The automatic guns of the Ultramarines’ defences tracked across the broken land as their sensors searched for the tell-tale signals of tyranid body heat. The aliens’ metabolisms were many times faster than a human’s and their heat signatures were similarly bright, and here and there a tyranid organism emerged from its skulking place in the earth to be shot down by a blast of cogitator-aimed heavy bolter fire.
The Ultramarines landing zone was established before nightfall. The Third and Fifth Companies, having exterminated the tyranids infesting the immediate vicinity, had drawn back and fortified the zone as the strike force consolidated its first foothold on Kolovan. The first drops from the Defence of Talassar overhead had been the sentry guns and a few Rhinos and Land Speeder scouting vehicles. The rest of the strike force’s vehicles remained on the cruiser, for the foothold was still in danger of being overrun before the Ultramarines fully consolidated their grip on the planet.
‘As the sun sets,’ said Cassius, addressing the assembled brethren of the Third and Fifth Companies, ‘so do the hopes of this world. The xenos have taken their piece of flesh from Kolovan. Many of its cities have fallen and the populace has been culled. And yet the Ultramarines will place their lives upon the altar of battle, at the mercy of fate. For we understand what is truly at stake on this world.
‘With Kolovan’s fall, the hive fleet shall drain it of its biomass and, thus swelled, will surely move on to Ryza. And Ryza, already fighting the greenskins and unable to defend itself against an assault by the tyranids, will surely fall in turn. As Ryza falls, the hive fleet will open the gates to the Segmentum Solar. Hive Fleet Kraken will have a way into the heartland of the Imperium, the Sol System, Holy Terra itself. But all of these things exist in a future that will never come to be, for it is on Kolovan that the Ultramarines will halt the hive fleet.
‘It is on Kolovan we will avenge every death the xenos have inflicted, and have yet to inflict. Though the tyranid does not feel emotions as we do, know that it will feel despair when its hope of threatening the beating heart of the Imperium is blunted here. It is fear it will know to witness the Ultramarines undoing its grand gambit, and it will know hatred as we drive it from this world with blade and bolter. These things we will teach it, my brothers! For as we shall know no fear, we shall bring fear to that which has never known it!’
The sermon carried far in the cold, still air of the night. By day the desert was baked by the cruel sun, but by night it bled all its heat out into a clear sky and became chill enough to kill an unprepared human.
‘In the name of the Primarch and the Emperor Most High,’ began Cassius, ‘let the eve of battle be the prelude to our triumph.’
Cassius only needed to speak the first line of the prayer. It was one of hundreds every Ultramarine knew by heart, for they were collected in the Codex Astartes, and there was not a warrior present who had not memorised the sacred texts of the Primarch Guilliman. As the brethren kneeled in prayer, Cassius looked from one to the other – they wore their helmets even away from combat to counteract the planet’s toxic air, but he could still tell them apart by the squad markings and the nicks and dents in their armour.
Cassius was the oldest member of the Ultramarines aside from those who resided now in Dreadnoughts, and every member of these two companies had been recruited, trained and made into a Space Marine after Cassius had gone through that same process. Many of them he had chosen himself from the tribes and civilisations of Ultramar. He had found Captain Galenus of the Fifth in an interhouse war among the lesser aristocracies of Macragge, and spirited him away as a youth after he had slain four grown men in duels over his fallen house’s honour. Captain Fabian had been born to Talassarian sea tribesmen who fought an unending war against rival seaborne nomads and the monsters from the planet’s depths.
Cassius had shepherded them and dozens of others into the Chapter, and through battlefields without counting. To those battle-brothers he was the first Ultramarine they had ever seen in the flesh, and they still looked to him as an emblem of everything the Chapter represented.
As the prayer concluded, the strike force split up to attend to their wargear rites and private prayers. Cassius and the other officers of the strike force had set up a tactical holo-cartography chamber in one of the prefabricated hardened buildings. The buildings had been dropped from orbit along with the first of the Ultramarines’ vehicles. Captains Fabian and Galenus were already inside. The holomat was projecting a flickering map of the surrounding topography, unrolled in a broad swathe of grainy light. Blue icons hovered over the Ultramarines’ landing zone, marking the locations of the strike force’s units.
The hologram zoomed out, revealing the contours of the planet. Adverica was south of Kolovan’s equator, the smallest and least populated of the world’s three primary continents. Its rocky, tortured interior was ringed by dense rainforests to the sweltering north and a region of active volcanoes along the southern edge. The continent was divided by a deep fissure, and the expanse of land was sparsely dotted with settlements and industrial installations. Adverica’s three major cities were clustered along the northern shore, each with a population of several million. In that region the toxic air was counteracted by the atmospheric conversion towers along the coast, which filtered out the worst of the poisons to render the region habitable on a large scale.
It was very likely that every single Imperial soul in those northern cities was already dead. The tyranids had already swarmed across Estenia and Oriobis, the two larger western continents, overrunning whatever pitiful defences the now-deceased planetary government had managed to throw together. The population would have been hunted down and slaughtered. Then the feeder-beasts would have descended, consuming every scrap of biological matter on the surface, churning the corpses of a hundred million loyal servants of the God-Emperor into a gene-broth to be siphoned up by the xenos’ circling hive ships. Cassius had seen it happen to a hundred worlds, had read archives of data and analysis from the Imperium’s foremost experts on the tyranid menace. Every time he thought the fires of his hate for this foul species could burn no brighter, he found new fuel for his rage.
For now, they could only hope that the tyranids had not yet established their digestion pools and harvesting organisms on Adverica. If they had done so, and if they gathered enough biomass from the population, they could spread to infect dozens of nearby worlds, including planets of major strategic import such as Ryza. And then, too vast to stop, they could continue on world by world, on a pathway that would eventually lead them straight to Terra. This planet was already dying, but if they could hold the tyranid advance here, its death could at least serve to prevent other Imperial worlds from suffering the same fate.
‘Shipmaster Vanheuten has forwarded the geo-survey from orbit,’ said Captain Galenus as Cassius entered.
‘How are the men?’ asked Fabian. He was a veteran of the old breed, with his solid, grizzled face now revealed since he had removed his helmet. He had an open, agreeable look, and the men of the Third trusted him absolutely.
‘Their souls are sound,’ said Cassius. ‘The engagement with the xenos has roused their spirits.’
‘Name me an Ultramarine who doesn’t enjoy shedding tyranid blood,’ said Fabian. ‘I am more concerned with them losing focus and pursuing vengeance above victory.’
‘Then rein them in,’ said Cassius. ‘That is the burden of your command. The depth of our brothers’ hatred is from where they draw their greatest strength, and I shall bring those depths to light.’
‘We have to revise the next stages of the assault,’ said Captain Galenus, cutting to the quick as usual. Galenus was a straightforward soldier with little time for the weapons of symbol and sermon. ‘The tyranids hold more ground, and closer, than we anticipated. Their immediate objective on Adverica is the biomass of the northern coast. Once the xenos have a complete grip on this continent they’ll use aquatic bioforms to cross the ocean and take the rest of the planet.’
‘That’s what we’re here to prevent,’ said Fabian.
‘But they can put pressure on us here,’ continued Galenus. ‘This foothold isn’t a fortress. A major concentration of tyranids is gathering to the east past the fault, and they can mass against us with very little notice.’
Cassius fell silent, studying the geographical data intently, searching for something, anything, they could use.
‘This fault,’ he said, pointing at the gouge in the earth that separated Adverica from coast to coast in a great horizontal slash. ‘Is it stable? The geometry of this region suggests it has a history of volcanic upheaval.’
‘The geo-survey indicates that to be the case,’ said Fabian. ‘Energy readings suggest that Kolovan’s outer core is especially volatile. Earthquakes would be common in this region, close to the fault.’
Cassius nodded, and looked at Galenus and Fabian in turn.
‘As things stand, the tyranids can pour into this trench, cross it with ease and encircle us on the southern side,’ he said. ‘We must deny them this option.’
The two captains looked at each other.
‘You suggest we cause some sort of tectonic fracture?’ said Galenus.
‘I suggest exactly that,’ said Cassius. ‘We tear this continent in two and we drown the tyranids’ eastern swarm in the waters that pour in to fill the breach.’
There was a silence. Then Fabian laughed. ‘Fighting alongside you is always an enlightening experience, Chaplain. I will contact Shipmaster Vanheuten, tell him to start working on a bombardment plan.’
Cassius shook his head. ‘This will require greater precision than our vessels’ guns can provide,’ he said. ‘Do we have any heavy ordnance on board the Defence of Talassar? A siege device, or something similar?’
‘She carries a complement of cyclonic charges, I believe,’ said Fabian. ‘Used to undermine the structural foundation of major enemy fortresses, softening them up for artillery strikes.’
‘Contact the ship,’ said Cassius. ‘And send for Techmarine Lephaestus. Few are as learned in the art of siegecraft. He will know where to strike.’
‘This will buy us time,’ said Galenus. ‘But we still need to break the back of the main tyranid swarm in the west.’
‘So I see.’ Cassius followed the icons on the holomap. The enemy stained the north-western region of Adverica like a cancer. ‘If we are not swift, they will become too strong for us to crush.’
The tyranids on Kolovan were in the early stages of invasion, with basic combat organisms commanded by warrior-forms, but as time went on the more specialised organisms would be dropped from the hive ships or birthed from the nutrient pools. The tyranids would adapt to the strike force’s arrival and evolve new forms and weapons to fight their enemies – denser muscle fibre to drive claws through ceramite armour, heavier exoskeletal layers to turn aside bolter fire, swifter scout forms to detect their movements, and siege-beasts to overturn their tanks. The pattern had been repeated across thousands of worlds caught in the path of the tyranid hive fleets. It would happen on Kolovan too, if the Ultramarines did not shatter the tyranid force now.
‘So we must split our force,’ continued Cassius. ‘One half to the fault line with the charges, one half west to hold their advance.’
‘It is the only path available to us,’ said Galenus.
‘Then our purpose will see us through,’ said Cassius.
‘I shall take the Third westwards,’ said Fabian. ‘I know my battle-brothers would be glad to see Chaplain Cassius marching with them.’
‘I would not deny them the chance to tear out this infestation at its root,’ said Cassius.
‘And what kind of captain would I be,’ said Fabian with a smile, ‘if I denied them the sight of Lord Cassius smiting the foe?’
Cassius did not respond to that, and activated the controls at the base of the holo-projector. The map zoomed in to the region west of the Ultramarines’ foothold. The topography was as tortured here as the rest of the continent. Jagged valleys had been carved out of the desert, the largest of which formed a wide channel through which the massed horde of the tyranids could pour through into the heart of Adverica. From the centre of the image, facing the southern entrance of this great valley, rose a craggy mass of rock, solid where the rest of the region was shifting and broken.
‘Here,’ said Cassius. ‘A defensible structure. This canyon is the logical path through to the heartland. The xenos will pass through it. If we seize this position we can bottleneck the swarm, and thin their numbers before they reach us.’
‘It’s pre-Imperial,’ said Fabian. ‘Some kind of ancient fort built into the rock. Looks rugged enough. Acceptable lines of fire.’
‘That will be our objective,’ said Cassius.
‘Agreed,’ said Fabian. ‘By dawn we will have enough Rhinos dropped to transport both companies to their assigned mission zones. Still time to pray, Lord Chaplain.’
‘Then I will lead, for those who desire it,’ said Cassius. ‘Come the dawn we will strike out. And brothers, our souls will be prepared.’
The rising of the sun saw twin columns of Rhinos leaving the Ultramarines’ foothold and the protection of its automated guns.
Even with the main complements of the Third and Fifth Companies gone, the drop zone bustled with activity. By now a crew of labour-servitors had been dropped in landers to shore up the defences, along with a squadron of gun-servitors to further deter tyranid incursions. Sergeant Verigar, who had lost two fingers of his right hand in the cleansing of the landing zone, remained at the base camp with a small detail of Ultramarines, and it was one of his squad that spotted a new fleck of darkness in the sky above.
‘Has it opened communication with us?’ Verigar asked Brother Morvion, who was operating the vox.
‘Aye, sir,’ Morvion replied. ‘It’s a Mechanicus vessel, the Castraneta, requesting landing.’
‘Finally they show,’ muttered Verigar. ‘One ship should turn back the tyranids, I’m sure. Give them authorisation to land. Let’s see what they want.’
‘It’s bleeding fuel and spewing smoke,’ said Morvion. ‘They’ve taken a bad hit.’
As the ship descended the gun-servitors turned their heavy stubbers skywards and Verigar ordered the sentry guns recalibrated to face the unexpected arrival. No sense in taking unnecessary risks. As the ship descended it coalesced into the shape of a small, swift cutter in burnt orange livery, belching smoke from a crater torn in its rear engine.
The cutter landed inside the Ultramarines’ foothold, and Verigar ordered the servitors to hold fire. Up close, some sort of elaborate iconography that Verigar could not place was visible on the side door of the cutter that now opened to allow a figure in deep orange robes to disembark.
Sergeant Verigar waited as the new arrival stepped out onto the dry earth. An honour guard of once-burnished valet servitors descended after him, now stained black by the thick smoke.
‘Greetings, Space Marine,’ said the newcomer in a voice that sounded like the grinding of steel blades.
The leader was roughly humanoid, though like most members of the Mechanicus he had been extensively augmented. One of his arms was fully mechanical with a complex claw incorporating several different tools, while the other was human but with flesh the blue-grey of a corpse. His head was hidden in a deep hood into which led several wires and cables, attached to the brass-cased rebreather unit mounted on his hunched back. His robes were patterned with bands of crimson and embroidered with mottos in the obscure alphabet of Lingua Technis. The human hand held a staff of office carved from ivory and topped with a brass cog.
‘I am Magos Xenopathologis Uranios Rothe,’ the figure continued, ‘representing the archmagi of Blessed Ryza.’
‘Greetings, magos,’ said Verigar. ‘Sergeant Verigar of the Ultramarines Third Company. I would ask you to explain your presence here.’
One of the scorched valet-servitors shuffled forwards and unfurled a pennant covered in intricate heraldry, comprising several hundred lines of binary code surrounded by laurels and cogwork.
‘I am a representative from Adeptus Mechanicus research complex Zeta-Epsilon Twelve,’ Rothe said, ‘located one point zero three miles underneath the northern city of Harienza. Approximately seventy-four hours ago the tyranid swarm consumed the last vestiges of the city’s militia regiment, and we were forced to enact emergency lockdown procedure Alpha-Three. We request your assistance in evacuating personnel and equipment of great importance.’
The magos looked at the blazing ruin of his cutter. The promethium tanks that fed the engine had ruptured, and flames now wrapped the entire vessel. The metal of the cockpit hissed and groaned, and collapsed in on itself, sending another tongue of flame shooting into the air.
‘It is unlikely that my own transport vessel will suffice,’ Rothe said.
‘My commanders are taking the fight to the tyranids,’ said Verigar. ‘They will be informed of your arrival. But this is no rescue mission, magos. The Ultramarines are here to contain the xenos threat, not extract survivors and lab gear.’
The magos released a lengthy splutter of binaric that Verigar did not understand. He guessed that it was not entirely complimentary, and his eyes narrowed.
‘Sergeant,’ Rothe rasped, ‘the research that is being carried out at Zeta-Epsilon Twelve is of the utmost importance. I must demand your immediate assistance in securing it.’
Verigar looked the tech-priest up and down.
‘I’ll explain this very clearly, magos,’ he said, emphasising every word. ‘This is an Ultramarines operation. You do not make demands here. Unless you have a spectacularly good reason for us to retrieve it, your precious data can rust and rot as far as I’m concerned.’
The magos released another indignant blast of binaric, accompanied by a faint whirring sound as he clenched and unclenched his bionic claw.
‘I have no time for your obstructive attitude, sergeant,’ said Rothe. ‘For the last twenty-nine years, seven months and eighty-six hours, I have been working on a theoretical model for the large-scale application of bacterial pathogens designed to flood a xenoform host with lipoglycan endotoxi–’
Verigar held up a gauntlet.
‘What do you mean? Biological weapons?’ he asked.
‘That is a most reductive interpretation,’ replied Rothe. ‘The implications go far beyond simple biological warfare. My research could lead to a new understanding of the physiological susceptibility of the xenoform to biosynthetic microbes.’
Verigar nodded thoughtfully.
‘It will still have to wait,’ he said.
Rothe spluttered so much that the sergeant genuinely thought a vital gear had come loose somewhere inside his mechanical form.
‘Magos,’ Verigar said, patiently, ‘recovering your research data will make no difference if the tyranids break through into the mainland and overrun our position before we can utilise it. As we speak, the Third and Fifth Companies are rushing to slow their advance. I will contact Captain Fabian and inform him of this information. When he and the Third Company return, we will discuss your findings.’
Verigar glanced from the cutter to the distant plume of smoke and dust vanishing eastwards, in the wake of the Third Company’s advance. Maybe the Adeptus Mechanicus had a weapon that could deliver Kolovan. Perhaps the Ultramarines would shatter the xenos hold on the world and the weapon would not be needed. Whatever the outcome, a great many tyranids would have to die first.
At the edge of the Transadverican Canyon, looking out to the rocky wastes on the eastern side, it was possible to appreciate how complete the tyranid infestation had become. The far side teemed with tyranid battle-organisms, from the masses of scuttling termagants and ripper drones to lumbering siege-forms that served the hive mind like tanks served the armies of the Imperium. Clouds of steaming spores, the cast-offs from the tyranids’ rapid evolution, rose into the air and cast an uncharacteristic shadow across the desert.
Captain Galenus leaned from the upper hatch of his Rhino and held out a hand. Discoloured water pattered against the palm of his gauntlet.
‘I wonder how many years it has been since this desert last saw rain,’ he said.
‘The tyranids twist everything they touch,’ said Sergeant Kytheos, who led Galenus’ command squad.
‘They hurl spores and bio-organisms into the skies,’ said Galenus. ‘They torture the earth and reshape it to suit their own foul needs. This planet is dying, and these are the symptoms.’
‘They will burn for this,’ said Kytheos. ‘All of them.’
The canyon itself was six thousand metres deep, formed by a join between the two main tectonic plates that made up the Adverican continent and carved deep by long-dried rivers. Dozens of exposed strata spoke of the planet’s troubled geological history. From the eastern desert the tyranids were spreading north into the equatorial plains, and westwards to link up with the concentration that was heading towards Cassius’ objective.
The eastern desert would have to be cleansed. If Cassius and Fabian could hold back the advance of the main assault, the strike force could reconvene and mop up the eastern infestation while it was occupied trying to force itself a way to the coast. It would be driven into the sea and Kolovan would be delivered. But first, the Ultramarines had to split the tyranids and ensure they were not surrounded.
‘The Defence of Talassar reports that the Stormraven is on its way,’ said Kytheos. ‘The charge will be down in less than four minutes. Vigilant Beta has a visual.’
‘All units!’ voxed Galenus. ‘Move to Vigilant Beta’s position! Make ready to engage!’
The Fifth Company’s ten Rhinos gunned their engines and rode up over the ridges of the broken desert, wheeling northwards and driving parallel with the edge of the Transadverican Canyon. The xenos host stirred as the roar of engines echoed between the stratified canyon walls. Winged tyranid scout-forms flittered out over the far side of the canyon, already swooping towards the armoured column like carrion birds expecting a meal.
The Stormraven Ausgustia, launched by the Defence of Talassar and flown by Brother Axil, the company’s finest combat pilot, roared overhead of the column, and came to rest several dozen metres from the lip of the chasm. The Rhinos circled the landing site, top hatches opening for the Ultramarines inside to mount storm bolters and scan the sky for potential threats. Others disembarked from bulky access doors that clattered open on the vehicles’ sides, weapons readied. Galenus was the first out, running over to the Stormraven, accompanied by his command squad and Techmarine Lephaestus.
Usually designated as transport vessels for squads of Space Marines, this particular Stormraven had been customised to transport an even deadlier payload. The bullet-shaped cyclonic charge was nestled in the craft’s rear grapples, which had been reinforced and buttressed by criss-crossing plasteel girders in order to provide a secure carriage for the ship’s volatile cargo. The charge itself was almost as tall as a Space Marine, and measured a good couple of metres in width. Its rough steel casing was etched with holy scripture. The red-armoured Lephaestus used the servo-arm attached to his armour’s backpack to pry open a panel on the side of the device, beneath which was a series of arcane data readings.
‘Is it intact?’ Galenus asked. His command squad were already forming a defensive line and the rest of the strike force were creating an impromptu defensive position anchored by their Rhinos.
‘There is no breach,’ replied the Techmarine. ‘Let the Omnissiah be praised. The machine-spirit is fit for libation.’
‘Be quick about it,’ said Galenus, who had little time for the ceremonies taught to the Techmarines by the priests of Mars.
Tyranid war-forms were already scuttling across the canyon floor towards their position. The Ultramarines formed up in firing lines on the ridge, directed by their sergeants to create overlapping fields of fire in the direction the tyranids would approach from. Galenus watched the precepts of the Codex Astartes being ticked off in his mind, the angles and mathematics of combat falling across the battlefield in a mental map, the endless streams of battle-lore spooling through his memory. Mutually supportive firing zones. The reserve ready to swing up and create a crossfire. The assault units preparing to charge through the tactical units and counter-charge the tyranids. Guilliman himself could not have drawn the battle lines more sharply.
Techmarine Lephaestus scattered sacred machine oil from an aspergillum onto the cylinder. It spat and hissed where it touched the still-hot casing. Lephaestus murmured in High Gothic as his servo-arm held up a data-slate with numbers streaming across its glowing screen. He turned to the captain.
‘We will need to take the device down into the canyon,’ he said.
Galenus cursed. Of course.
‘It needs to be primed and placed at exactly the right point,’ Lephaestus continued. ‘We must create a nucleation zone of catastrophic size at a point where the mantle of the planet is weak enough for the detonation to bring about a seismic event.’ He held up the data-slate. ‘Readings suggest that there is such a point one thousand, two hundred and thirty-five metres across the canyon floor, a shallow depression where the crust of the planet is brittle and thin.’
Twelve hundred metres. That would buy them some time, thought Galenus. The canyon was five kilometres across at its narrowest point, which meant that the tyranid swarm would take several minutes to reach them.
‘Captain!’ came a vox from Vigilant Gamma. ‘We have airborne organisms coming across the canyon towards our position.’
Galenus turned to see the shadow lifting up from the far side of the canyon. It consisted of scores of winged scout-forms, dubbed gargoyles, surrounding a larger winged creature that trailed a nest of barbed tendrils from its underside. It was the size of a fighter craft, and the gargoyles whirled around it as if it was on a bombing run and they were its escorts. Time was running out.
‘Assault Squads, to me,’ Galenus roared, signalling Brother Axil in the Stormraven to fire up his engines. ‘Brother Axil, you will take me and my command down into that canyon. We will hold off the tyranids long enough for Techmarine Lephaestus to place the charge.’
The captain turned to the Assault Marines, who were led by the veteran Sergeant Rullus, a big man even by Adeptus Astartes standards, with a shaven head and a vicious burn mark across the left side of his face. He wielded an eviscerator chainsword in two hands, holding the heavy, cumbersome weapon as easily as if it were a child’s toy.
‘Follow us in, sergeant,’ Galenus said, ‘and form up around the Stormraven. Buy us time.’
Rullus nodded grimly. He knew the risks here. Without the support of the rest of the company, they would be horribly exposed on the open ground of the canyon floor.
‘Sergeant Vorrux, lead the rest of the company away from the detonation area. You cannot help us here, and we must maintain a second front in case something goes wrong. Get well clear, but keep the engines running – we may need you.’
Dust was thrown up in great plumes as Brother Axil gunned the flyer’s engines. The Stormraven’s access ramp lowered, and Galenus and his squad thundered into the transport hold. The captain felt his stomach jolt as the gunship lurched into the air, and grabbed a restraint harness to steady himself. As they passed the lip of the chasm, Axil threw the Stormraven into a steep dive, abandoning a smooth, safe flight in favour of expediency.
In the Stormraven’s wake, Sergeant Rullus and his Assault Marines charged to the cliff edge and hurled themselves into space, firing their jump packs as they went. The burn of their thrusters sent the Space Marines soaring in a wide arc towards the canyon floor thousands of metres below, which rushed up to meet them eagerly. With judgement honed from thousands of airborne assaults like this, each Ultramarine tempered his terminal velocity with periodic bursts from his jump pack. Their timing was so precise that each came down to earth in a sprint, hurtling towards the Stormraven that was circling the landing zone ahead.
‘Guns live!’ shouted Axil over the vox, swinging the gunship around to face the aerial assault, which was bearing down directly towards them. The lead tyranid flyer’s face split open, revealing a cannon barrel grown from its oversized tongue. Its forelimbs were adapted into scything blades that could slice a tank in two.
There was a chattering roar as the Stormraven opened up with its forward-facing assault cannons. Clouds of bloody smoke erupted along the tyranid line as mass-reactive rounds found their targets and detonated, sending shards of metal and shredded chitin ripping through the airborne swarm. Axil’s gunner loosed a missile which left an arcing contrail as it zoomed towards the lead flyer. The massive creature dipped its wings at the last possible second, and the missile flew past and impacted in the gut of a bloated horror with two obscene weapon-growths protruding from its torso. A gout of flame and the resulting supersonic shock wave tore the creature to bloody chunks and rippled through the smaller creatures trailing in its wake, sending dozens toppling from the sky.
In a daunting display of piloting skill which Captain Galenus swore he would cite for commendation if any of them made it out of this alive, Brother Axil cut the Stormraven’s forward motion and raised the nose of the craft, descending the remaining dozen metres or so to the target zone while still maintaining a full cannonade at the onrushing tyranids. As he reached the torn, jagged canyon floor, Axil lowered the forward ramp, and Galenus and his men poured out.
Ahead they could see the tyranid infantry hurtling towards them, only a few hundred metres away now. Protrusions of igneous rock provided some cover, but the canyon floor ahead of them was largely open. Behind them, to the rear of the gunship, the ground sloped down slightly to form a crater several metres across. This was the spot Lephaestus had recommended. The Techmarine was already using his servo-arms to detach the grapples that secured the cyclonic charge. Galenus and Brother Hetrus ran to his side, and together the three began to drag the device to the centre of the crater.
Brother Axil cursed over the vox, and Galenus looked up to see a shadow fall across them. The monstrous flyer descended, jaws stretching wide to reveal a colossal weapon-organ that dripped with foul bio-acids. The monster’s skin was pockmarked and blistered by bolter fire, but still it came on, seemingly unconcerned by its ruptured flesh. Living missiles detached themselves from the creature’s wings and hurled themselves at the Stormraven. Metal screamed and shattered as they impacted, and arcs of electricity wracked the cockpit. The tyranid spat a stream of acid from its mouth-cannon, and the vitriolic spray hissed as it splashed across the gunship’s viewport, washed over the top of the vessel and splashed across the Space Marines dragging the charge into place. Galenus growled in fury as he felt the acid sear into his gorget. Warning runes flashed up on his visor’s tactical display, and he blinked them away in irritation. The shadow passed over them as the tyranid flyer swept around in a great arc, lining itself up for another attack run.
Brother Hetrus was down. Galenus went to roll him over, and saw the smoking, melted ruin that used to be his face. The acid stream had hit him directly. Lephaestus was also sprawled on the ground, though Galenus could see him dragging himself to his feet, plasma pistol raised in one hand.
‘The device!’ Galenus shouted. The air was filled with the smell of scorched metal and seared flesh. Lephaestus staggered and fell against the cyclonic charge. His armour was smoking, the cog icon on his breastplate that marked him as a servant of Mars had melted away, and Galenus could see raw, red flesh beneath. The Techmarine pulled at the panel on the side of the device. It curled and came apart in his hands.
‘The activation panel is gone,’ Lephaestus gasped, his voice taut with agony. ‘Melted away. I intended to set the timer myself, once we had it in place.’
Galenus grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘Can we still detonate it, brother?’
The Techmarine looked at him and nodded slowly.
‘I can,’ Lephaestus said. ‘Manually.’
Galenus growled in frustration, and struck the canister with a gauntleted fist.
‘Please, captain,’ said the Techmarine, ‘Do not manhandle the device. Its spirit is angry enough already.’
Galenus could not help but smile. He clapped Lephaestus on the shoulder.
‘We will buy you the time, brother,’ he said.
‘It’s coming back around,’ Sergeant Kytheos shouted, bounding down the slope towards them. He had his custom bolter in hand and Galenus drew his power sword. It had a short, broad blade in the tradition of Macragge, with the symbol of his Chapter in lacquered blue on the hilt.
‘Brothers!’ he shouted. ‘We cannot yield this ground!’
Behind whatever cover they could find at the top of the slope, the Ultramarines let loose a barrage as the gargoyles passed into firing range. Dozens fell as the precision taught on the firing ranges of Macragge picked them out from the sky. The gargoyles returned fire from the fleshborers formed from their limbs and Galenus unhitched the storm shield hung on his back to fend off the hail of ravenous organisms. They splatted and thunked into the shield, and he glanced with disgust at the way they wriggled feverishly in the dirt where they landed around his feet. The enemy flyers dropped lower, and the barrage ceased as they picked up speed, skimming towards them across the ground. Closer they came, closer and closer…
‘They close to blade range,’ shouted Kytheos. ‘Scores of them.’
Galenus shook his head. They were only eight men. Where were the Assault Marines?
His question was answered by the throaty roar of a firing jump pack. Sergeant Rullus and his force met the tyranid flight in mid-air, hurtling over the heads of Galenus and his men to crash into the gargoyles with the bone-cracking force of their momentum. Rullus swept his eviscerator in a wide arc, and simply let the oncoming organisms dismember themselves on its teeth. More Space Marines hurled themselves into the fray. Swathes of flame enveloped enemy creatures, sending them crashing to the ground in heaps of screaming, burning flesh. The crack of bolt pistols and the grinding tear of impacting chainswords was a blessed symphony to Captain Galenus’ ears.
The captain drew back his shield and thrust his blade up to meet a gargoyle bearing down on him. The blade sheared through its forelimb and the creature was on him in a flapping of wings and snapping of teeth. Galenus got his shield under it and flipped it off him to the ground, despatching it with a sword-thrust to the throat. The power field burst to rip its head clean off and leave its upper torso a mass of torn and oozing organs.
The stench was awful. It was not just foul, like the rancid effluvia of a city, though that was bad enough. It was inhuman, a cocktail of chemicals that had not formed by any natural process in this galaxy, for the tyranids – the Inquisition hypothesised – were from another region of space entirely, and had drifted to this one after aeons dormant in the void. If there was ever proof of the utter disconnect between the tyranids and any living thing in the Emperor’s galaxy, it was the stink that billowed out of that torn organism, scorched by the swords’ power field and free to flood out across the desert rocks.
As his brothers tore into the smaller creatures, Galenus hacked around him to open up enough of a space to take stock of the situation. The shadow of the huge flying creature swooped closer, lower than before, aiming not for the stricken Stormraven, but for Galenus himself. The captain leapt up onto a nearby spur of rock to give him an extra metre or so of reach.
The bio-cannon extended from the huge flyer’s jaws. Its tiny yellow eyes were focused on Galenus. The captain stood his ground, daring the creature to open fire at him, daring it to rake down at him with claws and tendrils.
The bio-cannon belched another mass of fizzing acid. This time Galenus threw his shield up in front of him taking the weight of the blast against it, planting his back foot to keep himself upright under the torrent. He could feel the hiss of decaying ceramite as acid ate through the front of the shield and stray gobs of it bubbled against his armour.
The flyer let out a rising shriek as it closed. Galenus threw the ruined shield aside and raised his sword. The flyer’s tendrils unspooled beneath it in a forest of writhing flesh, and twin blades sliced towards him. He swung his sword overhead and felt the impact as it smashed through the first blade in the flash of the discharging power field. The captain leapt to one side as the second blade whistled over his head and the tip of his sword punched up into the thick, fibrous tissue of its wing root.
The sword carved through the base of the flyer’s wing. Tendrils whipped and twined around Galenus’ limbs as the sword bit deeper and finally came free, the half-ruined wing left useless.
The flyer, unable to gain height again, dragged Galenus with it as it slammed into the ground. Galenus rolled with the impact, kicking free of the tendrils and forcing the weight of the creature off him. The rest of the command squad leapt onto the beast, with Kytheos pumping half a magazine of bolter fire into the side of its head. The flyer died butchered on the ground by the bolters and blades of the Ultramarines.
They would hold, but not for long. Galenus could not order them to defend this position indefinitely. The leading edge of the tyranids’ ground swarm had already reached the forward line of the Assault Marines, and Galenus could see brothers going down under the mass, chainswords still swinging defiantly.
Time. It was always about time. There was never enough.
‘Lephaestus!’ shouted Galenus. ‘What is the status?’
‘The machine-spirit approves of activation,’ said the Techmarine. ‘This will work.’
Galenus was about to order Lephaestus to blow the thing, when he heard a crackle over the vox.
‘Captain,’ said Brother Axil. He sounded like hell, his words thick and wet as if he was choking them out through a mouthful of blood. Possibly he was. ‘Ausgustia still lives. She’s taken a hell of a beating, but she can make it out.’
Hope. The Emperor saw fit to dispense it at the most unlikely moments.
‘Fire the engines, brother,’ Galenus shouted. ‘Sergeant Rullus, do you hear me? Retreat, back to the gunship.’
The captain sheathed his sword and ran through the mass of torn flesh and entrails which was all that remained of the huge tyranid flyer. A few of the gargoyles still lived and fought on by instinct, flapping and screeching as bolter fire stuttered up to shoot them down, but the aerial assault had been blunted. Ahead, the screen of Assault Marines held the ground swarm at bay, but they were too few to occupy the tyranids for long.
‘Captain,’ Rullus shouted over the vox. ‘Get clear. We cannot pull back, we’re surrounded. We’ll make them pay, Captain, for ev–’
Rullus’ voice was drowned out by the crack, crack, crack of a bolt pistol discharging, and a hissing, alien shriek so high-pitched that it reverberated around Galenus’ skull, shaking his teeth. There was nothing to be done. The swarm enveloped the Assault Marines, who stood tall and proud, true Ultramarines to the end, as a torrent of flesh washed over them. Galenus could see flashes of glorious blue amidst the hideous pale, swirling mass of warrior-organisms. His soul ached, and he wanted nothing more than to charge into the fray to aid his brothers, but he could not leave the Fifth Company leaderless.
‘To me!’ he shouted, and his command squad filtered back into the hold of the Stormraven. Brother Phiron had lost a leg, and was being carried by two of his fellow warriors, still roaring oaths of vengeance as he went. Four more of Galenus’ most trusted warriors would never leave this canyon. There was not even time to secure their gene-seed.
As the last of the Ultramarines staggered aboard, Brother Axil kicked the gunship’s thrusters and it rose into the air, screeching in protest and raining fragments of twisted and warped metal onto the canyon floor. As the ramp closed and the Stormraven swung back towards the southern wall of the canyon, rising slowly, Galenus caught one last glance of Techmarine Lephaestus, slumped next to the cyclonic charge, gun in hand, one servo-arm tearing at the metal canister. Lephaestus raised one arm to his chest in salute. Then the ramp rose to cut out the harsh yellow sun of Kolovan, and he was gone.
‘Mars will hear of your sacrifice, brother,’ the captain whispered.
Techmarine Lephaestus watched as the tyranid horde rushed towards him. Did they know, he wondered? Was the wretched alien consciousness that gave them motion aware that its doom was at hand?
By the Omnissiah, his chest hurt. He was a veteran of a hundred campaigns on a thousand planets, but he had never felt such pain. He could still hear the hiss of the bio-acid as it ate at his flesh, devouring his insides with hateful efficiency. Breathing sent a torrent of agony flooding through his body. A lung had collapsed, then. That was probably one of his less catastrophic injuries.
It did not matter.
The captain, Emperor protect him, was clear, and the Fifth had hopefully retreated far enough that they would escape the coming cataclysm.
His servo-arm tore away the plating at the side of the canister, exposing wiring and circuitry, the beating heart of the cyclonic charge. This was not the right and proper way to send such a blessed device about its holy purpose, but Lephaestus hoped its vengeful machine-spirit would understand.
As a shrieking tide of foul creatures swept down the slope of the crater towards his ruined form, Techmarine Lephaestus placed the barrel of his plasma pistol against the exposed interior of the charge, and fired.
The canister delivered from the Defence of Talassar was a fortress-killer, a bluntly efficient warhead capable of ending potentially brutal sieges before they had even begun. Each cyclonic charge contained a cluster of gravitational explosives that created a chain reaction, seeking out the densest material and ripping it apart until the reaction died out far within a planet’s crust. Even the most solid foundations would be torn asunder, and the resulting tectonic upheaval would collapse fortified enemy positions with contemptuous ease. In sufficient numbers, they could rip a planet apart. A single charge could not destroy a world but, when deployed at the right location, it could rearrange the surface of one.
It detonated at a critical spot in the base of the Transadverican Canyon. The first rippling band of explosions tore a hole into the earth, driving the inner bundle of gravitational munitions into the ground. A plume of dust and pulverised tyranid corpses was thrown into the air, rising high above ground level.
The ground shuddered. Fissures opened up in the broken earth and chunks of rock toppled into the yawning depths. The canyon wall on the far side of the chasm sloughed off in great chunks, spilling dozens of bio-forms into the abyss. They kicked and squirmed uselessly as they fell. With a terrible sound like the planet itself groaning in pain, the gravitic charges went off and a shock wave of rapidly changing density radiated outwards deep into Kolovan’s planetary crust. Strata of the densest rock liquefied. Thousands of cubic kilometres of sedimentary stone were turned to dust.
The far side of the canyon dropped thousands of metres in just a few seconds. The tyranids gathering there vanished in a mass of pulverised rock that rose in an enormous black cloud. The canyon itself was torn open like an old wound, rippling heat distorting the dust clouds billowing above it as molten rock rushed up from below. A huge sheet of lava was hurled into the air as the canyon was forced open still wider.
The rumbling decreased in volume and pitch as it reached the lowest depths of the planet’s crust. The lava’s pressure was spent and the shuddering halted. The detonation and accompanying earthquake had widened the canyon by half a kilometre and transformed the surrounding area, further breaking up the rocky desert, collapsing ancient underground caverns and riverways and opening up new voids beneath the earth.
It went quiet, for a time. The initial shockwaves and eruptions faded to a low rumble.
But it was not over.
The rushing sound came from the north. It was quiet at first, mingling with the rattling grind of the Stormraven’s engine, but Galenus’ enhanced hearing picked it out as it rose. A white plume breached the horizon as the waters approached.
The Transadverican Canyon did not reach quite to the coast. There, the tectonic plates overlapped to form the highlands of the rolling equatorial rainforests. But the cyclonic charge changed this, tearing the canyon open to the coast and beyond, breaching the limits of the northern ocean. The waters were first flashed to steam by the burst of lava from below, and then rushed in to fill the new, dry river that had opened up, reaching right through the centre of the continent.
The waters poured in from the south, too, where the polar ocean inundated the networks of caves and underground lakes suddenly opened up by the plate margin’s opening. But it was from the north that the torrent came fastest. It roared past the site of the battle, carrying thousands of organisms living and dead to be battered to pieces against the jagged rocks. The flow rushed back and forth, ripping tonnes of rock off the canyon sides and further opening up the new bleeding wound across the continent.
‘Relay to Cassius’ force,’ said Galenus into the vox over the sound of the rushing waters, loud even here as they soared out over the open desert. ‘The cyclonic charge detonated successfully. Objective accomplished.’