Marduk fired, his round screaming less than half a metre past Burias’s head to detonate in the
chest of another of the creatures as it scrambled from the crater. The rest of the Host opened fire as
more of the creatures leapt from the spore, their weapons ripping the creatures apart, spraying sickly
ichor across the snow.
Another mycetic spore screamed from the heavens and smashed into the ground ten metres
away, and then another.
“How long?” asked Marduk, his bolt pistol bucking in his hands as he killed another of the
leaping tyranid creatures.
“Five minutes,” said Kol Badar.
More of the creatures ripped free from birth-sac as the sides of the spores flopped open, and they
launched themselves at the Word Bearers, covering the distance over the snow in powerful leaps.
“Close ranks,” roared Kol Badar, and the Word Bearers formed a tight circle facing outwards,
with Darioq-Grendh’al in the centre. Weapons barking, ripping the first of the leaping tyranids out
of the air, smashing them backwards as their flesh and chitin was torn apart.
Another spore crashed down nearby, its impact spraying Marduk with snow and ice. One of the
warrior brothers sent a missile screaming from the launcher braced against his shoulder into the
fleshy pod as its sides flopped heavily to the snow. The missile detonated inside the convulsing
birth-sac, lighting it up from within for a moment, and the mass of creatures inside could be seen
clearly through the skin of the sac enclosing them. Then the sides of the pod were ripped apart, and
the high-pitched screams of the dying tyranids echoed through the gale as they were consumed in
flame and shrapnel.
The missile launcher was tossed aside, its ammunition spent, and the warrior drew his bolt pistol
and combat knife.
Marduk blasted the head of another creature into pulp and tracked his pistol skywards as one of
the xenos creatures leapt high into the air. It descended towards him, sword-bladed arms lancing at
him, and he fired. The bolt took the creature in the chest, passing through its chitinous exoskeleton
before detonating, creating a head-sized crater of mined flesh. Still it fell towards him, its brain not
yet registering that it was dead, its every instinct willing it on to kill.
Marduk swiped it out of the air with his chainsword, ripping the toothed blade through the
creature from neck to sternum, but one of its arms stabbed into his chest, biting through his power
armour and embedding itself in his fused ribcage.
Slashing with his chainsword, Marduk sheared through the tyranid’s elbow joint and it fell dead
at his feet, its forelimb still protruding from his chest. He had no time to remove it, as a wave of the
tyranids swarmed out of the storm.
Shouting a warning, Marduk held his fire until the tyranids were closer. The creatures from
several of the spore-pods must have banded together, for this brood numbered perhaps thirty
individual aliens. However, they did not move as individuals; they moved as one single living
organism, with synchronicity that could never have been matched by even the best drilled veteran
coterie of the Legion.
Without any obvious form of communication, the swarm of aliens turned as one, angling
towards the Word Bearers, their movements precise and almost robotic. Marduk saw that these were
a different subspecies from the leaping aliens, though they were similar.
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More hunched, these ones scuttled forwards bearing what might have been projectile weapons in
their fore-limbs, though in truth the weapons were merely extensions of their limbs, fused to them,
as much a part of the creature as the rest of their vile bodies.
Bolters and heavy weapons roared, ripping the first of the creatures apart in bloody explosions,
but they continued scuttling forwards, oblivious or uncaring of their fallen. Their bio-weapons
pulsed, the fleshy projectile tubes contracting sharply with peristalsis. Marduk felt something
splatter across his left arm plates, and hissed in pain.
Looking down, he saw a mass of fleshy grubs boring through his ceramite vambrace and into his
flesh, and he swatted frantically at them, trying to dislodge them. He squashed dozens of them as
they scrabbled for purchase on his armour, but several of them were already too deep for him to
easily remove, burrowing into the muscle of his forearm, squirming within his body as they feasted
on his flesh.
Focusing his mind, he pushed away the pain and discomfort, and killed two of the tyranids with
his pistol. He saw one of the 13th coterie fall to the ground, screaming in agony as a mass of
writhing flesh-worms burrowed through his helmet, clogging his respirator and boring through the
lenses covering his eyes, gnawing their way through his skull and into his brain.
A flamer roared, bathing the tyranid brood in burning promethium, and they screamed in
inhuman torment as their bodies were consumed. Bolters tore through the survivors, but still more
clambered over the bodies of the dead to fire their living ammunition into the tight circle of Word
Bearers. More snow was kicked up as another spore slammed down into the ice.
Marduk ducked his head as a stream of beetles was spat towards him. Several wriggling bugs
struck his right shoulder pad, painted black in mourning for Jarulek, but he squashed the voracious
feeder creatures before they could bury themselves in his armour and flesh.
A second putrid stream of voracious organisms spat past Marduk to engulf Darioq-Grendh’al.
An orb of energy appeared around the corrupted magos, and the coruscating electricity of the potent
conversion field fried the tiny creatures.
The magos turned heavily towards its attacker as the flickering energy field disappeared, and
Marduk sensed anger surge through the daemon inhabiting the ex-priest’s flesh. Darioq-Grendh’al
planted his feet, bracing himself as the two servo-arms over his back stabbed forwards, their forms
blurring as they were altered by the power of the warp. Metal re-formed and a pair of fleshy
tentacles joined with the servo-arms, forming a cable, part organic and part mineral, pulsing with
energy.
A pair of incandescent beams roared from the reformed servo-arms, and the power of Chaos
screamed in Marduk’s ears.
The beams struck the tyranids, and half a dozen of them were engulfed in an inferno, hissing and
writhing as their flesh mutated. Tentacles tipped with chitinous barbs burst from within the tyranids,
ripping through their flesh and thrashing out through eye-sockets and mouths, turning the xenos
beings inside out. Within moments, all that remained of the tyranids struck by Darioq-Grendh’al’s
fire was a thrashing mass of tentacles.
“Impressive,” said Marduk with a smile as Darioq-Grendh’al’s servo-arms moulded back to
their usual form.
“Two minutes,” shouted Kol Badar as yet another spore-pod slammed down, crushing a handful
of tyranids beneath its impact. This pod was much larger than the others, and powerful forms larger
even than an Astartes warrior struggled to free themselves from within it.
“To the north-west, move!” roared Kol Badar as a trio of giant tyranid beasts ripped free of the
skin of the large spore-pod and reared up to their full height—easily twice that of a normal man—
and another brood of smaller creatures swarmed from the howling winds, angling towards the Word
Bearers. More pods slammed down from the heavens.
“Move, Grendh’al,” said Marduk, impelling the creature with his voice of command, and though
the daemon resisted him, its will was overpowered, and it reluctantly turned to do as it was bid.
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The Word Bearers carved through the hordes of lesser tyranids like a spear through water,
smashing them aside as they drove forwards. A warrior stumbled as maggotlike organisms
splattered across his armour, acidic life-fluids melting through his armour plates and burning into
his flesh. Marduk lifted the warrior back to his feet, supporting him with one arm as he fired.
Spotlights tore through the darkness and the swirling snow, and the hulking shapes of Land
Raiders appeared through the whitewash of fog and ice. Incandescent las-cannon beams stabbed
from side-sponsons, scything through tyranid organisms that hurled themselves at the Word Bearers,
symbiotic bio-weapons spitting. Heavy bolters scythed through dozens of the xenos beasts, ripping
them apart with their high calibre rounds.
The Land Raiders came to a grinding halt before the warriors of the XVII Legion, growling like
daemonic beasts, their hot breath steaming from exhaust stacks. The frontal assault ramps smashed
down onto the ice, and the warriors of the XVII Legion stormed inside the gaping interiors of the
immense steel beasts.
Sabtec relieved Marduk of the wounded warrior he was supporting. The warrior was reciting the
Doxology of Revilement, focusing on the words to alleviate the pain of the bio-acid melting through
his armour and flesh. As he passed the warrior into Sabtec’s care, Marduk spun around standing in
the door of the Land Raider as the last of the warriors of the Host stamped forwards.
The larger tyranid creatures they had seen clawing their way free of their spore-pod were
stalking towards the Land Raiders, their tails thrashing. Each pair of upper arms ended in scything
blades, and their secondary pairs of arms moulded into long-barrelled bio-cannons. A swarm of the
lesser tyranids raced towards Marduk as the assault ramp began to close, and he fired into the pack,
dropping two of them.
Lascannon beams made the air crackle with electrical energy as the twin-linked side-sponsons of
the mighty Land Raiders fired, and one of the large tyranid creatures was vaporised. The other two
lurched forwards, discharging their long-barrelled bio-weapons towards Marduk even as the
swarming horde of lesser xenos raced towards him.
The bio-weapons ammunition splattered onto the assault ramp of the Land Raider as it rose,
spraying acid across the thick metal that began to hiss and bubble. A drop splashed onto Marduk’s
chest plate, burning a hole through his armour and searing his flesh, but he ignored the wound and
slashed with his chainsword as the lesser tyranids launched themselves onto the Land Raider’s
chassis.
Heavy bolter fire ripped two of them to shreds as the Land Raider lurched into reverse, but two
of them hurled themselves through the closing aperture as the assault ramp hissed closed, and
Marduk killed the first, impaling its head on his chainblade, the whirring teeth ripping its skull apart.
Sabtec killed the second creature, slamming its bestial, xenos face into the side of the Land Raider
again and again until it was an unrecognisable, bloody pulp.
More of the small tyranids scrabbled at the assault ramp as it closed, but then the assault ramp
was sealed, severing several stabbing blade-arms that fell to the floor inside, leaking foul-smelling
fluids.
Marduk slumped down into one of the seats, breathing hard.
Only then did he realise that he still had the bony blade-arm of one of the creatures protruding
from his chest. He ripped it clear with a sharp movement, and tossed it to the floor alongside the pair
of tyranid corpses.
The Doxology of Revilement was still being recited as Sabtec tore the melting breastplate from
the warrior of his coterie who had been splashed with bio-acid, and the champion sprayed a black
film over the wounds.
“First Acolyte,” said Kol Badar over a closed channel from the other Land Raider.
“Go ahead,” said Marduk.
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“The tyranid invasion may have covered half this world already,” said the Coryphaus. “I feel
that it would be inadvisable to proceed to the drop-ship’s location overland. We do not know the
numbers of the xenos between here and there.”
“Agreed,” said Marduk.
“I suggest that we order the ship to launch, to meet us half way.”
“Understood. See that it is done,” said Marduk severing the connection.
Bloody and battered, Marduk pulled his helmet from his head and stowed it in the alcove above
him.
At last they were leaving this doomed Imperial backwater planet, he thought, and he smiled,
exposing his sharp teeth.
A month, maybe two, and he would be back on Sicarus, returning in glory.
The Land Raider rocked as tyranid bio-weapons struck its armoured hide, but still Marduk
grinned.
Glory would be his.
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dracon Alith Drazjaer of the Black Heart Cabal strode down the dark corridor, his thin lips curled in
distaste. He moved with the supple, arrogant grace of a born warrior. A pair of heavily armoured
incubi bodyguards walked warily on either side of him, the sweeping blades of their punisher
glaives lowered.
They passed dozens of cells, all crammed with wailing, wretched slaves, many of whom had
already felt the ministrations of the haemonculus Rhakaeth, or soon would.
The wretched creatures were mostly human, but there were other lesser species packed into the
crowded cells as well: tall, reptilian k’ith; kroot mercenaries; stony-faced demiurg; as well as eldar,
either those of Drazjaer’s dark kin that had fallen from his grace, warriors of his rivals, or his
deluded craftworld cousins.
The cells closest to the haemonculus’s operation chambers were filled with his experiments, and
these blighted creatures filled the corridor with their sickly cries. Humans with their spines removed
flopped impotently on the floors of cells, while others that had had their legs replaced with muscular
arms whooped in insane rage, hurling themselves against the invisible barrier separating them from
Drazjaer. They were thrown backwards as energy arced across the barrier, accompanied by the stink
of ozone.
Other twisted monstrosities had insect-like eyes, more than one head, or random limbs sprouting
from their bulbous stomachs. Some had leathery wings grafted to their backs, and others pulled
themselves across the floor of their cells with flipper-like appendages where human hands had once
been, their lower bodies shrunken and wasted, like the malformed legs of a foetus not yet reached its
term.
Some of the abominations scratched at faces that were already torn to bloody ribbons, and all
cried out for death. Still others flexed overgrown muscles, fan-like webs of skin opening up beneath
their arms, while others appeared almost normal, with just minor enhancements, such as arms that
