Devourer - Joe Parrino Read online

  Silence descended again. The squad sat on the command deck with weapons drawn. Jatiel cradled his mace across his knees, the ornate golden head resting gently on the carved splendour of his command throne.

  An air of stymied impotence and impatience suffused the deck. The serfs scurried with downcast faces.

  Shadows danced at the edge of Jatiel’s vision, shadows from another age. His fangs bared and he felt the ghost of pain dance through his limbs.

  ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘Not now.’

  Naskos Ventara offered his sergeant a concerned glance. ‘Sergeant?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s nothing.’ The sergeant pointed back to the viewscreen. ‘Watch.’

  The ship’s astropath, Amanther Kidrun – a woman who had been muttering for weeks, wracked with visions of chittering horror and sentient darkness – started to scream. Her shrill cries echoed around the bridge.

  Kidrun descended into a seizure, heels drumming against the gilded deck, boots carving scuffs into the murals that featured there. ‘The Great Devourer!’ she cried. ‘The swarms, the ungodly swarms. They descend upon us. They will consume us!’

  Alarm spread through the serfs as morale plummeted. Jatiel could feel the fear leach from them all, could smell the foetid animal reek of terror taking root in the souls of his crew. He surged to his feet. A storm cloud passed over his craggy features, drawing his grey brows down over his blue eyes.

  ‘Enough!’

  Asaliah and Emudor dragged the struggling woman from the bridge. They returned moments later and resumed their seats. All eyes returned to the screens.

  Swarms of colour arrived at the edge of the map, soon blotting the entire screen like bruised fruit. Grim looks stole over the Space Marines’ faces.

  ‘Holy Throne,’ someone murmured. It became a litany, over and over, descending into madness. Then screaming.

  Jatiel’s armoured fist thundered into the arm of his command chair, sending a crack shivering through the wood. The serfs jumped, but no one looked chastened or chagrined. The sergeant realised the oath had come through the vox, the echo stealing from some Navy captain or officer.

  ‘Shut off that noise,’ the sergeant ordered.

  ‘Compliance.’

  The waiting was the worst. The trillions of men and women who called Cryptus home would be waiting on their home worlds, each having to shoulder weapons to defend their way of life. Ranks of Astra Militarum would bolster their lines, serving as the core of the defence. They faced untold trillions of tyranid organisms, each designed for death and consumption.

  His teeth gritted with duty. Perdita offered no sustenance to the xenos and was likely to be overlooked. Frustration thundered through Jatiel’s veins. But he had his orders, so the Golden Promise continued to orbit Perdita. Swarms of the xenos passed the world, streaming towards the heavily populated core worlds.

  Frustration and fear drifted through the bridge. The Golden Promise’s shipmaster, a rad-scarred, formidable Baalite woman by the name of Dabria Korbel, flinched at each flash of light, as each ship died. She stood before Jatiel, clad in the red, black and gold uniform of a Chapter-serf.

  ‘The swarms are too close for my liking, my lord,’ she spat.

  They were not close enough for Jatiel, but he nodded. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it.’

  Emudor said, ‘We can move to the other side of the planet.’

  ‘With respect, lord,’ Korbel said, ‘we can’t. They’ll see our engine flare. And to make matters worse, auspex shows them just as thick coming around the other side.’

  ‘We hold to Lord Dante’s plan,’ said Jatiel. ‘We wait in orbit and…’

  Well, he wasn’t sure of the ‘and’. The Chapter Master had merely said to hold Perdita. Quite how Jatiel was supposed to do that, he wasn’t aware.

  Asaliah heard the hesitation. ‘We hold the world or we die in glory.’

  ‘Simple,’ said Ventara.

  ‘But it will not come to that,’ predicted Emudor. ‘We present no real threat to the tyranids and Perdita holds nothing of interest to them. Until our brothers arrive, we will remain in orbit around the dead world.’

  A uniformed serf approached Shipmaster Korbel with a data-slate. The movement attracted Jatiel’s eyes, but the sergeant ignored the pair. It was a scene that repeated often on the Golden Promise.

  The humans conferred for two minutes before the serf rushed back to his station. Korbel approached Jatiel’s throne. Her eyes were wide, eyebrows arched. Wrinkles stood out on her forehead, pushing up at the black and grey hair. Concern was writ large on her face.

  She gave the data-slate to the sergeant, retreated five paces and crossed her arms. Her booted foot tapped at the deck-mesh.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked, glancing at the data scrolling across the slate. He knew the answer, but he wanted to hear the shipmaster’s appraisal.

  ‘Inbound ship signatures, my lord.’

  One of his eyebrows arched. ‘Xenos?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Size and signature point to human origins.’

  ‘And they’re on an approach vector to Perdita?’

  ‘Their current speed and direction indicates so, my lord.’

  The other members of the squad clustered around the shipmaster. The buzz of active power armour filled the bridge.

  ‘Any indication of who they are, sergeant?’ Ventara asked.

  The sergeant looked to the shipmaster. ‘Nothing yet, my lords,’ she said. ‘We have attempted to hail the ships. No response.’

  ‘But why head to us? Who even knew we were here?’ asked Ventara.

  Jatiel ignored the speculation that ensued. He preferred to deal with facts. ‘How long until they intercept us?’

  ‘Twenty-four hours, my lord.’

  This was a complication that their mission did not need. The ships, whatever their motive, could draw the tyranids to their position, instigating xenos interest in the dead world.

  An idea flashed. ‘Have the approaching vessels made any significant course corrections since their launch?’

  Korbel stared at the data-slate, brow furrowed and lips pursed. ‘Three registered, my lord.’

  She pointed out the times.

  ‘And competency of those manoeuvres?’

  ‘The first indicates standard Imperial Navy competency, perhaps a touch out of place. Their route also indicates that they were bound for one of the front-line planets.’

  She frowned. ‘The second reeks of desperation and attention seeking. Engine output also flares and then drops at this point. Something went wrong aboard those vessels.’

  Since first registering the course corrections, the data had almost become lost beneath a screed of other orders, information and concerns. Jatiel had not forgotten, but Shipmaster Korbel had been forced to. A frigate did not cease functioning while it tried to evade detection.

  While they remained a single ship hidden against the backdrop of a massive world that stealth was made moderately easier. Korbel kept the ship’s systems running at the bare minimum. The engine was cool and the ship’s machine-spirit drugged into a haze by the lack of power.

  Frost crept across the doors leading away from the bridge, a testament to the low priority currently granted to life-support systems. Chapter-serfs were confined to quarters and only essential personnel were left to man their stations.

  Only the bridge retained a modicum of full function. Stale air and stale breath drifted through the room, masked only slightly by the mingled scents of body odour and incense. Air scrubbers wheezed from behind hidden panels, barely coping with the stagnant atmosphere.

  A communications officer began yelling, drawing attention to his station. They all believed the moment had arrived that they both dreaded and half hoped for, that the tyranids had caught notice of their ship, drawn against the backdrop of dead Perdi
ta.

  The communications officer’s words, seconds later, dispelled concern. Jatiel could hear over a dozen serfs letting slip a sigh of relief.

  ‘One of the ships has opened a channel. They’re attempting to hail us.’

  Korbel looked to Jatiel. The sergeant nodded.

  ‘Put it through,’ the shipmaster ordered.

  Static assaulted their ears, suddenly loud with the background noise of the universe’s birth pangs. Then a voice, hunched and whispered, filled with unremitting fear.

  ‘Please,’ it whispered. ‘Please.’ Sobbing filled the bridge. ‘Please help. They’ve taken the ship. The convicts…’ Jatiel heard laughter, a deep burbling sound hissed through consumptive teeth. ‘Throne of Terra!’ The feed washed back into static.

  A new voice came on, the source of the laughter. ‘Please.’ A man’s voice. He sounded pleading, as desperate as the previous person had been, but Jatiel caught the ripe undercurrent of fear driving through the word. ‘Let us go. We’re leaving this system. We ain’t done nothin’.’

  A servitor began to mumble, spouting binaric cant.

  Korbel cocked her head to the side, deciphering the lingua-technis, an augmetic ear translating the language of the Adeptus Mechanicus into Gothic.

  The colour drained from her face. ‘My lord,’ she began. ‘Multiple targets inbound.’

  The convict’s voice and the approaching Imperial vessels were forgotten. A pregnant silence descended on the bridge. Mortals held their breath. An acrid, metallic taste suddenly danced on Jatiel’s tongue. He knew his pupils were dilating, knew it as the lights stabbed into his suddenly hypersensitive vision. Breath heaved in and out from his chest. Adrenaline pounded through his veins. Chemical signifier scents wafted from the Blood Angels. Manic light gleamed in all their eyes.

  Cassuen and Emudor both bared their teeth in feral smiles of anticipation. The sergeant could feel his own fangs piercing through his gums, suddenly painful and uncomfortable.

  Blood, sacred blood, shared with the primarch Sanguinius, pounded in his ears. His armour’s machine-spirit sensed the rising kill-lust in the sergeant, dampening some less desirable aspects and bringing clarity and thirst to the fore.

  His mouth and throat felt dry.

  ‘Helmets,’ the sergeant growled. It would bring no balm to the mortal serfs to see the thirst painted across their masters’ faces now. The squad complied, shutting the bridge away behind red masks.

  The presumed convict’s voice washed away. All vid-screens became occupied by a singular view. The vid-feeds switched to display near space. The feed was no longer on a scale of millions of kilometres, now it was simply thousands. Point blank in void-war terms.

  Fleet markers were tagged, although they showed no friendly notifiers. There was just the Golden Promise, held in close orbit to Perdita. The Blood Angels vessel, marked in the red and gold of the Chapter, tried to lose itself against the colossal bulk of the dead world. It should have registered as no more than a mere speck against the drifting snow and ash of Perdita’s landscape.

  But with the other human ships drawing closer, somehow having found the Blood Angels vessel, the cluster of life, the heat wash from burning engines, drew the attention of whatever malevolence served the tyranid breed as intelligence. A choice target, canisters of meat and biomatter to fuel the swarm.

  Simulated by a marked river against the black of the void, screen overlays brought meaning to the situation. Jatiel ignored the overlays, stepping beyond them, moving to one of the many observation windows that studded the bridge. At first, all he saw were stars against the field of utmost black. But now, just becoming visible at the extremes of his genhanced vision, were pinpricks of light.

  They looked to be stars. They were not. The tyranids were now aware of the Golden Promise. And they were coming.

  The anxiety aboard the bridge deepened, rancid fear-stink filling the room. Jatiel could not fault them. Despite being serfs in service to one of the most glorious Chapters of the Emperor’s own warriors, they were mortal, after all.

  ‘With your permission, sergeant?’ Korbel asked.

  ‘Granted.’

  A klaxon broke out wailing.

  ‘All hands to battle stations,’ Korbel commanded into the ship’s internal communication networks. Jatiel knew that serfs and Chapter slaves were being roused from their bunks, life-support systems increasing by the barest of notches. What had been running on almost uninhabitable was now bolstered to the merely uncomfortable.

  Gun batteries opened along the Golden Promise’s flanks. Torpedo tubes in the ship’s armoured prow yawned. Crew began shouting firing solutions, plotting out projected movement patterns and void shield capacities.

  ‘Fire,’ Korbel whispered. The ship shuddered and torpedoes, loaded as the ship achieved a stable orbit around Perdita, raced forward. Forged on Halfus, half a segmentum away, the torpedoes acted like frag grenades.

  Halfus-pattern torpedoes were notoriously effective against tyranid swarms, originally seeing use on Deathwatch vessels. Since that world’s fall to the Tau Empire, the torpedoes were rare and precious things. The Golden Promise only carried four.

  All were launched within twenty minutes of detecting the approaching tyranids.

  There was no visible change as the torpedoes left visual range. Tags on the overlay watched their course while Adeptus Mechanicus adepts blessed their passage in lingua-technis.

  Lance strikes speared out moments later as those weapon systems kicked in. Then the torpedoes detonated, massive bursts of razor-sharp metal that stretched over kilometres of space.

  A ragged cheer moved like wildfire through the bridge as the Master of Sensors detected several vessel kills. A drop in the ocean, even against this merest splinter of the hive fleet assailing Cryptus.

  More lance strikes stretched into the void, eating millions of kilometres in the blink of an eye.

  The winking stars came closer and increased in multitude, Cryptus’s sun shining off the iridescent chitin of the tyranid bio-ships.

  ‘The other vessels are attempting to hail us again,’ a comms officer said.

  ‘Deny them,’ Shipmaster Korbel ordered.

  Jatiel watched as the convict vessels continued to make for the desperate protection of the Golden Promise.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  Korbel ignored the sergeant, concentrating on the encroaching xenos.

  Jatiel could almost see them now. They manifested as a cloud of bright colour against the depthless black of the void.

  Mortals kept glancing up from their consoles at the vid-screens. Sweat broke out against pale skin. Fear, nervousness and anxiety once more created a heady stench in the bridge. The carved and gilded cherubs continued to stare down impassively. They had gazed on countless such scenes in countless wars. That they still had a bridge to guard was evidence of the Golden Promise’s resilience.

  Void shields shimmered as probing tyranid weapons fire impacted. The Golden Promise shuddered under the kinetic blowback. Point defence cannons streamed their fire into the void as tyranid fighter-analogue organisms, having slipped past the ship’s auspex, ducked through the void shields and attempted strafing runs on the Blood Angels vessel. Jatiel could feel miniscule vibrations through the arms of his throne as the ship shuddered beneath the tyranid onslaught.

  ‘Shipmaster, my lord,’ a robed serf announced from the sensorium. ‘Sensors detect energy build-up from the xenos structures.’

  Jatiel’s mind was awash with tactical inlays. A reprieve or a new threat?

  Asaliah gripped his own chair with manic concentration, gauntlets eating grooves into the smooth Baalite marble. He loomed forward, leaning over the table.

  ‘Brother?’ Jatiel asked.

  Asaliah opened and closed a vox-link multiple times. ‘I cannot speak,’ he finally growled. ‘The oath.’<
br />
  ‘It matters little now. We may have to face whatever threat emerges from here in the next few moments. Oath or no, the Inquisition no longer has claim over you, brother. We must seize whatever advantage we can.’

  ‘Necrons,’ Asaliah spat eventually. ‘It could be the necrons.’

  ‘What can we expect?’ asked Cassuen.

  ‘Nothing good,’ came Asaliah’s grim reply.

  ‘But they allied with us once,’ said Jatiel.

  ‘Because it suited them,’ Emudor replied. ‘I was there on Gehenna. I fought alongside the xenos, but they did not ally with us out of kindness.’

  ‘Is there anything to suggest they would do the same here?’ Korbel hissed.

  Asaliah shook his head. ‘Not that I can see. These aliens are not like the eldar. We have nothing in common with them.’

  ‘Then we will prepare for war with them as well,’ Jatiel said. ‘Asaliah, you will advise Shipmaster Korbel of any noteworthy weaknesses and tactics the xenos may try.’

  Asaliah laughed. ‘There are few enough of those, but I will do what I can. The aliens are masters of the void. On the ground, they can be countered, but they owned the stars once, if what the Inquisition says is true. They will hammer us with weaponry not fired since before life began on Ancient Terra. Or they will ignore us. But my knowledge is at your disposal, shipmaster.’

  ‘Why would they come here?’ Korbel asked.

  Asaliah shrugged.

  ‘Watch the structures,’ Jatiel ordered the sensorium officer, his words dripping with finality. ‘But we must focus our efforts on the tyranids. Deal with the immediate threat now. We will face the necrons when, and if, they arrive.’

  Chapter Four

  Valnyr and her lychguard moved with purpose through the darkness of the awakening tomb world. Canoptek constructs watched from shadowed alleys, letting them pass. Scrabbling sounded from the cracks in the obsidian walkways. Stalactites loomed from the darkness, the result of countless cycles of dripping fluid trickling from the planet’s surface.