by Toby Frost
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Warhammer 40,000
Prologue
Part One
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Part Two
9.
10.
11.
12.
Part Three
13.
14.
15.
16.
Part Four
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
About The Author
Legal
eBook license
It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
PROLOGUE
The box was dented and battered. Shiny new metal winked through chips in the green paint. Across the lid some servitor a billion kilometres away had stencilled the words ‘Departmento Munitorum XX Shotgun Shells’.
Straken held his gun in his left hand, and his steel right arm loaded the shotgun with a soft, hydraulic whirr. Each shell was only a few centimetres long. Strange how victory could come down to something so small, he thought. Like the twenty-two metres between this dugout and the last few tyranids on Signis VIII.
Captain Corris ran down into the dugout, stooping under the lintel. Like most Catachans, he was heavily muscled, and he only just fitted through the doorway. ‘Colonel Straken?’
Straken looked up. From far away, artillery roared, a low rumble that ran through the dugout like a growl.
‘Colonel, we’ve received a call from the Sixth Gordarian Artillery. They want to bombard the hill, sir. To wipe out the xenos once and for all.’
‘To hell with that,’ Straken growled. He got up and walked to the door. ‘Tell them to hold fire. We can take care of this.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Corris replied. ‘I’ll let them know.’ He followed Straken out the door.
The men waited in a loose half-circle. Their wargear was stripped down and modified, their uniforms torn, repaired and striped with dirt, but they still wore the red bandana of Catachan, the symbol that marked out the nine hundred remaining men as having the skill and toughness to survive one of the worst death worlds in the Imperium. In the centre, Corporal Thule hunched over the vox-rig, nodding as he relayed Corris’s order. To the west, a Chimera rolled forwards, its tracks grumbling and squeaking as they turned. Tinny marching music blared out of speakers welded to its side. Behind it walked men with motion detectors, sensorium rigs, even the odd psi-tracker. The tyranids in this region might be dead, but they were quite capable of sowing the ground with dormant young.
It had taken three months to clear the planet out. Against an enemy like the tyranids, Straken thought, that was almost nothing. It had been tough going – it was never anything else, not against the tyranids – but the Navy had caught the infestation early. Then the Catachans had landed, among them the glorious Second, Straken’s regiment, their mission firstly to scout, then to contain, and finally to eradicate. On the horizon, Straken could see the vast organic ruins of a bio-titan; they looked like dragon bones, slowly slipping into the mud. The job was almost done.
‘Gentlemen,’ Straken said, and nearly a thousand hard faces looked back at him. ‘Over that ridge is one of the last psychic beacons holding the tyranids together. Kill it, and there’ll be nothing more than animals left to fight – tough animals, but nothing meaner than you’d find back home. Whatever’s over the ridge, it’ll be big and angry.’
‘So am I,’ one of the men called, and there was a ripple of laughter.
Explosions rippled across the horizon, throwing black clouds into the air like soot across a painted landscape. Vendetta gunships swung in through the murk, lascannons slicing the sky. This might be the final great push against the tyranids, but the enemy would fight to the last.
‘The Gordarian armour want to shell the hill. I’ve told them to belay that order. This started off as a Catachan job, and I mean to finish it that way.’ Straken raised his shotgun. ‘In a minute, I’m going to head out there and nail the last of these things. If anyone wants to stay here, they’re welcome. You’ve done enough already, Emperor knows that. But if any of you layabouts want to give me a hand out there, and help take that tyranid’s head for Catachan – well, sometimes I get tired of having to do all the hard work round here.’
It was about the mildest speech he had ever made, but his men deserved it. It would be wrong to order them to risk themselves when one allied barrage could finish things once and for all. But then, there was the honour of Catachan to consider.
His soldiers rose. Halda, the colour sergeant, grabbed the edge of the regimental standard and clenched his fist for a moment. Sergeant Pharranis cleaned the lens of his bionic eye on a rag, then folded it and screwed a fresh hydrogen flask into his plasma gun. Further down the line, a tough sergeant named Dhoi was testing the edge of his fang-knife, smiling grimly at the blade. Straken waited, hearing that familiar clatter of troops readying themselves to fight: fresh power packs clacking into lasguns; boots on mud; battered armour being checked; low voices murmuring prayers, praising weapons and cursing the danger to come. Corris caught Straken’s eye and gave him a quick, curt nod. Straken felt at once at home and ready for war. He took a deep breath.
‘Then let’s move! Who’s with me here? Are you going to nail these alien scum, or do I have to do everything myself?’ He turned to Halda. ‘Colour sergeant, get that banner up. Now then!’ Straken raised his metal fist. ‘In the name of the Emperor – with me!’
Bellowing, he rushed into the open. A bugle blared and his men cried out behind him, as if their voices alone would speed them towards the enemy. They raced up the slope, boots pounding, roaring like beasts. As they reached the top, a lithe, blood-coloured alien leaped into view.
Straken saw it first: a mass of fangs, armour and spindly limbs ending in claws the size of scythe-blades. He glimpsed bestial eyes glaring with something more than just hunger – and then it sprang at them. ‘Kill it!’ he called, and half a dozen lasguns cracked. The tyranid fell backwards, ichor pouring from several wounds, and Straken suddenly saw the edge of the pit from which the xenos had emerged.
The hole was almost ninety metres across, and deep: an ideal nesting place. A second tyranid loped from the bottom of the pit, hissing and snarling. It stood almost twice man-size, its uppermost pair of arms fused into a pulsing mass from which a bone tube protruded. Deathspitter, Straken thought. The beast’s gun fired once, and a gobbet of whirling sludge shot over Straken’s head. Then the rest of the enemy burst from their hiding places and attacked.
A monster with serrated blades instead of hands leaped onto Private Carne, one of the demolitions men. He fell down, flailing, and for a second Straken thought the man was finished. The next moment Carne was on top, stabbing down with his long knife as the alien thrashed beneath him.
Movement came from the left, and Straken whirled and fired. The shotgun kicked against his ribs, and a second leaper twisted in mid-air and fell dead. The tyranids poured out of the crater and were met with a vicious wall of lasgun fire. A Guardsman on Straken’s right took a direct hit from a deathspitter and stumbled aside, his screams drowned out by the terrible hissing sound of disintegrating flesh. In three seconds he had melted to nothing. A grenade flew overhead and hit a pack of slithering brutes as they rushed from their burrow. The explosion threw sinuous bodies into the air, dropped them thrashing into the dirt.
Sergeant Pharranis unloaded his plasma gun into one of the monsters, and it collapsed in a sizzling, bubbling heap. On the right a corporal called Balt hacked at a wounded tyranid, sawing at its neck for a trophy-kill. He yanked the head away from the still-twitching body, a row of skulls already gleaming on his belt. Something exploded behind Straken – he couldn’t tell whether it was a weapon or see the beast that fired it – and he glanced round. Where six men had stood, there was now carbon and reeking smoke.
Fire burst on the horizon. The crater rang with the crack of lasguns and the roars and yelps of the horde. Scythe-armed beasts leaped up from the ground as if hurled by catapults, sailing up to land among the Catachans. One trooper was eviscerated with a single swipe, beheaded by a second. Guardsmen drew long knives and swords, and waded in. Through the chaos, Straken heard a chainsword rev into life. Lieutenant Trask, always quick with a joke, staggered away, his right arm clutching his left.
A tyranid sprang down on Straken like a swooping hawk. He dropped to one knee and blew it in half, pumped the shotgun as he rose and finished it before it could crawl towards him. On his right, a hunter-slayer knocked a private to the ground and leaped on him, snarling like an attack dog. The man tried to push the alien’s head back with his left hand and it bit off half his hand.
Straken cursed and raised his shotgun to blast the creature, but Corris grabbed the tyranid before he could fire, yanked its chin up and drove his knife through the side of its neck. He sliced down, cutting the beast’s throat, and heaved it away. Straken blasted a second hunter-slayer as it aimed its bio-gun at him, and glanced back to see Corris dragging the wounded soldier to his feet.
‘Nice work,’ Straken said.
‘One for the knife,’ Corris replied, and Straken saw a dozen deep notches on the blade. ‘Medic!’
The xenos fought wildly, but they were losing. The Guardsmen killed the aliens quickly, and now they had the advantage of numbers, there was nothing the tyranids could do except die. The last few hunter-slayers were shot down, or wrestled to the ground and stabbed. Men cheered – some cut trophies, others took the chance to reload.
Straken felt fierce pride, and then checked himself. Where was the node-creature, the big one they had come here to kill? The aliens that lay dead and dying around him were just the small tyranids, the foot soldiers. They were the things that the hive sent in to scout, or to use up the ammunition of its enemies. Something was wrong. Straken didn’t know much about tyranids beyond how best to kill them, but every soldier in the Imperial Guard knew to shoot the big ones first.
He stopped and looked back. One man sat on the edge of the crater, his teeth gritted and his arm held across his chest. The unit medic crouched beside him, spraying the wound with anti-toxin. Tyranid creatures dripped with poisons worse even than those on the Catachan home world.
‘That all of them, boss?’ Halda called.
‘Not yet,’ Straken replied. ‘Stay ready.’
They fanned out around him, instinctively forming a loose circle in the centre of the great crater. Straken felt exposed here, and knew his men would too. After fifteen years on Catachan, and nearly three more decades in the most vicious guerrilla wars that the Imperium could provide, he was as used to having cover as he was to the sound of lasgun fire.
Captain Corris said, ‘It’s a big one, right? Not like this.’ He prodded one of the hunter-slayers with his gun barrel.
‘That’s what they said,’ Straken replied.
The crater wall exploded in front of him. He turned aside and debris bounced off the metal side of his torso. A trooper shrieked and fell, clutching his face, and two men pulled him away.
Something huge burst through the cloud of dust. Multi-limbed, covered in armoured plates and over twice Straken’s height, it opened a mouth crowded with fangs as long as fingers and roared at the sky.
‘Bring it down!’ Straken yelled, and he fired his shotgun, racked the slide and fired again.
The beast rushed forward on massive hooves, agile for its size, and Straken saw a pair of two-metre blades in its hands. Men yelled. Lasgun fire pattered off the monster’s armoured hide.
Captain Corris leaped forward as he stabbed, but he was too slow. The alien’s sabre swung down like a great pendulum, almost lazily, and buzzed as it sliced off Corris’s arm and half his head.
The tyranid stood over the captain’s body and bellowed at the Guardsmen. The adepts back in the rear echelon said that tyranids didn’t have a language, that they didn’t need to speak, but Straken knew what that roar was: a challenge.
He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Demo!’ he yelled, and a soldier sprinted over, shrugging his pack off as he ran. Straken snatched a thick, thirty centimetre-wide disc and clocked the dial to four seconds.
‘Everyone clear!’ he shouted, and as the Catachans drew back, still firing, he ran in and threw the charge as hard as his metal arm would allow, sending it skimming across the dirt.
It hit the tyranid’s leg. The monster twisted round, saw it, and reared away. It knows, Straken realised. The damned thing knows… Then the charge went off.
The explosion threw him onto his back. For a moment he felt nothing, heard nothing and wanted just to lie there in the quiet. Then the world burst back into his senses, and Straken hauled himself to his feet.
‘Get up!’ he yelled at the men around him. ‘Any wounded? No? Then follow me!’
They advanced, legs bent and guns ready. The smoke of the explosion was starting to clear. Within the crater, a fresh hole marked the place where the localised charge had gone off.
The beast lay on its side. Its two left arms were completely destroyed and both legs were twisted awkwardly. As Straken approached, he saw that his men had not missed either, for the massive body was pitted with las-burns.
Somehow, it raised its smoking, shattered head and snarled at him. Straken looked at it. You’re not so much, he thought. I’ve killed bigger things than you back on Catachan.
He turned and looked back at his men. ‘This is the smart one,’ he called out, ‘the one we’ve been looking for. Not looking so clever now, is he?’
‘Can’t be smart to mess with us!’ someone shouted.
With its last strength, the tyranid lunged at him. ‘Sir!’ a voice cried. Straken whipped aside, and the creature’s fangs slammed shut on the air in front of his chest. His hand shot out, caught the alien’s smouldering neck, and his fingers closed.
Straken drew his long knife, the traditional weapon of a warrior of Catachan. Even with the added strength of his bionics, it took four hard blows to sever the alien’s head.
‘This is for Corris!’ he cried, and he threw the smoking head onto the ground.
Tired as
they were, the soldiers cheered. The crater was theirs, and now the war – this war at least – was over. The Catachan II had achieved their last objective, and Signis could be left to the local defence regiments and the cleanup teams.
Distantly, as if to applaud them, the artillery boomed. Under the sound of cheering, quiet at first, Straken heard the first thing to genuinely frighten him on this world: the high-pitched whine of a demolisher shell, reaching the peak of its firing arc above them – and then falling…
‘Emperor,’ he gasped. ‘Incoming – everyone down!’
Men scattered to the edges of the crater, throwing themselves onto the ground. Beside Straken, a trooper stared at the sky, astonished. ‘Those Gordarian morons are shelling us!’ he cried.
‘Then get down, stupid,’ Straken snarled. A hundred metres beyond the crater, the first shell hit the ground, hurling dirt and scraps of tyranid twenty metres into the air. Straken strode over to the vox-operator, flexing the fingers of his metal fist. By the Emperor, he’d have the balls of whoever was responsible for this.
‘Comms,’ he called, ‘get on that link and tell those morons–’
The second shell landed twenty metres away. The world spun. Straken heard and felt clods of earth battering down on him, a storm of dirt, and then the world went black.
1.
Straken awoke to find half the world in darkness. The left side of his vision had gone. That meant that his bionic eye had been deactivated. He tried to flex the fingers of his mechanical arm. Nothing moved.
Above him he saw a grey, vaulted roof. A red robe moved at the edge of his vision. He shut his eye and waited, knowing that even without his right arm, his left could still draw a knife.
‘Please open your eyes, Colonel Straken,’ a voice said. ‘You’re back on the Radix Malorum, in space. You’re perfectly safe here.’
He opened his eye. A man in a white tunic stood over him. The doctor had heavy spectacles and a goatee beard.
‘Are we in orbit?’ Straken’s voice sounded more threatening than he’d intended.
