25 For 25

by Various

  The alien flora had subsumed entire continents, a rapacious instinct to devour encoded in every strand of its genetic structure. Nutrients were leeched from the soil and used to create hyper-fertile spore growths that drifted on the heated currents of the air to seed new regions and pollute yet more land.

  Only rigorous burning policies ensured the planet’s survival – for a world of the Imperium could not simply be abandoned, not after all the blood that had been shed in its defence. The shining steel cities, islands in a sea of alien growth, still produced masses of munitions and armoured vehicles for Imperial wars throughout the subsector.

  Salvoes of anti-plant missiles, slash and burn pogroms and pesticide overflights were a matter of routine since the defeat of the invasion.

  Such things were thankless tasks, but necessary for the planet’s continued survival.

  But all that was rendered moot in the face of Magos Szalin’s creation.

  Developed from a partial fragment of ancient research conducted by Magos Heraclitus, the bio-toxins were intended to increase the growth rate of crops on agri-worlds. Magos Szalin had taken the next step and pioneered techniques designed to increase the productivity of such worlds a thousand fold.

  Now that work was put to the ultimate test, mixing its monstrous potential for increased growth with an alien organism that was at the apex of its biological efficiency.

  Within seconds of the Heraclitus strain being released into the atmosphere, the alien growths reacted to its touch, surging upwards and over the planet’s terrain. Slash and burn teams were instantly overwhelmed by mutant growths, poisonous plant life expanding kilometres in seconds as the virulent growth strain sent its metabolism into overdrive.

  Huge amounts of nutrients were sucked from the ground and released as enormous quantities of heat, raising the ambient temperature of the world in a matter of moments. Oxygen was sucked greedily from the atmosphere by horrifyingly massive spore chimneys and the planet’s protective layers were gradually stripped in unthinking biological genocide.

  This was not the rapid death of Exterminatus, but ecological death of worldwide proportions.

  Panicked messages were hurled out into the immaterium and only those with the money, influence or cunning escaped on hastily prepped ships that fled the planet’s destruction.

  But these were few compared to the billions left behind and, weeks later, as the last of the planet’s atmosphere was stripped from it by the hyper-evolved alien biology, stellar radiation swept the surface, killing every living thing and laying waste to all that remained.

  Months after the launch of the missiles, nothing remained alive, the deadly alien vegetation killed by lethal levels of radiation and the frigid cold that gripped the planet without its protective atmosphere.

  All that now remained of the planet was a dead, lifeless ball of rock, its surface seared and barren, with only the skeletal remains of its blackened cities left as evidence that human beings had once lived upon it.

  The silver-skinned drop-ship fell through the airless vacuum of the planet. A host of Marauders and Raptors followed it down, though nothing lived here now. The drop-ship’s retros screamed as the pilot brought it in on final approach, the skids deploying just before it landed in the midst of dead plant matter and scorched alien trees.

  A drogue arm deployed to test the external environment and once it retracted, the pressure door on the side of the craft opened and a heavy ramp extended to the surface.

  Cautiously, for none aboard truly felt safe, a squad of Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-Guard clad in heavy environment suits – similar in function and design to the Terminator armour employed by the Adeptus Astartes – emerged and descended to the planet’s surface.

  Following the group was a figure whose heavy armour was swathed in vivid red robes emblazoned with the black and white cog symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

  His name was Magos Locard and this was not the first time he had come to this world.

  With quick, precise gestures, Locard directed the Tech-Guard to collect samples of the dead plants and the underlying strata. Diggers and corers rolled down from the drop-ship and Locard watched them as they gathered information that might offer some clue as to what had caused this catastrophe.

  Despite the many augmentations applied to his flesh, Locard was not so far removed from humanity that the fate of this world did not cause him great sadness. Like many others, he had fought to save it and had been instrumental in what he had thought was its salvation.

  Now all that was ashes and Locard felt a great anger build within him.

  Whoever had done this would pay.

  A Tech-Guard soldier approached Locard and said, ‘My lord, we’ve found it.’

  Locard followed the man as he waded through thick piles of ashen vegetation to the source of what had led them to this exact place. Though the planet was now bereft of life, a constantly repeating signal had reached into space, its plaintive voice almost lost in the void, but shrill and insistent, demanding attention.

  The vegetation thinned and Locard realised he was walking in a deep trench carved by the impact of something that had fallen from the skies.

  ‘Here, my lord,’ said the Tech-Guard, backing away from Locard.

  Locard saw a battered silver tube, perhaps ten metres in length – an orbital torpedo, though his exo-armour’s auspex told him there was no ordnance or explosives loaded in the warhead. This was the source of the signal and Locard knew that someone had wanted them to find this.

  He walked along the length of the torpedo towards the payload bay and deployed bolt-clasps from the forearm of his armour. One by one, he removed the bolts of the payload bay and hurled it aside when he unscrewed the last one.

  The inside of the bay was dark, but his enhanced ocular implants could easily make out what it contained. He frowned and reached inside the bay to remove its contents.

  He turned to the Tech-Guard next to him and handed him a cracked helmet, the paint chipped and one eye lens missing. The helmet was a deep blue and bore a symbol on the forehead that was known to Locard.

  The inverted omega of the Ultramarines Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said the Tech-Guard, turning the helmet over in his hands.

  ‘Nor I,’ said Locard, turning and marching from the missile. ‘Not yet.’

  As the Tech-Guard followed Locard he said, ‘What happened to this place?’

  ‘This place has a name, soldier,’ snapped Locard. ‘Imperial citizens died here.’

  ‘Apologies, my lord, I meant no disrespect,’ said the Tech-Guard. ‘What was it called?’

  Locard paused, casting his gaze across the blasted wasteland that was all that remained of a once proud Imperial world that had stood defiantly before the horror of a Tyranid invasion.

  ‘It was called Tarsis Ultra.’

  FLESH

  Chris Wraight

  Fifty years ago, they took my left hand.

  I watched, conscious, heavy-headed with stimms and pain suppressants. I watched the knives go in, peeling back the skin, picking apart muscle and sinew.

  They had trouble with the bones. I had changed by then and the ossmodula had turned my skeleton as hard as plasteel. They used a circular saw with glittering blades to cut through the radius and ulna. I can still hear its screaming whine.

  They were simply following protocol. Indeed, they were further along the path than I was and there was something to be learned from the way they operated.

  I kept it together. I am told that not everyone does.

  It took three weeks for the new mechanism to bed down. The flesh chafed for a long time after that, red-raw against the metal of the implant.

  I would wake and see it, an alien presence, bursting from the puffed and swollen stump of my left arm. I flexed iron fingers and watched micropistons and balance-nodes slide smoothly past one another. It looked delicate, though I knew it was stronger than the original had been.

&n
bsp; Stronger, and better. Morvox spent a long time with me, explaining the benefits. He cast the issue in terms of pragmatism, of efficiency margins. Even back then I knew there was more to it than that.

  This was an aesthetic matter. A matter of form. We were changing ourselves to comply with the dictates of taste.

  Do not mistake this for regret. I do not regret what has been done to me. I cannot regret, not in any true sense.

  My iron hand functions competently. It serves, just as I serve. It is an implement, just as I am an implement. No praise can be higher.

  But my old flesh, the part of me that was immolated in the rite, overseen by those machine faces down in the forges, I do not forget it.

  I will, one day. Like Morvox, I will not remember anything but the aesthetic imperative.

  Not yet. For now, I still feel it.

  I

  From the Talex to Majoris, then over to the spine shafts and the turboclimbers. Levels swept by, all black, mottled with grime. Out of Station Lyris, and things got cleaner. Then up past the Ecclesiast Cordex, taking grav-bundles staffed by greyshirts, and into the Administratum quarter. That looked a lot like real grass on the lawns, baking under hololamps, before up again, through Securum and the plexiglass domes of the Excelsion.

  Then things were really sparkling. Gleaming ceramics, floor-to-ceiling glass panels. You could forget the rest of the hive, the kilometres of squalid, close-pressed humanity, rammed into the angles between spires and manufactoria.

  Right at the top, right where the tip of Ghorgonspire pierced the heavy orange fug of the sky, it felt like you’d never need a gland-deep dermoscrub again. You could imagine that everything on Helaj V was pristine and smooth as a Celestine’s conscience.

  Raef Khamed, being a man of the world, was not prone to think that. He stalked up to Governor Tralmo’s offices, still in his Jenummari fatigues, still stinking from what had happened in 45/331/aX and from the journey up. His lasgun banged against his right thigh, loose in its waist-slung holster. It needed a recharge. He needed a recharge. He’d emptied himself out on those bastards, and they just kept coming.

  The two greyshirts flanking the doors saw him coming and snapped their heels.

  ‘Jen,’ they said in rough unison, making the aquila.

  ‘She’s in there?’ asked Khamed, pushing the door open.

  ‘She is,’ came a voice from inside the chamber. ‘Shut the doors behind you.’

  He went in, and did as he was told.

  Khamed stood in a large circular chamber. The floor was veined stone, grey and pink. False windows lined the walls, looking out on to false meadows and false skies. A bonestone statue of Sanguinius Redemptor stood by the walls, pious and gloomy.

  There was a desk at the far end, but it was empty. Set off to one side, three low couches had been set around a curved table.

  In one of the couches sat Governor Planetary Anatova Tralmo, tight-skinned from a century of rejuvenat and with oil-shimmer hair. Next to her was Astropath Majoris Eridh, milk-eyed and staring.

  ‘How goes it?’ Tralmo asked as Khamed sat down. She winced a little as his grimy fatigues marked the cream surface of the couch.

  ‘Awful,’ said Khamed, not noticing. ‘Bloody awful. I’m not even going to try to describe what I saw this time.’

  The Governor nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Then you’ll like this, I hope. Eridh?’

  ‘A response,’ said the Astropath, looking at Khamed in that eerie, sightless way of his. ‘Two cycles back, just deciphered and verified.’

  Khamed’s weary face lit up. He’d begun to doubt there’d be one.

  ‘Throne,’ he said, letting his relief show. The time for bravado was long gone. ‘At last. Regiment?’

  ‘It’s not a Guard signal, Jenummari.’

  ‘Then what? Who?’

  Eridh handed him a dataslate with a summary of the transmission, elucidated into verbose Helaj vernac.

  Khamed looked at it, and his muscles tensed. He read it again, just to be sure. He discovered he was holding the slate rather too tightly.

  If he’d been less tired, he might have hidden his response better. As it was, when he looked up, he knew he’d given everything away. For the first time, he noticed the air of tight expectation on Tralmo’s face.

  Khamed had always liked her. Tralmo was tough. She didn’t shake easily and had been good during the difficulties.

  Just then, she looked like she was going to throw up.

  ‘How long have we got?’ he asked, conscious of the sudden hoarseness in his voice.

  ‘Less than a standard Terran,’ replied Tralmo. ‘I want you to meet them, Raef. It’s protocol. We should keep this military to military.’

  Khamed swallowed. He was still holding the slate too tightly.

  ‘Got you.’

  Bitch.

  The docking bay doors were a metre thick. They dragged open, grinding along rust-weakened rails. Outside, the platform was open to the elements. On Helaj, the elements were always hateful.

  Tracer lights winked in the orange gale. Further out, deeper into the sub-zero atmospheric bilge, more lights whirled. The storm roared, just as it always did, grumbling away like a maddened giant turning in its sleep.

  There was another roar over the platform, closer to hand than the storm, and it came from the blurred outline of a ship. The thing was a brute, far larger than the shuttles that normally touched down at the spire summit.

  Khamed couldn’t make much out through the muck – his visor was already clouding up – but the engine backwash was huge. As he’d watched it come down on the local augurs he’d seen rows of squat gun barrels along its flanks, gigantic thruster housings and glimpses of a single infamous insignia.

  That hadn’t made him feel well. He was on edge. His hands were sweaty even in the thick gloves of his environment suit. His heart hadn’t stopped thumping.

  His men, twelve lostari lined up behind him, weren’t any better. They stared into the raging clouds ahead, their weapons clutched tight, held diagonally across their body armour.

  We’re all soiling ourselves. Throne of Earth, trooper – get a handle on this.

  The roar transmuted into a booming thunderclap, and the ship pulled away, back into the raging cloudscape. Its dark outline faded quickly, though the noise of those engines lingered for much longer.

  New shapes emerged from the smog-filth, resolving into clarity like a carcharex out of the acid sea.

  Five of them.

  The Imperial Guard garrison in Ghorgonspire was over a hundred thousand strong. They’d made no progress against the incursion for six local lunars, which converted into a lot longer if you went with Terran.

  Five of them. Five.

  ‘Formal,’ hissed Khamed over the vox.

  His men snapped their ankles together and stared rigidly ahead.

  The quintet approached. Khamed swallowed, and looked up.

  Their armour was night-black and plainer than he’d expected. There were white markings on the shoulder-guards, but the finish was matt. Blunt, uncomplicated.

  There was no getting away from the size of them. He’d been warned what to expect from Namogh, who’d witnessed a squad of Argent Sabres twenty years ago while on an exchange placement off-world.

  ‘You never get used to it,’ he’d said, his ugly face thoroughly disapproving. ‘You think, that’s a machine. It has to be. But in there, there’s a man. And then it moves, all that plate, tonnes and tonnes of it, and you know it can move quicker than you can, it can kill you quicker than you can blink, and then you think: I was right the first time. It is a machine, a nightmare machine, and if we need to make a thing like this to keep us alive, then the universe is a scary place.’

  Their armour hummed. It was barely audible over the roar of the storm, but you knew it was there. Just like the ship Khamed had seen, the power stored up in those black shells was obvious. They didn’t need to hide it. They didn’t want to hide it. They strode – s
trutted – up to him, every movement soaked in menace and confidence and contempt.

  Khamed bowed.

  ‘Welcome to Helaj V, lords,’ he said, and was disgusted to hear how his voice carried a tremor even over the tinny transmission of his helm vox. ‘We’re grateful to have you.’

  ‘I think that unlikely,’ came the response. It was machine-clipped. ‘But here we are. I am Brother-Sergeant Naim Morvox of the Iron Hands. Brief me as we descend, then the cleansing will begin.’

  ‘They come up from the underhive. We isolate the spearheads and respond with contagion-pattern suppression.’

  Khamed had to trot beside the stalking figure of Morvox as he tried to explain the situation. The Iron Hands Space Marine made no effort to slow down and kept up a punishing, metronomic stride. Behind him, the other four giants matched pace. Their heavy treads clunked on the polished surface of the transit corridor. Khamed’s own men trailed in their wake.

  ‘With little success,’ observed Morvox. His voice. It was a strangely muted sound to come out of such a monstrous mouthpiece. Like all the Iron Hands squad, Morvox kept his helm on. The faceplate was a blank, dark mask.

  ‘We’ve succeeded in keeping them from the upper hive,’ replied Khamed, knowing how weak that sounded.

  Morvox was approaching the honour guard: fifty lostari in greyshirt trim, ranked on either side of the corridor, guns hoisted.

  ‘But you have not eliminated the source.’

  ‘Not yet, no.’

  From somewhere, Khamed heard Namogh’s voice call the troops to attention, and their ankles slammed together. It wasn’t done smoothly. The men were nervous.

  ‘I need access to your hive schematics,’ said Morvox, ignoring the troops and carrying on down the corridor. ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘8.2 Standard Terran lunars ago,’ replied Khamed, shrugging an apology as he sailed past Namogh’s position. His deputy looked even more irritated than usual. ‘Insurgents control fifty-five percent, all lower hive. We have no access to the levels below the base forge.’