25 For 25

by Various

  ‘Get away… get away…’ I tried to push them off, and stagger on. I saw them back away as my vision dimmed. I did not feel the deck hit me.

  Even in my poison-fever, I could not escape my wards. They plagued my mind as the toxin did my body. In my dreams I saw them clearly. I saw how each would add to the slow disintegration of my Chapter; to its reduction to a shadow of its former self. Hwygir was unable to step beyond the feral thinking of the savage world on which he had been born. Was that the purpose for which the Astartes were created? To be unthinking barbarians? No.

  Narro was the reverse, his mind too open. His young fascination with the xenos was a danger he did not comprehend. He thought to save humanity by studying the technology of its enemies, using such xenotech against them, integrating it within our own forces, within ourselves. His path would lead us to create our own monsters, corrupt our blessed forms and thereby our spirits. We Astartes may have bodies enhanced to be greater than any normal human, but our souls remain those of men. The only knowledge an Astartes needs of a xenos is how it may be destroyed. Anything more is heresy.

  Vitellios, I could see however, was destined for a different kind of heresy. Years of training, hypno-conditioning in the ways of the Chapter, and still he clung to his old identity. His arrogant presumption of self-importance. That he might be right and the Chapter might be wrong. Our history lists those Astartes who doubted the Emperor, and each of their names is blackened: Huron, Malai, Horus, and the rest.

  Pasan, though, was my greatest disappointment. Every advantage that could be offered, a destiny nigh pre-ordained, and this lacklustre boy was the result. Insipid, full of self-doubt, unable to grasp the mantle of leadership even when presented to him. If half-men like him were to be the future of the Scythes then, Emperor help me, I would have rather the Chapter have stood and died at Sotha.

  ‘Gricole,’ I croaked when next I awoke. ‘How am I?’

  Gricole raised the dim light a fraction and bent to study the readings from the medicae tablet.

  ‘Your temperature is down. Your hearts are beating slower. And your urine… is no longer purple. I would guess you are through the worst.’

  I coughed. It cleared my throat. ‘Good,’ I said, my voice stronger. ‘Too much time has been wasted already.’

  I levered myself up and off the tablet. I felt a touch of weakness in my legs.

  ‘The time has not been completely wasted,’ Gricole began. ‘We have been making some progress–’

  ‘We have set out for home?’ They should have waited until I was conscious again, but in this instance I would forgive them. ‘How far have we gone?’

  I looked into Gricole’s stout, troubled face. I pushed past him, out of the Apothecarion, and to a porthole. The hive ship filled my view.

  I turned back to my retainer, my thoughts gripped with suspicion. ‘They have not gone onto the ship without me?’ I strode across the room, my weakness vanishing before my anger. ‘I expressly forbade it!’

  I stalked out into the antechamber. My four wards were there. Startled, they stumbled to attention.

  ‘Who was it?’ I demanded. ‘One of you? All of you? Who here did not understand my orders?’

  I looked pointedly at Vitellios, but he stared straight ahead, not moving a muscle.

  ‘You will find your tongues or I will find them for you,’ I said sternly.

  ‘Honoured sergeant.’ It was Pasan. ‘Your orders were understood and followed. We have not left this craft.’

  His words were bold, but the slightest quiver in his voice betrayed his nervousness. I stepped close to him and studied him carefully.

  ‘Then explain to me, Neophyte Pasan, what is this progress that you have made?’

  I saw his eyes flick for an instant behind me, to Gricole, and then away. He blinked with a moment’s indecision.

  ‘We found a–’ Narro started.

  ‘Quiet,’ I overruled. ‘Neophyte Pasan can speak for himself.’

  ‘We have… we have been mapping the surface,’ he spoke, gaining confidence with each word. ‘We found an aperture that we believe will lead us straight to our target.’

  ‘Is this impertinence, Pasan? We recovered the beacon. What target is this?’

  ‘My men,’ Cassios said from the entrance hatch. He stepped into the antechamber. ‘My apologies, brother-sergeant, we could not make you aware during your indisposition. These Scouts were fulfilling my instructions.’

  ‘It is a second beacon, honoured sergeant.’

  I looked from Cassios to Pasan. ‘Another beacon? Our auspex read only the one.’

  Vitellios chipped in. ‘It signalled only once, at the exact time we discovered the commander’s beacon.’

  ‘It makes sense, sergeant,’ now Narro spoke again. ‘If some of the xenoforms can detect the beacon’s signal you would not wish to lead them to all your hiding places. You would wait until a rescue party might be close, close enough to reach a primary beacon. Then once we accessed that, it must have sent a signal to all the secondary beacons to begin transmitting.’

  ‘And one replied. Once.’ I looked back at Cassios, but he was concentrated upon the neophytes’ explanation. ‘Our auspex did not detect a second signal at that time.’

  ‘Not our squad auspex, no,’ Narro continued, ‘but the one on the boat did. It is noted within the data-log. It is at the far end of the ship, so deep inside we would not have detected it.’

  ‘Very well. Commander?’ I fixed my gaze upon Cassios. ‘Do you know what we may find?’

  ‘Our boarding parties struck all across the ship. There are several for whom I have not accounted.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I only pray they were as lucky as I and that we may reach them in time.’

  My wards appeared convinced, but I was not. Yet if more of our brothers were still sent abourd that abomination, I could not leave them behind.

  ‘So, Scout Pasan, tell me. What is this aperture that you have discovered?’

  ‘Arse!’ Vitellios swore as he took another grudging step along the dim tunnel. ‘I can’t believe I have to climb up this bio-ship’s arse.’

  His overblown irritation elicited a smattering of laughter from the other neophytes.

  ‘Keep the chatter off the vox!’ I snapped at them all, my patience worn thin. There was no atmosphere in this part of the ship so we were fully encased within our armour with only the squad-vox to keep in contact. I was still not recovered, I felt weak, uncomfortable, and my discomfort frustrated me even further. Such petty inconveniences should be nothing to an Astartes. My body should be healed fully, not still ailing. I pushed on, the temperature rising and my temper shortening with each step.

  How had I come to this? Reduced to a haemorrhoid on a hive ship’s backside! Was this what heroes of the Astartes did? Would, one day, a new generation of battle-brothers listen in hushed tones to the tale of this adventure?

  ‘Brother-sergeant?’ Cassios’s voice came through to me. He had set it to a private channel. Cassios, though, would be my salvation. When we returned home after this insertion, we would not be met by a Techmarine adept to catalogue our salvage. No, we would have an honour guard fitting for the hero we would restore.

  ‘Commander?’

  ‘I asked the neophytes, during the days you were inconvenienced, of the circumstances of my rescue.’

  ‘With what purpose?’ I had intended my query to be polite, but as I heard it back through the vox it had the tinge of accusation.

  ‘No more than to further my understanding of them. It struck me that Scout Pasan in particular showed considerable courage in leading the ravener away, allowing the heavy bolter to be retrieved.’

  ‘It would have shown considerable courage had I ordered him to do it,’ I said, my voice sounding testy, ‘but in the midst of battle, you must act as one. You cannot have a single person deciding to act alone, expecting everyone else to understand his meaning.’

  ‘And yet at other times you have remarked on his failure to us
e initiative. That he has waited for orders.’

  ‘He must learn to judge between the two. That is also part of leadership; when to act and when to listen to others.’

  ‘You truly believe he is the right one to groom as acolyte?’

  I knew to whom Cassios was referring, but I held firm in my opinion. ‘Pasan is Sothan. Like you and I. One of the last. He has it within him. He merely needs to discover it.’

  The conversation ended shortly after that. Cassios did not understand; he had spent two days with the neophytes. I had fought alongside them for over two years. My mind dwelt on Cassios’s behaviour. It had been the neophytes who had pushed for this second insertion yet I knew it was exactly what he wished. There are reasons why any Space Marine discovered still living aboard a hive ship must be examined by the Apothecarion before returning to duty. It is not the constant danger and warfare, our minds are enhanced so that we may fight without rest, but it is the unknown influence of the greater tyranid consciousness that bears down on each and every living thing within its grasp. No one yet knows what effect that may have.

  There is another reason as well. Not all tyranid xenoforms are created simply to destroy their enemies. Many are designed to infiltrate their minds, turn them against their friends and lead them into traps to be devoured. Cassios’s behaviour seemed normal, but then perhaps that was a sign. How normal should a man be after such an experience?

  I led them on in silence. The torches on our suits illuminated only a fraction of the gloom ahead of us. In truth, we did not know what function this part of the hive ship performed. Pasan had found the entrance at the stern of the vessel; it had been small, shrivelled, but the tunnel had widened out considerably after we had penetrated the initial portal. The bio-titan birthing cavity was nothing to the size of this cavern. Walking along the middle, the lowest point, we could see neither wall nor roof. We might as well have been walking upon the surface of a planet, the only difference being that the ground sloped upwards rather than down as it disappeared into the darkness on either side. It was desolate; there were no remains here of any of the lesser tyranid creatures that we had waded through in our earlier expeditions. The floor was bare, a series of shallow crests as though we were on the inside of a giant spring, and the footing was firm. It appeared as though we had found the one part of the vessel where nothing had ever lived.

  Or I may have spoken too soon. I noticed to my right Cassios stop suddenly, he kneeled and held his gauntleted hand on the ground.

  ‘Something’s coming. Take cover,’ his commanding voice coming through the vox crackled around the inside of my helmet. What cover? I asked myself, but Cassios was already breaking to one side.

  ‘To the right,’ I ordered my wards after him. They responded instantly, ready to follow him. We ran for a minute until the rising wall hove up into view, soaring above our heads into the shadow. Cassios climbed the slope until it was as steep as we could manage and then stopped there, looking further ahead.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked him. The auspex showed nothing.

  ‘Do you not see them?’

  I peered into the gloom. ‘No,’ I said.

  He bade us wait, however, and within a few moments I saw what he had seen. A ridge emerged ahead of us, stretching across the horizon, as though a mighty hand had gripped the ship from the outside and was squeezing it up towards us. I heard my wards gasp as they saw it too.

  ‘Holy Throne…’

  ‘God-Emperor…’

  ‘Sotha preserve us…’

  ‘What in the name of a hive-toad’s spawn-baubles are those?’

  The ridge was no muscle contraction: it was a phalanx of huge tyranid creatures of a sort I had never seen before. Each as big as a tank, as big as a Baneblade, packed tightly together so there was not a centimetre between them, and moving as a line slowly towards us. Their armoured eyeless heads were down, so low as to be ploughing over the surface in front of them, dragging their bulbous bodies behind. Their limbs had atrophied so they oozed their way forward like snails. I did not know what their slime would do, but their weight alone would crush us. I looked to the left, to the right, there was no way around; they ringed the circumference of the cavern, somehow sticking to the walls even as they arched round and became the ceiling. I doubted whether all the weaponry we had to hand would be enough to stop one of these brutes in its tracks.

  I looked down the line, searching for a tank-beast that appeared smaller or weaker. If we targeted one with concentrated fire there might be a chance, but my attention was dragged away when my wards suddenly let out a great cheer. Cassios was advancing, climbing the curving slope as he went. He had gone mad, I realised, the sight of his foe had driven his wits from him.

  ‘After him!’ I ordered the Scouts. I would be damned if I would let him die now, after all he had survived, before he could be welcomed back home. We chased him as quickly as we could, struggling at the steep angle this close to the wall. He charged ahead of us, not even drawing his weapon. Scrabbling higher, he leapt from the cavern wall onto the top of the nearest tank-beast’s head. Then, balanced precariously as the beast chomped forward, his power sword appeared in his hand and he stabbed down.

  The tank-beast did not seem to notice.

  ‘Back!’ I shouted, appalled, to the others. ‘Back! Firing positions!’

  The beasts’ pace had appeared slow from a distance, but up close they ground forwards with surprising speed. On such a slope, it was as if a Land Raider was barrelling towards us, teetering on a single tread.

  ‘Stay on the curve! Stay high!’ Cassios’s voice blasted into our helmets as we fell back and he stabbed down again. I glanced behind, this time the beast acknowledged the strike with a flicker of its head that nearly threw Cassios off, but then it returned to its path and he regained his grip.

  The Scouts stood ready to fire, but I hesitated, fearing the volley would hit the commander.

  ‘Fire above me!’ Cassios ordered, and we fired a battery of shells and shot over Cassios’s head as he ducked and swung again. He cut to the right side of the beast’s head, on the underside of where he was crouching. This time the beast shied slightly away from the barrage, but again returned to its course.

  ‘Again!’ He cut. We fired, the beast looming before us as though we were insects.

  ‘Again!’ he cried one last time before the beast steamrollered over us. We fired and he jammed the sword in as deep as it would go. The beast reacted. It squirmed away from our shot and lazily snapped towards the pinprick causing it pain. Its weight shifted and the upper edge of its body detached from the wall. For the first time we glimpsed the immense pores and suckers that had held it fast. As those came away from the surface, its weight shifted even further and more suckers came loose. With the inertia of a battleship ramming another, it slowly toppled down upon the tank-beast to its side and both monstrous creatures halted for a moment in confusion. Above them, their collision had left a gap. None of us needed to be told what to do.

  We raced forwards to pass through before the tank-beast recovered. As we crossed into the valley we had created in the advancing ridge, it regained its grip and lumbered back. The valley’s wall closed in upon us and I willed every last jolt of energy to my legs. The walls slammed shut as we shot from them and skidded upon the deep coating of mucus the tank-beasts left behind. I gained purchase for an instant before Hwygir, out of control, knocked me flying. We slid down the curved wall of the cavern right back into the centre until we finally stuck where the mucus was pooling.

  I cut through the groans on the vox, demanding my squad to report. Haltingly, they did so. Slowly, trying not to fall again, I picked myself up from the laden ground and then checked the others. Cassios was rising as well. Hwygir was holding the heavy bolter high in the air, keeping it dry. Narro and Pasan were scraping the fluid off themselves as Vitellios just stood there, a look of horror on his face as he stared down at the mucus dripping off from every part of him.

  ‘I’v
e been slimed,’ he said.

  I forwent commenting that such dross reminded me of the grime-swamp where he’d been birthed; I had more pressing concerns.

  ‘Neophytes, get yourselves up. Check your weapons, check your weapons!’ I chivvied Vitellios. ‘Straighten yourselves and get ready to move.’

  I stepped away a little to check my own pistol and could not help but reflect once more on the new depths to which my command had sunk. I saw Cassios stepping around the neophytes, congratulating them individually. It did not matter, as soon as I returned him to The Heart of Cronus I would request transfer to the battle company and no one would be able to deny me.

  ‘What is this place anyway?’ I overheard Vitellios ask the rest.

  ‘A no good place,’ Hwygir concluded.

  Narro was already working on hypotheses. ‘Maybe some kind of alimentary canal, maybe a funnel or blow-hole.’

  ‘Maybe the barrel of a bio-cannon?’ Pasan queried.

  ‘One big cannon,’ Vitellios said.

  ‘Either way, I just hope there’s nothing bigger coming up out the pipe.’

  I allowed them their inane chatter this once. I had checked my pistol and by His grace it still functioned. Our weapons last hundreds of years for a reason. I holstered it and then punched the auspex back to life to check the path ahead. I looked at its readings and then punched it again. The readings did not change. My body still moved, taking a few steps forward, but my brain, for this moment, had frozen. There was something bigger coming up the pipe. It wasn’t a tank-beast or a carnifex or even a bio-titan. It was the spark of life that Cassios had claimed to sense. Ahead of us, growing, feeding, ready to be born, was a creature far larger than any we had encountered. It was the Kraken’s offspring. It was another hive ship.

  ‘Brother Tiresias?’ The lieutenant stopped me as I walked the corridors of The Heart of Cronus.