Shield of Baal: Devourer

by Joe Parrino

  He returned to find the time field failing, overwhelmed by the sheer number of actors moving through it. It failed and the tyranids ran forward, no longer impeded by the constant sheeting of the necron gauss volleys.

  The necron line was in shambles, broken up by the tyranid subterranean assault.

  Something screamed, setting his skull to shivering. Through occluding mists of boiled tyranid blood came a lumbering form. A crescent shaped head swept from side to side. The animal was the size of one of the huge human war machines, trundling forward on bladed limbs. A spiked tail lashed behind it. Scurrying along its flanks were lesser organisms, still fearsome, each easily the height of a necron.

  Everything about the creature displayed its importance in whatever passed for a tyranid hierarchy. It screamed again, sending the tyranids running forward with renewed vigour. Mandibles waved around its jaws, wickedly hooked. Other organisms fell dripping from orifices in the animal’s body, newly born and already hunting.

  Anrakyr looked around him, trying to find some means of killing this new threat. There was little help around him, merely dully moving warriors.

  Already the emboldened tyranids were breaking the necrons, pushing them back to the gate. There was no time to find a better weapon.

  Anrakyr hefted his spear and charged forward.

  Surprisingly, the triarch praetorians followed. Their rods of covenant blasted a hole for him through the guardian creatures.

  He slipped in the blood. Things swam in it, wormlike organisms and other, less identifiable creatures. They popped beneath his strides.

  Anrakyr cast his spear, lancing the weapon deep into the organism’s head. The animal slowed with a trilling squeal. He tried to sprint forward, but the blood slowed him. He managed a run. Then he leapt, fingers punching into the beast’s side.

  Other tyranids continued to spill from holes in its side, but Anrakyr ignored them. Thin blood oozed from the small wounds he punched in. He clambered onto its back and ran forward.

  It bucked and trembled, trying to dislodge the necron overlord. Anrakyr nearly lost his footing, only just avoiding falling from its side to be trampled beneath its thrashing claws. An orifice opened before him and a hissing thing climbed out. Anrakyr’s fist took it through the skull, punching through chitin and bone, popping the brain.

  His spear gleamed where it was lodged in the greater creature’s skull. It beckoned, like a flag. He wrapped his hands around the haft of the spear and thrust down, driving it through the braincase of the beast. It screamed one last time before it collapsed.

  Anrakyr leapt clear, ploughing through the pooling tyranid blood. He paused a moment, letting the sense of victory flow through him, but it felt hollow. The tyranids lost their coordination, milling in confusion.

  The overlord left the colossal corpse behind and rejoined the main body of his necrons.

  The tyranids were thrown back, carved to pieces at the molecular level. Steaming chunks of dead alien collapsed into the rock. Their glutinous, acidic blood washed up the defile, unable to drain down through the solid rock, rolling in thick waves like the sap from millions of cut trees.

  The bio-acid hissed and spat, creating foul-smelling, chemical steam, as it slowly ate into the shins and feet of the embattled necrons. Tyranids continued to charge forward, driven by unspeakable hunger and abominable intelligence.

  Some of the smaller creatures could barely slog through the remains of their fellows. They thrashed and screamed as they drowned, sucked beneath the waves of their own species’ blood.

  The assault faltered. Only the largest creatures were able to navigate the rising tide of blood. Those that approached were torn apart by concentrated gauss fire as coordinated targeting protocols activated in the empty-shelled skulls of the necron warriors. Scarabs fell in carpets as their energy was completely drained.

  A reprieve had been bought.

  Elation flooded through Anrakyr as further good news arrived. A rush of air fluttered the tattered, ancient fabric that draped his chassis. Jubilant, synthetic cries came from the canoptek creatures. The worker crypteks surrounded the Traveller. All of them bowed.

  ‘Kehlrantyr is open,’ they chorused.

  Anrakyr turned away from the dead tyranids. The great gates of Kehlrantyr, the carved obsidian portals, had been levered open. Air pressure differentiation gusted out as the tomb world opened on to the surface for the first time in countless years.

  Tyranid blood already spilled in, rushing in little rivulets past Anrakyr’s legs. Green lights played in the stygian darkness of Kehlrantyr’s interior. It seemed the tomb world had still to awaken, even with the tumult that engulfed its surface.

  ‘So it is,’ Anrakyr said. Had he been able, he would have smiled.

  Shaudukar was the first to notice the pack of flayer-cursed that hunted them.

  ‘We are being followed, my cryptek,’ she whispered.

  Valnyr sighed. ‘The reprieve is over. I suppose it was too much to hope that our path to the gate would leave us unmolested.’

  Static followed her words. It sounded like the buzzing she kept hearing.

  Numerous side passages branched from their path. Rotten air gusted from statue-carved niches flanking them.

  ‘What are your orders, Valnyr?’ Shaudukar asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Every fibre of her being demanded that she run, but she remained where she stood.

  Footsteps echoed down one of the side passages. Lockstepped, disciplined, they sounded like metal on stone. Lychguard and false necrons readied themselves to face whatever this new threat might be.

  The flayers hissed their static from behind, breaking into an ungainly run. A ragged volley of gauss fire and more esoteric weapons slowed them. But it was not enough. The flayers advanced, faster and faster, eager to share their hungry curse.

  The mysterious footsteps grew louder and louder, bouncing off the stone, echoing from the statues. Valnyr prepared herself for the worst, diverting her attention away from the flayers. She held her staff ready. The cryptek gathered the threads of time, prepared to do what she could to survive for minutes longer. Green light flickered down the passage.

  The flayers faltered as they drew level, stunned and broken by the thunder of gauss weaponry that exploded outwards. Warriors marched from the passage with near mindless belligerence. At their front stood a sentient necron. Valnyr recognised the leader as a necron of high stature, judging by the ornate carvings of his chassis and the crown that stood proud from his skull. She did not know the sigils that marked his allegiance, but she was thankful to see him.

  She fell to her knees, elated. Then hunger burned through her once more. Her world went dark.

  Strongpoints were being set up all across the ship, manned by armed serfs and combat-tasked servitors. Plates in the floor, walls and ceiling angled out on hydraulic pistons, creating cover and barricades.

  Jatiel caught the telltale scent of smoke moving through the ship’s atmosphere.

  ‘That is not a good sign,’ Emudor said.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ agreed Ventara.

  They rushed through corridors of preparing serfs, through strobing fields of blood-red light and alarm klaxons. The ship shuddered around them, wracked by palsied tremors. A tech-adept directed them through the vessel, routing them towards the likely ingress point for the tyranid boarders. Serf shock troops, encased in bulky void-suits, were caught up in the Space Marines’ wake.

  Great screams of tortured metal overwhelmed the alarms. Localised atmosphere died. Serfs fell, pulled through sudden holes in the hull and out into vacuum. Tentacles erupted through the breaches, questing, reaching and writhing. Asaliah was the first to react, to open fire. The Deathwatch veteran’s bolter coughed, popping frozen blood blisters out of the crimson and bone tyranid limbs.

  Jatiel pushed himself forward. Through the vacuum and
zero gravity, the Blood Angels sergeant flew towards the hole. He brought his mace down with a thunderous crack, pulverising chitin, flesh and bone. A fine mist of blood droplets sprayed outwards and then quickly froze.

  Boltguns fired, the sound muted, and rounds impacted into more of the tentacles, detonating and blowing more chunks from alien flesh. Ventara yelled into the vox as one of the grasping tentacles, coated in bone hooks, rasped along his armour. Vapour shot out from the compromised battleplate, but the Space Marine fought on.

  Genestealers flowed in, clambering along the tentacles like jungle predators. They jinked and danced through the hail of bolter fire. One leapt towards Jatiel, face leering with a dead-eyed smile. His mace caught it under the jaw, pulling the head and attached spinal cord off and out.

  ‘There are too many!’ the sergeant yelled.

  Grenades sailed past him in response. The sergeant kicked off a tentacle, pushing himself back into the embrace of the Golden Promise. Shrapnel erupted before his eyes, breaking through the tentacles and running genestealers.

  He saw a squid-like organism behind them, mouth open wide, vomiting forth the genestealers. Bolts flew through the void around him, impacting into the grasping organism’s body.

  As he floated backwards, Jatiel reached for the krak grenades at his belt. He primed and flung them. Tentacles caught the grenades and pulled them greedily into the grasping organism’s mouth.

  Jatiel smiled as they detonated, breaking up the creature’s head. Genestealers were caught in the explosion, pulled apart by bone and chitin fragments.

  But Jatiel had misjudged the explosion. He was caught on its edge, flung back towards the ship and cracking into its gothic skin. His armour’s auto-senses warned him of breached integrity. Cold spots flushed against his skin and he could hear a rush of air as his armour’s atmosphere escaped.

  Then Asaliah was there. ‘Up you come, sergeant.’ The veteran grabbed Jatiel and dragged him back inside.

  The ship’s vox-network intruded. Tyranid creatures flooded her, boarding at multiple locations.

  ‘The xenos are making for the bridge and the enginarium. This ship is lost if we do not hold those locations,’ Ventara said. Already more squid-like creatures were swarming towards this breach.

  ‘Asaliah, you and Ventara will go to the enginarium. Secure and hold. I will take Emudor to reinforce the bridge.’

  Chapter Nine

  Valnyr awoke before the great gates of Kehlrantyr, borne upon the shoulders of her lychguard. The atmosphere was tense. She could hear an argument between Shaudukar and the false necrons.

  ‘The cryptek is afflicted,’ said Nuensis.

  ‘No,’ asserted Shaudukar with weary finality. Her tone indicated she had been repeating the word for some time.

  ‘I am… well,’ Valnyr said. ‘Let me down.’

  The great gates of Kehlrantyr lay open. Green glyphs continued to glow, announcing the impeccable glory of Kehlrantyr and her unassailable hosts. The irony was not lost on Valnyr.

  Their numbers were greater than they had been. Other necrons had joined the party, marked with symbols the cryptek didn’t recognise. A brace of destroyers, cackling in their own dark tongue, flew overhead, out of reach of the flayers. Canoptek constructs, summoned by the desperation of the necrons, swarmed to them. Valnyr’s fleet splashed through liquid. The acidic fluid pitted her legs, hissing and drawing clouds of dissolved metals into the air.

  ‘Blood,’ said Shaudukar. There was an edge to the lychguard’s voice. Valnyr glanced over, her posture indicating concern. The cryptek resisted the urge to fall to her knees and lap at the organic liquid with a tongue she no longer possessed. She shuddered. Where had that thought come from?

  Sunlight streamed in from beyond, dispelling the gloom that afflicted Kehlrantyr’s interior. More unfamiliar necrons rushed inside, while Valnyr could hear the distinctive wail of necron weaponry from outside.

  The Kehlrantyri drew up in a protective circle, hunched in shadow, ready for whatever came at them. Aliens hissed from behind them, joining the static-screams of the flayer-touched. One hundred necrons of Kehlrantyr, perhaps the last left sane of their fabled world, greeted their kin from elsewhere.

  ‘A paltry display,’ boomed a voice. ‘But a welcome one.’ The other necrons advanced on them, nigh on a thousand of them. ‘I was concerned that the tomb world was not yet awake and I am heartened to see that Kehlrantyr stands ready to greet me.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ Valnyr said. Best to err on the side of caution, she thought. Crypteks, distinctive and easily recognised to Valnyr’s practiced gaze, split from the main advancing group and took station beside the great gates. Already the vast portal was humming closed, driven by the cants of these foreign necrons.

  ‘Your words and presence indicate that this tomb world is awake. Yet your posture states that you wish it were not so.’ The speaker halted. ‘What has happened here?’

  One of the bizarrely ornamented necrons that accompanied the speaker whispered, ‘You were warned, Anrakyr.’

  Valnyr said, ‘The dead words of Llandu’gor afflict us.’

  Curses streamed from the speaker. A great thud sounded from the gate, a bruising organic sound as something large charged into the obsidian doors. He shouted to his crypteks, ‘Seal the gate!’

  Valnyr watched them comply, watched the telltale glow of chronomancy centre on the great edifice. ‘A null field?’ she asked, unable to keep the words contained.

  The necron lord turned to face her, hands clenched in the sign of profound disappointment. Lightning played over the overlord’s body, abrading away the blood and gore that covered him. A dry circle of stone surrounded him, kept clean by flowing scarabs. ‘Yes,’ he answered.

  Such a display of skill, such unsurpassed knowledge of the ancient time science. To seal the doors in a field where time no longer held sway, a permanent region of stasis. They would open no more. They would never again face a progression of time. But to do so would drain the crypteks, using their power to channel the field. The implications were staggering.

  She groaned, ‘What comes behind you?’

  ‘The tyranids swarm on this world, cryptek.’ He spoke slowly, enunciating his words as if to a child.

  ‘Tyranids?’ asked Maantril. ‘What manner of beasts are these?’

  Nuensis blurted the equivalent of an exasperated snort. ‘The aliens that have infiltrated our tombs.’

  ‘We are trapped, then,’ said Maantril. Other nobles took up the cry. ‘We are trapped and there is no way out.’

  The newcomers advanced. One of their number, a floating destroyer, said, ‘What of the tomb’s Dolmen Gate?’

  The overlord registered surprise to hear such a question come from the dent-skulled destroyer. ‘You must have a route out.’

  The three triarch praetorians flanked the overlord, rods of covenant prepared to compel an answer.

  ‘We do,’ Valnyr said. ‘We did not wish to use it.’

  ‘Where does it lead?’ asked one of the praetorians, its skull-visage surmounted by a fan of broken knives. The others chorused the same question.

  ‘Zarathusa,’ answered Valnyr.

  The overlord groaned. ‘Of course it does,’ he muttered. ‘There is no time to waste. You,’ he indicated the Kehlrantyrian necrons, ‘will lead us to the Dolmen Gate.’

  The buzzing came first, low and subsonic. It lanced through the darkness, gliding on static wings and setting the metal bones of her chassis to vibrating. Hunger followed. Valnyr’s mouth opened and static joined the screams already echoing from the dark chambers. These were the static-screams of the lost, the haunting cries of those rewritten by the flayer virus. Valnyr could almost hear the tortured personalities, the ghosts of those who had endured so much, who had let bitter jealousy and the fear of death drive them into a bargain in a now forgotten age. Her family, her kin, a
ll those she had known, lost to the creeping vengeance of a broken god.

  Necrons recoiled around her. Her fingers tapped against her staff in a restless rhythm. The fit passed.

  ‘You are afflicted,’ said one of the praetorians.

  ‘The dead words of Llandu’gor ride your soul,’ said another.

  Shaudukar and her lychguard bristled. ‘Our mistress is fine,’ said the lead lychguard. Valnyr could hear a crackle beneath her words, a hint of static and buzzing.

  Weapons were drawn, turned upon one another. The old divisions showed themselves. Fear and buzzing, static and horror, branched through hurried conversation, past accusation and understanding.

  The tyranids were forgotten, pushed aside as a problem that could be dealt with later.

  ‘Enough,’ said Anrakyr, steel lashing all the others into silence. Valnyr noticed that the overlord kept his spear levelled, ready to stab out at a moment’s notice.

  Two camps were forming. Kehlrantyri and Anrakyr’s foreigners faced one another. They stopped marching to the Dolmen Gate. They stood, immobile, shoulders hunched, faces impassive but with upraised voices echoing through the darkness.

  Flayers chose that moment to assault, sprinting in their jerking movements, shambling into momentum from darkened streets.

  Lightning lanced out from the unafflicted, punching through clumps of the flayers. Crackling sheets of green light, chained and shackled to the near-mindless necron warriors, stabbed out. Other, more esoteric weapons added their voices to the hue and cry as sentient necrons, gifted with weaponry of ancient science and provenance, fired.

  But on the flayers came, talons reaching, mouths stretched wide to taste non-existent flesh.

  Valnyr forgot the division between Kehlrantyri and foreigners, between her kin and her accusers. All was subsumed beneath her desire to survive and the dreadful buzzing.

  Time slowed, but this was no expression of her science – this was the stress-filled moment of collision, the do or die of combat. She slammed her staff forward with nerveless grace, ramming it into the chest cavity of a hissing flayer. She grunted as she lifted the flayer. It slid towards her down the haft of her staff, hands and talons outstretched, reaching for her head.