The second captain met the veteran’s approach with his blade, deflecting the scything claws of the upper limbs. The veteran was strong, and managed to smash the sword out of Slaughter’s grip.
He cursed and shot it through the brain case with his bolter. The entire front of his armour was sprayed an instant grey. Another lumbered towards him and he shot that too, blowing out its midsection and snapping its spinal membranes. Frenzy finished the next with his axe.
‘Getting tired, captain?’ Heartshot asked Slaughter.
Slaughter told him what he could do with his rotor cannon, and then retrieved his sword.
‘Anterior Six and Ballad Gateway are now in the nest with us,’ reported Frenzy, his voice a vox-buzz.
‘That’s good enough,’ said Slaughter. ‘Four walls should bring this place down.’
‘There are assault squads from Zarathustra in the upper levels too,’ said Coldeye.
‘We can close the book,’ said Slaughter. ‘By the next time the wretched local star rises, we—’
His words were drowned out. A sudden and deep noise boiled out of the guts of somewhere, out of space itself. It was brief, but it was immense. It shook the nest. It overloaded the frequencies of their vox-systems for a moment. It hurt their ears.
Slaughter’s visor display took a moment to reboot.
‘What in Throne’s name was that?’ he asked.
‘Contacting the fleet,’ reported Frenzy. ‘Checking.’
‘Some kind of transmission,’ said Chokehold. ‘Ultra-high frequency. Gross intensity. Duration six point six seconds. A new weapon, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Slaughter grudgingly.
They resumed their advance. After a few minutes, fleet tactical reported back that they hadn’t been able to identify the sound either. It had been picked up by Imperial forces all across the planet, and in orbit too.
‘A new weapon,’ muttered Chokehold. ‘I told you…’
There was another burst about half an hour later, duration seven point nine seconds. By then, Slaughter’s force was locked in a furious hand-to-hand war with dozens of veterans. The noise took them all by surprise.
When it ended, the Chrome veterans were slightly stunned, and then recommitted to the fight with renewed fury. As though they were afraid, and starting to panic.
Six
The magos biologis’ name was Phaeton Laurentis. When the first noise burst occurred he was preparing to enter the blisternest behind the shield-corps advance. The blast of sound terminally damaged two of his six sensitive, audio-specialised servitors. Like Slaughter, he immediately contacted fleet tactical, and also sent direct vox-burst communiques to the staff of his own vessel, the survey barge Priam, which was in the vanguard of the Imperial Fists fleet.
‘Tell them I need at least a dozen more audio-drones shipped to the surface,’ he told his communication servitor. The servitor, a grinning bronze skull mounted on a cloak-swathed wire anatomy, chattered its teeth mechanically as its brainstem fired processed vox data-packets into the aether. Laurentis reeled off a list of other complex devices he would need: techno-linguistic engines, parsing cogitators, vocalisation monitors, trans-aetheric responder coils.
‘Permission denied for surface drop of requested material,’ the communication servitor replied after a minute. Its voice, which emanated from a mesh speaker cone fused into its verdigrised collarbone, was oddly that of a young woman. As the voice spoke, the bronzed skull clacked its teeth aimlessly and uselessly.
‘On what authority?’ asked Laurentis, offended.
‘Undertaking Command,’ the servitor replied.
‘Open me a direct link with the Chapter Master,’ said Laurentis.
‘Pending.’
‘Of course, he will be busy. Inform me when the link is open,’ Laurentis said, and strode off to mount one of the motorised carts that would convey, on their heavy, clattering treads, the magos’ survey staff into the alien habitat.
Smoke from the nest clambered into the sky as if trying to flee the warzone. The heavens above were black with filth, and embers rained down. Around the edges of the nest, which were cracked and splintered like the shell of an egg, the soil and vegetation were awash with draining bio-fluids from ruptured nest organics and the ichor of slain Chromes. There was a pervasive stink of rotten fruit.
Such a sight, such a vivid display of an alien ecology, even one so damaged and desecrated, should have filled Magos Biologis Laurentis with total fascination. His life had been dedicated to the study of xenoforms, and it was very rare, even for a man as distinguished and respected as he was, to see such a spectacle first hand. Usually, the only traces of hostile xenoforms and their habitats that magi biologis got to inspect were burned scraps and fused tissue residues brought back by undertaking fleets.
However, his enthusiasm for his research, and the alien specimens spread out before him awaiting his probes and scalpels, was muted. The sound had bothered him, and he knew exactly why.
A total of four noise bursts, each of progressively longer duration, occurred in the following ninety minutes. After the fourth, Chapter Master Cassus Mirhen walked slowly and thoughtfully across the gleaming bridge space of the battle-barge Lanxium, took his seat on the great steel throne, and gestured to the vox-servitor that had been waiting patiently for almost two hours.
The command crew and the bridge officers watched the Chapter Master anxiously. He was a great man, arguably the greatest warrior alive in the Imperium. His deeds and achievements were recognised on an honour roll that was the envy of all other Chapter Masters. He was commander of the Imperial Fists, and the living embodiment of Dorn himself.
But he had a temper, oh yes indeed…
Since the latest phase of the attack had begun in the early part of the day, Mirhen had been on his feet in the ship’s strategium, watching every last scrap of data as it came through from air and ground forces, and taking personal control of every tactical nuance. Defence was the Imperial Fists’ greatest skill, and even in attack, the Chapter’s strategy was reflective and complex. Nothing was left to chance. Nothing was over-extended or risked. Leave the headlong insanity of assault to the likes of the Fenrisian Wolves or the White Scars. The Imperial Fists were the Imperium’s finest military technicians, and even the most fluid plans of assault were made with the same precision reserved for indefatigable defence. It was often repeated that the Lion had once scoffed at Dorn’s precision thinking, remarking that ‘no plan ever survives contact with the enemy,’ to which Dorn had retorted, ‘Then you’re not making the right plans.’
Indeed, Imperial Fists methodology, the methodology that had saved Terra in its darkest hour, the methodology espoused by Rogal Dorn and inherited by Mirhen, seldom used the word ‘plan’. Mirhen prided himself on ‘schemes of attack’, whereby layers of careful, preconsidered variables could be stripped back as necessary. Every step of combat — that most chaotic and mercurial of all circumstances in the galaxy — gave way to multiple possibilities. Some warriors, especially the noble Ultramarines, reacted intuitively to such possibilities as they occurred.
An Imperial Fist identified and prepared for all of them, and simply diverted to the part of the scheme that was most appropriate.
Most believed that Mirhen’s presence in the strategium, and his hands-on approach to the Ardamantua Undertaking, was typical of this obsessive precision thinking. In truth, Mirhen liked the challenge. War did not come often enough for him. It was a test, a game, an exercise, a trial. He wanted to be involved, entirely involved; he wanted to push himself.