Fear the Alien

by Christian Dunn - (ebook by Undead)

  Hurrying down to the basement, he found Mathein and the other two orderlies had shifted the recovering wounded to sit on rolled sleepsacs, leaning against the walls. On the mattresses, sensor blankets gleamed with fresh counterseptic, telltales blinking in readiness. Thermosealed trays of servoclamps and electroscalpels were stacked high. Etrick and Tind were ready at their operating tables and the blood recycler hummed. The resuscitrex diodes indicated it was fully charged.

  “Let’s get to work,” Catmos said grimly.

  Once upon a time, the field surgeon had kept a tally of the wounded he tended. When medics serving the Alba Marmorea were summoned by the Officio Medicae, to be shown advances in battlefield surgery, orderlies compared notes. This many wounded, this many saved, so many restored with bionics, so many dead, the fallen toasted with shots of amasec.

  Now Catmos simply concentrated on the patient bleeding beneath his electroscalpel, no thought for the body he’d just mended, for whoever the orderlies might bring next. His whole world was the life trickling through his fingers unless he could find the way to stop it.

  He packed a wound with gauze. “Next!”

  Danger, hunger, weariness were all irrelevant until every wounded Guardsman was treated.

  “That’s all,” Mathein said wearily as he lifted the casualty away, his bionic arm making light work of it.

  “Truly?” Catmos looked up, startled to see evening shadows clotting the stairwell. He had completely lost track of the passing day.

  His meditunic was stiff with dried blood and discarded plastek gloves lay in drifts round his feet, along with a stray finger. It had been ripped from a Guardsman’s hand, caught in his trigger guard when a tyranid smashed his weapon aside. A tattooed arm wrapped in mediplas was set to one side. The bone had been so mangled that amputation was the only option. The wreckage of an eyeball glistened in a steel dish, ruined by a boring bio-worm. At least cutting it out had saved that Guardsman’s life. But a clotted tangle of entrails was testament to failure. The patient had bled out from a lacerated liver as Catmos fought frantically to kill all the borers wriggling through the man’s abdomen.

  Mathein would have an accurate tally. Catmos might not count them but someone had to. No, that could wait.

  “Field surgeon?” Lieutenant Jepthad was coming down the steps.

  “Sir.” Catmos saluted the young man, belatedly realising his arm was aching.

  “How are the men?” Jepthad asked quietly.

  Catmos considered his reply. “Every man of Alnavik accepts life is lethal, whether he stays dirt-side or becomes a Stone Bear. So we stand firm when lesser regiments fail. But this enemy—” He shook his head. “It’s a sore trial.”

  The lieutenant surveyed the wounded, on the mattresses and sitting by the walls. Unexpectedly, he smiled.

  “It’s said the tyranid are fearless,” he remarked. “They’re not. They’re mindless. Did you see that today? There’s no spark of independent thought in their eyes, and that’s why we will prevail.”

  Catmos covertly surveyed the Guardsmen’s faces. They didn’t look convinced, though plenty looked curious. At least that was better than exhausted dejection.

  “Tyranids cannot think for themselves,” the young officer said scornfully. “They’re puppets doing the Hive Mind’s will. We’re men. We think for ourselves. Yes, we’re scared.” Jepthad surprised everyone with that bold declaration. “And we know why. Because those abominations somehow reflect the evils of the warp to cast this fearsome shadow over their foes.”

  His voice was calm, reassuring. Valley-dwellers always prided themselves on their wisdom, Catmos reflected. Of all the descendants of Holy Terra hardy enough to colonise the ice-bound planet, they had the wit to claim Alnavik’s sheltering dales. They didn’t have to prove themselves quarrying the fine white marble that adorned Imperial temples across half the sector. They saw no merit in measuring themselves against the perils of the sea. Squid didn’t care.

  Jepthad walked round the room, entirely at ease. “I could do without their psyker spite gnawing at my thoughts,” he said frankly. “But we won’t be found wanting. We have the intelligence to see that fear for a mindless lie. We know what we face. We know we can trust our weapons and our comrades. Best of all, we know help’s coming.”

  He gestured upwards. “That’s a single hive ship in orbit, some lost remnant of a splinter fleet that’s been drifting through empty space since Hive Fleet Kraken was broken. I don’t say it’s no threat,” he allowed. “Never underestimate tyranids. That’s why the Praetors of Orpheus are on their way.”

  Catmos was encouraged to see smiles of relief and hope. The Praetors of Orpheus had fought heroically on Narthil III. The Stone Bears recognised their debt to the awe-inspiring warriors.

  After acknowledging the exultation that news prompted, Jepthad continued. “So our task is to hold out against the tyranids till the Praetors of Orpheus attack them from space. Then the vermin will be crushed between us!”

  “Then you’ll be needing this, sir.” Biniam strode forwards from the stair. He held out a power claw. A bear’s mask snarled above the three shimmering blades.

  For the first time, Jepthad was shaken. “That’s Captain Slaithe’s—”

  “You’ve earned it,” Biniam insisted.

  All the wounded shouted agreement. Several brandished the brass bear claws favoured by the rank and file: knuckledusters adorned with talons.

  “It was damaged.” Reluctant, Jepthad accepted the fearsome plated gauntlet.

  Biniam shrugged. “I saw to that.”

  Catmos reckoned the vox-sergeant could restart a stricken Imperial Navy cruiser with the wires from half a pict and some Sentinel datachips.

  “I will wear it with pride.” Jepthad thrust his hand inside and flourished the weapon. “To kill any tyranid that comes within reach, in Captain Slaithe’s memory!”

  “Stone Bears!” a man shouted. “Hard enough to eat rocks and shit gravel!” yelled another.

  The cheers and laughter broke off as a cadet hurried down the stairs.

  “Commissar Thirzat’s compliments.” He saluted Jepthad. “Please compile your report for the vox-sergeant to transmit with his.”

  Jepthad nodded. “Sergeant?”

  Biniam nodded at the resuscitrex. “I just need to look at that.”

  “Orderly.” Catmos glanced at Mathein. “It’s time the men were settled.”

  As Jepthad headed for the stairs, Biniam came over to the operating table.

  “To amuse yourself when you can’t sleep?” Pretending to examine the resuscitrex, he passed Catmos some mongrel offspring of a pocket data-slate and a handheld pict.

  “Drop by later and you’ll see.” The field surgeon nodded to the storerooms by the rear stairwell. “Just don’t interrupt. And thanks for this.”

  “What would you do without me?” Biniam sauntered after the hurrying lieutenant.

  Seeing the junior surgeons making checks on the casualties, Catmos went to the storeroom where they’d dumped the junk from the rest of the basement. By the time he’d made space for two chairs Mathein appeared with the day’s full report.

  “Nine more dead, eighteen wounded.” The orderly looked expectantly at the curiously rigged data-slate, the screen barely the size of Catmos’ hand. “So what’s that for?”

  “Who’s at worst risk of battle shock, among the men fit to fight tomorrow?”

  Barely half were left unscathed now, of the comrades who’d been ordered to hold this emplacement. How many would freeze tomorrow, Catmos wondered, overwhelmed by fear, by recollection of the slaughter they’d already seen, by the sheer impossibility of their task? Until they were slaughtered by the tyranids or cut down by the commissar’s pistol?

  Mathein thought. “Otharen.”

  “Bring him here.” Catmos switched on the data-slate and smiled as coloured lights darted round the black screen. He quickly set the simple game’s parameters.

  As Mathein opened the st
oreroom door, he indicated a chair. “Guardsman, please, sit.”

  Otharen lowered himself down. His torso was swathed in bandages. “Sir?”

  “Report, Guardsman,” Catmos said briskly. “Tell me exactly what happened to you today.”

  “I crew a mortar,” Otharen said uncertainly.

  Catmos took the other chair. “You were close by when the gate was breached?”

  Now he recognised the young man. He’d nearly been the second victim of the lanky tyranid the commissar had killed.

  “Talwhit, he was my crewmate.” Rimmed with white, Otharen’s eyes bored straight through Catmos, seeing only horrors. “It ate—it ate—”

  “Guardsman!” Catmos clapped his hands. “Look at me.”

  Otharen dragged himself back from the terrifying memory, though he was helpless to stop the shudders wracking him.

  “Stand up.” Without asking Catmos, Mathein draped a sensor blanket over Otharen’s chair. “Now sit.”

  As the Guardsman numbly obeyed, Catmos handed him the rigged data-slate.

  “Otharen, I want you to tell me everything that happened, everything you feared and felt. But while you’re doing that, you must play the starchaser.” He reached over and double-tapped the screen. “Like when you were a cub.”

  “Sir?” The Guardsman was utterly confused.

  The starchaser beeped reprovingly. Otharen had failed to follow the pattern of lights with his finger.

  “Just do it, soldier,” Catmos said sternly.

  Ingrained habits of obedience set Otharen tapping the screen. Yellow top, blue left, green right, blue left catching out Otharen’s finger anticipating the next light at the bottom. Red at the top, Otharen only just holding back in time. Red for danger, tap that and the game was over. The lights sped up, green, orange, purple, darting into the corners, each one needing a tap before the next one blinked into view. White, a double tap for that, the star itself.

  “Tell me everything that happened,” Catmos repeated. “No, don’t stop. Keep chasing the stars.”

  Otharen swallowed. “Me and Talwhit were firing the mortar.”

  This time he managed a few more sentences before the horror choked him.

  The sensor blanket telltales were glowing red. Mathein stepped forwards but Catmos held him back with a raised hand.

  The starchaser bleeped insistently. Otharen blinked and focussed on the screen. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “Reset the game,” Catmos insisted.

  “We were firing the mortar.” Otharen doggedly obeyed, prodding the screen with a numb finger. “Reynas was spotting for us, up on the walls.”

  Catmos didn’t know how many false starts and repetitions it took. But Otharen was finally able to endure reliving the terror of Talwhit’s death. The sensor telltales still showed amber but his panicked brainwaves had subsided, the racing heartbeat and the sweating. The young man’s voice was steady, his gaze fixed on the starchaser, his finger steadily following the flickering lights.

  The device acknowledged his success with a sweet chime. Otharen looked up at Catmos and scrubbed tears from his stubbled cheeks with his other hand. “Sir?”

  “Very good, Guardsman.” Catmos smiled as he took the starchaser. “Now get some sleep.”

  Mathein was standing behind the chair, carefully watching the sensors. As he turned, he stiffened to attention. Thirzat was in the doorway.

  “Orderly,” the commissar said curtly. “See your patient to his mattress.”

  Mathein looked uncertainly at Catmos.

  “Go on.” The field surgeon nodded.

  As Mathein escorted Otharen out, Thirzat entered the storeroom and closed the door. “What was that?”

  “A treatment for the mind, now we’ve tended his body.” Catmos spoke with more confidence than he necessarily felt. “Like the lieutenant said, tyranids are mindless. We’re not.”

  “Some unsanctioned psyker trick? I’ll break you if it is,” Thirzat warned, with more than the usual distaste for psykers.

  “Check my records. I’ve no hint of psychic potential.” Catmos held up the starchaser. “It’s a variation on an old trick of my mother’s.”

  That prompted surprise in the commissar’s cold eyes. “Explain.”

  Catmos gestured to the empty chair. “My mother was a healer on Alnavik.”

  “In the quarries?” Thirzat sat down, stiff-backed.

  “Accidents are a fact of life, like ships going down in the ocean.” Catmos shrugged. “She mended broken bones and amputated crushed limbs. Then there were the nightmares tormenting men and women who’d been digging out the dead and injured from under a rockfall, as well as crippling those who’d been trapped. The same as battle shock in the Guard.”

  “Afflicting those lacking resolve.” Thirzat was wholly unsympathetic.

  “You might think so,” Catmos said mildly, “if you didn’t know a person had been brave and steadfast before. My mother wouldn’t abandon someone she knew to be true steel. She swore getting someone to talk through their trials enabled them to defeat their fear. When they could do that without flinching, they could face the terror again.”

  Thirzat looked at him unsmiling. “I’m waiting for your explanation.”

  Catmos wondered briefly how the Commissariat surgically removed a sense of humour.

  “Getting someone to talk through their fears is impossible if the fear’s all they have to focus on,” he said crisply. “Giving them something else to do with their hands, with their eyes, distracts them just enough to take the edge off the terror. I can’t explain the whys and wherefores of it. I just know it works. My mother would give her patients a rhythm to tap out, one of the mountain songs everyone knows.” He held up the rigged data-slate. “I don’t know any music from the dales and the coast. But everyone plays starchaser.”

  Thirzat looked at the field surgeon for a long moment. “Will that boy hold his ground tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know,” Catmos said honestly. “But the odds are better than they were before.”

  “How many will you play this game with?” the commissar demanded.

  “As many as I can. Why not?” Catmos challenged. “If it does no good, can it do any harm?”

  “Beyond depriving the wounded of sleep?” Thirzat grunted. “We need every man standing.”

  “We need every man holding his ground.” Catmos threw the commissar’s own words back at him. “And if that boy dies, I want him to die with honour, not condemned as a coward by your pistol. In the meantime,” he pointed at the sensor blanket’s telltales, “why don’t I dress your wounds?”

  “It’s nothing.” A muscle flickering in his jaw, Thirzat rose to his feet.

  “Commissar, don’t be a fool,” Catmos said curtly. “How will the men hold out without you?”

  The first hint of a smile lightened the commissar’s expression. “Lieutenant Jepthad will do his duty.” But he shrugged off his greatcoat.

  The commissar had removed his uniform tunic earlier. Despite Thirzat’s skills and agility, Catmos saw the tyranid warrior’s claws had sliced deep in a few places. “Take off that undershirt.”

  Mathein was waiting anxiously outside the door. “Sir?”

  “It’s all right.” Catmos fetched counterseptic and suture-glue. “Let me patch him up, then fetch another showing signs of battle shock.” He paused. “Find a Guardsman called Nyal. See how he’s faring.”

  He went back and tended Thirzat’s injuries. The wounds cut through old scars. It would be easier to dislike the commissar, Catmos reflected, without incontrovertible proof of his courage. Thirzat’s back had no scars at all.

  “So, can I continue?” Catmos scoured a red-rimmed gash, swollen with tyranid venom.

  “If I thought we’d live to see the Praetors of Orpheus arrive, I’d forbid it, and report you to the Officio Medicae.” Now Thirzat’s smile reminded Catmos of a death’s head. “Since I doubt I’ll get the chance, you may as well carry on.”

  “You
don’t think we will get out of here?” Catmos concentrated on matching the edges of the wound as he applied the suture-glue. “We drove that monstrosity back, didn’t we? A tyranid warrior, if I recall my training?”

  “It didn’t yield that ground,” Thirzat said through gritted teeth. “The Hive Mind called it off once that other creature had learned what it needed. The one with the tentacles, that was a lictor.” He nodded with satisfaction when he saw Catmos’ belated recognition. “Not all tyranids are puppets, whatever the lieutenant says.”

  The commissar rose and picked up his greatcoat. “The bigger ones know what they’re doing. That warrior will be back, or something worse, with a new plan to overwhelm us and ten times the vermin following.”

  “What did they learn that could help it?” Catmos tried to hide his dismay.

  “Doubtless we’ll find out tomorrow.” Thirzat shrugged. “Make sure your orderly knows what to do.”

  “In case of the worst.” Catmos knew his duty. He swallowed hard. “But I’ll still hope for the best.”

  “It’s best not to hope. Then there’s nothing left to fear.” Thirzat opened the door and strode through the basement, head high, shoulders back, exuding confidence.

  While he was expecting everyone to die? Suddenly Catmos was furious. No. He wouldn’t accept the commissar’s dire prediction.

  “What did he have to say?” Biniam approached from the shadowed back stairs.

  Catmos was chilled by his friend’s grim voice. “What news on the vox?”

  “HQ’s astropath just died, screaming about shadows in the warp, bleeding from his eyes and nose,” Biniam muttered. “No one knows where the Praetors of Orpheus are.”

  “What about the other emplacements?” Catmos contemplated the wounded men.

  “Six more dropped off the vox-net.” Biniam shook his head. “No word from Yota City.”

  “So we hold out ’til we’re relieved or we’re all dead.” Catmos beckoned to Mathein.

  Which wouldn’t be long, given they’d taken such devastating casualties in two days. But there was still work to do, to stop him succumbing to his own fear, if nothing else.