Thaddeus turned away from the window, concentrating on the mission at hand.
They'd just set down atop the governor's palace, to drop off Sergeant Cyrus and his Scout squad, and now Thaddeus and the rest of Seventh Squad were bound for a point some several thousand kilometres to the east. Zenith had been constructed at the point where the planet's equator intersected with the meridian which divided the western and eastern hemispheres - and which gave the planet its name. The first tyranid incursions had been reported on the far side of the world, at the antipodes from Zenith, where the meridian divided east from west. That was where Sergeant Aramus and Third Squad were now, trying to root out the source of the interference which blanketed the entire solar system. But the infestation had already spread thousands of miles, with reports of tyranid sightings in habs, hives, and factories all across the eastern hemisphere. By the Blood Ravens' best estimations, the tyranid reach now extended halfway across the eastern hemisphere towards Zenith, and unless checked in short order, the infestation would swell to consume the capital city itself.
Cyrus and his Scouts had been tasked with preparing the city for the incursion, and Avitus and his Devastator squad were on their way even now to implement measures to slow the tyranid advance, but in the meantime every effort needed to be made to try to halt the advance altogether. And that task fell on the shoulders of Thaddeus and the Seventh.
The rank and file of a tyranid invasion fleet were mindless creatures, without any independent thought or will of their own. It was only with the guiding influence of the collective minds which directed their movements that the tyranids were any threat at all. Without the beasts who relayed the synapse commands of the hive mind to the lesser forms, the tyranids would be nothing more than mindless beasts, lacking even the appetites and instincts that now drove them.
The synapse beasts that Thaddeus's squad would seek were zoanthropes, close cousins to the vanguard creatures who it was believed were responsible for the blanketing interference of the shadow in the warp. Unlike the vanguard creatures, though, zoanthropes whose psychic potential was geared entirely towards promulgating the warp shadow, the zoanthropes that Thaddeus sought were intended for the battlefield. They possessed not only the power to direct the movements of their hive siblings, but also the ability to fight their enemy directly with claws, teeth, and awesome psychic powers.
'Coming down,' called Battle-Brother Takayo from the commands of the gunship. 'We should touch down in another two minutes, Thaddeus.'
'You heard him, squad,' Thaddeus said, racking his bolt pistol and holstering it at his side. As they emptied out of the Thunderhawk they would don their heavy jump packs, which would allow them to cover ground much faster than they could on foot. 'Be ready.'
The other four Blood Ravens in the transport compartment nodded, checking the action of their own pistols, and loosening their chainswords in their sheaths.
'Knowledge is power…' Thaddeus said in a quiet voice, trying to remember how to forget.
'…GUARD IT WELL!' Sergeant Avitus shouted, completing the Blood Ravens' battle cry as he lobbed another incendiary into the trench cut by Battle-Brother Gagan's meltagun. Already the structures on either side of the trench were licked by tongues of flame, but they had kilometres more work to do before they could move on to their next position, and there was no time to lose.
The fire-bomb went up in a miniature inferno, taking another section of wall with it, but things were still progressing far too slowly for Avitus's taste.
'Dow!' he called to the battle-brother who stood atop the roof of the storage facility a few dozen metres away. 'Target those buildings and fire,' Avitus snarled.
'Right, sir,' Dow said, and fired a ribbon of burning plasma from his gun at the buildings before them.
They'd had no sign of the enemy, and the lack of engagement was wearing on Avitus's nerves. Destroying a few hundred square kilometres of farm and industrial zones served to improve his mood slightly, but it wasn't enough.
'Eyes open, squad,' Avitus said, lobbing another fire-bomb into the gouge carved out by Dow's plasma beam. 'I don't want to be caught napping.'
From the intelligence they'd received, Avitus knew that there were no tyranids within a hundred kilometres of here. But the tyranids to the east of them were advancing on their position quickly, and if it took them another day to close the distance then Avitus would have been surprised. But there was nothing to be gained from being lax, either way.
Some of the inhabitants, hearing reports of the xenos activity to the east, had already fled west toward Zenith, abandoning hive and hab as they sought refugee in the soaring towers of the capital city. The first zone that the Ninth Squad had come to torch had been a farming region, with huge vats of algae and enzymes in culture that could then be reconstituted into the foodstuffs consumed by the lower-hab dwellers of the planet, those who couldn't afford organic foodstuffs imported from off-world. The algae vats were sickly green, repulsive in appearance and even worse in smell, but the worst thing about them was that they were raw, easily processed biomass, such as the tyranids thrived upon. If the vats were still standing when the ripper swarms of the invading tyranids arrived, they would be able to consume it in an eye-blink, preparing it immediately for conversion into yet more tyranids.
Avitus and his Devastator squad had been given the task of removing this asset from the enemy's path. That is, they had been instructed to burn the whole thing to dust. And not just the farm zone itself, but all the buildings and structures surrounding it, kilometres deep and hundreds of kilometres across. Just as firefighters would create a firebreak - cutting down all the trees in the path of a wildfire, employing the axe to spare them the flames - so too did the Blood Ravens have to destroy at times in order to preserve. And there were no Blood Ravens better suited to destruction than a Devastator squad, and no Devastators more qualified for the task than Avitus's Ninth.
Those inhabitants of the area who had not yet fled had, initially, been less than sanguine about the prospect of Imperial forces destroying their homes, their workplaces, everything they had ever known. They had stubbornly refused to accept that the safety of others' homes was worth the sacrifice of their own. Of course, though Avitus had been tempted to rip a few of the dissenters to pieces with his heavy bolter, Sergeant Aramus had ordered in no uncertain terms that the human inhabitants of Meridian were to be safeguarded, whatever the costs. And Aramus would, doubtless, have taken umbrage at Avitus mowing down a few innocent civilians simply in order to make his case with the civilians he didn't shoot.
Still, Avitus was not one to coddle, and barred from opening fire on the civilians, he'd simply repeated his order for them to vacate, giving them to the count of one hundred before the Ninth Squad opened fire. If any of the bleating civilians were still in harm's way when the first plasma and melta shots fired the area, it was only because they had refused to listen.
There was no enemy to fire upon… yet. But Avitus had so far managed to keep his temper in check by releasing any frustration he felt on the buildings.
'Knowledge is power!' he shouted, firing his heavy bolter into the bulk of a burning building, watching the flames dance across the green-scummed waters of an algae tank as the liquid accelerants spread. A battle cry issued against standing buildings hardly seemed in the tradition of the Blood Ravens, but it was better than nothing. 'Guard it well!'
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ONBOARD THE ARMAGEDDON, Apothecary Gordian stepped back from the platform at the centre of the Apothecarion, waiting for any sign of results. The medicae servitor had already trundled off, the latest dose having been administered to the soft flesh of Captain Thule's neck.
The captain's skin was mottled and wan, his complexion sallow and cheeks sunken. The tyranid toxins that had coursed through his system had done considerable harm to his bodily functions, and though periodic stints in the sarcophagus had slowed the advance of the deterioration, the damage was still extensive.
'Report,' Gordian said, almost hesitantly, addressing the servitors which governed the probes and sensors mounted on the platform itself. They bathed the captain's prostrate form with active scans on a wide spectrum, gauging his body's internal and external temperatures, heart and respiration rates, and so on.
This latest antitoxin trial would be the last that Gordian would attempt. If the Omega-Five strain failed to affect the levels of toxins in Thule's system, the captain would be returned to the sarcophagus for the remainder of the undertaking, perhaps indefinitely.
The servitors began to squeal, reeling off the captain's vital signs in binary form.
It was not unheard of for Space Marines to remain in sarcophagi for extended periods. It was told in the pages of the holy text, Apocrypha Azariah: Travails of Vidya, that the Great Father Azariah Vidya had been mortally wounded in a terrible battle against the unclean powers, and that enshrined in the hallowed confines of a sarcophagus had floated freely through the black void of space for many decades before finally being recovered by the Ravenous Spirit, strike cruiser of the Commander of the Watch.
But wounded as he had been, in body and spirit, Great Father Vidya had not been poisoned by tyranid toxins, his oolitic kidney rendered unable to filter the poisons from his body, Gordian was quick to recall.
The servitors concluded their recitation of the captain's vitals, and Gordian stood stock still.
Had he misheard? Had the servitors just reported the values he thought he'd heard?
'Repeat, and elaborate,' Gordian ordered, taking a cautious step towards the platform, his gaze running up and down the length of Captain Thule's weathered form.
The servitors completed their more detailed recitation of the captain's state.
Gordian had heard correctly. The toxicity of the captain's blood was decreasing.
The Apothecary resisted the urge to utter a prayer of thanks, and instead bent to test the elasticity and tension of the captain's skin with his fingertips. Yes, it was clear now, there were definite signs of improvement.
If antitoxin trial Omega-Five was indeed the elixir for which he'd been searching all these long hours, then there was still a slim hope for Captain Thule. Spared the confines of the sarcophagus, it was just possible that Thule's body might be able to repair itself. But it was still far from certain. Even with the toxins gradually purged from Thule's body, his injuries, internal and external, were still extreme. And it remained to be seen whether the captain's body could heal itself, after all.
There was nothing to do now but wait, and pray.
SERGEANT THADDEUS AND the rest of Seventh Squad made their way down the thoroughfare, eyes watching every shadow. The habs rose on either side of them like mountains of steel-reinforced rockcrete, towering so high that had the thoroughfare not run directly east to west, it was likely that no light would have reached the ground where they walked. As it was, long shadows stretched out as the sun dipped slowly in the west, a sickly white orb in a gun-metal grey sky.
Somewhere just up ahead, Thaddeus knew, the front line of the advancing tyranid forces would be found. Likely it would be lictors who ranged in front, seeking out pockets of enemy resistance, or else locating native life forms that could be easily absorbed by the ripper swarms who followed them. Or perhaps one of the strains of gaunt broods, individually less of a threat than the larger forms, but in their teeming swarms a threat not to be taken lightly. Or perhaps they might encounter gargoyles, taking to the skies on leathery wings, or raveners, slithering like snakes on their serpent-like tails. Worse still would be a biovore, giant war beasts who carried countless spore mines within their very bodies; or one of the largest tyranids of them all, the carnifex, massive engines of destruction as large as any Imperial tank.
But all of them, from the ripper swarms to the mighty carnifex, took their direction from the zoan-thrope, who passed along the synapse commands of the hive mind. It was a rare tyranid - like the tyrants and the warriors - who shared its own direct link with the hive mind. The other sibling creatures were ultimately and completely dependent on the psychic resonance of creatures like the zoanthrope. If the zoanthropes were removed from the field of battle, the number of effective combatants among the tyranids would drop precipitously. Tyranid tyrants could still operate on their own, of course, and tyranid warriors could act as psychic resonators on a smaller scale, effectively ''leading'' sibling creatures in close range around them, but the rank and file of the tyranid invasion would be incapacitated.
It was unlikely that Seventh Squad would be so lucky as to encounter the zoanthropes first, however, and so the mission plans called for Thaddeus and his squad to punch through the tyranid front lines, pushing deep into enemy-held territory until they located one of the synapse-beasts. Having located one, they would then put it down in the most expedient - and final - way possible, allowing no possibility that the zoanthrope might survive the encounter and continue to function, even in a diminished capacity. And having taken one zoanthrope off the board, they were to continue the operation, searching for another, and another, and another.
Thaddeus, who had so often gone into battle with a grin on his lips, now faced the shadows which lined the deserted thoroughfare with his expression hard and set, his mouth drawn into a line. There was no joy in this action for him, no exultation that he could hope to find in accomplishing a mission. Even if the Seventh Squad succeeded beyond all expectations, and managed to bring down not just one but all of the zoanthropes, eliminating the combat-readiness of a majority of the tyranid life-forms on Meridian, the small percentage that still remained would likely still number in the untold thousands, and would still constitute a threat beyond anything that the few dozen Blood Ravens on the planet could hope to stand against.
It was only when taking the missions of the other squads into account that the actions of Seventh Squad had any hope for success. Only if each of the teams accomplished their mission objectives might Meridian have any hope of survival, and even that hope was a slim one.
As the shadows lengthened before them, a cluttering could be heard from beyond the curve of the hab ahead and to their right.
Thaddeus held up his hand in a fist, signalling to the others to halt, but it hadn't been necessary. They'd all heard the sound, and knew all too well what it presaged.
'Brandt, Marr,' Thaddeus voxed to the two Blood Ravens nearest him, his voice scarcely above a whisper. The runes on the inside of Thaddeus's visor flashed green for both of them, signalling that they were listening. 'I want to know what we're walking into, and that means we need aerial. You two hop one hundred metres ahead' - Thaddeus pointed with the barrel of his bolt pistol to the intersection that lay ahead of them, where the thoroughfare met another running north-south - 'with Marr covering left, Brandt right. If you see anything, shoot it. We'll move ahead while you're airborne to give cover for your descent.'
Again the runes flashed green and the two Blood Ravens drew their chainswords, and with the blades whirring in one fist and their bolt pistols in the other, they activated the controls on their jump packs and launched themselves skyward.
'The rest of you advance on my mark,' Thaddeus voxed to the others. 'Takayo and Skander, cover the left approach. Kell, you're with me on the right.'
Three runes flashed green.
Overhead, the two Blood Ravens on their jump packs were about to clear the obstructing habs and get their first glimpse of what lay beyond.
'Mark!' Thaddeus shouted, and drawing his chainsword raced forward towards the intersection.
Far overhead and ahead of them, Brandt opened fire with his bolt pistol, pouring hellfire rounds down. 'I've got lictors,' he voxed, as calm and collected as ever.
To the left, Marr was also firing, and somewhat more agitated than his battle-brother replied, 'And I've got gaunts.'
As Thaddeus and the others pounded across the ferrocrete and into the open, the tyranids rushed out to meet them, dozens of the monsters on either side. It was a riot of scything
talons, rending claws, spine-fists and fleshborers, with snapping maws and feeder tendrils lashing the air, hungry to bite into the flesh of their prey.
Lictors and gaunts, then. It wasn't zoanthropes, but it was a start.
Chainsword met talon and claw as the Blood Ravens clashed with the onrushing tyranids, and the battle was on.
IN THE CAPITAL city Zenith, Sergeant Cyrus addressed the mustered ranks of the Planetary Defence Forces, who looked at the Blood Raven with expressions comingling admiration, respect, and fear. Unlike the planetary governor, who appeared so wrapped up in his own skewed view of reality that he was unable to recognize the real threats before him, the soldiers of the PDF were well aware of the gravity of their situation, and how ill-prepared they were to deal with it.
'Now,' Cyrus was saying, 'as far as munitions are concerned, in an ideal universe you'd all be kitted out with hellfire rounds. But I don't have to tell any of you that this universe is far, far from ideal.'
There were several hundred soldiers massed in the pavilion, facing the dais upon which Cyrus stood. The five Scouts of Cyrus's Squad stood on either side of their sergeant, bolt pistols and sniper rifles bolstered and slung but in evidence.
One of the soldiers towards the front of the rank, whose insignia marked him as a lieutenant, raised his hand. When Cyrus nodded in his direction, the lieutenant said, 'Hellfire rounds?'
Cyrus nodded. 'Special rounds developed in the early days of the Tyrannic Wars. You take out the core of a bolter round, replace it with thousands of needles full of mutagenic acid encased in a ceramic shell. The round is armour-piercing, just like a standard-issue bolt round, but instead of exploding on impact, the hellfire bleeds the acid inside the target's body, eating it from the inside out.'
Some of the soldiers exchanged glances, nodding appreciatively, while others whistled low, imagining the kind of carnage the sergeant was describing. It was clear that some were even entertaining optimism, having discovered that the Space Marines had developed weapons specially suited to deal with the xenos monsters now invading their world.
Dawn Of War II Page 20
