There was neither celebration nor sorrow among the Tyrannic War veterans when they were roused from their cells and duelling circles, and summoned to the muster deck of the Defence of Talassar. They did not express joy that they were going back into battle nor anger at the losses inflicted on their number at Sigma Fortulis. There was only a sense of purpose and determination that accompanied them as they gathered on the cavernous muster deck. It was unvoiced, of course, but Cassius could read it in his battle-brothers as if it had been inscribed on their armour.
‘I thought I’d killed my last tyranid here,’ said Brother Etriades as he took his place alongside the others. The fact that he was standing at all was astonishing. The wounds that he had suffered under the blades of the Swarmlord had been vicious, but none had managed to keep him in the medicae. His missing leg had been replaced with a cumbersome, claw-like bionic and his armour had been hastily repaired, though great gouges were still torn across the greaves and chestplate.
With some reluctance, Soemnus had cleared him for duty. The Apothecary had also been seconded to the assault team, and now stood eyeing Etriades warily, his chainsword in hand. Soemnus had served a term in the Deathwatch, the chamber militant of the Ordo Xenos, and Cassius had welcomed his experience of tyranid biology.
‘None of us have killed our last tyranid,’ said Sergeant Remas. ‘There are always more.’
‘Not always,’ replied Brother Pharron. ‘One day, they will be gone. We won’t be here to see it, but we will prevail.’
‘Or we will live through mankind’s death throes,’ added Kilrian, ‘and go down fighting as the Kraken devours us. Either way, we fight.’
‘That’s the spirit, brother,’ said Brother Errath. ‘Nothing like an optimistic frame of mind.’
Metal clicked on metal, and Cassius turned to see Magos Rothe, heading towards him, clutching a pair of devices in his hands. One was a small, steel cylinder, with an open gap in the middle through which a pale, swirling liquid could be seen. The other was a device that looked much like an auspex, though bulkier and rough-edged, as if it had been hastily constructed from whatever spare parts came to hand.
‘Lord Chaplain,’ said Rothe, presenting both items. ‘I have made some calculations, and I believe I have a way to help you locate the hive ship’s energy cortex.’
Cassius took the pathogen vial and handed it to Soemnus. The other device was heavy in his hands. As he held it, he noticed a series of pulsing readings scroll across its data-screen.
‘This is a customised dosimeter,’ said the magos. ‘It will locate and track large pulses of energy in the immediate vicinity. I have programmed it according to the latest data that the Adeptus Mechanicus has obtained regarding tyranid bio-vessels, but it will not guide you directly to your objective. Rather, it will keep you heading in the right direction. Operation could not be simpler.’
He point to a brass button on the side of the device.
‘This switches it on,’ he said.
Cassius heard Etriades snort with laughter. Rothe glanced back at him in surprise.
‘Once it is active, the process is automated,’ he continued. ‘It is a crude device, but given our limited time span it is all I can offer you.’
‘My thanks, magos,’ said Cassius.
Rothe lingered, burbling softly in binaric.
‘May the Omnissiah guide your steps, Chaplain,’ he said at last. ‘Our time together has been… illuminating.’
‘We are departing imminently,’ said the Chaplain. ‘You should vacate the muster deck.’
‘Your chances of success would appear to be minimal,’ said the magos, finally. ‘But I believe you can complete your mission. I have witnessed the Ultramarines in battle, and they are capable of subverting even the most vicious odds.’
‘Commencing approach vector,’ came the artificial voice blaring over the ship’s vox-casters. ‘All crew to stations, stow and brace.’
‘Let’s get this suicide mission underway then,’ said Kilrian.
The strike team filed into the nearest of the boarding torpedoes that were arrayed facing the muster deck’s enormous blast doors. Each torpedo was a huge cylindrical vehicle with clusters of engines around its stern and midsection, and multiple drill heads on its prow like the gnashing teeth of some enormous parasite. Each had the name of a fallen champion of the Ultramarines stencilled on its hull, as if those long-dead Space Marines were striking a final blow against the enemy.
Cassius joined the veteran squad in embarking onto their boarding torpedo. It was as cramped inside as the drop pods the force had used to assault Kolovan.
‘Twenty-one or twenty-two?’ asked Errath as the squad bolted in to their restraint harnesses. He gave Etriades’ augmetic leg a kick, and there was the dull clunk of ceramite on steel.
‘Twenty-one,’ said Remas. The rest of the Veterans nodded in affirmation.
‘Dare I even ask?’ said Apothecary Soemnus.
Kilrian chuckled. ‘Brother Etriades’ noble left leg is the twenty-first limb to give its life in defence of the Imperium from the tyranid menace since the inception of Veteran Squad Remus,’ he said. ‘We go through them almost as quickly as we do battle-brothers.’
The torpedo shuddered as the deck’s blast doors opened outside. Inside, each torpedo was little more than a steel tube with several restraint harnesses, now lit red by the warning strobes that indicated an imminent launch. The Ultramarines put on their helmets and strapped themselves in to the grav-compensator rigs along the side of the troop compartment.
‘Thus we first ventured to bring war to the stars,’ said Cassius. ‘As Guilliman and the Emperor led us in the Great Crusade. Thus we were created, to fight in the void as no man could. Now those ten thousand years vanish and we fight as those first of us did. The foe has changed but we have not. Our ancestors fought with honour and fury, and mercy to them was a sin. And just as they taught the galaxy to bow before the Emperor, so we shall teach the Kraken to know fear.’
As one, the Tyrannic War veterans struck gauntleted fists to their breastplates.
‘For Macragge and for Sotha!’ they roared. That was all that was said. That was all any of them needed to remember.
With stomach-lurching force the rear engines fired. The torpedoes sped towards the starboard side of the hive ship and the slits in its skin that Vanheuten’s crew had identified as likely gills. There were few obvious ways into the hive ship and the jaws were out of the question given the forest of feeder tentacles that surrounded them. The colossal tendrils would snatch up any foreign objects that strayed within range and drag them into the vessel’s maw to be digested. The dorsal organism pits and the gills were the strike force’s best chances, but they offered a probability of success well below certainty.
So much was up to chance. Guilliman had written in the Codex Astartes of the perfect battle for Space Marines to fight – an isolated or unprepared enemy, vulnerable to the surgical strike with overwhelming speed and strength. It was for such a battle that they had been created. But Guilliman had also written of the imperfect battle, where they did not have the luxury of perfect intelligence, a choice of battlefield or an ignorant enemy. There, it was the valour and discipline of the Adeptus Astartes, their aggression and toughness, that would see them through.
This, Cassius was certain, could be classed as an imperfect battle.
‘The Kraken took Sotha and left nothing but dust and ash behind,’ said Sergeant Remas. ‘Every surviving brother swore their own oath of vengeance against the enemy. I know I am not truly a brother to any of you, but hear my oath now. I will not stop fighting until every tyranid is dead. I know this means I will die fighting them. This I welcome, for there is nothing left in this galaxy now but a death in pursuit of my vow.’
‘You seek death,’ said Fandralus.
‘If you see it like that,’ replied Remas. ‘Take it or scorn it. It is said.’
The torpedo shuddered and the thrusters tilted it onto its final trajectory, aiming for the dark slashes in the vast organism’s side.
The hive ship dwarfed the Defence of Talassar. It was bigger than the mightiest Imperial battleships. Getting lost inside, far from any vital organ, was one of the biggest dangers the Ultramarines faced.
‘Final approach,’ came the synthesised voice of the servitor-pilot. ‘Brace. Brace.’
The lighting in the torpedo went dark. The crude vessel shuddered as the retro-firing engines burned. What followed was a moment of total silence as the engines cut off completely, relying on the optimum inertia of the torpedo to carry it through the last few hundred metres of void.
Cassius could hear the twin drumming of his hearts – one human, one a gene-cultured augmentation.
A sudden scream told him the prow grinders were active. Their note changed as they struck flesh and Cassius’ restraints fought to keep him from being flung free by the deceleration and the sudden impact. His stomach lurched, even his transhuman physique battered by the violence of the breach.
Warning runes flickered from the readouts on the walls. An alarm tone warbled from the prow. The grinders continued, the sound deepened by the greedy gurgle of flesh being chewed through.
Then the grinding halted. The alarm sounded for a few moments, then cut out.
‘Ready yourselves,’ said Cassius. ‘Think of our brothers on the surface, and know that if we fail here they will surely die.’
With a shriek, the torpedo’s prow was forced open into three petals of gore-coated steel. Into the torpedo rolled a toxic miasma of poisons and spores, the foetid exhalation of the Kraken. Warning runes flicked on inside Cassius’ helmet as its filters were pushed to maximum.
‘Throne alive, that stench,’ snarled Brother Kilrian.
‘Just be grateful you can breathe it,’ said Tiresis. ‘If our filters can’t cope we’ll be running on internal oxygen. That will cut this mission very short indeed.’
‘Then we’d better kill it quickly,’ said Pharron, thumbing his combi-weapon over to its flamer setting and briefly sending a soft orange light dancing across his armour.
The Ultramarines unbuckled their restraints and the flashlights mounted on their shoulder-plates illuminated the interior. The torpedo had entered the hive ship’s gill and bored through several layers of whalebone-like material to reach a cavity inside. The walls were covered in fine whitish cilia and irregularly-spaced breathing orifices that opened and closed like dumb mouths. The passageway continued up ahead, joining the honeycomb of the hive ship’s lungs.
The gravity was low. This high in orbit, Kolovan’s mass had only a slight effect. Cassius had to kick himself off a wall to get clear of the torpedo’s opening and arrest his motion by digging an outstretched hand into the soft, mucusy substance of the wall. Space Marines were trained to fight in low gravity, but it was still far from the Chapter’s standard mode of battle.
‘There is rhythmic energy activity towards the prow,’ said Apothecary Soemnus, studying the dosimeter. ‘Powerful activity. From the readings I would suggest we head that way.’
‘Then we move,’ said Cassius.
‘General advance, full spread!’ said Remas over the vox. ‘And keep your eyes open. Every corner could be a threat.’
The veterans led the way through the heaving, fibrous mass of the hive ship’s interior tunnels. They moved rapidly through the minimal gravity, pulling themselves along by the hair-like cilia covering the walls. The old training in zero-gravity environments over Macragge returned to them rapidly as they half-marched, half-swam through the confines of the hive ship.
Minor organisms, pale finger-sized worms or flittering insects that trailed long tendrils, fled as the Ultramarines passed. There was no telling how many billions of organisms lived inside the hive ship, specialised to function like the cells in a human body. And just as the body reacted to fight infection, so the ship would fight the Ultramarines.
‘Contact!’ came the cry from Brother Pharron, at the tip of the formation.
They were passing through a narrow membranous corridor, wide enough only for them to advance single file. Cassius, third in formation, could not see what was approaching, but he heard the roar of his combi-flamer and heard an alien screech of agony.
‘Contact!’ voxed Brother Tiresis, bringing up the rear. More sounds of battle reached the Chaplain’s ears, this time the acid hiss of enemy bio-weapon fire, and the crack of a power weapon impact.
Cassius cursed, unable to move forward or back, but desperate to engage the enemy. He did not have to wait long. A wicked, arm-length blade slashed through the membrane wall before him, and curtains of flesh peeled back to reveal several tyranid warrior-forms, pale and sickly-looking, loops of mucal slime trailing from their bodies to the wall of the cramped channel through which they came.
Cassius aimed Infernus at the chest of the leading creature and opened fire.
‘Holy Throne,’ whispered Brother Lyrun.
Mesa Varenus, the most populous habitation centre on the continent of Adverica, had been efficiently wiped from the face of Kolovan. Once, its bustling streets would have been thronged with citizens on their way to another day of hard labour in the belly of the great factory-blocks, or to offer their midday prayers in the sprawling temple district. Looking at what now remained, it was hard to believe that just a few weeks ago it had been a functioning Imperial city.
Up close, the capillary towers that the tyranids had created were horrifying in scale. They reached so high that they pierced the swirling clouds of spores that hung over the city, stretching and curving upwards like barbed, arachnid legs. On the open ground below the towers, Galenus could see the repulsive digestion pits, great lakes of grey-brown liquid that bubbled and frothed with chemical activity. So close to the city the sky was dark and clouded, striated with pale fingers of toxic yellow light as Kolovan’s sun stubbornly tried to pierce through the nightmare that had enveloped the planet.
Everywhere they looked, the enemy writhed. The hormagaunt infantry-forms were so numerous that it was impossible to pick a single creature out from the sea of off-white flesh. Tyrant-forms stalked through the swarm of bodies, and great, four-legged feeder organisms spewed fresh slurries of biomass into the pools of broken-down matter.
‘There must be millions of the cursed things,’ said Brother Dariun, peering out of the command Rhino’s viewing port.
The Fifth Company was stationed behind a ridge roughly a kilometre from the city and the tyranid feeding structures. Ahead of them was a flat, dry plain of cracked earth, perfect terrain for an armoured assault. There was no time for a complex tactical approach – the full force of the company’s tanks had been drawn up to lead the assault, while the Rhinos containing the Tactical squads would follow behind, discharging their cargo of Ultramarines right into the gut of the enemy force.
‘When Captain Fabian is in position we will be across that plain and into their ranks before they even realise they are under attack,’ voxed Galenus, addressing the entire company. ‘Do not stop, not for a single moment. Victory here depends on our momentum. We must strike hard and break through to the towers before the enemy can mount an effective defence.’
‘Captain Galenus,’ said Sergeant Kytheos. ‘The Third is in position. Captain Fabian awaits your signal.’
Galenus nodded. ‘Let us begin,’ he said.
‘All units, advance, cruising speed!’ Kytheos shouted.
‘Flamers to the fore!’ shouted Cassius. ‘Burn them to ashes!’
Cassius flicked the fire selector on his own combi-flamer just as a hideous six-limbed creature rounded the corner before him. Genestealer. The tyranid species was an enigma to the average Imperial citizen, but stories inspired by this particular xenos beast had been propagated on a thousand worlds. Tales of entire populations disappearing one by one, dragged into the darkness by razor-sharp claws, tales of terror and bloodshed. Some of these whispered nightmares were embellishments, exaggerated to scare mortal children away from dark and dangerous places. Some were not.
The creature leapt at Cassius, and he torched it in mid-air, turning slightly as he did so to let its burning, screeching body crash past him. He turned to finish it, but saw Sergeant Remas set himself and swipe his sword across in a vicious backhand slice. The genestealer’s smouldering head came free and its corpse toppled into the ankle-deep fluid that seeped into the chamber.
‘We’re lost, Chaplain,’ Remas shouted as Pharron and Kilrian rushed past, sending sheets of flame down the hall before them. ‘Soemnus says the signal is growing weaker again.’
There was no time to reply. More genestealers slithered from access cysts in the low ceiling, dropping with a splash into the filthy liquid and scrambling towards the Ultramarines, wicked claws leading.
Sergeant Remas blasted away at one with his bolt pistol, but they were damned fast. Cassius saw him go down, sending up a great gout of brackish liquid as he fell. The other went straight for the Chaplain. He stepped back, accepting a slash on his forearm from the creature’s serrated foreclaws. Its second set of arms swept at his belly, trying to open up the ceramite and spill his guts. Cassius jabbed his crozius forward, letting the winged tip of the weapon crunch into the genestealer’s face.
His enemy’s swing missed, and it rocked back, staggered by pain as one of its hateful, deep-black eyes dripped down its angular jaw. Cassius did not waste a moment. He flicked Infernus back to its default fire mode and shot the creature in the face. Bone and blood sprayed across his vision. He turned to help Remas and saw the Scythe of the Emperor pull his power blade free from a dead genestealer’s skull. Cassius helped the sergeant to his feet.
‘We have to move,’ Remas said. ‘If we halt, they surround us.’
Cassius growled in frustration. Wherever they ran, the enemy found them, and they had no idea how close they were to the energy cortex.
‘We push forward,’ he said. ‘There is no turning back.’
That was a practical point as much as a metaphorical one. Genestealers and warrior-forms harried the rear of the squad, pouring from chambers that the strike team thought cleared. Second-guessing their original decision to head towards the maw of the ship would only slow them down and allow the tyranids to cut them off completely.
The squad reformed, Kilrian and Pharron pushing ahead through the tattered remnants of a wall-membrane into the next arterial channel, flamers leading the way. Here the flesh-walls were near a hundred metres in height, stretched so taut that they looked almost human in design. Only the faint ribbing of what looked like capillaries running along the channel, and the faint, rainbow shimmer of chemically reactive lighting gave away their organic nature. That and the smell, though the entire ship reeked to Cassius, even through the filtration mechanisms on his rebreather.
‘Clear,’ said Pharron, flicking his combi-weapon back to the bolter mode. He and Kilrian moved forwards, faster now.
There was a sound like tearing cloth, loud and coming from behind the Ultramarines. Cassius turned.
Behind them, near the membrane they had entered through, the flesh-walls had torn open at floor level, releasing a flood of milky-white fluid. The rent in the skin of the ship was tearing towards them, and through the gap poured a tide of slavering, fist-sized organisms with barbed, tapered bodies, each of which culminated in a yawning, fang-filled mouth.
‘Rippers!’ yelled Brother Tiresis, and Cassius heard the roar of his plasma pistol as he fired into the swarm of bodies. ‘Move!’
Thousands of them bore down in a living wave, filling the channel as if the hive ship were drowning in a sea of them. The tear in the flesh-wall outpaced the Ultramarines, and suddenly the tide of organisms was in front and to their flanks, as well as behind. Cassius fired a prolonged gout of flame into the mass and in the low gravity it flowed like water, sluicing up the chamber sides, billowing like incandescent smoke as the walls blackened and flaked away.
The wave hit him. He was aware of Brother Etriades beside him, slashing with his twin chainblades. The burning mass of rippers swamped Cassius and he swept around him with his crozius, letting the power field erupt to blast a hole in the solid mass of writhing, biting bodies.
The vox was alive with curses and grunts of pain. Someone screamed.
‘Squad!’ came Remas’ voice. ‘To me! Grenades away!’
Cassius fired again and the flame washed back over him, rebounding off a solid mass of the diminutive creatures. He kicked off the wall beside him and slammed into the opposite one, the lung tissue giving way beneath his impact. Rippers were crushed and fell aside. Cassius rolled in place, trusting in his armour to hold against the flames and struck out again with his crozius. He could see nothing but the segmented limbs and flesh-tube bodies of the rippers trying to chew through his faceplate. The only sound aside from the vox was the grinding of tiny jaws against his armour, his own breathing and the hammering of his hearts.
Frag grenades burst all around. Cassius batted more rippers with his crozius and saw a hand reaching for him. It caught him around the collar and dragged him out of the tide. Cassius glanced round to see Brother Kilrian hauling him clear, firing his combi-flamer one-handed into the swarm. Dozens were caught in the spray of fire, and the blackened walls of the lung chamber crumbled into a haze of black-grey ash.
‘Keep moving!’ ordered Cassius, clambering back to his feet.
The veterans had thinned the first wave of rippers. Morvion’s chainblade was already trailing streamers of shredded muscle and the air was full of torn flesh and blobs of ichor. Cassius could see only a couple of metres through it – even Kilrian beside him was just a shadow against darkness.
They were blind. Blind and surrounded, in the belly of the foe.
The door-membrane at the far end of the corridor had sealed. Cassius made to strike it with his crozius, but Brother Errath put a hand on his shoulder and stepped forward with his multi-melta. He blasted streams of white-hot energy into the fleshy substance, and it warped and melted in the unimaginable heat. Errath kicked through the charred and twisted remnants, and Cassius could see more clearly as the veterans forged up a gently sloping mound of muscle, with pale blue, pulsing glands hanging from the ceiling like stalactites. Ahead, the ceiling rose sharply, and Cassius could see more of the strange growths hanging a few dozen metres above. Across the floor were spread several strange shapes, like fleshy petals, splayed across a hole in the chamber floor. These pulsed with the same blue energy as the growths, and they curled inwards slightly as the Ultramarines came forward.
Kilrian entered the room, bolter sweeping to the left. As he brought it back across, a pale white blur slammed into him from the right, bearing him to the floor. Ceramite screeched as the genestealer dug its claws into Kilrian’s back, scratching, rending and tearing. Blood sprayed, and Cassius heard the snap of bone. He rushed to his stricken battle-brother and slammed his crozius into the genestealer’s skull. It collapsed, twitching, on top of Kilrian.
He turned, looking for Apothecary Soemnus, and something slammed into his gut with fearsome force. He folded and was forced backwards. He felt claws digging into his armour, into his flesh. He could see the genestealer’s stinking, snarling face and smell its rotten breath. He tucked his legs behind its own, holding the creature close and trying to bring it down, trying to angle his bolter to put a bullet through it. Something sharp tore into his side and left a searing shard of agony in his flesh.
He headbutted the creature, once, twice, and then they were rolling, clawing and punching at each other. Something else grabbed at his leg, and he roared in fury as he felt its powerful strength wrap around his body and drag him across the floor. Distantly, he could hear the deep thud of bolter shells and the battle-oaths of his brothers. Still he was pressed together with the genestealer, and as it snapped and screeched in his face, he saw a thick fold of corded muscle wrap across them both, enveloping them in a cocoon of stinking xenos meat.
Cassius suddenly felt a constricting pressure so great that he thought every bone in his body would break. Then the darkness claimed him.
Roaring his faith in the Emperor and his love of glorious Ultramar, Captain Fabian charged across the shattered remnants of Mesa Varenus at the head of the Third Company.
‘Forward to glory, brothers of the Third!’ he roared. ‘First to battle! First to glory!’
To their left, Galenus had crashed into the tyranid ranks, lascannons and autocannons blasting ceaselessly as the two formations of tanks peeled left and right, forcing a gap into the enemy force through which came the infantry in their armoured vehicles. The ramps came down and disciplined Ultramarines squads emerged, marching in tight formations that punished the massed ranks of the enemy with ceaseless volleys of mass-reactive rounds. As they advanced, the tanks and artillery pieces began to hammer the thickest clusters of enemy organisms. The three Vindicator siege tanks, meanwhile, slung high-explosive rounds towards the closest capillary tower, which shuddered and groaned under the vicious barrage.
It was a heroic assault that could have been taken directly from the pages of the Codex Astartes, but it would only be a matter of time before the tyranid swarm recovered and surrounded the Fifth’s vulnerable flanks, enveloping the company and preventing any ordered retreat.
Already, Fabian could see the enemy moving to do just that. Led by a towering tyrant-form with a serrated bonesword in each plated fist, a formation of xenos warriors was sweeping around to the south, entering the outskirts of the ruined factory district through which the Third advanced.
The tyrant screeched as it saw the ranks of Ultramarines charging across the rubble towards it. A weapon-organ protruded from its gut, and spat a bolt of sizzling acid that hissed through the air towards Fabian. He veered right, and the projectile smashed into a rubble pile behind him, burning through the shattered stone and sending shards flying through the air to rain off his power armour.
They were only a dozen metres from the tyrant’s force now, and Fabian raised his plasma pistol to fire. It spat a bolt of flame that missed the tyrant by a hand’s width, and burned through the skull of a tyranid warrior behind it. Fabian cursed. How in the Emperor’s name were you meant to hit a thing with these wretched augmetics? Bio-weapon fire spattered off his battleplate in return.
Behind him, perched in whatever elevated positions they could find amongst the shattered and broken towers of the destroyed industrial zone, Devastator squads began to rake the tyranid force with heavy bolter fire and missiles. Smoke trails criss-crossed over Fabian’s head, and he felt the shudder of an impact shock wave run through him as the projectiles detonated, sending up great plumes of churned earth and flesh.
Then Fabian was amongst them, hacking and stabbing with his power sword. The tyrant strode through the storm of fire towards him, smashing aside its fellows disinterestedly as its coal-black eyes bored into him. Fabian blasted a termagant into ash, ducked a swinging claw-scythe and decapitated a screeching monster with a spinning slash. He turned and levelled his blade at the tyrant-form.
‘You wretched creatures took an eye and a limb from me here,’ he said, advancing steadily, wide smile hidden by the mask of his helm. ‘I’ve a mind to return the favour.’
The light rushed back in to Cassius’ eyes, and he struck something hard enough to force the breath from his lungs. For a moment he experienced a disorientation more severe than anything he had felt before, as his brain attempted to sort out up from down, left from right. He was covered in a stringy mucus-like substance, and his vision was blurred.
His mechanical orb picked out a wide, spherical cavern, dark and quiet aside from the steady drip, drip of viscous fluid from a pulsating sphincter set in the wall. He stepped forward, and his boot crunched into something.
At his feet was a tyranid. A genestealer, probably the one he had been grappling with. It lay broken on the floor of the cavern. The lower half of the alien’s torso was a crumpled mess, and its left leg kicked and twitched.
A gruesome injury, and one that gave Cassius some idea of what had just happened. The xenos’ injuries – aside from those he himself had inflicted upon it before he blacked out – were consistent with extreme pressure trauma. Had the Chaplain not been protected by his power armour, he would likely have suffered the same fate.
The chamber throbbed with a peristaltic motion. Cassius stepped back, raising Infernus as the dripping sphincter on the wall bulged. A hulking black shape was vomited forth, and crashed into the Chaplain, knocking him to the floor. He rolled with the impact and came up with Infernus levelled.
He stared into a slime-coated black helm, pockmarked with a hundred battles’ worth of scars, burn marks and dents.
‘Chaplain,’ gasped Sergeant Remas.
The cavern heaved again, and another shape fell to the earth. Apothecary Soemnus dragged himself to his feet, covered in mucus but still clutching the antiviral cylinder.
‘That,’ he said, ‘was a singularly unpleasant experience.’
‘The others,’ said Cassius, ‘where are they?’
‘Kilrian and Pharron fell,’ said Remas. ‘Errath took a bad hit. He stayed to rupture the ingress sphincter after we’d gone through.’
‘You knew what it was?’
‘Not my first time on a tyranid vessel, Chaplain,’ said Remas. ‘It looked different, but when you were dragged through I could take an educated guess.’
The sergeant moved to the membrane door leading out of the chamber, and hacked through it with his power blade. It seeped a foul, milky-white liquid as he carved it apart.
‘We should move,’ he said. ‘Brother Errath has bought us time, but there will be more tyranids converging on this location.’
‘Apothecary, the dosimeter,’ said Cassius. ‘Have we strayed further from our target?’
‘Closer,’ said Soemnus. ‘The pulse is more powerful. I can feel it through the vessel itself – can’t you?’
Cassius could. It was faint, but every few seconds there was a deep, rumbling throb that ran through the chamber in a compression wave of air. The pools of fluid that covered the chamber floor rippled slightly.
‘We’re near,’ said the Apothecary.
‘Then let us hurry, brothers,’ said Cassius.
A vast, dark space opened up before them as they stepped out of the chamber onto a long, narrow walkway formed of twisting sinew. Below was nothing but darkness and empty air, though Cassius could see other sinew bridges stretching across the cavern all around them. Along the ceiling, which was curved and shadowed like that of an immense cathedral, clustered masses of pustule-like growths and trailing masses of fibrous tendrils, flowing in the low gravity as if underwater.
They were half way across when Cassius paused. A cold shiver ran down his spine. Slowly he turned, and looked up and out across the abyss.
It was there, some two hundred metres above him and out across the cavern, crouched on one of the sinew bridges. It was looking right at him.
Its body was softer, dripping with birth fluids and other vile matter, and it was paler than before, but Cassius would remember those the sickening nausea of its psychic presence until the day he died.
‘The Swarmlord,’ whispered Remas, stepping to his side.
‘It lives,’ said Cassius.
How was that possible? He had seen this thing die twice, had seen it left crushed and broken on the ground. And yet still it stood before him. There could be no mistaking it. He felt the old urge again, the need to kill the abomination, to crush it so thoroughly that it could never spread its foul influence across any corner of the galaxy ever again.
The Swarmlord turned away from the veterans and strode across the sinew bridge towards the chamber they had entered from. As it reached the cavern wall, a membrane yawned wide to let it pass. It paused, turned to stare back at Cassius one more time and the Chaplain felt the throbbing in his skull build to a crescendo. Then the repulsive presence drained from his mind, and the creature was gone.
‘We kill it,’ said Remas, starting forward and drawing his combat knife. ‘We can scale that cavern wall. It’s made from soft organics, and the low gravity will help with the weight of our armour.’
‘No,’ said Cassius.
Remas stopped, and turned.
‘What?’
‘No,’ Cassius repeated. ‘Let it go, sergeant.’
‘For Sotha and for my Chapter,’ shouted Remas, smacking the hilt of his power sword against the scarred and pockmarked image of the twin Scythes he wore on his shoulder. ‘You cannot deny me this.’
‘Our duty lies in our mission,’ said Cassius. ‘That mission is clear.’
‘That is not what you said at the fortress,’ retorted Remas. He gestured at Cassius with his power sword. ‘You knew our vengeance meant more than any mission! You ordered us from our posts and you destroyed the Swarmlord!’
‘I know,’ said Cassius. ‘And I was wrong.’
Without another word, the Chaplain made his way across the bridge, away from the Swarmlord. Apothecary Soemnus followed. After many moments, so did Sergeant Remas.
The second capillary tower fell. The Fifth Company held off the increasing numbers of tyranids long enough for the Vindicator tanks Proethus, Vengeance of Calth and Dominus to launch a sustained barrage. Their demolisher cannons fired, loud enough to burst eardrums. Detonations rippled along the base of the tower. Proethus scored a direct hit on the centre of the structure, sending a storm of chitin shards scything through the tyranid swarm, slicing in half those creatures not instantly incinerated by the force of the detonating explosives. The rest of the tower fell in segments, each crushing scores of swarming tyranids as it crashed to earth.
A cheer went down the Ultramarines’ line, only to be cut off as a counter-barrage from tyranid artillery beasts lurking behind the main enemy force struck home. Bio-plasmic rounds seared through the thick armour of Dominus, rocking the venerable tank on its tracks. A second barrage struck the breach that the first had created, and the Vindicator’s ammunition bay went up. The detonation was incredible. A mushroom cloud of flame and dirt split the tank apart, and sent the wreckage of the Dominus crashing into the Proethus. A vicious shock wave sent the closest Ultramarines battle-brothers sprawling, and the concussive force ruptured the brains of the weaker tyranid organisms, dropping dozens of them where they stood.
‘We’re pushing through to the third tower, Galenus,’ Fabian voxed to his fellow captain, shouting over the ringing in his ears. ‘Sweep around to the northern digestion pool.’
The combined attack of the Third and Fifth had brought down two of the alien towers and targeted the southern digestion pool so thoroughly with artillery and heavy weapons fire that most of the foul liquid within had been super-heated and evaporated, leaving little more than a brown-grey morass behind. Fabian saw tyranids mired in the swamp of broken-down organic matter, struggling weakly, unable to pull free.
But ten towers still remained, and the tyranids brought more and more of their foul xenoforms to the field with every passing moment.
‘Come on, Chaplain,’ whispered Fabian. ‘Give us something.’
‘Captain!’ came a shout from behind him. He turned, and saw Sergeant Vorrel gesturing to the south-eastern edge of the battle.
A phalanx of bipedal tyranid warriors sliced into the Third Company’s right flank, taller than the swarm-creatures, and armed with boneswords and heavy weapon-organs that vomited forth storms of living projectiles. Fabian saw brothers fall, and cursed as the tyranid warriors charged into the gaps in the line, laying about them with their vile blades.
Cassius grabbed the tyranid warrior’s chitin blade, ignoring the pain as its monomolecular edge cut into the flesh of his palm, and crushed the creature’s skull with an overhead swing of his crozius. Behind him he heard the roar of Remas’ bolt pistol, and the grinding, tearing sound as Apothecary Soemnus sunk his chainsword into enemy flesh.
They had pushed even further into the depths of the ship, and now the regular pulse of energy was a punch to the base of the skull that disoriented and sickened. Cassius felt blood trickling from his eyes and nose. They could not stay here for long. Even their transhuman resilience was little defence against the devastating power that gave this foul vessel life.
‘Ahead,’ gasped Soemnus, swaying as he staggered forward. They were in a cylindrical hallway comprised of hundreds upon hundreds of thick, muscled tubes that pulsed and surged. Remas knelt at the entrance, power sword stabbed into the floor, reloading his bolter with trembling hands.
‘Go,’ he said, and Cassius could hear the blood filling his mouth. ‘I will hold here.’
Soemnus and Cassius made it, step by step, to the end of the hall. Soemnus swept his chainsword through another wall membrane. Beyond was a vast mass of dark red muscle, a bundle of looping sinew and ribbed, fleshy tubing taller than two Space Marines. It was topped with a glowing blue crystal that burned with an unnatural light so fierce it hurt Cassius’ eyes to look upon, enveloped in a thick mass of spongy neural tissue, wrapped and entwined like deep-sea coral. Above them, soaring through the darkness, was an enormous branching mass of arteries and veins that would pump oceans of ichor through the hive ship with every deafening throb of the heart.
It pulsed again.
Cassius staggered and gasped, hit with a shock wave of unimaginable force. It shook his bones, grabbed his brain and crushed with the force of a power fist. He teetered and felt himself swaying. He coughed blood.
Soemnus was face down in the damp floor of the cortex chamber. The cylinder containing the antiviral rolled free from his limp hand.
Cassius tried to stand, could not, and fell back on his hands and knees. The world swayed around him. He was dimly aware that there was something he needed to do. The antiviral.
He crawled forward, grabbed the cylinder, and with a surge of furious defiance, he hauled his battered body upright. He took a step forwards, then another, stepping over the prone form of the apothecary. He heard the hideous wails of the xenos in the distance, interspersed with the bark of a bolt pistol. The pistol fell silent, and Cassius felt his fury rising. No more brothers would die at Kolovan. He hacked into the muscle of the energy cortex and discharged the power field of his crozius and the toughened flesh splattered across his amour.
He could have struck his blow in the name of Macragge, of all their fallen, of the dead of Kolovan or all those who had fallen prey to the Kraken. But the scale of the tyranids’ crimes against the Imperium was too vast for mere words. So Cassius said nothing as he rammed his fist into the muscle of the organ, felt it reach into an open chamber beneath, and released the antiviral into the heart of the hive ship.
Galenus rolled with the impact of the strike, splashing through a rivulet of foul biomatter. The stench of the vile fluid filled his nostrils. He rose, slashed an onrushing creature to the ground, reversed his grip and drove his blade through its back. The hive tyrant came forward again, swiping its heavy talon across so fast that the captain could not bring his blade up to block.
Ceramite sheared, and Galenus was thrown backwards. Armour-breach warning runes flashed across his helm, and the breath was torn from his chest. The tyrant came forwards, and brought its right talon back for another slash. There was a blur of blue and gold armour, a sharp crack, and the creature’s arm flew free. Captain Fabian barrelled in, power sword hacking and carving. It tried to dodge the furious assault, fending off the vicious sword with its remaining limb.
Galenus staggered to his feet, ignoring the agony in his chest, and drove his own blade deep into the creature’s thigh. It arched its back and screeched, sinking to its haunches. Fabian took his blade in two hands and sliced through the tyrant’s mouth. The top of the skull fell free with a spurt of grey-white fluid.
‘My thanks, brother,’ gasped Galenus, as Fabian put an arm around his back, holding him upright.
‘Don’t thank me too soon,’ Fabian said. His voice was grim, and as Galenus surveyed the battle, he saw why. The tyranids had flanked the Third, pushing them back until they formed an island of blue armour with the Fifth. Several tanks had been reduced to smoking wrecks, and the enemy was already swirling around to envelop the Ultramarines’ position entirely. Flying organisms hurled acid and bio-chemical rounds into the packed ranks of Space Marines, who now had no chance at all of reaching the remaining feeding towers. It was over.
‘This is it, then, brother,’ said Galenus. ‘Let us take as many of these wretched creatures with us as possible.’
‘The Third and Fifth side by side until the end,’ said Fabian, checking the charge of his plasma pistol. ‘How fitting.’
Galenus drew his combi-melta. Ahead of the two captains, the mass of the enemy swarm was hurled aside as something bulldozed its way through. With a deafening roar, three enormous siege-beasts crushed their way towards the Ultramarines, talons sweeping both tyranids and Space Marines aside. Fabian and Galenus raised their weapons to fire.
They never did. Only a few metres away, the three siege-beasts staggered, suddenly off-balance. The momentum of their charge sent the leading beast sprawling, digging up a channel of earth as its colossal weight scraped across the churned ground. It wailed, a bizarre sound coming from such a hulking, monstrous creature, and thrashed its talons. The other two beasts pulled up short, as if entirely unaware of their surroundings.
Galenus and Fabian did not stop to wonder at their good fortune. They rushed to the fallen siege-beast, driving their power swords deep into its skull, again and again until it fell still. The other two creatures roared, and began to slice at the nearest object they could lay their eyes upon. One started hacking and tearing at the smoking ruin of a Predator tank, pounding and beating at the inanimate metal. The other turned on its own kind, carving a path through the swarming hormagaunts.
‘What in the name of the primarch is going on?’ asked Fabian.
Galenus looked around. Only moments before, the tyranids had been pressing them mercilessly on all sides. Now the creatures milled, uncertain and distracted. Some still fought, but others turned back into their own ranks, or stood, dazed, as the Ultramarines’ weapons cut into their flesh.
‘The Chaplain!’ said Galenus. ‘He must have deployed the antiviral.’
‘It doesn’t matter what has happened,’ said Fabian. ‘This is our chance! All squads forward, now, assault formation. This is the moment, brothers! This is the hour of Kolovan’s vengeance! Forward to victory!’
Roaring battle-hymns and oaths of vengeance against their hated enemy, the Ultramarines of the Third and Fifth Companies tore into the disorganised tyranid ranks.