Tigurius smiled. Ricimer had his faults, but a lack of tactical acumen was not one of them. ‘I’ll defer to you then, brother. Arrange our withdrawal as you see fit.’ The vox crackled again, loudly, in his ear. A garbled voice floundered in a wash of interference and then fell silent. The sound of bolter fire echoed up from the hab-block.
Ricimer cocked his head. ‘Geta… report,’ he said, hesitating. ‘Metellus, Oriches, sound off.’ Voices crackled over the vox, and Tigurius turned to see one of the combat squads hurrying towards them. ‘Metellus,’ Ricimer said.
‘There’s Oriches,’ Tigurius said, gesturing with his staff. The second of the three squads came into view, firing behind them as they moved. One of the Space Marines, clutching the bulky shape of a heavy bolter, stopped and turned, levelling the weapon at some unseen enemy. The heavy bolter roared, and Tigurius heard the high-pitched cries of dying tyranid beasts.
‘They’re massing. Something’s driving them forward again,’ Oriches shouted, as he climbed the steps. His armour, as well as that of his men, was scorched and scored by blistering venom and alien claws. ‘It’s big, whatever it is.’
‘One of the command-caste, perhaps,’ Ricimer said.
‘No,’ Tigurius said. The echo of the scream was still in his head like an ache. ‘It’s something else. I can feel it.’ He looked out into the dark. ‘Geta?’ he asked, looking up at Ricimer. Ricimer said nothing. He stared out into the ruins of the block. Tigurius could tell from the sudden flickering of his aura that the other Ultramarine was concerned. Geta should have fallen back with the others. If he hadn’t, that meant his squad had engaged the enemy. The sound of bolter fire ratcheted through the still air.
Tigurius looked at Ricimer. ‘Fall back into the space port, as planned. If I have not returned by the time of extraction, you are to follow standing orders. Evacuate and turn this planet to ashes from orbit.’
‘Where are you going?’ Ricimer asked.
‘I shall meet the enemy in the field, as is my right and privilege,’ Tigurius said. ‘Someone must remind them that the sons of Guilliman are not a meal that agrees with them.’ And I want to know what that was that I felt, he thought. If the hive fleets had given birth to some new monstrosity, he wanted to know about it and test its might if possible. Knowledge was power.
‘One of us should come with you,’ Ricimer said.
‘Geta will serve in that capacity,’ Tigurius said, over his shoulder. ‘When you see us, know that the enemy will not be far behind.’
‘I don’t need to be Chief Librarian to know that, brother,’ Ricimer called.
Tigurius chuckled, but didn’t reply. He moved quickly, gathering his strength as he did so. Something, some flicker of foresight, told him he would need it. He broke into a run, sprinting into the labyrinthine confines of the hab-block. He trusted in his senses, physical and otherwise, to lead him to Geta and the others.
As he continued on, the sound of bolter fire grew steadily louder, drawing closer. Geta and his brothers were hard-pressed, Tigurius suspected. Then, if what he’d felt were any indication, they might soon be a good deal worse than that. He’d never felt such raw power, not from any alien psyker he’d ever encountered. He hurtled along a broad avenue, moving smoothly, until a flash of movement caught his attention. He smelled the acrid tang of fear, mingled with blood, as he slid to a stop.
A group of ragged figures stumbled out of a side-street. He raised his staff, then lowered it as two of his battle-brothers came into view just behind them. He recognised them both – Valens and Appius – as members of Geta’s squad.
‘Chief Librarian,’ Valens said, smashing a fist against his chestplate in a hasty salute.
Several of the humans wore the battle-tattered remnants of the uniform of the local defence forces. The rest were clad in Administratum robes. All were wounded, some worse than others. They looked at Tigurius dully, exhausted and drained of emotion.
‘We found them holed up in a signatorium,’ Valens said. ‘We almost missed them, but one of them managed to signal us.’ He gestured back the way they had come. ‘Geta and Castus stayed behind, to give us time to get the humans clear. The enemy were right behind us – swarms of them, ’gaunts and more besides.’
‘Forgive me, brother, but I am more concerned about what might be behind the chaff,’ Tigurius said. He could feel something coming closer, like the rumble of distant thunder. He tapped Valens on the shoulder-plate with his staff. ‘I need you to follow your orders. Go. I will find the others.’
Valens hesitated. ‘But…’
Tigurius reeled as a sudden flare of pain seared his mind. The humans screamed and staggered, one falling to the ground, her eyes rolling to the whites, and blood pouring from her nose and mouth. Valens and Appius felt it as well, the former shaking his head like a stunned bovid. ‘What in Guilliman’s name…?’ he croaked.
Tigurius didn’t reply. A bolter roared close by, and he saw Geta stumble out into view from the same side-street that Valens and the others had come from, shoving another battle-brother ahead of him. Their armour was scorched black where the bare ceramite wasn’t showing, and it was wreathed in smoke. As the wounded Space Marine stumbled, Geta whirled about, his bolter rising. Something pale and radiating a sickly luminescence stretched out towards him. The wriggling ectoplasmic tendrils briefly fluttered over the Space Marine’s head. His helmet burst asunder in a welter of blood, bone and brain matter.
Tigurius’s eyes widened as Geta’s body sank to its knees, and slowly toppled over, covering the form of his wounded brother.
‘Castus,’ Valens began, starting forward. Tigurius caught his arm. He could feel a cold scrabbling at the edges of his mind, as if something were trying to pry back his thoughts, in the wake of that searing scream. Whatever had killed Geta was more dangerous than any mind-beast he’d encountered before.
‘I’ll go. Withdraw, get the humans to safety,’ he said.
Valens hesitated, but only for the briefest of moments. Then he and Appius were moving swiftly, following orders, falling in around the small group of bedraggled soldiers and civilians. Quickly, the Ultramarines scooped up those humans who were too injured to walk by themselves, or bent so that the latter could climb onto their backs. Valens held a small child cradled to his chest, the girl’s mother clinging to his neck. Tigurius felt a flicker of pride at the sight. Let them bestride the galaxy like the gods of old, sheltering mankind from destruction at the hands of an uncaring universe, he thought. A line from the Codex Astartes, and a good one.
That was what it meant to be a Space Marine. That was what it meant to bear the colours of the Chapter into war. Theirs was not merely to bring death to the enemies of mankind, but to preserve life, where they could. They were the shield, as well as the sword, of humanity, and Tigurius did not intend to falter in that duty. Emperor guide my hand, he thought, letting his mind reach out towards the distant, flickering star that was the holy Astronomican.
As he did so, however, he recoiled in disgust. An intrusive, creeping miasma spread across his thoughts, plucking at his senses. It felt like acid splashed on flesh, and he staggered, his hand flying to his head. Pain flooded his nerves, and he fought to regain control of himself. It was worse even than the scream had been. He turned, teeth gritted, and saw Geta’s killer stride into sight.
It was a centaur of sorts, moving forward on four thick limbs, but possessing a barrel torso, topped by a heavy, pulsing braincase and two long, deadly looking talons. Cruel spikes rose from its segmented carapace, and the squirming meat of its mind pulsed wetly, filling the air with a diseased radiance. The world turned soft around it, and he could feel the terrible weight of its regard as it turned its eyeless skull towards him. Its fang-studded jaws champed eagerly as it stalked towards him.
Tigurius did not recognise the beast, but he knew what it was, regardless. It was all the horror and fear that flowe
d in the wake of the hive fleets made manifest, and its servants bounded past it, screeching in predatory anticipation.
Tigurius tore his eyes from the larger creature and sent a killing thought smashing into the scuttling hormagaunts. Even as they died, he wrenched his gaze back to the thing that had killed Geta. Whatever it was, it would die, as easily as all the rest. He sent a bolt of shimmering psychic force thundering towards it.
The sixfold mind-nodes which clustered on its skull flexed unpleasantly, and the bolt washed harmlessly across the shimmering barrier that had suddenly formed about the beast. Tigurius stepped back, readying another bolt, but his enemy was quick to take advantage of his moment of hesitation.
Its jaws opened soundlessly, as energy speared from its sightless cranium. The psychic scream carved through his defences, obliterating the sutras that guarded his thoughts from the vast, alien mindscape that pressed down on his psyche. His skull felt as if it were swelling within the envelope of his flesh, and he clutched at his head. Streamers of vibrant agony ran up and down his spine, and he could taste blood and bile. The alien mind bore down on him, like a wrestler pressing an opponent to the ground. He sank down beneath its pressure until one knee touched the ground.
Tigurius drove the end of his staff into the broken pavement, as if it might anchor him in place. His thoughts clung to the intricate designs, finding strength in the millennia-old patterns. He had found it beneath the Great Bastion on Andraxas, and it was said, by the artificer-scribes of Corinth, that the staff might once have belonged to Malcador the Sigillite, First Lord of Terra. Sometimes, in moments of great stress, moments like this, he thought he could hear the rasp of a voice out of antiquity. A ghost of a memory of the man who had once fought to defend the Imperium, even as Tigurius himself now did.
He focused on that dry, rustling murmur, and strove to block out the pain that sought to drown his mind. He reached up and clamped his free hand around the staff. Grasping it in both hands, he hauled himself to his feet.
The creature loped towards him, its four legs pumping like pistons. Its great talons swept out, and he only narrowly dodged aside. He rolled away, drawing his bolt pistol as he came to his feet, and fired. The tyranid shrieked as bilious ichor spurted from its flesh. It turned swiftly, and the tip of one talon scored a line across his chestplate, sending bits of ancient parchment fluttering to the ground. He fired again, ignoring the growing ache in his head, trusting in his mental shields to hold against the creature as its mind-nodes pulsed. That trust, however, was in vain. Smoke boiled from the circuitry that lined the interior of his psychic hood as its synaptic connectors burned out one by one.
Tigurius staggered. His staff and bolt pistol slipped from numb fingers. The creature hissed and slunk around him. He could feel it prying at the gates of his mind, scrabbling about in the shadows of his consciousness. His limbs felt heavy and awkward, and he sank down once more, borne under by the enormity of its will. The world gave a spasm, like a faulty pict-feed. He smelled rancid meat, and heard a riotous murmur that overwhelmed his thoughts, smashing them aside. He felt heat, and hunger… a terrible hunger.
That hunger tore through Tigurius, smashing aside his certainties and assurances, his confidence and surety, in a way it had never done before. All of it, all of his training, his skill, his power as Chief Librarian, was as nothing before that inhuman ache, and he realised with a growing horror that he had never truly faced the hive mind before – that this hunger was a roaring inferno compared to the flickering spark he had touched previously.
It was a hunger such as a fire might feel, enormous and unending. A hunger which would never know appeasement and would never abate, not even when the last sun had flickered and died, leaving the galaxy a cold, barren void at last. Even then, the hunger would not end, even then the hive mind would hunt, feeding on itself until, at last, the surviving shard of its intelligence withered and starved, alone in the dark and quiet.
But before that, it would feed on every world. It would batten on every star, and strip every system and sector of life. The Imperium would fall to it. There would be no salvation, no last minute reprieve. The murmurs grew in volume, and he clutched uselessly at his head, trying to block them out.
As Tigurius fought, trying to shutter the gates of his mind, scraps of sound and memory burned across the horizon of his thoughts. He saw flickering images, as if he were seeing through the eyes of the hive mind as it spread out to consume Ultima Segmentum. He heard the slow scrape of the monster’s claws as it advanced towards him, across the street. But he could not rise to confront it, could not stifle the images which overwhelmed his mind with thoughts and memories not his own.
They were flashes only, brief moments of time, crystallised and vivid.
He saw Sisters of Battle fighting back-to-back with Militarum Tempestus Scions as a tidal wave of chitin and talons loomed over them, ready to sweep them aside. He felt their fear and pain as the image burst like a bubble, parting to reveal a Terminator, clad in the crimson heraldry of the Blood Angels Chapter, grappling with a multi-limbed broodlord in the burning ruins of an Imperial palace. As the broodlord swiped its cruel claws across his brother Space Marine’s chestplate, Tigurius clutched at his own chest, feeling the pain of the blow as if he’d taken it himself.
His mind reeled as the scene wavered and tore, revealing the sleek void-craft of the eldar, locked in battle with a swarm of flying horrors birthed by the hive fleet. He felt the ground tremble beneath him as the beast drew closer. The alien stink of it was thick in his nostrils, but he could not focus, could not even see it.
The images came faster and faster, overwhelming him with their intensity. Some small part of his mind knew that the creature was using them to batter him, to weaken him, even as Tigurius himself had used his powers so many times to weaken the tyranid swarms – to make them easy prey. His head felt full to bursting. He saw a warrior of the Grey Knights, trapped between the gibbering filth of the warp and a horde of hormagaunts. Even as the Grey Knight moved to confront his foes, the image came apart like sand in the tide, and suddenly, Tigurius was caught in stultifying darkness. He saw green lights, and heard the squeal of ancient machinery coming to life, but too late. The steel-limbed necron warriors awoke from the slumber of ages as the tyranids flooded the tomb, smashing the automata down as they rose.
He smelled and tasted blood. Blood Angels and Flesh Tearers fought against overwhelming hordes beneath a red star, and he felt their rage and madness as if it were his own. It threatened to overwhelm him, and he cried out. The image shattered and he was smashed to the ground by a heavy blow. Another blow caught him across the back and he felt his armour rupture. He rolled over with a groan, mind sluggish, body barely responding. Hoses popped and seals burst in his armour as its weight settled on him, driving his wounded back against the street.
Its featureless skull loomed over him as he struggled uselessly against it. Blossoms of ectoplasm sprouted on its head, unfurling and growing, becoming tendrils like the ones which had been the cause of Geta’s death. The tendrils quivered, and then stiffened and shot towards him. Something cold touched him and darkness invaded him. It was stronger than the scream, impossible to resist.
His thoughts were ground under the relentless clamour of an alien intelligence far older and crueller than he had ever suspected – this intelligence was nothing like the others; the Leviathan was stronger than the Behemoth, and more dangerous than the Kraken. Worse, he’d been wrong. There was a mind there, amidst the hunger, a true mind, a fierce self-awareness that put the torch to every assumption and scrap of knowledge about the tyranids that he’d possessed.
And that mind hated him. It wanted vengeance. It wanted him. For the first time, Varro Tigurius felt the first stirrings of fear. Such a thing could not be defeated. His will was as nothing next to that of the hive mind. It would devour him, and then Kantipur, and after that, the sub-sector. It could not be stopped.
Even Holy Terra would fall.
No!
Even as the thought filled his mind, he refused it. Terra would not – could not – fall. He focused, looking past the horror that held him, and up into the darkness beyond it. He could still hear the voice of the staff, even though it was out of reach. It whispered to him and he closed his eyes, trying to focus on it rather than the horror reaching out to engulf him. He could feel the heat and light of the Astronomican, he could hear its song, swelling in his mind, dimly at first, and then more loudly.
Tigurius reached out, even as he drowned in that cold, hungry darkness, and felt the light of the Emperor’s grace, just at the tips of his fingers. Was it the same light that Malcador had felt, the day he took the Emperor’s place on the Golden Throne? Had the Sigillite felt the light of the Astronomican on him, the day he’d sacrificed his life for the good of the Imperium? The whispers grew in strength, filling his mind, driving out doubt and hesitation. Malcador had died for the Imperium – could he do any less?
He grabbed hold of the light with all of his strength, and sent it pulsing outward, against the dark. There was a scream, like that of a startled animal, as the shadow in the warp met the blinding light of humanity’s guiding star, and then the weight was gone and he could breathe again. His eyes popped open and he saw the xenos monster stumble away, shaking its head. Greasy smoke rose from its brain-case, and could smell the stench of rancid, burning meat. He lunged to his feet.
Acting on instinct, he snatched up his bolt pistol and flung himself at the monster. He caught hold of its carapace and swung himself up. It heaved, trying to buck him off, but to no avail. He shoved the barrel of his bolt pistol against the meat of its mind, and emptied the clip. The great body convulsed, and it took a faltering step. Then, with a sibilant whine, it toppled, slamming into the street hard enough to crack the pavement. Tigurius rolled clear.
He came to his feet and retrieved his staff. As his fingers tightened about it, he spun and extended it towards the twitching hulk, ready for it to spring to life once more. Thankfully, it did not. It sagged, and the acidic bile that passed for its blood began to eat its way free of the armoured shell.