Satisfied that all was as it should be, he slung his shotgun and made his way back into the warehouse. Crammed in tight, nearly three thousand people covered virtually every square metre of floor space. Smouldering braziers kept the worst of the night’s biting chill away and stolen, high-calorie Imperial ration packs designed for winter operations were stretched to feed entire families. Ragged tarpaulins offered a little privacy to those who could scavenge them. Only the cold kept the stench of so many unwashed bodies from stinking the place up.
Tigerlily made her way through the crowded warehouse and, though he knew she was giving away firewood without
taking anything in return, he let it go, figuring it was as well to keep her sweet. There was no one better with a knife and he’d seen her handiwork often enough to know that pissing her off wasn’t a good idea. Soft sobbing and low voices filled the warehouse. Glares of hostility followed him everywhere, but he didn’t care.
They might hate him, but they needed him. Without him, they were all as good as dead. It was that simple, and if he made a killing along the way, well that was just fine and dandy.
As he made his way to the front of the warehouse he heard a strangled cry from behind a tied-down tarp.
It was a common enough sound in here and Snowdog ignored it until he heard a familiar voice hiss, ‘Shut your mouth, girl. Your man agreed to this, so shut your damn mouth and lie still.’
Immediately, Snowdog spun on his heel and racked his shotgun. He ripped aside the tarp, snarling in rage as he saw Trask holding down a weeping girl, her dress hitched up over her knees.
‘Trask, damn you! I said no more of this!’
‘Frag you, Snowdog,’ snapped Trask, rising to his feet. ‘They ain’t got no money!’
‘I said no,’ repeated Snowdog. He stepped forwards and hammered his shotgun into Trask’s face. The thick wooden stock broke his nose with a sharp crack. He followed up with a boot to the groin. Trask dropped, hands clutched to his crotch and blood spurting from his nose. Snowdog spun the shotgun and jammed the blue-steel barrel between Trask’s legs.
‘I even think you’ve done this again and I pull the trigger next time. You get me?’
Trask coughed a wad of blood and phlegm.
‘I said, “do you get me?”,’ bellowed Snowdog.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ coughed Trask. ‘I get you, you bastard.’
‘Get out of my sight, Trask,’ snapped Snowdog.
His face a bloody mask, Trask painfully picked himself up and lurched away, shouting at sniggering people to shut the hell up. Snowdog took a deep breath and held out his hand to the crying girl. She shook her head, tears cutting clear streaks down the dirt on her face.
‘Whatever,’ shrugged Snowdog, fishing out a couple of crumpled bills from his trousers. He tossed them to her and said, ‘I might be many things, but I won’t stoop that low. You understand?’
The girl nodded hurriedly, tucking the cash into her dress and scurrying away.
Snowdog watched her go as Silver came up behind him and slid her arms around his waist.
‘He’s gonna kill you if you don’t kill him first,’ she said.
‘Not Trask,’ said Snowdog, ‘he ain’t got the guts to come at me face to face.’
‘I know, that’s why you’d better watch your back.’
‘I will,’ promised Snowdog.
LORD INQUISITOR KRYPTMAN shivered, despite the thick robes he wore and the thermal generator burning brightly beside him. His breath misted in the air and the stench from the huge pile of corpses gathered on the esplanade behind the wall on the orders of Magos Locard was beginning to make him nauseous. He had studied, dissected and killed tyranids for over two centuries, but could never get used to their disgusting alien smell. The sooner this race was exterminated the better.
His personal retinue of Storm Troopers as well as two members of the Deathwatch led by Captain Bannon formed a cordon around them, hellguns and bolters pointed outwards into the night.
‘Anything?’ he shouted to Locard, who was waist-deep in tyranid viscera. His robes were filthy, his mechadendrites sifting through the organic waste and a genoprobe chiming softly in his hands.
‘No, my lord. All the creatures I have examined so far are at least sixth generation iterations and therefore useless.’
‘Damn,’ swore Kryptman. ‘Very well, burn them. Burn them all.’
CONCEALED BY THE night’s darkness, the lictor slid through the darkness of the city, making its way towards where the pheromone signature of its alien kin was strongest.
Drawn towards the valley mouth, the lictor moved with stealth and speed, like a flickering shadow that darted from
cover to cover, unseen and unheard, even by those it killed. On occasion it had encountered prey and killed them to bolster its energy reserves before moving onwards.
The lictor rounded the corner of a ruined building, feeling the scene before it wash through its sensory receptors in a heartbeat. It sensed heat, dead kin and a pheromone signature that surely indicated a leader beast of prey.
CAPTAIN BANNON’S EYES scanned from side to side as Inquisitor Kryptman and Locard performed their grisly autopsies on the tyranid corpses they had been ordered to gather. For what purpose, Bannon didn’t know and didn’t care, so long as it helped the defenders exterminate these xenos. He and his men had travelled the length and breadth of the city’s armed forces, instructing every squad in the best methods of combating tyranids, pointing out weak spots in their natural armour, vulnerable organs and the correct hymnals to recite both prior to and following combat.
It was slow work, but it was paying off, as the daily casualty rosters, while still horrifying, were not as high as they might have been. Bannon understood that this could partly be accounted for by the weakest men having already fallen and the strongest remaining, but the men of Erebus had learned quickly and he knew that alien losses were much higher.
He had been impressed by the Ultramarines and the Mortifactors, though he found it hard to believe that both were descended from the same gene stock. His proud lineage came from the blessed Rogal Dorn and he briefly wondered how many of the successor Chapters of me Imperial Fists had deviated from their original teachings. Not many, he surmised, if the Black Templars were anything to go by.
‘Captain Bannon,’ said Inquisitor Kryptman.
‘My lord?’
‘There is nothing here of value. Burn it all.’
Bannon said, ‘Aye,’ and nodded to Bromer Elwaine, originally of the Salamanders Chapter, who raised his flamer and sent a sheet of burning promethium over the mound of cadavers. His mouth twitched in a smile of satisfaction as he watched them immolate.
‘Brother-captain,’ snarled Henghast of the Space Wolves. ‘Enemy near!’
Bannon knew better than to doubt the Space Wolfs senses, but before he could do more than face outwards, it was upon them.
One of the inquisitor’s Storm Troopers was lifted from the ground, multiple barbs bursting from his back in a spray of blood and bone. Hellguns fired blindly into the dark, the soldiers having lost their night vision looking into the fire. Another soldier fell, his legs shorn from his body by a massive swipe of chitinous claws.
He saw it in the flickering glow of the flames. A lictor, its upper claws unsheathed and bloody. He raised his bolter, aiming for the junction of thorax and legs, and fired a hail of shells. The lictor spun away from his shots, speeding around the edge of the burning pyre of alien corpses.
Bannon ran around the fire, shouting, ‘Henghast, go left! Elwaine, cover!’
Elwaine widened his stance, bracing his flamer as Henghast made his way around the other side. Kryptman had his pistol drawn and Locard twisted his head left and right, chattering excitedly to the inquisitor.
He scanned the ground before him, shutting out the screams of those wounded by the lictor. Damn, but it was quick. Where had it come from?
Bannon heard it a second before it attacked.
Power
ful muscles hurled the lictor straight over the pyre, its claws aimed at his heart. He dropped, rolling and firing in one motion. Its claws ploughed the rockcrete, shearing through his shoulder guard and drawing blood. His shots went wild as a tongue of flame washed over the lictor.
But it was no longer there, vaulting from Elwaine’s line of fire and smashing the Space Marine from his feet. Clawed hands ripped the flamer from his grip and tore his arms from his sockets in a flood of crimson. Elwaine dropped with a grunt of pain, still kicking at beast as it dismembered him.
Bannon fired again, this time drawing a screech of pain ‘ from the lictor as his bolts penetrated its chitinous hide. It spun, blindingly quick, and barbed tendons lashed out, skewering his bolter. The weapon exploded as the propellant in the ruptured shells ignited and Bannon fell back, his gauntlets melted in the blast.
Hellgun fire slashed at the lictor and over the screams Bannon head Kryptman’s voice.
‘Don’t kill it! For the Emperor’s sake, don’t kill it!’
He rolled to his feet as the lictor came at him. drawing his combat knife and leaping to meet it.
As he leapt he realised that the lictor wasn’t coming for him.
It was going for Inquisitor Kryptman.
Kryptman fired his pistol at point blank range, blasting clear a portion of the lictor’s upper thigh. It stumbled, but its mantis-like upper claws swept down to eviscerate the inquisitor.
Then Henghast was there, his power sword sweeping down to intercept the blow. The former Space Wolf spun low and slashed his blade through the lictor’s upper claws, drawing twin spurts of black blood. It roared in alien rage and once again its barbed hooks lashed out, entangling the Space Marine’s sword arm. Its lower arms punched out, ripping through Henghast’s armour and hurling him through the air. Blood pumped from its severed claws as Bannon fought to draw his own sword with his scorched hands. His power armour dispensed pain retardant drags into his system.
The lictor spun away from the fire, its wounds driving it from the fight before he could reach it. He stumbled towards the inquisitor and Locard. Both were alive. Shaken, but alive.
‘Get it, Bannon!’ hissed Kryptman, ‘but for the love of the Emperor, don’t kill it. We need it alive!’
He stumbled after the monster as it sped towards the city walls, shouting into the vox, ‘Uriel, Astador, anyone! I need help. I am in pursuit of a lictor heading north-westwards to the walls. Close on my position, and if you see it subdue it. I repeat, subdue it, do not kill it!’
URIEL, PASANIUS AND ten warriors from the Fourth company ran from the walls towards the source of Bannon’s desperate call for aid. Leading his men in prayer, he had been amazed at the last portion of Bannon’s message. A lictor on the loose and they were not to kill it?
‘Spread out,’ ordered Uriel.
‘Why in the name of all that’s holy can’t we kill the damned thing?’ said Pasanius.
‘I don’t know, but Bannon must have a good reason.’
‘How are we supposed to see it, I thought these things were chameleons?’
‘Just follow the screams,’ said Uriel as he heard cries of pain a hundred metres or so to his left. His armour’s auto-senses penetrated the darkness with ease and he saw the shimmering outline of the creature as it butchered its way through the picket line of squads protecting the army’s rear.
‘With me, now!’ shouted Uriel and took off towards the lictor. He opened a channel to Bannon. ‘I see it, it’s in north sector delta!’
Whether the monster needed to kill or simply took pleasure in the act, Uriel didn’t know, but it had stopped to slaughter the men stationed there. Uriel raised his gun, his finger tightening on the trigger before he remembered he was not to kill the creature. It spun away from him and leapt for the side of the rock face, its lashing hooks digging into the rock and hauling it rapidly upwards.
‘It’s getting away!’ shouted Pasanius.
‘Not if I can help it,’ snarled Uriel, switching his bolter’s shot selector to single shell. The lictor scaled the mountainside in jerky leaps, several of its fleshy grapnels hanging useless at its side.
Uriel said, ‘Bolter-link,’ and sighted carefully along the barrel of his weapon. Range vectors and an aiming reticule appeared on his visor, designating the point his shell would impact. He waited until the dot flashed red and pulled the trigger.
The weapon bucked in his hand and a portion of the rock face exploded as his shell blasted it apart. The lictor screeched in frustration as its flesh hooks were blown clear of the rocks and it tumbled hundreds of metres down the side of the mountain to slam into the ground with a sickening thud.
The lictor pushed itself groggily to its feet as Uriel and Pasanius leapt on it, pinning it to the ground with their weight. It thrashed weakly, tearing at their armour, but as more Ultramarines arrived, they eventually grappled the struggling monster to immobility.
Bannon skidded towards the battling Ultramarines with more of the Deathwatch behind him. Three of his men carried high-tensile cabling, capable of bearing the weight of a Land Raider.
‘Bind it,’ he ordered.
THIRTEEN
IN A CAVERNOUS hangar built into the rock face of the van Gelder family’s mountain estates, a veritable army of lifter-servitors and indentured servants loaded a long, silver-grey starship named Magnificence with scores of sealed crates. The ship’s sides were emblazoned with heraldic crests depicting heroic van Gelders of history and her worth beyond measure.
Unwilling to entrust the loading of his entire estate to mere workers, Simon van Gelder, former councillor of Erebus City, watched impatiently from a high gantry as his harried overseers checked off each crate as it was wheeled up the ramp into the Magnificence’s capacious hold. The operation to load her had been underway for several hours now, and Simon knew that the abundance of his possessions would mean he would be here for some time yet.
Well, no matter. All that concerned him was that the loading be done before this invasion progressed any further. He vas damned if he was going to stay and die with these fools for the sake of some outmoded notion of honour. An oath sworn with some long-dead – and probably mythical – figure was no oath at all and certainly didn’t bind him.
No, he was going to survive this war and if by some mischance these fools were actually able to drive the aliens from Tarsis Ultra, then he would return with his wealth intact, not flattened in the name of military strategy. Those meek sheep who blindly followed Montante’s fawning over these Space Marines were sure to be bankrupted by this war and even if they survived, they would have no one to turn to for their continued economic life but him.
The thought of Montante begging him to return to the council and pledge his financial support to prop up his ineffectual regime pleased him mightily and he wondered how long it would be before he would be in a position to manoeuvre Montante from office. Not long, he was sure. The industrial blocs were notoriously fickle and with the right palms greased and pockets filled, it would be child’s play to ensure that his nomination was successful.
Simon pulled out a thick cigar from his long frock coat, lighting it with a small gold lighter and puffing an expansive series of smoke rings.
Scenting the smoke, a safety protocol servitor marched stiffly towards him.
A red light flashed on its chest panel as it said, ‘This area is a protected zone and the ignition of combustible materials is prohibited. Extinguish all flames and prepare for censure.’
Simon waved the servitor away snapping, ‘Go away. Authorisation code Gelder nine-alpha-prime.’
The servitor turned and marched away as Simon shook his head and strolled along the gantry to an armoured blast door that led onto a balcony overlooking the city. Another servitor opened the door, wired into the rock of the wall, its arms augmented with powerful pistons that turned the heavy locking wheel with ease.
The door ground open and cold air rushed in. Simon gathered his insulated coat about himsel
f and walked into the fading light of evening. This high on the valley sides, the wind whipped by like a scalpel, cutting him to the marrow with its icy blade. Far to the west he could hear the faint metallic ring of battle, the cries of fighting men carried eastwards on the wind that howled through Erebus. His contempt for what these men of war had led them to knew no bounds and his desire to live through this surged through him once more.
A chattering blast of gunfire sounded from further up the valley, close to Montante’s palace. Simon watched as a flock of the flying aliens darted through the air above the source of the River Nevas. The servitor-manned guns on the valley sides tracked their movement, filling the air with explosive projectiles that burst in lethal clouds of shrapnel and shredded dozens of the beasts before they withdrew. They were clever these aliens, saw Simon. Testing each area of the valley for weak points to find a way in.
But Simon knew there were no weak points. His consortium, in conjunction with the Adeptus Mechanicus, had supplied and built the weapons as well as the servitors that controlled the guns and he knew that their coverage was nigh-on impenetrable.
Anything that flew above a, certain altitude was interrogated by the machine spirits bound within each gun and should there be no response to that interrogation, the guns would open fire. Without clearance, flyers would be mercilessly engaged and destroyed the moment they entered the guns’ coverage.
Simon smiled, his fingers playing over a plain metallic box in the pocket of his coat.
Unless you knew how to shut them down.
TECHS SWARMED AROUND the Ultramarines’ Thunderhawk, stripping armoured panels from its hull and removing ammo hoppers from its frame under the watchful eye of Techmarine Harkus. His features were anxious and Uriel could hear frequent angry tirades passing between Harkus and the Adeptus Mechanicus cutters.
Sparks flew as extra weight was removed from the Thunderhawk with heavy cutting gear, thick plates of armour stripped and weapons removed to try and reduce the overall weight of the gunship from seventy-six tonnes to a mere forty.