Noxx fired off a salvo of shots and ducked back behind a stone pillar. The psyker was close by, his crimson helmet wreathed with tiny jags of lightning. “Care to conjure a hellbolt for us?” said the sergeant. “We’re in danger of losing our momentum here.”
“I am afraid my attention is elsewhere.” The Codicier seemed distant, distracted. “Sensing… I am sensing the dimensions of this place. There is a very strong warp energy signature…” He pointed in the direction of the tower. “In there.”
The Flesh Tearer cursed. “Tell me you’re not talking about another warp gate! I’ll not blast down the doors to this place to find the stink of Fabius Bile and nothing else!”
Stray lasers chopped chunks from the rock near Ceris’ head, but he appeared not to notice. “I cannot be sure. Lord Mephiston gave me a telepathic imprint of the transit-magick Bile used to flee from Baal… This is not the same, but—”
“Enough!” Noxx cut him off. “If we cannot get to the source of this energy, then perhaps Rafen can. Send to him, guide him to it. Tell my errant cousin that Bile will slip our grasp if he cannot neutralise it.”
Ceris didn’t answer; instead he bowed his head low, and the crystal matrix of his psychic hood glowed brighter.
Noxx chanced a look around the pillar, and a storm of laser fire lanced towards him. He swore again and ducked back, his eyes finding Brother Puluo across the way.
The other Space Marine’s voice clicked in the vox bead in his ear. “There’s a high-gauge lascannon in the fire slot, lower right quadrant.”
“I’m acquainted with it,” Noxx replied, considering a carbon score-mark across his power armour’s right shoulder pauldron.
“All units, give me cover,” continued Puluo. “I’m going to kill it.”
Noxx nodded in agreement. “Do as he says.”
Puluo hefted the weighty form of his heavy bolter up in front of himself, then broke into a full-tilt ran. The second he left his cover, red streaks of coherent light stabbed out at him. Noxx revealed himself as well, firing from the shoulder, and he saw Ajir, Kayne and Gast do the same, all of them giving the enemy gunners a sudden feast of targets to choose from.
An Astartes behind that gun would have concentrated their fire on Puluo, the largest extant threat; but instead there was a moment of hesitation, then sporadic, reflexive fire towards the other battle-brothers.
It was enough for Puluo to close the distance. He swung down the heavy bolter as he ran and squeezed the trigger bar. The gun crashed, the reports from the muzzle echoing off the walls of the enemy stronghold. Too late, the laser cannon traversed back towards Puluo, but the Blood Angel was nimble for his size, and he weathered glancing hits across his armour to come all the way in to point blank range.
Fuelled by battle anger, Puluo leapt up and jammed the barrel of the heavy bolter into the firing slit where the lascannon gunner was hiding. He released a wild burst of automatic fire into the chamber beyond, riding the big gun’s recoil, ranging it around to be sure that everything inside would be killed.
With the lascannon out of operation, the rest of the squad moved up, taking down the remainder of the defenders. Ajir used hull cutters to blow open the portcullis, and together the Space Marines crossed into Bile’s fortress, wreathed in cordite smoke.
The dour Tauran—he called himself Nisos—moved quickly, but he seemed to be always a step behind Rafen as they moved through the corridors of the lower tower, along stone passages laser-cut from the living rock. The Blood Angel paused in the lee of a support and glanced at him. Nisos was watching him carefully.
“You have something to say to me?” Rafen pitched his voice in a whisper.
The Tauran tapped his head. “You say you hear a voice in your thoughts. This Brother Ceris you spoke of.”
“Not so much a voice,” Rafen admitted. “More a sense of the man…” He frowned. “It is difficult to put into words. But he is guiding me. Us.”
Nisos kneaded the grip of a lasgun he had stolen from a dead guardian. “That does not sit well with me. How do you know it is your battle-brother? What if that presence in your thoughts is some trick of Bile’s? What if—”
Rafen extended a hand and placed it on the Tauran’s shoulder. The edge of fear in the other man’s voice was troubling, and he wondered how long Nisos had been in this prison, and what manner of torments he might have endured to so unsettle him. “You must trust me, my friend. Trust that I trust the psyker.”
“The ways of the warp are the maze of damnation,” Nisos said quietly. “I have seen men touched by the power of the immaterium, good men, and watched them burn in daemonfire.”
“It is Fabius Bile who will burn this day,” snapped Layko, a wiry, malnourished Crimson Fist who had joined them on Kilan’s recommendation. He brandished a pair of wicked combat blades. “I am eager to give him a taste of my revenge. Why do we delay?”
“Move with care, Son of Dorn,” said Vetcha, slipping back towards them. “New Men are close by. I smell the foe, all sweat and rotting meat.”
Rafen nodded, half-hearing the old man. He fell silent, allowing himself to lose focus for a moment. Immediately, he sensed Ceris’ presence. The psyker was almost there in the corridor with him, like a ghost at his shoulder. Without words, the witch-kin pressed him onward. A pressure, an ethereal hand at his back, turned him to the right. He peered around the curve of another support and saw two of Bile’s New Men guarding a heavy circular hatch.
Retreating, he turned back to the other Astartes. “In there,” he began. “A psionic energy source, likely the power for our target’s arcane warp-sorcery. It must be neutralised.”
Nisos shivered. “I feel it in the air. A taint, slick on my skin.”
Rafen nodded. He could feel it too, the telltale greasy texture in the atmosphere, the sense of lurking power like the precursor to an oncoming storm.
“Two guards,” noted Vetcha. “I expected more.”
Nisos gestured around at the walls; a distant alert klaxon had been sounding for some time. “The others have probably been drawn off to deal with the escape, or Rafen’s friends.”
“We go, then?” said Layko, battle-need written large across his drawn features.
“Oh, indeed, we go,” Rafen replied.
They charged around the corner in a tight wedge, Rafen leading from the front with the barbed bolter screaming. The closest of the New Men was hit and fell, injured but still alive. The second dodged away, sending laser flashes back towards them.
Nisos returned fire with his captured lasgun and scored hits on the second New Man; the gene-freak’s cloak smouldered and caught fire.
Layko came in shouting and beheaded the downed guardian as he tried to rise again. The body fell to the deck, but the Crimson Fist continued to hack at it, shredding flesh and bone into an unrecognisable mess.
With Vetcha covering their rear, Rafen and Nisos sprinted past the massive hatch and bore down on the last guard. The enemy released a fan of laser fire, and had he been clad in his battle armour, Rafen would have dared to wade straight into it and let the ceramite shunt away the lethal flashes of hard light; but he was wounded, ill-prepared, poorly-armed and slowed by the parasite, and such brute-force tactics now would have ended him.
Instead, he threw himself forward, low and close to the ground. Rafen fell into a tuck and roll as Nisos harried the New Man with return fire, and the Blood Angel came up close to the guard, leading with the bolter. He stabbed the blade-wreathed muzzle of the gun into the meat of his enemy’s thigh, and before the New Man could react, he fired. At point-blank range, Cheyne’s gun blasted a massive divot of flesh from the creature and sent it howling to the ground. Nisos swept in, and fired another laser blast through the New Man’s eye; the energy bolt instantly flashed the guard’s brain matter to steam and his skull exploded in a cloud of pinkish-grey mist.
Rafen kicked the corpse away and returned to the hatch. Vetcha had pulled Layko away from his
kill; the emaciated Astartes was covered in splashes of blood, his fists as crimson as his Chapter’s sigil. Layko’s face was set in a rictus grin.
Acting quickly, the Blood Angel found the series of iron levers set into an alcove along one of the walls. In moments, the heavy hatch began to groan open, swinging out in thick hinges.
New gales of the psyker-stink gusted out at them as the doorway widened, and with it came another, horribly familiar smell—the battery-acid stench of tyranid pheromones, heavy and cloying in their nostrils.
Rafen cleared his throat with difficulty and took a shallow breath as he moved to cross the threshold; and suddenly, the docile parasite awoke once again. His hand went to his chest, expecting another surge of pain, but this was different. The maggot-thing seemed to be trembling, vibrating inside his flesh. The sensation was nauseating and he felt revolted to his core by it.
The Blood Angel looked up to survey the chamber beyond the hatch and the disgust churning inside him grew tenfold.
Nisos was next, Vetcha and Layko following. All were silent, all sharing the same horror at the sight before them.
The chamber was spherical, and shrouded with metal walls, although these were hardly visible beneath the layers of oozing, gelatinous matter coating every surface. High overhead, above a raised gantry, light seeped in from a circular window. With a flash of understanding, Rafen recognised it as the viewing port he had seen in the floor of Fabius’ laboratory.
The wan illumination cast shadows everywhere, but was not so merciful as to hide the full scope of the monstrosity that dominated the room. Hanging in mucus-encrusted chains from a cruciform support frame was the distended and diseased form of a limbless tyranid beast, shrouded by the softly glowing planes of crystalline psi-baffles.
“A zoanthrope,” grated Layko. “Throne and blood, it’s alive…”
“Bile’s pet,” said Vetcha, with a nod.
Rafen studied the beast coldly. Distended and horribly warped by its massive brain, nearly half the mass of the hydrocephalic tyranid psyker-creature was made up by its huge head, a hammer-shaped mass of blackened chitin armour over pulsating pink matter. A drooling mouth of yellowed fangs hung open, serpent tongues lolling out and dripping thin fluids. Rheumy eye-pits glared back at him from beneath a bony cowl, and even in the alien expression, the Blood Angel could sense a palpable, ready hatred. Beneath the bloated head, a sinuous body barbed with protrusions and strange tusks thinned into a long, barbed tail that hung like a piece of dead meat. Wicked talons the length of a man’s forearm were curled up against the zoanthrope’s torso. Every now and then, they would twitch in palsy.
Alone, this xenos thing was horror enough; but there was more here. Raw-edged wounds filmed with blood that would not clot, seeping from incisions on the alien’s spine. Flays of skin peeled back and held in place by heavy iron spikes revealed a swollen bolus of glistening flesh that hung loose towards the floor. Pipes, wet with ichor, penetrated every part of the alien’s torso. With each laboured, breathy exhalation the creature made, faint traceries of fine dust were drawn up the tubes, away into sockets on the curved walls.
Rafen dared to take a step closer, and the zoanthrope showed more teeth; but the gesture seemed cursory, and without real intent. Peering at the sac, he saw movement within it, and heard a faint keening. Instantly, the maggot in his chest flexed, making him choke. He saw the same reaction from the others. With disgust, Rafen watched the sac pucker, and from it fell a newborn parasite, shiny with wet mucus.
“They’re everywhere,” said Layko, almost gagging on the words. “Look!” He pointed with his swords. Concentrating on the shadows, Rafen’s vision grew definite and he saw what the Crimson Fist meant. What he had first thought might be spoil heaps or piles of shed matter were slowly moving masses of the maggot parasites.
“Little wonder those things Cheyne implanted in us are so agitated,” said Nisos. “They can sense the closeness of these others.”
Rafen paused, turning back to the wheezing zoanthrope. Closer now, and he could see it was weak and sickly. The flesh of the xenos was pallid, and the surface of its chitin armour was pitted and cracked. A fetid air of necrotic decay shrouded the thing. The alien’s head tilted to present him with a jaundiced, milky eye, and he felt a faint wash of telepathic energy move over him. The Blood Angel shuddered, but held fast; the sensation passed as quickly as it had come.
“A creature like this…” began the Tauran. “It could shatter our minds with a single thought.”
“Perhaps once,” said Vetcha. “But not now. Bile has made it his slave.”
Rafen nodded. He could see the lines of sutures along the curvature of the zoanthrope’s skull, the places where Fabius’ chirurgeon had bored into the alien’s brain matter and lobotomised it. “The traitor shows cunning, as ever,” he said. “Just like this fortress, he has taken what he could find here and perverted it to his own ends.”
“If this zoanthrope is the breed sow for the parasites…” began Nisos. He retched. “Emperor preserve us! We are tainted by the blood of the alien!”
“Calm yourself,” said Vetcha. “We’ll wail over who is sullied with what when the task at hand is complete.” He turned to Rafen, his blind eye sockets blank and without pity. “We must kill this thing.”
Rafen nodded. “Aye. The beast’s psychic might is at Bile’s command. If he uses it to forge a warp gate, he will be lost to us.”
“But the protection, the pheromones!” snapped Layko, pointing at the tubes. “I abhor the xenos as much as any Astartes, but if it dies… what then?”
The Blood Angel studied the mechanisms drawing the scent-chemicals from the zoanthrope’s gland clusters. “The veil will fall. Any tyranid predators close by will be drawn to the fortress.”
“So we kill the zoanthrope, and its kindred will come and consume us all!” said the Crimson Fist.
“But if we let it live, Bile will flee.” Rafen shook his head. “There is no debate to be had here.” He raised the barbed bolter and aimed at the alien creature’s head. He tensed, expecting it to lash out, to strike at him in some wild, final effort; instead the zoanthrope folded down its claws and bowed to him, the chains about it slackening.
Nisos hesitated before taking aim with the lasgun. “Curious. It must know what we are about to do.”
Vetcha nodded. “It’s been a prisoner here longer than any of us. I doubt the arch-traitor’s cruelty was any less towards it for its origins.” He coughed and looked away.
“It… wants to die,” said Layko.
“A wish we will grant,” Rafen replied, and fired.
The zoanthrope was the last of the tyranid master clade still living on Dynikas V. The agonies it had suffered at the hands of the flesh-prey that had tormented it were unbounded; the alien’s malleable genetic make-up, the core strength of Hivemind and the key to its victory over the monoforms that infested the galaxy, had been turned against it. The being that had captured it, shackled it, had twisted the zoanthrope with sciences bonded to dark magicks and freakish sorcery. The tyranid became a slave, a breeding machine, little more than a piece of organic hardware meshed into the workings of Fabius Bile’s hidden fortress.
If the xenos could have understood the concept, it might have experienced gratitude, or perhaps grasped the incongruity of its fate. But at the end, only one thing mattered; it wanted death, desired it more even than the great unstoppable hunger that lay at the heart of all of its kind.
And in the seconds before its life drained away, even as the bolt shells and laser blasts ripped it open, it gave voice to a final scream of pain that echoed across the planet.
In the halls of the prison, Brother Ceris cried out and spat blood, flares of bright actinic light flashing about the edges of his psychic hood. He crashed to the stone floor, twitching and coughing, for long seconds caught in the telepathic undertow of the alien’s death cry.
The psionic wave of shrieking, boiling pain flashe
d out across the island in a radial wave, invisible to the naked eye but blazing sun-bright across the frequencies of the mind. Hundreds of kilometres away, mind-sensitive psi-slaves aboard the boats patrolling the Dynikan oceans were killed instantly, and without them the predators in the water began to drift closer, hunger-lust stimulated by the burst of hate that the scream kindled in their primitive minds.
At the epicentre of the killing, the psionic shock touched every single thing that shared a molecule of tyranid DNA. The clouds of pheromones that had shrouded the island for so long were suddenly robbed of any potency, all power bled from them as the haze of biochemicals quickly discorporated and congealed, becoming a rain of greasy white ash falling from the sky.
The wave of rage expanded, like finding like as every tyranid it touched was abruptly shaken into a ravening, bloodthirsty frenzy. Creatures that drifted or swam or flew were immediately aware of something new and horrible in their midst, as the mélange of pheromones and telepathic blinds concealing Bile’s island were instantly dissipated. For the swarms of the xenos, it was as if a colossal malignant tumour had manifested itself without warning in the meat of their body.
All other desires, all other instincts were forgotten. A towering mad fury reserved for the hatred of invaders blossomed across the mind of every tyranid on Dynikas V. They smelled human meat, the spoor of the unlike, and the drives that ruled their species took to the fore.
To attack. To kill.
To devour.
The alien’s death scream cut into Rafen like a ragged knife, and he threw up his hands to protect his ears. But the sound was no sound—instead it was an effect, a field of unseen force rippling about him, through him, into him.
And then came the pain. A fiery churn in his chest that felt like liquid metal pouring down over his flesh, burning him, crisping his skin and bone into blackened gobs of shapeless matter.
Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow Page 109