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No choice.
His thoughts and feelings were in disarray. Who knew all turned this way? No answer in the silence of the empty strategium. He did what he shall. Didn't he? Headed to the place he was at ease. He locked the door and engaged the emergency override. No one can open it from without.
He was sitting in a chair when something blew outside. He rose his head in ignorance, his glance was void. Then cracking sounds outside, again and again.
“Thermal deformation”, - suggested his mind.
Someone was trying to breach the bulkhead.
The sharp, malicious hiss of the plasma cutter only intensified the oppressive silence. Looking at the blazing flame of the torch, which already penetrated fifteen inches of blast-proof bulkhead, with growing clarity and despair he realized - this was the end. They already knew what he had done. But he himself couldn't explain why. He knew it's his role. His doom. And yet, amidst the chaos and despair, a faint echo of melody lingered in his memory—a tune that had once carried him through the darkest hours. The Song resounds among the stars has sustained and guided him these past ten years since that monstrous hive fleet invasion. That has helped him survive the deaths of his soldiers and his friends... is not helping him now. Consumed by the past horrors of his service, feeble and pity he sat motionless, staring into the past.
“Why did you do this?”, the man asked. He was on the other side of the table .
No answer.
“Victor!”, shouted his guest.
As if just waking up, he looked at the Commissar. Lost in his thoughts, he didn't realize a squad of troopers cut open the door with a heavy plasma torch, and his old friend stepped inside. Usually unshakable , the Commissar was now furious. His left eye twitched constantly, and fresh burns on chin and neck oozed blood. The old comrade was standing there for who knows how long. Clenching and unclenching fists, glaring on the colonel with righteous fury in eyes.
“Geffes? Commissar? I knew you'd come. You ask 'Why?' After all these years. I was watching my men die row after row, company after company. I knew we had no choice. No one had” his sight dulled ”Something broke inside me, something so important and precious that it defined me was gone. I heard a melody from the Void. Something unimaginable, something wondrous, is coming. Just do what you must, my friend." He smiled for a moment. Geffes saw a light in Victor's eyes fade. "You have no choice. No one has a choice..."
The devastation, reaching the depths of his soul, suddenly receded. A sound, a ringing fragment of melody, one after another, filled the abyss in himself again. Amid this melody, amid the tremors of the universe that had already shrouded him in a veil of peace and tranquility, a familiar voice faintly begged him, repeating, "Thou shalt not kill."
"You're coming with me in the name of Him”, he shouted.
"Now. And don't dare you..."
Geffes doesn't finish his sentence. The floor heaved, a jagged bone blade nearly two yards long ripping through the ceramite flooring and the carpet and snaking body shot up and, upon landing, coiled itself into several rings, like an asp preparing to strike. The Commissar, thrown back against the wall, reached for his weapon, but a swipe of the beast's tail knocked him out. A glowing, iridescent crest rose above Ravener's head. It pulsed with light in time with the melody of the stars, sometimes darkening to a deep indigo, sometimes blazing with a bright white-blue.
The colonel, reaching for his bolt pistol, realized, suddenly, who he shall not harm. Relaxing, he walked around the table. Approaching the Tyranid, he cautiously extended his hand, giving the beast a chance to decide for themselves whether to allow him to touch. The Prime, lowering his head, gazed intently at the man. An alien intelligence pulsed in his enormous amber eyes, predatory, calm, pure.
"It's like I'm looking into the eyes of everyone I know at once..." the colonel whispered, trembling.
The illusion fell. Victor shook his head. Feeling no resistance from his guest, he touched the leathery body and was amazed by the intense heat emanating from it. Like touching hot metal. But there was nothing but peace in this heat, like sitting by the fireplace at the end of all wars.
Victor didn't hear the lasfire, the whine of meltas and explosions, the cries of his men, their groans, and last prayers. In the silence existed only in the prison of his mind, filled with the melody of the stars, the colonel didn't hear, but understood: "Let's go." He examined the hole in the floor and realized that he could easily walk along it crouched. Nodding to his companion and without looking back, he descended. Into the darkness.