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In the thousand year wake of the M40 Achilles Crusade, the Orpheus Salient – within the Jericho Reach – sits shakily in Imperial hands. Beset on all sides by the foes that kept the Deathwatch in operation throughout the sub-sector for centuries, it is only a matter of time before the age-old enemies of the Imperium of Mankind return to wreak havoc.

The men and women who defend mankind from the darkness outside of the Emperor’s light are courageous, hardy, brutal, and fallible. From an Imperial Guard lord general, to the Arbite Mortiurge, every warrior needs to do their duty if the sub-sector is to survive the coming bloodshed.

Download PDFs or scroll down to the comments to read:

The Mortiurge:
- Nemamiah (short story)
- Emperor's Scourge (short story)
- Hunter's Game (short story)
- Immune Response (novella)

The Widow Makers (novel):
- Hunter's Shadow - Part 1 (chapters 1-3) NEW

The Mortiurge short stories and Widow Maker novel parts are part of a series of stories written in the aftermath of Fantasy Flight Games offshoot of WH 40K, Deathwatch. Each is attached to this post as a PDF download - and therefore should be able to work on most computers and kindle readers (or kindle apps).

The Old Orpheus Salient can be found at http://adriancollins.com.au/the-old-orpheus-salient/.
My Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/AdrianCollins.Author?ref=hl

Feedback, ideas for follow-up stories; I love 'em all. Hit meh.

They fled for all they were worth.

Oh, an unlikely alliance that is !

Read all of it and its pretty awesome. I wonder if you're planning on continuing this .

Sure am! another short story, and a novella are just getting fluff-checked by a mate. Will have them up soon.

In this post: 'Nemamiah' and 'Emperor's Scourge'.



Nemamiah

There were thousands of people in the streets. Every man and woman bore the same worn down look as they picked their way past trash piled knee-high against the dark and pitted walls of towering hab blocks. The immense structures disappeared into the low-lying, rust coloured smog cloud sitting fat and heavy above. Flickering glow-globes hung from sagging cables, swaying gently in the artificial breeze as they provided synthetic light. A beaten series of vox speakers blared out a pre-recorded sermon from one of the upper-hive templums, urging the depressed river of grey dressed underhivers to greater effort in the work at the manufactorum.

He stood out like a star against the backdrop of the void, gaudily dressed in gold-stitched red satin and wearing a fortune in gold chains, bangles, and other jewellery. His hooded green eyes were quick, sharp and vicious, staring down anyone stupid enough to make eye contact with him as he strolled casually through the masses. Two golden bolt pistols were slung in holsters on his lower back. They were worn openly and without fear of reprieve from an Arbites precinct that was far too undermanned to take him on. Such immunity in the face of Imperial law overflowed from his shoulders in waves of arrogance.

On either side of him was a stunningly attractive woman, each in a plated bodyglove, both as deadly as they were beautiful. The way they moved spoke of high quality training and augmentation, of a cat like grace matched with wolf cunning. Around them, like fortress walls pushing back the press of the crowd, strode a solid circle of heavies, thugs and bruisers. Most had the look of ex-PDF. Some sported augmetic limbs and all brandished weapons in plain sight.

One of the heavy’s eyes lingered on the freely flaunted wares of a house of ill-repute a moment too long and lost his place in the steadily moving formation. As the mass of manufactorum workers continued to slide around them like a glacier sliding past a mountain, a young man, just another depressed face amongst thousands, stumbled through the sudden opening. His rolling gait painted him as incredibly drunk, his vomit stained grey coveralls sported an employee number that put him as a night shift worker who had drank his way through his time off.

The heavy turned and threw an arm out to grab at the man. His massive hand swung by the drunk’s dark, roughed-up hair as the youth’s foot dragged and caught on the uneven ground and he stumbled forwards. The two feline bodyguards were on him in a flash, interposing themselves between their boss and this potential threat. The man tripped again, accidentally hammering one surprised woman to the ground with a thickset shoulder and, almost unbelievably, stopping himself by placing a hand on the boss’ bare forearm while the second bodyguard struggled to grapple with his drunken gait.

The boss didn’t move, just stared at him as the youth straightened himself up with a stupefied grin wrapped in thick stubble and a belch that shook the very air around him. At the same time two thugs and the two bodyguards crashed in to him, taking him from his feet and away from the boss. They crunched into the ground, the youth pinned down and shouting, begging for forgiveness now he’d realized what he’d done.

The boss stood over him with pistol in hand, gleaming gold in the flickering lights above, and pointed at his head. The drunk let out a whimper and a wet sob as the world around him seemed to pause to witness his death. The bolt pistol boomed, sending Imperial citizens running in a stampede away from the youth’s plight.

“Release him,” said the boss, his voice quiet and calm and full of power.

The youth stood, wiping chunks of skull and brain matter from the offending heavy off his face. The boss reached out and picked a piece of flesh from the youth’s hair and discarded it to the ground.

“There. That’s better, isn’t it, son?”

The youth looked at him, his face ashen and his fear obvious in his nervous, submissive stance and downcast dark eyes.

“T-thank you, sir,” he stammered, lowering his gaze to the ground where one hundred and twenty-three kilos of headless muscle was already being eyed off from afar by rats the size of small dogs.

“You know who I am.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“Underboss Yaziniki, sir, I know who you are… sir”

“Then you know that I am considering shooting you in the head, just as I did Junar a moment ago,” said the underboss.

The young man visibly started shaking, a dark stain spreading across the front of his pants. He fell to his knees.

“Please, sir, please! I want to live!” he wailed, snot bubbling from his nose and spittle linking his shuddering lip to the ground.

The underboss smiled for a moment, relishing the effect he was having on the poor bastard before turning and walking away.

“You’re not worth the bolt, or my time. Wyren, Tonas; beat him. Make sure he remembers who rules these stacks.”

Two immense men broke off from the group as the young man stood up and backed away, only to trip and fall to the ground. They jogged a couple of steps to catch up and then laid in to him. The river of people just kept walking past as his body was brutally hammered by the two massive brutes. None amongst the thousands had the courage to speak out or act against the violence; barely any had the fortitude to even look.

When they were done, he lay there for a while, just another piece of trash amongst the piles of garbage he rested half covered in. A few minutes passed before he moved with a loud and long groan, sending the approaching rats scurrying away. He staggered to his feet, using the wall as best he could to keep his balance. Smearing blood from a cut lip and a split eyebrow, he stood and did his best to clean up his face before tottering off down the street, his step unsure, and melding back into the countless thousands of people going to and from their shifts.

A few blocks passed by before he stopped and stood at the door of a small, hole-in-the-wall bar. An overweight door watchman stood at the front, surveying the crowd with a look of complete disinterest as he gnawed on an animal bone, grease dripping down his four chins. He spotted the young man; his face freshly beaten, vomit and snot and blood covering his shirt, a lightening wet patch on his pants and the smell of urine hanging around him like a cloud of trash-flies.

The youth approached and the door watchman moved to intercede, a fat lipped mouth wobbling open in a not yet spoken challenge. Without breaking in his stride or the stony gaze of his bloodied and bruised face, he flipped out a few ratty looking folded Imperial credit bills and tossed them at the bouncing man-breasts of the guard. The door watchman shrugged his shoulders as he grasped the bills and went back to indifferently watching the crowd outside, sucking on the bone to slurp off the last few pieces of cooked meat.

There were four patrons inside the bar. The youth noticed immediately that two were definitely carrying, their backs to wall and gang tattoos running up their necks. They watched him with kroothawk-like eyes, sharpened by Blaze or some other narcotic. The young man walked to a table at the opposite end of the bar from them, taking a seat away from windows and resting his back against the green paint of the wall with a grunt of pain.

His eyes rolled over the other two men. One was so drunk his head rested upon the table from which the owner was serving, the other was silently crying into his drink. He dismissed them as threats. A girl, probably no more than seventeen or eighteen standard, walked over to him. She was pretty, but had a large gang tattoo on her cheek that marked her as the property of one of the gangers sitting in the opposite corner.

“Sir, I think you’ve had too much already…”

The youth looked up, his dark eyes unclouded, sharp and intelligent.

“Get me a drink, girl. Amasec. Rotgut, whatever. The cheaper and nastier, the better.”

The girl stood there, a little taken aback by his sudden resolution to clarity. He sat straight, his shoulders square, his fingers drumming on the table.

“Did I not make myself clear? I asked you to get me a drink, not to stand there staring at me. It’s not like I’ve asked you to recount the ten-thousand year history of the Martians or anything. This shouldn’t be difficult.”

Her mouth dropped open a little, working open and closed as she tried to labour through the insult, confusion running rife across her face. Then her face reddened as she whirled around and went back to the bar. He smiled to himself and pulled out a palm-sized picter unit from his pocket. The screen had cracked in the beating he had taken but the image came up clearly after a short time. He looked up once more. The girl was pouring his drink. The two gangers were deep in conversation. Sleepy was still sleeping. The last patron was watching his glass with hurt intensity, tears rolling down his cheeks.
He looked back down at the screen, where a user ID and password was being requested.

Name: Thale Rook
Password: Nemamiah

Instantly the screen blinked and Thale’s eyes were shown a top-down view of a public toilet on the left-side of the picter. A waist level view of the small public waste disposal unit that the first image sat in blinked to life a moment later on the right. It was a fairly standard unit, three collection cubicles, all rusting brushed steel and a mirror that was more backboard than reflective surface. Nothing moved. Thale looked up as the girl placed his glass, still adorned with another patron’s lip marks, before him and walked off in a huff. He grabbed the glass, wiped down the rim with a cleaner piece of his shirt, and settled back, his boots resting on another chair.

He watched the screen. He didn’t have to wait long. Three men and one of the lithe bodyguards burst in through the door on his pict-unit. There was no sound, but the way the image shook with the hammering of the door into the wall spoke volumes for their urgency. Pistols drawn, they cleared the room, kicking open the doors to the three cubicles. The look of disgust on their faces as they looked in the first two cubicles made Thale smile.

The first cubicle had an over-flowing recovery bowl. Clogged by a stout factorum worker after a solid night on the drink. The next cubicle had a good coating of vomit, also courtesy of the factorum worker. A night of perceived friendship with the man had been almost too much to bear for Thale. The man was a well-known petty criminal, a piece of scum too small time for the Arbites to bother shutting down. He bragged incessantly of his prowess with women and his ability to take them at will, and usually against theirs.

Thale hadn’t felt bad at all as he slipped drugs into the man’s drink. Had felt nothing but disgust for his companion and at the fetid stench of the public waste collection unit as he guided the big man into one cubicle, and then the other. There had been no remorse when he’d knife-punched the man in the throat and then snapped his neck before dumping him into a furnace unit. A small piece of positive collateral damage the Imperium wouldn’t miss.

Thale’s attention returned to the screen as he raised the glass to his lips and enjoyed the pure chemical burn of the amasec as it moved down his throat. His thumb hovered near a small button cover below the screen as the underboss rushed into view, his pants already down around his knees held in one hand while the other clutched at his stomach. The underboss charged into the cubicle, his bow-legged waddle desperate. Thale switched his gaze to the left hand, top-down, screen.

Without even closing the door Yaziniki dropped his pants fully, put a hand on either wall of the cubicle, and arched his back to look at the ceiling, his eyes squeezed shut with pain and effort.
Diharetinum will do that to a person.

Thale chuckled to himself; absorbed through the skin, and quite fast acting, it’ll twist your guts up and make you wish the Emperor had never given you life in the first place as you lose about three kilos in one sitting. Thale carefully removed the fake finger coverings with a kerchief, making sure not to end up like Yaziniki, himself.

Thale flicked up the button cover. The screen went out of focus for a moment, and then came back sharp, a crosshair sitting in the centre of the top-down view. Yaziniki opened his eyes, most probably having heard the lens whir as it focussed.

“Tunley Yaziniki. I, Thale Rook, Mortiurge of Arbite precinct five-one-four, six-west, Lerrunhive, have found you guilty of two hundred and fourteen counts of murder, sixty-seven counts of supplying and manufacturing blaze or obscura, nine counts of trading in heretical documentation and materials, and three counts of murdering or wounding Arbites in service to the Emperor. In the Emperor’s name, may you burn in the warp you piece of gak.”

He pressed the button and the screen flashed white. He almost wished he could have heard the commotion; could have enjoyed the underboss’s misery in his last moment of life.

Thale shrugged his shoulders, dismissing the thought. There simply just had not been enough room in the vent above the cubicle for the pict-capture unit, transmitter, the combat shotgun with its single Executioner round and trigger-actuator, and a vox-thief.

Thale licked his lips, savouring the burn of the amasec. He’d had nastier ones, sour vintages more to his liking, but this one would do to celebrate a job well done.

“Another drink, officer?”

Officer? Damn. She’d heard him. Thale gathered himself in a heartbeat and fixed her with his stare.

“You know what I am?”

She averted her gaze and nodded. “An Arbite.”

Thale smiled coldly.

“Not just an arbite, girl,” he said, his voice low to avoid attracting the gangers’ attention. “I am the one they call when the only justice is blood.”

He turned the screen around in his palm and showed her his handiwork, a thick finger reaching up to his lips. She gasped and covered her mouth with her hand as her wide eyes drank in the scene. The executioner round had detonated Yaziniki’s body, but external limbs could still be easily made out.

She took a step back from him, flicking a nervous glance over at the two gangers at the opposite end of the bar. They were still engrossed in conversation.

“Don’t look at them, girl. Look at me. Look at my eyes. Listen to me carefully.”

He drew her in with his intense stare, letting the moment hang, lowering his voice to an apex-predator growl. “The same fate awaits you should you discuss this ‘chat’ with your owner over there. Do you believe me?”

She nodded, hand still over her mouth, eyes wide with fear.

“Good.”

He sighed, drained the last of his amasec, put the picter in his pocket, and stood.

“The body you just saw was Underboss Yaziniki.”

The girl gasped in surprise. Yaziniki was supposed to be untouchable, even the Arbites wouldn’t go near him. It was said you’d need a Guard regiment to dig him out.

“If I can get to him through an empire of body guards, imagine how easily I can get to you.”

Thale got out his credit bills and dropped a few on the table before leaving the girl and the bar.

She was an innocent. Some poor wench trapped in a game of violence she could never escape. He hadn’t enjoyed the look of gut-wrenching terror his threat had brought out in her. As soon as she had identified him, however, Thale had been forced to quickly turn her into a necessary pawn in his righteous endeavour.

She wouldn’t tell the gangers, he could read it in her fear. The gangers were a present danger to her, but he was like the spectre of her nightmares. She would never forget him; his young life spent gathering experience eliciting terror from other criminals would ensure that. His pitch was perfect in its malice, his features tilted forwards to take advantage of the lights above to create the right amount of shadow over his eyes, his body up straight and intimidating in comparison to her small frame, and his intent clear like a terralion eyeing its wounded prey - despite its falsehood.

Yaziniki’s associates would look for him, but wouldn’t find him. Wouldn’t know where to start looking. Plenty of innocents would be killed in his stead if she spoke; he had a common face and a build that was solid, but not overly large, like so many men in the precinct. She would have a hard time recognising him without blood and snot and huge bruises covering his beaten features; the heavies he’d allowed to slug him had made sure of that. It would protect him as much as put those around him at risk.

Overboss Radacast, master of a hundred gangs and precincts, would try to hide this. He’d try to keep it from reaching his foes, hiding a potentially perceived weakness in his organisation. Nevertheless, in time, word would get out. Someone out there, an unknown Arbite or vigilante with access to military grade weapons and tech, had got to one of their big bosses. The crime chiefs would rage at their inability to find him, expend untold resources into trying to guarantee their safety instead of into their illegal trades, and fear would spread amongst the gangs and cartels that plagued this underhive. His underhive.

They would search, but Thale would slip into the darkness, where his only light was gifted by the Emperor and shielded within his soul from the foulness around him. In time he would be given, or find, his next target. Ever the lone wolf, he’d strike out deep into the darkness once more. Ever, he would be Lerrunhive’s dark shadow.

Thale Rook smiled. It was the way he liked it. What he was born to do. Love, respect, brotherhood, compassion; these virtues were not the armament of the Mortiurge. Fear was Thale’s greatest weapon. Fear, and a combat shotgun drum-fed with executioner rounds.








Emperor's Scourge


She looked just like any one of the other thirteen million young women that lived in the squalor of precinct five-one-four, six-west, Lerrunhive. Dark hair, straight when he’d met her the night before but now messily curled with dried sweat, framed her tired features. Blue eyes sat beneath closed lids and a small nose twitched as the hair upon his chest tickled it. A lean, pale arm grasped the dingy motel’s coarse blanket closer to her.

She may have looked like any one of Lerrunhive’s of other girls, but to Thale Rook this one was special. The girl meant something to the grizzled youth. He watched her breathing for a short while as a hanging glow globe outside the window of their two-by-three metre room flickered light through a window barely thirty centimetres square. He admired her covered form and revelled in the touch of her soft skin against his own.

The girl awoke. Blue eyes that he could have drowned in looked up at him, and dry lips from the night’s excesses wove themselves into a sultry smile. Her hands, surprisingly clean, slowly traced the scars upon his body. Healed las-burns, solid shot punctures, stab-slits, flame scorches, lines of stitch-holes and surgical incisions covered the hard musculature of his frame. His skin was a hundred shades of pale white where his healed pigment reacted differently to each type of wound.

For a few short minutes Thale Rook, Mortiurge and righteously brutal killer, allowed himself to enjoy a closeness he’d not had since enlisting in the Arbites almost a half-decade past, leaving behind the ghosts of his bloody past, buried in the mud of planets in far-flung systems. The girl snuggled in to him further, moaning with both pleasure and pain as her obscura hangover kicked in and the memories of their night spent together rolled over her in unison.

She looked up to him once more. “You have many scars, for someone down from the upper habs. I like scars.”

Then, like the stain of blood from his hands under faucet, brush, and soap, the moment washed away. His gaze hardened. Thale pushed her off and rolled to sit on the side of the bed, the heels of his hands working life back into his eyes.

“Time for you to go.”

Her mouth worked open and closed, shock working its way across her face.

“But… you said… breakfast… and a trip to see your parent’s hydro-vinyards…” she complained, her voice a mixture of hurt and whine.

He steeled his gaze as she tugged at heartstrings he once thought snapped and rotten.

“Get your stuff and get out.”

Shock and hurt were quickly replaced with anger as she surged to her feet and grabbed at a pile of discarded clothes on the floor to cover her nakedness.

“But you said.”

“Get. Out.”

“Do you know who I am? Do you know who my family is? Can you imagine what Radacast will do to you?”

At each question, her voice became shriller. Thale covered his ears. Though he had passed on smoking Obscura with her, he had still partaken in severe rotgut abuse and his head felt like a piece of dried-out bone being smashed to splinters with a cudgel. Through the increasing velocity of her verbal abuse, there came a knock at the door.

The girl went quiet.

“Mistress Lanna? Do you…”

“Get me out of here at once! Break down the door if you must!” shrieked Lanna, her gaze like the fires of a furnace, searing Thale’s skin.

The door exploded inwards and two lithe females in fitted body gloves burst in, bolt pistols up and ready. Thale didn’t bother to react to their entry, instead reaching out for a cup to push under a tap running with cloudy water.

Lanna glared, vicious glee upon her features. “I hope you can afford to pay for that!” she yelled, kicking out at the shattered door and yelping as her bare toe bent backwards.

Thale looked up and huffed out a laugh before downing the water and reaching out for another. A blade slammed the tin cup from his hand and pinned it to the wall. The Mortiurge looked back over his shoulder. The bodyguard who had thrown the knife was already re-drawing her second bolt pistol to aim at his head.

“I assure you, it won’t be a problem,” he grumbled.

The comment only stoked her rage and soon the small room looked like a frag grenade had gone off in it. His clothes were strewn far and wide, the small bed was kicked to slide heavily into the wall and the mirror was destroyed. There were holes in the rotting plaster walls where her now booted feet had easily crashed through them. The bodyguards stood there and watched, their unwavering pistols never dropping their direct line to his skull.

Lanna stopped, her shoulders heaving and her face red. Her stare was pure spent rage and childish indignation. Gone was the attraction Thale had let slip past his walls. Gone was the pity he had for her for the unwitting part she was about to play in his mission. Gone was his momentary and uncharacteristically soft moment.

Thale stood to his full height, rolling his shoulders and tilting his head to one side to crack his neck, allowing his powerful build to impose itself on the young woman.

He tilted his head forwards to shadow his face and bunched his chest and stomach and arms to accentuate both his raw power and the host of scars upon his body. The three women before him reacted immediately. Lanna squeaked in fear and the two women either side of him braced themselves for violence.

Taking a deep breath Thale looked up to the light to soften his features and allowed his body to relax. “Lanna. It is time for you to leave.”

Tears sprung down her cheeks. “How could you? You said…”

He smiled, greasily, like he’d seen so many men do to so many women before. Like he had done to so many women, on so many planets, in his youth before finding his true cause under the Emperor’s light.

“I lied. I lied to bed you like I’ve bedded thousands of others.”

Lanna’s mouth dropped open, incredulous. Sorry kid, this’ll hurt.

“Think you’re the only lower-hab girl I’ve tricked in to a hotel bed? Think you’re the only one I called ‘special’ and ‘unique’ with ‘eyes I could drown in’?”

Lanna’s face went a new shade of red, somewhere between shame and the rage of the scorned. This is what I am. This is what I do to keep the innocent safe.

“Think I won’t be back down here in a few days time, in a bar a few blocks away, spinning the same lies to some other wench that takes my fancy?”

Thale watched the bodyguards as much as he watched Lanna. If he had his guess right, this wasn’t the first scene they’d seen their little charge create with a one-night stand. They wouldn’t interfere unless he threatened her safety. He had some leeway, but he needed to tread carefully. He needed to get her out and going where he wanted her to go.

“Think you’re the first little hussy that has told me her father, or her brother, or her uncle would hunt me down? Do you?”

Lanna couldn’t manage words. Her mouth just worked open and closed.

“Get out,” snarled Thale. “I’m finished.”

Lanna screamed at him, rage and hurt flying at him in specks of spittle.

She turned and turned, her fit of wrath causing more and more damage as she searched for something. Thale lifted up a pack of lho-sticks. Five or six still rolled around inside the card packet. A foil-covered ball of obscura the size of his thumb rolled around in there also. Lanna’s eyes locked upon them.

Thale smiled coldly as he held them there for her to look at. He opened the packet without breaking eye contact, drew out a lho-stick, lifted her lighter, and flicked the flame on. Taking in a deep breath, he tossed the packet to her.

After snatching the packet from the air, Lanna lifted a small side table from the floor and threw it at him. Thale swayed aside lazily and let the table crash into the wall behind. Outside, the shouts of the motel’s fat guards filled the air from a few floors down. Lanna ignored them.

“You bastard! My aunt’s gunna kill you!”

Aunt?

“She’s gunna rip your arms off and feed them to you! She’s gunnna…”

No wonder we could never find him. Radacast is a woman. Lanna’d finally found her vocabulary and was really finding her stride. Thale ignored her, trying to enjoy the torrid smoke of the lho stick while pondering this new information.

“Look at me you piece of gak!”

Thale looked to one of the guards. “Best get this little screamer off home before the guards arrive.”

The guard he spoke to didn’t quite catch the smirk that crossed her face before it betrayed her. Both of them had been outside the motel door the entire night.

“Best we leave, mistress.”

Lanna looked at both the guards in turn. “Aren’t you going to do something?”

One of the guards looked at Thale. The Mortiurge couldn’t help but notice her eyes flicker over his form.

“The Overboss pays us to keep you safe, not settle spats with… men,” said the guard.

Lanna stomped her foot. “But my father is the Overboss’ brother! You are supposed to do what I tell you!”

Thale laughed. The guards grabbed Lanna just as she launched herself across the bed at him. She yelled and screamed and squealed helplessly as the two women dragged her out of the door and into the flickering darkness beyond.

A moment after she was gone Thale slumped back on to the bed, hands covering his face.

Too close. Left myself open. I am the Mortiurge. There are no feelings but righteousness. No love but for the mission. No true pleasure but the death of Lerrunhive’s enemies. I am the Mortiurge.

I am His will, in the dark, made manifest.

I am the Mortiurge.

He took a deep breath and stilled his mind, cleansing it of Lanna’s smell and touch. He wiped himself clean of the sensuous kisses and warm, sweet breath, the lean legs and the soft moans with older memories of rage and anger and hurt.

Overboss Radacast is a woman.

She is cunning, but I am the Mortiurge.

And I have a job to do.

Thale’s arm snaked out and reached under the bed, wrenching something loose from under the mattress. A holster and folded-up belt came loose. A .54 Trantor hand cannon sat heavy within the beaten leather. Tied to the holster was a palm-sized picter unit.

The Mortiurge separated the picter unit from the holster and tossed it on to the bed as he pulled on his worn work fatigues and boots and then fed the holster belt into the loops of his pants. The unit flickered to life as he brushed the screen, requesting a user ID and password. With surprising dexterity for the size of his hands, he tapped them in.

Name: Thale Rook
Password: Nemamiah

The screen flashed white and then opened on to a panel of options. Quickly manipulating the device, Thale brought up a map with a flashing blip upon it.

There she is.

He smiled to himself. The tracking bug in the lho-stick pack had been one of the last things he fully remembered doing before coming back to the room the night before. The foul taste of the sticks still coated his mouth. He stood and walked out of the destroyed room, staying in the shadows of the glow globes as he unlocked the door to the neighbouring apartment.

Inside, it was neat and tidy, as he had left it each morning after failing to find the Overboss’ niece the twelve consecutive nights previous. Flicking on the light and closing the door he quietly up-ended the bed and dragged out a dark steel suitcase. Quickly pressing his thumb to a print reader he opened the case to reveal his kit and disguise.

He strapped on some body armour before buttoning on a dark shirt. A shoulder holster went on next, las pistol charged and ready. A heavy trench coat went on after, steel bullet-mesh woven into the under side of the garment. He looked to the cracked mirror.

He resembled any one of thousands of the Overboss’ men that prowled the precincts of the bastard’s influence. With a grunt and a nod, Thale deemed himself ready, and turned and walked through the door.

“Hey!” called a voice. “Stop! Don’t make me shoot you!”

Thale took a quick look at his picter screen and turned. Bloody hell.

Three of the motel guards and a flush-faced balding man with a shotgun stood at the open door to the trashed room.

“Did you see who did this?” shouted the hotel manager, waving his shotgun wildly. “Did you see the bastard that ruined my room? Tell me!”

Thale thought of how much quicker this discussion would be if he could just draw his Trantor.

Restraining himself, he shook his head. “No. I saw nothing.”

The manager stormed towards him, shotgun still waving wildly.

“I bet it was – “

Thale’s hand snaked forwards, slamming the barrel back into the manager’s nose, breaking it in a spray of crimson.

The guards made to move forwards but the Trantor in Thale’s right fist and the landlord’s shotgun in his left quickly made them think otherwise.

“Drop ‘em.”

Two autoguns and a seven-kilo miner’s spanner fell to the ground.

“Piss off.”

The three men turned and ran.

The manager looked up from the ground, cowering as best he could with nothing to cower behind. Thale squatted down.

“My name is Juxan,” growled Thale, pouring all of his fake malice into his words. “One of Overboss Radacast’s men.”

The manager whimpered and snivelled at the name, snot and drool mixing with tears and blood upon the concrete below his face.

Thale leaned in closer. “It would be best for you to forget I was here.”

The manager squealed and cried, nodding furiously, his eyes filled to overflowing with fear.

Just to make sure, Thale cracked him on the base of the skull with the Trantor’s pistol grip and put him out.

* * *

Five or six minutes later, Thale walked out from the ground floor elevator and into the streets. It was halfway through the morning shift at the manufactorums, and relatively quiet. Too early for the next shift to be awake and too late for the rotgut drinkers, blaze injectors and obscura smokers from the last shift to still be conscious. It was a time of darkness. It was a time for the Mortiurge to go to work.
Thale followed the map upon the picter, his stride powering him past the disparate wanderers of the early morning streets. None dared a second look or to walk near him, too fearful of what he might be and what little slight they may cause. Overboss Radacast’s men were not known for their mercy, or for their sanity.

He moved as quickly as he could, cutting through backstreets and charging through hab blocks to track and gain upon his quarry. Thale ignored the grasping hands of beggars and those so far in an Obscura haze they thought him friend. He leapt over street-blocking piles of trash and punched his way past would-be muggers and green juvies posing as hardened street gangers. Above, the suffocating cloud of filth that sat heavy between the towers disappearing above was lit by the glow globes swingling in the artificial breeze.

Voices, here and there, rent the air as they echoed from the impoverished Imperial hab blocks. Screams, cries, arguments, abuse, fear, anger, pain – the siren song of the lower habs of Lerrunhive rung out like a choir of misery and reverberated like souls looking to flee the rusted walls, rotting plaster and decaying society. In the far distance, loud speakers blared the muffled words of someone not knee-deep in the human waste Thale waded through.

He caught sight of Lanna as she entered the guarded doors of a decrepit hab block and walked in to an elevator. Thale smiled. This was it. It had to be. Dilapidated and seemingly deserted, the hab block was seven or eight hundred storeys of hidden stronghold.

He’d finally found where the Overboss had been hiding since his – her – underling, Yaziniki, had caught an executioner round to the head.

He straightened his coat and his back, asserted a harder look upon his already stone-hard features, and walked towards the door with a slightly exaggerated swagger. The two guards raised their weapons. Thale recognised one, squinting to make sure. Unlo; I know you.

Thale didn’t break his stride as they tracked him the whole way to stand before them.

“Name?” one of the men barked.

“Juxan. You know me, Unlo, you piece of gak. Don’t waste my time.”

The guard balked a moment. Unlo didn’t actually know him, or Juxan, of course. But he would know Juxan’s name well enough to be afraid of it. Thale knew Unlo from a low-priority hit-list with an attached crime sheet as long as he was tall. Juxan was a third or fourth tier enforcer - well above this man’s pay-grade. Unfortunately for Juxan, his thickly muscled body was now naught but dust in one of the ash-traps from the city’s rubbish furnaces. Fortunately for Thale, the dead gang-member bore a half-decent resemblance to his own face. His body armour filled out the missing size, and his reputation for violence would easily be assimilated and used for good.

Thale fixed him with his stare, his hand sweeping the trench coat back from his laspistol.

“The last thing the Overboss needs today is to think about replacing two incompetent door guards.”

Unlo and the second guard looked at each other. Thale watched the heavies as they went through fear, a little more fear, and then finished with unashamed terror.
With a snort of derision, Thale pushed past them. He crunched his elbow into Unlo’s chin just to prove his point.

Within the inner elevator sanctum, more guards sat ready to react to any violence at the front door. Two large doors sat waiting for elevators to return to the ground, numbers well in to the hundreds ticking over as one elevator went up and one came down.

Thale watched as one finally reached its pinnacle at floor seven-one-six and the other continued its descent. He shrugged off any attempt at friendly banter from the guards around him, instead listening to those that spoke amongst themselves. There was but one name he was interested in hearing, and it wasn’t long until a conversation between some men manning a tripod-mounted autocannon behind him spurted it out.

“Yaziniki.”

“I heard say he was killed by Overboss Salima.”

“That fat oaf? Nah, he wouldn’t have the stones.”

There were chuckles all round. Then there was silence.

“Heard it was the Ghost.”

There was a slap of flesh on leather, a grunt of pained surprise, and the hissing of men silencing each other.

“Ain’t no such thing as ghosts,” whispered a different voice. “With the bosses putting any man who seen anything to the hard question and then in the furnaces, you’d do best to keep such words to yerself.”

Thale allowed himself the slightest movement of his lips – a beaming smile of self-pride considering where he stood. There was quiet a moment longer. The descending elevator reached the fiftieth floor. The second elevator began to make its way down from high in the stack.

“Yaziniki’s guards are all gone.”

“Yep. Like I said. Anyone who seen anything goes straight upstairs for the hard question.”

“Heard the Ghost got em’ too.”

“Grox-shagging idiot, what did I just say?”

“True but. You seen em’ go up? The guards?”

“Not me. Barran seen em’ go up, I heard.”

“Where’s Barran?”

“Dunno, not seen him in a week.”

“Reckon the Ghost – “

“One more mention of that… myth… and I’ll put one through your head, right here, right now.”

The elevator doors opened and Thale marched forwards to the sounds of a scuffle breaking out behind him.

An armed guard stood in the elevator, staring at Thale.

“Level?”

Thale thought for a moment. If he dropped on to the Overboss’ floor, he’d like be shot if Juxan’s status wasn’t high enough. If they made him, they’d torture him for weeks and then maybe shoot him – if he was lucky.

“Level?” the guard growled, annoyed at having to repeat himself.

“Seven-one-one,” said Thale.

The guard tilted his head. “Level’s empty. What cause you got to got there?”

“Overboss is lookin’ to move family into levels below him. Needs the floors cleaned out good and proper,” said Thale, adding some timbre to his voice.

The guard nodded, leaned forwards and typed a code into a touch-pad. For a while, they travelled in silence. The guard looked at him a few times before daring to speak. Thale did his best to seem unapproachable, but failed.

“Speakin’ of family, I saw the niece come in, just before you.”

Thale didn’t respond. Blue eyes he could have drowned in flickered through his memory and tugged a little at his chest. I am the Mortiurge.

“Nice piece. If she wasn’t the Overboss’ – “

Thale cut him off with a look that could have frozen flames mid-flicker. The guard choked a moment on the rest of his sentence and looked down at his feet. The rest of the ride to the seven hundred and eleventh floor went in utter silence.

Thale hit the guard with one last stare as the doors opened before walking out. He could hear the guard desperately pressing the door close button with his thumb almost before he’d made it out and onto the floor. Then there was darkness.

Trantor drawn and up in front of him, Thale flicked on a small, finger-sized torch attached to the pistol’s undercarriage, and looked about the corridor he stood in. Like most of the levels below him, floor seven-one-one hadn’t seen a human in a century or two. The decomposing plaster walls dripped with moss and sewage from the broken pipes heading down from the newly occupied floors above. Cheap alloy furniture had almost rusted away to nothing. The air hung thick and un-recycled, making breathing difficult.

Small skeletons, mostly animal, some reptilian and one human, lay in the corners, bereft of flesh. There was no sound but Thale’s own breathing. Taking a deep, cloying lungful, the Mortiurge moved forwards, his feet sinking ankle-deep into the dust and rot upon the ground. He moved up the corridor, searching for a service elevator or staircase to move up to the next level.

He passed open door after open door as he moved, giving each room beyond a per functionary sweep of his torch and hand cannon. The tiny apartments had suffered a similar rot to the elevator welcome room, furniture lying in ruins having been eaten by rust, and walls drooling with rotten decay. A pict or two had been left up in a frame but time had long since eroded the coloured inks that had shown the scene.

Thale’s light finally found the service stair door. Wrapping his hand around the handle he tried to gently pull the door open, but the door was jammed and the cheap steel began to flakily splinter outwards. Grunting, he applied a little more pressure until the door finally gave way and screeched open on rusted hinges.

Thale winced. With any luck they hadn’t heard him six floors up.

Shining his light through the door and into the stair he moved on. A sound behind him, back in through the door to seven-one-one made him turn, his gun searching for targets. Nothing. No movement. He shook his head at his own skittishness and moved to turn away. Not daring to risk the noise of the door closing once more Thale made his way up to seven-one-six without closing it.

Shining his light on every step before putting his weight on it Thale eventually reached the door. From the outside, the wood was as decrepit and rotten as it had been below. The hinges were red with rust, the bolt-housings having withered away to almost nothing. There was light coming from the narrow slit at the bottom of the door and the rumbling tones of mens’ voices.

Thale checked his surroundings again and lowered himself down to the ground. The floors inside had been swept clear of dust and debris, and he could see feet moving around on freshly polished concrete. Black combat boots for hired muscle, polished leathers for the more rich and influential, a few wildly different pairs of heels and assorted womens’ shoes. Finally he spotted what he was looking for. Brown boots: feminine and well-worn but of a rich cut.

Lanna.

As if on queue, her voice cut through the din.

“But, aunt, I need you to teach him a lesson!”

There was a long, tired sigh. “Lanna, niece, Juxan is one of my top level enforcers. Your father and I both told you to not interact with our men. I will have words with him. That will be all on the matter.” Thale closed his eyes and took in the power of the voice: there were lord governors who commanded less respect and obedience with all of the senses available, let alone just their voices.

“Words?” Lanna cried. “Words are worth nothing! Have you not been listening? Do you not understand how he treated me? I want you to hurt him!”

Another male voice interrupted the conversation. “Sister, I cannot have my daughter treated this way. You are her aunt. You are the Overboss. Fault is shared by Lanna – “

“Father!”

“Shut up Lanna,” rumbled the voice again. “Sister, fault is shared by Lanna, but Juxan should have known better. Juxan must be punished.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Juxan is one of the men in line for taking on Yaziniki’s region. He holds sway there. And he holds sway with me. I shall have words, but no more. I am finished discussing the matt -”

“Aunty!”

“Sister – “

“Enough!” snapped the Overboss. “Let me put it this way; this is a business. Juxan contributes far more than you do. I need him. I don’t really need either of you, but I suffer your presence because my sister loved one of you and bred the other.”

“I am your blood!” screamed Lanna.

“You are nothing!” roared Radacast. “Blood is only worth something when it is spilled! If you had any of me in you, Juxan would now be lying on a blood soaked mattress with a second smile cut in to his throat! Emperor’s balls, if you had anything of my sister in you he wouldn’t have arms or legs either!”

Something flew across the room and slammed into the wall, a steel leg puncturing the plaster through to the stair well.

There was quiet, some shuffling beyond the door. Somebody cleared their throat.

“Get out.”

Footsteps echoed as Thale watched Lanna’s boots, and those he supposed were her father’s, leave the room. A door slammed closed.

“Somebody get that chair out of the wall.”

Thale flicked off his torch and was plunged into darkness. He heard a shuffle once more as the voices started again. He turned and shone his light down and then up the stairwell. Something was in here with him. There was another sound, a whisper in the darkness, like something stealthily scraping upon a stair.

He heard the chair move and flicked his torch off immediately as the leg protruding from the wall was wrenched out to leave a bar of light spearing through into the darkness. Thale sat still, his gun out before him, searching the pitch black of the lower and upper levels for the source of the scuffling noise. He waited what felt like an hour, but could only have been minutes: nothing.

Leaning towards the beam of light, he risked a glance into the hole in the plaster, making sure not to interrupt the light and allow himself to be seen. There were men in their finery as well as plenty of heavies. At the centre of it all, behind a polished wood desk, could only be Radacast.

She was surprisingly wiry and old, her hair going from grey to white at the temples. Her hatchet-like face exuded viciousness and cold calculation, her icy gaze like the void far above as she brooded upon the door where her brother and niece had departed.

Thale’s eye was drawn to an immense statue in the corner. Sitting mostly in the shadows, it could scarce be argued to be a human. Immense shoulders, a chest like some great mammoth simian of old Terra, and archaic armour pieces to cover rippling musculature and healed wounds that made Thale’s own look like they had been inflicted by children, made it look like -

They have a bloody pit slave.

Thale swore inwardly and pushed himself to his feet. His mission had just doubled in difficulty. This could never have been a simple head-shot assassination. Everyone inside that room had to die, and they had to die quickly. If he missed one, or allowed one to get to a vox, then he was not getting out of the ground floor lobby alive.

The pit slave was an underground gladiator. It would be so amped up on growth hormones, rage and blaze, the only weapons bringing that thing down were the .54 Trantor hand cannon, a Leman Russ battle Tank, or an Astartes. Thale only had one of those.

He levelled his .54 Trantor at where the pit slave was about to lose his head, leaned back and lifted his boot to kick in the door.

That simple movement saved his life.

Something whistled through the air in front of his face. It smelled bad and it sounded sharp. Thale reflexively pushed the button on his torch and for half a second was afforded a view of a creature of his nightmares.

A forest of razor sharp teeth surrounded by purple and pink flesh dotted with black specks moved like quicksilver. Beady black eyes stared at him in alien hunger. Sinew and rippling muscle pulled and flexed over chitinous bone. A lashing tongue chittered with rage as misfortune saw it momentarily robbed of a kill, and off-balance.

All of this in the moment before it slammed in to Thale and sent him crashing through the plaster wall and in to Radacast’s office.

There was a second of stunned silence. Guns lifted. Men shouted. Thale launched himself behind a bookcase. The pit slave roared like an ancient beast, the very sound reverberating inside Thale’s hammering chest as Radacast’s immense bodyguard took a pondering step forwards. The Overboss’ mouth opened to unleash the guns of her men upon Thale and end the Mortiurge’s life.

It never happened.

Something else burst through the wall, and before Thale had stopped sliding across the floor into cover, three men were dead. Eviscerated. Fans of crimson flew through the air from corpses as they flailed to the ground. The two that had not lost their heads were dead before the shock could register on their features.

The head of the final man was in the jaws, being quickly compressed to nothing by hundreds of needle teeth.

Thale couldn’t move, couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Another man died as he goggled at the beast. Clawed hands tore a screaming lady’s arm from its socket. Chittering, alien and foul, filled the room amongst the screams of fear, pain and horror.

Radacast threw herself backwards as her heavies opened up. The thing was immediately a blur of motion. Slugs, lasblasts, solid rounds and pellet shot and all manner of munitions chased it across the room. More men and women died by the second as the beast stood still only for a racing heartbeat at best, while it destroyed another hapless man or woman, before moving again.

Somebody’s shot severed a power cable in the wall, after passing through a screaming guard, and the lights went out.

Another shot burst a water mane and a high-pressure horizontal fountain exploded into the room, smashing a guard from his feet. Quicker than Thale could track, the beast leapt upon the stricken man and tore him to pieces in a flurry of blows from its four arms. Then it was gone again, racing back into the cover of the water to strike again and again.

Thale remained hidden, watching in abject horror as Radacast’s people were destroyed at a rate he’d only seen in Guard assault drop sites. Severed limbs had barely hit the floor from the last victim before the beast was on the next man. At a quick count, over twenty lay dead, and only a few more still stood firing. It was time to act.

Doing his best to sight the beast, Thale held out his gun from behind his cover in both shaking fists. He watched as the blur of motion finished with one man and leapt three metres to bear down another. There was an opportunity, so minute that any without Guard and Arbite training would never have hoped to take advantage of it.

Thale narrowed his eyes and took his chance.

The creature screeched as the .54 Trantor boomed deafeningly and one grotesque arm was blown from its body. Black, soulless eyes turned to face Thale, and its legs wound up to launch itself into his cover. Thale’s second shot left a burning groove over its shoulder.

He wouldn’t have time for a third.

It leapt at him, its vicious lamprey mouth opening wide in anticipation.

Thale rolled away and it crashed into the bookcase, claws shearing through his mail jacket and body armour to tear a long set of gashes into his back. Thale yelled in pain as he hit the ground and tried to get his gun up. It was too fast.

The pit slave was faster.

A hand as big as Thale’s head grabbed the monster by one of its legs and wrenched it backwards with power and strength beyond humanity. The pit slave roared as it brought its other fist hammering down into the beast’s midsection. Bone crunched, the creature screamed its alien scream and twisted around.

The pit slave used its immense strength to grapple and pound upon the monster while the creature hacked and slashed and tore bloody chunks from its captor. As the creature became an even wilder whirlwind of fury, the pit slave began to slow. It bellowed again, though the strength was draining from its voice. Fists hammered the beast with less and less power and Thale could see its grip was slipping in its own blood on the abomination in its grasp.

He and Radacast, the two remaining people in the study, broke cover at the same time. Radacast unleashed indiscriminately with a lasrifle on full auto, while Thale let the power of his Trantor rain upon the beast in the pit slave’s grasp. Finally, the slave and the creature collapsed to the ground.

Thale stomped up and put his last .54 round through the monster’s head to make sure.

Finally, it was still.

Thale couldn’t break his stare from that monster and the tattered remains of the pit slave. Thought I’d left them halfway across the sector, a couple of million guardsmen between them and me. How’d they get here? That moment almost cost him his life.

The red-hot barrel of a lasrifle jabbed the side of his neck, burning the flesh. Thale looked up. Radacast had him square.

Thale’s head dropped. Not in defeat. But to give himself a moment’s respite.

“I have you, bastard. Don’t you move. I’m going to have some fun killing you for what you did to my men,” sneered Radacast, her eyes burning with cold anger.

Thale nodded, but said nothing.

Something caught his eye. Something red and flashing dully. Thale smiled and reached into his coat.

“Don’t move, I said!” screamed Radacast.

Thale nonchalantly pulled out his las pistol. Radacast yanked the trigger.

There was a low, pitiful whine and a short expulsion of heat from the barrel of the lasrifle. Nothing more.

“You’re empty,” said Thale, levelling the pistol at Radacast.

The Overboss’ face dropped and her knees went out from under her.

Thale stood over the Overboss. Not a judge. Not a jury. The Mortiurge. The executioner.

“Radacast. I, Thale Rook, Mortiurge of Arbite precinct five-one-four, six-west, Lerrunhive, have found you guilty of seven hundred and eleven counts of murder, three-thousand, six hundred and twenty five counts of authorising murder – “

Thale stopped mid sentence and looked at the main door to the study. It was closed, locked by a small deadbolt that wouldn’t have held up in a stiff breeze.

Radacast opened her eyes a moment, a whimper escaping her lips.

Thale looked down once more. “Where are the men you had outside?”

The Overboss’ face spelt confusion only for a moment before the front door was ripped away off its hinges and something immense came in to the darkness.

The monster ducked to get into the room; two immense arms with wicked claws at the end flexed open and closed. Two smaller arms sprouting from just below the armpit unfolded, bone blades the length of an Arbite captain’s ceremonial power sword slashing out to create a cross of limbs. Hardened bone carapace sat over wet sinew and flesh like a perverted version of Thale’s own body armour. An immense head, thrice as large as on the beast they had just killed, regarded them for a moment with equally soulless eyes before backwards-jointed knees brought long clawed feet into the room.

Blood and chunks of flesh hung from tremendous jaws and thick bladed teeth gnashed while a long pink tongue flickered and licked, tasting the air and the violence still in the room.

Thale had never known such fear in his life.

His bowels begged to be released.

His body refused to move.

His mind could not function.

The beast’s chest puffed out in challenge and its head ducked, mouth opening with to release an ear-drum destroying scream.

Two, and then three, and then four more of the smaller beasts came to stand in the doorway beneath or behind the monster.

Below him Radacast had been pushing her way backwards towards the hole next to the stair well door.

Thale saw the Overboss’ boot as it slid out of his own peripheral vision.

His head turned.

His boot took one step back, without his permission.

The monster strode forwards.

A larger section of the wall blew out as the water mane severed completely and the full brunt of the high-pressure water slammed into the creatures, driving them against the opposite wall.

Thale turned and ran.

Radacast ran beside him.

They fled for all they were worth.

Hunter's Game

Heart pounding in his ears like a forge hammer, Thale Rook shoved Radacast down another stairwell and launched himself into the dark after the criminal Overboss. He choked on stale air with ragged breaths as his legs powered him downwards, rotting step after rotting step, decrepit floor after decrepit floor. Doors whirred past him, the stab of his finger-torch highlighting numbers stencil-sprayed in black paint to mark each level of the abandoned hab-block Radacast and her immense organisation had been using as a headquarters until the adrenaline soaked minutes ago, when the monsters had attacked, and Thale had failed to assassinate his mark.

701… 700… 699… 698… How did they get here? How did they get into Lerrunhive?

Radacast’s wiry build frantically ran and tripped and tumbled down the stairs before her, a lean hand running along a honeycombed, moss-coated and eaten handrail. The little Overboss was covered in the red remains of the leaders of her organisation, their lifeblood coating her expensive suit, giving testament to the slaughter they had both just escaped.

Thale could feel the weight of his body armour and bullet-mail lined greatcoat upon his shoulders, soaking through with sweat and fear. His heart began to pound all the faster as he heard their chittering come louder behind him, chitinous claws scraping against rotten rockcrete. Sweet Emperor, how did they get here?

“What are they?” huffed Radacast breathlessly, eyes a moment ago hard and murderous now like the frightened child looking to a parent for protection.

Thale shook his head, flashes of needle teeth, pink-purple skin, vicious bone-claws, and soulless black eyes covered in human blood spurring his fear and his body to ever-greater lengths.

Radacast spared another glance back at him when he didn’t answer. “You’re the bloody Arbite! You’re the bloody assassin! Tell me what they are! You must –“

“Shut up and run,” grunted Thale.

He chanced a look over his shoulder, back into the darkness of the stairwell above him. There were only the stairs behind him; and the promise of a horrible death. He looked back at the slim chance of survival before him, one skinny criminal he’d been sent to assassinate, and seven hundred flights of stairs.

Something screeched, shrill and alien, and set Thale’s hackles up. He looked over his shoulder again, cold fear gripping his guts. The edge of the step beneath his boot crumbled. Thale tripped, overbalanced, and fell. Radacast heard the tumble, and moved out of the way, letting Thale hammer into the ground at the corner, the breath exploding from his lungs.

Thale rolled on to his back, wheezing and coughing, groaning with pain, and made to get up. He opened his eyes just in time to see Radacast fly past, barely sparing him a glance on her way as she slammed a knee into Thale and knocked the young Arbite back to the ground. Thale didn’t waste his breath shouting at her, instead shoving his hands beneath him to launch himself back up. The chittering and scratching was drawing closer and closer, perhaps only a floor behind him.

Shitshitshitshit.

Thale launched himself down and around the next corner, his body crying out with a hundred scrapes, bumps and bruises.

695… 694… 693… 692…

As he passed the six-hundred and ninety-first floor, Thale caught up to Radacast, the little Overboss’ feet moving in a swiftly tiring blur beneath her. There you are, you little bastard.

Sweat dripped from Thale’s eyebrows and nose, running down his cheeks and into his stubble, stinging his eyes all the while. It took all of his Arbites-trained restraint not to pull his Trantor from its holster and blow a fist-sized hole through the Overboss, just to satisfy his spite. And do the job Lerrunhive’s tax-contributors pay me for.

685… 684… 683… 682…

Thale shoved and pushed Radacast harder and harder, not wanting the woman behind him, but the little criminal hadn’t trained like Thale had: her form wasn’t covered in hard muscle, her lungs weren’t clear of the lho-stick rot, nor were her survival instincts honed to a razor edge. Radacast blubbered and cried as she stumbled more than ran, her sobs echoing in Thale’s ears like a siren, drawing the foe to them. A beast rounded the corner right behind Thale, bone-claws scrabbling against the floor for purchase before slamming into the opposite wall. Thale sighted his next foot-fall, drew his .57 Trantor, twisted at the waist, and pulled the trigger.

The muzzle flare lit the stairwell a brilliant yellow. A wide maw lined with needle teeth had opened up right behind him, long lashing tongue reaching out for him, fetid breath steaming out. The creature was flung back by the .57 round, the ichor-splattered wall behind visible for a brief moment through the hole drilled through the back of its head. Thale turned back before his next foot landed.

Radacast was there, staring dumbly, mouth open mid-cry of alarm. Thale cannoned into her and sent both of them sprawling to the ground. There was an audible crack, and then the Overboss started screaming. Thale looked up and grimaced a moment as he saw the jagged bone jutting from Radacast’s wrist. The sounds of further pursuit followed him, growing ever louder by the moment.

Shitshitshitshit!

He looked around desperately, even if he ditched Radacast, he wasn’t going to make it down many more floors before they caught him. He didn’t have an everlasting supply of ammo and he didn’t fancy his chances in hand-to-hand with one of those xeno monsters. He looked back to Radacast. The little Overboss had gone bone-white and had started shaking, vomit-speckled drool spilling from the side of her lips, eyes wide open with shock and chest hammering up and down with ragged breaths.

Emperor bloody save me…

Thale spied the door. 681. There was the slightest gap – perhaps only a few millimetres, but there nonetheless – between the door and the frame where someone, probably two centuries before, hadn’t closed the door properly. Thale ripped off his jacked and threw it down the stairwell, watching for a few seconds until it landed heavily on the rail a few floors down. Let them track like dogs, like the others. Track like dogs, you bastards. Track like dogs. Reaching out and grabbing a handful of Radacast’s hair, he launched both of them through the door and eased it shut behind him, twisting off his finger-torch to plunge them into absolute darkness.

Their breaths ringing out loud into the pitch-black room, Thale forced his hand over the whimpering Overboss’ mouth and sat them both down against a sagging wall. There they sat in silence for only a few short moments until the silence was shattered on the other side of the door by the sounds of high-pitched chittering and scrabbling. The wall of noise filled the room and Thale could feel Radacast’s terror in the thin, quailing limbs, and the quickly dampening ground beneath them.

The sounds began to recede as the tide of alien flesh made its way down and away from their position. Thale removed his hand for a moment, allowing Radacast a breath and a groan, before clapping it back over her mouth as a few more of the creatures ran past, and then the more familiar sounds of human footfalls followed. Thale closed his eyes, praying inwardly to the Emperor that they would not hear the heart pounding in his chest.

Soon enough, they were gone also. Thale let out a long breath and pulled his hand away from Radacast’s mouth. The little woman had the good sense to keep her mouth shut this time. Thale pushed himself to his feet, gun out in front of him, squinting hard to see into the dark. The blackness was like a solid wall, pressed against his face, even darker than the stairwell. He pushed his hearing to the limit, whipping his gun to face even the hint of a sound. The old building creaked and groaned, ancient load-bearing girders bending under the weight of the hive at a glacial pace.

Thale took a deep breath, reaching up to the undercarriage of his Trantor and resting his thumb against the on-button. He squinted harder as he thought he saw a cluster of small dots before him, head high and about a billionth of a shade less than the darkness around him. He squinted harder and harder, his eyes beginning to burn with effort and his lungs screaming for air.

Then there was a shuffle. Ever so slight.

“Did you – “ Radacast’s pained whisper was like a thunderclap.

Something chittered. Thale flicked on his light to blinding brilliance. He stopped himself just short of blowing a skinny teen’s head from his shoulders. Damn near gak himself, too. The teen just stood there and stared at him, blankly, eyes silvery in the darkness, gang tatts covering his face dark-inked and angry. He didn’t cringe from the light, nor from the Trantor.

Thale played the finger-torch left and right and saw that the teen wasn’t alone. There were more of them, a myriad of hiver tatts covering their faces. There were others without the markings: men, women, boys, and girls. All of them stood there, staring at him with the same silvery eyes.

Thale held his ground before them, keeping his gun up.

The skinny teen took a step forwards, his head twitching.

“Stay where you are, kid,” hissed Thale.

The skinny teen took another step, a smile making its way over his face.

Thale heard another chitter. His gun snapped over to paint at a young girl. Did she -?

The skinny youth’s lower jaw split in half to reveal a forest of teeth and a lashing tongue. Radacast screamed. The Trantor unleashed its fury. The freak’s head detonated, as did the hulking man behind him. The rest charged. All the while Radacast screamed.

Thale got off six devastating shots before the first creature got to him. Bodies flew through the air, previously hidden alien limbs lashing out in their death throes as the .57 rounds carved fist-sized gouges through the attack. Then, they were on him.

In the staccato light of his finger-torch he twisted out of the way of a lancing claw and knife-punched a woman in the throat. A claw erupted from the darkness and he ducked, feeling something take a snick out of the back of his head. A mouth, wide and full of barbed tentacles almost took his nose. He got his elbow up into the bastard’s throat, put a slug through a kid that ran at him from the side, and then holed the one trying to bite his face off. Thale kicked out, sending the man flying back into the pack behind him.

Hands, swift and sure with years of training hard-wired into them, hit the mag-release while pulling a fresh clip from his belt to slam into the pistol grip. He got off three more booming shots before they were on him again.

Something ripped his shoulder. He caught a glimpse of a woman flying through the air at him before he snapped out a punch and floored her. Talons raked over his forearm as he blocked a strike before someone kneed or punched him in the guts, smashing the air from his lungs. He stumbled back, tripping on a body before getting off two more rounds and clearing a bit of space.

A kid charged forwards. Thale hesitated a moment instinctively. He was probably no more than four or five. If it wasn’t for the silver eyes and long, barbed tail, the pale-skinned, blond kid would have looked just like a few hundred million other boys in the streets and stacks of Lerrunhive. Poor kid, never had a chance. Thale obliterated him from the sternum up with a single round. Then, there was silence but for his own breathing.

He flicked the torch over his own body. He was scratched and carved, torn and bruised, but he was alive and combat effective. He splayed the torch over the corpses, looking for signs of life. There was naught but bodies before him. He swung the torch back to look for Radacast. The little Overboss was unconscious.

The head of the woman Thale had punched in the face was in her lap, her face blue, Radacast’s snapped limb dangled around her throat like a garrotte. Tough little bastard.

Thale walked over to her and reached down. Radacast opened her eyes. Thale offered her a weak smile. “C’mon, we’re not out of this yet.”

Something slammed into the door. Chittering exploded from the stairwell and a long, black claw lanced through the sheet steel like it was made from paper.

“C’mon!” shouted Thale, wrenching the Overboss up and over his shoulders in a Guardsman’s carry, before running.

Radacast cried out once as Thale ran, before going limp again with a long, sickening groan. Thale held the Trantor out in front, lighting the way down a long corridor, the sound of the door crumpling to the chittering cries of the beasts behind echoing after them. Thale looked desperately around as he ran, searching for an exit or a safe-haven.

He thought back to the scant resistance the door had shown to the black claw but a moment before. Bugger the safe-haven. We gotta get out.

Looking around, and not where he was going, Thale suddenly found himself bereft of floor. His shoulder collected the rusted, rotten edge of the massive hole on the way down. Radacast flew over his head, and then past him on the way down, and a moment later Thale found himself on his back, staring up at a gaping dark maw in the ceiling, desperately trying to get his breath and scrabbling around for his gun, Radacast unconscious beneath him.

Thale sat up painfully, patting Radacast to make sure she was alive. The Overboss groaned quietly.

“Knew I brought you along for a reason,” grunted Thale as put his hand over the torch beam to stifle it.

Radacast didn’t respond. Thale made to grab her, but stopped, looking back up at the ceiling, and then once more down at his quarry, his hand stopping just short. Radacast’s eyes began to flicker open. Thale waited for them to open and smiled coldly.

Radacast was a sharp woman. “Arbite! Don’t you leave me here, you bastard!” she hissed as loud as she dared.

Thale put his hand to his ear as the screeching and scrabbling of their pursuers came louder and louder. Radacast’s eyes widened in terror.

“Arbite! I swear by the Emperor’s light I’ll –“

Thale rounded a corner, flicked off his light and plunged the world into darkness.

I am the Mortiurge. I am Lerrunhive’s dark shadow.

He heard Radacast’s plea fade into nothingness as he left her for the teeth and claws.

“Please no.”

* * *

Radacast’s mind was a whirl of agony and panic. How could that bastard just fraggin’ leave me here?

“Arbite!” hissed Radacast into the pitch black.

There was a mess of chitters and scratches from above and then absolute silence.

Radacast held her breath, her heart thundering in her chest, the silence roaring in her ears. Something made a noise and some dust and grit floated down from above to settle on her face. Her nose itched, somehow overwhelming the roaring pain of the snapped limb she’d used to strangle the freak minutes before.

Radacast could feel something watching her, as if the darkness was made of malevolent eyes, staring at her with the relish of a gutterwurm squirming towards a legless rat. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. The darkness and silence weighed down upon her as if the untold tonnage of the entirety of Lerrunhive sat upon her chest. Her nose twitched; a horrible sensation running into her sinuses and into the roof of her mouth.

Her nose scrunched up, breathless lungs rebelling against her, desperately trying to pull air in. Radacast pressed her tongue into her teeth and clamped her jaw so hard she thought her bones might crack.

It was no good.

She made a sound.

A chorus of chittering and movement broke out above.

Radacast sneezed.

Something landed on the ground right in front of her and Radacast pissed herself, not for the first time that night.

Something landed on top of that thing and her world erupted into a cacophony of screeches and whines. Then a light stabbed out to reveal a pile of swirling and lashing, purple-pink flesh, teeth, claws, and beady black eyes not a metre before her. A gun roared. One of the beasts, huge from Radacast’s perspective upon the floor, was punched from its clawed feet. One of its arms tumbled to the ground, the separated limb spraying her in warm, viscous xenos lifeblood. Holding her ruined limb in her lap, Radacast scrambled backwards as another shot deafeningly clapped like a thunderbolt and bored a hole through the second monster. The light whipped up and another nightmarish creature was dead before it hit the ground as the Arbite’s handcannon wreaked a bloody tally.

Radacast kept scrambling back on her one good arm. The light whipped back down, just in time to blow the head off the last creature mid-flight on its way to eviscerating her. Radacast screamed as the body slammed into her, the weight crushing her and bending her forearm back the other way. She screamed and screamed for what seemed an eternity, ichor from the previously blown-off limb pooling in her mouth, filling her senses with an alien stench that made her gag and vomit.

A hand clamped over her mouth. She screamed into it for a while, but then stopped as the Arbite’s face came into view, a finger over his lips. Radacast summoned all of her strength, and stopped herself, giving the bastard above him a curt nod. The Arbite removed his hand. From above, then there was silence once again.

The Arbite pulled the dead alien off of her with considerable effort, his young face contorting as he pulled at the grotesque limbs of the beast. Through a haze of agony and the clouded stench of dead monster mixed with her own vomit, Radacast studied that face, putting every line, angle, scar, colour, and nuance to memory. As the alien slumped off her, and she managed to sit up, the Overboss watched the Arbite quickly clear the adjoining rooms.

The man was lean, taut, not overly muscled, fluid in his movements, tight with his form. Everything about him screamed Guard. But he was too young to have done his tour, survived, and been allowed to settle or leave the Imperium’s meat-grinding crusades. Perhaps he’s had a Guard tutor? She wondered. It’s going to be hard to kill you, Arbite. But I shall find your weaknesses, I shall find the cracks in your armour, and I shall revel in slipping my scalpels through your plate and into your flesh.

She tried to stand, but failed. The Arbite came back in, motioning her to follow. Radacast scowled and tried to get up again. Her legs just did not have the strength. She huffed a breath and held out her hand. But first, you’re going to have to get me out of here. Then I’ll kill you. To say thanks, maybe I’ll let you keep your balls.

The Arbite helped her up, his grip like an iron vice. Radacast held on to the wall as a wave of vertigo threatened to send her tumbling back to the ground. She was grateful when the Arbite put an arm around her shoulders and helped her get steady, but made an effort to shove his hand away when she felt like she could stay upright. The Arbite grinned humourlessly, and motioned her on ahead with the torch on the bottom of that ridiculously powerful handcannon. That one’s going on my trophy rack, right beside that handsome head of yours, my helpful young Arbite. I’m going to enjoy stuffing and preserving you.

Radacast forced her leaden legs to move, step by agonising step, into the darkness, the Arbite always on her heels. She peered into the dark doors that sat ajar, startling at nothing, her nerves taking their damned time to readjust. With only silence behind them, she finally had a moment to get her head in order, doing her best to think about anything but the torturous throbbing of her arm. She searched the walls desperately, trying to get her bearing.

“What’re you looking for?” whispered the Arbite.

Radacast made to wave him to silence, forgetting her broken limb. She bit down of a cry of agony. The Arbite reached out and stopped her, turning her around to face him.

“Keep quiet. This is going to hurt.”

Radacast put her free hand over her mouth and closed her eyes. I’ll remember this. You’re groxmeat –

Her world exploded into white pain as the Arbite forced the limb across her belly and then pulled her shirt up to wrap it tight against her form. Oh yes, I’m going to love flaying the skin from your face.

“You right?” asked the Arbite.

Radacast opened her eyes a slit, the blurry face of the youth before her filling her vision.

“Fine,” she grunted through gritted teeth.

“Then come on. You’re slowing me down,” said the Arbite, giving her a shove forwards.

Radacast stumbled, before righting herself. She glared back over her shoulder, sure she’d heard the Arbite chuckle. The man glared right back, for a brief moment, before his dark eyes darted over her shoulder. The Arbite nodded forwards with a grunt.

The Overboss looked back where she was going, and saw what the Arbite had seen: a floor plan.

It only took Radacast a moment to spy their way out: a service elevator, at the end of the corridor. It’d need a manual crank to power it. She looked at the Arbite. Good thing I brought some muscle. Not as stupid as my usual employees, but he’ll do. She grinned to herself.

“This way, Arbite,” she said.

The Arbite squinted at her for a moment. Put off by his sudden loss of Alpha status, no doubt.

The Arbite grunted and shoved her forwards with the nose of the handcannon. I rescind my offer to keep your balls, herein.

It took them a short while to get to the elevator. Radacast walked into it and sat down, releasing a long breath and cuddling her arm. Thale walked in beside her, pressing the lobby button with increasing frustration and force, to no effect.

Radacast reached out with her ruined leather shoe and kicked the man in the shin. The gun was in her face in the blink of an eye.

“Idiot,” snarled Radacast, pushing the torch out of her eyes. “It’s a service elevator. It’s powered by crank in case of blackout.”

The Arbite’s jaw clenched. “Fine. Where is it?”

Radacast pointed to a panel in the wall a few metres away.

The Arbite glared at her a moment, but the distant sound of a door shattering and the pounding of feet and scratching of claws set him off. With a rather prodigious show of strength, the Arbite tore the panel door clear from the wall, wrenched out the lever, and snapped it into place. He began cranking furiously, the screeching of unoiled mechanisms like a wailing siren to the silence. The button panel on the wall began to glow softly before Radacast’s eyes. Soon after, the small lights in the roof began to emanate the dimmest of glows.

She smiled and pushed herself to her feet, her eyes narrowed and flicking between lobby button and the furiously cranking Arbite. Something rounded the corner at the end of the corridor. The Arbite shot it dead. The button pinged as the power requirement to reach the bottom was achieved. The Arbite turned.

Radacast smiled and pressed the button, chuckling as the doors slid closed with a shutter and a squeal of metal on rusted metal.

The Arbite covered the distance at a sprint, reaching out his hand to stop the closing door. Closing on your life, my young Arbite. Radacast leaned a little sideways to make sure the man’s desperate eyes saw her widening grin of pleasure.

On the opposite side of the door to the buttons, a small vox speaker crackled.

“That you comin’ down boss?” came a voice as thick with stupidity as the wielder was likely to be with muscle.

Reaching out with her good hand to click the vox from receive to send, she replied, with a certain relish that only winning yet another victory over the Arbites brought.

“Set melta-charges on the main supports. Get our people out of the adjoining stacks. No-one, and nothing, gets out but me. We’re bringing this place down.”

She kept the button pressed, and thought for a moment.

“And for the love of the Emperor, someone make sure there is a fresh suit, a medicae, and a glass of amasec waiting for me when I get down there.”

Victory was always sweeter with amasec. Goodbye my young Arbite. A true pity your handsome head shall never grace my trophy wall.

She took a deep breath. Now what the frag were those beasts?

* * *

“gak.”

Shoulda seen that comin’.

The sound of more footsteps turned him around. Thale pointed his gun back down the hallway and blasted three more silver-eyed youths from their feet. Then his gun clicked dry.

“gak.”

Desperately, he searched around for an exit. He rushed into a cramped apartment and found nothing, even the windows had been boarded up with steel sheet.

“gak.”

He ducked back out into the corridor. Impossibly, the end of the hall seemed to become even darker as he stared at it. Behind him, the cables inside the elevator shaft rattled and twanged with vigour as Radacast made her way to safety. A swiftly intensifying sense of dread began to make its way over him as something walked out into the darkness before him.

A swift pounding began at the base of his skull as more details began to coalesce from the shadows. Images began to flicker before his eyes: flesh and worlds, equally consumed by a never-ending hunger. He felt something pull at his mind, and perhaps his soul, tugging and probing with ethereal clawed hands and tendrils, testing and coaxing him with alien emotions and feelings of – belonging? His eyes began to burn as, step by ponderous step, the bloated creature made its way towards him.

Arm shaking, as if it fought his efforts to raise it, Thale lifted the gun, allowing the finger-torch to shine. His jaw dropped in horror as he saw it. A huge head leered, sword-like teeth revealed in a rictus grin, eyes slamming into him. Before he could react, he lost control of his arm and the Trantor clattered to the ground beside him. The creature raised an open hand to him, and Thale felt the fear melt away as it began to work its psychic tendrils through. Around them, emergency lights began to glow softly in the hallway.

More images played over his mind’s eye. He watched nonchalantly.

Vast leviathans above the planet, long streams of creatures bursting from beneath mothering wings.

Huge spores crashing to the ground in his precinct.

Vicious creatures running through the streets consuming everything.

Food everywhere. Lerrunhive providing a wonderful feast of biomatter.

He could taste the blood and the meat. He could feel the joy of the mind that he shared with all as new DNA strands and understandings of how to hunt and kill and feast swelled from the billion-billion pieces of himself that came for this meal.

Thale blinked as something touched his face. A claw trailed down his cheek, drawing a little blood like the gossamer kiss of a surgical scalpel.

The creature was right before him, terrible quicksilver and black eyes gleaming their ravenous hunger. Thale felt his lip twist up into a grin. His knees gave out and he fell to the ground, his stare never leaving the hypnotising eyes of the creature lording over him. Alien emotions and images continued to flitter through his mind behind the all-encompassing face above him.

The clawed hand slowly reached for him once more, splayed wide to cover his face, those black eyes still holding him through the gaps between fingers. Almost completely unnoticed to his entranced mind, he heard the pop and crackle of a vox speaker coming to life.

“My young Arbite, immediately after trying to kill me, you saved my life more than once. If you are still alive, you have five minutes to exit the building. Let it not be said that I am a woman to leave a debt unpaid. The Emperor protects.”

Emperor…

The word swirled through his mind like a combat team trying to clear a hab block. Memories of hard-edged buildings, rock-like bunk mattresses, roaring combat masters and drill sergeants flayed him painfully. The reassurance of pulling the stock of a lasgun to his shoulder beside his squad-mates cleansed images of consuming flesh. A golden eagle screeched and then swooped to shred and tear at withered purple and pink flesh and sinew, dodging flailing black claws. A bayonet was driven into the ground to keep a lasrifle upright, the remembrance clenching his throat. Placing a blood-speckled helm upon that lasgun’s butt pushed out a wet sob.

Finally a figure in the black and gold armour of an Arbite Judge stood before him, disapproval written across his features.

My son. You cannot stay. I… we, have a duty to the Emperor. We must deliver on that duty, by any means necessary.

Thale could feel a tear roll down his face.

Your shuttle leaves for orbit in fifteen minutes. We won’t see each other again.

Father, I’ll not be an Arbite. I’ve watched my friends die in battle already. I’ve buried so many of them, fighting against the Great Devourer. I’ve had five years of it. Five years of –

You’ll be an Arbite. I didn’t spend four year’s salary bribing half the traders between here and whatever hell-hole I dug you out of for you to come back here and be some drunkard the Enforcers drop on my doorstep every second night.

I cannot watch my brothers in arms die like that again.

The image of his father frowned harder, took a deep breath, and reached out to put an ethereal hand on his shoulder.

No. You’ll not have brothers in arms. You will be the Mortiurge.

Mortiurge, father?

A Mortiurge: a man of blood, a killer in the darkness, Lerrunhive’s dark shadow; the only golden light, that of the Emperor held within the bastions of your soul.

A long silence followed: words unspoken, or unable to be spoken, staying within father and son. Goodbye, father.

The Emperor protects.

Thale blinked the fog from his mind. The creature above leant in. Thale licked his lips, clenched his jaw, and drove his fist up, knife-punching the beast in the throat. It was like hitting a solid brick wall. Faster than his eye could track, the monster whipped out a thick, sinewy arm and sent him flying through the service elevator door and into the shaft.

His hands desperately scrabbled to hold onto the thick cable, fighting the gluggy grease layered upon it, frantically trying to arrest his slide as slithers of steel slid into his palms. Thale cried out in effort and agony as he watched a long piece of rusted metal, only a few hairs thick, slip out through the top of his hand, carrying the red sheen of his blood in the dull flicker of emergency maintenance lighting.

He’d dropped almost three floors before his grip became tight enough to stop himself. Thale wrapped his body and arm around the cable, locking himself in place. Agonisingly, he released his grip and used his teeth to pull out the metre-long splinter of steel from his hand. With his hand free, he ripped off his shirt and body armour and wrapped it around the cable.

A body flew soundlessly past him, hand smacking against Thale’s leg, but finding no purchase. It was gone into the dark in a moment. Thale looked up, and flinched just in time as another, calm-faced body flew past, failing to grab him but nearly knocking him free as he slid another floor down. He looked up once more. Dark eyes on a bestial face glared at him from the dark above.

Thale looked back, and smiled.

“Come get me, you bastard,” he grunted, making half of the aquila sign across his chest, before grabbing on, setting himself, and beginning his slide down.

Using the thick soles of his combat boots to keep his slide controlled, he rocketed down, his hands, legs, and feet burning with friction. More bodies sailed past him, most missing him all together, twisting back to look up at him as they plummeted to their deaths, arms reaching back up for him with clawed fingertips.

Thale tried to work out how long he had left and how many floors he still had to go.

Two minutes, at best.

A couple of hundred floors, at worst.

gak.

He released his grip just a little bit further, grimacing at the smell of his shoes and flesh burning.

Finally, he saw dim yellow lights atop the roof of the elevator below him. He could see where ten or fifteen bodies had smashed through the roof and lay on the floor within. Drawing on his last remaining reserves of strength, he tried to tighten his grip on the cable. The burning intensified like he’d wrapped his body around a freshly used flamer nozzle. The top of the lift sped towards him mercilessly. Thale screamed as he pushed his feet together harder, squeezed with his thighs, and gripped his hands against the last remaining shreds of his shirt and body armour between his searing palms and the greased cable.

Thale crashed through the remnants of the roof, slamming into a pile of bodies. Blood erupted in a wet slap of viscera against the elevator walls. He felt some of his ribs give and snap. Thale blacked out for a moment.

He groaned and tried to move. He stopped and groaned again, trying to remember where he was.

Up. Up. Gotta get up.

Thale forced himself into a crouch, his dark vision screaming in agony against the bright lights of the lobby. He took a step, and collapsed.

Get up, you weak bastard. Get up.

He was up again, taking one wobbly step after another. Then he was stumbling and running, tripping and slipping, leering off balance one way and then the other as he made a mad dash for the front doors and threw himself out onto the street.

He lay face down on the pavement, relief washing through him. Feet pounded over to him and big hands grabbed him roughly under the armpits and dragged him across the ground. There was a series of loud explosions. Blistering heat washed over him and slammed him into the ground. The hands under his armpits were torn away and he heard someone scream as they hit the ground.

Thale rolled onto his back, his eyes wide in shock as the full eight-hundred storeys of the hab block began to slowly, almost majestically, make their way down, smoke and dust billowing out towards him. Thale closed his eyes, too exhausted to move.

The Emperor protects.

Big hands grabbed him once more and he was pulled in through a doorway, the heavy wood slamming shut before the cloud enveloped the outside world. There was darkness for a moment. The sounds of ragged and excited breaths filled the blackness. Then the lights came on.

Radacast squatted before him, broken arm bandaged and in a sling.

“My young Arbite. It would seem that you are in my debt. My men have just saved your life, although you did do a rather admirable job up until that point.”

Thale held his tongue, taking in his surroundings. Radacast had about thirty hard-bitten heavies around her. They weren’t street-level gangers, these heavies. Some bore Guard tatts from five or six different regiments he knew of, others wielded expensive augmetics. One of them, an immense brute, jaw shuddering with some stimm or other, had a ridiculously oversized boltgun across his broad chest.

gak.

Radacast smiled. Thale tried to remain stoic, but knew his death would be but moments away.

“Unfortunately, you have now outlived your usefulness, young Arbite. This is where we part ways.”

Outside a siren began to wail.

“Enforcers,” grunted the heavy with the boltgun, his voice like rocks grinding.

Thale shook his head.

“No, that’s the call for the PDF to assemble.”

Radacast frowned. “The PDF? For a collapsed hab block in a run-down area nobody cares about?”

Thale shook his head, coughing. “No. For those beasts.”

Radacast stood, triumph written across her features. “Then, the Imperium already has its victory, thanks to none other –“

A loud whine and a crash of sound outside quickly receded into the distance. Then another. And another. Singular ear-piercing cracks quickly became a torrent of deafening noise.

Thale shook his head. “No, it has only just begun,” he shouted.

“How can you know?” screamed Radacast, leaning in to be heard.

“I’ve fought them before.”

Radacast leered. “Well, my young Arbite. It would seem you’ve become useful once more. He comes with us.”

The precinct vox speaker system opened up and a harsh voice began barking orders for martial law. The staccato flicker of surface to orbit defence lasers pierced the dust cloud to sting the eyes and leave lasting after images etched in Thale’s vision.

Radacast led her men out back into the streets, ornate laspistol by her side. They moved through the backstreets, shooing street dwellers out of the way brutally. Some were mercilessly gunned down as they begged for food or money. People were scared; Thale could feel it in the air. He could see PDF reserves still dressing themselves, lugging kit bags, sprinting towards the barracks.

Heavily shepherded by Radacast’s bodyguards around him, Thale’s heart began to hammer in fear as they rounded a street corner, directly into a riot. Bricks flew and smashed through shop windows. People streamed in after and ran out, goods in hand. Shopkeepers fired into the crowd indiscriminately with stub pistols and rifles. Bodies littered the ground; some moved in agony, most didn’t.

Radacast pointed towards an adjoining street. “That way.”

They moved warily, guns up and covering all directions. They almost walked right into the shield wall and gaping combat shotgun muzzles of an Enforcer riot squad. Three Arbites stood behind them, guns levelled.

“Drop your weapons!” boomed the lead Arbite.

Radacast’s men tried to spread and find cover. Thale didn’t bother moving. The Enforcers and Arbites had the lot of them in an undisrupted field of fire with no escape but to turn, run, and hope one of the heavily trained and armed men and women behind them had on off day on the range.

“Drop them! Drop them, now!”

Thale looked at the hard glares of the criminals around him. White-knuckled fingers gripped triggers. Eyes were wide with fear and excitement. Radacast moved behind one of her bulkier men. The situation was about to explode.

gak.

Thale shook off the hands holding him and brushed through the crowd to stand before the Arbites.

“Are you in charge of these men? Tell them to drop their guns now! You have five seconds to comply!” roared an Arbite.

Thale held up his hands.

“I am Thale Rook; Mortiurge of precinct five-one-four, six-west, Lerrunhive. Who is in command here?”

“I’ve got three guns on your back if you try anything funny,” hissed Radacast.

“I am Judge Onex. I command here,” boomed the voice of an immense Arbite Judge.

“Do you recognise me, brother?” The word almost caused his mouth to bleed.

The Judge sneered. “I recognise you. Though you look to have fallen from your father’s pedestal and in with the muck, where killers for hire – like you – belong.”

Thale smiled, and pointed to the sky. Through the pollution fog and the constant flickering of defence lasers, he could see the purple and pink flowing organically against the starry black of the void above.

“The devourers of worlds are here, my brothers! Lerrunhive’s going to need every killer in her arsenal.”

Veryu good. Lovely interaction between criminal and Arbite.

Glad you liked it mate. I'll have the next instalment up in a sec.

Immune Response


I.
Thale Rook stood within the thick rockcrete and ceramite fortifications of the squat Arbite Courthouse in precinct five-one-four, six-west, Lerrunhive. He stared balefully at the pict screens that lined the walls. The jerky images showed people soundlessly flowing past in flickering shades of grey, intermittently interrupted by static wash, in an endless crush of mute humanity. Their fear was palpable through the captured images, and Thale clenched his fist as he saw yet another Imperial citizen fall to the ground, clawed fingers reaching for a saviour through the boots that quickly crushed him to death.

Around Thale, the Courthouse buzzed with life. Twenty vox operators all spoke at once while adjutants ran back and forth between their blue comms screens, chatter, and the immense figure sitting in the brushed steel command throne. Seated, leaning forwards, elbows on his knees and square jaw resting on his steepled fingers, Judge Onex was an immense and physically intimidating commander.

“Gate command puts lock-down estimate at thirty minutes.”

“All precinct boundaries report ready for lock-down.”

“Word from the planetary governor: message begins, ‘Imperial armada contact made with Lord General Adarin Tibor. Armada en-route. Relief expected within the week. The Emperor protects.’ Message ends.”

“PDF gun nests set up at precinct entry points seven-three through one-oh-eight.”

“Magus Iritin reports hive defensive void shields activation in thirty standard.”

“Enforcer squad twelve advises hab blocks in two-one through two-nine are now at capacity.”

“Report from Enforcer squads one and three: gang activity in sectors three and four. Requesting back-up. Response?”

“Enforcer squads fifteen and twenty-three report completed sweep of sectors three-four and three-five. Continuing on to three-six.”

“Civilian traffic preventing tank movement to one-oh-nine through one-one-three –“

Onex’s voice was deep and authoritative, “Have Enforcer platoons three and seven redirect civilian traffic through one-one-five. Message to platoons one and three: hold, backup on its way. Someone find me a squad I can send to them.”

Onex paused as his commands were relayed and more calls for his attention came through. He rubbed a hand over tired eyes. The man had been going non-stop for almost two days.

“Someone get me some recaf.”

Thale watched his commander sit and listen, pick out important pieces of information, map his response in his head, and provide decisive direction a moment later over and over, and over again. All the while, Stalking back and forth like a caged animal, Thale’s frustration grew by the second. The vox operators had stopped looking at him after a while as their jobs became more and more encompassing.

Thale huffed and blew out his cheeks, roughly rubbing his face with his hands just to do something to let out his energy and his frustrations. He squatted down for a moment, scratching his stubble. Then he stood, took a few paces and turned back around, rubbed the back of his head, ran a check of his equipment, and returned to watching the screens. He turned to the Judge, took a step forward, mouth opening to speak, stopped himself, and turned away.

“Rook; for the Emperor’s sake, will you take a seat?” growled the Judge.

“Sir, we need to lock this place down. We need to lock it down now.”

Onex turned on him. “How many times are we going to have this discussion?”

“As many times as it takes you to lock the precinct down and convince the governor to close the hive gates and subterranean entries. As long as it takes to seal us off from them.”

The Judge’s face hardened. “You would murder all of those people? You would have me consign them all to death? There are thousands still outside our gate!”

“Better those thousands die, than the billions in here,” growled Thale. “This isn’t a game of being a hero, sir. We let those bastards in, and it’s all over.”

Onex sprung to his feet, his fresh mug of recaf flying to the floor. “Those are Imperial citizens, you heartless bastard!”

Thale strode into the physical wave of rage the Judge exuded, ready to explode. He was about to shout back, but stopped himself. Shouting at this thick bastard hasn’t worked the last six times.

He took a deep breath. “Sir, respectfully, I need you to listen to me.”

Onex looked about to shout him down but Thale raised a conciliatory hand. Bit odd, reasoning without a drum-fed shotgun – for once.

“Please. Sir, those things we found in Overboss Radacast’s hab block, those things that sit in the void above ready to drop on us, they aren’t like anything you’ve fought or seen before. They are bigger, faster, and more agile than you could possibly imagine. They are bastard tough, and they kill mercilessly with bone claw and bio weapons that shear through adamantium like it was paper. They are innumerable. They fall on planets and systems like an enveloping cloak: completely unstoppable. They are hunters alone, or ravenous beasts in packs. They care for nothing but killing you. They never tire, they never relent, and they never sate their hunger.”

Thale stopped for a moment. Chatter had dropped to a minimum. Everyone was looking at him.

“You let one of those bastards in here, it’s going to kill a lot of people before we can put it down.”

Onex’s frown had furrows deeper that the intercontinental canyons that marked the territories of the hives and their manufactorums.

“Half an hour longer. We can give these people half an hour more. Just until the void shields go up.”

Thale clenched his jaw in annoyance. “Sir,” he growled.

This time it was Onex’s turn to put his hand up. “The shields aren’t going up for half an hour. If what you say is true and they fall upon us, then it won’t matter if the gates are closed or not, they’ll just drop right into the hive from above.”

Thale took a deep breath. The chatter around them began to pick up momentum once more.

“True, sir.”

Onex grunted, and moved his attention back to the requests and updates flowing through the room once more.

“Sir?”

“What?”

Thale looked at the fifteen-man Enforcer squad lining the rear wall of the bunker.

“Permission to join the Enforcer teams out in the streets.”

Onex gifted Thale another withering glare. “Denied, again.”

“But, sir –“

“S-O-P, Mortiurge Rook. Arbite precinct houses go into lockdown if the hive comes under attack. Even you are not above S-O-P.”

Thale growled, and went back to pacing.

* * *

The next thirty minutes passed at glacial speed. By this time, Thale was about ready to rip a pict screen from the wall and beat someone to death with it. Finally, a vox operator caught his ear.

“Void shields in three, two, one.”

Immediately, Thale felt the hair on his arms stand up and tasted the electric tang in the air.

“Commence gate close. All Enforcer units are to remove any civilians away from the walls and the PDF emplacements. Move them towards the centre of the precinct and get them into the habs. Pile them in the hallways and elevator shafts if needs be. Just get them off the street,” barked Onex.

Onex stood. “Lock this precinct down.”

The vox operators went into overdrive. For twenty minutes Thale could barely hear himself think.

A vox operator stood, waving to catch the Judge’s attention, and ran over. Thale leaned in, to listen, discreetly.

“Sir, word from the planetary governor: message begins; ‘To all Arbite and PDF commanders, the creatures have begun planet fall. Lock down all hive and manufactorum walls. Void shields are to be raised immediately. Hold for all that you are worth. The Emperor Protects.’ Message ends.”

Onex let out a deep breath. “So it begins.” He looked to Thale, lip pulling up in a sneer of distaste. “What do you advise now? What, with your years of experience.”

Thale let the Judge’s sarcasm and disgust wash over him. The Judge’s hatred of him wasn’t lost on the young Arbite, but it was a burden he had long accepted and embraced. Brotherhood, respect; virtues I can never again enjoy. I am the Lerrunhive’s dark shadow. I am the necessary evil when the darkness cannot be fought with light. I am the Mortiurge. Those I serve with hate me, and I am unknown to those I protect. I am the Mortiurge.

Onex huffed. “I thought as much.”

Thale rubbed his chin. “Kill the big ones, sir.”

The Judge frowned, his face clouding over further. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“No, sir. Kill the big ones and it disorients the little ones. Makes those smaller bastards easier targets.”

Onex snorted, shook his head and turned away. “Get out. Your presence is irritating me.”

Thale shrugged and turned away, already forgotten as Onex began to bark out orders. He walked past the Enforcer squad, looking over each man’s body armour and weapons as if he were a drill sergeant. They looked keen to get out of the Courthouse. It was stifling, the recycled air already beginning to become like breathing hot soup. I need some air.

He locked eyes with the sergeant, snorted at the fear he saw there, and turned away. He walked a few paces and gripped a ladder rung that had been sunk into the wall. Punching a code into the small keypad beside the ladder, he began to ascend.

The metre-thick plasteel hatch slid back into a concealed recess and in a moment, Thale stood atop the Arbite complex. Up top, three Enforcer squads manned heavy bolter and autocannon positions, scanning the mass of humanity being pushed past them in the streets below. One of the Enforcers saluted Thale. He ignored the man, instead looking to the sky.

The first one hit like the tiniest raindrop above, splattering against the fizzing void shield. Then, another hit. Then, ten more struck. A moment later, a hundred were annihilated against the shield. Another heartbeat later a thousand hit, then ten thousand, and before Thale could blink, it was a wall of crackling blue above them as a torrent of spores rained down and smashed into oblivion above.

He heard a murmur of fear run through the enforcer squads upon the rooftop. Someone dropped a combat shotgun with a clatter. Thale was pretty sure someone pissed themselves, the acrid tang of urine biting through the smog stink.

Thale could feel their eyes upon him before he even looked down from the scene playing out far above him. Inside, he still smouldered at being held captive in the Arbite command centre. Emperor damn the lot of you. He brought down his well-practiced cold gaze and briefly looked at the Enforcer squads who, to a man, were looking to him. He was an Arbite, a leader, an elite soldier tasked with defending Lerrunhive, and they needed his leadership.

For a brief heartbeat, Thale pitied the men. Memories of similar looks from long-dead Guard squad-mates on far-off battlefields flickered before his mind’s eye. The pang of loss scratched the back of his throat while he felt his eyes redden and moisten.

“Sir?” someone ventured. “Do you know what they are? How can we fight so many?”

Thale clamped his jaw down, hard, the muscles in his jaw working as if to break his own teeth, while his eyes narrowed to angry slits. No. Never again. I may wear the uniform of the Arbites, but I am no brother of law-enforcement. I am the Mortiurge.

Thale sneered at the man, shrugging off the Enforcer’s need for reassurance. “You can’t.”

“But, sir –“

Another memory flickered behind his eyes; a wave of gnashing teeth and rending claws. Men, brothers, falling, calling out, begging for him to go back and save them moments before their wails of gut-wrenching terror turned to screams of agony. He remembered the looks on their faces as they realised he wasn’t coming back. He remembered the wall of pink and purple flesh tearing them to pieces. He remembered running.

He remembered meeting those men in basic. They laughed and drank and trained through warp travel to keep their minds from the horrors outside. He shouted encouragement to them and shared the fear of planet fall, when all control over your fate was lost. He shared the boredom of the march and the camp and the preparation; vomiting as they extended latrine trenches, or grumbling as they dug defensive earthworks. They lived, they learned, and in their own fashions, they loved their Guard brothers.

But in the end, they all died screaming.

“You can fight them all you want. You’ll still die.”

The Enforcers stared at him for a while. He offered them no further comfort.

Thale turned away and pushed his fingers through his greasy hair. Off in the distance, towards the towering curtain wall, there was a resounding clang as the colossal adamantium gates finally closed. Thale let out a breath as a little relief washed over him. At least the Judge managed that.

* * *

“Sir, we’ve lost contact with Gladia.”

Thale’s stomach twisted. gak.

“What do you mean, ‘lost contact’?” snarled Onex. “That’s a hive with three billion occupants! Get me Judge Ancarion immediately.”

“I’m getting no response, sir.”

Balls.

“Keep trying. Five-minute intervals. Keep me updated.”

“Judge Onex: word from Judge Saria; “Walls at Seadonhive breached. Requesting immediate assistance. Void shield failure imminent.’ Message ends.”

Onex looked at Thale. Thale held the Judge’s gaze, trying to read what the man would do. They lasted four days beyond planet fall. We need to make it a few more days if we’re to have a chance of surviving. Gotta last till the armada gets here.

“Get me Lerrunhive’s lord governor. There must be some PDF we can send -”

Thale stepped forwards. “Sir, anything that steps outside of our walls will be dead in five minutes.”

“Damn it, Rook!” exploded Onex. “I’ve had it with your insubordination! When this is over I’ll have your badge, famed father or not!”

Thale laughed out loud, tilting his head back and really letting go.

Onex was across the bunker floor and on him in a moment, huge hands grabbing Thale by his bullet-mail lined Arbite coat and slamming him back into a wall. Thale only laughed harder.

“What are you laughing at you bastard upstart!” screamed Onex.

Thale stopped, his face immediately dropping and going to his normal, blank stare. The room was quiet around him.

“It’s funny, sir, that you still think this is about anything outside of Lerrunhive’s walls – that anyone can help us, or that we can help anyone else. The world around us is dead. To assume otherwise is to allow your mind to wander onto something that doesn’t help our precinct. We have one section of wall, one gate, a couple of companies worth of Enforcers and PDF and scant few Arbites to protect the one hundred million people under our jurisdiction. That, sir, should be your only concern.”

Onex’s face shook with anger and denial. His red raw eyes were hard as stone, his jaw grinding his teeth so loud Thale was sure the entire room could hear them crunch and crackle.

“Sir,” interrupted an adjutant.

Thale held the stare.

“Sir!”

Onex’s head turned away, but his meaty fists held Thale pinned.

“What?”

“They’re at the walls.”

“Who?”

“Them.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know, more than the pict-screens can see.”

Thale was dropped and forgotten in an instant as the judge whirled to look at the screens quickly changing over to the wall views. Thale stood, rooted to the spot, watching the meagre lines of the PDF open fire from the walls into the ocean of beasts rolling towards Lerrunhive.

Like trying to drink an ocean dry, by yourself.

Something caught Thale’s eye. A small, blinking red light on a screen in front of one of the operators who had turned away to watch the horde smash against the bottom of Lerrunhive’s walls and gate. Thale walked over to the operator and looked over the man’s shoulder, doing his best to interpret the warning message.

“Operator. What is that warning?” he asked.

The operator swung around, eyes wide open in surprise to find Thale over his shoulder. Thale grabbed the man’s head and twisted it to force him to look at the screen.

“What is that?”

The operator tapped a few keys and twisted a few dials.

“That’s a sewer.”

“So, why is it flashing?”

“There’s something in there.”

“Should there be?”

“Ahhh…” a few more key taps, a few more dial twists. “No. It’s a minor effluent expulsion pipe leading to an external waste dump and disposal factorum. It should be closed off at the bulkhead.”

gak. They’re inside. “How do I get there?”

More key taps. Thale’s foot began to tap with impatience. “Damn it, grox-brain, faster!”

The Operator’s hands became a blur and the screen chopped and changed at an incredible rate.

“Mechanicus service elevator down to generator three-four-oh-six. Should only be a few hundred metres from there.”

Thale stole a look at the heavily occupied Onex, then pulled out his small hand-pict unit. The operator quickly linked it to his terminal and uploaded the mapping protocols before handing it back. Thale looked for Onex once more as he pocketed his pict-unit. Five adjutants surrounded the Judge, all vying for his attention at once. Thale smiled to himself.

Thale turned to the Enforcer squad and hand-signalled for preparedness. The lead Enforcer took a look at the Judge, indecision playing over his face. Thale squared the man up, tapping a finger first against the Arbite badge pinned to his coat, and then to the Trantor .54 hand cannon in his shoulder holster. The Enforcer sergeant’s eyes narrowed. The man chewed his teeth a few times, swung his shotgun off his shoulder, and pressed the main door release for the command level of the Arbite centre. The squad moved out.

Thale stopped and turned, concern openly playing across his face.

“Operator, what does that generator power?”

The operator took a moment to find out. “Sir, generator three-four-oh-six is a part of seven linked generators that power the stabilising link of the western-most void shield over Lerrunhive.”

Thale barely caught Onex’s enraged face as the Judge spied him leaving, before he turned and ran out the door, slapping a drum of Executioner rounds into his combat shotgun.


II.

Corridors and tunnels flew past to the sound of ragged breathing, equipment rattling, Onex’s tiny voice screaming through a disconnected ear-piece, and boots pounding against steel and rockrete floors. Thale led from the front, the fifteen Enforcers pushing hard to keep up with him a few metres behind. A thin, dark shape loomed out of a door.

“What th –“

Thale shoulder-charged the old man back into his room with a grunt of effort. It slowed him less than half a step, but it was half a desperately needed step. Lerrunhive’s ability to be defended may have relied on that half a step. Behind him, over the sounds of the armed men following him, Thale thought he could hear the meek cries of the man whose ribcage he had probably just shattered. He narrowed his eyes and ran harder. I am the Mortiurge.

He ducked hanging cables, leapt over holes in the floor, slammed into drunks and drug addicts and innocents alike, his legs powering him on towards the Mechanicus service elevator. He reached an intersection and paused, his chest heaving and his muscles screaming. Wrenching his pict-viewer from his pocket, he checked his bearings as the Enforcer squad caught him, sweating and gasping for air.

“We need a breather, sir,” said the gasping Enforcer sergeant.

“gak on what you need, sergeant,” snarled Thale. “Lerrunhive is at stake. Push your Enforcers harder.”

Thale turned, and, with a quick double-check of his map, ran down a series of stairs and through a long corridor. At the end of the hall a brute of a man stood guard outside of a door. His arms were thicker than Thale’s thighs, winding tattoos leading from shovel-like hands to boulder-like shoulders, barrel chest and huge gut. The man saw Thale coming and stepped into the centre of the space, hand stretched out.

“Sir, these rooms belong to Overboss Radacast. I’m gunna need to see some iden –“

The thunderous report of Thale’s combat shotgun reverberated down the hall. One-hundred and fifty kilos of muscle, fat, bone, augmentations, and probably even a little bit of brains, disintegrated. The chunky legs remained standing for a moment, a stick of pink spine pointing to the ceiling, before toppling to the blood-slick ground.

“Arbite!” bellowed the Enforcer sergeant.

Thale leapt the body and kept running.

“Arbite!” Thale slid to a stop and turned.

“You have just murdered an Imperial citizen –“

Thale lifted his rifle and pointed it at the Sergeant. The man stopped and ducked to the side, as did the men and women directly behind him.

“And I won’t hesitate to murder another hundred, sergeant, if it means Lerrunhive is safe.”

The sergeant had a decent set of stones swinging between his legs, or rolling around in his head, and strode forwards. “You’re a cold-blooded killer, Throne damn you.”

Thale smiled, pouring years of malice into its iciness. “Of course I am. I am the Mortiurge.”

“You’re a bastard. My Enforcers and I will not follow you.”

“Taking a moral stand, sergeant?” asked Thale, racking the slide on his shotgun for effect. “That’s big of you. Now, come on.”

The man squared up. “No, sir.”

Either he’s in Radacast’s pocket, scared shitless to the point of mutiny, or he’s actually trying stop me because I killed that fat waste of oxygen.

Thale leapt the body before anyone could move, and drove the butt of his shotgun into the sergeant’s stomach. His knee rose and met the man’s descending chin, laying him out, unconscious. The Enforcers behind the sergeant stood, mouths open in shock as Thale drew his Trantor and pointed it at the unconscious man’s head.

“I, Thale Rook, Mortiurge of precinct five-one-four, six-west, Lerrunhive, declare you derelict in your duty to the Emperor and sentence you to –“

A shotgun racked. Thale looked up. An Enforcer, only one, stood before him, legs wide and supporting, combat shotgun pulled into her shoulder, muzzle aimed at his head, narrowed eyes looking down the barrel.

“Put the gun away, sir,” she said, her voice barely wavering.

Thale smiled.

“Or what?”

“I’ll… I’ll have to put you down. Respectfully, sir, lower your gun.”

Thale let the moment hang. He flicked his gaze over her shoulder. Some of the other Enforcers were starting to find their guts, and were bringing their weapons to bear.

Thale’s smile broadened as he straightened and looked back to the Enforcer standing before him. “Good, at least one of you has the guts to do what needs to be done. You’re promoted.”

“What? Sir, you can’t –“

“The monsters outside have gained access to our city and are probably right now destroying a generator holding up the void shield above our heads. That void shield is stopping them from dropping into our streets.”

The Enforcer gawped at him. To her credit, she never let her shotgun waver from his chest.

“Those little bastards get in here, sergeant, we’re all dead in three days: every man, woman, and child. All of us.”

She took a moment to take that in, then lowered her gun.

The previous sergeant took that opportunity to come to. “Wh… what the… Arbite? Did you? I’ll have you up on report!”

The new sergeant knelt down.

“Ah! Enforcer Mari… get me up. Men! Guns up! Take the Arbite into custody.”

Sergeant Mari slammed the butt of her shotgun into the man’s skull and put him out again.

Thale nodded. “Follow me, Sergeant Mari.”

Thale turned away and began to jog. There was a brief moment when he thought the Enforcers may not follow, but a long moment later, they were back on his tail. They were always going to follow. I know fighting men and women too well.

At the end of the hallway, a steel-grated door was jammed half open, and a rotten looking elevator sat dormant, flickering dull lights welcoming Thale and his Enforcers. Thale shook off a little shudder at the sight and leapt in. He pulled out his pict-screen, checking the correct level. As the last Enforcer jumped in, Thale mashed his thumb into the floor number keypad and got them moving.

Mari frowned as she watched the numbers tick by.

Wiping a strand of hair from her face, she looked to Thale, a little worry playing across her features. “How deep are we going, sir?”

She’s not half bad…

“Sir?”

Last thing you need is another one getting under your skin. Mind on the job. Thale rubbed his eyes, the vibration of the descending elevator running up his legs. I am the Mortiurge.

“Deep, sergeant. Into the deepest guts this big bastard above us has.”

“Muties down there, sir. Scavies, ratskins: the scum of Mankind. Big gangs of them. The Enforcers haven’t been down there in centuries.”

Thale glared at her. “Am I gunna have to replace you, too?”

Mari’s face hardened. “No, sir.”

Thale nodded dismissively. “Good. Everyone, equipment check. We’ve got about twelve minutes before that door opens and we’re in the gak.”

* * *

Rusted metal screamed as the elevator juddered to a grinding halt, nearly half a kilometre below the planet’s surface. Thale turned and pointed at two Enforcers. “You two, on me. Let’s go.”

Mari wrenched the door open and Thale led the squad out, underslung finger torches stabbing out into the darkness.

“Clear left,” barked an Enforcer in a deep voice.

“Clear right. Open door over there,” came the husky voice of a thickset woman.

“I got it, Mother,” came the voice of a youthful male.

Thale let the two that had flanked him take point and turned to see a lean young man, shoulders hunched over his shotgun and finger-torch smoothly swinging from left to right, move into a dark doorway. Two shots clapped out. A body hit the floor – a sound I know well – before the young Enforcer came out.

The Enforcer turned to Thale. Immaculately presented, the youth was clean-shaven, and had flawless onyx skin. The Enforcer’s light eyes locked onto him. “Clear, sir.”

“Sharp work, Scruff. Move up on point with Jaggs and Tully,” ordered Mari.

Thale nodded. “They’ll have heard it. Let’s get moving before they find us. We’ve got half a click to cover before we work out what got in.”

Thale shouldered his way through to point and got them moving again. He caught an approving look from either Jaggs or Tully, and did his best to ignore it. Shotgun up, all but one executioner round still in the drum, Thale led the way into the dark.

They moved quickly and economically, covering each other and stopping to clear adjoining rooms. Most of the monsters they passed were once humans, thick tentacles replacing arms and pale, necrotic flesh hanging from mutated bones. Most of them ducked back into the darkness, snarls and murdered Imperial Gothic all they could throw at the tight packed Enforcers. The rest found the Emperor’s final light at the wrong end of a combat shotgun.

They were almost halfway there when one of the Enforcers called a halt.

“Sarge? Gunnersen is missing.”

Mari swore. “Scaly, go back for her.”

“No. We gotta keep moving. There’s more at stake than one of your Enforcers getting lost down here,” hissed Thale.

“She’s a recruit. She’ll be dead in fifteen minutes without us.” Mari hesitated a moment. “I was looking out for her.”

Thale sucked his teeth a moment. He looked both ways, forward and back. I’m already down one. If they’ve gotten in here I’m gunna need every gun. gak.

If we don’t get there in time, one extra gun’s not gunna matter. gak.

He looked at Mari, and then at the Enforcers around him. “Two of you, on me. Wait one minute, then come after us if we’re not back.”

Thale moved off before anyone had a chance to respond.

“Scaly, Bright Eyes, go with the Arbite.” A woman in her forties with scarred skin from Greyscale, and a man of about the same age with cheap, clunky augmetics replacing his eyes, followed Thale.

Guns up, they searched for only 30 seconds before they found a trace of Gunnersen. Thale squatted down and dipped his fingers in the deep pool of blood, then followed the thickening trail into darkness with his finger-torch. He held his fingers up to Scaly and Bright Eyes.

“She’s gone. Let’s go back.”

“We should get her body, for burial,” said Bright Eyes.

Thale stood. “We don’t have time. She’s gone.”

He began to walk back to the squad. Scaly followed, but Bright Eyes lingered a moment.

Thale paused and turned back. Damn it. Last thing I need is a soft-touch having a tear over some dead girl. He took a breath, doing his best to suppress memories of lost brothers with his anger. “She went out doing her duty. Happens to most of us at some point. Come on, let’s get moving.”

He turned away as Scaly moved past him, her gun up like a professional. There was the smallest of sounds behind him, just a shuffle of a combat boot against rotting steel decking and something scraping against –

A shotgun clattered to the floor. Thale spun around, gun up. Bright Eyes stood transfixed in the light of Thale’s finger-torch, the green dots of his augmetic eyes locked on the Mortiurge. The Enforcer began to choke, then coughed out a mouthful of blood.

Thale’s eyes widened as the long black bone claw jutting from Bright Eyes’ sternum moved and then ripped the Enforcer from before Thale and into the black square of a roof-mounted air duct. What little light there was glinted from black, soulless eyes staring down at him.

“gak.”

Thale opened up, unloading half his drum into the roof, blowing immense chunks of rockcrete and plasteel to the ground. There was an alien scream amongst the tumult and Bright Eyes’ limbless torso fell to the ground, a metre-long claw with a shattered end still stuck through his chest. Thale unloaded the remainder of his drum into the ceiling, spreading his arc of fire to make sure of the job.

Silence came like a blanket as Thale depressed the trigger. His hammering heart and his own rasping breathing were the first things he’d heard. Then: the ticking of his cooling barrel. A cacophony of stomping boots came around the corner behind him.

“He’s here!” called out an Enforcer.

Thale dropped to his knee, hitting the eject on his drum as he desperately tried to pierce the gloom above him.

“Clear left!”

“Clear right!”

“Bright Eyes is dead.”

Someone vomited behind him.

Slamming a new drum into place, Thale stood and turned away from the scene. Mari stood before him.

“Where’s Scaly?”

Thale stared at her for a moment. Scaly?

Mari’s face went hard. “You may not care about my people, but they are family to me. Where is she?”

Thale turned around, doing a full three-sixty, looking for signs of Scaly. gak.

“What the frak happened, Arbite?” snarled Mari, reaching up and grabbing a handful of his jacket.

Instinctively, Thale reached up and battered her hand away. He kept looking for signs, using all of his violent years of hiding and sneaking and killing to try and work out what had happened. What took her?

It took a while, but it dawned on him. Tales of men long dead on far-flung planets he had once trod came back to him.

… big bastard moved faster ‘n I could track…

… took out the whole platoon, man by man, in an hour…

… only one guy made it. This thing followed that last man back to base, waited till they opened the bunker door and followed him in…

… me and a few lads spotted it as the door was closin’…

… one of the machine freaks was talkin’…

… gave it some weird name after we fragged it…

“Arbite!” Mari grabbed him again. “Just what the frak is that thing killing us?”

This time, Thale was too lost in his world of thought to react.

… Lictor…

“Lictor.”

“What?” Mari’s grip relaxed.

Thale pushed her away without much effort. “It’s a Lictor. I’ve heard of them before. I’ve known men that killed one before. Not before it took out a recon platoon and a command squad like they were nuthin’.”

“Where? Where did you see one before?”

Thale shook his head, clearing away the fog of the horrible past. “I haven’t seen one. I know enough to be gak-scared of them though.”

“Then what do we do? Call for back-up?”

He could sense the fear beginning in the squad. Mari’s face had started to lose its colour. He shouldered his rifle and moved his way through the squad.

“No, we get back on target, and we keep moving to our objective. There is more at stake here than just the group of us.”

Thale moved out again. They were only a couple of hundred metres from the entrance to the sewerage tunnel.

“Mother, on point with me,” he said. “The rest of you, guns up, the Enforcer in front of you in your sight at all times. Two in the rearguard. Mari, you’re one of those.”

Thale started moving. The tightly wound group of Enforcers moved with him.

“Kill anything that isn’t wearing a badge, on sight. No mercy.”

They moved as one, a barrel aimed at every dark space or weak spot in the walls around them. A slack-jawed, almost translucent skinned old woman came out of a door. She had only a moment to show her surprise with half a mouthful of rotted teeth before Mother gave her a double-tap with her shotgun and sent her flying back. Thale nodded his approval and they continued.

“Halt,” hissed Scruff. “Bulkhead, down the left-hand corridor. Thirty metres.”

Thale tapped either Jaggs or Tully on the shoulder – he was still unsure which one was which – and they moved to take his spot on point. He got back behind Scruff’s shoulder, his eyes warily darting from shadow to shadow. He pulled out his picter and brought the view-screen up to his face to check the map.

“That’s the bulkhead we’re after. Scruff, you’re point. I’m next with Mother. Mari, bring up our arse.”

They moved up to the door marked as a non-toxic sewer access. An Enforcer pushed past and pulled out a small pouch of tools, working at the keypad that would open the thick door. It took only a moment before there was a spark. The Enforcer stiffened for a moment, before stumbling back. Thale frowned.

The door hissed, and slid open a little, enough to admit one of them at a time. The Enforcer that’d opened the door shook his head and smiled awkwardly at Thale. “Friends call me Sparks, sir.”

Thale let a smile slip before catching it. I am the Mortiurge. He stood by the door, pointed to two of the Enforcers, and motioned for them to go in. They went in, guns up. Thale pointed two more through, then two more, then another two. Finally It was just Thale and Mari. Thale motioned with his head, and Mari went in.

Thale watched her back as she went through. I am the Mortiurge. Then he tapped an Arbite override into the keypad and shut the door, cutting himself off from them. Immediately he could hear something banging on the other side of the door and the muffled shouts of the Enforcers.

He shouldered his shotgun, switched off his finger-torch, narrowed his eyes, and moved off into the darkness.

It took him a short while to become a part of the darkness once more. He squatted in a corner with his back to solid rockcrete for long minutes, eyes wide open, every sense straining for the slightest shadow of movement of whisper of sound. The hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up as minutes passed before his deep-hive vision began to come back to him. He took deep breaths to keep his heart rate low, his nostrils flaring, the stagnant air making a barely-audible whistle.

The slightest impression of a doorframe appeared. An exposed wall pipe shaped in the gloom. Then the jagged edges of a rotted door coalesced next. Soon, in the dimmest shades of grey against the black, Thale was home.

Taking a slow, deep breath, he held his breath and listened. His listened for long minutes before his need for oxygen made him slowly exhale and re-draw. He lasted only half as long this time, but as he was about to exhale, he thought he heard footsteps. They were quiet, almost not there at all. He strained to listen harder, stretching his ample abilities to their very lengths as the steps stopped a moment, outside the doorframe.

There was the lightest whisper of something mechanical exhaling, then nothing. Thale daren’t move. His finger rested on the trigger and he started to bite his cheek as his legs began to cramp. Then he heard another sound, a slither so quiet an Astartes would have struggled to hear it. It was right above him.

Thale didn’t hesitate.

Inert legs cried out in anguish as they propelled him across the floor.

His shoulder roared out in agony as he twisted, landed heavily on it, and slid across the ground.

Something stabbed through his leg, just below the knee, thick like a sword and ten times as sharp, pinning him to the ground and stopping his slide like an anchor.

Pain blasted through him.

Thale pulled the trigger.

Something screamed and the bone-claw through his leg wrenched out.

He roared in pain and pulled the trigger again, and again, and again.

A light flooded in from behind him, bright and painful to his eyes, almost blinding him.

His gun was kicked from his hand and a boot pinned him to the ground. Thale reached for his Trantor. Something mechanical whirred and stabbed through his forearm, pinning him down in a third place. Thale screamed in agony. Whoever was upon him kept the lights shining in his eyes; but Thale was still alive.

Eventually, the light swung away from him, and onto the shattered remains of Lictor he’d killed, and Thale got his first look at one of the few men or women in Lerrunhive he feared.


III.

The man above him was clad in a kind of power armour, sleek plates of ceramite cutting away in places to reveal bundles of electro-motivated, black muscle-fibre bundles that flexed and moved like they were the wearer’s own. Sleek pauldrons, bladed vambrances, and spiked greaves covered his limbs while some sort of device or weapon seemed to cover almost every spare piece of space upon them. His back was slightly hunched with a small power plant that gave off no hint of sound, heat, or exhaust.

Thale licked his lips as he stared at the Spyrer. gak. He was in over his head and he knew it.

Four long mechandrites moved slowly and rhythmically from his back. Two had some sort of stubby lasweapon while the other two wielded deactivated power claws – one of which was still nailed through his forearm. The Spyrer was leaning away from Thale, down to inspect the xeno carcass, turning the elongated head first one way, and then the other, with his boot. Thale slowly moved his one free hand down his side, reaching for his short combat knife.

The two stubby lasweapons whined a warning and snaked back to point right at his head, moving up and down like living, breathing creatures right before his face. The final free claw wound up, lining up his other forearm.

Thale froze. “Stop,” he whispered. “You’ve won.”

The Spyrer turned back to face him, his mask that of a screaming banshee, no less than seven opticals whirring to focus on Thale. Thale caught a glimpse of a coat of arms printed in black upon the close-fit cuirass. Two chainglaives crossed behind a shield circled by brambles. The House of Brosnen.

“Won?” came a snarl like a body being dragged over rocks. “I’ve not won. This isn’t my kill. It was stolen from me. Stolen, by the bait.”

Thale clenched his jaw, a spike of anger rifling through his body. Bait? I am the Mortiurge.

“How can I take this back to my sons and daughters, knowing full well it is not mine to clean and place upon the trophy wall? How will I set an example of strength for my family when some low-born Arbite filth can take the prey before I can?”

The Spyrer increased the pressure on Thale’s chest, forcing the breath from his lungs. Thale heard one of his ribs crack, then a second, but held on to a grunt of pain. He needed something, quickly, so he could continue on mission. The Spyrer was far too strong for him to try to win through force. Thale had seen the capabilities of the suits those with more money than sense could afford, off-world technology smuggled past the Mechanicus check-points powerful enough to threaten a fully armoured Astartes.

“There… will be… more,” he managed through gritted teeth.

The Spyrer leaned down, the pressure increasing once more. Thale felt like his head was about to burst. “More?”

Thale nodded, unable to talk.

“Where?”

Thale couldn’t respond, the edges of his vision greying. The pressure released and he wrenched in a painful lungful of air and coughed. Gasping, he sat up, crying out as the claw slid out of his forearm. He opened his eyes, the Spyrer wasn’t there and the lights were out once more. Thale daren’t move.

Something, razor sharp enough to carve away some of his stubble, but well controlled enough not to break the skin, caressed his cheek. The Spyrer was behind him.

“Tell me, scum, where can I find more of these wondrous beasts?”

“Where have you been? There’s a few million of them dropping from ab –“

The dull thuds of combat shotguns going off in continuous volleys answered the question.

Thale heard and felt the Spyrer turn away from him. The Mortiurge sprang to his feet, his hands scrabbling for his shotgun in the pitch black, his leg and his forearm crying out in dull agony. His hand grasped the stock and he whipped it up into his shoulder, searching for a target desperately. The rolling crescendo of combat shotguns continued in the distance while Thale tried to acclimatise to the dark once more, his heart trying its best to smash its way out of his aching ribcage.

There was a whisper in the dark. “The house of Brosnen never forgets when it has been wronged, Arbite. I never forget.”

Thale flicked on his finger-torch. There was nothing sharing the room with him. He cleared the room, including the new hole he’d blasted into the floor above, and then the corridor outside, before limping to the bulkhead he’d sent the Enforcer team through. His leg and forearm burned, his right side was soaked in his own blood and that of the Lictor, and he still smarted at having been bested by another denizen of Lerrunhive’s dark, but he was alive.

The Lictor was dead, and Lerrunhive needed him to secure the power plant.

And they need me if they’re going to get out of here alive. The thought nearly stopped him in his tracks as he neared the bulkhead. His hand reached for the keypad and punched in his override code as he thought about the feelings roiling through his chest.

Gotta save Lerrunhive. Get straight to the power plant, leave the squad as a blocking force.

The door opened a fraction and the sound of someone’s scream being cut off amidst the roar of shotguns and the alien assault.

They’ll die without you.

“Jaggs! Down!” Mother’s husky bark snapped out followed by a burst of bolt pistol blasts and a high-pitched scream.

“Mother!” That was Mira. Someone screamed horribly. That was Mother.

Thale shoved the heavy door open and leapt into the battle. He landed upon the ledge running along the side of the tunnel, up out of the flow of filth. Six Enforcers were knee deep in gak in the centre of the massive square tunnel, Mira in the centre raining shells into a beast that was too busy eviscerating what was left of Mother to notice being blown to pieces.

Scruff was by her side, bleeding heavily from a stomach wound, holding his guts in with one arm while trying to rack and shoot with the other. Jaggs and Tully were on the other side, unleashing hell. Two other Enforcers were on the wings. Sparks dropped his shotgun and drew his bolt pistol, just in time to drill a leaping, clawed beast before it landed on him, dead, knocking him off balance.

More creatures followed the first. Thale hammered them with shells and then turned his attention down the pipe. There were hundreds of the things. They clogged the five metre tall pipe, climbing over their dead and their living to get at the Enforcers.

Thale swept the advancing creatures with a volley to clear the way to the Enforcers before running between the two groups, planting his feet, and unloading the rest of his drum into the horde. At this range, with a wall of targets before him, he couldn’t miss.

The effects were devastating. The Executioner rounds annihilated the front ranks of the foe and those behind them. Bone claws and chunks of pink and purple flesh flew from detonating bodies. The air filled with a mist of ichor and the alien chittering screams threatened to drown out the shotgun blasts. The gun bucked in Thale’s hands wildly, but it didn’t matter as he unleashed the Emperor’s anger into the foe.

These creatures were defiling Lerrunhive.

They were a disease; and he was the cure.

He was Lerrunhive’s immune response.

The barrel clicked dry. Thale had driven them back almost fifty metres. He turned to the shocked Enforcers behind him.

“Run!”

* * *

They ran through the sludge, human effluent geysering from where their heavy tread splashed. Scruff cried out in pain and sobbed as they ran, his shotgun lost to the muck behind them as he used both arms to cover his stomach. Mari turned back to look at him.

“Keep running!” shouted Thale breathlessly as the sounds of alien pursuit began again.

Throne, give me something to stop them.

The Emperor answered his prayers. Above their head, clamped to the top of the pipe above their heads was a fat power plant waste pipe. Noxious fumes and toxic runoff would be running through there, as far away from people as it was possible to get within a hive.

Scruff chose that moment to stop and collapse against the wall.

“I’m done, sarge,” was all he could manage.

Thale looked down the tunnel. They had thirty seconds, at best. He reached down to Scruffs equipment belt and pulled out a grenade and put it in Scruff’s hand.

“Grenades. All of you,” he demanded.

The Enforcers obeyed immediately. Thale wrenched off his jacket, and then his shirt, and clustered the eight other grenades and shoved them into Scruff’s arms. Pale blue eyes watched him from the dark-skinned face. He could see them pleading for survival. But he could also read the strength in them. He nodded to the young Enforcer.

Then he drew his Trantor and blasted a hole in the power plant effluent pipe ten metres down from them, towards the approaching horde. Immediately the toxic reek turned the air dry, as if it sucked the very life from it with its stench.

“Let em get close, then blow the tunnel.”

Thale ran without waiting for a response. Mari whispered something to Scruff, and then they were gone. Thale had already spied the next bulkhead entrance. Twenty metres, maybe ten seconds.

The slap of overpressure smacked them all to the ground. Thale went under, receiving a mouthful of gak that he immediately choked on and vomited up. His lungs screamed for air, but the yellow, green, and white light glaring from above the sludge made him think twice. He stayed under as long as he could before going up for air.

Immediately he hacked and coughed and choked in the thick, toxic smoke. He saw the silhouette of a hand breach the surface. He reached out and grabbed it. Mari came up, choking and gasping. Thale saw either Jaggs or Tully come up as well. He still didn’t know which one was which.

Then the other one floated by, face down. Thale flipped him over. A piece of rockcrete had ripped his face off. Mari cried out and then went silent. “Tully…”

Sparks swam up next to them. “Think I broke my ankle, sarge. Twisted it hard on something.”

Jaggs looked over to him, but didn’t move, fear and pain written across his features. “Gotta get out Sammy. You gotta get up.”

Thale ducked down and got one of Spark’s arms over his shoulder and lifted. “Probably saved your life, brother. Mari, Jaggs, watch our back. Emperor willing, the roof has caved in. If not, we’ll be in it again pretty soon.”

He began to walk to the bulkhead he’d spied earlier, half helping, half dragging Sammy. Moving painfully slowly, they finally got there. The bulkhead door had a Mechanicus symbol etched there, but was open just wide enough for a man to get through. Thale frowned as he peered closer. There were claw marks on the corners of the steel. He handed Sparks off to Jaggs, pulled his Trantor, and went in.

Inside, the air vibrated violently and it stank of burnt fuel. Bodies in red-brown robes lay everywhere, their blood sprayed up the walls and the thick armourglass window on the far side of the room. Chunks of machine pieces, some obviously augmetics, some non-descript, were scattered around the floor. Thale moved through the wreckage until he reached a shattered console. One of the one remaining palm-sized pict-screens flashed a warning red.

A tremor shook the room. Thale looked up and out into the power plant. An immense concoction of shuddering pipes, forearm-thick power cables, rusting metal housing the size of small hab-blocks, and jets of steam filled a room the size of a Guard mass-lander’s interior.

A red light began flashing and a siren wailed deafeningly. The room began to quake and shudder all the harder around them. A monitor fell from the ceiling and smashed to the floor. Thale almost didn’t hear the groan of pain and the scrape of steel on rockcrete next to him. Mari was on the wounded pile of robes in a flash, leading with her shotgun.

Thale swept back the cowl to reveal the face of a different kind of monster. The Adept barely had any flesh to speak of on his head. Just a mass of boxy augmetics covered in ribbed wire coverings against his white flesh. Red orbs looked up at him.

“Generator 3406 will go critical in 3 minutes and two seconds.” The voice was all machine. “You have thirty seconds to get me to the controls behind you before everything within a kilometre of us is instantly vaporised.”

Thale reached down and grabbed the Adept. He was bastard heavy. Thale couldn’t budge him. Mari leant her efforts, but it wasn’t until Jaggs dropped Sammy to help, that they were able to drag the Adept over. They propped him up as best they could against the cogigator console.

A long mechandrite extended from the Adept’s back and slid into a plug on the side of the cogigator. The red runes on the remaining screen went green and then blank. Then the power went out.

Thale flicked on his thumb-torch.

“What’d you just do?”

The Adept looked up at him.

“I protected the machine-spirit. A shut down and restart, with an emergency cool down period of 3 hours, 17.3 minutes, twelve seconds, and the correct prayers and requests for forgiveness, will ensure the machine-spirit is appeased, and can return to function as normal.”

Thale’s eyes widened. “No! Turn it back on! Turn it back on now!”

“I cannot, the Omnissiah has ordained the emergency reset protocol as I have explained.”

“The void shield is all that is keeping those things that killed all of your people from dropping into the city! Do you have any idea how many tens of thousands could drop into the hole left by the shield in three fraggin’ hours?”

If the metal face were capable of expression, Thale was pretty sure there wouldn’t have been one anyway.

“Generators 3404, 3405, 3407, 3408, 3409 will increase output automatically. There will only be intermittent failure of the fields for a period of 19 minutes and 15 seconds.”

Thale thought about pulling out his gun and executing the Martian. He thought about it for a good few breaths.

He looked at Mari. “Nobody gets in here. Nobody touches him. Nothing prevents him from getting that shield up.”

Mari took a step forwards. “Where are you going?”

“I’m gunna get up there and let command know what is happening. If the shields are already failing, they’ll –“

“You’ll have 20.9 standard minutes before the capacitors deplete their charge,” interrupted the Martian.

“What’s the quickest way to the surface?” demanded Thale.

“Service elevator –“

“I know it. What is the quickest way there?”

“Go through the plant, take gantry 3 over to exit 9. Follow the passage for 72 metres. Turn right at a 90º angle. Take service tunnel 676 and follow for 20 metres. There is the elevator.”

“Arbite!” called out Mari as Thale opened the door to the power plant.

Thale looked back.

“Don’t die.”

Thale flashed her a smile. “I’ll try.” Then he ran.

* * *

Judge Onex was at the end of his tether. He was fighting a losing battle to keep his eyes open and his mind sharp, and the stupidity of those not wearing an Arbite badge was about to make him erupt. Rook was the exception –running off with one of the four platoons he kept on base was just the starting point. That disobedience was a small fly buzzing around his head in a swarm of bees. An adjutant ran over.

“Sir, request for backup received from the PDF. Signature is from a Major Etherington. Reads; ‘Judge for precinct five-one-four, six-west, request for military aid. More firepower required on the walls.’ Message ends. Response?”

Onex’s eyes narrowed. “Ignore.”

The Adjutant nodded and ran back to his station. Almost before than man had taken five steps, another adjutant was standing before Onex. He rubbed the bridge of his nose between his eyes.

“Sir, request for a direct vox-link to you from the PDF. Immediate urgency.”

Onex sighed. It was the twentieth one they’d sent. “Refused. We’ve no help to give, no sanctuary to offer. You are authorised to refuse anyone short of the lord governor, herewith.”

“Sir, the call is on the PDF vox, but the caller says he’s an Arbite.”

Onex sighed. Damned bastards’ll try just about anything. He was just about to refuse when he frowned. Rook.

“Allow it.”

The adjutant passed him a small wireless.

“Onex speaking.”

“Sir, it’s Rook. We’ve got a problem.” The line was crackly, full of static from the void shields and riddled with the overlays of other conversations on other vox channels.

“Damn right we have a problem, Rook. I’m gunna rip that badge off you and shove –“

“Shut up, sir. Shut up right now.”

Onex’s mouth opened, but there was something in the urgency of Rook’s voice that held his rage. Rook was an Arbite, a cold-blooded murderer no doubt, but he was still held together by a code from the Scholam and a heart with the Aquila stamped on it.

“The west-facing void shield is about to go out.”

“What?”

“Sir, I repeat, the west facing void shield is about to go out.”

Onex was standing. “Everybody, silence!” he roared, and the room went quiet, ever set of eyes upon him.

He ran over to the hatch to the roof and started punching in the open code.

“Rook, confirm. The void shield over our precinct is about to go out?”

“Sir, confirmed. You have five minutes to get the word out. Get everyone inside. Bar the doors.”

Onex ran out on to the roof. Far above, he could see the constant rain of detonating alien filth smashing in to the flashing void shield. The air was thick with ozone tang as the immense energy field was stressed and strained to its limits.

“The shield is still up, Rook.”

As the words left his mouth, the field flickered. It was only for a moment, but in that moment almost one hundred spores got through and came crashing into the spires above and the precincts below. Immediately, he could hear the muffled hard bangs of solid projectile weapons and the hissing of las weapons a few blocks away. There was an explosion that lit up a long street as some idiot unleashed his tank’s primary weapon or someone fired a missile launcher.

“Rook, where are you? How did you get a PDF vox-link?”

There was a pause.

“Rook?”

“Sir, I found a platoon of PDF. They were in a bar, drinking. I have sentenced their sergeant and executed him. I have taken command and will commence street-to-street sweeps when void shield solidarity is established.”

“Leave those men and get back here, Rook.”

There was another long pause.

“Rook, this is an order; get back to base. You are not above the law. You are not above S-O-P.”

The pause drew out.

“Sir, I must respectfully decline. I’m more use to the precinct defending her streets.”

“Damn you, Rook.”

“Sir, respectfully, that is the duty of the Emperor.” The vox-link clicked closed.

Onex growled and dashed the vox-link against the rockcrete. I’m gunna rip his head off and take a sh…

He stopped himself, and took a breath.

Emperor, bring me the calm to command. Onex closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked up again.

The shield was gone. The spores were raining in for five or six seconds before the shield went up again.

Thousands got in.

“Inside!” yelled Onex as he watched their trajectories come to saturate his precinct.


IV.

“Barricade the door!” Thale roared at the thirty PDF troopers hunkering down in the ground floor of a squat pre-fab.

They were a sorry looking bunch; boys and girls too young or too soft for the Guard, and greybeards so far past their prime it was amazing they were still standing under the ridiculous amount of kit they each carried. They were scared; a few had gak or pissed themselves without even seeing anything more than a spore fly through the air. Some were crying. Some were shouting, their voices cracking in terror or still slurring with drunkenness. Outside, through the thick walls, they could just hear the sounds of the unfortunates outside being slaughtered.

Thale could read the terror as the cracks of lasrifles and solid chugging of autocannons offset alien screams. The man beside him moaned and released his bowels as, just outside their door, somebody screamed as they unloaded their lasrifle on full auto, and then screamed more shrilly as something ripped them apart. Blood seeped under the door. Thale held up his Trantor, his shotgun long discarded as dead weight.

Something slammed into the door, but it held. The door shuddered under the impact again and there was a collection of moans and cries of fear from the soldiers around him. Soldiers – can’t even call them that. Probably drown in their own gak before going out on the street to fight. He thought back to Mari and her well-drilled Enforcers fondly. At least they would fight. And for the first time in many years, his memories stopped there before hurtling him into the horrors of the past.

He looked back around at the units. They may be scared, they may be useless, but now they were his scared and useless soldiers. He had ten minutes before the shield generators provided enough power to keep the western shield up. Some looked back at him with outright terror. Most of those that did were spotted with the executed sergeant’s skull contents.

The hammering on the door stopped. Thale squatted down.

“All of you, circle up, on me.”

Some moved immediately. Some waited for others to move, and then followed. Some didn’t move at all. Thale fixed them with a glare.

“I won’t order it again.”

The lingerers joined their platoon-mates. Every set of eyes was on Thale.

“My name is Thale Rook. I am an Arbite. I want my three squad commanders front and centre.”

A woman, maybe eighteen standard, moved forwards. She was ropily muscled and had a hard edge to her features. There was some resilience still in her eyes. “Loucla, sir.”

An older man, maybe sixty, with a well-rounded gut and a thick moustache came forwards next. “Swib, sir.”

A man in his middle thirties, previously hidden at the back, made his way to stand beside the other two. He openly wore gang tattoos on thick forearms revealed by rolled up sleeves. He moved with the wary swagger of someone used to fighting, and confident of their skills.

The man stood there, sneering openly.

“Name?” said Thale.

“Durden.” Durden continued to sneer.

Thale held his gaze. “We gunna have a problem, Sergeant Durden?”

Durden squatted down in front of Thale. “I know o’ you.”

Thale frowned.

“I know o’ you. I know who you are. You ain’t no normal Arbite. Ain’t bound by no rules like the rest of ‘em. Brothers I know –“ he said as he rubbed a tattoo Thale recognised as one of Radacast’s, “- told tales o’ you. The Ghost, they calls ya. They afeared o’ you.”

Thale smiled. “I think not.”

“Most o’ you lot is big, mean lookin’ bastards, tryin’ to put the fear in us through nuthin’ more’n a big set o’ shoulders, a badge, and a gun. The Ghost, on t’other hand, is average, in every way. Average height, average weight; dark hair and a young face the only thing to set him apart from the rest o’ ‘em. Only other thing sets the Ghost apart is he don’t need to rely on his looks to strike fear. That one thing, and, he killed a friend o’ mine.”

“Sounds like half the male population of Lerrunhive.”

Durden hawked and spat on the ground. “Funny, sounds like he looks just like you.”

Thale kept his most disarming smile up. “I’m a rank and file Arbite, nothing more, nothing less. Let’s get on with this, before I’m forced to replace you.”

Durden smiled back, stroked his lasrifle, and watched him a short while. “If you says so. Got my suspicions. There’s a reward on the head of the Ghost. Put there by Radacast herself. A man could live proper off it for years. Maybe even get hisself a woman to settle with. If I get to nail the bastard, to avenge an old friend, it’d just be a bonus.”

Radacast. Ungrateful bitch. Thale was well versed in visual subterfuge. His face was a mask he could mould to do whatever he wanted, pretty well whenever he wanted. He put all of that skill to good use now as he held Durden’s glare.

Thale pointed to his badge slowly. It was a standard Arbite badge, nothing special about it. Advertising he was a Mortiurge was like putting the barrel in his mouth himself and offering Radacast the trigger. He ran his finger under the latter half of the inscribed Adeptus Arbites.

“Ar-bi-te.” He sounded out. “Not Ghost.”

There was a bit of a nervous laugh from someone in the platoon. It was infectious and soon most, bar Durden, were laughing.

Durden snorted, losing some of his conviction in the face of ridicule. “You got some cold blood in ya. I can smell it. Like knows like. Killers know killers.”

Thale shrugged and turned back to the rest of the platoon. Have to keep an eye on that one. Sooner or later, I’ll have to put a bullet in him.

“Right, I’m going to give it to you straight. Not many of you are going to survive what is about to happen.”

Most of them just stared blankly at him. That went well.

“The enemy running those streets is xeno. There is no mercy. No remorse. No breaks or rest. As soon as we walk out there it’s a simple matter of they kill all of us, or we kill all of them. There is no middle ground, no grey area. Do or die, my brothers and sisters in arms.”

There were some grim nods.

“We’re going out there in five minutes. You see anything not wearing a uniform, you kill it, no questions, no hesitation. Some of them bastards look just like us.”

There were more nods. The air was still thick with fear,

“Volley fire them until they don’t get up. Then put one more volley in, to be sure. Anyone got a rocket or grenade launcher? Any autocannons or heavy bolters? Flamers?”

Three flamer units stood up. An autocannon team put their hands up. Three bigger men with rocket tubes strapped over their backs also stood. Not enough. Not by a long shot.

“Rockets and grenades. Keep your explosives shelved until you see something at least half again as tall as you. Those are your priority targets. Lasrifles until then. Flamers; up front in your squads at all times. You guys are on point. If you have extra ammo in your pack, get it on your webbing. Nobody is going to shoot you to set it off.” I hope. “Autocannon; keep your tripod attached. Any extra ammo belts? Hang ‘em over your shoulders.

“All of you; lose anything you don’t need to survive the next three hours. One day’s rations only. We need speed and we need ammo. Nothing else matters.”

He caught a young man repacking his backpack and putting in a gas burner for field cooking.

“Trooper?”

The youth looked up to him. “Private Spirren, sir. Squad Loucla, sir.”

“Lose the backpack. Ammo and grenades in your webbing and pouches. Rifle cleaning kit – bring it. You’ll need your med-kit.”

Thale reached down and grabbed the med-kit from Spirren’s hands. He got rid of the small, stick on bandages used to seal off cuts and a few other useless pieces, then gave it back.

“It’ll take more than a few little stick-ons to patch you back up if one of those bastards gets you. Get rid of your rifle strap – one of those bastards gets a hold of your las and starts yanking, you don’t want to be attached to it.”

He leaned in and grabbed the youth’s shoulder firmly. “Don’t worry kid, you’ll be fine.”

The kid was scared, but that simple action bred a tiny bit of confidence within him. More than that, the men and women around them had watched and listened, and were following the example. Soon, at least their kit began to look like a professional soldier’s.

Thale licked his lips as the familiar tang of the void shields came back on. He waited a while, making sure the ozone taste and smell in the air didn’t go out.

He looked to his platoon. “That’s it. We’re on. Durden, your squad’s on me at all times. We’ll take the right. Loucla, yours are left. Swib, you’re watching our backs at all times.”

He locked eyes with each squad leader. “Clear?”

They nodded in return. Even Durden nodded almost imperceptibly, albeit begrudgingly.

Thale unlocked the door and opened it. He was the first out and the first to see the charnel house the streets of Lerrunhive had become. Bodies were everywhere, and creatures tore the dead to chunks. One spotted them. It only took a moment and then every monster in the street outside looked up at them in unison, and charged. Thale waited as more of his platoon poured out.

“Hold fire!” he bellowed. “Durden! Your men in a firing line on me.”

The men and women of squad Durden lined up either side of him.

“Squad Loucla! In a line behind squad Durden!” The rushed clumping of boots let him know he was obeyed.

“Squad Swib! Combat line watching our backs, if you please!”

Thale had less than fifty metres to play with before they were on his position.

“Squad Loucla, take a knee.”

The squad took a knee and two ranks of lasrifles pointed down the street. On the ends the two flamers lined up. Thale could hear the autocannon team fumbling their equipment behind him as they moved to support Swib’s squad.

Thale narrowed his eyes. “Now you hold here, defenders of Lerrunhive. You hold here like motherless bastards and you don’t give a Throne blessed flagstone to these scum.”

“Fire!”

The volleys started out disciplined, mowing down the groups of clawed beasts that ran at them. They moved quickly, at a speed almost unbelievable for creatures so big. As powerpacks ran dry and had to be replaced, the disciplined volleys quickly became a torrent of red rapid-fire las blasts.

“They’re behind us!” shouted Swib as the autocannon opened up. “Aim for the clusters! Lasrifles for the individuals, damn you, train that bastard cannon on the clusters!”

Ragged Volleys opened up from Swib’s men and women.

Thale peered into the smoke as one more beast went down. It tried to drag itself towards them, ever-hungry eyes soullessly staring at Thale. Thale drew his Trantor and cored its head.

“Cease fire!”

Swib’s voice rang out. “Cease fire! Throne damn you, cease fire!”

The chatter of the autocannon stopped. Nothing moved.

“Let’s go. Get that cannon packed and follow me.”

They’d survived their first engagement without a scratch, though Thale could hear a boy moaning that he’d burnt his hand on his lasrifle barrel.

“That you Spirren?”

“Sir, yes sir,” moaned the youth.

“Stop moaning. Those things track by sound.”

Spirren shut up immediately. They made it almost one-hundred metres before the ground began to shudder.

“Contact on the left!” cried out Loucla.

“Contact front! Hundreds of em!” yelled one of Durden’s squad.

Thale spotted them immediately. gak. He looked around for options, there was no way a platoon was going to hold that lot without some walls around them. There was a crash to his right. Durden had read his mind.

“Sir, in ‘ere.”

“Loucla! Swib! Get your squads in here! Durden, lock down the first floor and get your men knocking out windows.”

Thale stood at the door, issuing orders as each squad came through.

“Loucla; first floor with Durden’s squad.”

“Swib; second floor. Get that autocannon set up. Your flamer stays on the ground floor with us. Send two troopers to the roof to make sure we have a clear way up there.”

“Sir, won’t we be trapped?” asked the burly sergeant.

“Got nowhere else to go. We stay out here, we’re groxmeat.”

Swib nodded and went in. Thale was the last one through. As he slammed the door shut and moved out of the way to let a trooper move a heavy desk and refrigeration unit against the door, the first shots sang out.

“Here they come!” yelled an old trooper, the lump on the top of his spine accentuated as he leaned into his rifle’s butt and gave them a spray on full auto.

“Pour it on ‘em” shouted Durden.

One of the flame units opened up, promethium fumes quickly filling the ground floor of the hab-unit. Upstairs the autocannon began to chatter. Thale leaned over a soldier’s shoulder to get a look, and clenched his teeth. There was an ocean of them outside. gak.

He scanned the horde for one of the big ones. If he could nail one of them, he could stall the attack and they could rack up a few easy kills. Damn it, where are you, you big bastard. I know you’re out there somewhere. Where are you?

Thale reached past the soldier and laid down some fire as the clawed beasts got closer and closer, using piles of their own dead as cover. One leapt at Thale’s window. The Trantor sent the monster flying back. Another leaped and managed to skewer the soldier in front of Thale with a long bone-claw. The soldier gave out a shriek before he was torn out the window.

Thale slammed in a new clip and emptied it almost just as quickly. The creatures were hurling themselves at the windows with renewed vigour. There were screams behind Thale. Someone grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Back away, Arbite!” yelled Loucla, as she and another trooper launched a pair of frags out the window and followed through with withering blasts of their lasrifles.

Turning away to assess his situation, Thale could already see their position was hopeless. Three more soldiers lay in pools of their own blood, limbs missing or claw gouges bright red against their uniforms. They had a few minutes of hold left in them on the first floor, at best. Thale looked out another window. Come on, where are you?

A massive form came around the corner at the end of the street. There you are.

“Missiles! Missiles up to the second floor!” The men with the rocket tubes across their backs abandoned their windows and jogged to him.

Thale charged up to the second floor. He hauled a soldier out of the way and leaned out to spot the creature. Throne, he’s big.

A soldier appeared at his side, missile tube over his shoulder. Thale pointed for him.

“The big one. Let him get close. Then give him one straight in the guts. If you put him down, we’ve got a chance. If you miss, we’re all dead.”

Thale gave the same message to the other two men and then turned to run down the stairs. He only made it half way down. The screams, close-range and wild lasblasts, and gleeful chittering of the beasts let him know what had happened before he saw the first floor.

There were about seven of them still alive, Durden at the fore, firing from the hip and backing away from the walls towards the stairs. There were bodies everywhere; human and xeno. A mixture of human red and xeno purple-pink sprayed the walls. The creatures streamed in through the windows, falling to the ground as the concentrated fire took them down.

Thale sprinted down a few stairs and blasted some of the windows clear with his last mag.

“Durden! Get your men out! Let’s go!”

Durden turned and ran after the survivors. Thale gave Spirren a shove up the stairs as the exhausted youth faltered for a moment, his terror worn openly. Thale backed up quickly as a trooper blasted down past him, felling the beasts as they grouped at the bottom of the flight.

Up above, Thale heard the first missile whoosh from its tube. There was a detonation outside. A second missile was immediately followed by a third. The two exploded almost simultaneously. The men and women on the second floor yelled with delight. Thale felt his heart lift.

Below him, the creatures had stopped dead, staring blankly ahead. In a moment they began to move around, snapping and snarling at each other, as if they had completely forgotten they were in the middle of a pitched battle. A handful of grenades flew past Thale’s shoulder. He turned an ran to the second floor, throwing himself up the final few as the ground was rocked with explosions and peppered with red-hot fragments.

“Good shooting, Beno, my lad!” shouted Swib.

The remaining troopers gave a good account of themselves in the moments it took the beasts to reorganise themselves. Someone ripped a door off its hinges and closed off the stair-exit. Grenades flew around like parade-day confetti into milling groups of xenos. Flamers emptied their tanks in broad, burning sweeps of the outside. Lasgun barrels glowed red hot from the fusillades laid down. The autocannon’s barrel was replaced twice, before the firing mechanism seized and the weapon was discarded. Thale took a moment to bark out a laugh as the bulk of the weapon was tossed out of a window and collected a flailing creature climbing the wall, crunching through its skull.

All too soon, the moment of respite was over and the creatures went berserk. Thale looked out into the thinning masses and spied three more immense creatures coming towards him, each with four arms carrying a myriad of alien weaponry. A projectile flew through the window, narrowly missing his head, and slammed into the rear wall like a spear. Immediately, small bugs began to pour out of a series of small holes in the shaft and the wall began to disintegrate.

“What in the name of the –“

A second spear took a young woman in the chest. She flopped onto her back, mouth wide open and gasping for air. Spirren ran over to the girl, crying out a name that Thale couldn’t hear through the din of battle, and knelt down to yank the spear out. His hands wrapped around the shaft before Thale realised what would happen.

The woman’s chest cavity collapsed as the meat and bone inside that held it up was eaten away. Spirren screamed as the flesh-eating beetles attacked his finger and hand, bits of bone already showing through the corroding flesh. Thale Leapt upon the lad, riding him to the ground and pushing out the arm flat against the floor. He wrenched off his belt and tourniquet the bicep.

Spirren’s eyes were wide with shock as he watched his wrist disappear.

Thale turned to the rest of the room. “Somebody! A sword, knife, axe, anything!”

Durden turned away from spraying las out through his window, whipped out a hatchet-knife, and tossed it to Thale. Thale grabbed it and raised the weapon, his eyes narrowing on the clean white flesh of Spirren’s bicep, just above the elbow.

Spirren grabbed him with his other hand, his face intensely pale, “I was… quiet… how did they find me? You said… sound… they track by –“

His eyes went wide as the hatchet-knife went clean through the arm. Spirren’s back arched and he screamed soundlessly, before passing out. Thale dragged the youth away from his arm as the severed limb was consumed at a frightening rate.

“Birds in the sky, sir!” whooped a soldier a moment before a massive claw came through the window, punched into his chest, grabbed his ribcage, and wrenched him back through.

Durden ran over and emptied his clip. He looked back to Thale as he re-loaded. “Birds in the sky, Arbite! Looks like Guard!”

Thale lifted the dead-weight of Spirren over his shoulders in a Guardsman’s carry, hefting the youth’s rifle in his other hand. “Everyone topside! The Emperor protects those who fight for Him!”

They turned and ran as the barricades over the stairs to the bottom floor exploded into the ceiling and an immense creature strode up. The man running up to level three beside Thale fell, screaming as another metre-long spear lanced through his leg and the devouring began. Thale didn’t break stride as he put a blast into the trooper to end his service to the Throne.

Swib stopped at the top of the stairs and unleashed a blast back past Thale, his face red with exertion and covered in a thick sheen of sweat. Something chittered and burned, tumbling back down the stairs behind him. The Mortiurge and his PDF sprinted for all they were worth, frog-leaping each other and providing cover as they went. Before he knew it, they were out in the open air, twenty stories up, and with nowhere left to go.

“Every gun on that exit!” Thale dropped Spirren and ran to the edge of the buildings. True enough, a flight of ten Valkyrie troop transports, plus two escorting Vulture gunships, was lighting up the streets with rockets and bolter fire. Oh you beautiful, beautiful babies!

The men and women behind Thale opened up. Thale swung around and added his lasrifle to the gunfire. Creatures fell over each other to get through the door, pushing dead bodies through as unknowing shields.

“Grenades! Anyone got any grenades?” shouted Durden.

“All out!” shouted someone. Nobody else bothered to reply as the river of monsters advanced on them, ten tumbling corpses at a time.

They were like a slow moving avalanche of death, wading into the lasfire, buying a metre of ground for the beast behind them with their own lives. They just kept coming. Thale could hear the scream of the Valkyrie and Vulture ships as they approached. A missile streaked past them and lanced into the door opening, blowing it to pieces and flattening Thale and his men in the process.

One of the big creatures came through, shoving the smaller ones before it. Thale drew a bead on it, the immense beast easily four metres tall and filling his sights, before firing. One of the small creatures leapt and took the blast tumbling to the ground. The creature locked eyes on Thale, threw its long-clawed arms wide, opened jaws big enough to bite a man in half, and leapt.

Thale kept his finger pressed on the trigger. The creature bucked, mid-flight, and fell, putrid wet chunks of its body mushrooming away and smacking into Thale as heavy bolter rounds stitched across its body and detonated within. Before Thale knew it, there were Guardsmen all around him on the roof, an assortment of high-impact weapons in their arms adding overwhelming fire to the fusillade.

They wore grey fatigues under heavy carapace armour with full rebreather masks and moved like veterans. Behind them, on the edge of the building, their Valkyries hovered while the rest of them moved around blasting the foe. One of the men came up to him, a set of gold captain’s pips on the shoulder of his armour. One of his command squad stood with him, a huge, drum-fed boltgun resting across his thick forearms like there wasn’t an entire building full of monsters beneath their very feet. The captain took off his rebreather as he addressed Thale.

“Captain Andeferon Morn, 395th Arminians.”

“Arbite Mortiurge Thale Rook.”

“Looks like you’ve got yourself a Nid problem.”

Thale snorted.

“Let’s get your people out of here, sir,” finished Morn.

Thale turned to call his men and women over. It galled him to see what was left. Swib had only a couple of his men with him. Spirren, still unconscious on the ground, was all that was left of Loucla and her squad. He spied two of Durden’s squad carrying a third member between them, both legs ripped to shreds below the knees. Where’s Durden?

“Mortiurge!” screamed Durden, as his fist connected with Thale’s jaw and sent him sprawling. “I knew you was the Ghost!”

Durden’s rifle rose, as if in slow motion, the glowing red muzzle sweeping up to take Thale.

Thale saw it happen before he had a chance to stop it. Captain Morn was unbelievably fast, even in his bulky armour. His fist shot out and smashed into Durden’s throat. The sergeant’s eyes bulged for only a split second before the captain’s elbowed him in the guts and doubled him over before a fist met his head on the way down and sent him sprawling to the ground.

In a blur of motion Morn drew a knife and slammed his knee down into Durden’s chest. The blade swept down.

“Stop!” shouted Thale.

The blade stopped, only a centimetre of its tip buried in Durden’s chest above his heart. Morn looked up and then stood, leaving the boltgun-wielding Guardsman by his side to keep Durden covered.

Thale stood. “He is my -“

“Without discipline, you have nothing, you stupid grox-shagger!” roared Morn, his steely visage gone in a moment of rage.

The captain turned away before Thale could respond, pressing a vox link on the side of his rebreather. The Guardsman with the boltgun looked to Thale.

“Get your people on the Valkyries. We’ve got to move on.”

* * *

Thale took in the warzone his precinct had become from the open hatch of the Valkyrie. His legs had given out almost as soon as he’d sat down. He squinted as the bright light of a missile exhaust streaked down from a nearby Vulture and exploded in the streets. The hunched form of a door gunner gave something down there a good long burst from his heavy bolter, the empty shells rolling off the floor to fall down below.

He looked back at the roof from where they’d come.

If the Emperor was merciful, Durden, you were still out cold when they tore you apart down there.

The captain came back from the cockpit, holding on to the roof-rail as his knees bent and compensated for every pitch and yaw of the gunship with well-practiced ease. Morn squatted before him.

He pointed to the building they’d left Durden on. “That was cold-blooded, Arbite Rook.”

Thale gave him a grim smile. “I’m not an Arbite, Captain Morn. I am the Mortiurge.”

Hunter's Shadow - Part One

One.

Colonel Andeferon Morn walked into the strategium of the Avenger class grand cruiser Angel’s Fury, and almost had to reach up with his hand to stop his jaw from dropping open. He openly marvelled at the immense capital ship’s tactical hall, the trepidation of meeting the battle-group’s commanders melting away in the face of such industry. He felt a hand rest reassuringly upon the colonel’s insignia freshly sewn onto his jacket’s shoulder, and turned to his brother-in-arms.

“Took my breath away when I came here for the first time too, Ande. Just do your best not let your mouth hang open like a slack-jawed servitor,” said Luten, his general’s stars just as new upon his shoulders. “This is just another part of the war machine, like a baneblade or valkyrie, just not as pretty.”

Andeferon grinned, the strategium’s spell broken, and did his best to take in the vast chamber before him without looking like a green recruit.

From how long it’d taken him to get here, he knew the strategium was carved into the deep and protected bowels of the immense ship. Thick buttresses and blocky bulkheads ran up and around the bare adamantium walls like the inside of a titan’s rib cage. Heavy cabling wrapped in ridged grey insulation fed the room from the ship’s proudly beating heart a kilometre or two to stern. Every flat surface except the floor was studded with sound dampeners shaped like round-headed rivets. They thrummed soundlessly as they generated their fields and cast eerie shadows from the boxy glow globes that sprouted amongst them.

Walking beside Luten, Andeferon shook his head in wonder at the sheer volume of tactical officers and servitors that lined the three-tier stadium-style room they were making their way to the centre of. His ears filled with the dull buzz of hundreds of human and mechanical voices as the room communicated between the thousands of Guard and navy units that made up the battle-group, and the huddle of commanding officers at its centre.

As Andeferon and Luten came within twenty paces, the general staff turned to look at them. In some of those gazes Andeferon read genuine remorse. In others there was hard-won respect. One or two officers were unreadable. A man strode towards them from the crowd; almost white eyes, surrounded by brutal red and purple heat scarring, squinting as they focused on the two Arminians.

That’s the bloody lord general. Andeferon instinctively smoothed down his flawlessly pressed grey dress jacket. He ran nervous fingers over the gold plated aquila stamped buttons to make sure they were done up properly, over the hard edge of the corner of his Uplifting Primer in his chest pocket, and then the upper thighs of his matching dress pants. Getting the lines just right had taken him hours of hard work and frustration.

“General Luten, my sincerest condolences and my congratulations,” began Lord General Adarin Tibor, his stocky soldier’s frame still holding its muscle under his thick green, red trimmed overcoat.

Andeferon stopped beside Luten and snapped off a sharp salute, the campaign medals pinned to his jacket clanking heavily. He held the salute until Tibor returned it briefly, and then stood at ease.

“Thankyou, sir,” said General Luten stiffly. “The division will miss him. He was a fine leader.”

“I shall miss him, he was a fine friend the past eight years of this mission,” said Tibor, genuine sadness playing across his features for a moment. “He had assured me, in passing, that you would be a worthy successor should he fall. I pray he is right; I’d hate to have to replace you. Please, introduce your offsider.”

“Colonel Andeferon Morn, tenth regiment,” said Luten, ignoring the barbed comment.

“A 2IC from your old regimental command, General Luten?” asked Tibor, locking eyes with the new general.

Luten nodded resolutely. “Sir.”

Tibor stuck out his bottom lip and nodded slowly, then held out a white-gloved hand to Andeferon. “Welcome to my strategium, colonel. Drink?”

A servitor whirred over, its rubber padded caterpillar tread making little to no sound as it made its way to them. A deathly, pale-fleshed limb held out a wide silver tray with a selection of beverages and sparkling crystal glasses.

Both Luten and Andeferon shook their heads. “No thank you, sir.”

Tibor leaned in, his bulk imposing and his white eyes narrowing as his gaze switched from man to man. “I insist.”

“Sir,” both men responded in unison, Andeferon reaching out and picking up a liquor glass after Luten.

Tibor picked one up also. There was a moment of awkwardness as the three stood there, not moving, before Andeferon realised what was expected of him.

“Lord general, the choice is yours, would you prefer wine or something stronger?” asked Andeferon hurriedly, his big, callused hand reaching out to hover over a small selection of wine bottles.

“Something stronger. We are not holding wine glasses, after all,” said Tibor, raising his stubby glass to ensure Andeferon could see.

As Andeferon reached for a bottle, the lord general sighed loudly. “No, not that one, I’ll have a glass of the 421.M41. A special year, that one.”

Andeferon poured into the lord general’s cup first, and then into the other two glasses. He saw a tightening of the man’s thick lips under those foul eyes before he remembered to pour a few drops of water into each glass to release the flavour. The servitor turned and trundled away. Inwardly Andeferon fumed, I’m a soldier, not some bloody serving wench, you pompous arse!

Tibor smiled without joy. “You, colonel, are an easy man to read. A typical soldier. Remember your place, Andeferon.”

Andeferon quickly hid his shock and looked down at his glass, his cheeks burning. Tibor’s gaze switched back to Luten.

“Sir, my apologies on behalf of Colonel Morn, he will become accustomed quickly,” said Luten.

Tibor waved it off as if it were nothing. “Do not bother excusing the colonel. Let us discuss, quickly, the time required to complete the planet-side ceremony and move on.”

Luten nodded. “The revealing of the statue and headstone shall be today, after the general staff meeting. The entire Arminian division will then need to be lifted back to one of the troop carriers. Just under fifty-five thousand men, four hundred valkyries, fifty vulture gun ships, and two thousand chimeras. Navy estimate has it at four days, sir.”

The muscles on the side of Tibor’s jaw clenched and stuck out like thick cables, before releasing. “Unfortunate your predecessor had to allow himself be killed on this worthless planet. Without his funeral ceremony, we could have been on our way to the next planet tomorrow. As it is, we are already in for three weeks of warp travel to get there.”

Andeferon forced himself to remain calm, watching his general do the same more successfully out of the corner of his eye.
“Annoying, but a must to keep the morale of the men up, I suppose,” mused Tibor whimsically as he took a sip of his drink and turned away. “Join us at your leisure, gentlemen.”

As the lord general walked back to the general staff meeting, Luten turned to Andeferon and hissed under his breath, “Ande, this isn’t an inter-regimental strategium, you can’t fire up whenever someone insults you. This is the bloody lord general and the bloody general staff of the battle-group! Get your head out of your arse and at least act like an aide for the next few hours.”

“I’m not a...” objected Andeferon.

“Colonel, don’t make me repeat myself.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll sort it out immediately,” responded Andeferon curtly, fists discreetly clenching by his side.

“Gentlemen?” called out the lord general, looking over to them and focussing the entire meeting on their separation. “Won’t you join us? I’d dearly like to get started.”

Annoyance flashed across Luten’s face. He turned away from Andeferon and strode over to the tac-table. Andeferon just managed to keep in step as they approached the circle of the general staff. Immediately Andeferon picked out three generals, one colonel, and one surly looking captain from the storm trooper company attached to the battle group. They stood amongst a tactician, a commissar, the master of the navigators, the lord admiral of the navy, and a Mechanicum magos.

Leading the colonel around the tac-table, Luten introduced Andeferon to Lord Commissar Lewin Myke, a lean man with a face that reminded him of the hard dark iron edges of a sword breaker, and General Xonin Ject of the 56th Cemar infantry division along with his aide. Andeferon took an immediate dislike to the Cemar general, a weak-chinned man with a sweat sheened face and a manner that reeked of softness. The man’s aide, a Colonel Illen, was the exact opposite; solidly muscled with a strong jaw line. Andeferon noted two small golden aquilas for valour pinned to his grey dress jacket alongside a host of campaign medals.

Luten moved him on to General Jon LaFour of the 33rd Parin infantry and General Lombi Bausch of the 21st Alyrian artillery. These two generals appealed to Andeferon’s soldiering mind far more so that Ject. General Bausch was a hard eyed, handsome, middle-aged woman of slight build that spoke of whip-corded muscles beneath her dress yellows. Her dark green eyes shouted intense intelligence in demand of a challenge. LaFour, a stout lean man with short greying hair and hard cold eyes freshly chiselled from an arctic polar ice cap, had a hand equally the size of Andeferon’s, capable of a confident and satisfyingly crushing handshake. Andeferon smiled as he sized the general up subconsciously, remembering the way his father had always taught him that a great way to judge a man’s fighting spirit is through the strong grip of his handshake.

Out of the corner of his eye Andeferon noticed a group of sergeants and lieutenants sitting upon a side bench out of the way, but within earshot of the meeting. They wore different uniforms, a mix of infantry with a scout and armoured cavalry uniform or two, each man in a different state of bored unhappiness. None of those guardsmen met his eye. Andeferon snorted and dismissed them with little afterthought, returning his attention to the men and women around him.

Before long, the lights around the tac-table dimmed and a throat was cleared loudly enough to quiet the assembled generals immediately. Tibor stood upon a slowly rising dais that took him a good meter above the tallest soldier on the floor. He looked down over the assembly, the light of the tac-table playing shadows up his face.

“Gentlemen, and lady,” he said, nodding Bausch. “I’d first and foremost like to raise a toast.”

The group raised their glasses.

“To a fallen general, a great friend, and a servant of the Emperor.”

Glasses clinked and drinks disappeared down greedy gullets. Andeferon pulled his lips back over his teeth as his drink burned its way down to warm his stomach pleasantly.

“In four days the Arminians will have completed their funeral rites for their general, and we shall be able to fully depart this system, bound for the next. At this time I would like to welcome General Luten and his offsider, Colonel Morn, to our fold. You will all have known General Luten from previous strategium meetings, but may not know Colonel Morn.

“Colonel Morn is the esteemed leader of the elite tenth regiment, having previously led their first company with what I have been told is extreme valour and bravado. Please welcome him warmly.”

Faces turned back to Andeferon and glasses were raised once more in welcome.

“Can I have a quick appraisal of losses for this planet please,” said Tibor. “Anything of urgent note, such as a lack of rifles and so forth, as well.”

The Lord Admiral strode forth. “Two light cruisers now stripped and scuttled into Ryvan’s Belt. Six fighter wings lost. The rest of the fleet is warp and combat ready.”

Luten was next. “Two thousand three hundred and forty two men lost. Fifty-five thousand will be ready for duty after the ceremony tomorrow, sir.”

Tibor nodded, marking down on his data slate.

“Under six thousand lost, sir. I have one hundred and twelve thousand troops embarked and ready for transport,” said General Ject.

“Seven and a half thousand lost on this miserable excuse for an Imperial planet, sir, but I’ve got almost two hundred thousand more where those came from,” said General LaFour. “We’ll need the munitorium to divulge a few thousand more flamer units to my men, as we’re running short.”

“Noted,” said Tibor.

“I’ve thirty thousand Alyrians already in orbit, sir,” said General Bausch. “We sustained minimal casualties. In half a day our artillery pieces should be loaded and my ladies’ll be ready to move on.”

“Light casualties,” finished the storm trooper captain.

Tibor finished noting down the casualty counts. “Right, that leaves us with just short of four hundred thousand, plus my armoured division. I hope that is enough to get our next job done.”

The lord general held up a controller wand and pressed a stud upon it. A previously saved holo-image leapt up for a moment, showing the fleet’s current orbit around the grey globe of Alanta Prime. In the background, the Ryvan’s Belt asteroid string rolled slowly by, bisecting a small piece of the old Orpheus Salient of the Achilus Crusade. The image dropped back to the tac-table quickly and then leapt back up from the centre, revealing a rusty brown coloured planet as it sprung to lightly flickering life and began to rotate slowly before them.

Andeferon leaned in closer.

“Ronus Four, gentlemen,” said the lord general. “A labour planet; population of approximately eight hundred billion inhabitants. They provide skilled manual workers for almost every manufactorum and harvest planet within a month’s warp travel. Essentially, the planet is breeding and storage. The levies they provide annually to the Guard are in the millions. The Ronus Defence Force is massive, though poorly trained in anything but riot control. The rich here are astronomically so, and the poor live knee high in their own excrement until they are hired off world where they work until the Emperor takes them.

“They have also been infected: Infection Protocol red. In lieu of a Splinter Protocol this is our next priority target.”

Everyone leaned in closer as a recording began to play.

“This is governor Decium Ven Itis, of Ronus Four. 501.576.M41. Calling all military commands in system. As per the Infection Protocol, be advised we have found evidence of genestealer infestation deep within Beta Hive Three. The RDF have been activated and all reserves called for active service. All hives have been advised and have begun security sweeps. Infection Protocol level orange is in place. Stand by for updates. The Emperor protects.”

“That was two years ago,” stated Tibor, as he clicked another button upon the controller wand. “Then, six months after the initial transmission.”

Andeferon listened intently.

“This is governor Decium Ven Itis, of Ronus Four. 451.511.M41. To all military commands in system. We have found the infestation centre at the bottom of Beta Hive Three. The bottom fifteen layers of the hive, along with their inhabitants, have been cleansed by fire. The bugs are assumed dead. Infection Protocol level green is in place. Glory to the RDF. The Emperor protects.”
“If Infection Protocol level green is in place, why are we wasting our time on the planet?” asked Ject.

Tibor shook his head.

“Shut up for a few minutes and you might find out, general,” snarled LaFour, making no effort to hide his disdain for the man.

Ject reddened. Colonel Illen looked up at Andeferon and locked eyes for a heartbeat, his look betraying his embarrassment.

“If I may,” said Tibor, indicating again with the controller wand. “This is from six months ago.”

“Decium Ven Itis, Ronus Thr... no, Four! To all military commands that hear this; send aid immediately. Send whatever you’ve got! Infection Protocol level red. I repeat, level red. They were hiding! They came from nowhere. Three of the smaller hives burned from top to bottom, oh, almighty Emperor forgive me as I send you these tweny billion souls. Look after them as you would my own children.
“Five of the larger hives are showing signs, freaks like you wouldn’t believe! Our men are overwhelmed and slaughtered as they confront the foe...”

Tibor shut off the recording.

“The governor continues along the same line for another five or ten minutes. His reports describe the foe as deep rooted into the hives, attacking key structures and figures, millions turned and billions burned; so on and so forth. The outer planets and systems won’t touch the workforce with the threat of infection. There’s no food going in to slake a hungering populace, and no workers going out to relieve population congestion. Several large-scale uprisings have already been put down, but more are beginning every moment,” Tibor paused for effect.

“That means no guard levies, three hundred thousand of which were supposed to join my fleet, and no workers for the planets who rely on them to meet their quotas. This spirals on to a food and materials shortage in the sector. Shortages that will take months, maybe even years to remedy through increased output from other systems. Again, we will be affected,” continued Tibor, locking eyes with every member of the general staff. “I cannot express to you the importance of this planet in any clearer terms. If it falls, and one of the larger splinter fleets hit the area, we could potentially lose this sector and have a fleet that has fed on the biomass of many trillions of people and the planets they reside upon loose within the Imperium. Does anybody here fail to recognise the trial we face?”

There was silence as each solemn individual awaited his next words. Andeferon exhaled, realising he’d been holding his breath as the enormity of the task placed upon them rested upon him.

“Sir?” said General Luten.

“General Luten,” said Tibor, indicating the general should continue with a flick of his hand.

“It’s rare there would be an infestation and uprising unless there is a splinter fleet nearby, ready to consume the planet. Have we had any word?”

The entire room around Andeferon seemed to go quiet. Looking around, it seemed like even the servitors had gone still in anticipation. He knew enough to understand that a splinter fleet was what they all feared most – and what they had been given standing orders to find and destroy. Luten had explained, over a glass of amasec the previous night when the general had handed him his colonel’s pips, that a battle-group of their size could not hope to stop anything more than a small splinter fleet. Andeferon shivered as the memory ran an icy chill of insignificance down his spine.

The weedy master navigator stepped forward, putting up a skinny, translucently skinned arm to touch the dark blue shawl worn over his third eye. The navigator was stooped over and had fat blue bruise bags under his sunken eyes. A white handkerchief, stained with pinkish blood and yellow-brown mucus was clutched in his other hand. That the man was under an unknowable strain was obvious from his visible exhaustion.

“The way to Ronus is fraught with hidden peril. The warp lingers like heavy storm clouds awaiting an atmospheric shift to unleash its full potential. Something lurks; hangs over this entire region of space like a wet blanket suffocating us, heavy with a predator’s potential. A predator that would step upon us ants without realising we were there on the way to its prey.”

The collective assembly looked at him in confusion. The heavy mixture of perplexity and disgust on Andeferon’s face prompted the navigator to further himself, as if talking to a child.

“The tyranids. Their very presence, or the lingering aftereffect thereof, I cannot tell. A focus point loiters in this region of the Imperium. Every time we jump, we jump blinder than the last time. More than that I cannot say. They may be here, they may be there, their psychic presence blinds and wounds all of us; it is a constant battle to keep us alive. We’ll not know until they are right upon us. The planet and ship’s augurs are our best early warning system.”

There was quiet, for a time, then the navigator sniffed loudly as a fat worm of semi-congealed blood oozed from his nose. He lifted his soiled handkerchief and smeared the blood away.

“I must depart to the stasis chamber, sirs, if you will excuse me. The shadow over this region is straining me. I must be fresh for when you decide to jump,” said the navigator, before turning and leaving without acknowledgement.

Andeferon watched the hobbling man until he left the strategium, before turning back to Tibor.

“Succinctly, we do not know for sure. The best we can get from the data Ven Itis sent out is the region of space surrounding the Ronus system is clear,” said Tibor to a collective sigh of relief. “Though, in truth, gentlemen, that scares me more so. ”

“Better the tyranid you know than the tyranid you don’t,” said General Bausch in her sharp voice, her harsh gaze lingering on the tac-table.

Tibor nodded. “Well said. All the more reason for us to get our forces moving immediately. I am dividing the fleet. The ships conveying the troops currently in space will depart within the next twelve hours. General Ject, you will transport ten thousand of your men aboard the cruiser Mankind’s Wrath and a further five thousand upon each of the escort cruisers Endurance and Mykar’s Shield. The remainder of your men will come with me under command of General LaFour.”

Ject’s jaw tightened and he looked about to object, but was quickly spoken over. Andeferon spied a predatory smile spread over LaFour’s face.

“You will await the embarkation of the Arminians upon the ironclad, Emperor’s Bounty, and then follow with all due haste to the Ronus system and rendezvous with the main force at Ronus Four. General Luten assures me the embarkation will only take four days.”

Ject was obviously still smarting. “Sir, I... If we are attacked after you are gone, I will not have enough men to hold a world.”

Tibor shrugged dismissively. “We all know the xenos hunger. If they were still here, we’d already be knee deep in them. We’ve cleansed this system of its xenos taint, general. I see no risk. I feel I’ve been more than generous with the men I’ve left behind for you.”

“The cowardly general always asks for more men. The righteous general asks how he can make each man he does have worth more,” stated LaFour, ice-blue eyes glinting in challenge.

“Warmaster Iten Volarnus, M38, if I am not mistaken,” mused Tibor.

“Rightly so, lord general,” said LaFour, ginning at Ject.

“Sir, I... ah, I ah... the potential of a splinter fleet, ah... the navigator said they could be anywhere…” stammered Ject.

Luten stepped forward. “Sir, he has a point. Leave twenty thousand more and a few tank regiments just to be safe.”

“I did not think to put you in the same book as Ject,” snarled LaFour.

“You would question my courage?” asked Luten, his voice colder than the void outside.

LaFour held Luten’s stare for a moment, and then huffed loudly, looking back up to the lord general as if the Arminian was below him. Ject flashed Luten a look of thanks. Andeferon followed Luten’s example, and made a point of ignoring the man. Colonel Illen was right; the Cemar general was an embarrassment.

Tibor made a few adjustments to a data slate and raised his hands. “Placate your anger please, gentlemen. I’ve assigned two regiments of my own Severethian battle tanks to the Arminians. I need the foot soldiers for the assault on the hives of Ronus. Lord Admiral Minus, please make the arrangements for the transport immediately, that will be all for the navy today.”

The heavyset Lord Admiral Tiberius Minus nodded and left without further word, already speaking into the vox attached to his large augmetic ear unit.

“That will be an end to the matter,” said Tibor. “All of you, please refer to the tac-table to see your mens’ ship and command allocations.”

Andeferon held back along with the other aides as the generals all moved forward and inspected the information presented to them by the tac-table. Luten and LaFour were done quickly and moved away. Bausch, Darin and Ject lingered as they double-read the information to ensure their understanding. Eventually Ject was the only one left, shaking his head lightly.

“What now general? Forgotten how to read?” teased LaFour viciously.

“That will be enough, General LaFour,” said Tibor.

LaFour scoffed a laugh. “As you say, sir. My most heartfelt apologies, General Ject.”

Andeferon looked over to Colonel Illen, who was positively red with shame and anger now, as he watched the exchange between his general and LaFour. Andeferon pitied the poor colonel. The Arminian leaders were all battle hardened. They were strong men from a planet where the Emperor stripped the weak away from the gene pool so that His workers and regiments would be harder. Andeferon could never see himself in a position to appreciate what Illen must be thinking as the Cemar’s weak-willed commander continued to ignore all and scroll feverishly through his data.

“Now if that will be all...” began Tibor.

“Sir?” started Ject, raising a hand without looking up.

Tibor visibly stiffened with annoyance. “You have thirty seconds.”

“Sir, I must object! You’ve left me a mix of under strength regiments and reserve companies whilst taking all of my experienced and elite men. One of the companies you’ve left here is an infirm rehabilitation company! Some of them are awaiting augmetic limb implants and haven’t picked up anything more than a bowl of food in months!” finished Ject in an exasperated shout.

LaFour barked a laugh out loud.

“You’ll watch your tone when addressing your betters, general,” growled Tibor, his face clouded with indignant rage. “The Arminians will be with you. Follow Luten around for a few days, maybe he’ll show you how to conduct yourself as a servant of the Emperor.”

LaFour laughed even harder. Bausch cracked the slightest grin.

Ject just looked around at the faces at the table, becoming more incredulous with every moment but unable to form words with his babbling lips. Finally his eyes came to rest on the bench full of sergeants and captains sitting in the shadows. Some of those men sat quietly laughing at him; others stared at him malevolently. Not one face showed any form of sympathy or support.

As soon as the grin appeared in the corner of Ject’s mouth, Illen’s head went down. It took only a moment longer for everyone else to catch on.

“Oh, for the Emperor’s sake...” began LaFour.

“Shut up, LaFour!” shouted Ject, before turning to Tibor.

Tibor just raised his eyebrows in anticipation of what was to come as Ject brought a screen full of regiment names and numbers to the centre of the tac-table and enlarged it with a quick swipe-spread of his fingers.

“The 65th and 66th Tallon Rangers, the Riven IV armoured, the 5th and 6th Kistanii infantry, the 59th Kodan heavy infantry, the 659th Strachians light infantry; the list goes on!” said Ject excitedly, building momentum. “Individually used up regiments numbering only in the hundreds but collectively there must be five or ten thousand veteran guardsmen languishing in the hulls of those troop ships and cruisers!”

“A mongrel regiment...” said Tibor, as if the very name was like rubbing dung worms on his tongue.

“You can’t be serious,” said both LaFour and Bausch in unison.

“While the fleet is preparing to set off to the jump point they can all be ferried over to the Mankind’s Wrath. Just give them to me and I’ll manage their integration into my forces!”

“This is an insane waste of navy resources,” stated the munitorium clerk.

“It’s an insane waste of experienced soldiers, is what it is!” shouted Ject.

As the argument raged on, Andeferon placed a hand on Luten’s shoulder and pulled him aside.

“General, some of those regimental names ring a bell. The 659th Strachians are expert hive fighters and we fought with the 65th Tallon rangers five years ago and they were good. Most of them were slaughtered in the jungles on Dagun, but they were good,” whispered Andeferon.

“I remember the Rangers,” said Luten. “What of it?”

“General Ject has a point.”

Luten nodded for him to continue warily.

“Hear me out, sir,” said Andeferon. “It looks like there are five or so thousand experienced fighting men down there. We just spoke about losing our reinforcements to the contamination, we need every man ready to go planetside with a gun in his hand.”

“The logistics of putting together a mongrel regiment border on the ridiculous,” hissed Luten. “You’ve got small groups of men from many different worlds and cultures and martial disciplines all shoved into one regiment, do you have any idea how hard that would be to manage?”

“Couldn’t agree more sir,” said Andeferon.

“Then what is your point, Ande?” asked Luten. “With the threat of the splinter fleet potentially being anywhere, we don’t have the time to mess around with this sort of foolishness.”

“Let’s bankroll Ject to do it.”

“Bankroll him? What do you think this is, a bidding war?” asked Luten.

“That’s exactly what this is,” responded Andeferon, tightening his grip on his general’s shoulder. “The lord general, the Emperor bless his command decisions, is a cold hearted pompous arse. From the looks of him, he loves his wine and spirits as much as he loves his wars from the safety of his strategium - ”

“You tread a thin line, colonel,” interrupted Luten, his eyes narrowing.

“Okay, fair call, general. I apologise,” backpedalled Andeferon. “My point being we have a chance to strengthen the forces on the ground with these men. Men who may very well direct the claws and fangs of the horde away from our own boys.”

Luten nodded in thought, but was far from convinced.

“Who cares if they are co-ordinated?” continued Andeferon, gaining momentum once more. “Who cares if they in-fight? A harsh commissar and a bolt pistol will sort that out for the most part. All that matters is that we have more lasguns on the ground and more pumping hearts for the bugs to stop before they get to us. Support the general. Offer up some of our wine or something to help his cause. Tibor will never go for it otherwise. Then take over and use them as meat shields for our men.”

Luten frowned. “You disappoint me, colonel. These are guardsmen we are talking about, not sacrificial lambs.”

Andeferon scowled. “You would choose them over us?”

Luten locked his harsh stare in his subordinate. “I would value experienced men as more than kindling for the tyranid fire! Let those poor bastards have their retirement, albeit in the hulls of troop ships. Let them languish in peace. You disappoint me, I’ll not entertain this folly further.”

Andeferon made to object but was instantly silenced by Luten’s venomous stare. The Arminian general’s ice-cold gaze brooked no further disagreement from his subordinate.


Two.

Luten turned and walked back to the table. Andeferon shook his head, following him back into the hubbub of the argument. Even the mechanicus representative had joined in now, right in amongst the throng of generals, his mechandrites twisting with annoyance from the polished steel of his piston powered limbs.

“This is madness, why are we wasting our time on this?” shouted Bausch, her trademark cool gone.

“Ject, you are an absolute fool!” roared LaFour. “Lord General Tibor, you cannot be considering this? Surely not!”

“Fool enough to make use of wasted man power?” yelled back Ject, his hands gesticulating wildly.

“Silence!” thundered Tibor.

There was absolute quiet as the lord general’s rage radiated down upon the assembly. Most averted their eyes in shows of embarrassed supplication at their loss of control. Only the magos still stood staring up at the lord general. Andeferon focussed on the magos.

“Lord General Adarin Tibor, you promised me some base material for new servitors. Soldiers make excellent base material for battle servitors and from the elevated tone of your general staff’s discussion, you’re going to need some of my praetorians,” stated the magos, his voice soulless.

Even Lord General Tibor’s mouth hung open for a moment. “You want… you, what?”

“I have scoured your ship’s dungeons for thieves, rapists and murderers. You’re short of the quota promised to me in meeting referenced General strategium resource meeting 1421.236GSRM, held forty three point six standard terran days ago upon the third hour, Imperial standard. I can bring up a recording of the meeting, if it pleases you,” stated the magos.

The entire general staff sat gobsmacked. LaFour recovered himself first.

“Take the mongrels upon the ships carrying my men,” he said without much conviction. “All these left-overs do is cause trouble amongst the true fighting regiments. I care not what happens to them.”

The low ranked men on the bench by the wayside were now earnestly watching the discussion, knowing now their very lives hinged on it. Some had stood, torn between remembering their place and striding forwards to defend themselves. One huge bearded man had tears running down his cheeks. Andeferon tried to push away the guilty feeling of their betrayal that had engulfed him.

“Seven cases,” stated Luten, his face barely masking horror at what he was witnessing.

Tibor looked down to him as the rest of the meeting focussed on the Arminian. “General?”

“Lord general, I have seven cases of Arminian red, bottled two years prior to our departure and now aged perfectly to ten years,” said Luten.

Tibor nodded, recovering himself. “I have had a drop of that, last time we dined together. It is quite a wonderful vintage. What’s your point?”

“Give the left over companies to Ject. Let him build his mongrel regiment. Don’t waste the men. They’ve done the hard yards for you, sir. Lost hundreds of thousands of lives for this mission. They deserve to go out on a battlefield and not on the mechanicum’s assembly lines,” pleaded Luten.

Tibor paused for a moment, smothering a smile and putting on a show of consideration. Andeferon watched Luten as he pleaded the lord general with his normally cold and stern eyes. Luten; as hard a man as any Andeferon had ever known, had been born and raised in the hab blocks ringing one of the combat shotgun assembly manufactories on Arminia. A man whose youth had been spent leading hive gangers headlong into brutal knife fights, now stood like a peasant; begging. It took all of Andeferon’s self control not to explode at the lord general. This fat waste of a Guard uniform was stringing this moment out of Luten. And the white-eyed bastard had recovered himself well enough to vukking well enjoy it.

The magos was still fuming. “Lord general. You demand more praetorians, yet resources are not supplied. I cannot…”

Luten took a step forward in earnest. “Ten cases and consider me in your debt a favour.”

Tibor couldn’t be happier to have done so, a disconcerting glint of sick satisfaction flashing through his bionic eyes as he looked down to his data slate once more to make adjustments. “Gentlemen, consider yourselves in my debt. Ject, those men are yours. You can chase down the lord admiral and explain to him what you want. His unhappiness at these non-scheduled transports will be supreme.”

Ject nodded gleefully and turned, aide in tow, and quickly marched out of the strategium. Andeferon could have chased the coward down and beaten the snot out of him. Not even a nod of thanks.

If the magos could have had a facial expression, it would have been livid rage. Without further word he turned and left, the scurrying of his adamantium leg mounts upon the pearl tiles like those of a hull spider.

Tibor looked to the rest of the assembly before shutting down the tac-table display. “That will be all lady and gentlemen.”

With that, the general staff meeting dispersed quickly.

Andeferon turned to Luten as they both walked away from the tac-table. “Sir, I...”

“Shut up colonel,” snapped Luten as he continued marching stiffly from the strategium.

Lord Commissar Myke fell into step beside them. “General, I applaud your decision to help Ject take on the mongrel regiment. There is nothing the Emperor despises more than a waste of good guardsmen. They should be dying in battle for Him, and naught else.”

“It was not even a decision,” snarled Luten, still raging. “To even think of just giving good honest guardsmen to the mechanicum to be slaughtered like wild hab dogs and rebuilt into mindless servitors is... is...”

“I understand you loud and clear, general,” cut in Myke. “I only came by to let you know I shall be assigning myself to the regiment. They are going to need the best if they are to have a chance. Speaking of which, a pity you did not take them on.”

Luten shook his head. “The Arminians could not accommodate them. We are a sledgehammer regiment, ever destined for the thickest of the fighting. We are fex slayers, the scourge of stealers, the wall of the battle group as solid and sure as an adamantium shield plate on the ironclad. We are the Widow Makers. Splinter hunters.

“Scouts, basic infantry and ex tank crews would be...”

Luten locked eyes with Andeferon.

“... just meatshields.”

Andeferon reddened a little, with anger or embarrassment he could not yet fathom. The commissar read the moment quickly and changed the subject, much to Andeferon’s relief.

“How long until the ceremony, general?” he asked. “He was a good man, and I see it as justly fitting that the division he raised from his home world is there to see him off. In fact, if I am not mistaken, are they solely awaiting your arrival to begin?”

“That they are, lord commissar,” said Luten.

“May I attend?” asked Myke.

Luten shook his head. “My apologies lord commissar, but this is a day of mourning for an Arminian hero. That we must do it on foreign soil is insult enough. It is a private matter.”

“Ah, had I had you at the schola progenium as a young man you would have sent me away smiling as if you had just complimented, as opposed to rebuffed, me,” said Myke.

Luten dipped his head. “Apologies, lord commissar. I am a soldier. Manners are something I am still trying to add to my arsenal.”

Myke stopped and saluted smartly. “To the departed, and to the future. May the Emperor watch over you and your men.”

* * *

The drop ship arrived less than an hour after jettisoning from the immense hanger door. It had taken the navy over half the day to requisition a transport for them, long enough for Andeferon to see most of the fleet depart towards the jump point. As they’d travelled down through the atmosphere, he’d tried to keep note of where the ships might be transferring. He was certain he’d seen a flash of light as the fleet had torn into the warp. He’d made the observation to Luten in the hope of bridging the silence between them that had lingered for their wait and descent. Luten laughed and called him a simple idiot.

As the doors thumped down, Andeferon followed the general out into the late afternoon summer heat and on to the immense stone plinth that sat underneath the ten-metre tall brass statue of the Arminian’s fallen commander. Up, above the low lying haze of post-war smoke, the sky was clear apart from some distant fluffy whites lazily sitting above the distant plains, the late afternoon sun transforming their colours to look like a dull fire’s reflection upon an inverted snowscape. The two moons and distant stars had already begun to peek through the darkening sky.

In the distance, the left over whisps of smoke rose lazily up from the piles of ashes that had been the bugs and their foul cults. Tens of thousands of mutant freaks and purestrains had been turned to ashes in the broad plains ringing Lerrunhive’s outer hab flats. Within the boundaries of the hive, cremhouses burned day and night while priests murmured incessantly to bid those civilians, PDF and soldiers who had fallen, a safe journey to His side.

“I’ll never understand why our people turn for them,” mused Andeferon. “Stupid bastards must have a death wish. His Guard will slaughter them every time.”

“You’re assuming they have a choice,” said Luten quietly, as if to himself more that the Colonel.

“General?” asked Andeferon, not sure he’d heard his superior properly.

Luten smiled, somewhat sadly. “It matters not. They are dead, the planet is cleansed, our men have survived, and we’re off to another war zone.”

“The Emperor does love his Widow Makers,” said Andeferon, quickly forgetting his general’s morose comment.

“That He does, colonel. That He does.”

Andeferon turned and marvelled at the tens of thousands strong Arminian host that stood before him in perfect rank and file. They were sectioned off by regiment, company, platoon, and squad. Ceremonial regimental banners flapped in the residue downdraft of the drop ship. Fifty-five thousand of his fellow home worlders, drafted from the open shield hives and vast hab networks of Arminia, stood proudly at attention for their new general. Andeferon hadn’t seen this since he and his division, eight years ago and a hundred and fifty thousand men strong, had stood upon the assembly field waiting to embark the drop ships and step off their home world in search of bloody adventure. He found himself smiling, almost forgetting the next hell storm they would be transported to in a matter of weeks.

He cast his eyes out to the back of the division, to where his own regiment stood with their dormant valkyrie troop ships, the sun shining from the armoured glass of their canopies. Fifty vulture gunships hovered like lazy wolf wasps above. Four thousand men of the 10th stood in front of their obsessively maintained ships in their thick carapace armour, concrete grey combat fatigues, and full-faced rebreather helms. They held a mixture of lasrifles, helguns, flamers, drum fed automatic combat shotguns, plasma and bolt weapons slung over their shoulders or resting on tripods. Those four thousand elite men were now his: his Widow Makers.

“Accompany me upon the dais for my speech?” asked General Luten.

“Respectfully, no, sir. I’d like to spend the ceremony with my men.”

Luten smiled sadly. “I expected as much. Enjoy your time leading the men, Ande, they are the best Arminia has to offer.”

Andeferon saluted and put on his helmet, feeling the vox mic nestle against his cheek. “Morn to Valkyrie One. Pick up at the dais immediately.”

“Copy that, sir,” said the pilot’s voice.

One of the troopships rose confidently from the ground, all soldiers within twenty metres smoothly taking a knee as it hovered over them briefly, and then rose to twenty metres before dipping its nose and flying slowly over the formation. The troopship banked and turned as it presented its side to Andeferon, a gloved soldier manning a barrel-capped heavy bolter reaching out a hand of help.

Andeferon took the proffered hand and leapt aboard. Immediately the valkyrie rose and flew back to its space in the formation. As it was touching down, less than a minute later, the command vox burst to life with chatter.

“Command Relay Override... All local command vox networks… Emergency threat level red… Repeat level red.”

“What in the name of the Emperor is that?!”

“Off to port! Two hundred thousand kilometres and clo…”

“...fast, so fast!”

“Where did that bastard come from?”

“Ryvan’s Belt! Hiding in the Belt!”

“Break orbit! Break formation!”

“Is that the...”

“It’s hit the Bounty!”

Andeferon immediately cut the link and voxed the general. “Sir, are you getting this?”

There was silence for a moment. “Sir?”

“Colonel, a splinter fleet has ambushed us,” said Luten. “Emperor save us all.”

Andeferon felt his heart start to pound. Vuk vuk vuk vuk vuk.

Ject’s words came to mind. I won’t have enough men to hold a world…

Andeferon forced himself to think. He forced a deep breath through gritted teeth to still his hammering heart and racing mind. “If we try to get space borne in those drop ships we’ll be minced grox meat before we break into the void.”

“Agreed. Hold for now. Embark your men, but hold position,” responded Luten.

Andeferon cut the link as he heard the general providing prep and hold fast orders to the rest of the regiment. He could hear the coughing start of two thousand chimera engines amongst the idling whine of his valkyries and vultures.

“Captains,” he voxed on the closed regiment channel. “Embark the men.”

“Sir? What’s going on?” asked Captain Mander of third company.

“Embark the men, captain,” responded Andeferon. “I’ll fill you in as I find out more. Get the pilots to cycle up the engines, full tactical alert.”

A host of affirmatives clicked off and Andeferon stepped to the side as the nine men of his command squad filed past him and jumped aboard Valkyrie One. He nodded to each man reassuringly as they passed him. Short and squat Olyvar Heskon jumped past with his massive vox system strapped to his broad back. Corpsman Thymit Ollins held his lasrifle by its carry handle in his left hand while his right did last minute checks through his already checked field kit. Asys Cuvue had his bulky bolter held across his thick forearms while sergeants Rian and Verton jumped aboard, cradling stocky automatic shotguns with deep underslung ammo drums. His three special weapons troopers boarded next, trooper Sau nodding to his colonel respectively.

Last to jump on was his shield bearer, Honorary-Captain Vittus, a two and a quarter meter tall bull of a man carrying a holstered plasma pistol and a ceramite shield over a meter in diameter. Whilst not standard Imperial Guard, the shield bearer was a relic position and rank from the days before the arrival of the Imperium, when the Arminians marched across open fields in their blacksmith-forged steel armour and hacked at one another with sword and shield.

“With your leave, colonel,” said the big veteran.

“It is given,” responded Andeferon, giving the honorary-captain permission to depart his side.

Andeferon was about to climb aboard when his attention was pulled to the blue sky above. Reaching up to the right side of his helmet he flicked a small switch and then toggled a tiny roller to magnify the vision of his visor. At such long range he took a few minutes to work out what it was, and what surrounded it.

Immediately, his colonel rank-spec helmet flashed a trajectory warning icon. His memory raced through the vox traffic he had accidentally picked up. Then, as the falling object smashed through speed barrier after explosive speed barrier like an immense meteor, it became horrifyingly evident what he was looking at.

“Holy Emperor, it’s the bloody ironclad, it’s the Emperor’s Bounty!” he said to himself as the fireball got larger by the second. “Captains! Incoming! Grab whoever else you can fit in your ships and lift off in fifteen seconds! Get as far away as you can!”

“General! General! Have you...” yelled Andeferon, not waiting for the affirmatives of his captains.

“Yes colonel, I’ve seen it. We’ve a minute at most,” said Luten calmly as panic began to sweep through the division and men began to stampede in a heaving mass of panic.

“I’m lifting off to get you now,” said Andeferon urgently. “I’ll have you out of the impact zone, sir.”

“Colonel, that thing coming down is millions of tonnes of adamantium. It’s an ironclad and it’s heading nose first for us,” said Luten. “You and I both know that anyone caught within ten kilometres of the impact is going to be vaporised by the shock wave. Lift off and get out now, colonel.”

“But general!”

“Lift off now, colonel!”

Andeferon clicked off his link and screamed in frustration within the confines of his helmet. He signalled his regiment, then waved to his eagerly awaiting pilot who kicked the engines to overdrive and speared the valkyrie low and away from the statue.

“Get as many men away as you can, colonel, and come back for survivors. Those are saviour pods coming down behind the Emperor’s Bounty, don’t leave those that survive the drop to be mopped up by the bugs.”

Andeferon looked out the open cargo door to the sky. The ironclad filled a large piece of the atmosphere above like a world ending meteor, horrible light covering the ground and the men below it as its bulk blotted out the sun, the shredding remnants of its thick adamantium reinforced prow glowing blindingly. Behind the falling ship, a huge puff of blue-white flame erupted outwards as the engines spasmodically and explosively coughed their last impotent breath into the atmosphere, flash boiling any unfortunate native creatures within two kilometres. It hadn’t seemed possible for the falling mass of flame and steel to accelerate any faster, but with that burst two more immense white rings of superheated air discharged from around the prow with claps like the death of mountains.

“It’s been an honour serving with you, Ande,” said Luten.

“Vuk! General…” yelled Andeferon, looking around for something, anything he could do, his limbs full of nervous and useless energy as the valkyrie sped farther away from Luten.

“Let it go, Ande. The division is yours now.”

The colonel’s fist slammed into the grey steel wall beside him as his head dropped in inevitable defeat. Andeferon could almost see the sad smile he knew Luten would be wearing. Outside, the ground rushed by at blurring speed as the turbojet engines screamed throatily, unleashed to their full potential, but were almost drowned out by the roar of the supersonic million-tonne missile headed for the earth.

Despite the vox against his ear, Andeferon struggled to hear anything further.

“Sir, what?” he yelled, cupping his hands over the side of the helmet, making just enough difference.

“...with you, Ande. You’ve been a good soldier. A good friend.”

There was roaring static for a moment: the calm before the impact – where lips moved but nothing came out, where the world outside slowed to the pace of a leisurely walk, where the power of cataclysmic potential took over.

“Serve Ject as you served me. The man needs you to help him. These men need you to help him. Not just ours, all of them.”

Andeferon’s head sagged further and his eyes closed.

The world outside the shuddering hold went fluorescent white.

The shockwave of the impact slammed into Valkyrie One three seconds later.

* * *

General Xonin Ject stood aboard the bridge of the Mankind’s Wrath, watching in morbid fascination as the ambushing tyranid fleet erupted from Ryvan’s Belt. Inwardly he cursed the sheer stupidity of the naval officers around him. How, in the name of the Emperor, have the bugs ambushed us?

His eyes strafed the light blue curve of the stratosphere as the Mankind’s Wrath readied to break from orbit and make for open space before it was trapped between the massive spacefaring beasts of the enemy and the planet. Like tiny black specks below them, drop ships trailed to the planet’s surface to where the eye-burning bright flash of light had signalled the death of the Emperor’s Bounty and so many tens of thousands of Cemars, Arminians and navy crewmen.

Ject signed resignedly. He’d done all he could for the men on the ground, if any had gotten away from the massive impact. Despite the objections of the naval staff he had ordered his men to the surface. He’d taken action without consulting the navy captain, in sending those men planetside, but he was certain his action had been just and right. In hindsight, he almost wished he’d gone with them.

Up here, in the cold of the void, one of those leviathans might destroy all of them in the space of a heartbeat. He’d even heard horrible stories of ones that could grapple with the ship, sucking out every biological organism in a few short minutes to be digested and broken down into tyranid biomatter. The general shuddered at the thought of the few thousand of his own division and the remaining mongrels he had kept in the void suffering such a fate, should the fleet not get them clear of the planet in time. At least those who had gone planet-side had a chance. It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was better than what they had in space.

Ject resignedly closed his eyes for a moment. He was sure he would be dead sooner rather than later. Nothing could stop what he knew was coming: an avalanche of bioflesh of one mind, a mind with a single purpose: complete domination.

Looking once more into the black of the void, Ject noted the brave tiny silver specks of the interceptor squadrons in V formations as they flew towards them. Every man and woman in those interceptors would already know that theirs was a suicide mission, a desperate attempt to buy enough time for the cruiser and light cruisers to get clear of the planet. The ambush fleet looked immense to Ject, that tremendous single ship surrounded by its escorts and drones taking up a massive part of the bridge’s viewing portal.

The Nids are like a disease to the Imperium’s body, mused Ject. No matter how many times you stop them, how many you shoot, burn, blow up, or virus bomb, the leftovers always come back in a thousand different places. And when they come back, they came back hungry to grow once more.

On the bridge’s tac-table, Ject could see already see the two light cruisers were forming up around the Mankind’s Wrath, their captains readying their crews for the suicidal blockade run they were about to embark upon in an attempt to get into clear space. If they could get clear, Ject envisaged they could manoeuvre and attack from hiding, perhaps even in Ryvan’s Belt like the bugs had, until reinforcements could be called back from Ronus Four. Ject could hear the communications with the gun crews who were preparing consecutive full spreads of torpedoes and charging the lance batteries. Orders were shouted across the room and confirmations passed in clipped naval battle-speak at an almost unbelievable rate.

Above the hubbub of the bridge, Ject could hear screams, inhuman screams, screams that should have been reserved for those unfortunate enough to have their sanity shredded and torn away. They drifted down the corridors and through the bulkheads like flayed souls looking for salvation. He winced as their manic sounds scratched at his reddening ears and despairing mind. Around him he saw several ratings visibly cower from the sounds that seemed to ignore the dampeners studding the walls.

He’d heard the effects of the tyranid’s presence upon those that could see into the warp before. Heard it more times than he cared to remember in the last eight years of cat and mouse warfare, and each time prayed it would be the last time. Before the master of the navigators had arrived, Ject already knew the man’s charges were insane or dead, having been brought out of protective stasis chambers too early. Captain Praxys clipped his shoulder as he marched through the bridge.

“Throne, General!” barked the big captain. “Stick to a wall. You’re in the way!”

Ject nodded, looking around forlornly. He knew he was, he just wasn’t sure he cared enough right now to do anything about it. His view of the end of his life was pretty good from where he was standing, through the bridge’s viewport. A naval rating bumped into him, spinning his dazed form a half step around. His eyes settled on a long range vox operator as the young rating looked around at the organised chaos of the bridge, seemingly without much purpose.

Ject waited for his brain to get into motion and realise that he was an Imperial Guard general and that he was bloody well still alive, before he strode over to the man, reinvigorated with some small sense of purpose. “Rating! Get me a link to somebody planetside!” he barked at the surprised young man.

The operator hesitated, his eyes nervously flickering around looking for a naval officer to confirm for a second, and then nodded to himself and began twisting brass dials and playing his fingers along scrawling wavelength frequencies upon a pict screen for signs of contact. Every few seconds he would call out a code identifier, or change a dial or small lever. Ject just stood there tapping his foot ever more urgently, trying to ignore the rumblings through the deck as the immense cruiser made final adjustments for the blockade run.

The captain strode by once more, but halted this time. “Ject? Why are you wasting that man’s time?”

“I’m trying to let the Arminians know what’s happening, captain,” said Ject, trying to maintain his calm.

“Pointless,” snapped the captain. “The main battle fleet jumped while the nids were here. Bastard bugs just being in an area plays havoc with warp travel. Our fleet is, for all of our intensive purposes, lost. We’ll not find them and they’ll not find the Ronus system with the warp storm they probably went into. The entire navigator cadre in their fleet is probably dead or uselessly insane. Bloody Tibor was a fool and now he’s probably killed the entire fleet, Emperor rest their souls.”

“But those men…” said Ject weakly.

“The soldiers dirtside are already dead, they just don’t know it. We need to break out and escape, cut our losses. We’ll need the Emperor himself to smile upon us just to get away.”

“So you’ve no intention of staying in system to try and support the men I’ve just sent to the surface?” asked Ject incredulously.

“What’s the point? We’ve no chance against what’s coming and neither do they. Get the men you have up here to the armsmen stations,” said the captain, turning to leave.
Ject stared at him in utter disbelief.

The captain turned back, holding his gaze while still walking away. “See that out there?” he barked, pointing at the immense ship at the centre of the tyranid mass. “That’s a Hive class ship. That alone could kill us before we landed a shot on its hide! Those escort and cruiser class bugs surrounding it can wipe our fleet out in one volley. Those little bastards around all of them could swarm us and the last thing you’ll see is a bug eating your guts while you mewl like a child!”

Ject just stood there, his face clouded with embarrassed anger.

“Do you understand? Do you? There is enough out there in that fleet to take all three of my ships a hundred times over, and by sending those men to certain death you’ve just made it that much harder for me to get us out of here alive,” roared the captain before taking a breath to calm himself somewhat. “Next time ask me about my plans for my ships before you go and do something stupid like that. Those men’s deaths are on your hands, general. If, by some miracle we make it out of here, you can live the rest of your days with that weight on your soul.”

Ject felt his heart fall within him: another failure, another man stepping all over him just like LaFour had hours before. He sometimes wondered why the lord general had raised him from his happy position amongst the ranks to take on the role of leading the Cemar division. It was almost a cruel joke that a man like he, a former munitorium liaison with a rank by necessity and not for leadership, should be handed over one hundred thousand lives, and command. He shook his head; command could be a curse.

The Emperor helps those who first help themselves. He tests us to ensure we are worthy of Him. For it is not His responsibility to watch over us mere guardsmen, but ours as members of mankind’s shield to shed our blood for what He gave us.

Ject continued to watch the captain walk away from him as the regimental prayer trailed through his mind. A slight pang of nausea made him taste bile as he realised he’d just sent Colonel Illen and seven thousand men of the third Cemar regiment, two regiments of Severethian armour, any scraps of other regiments that had yet to disembark from the transports from the rest of the fleet, a few fighter wings, some munitorium pilots and their loads, and old Lord Commissar Myke to an abandoned death.

He had to do something. He would not spend his last moments languishing in self-defeat and pity. He would not go face the Emperor upon His golden throne as a failure. Colonel Illen’s face came to mind. To see that man look at him with anything but shame or disgust would make this moment worth it. He would bloody well find a way, or get court martialled trying. But how?

He looked about, men ran left and right and orders were shouted into the maelstrom of sound and activity around him. His quick bout of courage faded as he realised he didn’t know where to start. Inside, he railed at himself, what good was this epiphany if he couldn’t even start down the track to self-redemption? He was too far from the strategium to access the vast vox network there. It was too late to board a drop ship with more troops. He couldn’t commandeer the fleet, if they could even break out in the first place. There was no way they were getting messages through the warp to wherever the rest of the battle group was. Throne, there has to be something! Give me something!

Closing his eyes, he began to pray once more. Emperor, who watches over Mankind...

“Sir!” yelled the rating. “I’ve found live vox traffic!”

Ject’s eyes snapped open. “Get me a line to someone, now!”

A few moments later the operator handed him a headset and a vox mic.

Ject cleared his throat and raised the mic to his lips. He would get these ships turned around and he would come back for these men. He didn’t know how, but he would make it happen. He had to give those men on the ground something to cling on to when the spores began to rain from the sky and men started dying in their droves. He had to let them know that he had not forgotten them and that they would be back.

He had to give them hope where sanity would say there was none.

He owed those men that much.


Three.

“General Luten! Colonel Morn! Respond!”

Andeferon moaned as his pounding head was assailed by the urgent and almost whinging voice.

“General Luten! Colonel Morn! This is General Ject aboard the Mankind’s Wrath, for the love of the Throne respond!”

Andeferon winced and tried to stifle a cry as more of his peaceful unconsciousness drifted away and his body began to scream out in agony. His eyes opened to the destroyed interior of Valkyrie One. His command squad were shredded. Pieces of them lay everywhere. The twisted grey interior paint was sprayed lustily with the lifeblood of his men. Twisted and shattered and torn steel had impaled torsos and sliced messily through limbs.

“This is General Ject aboard the Mankind’s Wrath. Any surviving Arminian forces, respond immediately!”

Pain lanced through his shoulder as Andeferon reached up to trigger his helmet’s vox. “General, I hear you.”

“Thank the Emperor! Who is this?” demanded Ject.

“Colonel Morn...”

“Then General Luten...” trailed off Ject.

“Is dead,” finished Andeferon.

“But you live, colonel. The Emperor protects,” responded Ject after a brief silence.

“It bloody well doesn’t feel that way,” groaned Andeferon as he tried to sit up, his hands and eyes running over his carapace armoured body, checking for injuries or wounds. His jaw clamped as the broken ends of his ribs grated against each other.

“Colonel. Repeat last statement.”

“Forget it,” grumbled Andeferon under his breath. “What the vuk just happened? Where did that come from?”

“Colonel, round your men up, get back to the crash site and pick up survivors. I’ve sent reinforcements to you but they will be a couple of hours in deployment. We lost low orbit to the bugs straight after those transports launched.”

“You’ll what? You’re leaving us?” asked Andeferon, suddenly wide awake.

“We’ve already left. We had no choice; we’re outnumbered and outgunned. We’ll be back in a few weeks with the battle group,” said Ject.

“A few bloody weeks!” roared Andeferon, the sound sending his head pounding all the harder.

“I haven’t got time to argue with you colonel! If you want to survive the next thirty minutes you need to move, and you need to move now.”

Andeferon cut off the link without responding.

He pushed himself to his feet shakily, throwing out a hand to catch the door as his legs buckled. He screamed out in pain as his bruised or fractured collarbone protested at the weight he placed upon it. Raising his head, he got his first view of the utter destruction the iron clad had wrought upon the earth, and upon his beloved division.

Thickening dust and smoke kept visibility to only limited, though the hulking wall of earth that bordered the impact crater could be seen like the silhouette of a mountain range. Fires raged out of control, anything that could burn was either already charred or still burning. Palls of smoke soared high into the air, reaching up to a distantly blurry dissipating mushroom cloud. The very air felt alight on his skin. He could make out six other valkyrie wreckages, each one more ruined than the last. Men who had been tossed from the troop holds onto the ground lay still, their clothes and flesh dancing with yellow and white flame.

Turning his attention back inside the hold he stumbled amongst the sprawled bodies, looking for signs of life amongst the ruin. Only three men lay with all of their limbs intact and without a jagged piece of metal piercing their armour-plated bodies. Andeferon rolled the first one over onto his back gingerly, and immediately averted his eyes. Trooper Cuvue had struck something face first, shattering his helmet visor and caving in his head.

Andeferon turned to the next man, a metre-wide ceramite shield with a deep gouge through it was still strapped to his forearm and fist. Please, thought Andeferon, Please be alive. Honorary-Captain Adrik Vittus groaned. The colonel almost cried out in delight as the massive man rolled onto his back, looking first at Andeferon and then down at his shield arm.

“Adrik, can you stand?” asked Andeferon, offering his hand.

“Sir; shield took the brunt,” he wheezed as he tried to sit up. “Shoulder’s broken. Gah.”

Andeferon leant down and unstrapped the shield from the big man’s forearm and then helped him sit up against the wall. Vittus removed his badly damaged helmet and dropped it to the ground, his square jaw like a small anvil and his deep set grey eyes squinted in agony. His short shaved hair was beaded with sweat and purple bruises were already starting to show on his scalp.

“Sir, help me up,” his voice grated as he reached up to take Andeferon’s hand.

Andeferon helped the big man up, his legs quaking as he took the weight, and his breath labouring. The honour-captain’s shield arm hung limp, but Andeferon undid one of the clasps on the side of the big man’s vest and tucked the arm inside. Vittus cried out more than once, but by the end his arm was held securely against his body.

“Check on the others,” said Andeferon without much conviction, and turned to walk out of the twisted door.

He lifted his hand to his vox button. “Morn to all Arminian airborne units. Come in, Valkyrie One is down, request pick up.”

He waited a few seconds, strolling further away from the wreckage of Valkyrie One to loosen the bruised muscles in his legs, before repeating himself. He was cut off.

“Colonel, Valkyrie Two-One responding and en-route to your position,” responded the droning voice of a pilot.

“Valkyrie Two-One, advise ETA,” responded Andeferon.

He never heard the response as a white-hot ball of light flashed past his shoulder and slammed into something behind him that screeched inhumanely. He ducked and reached for a helpistol that was no longer in his hip holster as Vittus walked towards him firing shot after shot of burning plasma past and over him.

Andeferon spun to see a tangled mess of burnt limbs, claws and teeth melt to the ground as the superheated discharge of Vittus’s pistol destroyed the genestealer. He stood and limped quickly back to the ruin of Valkyrie One. He needed a gun. Vittus fired past him again, the shot leaving a white after-image across his vision.

“Bastard spores are already down! Back into the valkyrie!” yelled Andeferon as he passed his shield bearer.

Vittus began to take backwards steps as three creatures ran at him, their powerful legs whipping them across the burnt earth, jaws distended wide showing a vicious forest of needle-sharp teeth. Chitinous armour covered in taught alien flesh blurred as the creatures dug their thick, wickedly clawed feet into the earth and accelerated, small beady black eyes glistening with feral hunger and horrible unified intelligence.

Andeferon leapt into the wreckage and searched around desperately for a weapon. He picked up an automatic shotgun by its pistol grip and hefted it, only to find the barrel had bent out of shape. Outside, the big shield bearer cursed as his pistol ran hot, and turned to run. He was going to be too slow, the beasts were right on his heels. Immediately Andeferon saw Vittus had only moments to live. He spied a barrel and dropped to his knees to roll a body away.

He found the lightweight stock of an AR2 Tekla-pattern lasrifle and pulled it confidently from beneath the decapitated body of Corpsman Ollins. Ollins was the only man in his command squad that carried such a reliable weapon, and as Andeferon sighted down the rear drum sight atop the carry handle he was glad for every bit of the nine-hundred millimetre long piece of Aquila stamped Imperial manufacturing beauty.

Ollins, as always, had the shot intensity up to its maximum. Andeferon’s first shot swung wide of the lead stealer, but the second punched through its nose and explosively cooked whatever the xenos filth called a brain out the back of its head. It took three more shots to bring down the second beast as Vittus launched himself past the colonel and into the valkyrie. The stealer tumbled end over end in death, and landed mere metres from Andeferon’s feet.

With the third monster following the second so closely there was no time for Andeferon to change his aim and shoot the final one. A huge clawed arm speared out for his body, barely missing him but wrenching the lasrifle from his hands as he threw himself backwards to the floor. Immediately it was upon him. Immense jaws snapped air once, twice, and then flashed by his head, teeth burying into the body of the fallen trooper he’d landed upon as he rolled away into a corner.

The beast reared and flicked its head, flinging the body – minus a chunk of its torso – out of the valkyrie, leaving a slipstream of flying gore, and then turned to pounce on Andeferon. The colonel closed his eyes. There was nowhere to go. Emperor, welcome me to your side...

A concussive bang reverberated throughout the shell of Valkyrie One. A nanosecond later, the xenos filth slammed into Andeferon and lay still, it’s cored body still pumping viscous deep purple fluid in a multitude of thick ropy jets. Andeferon couldn’t move. He could see the open gullet of the beast, a meaty chunk of shredded flesh still lanced upon those yellowing teeth, sliding down against his visor and catching against the edge of his rebreather mask. One of the teeth carved a slow gouge across the flexi-glass right in front of his eye as the body slowly slid down.

Then the carcass was gone, dragged off of him by the towering Vittus, a smoking bolt gun hanging from his shoulder.

“Sir, we need to get going,” said the big man. “Take this, it damn near broke my wrist.”

Vittus dropped the bolt gun into Andeferon’s lap. The weapon was heavy and large, not quite Astartes class, but still large enough to be considered a heavy assault weapon for his regiment. Before he stood, Andeferon laid the bolter across his lap and ejected the drum clip and checked the load, quickly snapping it back in satisfied it was only minus the one shot. As he stood, he racked the slide.

Vittus had used the contents of a few of the fallens’ water bottles to cool off his plasma pistol, and the dull red glow of the barrel faded back to its normal colour.

“Come on, move out. Let’s make sure there aren’t any more of those little bastards near by,” ordered Andeferon.

Vittus seemed hesitant for a moment.

“Vittus?”

“The shield; I cannot leave it,” said the big man, his eyes locked squarely on the ripped piece of adamantium lying in the centre of the hold.

“We’ll get a new one forged,” responded Andeferon, his eyes flicking between the shield bearer and the hold door.

Vittus was quiet for a moment, his face contemplating. “Sir, that shield has protected the Colonel of the 10th regiment for eight years. I have held it for two of those years. I cannot leave it. Strap it to my back.”

“We don’t have time for this, Vittus. Our bird will be here soon. I want a secure pick up site,” said Andeferon, beginning to lose his temper.

“Sir, please, the men need to see it. They need to see ceramite forged on Arminia Secundus watching over their colonel. Think of all the men we’ve lost, it’s for them; we are mankind’s shield… the Guard that is... I... I need it sir,” admitted the huge honour-captain.

Andeferon stared at him, malevolence eventually turning to acceptance.

“Fine,” snapped Andeferon and slung his weapon.

He grabbed the shield, and reached into his webbing for a roll of medical tape. “I swear if you get me killed because of this bloody thing I’m going to forsake going to the Emperor’s light in favour of haunting whatever bloody existence you may get after death.”

“Yes sir. Thank you, sir,” said the big man as Andeferon wound the tape around the shield and the shield bearer’s body, inwardly admonishing himself for words a more pious and fanatical man than Vittus might deem heretical.

“You look bloody ridiculous,” said Andeferon when he had finished. “Like some stupid hab-ganger has taped a big fry pan to his back.”

Andeferon winced as he barked out a laugh and his ribs grated. Vittus laughed at his cry of pain. The smile dropped from Vittus’s face at the same moment as Andeferon heard the heavy scurrying of clawed feet outside. Vittus had already fired two shots when Andeferon spun, his thumb flicking the selector to full auto, and unleashed the fury of his weapon into the swarm of tyranid beasts charging them.

The bolter bucked and kicked like a maddened Chaba bull, a hail of empty brass spitting sideways from the ejector port as the muzzle flare lit up the shadows of the hold. Beasts exploded as the mini warheads detonated the monsters from the inside. Limbs flew and chunks of the charging wall of claws and teeth fell and died. Lancing single plasma shots melted more of them, but despite all of their firepower, the swarm kept coming, still thirty or forty strong with quad-armed genestealers sprinting to the fore.

Click. Click. Click.

“Oh, vuk me,” said Andeferon, lowering the empty bolter.

The lead genestealer leapt at them, claws splayed wide and jaws open showing the purple veined pink of its inner throat behind its vicious teeth. Its head disappeared as a white-hot plasma bolt struck it mid-flight. It was a small thing, now they were about to die: one last foe before the end. Andeferon knew they were dead: his gun empty and Vittus’s pistol too slow to break the oncoming tide now only a few metres away.

With only a heartbeat to live, Andeferon drew his forearm length knife and prepared himself. At least he’d take one with him. Emperor welcome us...

A metre short of the door the leading tyranids were torn apart in a hailstorm of gunfire. Andeferon laughed as the familiar scream of hovering valkyrie and vulture engines and the roar of pintle mounted heavy bolters filled the air like a beautiful symphony. The hovering birds buying them a moment’s respite, the colonel spotted and grabbed a frag grenade from a fallen guardsman’s webbing and hurled it out in to the mass. Andeferon threw himself and Vittus back, both crying out in pain as they landed, and then again as the pressure wave from the grenade struck them.

He could hear the rain of spent shells tickling the roof of Valkyrie One above him as the advancing genestealers were pummelled into explosive submission by the fusillade. In his ear, his vox bead clicked and fuzzed.

“Colonel Morn, this is Valkyrie Two-One. Respond.”

Andeferon laughed grimly. “This is Morn, pick up for two. Medics required.”

“Affirmative,” came the response.

Outside, Andeferon could see the underbelly of a lowering valkyrie, dirt and dust and soot swirling up from where the jet engines roared.

He shook his head as his eyes flicked back over the ruination of his squad. Leaning down, he hauled a limbless torso off an ammo box and grabbed a couple of extra bolt drums for his weapon, grunting as his ribs grated and his shoulder ached.

“What does a man have to do to get killed around here?”

Vittus was beside him. “Sir?”

Andeferon took a deep breath and smiled grimly to himself. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

* * *

Valkyrie Two-One hovered above the far outer edge of the impact crater, engine wash blowing storms of dust outwards below. Andeferon did his best to ignore the softly throbbing morphitine dulled pain of his ribs as he stared out from the open hold door. He searched for survivors amongst the wreckage, squinting for a moment as the second company man beside him unleashed a short burst of heavy bolter fire downwards and destroyed a wandering xeno. Andeferon watched the smoking muzzle begin to pan left and right for more targets as the remaining valkyries of first and second company, thirty-two beautiful birds in all, formed up alongside a trio of vulture gunships.

He noted that some of the valkyries were overloaded with men, some from other Arminian regiments even, but there was naught to be done. To drop those men off on the ground was to give them to the maws of the beast packs roaming the desolation of the crash site. When the last bird slid into place Andeferon gave the order to move forward and into the crater. At increments of a kilometre along the tall dirt ridge of the crater edge, he knew that the other paired one hundred and ninety eight companies of his command were mirroring his move. He couldn’t see them through the dust and ash hanging lank in the air, but he could hear their engines and the staccato bursts of their heavy bolters.

The first saviour pod they came across had been savagely torn open from the outside. From the air, Andeferon watched as two five man fire teams lined down to the surface from Valkyrie Three-Seven, while the remainder hung watchfully over the ten men. Having already cleared the surrounds by air, the men moved in, walking over six mutilated naval bodies laying around or inside the rent, and quickly disappearing from view.

There was no sign of the fire teams for a minute or two, then gunfire flashes lit the opening. When only six of the second company men came out and waved the all clear, Andeferon knew what had happened. He tuned in to the captain’s link of second company’s vox channel.

“...medics?”

“Don’t bother, sir, we’ve got their tags and ammo, whatever that was before we melted it shredded my guys. Probably isn’t enough left for body bags.”

“Any other survivors?”

“None, sir.”

“Tag the saviour pod and get airborne, sergeant.”

“Sir.”

One of the men bearing a sergeant’s two white stripes across his shoulder guard below them took out a small, fat marker and put a thick red cross next to the hole in the pod. Three-Seven lowered its belly a metre from the dirt, and the remaining Arminians of her squad embarked efficiently and without fuss.

Andeferon clicked his regimental vox. “First and second, tight spread: advance. Majors, report in progress.”

The three surviving majors of the tenth regiment, each now commanding a third of the regiment’s companies, called in one by one.

“This is Kunnan. Good progress, sir, we’re carrying forty-seven survivors, mostly navy. No losses.”

“Understood,” said Andeferon.

“Larack here. Encountering growing swarms of stealers, sir. Most of the saviour pods are gutted, only twelve live ones. We’ve lost two fire teams. Bastards are running bloody rampant but we’re fraggin’ a lot of em’.”

“Hamnit, calling in. I’ve got four companies covering the retreat of a couple of hundred navy and a few soldiers to our six, can’t be sure what regiment. The rest of us are advancing forwards. Wind’s picking up out this way, sir, visibility is increasing.”

Andeferon nodded to himself. “Hamnit, get those men double timing out of the crash crater. Keep pushing forwards to the crash site. We need to be in and out of here before too many spores fall.”

Squinting hard to see into the thick dust, Andeferon could begin to see the wind swishing and swirling through the haze and his visibility increasing as eddies and whorls of dust cleared small pieces of sky and terrain. Below, the turbo jet engines pushed at the ash and soot with such ferocity that they dug trenches in the piles of debris that covered the ground. As the debris cleared, Andeferon saw the first Arminian bodies from the division of men they had left behind.

He heard one of the men beside him moan unhappily as the ash and soot and dirt were pushed clear of the tangle of torsos and limbs that were revealed like a morbid carpet below. Pieces of combat fatigues caught aflame as the heat from the engines lit up the buried corpses. Instinctively the pilot began to gain altitude to stop the ruination of their men. The extra thrust revealed more of the horrible mass burial site.

“Back to regulation height, pilot,” ordered Andeferon. “Their souls are with the Emperor now.”

The pilot obeyed immediately, begrudgingly.

“Sir, this is Two-Seven, saviour pod below, no hostiles, no visible friendlies, moving to clear. Stand by,” voxed one of the second company sergeants.

“Morn to all first and second company birds, hold the line, remain on station in support of Two-Seven’s position,” ordered Andeferon.

A host of affirmatives clicked back. A few hundred metres to his left he heard the hard bangs of a short burst of heavy bolter fire over the screams of the first and second’s turbojet engines.

“One-Three. Contact: hundred metres. Small pack. Five or six eliminated,” came the voice of another sergeant.

Andeferon was about to check on the progress of the pod clearance when three more groupings of short burst heavy bolter fire banged out from the left of the line. Then a sustained burst from the right. Then another sustained burst roared from further off in that direction. Five, then six, then eight birds called in contacts.

Soon, most of the valkyries heavy bolters were roaring in controlled bursts into the clearing gloom before them. Two-One’s left hand side pintle mounted heavy bolter opened up as the hunch-shouldered trooper drilled a quick burst into three silently hunting stealers on the ground. The beasts crumpled to the ground.

Without warning there was a huge impact and an explosion down the line of hovering valkyries and vultures.

“Vuk!” called out one of the pilots as the valkyries closest to the explosion banked away from fireball. “Throne was that?”

“Didn’t see it. Anyone got eyes on what just happened?”

“One-Nine is down! One-Nine is down!" came another pilot’s voice. "something hit it from…”

The area lit up once more as another bird crunched with heavy impact and fell to the ground, spilling crew and soldiers to their deaths before the engines struck dirt and exploded with the burning white of fuel.


“Another one down! What is that?”

Andeferon looked around; surely it was too early in the invasion for any seriously big hitters to be on the ground? What could have…

And then it struck him, or almost did. A spore speared right past his open cargo bay and smashed into the ground below. The soldier manning the heavy bolter flinched with surprise and then stood tall and drilled another short burst into the mass of blackened purple flesh below as it opened like an overripe flower to reveal its cargo.

Andeferon swore and then tapped his regimental vox. “Morn to all units. That’s it; pull back. Get us out of the area. Rendezvous…”

“Sir! There’s still survivors!” voxed Major Hamnit.

“We’re wasting fuel and ammo and lives. Pull out,” snapped Andeferon.

The three majors acceded and affirmed the order.

“Colonel,” voxed the pilot. “Vox is picking up traffic from inbound drop ships.”

“Patch it through and get us out of here,” returned Andeferon, and waited a moment before continuing. “This is Colonel Morn, go ahead.”

“Colonel Morn. This is Commissar Myke. I’ve got men, tanks, and ammo, where do you need us?” came the crackly voice of the lord commissar.

“Commissar, get your ships clear of the drop site. Be advised: tyranid activity and spore drops are increasing. We’re pulling out of the area. We need to find somewhere defensible,” voxed Andeferon.

“Understood.” Then there was a moment’s silence. “The sacrifice the Arminian’s made today shall not go unavenged, Colonel. We may be outnumbered, we may have lost low orbit, but I swear by the Emperor we’ll make these bugs pay for every scrap of dirt on this planet.”

Andeferon cringed inwardly. It wouldn’t matter how many of the horde they killed. They could kill every single beast that stepped hoof or claw or foot planetside and it wouldn’t matter. So long as there were swarms to be dropped onto the ground when the fighting was done and all the humans were dead, then every little piece of biomatter would be ingested by the tyranid fleet and recreated into billions more creatures to assault another world.

That was how the bugs worked. They destroyed you and then turned you back on the Imperium. There was no victory to be had here. Andeferon held his bitter opinion to himself. Disheartening the men around him would serve no purpose. And who knows, the Emperor himself may smile upon them.

Ject might come through for us. Andeferon huffed a laugh.

“As you say, lord commissar. If you have long range scans, find me somewhere we can hold. We need a base of operations. Vox me the co-ordinates. We’ll meet you there.”

“Understood,” said Myke. “Lerrunhive is about fifty clicks south-south west. I was eyeing it off on the way down.”

“We’ll rendezvous there, Commissar. Shut the hive down. Get the PDF mobilised and fortifying the walls. Find me a line with a wide-open fire field before it. Morn, out.” Andeferon sighed and passed on the direction to the regiment.

“Sir!” called out one of the gunners.

Andeferon whirled around and quickly bounded to the man’s side. He followed the trooper’s outstretched arm to look into the thinning dust. A naval rating was sprinting their way as the pilot was beginning to pull away. The man was running hard with geysers of soot erupting behind him as his feet kicked out with desperate strength to power him towards safety. Andeferon voxed the pilot, who swung the bird around. Two Vultures dropped back in escort as the rest of the two companies continued on away.

In a shadowy flash, something felled the man and then disappeared into the dust as quickly as it had arrived. Andeferon knew the man’s life was over. He may have been kicking and soundlessly screaming as he tried to cover the stump where his leg had been but a moment ago, but the man was dead. He just hadn’t realised yet.

Andeferon clenched his jaw as he saw fifteen-odd creatures slowly advance out of the swirling storm. The man crawled backwards one way, and then another, his terror palpable. The beasts taunted him, leaping forwards and then pulling up short, baring teeth, snapping lazily at his remaining limbs. Andeferon voxed the pilot again and Two-One pulled up into a hover.

The colonel held out his hand. No words were needed. In a heartbeat, the pistol grip of a lasrifle was in his palm, and then its stock was pressed into his shoulder. He flicked the selector to single shot and looked down the sight. Andeferon saw the man reach out to him, remaining hand open, pleading for salvation from the terrors around him.

In that heartbeat moment more genestealers had appeared. Hunch backed gaunts and other larger beasts hulked like monstrous silhouettes amongst them, long and vicious claws swaying in the wind. Andeferon breathed out slowly to steady his aim, riding the pitching valkyrie deck with practiced ease. I’d expect you to do the same for me.

One shot was all it took. One hot, white flash of light that lit up the interior of the cabin one nanosecond, and punched a fist sized, cauterised hole in the man’s chest the next. The man toppled over dead.

As one, in sickening unison, every single set of black eyes snapped up and locked onto Andeferon. Andeferon lowered the weapon. Where there had once been fifteen genestealers now stood a horde. There must have been hundreds already, and the spores were beginning to fall like rain.

“Let’s go,” voxed Andeferon.

Immediately, the deck of the valkyrie began to tilt as the turbo jet engines roared to pull them out of their mid-air hover. Andeferon’s attention remained on the man he had just shot as the body was torn apart. As the air began to clear further of soot and dust and smoke and the late afternoon sky pierced in from above, Andeferon had a long moment of dreadful realisation as hundreds quickly became thousands. And thousands turned into tens of thousands as the wind picked up to a gale and cleared vision to many hundreds of metres. Massive fexes and other monstrous creatures picked their way out of shattered fat spores. Formless, shapeless beasts wriggled or slid to spew out eggs and mucus covered swarms of carnivorous worms that immediately started to work on the buried and freshly dead, breaking them down to base form biomatter.

As the screaming of the three birds’ engines began to take Andeferon away from the site, a four metre tall beast walked forth from the mass. Thick bone plates oozing viscous xenos filth and spattered in fresh crimson covered its sickeningly lean and muscular body. Huge spines jutted from massive hunched shoulders and a bone crest ran down its head to the nose. Four multi jointed arms, each ending in a differently horrid eviscerating weapon, reached up to point at him in challenge. The gesture was almost human.

Instinctively, Andeferon knew this beast to be the Tyrant: the lynchpin of the invading force. If he had his regiment on his wing he might have been able to destroy it and turn the tide of the battle in the space of time it took for a few hundred missiles to streak over the short distance. He cursed loudly and colourfully as the valkyrie began to pick up pace, away from the massive beast. Andeferon leant out of the hold into the buffeting wind, sighted the rifle back past the tail of Two-One, and shot it in the head.

The shot glanced down the side of the beast’s face, leaving a deep black, burnt flesh furrow from its avian beak to the back of its elongated head. Its thick, wedge like mouth widened slowly at first, revealing rows of needle teeth, then its powerful jaw wrenched open. Double hinged mandible bones split the beast’s face into three small forests of teeth as its body went taught and it roared with the voice of the horde, leaning towards Andeferon with effort and bestial prowess.

The noise made Andeferon shudder. The tyranid war machine was in full swing once more. The greatest threat this sector had seen in a thousand years had returned, and Andeferon was right in the middle of it with his men.

The planet and all of its Imperial soldiers and citizens had weeks left, at best.

first of all, great story. But the posts are way, way too long and is very off putting. (this is my forth attempt at posting) If you were to break it up more into smaller posts I'm certain you would have more comments as this is good gak. I hope this answers a unanswered question in your mind.

themanwiththeplan.

It actually does, cheers mate! The Widow Makers is a novel. Chapter at a time work better, you reckon?

Does it look dicey having the attachments up there. I was kind of hoping people would download those instead of going through the posts.

People genrally just want to read stories on here instead of going around the block to find it. The minions of dakka like to read and comment here instead of being bounced to another site. So TBH I didnt use them.

One chapter at a time would suit best as it lets people manage how much they read in one sitting, and they know where they have read to so far. A wall of text is off putting to reader as well, so be mindful of how it looks to others.

I hope this helps.

Cheers fella. I'll keep it mind for the next posts.