Greater Good

by Sandy Mitchell

  ‘Could be,’ I said, as a dozen more bioforms swarmed out of the narrow opening, and followed their fellow. A brood of termagants, outnumbering them at least two to one, and being herded by one of the hulking warrior forms, turned their fleshborers on them, bringing the first few down, then the purestrains were among them, slashing and tearing at their prey.

  ‘Structural breach,’ the cogboy said, and for one terrifying moment I thought he meant that the swarm below had changed their minds and decided to come after us instead. But the icons on the hololith were moving out, beyond the subterranean boundaries of the shrine.

  ‘The burrowers are loose,’ Jurgen remarked, as though commenting on the weather, and a moment or two later I saw something monstrously huge surfacing within the heart of the swarm, knocking uncountable scuttling horrors from their feet. Some fell into its gaping maw, others were mashed to paste beneath its gargantuan coils, then it was gone again, leaving only an eddy of disorientated abominations on the surface to mark its passing.

  ‘They seem to be targeting the synapse creatures,’ Yail said, and I nodded.

  ‘Just the same tactics we’d employ,’ I agreed, although the two swarms seemed able to exploit one another’s vulnerabilities with an instinctive speed and precision we could only gasp at. ‘But this can’t go on for long.’

  ‘It can’t,’ the Adeptus Astartes sergeant agreed. ‘We just have to hope that the loser weakens the victor sufficiently to tip the odds in our favour.’

  ‘It’ll have to tip ’em a long way to keep this place secure with little more than a mob of cogboys waving sharpened sticks,’ I said, ‘even with you and your men to lead them[171].’

  ‘And you,’ Yail reminded me.

  ‘We’re just prolonging the inevitable,’ I said, switching the hololith back to the overall strategic view to emphasise the point. ‘So long as that bioship fragment is here, they’ll just keep on coming.’ The scrimmage in orbit seemed just as desperate and bloody, the hive fleet pressing the Navy hard, although at least it looked as though no more spores were falling. I switched the view again, to the region surrounding us. ‘There are more ’nids inbound all the time.’ I zoomed the image, taking in a cluster of contact icons scuttling towards us as fast as their legs could carry them. ‘This group could have joined the assault on the main hive, but it’s coming here instead.’

  ‘We need reinforcements,’ Yail said, scanning the datafeed for any unengaged units, and coming up as empty as I had.

  ‘Or we need to evacuate,’ I added. He looked at me as though I’d suddenly started talking orkish, so I waved an expansive hand, taking in all the tech-priests surrounding us. ‘This place is full of non-combatants, whose ministry is desperately needed to keep the forges running. If nothing else, we have to ensure their safety.’ And mine too, although I didn’t think it politic to mention that.

  ‘Fecundia is being overrun by tyranids,’ Yail said, still sounding bemused. ‘We are hardly likely to find a safe refuge for them anywhere else.’

  ‘Anywhere else has got to be safer than the ’nids’ primary target,’ I countered. I gestured towards the tactical display again. ‘The main hives are being successfully defended, at least for the moment.’

  At which point, I finally heard a welcome voice in my ear. ‘Ciaphas,’ Zyvan asked, ‘are you still there?’

  ‘Hanging on,’ I replied. ‘Watching a little tyranid civil war from the windows.’ It was still raging unabated, although sooner or later the superior numbers of the invaders were bound to tell. Not far away a brood of carnifexes was charging ponderously home against the flanks of a transplanted tyrannofex, which staggered and fell, retaliating with a withering barrage of fleshborers which began to devour its attackers instantly. Maddened with the pain of their wounds, the hulking slabs of muscle and bone staggered drunkenly, and charged again at random, crushing a group of their own hormagaunts as they went. ‘Quite a pleasant change to see them ripping into one another.’

  ‘No doubt,’ the Lord General said, sounding strained, ‘but we’re not so lucky. We’re barely holding on up here, and the leviathans at the heart of the fleet have just come into auspex range. Unless we can come up with something in the next couple of hours, it looks like we’re finished.’

  ‘So I take it evacuating the civilians will be out of the question?’ I asked, getting precisely the answer I expected.

  ‘You take it right,’ Zyvan said, sounding appropriately touched by my non-existent concern for the non-combatants; but under the circumstances I could hardly ask about being able to make a run for it myself. In the unlikely event of getting out of this undigested, I had a reputation to maintain, and if a chance did come up to save my own neck, it’d be a lot harder to take if I’d undermined Yail’s trust in me beforehand. ‘The Navy’s got its hands full, and even if we could get a shuttle away, it’d be downed before it hit the atmosphere.’

  ‘Then we’ll hold on as long as we can,’ I said. Which was all good sinew-stiffening stuff, just the kind of quietly understated declaration of resolve someone like I was supposed to be was supposed to say in situations like this. I glanced at the hololith, seeing the swirl of the internecine battle to the death unfolding like a clash between storm fronts. ‘We’ll upload our tactical data, and keep it coming in real time. If we do go down fighting, the analysts might be able to make something out of it.’

  ‘Standing by to receive,’ Zyvan said, and cut the link, rather hastily, I thought[172].

  ‘A good suggestion,’ Yail said. ‘I’ll advise Apothecary Sholer to prepare whatever results his researches yield for transmission too. It would be regrettable if any useful information was lost at the last minute.’

  ‘It would indeed,’ I said, thinking it would be a damn sight more regrettable if I was. I spoke absently, though, my attention almost entirely on the ebb and flow of the contact icons in the hololith, as my subconscious struggled to bring something about them into focus. I glanced out of the window, where the epic clash of chitin was still illuminated by the flickering glare of the immolating harvester, translating the movements of the icons into those of the actual creatures, and realisation suddenly struck, like one of the secondary explosions going off around the wreck. ‘Look at that!’

  ‘They’re giving it some, all right,’ Jurgen agreed, completely missing the point, which was nothing new, but Yail was looking puzzled too.

  ‘All I can see is tyranids killing one another,’ he said, with a faint air of resentment, as though he didn’t see why they should have all the fun.

  ‘But it’s how they’re doing it,’ I said. I pointed at a particularly egregious example. ‘Look at those termagants.’ A brood of the invaders was firing its fleshborers at an advancing tervigon, the towering creature’s thick armour plating shrugging the incoming hail of deadly beetles off with almost contemptuous ease, although several of the newly-spawned termagants scuttling around its feet fell, while the others returned fire with fleshborers of their own. Abruptly the target brood scattered and ran, taking what cover it could.

  ‘That’s typical instinctive behaviour,’ Yail reminded me, still none the wiser, and I nodded.

  ‘But they had one of the big warrior forms with them,’ I said, pointing it out just before the tervigon bit it in half, chewing and swallowing its impromptu snack with every sign of relish. ‘It should have been directing them, overriding the instinctive response.’

  ‘It should.’ Yail nodded, in sudden understanding. ‘The presence of the node from the bioship must be inhibiting the hive fleet’s ability to pass on instructions.’

  ‘Jamming it, like we do with enemy vox-channels,’ I agreed. I made for the door, with a fine show of decisiveness. ‘We need to talk to the Apothecary right away.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  Sholer’s makeshift analyticum turned out to be pretty much as I’d expected: a large, echoing space the size of a shuttle bay, the cargo pallets usually stacked there either pushed into the corners or pressed into service
as improvised tables and workbenches, at which crimson-robed acolytes of the Omnissiah were toiling away diligently, doing Emperor knew what. Cabling ran everywhere, with the typical cogboy’s indifference to either trip hazards or the danger of accidental electrocution, although I suppose the latter would hardly inconvenience anyone with so high a proportion of mechanical to organic components. If anything, it would probably perk them up a bit[173].

  The middle of the chamber was dominated by the bioship fragment, a vast chunk of necrotising meat, which towered more than twice my height. In fact it would be no exaggeration to say that it was roughly the size of a Baneblade overall, though less firmly defined. Noisome fluids seeped from it constantly, trickling into a hastily-drilled hole in the floor, from which a steady splashing sound indicated that they were being collected in a vat of some kind[174]. Needless to say, the stench was indescribable. The whole thing was studded with metal spikes driven deep into the mound of flesh, from which a forest of wires ran to banks of instrumentation, the displays of which were being intently studied by Sholer and his gaggle of assistants, a few of whom I recognised from the analyticum downstairs.

  ‘Commissar,’ he greeted me, with manifest surprise, as I bustled in, Jurgen at my heels. It was, perhaps, a measure of how overpowering the stench was that I had to turn to make sure my aide was still there. ‘I assume your presence means an unexpected development?’

  ‘It does,’ I assured him. I’d petitioned the machine spirit of my data-slate to keep watch on the tactical information we were uploading to Zyvan’s command centre aboard the flagship, and handed it over hurriedly, with a nod towards the kopje of diseased flesh looming over us as I spoke. ‘We think this thing’s jamming the influence of the hive fleet. I need to know how, and if we can exploit it.’

  Sholer glanced at the slate for a moment, assessing the tactical data as rapidly and comprehensively as only an Adeptus Astartes could, then handed it back, with a cursory nod. ‘Intriguing,’ he said, and turned to one of the flickering data displays. ‘The main instances of disruption appear to correspond with neural activity on these frequencies.’ The regular wave patterns dissolved into meaningless static, and Sholer frowned. ‘Equipment malfunction,’ he said. ‘Hardly surprising, given how quickly it was all moved and reassembled.’

  ‘Jurgen,’ I said, divining the probable cause[175], ‘could you find me a recaff somewhere? And you’d better get something for yourself while you’re about it. It looks like being a long night.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ he said, and slouched out. The display steadied.

  Sholer gave it a couple of extra whacks to be on the safe side, and turned back to me. ‘This is a very promising line of enquiry.’

  ‘Which is going to be terminated in pretty short order, if the creatures outside have their way,’ I reminded him. ‘How can we use it now?’

  ‘We’d need to boost and transmit the signal,’ he told me, clearly intrigued by the possibilities; something I’d have found a good deal more encouraging if he wasn’t still treating it as an abstract problem to be solved for the fun of it, rather than the urgent matter of our survival. ‘Unfortunately, transmitting a psychic signal isn’t quite as simple as sending a vox.’

  ‘Use a psyker, then,’ I said. ‘You’re not going to tell me an installation as sensitive as this one doesn’t have an astropath on staff?’

  The Apothecary nodded.

  ‘Of course there is,’ he agreed. ‘But I don’t see what good it’ll do. She won’t be able to read a thing from it, let alone act as a relay. The warp shadow’s got us completely cut off.’

  ‘No harm in asking her, though, is there?’ I demanded, with rather more asperity than I’d intended.

  ‘None whatever,’ Sholer said.

  Though I’ve never been particularly comfortable in the company of astropaths, I was more than happy to see this particular one, who strolled into the analyticum with complete confidence, stepping over the cables lying in wait for the unwary without so much as a flicker of her sightless eyes. Like most of her kind, her age was indeterminate, the skin of her face etched with faint stress lines, although the faint stubble on her shaven head was dark where it shouldered its way through the tattooed icon of the Emperor, no doubt intended to invoke his protection. ‘You must be Cain,’ she said, turning her head in my direction, and adroitly sidestepping a scuttling CAT as she did so.

  ‘I must,’ I agreed, debating for a moment whether to extend a hand in greeting, before deciding against it. Her preternatural senses would probably make her aware of the gesture, but if they didn’t, I’d look like an idiot. Then she extended hers, to precisely the right position for me to take with the least amount of difficulty. ‘Good of you to come.’

  ‘It’s not as though I had a lot else to do,’ she said, with a faint smile, as I released her hand after a perfunctory shake. Even through my glove, I thought I could feel a faint tingling sensation, although I suppose that could have been my imagination. Without Jurgen around I felt unusually vulnerable, even though I knew intellectually that she couldn’t read my mind directly. I’d made sure my aide was occupied elsewhere, however, as his presence would have been sure to disrupt proceedings. I’d known psykers have a seizure in his vicinity, and even if our astropath wasn’t simply poleaxed by his aura of psychic nullity, she’d certainly recognise him for what he was, a development Amberley was sure to take the dimmest of views of[176]. ‘Clementine Drey.’

  ‘We need you to transmit something,’ Sholer explained, and Clementine’s face took on a puzzled expression, deepening the delicate tracery of barely-perceptible lines across her face into full visibility, adding a couple of decades to her apparent age in an instant.

  ‘I can’t push a message through the shadow,’ she said, as though explaining to a child that space was black.

  ‘We know,’ I said. ‘We just want you to send it out there regardless.’ If I’d said we wanted her to contact the hive mind, she’d probably go completely to pieces, leaving us no better off than we were now.

  ‘Transmit blind?’ Clementine asked, apparently unconscious of the irony, and looking no happier. She clearly wasn’t an idiot, and probably had an inkling of what we were after. She turned, looking uncannily as if she was studying the bioship fragment with her sunken eye sockets. ‘You want me to try contacting that?’

  ‘Could you?’ I asked, trying not to sound too eager, and she shook her head.

  ‘There’s nothing there. It’s like…’ she paused, groping for an analogy. ‘It’s like a hole in the room. There’s just nothing to sense, like a fragment of the shadow itself.’

  Sholer and I looked at one another. I don’t know how he was feeling, but I was close to despair. How could the astropath pass on the signal from the bioship fragment when she couldn’t even perceive it? Then my eye fell on the array of instrumentation, and their scurrying, red-robed attendants.

  ‘Can you read those instruments?’ I asked, hardly daring to hope.

  ‘Of course.’ Clementine looked puzzled again, though how she was able to perceive them at all was beyond me. ‘It’s simply data flow. The kind of thing I encode for transmission all the time.’

  ‘Can you do it in real time?’ I asked, and her expression began to border on the scornful.

  ‘Easily,’ she said.

  ‘Right now?’ I asked, thumbing my palm for the answer I wanted to hear.

  ‘Find me a seat,’ Clementine said, in a resigned tone. She turned her head. ‘And I’d appreciate a little privacy. The process can be unpleasant to witness.’ By which she meant unpleasant to experience, if I was any judge, having had more than a little experience of polite misdirection myself. Sholer went off to chivvy the rest of the cogboys away, while I heaved a couple of the smaller crates around to screen off the main workstation from eyes other than our own.

  By the time I’d finished, Clementine had settled in a chair before the lectern, staring through the pict screen as if she could see the individual electrons
pinging about in it. For all I knew, perhaps she could.

  ‘Commissar,’ Jurgen’s voice sounded urgently in my comm-bead. ‘The ’nids are finishing off the last of the ones we thawed out, and most of them are moving on the shrine.’ His words were punctuated by the hissing roar of the melta firing. ‘Some have already broken through in the lower corridors.’

  ‘It has to be now,’ I said, as Sholer rejoined us. ‘The other group’s on the way up to kill this thing.’ As if to underline my words, the muffled roar of a bolter echoed from somewhere beneath my feet.

  ‘They’re in the lift shaft,’ Yail’s voice chimed in, unnecessarily, as my innate sense of direction had pinpointed the source of the firing. I pictured the wide, deep void, plunging all the way down to the lower levels, providing the invading tyranids with the most direct route possible to where we were sitting.

  ‘How long can you hold them for?’ I asked, drawing my weapons.

  ‘Long enough, I hope,’ Yail replied, before cutting the link, no doubt having a good deal more to concentrate on than idle conversation.

  ‘Ready,’ Clementine said, looking far from happy, as the sounds of distant firing redoubled. ‘I’ll just keep echoing whatever comes in through the feed, although Throne knows what you expect to pick it up.’ Her mouth moved, in some litany peculiar to her caste, then her body spasmed, as though she was throwing a fit, every muscle locking rigid with startling suddenness. She slipped from the chair, smacking her head on the edge of a nearby crate, and opening an ugly wound, which Sholer moved to staunch. A thin trickle of drool, admixed with blood from her bitten tongue, oozed slowly from the corner of her mouth.