Hammer and Bolter - Issue 2 Read online

  The object, fully raised above the pit, hung there in all its ancient, inscrutable glory. Borgovda gave a muttered command into a vox-piece, and the cranes began a slow, synchronised turn.

  Borgovda held his breath.

  They moved the vast sarcophagus over solid ground and stopped.

  ‘Yes,’ said Borgovda over the link. ‘That’s it. Now lower it gently.’

  The crane crews did as ordered. Millimetre by millimetre, the oval tomb descended.

  Then it lurched.

  One of the cranes gave a screech of metal. Its frame twisted sharply to the right, titanium struts crumpling like tin.

  ‘What’s going on?’ demanded Borgovda.

  From the corner of his vision, he noted the Deathwatch stepping forwards, cocking their weapons, and the Dreadnought eagerly flexing its great metal fists.

  A panicked voice came back to him from the crane operator in the damaged machine. ‘There’s something moving inside that thing,’ gasped the man. ‘Something really heavy. Its centre of gravity is shifting all over the place!’

  Borgovda’s eyes narrowed as he scrutinised the hanging oval object. It was swinging on five taut cables now, while the sixth, that of the ruined crane, had gone slack. The object lurched again. The movement was clearly visible this time, obviously generated by massive internal force.

  ‘Get it onto the ground,’ Borgovda barked over the link, ‘but carefully. Do not damage it.’

  The cranes began spooling out more cable at his command, but the sarcophagus gave one final big lurch and crumpled two more of the sturdy machines. The other three cables tore free, and it fell to the ground with an impact that shook the closest slaves and acolytes from their feet.

  Borgovda started towards the fallen sarcophagus, and knew that the Deathwatch were right behind him. Had the inquisitor known this might happen? Was that why he had sent his angels of death and destruction along?

  Even at this distance, some one hundred and twenty metres away, even through all the dust and grit the impact had kicked up, Borgovda could see eldar sigils begin to glow red on the surface of the massive object. They blinked on and off like warning lights, and he realised that was exactly what they were. Despite all the irreconcilable differences between the humans and the aliens, this message, at least, mean the same.

  Danger!

  There was a sound like cracking wood, but so loud it was deafening.

  Suddenly, one of the Deathwatch Space Marines roared in agony and collapsed to his knees, gauntlets pressed tight to the side of his helmet. Another Astartes, the Imperial Fist, raced forwards to his fallen leader’s side.

  ‘What’s the matter, Scholar? What’s going on?’

  The one called Karras spoke through his pain, but there was no mistaking the sound of it, the raw, nerve-searing agony in his words. ‘A psychic beacon!’ he growled through clenched teeth. ‘A psychic beacon just went off. The magnitude–’

  He howled as another wave of pain hit him, and the sound spoke of a suffering that Borgovda could hardly imagine.

  Another of the kill-team members, this one with a pauldron boasting a daemon’s-skull design, stepped forwards with boltgun raised and, incredibly, took aim at his leader’s head.

  The Raven Guard moved like lightning. Almost too fast to see, he was at this other’s side, knocking the muzzle of the boltgun up and away with the back of his forearm. ‘What the hell are you doing, Watcher?’ Zeed snapped. ‘Stand down!’

  The Exorcist, Rauth, glared at Zeed through his helmet visor, but he turned his weapon away all the same. His finger, however, did not leave the trigger.

  ‘Scholar,’ said Voss. ‘Can you fight it? Can you fight through it?’

  The Death Spectre struggled to his feet, but his posture said he was hardly in any shape to fight if he had to. ‘I’ve never felt anything like this!’ he hissed. ‘We have to knock it out. It’s smothering my… gift.’ He turned to Borgovda. ‘What in the Emperor’s name is going on here, magos?’

  ‘Gift?’ spat Rauth in an undertone.

  Borgovda answered, turning his black eyes back to the object as he did. It was on its side about twenty metres from the edge of the pit, rocking violently as if something were alive inside it.

  ‘The Exodites…’ he said. ‘They must have set up some kind of signal to alert them when someone… interfered. We’ve just set it off.’

  ‘Interfered with what?’ demanded Ignatio Solarion. The Ultramarine rounded on the tiny tech-priest. ‘Answer me!’

  There was another loud cracking sound. Borgovda looked beyond Solarion and saw the bone-like surface of the sarcophagus split violently. Pieces shattered and flew off. In the gaps they left, something huge and dark writhed and twisted, desperate to be free.

  The magos was transfixed.

  ‘I asked you a question!’ Solarion barked, visibly fighting to restrain himself from striking the magos. ‘What does the beacon alert them to?’

  ‘To that,’ said Borgovda, terrified and exhilarated all at once. ‘To the release of… of whatever they buried here.’

  ‘They left it alive?’ said Voss, drawing abreast of Solarion and Borgovda, his heavy bolter raised and ready.

  Suddenly, everything slotted into place. Borgovda had the full context of the eldar writing he had deciphered on the sarcophagus’s surface, and, with that context, came a new understanding.

  ‘They buried it,’ he told Talon Squad, ‘because they couldn’t kill it!’

  There was a shower of bony pieces as the creature finally broke free of the last of its tomb and stretched its massive serpentine body for all to see. It was as tall as a Warhound Titan, and, from the look of it, almost as well armoured. Complex mouthparts split open like the bony, razor-lined petals of some strange, lethal flower. Its bizarre jaws dripped with corrosive fluids. This beast, this nightmare leviathan pulled from the belly of the earth, shivered and threw back its gargantuan head.

  A piercing shriek filled the poisonous air, so loud that some of the skitarii troopers closest to it fell down, choking on the deadly atmosphere. The creature’s screech had shattered their visors.

  ‘Well maybe they couldn’t kill it,’ growled Lyandro Karras, marching stoically forwards through waves of psychic pain. ‘But we will! To battle, brothers, in the Emperor’s name!’

  Searing lances of las-fire erupted from all directions at once, centring on the massive worm-like creature that was, after so many long millennia, finally free. Normal men would have quailed in the face of such an overwhelming foe. What could such tiny things as humans do against something like this? But the skitarii troopers of the Adeptus Mechanicus had been rendered all but fearless, their survival instincts overridden by neural programming, augmentation and brain surgery. They did not flee as other men would have. They surrounded the beast, working as one to put as much firepower on it as possible.

  A brave effort, but ultimately a wasted one. The creature’s thick plates of alien chitin shrugged off their assault. All that concentrated firepower really achieved was to turn the beast’s attention on its attackers. Though sightless in the conventional sense, it sensed everything. Rows of tiny cyst-like nodules running the length of its body detected changes in heat, air pressure and vibration to the most minute degree. It knew exactly where each of its attackers stood. Not only could it hear their beating hearts, it could feel them vibrating through the ground and the air. Nothing escaped its notice.

  With incredible speed for a creature so vast, it whipped its heavy black tail forwards in an arc. The air around it whistled. Skitarii troopers were cut down like stalks of wheat, crushed by the dozen, their ribcages pulverised. Some were launched into the air, their bodies falling like mortar shells a second later, slamming down with fatal force onto the corrugated metal roofs of the nearby storage and accommodation huts.

  Talon Squad was already racing forwards to join the fight. Chyron’s awkward run caused crates to fall from their stacks. Adrenaline flooded the wretched remains of his o
rganic body, a tiny remnant of the Astartes he had once been, little more now than brain, organs and scraps of flesh held together, kept alive, by the systems of his massive armoured chassis.

  ‘Death to all xenos!’ he roared, following close behind the others.

  At the head of the team, Karras ran with his bolter in hand. The creature was three hundred metres away, but he and his squadmates would close that gap all too quickly. What would they do then? How did one fight a monster like this?

  There was a voice on the link. It was Voss.

  ‘A trygon, Scholar? A mawloc?’

  ‘No, Omni,’ replied Karras. ‘Same genus, I think, but something we haven’t seen before.’

  ‘Sigma knew,’ said Zeed, breaking in on the link.

  ‘Aye,’ said Karras. ‘Knew or suspected.’

  ‘Karras,’ said Solarion. ‘I’m moving to high ground.’

  ‘Go.’

  Solarion’s bolt-rifle, a superbly-crafted weapon, its like unseen in the armouries of any Astartes Chapter but the Deathwatch, was best employed from a distance. The Ultramarine broke away from the charge of the others. He sought out the tallest structure in the crater that he could reach quickly. His eyes found it almost immediately. It was behind him – the loading crane that served the mag-rail line. It was slightly shorter than the cranes that had been used to lift the entombed creature out of the pit, but each of those were far too close to the beast to be useful. This one would do well. He ran to the foot of the crane, to the stanchions that were steam-bolted to the ground, slung his rifle over his right pauldron, and began to climb.

  The massive tyranid worm was scything its tail through more of the skitarii, and their numbers dropped to half. Bloody smears marked the open concrete. For all their fearlessness and tenacity, the Mechanicus troops hadn’t even scratched the blasted thing. All they had managed was to put the beast in a killing frenzy at the cost of their own lives. Still they fought, still they poured blinding spears of fire on it, but to no avail. The beast flexed again, tail slashing forwards, and another dozen died, their bodies smashed to a red pulp.

  ‘I hope you’ve got a plan, Scholar,’ said Zeed as he ran beside his leader. ‘Other than kill the bastard, I mean.’

  ‘I can’t channel psychic energy into Arquemann,’ said Karras, thinking for a moment that his ancient force sword might be the only thing able to crack the brute’s armoured hide. ‘Not with that infernal beacon drowning me out. But if we can stop the beacon… If I can get close enough–’

  He was cut off by a calm, cold and all-too-familiar voice on the link.

  ‘Specimen Six is not to be killed under any circumstances, Alpha. I want the creature alive!’

  ‘Sigma!’ spat Karras. ‘You can’t seriously think… No! We’re taking it down. We have to!’

  Sigma broadcast his voice to the entire team.

  ‘Listen to me, Talon Squad. That creature is to be taken alive at all costs. Restrain it and prepare it for transport. Brother Solarion has been equipped for the task already. Your job is to facilitate the success of his shot, then escort the tranquilised creature back to the St. Nevarre. Remember your oaths. Do as you are bid.’

  It was Chyron, breaking his characteristic brooding silence, who spoke up first.

  ‘This is an outrage, Sigma. It is a tyranid abomination and Chyron will kill it. We are Deathwatch. Killing things is what we do.’

  ‘You will do as ordered, Lamenter. All of you will. Remember your oaths. Honour the treaties, or return to your brothers in disgrace.’

  ‘I have no brothers left,’ Chyron snarled, as if this freed him from the need to obey.

  ‘Then you will return to nothing. The Inquisition has no need of those who cannot follow mission parameters. The Deathwatch even less so.’

  Karras, getting close to the skitarii and the foe, felt his lip curl in anger. This was madness.

  ‘Solarion,’ he barked, ‘how much did you know?’

  ‘Some,’ said the Ultramarine, a trace of something unpleasant in his voice. ‘Not much.’

  ‘And you didn’t warn us, brother?’ Karras demanded.

  ‘Orders, Karras. Unlike some, I follow mine to the letter.’

  Solarion had never been happy operating under the Death Spectre Librarian’s command. Karras was from a Chapter of the Thirteenth Founding. To Solarion, that made him inferior. Only the Chapters of the First Founding were worthy of unconditional respect, and even some of those…

  ‘Magos Altando issued me with special rounds,’ Solarion went on. ‘Neuro-toxics. I need a clear shot on a soft, fleshy area. Get me that opening, Karras, and Sigma will have what he wants.’

  Karras swore under his helm. He had known all along that something was up. His psychic gift did not extend to prescience, but he had sensed something dark and ominous hanging over them from the start.

  The tyranid worm was barely fifty metres away now, and it turned its plated head straight towards the charging Deathwatch Space Marines. It could hardly have missed the thundering footfalls of Chyron, who was another thirty metres behind Karras, unable to match the swift pace of his smaller, lighter squadmates.

  ‘The plan, Karras!’ said Zeed, voice high and anxious.

  Karras had to think fast. The beast lowered its fore-sections and began slithering towards them, sensing these newcomers were a far greater threat than the remaining skitarii.

  Karras skidded to an abrupt halt next to a skitarii sergeant and shouted at him, ‘You! Get your forces out. Fall back towards the mag-rail station.’

  ‘We fight,’ insisted the skitarii. ‘Magos Borgovda has not issued the command to retreat.’

  Karras grabbed the man by the upper right arm and almost lifted him off his feet. ‘This isn’t fighting. This is dying. You will do as I say. The Deathwatch will take care of this. Do not get in our way.’

  The sergeant’s eyes were blank lifeless things, like those of a doll. Had the Adeptus Mechanicus surgically removed so much of the man’s humanity? There was no fear there, certainly, but Karras sensed little else, either. Whether that was because of the surgeries or because the eldar beacon was still drowning him in wave after invisible wave of pounding psychic pressure, he could not say.

  After a second, the skitarii sergeant gave a reluctant nod and sent a message over his vox-link. The skitarii began falling back, but they kept their futile fire up as they moved.

  The rasping of the worm’s armour plates against the rockcrete grew louder as it neared, and Karras turned again to face it. ‘Get ready!’ he told the others.

  ‘What is your decision, Death Spectre?’ Chyron rumbled. ‘It is a xenos abomination. It must be killed, regardless of the inquisitor’s command.’

  Damn it, thought Karras. I know he’s right, but I must honour the treaties, for the sake of the Chapter. We must give Solarion his window.

  ‘Keep the beast occupied. Do as Sigma commands. If Solarion’s shot fails…’

  ‘It won’t,’ said Solarion over the link.

  It had better not, thought Karras. Because, if it does, I’m not sure we can kill this thing.

  Solarion had reached the end of the crane’s armature. The entire crater floor was spread out below him. He saw his fellow Talon members fan out to face the alien abomination. It reared up on its hind-sections again and screeched at them, thrashing the air with rows of tiny vestigial limbs. Voss opened up on it first, showering it with a hail of fire from his heavy bolter. Rauth and Karras followed suit while Zeed and Chyron tried to flank it and approach from the sides.

  Solarion snorted.

  It was obvious, to him at least, that the fiend didn’t have any blind spots. It didn’t have eyes!

  So far as Solarion could tell from up here, the furious fusillade of bolter rounds rattling off the beast’s hide was doing nothing at all, unable to penetrate the thick chitin plates.

  I need exposed flesh, he told himself. I won’t fire until I get it. One shot, one kill. Or, in this case, one paralysed xenos w
orm.

  He locked himself into a stable position by pushing his boots into the corners created by the crane’s metal frame. All around him, the winds of Menatar howled and tugged, trying to pull him into a deadly eighty-metre drop. The dust on those winds cut visibility by twenty per cent, but he knew he could pull off a perfect shot in far worse conditions than these.

  Sniping from the top of the crane meant that he was forced to lie belly-down at a forty-five-degree angle, his bolt-rifle’s stock braced against his shoulder, right visor-slit pressed close to the lens of his scope. After some adjustments, the writhing monstrosity came into sharp focus. Bursts of Astartes gunfire continued to ripple over its carapace. Its tail came down hard in a hammering vertical stroke that Rauth only managed to sidestep at the last possible second. The concrete where the Exorcist had been standing shattered and flew off in all directions.

  Solarion pulled back the cocking lever of his weapon and slid one of Altando’s neuro-toxic rounds into the chamber. Then he spoke over the comm-link.

  ‘I’m in position, Karras. Ready to take the shot. Hurry up and get me that opening.’

  ‘We’re trying, Prophet!’ Karras snapped back, using the nickname Zeed had coined for the Ultramarine.

  Try harder, thought Solarion, but he didn’t say it. There was a limit, he knew, to how far he could push Talon Alpha.

  Three grenades detonated, one after another, with ground-splintering cracks. The wind pulled the dust and debris aside. The creature reared up again, towering over the Space Marines, and they saw that it remained utterly undamaged, not even a scratch on it.

  ‘Nothing!’ cursed Rauth.

  Karras swore. This was getting desperate. The monster was tireless, its speed undiminished, and nothing they did seemed to have the least effect. By contrast, its own blows were all too potent. It had already struck Voss aside. Luck had been with the Imperial Fist, however. The blow had been lateral, sending him twenty metres along the ground before slamming him into the side of a fuel silo. The strength of his ceramite armour had saved his life. Had the blow been vertical, it would have killed him on the spot.