He waved forward the rest of his warriors, Pasanius taking the lead with the blue flame of his flamer burning brightly in the rich atmosphere of the hive ship. Uriel felt motion around his boots and saw grotesque, beetle-like creatures scuttling across the ribbed walls of the chamber, feasting on the waste embedded there.
They were no threat and he ignored them as they pushed deeper into the chamber. A pulsing rumble thumped from the walls like a gigantic heartbeat, or a series of heartbeats. Kryptman had said that a hive ship was a massive agglomeration of creatures blended into one gestalt beast that formed the over-mind.
‘This place is cursed,’ said Brother Pelantar, moving up to take a flanking position, his heavy bolter slung low and ready to fire. Alvarax took up the same position on the opposite flank.
‘You might be right,’ agreed Uriel, remembering the depths of Pavonis where he had fought the Bringer of Darkness and how evil echoes of past horrors could saturate a place with their power.
Brother Damias moved to the centre of the group, reading from a specially modified auspex Inquisitor Kryptman had furnished him with. Its blue light reflected from the base of his helm, its soft chiming loud in the warm chamber.
Hissing gusts of steam vented from slitted orifices and a tremor ran through the floor of the chamber as the walls rippled with motion. Uriel saw the scurrying organisms speed into fleshy caverns set in the depths of the wall and said, ‘Come on, let us be about our business. I do not believe we should linger in this place.’
With Pasanius leading the way, the Deathwatch moved off into the depths of the hive ship.
SNOWDOG SPRINTED DOWN the stone stairs of the medicae building as the sound of alarm bells rang throughout the facility. Sisters of the Order Hospitaller hurried through the building, directing those wounded men who could walk towards the upper levels. Others carried stretchers or boxes of medical equipment.
He skidded to the bottom level, finding the vestibule thronged with nurses as they guided those without their sight through the armoured door at the base of the stairs. Snowdog could almost taste the panic in the air.
‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.
No one answered him, too wrapped up in their own fear to reply. He pushed his way through the crowds towards the main wards, finding many more wounded men being chivvied to their feet by tearful sisters. Straight away he could see that there were far too many wounded for them to cope with.
As he realised this, he saw Sister Joaniel marching towards him.
‘You!’ she yelled, ‘come here!’
He made his way along the ward, dodging wounded men as they limped towards the main doors.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked again.
‘We’ve received the evacuation order,’ said Joaniel desperately. ‘You need to get these men out to safety. The front line is about to fall.’
‘What? But it’s less than half a kilometre from here!’
‘I know, that’s why we can’t waste any time. I need your help.’
‘My help? What do you think I can do?’
Joaniel gripped Snowdog’s arms and said, ‘The medicae facility is built against the rock face of the valley’s southern wall. There is an entrance to the caves on the upper levels that lead further up the valley.’
‘And?’
‘And I want you to lead these people out of here to safety,’ explained Joaniel.
‘What? I just got them here!’
‘I don’t care, just do it,’ snapped Joaniel.
‘Okay, okay,’ said Snowdog. What about you? What are you gonna be doing?’
‘I’m going to be making sure that my patients get out of this building alive.’
OOZING SLIME DRIPPED from the ceiling, hissing as droplets pattered against the shoulder guards of the Deathwatch. The fleshy passageways of the hive ship were a cornucopia of biological horrors, fleshy folds of muscle and gristle lining every wall and suppurating pools of digestive juices filling every footprint they left. Tiny slave organisms hurried along every passageway, ignoring the Space Marines as they pushed deeper into the body of the beast.
The omnipresent rumble drifted from every orifice and the noise of biological processes was thick in the air.
Uriel could feel a nascent claustrophobia as the walls of the ribbed passage contracted in time with the ramble, expanding
again as though they were in some great breathing organ. Steaming jets of liquid sprayed them as they passed from the passageway into a wide, necrotic chamber of crackling gristle and pulped meat.
Row upon row of ruptured egg sacs and niches with cancerous organic pipes hanging inert within them lined the walls of the chamber from floor to ceiling.
‘What is this place?’ asked Henghast.
‘They slept here,’ said Damias, sweeping his softly chiming auspex around. ‘They slept away the years while they travelled to Tarsis Ultra from wherever they came from.’
Uriel saw Damias was right as he spotted a tyranid warrior organism in one of the niches, its flesh withered and dead. Its four arms hung limply at his side, its bony head slumped over its shoulder.
A sudden hissing motion rippled through the walls, a greenish glow building from the smoke that drifted at ankle height. At the far end of the chamber, a fleshy fold of bone lifted aside and a wash of stinking chemicals spilled into the chamber carrying a tide of screeching tyranid creatures.
‘Captain!’ yelled Pasanius as he bathed them in flames.
Alvarax and Pelantar braced themselves and sprayed the creatures with shells from their heavy bolters. Uriel fired into the mass of aliens as a host of the ventricle valve doors rippled open and yet more beasts poured into the chamber.
A giant beast bounded towards them, its armoured carapace low and armoured like a scorpion. It bounded towards Jagatun, who ducked and slashed its soft underbelly with his razor-edged tulwar. Looping organs spilled from the wound.
Henghast howled and slashed his power sword through its body, dragging Jagatun to his feet while firing his bolter with his free hand. Pasanius fell back, each step accompanied by a spray of liquid fire into knots of screeching aliens.
Uriel blazed away at the creatures as they poured from the walls to assail them. He didn’t know how many beasts the hive ship had at its disposal, but he knew they could not afford to find out.
‘Deathwatch, fall back!’ he ordered.
Alvarax and Pelantar backed away, firing as they went and closing on Uriel.
‘Brother Damias!’ yelled Uriel. ‘Which way?’
Damias was blood-streaked, his power fist coated in alien gore. He consulted the auspex and said, This way.’
He set off through an oval hole in the wall as Uriel called, ‘Everyone through here!’
Henghast dived through the hole, followed by Jagatun. The roar of heavy bolters covered them before Pelantar ducked into the gap. Uriel pushed Pasanius through and shouted, ‘Alvarax! Come on, we are leaving!’
Alvarax raked his fire over the attacking beasts, his aim sure. Dozens of aliens fell, blown apart by his sanctified shells.
Then the ground opened up beneath him and he was gone, sucked into the depths of the ship.
Uriel shouted, ‘Alvarax!’ and moved to go to his battle-brother’s aid, but a strong hand gripped him and hauled him back.
‘He’s gone,’ yelled Pasanius, ‘Come on!’
Uriel nodded and pushed into the close confines of the new passageway, feeling his way by touch rather than sight. He heard an oozing sound behind him as muscular contractions pulled the passage way wider to allow more of their pursuers to chase them. Pasanius pushed him ahead and turned to fill the passageway with flames. Screeching howls followed them as aliens burned. The fleshy passage shuddered in sympathy with their pain and Uriel was suddenly reminded of something Kryptman had told him before they left Tarsis Ultra: ‘As you penetrate deeper into the ship, its nervous system will become more sophisticated. It will feel pain the closer you get to its centre.’
br /> He followed his warriors as the passageway sloped downwards, the soggy texture of the ground squelching as he ran. He heard gunfire and saw a glow from up ahead as the passage widened into a vein-ridged chamber with a pulsing, mushroom shaped organism at its centre.
A score of dead creatures littered the ground before the thing. ‘What is that?’ asked Henghast.
‘Does it matter? They were guarding it so it must be important to them,’ said Jagatun, slashing his tulwar through its stem. Plumes of spores erupted from the organisms severed stalk and enveloped Jagatun like a cloud of buzzing insects. He batted them away before doubling up as the surface of his armour began corroding before Uriel’s eyes.
He heard the White Scar’s screams over the vox as the spores devoured him from within, his filters and rebreathers no defence against such a deadly attack. The Deathwatch backed away from the clouds of corrosive spores, unable to help their stricken battle-brother. Pasanius fired his flamer, consuming them in a cleansing burst of promethium.
Chittering screeches from the sucking passageway they had just come from echoed towards them.
‘This way,’ said Uriel plunging into a ridged opening in the far wall, emerging into a long, curving passage, knee-deep in sloshing fluids. Fronds of cilia dangled from the roof and walls of the passage, waving as though in a gentle breeze. The sludgy liquid flowed away to the right and Uriel waited for Brother Damias to join them.
As the Deathwatch assembled, Damias led them to the left, splashing through the foetid ordure against the flow. Wormlike organisms swam through the sludge, latching onto their armour and attempting to feed.
The Space Marines plucked them from their armour in disgust. They were annoying but hardly dangerous. Uriel pushed onwards through the circular tunnel, the fronds above him brushing against his helmet.
He halted as he heard a strange sound over the constant ramble of the hive ship. It sounded like distant thunder, like standing at the end of the Valley of Laponis on Macragge and listening to the noise of the far-off Hera’s Falls.
As he realised what it was he shouted, ‘Hold on to something!’
He punched his fist through the tough walls of the veined passage and gripped a handful of the hive ship’s substance as hundreds of tonnes of organic waste thundered along the passageway towards them.
SNOWDOG HUSTLED THE wounded men up the stairs to the upper levels of the medicae building, wondering how long they had before the tyranids got here. The damned alarm bells were still ringing and he smashed the butt of his gun against one until it shut up. Jonny was on the landing above him and Lex was busy wiring the main door of the building with the mother of all explosive devices. Tigerlily was keeping an eye on Silver who was now stable, but still unconscious. He had
no idea where Trask was, but didn’t much care one way or another. He still carried the backpack filled with valuables taken from the crashed starship, so it wasn’t as though Trask was off stealing that.
He pushed his way down to the vestibule, seeing the skinny shape of Lex still working at the door.
‘Lex, whatever you’re doing, do it quicker, man,’ he said.
‘Hey, I’m going as fast as I can. You know, if you helped, I could get done quicker.’
‘No way, man. Me and explosives? Forget about it.’
‘Well thanks for offering anyway,’ sneered Lex.
‘No problem. Everyone off this floor?’
‘Yeah, I think so. Everyone except that crazy sister.’
Snowdog pushed his way into the main ward area. The place was deserted except for Sister Joaniel, who stood behind the central nursing station with a plain wooden box before her.
Snowdog jogged towards the nursing station and slung his lasgun. ‘Hey, sister, we don’t have time to hang around here. Time we was gone.’
‘Is everyone safe?’ asked Joaniel, tears streaking her face.
‘Yeah, more or less. They’re all on their way upstairs if that’s what you mean.’
‘Good,’ nodded Joaniel. ‘I couldn’t save them before.’
‘What? Save who?’
‘All of them. On Remian. They called me the Angel of Remian because I put them back together after the war had broken them, but in the end I couldn’t save them. They all died.’
Joaniel held up the wooden box and said, ‘They gave me this for all the good work I’d done. It’s a medicus ministorum… I don’t deserve it.’
‘Okay,’ said Snowdog in puzzlement, ‘as fun as it is to trip down memory lane, Sister Joaniel, I think we need to get going.’
As if to underscore his words, a thudding boom impacted on the thick wooden doors of the medicae building. Even through the thick walls, Snowdog could hear the scrape of hordes of aliens swarming around the building.
Lex stuck his head in the door to the wards and shouted, ‘Come on, let’s get the hell out of this place.’
Snowdog turned to Joaniel. ‘You heard the man, now come on.’
She gathered up the wooden box, but didn’t move. Cursing himself for a fool, Snowdog grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along the ward.
‘Why the hell do I let myself get into these situations?’ he wondered aloud.
Together they emerged into the vestibule, the doors already splintering under repeated blows from something massive. They skidded across me stone flags of the floor, sprinting for the armoured door that led to the stairs. Jonny Stomp stood at the bottom, his massive hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.
‘Come on!’ he yelled.
With a crash of shattered timbers, the main doors were ripped from their frame and scores of snarling creatures poured in around a massive battering ram of a monster. Its claws were massive, sheathed in splintered wood and its jaws screeched with burning fires.
It took a thunderous step into the medicae building, the stone cracking under its weight, just as Lex’s bomb went off.
Snowdog gathered Joaniel in his arms and threw himself flat as the detonation slammed them both into the wall. Fire and dust and stone filled the air as the blast took out the aliens as well as the columns supporting the roof and walls of the entrance. The giant beast staggered, but didn’t fall, its armoured hide painted with the gory rain of its smaller kin. It reeled at the edge of a crater gouged in the ground, blocks of stone tumbling from the walls around it.
Snowdog rolled onto his stomach, his body one giant mass of pain. Strangely, his back felt fine, but then he remembered his backpack of valuables and figured it must have protected him from the worst of the blast. He tried to push himself to his feet and cried out in pain, feeling at least one rib broken.
Joaniel pushed herself up against the stone wall, still clutching her medicus ministorum. Snowdog groaned beside her as the gigantic monster recovered its wits enough to take another stamping step towards them.
Jonny Stomp stepped down into the vestibule, his enormous hunting rifle wedged tightly against his shoulder.
The massive beast was almost upon him, the fire building between its gnashing mandibles.
Jonny sighted along the barrel and pulled the trigger.
And the beast’s head vanished in an explosion of blood and bone.
Jonny was hurled through the stair door by the recoil and landed in a sprawling heap. He whooped with glee, thumbing another shell into the breech.
The monster crashed backwards into the crater blown by Lex’s bomb as Joaniel pulled Snowdog to his feet. He cried out in pain as she pushed him into Jonny’s arms.
‘Go on!’ she shouted. ‘Get him out of here!’
‘What you gonna do?’ said Jonny.
‘I’m right behind you,’ said Joaniel, crouching by the medicus ministorum and flipping open its lid.
Jonny saw hundreds more of the smaller beasts gathering outside. ‘Whatever you say,’ he shrugged and half-carried, half-dragged Snowdog after him.
Joaniel lifted a gleaming bolter from within the box and slid home a magazine of shells.
She glanced upstair
s, seeing Jonny and Snowdog rounding the first landing.
And closed the door, hearing the heavy- clang of the lock as it slammed home.
Hissing monsters cautiously stalked into the medicae building, wary of more traps.
Joaniel cocked her bolter and smiled to herself. She hadn’t been able to save those on Remian, but here and now she was going to do everything that was expected of a Sister Hospitaller of the Order of the Eternal Candle.
‘Come on!’ she screamed. ‘Are you going to make me wait all day?’
She smiled beatifically as she opened fire, blasting the nearest creatures apart in controlled bursts. She fired and fired, killing dozens until finally the hammer slammed down on an empty chamber.
She dropped the weapon and spread her arms wide as the beasts leapt forward.
The Angel of Remian died with the last of her guilt washed away in blood.
LEARCHUS RAN THROUGH the rains of District Quintus, the last remnants of the defenders of Erebus falling back in disarray
alongside him. Swooping creatures dived from above, tearing at the routing soldiers and even the formidable strength of the Space Marines was sorely tested.
The Ultramarines and the Mortifactors fought side-by-side, buying time for the Krieg, Logres and Defence Legion troops to rally at the next wall. Learchus could see it was hopeless, but he had the soul of a warrior and fought on. The tyranids had closed every avenue of escape, as though they knew every possible route through the city or they could anticipate every move the Space Marines made.
He fired a bolter he had taken from a dead Marine, bringing down a host of winged monsters carrying off a Krieg soldier and hacked down a pair of hissing beasts that were devouring the corpse of a fallen Ultramarine.
He reached down and grabbed the armour of his dead comrade and began dragging him backwards. Chaplain Astador stumbled alongside him and lent his strength to the task, smashing an alien’s skull with his crozius arcanum as he did so. The warriors of the Fourth company and the Mortifactors gathered around their leaders, forming a defensive perimeter around them. Learchus saw how pitifully few they were now.