Hammer and Bolter - Issue 2 Read online

  Talon Squad hadn’t survived the last six years of special operations to die here on Menatar. Karras wouldn’t allow it. But the only weapon they had which might do anything to the monster was his force blade, Arquemann, and, with that accursed eldar beacon drowning out his gift, Karras couldn’t charge it with the devastating psychic power it needed to do the job.

  ‘Warp blast it!’ he cursed over the link. ‘Someone find the source of that psychic signal and knock it out!’

  He couldn’t pinpoint it himself. The psychic bursts were overwhelming, drowning out all but his own thoughts. He could no longer sense Zeed’s spiritual essence, nor that of Voss, Chyron, or Solarion. As for Rauth, he had never been able to sense the Exorcist’s soul. Even after serving together this long, he was no closer to discovering the reason for that. For all Karras knew, maybe the quiet, brooding Astartes had no soul.

  Zeed was doing his best to keep the tyranid’s attention on himself. He was the fastest of all of them. If Karras hadn’t known better, he might even have said Zeed was enjoying the deadly game. Again and again, that barbed black tail flashed at the Raven Guard, and, every time, found only empty air. Zeed kept himself a split second ahead. Whenever he was close enough, he lashed out with his lightning claws and raked the creature’s sides. But, despite the blue sparks that flashed with every contact, he couldn’t penetrate that incredible armour.

  Karras locked his bolter to his thigh plate and drew Arquemann from its scabbard.

  This is it, he thought. We have to close with it. Maybe Chyron can do something if he can get inside its guard. He’s the only one who might just be strong enough.

  ‘Engage at close quarters,’ he told the others. ‘We can’t do anything from back here.’

  It was all the direction Chyron needed. The Dreadnought loosed a battlecry and stormed forwards to attack with his two great power fists, the ground juddering under him as he charged.

  By the Emperor’s grace, thought Karras, following in the Dreadnought’s thunderous wake, don’t let this be the day we lose someone.

  Talon Squad was his squad. Despite the infighting, the secrets, the mistrust and everything else, that still meant something.

  Solarion saw the rest of the kill-team race forwards to engage the beast at close quarters and did not envy them, but he had to admit a grudging pride in their bravery and honour. Such a charge looked like sure suicide. For any other squad, it might well have been. But for Talon Squad…

  Concentrate, he told himself. The moment is at hand. Breathe slowly.

  He did.

  His helmet filtered the air, removing the elements that might have killed him, elements that even the Astartes implant known as the multi-lung, would not have been able to handle. Still, the air tasted foul and burned in his nostrils and throat. A gust of wind buffeted him, throwing his aim off a few millimetres, forcing him to adjust again.

  A voice shouted triumphantly on the link.

  ‘I’ve found it, Scholar. I have the beacon!’

  ‘Voss?’ said Karras.

  There was a muffled crump, the sound of a krak grenade. Solarion’s eyes flicked from his scope to cloud of smoke about fifty metres to the creature’s right. He saw Voss emerge from the smoke. Around him lay the rubble of the monster’s smashed sarcophagus.

  Karras gave a roar of triumph.

  ‘It’s… it’s gone,’ he said. ‘It’s lifted. I can feel it!’

  So Karras would be able to wield his psychic abilities again. Would it make any difference, Solarion wondered?

  It did, and that difference was immediate. Something began to glow down on the battlefield. Solarion turned his eyes towards it and saw Karras raise Arquemann in a two-handed grip. The monster must have sensed the sudden buildup of psychic charge, too. It thrashed its way towards the Librarian, eager to crush him under its powerful coils. Karras dashed in to meet the creature’s huge body and plunged his blade into a crease where two sections of chitin plate met.

  An ear-splitting alien scream tore through the air, echoing off the crater walls.

  Karras twisted the blade hard and pulled it free, and its glowing length was followed by a thick gush of black ichor.

  The creature writhed in pain, reared straight up and screeched again, its complex jaws open wide.

  Just the opening Solarion was waiting for.

  He squeezed the trigger of his rifle and felt it kick powerfully against his armoured shoulder.

  A single white-hot round lanced out towards the tyranid worm.

  There was a wet impact as the round struck home, embedding itself deep in the fleshy tissue of the beast’s mouth.

  ‘Direct hit!’ Solarion reported.

  ‘Good work,’ said Karras on the link. ‘Now what?’

  It was Sigma’s voice that answered. ‘Fall back and wait. The toxin is fast-acting. In ten to fifteen seconds, Specimen Six will be completely paralysed.’

  ‘You heard him, Talon Squad,’ said Karras. ‘Fall back. Let’s go!’

  Solarion placed one hand on the top of his rifle, muttered a prayer of thanks to the weapon’s machine-spirit, and prepared to descend. As he looked out over the crater floor, however, he saw that one member of the kill-team wasn’t retreating.

  Karras had seen it, too.

  ‘Chyron,’ barked the team leader. ‘What in Terra’s name are you doing?

  The Dreadnought was standing right in front of the beast, fending off blows from its tail and its jaws with his oversized fists.

  ‘Stand down, Lamenter,’ Sigma commanded.

  If Chyron heard, he deigned not to answer. While there was still a fight to be had here, he wasn’t going anywhere. It was the tyranids that had obliterated his Chapter. Hive Fleet Kraken had decimated them, leaving him with no brothers, no home to return to. But if Sigma and the others thought the Deathwatch was all Chyron had left, they were wrong. He had his rage, his fury, his unquenchable lust for dire and bloody vengeance.

  The others should have known that. Sigma should have known.

  Karras started back towards the Dreadnought, intent on finding some way to reach him. He would use his psyker gifts if he had to. Chyron could not hope to beat the thing alone.

  But, as the seconds ticked off and the Dreadnought continued to fight, it became clear that something was wrong.

  From his high vantage point, it was Solarion who voiced it first.

  ‘It’s not stopping,’ he said over the link. ‘Sigma, the damned thing isn’t even slowing down. The neuro-toxin didn’t work.’

  ‘Impossible,’ replied the voice of the inquisitor. ‘Magos Altando had the serum tested on–’

  ‘Twenty-five… no, thirty seconds. I tell you, it’s not working.’

  Sigma was silent for a brief moment, then he said, ‘We need it alive.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Zeed. The Raven Guard was crossing the concrete again, back towards the fight, following close behind Karras.

  ‘You do not need to know,’ said Sigma.

  ‘The neurotoxin doesn’t work, Sigma,’ Solarion repeated. ‘If you have some other suggestion…’

  Sigma clicked off.

  I guess he doesn’t, thought Solarion sourly.

  ‘Solarion,’ said Karras. ‘Can you put another round in it?’

  ‘Get it to open wide and you know I can. But it might not be a dosage issue.’

  ‘I know,’ said Karras, his anger and frustration telling in his voice. ‘But it’s all we’ve got. Be ready.’

  Chyron’s chassis was scraped and dented. His foe’s strength seemed boundless. Every time the barbed tail whipped forwards, Chyron swung his fists at it, but the beast was truly powerful and, when one blow connected squarely with the Dreadnought’s thick glacis plate, he found himself staggering backwards despite his best efforts.

  Karras was suddenly at his side.

  ‘When I tell you to fall back, Dreadnought, you will do it,’ growled the Librarian. ‘I’m still Talon Alpha. Or does that mean nothing to you?’
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br />   Chyron steadied himself and started forwards again, saying, ‘I honour your station, Death Spectre, and your command. But vengeance for my Chapter supersedes all. Sigma be damned, I will kill this thing!’

  Karras hefted Arquemann and prepared to join Chyron’s charge. ‘Would you dishonour all of us with you?’

  The beast swivelled its head towards them and readied to strike again.

  ‘For the vengeance of my Chapter, no price is too high. I am sorry, Alpha, but that is how it must be.’

  ‘Then the rest of Talon Squad stands with you,’ said Karras. ‘Let us hope we all live to regret it.’

  Solarion managed to put two further toxic rounds into the creature’s mouth in rapid succession, but it was futile. This hopeless battle was telling badly on the others now. Each slash of that deadly tail was avoided by a rapidly narrowing margin. Against a smaller and more numerous foe, the strength of the Astartes would have seemed almost infinite, but this towering tyranid leviathan was far too powerful to engage with the weapons they had. They were losing this fight, and yet Chyron would not abandon it, and the others would not abandon him, despite the good sense that might be served in doing so.

  Voss tried his best to keep the creature occupied at range, firing great torrents from his heavy bolter, even knowing that he could do little, if any, real damage. His fire, however, gave the others just enough openings to keep fighting. Still, even the heavy ammunition store on the Imperial Fist’s back had its limits. Soon, the weapon’s thick belt feed began whining as it tried to cycle non-existent rounds into the chamber.

  ‘I’m out,’ Voss told them. He started disconnecting the heavy weapon so that he might draw his combat blade and join the close-quarters melee.

  It was at that precise moment, however, that Zeed, who had again been taunting the creature with his lightning claws, had his feet struck out from under him. He went down hard on his back, and the tyranid monstrosity launched itself straight towards him, massive mandibles spread wide.

  For an instant, Zeed saw that huge red maw descending towards him. It looked like a tunnel of dark, wet flesh. Then a black shape blocked his view and he heard a mechanical grunt of strain.

  ‘I’m more of a meal, beast,’ growled Chyron.

  The Dreadnought had put himself directly in front of Zeed at the last minute, gripping the tyranid’s sharp mandibles in his unbreakable titanium grip. But the creature was impossibly heavy, and it pressed down on the Lamenter with all its weight.

  The force pressing down on Chyron was impossible to fight, but he put everything he had into the effort. His squat, powerful legs began to buckle. A piston in his right leg snapped. His engine began to sputter and cough with the strain.

  ‘Get out from under me, Raven Guard,’ he barked. ‘I can’t hold it much longer!’

  Zeed scrabbled backwards about two metres, then stopped.

  No, he told himself. Not today. Not to a mindless beast like this.

  ‘Corax protect me,’ he muttered, then sprang to his feet and raced forwards, shouting, ‘Victoris aut mortis!’

  Victory or death!

  He slipped beneath the Dreadnought’s right arm, bunched his legs beneath him and, with lightning claws extended out in front, dived directly into the beast’s gaping throat.

  ‘Ghost!’ shouted Voss and Karras at the same time, but he was already gone from sight and there was no reply over the link.

  Chyron wrestled on for another second. Then two. Then, suddenly, the monster began thrashing in great paroxysms of agony. It wrenched its mandibles from Chyron’s grip and flew backwards, pounding its ringed segments against the concrete so hard that great fractures appeared in the ground.

  The others moved quickly back to a safe distance and watched in stunned silence.

  It took a long time to die.

  When the beast was finally still, Voss sank to his knees.

  ‘No,’ he said, but he was so quiet that the others almost missed it.

  Footsteps sounded on the stone behind them. It was Solarion. He stopped alongside Karras and Rauth.

  ‘So much for taking it alive,’ he said.

  No one answered.

  Karras couldn’t believe it had finally happened. He had lost one. After all they had been through together, he had started to believe they might all return to their Chapters alive one day, to be welcomed as honoured heroes, with the sad exception of Chyron, of course.

  Suddenly, however, that belief seemed embarrassingly naïve. If Zeed could die, all of them could. Even the very best of the best would met his match in the end. Statistically, most Deathwatch members never made it back to the fortress-monasteries of their originating Chapters. Today, Zeed had joined those fallen ranks.

  It was Sigma, breaking in on the command channel, who shattered the grim silence.

  ‘You have failed me, Talon Squad. It seems I greatly overestimated you.’

  Karras hissed in quiet anger. ‘Siefer Zeed is dead, inquisitor.’

  ‘Then you, Alpha, have failed on two counts. The Chapter Master of the Raven Guard will be notified of Zeed’s failure. Those of you who live will at least have a future chance to redeem yourselves. The Imperium has lost a great opportunity here. I have no more to say to you. Stand by for Magos Altando.’

  ‘Altando?’ said Karras. ‘Why would–’

  Sigma signed off before Karras could finish, his voice soon replaced by the buzzing mechanical tones of the old magos who served on his retinue.

  ‘I am told that Specimen Six is dead,’ he grated over the link. ‘Most regrettable, but your chances of success were extremely slim from the beginning. I predicted failure at close to ninety-six point eight five per cent probability.’

  ‘But Sigma deployed us anyway,’ Karras seethed. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  ‘All is not lost,’ Altando continued, ignoring the Death Spectre’s ire. ‘There is much still to be learned from the carcass. Escort it back to Orga Station. I will arrive there to collect it shortly.’

  ‘Wait,’ snapped Karras. ‘You wish this piece of tyranid filth loaded up and shipped back for extraction? Are you aware of its size?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ answered Altando. ‘It is what the mag-rail line was built for. In fact, everything we did on Menatar from the very beginning – the construction, the excavation, the influx of Mechanicus personnel – all of it was to secure the specimen alive, still trapped inside its sarcophagus. Under the circumstances, we will make do with a dead one. You have given us no choice.’

  The sound of approaching footsteps caught Karras’s attention. He turned from the beast’s slumped form and saw the xeno-hierographologist, Magos Borgovda, walking towards him with a phalanx of surviving skitarii troopers and robed Mechanicus acolytes.

  Beneath the plex bubble of his helm, the little tech-priest’s eyes were wide.

  ‘You… you bested it. I would not have believed it possible. You have achieved what the Exodites could not.’

  ‘Ghost bested it,’ said Voss. ‘This is his kill. His and Chyron’s.’

  If Chyron registered these words, he didn’t show it. The ancient warrior stared fixedly at his fallen foe.

  ‘Magos Borgovda,’ said Karras heavily, ‘are there men among your survivors who can work the cranes? This carcass is to be loaded onto a mag-rail car and taken to Orga Station.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Borgovda, his eyes taking in the sheer size of the creature. ‘That part of our plans has not changed, at least.’

  Karras turned in the direction of the mag-rail station and started walking. He knew he sounded tired and miserable when he said, ‘Talon Squad, fall in.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Chyron. He limped forwards with a clashing and grinding of the gears in his right leg. ‘I swear it, Alpha. The creature just moved. Perhaps it is not dead, after all.’

  He clenched his fists as if in anticipation of crushing the last vestiges of life from it. But, as he stepped closer to the creature’s slack mouth, there was a sudden outp
ouring of thick black gore, a great torrent of it. It splashed over his feet and washed across the dry rocky ground.

  In that flood of gore was a bulky form, a form with great rounded pauldrons, sharp claws, and a distinctive, back-mounted generator. It lay unmoving in the tide of ichor.

  ‘Ghost,’ said Karras quietly. He had hoped never to see this, one under his command lying dead.

  Then the figure stirred and groaned.

  ‘If we ever fight a giant alien worm again,’ said the croaking figure over the comm-link, ‘some other bastard can jump down its throat. I’ve had my turn.’

  Solarion gave a sharp laugh. Voss’s reaction was immediate. He strode forwards and hauled his friend up, clapping him hard on the shoulders. ‘Why would any of us bother when you’re so good at it, paper-face?’

  Karras could hear the relief in Voss’s voice. He grinned under his helm. Maybe Talon Squad was blessed after all. Maybe they would live to return to their Chapters.

  ‘I said fall in, Deathwatch,’ he barked at them, then he turned and led them away.

  Altando’s lifter had already docked at Orga Station by the time the mag-rail cars brought Talon Squad, the dead beast and the Mechanicus survivors to the facility. Sigma himself was, as always, nowhere to be seen. That was standard practice for the inquisitor. Six years, and Karras had still never met his enigmatic handler. He doubted he ever would.

  Derlon Saezar and the station staff had been warned to stay well away from the mag-rail platforms and loading bays and to turn off all internal vid-picters. Saezar was smarter than most people gave him credit for. He did exactly as he was told. No knowledge was worth the price of his life.

  Magos Altando surveyed the tyranid’s long body with an appraising lens before ordering it loaded onto the lifter, a task with which even his veritable army of servitor slaves had some trouble. Magos Borgovda was most eager to speak with him, but, for some reason, Altando acted as if the xeno-hierographologist barely existed. In the end, Borgovda became irate and insisted that the other magos answer his questions at once. Why was he being told nothing? This was his discovery. Great promises had been made. He demanded the respect he was due.