by Steve Parker
But something was moving in the cloud of dust up ahead. Something big.
Zeed heard a chilling double scream unlike anything he’d heard before. Then he saw it, the frontal section of something large and wormlike, plated in broad rings of glittering black shell. It cast its head about, searching for the Ultramarine, strange multi-part jaws working the air, hoping to bite down on its target.
Zeed still couldn’t see Solarion. His view was blocked by the bulk of the monster. But he heard him growl something over the vox-link. In all the noise, it was difficult to make out – a curse of some sort, maybe.
‘Omni! Contact front!’ Zeed shouted to his friend. ‘Something big!’
Voss’s flames had bought them a little breathing space. Together, the Raven Guard and the Imperial Fist ran forwards up the tunnel, Zeed firing off rounds at the monstrous armoured worm. That armour, however, was too thick for any bolter-round to penetrate, and if Zeed thought his attack would draw the monster’s attention away from Solarion, well, in that regard he was wrong.
‘Prophet,’ he shouted over the link. ‘Respond.’
From the other side of the beast’s massive cylindrical bulk, Zeed and Voss could hear three-round bursts of bolter-fire.
‘Prophet!’ Zeed said again.
‘Damn it, Raven Guard,’ came the voice at last. ‘I’m a little busy here. And don’t call me that!’
There was further cursing, then, ‘It’s no good. I can’t even chip the thing. I knew we should have been issued Kraken rounds.’
At least the Ultramarine was to the west of the creature. He could still fall back to RP2, which lay just half a kilometre further up the tunnel. But the vast, wormlike enemy was blocking any hope of Talon Four and Five joining him. Clearly their weapons were inadequate against all that armour plate.
Zeed and Voss were within just a few metres of the creature’s bulk now. Zeed slowed, knowing there was nothing in his arsenal to defeat such a beast. Perhaps if they had brought a lascannon, a meltagun, a plasma cannon, or his own beloved master-crafted lightning claws…
But, right now, those peerless claws were somewhere beyond the planet’s ionosphere, in orbit aboard the Saint Nevarre. Next time, he would insist on choosing his own damned mission loadout, and to hell with Sigma.
Voss, however, had his own ideas. The Imperial Fist surged past Zeed, ran straight up to the side of the worm and thrust his gauntlets deep between two of the monster’s exo-skeletal segments. With a booming roar, he threw all his tremendous augmented strength into pushing the sections of black plate apart. Zeed saw glistening purple flesh appear in the gap, soft, wet and sticky.
Vulnerable.
He leapt to Voss’s side, thrust his bolter’s muzzle against the exposed skin, and emptied half an entire clip deep into the body of the beast.
There was a repeat of the strange double-voiced scream, and the creature whipped its head around, throwing Zeed and Voss back against the wall to their right. But, as it turned to bring its glistening jaws to bear on them, the bolts detonated deep inside its flesh. The rounds, clustered together, caused a massive rupture, blowing out a great section of its body, covering the Space Marines and the tunnel walls in a disgusting shower of gore and chitinous fragments.
The creature slumped dead, rocking slightly from side to side on its rings, pungent smoke rising from the messy crater in its corpse.
Zeed and Voss pushed themselves up and looked at the results of their handiwork.
‘Not subtle,’ said Zeed, ‘but nice.’
‘It will do,’ Voss agreed. ‘I guess the tyranids found rock-eater genes somewhere after all. They must have incorporated them into one of their new bioforms.’
‘You think too much, tree stump,’ said Zeed, kicking the lifeless mass of the thing with the toe of his boot.
The creature suddenly jolted, and they both levelled their weapons at it with a start, though Zeed’s was now already empty. But the thing hadn’t returned to life. It was just Solarion, pushing his way past the limply clacking mouthparts to rejoin them.
If Zeed and Voss had expected any thanks, they were mistaken.
‘Once you’re finished feeling proud of yourselves, perhaps we can get a bloody move on. RP2 is just up ahead.’
He vanished back around the monster’s corpse and they could hear him break into a run on the other side, his boots hammering on the rocky tunnel floor.
They looked at each other a moment.
‘Sooner or later,’ said Zeed, ‘I’m going to crack him one in the face.’
‘I’ll hold him for you,’ Voss replied with a grin beneath his helm.
Zeed snorted his disdain for the idea.
‘Hardly necessary.’
16
Solarion, Zeed and Voss found RP2 just as they had left it. The water so many metres below the strange natural bridges still cast its eerie white glow up to the cavern’s ceiling. The hidden cache of ammunition and grenades was untouched. This was the room in which the inquisitor’s hexagraphe had been detonated, but it bore no real trace of that event. The only sign there had ever been a hexagraphe was the orb’s case, still lying open where they had left it. Fragments of Sigma’s servo-skull were still scattered where Zeed had stamped on it.
Voss covered the point where the rock bridges met in the approximate middle of the cavern while Zeed and Solarion restocked on bolter ammunition. This done, they turned to cover him while he re-supplied himself with flamer fuel.
Then, on the single span of narrow rock that ran west towards the exfil point, they waited, and hoped that Karras and Rauth were somehow still alive.
Seconds felt like minutes. The silence was, in some ways, worse than coming under full assault. After all they had been through, the running and firing, the non-stop pursuit, the storm of slaughter they had rained on the birthing chambers, this relative quiet was unnatural and unsettling.
‘What if they don’t come?’ murmured Zeed. He had just checked his mission-chrono and did not like what he saw. If they left now, just the three of them, they could make it back to RP1 and then to the exfil point with minutes to spare before the extraction deadline. Not many, but enough. Were Scholar or Watcher even still breathing? He almost wished he had powers of clairvoyance himself. Almost, but not quite. He could never truly wish for a Librarian’s gifts. The dark fate often attached to them was too terrible.
There had been nothing from either of them on the link. That doesn’t mean anything, he told himself. Comms at any kind of range down here were poor at best. Too many rare metals and strange crystals interfering.
How long was one to wait for those that might already be dead? How long did honour and loyalty demand? And what about the woman? Did they have her? Had Karras actually given her back to those monsters to buy their lives?
No. Zeed didn’t believe that for one second. No Space Marine would bargain with a filthy xenos. Suffer not the alien to live. Karras wouldn’t have done it. He’d had a trick up his vambrace, Zeed was sure. Rauth had held back to wait for him. If things had gone awry, Karras had good support. Zeed might not like Rauth all that much, but there was no denying his cold efficiency. The Raven Guard could quite believe the Exorcist had no soul.
No one spoke. All of them, even Solarion, knew that, despite the relentless cycling of the mission chrono, duty and honour bound them together and dictated that they wait until the last possible moment. To return to Sigma without White Phoenix was to return in disgrace, their first Deathwatch operation a disaster. It would suggest that their Chapters had made a mistake in nominating them. It would mean that the Watch Council had made a mistake in approving them for deployment, and it would mean Sigma and the Ordo had made a mistake in trusting them. Alive or dead, they would be judged unworthy of selection.
No, thought Zeed. I’ll not go back to be labelled ‘failure’ or ‘disgrace’. Not by Shrike, not by anyone. Especially not that damnable inquisitor. Not after what I saw back there in the heart of the nest.
He
hoped Karras was on his way. He had to tell him. Let Karras decide whether to inform the others or not.
The sounds of countless claws scraping on rock came to them now, getting louder as the Space Marines listened, accompanied by that distinct screeching and chittering, and the clacking of chitin shell.
‘For the Emperor,’ said Solarion, cocking his weapon.
‘For the primarchs,’ said Voss, his flamer held ready.
‘For Talon and the Watch,’ added Zeed.
The first cluster of horrid alien forms raced into the chamber, the genestealers’ powerful legs propelling them at frightening speed, eyes wide, filled with murder.
Bolters answered.
Hunched, ridge-backed bodies began tumbling from the rocky bridge, spinning end over end before splashing into the glowing liquid far below. Dozens fell that way. The bridge was narrow, funnelling the genestealers into a lethal cone of fire. The Space Marines simply couldn’t miss. Some of the genestealers, blocked by sheer numbers on the bridge, began to clamber up towards the cavern ceiling, the claws and talons of their double pairs of arms making light work of vertical walls.
‘Omni,’ shouted Zeed over the raucous rattle of his bolter, ‘cover the bridge while we pick the others off the walls and ceiling.’
Voss stepped forwards towards the foe, white flame roaring out in front of him.
Zeed watched his latest kill tumble from overhead, down past the bridge, then targeted another, and another. Focused on the killing, he had all but put Rauth and Karras from his mind.
Then a black shape exploded out from a tunnel mouth on the right. Had the broodlord sent a flanking force?
The Raven Guard almost loosed a bolt at it, but checked himself just in time.
It was Darrion Rauth, sprinting full-tilt with the pale, pathetic figure of White Phoenix in his arms. ‘Covering fire!’ he was shouting. ‘The beast comes!’
Just half a dozen metres behind him, Karras now burst into view, also running as fast as he could, bolt pistol in his left hand, the shimmering force sword Arquemann held single-handed in his right.
‘Prepare to fall back!’ Karras shouted.
A second later, Zeed saw why.
The tyranid broodlord emerged after them at speed. It burst into the cavern with a deafening roar. Its thunderous footfalls shook stone chips loose from the underside of the bridge. It turned to face the Space Marines and screamed.
Voss had just purged a span of the bridge with a blast from his flamer when Rauth reached the junction at its middle. He leapt over the heaps of charred corpses, came level with the rest of the kill-team, dropped to a knee and placed the woman as gently as he could on the ground. Then he ripped his bolter from his right cuisse and shouted, ‘Mag!’
Zeed stepped close, still firing, and let the Exorcist strip a fresh magazine from his webbing. Rauth hammered the magazine home into the housing under his bolter’s barrel.
‘Not that it’ll make a damned bit of difference,’ he spat and loosed a burst at the broodlord. Zeed saw at once what he meant. The triple-round burst detonated before ever striking the beast, such was the powerful protection of the psychic shell it was projecting around itself.
Karras was almost with them now, vaulting over the smoking bodies that littered the bridge.
‘What are you doing?’ he yelled. ‘Pick her up and run!’
Rauth turned his muzzle towards a knot of genestealers breaking from the far tunnel and pressed the thumb-stud on his under-barrel grenade launcher. There was a dull whomping sound. Half a second later, the high-explosive round struck dead centre, blowing the tyranids apart. Pieces of them rained down on the surface of the lake below. Then Rauth scooped White Phoenix back up into his arms and turned for the exit.
Karras reached the others where they were laying down suppressing fire, and spun. The broodlord had just made the junction at the middle of the bridge. It turned, stance wide, and its eyes tracked Rauth as he sprinted into the west tunnel and disappeared.
‘Omni,’ said Karras. ‘Tell me you still have the detonator for the charges you placed here.’ As he said it, he holstered his bolt pistol on his left cuisse and held out his left hand. He had used psychic detonation once already. The broodlord would be wary now. If Karras sent out psychic force to set off the explosives, the monster might react to block it. Conventional means were a safer bet this time around.
Voss passed him a small metal cylinder with a flip-top safety release and a red button on the top. ‘You get one shot only with this, Scholar,’ he warned.
‘I know. Now move out, all of you. Get that woman back to the exfil point. Go!’
There was no argument this time. Zeed and Solarion each loosed a final HE[21] grenade-round from their own launchers, then sprinted from the cavern with Voss. The first detonation, high on the north-east wall, sent a score of badly wounded genestealers tumbling to their deaths. The second detonation struck the broodlord’s shield dead-centre. The beast raged and staggered back, but a metre only. When the smoke cleared, it stood unharmed, its furious gaze now locked on Karras. It broke into a lumbering trot, heading straight towards him.
Keep coming, you ugly bastard, cursed the Death Spectre.
With the detonator in one hand and Arquemann in the other, he prepared to slay this menace once and for all. Psychic power flowed along his arm and into the ancient crystalline matrix set deep within the rare alloy of the blade. The broodlord felt the concentration of building power. Its cold eyes flicked to the sword then back to Karras’s visor.
It didn’t slow its advance.
Karras’s retinal display told him exactly where all the explosives were. His helm’s spectrometer and tracking subsystems had pin-pointed their location by concentrations of scent molecules. The display marked them with small red reticules.
The charge of most immediate interest to Karras was the one stuck fast to the side of the bridge just ten metres in front of him – a charge past which the broodlord now ran.
Karras held up the detonator, arm extended straight out.
‘Far enough!’ he snarled at his enemy. He thumbed the release and hit the switch.
There was a peal of thunder, so sharp and close that it stabbed at his ears.
The broodlord bellowed in outrage as the rock beneath its feet disintegrated into a shower of rubble. Chunks large and small plunged to the glowing waters below. The mighty tyranid plunged, too… Almost. As the bridge fell away beneath it, it leapt powerfully, slamming its upper body into Karras’s end of the shattered bridge and scrabbling desperately against gravity. One set of talons found purchase, and it hung for a moment, clawed feet dangling in thin air above a hundred-metre drop. Then it swung another arm up and secured a better grip.
The creature, more physically powerful than any Space Marine, began hauling its heavily armoured body upwards. But, as its head cleared the lip of rock, it found itself looking up into the glowing visor-slits of Karras’s battle-helm.
There was a moment when their gazes locked, each combatant looking into the soul of the other. It was a moment Karras had known many times – that moment of shared knowledge between enemies, even across species so vastly different. It was the moment when the victory of one becomes absolute; the moment when the loser knows absolute loss, when the deadly dance is over and they stand apart, separated by inescapable, undeniable fact.
‘I win,’ said Karras coldly, voice little more than a whisper tremulous with hate.
Arquemann flashed downwards, once, twice, severing those clawed hands at the wrist.
The broodlord gave a long, chilling scream as it fell, a scream that Karras allowed himself to savour, if only for a moment. He didn’t stay to watch the monster hit the powerfully corrosive waters so far below. He heard the splash, but he had already turned away and was running; running as fast as his tired, aching legs could manage.
The digits on his mission chrono had turned red. Talon Squad had less than thirty minutes until the extraction deadline.
> It might just be enough, Karras told himself as he pounded up the tunnel.
But a self-critical sneer stole over his face.
Who did he think he was he fooling?
17
Zeed, Solarion and Voss raced along the tunnel, plasteel support beams whipping by in the glow of bolter-mounted flashlights. The tunnel curved upwards and to the right, and soon they reached the end of it, to be greeted by a frustrated Rauth.
The Exorcist had placed the woman down. Behind him was the emergency blast door that they had muscled open hours ago.
It was shut tight.
‘They got ahead of us,’ rasped Rauth. ‘This door… It’s not designed to be opened from this side. No emergency release, no handles, nothing.’
There was the boom of an explosion from back down the tunnel.
‘At least that means the bridge is out,’ said Zeed.
‘It won’t stop them,’ said Solarion. ‘Even with the broodlord dead, they’ll be coming. They still have prey to hunt.’ He looked at the slumped woman. ‘Maybe they’ll come for what’s inside her.’
Voss slung his flamer and pushed past the others, walking straight to the door. Rauth was right. The blast door was built to be opened from the other side only, a measure intended to stop doomed and desperate men from inflicting their fate on others, be it deadly gas, a magma flood, or something else entirely.
Voss drew his knife and tried to work the blade into the crack between the heavy adamantium doors.
