Omar knelt and observed the caked and dry gore splattered around the impact point and running up the shaft.
“They put up a fight, at least,” he said as he considered the room.
Jarl Mahora grunted and shrugged his shoulders, clearly not impressed with what Omar considered putting up a fight, and moved through the interior hatch that lead down into the barracks. Ajax and the others followed him and found themselves in a small hub of sorts. There was a small elevator leading down to the desalination platform, and several hatches marked barracks, medbay, and mess hall.
These men and women lived a simple life, and for a moment Ajax wondered what that might be like, to simply toil and relax. It was, in some ways, not so different than his own, if he was honest about. This life of endless war did have a degree of tedium, and the man found himself wondering if he’d ever just relaxed and played a game of cards or billiards with his band of brothers. Such pursuits were allowed to be sure, though most men of the Einherjar kept to their training, for each ounce of sweat in training meant an ounce less blood spilled when next they met the garm upon the field.
"Down there," said Ajax suddenly, pointing to a stairwell leading down into the engineering section of the plant, his certainty a sharp blade slicing through the malaise that seemed to have fallen upon this compound.
Skald Omar and Jarl Mahora shared a look, and then the grizzled veteran shrugged and held his rifle at the ready while he began descending the stairs. Ajax fell in behind the jarl as the others took positions in the stack, each of them hugging the wall and angling their weapons downwards into the darkness. They switched on their body lights and found that the lighting had all been smashed down here, and though there was a hatch at the bottom of the stairs even the light of the buttons had been disabled.
It reminded him of the pitch dark of the sea caves, and Ajax flexed his fingers on the grip of his rifle to ease the mounting tension.
"Crack it open, lads," said Jarl Mahora as he gently tested the hatch and found it to be wedged shut even though the electronic lock had been destroyed. "I'm in first, up the center, Ajax sweep, Rama, take the right."
Two of the other marines, men from Gorgon Company, slung their rifles and produced their trench spikes. Being made of titanium with hardened points, the Einherjar trench spikes made for acceptable pry bars when needed. One man drove the point through the small seam in the hatch and heaved, giving the second marine enough space to slide his spike in and manipulate the heavy bolt that held the door shut. Had this facility been of a higher security rating there would have been over a dozen bolts in the hatch, but since it was a simple desalination plant, most of the hatches had only one bolt mechanism.
Lucky for us, thought Ajax as he thumbed off the safety of his pulse rifle and held his finger against the flat metal, just above his trigger.
As soon as the bolt was clear, the two men leapt back as Mahora drove his armored shoulder into the door, and the hatch swung inwards with a booming sound of rusted metal smacking against more rusted metal.
Ajax rushed into the darkness behind Mahora and move to the left, sweeping his pulse rifle across the sizeable engineering section, the mounted light revealing a nightmarish scene. Mahora cursed under his breath as he pounded forward and Rama gasped in surprise.
The engineering section was a large chamber outfitted with most of the technical hardware that kept the planet running. There were a multitude of vents in the walls, designed to relieve the chamber of the immense heat generated by the plant's inner workings. All of those had been covered in what appeared to be a thick resin, slightly opaque and hardened, making Ajax think of the same fluids that would leak from a man's nose when he came down with a cold. With the heat trapped, the chamber was stifling, made more so by the oppressive humidity and the stench of rotting organic material.
The marine's boots crunched across the deck and Ajax looked down to see that while the walls and vents might be covered in the heavy, organic resin, the floor of the chamber was thick with tiny bones. It took Ajax a moment to realize that they were marching across hundred, perhaps thousands, of fish skeletons. It was difficult to see the whole chamber by the light of their three pulse rifles, but the marine took note that on the far side of the chamber there was an open pool of water with safety railing surrounding it. He realized that it was how the maintenance crews in dive suits were able to move in and out of the water. The railing was wickedly bent in a few places, as if something far too large to fit had forced its way through.
A wet crunching sound came from the darkness ahead, and all three marines converged their mounted lights on the source of the noise.
Jorumgandr was there, its thick wet hide sparkling as the lights reflected off it. The marines were veterans of hundreds of battles, had faced death and resurrection many times, but nothing in their long war with the garm had prepared them for what they witnessed.
The marines paused, fingers on the trigger, so shocked were they by the sight of it.
Jormungandr used one of its tentacles to push the crushed body of a human in workman's coveralls into its mouth, having unhinged its already huge jaws to make room for the grisly meal. The great beast's belly was massively distended, straining against the sheer amount of meat that had been stuffed inside it. As the corpse was being pulled wetly into the creature's mouth, the entire beast's body shuddered with effort and a grinding sound filled the chamber. Just like down in the sea caves, Ajax witnessed the gills at the base of the beast's neck flutter and expel gallons of blood and tissue. So focused was the beast upon its bizarre task that it paid no mind to the intruders, nor did it apply any psychic pressure upon the mind of Ajax.
The marine decided it looked like a sort of alien wood chipper, and the hideous thought snapped him out of his temporary shock as much as the cries of surprise that came from Skald Omar and the marines who entered behind the vanguard.
Ajax bellowed a war cry and squeezed the trigger of his pulse rifle, sending several plasma bolts towards the alpha garm. Jormungandr was not so bloated that it could not anticipate the attack, and the creature managed to jerk out of the way. Two bolts went wide and tore into the resin covered metal wall, creating a shower of sparks, and melted organic material, though one bolt did rend a gaping hole in one of the creature's tentacles.
Mahora shouted as he and Rama lent their fire to their comrade, only now their moment of advantage was lost, and the deadly speed of the alpha garm was telling. The creature was just as adept at moving above the water as it was below, using its tentacles to pull itself into the darkness.
The marines fired, their muzzle flashes and mounted lights struggling to track the beast through the engineering section. Bolts from their pulse rifles chewed up the walls and equipment in the chamber as they blazed away at the creature. Jormungandr's body convulsed and a cloud of barbs shrieked out of the darkness to impale Skald Omar and the marine standing next to him.
The marine collapsed in a heap with several barbs through his chest and neck, while Omar staggered backwards with one deep in his thigh.
Mahora roared and rushed the beast, firing as he ran, in an attempt to drive it into the far corner of the room. Ajax turned from the fight to glance at Omar, who had dropped his pulse rifle and fallen to his knees, beginning to seize from the poison in the barbs. The skald's mounted light illuminated the wall next to the entry hatch, and Ajax saw two dozen severed hands that had apparently been nailed to the wall.
Before his mind could process the curious display of carnage, Jormungandr's psychic howl for aide thundered across his mind and put Ajax on his knees.
It took the marine several harrowing moments to gain control of himself with his breath, and when he looked up, ripper drones were already emerging from the dive pool on the other end of the chamber. A scream of pain snapped the marine's attention over to Mahora just in time to see the jarl hurled several meters through the air and slam into a bank of cogitator units with one arm missing.
Jorumgandr was
a writing mass of teeth and tentacles as it plowed through another marine, knocking the man aside as if he weighed nothing. The beast was more concerned with escape it seemed, than violence, and Ajax could see multitudes of terrible wounds troubling the creature. In the tight confines of the chamber, at this close quarters range, the pulse rifles of the Einherjar were especially devastating, even against an alpha garm such as this.
Omar went into convulsions as the poison flooded his system, prompting Ajax to thumb his pulse rifle over to full-auto.
Jormungandr stuffed itself through the entry hatch and disappeared up the stairs while Ajax turned his weapon on the ripper drones coming out of the pool. There were two of them already through, and a third climbing up. The marine cut loose and emptied his magazine at them, shattering their bodies with super-heated rounds, rending several holes in the walls behind them.
The pulse rifle clicked empty and he discarded it, knowing he did not have the time to vent the head or reload. He snatched up Omar's pulse rifle and raised it to his shoulders to empty yet another magazine into the rippers that were already rising to replace their slain kin. The marine that had been knocked down by the tentacles had risen to a crouching position and appeared to be shaking off the heavy hit and preparing to fire on the rippers also.
The pool was a natural choke point. That was an advantage for the marines, although an entire swarm might be trying to come up through there. If they didn't keep pouring on the fire on it would only take a matter of moments for an entire ripper swarm to fill the chamber and be in a position to sweep up from below to attack the defenders of the plant above.
"Get that alpha, we'll hold the drones!" growled Mahora, who was back on his feet and bracing his pulse rifle against the cogitator bank so that he could take shots at the rippers who continued to attempt breaching the chamber through the pool.
Ajax dropped the overheated rifle and sprinted towards the door, followed by one of the marines from Gorgon Company, as the others lent their fire to Mahora's against the drones. Ajax pounded up the steps, taking them two at a time, doing his best not to slip in the wide streaks of blood and ichor that the wounded Jormungandr was leaving behind. He pulled his pistol from its holster and pointed it ahead of him just as they entered the small hub, and managed to get several shots off as he saw Jormungandr squeezing its bloated self through the hatch that lead to the common room.
The small rounds blew chunks of meat out of the beast. In response, it convulsed to spew another cloud of barbs at the oncoming Einherjar. Time slowed for Ajax as he saw death streaking towards him, with nowhere to hide and no chance to move, he expected to be filled like a pin cushion.
Just before the barbs hit their mark, the marine who had joined him slammed into Ajax from behind. Ajax had the wind knocked out of him as he was shoved out of the way. One barb still tore through the visor on his helmet and pierced his left eye. Ajax fell to the deck. The marine who'd just saved his life was pierced by half a dozen of the deadly projectiles, causing the dying man to fall backwards.
Ajax grabbed the barb protruding from his faceplate and yanked it free, then scrabbled madly to get his helmet off. He couldn't be sure how much poison he'd just been injected with, if any at all, but he had certainly lost the use of his eye.
As the other marine's corpse clattered down the stairwell Ajax was confounded by the man's sacrifice. Yet more marines who bought into the Grendel story, and saw the continued survival of Ajax as critical to the resolution of the day's fighting. He had yet to decide what he believed, and found himself at once emboldened and angered by the dead man's tragic heroics. If men were going to step up and willingly take one step closer to blackout so that he could keep fighting then he'd better make good.
Ajax launched himself to his feet and into the common room, a snarl building in the back of his throat as he ran. He saw Jormungandr pressing its bulk out of the common room and onto the stairwell, and Ajax knew that the alpha garm was moments away from escape. They had to know why it was so important that the beast consumed the snail creatures, and why it launched a suicide attack against the rig just so it could gorge itself on what appeared to be the bodies of the maintenance staffers.
The marine knew his sidearm wouldn't do much more than slow the beast down, so as he rushed through the common room he pulled one of the jet-assist harpoons off the wall. His aim would probably be off thanks to the loss of the eye, but he had to keep going, had to keep fighting any way he could. Already he could feel himself beginning to weaken, and it was clear that at least trace amounts of poison had entered his body, even if the toxin-filled barb had not been able to empty itself.
Ajax emerged from the common room and found himself bathed in the dying light of dusk. All around him, above and below, a mighty battle raged as the swarms hurled themselves at the beleaguered marine defenses.
With his good eye, he squinted as he scanned for Jormungandr, not used to being in a combat situation without the visual enhancement of his helmet's ocular assist. The smears of blood and ichor went up and he saw that Jormungandr had heaved itself over the railing and was dragging itself across a gangplank that extended over the desalination device.
"Alpha Target on the move! Right above the central intake!" shouted Ajax over the company channel, and as he ran he saw several riflemen defending lower gangplanks and platforms turn their attention upwards. The defenders were being sorely pressed on all sides, but if even one more pulse rifle joined the struggle that was one more chance to bring this beast to heel.
The marine pushed himself even more, running as fast as he could up the steps and then leaping over the railing and onto the gangplank. Jormungandr saw him and again called for aide, forcing Ajax to concentrate on his breathing just as much as he was on forward progress. As Ajax held onto the thin railing of the gangplank, he kept putting one foot in front of the other, knowing that if he was going to be effective with the harpoon he had to get closer. Ajax fired the rest of his pistol magazine at the creature, more to interrupt its call than to hurt it, but even the one shot that did connect further damaged the already seriously wounded beast. In seconds the psychic pressure eased, and Jormungandr returned its focus to escape.
Ajax cursed aloud as he saw several shriekers break off their assault and form into two flights of angry monsters. One of the flights headed straight for him while the other flew out of his immediate sight. Ajax knew that in moments he would be a puddle of gore, and he had to make his play. The marine began sprinting across the gangplank, heedless of the multitude of acidic rounds that impacted around him. At least he was a moving target.
Above him a chainfire opened up, and soon the bodies of shriekers cascaded downwards on all sides. Ahead he saw the second flight of shriekers focus their attention on the gangplank, and instantly dozens of caustic assaults melted through the thin metal of the gangplank.
As Ajax ran, he saw the gangplank buckle and then suddenly bend. He realized that they were far enough away from the stable moorings of the central compound that gravity had become the enemy. There was more gangplank on his end than on Jormungandr's, and when the last bar dissolved, it was his side that began to arc downwards.
Ahead, he could see Jormungandr slowly pulling itself up the side of a platform. Beyond that was open sea. If it reached the platform there was nothing to stop it escaping. No nets and no marines. The two men who had been stationed there were now heaps of torn meat surrounded by the corpses of the shriekers they'd been fighting.
Ajax roared with frustrated rage as he surged forward, knowing that he was in the process of falling to his death. It made little difference, he knew he was dying from the poison, but he had to try. The marine's boots stomped across the falling gangplank as he thumbed the activator on the jet-assist and raised the harpoon to shoulder level with his right arm.
His left eye already a blind ruin, there was no need to squint as he did his best to line up his throw. Ajax squeezed the release handle as he hurled the harpoon with all his might. T
he harpoon sailed through the air for a moment, propelled by the muscles of the marine who threw it, and it would have fallen short but for the power of the jet-assist.
The tiny fuel pod built into the haft ignited and sent the harpoon slicing through the air, driving it deep into Jormungandr's already ravaged body. The barbed point pushed through the beast's thick flesh and embedded itself in the metal of the platform, pinning the thrashing beast in place.
Ajax's leap carried him in a wide arc downwards and he crashed into one of the catch buckets attached to the feeder line of the central system. His armor thudded dully and the marine's body bounced off the machine and fell further down to sea level. The rush of water filled the marine's awareness, but then, just as he was fully submerged, he was catapulted back up to the surface with a splash by the safety netting that covered the base of the plant's operation. Designed to save the lives of workers who fell, today it had become a graveyard, as hundreds of bodies covered the nets, both marine and garm alike.
The poison was beginning to make Ajax's muscles seize up, and it was all he could do to keep breathing as he rolled onto his back. Above him, he watched with a sense of cruel satisfaction as bolts from chainfires and pulse rifles reduced Jormungandr to a bloody alien pulp.
As he watched the beast's body come apart, its bloated stomach was torn and emptied itself into open air. What rained down onto the nets appeared to be a staggering number of partially digested human bodies.
They began to splash down around Ajax, and as his body finally gave in to the poison, the last thing he saw was the half-dissolved face of one of the bodies from Jormungandr's belly.
Space Marine Loki (Extinction Fleet Book 2) Page 9
