Predator, Prey

by Rob Sanders

  A serpentine head suddenly shot from the water and hit Tyrhone’s sweep and drag-ladder broadside. The helicondra elegantly snatched the Elite behind Allegra on the wire ladder and took the screaming Marineer below the waves on the other side. The full length of the animal proceeded to coil about the vehicle without touching the sweep, drag or other Elites. The soldiers behind Allegra began to reach for their dirks and Tyrhone slowed the sweep.

  The captain remembered the man behind her as a smirking soldier who had refused to eat his rations. ‘He didn’t eat the toonweed,’ Allegra called, casting a look behind her and then forwards at the commander who had peered around angrily. Whether he was furious with Allegra or the unfortunate Marineer, it was hard to tell. ‘The serpents have a sensitive sense of smell. They can’t stand the weed.’ She turned back to Tyrhone. ‘It’s what keeps the islanders safe from attacks,’ she gestured at the spit, ‘and makes the invader vulnerable. Beach us there.’

  Allegra pointed to a bare patch of shale nearby. Unconvinced, but with little choice but to trust the former pirate’s local knowledge, Commander Tyrhone led the sweeps up onto the shale beach. Once on the shore, the Elites fell to frantically extracting their lascarbines from their waterproof cases and assembling silencers and frequency flash-suppressors. With one eye on the chemical surf for surging serpents and the other on their assemblage, the Elites seemed nervous. Crouching in the bleached shale, Allegra watched greenskins dragged back into the water by muscular lengths of helicondra and heard the wet barks of blubber-dogs further up the spit sounding the alarm for their colony. Commander Tyrhone carried two carbines, and was assembling them twice as fast as the rest of his men. Taking one for himself and throwing Allegra the other, Tyrhone pointed to the breech of his weapon as demonstration.

  ‘Suppressor,’ he indicated, then moved a dark digit to a megathule modulator. ‘Set to a spectral frequency outside of visible range.’

  Allegra nodded. Her production-line Marineer lasrifle had sported no such feature. It was going to be difficult shooting without a searing beam to guide her.

  ‘Just look for the smouldering bodies,’ Tyrhone said.

  Allegra nodded again before making her way up the shale bank. The commander followed, leading his Elites. They all moved swiftly but cautiously, their barrels following their eyes as they scanned the beach for hostiles.

  It soon became clear to even the most prejudiced of the mezzohivers that the sea-scum captain had saved them both ammunition and encounters with the enemy. Every greenskin hulk they passed being dragged back through the shale, or being slowly coil-crushed and devoured, would have had to have been killed by the Marineers. Allegra led the way along the spit and through the barking packs of terrified blubber-dogs. The storage dumps and black markets lining the haven shore were ablaze. Precious goods and raided cargoes were furious with flame and the thickset alien thugs were bulldozing their way through the labyrinth of stalls and harbour-bound stocks.

  It was unclear whether the greenskins had set the haven alight or whether the remaining pirates had. Many raiders had worked out of Desolation Point their whole lives and would have been loath to give it up to an alien invader. Some determined resistance was being mounted in the accretion squares, mezzanine chem-distilleries and obscura dens. Mostly what Allegra saw of her marauder-kin, however, as the Elites moved silently through the maze of corrugation and scrap, were whores and young rovers being hacked to pieces by greenskin savages.

  As the contingency force made their way through the Brethren haven, the captain recognised locations from a childhood spent climbing, swinging and jumping from one salvage-building to another. A rattling refrigeration vault from where she used to steal ichthid eggs. The needle-den where she received a crude tattoo commemorating her second berth on a pirate vessel. A scud-wrestling den where she saw her first life taken.

  All Tyrhone had said about the Imperial Army storage depot was that it had a central location. So that was where Allegra led them. Through habstacks, across bridge alleyways and through street-strata, the Marineer Elites negotiated a colony under siege. Where they could, Tyrhone and his men avoided firefights and ramshackle fortifications. Where the gutter-mouths of raiders could be heard bawling curses at invading hulks and the brute chug of greenskin weaponry chewed through corrugated walls and foundation-pillars, the Elites pulled back and had Allegra lead them a different way. They were not outfitted to wage war amongst the haven habitations. They were equipped for a singular mission and purpose.

  On the occasions when ork barbarians could not be avoided or simply tusk-charged their way through walls and scrap-metal frontage, the Elites fell to their work with determination and economy. Although their lascarbines betrayed nothing but the drumming stub of automatic fire, beams transparent and invisible, their collective marksmanship was revealed in the thrashing impacts burning into greenskin unfortunates and the smouldering fall of alien cadavers. With such weapons, it took a cumulative and communal effort to kill just one of the beasts, but the Elites’ fire discipline and the economy and efficiency of their purpose was beyond question.

  Jangling lightly across chain walkways and descending into a much older morass of crushed habitations and reinforced underpassages, Allegra led Commander Tyrhone and his Elites to the centre of Desolation Point: a high-rise aggregation of obscura dens, infusion houses and bordellos. At the captain’s confirmation of such, Commander Tyrhone produced a tracking-auspex to scan for munitions signatures. After a moment, the auspex told him that there were indeed munitions in reasonable quantities matching the old Imperial Army signatures of the depot cache, but they were deep below.

  ‘This goes down?’ Tyrhone queried.

  ‘A number of sub-levels,’ Allegra recalled.

  At the haven centre, the greenskins were absent in any number. The same could not be said for raiders and marauders. Desolation Point was the closest thing any of them had to a home. They were not going to give it up to the newly arrived alien invader. Nor the enemy of old, the Undine security forces.

  ‘Get them snappers on the deck,’ a voice called from above. The accent was thick and guttural.

  The Elites tensed, their eyes down the lengths of their lascarbines, barrels aimed up and down the length and height of the street. A number of marauder gunhands were making their way down a mesh stairwell, holding high-powered autorifles and working bolt actions with grim menace. There were others on balcony walkways and patchwork roofs. Most had heavy-duty sights, but one or two even sported cracked scopes on their scuffed plas-stock rifles.

  ‘I said get ‘em down in the rust,’ the voice came again. Their skipper stepped out onto the street. Like his men he was all tattoos and dreadlocks, but indulged the extravagance of a grand hat and coat. His coarse hand rested on the grip of a fat stub revolver that nestled in his thick belt.

  ‘We don’t have time for this,’ Commander Tyrhone told Allegra.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ the captain said absently. It seemed, improbably, that her attention was elsewhere.

  ‘They are the Brethren. They are your people,’ the commander pressed, his lascarbine moving between the skipper and the two shotgun-wielding bodyguards that had walked out casually to flank him.

  ‘Do you think we have a secret handshake or something?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I thought.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, commander,’ Allegra said, her eyes travelling up beyond the death-trap balconies and mesh catwalks. ‘These men are Brethren, that’s true. But they’re also stone cold killers. They’ll try to end us, whatever we do. Words will just antagonise them further.’

  ‘I’m gonna count to three,’ the skipper spat. His men trained their weapons on the Marineers. The Elites trained their lascarbines back. Allegra returned her eyes to the narrow strip of sky visible up through the chainwalks, meshing and steep-sided accretions. She had been watching something above them. �
�One.’

  ‘When the signal is given,’ the captain said to the Marineers, ‘make your way swiftly down through the sub-levels.’

  ‘What’s the signal?’ the commander wanted to know.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘You’ll know it when you hear it,’ Allegra replied.

  ‘Three,’ the Brethren skipper snarled. Allegra saw him go for his stub gun. He would have got to it too, if it hadn’t been for the impact.

  With so many crash-capsules and rocks smacking into the surrounding ocean, it was only a matter of time before one actually struck the island colony itself. Allegra had been tracking the oily smear of the rock’s descent, watching it grow bigger and more imminent. By the captain’s estimation it hit somewhere on the eastern side of Desolation Point, but it had been a hard landing: rock on rock. The impact was ear-splitting. The immediate shockwave was enough to violently tremble through balconies, walkways and accretion structures.

  As the skipper and his pirate gunhands became preoccupied with the instability of their surroundings, Commander Tyrhone and his Elite Marineers did as they were ordered. They dropped down through cutways and ladderwells onto the sub-level below with their captain. As Allegra led them down through the dank meshways and underpasses, the soldiers could hear the howl of the impact gales above, whipping through the insanity of the architecture. This was followed swiftly by the cacophonous boom and excruciating moan of metalwork twisting and buckling. Buildings were toppling against and through one another as the shockwave rippled out from its impact point.

  As the Marineers dropped, scrambled and skidded down though the rotting and rusted sub-levels, with passages and reinforced chambers collapsing about them, Allegra and Commander Tyrhone corrected their course. Allegra had a natural feel for the underhive environs of her youth, whereas Tyrhone used as his guiding star the signature traces recorded by his hand-held auspex.

  Countless levels down and with the partially demolished colony settling dangerously above them, Allegra and the Marineers reached what they thought to be the rust-water-flooded bottom. The captain felt bedrock beneath her boots. Several of the Elites had activated their lamps and followed their commander as he in turn followed the insistence of the auspex through the knee-deep brown waters.

  As the auspex delivered its final verdict, Tyrhone stopped and looked to Allegra. The captain nodded. Kneeling down, the commander felt his way through the waters. Removing several fistfuls of rust-muck, Tyrhone’s usually grim face broke with a moment of relief.

  ‘Got it,’ he said to himself. ‘Get those lamps in here,’ he ordered, but no amount of illumination was going to cut through the murky water.

  ‘Just do it by touch, commander,’ Allegra said.

  Tyrhone grunted, before pulling back the sleeve on one arm to reveal silver ink on his ebony skin. The Imperial Army security passcodes for the munitions depot. ‘Four-point perimeter,’ Tyrhone ordered the Elites. ‘We don’t know who or what might have followed us down here.’

  ‘Nothing could have got through that,’ one of the Marineers replied, jabbing a thumb skywards.

  ‘We did,’ Allegra told him simply.

  ‘Just do it,’ Tyrhone ordered, beginning to punch the codes into the submerged and chunky glyph-grid.

  It took several attempts to input the codes. Whether the commander mis-struck a glyph stud or the water-infiltrated and antiquated hatch-mechanism didn’t recognise the code was anyone’s guess. As the hatch finally popped, rust-water started pouring down through the opening. With several of his Marineers, Tyrhone managed to get the hatch fully open.

  ‘You four remain here,’ he ordered the perimeter Elites. ‘This is a maximum-security depot: nothing gets in. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, commander,’ the Marineers returned.

  The munitions depot stank of rust and old air. It felt like a place of death. Climbing down the access ladder into the darkness, Allegra could almost hear the echo of old hatreds. Enmities of an older age: detestations strong enough to make forces want to inflict weapons of absolute destruction on one another. The kinds of weapons the depot had been built to house.

  With rust-water still pouring in from above and pooling about their boots, Lux Allegra and the Marineer Elites stood at the bottom of the chamber. Amongst the servo-cranes and pulley-systems, orbital torpedoes and biological weapons sat in their cradles and carriers. Even through the flaking paint and rusted casings, the ominous glyphs and symbols still visible on their sides made it clear which of the munitions were weapons-exterminatus.

  Taking pride of place at the heart of the chamber and keeping court in a dank palace of doom and destruction, the contingency force located the object of their mission. Three fat virus bombs sat there – rusted, forgotten and unrealised of purpose. As the Elites set lamp beams and eyes on the life-eaters, splashing footfalls became light and voices became hushed. Allegra and the Marineers stood and stared at the virus bombs. Dark moments passed.

  Allegra took a deep breath of stale, corroded air.

  ‘Master-vox,’ she ordered. The Elite assigned to hump the comms-unit slipped its weight off his back and handed it to her. Settling it on a nearby torpedo, Allegra set the frequency.

  ‘Tiamat, this is Elite-One, come in.’

  The vox-static howled around the darkness of the depot. ‘Elite-One to Tiamat, passcode Kappa, Theta, Iota. This is a command priority, please respond.’

  As the cold loneliness of the unanswered vox-request crept through the bones of the Marineers, Commander Tyrhone looked to Allegra for orders. She passed the hailer back to the vox-operator. ‘Keep trying,’ she told him, before turning back to Tyrhone.

  ‘Let’s get to work, commander,’ Allegra ordered. Slipping his demolitions pack off one shoulder, the Marineer officer knelt down in the rising water before the first bomb and set to priming the life-eater for a launchless detonation.

  SEVENTEEN

  Eidolica – Alcazar Astra

  ‘First Captain Garthas is dead, my lord.’

  ‘Say again, oratorium, say again.’

  With the mega-bolters and gatling blasters back to their raucous cacophony and the gunship Escorchier hovering above the void ramparts like a thunderous guardian angel, Captain Maximus Thane couldn’t make Brother Zerberyn out.

  ‘First Captain Garthas is dead,’ the honorarius repeated solemnly across the private vox-channel.

  Maximus Thane heard the words but it took a moment to process them.

  ‘How?’ was all he could think to say.

  ‘Fortress-Monastery North pict captures record the First Captain’s victory over the invaders’ breach force,’ Zerberyn reported.

  ‘Yes, brother.’

  ‘Lord Garthas was inspecting the dead and voxing new orders for Captain Xontague and his Fists,’ the Honour Guard Space Marine said. ‘One of the savages – a boarder, a hull breacher – still breathed in the First Captain’s presence. It was alive when its injuries dictated it should not be.’

  ‘Continue, Brother Zerberyn.’

  ‘It detonated the hull-cracking breach charge it carried, taking Lord Garthas and his honour guard with it,’ the honorarius said. ‘Their plate could not protect them from such a charge. Lord Garthas was found, but the Chief Apothecary said he could not be saved.’

  Thane stared bitterly out across the churning ocean of greenskin savagery that continued to roll up across the shattered void plating of the Alcazar Astra. Despite a full Eidolican night of fighting, despite the taking of life in ghastly swathes and the mettle of Dorn’s sons being put sorely to the test, the green invader came still. The attack moon had blanket-bombed the Eidolican dark side with rocks and crash transports. Hulks and landers still rocketed into the black desert-world dunes, vomiting forth alien barbarians – their brief thunderbolt transit rattling and shaking them into a bottomless fury. No matter how many enemy lives the
Fists Exemplar took in the name of their dead Chapter Masters and primarch, the ork attack moon supplied more.

  Master Aloysian had been as good as his word. Despite his doubts, the Master of the Forge had used his skills and prayers to bring the star fort’s only operational plasma drive to explosive life. The mighty engine column, that as one of four would have helped transport and manoeuvre the mighty Alcazar Astra in-system, blasted the fortress-monastery from its sandy foundations, turning the black desert to obsidian about it. As Master Aloysian had faithfully predicted, the star fort did not ascend. It inclined.

  Rising on the Transept East engine column, everything not mag-locked to the gore-slick void plating began to slip and tumble away. Fifth Captain Tyrian watched as thousands of greenskin savages fell away from the edge of the void hull and down into the plasma-drive-roasted sands. Creatures skidded and slid towards the company’s chainblades and boltguns, allowing the Adeptus Astartes to end them with ease. With their boots firmly locked to the metal deck, Xontague, captain of the Eighth, and his company cut through the monstrosities roaring and clawing uselessly past them. Captain Kastril and his Scout Marines secured themselves to the gargoylesque architecture of Fortress-Monastery North. When the deck began to rumble and tilt, the scouts picked off beasts from the plummeting masses with their sniper rifles over the pauldrons of their Ninth Company brothers.

  For Thane and the Second Company, the sea of green receded at the captain’s command. One moment Thane and Apothecary Reoch were back-to-back, carving and blasting pieces off gargantuan alien thugs; the next the deck was empty but for the dripping statues of Fists Exemplar, splattered in alien gore and mag-locked to the inclining deck. Monsters scraped, scrambled and scratched at the hull plating and each other, furious that gravity should drag them away from their quarry. Claws and weapons failed to provide purchase when sunk into the blood-smeared armour plating, and those monsters desperate and fast enough to grab something and hold on were swiftly blasted from their ledges by nearby Space Marines. As soon as the guns on the void ramparts re-established their firing protocols and the Thunderhawks assumed a similar suppression role above the helmets of the Fists Exemplar, Thane ordered Master Aloysian to gently reduce thrust and allow the plasma engine to take them back to the sands.