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Warrior Brood – Extract

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Chapter One:
Mantis Warriors

[Three Days Remaining]

The ground convulsed and shuddered, as though retching at some violation. In the haze of his peripheral vision, Shaidan glimpsed a sudden flash of orange light and snapped his head round to face it. On the horizon, across a sea of seething arachnid bodies, a shaft of flame lanced into the dark sky, incinerating a brood of flapping gargoyles that screeched helplessly into its path. A fraction of a second passed before the engine core detonated and the barely visible Mantis Vindicator exploded into a burst of destruction, sending concentric shock-waves of flame rippling through the dark ocean of insectile tyranids. A moment later, a sleet of molten, alien flesh rained down on the command squad, sizzling with heat and toxins. But already the distant ring of death had been overrun by a wave of talons and claws, each intent on reaching the Mantis Warriors’ command post.

‘The Vindicator?’

Shaidan pulled his eyes away from the ruin of the tank and turned to face his captain. ‘It’s gone.’

Audin nodded a brief acknowledgment to his Librarian. ‘How long till the Thunderhawks arrive?’

‘Minutes,’ answered Shaidan calmly, as his spun his crackling force staff and drove it through the bony neck of a diving gargoyle, its barbed wings clattering in shock. ‘Just minutes, but perhaps too many.’

The Mantis Warrior captain ducked under the claws of a swooping beast, firing off a volley of bolts into the advancing ground swarm as he did so. As the gargoyle overshot, Audin slashed blindly behind him with his power sword and rent the creature cleanly in two.

‘We must hold this vantage point until the hawks arrive – it is our only hope of extraction.’

‘Understood,’ whispered Shaidan, exhaling through gritted teeth as he fought to free one of the bayonet blades of his force staff from the skull of the snarling beast at his feet. With an imperceptible nod of his head, Shaidan sent a jet of blue light dancing along his staff, bursting the hormagaunt’s head into shards of alien bone and freeing his blade. Not for the first time, Shaidan offered silent thanks to the Emperor for this unusual weapon – a double-bladed force staff forged in the long forgotten fires of Badab Prime. As he pulled it clear of the carcass, his weapon jerked backwards and sliced the barbed wing off a gargoyle diving towards Lodur, the standard bearer, sending it sprawling across the roof of the bunker. Without even breaking the rhythm of his bolter fire, Audin swept his power blade across the skittering creature’s throat, silencing its screeches.

Lodur showed no signs of noticing. All of his attention was focussed on the brood of hormagaunts struggling to breach the line of Mantis Warrior Devastator Marines to the west of the bunker. His melta-gun hissed with superheated death as the giant banner of the Mantis Warriors rippled in brilliant greens against the night sky.

Spinning the force staff to clean the blades, sending threads of ichor and sparks of power flicking off into the ever darkening sky, Shaidan turned again to survey the scene developing below them. The Second Company was in full retreat. Some squads had already been extracted, hoisted out of the mire of talons and teeth by the shimmering green Mantis Thunderhawks. This bunker was their last stand. Theirs were the last human feet on Herodian IV, and theirs were barely human.

Looking south, in the near distance Shaidan could see Sergeant Magnir and his Devastator squad blazing away from an island of rock in the jagged sea of xenos organisms. They had been surrounded and cut off by the tide of tyranids that flowed over the desert towards the command bunker. Magnir had made a stand, buying a few vital moments for the command squad to reach its vantage point. But now, peppered from the sky by balls of bio-plasma, vomited from the screaming guts of circling gargoyles and besieged on all sides by broods of braying termagants, Magnir’s squad was a fury of death and glory. Shaidan watched the flashes of lascannons and great plumes of heat from the plasma cannons. He saw an arc of flash points, defined by the continuous discharge of heavy bolters, arranged in a disciplined, defensive line. Atop the highest rock, Shaidan could see Magnir himself defiantly battling the swooping gargoyles with his chainsword.

Away from Magnir, over to the east, immediately in front of the bunker, were Sergeant Hoenir’s Terminators. They were holding a line against impossible numbers, their storm bolters unleashing a continuous torrent against wave after wave of barbed claws and taloned feet. A huge bank of dead, arachnid aliens was growing in front of them, like an organic sea defence. But the swarm just kept flowing over the barrier of its dead, uncaring and utterly unsentimental.

A cloud of gargoyles pestered Hoenir’s Terminators from the sky, but they were little threat to the ancient armour of Mantis Terminators. When they came too close, Hoenir would swat them away with his power sword, or the Terminators would shred them with their chainfists. And from the top of the command bunker behind them, covering fire strafed over the heads of the Terminators, riddling the gargoyles with bolter shells; Veteran Marine Balder was encamped on the roof of the bunker with his trusted heavy bolter, relentlessly loosing hellfire shells into the cloud of flying creatures. On impact, the shells exploded into tiny stars in the night sky, sending fragments of deadly shrapnel splintering into the brood. Balder’s fellow veterans were in formation around him, discharging volleys of lasfire from their multilasers, providing support for Hoenir’s squad.

Silently praising the might of the Mantis Terminators, Shaidan turned away to the west, where Sergeant Ruinus’s Devastator squad was falling slowly back into the bunker’s precinct. Their heavy bolters were cutting swathes from the advancing horde, but it was a losing battle. The numbers were simply too great. Brother Nerthus was behind the line of his battle-brothers, firing salvoes from the squad’s lascannon, attempting to knock out the largest of the tyranid foes: giant warrior creatures on whom the bolter shells appeared to have little effect. Ruinus himself was in the centre of the retreating line. His boltgun had been spent long ago and he was in the thick of the hormagaunts with his power fist, smashing the giant scything talons and cracking tyranid bones with lightning speed and ferocity.

Circling over the heads of Ruinus’s squad like glorious green and gold avenging angels were the Assault Marines of Sergeant Soron, their jump packs blazing with fire against the encroaching darkness. The Assault squad rained frag grenades into the organic sea, creating miniature ripples of flaming death, buying precious moments for Ruinus’s Devastator squad below. With flamers, bolt guns and chainswords, Soron’s Assault Marines fought to keep the gargoyles off their retreating battle-bothers, struggling to part the clouds of flying aliens, desperately trying to keep them away from the command squad ensconced on the roof of the bunker.

Bringing his attention sharply back to the command bunker, Shaidan cracked his force staff into the rockcrete at his feet, sending a javelin of power forking through the humid air and smashing into a six-legged, viciously taloned creature leaping towards Chaplain Aegir. The hormagaunt seemed to disintegrate as it flew and the chaplain turned just in time to have his ornate deathmask splattered with charred fragments of the alien.

For as far as Shaidan could see in every direction, there was nothing but arachnid forms, barbed scales, dripping claws and the glint of sharp teeth. The sky itself was crying with toxins and the air was thick with microscopic parasites eating into the Mantis Warriors’ lungs: the planet was beginning to be consumed by the tyranid hive. The swarm was without end and it pushed forward relentlessly, fixated on annihilating this last point of resistance on Herodian IV. The last stand of the Mantis Warriors’ Second Company was all but over.

Behind the gurgling cries of the gargoyles and the ceramic clashing of claws, Magnir could hear a faint whistle. Distracted for a fraction of a second from the frenetic action around him on the rocky summit, the Mantis sergeant was thrown from his feet by the impact of six clawed legs, pinning him against the rock face. The creature stood over him, trapping his limbs under its own, dripping with blood and fizzing with streams of toxic ooze. The hormagaunt threw its head back and screeched, raising the giant scythes that protruded from its massively muscled forelimbs. Magnir stared straight into the red eyes of the alien beast, watching its unthinking hate pour back at him through the streams of saliva that puddled into the eye sockets of his helmet, glinting with bestial passion. He struggled against the xeno’s hold, thrashing with his own inhuman strength, but his limbs were trapped beneath the weight of the beast and pierced with its vicious claws.

A splintering crack cut off the hormagaunt’s victorious keening and Magnir watched one of its fore-scythes shatter under the impact of a hellfire shell. The beast reared in shock, screaming into the darkness below, its red eyes searching for the source of the shot. The shell ruptured on impact, sending a rain of lethal fragments riddling into the beast’s chest and peppering against the power armour of Magnir beneath it. As the creature shifted its weight, Magnir ripped his right arm free, dragging his flesh across the claw that pinned him down. A flash of searing pain shot up his arm before his enhanced nervous system shut down the pain receptors.

More bolter shells hissed over his head, impacting on the rock all around him. Gargoyles fell from the sky like insects, shot through with gaping holes where lascannon fire had ruined them, or deformed into molten lumps were the squad’s multi-meltas had cooked them.

The tyranid beast was ignoring the frenzy around it, its attention having been tugged back to Magnir as he freed his arm. It drove down with its remaining scythe, straight towards Magnir’s primary heart. But the injured sergeant was ready, parrying the thrust with his chainsword, pushing it off target. The talon slid along the serrated blade of the sword, sending sparks of bone cascading into Magnir’s face. The creature screeched in frustration and then pain, as a volley of fire from Magnir’s squad at the base of the rock found its mark, strafing the hormagaunt’s hardened thorax. It twisted away from the fire, stabbing down with its talon with desperate ferocity. Magnir pushed upwards with his chainsword, letting it slide along the creature’s talon, transforming his parry into a thrusting attack. In a sudden moment of agony, the giant scythe pierced Magnir’s shoulder, running straight through into the rock below. At the same time, the sergeant’s chainsword punctured the tyranid’s abdomen, where it whirred, churned and spat alien flesh. For an instant there was peace, with each silenced in shock and pain. Then the hormagaunt simply stopped moving and fell sideways onto the rock beside Magnir, the gaping wound in its abdomen already filled with tiny maggots greedily consuming their host.

Magnir took a breath, waiting momentarily for his Larraman’s organ to kick in and stop the rush of blood from his wounds. Then, in the background, he heard the whistling again. Climbing back onto his feet, the Mantis Marine scanned the scene below him. Off to the north he could see Audin and the command squad holding the extraction point, supported on each side by squads of Devastators and Terminators. On the crest of the command bunker was Lodur, the Company’s standard bearer, his melta-gun glowing fiercely in one hand with the Chapter’s banner held high in the other. The brilliant green and gold of the standard stirred Magnir’s heart; the flaming Mantis claw at its centre seemed to shine like a beacon of hope.

He strained his augmented hearing, filtering out the frenzy of battle around him: the whistle was getting gradually louder – something was whistling through the air above his head.

‘Ordnance!’

The spore mine flew straight over Magnir’s position, clearing the sea of creatures between him and the command bunker in a couple of seconds, arcing through the air on a gentle parabola. It came down just short of the command squad, busting against the side of the bunker with an organic splash, sending jets of toxic bio-plasma squirting across the rockcrete. Even from this distance, Magnir could see the rockcrete melting away where the viscous ooze splattered against it.

In his mind he calculated the trajectory of the mine, following its path back down to the south, deeper into the ocean of claws behind him. Sure enough, there, in a tiny circular clearing in the midst of the advancing horde, was a bulky, giant quadruped with a hideous deformity protruding from its back. Every minute or so the massive beast convulsed, lurching backwards as the immense muscle spasm fired a spore out of the growth on its back.

Magnir surveyed the distance between his squad and the biovore-cannon to the south. It was about two hundred metres, thick with a seething mass of tyranids. But, turning to the north, he knew that there was no way that his squad would make it to the command bunker either. Moreover, watching the impacts of the spore mines against the walls of the bunker, he knew that the exposed command squad would not last much longer against such an onslaught.

‘Devastators!’ he cried from his elevated position on the rock promontory – reaching his decision without hesitation. He knew that his squad could hear him, despite the frenzy of battle below. He raised his chainsword into the air, pointing across the swarm to the south, to the organic cannon that was spitting spores of death into the air, and called again. ‘Devastators! For Redemption! For the Mantis Warriors! For the Emperor!’ In immediate acknowledgement, his squad turned their guns to the south and released a united salvo.

Magnir leapt from the summit of the rock down into the wave of gaunts that broke against the fire of his squad, his spluttering chainsword alive with the promise of death.

The impact of the spore-mine shook the bunker, and Audin planted his feet against the shockwave as it rippled through the rockcrete, never once breaking the rhythm of his fire. The smell of toxins and vaporised rock meandered through the clouds of smoke, easing between the lashing talons and swooping claws of the incessant gaunts. In the background, filtered through his Lyman’s ear implant, Audin could hear the thud and whistle of another spore mine on its way.

‘Incoming!’ he yelled.

The fleshy spore bounced into a slide as it hit the roof of the bunker, skidding across the ichor-slicked surface as though it were on ice. Its tail thrashed viciously, trying to find a crack or protrusion on which to anchor itself. Audin launched himself into a roll, taking his weight on his shoulder before spinning back onto his feet, boltgun coughing. The rest of his squad parted to let the mine slide between them, never taking their eyes from the swarm of incoming tyranids that threatened to overrun their bunker, never relenting in their barrage of bolter shells, plasma and bursts of melta.

Shaidan saw the danger first, but it was already too late. The spore slid desperately past the front line of veteran Marines, who hardly seemed to notice it or its flicking and snaking tail. In the heart of the squad, banner held proudly and defiantly to the heavens, Lodur stood immovably, his melta-gun hissing with power.

‘Audin – Lodur!’ yelled Shaidan over the tumult, directing his captain to the threat.

The Mantis Warriors’ captain spun on his heel, seeing the danger just as the call reached his ears. Lodur himself glanced down at his feet just in time to see the impact of Audin’s bolter shells punch the spore off course as it slid towards him, pushing it off to the side. The head of the spore seemed to buck in indignation as it slipped off the far side of the bunker, its tail lashing and twisting in a desperate attempt to find a hold. Suddenly, a tendril darted out of its tip, flicking itself around Lodur’s ankle and constricting until his armoured boots started to buckle. With an anchor point at last, the spore caught its fall and started to pull itself back onto the roof of the bunker.

Lodur felt the pressure around his leg but his reactions were not swift enough. As the spore was dragging itself back up onto the bunker, its weight was pulling Lodur towards the edge. Sensing the danger, the standard-bearer drove the armoured stem of the standard down into alien tentacle and rattled off a volley of fire from his bolter, shredding the liana with a line of small explosions. At the same time, a forest of rope-like tendrils flashed out of the spore and caught hold of Lodur’s arms, jamming his bolter and binding the Mantis Warriors’ standard into his hand. The Space Marine thrashed against the constrictions that enveloped him, battling to save the Chapter’s standard from being drawn into the braying mass below. But it was no use; the vines held him fast and the weight of the spore mine dragged across the ichor-slicked roof, finally tugging him off the edge with the Mantis standard still fluttering in his hand.

As soon as Lodur cleared the roofline, the spore exploded, and the rain of bio-plasma followed his fall into the swarm of gaunts below. Before he hit the ground, his armour had already dissolved, and as he thudded into the earth he was instantly consumed by a wave of alien teeth.

‘Lodur!’ cried Shaidan as he bore witness to the standard-bearer’s heroism, his yell lost in the cacophony of battle. He clenched his jaw to harness the hate that rushed into his nervous system as he watched his battle-brother’s life smothered and the Chapter’s standard torn to pieces. With a curdling cry he vaulted off the bunker and launched himself down into the swarm, his power staff spinning into a storm of blue lightning. He landed with a crunch, just a couple of metres from the desecrated body of Lodur. The Mantis Staff burned in his hands, spinning rapidly and defining an impenetrable orb of power around him. Its blades sliced through limbs, claws and talons, sending tyranid blood and specks of blue power showering out into the xenos sea around him. He could feel the power of his forefathers coursing through his body, giving him strength, feeding the staff that seemed alive in his hands.

From the roof of the bunker behind him, a volley of hellfire shells punched into the swarm before him. Balder had seen Shaidan’s purpose and had abandoned his firing point on the east side to provide cover. As Shaidan scythed his way into the breach cut by the veteran Marine, the gaunts swarmed all over him, hiding him from Balder’s view. The Librarian was rapidly submerged and yet his staff flared and power ran through his veins: the sphere of lightning etched into the deadly sea by his weapon could not be breached and he left a wave of ruined tyranids in his wake as he fought his way forwards, deeper into the swarm.

With a sudden explosion of power, his staff spasmed in his hands as it spun. The flare cleared a radius around him in all directions, incinerating gaunts and sending their charred remains scattering into a wide fountain. In the fraction of a second of clarity that this provided him, Shaidan stooped to the ground and snatched up the remains of the Mantis Warriors’ standard, thrusting it into the air with a flourish. The tattered remnants of brilliant green flapped in the heavy air. As he did so, volleys of supporting fire raked out from behind him – Balder’s veteran Marines had formed a firing line along the bunker’s edge. In their midst stood Chaplain Aegir, his Crozius Arcanum held high, glowing with power. Behind the tumult and the screeches of the gaunts around him, Shaidan could hear the cheer raised by the Mantis Warriors all around: the Mantis Claw would fly until the last Space Marine left Herodian IV.

A sudden blast of purple ripped through the air above Shaidan’s head, arresting the moment of glory and smashing straight into the magnificent figure of Aegir, knocking him off his feet. Shaidan turned on his heels, snapping his attention round to the source of the blast. Over to the east, he could see Hoenir’s Terminators tracking their fire across the ever growing ridge of corpses before them. At the summit of the mound, surrounded by a faintly glowing purple aura that seemed to deflect even the most focussed volleys from the storm bolters, slivered three ungodly serpents. Their heads were monstrously disproportionate to their snaking bodies, and they were pulsing with energy. The other tyranids squirmed around them, keeping a perimeter of clarity that throbbed and oozed with warp taint. The light spilt down the bank of dead gaunts, lapping against the awesome armour of the Terminators. Shaidan recognised the new creatures at once: zoanthropes – tyranid sorcerers.

The three monstrous worms were oscillating slowly, gradually synchronising with each other, bringing their energy fields into resonance. Then, with a blinding flash, another javelin of warp energy speared out across the night sky.

Shaidan knew their target with absolute certainty.

‘Aegir!’ he yelled up to the heavens as he swung his staff, circling it above his head and decapitating a ring of snarling gaunts. He stole a glance at the roof of the command bunker just in time to see Aegir, back in position in the middle of the firing line, bathed in a terrible light. The purple taint flickered around his armour and hissed as it came into contact with the Crozius, sending plumes of warp-steam wafting into the air. With a thunderous crack, Aegir’s armour suddenly exploded outwards, sending shards of adamantium darting into the line of veteran Space Marines around him. The Crozius fell to the ground as the chaplain’s body simply blinked out of existence, sucked through the breach in reality into the unspeakable realm, where daemons salivated in anticipation of his soul.

With a cry of anger, his blood boiling with hatred, Shaidan lanced his staff into the thorax of a hormagaunt that leapt towards him, shattering the creature’s carapace in an explosion of brilliant light. He screamed into the swarm that vengeance would be his and then set off in the direction of the Terminators.

The sergeant’s chainsword bit through the carapace, chewing the shell into splinters and then thrusting into the soft flesh inside, where it whirred freely, churning the termagant’s organs into mush. Magnir pulled his blade free as he punched out with his left hand, fending off the elongated talon of a leaping hormagaunt, before turning his spluttering sword in a tight arc to sever the creature’s forelimb completely. His shoulder winced in pain, but he forced the injury into the back of his mind – no time for that now.

As always, Magnir was leading his squad from the front, spearheading the thrust towards the giant biovore that had planted itself just out of their reach, releasing salvo after salvo of spore mines towards the besieged command squad on the bunker. Magnir glanced to the north just in time to see a tremendous blast of purple fire consume Chaplain Aegir as he stood defiantly amongst his battle-brothers on the bunker.

‘Aegir!’ he yelled in horror.

Magnir had known the chaplain for nearly a century. Innumerable battles had been fought in that time, as the Chapter quested around the perimeter of the Imperium, searching for evils to slay, desperate for its own redemption. The two Space Marines had been recruited together from the forgotten wastes of Nanthrax III, as the Mantis Warriors had swept through the system clearing out the remnants of an ork invasion force. Both had shared in the Chapter’s shame years later when they’d turned their guns on fellow Astartes during the Badab War.

Magnir’s Devastator Marines advanced in a ring, loosing lances of lasfire, volleys of bolter shells and waves of melta in all directions as they moved. Magnir drew his squad deeper and deeper into the quagmire, hacking a path with his sword and his fists. The enemy was relentless: lightning-fast hormagaunts leapt from all sides, their six legs kicking wildly and their giant front talons thrusting for impact against the isolated Space Marines; wave after wave of smaller termagants formed banks of resistance, firing off a constant sleet of fleshborers – tiny beetles that gnawed into and cracked the adamantium of the Mantis Warriors’ armour; winged gargoyles circled overhead, vomiting balls of toxic bio-plasma into the tiny circle of Space Marines and shooting off fleshborer rounds from their symbiote weaponary.

Dropping his head in determination, Magnir lowered his giant armoured shoulder and barged forwards into the mass of gaunts before him. He could hear the crunch of bone and the serrated grind of barbed claws dragging across his armour. Then there was a sudden drop in resistance and he burst through into a clearing, stumbling and sliding to a halt before the massive figure of the biovore. Behind him, Magnir could hear his squad penetrate the defensive line around the organic cannon.

‘Covering fire! I need twenty seconds!’ he called, knowing that his squad would not fail him.

The squad spun on their heels, facing back into the seething tyranid sea through which they had just waded. They formed a perimeter around their sergeant as the sea pressed in against them, threatening to overrun them with sheer weight of numbers.

The biovore just ignored them. The eyes of its huge head were closed and the terrible muscles along its back convulsed. With a sudden, ear-splitting screech, the creature threw back its head and bucked. The deformed bulk on its back contracted in a ripple and then coughed out a spore, which was catapulted into the air towards the command bunker. Then its head turned, as though the massive creature was irritated by an insect on its skin.

Sergeant Magnir was already on the creature’s back, hacking into the spore cannon with his chainsword, grinding his way through the awesome lattice of bone and muscle. The creature reared up onto his hind legs, letting out a thunderous cry. But Magnir drove his blade deeper into the beast’s back and gripped the hilt with both hands, using it as an anchor against the violent motion of the creature. With a terrible crack, the biovore smashed its front feet back down to the ground. Without looking, Magnir realised what the crack must have been and he yelled out in fury. The sounds of bolter fire from his squad below had stopped suddenly and the sporadic bursts from other squads looked pathetically small against the vast sea of blackness that swarmed around them.

Unclipping a chain of frag grenades from his belt, Magnir made a final call to the remnants of his squad. ‘For the Mantis Warriors! For Redemption! For the Emperor!’ He could faintly hear the return call of a single voice buried beneath the wave of tyranid screeches and the lashing of teeth and then he plunged the grenades into the churning cavity in the biovore’s back. The creature bucked in pain, but, with a whip of his long-trusted chainsword, Magnir detonated the grenades.

‘Incoming!’ called Audin as the tell-tale whistle grew louder. He turned his power sword in a crescent around his head as he surveyed the remains of the command squad. Fragments of Aegir’s armour were scattered over the roof of the bunker, but his body had simply blinked out of existence. There was a deep cavity at the edge of the roof where Lodur had been incinerated by the spore mine, and talons were beginning to reach through the breach from below. Over to the east, Audin could see Librarian Shaidan scything a path towards the Terminators, the remnants of the Chapter’s standard held aloft in defiance. Balder and the veteran Space Marines were still fighting, apparently undaunted by the epic scale of the siege. Heavy bolters and multi-meltas spat fragments of death into the surrounding swarm with precise discipline and astounding effectiveness. Audin himself, planted in the middle of the roof, was fending off the swooping gargoyles with his power sword whilst rattling bolter shells into anything barbed that showed itself over the roof-line.

For once the spore mine overshot, as though its aim had been interrupted. Audin strained his eyes against the darkness and the increasing humidity, scanning the sea of tyranids off to the south. He could see nothing but the apparently never-ending ocean of glinting claws and flashing teeth – the evil sheen of ichor-coated xenos in the faint light. Then suddenly there was a burst of muffled light in the near distance. Flames erupted into the sky in rainbows of oranges and greens, as though chemicals were being burnt. A series of smaller explosions followed as flaming projectiles were ejected into the air, dragging tails of green fire, before exploding into fireworks that rained burning toxins down into the swarm around them.

Scanning his eyes to the left, Audin searched for signs of Magnir’s Devastators on the rocky promontory where they had been stranded during the retreat. Nothing. Then it suddenly made sense and Audin whispered a silent prayer for his heroic sergeant.

As Ruinus stared out into the swarm, new beasts were starting to appear menacingly amidst the teeming tyranid mass, cackling over the heads of the smaller creatures. The giant shapes punctuated the swarm like skyscrapers in a sprawling skyline. They bristled with claws and talons that projected several metres from their forelimbs and with ugly organic protrusions that could only be weapons of some kind. As they advanced, the smaller creatures seemed to part before them like an impossible ocean, as though commanded.

A rattle of bolter shells punched through the space between Ruinus’s line of Space Marines and one of the new creatures. Ruinus himself fired off a spray of hellfire shells a moment later, approving of his squad’s strategic choice: focus on the new giants. But the shells just ricocheted off the massive beast, or burst into shrapnel that flicked pinpoints of death into the sea of gaunts at the monster’s feet. In response, the giant warrior planted its rear feet and leant forward, balancing the immense recoil of its weapon as it spasmed, releasing a jet of tiny specks racing towards the line of Devastator Marines. A fraction of a second later, the specks splattered against the armour of Space Marine Haldrus, standing firmly with his multi-melta fizzling from his shoulder; he was instantly speckled with smudges of deep green and red.

It took a second, but then he started to scream. He threw his weapon to the ground and started clawing at his armour, scratching at the adamantium plates and yanking desperately at the seal of his helmet. His battle-brothers drew into a defensive ring around him, buying him some time to deal with the invisible attack. But then it was over. Haldrus slumped to the ground motionless, and thin trickles of bloody tissue oozed out of the little holes in his armour, which hissed and bubbled with toxicity. From out of one of the holes in his helmet squirmed a shiny, black-headed worm, grimacing with daggered teeth and blood.

In the seconds that it took Haldrus to die, the giant xenos warrior had broken into a charge. The smaller gaunts were scattering out of its path or simply being trampled under its feet. As it ran, it sprayed more devourer worms towards Ruinus’s squad from one of its bizarre organic protrusions and the other monstrous warriors nearby were closing in on their position. Meanwhile, the tide of talons and claws continued relentlessly, and the Devastators were battling for their lives.

‘Nerthus! Use the lascannon! Bring that thing down!’ cried Ruinus over the clattering din, hoping that the heavy gunner could hear him.

Nerthus steadied the cannon on his shoulder and took aim at the charging beast, citing a point between its augmented rib-cage and its colossal jaw. The creature kept coming, leaping and bounding like a monstrous insect. Nerthus fired, but the lance of light seared through empty space where the beast had been mere moments before. Fifty metres. Thirty. It was getting too close, but Nerthus couldn’t get his line of sight.

Javelins of lasfire jousted out from the Devastators’ position, flashing over the heads of the swarm but dashing by the side of the charging warrior beast. The smaller gaunts lashed at him with their own huge talons and peppered the air around him with fleshborer shells. Ruinus was there to defend him, sticking the muzzle of his heavy bolter into the mouth of a leaping hormagaunt and crushing the head of another with a weighty stamp. Fifteen metres.

‘Nerthus, now!’

The lascannon erupted, sending a blast smashing into the abdomen of the tyranid warrior as it leapt through the final distance between them. The force held the beast immobile in the air for a fraction of a second, arresting its momentum, before it crashed to the ground a couple of metres in front of the line of Space Marines. As one, the Devastators raked their fire across the fallen beast, spraying it with hellfire shells, lasfire and molten plasma. The swarm of smaller creatures seemed to sense the pain of this great beast and a piercing scream spewed out of the tide – its talons and claws lashing with renewed ferocity.

But the tyranid warrior wasn’t finished yet. Despite the close range barrage from the Mantis Warriors, which had shattered and splintered the creature’s talons, the warrior beast sprang back onto its feet, ichor gushing from its tortured form and it screeched with defiance. Its weapon coughed once more, splattering Nerthus with a spurt of tiny devourer worms. As it threw its head back to bray, Ruinus was on it, launching himself full length at the beast’s thorax with his combat knife clenched in his left hand. The Mantis Warrior sergeant punched the blade through the petrified bone that protected the creature’s vital organs, and then he smashed the knife straight through with the weight of the boltgun in his other hand. With the barrel jammed into the cavity, Ruinus clicked the weapon onto automatic and pulled the trigger, kicking himself away from the thrashing warrior beast as he did so.

The gun spent dozens of hellfire rounds into the interior of the creature, each shattering and exploding into myriad splinters, lacerating the beast’s internal organs and liquefying it from within. For a second the giant warrior remained on its feet, shuddering with the staccato of explosions in its body. Then it crashed to the ground, crushing a clutch of smaller gaunts as it fell. A piercing cry erupted from the ocean.

The Devastators were already back in their firing line, loosing disciplined volleys into the relentless swarm. However, at the moment that the giant fell, the tyranid mass seemed to hesitate. It stopped pressing and some of the creatures even appeared to turn on each other – impaling themselves on talons and claws. The raking fire of the Space Marines started to make inroads into the seething mass.

‘Devastators, pull back into the compound! Pull back behind the walls!’ Ruinus could see their moment of advantage – but it was not the promise of victory, only the faint hope of survival. The other tyranid warriors were charging in their direction. Their lascannon was gone, together with Nerthus. He himself was reduced to a combat knife. This was not the time for stupid heroics. ‘Pull back!’

When Shaidan burst out of the swarm into the Terminators’ pocket of resistance, the giant armoured Space Marines were a blaze of fire. Their storm bolters spat a merciless hail of shells into the horde, felling the creatures in broken waves, building a massive wall of tyranid corpses in front of their position – a decaying tsunami. Any beast that managed to slip through the spray found itself impaled by a power fist or shredded by the sputtering whir of a chainfist. The broken and ruined remains of such creatures were scattered on the ground by the Terminators’ feet. Not a single Terminator had fallen in the onslaught, but Shaidan could see the danger of the new serpentine enemies that seemed to float and slither into view on the crest of the ridge of corpses, flaring with warp-taint.

The storm of bolter shells just bounced off the purpling haze of power that emanated from the pulsing creatures. They seemed to be oscillating in a complicated, syncopated rhythm, occasionally phasing into resonance with each other and sending warp-flares spewing out into the night. The bursts of energy were growing more and more frequent until the heads of the beasts snapped round in unison, focussing their attention on one of the Terminators and releasing an awesome beam of crackling purple. It punched into the chest of the ancient armour, lifting the Space Marine off his feet and throwing him clear of the defensive pocket. He landed with a thump, crushing dozens of gaunts under his huge weight. Shaidan watched the flight of the Space Marine, and then horror crept over him as he saw the head of a termagant burst out of the huge cavity blown from the Terminator’s chest by the warp-beam. The creature leapt clear of the dead Space Marine and launched itself towards the clutch of Terminators – but it was shredded in midair by a sleet of bolter shells. Meanwhile, the fallen Space Marine was swamped beneath a frantic pile of gaunts and a flood of tiny, slithering creatures poured into the hole in the Terminator’s armour, consuming the Space Marine inside with a forest of tiny teeth.

‘Terminators, retreat!’ cried Shaidan. ‘There is nothing that you can do here.’

As he spoke, the Librarian thrust the tip of his force staff into the ground, sending jabs of lightning coruscating through the sand, frying a brood of gaunts in front of him. From the top of the staff, a pulse of energy lanced over the heads of the enemy creatures, smashing against the psychic shield of the zoanthropes. On impact, there was a huge explosion of uncontrolled warp energy, instantly incinerating a radius of tyranid creatures and pluming into a dome in the sky.

In support, the Terminators turned their guns onto the zoanthropes, letting loose with everything into the midst of the energy field. The fecund darkness was riddled with bursts of light, concussive explosions and clouds of smoke. But, when the cacophony calmed, floating effortlessly above the massive crater that had been blown into the bank of tyranid corpses, the zoanthropes appeared unharmed. And through the new breach in the improvised tidal defences below them poured brood after brood of gaunts.

‘Hoenir, retreat,’ said Shaidan calmly, turning to face the Terminator sergeant and imagining the anger simmering behind that ageless helmet. The Mantis Terminators had never turned their backs on any enemy. ‘There is nothing to be gained here. Nothing.’

The Terminators continued to blaze away into the relentless onslaught. For a moment Shaidan thought that Hoenir had not heard him or, even worse, was ignoring the order. Then, crackling into the open vox channel in their helmets, the Terminators heard the voice of their sergeant: ‘Ordered retreat. Fall back into the compound. Defensive ring – constant fire.’

Before the hiss of static that followed the order had even faded from their ears, the sergeant’s voice barked with renewed urgency. ‘Cancel that order. We have a new target.’

Lumbering into the breach in the line before them, crushing the smaller creatures under the weight of each of its ponderous steps, came a huge beast. It towered over its brethren, and ignored them utterly. It stood on its hind legs, twice as tall as a Terminator, and, in place of forelimbs, there were two giant scythe-like talons, easily longer than a man. Its head protruded forward, with an immense jaw shimmering with jagged teeth. From a bizarre growth sticking out of its abdomen protruded an ornate, bony barrel.

Shaidan stared at the monster and realised immediately that this must have been what had taken out the Vindicator earlier. He looked up to where the zoanthropes had been, and just saw their tails slip from view down the other side of the bank of xenos corpses – as though leaving the monstrous carnifex to deal with the Space Marines. For a moment, Shaidan wondered whether the sorcerous serpents were searching for a weaker point in the Mantis Warriors’ defences. They were after the command squad.

‘Hoenir. I must get back to the captain.’

‘Understood. May the Emperor guide you, brother Shaidan.’

Shaidan turned to face the sergeant and nodded his acknowledgement to the veteran warrior. ‘For Repentance and the Emperor,’ he whispered, pausing before scything his way into the sea of creatures between him and the command bunker.

The Terminators held their firing line, concentrating all of their ranged fire on the carnifex whilst battering the slashing hormagaunts and biting termagants with their power fists. Hoenir swept tight arcs with his power sword, slicing through alien flesh with each sweep, as his storm bolter coughed a continuous flurry into the face of the immense advancing beast.

The carnifex lumbered towards them, hardly slowed by the terrible impacts of the Terminators’ fire. The strange bony barrel in the creature’s chest started to shake and then, with a scream from the beast itself, a clutch of tiny fragments fired out, like shotgun pellets. The beast kept wailing as thousands of the tiny pods were scattered into the air in front of the blazing Terminators. For an instant, Hoenir thought that everything was going to be alright after all – these tiny pods would be no match for his squad’s ancient armour. But then, as though triggered by some silent signal, the pods exploded into life, sending barbed vines and hooked tendrils spreading and growing in all directions at once.

The rapidly expanding web sent feelers running over the armour of the Terminator squad, where tiny hooks penetrated the joins in their armoured plates, anchoring the strangler-vines and dragging the web towards the Space Marines. Hoenir shifted his attention from the carnifex itself to the thrashing vines that were attempting to lash around his powerful limbs. His power sword flashed with life, hacking through bunches of tendrils and severing creeping shoots. But the vines kept coming, growing thicker and thicker and Hoenir could feel his movements slowing as though constrained by tremendous weights.

Looking across to his squad, he could see them all struggling under the onslaught of liana and alien foliage. Most of them had stopped firing at the carnifex as they thrashed around to free themselves from this close range threat. Those with chainfists were making an attempt at a defence, but they were fighting a losing battle. Those without bladed weapons were now almost immobile.

Hoenir slashed violently with his power sword, freeing his storm bolter once more. He recommenced firing at the carnifex and watched in awe as the hellfire shells just bounced off the creature’s hide, lacerating clumps of nearby gaunts like paper. It was as though the swarm had known how to neutralise the advantages offered by the Terminators’ awesome firepower.

Two shuddering thuds shook the ground, and Hoenir turned his head to see two of his Terminators collapsed onto the floor, completely cocooned in the barbed stanglers. There was an incredible tension in those vines, which grew thicker with alien muscles as he watched. Then, in a sudden release of tension, the tendrils ripped apart, scattering the limbs of the Terminators in all directions. The abdomens and heads of the Space Marines were left on the ground where they fell and Hoenir caught a last glimpse of his battle-brothers before they were hopelessly buried beneath a frenzy of talons and claws, as the smaller gaunts overran their position.

The rest of the squad were not faring much better. Hoenir could see that a number of their chainfists had been bound into ineffectiveness, and the Space Marines were grappling with the alien plants with their other hands, having discarded their boltguns in the interests of self-preservation. The carnifex, now at close range, was simply dousing them with more and more of the seed pods, as the web of vines grew thicker and more impenetrable.

The increasingly vulnerable and immobile Terminators were now also under constant attack from the hormagaunts, which seized the opportunity to leap into battle, kicking out with six clawed-limbs and skewering the Space Marines with their elongated talons. Hoenir was now the only Terminator with a functioning storm bolter and he had his work cut out to keep the vines from binding his arms. Even so, his feet were immovably planted into the ground, and completely overgrown with liana. He was slowly being assimilated into the organic structure of the plant life.

As Hoenir despatched the pouncing hormagaunts with hellfire shells and slashed at the barbed stanglers with his power sword, he focussed an immense effort of will into his legs. There was one last trick in his box and he would play it on that cursed carnifex if it was the last thing he did. The servos in his armour whined and screeched in resistance as he struggled to turn his body. Just a few degrees. Just a few would be enough at this range; the carnifex was almost on top of him.

With a sudden jolt, Hoenir’s body spun round, pivoting on his right leg, his left having been severed, wrenched from his waist and dragged down into the mire of tendrils and thorns. In the fraction of a second before he lost his balance and fell into the thrashing sea of barbs, spikes and spines, Hoenir ducked his head towards the monster and activated the cyclone missile launcher on his back.

In a flurry of power, the missiles seared over his head, punching deeply into the flesh of the carnifex. They burrowed their way deep inside, like giant maggots, before detonating. With an immense convulsion, the massive creature exploded outwards, sending chunks of sizzling flesh raining into the swarm. A huge fire ball erupted from the heart of the beast, blasting outwards in a wide radius, incinerating dozens of broods of tyranids and reducing the barbed tendrils to ashes, cleansing the dead bodies of the Terminators.

‘There!’ called Soron, pointing into the heavily clouded sky with his chainsword, raising a cheer from the surviving Space Marines with his apparent salute. The Assault Marines had come down out of the sky and regrouped on the roof of the command bunker, reinforcing the depleted command squad. Around the base of the bunker, inside the walls of the compound, were Ruinus’s Devastators, their strategic retreat having brought them right to the very feet of the command squad.

‘I see it,’ answered Captain Audin, straining his eyes to catch a glimpse of the Thunderhawk as he thrust his power sword into the abdomen of yet another gargoyle, which tumbled out of the sky and slid across the slick roof of the bunker. ‘Ruinus, get your squad up here for extraction. Soron, give that drop ship some support.’

Soron brandished his chainsword, rallying his squad for one last flight and then kicked his jump pack into life. Energy poured out of the bottom of the pack, propelling the Space Marine into the air, with his chainsword roaring into the swirl of gargoyles above him. From below, a volley of heavy bolter shells seared through the air next to him, clearing a path for his squad to break through the cloud of creatures. As the Assault Marines burst out of the whirl of talons and wings, the night sky seemed to leap into life, punctuating their vision with pinpoints of light as the stars welcomed their angels home.

The Thunderhawk was already descending, its weapons batteries alight with lasfire, ploughing great troughs into the tyranid swarm that surrounded the command bunker on all sides. Off to the east, a great explosion of fire sent ripples out through the sea, only to be quashed by the sheer weight of numbers in the horde. Soron could see the gargoyles pestering the Thunderhawk, peppering it with pathetic splatterings of fleshborer symbiotes. But the aliens were also getting in too close for the gunship’s weapons to be effective, latching onto the wings, trying to destabilise the descent of the craft. Some were even throwing themselves into the exhaust vents, presumably to clog the atmospheric cooling system and overheat the engine. For a moment, Soron wondered how these mindless animals seemed to know what to do.

Pushing all such thoughts from his mind, Sergeant Soron organised the Assault Marines into a defensive formation, escorting the Thunderhawk down into the roiling mass of alien life below. Their jump packs roared with fire as the Assault Marines stood guard around the Thunderhawk, matching their altitude to its, defining a ring of death around their only hope of extraction with bolter shells and the constant whir of chainswords. From below came salvos of fire from the remnants of Ruinus’s Devastators, who had now made it onto the roof of the bunker. Meanwhile, the command squad was punching out hellfire shells into the constricting spiral of the swarm, which closed irrevocably on the bunker.

The Thunderhawk broke down through the cloud of gargoyles, spraying bolter and lasfire in all directions, its weapons systems firing automatically; it was greeted with a tremendous roar from the surviving Mantis Warriors. The gunship dropped as low as it dared above the Space Marines and opened its lower hatch. Meanwhile, side hatches opened on both flanks, and clutches of Space Marines appeared on both sides, firing fiercely into the swarm to provide cover for the extraction.

‘Ruinus, get your men on board!’ cried Audin as he fired a carefully placed bolter round into the neck of a snarling alien. ‘Now!’

Ruinus herded his Space Marines towards the lower hatch, watching thankfully as powerful hands reached down and dragged the remnants of his squad up into the vehicle. Snatching up a fallen boltgun, he planted himself firmly in front of the extraction point, firing continuously into the frenzy that continued unbroken around him.

‘Now you, sergeant,’ called Audin from the midst of the cacophony, knowing that Ruinus would refuse to leave him without a direct order.

Still firing with his right hand, Ruinus lifted his left into the air and was pulled up into the Thunderhawk.

A sudden explosion shook the bunker – a lance of warp-energy smashed into a battling figure on the rim of the roof, but then bounced out into the swarm, annihilating a brood of hormagaunts.

‘Shaidan!’ cried Audin in horror. But the Librarian stormed out of the blue haze with his force staff spinning into a frenzy of energy around him. He was charging towards Audin. The zoanthropes were just visible on the outside walls of the compound, pulsing with warp-taint and preparing to release another blast.

Shaidan threw himself into a dive between the enemy and Audin, as the serpents fired off their tainted pulse. The energy punched directly into his chest as he flew across the face of his captain. His force staff spluttered and spat crackles of blue lightning as the bulk of the zoanthrope’s force bounced off it and back into the swarm.

The Librarian slumped to the ground, supporting his weight on the staff. As he swam on the edge of consciousness, he felt a strong grip close around his wrist and then the vague sensation that he was flying. For a moment, he thought he was dead.

‘We must issue a call for assistance,’ said Audin, leaning over the vox unit in the Thunderhawk as it powered away from the surface of Herodian IV. ‘This enemy is beyond us. This is no time for foolish pride or selfish dreams of glorious penitence.’

Looking down out of the viewports, Audin could see the scale of the swarm that had descended on them, like a giant, black, roiling ocean being sucked into a whirlpool around that command bunker. It was an incredible sight – something to inspire awe in the heart of any Space Marine captain. Audin pushed the tinges of doubt to the back of his mind; no Chapter could have done any more than the Mantis Warriors had done.

There was a hiss of static, but then a reply came back from the Penitent Quest, the Second Company’s Strike Cruiser that was playing a game of cat and mouse with the tyranid in orbit around the planet.

‘Help is already on its way, captain. An Imperial Navy fleet and a detachment of Deathwatch Space Marines is en route. We received the communiqué more than an hour ago.’

‘Understood,’ said Audin in barely disguised surprise.

Already on its way, thought Audin. Already? But how could they possibly know that they were needed? Are the Mantis Warriors still under such suspicion? And a Deathwatch kill-team – that would also mean an inquisitor from the Ordo Xenos.

‘And the others?’ asked Audin, clearing his thoughts. ‘Did the others make it back to the Quest?’

There was a slight pause. ‘Some of them, captain.’

Chapter Two:
‘I’

[Two Days Remaining]

From the view-stations on the Vanishing Star Commander Kastor could see the battle for Herodian IV unfolding. His command ship, a bristling Gothic-class cruiser, was positioned in a mid-distant orbit, monitoring the engagement. Even from this distance, the massive lance arrays were providing formidable covering fire for the Imperial battlegroup. Nonetheless, a number of the junior officers on the command deck clenched their teeth with frustration, wanting to be closer to the action. Under their breaths they whispered curses at their cowardly commander. But Kastor was no coward.

‘Concentrate all fire on the largest ship – the Razorfiend cruiser on the port side of the Extreme Prejudice,’ commanded Kastor.

He had fought tyranids before and was well aware of their genus classifications. In fact, he had posted class descriptors to the command crews of every ship in his battlegroup, complete with notes on their capabilities and cautions to expect variations and transmogrifications of the standard design. Like the tyranids themselves, their vessels seemed to evolve and morph to fit the needs of the situation. Kastor had suspected for a long time that the vessels were actually giant tyranid organisms, and recent dispatches from the Ordo Xenos had confirmed this.

The Razorfiend was a lethal battle cruiser, heavily armed and immensely armoured. Two massive pincers protruded from its prow, tipped with cannons and it was releasing a continuous venom stream against the shields of the Extreme Prejudice, where the port batteries were retaliating with a tirade of lasfire. The confrontation was a standoff, effectively locking the Dictator-class cruiser out of the main battle and rendering it vulnerable to boarding actions from the flurry of brood drones that swam in shoals around the Imperial fleet.

Squadrons of Fury interceptors were flooding out of the landing bays of the Extreme Prejudice, desperately trying to repel the tyranid boarding action before it could really gather any momentum. Clouds of Escort Drone organisms were being spewed out of the Razorfiend craft to meet this new threat, engaging the Furies two to one.

The lance array of the Vanishing Star reached full charge with a resounding whine.

‘Fire all beams,’ commanded Kastor.

The lance of energy pushed its way through the cloud of Escort Drones and chaff-spores, detonating the mines and bleeding energy as it cut its path towards the Razorfiend organism. It punched into the starboard pincer of the tyranid vessel, sending ripples of explosions along its length. After a couple of pregnant seconds, the pincer buckled and then exploded from within, sending the Razorfiend vessel spinning out of control.

The Extreme Prejudice saw its chance and opened up with its torpedo banks, sending a wave of ordnance plunging into the wounded monster, where they sunk into the carapace armour before exploding with unforgiving ferocity. Gushes of organic tissue oozed out of the wound, spilling into the vacuum of space.

The Razorfiend spun under the impact, spiralling back towards the bulk of the tyranid fleet that held a low orbit around Herodian IV. As it closed with the horde, its spin slowed and it brought itself around to face the Imperial battlegroup once again – its grievous wound already sealed over with grotesque scar tissue and its single pincer pointing menacingly back at the Extreme Prejudice, where its Drones and Brood Ships persisted in their dogfights.

‘Hold position here,’ said Kastor calmly.

‘Should we not press our advantage, sir?’ asked Tactical Officer Lopthyr.

‘We have no advantage, son,’ replied Kastor without taking his gaze from the battle outside. ‘The vessel has retreated into a position with long-range cover. If we close, we move into range of the Hive Ship’s fire.’

Kastor pressed his hand against the armoured glass of the view-station and stared into the gyring clouds of combat that surrounded the Extreme Prejudice; Captain Melyus would deal with the short-range fighters for now, but eventually the lance arrays of the Vanishing Star would be needed to confront the Hive Ship. They must not sustain any damage before then.

If he didn’t know better, Kastor would have thought that the penetrating attack by the Razorfiend was designed to fail, in an attempt to draw the Vanishing Star into the melee prematurely. He had heard of tyranids throwing thousands of their smaller organisms into impenetrable barrages of Imperial cannon fire just to exhaust the batteries before launching their assault, but he had never heard of the mindless animals launching sacrificial raids with prize vessels like the Razorfiend.

For now, the Dictator-class Extreme Prejudice and the two Sword-class frigates, Purgation and Strident Virtue, would fight the war in the interval between the withdrawn Vanishing Star and the heavily defended tyranid Hive Ship.

Kastor turned from the view-station and walked slowly back to the elevated command throne in the centre of the circular bridge. He pushed himself deeply into the seat, propping his head on his hands as he gazed back into space. Just breaking the horizon of Herodian IV, silhouetted against a burst of eclipsed starlight and misted behind the flecks of battle in the foreground, he could see the ugly bulk of the Hive Ship. It was already in low orbit, skimming the atmosphere of the planet with its belly, sucking the planet dry of nutrients and releasing storms of toxins, spores and creatures into the air. It was only a matter of days now, perhaps hours, before the planet would be completely consumed.

The gunship slid effortlessly into one of the huge landing bays of the Vanishing Star, firing its retros into hisses of smoke and steam as it gently came to rest on the polished deck. The deck officer stood bolt upright, staring unblinkingly at the sleek lines of the unusual vessel. It seemed to bristle with armaments, yet the officer could see no signs of any at all. To the casual observer, the ship might have passed as a pleasure cruiser, but it filled the landing bay with such weight and gravitas that it could only be a gunship and an unusually lethal one at that.

Deck Officer Abett stole a glance behind him, wondering whether the guards had arrived yet. The ship had not appeared on any of the Vanishing Star’s scopes and it had slipped into the landing bay uninvited – virtually unnoticed. For some reason, the gun-servitors in the hanger space would not activate and the batteries encased in the mouth of the bay had not even twitched as the vessel had eased past them.

Abett’s eyes scanned the hull of the ship, letting his gaze caress the graceful and unfamiliar curves. The guards were on their way, but until they arrived, there was only Abett and a handful of tech-servitors to meet, greet or simply be slaughtered by their uninvited guests. He swallowed hard and stiffened his back.

With an uncomfortable bulge of his eyes, Abett saw the ship’s insignia just as the lower hatch jolted ajar, hissing as the atmosphere inside equalised. There, etched colourlessly into the gunmetal grey of the nosecone, was a tiny letter ‘I’. It was simple and unadorned; no effort had been expended on drawing attention to the icon. It was as though the little symbol had enough power on its own, so that it needed no ornamentation: if you were close enough to see it, then it was already too late – a signature rather than an emblem.

The hatch lowered from the belly of the ship, clanking onto the deck with a metallic ring. Abett stepped forward, holding his breath in terror as the three figures stepped towards him, clearing the deep shadow of the vessel. He opened his mouth to speak, his eyes flicking up and down anxiously as they struggled to take in the scale of his visitors. Two of the figures were enormous – far taller than any man – and encased in shimmering black power armour. On their shoulder-plates, he noticed, was the same ‘I’ as was etched almost imperceptibly into their ship – except their shoulder icons were emblazoned gloriously and ostentatiously. The third figure, standing stiffly between the two Space Marines, was a delicate looking woman enrobed in a long, black cloak that spilt onto the deck behind her – her pale grey eyes burning with purpose.

‘Where is Kastor?’ snapped the woman before Abett managed to find any words.

The deck officer started to hyperventilate, twitching his head from side to side in the desperate hope that the guards had arrived. They had not. The woman stared at him implacably and then seemed to come to a decision. She pushed the man in the chest to move him aside and then swept past him into the interior of the Vanishing Star, the two Deathwatch Space Marines following at heel.

‘I am not accustomed to being kept waiting, commander,’ said Kalypsia levelly. She sat with her back to the door as it slid open and Kastor paced into the room. She did not rise to greet the Navy officer, and she did not even turn her head to look at him.

‘And I am not accustomed to having my ship violated so unceremoniously.’ Kastor collected himself. ‘You deprived us of our chance to welcome you properly, inquisitor, and I fear that the Vanishing Star might not forgive you for that.’ Kastor spoke with silk shrouded fists. He was a direct man and no amount of Naval high-etiquette training could change his nature, even if it was expected of all officers of his rank. ‘Nonetheless, I see that you have made yourself at home here.’

Kalypsia played casually with the stem of her wine glass, rolling it between her fingers, creating a gentle whirlpool of motion in the deep red liquid. ‘Yes, thank you, commander. I am quite comfortable.’

Kastor stood in the doorway with his retinue of junior officers fanned out behind him, some of them still standing in the corridor outside the room. He was watching the back of the inquisitor’s head as she spoke. Over her shoulder, he could see a flute of wine set out on the large, oval conference table, taken from his personal collection. He made a mental note to have the responsible servitor reassigned to one of the front-line vessels of the battlegroup.

It was only then that Kastor noticed the two huge, black figures standing against the polished, concave walls of the chamber. His head snapped around to face them with a barely dignified double-take. How could he have failed to notice them before?

They were absolutely motionless, with their features hidden behind the impenetrable visage of their helmets. They might have been magnificent statues, but still they were the most imposing soldiers that Kastor had ever seen. Nonetheless, somehow his gaze was drawn constantly to the small, female inquisitor at the table. It was almost as though the giant warriors did not want to be seen and as though the entire chamber was focussed irrevocably on Kalypsia. The Inquisition could have that effect.

‘Are you going to come in?’ asked Kalypsia without a hint of satisfaction and still sitting with her back to him.

Kastor composed himself immediately – this woman was not going to intimidate him on his own ship. He motioned silently for his guards to fan out around the wall opposite the Space Marines and then he walked evenly towards the table. ‘Thank you, I don’t mind if I do.’

Quite deliberately, the commander made his way to the side of the table where the giant warriors were standing. He wanted there to be no doubt in anybody’s mind that he was in control. This was his ship. As he reached the chair in the middle of that side of the table, Kastor paused with his back to Kalypsia. Instead of turning to his left and taking his seat, however, he turned smartly to his right.

‘Captain. It is an honour to welcome you aboard my ship. As you will be aware, there are a number of Space Marines from the Mantis Warriors Chapter temporarily stationed here. However, the Deathwatch are a particularly rare and unusual honour. Should you or your team require the use of any of our facilities, please do not hesitate to requisition them.’

There was a moment of silence in which Kastor imagined Kalypsia’s deflated frustration. He had seen Space Marines before, even before he had rendezvoused with the Mantis Warriors’ strike cruiser, Penitent Quest, earlier that day. It was true that he had never encountered the Deathwatch before, but he had heard enough stories about them to recognise them when one of their Space Marines was standing two feet in front of his nose. He had also heard enough stories to know that he didn’t want to get on the wrong side of them.

With a sudden and abrupt movement, as though a decision had been reached, the Deathwatch captain unclasped the seal around his helmet and removed it from his head. Despite himself, Kastor took half a step back, nudging against the chair behind him. The face that looked down at him was struck through with a deep scar that ran from its left temple to the angle of the right jaw line. Short, fine hair fell loosely over its tanned forehead, partially obscuring a row of golden studs. But the eyes – the eyes shone with an ineffable blue that seemed to hold compassion and horror all at once.

‘I am Captain Octavius of the Deathwatch, and I thank you for your welcome. Your ancient vessel honours us, and we shall show it every respect.’

Kastor held those eyes for a fraction of a second, searching their depths, nodding slightly in acknowledgment, before an irritated voice made him turn back to the table.

‘Commander, when you are finished, we have much to discuss.’

Octavius had heard of the Mantis Warriors, and their name made him grimace inwardly. They were a mysterious Chapter, roaming the outer reaches of the galaxy on a perpetual quest to redeem themselves after their treachery during the Badab Wars. They had been stripped of their homeworld but, for some undefined reason, they had been granted the Emperor’s forgiveness, on the condition that they complete a penitent crusade. Evidently, the Emperor’s light found some utility in the Chapter’s disgrace – but Octavius could not imagine what that might be. It was not his place to ask why. He shivered involuntarily at the thought of working alongside these renegades. Then he stiffened his back, resolving that such petty issues of politics were below the Deathwatch and below a veteran captain of the Imperial Fists such as himself.

The two figures seated at the conference table before him were arguing energetically. From time to time, the Navy commander would bang his fists against the table in agitation, but the inquisitor would just lean back into her chair and sip delicately at her wine – agitating the officer even further. Octavius looked on impassively – he knew why he was here and the squabbles for jurisdiction made no difference to the Deathwatch. In the end, it would be he and his kill-team who would do the fighting, no matter who directed them to their target.

The Deathwatch were the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Xenos. In the end, no matter who claimed the theatre of war, Octavius would answer to Kalypsia. She was young and ambitious and she wore the seal of the Inquisition with a little too much ostentation, but she was nevertheless a fully fledged inquisitor. Octavius had not agreed with her stealthy approach to the Vanishing Star – the manner of their arrival would alienate the Naval officers unnecessarily. Far from being a subtle approach, their stealth could not have been more ostentatious had they been accompanied by an Inquisition battleship firing a broadside salute. But these were Kalypsia’s methods and Octavius did not doubt for a moment that she would get what she wanted.

The Navy commander had made a good impression. He had acted with honour and dignity, even in the face of such antagonism from the inquisitor. On the approach run to the Vanishing Star, Octavius had taken careful note of the strategic deployment of the naval battlegroup and he had approved. Kastor was clearly a soldier and Octavius could think of nothing more praiseworthy than a good soldier. Nonetheless, he doubted that any soldier would be a match for Kalypsia.

The inquisitor had been appointed to the mission at short notice and without consultation. The Deathwatch team had paused on the Inquisition battleship Veiled Salvation, en route to the frontier of Segmentum Obscurus, where there were reports of a large tyranid swarm massing. Intelligence suggested that it was a splinter of the Kraken Hive, which had been scattered into deep space by the Ultramarines many years before. However, the Obscurus frontier was a long way and the Deathwatch team were on their way to the Herodian warp-gate when Inquisitor Lord Parthon on the Veiled Salvation had redirected their mission – appointing Kalypsia to lead them. Shortly afterwards, the call came in from the Mantis Warriors, requesting support.

The appearance of a tyranid sub-splinter so far within Segmentum Obscurus was perplexing. It was not clear whether this small force was a vanguard for the larger swarm massing on the frontier, or whether it was actually a small, independent hive. What was clear, however, was that its presence so close to the warp-gate had made the immaterium in the region too unstable to sustain traffic to the frontier. For as long as the sub-splinter remained in the Herodian system, the gate would have to be closed, which would mean that it would take months to get reinforcements and supplies to the frontier by other routes. By that time, the frontier war might already be over.

It was fortuitous that Octavius’s Deathwatch team had been on hand and he was determined that they would get the gate open and get to the frontier before it was too late. All of this political posturing was just wasting time – and there was not enough of that to waste any of it.

Octavius watched Kalypsia fingering the pendant that hung around her neck – an elegant and simple vertical line, crossed three times in its centre like a mutant crucifix. It seemed to shine at her touch, glinting against the dark fabric of her body glove, delicately shrouded under the folds of a simple, black cloak. The medallion was worn on a loose chain so that it rested just above the exposed skin of her midriff. For the first time, Octavius noticed that the lights in the chamber had been gradually fading as the meeting went on. In the dim light, the icon of office seemed to radiate a steady glow, drawing all eyes to it.

Kalypsia wasn’t speaking, but clearly Kastor was waiting for an answer.

Inwardly, Octavius shook his head as the audacity of the inquisitor struck him anew. She didn’t even have to argue with this commander. That perfectly innocuous pendant gave her all the power she needed, like the tiny symbol on her gunship. Once you see it, it’s already too late. Octavius could see this realisation gradually dawning on Kastor as he thumped the table in annoyance and threw himself back into his seat.

The scene was interrupted by a mechanical grind from the doors, which slid open to reveal a large, armoured figure standing in the sudden flood of light.

The Mantis Warrior captain bowed deeply from the doorway, acknowledging the stature of the people in the room before steeling himself to enter it. Despite the fact that he was fresh from combat on the surface of Herodian IV, Audin’s armour had been polished until it resembled a shimmering emerald, adorned with sparkling gold purity seals. Without his helmet, his long black hair cascaded onto his shoulders, and piercing green eyes stared forth unflinchingly. Kastor rose to his feet and welcomed the Space Marine.

‘Captain Audin, thank you for joining us. We realise that you must have a great deal to attend to on the Penitent Quest.’

‘Thank you, Commander Kastor. Your concern is appreciated. We have just heard that our company’s battle barge, the Endless Redemption, is entering the Herodian system. So we are waiting for its superior facilities before engaging in any serious technical work on the wounded.’

‘That is excellent news, captain. Would I be correct to assume that the Endless Redemption is equipped with planetary bombardment cannons and the Exterminatus array?’

‘Yes, commander,’ answered Audin. ‘The Endless Redemption is fully equipped in that regard. It is, however, under strength when it comes to Space Marines. The Redemption is home to two full companies – my own, the Second, and Fourth Company, as well as several squads of Terminators from First Company. Unfortunately, the Fourth Company’s numbers are significantly depleted after an engagement with a detachment from the renegade Astral Claws in the Tenkudari nebula. As you will be aware, the Second Company has also suffered serious losses on Herodian IV.’ Audin’s manner was professional, crisp and formal, but the information he reported wounded him deeply. For nearly a century the Mantis Warriors had not been permitted to recruit new Space Marines and their numbers were now becoming perilously low.

‘It is of no concern,’ said Kalypsia, rising to her feet and turning to face Audin. ‘The further assistance of the Mantis Warriors in this engagement will not be required.’

Octavius could see Audin’s eyes narrow at the casual slight, as though he were suppressing a barrage of words that bubbled into his mouth. For his part, Kastor snapped his head round to face Kalypsia again, clearly shocked by this revelation.

‘With the greatest respect,’ grimaced the commander, ‘the involvement of a Space Marine battle barge might make the difference between victory and defeat in this conflict, inquisitor.’

‘You forget yourself, commander. The grace of the Emperor will make the difference and will bring us victory,’ smiled Kalypsia as though springing a trap.

‘Brother-captain. The presence of the Deathwatch in this theatre was unexpected, but most welcome. Should you or your team require our facilities, they are yours.’ Audin had composed himself and turned his attention to the imposing figure of Octavius.

Octavius considered Audin for a moment, meeting his eyes. Something flickered deep inside. He nodded an unspoken acknowledgment, but then added, ‘Thank you, captain. We have our own facilities.’

‘Of course,’ returned Audin with some discomfort, as he walked to the other side of the conference table and the others returned to their seats.

‘The grace of the Emperor is forever in my soul, inquisitor, be not mistaken about that. I merely seek to facilitate its expression in the most expeditious manner possible,’ retorted Kastor with some rhetorical flourish.

‘Well said,’ replied Kalypsia with mock admiration, ‘but my instructions are clear on this point. The war will be won, but it will be won without the annihilation of a complete planet. Herodian IV will be saved, not destroyed. Besides, more important than the planet is the Herodian warp-gate and there is no telling what effect the destruction of the planet would have on the warp signatures in this region – we may well ruin the gate through such clumsy measures.’

With that display of snide cultivation, Kalypsia had taken command.

‘What, then, do you propose, inquisitor?’ asked Kastor through clenched teeth.

Collia jerked her Fury into a spin, diving through a corkscrew roll that sent the stars into a dizzying spiral. The sleek Drone flicked after her, following her twists and turns with impossible ease. She was rocketing through space, frantically looking back over her shoulders to track her pursuer.

‘It’s still with you.’

‘Really! No kidding,’ answered Collia as she threw her weight forward against the stick, pushing her fighter into a steeper dive.

From behind came the concussions of a series of impacts, and she craned her neck round to see what had happened. The Drone was ruined, with oozes of ichor seeping out into space through vicious punctures along its side. It had lost all propulsion and was just floating in space, dead. There was a flash overhead as something overshot her position.

‘You’re welcome.’ It was Gordus, the squadron leader.

‘Thanks, Gordus,’ said Collia, settling back into her seat and gently rolling the Fury back towards the flock of Drones that were assaulting the Extreme Prejudice at close range. She could see the side batteries of the battle cruiser working overtime, sputtering with fire and light, but the scene was hazy and blurred, as though viewed through a cloud. Collia strained her eyes, peering into the space between her and her mothership, and she gasped.

‘Can you see that, sir?’

There was a long hiss of static before the voice of Gordus crackled into Collia’s ear. ‘Yes, I can see it. But I don’t know what it is.’

The space between the squadron and the Extreme Prejudice was speckled with little spherical objects, which bobbed and fluttered with motion. From this distance, they appeared bunched into a cloud or a mist around the battle cruiser but, as the Furies accelerated back towards their mother vessel, the scale of the objects became apparent; they were like asteroids, spinning and darting with thunderous momentum.

Flocks of Drones seemed to flit through the bizarre asteroid field almost as though it wasn’t there. Inside the cloud, Collia could see the Drones spewing venom against the armoured plating of the Prejudice, and she could see some Brood Ships trying to gain entry to the launch-bays.

With so many targets, the automatic laser batteries of the Extreme Prejudice were firing frantically, but their hit efficiency was low. They traced Drones through the void, only to be distracted by the flight path of an orbiting asteroid, then caught again by another flock of attackers.

If I didn’t know better, thought Collia, I would think that the flock of Drones had lured the Furies away from the Extreme Prejudice in order to set up this bizarre trap.

‘Should we call for supporting fire from the Vanishing Star?’

‘Negative.’ It was Gordus. ‘The Star’s lances would punch straight through the spore-field and smash into the Prejudice. That would be playing into their hands, Collia.’

‘They don’t have any hands, sir.’

‘Shut it, Collia. We need to get through that cloud and protect the Prejudice. All units commence their attack runs.’

The first wave of Furies was virtually annihilated. As they penetrated the cloud of mysterious orbs, they realised in an instant that the objects were not asteroids, but spore mines. Great ripples of explosions convulsed through the spore-field as proximity mines detonated. In some places, giant tendrils were fired out of the mines, weaving into massive, barbed webs that enwrapped Furies three at a time – packaging them into cocoons in which they were slowly consumed by toxins.

Collia thrashed at the control-stick wildly, sending her Fury into a haze of movement, twisting beyond the reach of spines and tendrils, ducking around mines that were drawn organically to the heat of her engines. She opened the throttle completely, punching through the spore-field at breakneck speed, putting her faith in control to get her through safely.

In a flash she was through, bursting into the tiny interval of clean space between the inner rim of the spore-field and the battle cruiser besieged at its heart. She fired the retros and pulled up sharply, fighting to avoid running her fighter into her own mothership. But as soon as she had the craft under control, she was assailed from all sides by flocks of Drones.

‘Collia! No!’ called Gordus as he watched the first wave of Furies explode impotently against the spore mines. He saw Collia’s Fury twitch and dive into the fray with great bursts of energy bleeding from its rear burners. But he had no time to mourn. No sooner had the first wave been broken against the mines than the squadron’s rear support units started to report.

‘We’re under attack from behind.’

‘There’re hundreds of them.’

Gordus pulled up out of his attack line and turned his Fury back towards the rear of the assembled squadrons, back towards the planet and the hulking masses of the injured Razorfiend and the Hive Ship. Sure enough, a great shoal of Drones had been unleashed against the rear lines of Furies, presumably manufactured in the depths of the Hive Ship itself. It seemed that the Fury squadrons had fallen into a trap of their own.

The lines of Furies were shattered, and pilots peeled away from their formations, dragged into desperate dogfights with these new enemies. The frigates Purgation and Strident Virtue had moved in to support, but they were being met by the advance of two Razorfiends. The space surrounding Herodian IV was alive with motion and death. Only a single squadron was left in formation, waiting for the order to penetrate the spore-field to defend the Extreme Prejudice. Gordus held the line.

A searing beam flashed past the formation, cutting into the spore-field and causing thousands of mines to detonate, leaving a temporary tunnel carved into the roiling cloud. Without pausing to see where the beam had come from, Gordus charged into the opening with his guns blazing – Storm Squadron hot on his heels.

The Sword of Contrition was decelerating rapidly to engagement speed, having blasted its way in from the outer reaches of the Herodian system, accelerating all the way. Captain Krelian had expected to find the tyranid swarm attacking the outermost planets and then working its way in towards the more heavily populated inner worlds – as precedent suggested. Finding nothing in the outer reaches, Krelian had left the Endless Redemption unescorted and used the speed of the Fourth Company’s Mantis strike cruiser to get to Herodian IV ahead of it. The battle barge would roll up in another day or so.

The theatre of battle had been obvious even from the most distant orbit – the blazing mess of fighters and lasfire could be seen from the very edge of the system – and Krelian had directed his ship into its heart without pausing to confer with the Vanishing Star. Veteran Sergeant Ruinus, back on the Penitent Quest, had explained that the Second Company was in tatters and that its strike cruiser was as much a hospital ship as a gunship at present. It was withdrawn, in the shelter of the giant Gothic-class cruiser.

‘Fire one more pulse in support of the squadron in the mine field,’ ordered Captain Krelian of the Mantis Warriors, ‘and then we’ll see what we can do to help the rest of these fighters.’

‘As most of you will all be aware,’ continued Kalypsia, with the tone of a lecturer informing the ignorant, ‘a tyranid invasion proceeds through various stages. The current incursion appears to have already reached the end of stage IV. Whilst this is more advanced than might be ideal, there is still hope.

‘Having only been alerted to the threat at a relatively late stage, we don’t yet have full details about how the swarm proceeded through the previous phases. In particular, it is unclear why the tyranids targeted this planet. Some of you will be aware,’ she said, nodding slightly towards Octavius, ‘that precedent suggests that tyranid swarms usually work their way from the outer reaches of a star system towards the interior, consuming all the organic matter they find on their way. In this case, it seems that the swarm has come straight to Herodian IV, neglecting the string of planets out to Herodian XII, some of which support small colonies of life.’

‘Why did it take us so long to detect the incursion, inquisitor?’ asked Octavius, his eyes darting to the Mantis Warrior captain.

Kalypsia noted the look, but answered formally. ‘There are various reasons, captain. Perhaps the most significant is the relatively small size of this splinter hive. As you know, the first sign of a tyranid invasion is usually a distortion in the warp, as the hive mind moves into the vicinity. In this case, the warp shadow was not substantial enough to excite our attention, especially in comparison with the immense darkness gathering on the frontier of Segmentum Obscurus.’

‘Small splinter?’ interjected Audin defensively. ‘With all due respect, inquisitor, there is nothing small about the scale of the tyranid invasion of Herodian IV.’

‘With all due respect, captain,’ answered Kalypsia, as though none were due, ‘the tyranid force that took Herodian IV is tiny in comparison with the swarms that were faced by the Ultramarines in the Ultima Segmentum. Here, the horde is big enough only to assault a single planet – there they rampaged through entire systems. That said,’ she added with the smallest hint of contrition, ‘the warp shadow generated by this swarm has grown significantly since the hive tyrant descended to the planet’s surface.’

‘So, why is it here, inquisitor?’ asked Kastor, leaning forward with his hands pressed against the conference table. ‘Why is it here and how long have we got to get rid of it? Can you tell us, or not?’

Kalypsia turned her sharp grey eyes on Kastor and stared at him for a long moment. ‘The important question for you, commander, is how we are going to get rid of it. My calculations suggest that we have, at most, two days in which to destroy the swarm. After that time the planet will be completely consumed and lost to us forever. This must not be allowed to happen. If the planet falls, so too falls the Herodian warp-gate. If the warp-gate is not reopened, the Obscurus frontier will be lost. Two days, gentlemen.’

‘Very well,’ answered Kastor with agitated resignation. ‘How are we going to get rid of it?’

Kalypsia said nothing, but rose to her feet and walked to the back of the conference room, enjoying the focus of the gazes that followed her every move. Her long black hair shimmered over her shoulders and seemed to blend into the cascades of her cloak as she walked. At an invisible signal, a screen whirred down from the ceiling, clicking into place against the back wall. Kalypsia pointed at the planetary chart. She had been building to this moment from the start.

‘Building on the intelligence gathered by the esteemed Inquisitor Kryptman, who was so instrumental in the victories against the Great Devourer in the Ultima Segmentum, Inquisitor Lord Parthon of the Ordo Xenos has developed a strategy for the location of a swarm’s hive tyrant. One of the key lessons learnt by Captain Bannon’s Deathwatch squad during the Tarsis Ultra campaign against the tyranids–’

‘–may the Emperor guard his soul,’ intoned Octavius at the mention of Bannon’s name. Bannon was a legendary figure in the annals of the Deathwatch – a heroic captain who gave his life so that the Ultramarines might triumph over the Great Devourer. For Octavius, Bannon was an icon of duty and honour and it pained him that their shared Chapter of origin – the Imperial Fists – would never know how their heroic captain died. Such was the nature of a secondment to the Deathwatch – it provided the warrior with matchless opportunities to prove his worth in the eyes of the Emperor, but it placed these legends into the shadowy realm of Inquisitorial records. Octavius had been called up to the Deathwatch from the Imperial Fists just after Bannon’s death and he had made it his mission to be worthy of the mantle passed down from this fallen hero. When he eventually rejoined the Imperial Fists, he would make sure that Bannon’s name was written large in the Chapter’s history books – the Imperial Fist captain who saved the Ultramarines.

‘Indeed, captain,’ said Kalypsia, conscious of the honourable devotion in Octavius’s interjection, but resentful of the interruption. ‘As I was saying: one of the key lessons taught to us by the heroic actions of Deathwatch Captain Bannon and his team on Tarsis Ultra was that the destruction of a hive tyrant will cause critical disruption in the organisation of a tyranid swarm. Indeed, Inquisitor Lord Parthon now believes that the disruption caused in a small hive splinter, such as the one we have here, would be so great that it would tilt the balance of the battle dramatically in our favour – allowing us to wipe out the swarm with quite acceptable losses on our side. This is because a splinter of this size is likely to have only one hive tyrant – and this tyrant acts as the nerve centre for the coherence of the entire swarm.

‘A swift surgical strike by an elite force led by Captain Octavius,’ Kalypsia nodded an acknowledgment towards the captain, ‘should be able to knock out the tyrant and give the rest of you,’ she swept her hand casually across the room, taking in Kastor and Audin, ‘the window required to eradicate these pests from the system. This obviates the need to utilise the crude Exterminatus on Herodian IV and thus preserves the integrity of the warp-gate.’

‘This is a dangerous plan, inquisitor,’ said Kastor suspiciously, sharing a glance with Audin. ‘If your team fails, the planet will be completely consumed and the warp-gate will be utterly lost in the warp shadow. Not only that, but the tyranid swarm will have gained a significant foothold in this sector, from which it may be able to advance deeper into Imperial space – Exterminatus would prevent that, at least.’

‘Mind your words, commander. Failure is not an accusation to throw at a Deathwatch captain. If it can be done, the Deathwatch will not fail,’ said Octavius levelly.

‘And if it cannot be done?’ replied Kastor, unphased.

‘We will see it done,’ stated Kalypsia flatly, closing the issue.

Chapter Three:
Desert

[38 Hours Remaining]

‘I told them that we knew how to locate the hive tyrant and that the Deathwatch kill-team would be able to exterminate it,’ said Kalypsia into the crackling vox unit. It hissed and cackled with interference as she waited for a response – the distance was great so there was a slight delay. Not for the first time, she cursed the tyranid swarm’s warp shadow; it disrupted all psychic traffic in the area and made astropathic communication almost impossible. Hence, even the Inquisition had to rely on these crude voice-transmission devices. They were slow, cumbersome, and ugly – none of which were qualities that Kalypsia appreciated.

Inquisitor Lord Parthon’s voice fizzled and sputtered. ‘Excellent. I assume that you were as convincing as I have come to expect you to be. It is important that they trust you. Remember, Kalypsia, time is of the essence. In less than two days, the tyranids will have what they came for. That could be very dangerous for us, not to mention for the rest of the Imperium.’

‘I understand, my lord. The mission will be accomplished in the time available to us. Have no fear of that.’

‘I have no fear of time, Kalypsia, for my eternal soul does not recognise it. But I fear the Great Devourer, and I fear what it may accomplish if we do not stop it here. The Herodian system is but a stepping stone. If the tyranid master it then time will be an irrelevance – instead, I shall fear for my soul.’

‘The tyranids will not succeed here, my lord. The Deathwatch will prevent this.’

‘I hope you are right, young Kalypsia. And what of our heroic Captain Octavius? Does he show any signs of suspicion?’

‘None, my lord,’ said Kalypsia with certainty. ‘I have offered no cause for suspicion, and I would not stand for it even if I inspired some. As far as he is concerned, we are hunting a hive tyrant. Octavius is a servant of the Inquisition, nothing more. He is a soldier – a tool.’

‘He is a Deathwatch captain, young Kalypsia, and the champion of my old friend, the Inquisitor Lord Agustius. You would do well not to underestimate him. He has been fighting the foul xenos since before you were born. There are eldar exarchs and ork warlords who shudder at his name – you should not treat him lightly. His presence on this mission is our greatest asset, but he is not entirely our closest ally.’ Parthon’s voice was level and calm, despite the keen insistence in his tone.

‘I will watch the honourable captain,’ replied Kalypsia with the faintest hint of sarcasm. For some years now, she had been concerned that her mentor was losing his nerve as he was growing old. There was no doubt that he was a wise man and a great inquisitor. Nobody rose to the rank of inquisitor lord and made so many enemies without being ruthlessly brilliant. But his edge seemed to be dulling and Kalypsia was confident that she could sharpen his plans as she went along.

‘See that you do,’ said Parthon and then the vox clicked sharply before falling silent.

Kalypsia stood up from the console and stared out of the view screen into the darkness of the landing bay that enveloped her ship, Perfect Incision. It had been sealed and emptied of all Navy personnel – something that Deck Officer Abett had been only too pleased about.

She looked back along the length of her sleek vessel, and she could see two giant Space Marines, one standing on each side of the open landing ramp. They were motionless sentries, almost invisible in their black power-armour, shrouded in the shadow of the Incision, encased in the solid dark of the Vanishing Star’s landing bay.

They were something of a mystery to her, and it went against her nature to take them too seriously – military men were simple men. Her father had been in the Imperial Guard until he was shredded by a tyranid hormagaunt as his squad marched slowly forward in a straight line, firing volleys of lasfire. It was pathetic, and she hated him for being such a grunt. Of course, she also hated the vile xenos creatures that had taken her father away from her, so she was left with a complicated psychological scar – hating the aliens and hating the pathetic way that people tried to fight them. So much hate. As a confused and passionate child, she had vowed never to lapse into a crude, stupid life. She was a natural recruit for the Inquisition, and she had made it her mission to ridicule the stupidities of military personnel ever since she was appointed as an inquisitor. There was more than one way to fight the xenos creatures of the galaxy.

But she had to confess that there was something different about these Deathwatch Space Marines. They were dark in complex ways and filled with silence. Never wasting words where none were needed. Despite herself, she could not think of them as stupid – the fathomless blue of Octavius’s eyes spoke of painful wisdom.

She had been on the Veiled Salvation under the tutelage of Parthon for many years, but this unexpected assignment had brought her into contact with the Deathwatch for the first time. Indeed, this was her first real contact with Space Marines of any kind. She had heard about them, of course. And she had occasionally seen them in Inquisition facilities, making reports of their various missions for the Ordo Xenos. But she had always suspected that the spectacular reports of their feats were exaggerated. The space between those stories and what she already knew of her father’s time in the Imperial Guard was just too massive. These Space Marines would have to be superhuman to do the things they were rumoured to do, or her father must have been even more pathetic than she thought.

In truth, she hated Space Marines already, but she could see how useful they were: giant, superhuman warriors, absolutely dedicated to service to the Emperor. Perhaps it was their dedication that she hated most – like the blind devotion that had made her father walk slowly into the talons of a tyranid swarm. To Kalypsia, the devotion of soldiers seemed like a simple and unquestioning affair – they followed orders. Thinking was done elsewhere, not within their heads but without them. And, in the spiralling bureaucracy of the Imperium, sometimes no thinking was done at all. That’s where the Inquisition fitted in – it had to do the thinking for everyone. This was something to which she could be devoted.

She pushed her doubts to the back of her mind: she would do the thinking on this mission and her Deathwatch Space Marines, including the heroic Octavius, would do as they were told. No matter what the ageing Parthon thought of the Deathwatch, they were just like any Space Marines, just like any soldier – they were still her men.

‘There. That’s our landing site,’ pointed Kalypsia, indicating with her finger.

Octavius shook his head slowly, running his hand over the deep scar across his face. ‘I’m afraid that I cannot concur, inquisitor. That location is sub-optimal.’

‘But that is our target, captain. Judging by the formation of the tyranid swarm and the geological information we have about the territory in that sector, it is almost certain that this is the location of the hive tyrant.’ The young inquisitor was not trying to convince Octavius, she was merely explaining why his opinion was irrelevant.

‘You do not understand, inquisitor,’ said Octavius carefully. ‘Even if that is our target, we cannot land on that site. It is already completely overrun by the swarm. You can see here and here,’ he said, pointing, ‘that the site is located in a narrow valley, and that both sides of it are swimming with xenos. Our Thunderhawk would be too exposed, too vulnerable on the descent and we would suffer too many casualties before we could even deploy our forces. The Deathwatch do not throw away their lives so lightly, inquisitor.’

‘But we must reach that site, captain. The lives of your team, precious as they are, are not the primary concern of this mission.’

Sitting in the corner of the room, his face hidden beneath the folds of a black hood, Deathwatch Librarian Ashok rose to his feet. Even without his power armour, the Space Marine was an imposing figure – more than humanly tall, with thick muscles giving the simple, heavy cloak an impressive shape. Kalypsia turned to face the unexpected movement, distracted for a moment from her engagement with Octavius. From the blackness beneath the Librarian’s hood shone two pearls of swirling darkness, as his black eyes burned in the shadows.

The Deathwatch do not fear to die, inquisitor. Indeed, we expect it. Ashok’s voice was low and smooth, almost a whisper. Something in the tone made Kalypsia wince slightly and she shrunk back imperceptibly. Looking quickly to Octavius, she realised that he had not heard the voice – he was looking at her with some concern. He had insisted on the presence of his Librarian for the meeting and now Kalypsia understood why.

Are you also ready to die, inquisitor? Ashok’s voice eased directly into her mind, pushing aside her other thoughts gently but firmly. Kalypsia was not a great psyker, but she had been trained by the Inquisition to use her limited abilities to their greatest effect. She had developed a strong capacity to shield her mind from the incursions of others – which is partly why she was so suitable for the present mission; only a psyker with strong barriers would survive contact with the tyranid warp shadow without going insane. But somehow this Librarian had circumvented her defences. She resolved that this would not happen again, and she slammed shut all the doors to her mind.

‘We will not throw our lives away needlessly,’ said Octavius, staring out of the briefing room of the Vanishing Star, gazing at the planet far below. Kalypsia turned back to face the captain, aware of Ashok’s eyes behind her all the time.

Even from this distance, the tyranid swarm was clearly visible as a series of black clouds swirling over the golden sands of the desert planet, roiling and oozing across the surface. It was incredible to think that the shifting oceans of black were actually made up of millions of scything, taloned tyranid creatures, swarming over the planet with the single, unified purpose of the hive mind. If it were not for the vile repugnance of the xenos, the sight might even have been beautiful.

‘We will land there,’ said Octavius, pointing towards the planet. He walked away from the view screen and back to Kalypsia’s chart where the movements of the swarm were projected onto the map. He pointed his finger to a small clearing in the swarm, just to the south of the target site. The black clouds swam and flowed around it, leaving it as a spot of light in the swirling darkness. ‘This landing site is relatively clean and close enough to the target zone. It is not flanked by enemy strong points. It is a more acceptable risk, and it does not diminish the success probability of the mission.’

Kalypsia considered the site for a moment. It might have been a rock promontory or a patch of deep desert where the tyranids had found no organic matter. Whatever the reason for its clarity, it certainly looked like a fortuitously clear spot. There were one or two other such spots in the vicinity, but this was by far the closest to the target area. There also appeared to be a thin corridor of less densely occupied territory leading through the valley from the site to the target. Despite her natural inclination to dismiss the ideas of this Space Marine and his precious protocols, Kalypsia had to admit that this was a good landing site. ‘Very well, captain, I agree. We will use your insertion point.’

The Thunderhawk bucked and screeched as it pierced the atmosphere of Herodian IV, its machine-spirit protesting against this apparent mistreatment of its hull. Techmarine Korpheus administered to its complaints with firm care; planetfall was usually a routine affair, but the atmosphere of Herodian IV was now so dense with humidity and oxylene gases that the Thunderhawk could feel the alien violation of its engine vents and the air resistance blasted the vessel’s armour with unusual ferocity.

The planet was changing, as the xenos Hive Ship pumped the atmosphere full of strange alien enzymes designed to accelerate the growth of all organic compounds on the surface and also to provide essential nutrients for the tyranid swarm that swam over the planet’s crust. Everything would grow to the point of saturation, and then it would lapse into a fecund decay. Specialised organisms would consume the carrion, using it as energy to fuel pupation and transformation into bigger, more powerful organisms. Meanwhile, the rest of the swarm would harvest every last molecule of nutrition and the Hive Ship would suck vast amounts of bio-mass out of the atmosphere to replenish its energy reserves. The tyranid – the Great Devourer. If there was enough rich material on the planet, the Hive Ship might even calve, giving birth to more ships for the tyranid fleet. If things got this far, then there would be no going back for Herodian IV.

‘Are your men ready, captain?’ asked Kalypsia without concern.

‘We are always ready, inquisitor,’ answered Octavius.

Octavius looked around the interior of the Thunderhawk at his team, each strapped securely into their landing braces. Only Korpheus was out of his position, tending to the Thunderhawk itself. The others sat in calm, almost motionless silence, their helmets secured and their weapons held ready. Ashok wore no helmet. Instead, his face was hidden below the folds of an ornate, heavy shroud. He stared fixedly into the polished floor of the Thunderhawk, never shifting his gaze nor showing any signs of breathing. Kalypsia was sure that she could see a faint red glow emanating from under the Space Marine’s hood.

Genuinely unnerved by the Librarian, Kalypsia asked, ‘What is wrong with him?’

‘There is nothing wrong. He is simply finding his balance before the battle to come. We must all do this in our own way. As you know, our traditions are all different, but we must honour them all as though they were our own,’ answered Octavius quietly. Out the corner of his eye he saw Broec twitch slightly. An altitude alarm sounded, and the flash of a warning light glinted off the stark white shoulder guard of the Emperor’s Champion, revealing the highly polished black cross insignia of the Black Templars – tolerance for diversity was not his forte.

Sitting across from Broec, towering over the other members of the team, was Neleus, resplendent in the Terminator armour of the White Consuls. Since joining the Deathwatch many years before, Neleus had blackened his armour to honour the spirit of this elite division, but one of his shoulder guards still proudly displayed the blue eagle of his Chapter, set against an immaculate white background. The ancient armour of a Space Marine would not stand for its identity to be completely swamped, not even by the majestic blackness of the Deathwatch. Each Space Marine preserved the original insignia of their original Chapters on one shoulder.

Neleus was tapping his foot against the floor in agitation, eager to be on the ground. None of the Space Marines enjoyed being sealed in a Thunderhawk, with their lives in the hands of a pilot-servitor; it would not become a Space Marine to die in such a context. In any case, the White Consuls were proud of their shared origins with the Ultramarines, and Neleus was keen to be on the ground and to show that their honoured brothers were not the only Chapter who could slay tyranids.

‘Are you really so different from each other?’ asked Kalypsia, inherently sceptical about variation amongst soldiers, especially soldiers as manufactured as the Space Marines.

‘The Deathwatch are a team, inquisitor. Our individual differences make the whole stronger.’ Octavius spoke from conviction. He was proud of his eclectic team, and it had never failed him before. The awesome reputation of the Deathwatch was founded upon exactly this insight: just as the Emperor divided his essence between the Primarchs of the various Space Marine Legions, so the Deathwatch would draw on the elite of each Chapter, uniting that essence once again. The result was suitably magnificent.

A warning siren sounded, filling the compartment with a pulsing orange light.

‘Brace for landing,’ called Korpheus from the cockpit. ‘This might be a little rough.’

A flurry of impacts smashed against the sides of the Thunderhawk as it descended. Even from within the sealed drop-chamber, Kalypsia could smell the gradual corrosion of the vessel’s armoured plating.

‘What’s hitting us, Korpheus?’ called Octavius over the rising din.

‘We just dropped through a flock of gargoyles. Most of them were shredded by the automatic guns, but a few survived. They’re firing on us with some kind of toxic venom. The armour will hold for now. At least until we hit the ground.’

‘Understood,’ replied Octavius. ‘And what about the landing site? How does it look?’

‘Still clean, but we’re going to hit it pretty hard. If I slow our descent any more, there won’t be much left of the hawk by the time we reach the ground,’ said Korpheus, still ministering to the craft as it screeched through the last stages of the drop.

A sudden lurch threw the team against their restraints. There was a faint hiss that ripped into a terrible, rushing gust, and then a piercing scream thrust into the compartment through a fresh tear in the wall. In an instant, Ashok was on his feet, whilst Octavius levelled his boltgun at the breach. A flash of blue lightning arced from the tip of Ashok’s power staff and stabbed through the gap in the ceramite. There was another shriek and a faint spluttering sound as liquid ichor rained against the hull from the outside.

The Thunderhawk rocked unstably, as though its balance had been thrown by the assault on its flank. It pitched and yawed as though adrift on a violent sea, and cracks began to appear in the walls on all sides. The Space Marines were all out of their harnesses now, each of them covering a different breech.

‘How far to the ground, Korpheus?’ asked Octavius.

‘Too far for the inquisitor, captain.’

‘Understood,’ said Octavius, his eyes fixed on the growing cracks in the walls. ‘Short bursts to minimise structural damage. This tub has got to get us down to the ground before it falls apart.’

Then the tub fell apart. With the hiss of toxins and the metallic scrape of talons, great chunks of the Thunderhawk’s armour were suddenly ripped away. Air and moisture flooded into the compartment, misting as they hit the warm air inside, obscuring the creatures that clawed their way through the breeches behind.

A blaze of bolter fire erupted almost instantaneously, shredding anything that moved around the perimeter of the vessel, but also chipping away great chunks of the ship’s substructure. Screams and inhuman shrieks echoed through the mists, and jets of toxic ichor splattered against the black armour of the Deathwatch Space Marines. Kalypsia stood her ground in the centre of the compartment, surrounded by an impenetrable wall of Space Marines. Her bolt pistol was drawn, but she could not see anything to fire at.

The Thunderhawk flashed through its descent like a meteor, shedding armoured panels and instrumentation as it went. Korpheus had now lost complete control of the machine and had joined his battle-brothers in the fight against the gargoyles.

‘Ten seconds to impact, captain,’ he yelled over the tumult of gunfire.

Octavius nodded his understanding as he fired off a rapid burst of bolter shells into the flapping form of a tyranid creature clawing over the Thunderhawk’s wing. He turned to Kalypsia and said calmly, ‘Time to leave, inquisitor.’

Wrapping one arm around her waist, he took a couple of steps towards the edge of the vessel, lowering his shoulder and crashing through the wall into the rush of air outside. As he fell, he could hear the rattle of explosions cease above him and he knew that his squad had followed him.

Ashok stood upright and looked across the sand, scanning its featureless terrain for signs of threat. Heat haze rippled across the horizon and he strained his eyes to see beyond it. How far away was the swarm, he wondered?

His mind was alive with voices and sounds, but they were utterly incoherent and deafeningly loud – he could learn nothing from the psychic utterances of the hive mind, except perhaps the location of his own insanity. And he had spent decades burying the genetic insanity of his Chapter.

He pulled his hood further down over his face, hiding his sensitive eyes from the intense glare of the local star. The texture of the shroud on his skin reassured him. The cloth had been presented to him after that terrible ordeal on Hegelian IX, when the Angels Sanguine Death Company had been sent into the catacombs to mop up the remnants of a fleeing tyranid force, but they had lost their minds to the Black Rage and had started to kill each other to slake their thirst for blood. Ashok had killed three of his own battle-brothers before he finally managed to bring his Rage under control. After that, he had spent three years strapped to the Tablet of Lestrallio in the Chapter’s fortress monastery, thrashing against his nightmares. When he finally emerged, he was presented with the Shroud of Lemartes – Guardian of the Damned – as a symbol of his mastery of himself. It was then that the call had come from the Deathwatch and he had been waiting for an opportunity to confront the tyranids again ever since.

A sharp movement over to his right made Ashok spin, planting his power staff into the sand in readiness. But it was Korpheus, climbing out of the crater his landing had punched into the ground, the silver Raven insignia on his auto-reactive shoulder plate a starburst in the bright light. He kept himself low to the ground, checking the surrounding terrain for signs of the enemy before emerging from the crater.

Ashok watched the caution of his battle-brother with a hint of amusement. The Raven Guard were justly famed as covert operations specialists and Korpheus was no doubt well experienced in this kind of drop mission, but Ashok found the creeping about faintly comical. He would rather face the enemy head on, in a blaze of warp energy. Hiding from your enemy prevented you from scything through them like an angel of death – and what could be a better label for the Adeptus Astartes?

Beyond Korpheus, a scattering of other dark figures were emerging from the sand. On the rise of a small dune stood Octavius, resplendent in his magnificent armour, shining in black against the endless undulations of the yellow desert. His head was turning slowly as he scanned the horizon. Behind him, dwarfed by his inhuman size and superhuman presence, stood the delicate figure of Kalypsia, her long cloak billowing in the dusty wind.

Further into the distance, beyond Octavius, Ashok could see the towering figure of Neleus, surrounded by a clutch of other Space Marines, each a black smudge in the rippling heat haze. A burst of red from the shoulders of one told Ashok that the Crimson Fist Veteran Sergeant Grevius was amongst them. A blink of silver suggested that the Space Wolf, Kulac, was also there. Their guns were drawn and pointed skywards. Scattered around them were a series of prone, smoking corpses – presumably the remains of the gargoyles that had attacked the Thunderhawk. The Thunderhawk itself was nowhere to be seen.

‘Tyranocide, mission check,’ stuttered a broken signal into Ashok’s vox bead. He pressed his hand to his ear, trying to improve the signal. Perhaps the impact had unbalanced the implant? More likely, the tyranid hive mind was spilling into real space and disturbing communications. Ashok could remember how his Death Company had lost communication on Hegelian IX and there the swarm had already been broken by the Angels Sanguine. He could remember the voices in his head, driving him into a killing frenzy – part of him knew that the voices were not his, even then. But the Blood Angels and their successor Chapters, like the Angels Sanguine, lived with the constant fear of a frenzied and suppressed internal voice and thus paranoia had kicked in automatically. Ashok was still not sure whether he had lost himself to his own Rage on Hegelian IX, or whether he had been assailed by the Hive Mind and driven to the point of insanity.

‘Broec, check.’ The Black Templar’s signal was strong and clear. It was followed by a string of affirmations from the rest of the team, each of whom appeared to have made it down to the ground in one piece.

‘Ashok, check,’ added the Librarian finally, completing the squad list.

‘Tyranocide proceed,’ came the voice of Octavius again. Ashok could see him on the dune, waving the dispersed line of Space Marines forward to the north. ‘Remain dispersed. Hold the line. Extreme caution.’ The signal was broken and weak, but it was audible enough. Ashok swept his gaze across the horizon once more and then set off through the desert towards the target, one hand holding the rim of his hood to keep the wind from blowing it off his head.

The desert was silent. Dust and sand whipped up into eddies and sand-devils that whisked across the gently rolling landscape, occasionally being swamped by great powdery clouds that floated on gusts of wind. The footprints of the Space Marines vanished as soon as they were made, leaving no trace of their presence. But the sand was loose and soft and the heavy, armoured boots of the Deathwatch sunk deeply with every step – so the approach was slower and more heavy-going than Octavius had anticipated. Kalypsia, lighter on her feet than her hulking escorts, kept pace comfortably – something that she would have struggled to do had they been on firmer ground.

Scanning from left to right, Octavius could see his team progressing over the sand. They were making ground steadily and without opposition. It was too quiet. Octavius had been wondering about the gargoyles that attacked the Thunderhawk on their descent. Most of them had been killed from the air, and the immense fire power of Neleus’s Terminator armour had despatched the rest after they had made landfall. But it seemed odd that nothing had come to support the ugly, flapping wretches.

Octavius shook his head mentally, trying to shake free his human preconceptions. Tyranids are animals, I should not expect them to behave like humans. For all I know, the gargoyles have no way of calling for support. It is entirely conceivable that the rest of the swarm would not care enough to give them support in any case.

However, he could not quite convince himself that the creatures were so simple. It was so very quiet, and Octavius had fought enough battles to know that silence is often the most dangerous noise of all.

‘It seems that our landing site was well-chosen, captain,’ said Kalypsia, pushing her way through the sand and pulling her cloak around her body to prevent the sand cutting into her exposed skin.

‘So it seems, inquisitor,’ replied Octavius without looking at her. His eyes were flicking across the horizon with a hint of anxiety. It was still clear – there was nothing but sand and haze. In his peripheral vision to the left, he could see that Ashok had stopped walking and had planted his staff into the sand in front of him. He stood motionlessly, as though waiting for something to happen. Some distance away, Korpheus had also stopped. The Raven Guard had dropped to one knee and was feeling the sand with his hand, apparently inspecting something on the ground.

Octavius twisted his head round to his right and saw Neleus striding onwards, followed by the rest of the squad, including the two Crimson Fists and Kulac. Just beyond them was Broec, his Black Sword held proudly aloft, as though he were leading a crusade. A wave of reassurance washed over Octavius as he watched the confident progress of his squad.

‘Ashok, Korpheus, what’s wrong?’ asked Octavius, the vox signal hissing badly before fading into a screech of feedback. There was no reply. Octavius punched the side of his helmet in a reflex reaction, but the vox just spluttered and crackled worldlessly.

‘Inquisitor,’ asked Octavius, quickly turning to face Kalypsia, ‘are the tyranids capable of disrupting vox communication?’

‘No, captain. They are simply animals. The presence of the Hive Mind does disrupt psychic communication, but it has no effect on conventional technologies. They are not capable of artifice, captain.’ Kalypsia tried to look directly into the captain’s eyes as she spoke, but they were hidden behind the deeply tinted visor of his helmet. She could not tell where he was looking and this made her uncomfortable for more than one reason. ‘Is there a problem, captain?’

A burst of gunfire made them both spin round to their right. Even from that distance, they could hear the cries of pain and the orders being barked by Neleus. The Terminator had his storm bolter pointed down at the ground and was unloading an incredible discharge into the sand. The other Space Marines had deployed into a wide circle, their guns similarly trained on the ground at their feet. Octavius did a quick mental count – there were only three others. One was missing.

From behind him came the sound of shouts and the pounding of feet. Without turning, Octavius knew that it was Ashok and Korpheus on their way to help the rest of the squad. Octavius also broke into a run, and the three of them went storming across the desert towards their stricken comrades, leaving Kalypsia standing alone on the crest of a dune.

It was Grevius. He had gone. Vanished into the sand. The squad had been pushing on through the desert in the wake of Neleus, their guns trained on the horizon and the sky, waiting for the first signs of an attack. There had been no sign at all. Just the gusts of desert wind and the incredible, eerie silence. Then, with a suddenness that had shocked them all, Grevius had pulled up short and let out a gasp of pain. His comrades had skidded to a halt and turned to face him, in time to watch him teeter precariously and then crash to the ground.

At the front of the column, Neleus had been the last to turn, but had been the first to reach the fallen Space Marine, ploughing through the sand with ease in his Terminator suit. By the time he had reached Grevius, the sergeant’s leg had already stopped bleeding, as his enhanced blood rushed to clot and seal the gaping wound. Grevius had rolled over into a sitting position with his boltgun directed back towards his remaining foot. A couple of metres away, lying just were it had been severed, with blood soaking into the sand around it, was his right leg.

In a sudden flash of movement, a giant blade had darted out of the sand beneath Grevius, slicing cleanly through the armour of his shoulder and taking his left arm off in a single swipe. Neleus had opened fire instantly, but the blade vanished beneath the sand as quickly as it had appeared. The dismembered sergeant had reacted almost as quickly, firing a volley of bolter shells into the increasingly blood-soaked sand underneath him. By this time the rest of squad had formed a defensive perimeter around their sergeant, scanning the ground with their guns for the tiniest sign of movement.

The desert had seethed and started to heave around Grevius, knocking some of the Space Marines off balance. Only Neleus had stood firm, firing continuously into the shifting sands, but he had little effect. With a sudden rush of movement, the sand around Grevius caved in as the massive blade reappeared, thrust through the back of the sergeant, shattering his spine and punching out towards the sky. The subsidence disturbed the footing of all of the Space Marines, even Neleus and their swift reactions were not enough to bring down the monster that dragged the hideously disfigured sergeant below the surface of the desert. As they fired into the ground, the bloodstains gradually vanished into the shifting sand and, by the time Octavius and the others arrived, there was no sign of Grevius at all.

‘What was it?’ asked Octavius, turning to Neleus after surveying the area.

‘I’m not sure, captain,’ answered the Terminator, his voice full of self-recrimination. ‘But it was fast, and it came from under the sand.’

‘How many?’

‘Just one, as far as I could see,’ conceded Neleus, biting on each word.

‘Did you hit it?’ asked Octavius, conscious of Neleus’s discomfort, but needing to know.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

Octavius was shaking his head in disbelief as Kalypsia arrived at the scene.

‘Something wrong, captain?’

‘Yes, very wrong. Inquisitor, what kind of tyranid organism hunts under the ground?’ Octavius’s tone contained a hint of accusation.

‘None that I am aware of, captain. However, as you know, a number of the tyranid genus are mutable. There may well be a new form here on Herodian IV, adapted for hunting in the desert. What did it look like?’

There was a slight edge to Kalypsia’s voice that made Ashok turn his fathomless black eyes to study hers.

‘It had two extended fore-talons, perhaps two metres long. There were four other limbs, which appeared to end in webbed claws, with which it scooped at the sand. When it ducked back below the ground, it exposed a long tail. It appeared to be scaled in yellow.’ Eager to make amends, Neleus was as detailed as he could be.

‘It sounds like some kind of lictor,’ concluded Kalypsia. ‘They are a predator species. Hunters. Extremely adaptable to hostile environments.’

‘Mantis stalkers,’ said Octavius, giving them their most common name. ‘I have seen them before – although never like this. They exude a pheromone trail that draws the rest of the swarm after them. We need to get to some solid ground,’ he added, turning his back to the squad and scanning the horizon.

‘There,’ said Korpheus, pointing out across the desert with his chainsword. All Space Marines had enhanced vision, but the Raven Guard’s eyes were sharpest of all. A great cloud of sand drifted across the vista, parting to reveal a jagged ruin on the horizon to the north. It wasn’t very big, probably no bigger than a Vindicator tank, but it was better than nothing.

In a sudden blur of motion, Ashok whipped his force staff into the air, spinning it above his head before thrusting it down into the sand at the feet of Neleus. The staff spat a bolt of blue flame, which coruscated and cracked between the grains. Neleus took a giant step backwards just in time, as the warp energy impacted with something under the surface, causing the desert to convulse. The rest of the squad dived for the ground, rolling into readiness with their weapons primed.

With a terrible keening, the creature roared out of the sand, rearing up on its hind legs and screeching into the sky. Sand cascaded down its scaled body, and bloody ichor gushed from a deep, pulsing wound in its abdomen. Its fore-talons thrashed wildly around, but the kill-team was already clear of its reach.

Neleus was the first to react, charging forward with his storm bolter a blaze of shells. By the time he launched himself bodily at the lictor, it was already a shredded, ruined mess of cracked scales and decimated tissue. The rest of the squad opened up. Neleus smashed into it, driving his power fist straight through its thorax with all the violence of vengeance, sending a shower of xenos life-blood splattering into the absorbent sand.

A gasp sounded from one of the other Space Marines and Neleus spun in time to see Broec driving his sword into the ground next to the disappearing gauntlet of one of his battle-brothers, a growing diffusion of blood spilling out into the sand around him.

Suddenly there were talons everywhere, flashing out of the sand and thrusting at the Space Marines from all sides. The desert shifted and flowed, rippling with vicious blades like a treacherous ocean. The team were on their feet, loosing volleys of fire into the sand all around them and fending off the talons with their own blades.

Stabbing out a couple of bolter shells, Kalypsia cast her gaze over the surrounding terrain – even she could see that the horizon was now thick with seething blackness. For a moment she thought that it was just the heat haze, but then the blurry forms began to resolve into fixed shapes. In every direction, the horizon was crammed with tyranids, scampering, leaping and charging in their direction.

The massive scything talon swiped out of the sand just as Kalypsia caught the outstretched hand of Octavius. Her feet left the ground just in time, as the barbed blade cut through the air at her heels, finding nothing on which to bite. Octavius pulled her clear of the desert and dropped her unceremoniously onto the overturned flank of the ruined emerald green Vindicator tank, his other arm a blaze of energy as his boltgun spat shells into the incoming horde.

Kalypsia was straight up onto her feet, her bolt pistol drawn in one hand and a crackling force whip burst into life in the other. She strode to the edge of the tank, firing a hail of shells from her gun, until she was in range with her whip. Holstering the pistol, she took the whip in both hands and lashed out with it on full extension. It snapped through the dusty air with a crack of lightning that raked across the sea of protruding talons, slicing them apart in a series of small explosions.

The rumbling horizon was drawing closer, as the swarm descended on the old Mantis Warrior Vindicator tank, which had been completely ruined by a huge explosion at some point in the recent past. The armoured plates on one side had survived the blast, so presumably it had been hit by some kind of cannon on the other side, flipping it into its present position; the armoured plates now acted as a reinforced floor and the Deathwatch team were bunched together on top of it, repelling the boarders.

The towering figure of Neleus in his Terminator suit occupied the stern of the vehicle. His storm bolter threw out a torrent of hellfire shells that punched, ripped and shattered their way through the advancing swarm. He was so close to the edge of the tank that he could reach out and catch some of the subterranean talons as they thrashed impotently around the armour of the ruined vehicle. Grasping one talon in the formidable grip of his power fist, Neleus dragged the lictor creature out of the sand and held it momentarily, dangling from its own fore-talon. Then, with a swift movement, he crushed the talon in his fist and launched the hapless creature in the air with a swing of his immense arm, riddling it with hellfire shells as it flew. By the time it landed back in the sea of its own kind, the creature was little more than a shredded husk.

‘Korpheus! What about that vox link?’ yelled Octavius over the screeches and shrieks of combat.

The Techmarine’s head appeared from within the devastated interior of the Vindicator, shrouded in a gust of smoke.

‘The vox amplifier is barely operational, captain. But I have sent a signal. The unit will repeat the signal until it fails,’ called Korpheus as he pulled himself through the hole in the decking and readied his weapons. ‘The lictors are pounding the armoured plates at the bottom of the tank. When they get through, the vox will be finished, and so will we.’

‘The Emperor protects!’ cried Broec, as he thrust his Black Sword into the air, rattling a volley of bolter shells from the gleaming gun in his other hand. ‘The vile xenos will suffer his wrath before they see the end of us!’

‘You are right, Broec,’ cried Ashok as he launched himself from the Vindicator in a blaze of warp-energy, taking the fight to the enemy in the best traditions of the Angels Sanguine.

‘Well said, brother,’ agreed Octavius as he cast his bolt gun aside and drew his ornate, two-handed force sword from its holster on his back. The blade was a memento of a previous campaign against the Biel-Tan eldar and it cackled with unspeakable energies as bizarre alien runes swam along its length like quick-silver. ‘This is no end for a Deathwatch kill-team!’

Octavius took an epic swing with his sword, slicing it through the abdomen of the first hormagaunt that made the leap onto the Vindicator and pushing it into the mouth of another as it threw its head back to keen.

The swarm was on them now and they were besieged on all sides, with nothing but the damaged armour of the ruined tank between them and the lashing claws beneath the sand, and nothing but their blazing weapons to repel the thousands upon thousands of tyranid organisms that swarmed through the desert towards them.

Two huge explosions rocked the remains of the Vindicator, impacting in the desert just a short distance from it. A spray of liquefied tyranid sleeted across the Deathwatch team, caught in the dust-filled wind.

‘There! There they are,’ said Shaidan, leaning over the pilot-servitor of the Thunderhawk as it powered down through the atmosphere. ‘Fire the lascannons on either side of their position. They need support.’

Searing lances of power fired out from the nose of the Thunderhawk, punching great craters into the sand around the Deathwatch team, showering them with debris.

From their altitude, they could see a hooded figure leap from the Vindicator, surrounded by a halo of blue light. It fought its way into one of the craters left by the lascannon fire and started to engage the tyranids at close range, carrying the fight to them rather than waiting for it to be brought to him. He was surrounded by fire and energy. In his right arm was a force staff of some kind, spinning in a frenzy of warp-energy, spitting bolts of blue into the enveloping swarm. His left arm seemed to be coated in coruscating pulses of power and great javelins of light rushed from his fingertips, incinerating swathes of hormagaunts as they leapt for him, lashing their claws.

Slithering towards the Librarian from three separate directions, Shaidan could see the familiar serpentine shapes of oscillating zoanthropes closing in. Running to the back of the Thunderhawk, he cried, ‘Take us down directly over them. Hold position for emergency extraction.’ Then he launched himself out of the drop-hatch.

‘Inquisitor, what are they?’ asked Octavius, nodding in the direction of one of the giant serpent creatures that were slithering their way towards Ashok. As he spoke, he swept his blade in a low arc, taking the feet away from three termagants that had just crested the Vindicator. With the back swing, he took off their heads before they could even shriek in shock.

Kalypsia turned her head, glancing quickly in the direction indicated by Octavius before resuming her work with the force whip, lashing out into the encroaching sea of claws, rending it into a mush of instantly decaying flesh and shattered bones.

‘Zoanthropes!’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Psykers,’ she added as an explanation. ‘Three of them will be too much for your Librarian.’

‘Thunderhawk!’ yelled Korpheus, struggling to make himself heard over the commotion and the roar of his own chainsword. His eyes were enhanced beyond even those of the other Space Marines, and he caught the glint of the Thunderhawk as it broke the cloud line. ‘And something else…’ But he could not tell what it was. A smaller shape, hurtling towards the ground at an incredible speed. It was not a torpedo. It looked rather like a man. A Space Marine.

‘Neleus,’ cried Korpheus in sudden realisation. ‘Clear a landing site for that Space Marine!’

The Terminator turned his head at the call from his battle-brother and nodded his acknowledgement. Leaving the growling Space Wolf Space Marine, Kulac, to hold the stern, he ran the few steps towards the prow and punched the cyclone missile launcher into action. Two rockets blasted over his shoulders and smashed into the swarm just in time, clearing a large crater and filling the air with great plumes of dust, showering Ashok with slime-filled debris as he fought on nearby.

The falling Space Marine flicked out his arms just as he was about to hit the ground, forming a cross in the air. And he stopped, just hanging there in the air, making no mark in the sand below his feet, his emerald power-armour gleaming in the hazy desert sun. The tyranids seemed to stop momentarily, as though awestruck by the arrival of this new figure. Then they launched themselves forward, lashing at him with talons, claws and teeth. The Space Marine revolved his weapon, an odd looking force-staff with blades on each end, and prepared for battle.

A cry made Neleus and Korpheus turn back to the stern of the vehicle, where they saw Kulac, their battle-brother from the Space Wolves, encased in a terrible orb of purpling fire. His weapons had been scattered to the ground, and he was held in an agonising sphere about ten metres above the ground. Broec was there in an instant, pushing his sword into the energy field and scanning the sea of tyranids for the source of its power.

The orb of warp-energy shattered with the touch of the Black Templar’s Chapter relic, sending the Space Marine slumping to the ground. Another blast of purple fire stabbed out from the swarm, originating from one of the zoanthropes that was working its way round to Ashok’s position. It was passing the stern of the Vindicator on its way.

Broec met the blast with his sword once again, and returned fire with a cough from his bolter. Neleus was already alongside him, and he opened up with his storm bolter, raining a torrent against the slippery creature of the sea. But the shells just seemed to bounce off, flicked aside by tiny bursts of purple energy, as it made its way round towards the Librarian.

‘Broec! What about Kulac?’ called Octavius from the midst of a maelstrom of flashing blades.

The Emperor’s Champion knelt quickly by the side of the fallen Space Wolf. ‘Dead, captain,’ he shouted back.

The Thunderhawk roared down above the Deathwatch team, holding its position a few metres above their heads.

‘Inquisitor, you first,’ cried Octavius over the intense noise of the engines and gunfire.

Kalypsia nodded, raked her whip across the front of the swarm with a final flourish and then leapt for the hands reaching down from the Thunderhawk.

‘Broec. Korpheus. Get Kulac’s body into the Thunderhawk,’ yelled Octavius, conscious that the Space Wolves would not forgive him were he to leave this battle-brother to be consumed by the Great Devourer. ‘Neleus, cover them.’

A flare of purple fire dragged Octavius’s attention back to his Librarian. Ashok and the mysterious new Space Marine were now fighting in the same crater, repelling the boarders with incredible ferocity and skill. Huge blasts of psychic power were jetting out from both figures, and each wielded their force-staffs with formidable prowess. The Mantis Warrior was pressing into the faces of the creatures in the front line, slashing his bladed staff into the sea of claws and whirling it into a frenzied sphere of crackling energy. Ashok stood in the centre of the crater, unleashing a constant tirade of lightning from his fingers and from his staff, holding the tyranid swarm at bay. Great piles of incinerated corpses lined the rim of the crater.

Octavius glanced up at the Thunderhawk and lifted up his left arm. Neleus reached down and caught his captain’s wrist. ‘Take us over that crater!’ ordered Octavius as he swung from the secure grip of the White Consul, his force-sword arcing and lashing at the pincers that reached desperately for his boots.

On the rim of the crater the three zoanthropes were pulsing into syncronisation, sending out oscillating streams of warp energy that smashed into the psychic defences of the two Librarians. Octavius could see that Ashok was weakening in the heart of the crater and that the other Librarian was fighting a losing battle to repel both the swarm and the energetic assault of the tyranid psykers at the same time. The mysterious Librarian had bought Ashok some time, but it was fast running out.

The Thunderhawk swooped down over the crater, with Octavius still hanging out of the drop-hatch. He sheathed his sword and reached down with his free hand, covering fire sputtering out of the hatch from Korpheus and Broec. Ashok looked up at his captain and yelled, ‘For Sanguinius and the Emperor!’ His eyes were burning with red fire and he turned back to the frantic battle that was gradually enveloping him.

‘Ashok! This is not a fight you can win,’ called Octavius calmly. ‘There will be another time.’

For a few seconds the Angels Sanguine Librarian appeared not to hear the words of his captain, as he released a vicious jet of crackling energy towards the zoanthropes on the crest of the crater, causing a great explosion of multi-coloured fire as it impacted on their force-shields. But then he looked back up at Octavius, his eyes gradually fading back to black, and said, ‘You are right, captain. Another time.’ Ashok reached up his left hand and was pulled up into the belly of the Thunderhawk.

‘Take it up!’ came the roaring voice of the Mantis Warrior Librarian from the crater below as he swung his force-staff around his head in a crackle of power, clearing a short perimeter around him. In the brief respite, Shaidan held his staff vertically against his body and a flickering blue fire enveloped his form. Jets of venom spurted out of the swarm from nearby, hissing pathetically against the fire; a hormagaunt launched itself towards him but ricocheted impotently off the energy field.

With an explosion of power that sent shock waves through the swarm, the Mantis Warrior slowly pushed up into the air, dripping blue flames down into the seething mass below his feet.

‘Let’s scoop him up and get out of here,’ said Kalypsia to the pilot-servitor in the Thunderhawk’s cockpit.

She looked out over the scene below and was stunned by the extent of the swarm that had descended on them – it stretched as far as she could see in every direction. Glancing northwards there appeared to be a slight clearing in the near distance around some kind of man-made structure and she bit her teeth together as she realised that they were so close to their target.

‘We’ve seen enough of the tyranids for today,’ she muttered.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2005.
This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS UK.

Cover illustration by Philip Sibbering.

Warrior Brood © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2005, 2015. Warrior Brood, Deathwatch, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78251-933-1

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