The crackling, lightning spitters and the beasts with giant sail-like appendages took up station before the refinery as a flurry of shells and energy blasts slashed towards it. A thick morass of spores and tyranid creatures swarmed forward, exploding and spilling their lifeblood as they absorbed the mass of firepower directed at the refinery. Lance beams cut through spores and burned alien flesh before finally striking the reflective sails of the winged beasts that escorted the lightning spitters. The sails' honeycombed structure dissipated much of the lance beams' strength, rendering them harmless as they scored the structure of the refinery, but failed to penetrate its metal hide.
Starhawk bombers and Fury interceptors surged from the launch bays of the Kharloss Vincennes, attempting to punch a hole through the tyranid screen, but every gap they blasted was soon filled with even more alien beasts. Eventually, the commander of the furies, Captain Owen Morten, pulled his surviving craft back to the carrier to refuel and rearm. Just because a task was impossible was no reason to give up.
No matter how hard the Imperial Navy hit, they could not penetrate the screen of tyranid creatures protecting the refinery and without the drag of friction, its speed increased until it was hurtling towards the Imperial battle line.
'Nothing is getting through!' shouted Philotas.
'Keep firing.' ordered Tiberius, his voice strained.
'Aye, sir.'
Tiberius's jaw muscles bunched in anxiety as he watched the rippling series of explosions bursting before the Vae Victus. Her firepower, normally so fearsome in battle, was availing her nothing as every shell from her bombardment cannon was intercepted by a tyranid creature sent to its death by the alien imperative of the hive mind.
Hundreds of beasts were dying, but they were achieving what the hive mind desired.
Nothing could touch the refinery.
Admiral de Corte gripped the arms of his command chair as the Argus canted to starboard. The massive vessel was slowly moving from the path of the oncoming refinery, but even without asking, he could tell they weren't going to make it. The fleet was scattering from its path as quickly as it could, but even at cruising speed a vessel as vast as a Victory class battleship took time to turn, and even longer from anchor.
Withering salvoes of massed gunnery from the defence monitors and system ships had prevented the approaching kraken from breaking their battle line, but nothing could halt the inexorable approach of the refinery.
'Estimated time to lethal range, Mister Viert?'
'Forty seconds, sir.'
'Get us clear, Philotas.' ordered Tiberius. The closure speeds of the refinery and the Vae Victus was such that, in the time it would take to load and fire another shell from the bombardment cannon, the massive structure would be past them before the shell could arm itself.
Tiberius angled his stance as the prow of the strike cruiser rose and the refinery swiftly vanished from the viewing bay. The admiral could feel the deck shudder beneath him as its hull groaned under the pressure of such violent manoeuvring and the thump of fire from her broadsides and close-in guns as smaller tyranid organisms shearing from the refinery's protective swarm threatened to overwhelm her. Without her complement of Space Marine defenders, Tiberius knew that to allow the tyranids to board the Victus would seal its fate.
'Estimated time to lethal range, Philotas?'
'Twenty seconds, Lord admiral.'
Salvoes of torpedoes exploded amongst the vanguard of the guardian swarm, killing alien organisms in their fiery blasts, but nothing could penetrate the thick mass of creatures forced to give up their existence in service of the hive mind. Less than sixty thousand kilometres separated the fleet from the refinery now. And at its current speed, that meant about ten seconds.
'All hands, abandon ship!' bellowed Admiral de Corte as the proximity alarms of the Argus began blaring. The sacristy bell chimed again and again, warning - as though warning were needed - of the imminent collision of the refinery. He knew it was a wasted breath, none of the ship's lifeboats would be able to get clear of the blast radius of the refinery, but he had to try. Their doom filled the viewing bay, hurtling towards them with awful finality and, in the few seconds left to him, he stood and marched to the centre of the command nave.
He saluted his bridge crew and said, 'It has been an honour to serve with you all. The Emperor protects.'
As the refinery flew into the midst of the Imperial fleet, the lightning spitters that had protected the gargantuan construction turned, whipcord fast, and lashed their former charge with raw tongues of blue fire. Metal ran molten beneath the assault and, like bloated ticks, the lightning spitters bored their way within the softened plates of the structure.
Once inside, each creature pushed its magma-hot discharge before it like a drill bit, slashing through metre after metre of sheet metal to reach the storage chambers at its heart. The heat from their crackling arcs of energy rippled around them, melting their own armoured carapaces and scorching the flesh from their bones, but driven by the implacable will of the hive mind, each beast continued onwards until it reached its goal.
As the first beast punched through the armoured chemical tanks, the flaring, electric arcs flashed across the fuel chamber, instantaneously igniting the volatile hydrogen-plasma mix. Others penetrated fuel chambers across the length and
breadth of the refinery and in a heartbeat, the colossal bomb of the refinery was ripped apart in a cataclysmic explosion.
Hundreds were blinded by the dazzling brightness of the explosion as it ripped across the heavens above Tarsis Ultra. The Argus vanished in the corona of the blast, its shields no protection against the violence of the detonation. Metres-thick sheets of adamantium were vaporised in an instant as the plasma fire engulfed the ancient vessel. Compartments vented into space, the oxygen igniting as the heat tore through the ship and its massive structure sagged as her keel melted in the incandescent heat. Thousands of men died instantly as their blood flashed to steam and the skin was scorched from their bones in the time it took to draw breath to scream.
The fires of the explosion expanded rapidly, quickly eclipsing the doomed Argus and smashing into the other vessels of the Imperial fleet. Six defence monitors and as many system ships vaporised as their magazines and fuel stores exploded. The Cobras of Cypria squadron broke apart as their store of torpedoes cooked off in the launch bays, though the ill-fated Cobra of Hydra squadron miraculously survived.
The launch bays of the Kharloss Vincennes blazed as fuel stores caught light, the blast doors melting shut and rendering them unable to recover previously launched squadrons of fighters and bombers. Well-practiced fire drills saved the ship and her captain's quick manoeuvring put her prow-first into the detonation and lessened the buffeting Shockwave's effect.
The Sword of Retribution, the Yermetov and the Luxor, shielded from much of the blast's force, were spared the worst of the damage, though their corridors echoed to the sound of hull breach klaxons and yelling damage control gangs.
Blood-red light bathed the control bridge of the Vae Victus, the sacristy bell ringing as though the ship herself was screaming. Sparks and jets of hydraulic fluid spurted from shattered control panels, but Tiberius knew they were lucky still to be in one piece.
The Vae Victus had been stern on to the explosion and its force had hurled her about like a leaf in a hurricane, but Admiral Tiberius's quick thinking had put her clear of the main destructive energies of the hell that had engulfed the majority of the Imperial fleet.
'Damage report!' bellowed Tiberius.
' We've got hull breaches on decks six, seven and nine.' reported Philotas. 'The engines are operating at fifty per cent efficiency and we've lost most of the turrets on our rear quarters'
'What of the rest of the fleet?' asked Tiberius, dreading the answer.
'I don't know sir. The surveyors are having trouble penetrating the electromagnetic radiation released by the blast.'
'Get me Admiral de Corte, we need to get control of t
his situation, now.'
'Aye, sir.'
Tiberius lurched across the buckled deck to stand beside the plotting table, trying to make sense of the confused hash of imagery displayed there. A red haze filled the bottom of the schematic, the slate unable to display enough symbols to represent the tyranid fleet. Scattered blue icons faded in and out of focus as the surveyors fought to lock down the positions of the Imperial vessels.
'Emperor save us.' whispered Tiberius as names of vessels began flickering up next to the blue icons. Precious few, he saw. He frowned, scanning the table for the icon representing the Argus. Tiberius looked up as Philotas said, 'The Argus is gone, sir.'
'Gone-' echoed Tiberius.
'She caught the full force of the blast. There's nothing left of her.'
The lord admiral fought down his shock at the destruction of so mighty a vessel as the Argus and the death of her crew.
And the rest of the fleet?' he asked, quietly.
'It looks like the local ships took the worst of the blast, but we've lost the Cobras and the Argus. The Sword of Retribution is damaged, but under power, and the Kharloss Vincennes is still with us though her launch bays are out of action.'
Tiberius nodded curtly, assessing the scale of the catastrophe and knew that the campaign in space was over.
'Issue a general communication to all vessels. I am taking command of the fleet. Order all ships to disengage. Get clear of Tarsis Ultra and rendezvous at Calydon.'
'Admiral?'
'Do it!' snapped Tiberius. 'Fighting an unwinnable battle is of no value if by doing so we lose the war. Now do as I say.'
Philotas nodded and dispatched the admiral's orders as Tiberius gripped the edge of the plotting table. Nothing now could be gained by fighting the advancing tyranids in space and he would not be responsible for dooming every man of the Imperial fleet.
Whatever came next, the defenders on Tarsis Ultra would have to face it on their own.
NINE
A cold wind blew across the tops of the Cullin Mountains, howling across the rocky ground below and stripping any lingering warmth from the bright morning. The air was crisp, but the sun was bright and low, preventing the foaming waters of the mountain springs from freezing over. Splashes of emerald green forests dotted the lower slopes of the mountains and, here and there, herds of shaggy yrenbacks made their way back down slope to the warmer plains from their drinking grounds.
Suddenly, the motion of the herds halted, each animal raising its long, furry neck into the air, as though scenting a predator. The herds milled in confusion, drawing closer to one another, agitated at their inability to identify the threat they all felt. The animals brayed in confusion, ears flat against their skulls.
A scattershot darkness covered the flanks of the mountain as a host of shapes flashed across the sky. All across the mountains, puffs of snow and rock were thrown skyward by the tremendous impacts of falling objects. The herds scattered as more and more objects dropped from the sky, churning the surface of the mountains with their numbers.
The clouds above flashed with purple lightning as spores burst within them, dispersing a multitude of contaminants and viruses that instantly began working to alter the dimato-logical balance of the planet's atmosphere. Heat built up rapidly, increasing the air pressure and causing actinic bolts of lightning to arc from cloud to cloud, dispersing them as a viscous, toxic rain.
In minutes, the newly risen sun was obscured by the sheer mass of spores falling from the heavens. Terrified yrenbacks ran backwards and forwards across the mountain sides, leaping through the deep snow in their blind panic. Churning motion erupted from the steaming spores that had landed in their midst, flashing claws and alien screeches as the creatures within them emerged and sought something to kill. Driven into a frenzied killing fury by the hive mind and bio-engineered, super-adrenal chemicals, the first wave of tyranid invaders hacked entire herds of the grazing animals to bloody ruin before collapsing and dying, spent by the fury of their assault and their inability to survive the freezing temperatures.
Thousands of tyranid organisms in the first wave perished as the numbing cold of Tarsis Ultra froze them within minutes of their arrival. After burning virtually all their bodily energies in their initial surge of violence, and without reserves of fat, none could survive more than a few minutes before perishing.
But none of this mattered, for as each creature died and the hive mind became aware of the local conditions on the prey planet, it simply adjusted the biological physiology of its warrior organisms, enabling them to produce more insulating tissue and energy reserves that would allow them to survive for longer periods.
Amid the loamy earth of the lower forests, the thick, biological rain soaked into the tree canopy and saturated the earth with its bacteria-laden substance. Microbes containing the genetic blueprint of tyranid fauna spread rapidly through the ground, assessing and digesting the chemical content of the soil before turning that energy into horrifyingly fast growth spurts.
Multicoloured fronds ripped their way through the silver bark of the trees and twisting vines and creepers surged from
the moistened ground. Again, the cold of Tarsis Ultra dramatically shortened the plants' lifespan, but as each leaf and creeper died, it vomited a host of fresh spores into the atmosphere and the cycle began again.
As each generation of plant went through its brief life cycle, the chemical reactions fermenting in the ground began raising the temperature of the surrounding air. Streamers of heated air drifted from the ground, warming the burgeoning plant life until the rate of growth was rising exponentially. Jagged spore chimneys of thick, vegetable matter broke through the hot earth and pushed skyward, their root structure burrowing through the permafrost to the nutrient-rich soil below. Hot steam and exhaust gasses from the biological conflagration below belched from the chimneys, sending yet more spores high into the atmosphere to be spread by the prevailing winds. As the atmosphere heated even more, strong updrafts of warm air rose, meeting the cold air descending from the mountaintops to create freak weather patterns that spread the contamination of the tyranid organisms even further.
The invasion of Tarsis Ultra had begun.
Despite the inability of the Imperial fleet to hold back the tyranid invaders, Tarsis Ultra was not without defences of her own. Ground-based batteries of defence lasers fired skyward and hundreds of orbital torpedoes roared into the upper atmosphere on blazing tail plumes.
The defence lasers slashed through the sky, but the rapidly mutating content of the air had one more adaptive surprise for the defenders of Tarsis Ultra.
One of the greatest problems for ground-based laser weapons was the reduction in power they suffered over long distances, called 'thermal blooming'. As a laser beam travels through the air, small quantities of its energy are lost to the surrounding atmosphere as heat, which causes disturbances in the air and disrupts the optical path of the beam. Not only does this impair accuracy, but it spreads the beam wider, thus weakening the energy delivered to its target. For the colossal energies produced by the defence lasers, this was not normally a problem, but each beam was passing through dozens of rapidly fluctuating temperature patches in the air, causing them to impact with greatly reduced power.
Many of the smaller organisms suffered at the hands of the defence lasers, but the majority of the tyranid creatures had little to fear from them.
But torpedoes have no such barriers to performance and these weapons reaped a fearful tally amongst the gathering predators. Hundreds of torpedoes exploded amongst the bloated spore ships of the tyranid fleet, destroying some and fatally wounding others. Scores of alien creatures perished and fell through the atmosphere as bright, fleshy meteors, haemorrhaging their lifeblood like comets' tails.
The skies above Tarsis Ultra were what Imperial strategos referred to as 'target-heavy' and every torpedo found its mark in a tyranid creature. Within two hours, over five hundred confirmed kills had been reported by the silo commander
s, along with desperate requests for additional ordnance to fire. Faced with so many targets, each silo exhausted its supply of weapons after another hour of firing.
Against any conventional invaders, the defences of Tarsis Ultra would have caused utter devastation and crippled any attempt to invade.
But the tyranids were far from conventional invaders.
From the air, the hydro-skiff resembled a speeding silver bullet as it roared along the frozen surface of the hydroway. Its passenger compartments were laden with soldiers of the Logres regiment making their way back to Erebus, its speed approaching two hundred kilometres per hour as its giant, prop-driven engines hurled it along the frozen canal surface.
A mist of ice crystals billowed in its wake as the hydro-skis angled to take the skiff around a bend in the canal, rounding a series of low hills capped with a thatch of evergreen firs. Sparks flew as the offside ski grazed the mag-rails on the side of the canal, the pilot having taken the turn a little too fast for comfort. But concerns of safety were now outweighed by the need for speed. They had seen the heavens criss-crossed by bright streaks of lasfire, and the pale blue of the sky to the west was laced with cloudy pillars from firing torpedo silos. No one needed to tell the men of the Logres regiment what was happening, and that it was time to head for the safety of Erebus.
Unnatural twilight was falling as tyranid spores filled the sky above, long shadows cast by chittering black clouds that spun and swooped like flying oil slicks. Soldiers peered nervously through the steamed windows at the gathering darkness, willing the skiffs pilot to coax his machine to yet faster speeds.