Space Marine

by Ian Watson

  Juron and Lex wrestled the monster off the Lieutenant, wrenching out the dripping tail-spike.

  Vonreuter moaned, then smiled as the pain caught up with him… before his suit’s opiates quenched the distracting pangs.

  Juron hauled the officer upright. Vonreuter tottered, then stood firm, though momentarily grey-faced. Some poison had perhaps entered his blood, and his blood was neutralising it, manufacturing anti-toxins at speed.

  Yeri was trampling upon one of the bone-guns, breaking it open. Cautiously he peered at the organic, steaming innards… discovering a brood chamber of tiny chitinous ammunition-creatures… a large curled-up beastie with tough mandibles… for stripping that casing of chitin?… a vomitory firing chamber…

  Giddy with the death he had brought to the sword-wielder, Lex made to stamp his boot down upon the guts of that gun which Yeri had just exposed. Lex would show him how to erase it from existence.

  Yeri thrust against him – “Don’t!” – but Lex’s boot crushed one of the spilled ammunition-creatures.

  Immediately that its shell was cracked, the vile green softness within gushed acrid fire, wreathing Lex’s boot… which he plunged into a pool of ooze to extinguish.

  “The gun’s made of different creatures joined together, using each other,” Yeri said to Juron, who nodded but seemed indifferent.

  “Well killed,” the sergeant said to Lex.

  Then they all headed through the open door, along a great passageway that dripped turquoise mucus. Cocoons bulged from niches. Lex broke one open with his power-fist.

  Within, draped in slime, hunched a paralysed tattooed human woman with braided ropes of brown hair, her breasts and belly alike swollen with a slow pulsing commotion of what might well have been larvae…

  “No time for this right now,” gasped Vonreuter.

  WHEN THEY ENTERED the next chamber – a gloomy glaucous cave with long feelers questing from the walls – a voice addressed them in Imperial Gothic.

  A throaty, sibilant, hissing voice, it framed the syllables of human language with some care, but correctly.

  “Kindly do not use your weapons upon me—”

  So they did not fire immediately.

  The figure that spoke was enmeshed in those medusa fronds, and it was only the height of a Marine…

  “You a prisoner?” asked one of the Fists.

  The figure that emerged was six-limbed – a centaur-dragon. Four of its limbs were powerful, hoofed legs. Only its two thick potent upper limbs were arms… Consequently it was no juvenile form of the alien nightmare-knights, although its weasely face was similar. Its skin was thick and horny.

  “I am Zoat,” the centaur said. “Please cease your confused intrusion into this home. You should honour the Masters from beyond the Deep. They shall find a suitable use for you as part of the multi-body that supports the Great Mind – the Mind that shall spread through all the universe.”

  Its voice was lulling, hypnotic – so they listened.

  “Your… engenderings… will partake in a Great Work,” it announced. “The Masters tell us that the Great Mind senses that there are… savage entities… within the warp which this galaxy floats upon, as glittering scum on a black lake—”

  “Tzeentch…” muttered Biff.

  Yeri darted a look of utter warning at his brother. With power-glove, Yeri mimicked the scribing of anathema upon bones… “Chaos…” Biff made a hex sign.

  Yeri looked on the point of leaping to muzzle Biff, lest Lex’s bones be put in peril.

  “Yes, Chaos,” sang the centaur. “Thanks be to the Great Mind that Guides, the Masters are immune to corruption!”

  “Your galaxy is crumbling under this corruption,” it hissed. “Our ships shall take your flesh, extract your genes, and forge instruments that will wash your worlds clean of…” It stared at Biff, eyes glittering, “…of the taint of Tzeentch. And… of other taints,” it added. “Do you fear the torments of this Tzeentch?” Oh, it had picked up on the name Biff murmured.

  “And… of the other kindred torments of Chaos?” it asked. “Under the wise guidance of your new tyranid lords all flesh shall finally be remoulded into pure tools, serving the tyranid Overmind, which shall expel and quench all this tarnish utterly. You can never achieve that. For the traits of Chaotic tarnish are written within you. We can unwrite what was written. We shall delve for your daemons and expunge them! This is our message to you: withdraw, relinquish, yield, and serve. Your stars shall be saved by the Masters!”

  Vonreuter’s voice shook. “Don’t listen to this talk of daemons, lads. Of Chaos… it’s verboten. There are nouns and verbs that oughtn’t ever to be uttered—”

  “But is this not true?” asked the centaur. “How foolishly you pretend otherwise – when our Great Mind can intuit in its dream the features of the Chaos that haunts you all. Your puny Empire is a mere cobweb.”

  “Heresy,” snarled a Marine.

  “Yet it is so! It is so! Your rulers know this very well. Are you not concerned with truth?”

  Biff itched to kill this suave freak who spreched ImpGoth so slickly. Yet he forced himself to listen.

  “Your Imperium is a tattered cobweb,” the centaur repeated sympathetically. “You cannot bind the dire Gods of Chaos. Nor can you resist our fleet. Ha, but we shall give you a useful place within our homes – and we shall purge all taint. For we can extinguish those daemons by altering all the flesh and minds they feed on.”

  “Weve seen the use you made of orks and people!” shouted Juron. “Mincing machines and searchlights!”

  “Yet those are happy beings – united within our purpose. Are you happy? No, you are clouded with dreads, and transfixed with terrors.”

  “Woz it talking about?” cried a Scout.

  “Don’t listen,” said Juron.

  “Some of your other comrades have already listened to us Zoats – and we shall not need to destroy them. They have laid down their weapons – to serve our Masters in… in the crusade… against Chaos.”

  “That’s a lie. A suave lie.”

  “Why should we lie, when we could kill you?”

  “Because your figging ship isn’t fully awake yet!” retorted Biff.

  “Why should we trouble to learn your language?”

  “Yeah, how did you manage that trick?”

  “Because Marines have assisted us. The Chapter of the Lambs…”

  “The Lamenters?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “So where are the Lamenters? Show us one!”

  “We Zoats are ambassadors,” the alien beast said, quite failing to answer Biff’s enquiry. “We are well-bred negotiators. Kindly escort me to your fortress-ministry. Monastery.”

  Biff jerked a thumb at Lex. “Try negotiating with him – he’s well-bred.”

  Yeri panicked at this seeming incitement of the alien towards his own warped focus of adoration. Quickly, he stepped in front of Lexandro, who responded with an affronted shove.

  “A living trophy, Brother Tech!” snapped Lex. “Don’t try to grab him for yourself.”

  “We can’t take an unknown alien spy into our base,” protested Brother Kurtz.

  “That’s another name for ambassador: spy,” agreed Brother Volkman.

  “Brothers!” Lex appealed, silkily. “Lieutenant, shall we avail ourselves of this offer? We have excellent accommodation beneath our Apothecarion, do we not?”

  Vonreuter’s wound was obviously troubling him. He seemed confused, unable to assess. Tentacles wafted from the walls, questing softly. The Lieutenant’s head nodded.

  “Take over command, Juron,” he murmured. “I have some toxins in me that my body doesn’t recognise…”

  “Sarge,” said Lex, “you led us when we seized the Titan together. Now we can seize… this.”

  “I shall come with you willingly,” promised the Zoat. “I shall come quickly. Kindly let us go now – in case some warriors of our ship surprise us. They are not… diplomats, as I am.”
>
  Juron frowned.

  “I shall warn you about the Chaos Powers our Overmind senses in this galaxy,” the Zoat vowed. This was a mistake. Juron groaned, “No…”

  Chaos was pollution of the innocent. A Marine, to be a knight of the Emperor, must be purely innocent.

  “Sir,” said Yeri, “shouldn’t we advise our Librarians? Shouldn’t they accept the surrender of this… ambassador?”

  The Spider writhed in Biff’s mind. “According to this Zoat,” he said slowly, “some of our Brothers already surrendered, overwhelmed by the opportunity of serving these tyranids. Now it wishes to surrender… quickly. How come?”

  He thunked. “Isn’t it simply saying anything… so as to waste time until some warriors arrive? Because it’s figging desperate to stop us heading any further in this direction, and finding something vital? Doesn’t fancy its chances against a whole bunch of us, though! So it’s lying.”

  Within an instant, the fluent alien diplomat became a ravening beast. It leapt at Biff so swiftly that it was upon him before he could fire a single bolt…

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE ZOAT TORE Biff’s helmet off. His helmet, and head too. The sheer strength of the alien beast!

  Wrenching upwards, it lifted his cranium and his brain and his neck tissues – stretching, then snapping – in one fluid hoist. Stripped bare, Biff’s cervical vertebrae stood upright from the collar of his suit. They seemed to be the nozzle for a fountain of blood. This fountain swiftly died. Even as his body still stood there headless, his blood had set to cinnabar.

  As the Zoat rushed Biff’s detached head aloft, Lex was appalled to glimpse Biff Tundrish still living for some seconds. His astonished eyes goggled from their orbits through his open visor. The shock had not quite yet thundered upon his consciousness to quench it utterly.

  To see a living head torn loose… and that head being able to know, for hideous instants, that it was deprived of a body…

  For a moment Lex could hardly comprehend. Here was some daemonic conjuring trick, such as the possessed Lord Sagramoso had perpetrated, or had endured! This alien monster boasted of making bodies mutable. It had talked of Tzeentch, the Lord of Change. Tzeentch the forbidden, Tzeentch the expurgated…

  But no. No daemonic trick. Sheer brute strength.

  The Zoat hurled helmet and head at Lex. Lex dropped his boltgun so as to raise both power gloves to catch the head.

  “No!” howled Yeri – whether at the decapitation, or at Lex’s rash folly in dropping his weapon, who could say?

  Lex clutched the helmeted head before him. It was like some absurd limbless crab-creature with a metal shell. The spider tattoo leered its venomous scumnik heraldry. Life still flickered distantly within those bulging bloodshot eyes, life that was fast ebbing away within the embrace of the spider – shrinking, receding, sucked down a horrid infinite dark well.

  Lex snarled at that face, thrust so suddenly up against his. He bared his teeth in fury at its impertinence in shocking him thus – as well as in disgust at its fate.

  And he smiled madly too. For Biff’s lips seemed with tormented effort to be trying to form a last, breathless word… of damnation, or of desperate life-desire…

  Jarring his own helmet against Biff’s, jerking his own face forward, Lex either bit or kissed those purpled, near-corpse lips. Which, he knew not, though he tasted blood. All meaning eluded Lex right then. He anointed Biff’s lips with his own spittle as one might kiss a hand-bomb…

  Lex registered that the Zoat had leapt upon Brother Kurtz. It was rending him apart even in his armour. It was using him as a shield even while it tore that massive shield asunder. So Lex hurled the head at the Zoat. Nor did Lex miss.

  Biff’s helmeted head struck the Zoat’s skull with all the force of a power-toss – and bounced away, to roll against the wall, where glossy jelly-tentacles hastened to invade it.

  No doubt it was fully dead by now. But how appropriate that Tundrish should biff to the last. His brain – and braincase – may well have been reduced to their original simple destiny as a nutting, head-butting instrument… Yet he was honoured, too; for even in his death throw he had butted for Rogal Dorn.

  Even in its berserker fury, the Zoat staggered briefly, before discarding broken Kurtz. It leaped at limpy Vonreuter, who was confused by toxins, to maul him.

  “Shoot! Shoot!” screamed Juron.

  Guns racketed.

  Bolts exploded.

  The Zoat was deconstructed.

  The Lieutenant had lost an arm. Vonreuter slumped – as Biff’s armoured trunk had already slumped. Brother Kurtz lay dying.

  Yeri hastened to Lex’s side, and stared him in the face – accusingly, so it seemed.

  “Did that head bruise you?” he demanded. His tone oscillated between recrimination and warped concern.

  “Bruise me…” muttered Lex, hardly comprehending Yeri’s question. The shock that Lex had experienced almost transcended that which Biff himself must have endured during his last moments. The ex-scumnik “brother’s” demise had been absolutely thrust in Lex’s face.

  “Bruise me…?”

  His whole soul was bruised. He felt such an inexplicable emptiness – the like of which, perhaps, Biff had also experienced at the sudden absence of a body. Lex sensed a parasitical presence – for a ghost seemed to hover by his side. Fading, diminishing, like a distant echoing cry.

  “So,” the sergeant said tightly. He kicked the destroyed Zoat by way of punctuation. “Must indeed have been desperate. Prevent us from proceeding, yes indeed. Tundrish has proved his point – fatally. Saved us from making a serious error. Saved us. Dorn be with him always.” He happened to eye Lex as he said this, and Yeri frowned.

  “Saved you? Saved you for what?” Yeri hissed at Lex, offended. “Set you up for a worse death, more like.” This prospect of death appealed strongly to Lex. The contemptible ex-scumnik was now honoured above his other two “brothers”. The proper balance of hierarchy should be restored.

  Why, Biff had even disarmed Lex… in a sense. How instinctive it had seemed to catch the head of a brother. Clever Zoat.

  Lex swiftly recovered his boltgun from where it had fallen.

  “If you’re so concerned, you could have given me this,” he snapped at Yeri. “Sir,” he said, “we must be very near a major organ. An undefended one.”

  “I’m going to report about the ambassador first, and what it said.” The sergeant closed his visor, to do so. He mustn’t want his men to hear any more distracting mention of Chaos Powers – which had only been a ploy of the cunning Zoat, after all.

  Lex paced, furious with impatience.

  Juron opened his visor again, looking grim.

  “We need to knock out a major organ. Librarian Grenzstein is dead. Let’s go for it, lads.”

  A GREAT CLOACAL passageway led towards a door that pulsed tightly, purple muscles contracting in spasm as if to hold itself shut against any intruder.

  Corpses of some dead Marines and slaughtered tyranids lay in slimy blue ooze. Scavenger creatures were dissecting humans and aliens alike. There were leathery pouches with gaping razor-jaws on a dozen short scuttling legs. There were writhing suction-tube snakes and there were bat-winged transporters with hook-feet.

  The pouches were biting through tyranid hide, butchering the aliens into joints. These, they gulped whole.

  Then they waddled, swollen, to lips in the moaning, capillary-webbed walls, which swallowed the bloated pouches. A hiss of gases suggested some pneumatic channel behind those orifices. Serpents were invading the suits of the Fists, apparently liquefying the contents of flesh and bone to slurp out as slurry. Transporters fluttered, gobbets hanging from their hooks.

  A snake leapt up at Scout Dietrich’s hellfire bolter. The scavenger serpent latched tight. It spewed steaming caustic juices that dribbled over the Scout’s glove as he tried to shake the snake free.

  A slash from Juron’s power sword bisected the snake – once, then twice.
Its mouth still gripped the gun, nevertheless. The barrel was corroding, warping out of true.

  “Drop the gun, Dietrich!”

  None too soon. The Scout’s gauntlet was dissolving. Running past mobile pouches and snakes, trampling some, knocking other winged scavengers from the air, they arrived at that reluctant, puckered door – and Juron lasered it apart.

  Biff’s dead. Biff’s dead. This truth gonged in Lex’s mind, provoking stupid hilarity at the scumnik’s demise – head torn off, indeed! That barbaric, presumptuous head… Forever thunking… That hideously ugly tattoo… And provoking resentment too, at being upstaged by such an underling – albeit a battle-brother. Yet the event also triggered a wild weird pang of soul-pain. A searing sensation of amputation… A sense of void within… of the abortion of a parasite which proved, by its absence, to have been of some perverse value and significance, after all. Biff had been an ever-niggling subtext to the pious litany of Lex’s life. He had lent significance by contrast.

  Yes, damn it, significance!

  A glossy blue chamber yawned beyond the lasered ribbons of the dying door.

  Across the floor sprawled a giant green… gland? Some body-organ of the ship, to be sure…

  It was some cancerous arching slug. Great splayed suckers attached both ends of it to a floor that was composed of quivering larvae-like tubes. These linked a perimeter of thick cables to nodules in the pulsing gland-mass. Red and purple excrescences blobbed from the organ, oozing hormones. The air stank of musk and hydrogen sulphide, of rotten eggs and perfume.

  As the Marines blasted the green slug with bolts, the organ spasmed. Bubbly ichor sprayed. Springy bundles of tendrils lashed out from the rips in its exploding surface. Nerve-tentacles, deep rooted in the floor, tore loose.

  And Lex felt the ache of amputation – of a dimming of connexions with other parts of himself – intensify abominably. At that moment it was as if Biff had previously been joined to him, fused flesh to flesh, and mind to mind – and now was being torn away all over again even more cruelly… to be extinguished in gibbering, insane darkness. Yeri clutched at Lex.

  “We’re losing touch with each other, Lex… We mustn’t! We mustn’t—!”