Drifting just off to the side of the hive ship was the gigantic corpse of a brood ship, which appeared to have launched all of its assault craft before being slain by the hive ship's weapons. Dozens of barbed projectiles impaled the brood ship. As it continued to tumble through the void, a garm spine frigate swept out from underneath it to attack the hive ship. It had apparently been using the dying brood vessel as cover, and soon was exchanging a catastrophic amount of firepower with the already wounded hive ship. Upon closer inspection, the tentacle appendages of the hive ship were even now crushing another frigate. With no garm ships loyal to the Alpha Hive Mind anywhere within scanner range or close enough to apply additional psychic pressure on Loki's mind, he knew that the power of both garm fleets was all but spent, and that these were the last moments of a battle long won by the Alpha Hive Mind.
"Pilot, you will notice the third assault craft embedded on the aft section of the ship, that's our insertion point. Set the drop launcher to punch us through just above it, where the hull is already weak," ordered Loki. "Gunners, keep a weather eye for that spine frigate. While it is likely to focus upon the other garm vessel, we will need to destroy it in order to accomplish the extraction and make our escape."
"The extraction, sir?" asked the gunnery chief, as he turned in his chair to face Loki.
The warrior looked at the gunnery chief and they held each other's gaze for a moment, before the chief backed down and returned to his duties. Loki took a deep breath as the ship neared weapons range, then keyed the command channel to speak. It was now or never.
"Men of the Angrboda, you have suffered much indignity. Your comrades have been put to death and your ship seized, and yet you serve at your post with skill and poise. In the battle ahead there may be opportunities for you to mutiny, and to do so is your right.
The skalds who are about to fight and die today have made their choice. You were never given that chance. I say that you will have that choice soon. If honor demands it, rise up and do your worst," spoke Loki over the command channel, his deep voice filling the ears of every man aboard the gunship, from skald to crew. "Though take heed, we are about humanity's business this day, and foul as it may seem, every blow we strike is for our people, even those whose blood yet stains our hands. There is only darkness and winter ahead, we go onwards without hope for a spring or a respite from carnage, and that is the source of our strength. Fight with me, brothers, and let us show them what men can do."
There was no battle cry raised, no shouts for glory, only the grim silence of the task at hand. Loki unfastened his straps and left the bridge, swiftly descending the ladder to the troop hold as the ship shook with activity.
He hoped what he'd said was enough, because if it wasn't, then no matter how the mission on board the hive ship went he and his men would have no extraction and it would have been for naught. It was such a risk, such a brazen gambit, and yet he felt firm in his choice. The ship's crew were Einherjar just as much as the infantry divisions who died upon the claws in the dirt. They would do their duty.
Loki strapped himself into one of the drop pods that the launcher would hurl at the enemy ship. Now that his course was set, he could feel the Usurper's psychic pressure beginning to push back against that of the Alpha Hive Mind. It knew he was coming, and it fought to help him maintain control. The ship bucked and spun, and Loki could feel the staccato recoil of the chainfires reverberating through the ship. Over his crew channel he listened as the pilot threaded his way through the space battle. The gunnery chief lashed out at the spine frigate and the Alpha Hive Mind's assault craft that had not yet disgorged their full complement of boarders.
Loki felt the surge of power in their voices, and knew that his speech had worked. Now that battle was joined, the crew of the Angrboda had set aside their questions, their doubts burned away in the fire of a good hard fight.
"Drop launch in five minus," said the pilot as the warning lights in the pods began to flash yellow, "We will engage the spine frigate and wait for the extraction order. Angrboda out."
Loki let out a breath he had not realized he'd been holding. They took the name, which meant they took the mission.
"Good hunting," said Loki just as the pods rocketed out of their housing and hit vacuum.
LORD OF MISRULE
The door of the drop pod burst outwards, and in the space of a breath, the skalds emerged with guns blazing. Loki leapt out of the pod and instantly found himself in a target rich environment. The assault craft they landed above had not yet disgorged its full complement of boarders, and through the massive tears in the flesh of the living ship, Loki could see them pouring out of the aperture of the craft's hollow needle prow.
They had deployed right into the thick of the enemy attack force, but there had been no other way. The drop pods were stout, but not designed for penetrating the thick hide of the garm vessels. They could handle the heat of orbital insertion, but were not designed for use against the garm.
It was just another example, in Loki's thinking, of how the oppressive presence of the Hive Mind had pushed humanity into a siege mentality. We have never developed ways to attack the garm, only to defend against them, and that's how the extinction fleet wants it, thought Loki as he cut a ripper drone in half with a burst of fire, so we must adapt with such reckless tactics as this.
The skalds were consummate fighters, in the deadly close quarters conflict with the garm, their superior training and weapons discipline gave them a distinct edge. In seconds, the garm boarding party's attack was blunted as the skalds cut a swathe through them to establish a kill zone for themselves. Scores of garm perished in the furious brawl, the aliens unprepared for the sheer brutality of the skald's entry onto the battlefield. Two skalds were already lying in pieces upon the fleshy deck of the ship, but bought with their lives was a solid fighting position for the others.
As Unferth and the others laid down suppressing fire with their pulse rifles in order to maintain the perimeter, gunning down enemies as they attempted to exit the garm assault craft, Loki took a knee and reached out with his mind.
The Usurper was aware of his presence upon its hive ship, and Loki could feel it howling in pain as boarders ravaged it from stern to bow. Open yourself to me, said Loki with his mind, casting his consciousness ahead of him like he imagined a bat might do with sonar in the perfect darkness of a terrestrial cave. In an instant he felt a pull, deeper into the ship, and though he could not consciously tell where he should go, he was certain that his feet would take him where he needed to go.
"Skalds, on me!" shouted Loki as he sprang to his feet and pushed through a large tear in the fleshy interior wall of the ship.
They had punched through the hull, but unlike human ships, the membranes of the living garm vessels prevented rapid decompression, one of the unique advantages they had evolved in order to cope with space travel. The garm adapt, Loki thought grimly as he raised his pulse rifle and shot a ripper drone in the face. Two more came rampaging down what Loki could only describe as some kind of ribbed hallway, and he brought them into his iron sights.
Unferth was suddenly at his side, and the two men reduced the drones to so much smoking meat in the blink of an eye. Roars of angry hunger erupted behind them, and they turned to see the hallway beginning to fill up with drones.
At first, Unferth moved to fire upon them, but Loki put his hand on the man's pulse rifle to prevent him from firing. Loki nodded in the direction of the drones and Unferth saw that the drones had stopped their advance, poised to attack, and yet holding their position as they looked at the Einherjar with their glossy black eyes. Something was holding them back, and Loki felt that it must be the Usurper.
Suddenly, the rippers of the Alpha Hive Mind lived up to their name by using their scything blades to cut their way through the walls, making room for gorehounds to move through the gaps and bring their projectile weapons to bear. The two garm forces began to tear into each other with a frenzied bloodlust that Loki had not enc
ountered in all his years fighting the garm. This must have been what the likes of Ajax and Hydra Company had witnessed on the barren wastes of Heorot when the swarms murdered Grendel's hive ship.
Loki turned away from the sickening carnage and rushed down the opposite hallway, letting his instincts guide him. Soon the hallway opened up into a central hub that led to several apertures in the spongy interior. The hub was awash in gore as swarms of garm loyal to the Alpha Hive Mind were in the last moments of slaughtering a clutch of the Usurper's drones, leaving only a lone WarGarm desperately defending itself.
"Fangs out!" bellowed Loki as he raised his rifle and sent a bolt through the neck of an enemy gorehound.
The thirteen warriors strode forward in a v-shaped formation, with Loki functioning as the tip of the spear, each of them laying down punishing fire with the sort of discipline that took years to perfect. Loki fired his ten rounds with devastating effect and then with fluid efficiency used one hand to guide the rifle along its sling to his back racking the slide to vent the rifle's accumulated heat. With his other hand he pulled his pistol from its holster and raised it to fire with a speed that others would have to work years to master.
Loki was not the only one to conduct such a maneuver, the tactic being a standard part of skald training for such blitz attacks. The skald sidearms were designed for this tactic, and their carbon mags only held ten rounds. As he emptied his magazine he depressed the ejector, and the hollowed-out magazine rocketed to the ground, propelled by the venting heat of the weapon. Without breaking stride, Loki slammed his pistol over one of the magazines mounted on his thigh plate and then slid the pistol back into his holster while with his other hand slinging the now vented rifle back into forward position.
His pulse rifle roared again, and yet more garm organisms screamed and died. By the time Loki and the other skalds needed to vent again, they had reached the center of the chamber. As the other skalds repeated the pistol swap and continued to punish the remaining hostiles, Loki entered melee range with the WarGarm.
The mighty beast leveled its weapons at Loki as the skald slung his rifle and neglected to draw his pistol. Loki sharpened his mind and sent his consciousness slicing through the space between them. In an instant, he felt the psychic pressure of the WarGarm as its instinct pushed it to attempt to control his mind and his actions, since he seemed to register in its simple mind as part of its own swarm. The beast was confused at the complexity of Loki's mind, and it bared its teeth menacingly as he stood before it. The monster's face was but a few inches from his own when Loki roared with voice and with mind.
His consciousness bowled over the intellect and will of the WarGarm, and it stopped its advance. The beast was held in thrall as Loki pushed himself deeper into its being. Inside the psychic fog that was the WarGarm's alien mind, Loki found its connection to the Usurper, envisioning it as a tiny silver thread leading into the distant unknown behind the fog. The WarGarm slowly lowered its weapons and backed away, its head down in a clear signal of submission.
Unferth and the other skalds were venting heat and reloading fresh carbon magazines as they stood in a protective formation around Loki.
The WarGarm turned slowly and began walking towards one of the dozen apertures in the central hub. Loki followed the beast, and Unferth, knowing what his master was attempting, gestured to the rest of the men to flank the pair on either side.
Loki felt the WarGarm sending psychic commands to the other defenders of the ship. The skald knew that the organisms that had been fighting desperately to protect the ship were now leaving it to die. All focus had shifted to one section of the ship, and it was there that Loki knew his destiny would finally take shape.
"I have made contact and the hive is with us. The ship's defenders are moving to run interference for our advance," said Loki over the squad channel. "You have been briefed on the subtle differences between friendlies and hostiles, but follow your own judgement when the time to fight is upon us."
It was not long after making his statement that their formation was attacked on two sides by swarms of the enemy, though as he suspected, the beleaguered defenders of the ship began to appear.
Loki soon lost track of where he was in the ship as they fought a running battle through the labyrinthian corridors and cyclopean chambers of the hive ship. The Alpha Hive Mind seemed to have sussed out what they were fighting to reach, as resistance continued to escalate most of the remaining defenders hurled themselves into the fray.
Loki allowed himself to run on instinct, sinking into a sort of battle trance as they moved through the ship. The Usurper's presence in his mind began to overshadow and drive out that of the Alpha Hive Mind, and Loki realized that if he'd been fighting to keep the Usurper out he'd have likely had a seizure. It was only their common purpose that kept his mind from being turned to ruin, and the veteran operator took note of that hard truth. He was in the Usurper's dominion now, and as aliens died in droves to escort him and the skalds through the ship, it was clear that without their help this mission would have ended much sooner.
The warrior slapped a fresh magazine into his pulse rifle and found himself entering a wide chamber filled with a nearly oppressive amount of heat and humidity. He had never been inside the central brood chamber of a hive ship, though he had read a multitude of intelligence briefings that constituted the sum of the Einherjar's knowledge of such things, which arguably was precious little.
Before him lay a wide pool filled with a glowing green fluid, and he could feel the Usurper's psychic presence emanating from it. The WarGarm was dying, having taken a number of grievous wounds during their violent march through the ship, and it sank to the floor just at the edge of the pool.
"Fagan, pull security," ordered Loki as he set his rifle against the edge of the pool and began unfastening his armor, "Unferth, attend me."
With the two of them focusing on the task, Loki was able to get his armor removed and strip away his body glove much faster than if he'd done it alone. The remaining six skalds fired into the sporadic groups of attackers that managed to fight their way into the central chamber. The sounds of horrific carnage just outside were near deafening, as every last garm defender had answered the call and was fighting with a desperate ferocity to buy the skalds life moment to moment.
Loki, now fully naked, climbed over the edge and lowered himself into the pool. The communications from the Usurper had been like a dream, and yet now that he was finally experiencing the pool, it was an altogether unexpected sensation. The alien mind had shown him what waited here, just beneath the viscous waves. Loki's feet touched the terraced ribs of the pool's floor, and he waded deeper into the liquid until finally, he disappeared beneath the gently swirling waves.
Unferth was a loyal skald and a believer in Loki's apocalyptic mission. A lifetime of war against the garm had opened his mind to much in the way of possibility. When the myths of ancient Earth began to manifest in his waking life, right before his eyes, the skald believed. Unferth had fought Grendel alongside the man who used to be Thatcher, and he'd been the one to carry his commander's torc to the body forge.
He had been a family man once, many lifetimes ago, and he had filled the hole in his heart with faith. Unferth needed for there to be more at work in the universe than jockeying for position on the food chain. Before serving under Skald Thatcher, he'd thought of the fact that his name, Unferth, appearing in the Beowulf saga as a simple coincidence, now he knew otherwise.
The surface of the pool was broken as Loki rose from the depths, and Unferth wept at the sight of it. The man's body was covered in tiny snail-like organisms that clung to his flesh, and in his powerful arms Loki cradled three writhing larval creatures. Loki's face had changed, and as the warrior watched muscles moved under skin and bone seemed to warp and change right before his eyes.
"Angrboda, prepare for extraction," said Unferth as he marveled at the sight before him, "Mission success."
The endless cycle of predator and prey b
e damned, they trod the path of destiny.
PAPER TARGETS
Ajax cast his sight across the vast sunlit oceans of Kai Prime, and found himself taken aback by the aquatic planet's beauty. The marine attempted to recall when last he'd seen such a vision of unspoiled nature, and was saddened that he could not.
Years of endless war had all but painted over his memories, and it seemed to him that the universe was a collection of ruined worlds, shattered by conflict. The bright blue of the waters, capped with frothy white as waves crested and broke against the rocky coastline, stirred within him something akin to melancholy, as he tried and failed to recall whether or not Rowan had loved the sea.
His wife had died in the early stages of the extinction fleet's invasion, though beyond the dim recollection of her beautiful face and the warmth of her smile, Ajax could not hold a memory of her firm in his mind. Only in the resurrection dreams, those fevered hallucinations that often assailed the Einherjar marines in that enigmatic state between life and death as the digital imprint of their minds was pressed into new cloned bodies, did she come into crisp focus.
A consciousness consumed by war eternal was the price of functional immortality, Ajax told himself firmly in an attempt to shake himself loose from thoughts that did not serve him, such was the cost of being a champion for humanity. Recycled heroes called to arms against wave after wave of ravenous alien swarms. There was a grim sort of poetry to that, and considering the mythic source of the entire Einherjar war effort, and the marine supposed it fitting.
Space Marine Loki (Extinction Fleet Book 2) Page 3
