Carcharodons: Outer Dark

by Robbie MacNiven

  The entire strike, from start to finish, had taken just over four minutes.

  As he switched back to his Phobos bolter, Kordi wondered at the fury of the assault. There were few enemies in the galaxy, from brute greenskins to chittering Q’Orl, that would have held against such focused brutality, let alone continued to attack in the face of it. The cultists, however, seemed utterly without fear or sense of self-preservation, driven on by a fanatical zealotry not even the Ministorum’s most bombastic battle preachers could have hoped to inspire. It spoke volumes of the threat such cults posed, and the hypnotic, corrupting power of the genestealers themselves. The hundreds of lives already expended by the cult in Absolution Square meant absolutely nothing to the patriarch and its magus.

  Kordi offered a terse prayer to Rangu as he opened fire once more, asking that the cult’s masters reveal themselves before they ran out of ammunition.

  The face of the daemon in the undercroft was the stuff of nightmares. The flesh was white but bore a hideous latticework of black veins. Its eyes smouldered like coals, burning from within deep, haunted sockets, and a distended jaw gave way to a maw filled with hundreds of slender, needle-like fangs. As its features were revealed it let out a terrible shriek and launched itself at Khauri, dragging the incorporeal shadows after it.

  Rannik fell to her knees, Vox Legi clattering onto the bare stone floor. Her hands gripped her skull and a scream was torn from her lips as the daemon’s screech flooded her mind with memories she had thought long suppressed, adding to the nightmare realisation that she was in the presence of a predator from the warp. Suddenly she was back on Zartak, in among the darkness and the dead, a single pistol shot ringing out from a high domed ceiling. She could smell the rot and see the pale, dead faces with their staring eyes and clutching, frozen fingers. She could hear the horrid crunch of heavy boots stepping uncaringly across a carpet of bodies. The low whine and whir of servos, the scrape of their battle­plate. Worse, the snap and crack of the lightning that shrouded their armour, like the bleakest, blackest midnight made manifest.

  If the daemon’s assault struck into Khauri’s memories as well, he did not show it. As she hit the ground, Rannik was vaguely aware of the Space Marine throwing himself forwards to meet the creature’s attack, his stave describing an arc of fiery blue illumination. Rannik saw nothing more, her eyes screwed tight shut as she sought to fight back against the tide of nightmares made real around her, but she heard the shuddering crack of an impact, and the explosive force of a psychic discharge.

  ‘Libera nos, salva nos…’ she began through gritted teeth, speaking the prayer Welt had taught her in an effort to control her nightmares. The words wouldn’t come, though. There was only the memory of Zartak, and the black, aching presence of the daemon that dominated everything with its warp-cast shadow.

  She forced herself to open her eyes and raise her head, slowly. Khauri and the daemon fought at the centre of the crypt, their power crumbling old stone statues and splitting open ancient tombs. The Carcharodon was wreathed wholly in the blue fire, his pale skin like a conductor for the energies that snapped furiously from his fingertips and around his stave. The creature that flitted about him was darkness personified, somehow immune to the light, its shrieks accompanied by the raking of claws that tore at and doused the Librarian’s flames.

  Slowly, Rannik reached out, her teeth gritted, her hands trembling. Slowly, her fingers found the stock of her Vox Legi. She gripped it, raised it. She was making a keening noise, low down in her throat, a primal expression of terror coupled with the mindless determination of a being pushed beyond breaking point. Knuckles white, she racked the shotgun’s slide. Amidst the crackling of arcane energies and the wailing of the damned, the cold, precise noise was a strange comfort. It gave her focus.

  The daemon had shrunk back from Khauri. Neither warp creature nor Carcharodon seemed able to fully land a blow, their psychic wills nullifying one another. As Rannik sought to master her thoughts, shotgun still in hand, the daemon drew more shadows into its incorporeal form. Before the eyes of the human and the Space Marine it began to harden and grow in stature, the darkness forming wicked spines and the memory of hanging, torn flesh. An unearthly groan suffused the crypt. Khauri seemed rooted to the spot, as the shape of another Adeptus Astartes formed before him. This one, however, was midnight-clad, a dark parody, a servant of the Ruinous Powers. Rannik remembered his likeness from Zartak. Words pounded inside her skull as the creature faced Khauri.

  You remember me now, don’t you, boy? You remember your Flayed Father? He who first marked you with the favour you now bear?

  ‘I remember you,’ Rannik shouted. Shotgun lowered, she fired.

  Third Company was being outflanked. Sharr had been expecting it since the beginning of the assault. The cult had more than enough fodder to demand the weight of the Carcharodons’ firepower in Absolution Square while at the same time turning their sides. First and Second Squads, led by Strike Leader Nuritona, had been deployed to delay such an eventuality, dividing into combat squads that covered the alleyways and narrow cathedra wynds that led off from the towering gothic structure.

  At first, contact had been minimal, the only hybrids they encountered overspill from the Absolution Square assault and smaller cultist bands that seemed to have become lost. As Seventh Squad slaughtered the heavy weapons teams on the roofs surrounding the square, however, the nature of the opposition attacking the Carcharodons’ flanks changed. The hybrid groups moved with purpose, and were better armed with autoguns and stubbers. Nuritona noticed that they were all former frateris or devotati in their black habits – the root of the infection on Piety V, and what passed for the elite of the xenos brood.

  They brought armour as well. Stolen landcars and Chimera transports raced down the narrow streets towards the seven spires marking the cathedra, and were met with a hail of firepower and the cracking autocannons and lascannons of the Carcharodons’ twin Predators. No vehicles made it within two dozen yards of the Space Marine positions, but the burning wrecks provided cover for the hybrids moving up behind. In less than half an hour, fire was being poured into Nuritona’s squads from close range, and they were sustaining casualties. Sharr ordered a general withdrawal.

  The crews of the company’s armour exited their vehicles and sealed them, trusting to the frenzy of the hybrids’ assault and their lack of sufficient armour-piercing equipment to see the vehicles unharmed when they returned. Only the occupants of Maxima Alba remained, continuing to unleash all of the Land Raider’s weapons systems into the impotent horde surrounding them. As the Carcharodons fell back inside the cathedra, the Reaper Prime cast one last glance at the mighty tank and then across Absolution Square, at the buildings overlooking it. During the Assault Marines’ attack on the opposing rooftops, Strike Leader Iko had confirmed a spotting initially relayed by the company’s twin Stormtalon fighters, Judge and Executioner. The Carcharodons’ primary objective had been half-achieved – part of the cult’s leadership had been exposed. The magus, so-called Cleric Marshal Brant, was with a gaggle of hybrid leaders – bedecked like some mockery of the Imperial Creed in Ministorum finery, watching the assault on the cathedra from the Theocratica’s address balcony. With the Devastators withdrawing inside the cathedra to set up, and the tactical squads fully engaged, they appeared beyond harm’s reach.

  They were wrong.

  Sharr had suspected taint had found its way into the heart of Piety V’s government from the start. Killing Brant immediately, however, would have only served to drive the patriarch away. Now that battle was fully joined, it was time to act. He keyed an uplink to the White Maw. After a moment, the vox established a chopped connection with the strike cruiser’s teleportarium, high above. He uttered two words.

  ‘Korro. Strike.’

  The Red Brethren materialised in a blaze of lightning around the teleport homer Apothecary Tama had concealed in the palace’s arboreal fea
ture. It had been there since the command squad passed through the Theocratica after their initial planetfall, ostensibly to assess it for defensive purposes. The hybrids observing the assault had nowhere to go.

  Korro killed Brant as the magus sought to marshal the ­psychic potency the hive mind had granted him, unnatural powers that had allowed him to conceal his corruption for so long. The strike leader smashed him with his thunder hammer, sending his pulverised remains hurtling over the balcony’s edge. The rest of the Carcharodons Terminators slaughtered his brood-kin without pause, lightning claws slicing alien-tainted flesh to gory ribbons.

  Below them, the horde had failed to notice the butchering of their leader. They surged on, towards the cathedra’s doors, where now only Sharr and his command squad remained.

  Te Kahurangi had seen the Red Wake fight and kill many times before. Regardless, it was always a special privilege to witness the elemental destruction unleashed when the Master of the Carcharodon Astra was called upon to render judgement.

  Tyberos met the first of the boarding tyranid warriors head on, his own charge making the entire service tunnel quake. The force of his impact carried the xenos off its hooves, slamming it through the air and then back down into the deck plates with an ear-splitting crack. Tyberos planted one great boot on its chitin-plated breast and, fast as lightning, slashed down from left to right with Hunger. The great swing of the gauntlet’s charged lightning claws sheared through the wall to the Carcharodon’s left, severed the warrior’s head, and carried on to slice into the wall on the right, leaving a trio of glowing gouges to either side that were immediately splattered with purple ichor.

  The Red Wake moved on immediately, his weight cracking open the twitching warrior’s carapace as he lunged towards the next of its brood-kindred. Slake took this one, its wicked, hooked tips scything down from the warrior’s skull to its groin, releasing a burst of viscous gore and writhing bio-things. A follow-up thrust from Hunger cracked the tyranid’s skull apart in a welter of grey cranial matter.

  The combined force and speed of the Red Wake’s attacks was without equal. It was to be expected that the hulking Chapter Master, clad in Tactical Dreadnought armour, would smash and break his way through almost any and all opposition. What opponents did not anticipate was how quickly Tyberos moved when roused to battle, how his gauntlets became a blur in the ichor-slashed air. While his centre of mass remained largely static, his thick plasteel and adamantium plates absorbing attacks with ease, the extra servo bundles in the armour’s shoulders and arms allowed him to strike faster than even an unencumbered member of the Adeptus Astartes. It was this advantage that meant the first three tyranid warriors to board the Nicor hardly managed to land a single blow. Te Kahurangi, a dozen paces behind the Red Wake, hadn’t even raised his staff.

  Tyberos had advanced as far as the breach. He eviscerated another warrior as it dragged itself through the hull, its reinforced chitin no match for his ancient lightning claws’ disruptor fields. The lumen strips in the service corridor continued to dip on and off, occasionally throwing its length into darkness, the towering form of the Red Wake left silhouetted by the actinic crackling of his two fists.

  ‘The pod will continue producing and birthing bioforms,’ Tyberos said, as though he wasn’t single-handedly stymying a tyranid infestation of the Nicor’s lower decks. ‘I am going to purge it from within. Remain here and kill anything else that emerges.’

  Again, if any other besides the Red Wake had uttered such orders, Te Kahurangi would have questioned them. Instead he simply confirmed over the vox and took up position beside the breach. Tyberos took one leaden step up into the orifice that had clamped and sealed around the acid-chewed hole. Servos groaning, he hauled his bulk into the opening. Beyond were the thousands of snaggle-teeth that had gnawed through the hull, each longer than Tyberos was tall. Past them was darkness, emitting a gut-churning alien reek.

  ‘Rangu and the Wandering Ancestors be with you, Red Wake,’ Te Kahurangi said as Tyberos began to advance down the alien’s gullet, squelching and crunching through membranous tissue and cartilage. If he heard the Chief Librarian, Tyberos didn’t answer. Instead there was a roar, as Hunger and Slake’s chainblade underbites activated.

  They needed more time. The hybrids had flooded the steps before the Cathedra of Saint Solomon, rushing its doors while they still stood open. Sharr barred the way with his brothers – Dorthor, Niko, Tama, Red Tane, Sengaru. The hybrids came on, talons and daggers out, screaming for the loyalists’ deaths. The Carcharodons met them with chainaxes and Niko’s adamantium koa spear. Blood painted the cathedra steps, shorn and mangled bodies flung back down it in welters of ripped flesh. Sharr stood a few paces ahead of the rest of the command squad, giving himself the room to swing Reaper. Blades and hard rounds rebounded from his armour as he swung left and right, the great chainaxe eviscerating everything it touched. His muscles burned with adrenal and combat stimms and his soul soared with the brute, simplistic violence, his every thought bent to breaking the weak, pathetic creatures scrabbling around his boots. He remained silent, however, balanced on the jagged edge of self-control as Reaper’s whirring teeth cleaved flesh and bone with every juddering stroke.

  Nuritona’s voice brought him back, clicking in his ear. ‘All squads are in position.’ The rest of the company, including Nuritona’s flank guards, were inside.

  ‘Back,’ Sharr voxed to the rest of the command squad. He stepped towards the doors, still facing the square. The foremost hybrids were still being forced against the Carcharodons by the pressure of the swarm at their backs, and it only built as first Sengaru, then Niko and Tama moved inside the great doors, locking their close combat weapons and turning to their bolt pistols. Dorthor was with Sharr as they backed away, the strike veteran opening fire at point-blank range to clear enough space to allow them both to disengage.

  Amidst the hail of detonating shells, Red Tane stood his ground. The company champion was a blur of savage motion, the void sword running with ichor as it cut heads and limbs off with every stroke. The coral shield’s jagged surface was also slick with the gory remains of those it had been used to bludgeon back down the stairs.

  ‘Tane, withdraw,’ Sharr snapped tersely. The champion showed no sign of having heard him. Taking Reaper in one hand, Sharr clapped his other on the Carcharodon’s pauldron and hauled him back. Dorthor switched to his bolt pistol and gripped the other, firing past him into the howling, snapping horrors rushing them.

  Third Squad’s commander, Strike Leader Waratak, was a giant of a Carcharodon, as tall and broad even as the Red Brethren in his Mark V power plate. The forearms of his armour, like the flesh beneath, were covered in swirling exile markings boasting of his strength. As Sharr and Dorthor dragged Red Tane out of the doorway and the Tactical Marines forced the great doors shut, it was Waratak who single-handedly heaved the great metal locking beam – normally the work of a dozen Ministorum attendants – into place, barring the frame. The sound of the beam’s impact into its slats echoed from the vaults above, followed immediately by the pounding of fists on the other side.

  Sharr released Tane’s pauldron and strode down the cathedra’s nave, towards the pulpit, apse and altar at the far end. He issued orders as he went.

  ‘Second and Ninth Squads, divide into combat teams and secure the balconies and side entrances. Third and Tenth, set up fire arcs around the main doors. Nuritona, on me.’

  The pews had been moved to the side of the main approach to the altar to deny any attackers the cover they provided, though there were too many to fully clear the space. The Devastators of Ninth Squad were already setting up around the altar and on the pulpit’s raised wooden platform. They were joined by Nuritona’s First Squad and Sharr’s command squad. Niko had already planted the adamantium haft of the company’s battle standard into the flagstones behind the altar, its dark, ragged cloth a counterpoint to the pristine white of the embroidered slab
covering.

  ‘We do not leave this place,’ Sharr said to the void brethren gathering in the apse. There were nods and simple affirmations. The Reaper Prime sent a prearranged vox-tap to the White Maw. The final pieces of the Carcharodons’ last stand were in place.

  The great doors came crashing open, and a tide of howling, shrieking xenos filth burst in. As one, every Carcharodon in the cathedra opened fire.

  They are not our brothers any longer, not truly. They are something both more and less. What they have suffered is nothing but the agonies we would all bear out, were the long millennium allowed to take its toll on us without the reprieve of death. Fear them, yes. Mourn for them, certainly. But above all, respect and honour them. They have met the eye of the Outer Dark, and they have held its gaze. Would that we were all strong enough to do the same.

  – Chaplain KioTama, Carcharodon Astra,

  On the Ancients, verse 19.

  _________ Chapter XIII

  Techmarine Uthulu entered the Bay of Silence as the freeze protocols reached the end of their cycle. Chaplain Nikora was already there, stripped and submerged to his chest in icy meltwater. Uthulu joined him at the base of the Ancients’ plinth, the vast forms of the trio of Contemptor Dreadnoughts towering over them.

  ‘Word from the Reaper Prime,’ Uthulu said, having to shout to be heard over the sound of the steadily flooding chamber. ‘Are they prepared, Brother-Chaplain?’