As they had closed with the hive fleet, they had quickly gotten a better read on their situation. It came as something of a relief to discover that this was not a full fleet, like the massive Leviathan, Behemoth, and Kraken Fleets of such dark memory, but was instead a splinter fleet, which must have split off from one of the larger bodies at some point in the past. But while it wasn't a full-fledged invasion fleet, it was still a not-inconsiderable threat, the hive ship herself a massive void-swimming gargantuan, attended by a myriad of other vessels ranging in size from the vanguard drone ships who acted as her scouts - small and only lightly armed, but possessing great speed and agility - to the massive Razorfiend cruisers and Kraken predators who swam in the hive ship's wake.
But if Forbes's plan was to have any hope of succeeding, they would need to punch their way through the outer ranks of the splinter fleet, taking the fight directly to the hive ship itself, the seat of the norn-queen and the collective hive mind who directed the movements not only of the spacefaring fleet but also of the ground-based elements on Meridian, Typhon Primaris, and anywhere else in the sub-sector.
'Razorfiend is down,' Mitchels reported, as the last barrage from the Hadrian's starboard batteries found their mark.
'Drones still buzzing our port,' the port-side monitoring officer called out.
'Keep at them, port,' Forbes ordered the monitoring officer. 'Commander Mitchels, come to a new heading, to intercept the hive ship, and all ahead full.'
'Aye, ma'am,' Mitchels replied, and then hurried to relay the orders to the appropriate stations.
Now, they had the hive ship in their sights, and if luck and the Emperor were with them, they could manage to get within torpedo firing range. And then it would all be up to Sergeant Tarkus and his Blood Ravens.
BY THE TIME Sergeant Aramus reached the crash site at the heart of Meridian's capital city Zenith, the other two surviving members of his Third Squad, Battle-Brothers Cirrac and Siddig, were already there with fire suppression units, trying to keep the flames that burned on the outer hull of the governor's shuttle from igniting the promethium in its tanks and taking an entire city block up with it.
Fortunately, the shuttle had come down in a reflecting pool, which meant that not only did the waters now boiling off serve to dampen the flames, but that casualties were kept to a relative minimum. A number of civilian bystanders were hit by debris from the impact, some merely wounded and others afflicted with fatal injuries, while more were burned badly by the bio-plasma flames that poured off the craft's hull; but the death toll was a fraction of what it would have been had the shuttle come down directly onto one of the milling crowds.
It remained to be seen, though, whether anyone on board had survived the crash.
'As soon as the flames are doused,' Aramus ordered, 'we'll open her up.' He stepped over the low wall into the reflecting pool, which was now all but completely drained, the water having boiled off as steam from the heat of the shuttle's flames.
Siddig sprayed the last of the foam on the shuttle's mangled wings, and signalled the all-clear to the sergeant.
His own enhanced strength augmented even further by the servos of his power armour, Aramus simply reached down, grabbed hold of the edge of the crumpled starboard-side hatch, and yanked it off. With an ear-splitting sound of metal against metal the hatch tore free, and Aramus tossed it aside without another thought. The shuttle was canted over onto its right side, its nose buried in the cracked base of the pool, and so with the hatch open everything in the cabin that wasn't locked down came tumbling out the starboard hatch, falling at Aramus's feet.
The sergeant reached down to pick up a clear cube, a few centimetres on a side, in which was encased a polished oblong stone about the length of a man's finger. He'd seen such stones before, worn around the necks of eldar warriors.
'This looks like an eldar spirit stone,' Aramus said in disbelief. The sergeant understood little of the hermetic beliefs of the eldar, but enough to know that no eldar would dream of allowing one of their sacred spirit stones to fall into a human's hands.
Aramus looked down at the litter of items scattered at his feet. There were perhaps a dozen or more similar cubes of various sizes. One held what appeared to be a tooth of an ork, another what appeared to be circuitry of Tau design, still another a disc covered in Chaos sigils that made Aramus's eyes ache just to look upon them. And there weren't just the cubes, but a riot of data-slates and books - printed books - whose titles were suggestive of daemonic grimoires, as well as hololiths and two-dimensional paintings depicting a wide range of unwholesome subjects. Aramus recoiled at the sight of the hoard. All of it was forbidden, whether xenos, or heretical, or daemonic. All of it was repulsive, repellent. And all of it, it appeared, was the possession of Governor Vandis himself.
'I… I can explain,' came the tremulous voice of Governor Vandis, who stood awkwardly in the canted hatchway, carrying in his arms an opaque case as long as he was tall. 'It isn't what it appears…'
Aramus didn't bother responding, but reached forward and snatched the long case from Vandis's hands.
'Please,' the governor said, trying to step down from the shuttle and instead sprawling face-forwards onto the mound of forbidden treasures. 'This is just my… collection, you see.' He rose up unsteadily on his knees, hands up in supplication. 'I am a collector, a patron, nothing more.' The governor's dark eyes were wide and frightened in his round face, lips quivering.
The case was heavy in Aramus's hands. He'd taken it from the governor for the simple reason that one didn't let a possessor of heretical items keep anything, for fear that he might carry something he might use against you. But now that Aramus held the case, he could not help but wonder what it held.
'No, don't!' Vandis pleaded, as Aramus undid the clasps that held the case shut. 'I… It was given to me, and…' The case fell open, and inside Aramus saw something he'd not expected ever to lay eyes on again.
Battle-Brothers Siddig and Cirrac had come to stand beside him, but from their vantage points could not see within the case. 'What is it?' Cirrac asked.
Aramus wrapped his hands around the hilt, and lifted the power sword free of the case, holding the blade high overhead.
'Wisdom,' Aramus said, the name on his lips a kind of litany.
The power sword, relic of the Blood Ravens Chapter, so ancient and honoured that it had been granted a name, had been borne into battle by countless champions and heroes of the Chapter over the millennia, back to the earliest days of the Blood Ravens, but the most recent to carry it had been Captain Davian Thule himself.
Wisdom had been lost when Thule had fallen to the talons and toxins of the tyranid on Calderis, and Aramus had thought it would never be found again.
And yet here it was, in the heretical trove of this collector of the perverse, the forbidden, the arcane.
'It was a gift…' Vandis pleaded. 'I didn't… I didn't know it was yours…'
It wasn't Aramus's, of course. Perhaps the governor merely meant that it belonged to the Chapter. But whomever was the rightful bearer of the blade, now that Thule could no longer wield it, it had no place being tarnished by the touch of such a low creature as Vandis.
'I… I can pay you….' Vandis said, nodding in desperation. 'Call it a fine, if you like. I can…'
Aramus activated the power sword, energy coruscating down the length of the blade.
Vandis rose to his feet, hands held up before him, face blanched and bloodless.
'Anything you want!' Vandis screamed. 'I… I'm sorry…'
Aramus remained silent as a stone statue, but swung the power sword down in a sweeping arc with all of the strength of his servo-augmented arm.
The governor collapsed to the ground, his shoulders hitting the ground before his legs had begun to topple over.
'Should we not have kept him for the Inquisition?' Brother Siddig asked. 'They might have wanted to interrogate him to track the source of…' - he gestured to the mound of items at Aramus's feet, mu
ch of it now incarnadine with the governor's blood - 'all of this.'
Aramus stilled the power sword, and shook his head. 'We don't have the luxury to worry about such things now,' he said, turning away from the shuttle and stepping back over the pool's low wall. 'He was in possession of heretical items, and so secured his own doom.'
'Sergeant?' Brother Cirrac called. 'What do we do with his… collection?'
Aramus glanced back over his shoulder, his expression disgusted.
'Burn it,' he said, jaw set. 'Burn it all.'
SERGEANT TARKUS CROUCHED at the forward end of the cabin, hands on the makeshift guidance controls. There was little room for a Space Marine in full power armour to manoeuvre in the confined space, much less four Adeptus Astartes.
'Closing on target,' came the voice of Commander Mitchels over the vox-comms. 'We should be in firing range in moments.'
'Acknowledged,' Tarkus replied.
Behind him, the other three surviving battle-brothers of First Squad - Battle-Brothers Nord, Tane, and Horatius - checked the actions on their bolters, and secured their grenades and other ordnance for the coming acceleration.
'Be ready, squad,' Tarkus called back to them. 'We launch at any moment, and I want us ready to strike as soon as we punch through.'
The magos technicus of the Sword of Hadrian was to be commended, Tarkus thought. The modified torpedo was not the most stylish of conveyances, and not as roomy as boarding torpedoes specifically designed for the task, but it would suit their present needs admirably.
'I wouldn't mind a bit more armament,' Brother Tane said.
'And I wouldn't mind a full company at our backs to do the job with us,' Tarkus answered, 'but we fight with what we've been given.'
Once the First Squad had boarded, the gunnery crew of the Sword of Hadrian had loaded the boarding torpedo into the ship's torpedo tubes. It would be fired just like an ordinary torpedo, but unlike the ordinary variety this one could be partially guided in flight.
'I wonder how the others fare on Meridian,' Brother Horatius mused aloud.
'We can be assured that they have done their duty,' Tarkus answered. 'What else is there?'
Since the Aurelia Battlegroup had come in close contact with the tyranid hive fleet all astropathic contact with Meridian had been lost, but the last communications received had indicated that Captain Angelos's battlegroup was inbound for Aurelia. It remained to be seen, though, whether they would reach Meridian in time to save the beleaguered world. As it stood, it seemed likely that the plan that Admiral Forbes and Sergeant Tarkus had devised might well be the best, or perhaps the only, hope that Meridian had.
'We're within firing range now,' Commander Mitchels voxed. 'Preparing to launch.'
'Acknowledged,' Tarkus replied. Then to the others in the squad, he said, 'This is it, squad. Be ready to hit, and hit hard.'
The boarding torpedo would be launched directly at the thorax of the hive ship itself, and provided the gunnery officer did their calculations correctly, then the torpedo's nose would punch through the outer hull of the tyranid craft. Once the hive ship's hull was compromised, Sergeant Tarkus and the others would be disgorged from the boarding torpedo, delivered right into the midst of the enemy.
'Firing boarding torpedo!' came the voice of Commander Mitchels, and Sergeant Tarkus and the others were thrown back against their restraints by the sudden force of acceleration.
'Knowledge is power,' Tarkus called out, as they barrelled towards the heart of the enemy, 'guard it well!'
CHAPTER TWENTY
'FALL BACK!' SERGEANT Avitus voxed, since even his loudest shout would be swallowed by the deafening chittering and shrieks of the tyranid hordes rushing towards them. 'Fall back!'
Avitus spared a last glance at the thrashing form of Battle-Brother Gagan, as the trio of tyrant guards smashed the last life from him with their massive forelimbs. Then he fired an ineffectual burst of hellfire shells at the hive tyrant itself before turning and pounding feet in the opposite direction.
The firebreaks had served to slow the tyranid advance, but not as much as had been hoped. It had taken the tyranids a day and a night and part of a following day to cover ground that they otherwise would have overrun in a matter of hours, it was true, but that came as little comfort to those who had hoped the firebreaks might be a more effective deterrent.
'Avitus, on your right!' voxed Brother Pontius.
Avitus, without pausing, veered left, and turning from the waist fired a few rounds from his heavy bolter at the lictor who loped after him. The hellfire shells pocked the lictor's torso, and while the tyranid didn't fall, its pace was slowed enough for Avitus to outstrip it.
'Elon,' Avitus voxed. 'Flank right, and watch for ripper swarms.'
Brother Elon flashed his acknowledgement on the green-blinking rune on Avitus's visor display.
Avitus and the Ninth Squad had been leapfrogging firebreaks since the previous day, three altogether, and now they were falling back one last time.
'Cyrus,' the sergeant voxed, as he leapt and scrambled over the ruined landscape, 'we're inbound, what's your status?'
A gargoyle flapped on leathery wings overhead, and Avitus potted it with a burst of hellfire shells, ripping the left wing to shreds and pumping mutagenic acid into the creature's abdomen.
'The eastern approaches are covered,' crackled the voice of the Scout sergeant over the comms. 'We should have the west completed by the time the tyranids approach from that vector.'
'Understood,' Avitus replied. 'We should be at the ring in another five.'
'Cyrus out,' came the curt reply.
Avitus scowled, but continued to make the best time possible over the rubble and debris of what had once been a prosperous mercantile region of the capital city. Once, high-hab dwellers and nobles from all over the planet had come here to paw over the offerings of a dozen different systems - overpriced jewellery and baubles, delicacies and comestible rarities, clothes of the finest fabrics and most stylish cuts, ceremonial weapons and more. Now, it looked like nothing but what it was - a war-zone. Buildings had been destroyed by the Blood Ravens and the PDF in their encounters with the isolated outriders who had preceded the main body of the tyranid force, the gargoyles who flew overhead and the lictors and gaunts who had made it past the firebreaks to the east.
The most recent firebreak to be abandoned, the last but one to be cut into the landscape, had held through most of that morning until the arrival of the hive tyrant and his retinue. Sergeant Aramus's orders to Avitus and his squad had been to hold the line as long as possible, giving as much time as they could to Sergeant Cyrus's Scout squad and the PDF forces assisting them in completing the ringed defence around the heart of Zenith itself. Employing the same strategy as the firebreaks, this ring was cut, burned, and blown into the buildings and surrounding landscapes, but rather than running north and south it curved to the west in either direction, looping gently around until it met itself on the western edge of the city. Or it would, as soon as the western defences were completed. The ring was a moat of dead ground and charred rubble, a no-man's-land that would art a final bulwark against the Great Devourer.
'Spore mine!' shouted Brother Barabbas as a biovore vomited a projectile in their direction.
Zenith would be the last stronghold against the enemy, the final hold-out on Meridian. Any humans who remained outside of the ring - if any survived - would be at the mercy of the tyranids. Of the defenders, once Sergeant Avitus and the survivors of the Ninth Squad got within the ring, only Sergeant Thaddeus and the Seventh Squad would remain outside. The rest of the Blood Ravens, along with the surviving units of the Meridian PDF and the countless millions of civilian refugees, had already withdrawn into the capital city.
Brother Safir had raced ahead, and now reached the defensive ring. He stopped at the edge, and turned back to offer covering fire to the others as they hurried to join him. As soon as the Ninth made it past the ring, the accelerants that Cyrus's squad had laced t
hroughout the moat would be ignited, creating a wall of flame and heat.
'Faster, Avitus,' urged Sergeant Cyrus, who had appeared at Safir's side, potting shots with his sniper rifle at the lictors who raced at Avitus's heels. A pair of Scouts accompanied their sergeant, and stood on the other side of Brother Safir, laying down suppressing fire with their bolt pistols and sniper rifles.
Avitus, already racing as fast as his legs would carry him, only growled in reply.
Brother Pontius leapt the edge of the defensive ring, followed in close order by Brothers Barabbas and Elon. Sergeant Avitus was the last across the line, and then Safir, Cyrus, and the two Scouts fell back as the tyranid raced to close the distance between them.
'Up, up!' urged Cyrus as the others scrambled to climb the inner wall of the moat. Scouts and PDF soldiers stood atop the inner rim, flamers in hand, ready to torch the moat.
By the time Avitus and the others reached the solid ground at the inside of the moat, the first of the tyranids had already scuttled down and into the trench, making good speed for the inside.
'Torch it!' Cyrus yelled out, his hair whipping around his bare head, his voice booming even over the howl of the wind and the skittering and chittering of the tyranids.
Dozens of flamers poured fire down into the trench, and the accelerants and explosives within ignited, throwing up a wall of flame dozens of metres into the air. Any tyranid who had made it into the ring was caught up in the flames, their chiti-nous carapaces cracking under the immense heat.
Cyrus turned to Sergeant Avitus, an uncharacteristic grin on his weathered face. 'Cutting it a bit fine there, Avitus.'
Avitus pulled off his helmet, the augmetic of his neck and jaw glinting dully in the flickering light of the flames, and answered only with a scowl.
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