured in green, it lay on the raised gantry deck above the enginarium floor; cut into pieces by the violence of alien claws, it displayed its brotherhood all too clearly in the bronze dragon emblem across its breastplate.
‘XVIII Legion,’ the Raptor hissed, recoiling in disgust. Zon La’s tongue ached with the sudden need to spit his corrosive saliva onto the skeletal corpse.
Vorasha, linked to the ship’s faded power core, turned to Lucoryphus. ‘Power killed in redundant decks. Ship name is Protean, yes-yes, XVIII Legion.’
Lucoryphus chuckled behind his faceplate. The red eye lenses stared out, with scarlet and silver tears painted in twin trails down his cheeks. It was a visage shared by all his bothers in the Bleeding Eyes. Each of them watched the world through helms with slanted eyes and cried tears of quicksilver and crimson.
‘Salamanders. We killed so many in the Old War. Amazed any still draw breath.’
‘Wait-wait.’ Vorasha never really talked – he hissed and clicked in place of true speech, but the other Raptors could make out the meaning in his broken language with ease. ‘I sense others. I hear others nearby.’
Lucoryphus was as tense as his brothers, head tilted.
He had heard it, too. Weapon fire.
‘Salamanders,’ Zon La rasped. ‘Still alive on ship.’
Lucoryphus was already making his ungainly way to the double doors that led deeper into the ship’s decks.
‘Not for long. Nine of you, remain with Vorasha. Nine more, with me.’
Xarl and Uzas, both warriors of First Claw, sprayed the hallway with suppressive fire, bolters kicking in clenched fists. Uzas’s field of fire was random, chewing down whichever alien beast drew his attention each particular second. Xarl was all controlled aggression, bolts punching home into the skulls of the closest aliens and crippling those that sought to rise again.
Both of them picked up the crackling declaration from Talos, and both were equally infuriated. The Bleeding Eyes, several hours deeper into the amalgamated hulk, had encountered loyalist Astartes.
Salamanders.
Too far away – far too far – for First Claw to reach them. Talos ordered his brothers to maintain the guardianship of Deltrian and purge the corridors of alien threats.
Xarl concentrated his anger into a killing urge, drawing his chainsword and tearing left and right, weaving wounds among the genestealers that reached the embattled warriors. Uzas, never one for subtlety or self-discipline, howled his bitterness through the uncaring hallways and tore into the aliens with his bolter, his chainblade and even his bare hands.
‘Lucoryphus, this is Talos.’
‘No words now. Hunting.’
‘Assess the enemy threat first. Do not engage without assured victory.’
‘Coward!’
‘We have the Echo of Damnation in the void nearby, fool. We can cripple their ship in space and deploy boarding pods at our leisure. Do not engage without assured victory. We do not have the strength here to face down Terminators.’
No reply came, except for the rabid charging of hand-claws and foot-talons on metal decking.
Talos exhaled slowly. It left his helm’s vox-speakers as a daemonic rasp. This was not going to plan.
His standing orders for the strike cruiser had been to power down and activate the Shriek if any Imperial vessels came into the system. There was little chance the Salamanders’ ship had detected and destroyed the Echo, but Talos was far from sanguine. Deltrian was taking too long, and Lucoryphus, as always, was an uncontrollable element.
‘First Claw to Echo of Damnation.’
‘…cr… s… aw…’
The vox was still worthless. They’d have to get back to the hulk’s outer layers to restore contact.
‘Deltrian,’ Talos voxed. ‘Status report.’
VII
The Eldest rounded a corner, clinging to the walls with claws that crunched purchase in the arched, ancient steel. It didn’t slow down, not even for a fraction of a heartbeat. Burning saliva stung its jaws as it drooled down its chin.
Prey.
Two. Ahead.
The Eldest leaped over the bodies of fallen kin, moving its headlong dash to the ceiling as it tore forwards, still not slowing in its stride. Claws ripped handholds in the corridor’s roof with vicious speed. Bodily, it shoved its lesser kin aside, bashing through those tall enough to obstruct its passage. In better times, their links to the Eldest’s mind would have sent them scurrying aside respectfully, sensing their lord’s approach.
‘Reloading.’ Mercutian dropped to one knee and ejected a spent ammunition belt from the massive heavy bolter.
At his side, Cyrion took aim with his own weapon, and the corridor echoed with the familiar crashing of a bolter letting loose on full auto.
‘Reload faster.’
‘Keep shooting,’ Mercutian snarled.
‘It’s on the damn ceiling…’
‘Keep shooting.’
Beneath and around, the hard bodies of its kin were shattering and bursting under the prey’s defences. The prey ahead – two of them – unleashed a sickening stream of burning anger that blasted the Eldest’s kin apart.
The heated projectiles began to crash against the Eldest’s skin.
It suddenly remembered what pain felt like.
Mercutian buckled the ammo feed into place and lifted his heavy bolter again. It took three awful seconds to power up again, then its internal mechanisms clunked into life.
An instant’s glance saw Cyrion’s bolter fire laying waste to the weaker creatures, but the huge beast was shrieking its way through a volley of bolter fire, still sprinting across the ceiling, eatin
g up the metres between them.
He didn’t rise to his feet. Remaining where he was, he pulled the trigger handle and felt his armour’s stabilisers kick in to compensate for the cannon’s recoil.
The heavy bolter shook as it disgorged a stream of high-velocity explosive bolts, each one pounding chunks of chitinous meat from the creature’s exoskeletal flesh.
As the twelfth bolt struck home, the beast fell from the ceiling, plunging into the seething mass of lesser creatures below. Mercutian lowered his aim, and let his cannon chew into them next.
The Eldest smelled its own blood, and this was somehow more shocking than the pain of its burst-open, bleeding wounds. The scent overpowered the wounds of its kin, eclipsing them in richness and potency.
The lord-creature drew in its damaged limbs, curling them close to its body. It had misjudged the prey. The prey was fierce. The prey could not be battled as equals, but must be stalked as meat to be hunted.
This was the Way. The Eldest’s hunger had blinded it to the Way, but the pain of its mistake served as the most forceful of reminders.
Hunched and defeated but utterly devoid of shame, the Eldest tore its way back down the passageway, slaying its own kin in its need to retreat from the prey.
Minutes later, in the silent darkness again, it uncurled its wounded limbs, waiting for the blood to stop flowing.
A single thought-pulse screamed noiselessly through the decks above and below. More of its kin spread across the hive, weakened by hunger themselves, uncoiled and rose from their own states of near-slumber.
The Eldest moved away, seeking to come at the prey alone next time, and with greater patience.
Mercutian lowered the heavy bolter and sank back against the wall. Cyrion locked his bolter to his thigh, and drew a pistol and chainblade.
At last, the corridor was mercifully quiet. Occasionally, a dead alien would twitch.
‘Talos, this is Cyrion.’
‘Speak,’ the prophet’s voice crackled back over the vox.
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