The Shadow of the Beast

by L J Goulding

  Hornindal wasted no time on ceremony or introductions.

  ‘Brothers. We exited the warp just over twenty-seven minutes ago, approximately six and a half days short of our destination, somewhere between systems in the vicinity of Artaxis. It is my belief that in answering the Chapter’s recall we have encountered the vanguard of a new tyranid hive fleet within Ultima Segmentum, and that their malign psychic presence is responsible for the sudden death of our Navigator.’

  Though the Scythes of the Emperor remained characteristically stoic, a few murmurs ran through Ogden’s security officers. He glared sidelong at them, a terse reminder that they stood under the gaze of their masters – Chaplain Demetrios in particular was known to have little patience for ill-disciplined serfs.

  ‘Though I no longer have any doubt that the xenos’ arrival is in some way linked to the recent troubles along the Eastern Fringe,’ the Reclusiarch continued, ‘this craven, scattered deployment of their forces does not fit with previous models of tyranid fleet activity. The alien is cunning. It learns from its defeats. It already knows that it could not conquer the glorious Imperium with a singular frontal assault, and so now it seeks an alternative.

  ‘The shipmaster and his officers assure me that no logical trajectory could bring this hive ship and the accompanying swarm so far into the subsector, either from Saphir or the Eastern Fringe regions, without encountering at least some Imperial resistance along the way. Therefore we must assume that the wretched xenos have divided their forces, seeking to harry us along many different fronts and spread their foul influence as widely as possible. They have spawned a vast spore-minefield to blockade the system. Their psychic shadow is growing.’

  Ogden felt a curious mix of horror and anger at those words. Though the tyranid menace of Hive Fleet Behemoth was already long vanquished before even his great grandfather had entered the indentured service of the Scythes, whispered tales had spread from battlefronts throughout Ultima Segmentum and gone on to become the stuff of legend. As a child, his cruel siblings had terrified him with stories of the unseen, multi-limbed xenos creatures that they insisted lived in the tunnels beneath the hab-centre and would gladly feast upon the flesh of soldiers and little boys alike. On many a cold Sothan night, the young Milus had cowered beneath his blanket and started at every imagined noise in the darkness – a far cry from the stern officer who now wore the heraldry of the Chapter with pride.

  There was something else, though. Perhaps a more primal fear.

  It was akin to the revulsion he felt when even a harmless domestic arachnid would scuttle across the floor of his quarters – the irreconcilable hatred that humanity had nurtured for non-mammalian life since the dawn of time. If that arachnid could master interstellar travel and demand an empire of its own, where then might its predatory gaze fall? What ‘foul influence’ might it exert over the worlds of man?

  Ogden steadied himself. He forced his attention back to the grim-faced Reclusiarch, who seemed to tower above even his Space Marine brethren as he spoke.

  ‘In issuing the general recall, Chapter Master Thorcyra likely summons us to defend the Chapter’s territories to the galactic east from the xenos incursion. However, his eye may have been diverted away from the far greater threat that we have uncovered, here and now – based upon our current position, Shipmaster Kaeron has calculated that our noble homeworld of Sotha already lies within the projected engagement zone.’

  Only now did the assembled Space Marines visibly react, with stifled curses and cries of defiance as their tight ranks faltered.

  ‘Stoke your hatred, brothers!’ cried Demetrios, his gauntleted fist raised high. ‘Save it for the bastard Devourer!’

  Many of the mortal serfs were far less restrained in their outcry, and Ogden found himself joining them. Among other less coherent threats that echoed in the chamber, he hefted his lascarbine above his head and vowed the death of the entire tyranid race.

  It was unthinkable. Sotha could not fall.

  The world was the ancestral home of the Chapter, true, but for many of those present – human and posthuman alike – it was also their birthplace, and for the rest it was at the very least the home of their blood-kin.

  In spite of the uproar, Hornindal calmly took up his crozius arcanum from the robed armourer standing ready beside him. With a simple gesture, he ignited the weapon’s crackling power field and held it defiantly aloft, bringing the hall to silence once more. When he spoke again, Ogden noted the old, familiar flicker of restrained zeal in the Reclusiarch’s voice.

  ‘Brothers, praise be to Him-on-Terra – you and I are of the same mind. We will not allow the hated xenos to lay even a single claw upon our home world! Forewarned, the Scythes of the Emperor will repel any foe, and Chapter Master Thorcyra will lead us in driving the damnable hive fleets from the face of the galaxy forever!’

  Cheers, and cries of ‘For Sotha! For the Emperor!’ erupted from the assembly. Chaplain Demetrios bared his teeth in something like a grin, and donned his skull-faced helm before approaching the squads to begin his battle ministrations; first Brother-Sergeant Certes, and then Edios, readily knelt before him to take their solemn oaths.

  Turning to marshal his team, Ogden was surprised to see Hornindal approaching him directly. Though he still bore the active crozius, the Reclusiarch did not carry in his manner the same ever-present threat of violence as Demetrios.

  ‘This duty weighs heavily upon us all, serf-sergeant,’ he said. ‘Without a Navigator, we cannot risk any warp jump to relay our warning to Sotha ourselves. We must, therefore, move through the swarm and beyond the psychic shadow of the hive ship. We must re-establish astropathic communications as soon as possible.’

  Ogden nodded. ‘Indeed, my lord… Though that may be just as dangerous as heading back into the xenos minefield…’

  He waited for some kind of response, but Hornindal only stared impassively back at him.

  ‘Where would you have my men deployed, then?’

  ‘You should prepare for boarding actions.’

  ‘Board a tyranid vessel, my lord?’ Ogden asked, incredulous. ‘Is such a thing even possible?’

  ‘No. You misunderstand.’ The Reclusiarch watched absently as the third squad leader, Hekaton, took the knee before Demetrios. ‘If we are not vaporised by bio-plasma or torn apart in the vacuum, then the xenos will try to board us.’

  Ogden considered this for a long moment. He could not decide which fate sounded worse.

  Like a blade aimed at the heart of the swarm, the Xenophon soared onwards. Her weapons batteries fired until the barrels glowed hot, dashing smaller xenos vessels against the blackness with las-fire and bursts of ordnance; driving the hideous things back in waves.

  To Goss’s eyes, they were not even ships in any sense of the word that he could justify. The way they skipped and swam put him in mind of shoals of aquatic hunters, twisting and pirouetting between the Xenophon’s streaking missiles, before wheeling around to strafe her shields with their return fire. They hounded the ship relentlessly, probing the limits of her defences even as they died upon them.

  The gunnery officers could not hope to target the vessels with the same fire-patterns they would use to engage traditional craft. The damned things were too fast, too unpredictable; it was like using a boltgun to swat flies. Instead, Shipmaster Kaeron had ordered them to create a kill zone three hundred metres out beyond the ship’s prow – a wall of random fire and timed detonations that would defy whatever morphic intelligence guided the abominations, and either force them aside or tear them to pieces. It was now just a question of whether there was physically enough ordnance on board to see them through to the far side of the swarm. It was far more likely, Goss knew, that the guns would run dry long before that.

  As if in confirmation, a warning symbol flashed on the oculus’s hololithic overlay and lent another insistent chiming to the myriad combat alarums
that filled the bridge space.

  ‘The starboard missile racks are empty, sir. We’re down to the reserve magazines.’ He hesitated for a moment, before muttering under his breath. ‘She’s only a destroyer. She’s not built to repel this kind of sustained attack. We’re not going to make it through.’

  Kaeron stood in front of his throne, staring up at the tactical display. He replied without shifting his gaze.

  ‘You don’t know the Xenophon, then. The old girl’s fast, and she’s still got teeth.’

  As the hololith refreshed on its three-second combat cycle, flocks of fresh contacts entered the display at the boundaries of auspex range – hosts of new organisms spawned by the larger carriers, or maybe even by the gargantuan hive ship itself? With so many returns it was difficult to tell. Some seemed only to circle at a distance, never even committing to an attack run.

  At the centre of the tableau hung the flashing scythe icon representing the beleaguered destroyer, a lone speck of green in an ever-growing ocean of red.

  The shipmaster gritted his teeth. ‘Order the starboard crews to reload. I don’t want both racks down at the same time.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  A succession of strafing impacts rang through the hull, and one of the foul vessel-creatures swooped in through the void shields to buzz the forecastle before disappearing overhead. Reflexively, several of the bridge crew ducked, but in the instant that it passed the frontal viewports Goss saw a flash of twisted chitin, fused carapace and ice-rimed, horned flesh.

  Throne, the horrid thing had even had little leathery fins…

  Though the swarm engulfed them, beyond it all lay the lolling bulk of the hive ship; a grossly distended, living horizon. Its great tentacle arms moved languidly in comparison to the rest of the fleet, highlighting the unimaginable difference in scale between them as the Xenophon sped closer. Like some bloated, coddled kraken, the hive ship seemed to watch the unfolding battle with a casual disinterest, the way a fattened Radnarian courtesan might regard a scurrying colony of ants.

  Choking back his disgust, Goss reviewed the course that he and his fellow officers had plotted to bring them out of the thing’s shadow. By pulling in close to the gravity well of the planetoid Sigma-Tumbus IV – which was now almost completely eclipsed in their view by the hive ship – they aimed to accelerate beyond the capabilities of the smaller, organic vessels and race for the deep-range shipping lanes beyond. There, Kaeron had reasoned, the astropaths would be free of the alien horror that clouded their minds and could send word to another ship.

  Assuming that any ship would hear them.

  A renewed proximity alarm sounded, and the Master of Signal called out from his console. ‘Large xenos craft, on direct intercept!’

  Coming about from beneath them, a huge, bladed monstrosity turned with surprising agility to bear down into the Xenophon’s kill zone. Seeming to manoeuvre using the largest of its curved appendages, the vessel opened its blunted bow to the void in a silent roar, revealing a fleshy gullet lined with thousands of razored spines. Goss’s stomach lurched as he realised that the thing could likely swallow the ship’s prow and the main batteries along with it.

  Kaeron turned and threw himself into the command throne. ‘Finally, something we can target.’ He brought the vox-hailer to his lips with obvious relish. ‘Helm, maintain ahead full. Weapons, make ready for torpedo launch, on my mark.’

  Adrenaline surged in Goss’s veins. The razored fiend grew ever larger in the oculus view, scattering the smaller vessels as it came, and the Xenophon was racing to meet it head-on.

  ‘Enemy vessel at three-fifty metres,’ he said, managing to keep his voice steady.

  As the huge creature broke through the edge of the kill zone, las-fire stitching its flanks with deep burns and blasting chunks from the ridged carapace, Kaeron slammed his fist down and shrieked into the vox.

  ‘Fire! All tubes, fire now!’

  The ship lurched as four mighty torpedoes burst from her prow and raced towards the target, though they barely altered her forward velocity.

  A seemingly prescient smaller tyranid vessel dived in front of the first projectile, sacrificing itself to save its larger cousin in a burst of ruined flesh and bony shrapnel, but the second, third and fourth found their mark easily. Huge warheads, designed to bring down renegade capital ships, detonated in the monster’s gullet, blasting the foul thing apart in a flaring bloom of catastrophic, organic ruin. Slathers of flesh and ropes of bloody fluid dozens of metres in length crackled through the Xenophon’s void shields and splattered over her pockmarked hull, to the cheers of the bridge crew.

  Kaeron turned to Goss, the thrill of battle written all over his face. ‘She’s got a taste for their blood now, eh?’ he yelled over the furore.

  Goss barely heard him, his eyes wide in horror.

  One of the dead creature’s wing-like blades, easily two hundred metres long on its own, had spun loose from the bio-wreckage and whirled towards them.

  He had meant to call out to the helm for ‘evasive manoeuvres’, but before he could even utter the words the thundering jolt of the impact threw him from his feet. The bone spur sheared through the turrets at the Xenophon’s prow, and cleaved a great gash in the hull-skin down her port flank, before skipping up on the crenellated ridge at her crown and spiralling off into the darkness. Secondary explosions tore through the batteries as their magazines ignited, and warning klaxons howled with renewed vigour throughout the ship.

  Ogden was sprinting the length of the ventral transit corridor when the shockwave hit. He felt a ripple of jarred air pressure on his bare face, and just a millisecond later the floor was yanked away from his feet.

  He and one of his men – now wearing ship’s issue flak vests and their yellow-striped helmets – had been managing to keep pace with one of the armoured battle-brothers from Sergeant Hekaton’s squad as he ran another pair of boarding shields back from the armoury.

  All thought of their task vanished as the deck lurched and the two men were catapulted into the ceiling. Ogden’s head skimmed past a ribbed support beam, but poor old Tyek wasn’t so fortunate – he struck it awkwardly, and the force of the collision snapped his neck and sent him sprawling.

  In that same instant, Ogden was wrenched from the air by a rough, vice-like grip around his shoulder; the Space Marine caught him mid-flight and hauled him back down onto the rumbling deck before he could injure himself. Officer Tyek’s body crashed down on top of them both.

  The hulking warrior crouched over Ogden for a long moment, shielding his comparatively frail mortal form with his own armoured bulk. His pauldron bore the name Mascios.

  ‘Are you damaged, honoured serf-sergeant?’ he asked bluntly, the words filtered and distorted by his helmet’s vox-emitters.

  Winded, and with his heartbeat hammering loud in his ears, Ogden tried to shake his head. The thunder and crash of distant explosions, somewhere topside, reverberated through the walls and deck plates. Decompression alarms were already sounding.

  He felt his ears pop. On board a ship in the deep void, that was a bad sign.

  From further up the ventral space – possibly one or two levels above – there came another impact on the Xenophon’s outer hull, but it was the grinding shriek of torn metal that followed it which seized their attention: a localised hull breach, without any doubt.

  Where, then, was the roar of venting atmosphere?

  Mascios rose, his internal vox clicking audibly as he opened a channel, and Ogden realised that he had lost his own vox-bead in the fall. Finally finding his breath, he weakly pushed Tyek’s body aside and raised his hand, pleading for a moment to recover, but Mascios was already retrieving the two boarding shields.

  ‘No time,’ he said. ‘We’ve been hit. This entire section is–’

  A crash of debris from further down the corridor silenced him, and he whipped arou
nd with his boltgun drawn. Ogden was beside him in a splintering second.

  A bestial, guttural roar echoed in the gloom, followed by the dull creak of twisted plasteel as something huge and organic heaved its way into the ship.

  Smoke filled the bridge, and a burst of sparks fell from somewhere in its vaulted reaches. The helm servitors babbled incoherently to one another.

  Rising shakily from the floor, Goss became aware of blood soaking the front of his uniform tunic; he had broken his nose on the deck plates as he fell. He pawed at the fabric in a daze. The rest of the bridge crew, including Shipmaster Kaeron, were moving and talking far too quickly for him to follow. He heard screams and cries for aid over the vox as the forward compartments burned.

  His gaze settled on the stuttering tactical display, and he saw that the smaller craft that had been circling the Xenophon were no longer hanging back.

  They were moving in, at ramming speeds.

  He shook his head, trying to clear his senses. Kaeron was shouting his name.

  Off to port, he spotted a handful of them. They were barbed and elongated; fleshy, winged harpoons, each the size of a Thunderhawk. Larger, maybe. They swam through the vacuum like coral rays, rippling their fanned membranes against the nothingness and propelling themselves at frightening velocities.

  Goss fumbled with his console, imploring the remaining gunnery officers to bring them down. Warning symbols flashed all across the hololith.

  Hull breach. Hull breach. Decompression. Hull breach.

  The closest harpoon-vessel entered a killing dive, folding its wings behind it and rocketing down hard towards the destroyer’s unguarded aft sections. It disappeared from view just as another twirled down into the forecastle and stuck fast, in plain sight of the frontal port – it was like a feathered dart piercing the hide of a lumbering grox, standing proud from the hull and swaying from side to side in the vacuum.