Predator, Prey

by Rob Sanders

  Lux Allegra didn’t care much for ancient history. A bitter fire had returned to belly, however. ‘These weapons of mass destruction could be used against the invader,’ she said, finally seeing where the Marineer commanders were going with their history lesson.

  ‘After a fashion,’ the admiral said cautiously.

  ‘Records show that the cache of stored orbital weapons are largely biologicals,’ General Phifer said. ‘They fell out of favour with Loyalist forces and a number were secured at Desolation Point.’

  ‘Biologicals.’

  ‘Virus bombs, captain.’

  The fire in Allegra’s belly felt suddenly doused.

  ‘A contingency force,’ she said, repeating the general’s earlier words. ‘You mean to deny Undine to the invader.’

  A gleam of grim determination found its way into Phifer’s eyes.

  ‘Should the Adeptus Astartes not arrive in time,’ the general said, ‘I aim to preserve Undine for the Emperor.’

  ‘Preserve for him a dead rock in space,’ Allegra accused.

  ‘A rock purified of the green plague, yes,’ Phifer shot back. ‘An Imperial rock, captain.’

  ‘What about the Western Hives?’ Allegra said, turning to Lord Governor Borghesi. ‘The billions at Pontoplex, Nemertis, Arethuse?’

  The old man shook his head sadly.

  ‘No one will survive the biological weapons, once they are unleashed,’ Phifer said. ‘But no one will survive the invader, and it has already been unleashed.’

  Lux Allegra was silent. She couldn’t fully imagine the enormity of the act Phifer, Novakovic and Borghesi were proposing. She felt the cold comfort of a fate accepted creep into her bones. Her hand unconsciously drifted down to the flak armour over her stomach. All of sudden, Lyle Gohlandr didn’t feel so far away.

  ‘We talk of contingency, captain,’ Admiral Novakovic said. ‘Hopefully, the Black Templars will arrive in time and the Emperor’s Angels will deliver precious Undine.’

  ‘Captain?’ Phifer said.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Allegra replied icily.

  The old men – general, admiral and governor all – nodded silently.

  A kind of terrible calm descended.

  ‘My men are dead,’ Allegra said at length. It felt strange to actually say the words.

  ‘You can take my security detail,’ General Phifer said. ‘Commander Tyrhone?’

  An officer stepped forwards from the shadows of the tiny command centre. He was dressed in the charcoal uniform of the Marineer Elites and had the dark skin of a Southern hiver. His face was all jutting bones and unsmiling gristle. A man made hard by his duties and the needs of the general under whom he served.

  ‘Tyrhone and his squad will be at your disposal,’ General Phifer said. ‘The commander will be of use to you in priming the virus bombs for a launchless detonation.’ Allegra nodded at the commander, who said nothing. Phifer gave her a data-slate. ‘This contains the location and security codes for the depot hatch-entrance. We cannot guarantee easy movement across the island. Desolation Point is a small colony but will still no doubt attract landing enemy in voracious number.’

  ‘Just get me as close to the shore as you can,’ Allegra said. ‘The north-east anchorage is the deepest and traditionally admits submersibles.’

  ‘Hold the depot,’ General Phifer ordered. ‘Prime the biologicals and await my command. Do you think you can do that?’

  Allegra turned with the data-slate in hand and made for the conning tower airlock.

  ‘Like I said,’ she said, half to herself, ‘I’ll do it.’

  FIFTEEN

  Eidolica – Alcazar Astra

  It was a wall of green flesh. A perimeter of brawn, bone and armour. An enclosure of savagery and xenos hatred. The genetic forefathers of the Fists Exemplar had stood on the walls of the Imperial Palace during the Battle of Terra. All of Dorn’s sons knew what it took to defend a wall and what it took to bring one crashing down.

  Second Captain Maximus Thane knew. But despite bringing wall after greenskin wall toppling to the hull of the star fort in clouds of gore and splinter-showers of skull, Thane always found that another beast-wall had been erected behind the bloody ruins in its place.

  It had been carnage for the past hour. The Alcazar Astra trembled with the storming footfalls of the alien invader. Battle-brothers stood their ground on the thick void plating of the fortress-monastery’s hull, with wild blades and bullets sparking off the scorched surface of their armour. The greenskins were everywhere, smothering the fallen star fort with their foul, alien presence. The Space Marines fought for their commanders. They fought for their companies. They fought for their Chapter and their fortress-monastery. They fought for their world. Like the metal gargoyles adorning what had been the star fort’s void ramparts, the Adeptus Astartes refused to move. They would not allow their defensive lines to be broken. But the green tide was irresistible as it washed monstrosities up from the sands and across the monastery decking, flooding each mighty transept with innumerable targets.

  As Maximus Thane ducked and weaved, kicked and blasted, he felt like the fortress-monastery was sinking. Not below the sands, but below the great number of the enemy. There was green everywhere. Savage after savage came at him and the Space Marines of his honoured company. Inside his helmet it was no better. There too he was drowning in reports and requests, his suit filtering vox-transmissions from his own desperate men over a cacophony of communications coming from Fists Exemplar brothers holding the rest of the fort’s perimeter. It seemed that the alien brutes were pressing the defenders from all sides simultaneously, with muscle to spare and a constant stream of reinforcements.

  Hugging his Umbra-pattern boltgun close into his shoulder, Thane felt the kick of the honourable weapon. Like a beast of burden thrashing and bucking its way to freedom, it wanted to be let loose on the enemy, but ammunition was precious. No battle-brother could know for how long he or his bolter would be needed. It was better to conserve the blessed shells than bury them in alien cadavers already finding their way to the ground.

  With his elbows out and boltgun tucked in close to his plate, the captain smashed his way through the walls of alien meat. Blood and snaggle-teeth flew from where Thane buried the elbow couter-joints of his suit into snarling green faces. Guts spilled from towering behemoths whose swollen bellies came in line with the squat barrel of his gun. A beast came at him from the left, a hydraulically augmented nightmare from the right. An axe of some brute description sang off his pauldron. A hulking greenskin, struggling to bring its steaming rotor cannon under control, managed to sink lead into the flesh of the mongrel-monsters attempting to tackle Thane to the ground. The captain’s plate registered the impact of several glancing rotor shells before swiftly reporting an update of full suit integrity in his visor display. Thane brought his boltgun up.

  Unlike the rotor-gunning greenskin, he did not miss his target. A judicious staccato of shells opened the beast’s skull up like an oasis fruit. With vicious momentum, the captain smashed the orks coming at him from the side back into their ranks. The first was trampled under the boots of its gore-hungry comrades. The second soaked up several suit-augmented impacts before Thane’s elbow broke through its helmet, hydraulics and skull.

  Between the split-second ducking, dodging and evasive footwork – and when he wasn’t forced to end some mindless, oncoming brute – the captain attempted to cast his gaze about the swarming transept. Several battle-brothers had gone down. He’d seen Brothers Vaux and Martegan both murdered by the same power-clawed monstrosity.

  ‘Sergeant Hoque,’ Thane voxed. ‘Get those battle-brothers back on the ramparts.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Hoque voxed back, the ferocious chatter of his bolter in the background.

  ‘A step back towards the hangar bays is a step in retreat,’ the captain called. ‘Let that be on the conscie
nce of any battle-brother indulging such a notion.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Hoque returned, his voice once again lost in desperate bolt fire.

  Thane took the heads off three advancing creatures with his boltgun while a fourth sprayed the Fists Exemplar with lead from its own crude automatic weapon.

  ‘Brother Aquino,’ Thane said. ‘Stop playing with that thing and end it swiftly. The enemy are pushing through.’

  ‘Yes, captain.’

  Sparks rained off the captain’s plate as the lead-sprayer closed. Smashing the weapon aside with his own, Thane found that the primitive death-dealer came apart with relative ease. Trusting in the craftsmanship of his own weapon, the captain stabbed its muzzle into the creature’s jaw, taking out a lump of flesh. Momentarily dazed, the monster reached for another weapon from its sagging belt. Its claw never got there, however. Thane had shot it through the eye and was pushing past it before the greenskin’s carcass hit the hull.

  ‘Squad Autolycon, Squad Lucifus, close that gap!’ the captain bawled across the vox-channel. ‘You could get a Land Raider through there.’

  ‘We could use a Land Raider up here,’ a battle-brother voxed between sword-swinging exertions.

  ‘Secure your mouth, brother,’ Sergeant Hoque bit back. ‘Keep your mind on your work and follow your captain’s commands.’

  As Thane blasted through two more greenskin savages, he was forced to admit that the battle-brother was right. Chapter Land Raiders would have done a nice job of breaking up the greenskin swarms on the dunes. Their heavy bolters would have crashed through the monstrous lines. Their lascannons would have cut through the dense formations. Their tracks would have mulched the green invader into the black Eidolican sands. They would have created an advancing line of rally points, allowing the Fists Exemplar to push the enemy vanguard back.

  That was all fantasy now. Chapter Master Alameda had gone out to meet the first wave of greenskins on the Fortunata Flats as they thundered from the black desert-world skies. Anticipating that the xenos would fight from the fortifications of their rocks and landing hulks, the Chapter Master had brought tracked fortifications of his own, in the form of the Chapter’s Land Raiders. A second wave of descents had landed almost on top of the first, however. While having the virtue of smashing many of the rocks and accompanying barbarian mobs into the desert peninsula, the second-wave descent also pulverised the Land Raider formation. Tanks were buried beneath rocks. Tanks were smashed to ruins. Tanks were bounced and toppled by the impact quakes of landing hulks. The formation scattered, while the crews of other partially immobilised vehicles were forced to fall back to exposed holdpoints in the dunes. Chapter Master Alameda wasn’t among them. His command vehicle had been one of the first smashed into the sands.

  Thane couldn’t imagine how many waves there had been since that dark hour. Fifty? Perhaps a hundred. Barely a handful of Land Raiders had made it back, and those were sent on immediately by First Captain Garthas to support Captain Dentor fighting on the Tharkis Flats and in the Great Basin.

  Two great arms suddenly wrapped around the captain. Something had seized Thane from behind. The arms were thick and scarred, and Thane felt like he was in the embrace of one of the Alcazar Astra’s redundant void-docking anchors as he was lifted off the deck of the star fort. A huge ork had reared to its full height and had taken him towards the heavens with it. The deluge of green fury swept in beneath Thane, hacking at the captain’s thrashing boots with chain-choppers and great axes.

  Thane’s plate was telling him something alarming about the hulk’s colossal embrace and its effect on the suit’s integrity. He could hear the creak of ceramite about him and the strain of servos. Above him the monster’s elephantine skull belted out a roar of triumph, something to enrage the sea of green about it to savage jubilation, before it acted upon its intention to crush the Adeptus Astartes like a cheap alloy can.

  Thane felt the monster tense further. His auto-senses registered a rapid descent, and before he knew it he was back on the hull of the Alcazar Astra. The creature had released him, and the captain was free. Descending further to one ceramite knee, Thane turned in the gore, his boltgun ready to blast a crater in the gargantuan thing.

  He found that the giant greenskin’s legs had been taken out from under it. The creature had nothing below its knees and had fallen down onto the bloody stumps. As it toppled forwards onto all fours, Thane saw Apothecary Reoch standing behind the beast. Reoch had been responsible for the sweeping amputation. His armour was dripping with blood, but his chainsword gleamed like a surgical tool. The Apothecary stomped forwards, hacking down on the maimed creature, executing precision strikes like a living autopsy on the beast-ork. It roared its rage and frustration briefly before the Apothecary worked his way up to the fang-mangled skull of the thing and took it off at the neck.

  ‘Back!’ Maximus Thane bawled as he slid back around on his knee. Behind him he found the wall of green once more. ‘Back… Back…Back!’ he called, his commands accompanied by single bolt-rounds of persuasion. One by one, the rushing oncomers dropped before the weapon’s fury.

  A Thunderhawk swooped above them, hammering into the masses with its heavy bolters. The gunship cut a path of mulched ork-flesh through the enemy lines, taking with it the next few beasts in line for Thane’s vengeance. The Thunderhawks were doing what they always did: performing admirably. They were inflicting horrific casualties on the invasion host, but the impact of their bloody work was neither seen nor felt by the battle-brothers on the ground. The orks weren’t impressed by the gunships or their death-delivering ordnance. The roar of the Mars-pattern engines and the punishment of their heavy guns and cannons drove the monsters into fits of exultant rage. As a homogenous war host, the ork invaders resembled some kind of mythical beast. Where one creature fell, two others would charge from the throngs in its place.

  Standing once more, Thane felt his power pack brush against the Apothecary’s. The pair fought back to back – Reoch opening up monsters with precision and Thane finding his way to single-shot kills with his brutal bolter fire.

  ‘Mortalities?’ Thane called across the helmet vox.

  ‘Fourteen that have been relayed to my suit,’ Reoch replied, gunning his chainsword in neat arcs.

  ‘I thought worse than that.’

  ‘You’re relieved by the number,’ the Apothecary said. ‘You shouldn’t be. Do the arithmetic: we won’t see the dawn.’

  Ducking beneath the irresistible orbit of a crude hammer, Thane slammed his boltgun into the wielder’s gut. Pushing against the creature with his suit-augmented might, the Fists Exemplar Space Marine made a little space between himself and the alien. Not much. There were a thousand other monsters behind it howling for their transhuman blood. It had, however, created enough of a gap to bring up the boltgun and blast several ragged holes into the greenskin’s chest. The ork fell back into the roaring green masses.

  ‘Well, the good news,’ Reoch told him, ‘is that our losses are fewer than on the other transepts. Hieronimax is down a quarter strength. Xontague nearly a half.’

  ‘Holy Throne…’ Thane hissed. Then, ‘Reloading!’

  Reoch stretched himself to keep the beasts from his captain. Driving the chainsword through one monster, he reverse-gunned the weapon and sawed it through the limbs of two other unfortunates. Then once again the hammer came at them. The monster swinging it was back, despite having a bolt-blasted ribcage. The heavy metal weapon came over the ork’s howling head and straight down at the Space Marines. Moving aside and away from one another, Thane and Reoch allowed the head of the weapon to smash into the void hull, where the captain fancied it might have even dented the armour plating. The Apothecary put a boot on the hammer and proceeded to saw through the weapon’s reinforced shaft.

  ‘The head,’ Reoch suggested.

  Thane nodded. The thing’s ugly features were staring at the deck, its eyes follo
wing the hammer and the mess the monster had hoped it would make of the Adeptus Astartes. Priming the boltgun, Thane stared down his sights before blasting the ork up under its chin and through the back of its skull. This time the beast fell away for good.

  With their attention on the hammer-wielding savage, the captain and Apothecary had allowed the crushing swarms of orks to crowd them once more. Thane’s disciplined bolt blasts were now at almost point-blank range. Reoch had little space to conduct his surgical dismemberments and was forced to snatch one of his bolt pistols from a thigh holster and show off his own close-quarter marksmanship.

  A heavy axe, cut brutally from a single piece of vessel hull-decking, found Thane momentarily wanting. It smashed the captain to one side, breaching the plate of his pauldron and sending one of his bolt-rounds wide. It took a second or so for Thane to recover but by then both axe-swinger and bolt-survivor were upon him, the creatures hacking away at the captain’s honourable plate. The monsters roared. Thane roared back, throwing himself at the gigantic specimens. Grabbing one of the beasts by a shoulder-spike, he buried the muzzle of his boltgun in the ork’s pot-bellied abdomen. Blasting several rounds into the greenskin’s gut, he allowed the alien to fall, clutching at its ruined midriff with its claws. Almost immediately, Thane brought the boltgun up and blasted through the throat of the second. It dropped to reveal the partially obscured shape of a larger monster behind.

  ‘This isn’t working,’ Thane said across the vox.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Reoch replied, sweeping his chainsword about him in tight arcs of flesh-carving efficiency.

  ‘Oratorium,’ Thane switched channel, ‘this is Second Captain Thane, Transept West.’

  ‘Yes, captain,’ a voice returned. It didn’t belong to the First Captain.

  ‘Where’s Garthas?’

  Thane brought down the hulking ork before him. It took three bolts, which was more ammunition than he had budgeted for the task. He helm-butted a smaller warrior-wretch and smashed in the skull of a third with the clutched gauntlet-grip of his boltgun. Alien brains speckled his plate.