I should have found that reassuring, but for some reason it only increased my apprehension. I stared at the detritus surrounding the crippled CAT, and sudden horrified understanding burst in on me.
'The blips on the next level,' I asked urgently. 'How close are they?'
'A score or so metres,' Blain replied evenly.
'Out! Now!' I said, Jurgen responding instantly, as I'd known he would, while the Terminator simply took a couple of paces in our direction, no doubt wondering if I'd lost my wits. Suddenly the air current I'd assumed was coming from a grille above our heads took on far more sinister connotations, and I drew my chainsword, powering up the blade as I did so. 'Jurgen, the ceiling!'
'Commissar.' My aide complied at once, raising the luminator attached to his lasgun, and picking out a ragged hole in the roof of the chamber. The luckless CAT hadn't been sniped, as I'd first assumed, just struck by a single bolt from a whole burst, the rest of which had chewed up the floor plates around it badly enough to drop it through to the deck below. To my horror, the attenuated beam picked out something moving in the shadows beyond the gap, bounding forwards inhumanly fast, before flowing like quicksilver through the aperture above us.
'Blain!' I just had time to shout. 'Look out!' then the first of the purestrains was on him. I saw the crackle of arcane energies I'd marked before in Fidelis playing about the blades at the end of his arms, as he parried the 'stealer's first blow, matching it slash for slash. It fell, bisected, while Jurgen and I opened up with our las weapons, secure in the knowledge that we could harm only our foes. Sure enough, another of the creatures fell, in the act of leaping towards us, while a few stray las-rounds expended themselves harmlessly against the reassuring bulk of the Terminator's ceramite.
Then I felt the breath constricting in my throat. Parallel grooves had been scored deeply into the surface of the impregnable armour, where the first genestealer had struck before being dispatched, and some thick, dark fluid was seeping from it, crusting like resin to seal the damage. I hesitated, unwilling to risk felling an ally by friendly fire now his suit had been breached, but events were out of my hands by this time: as Jurgen and I began to retreat down the corridor, a third pure-strain threw itself at Blain's unprotected back. He ducked forwards, lowering his right shoulder as far as the cumbersome armour would allow, trying to dislodge it in the manner of a wrestler attacked from behind, but to no avail; powerful talons tore into the ceramite as easily as a potter's fingers into clay, finding purchase where none should exist. Blain backed into the wall, hard, and chitin cracked. The 'stealer keened, an ululation of agony which made my teeth ache and pierced the space behind my eyes like a sliver of razor-edged ice, echoing off into the darkness, but held on regardless, distending its jaws as some foul-smelling ichor issued from the cracks in its carapace.
'Turn round!' I bellowed, forgetting in the terror of the moment that Blain could hear me perfectly well over the vox. 'Let us get a shot at it!' The Terminator stumbled in our direction, abused servos in his knee and ankle joints whining in protest, but before he could comply the genestealer brought its head forwards over his own, and before my horrified eyes sank its teeth deep into the ceramite of his helmet. The deck plates shuddered as Blain fell to his knees, and the 'stealer on his back brought round a handful of wickedly curving talons, to plunge them into the joint where helmet and suit conjoined. The vox in my ear carried a small sound, somewhere between a cough and a sigh, and Blain collapsed, toppling towards Jurgen and myself, his torso clattering resonantly to the metal floor of the corridor.
The 'stealer raised its head and stared at Jurgen and I, apparently bemused, shaking its head as if it had been dazed by the impact[118]. Then it seemed to rally, fixing me with a gaze of pure malevolence. Its momentary hesitation was to prove its undoing, however, as Jurgen and I had taken advantage of the brief respite to centre it in our sights; before it could spring at us, we fired almost as one, tearing it apart in a flurry of las-bolts.
'Blain's down,' I voxed, 'dead, I think.' To my surprise, my voice sounded calm and authoritative, despite the panic rush of adrenaline hammering through my system. 'Three purestrains accounted for, but there are probably others close by.' The faint echo of scrabbling talons drifted to my ears. 'Correction, definitely others, moving this way.' One look at Blain's corpse, stretched across the threshold, was enough to dispel any hope of closing the door against the onrushing tide of talon and mandible; I could barely have moved his hand, never mind that mass of ceramite.
'His lifesigns have ceased,' Drumon confirmed[119], after what was probably no more than an instant or two, but seemed considerably longer. This came as a relief; for a moment I'd feared having to attempt some kind of rescue, despite the manifest impossibility of success, in order to maintain my reputation.
'Then we're pulling out,' I said, backing away down the narrow corridor as quickly as I dared, reluctant to take my laspistol off aim for fear of the worst. And with good reason: an instant before Jurgen and I reached the opposite end, bursting arse-first into the chamber Blain had been guarding in a manner I've no doubt anyone observing our arrival would have found comical in the extreme, the head and shoulders of another purestrain erupted into the passage, the misshapen body behind it attempting to force its way past the obstructing cadavers. Jurgen and I popped off a couple of rounds each to discourage it, scoring a lucky hit or two, but the chitinous horror proved as resilient as most of its kind, merely ducking back as our las-bolts vaporised fist-sized chunks of its exoskeleton[120]. That bought us enough time to hit the palm plate, though, and before the 'stealer or any of its companions could recover, the thick metal slab slid back into place, sealing them in.
Or us, I suppose, as they still had the run of most of the hulk; and so far as I was concerned, they were welcome to it.
'What now, sir?' Jurgen asked. 'Should we catch up with the others?'
I shook my head. 'Back to the Thunderhawk,' I said, no longer giving the proverbial flying one what anybody thought. I'd come up with some kind of excuse before Drumon and the cogboys returned, if they ever did. We might have evaded them this time, but the brood mind was now aware of our presence aboard the hulk, and would be mobilising its genestealers against us as surely and dispassionately as antibodies against an invading virus. I exhaled, releasing the tension which had wound my body tight, trembling a little from the adrenaline comedown, and tapped my comm-bead. 'We're back at the sentry point. More 'stealers in pursuit, but we've sealed the hatch, so the perimeter's secure again.'
I should have known better, of course; a genestealer brood may be only a pale reflection of the tyranid hive which originally spawned it, but its gestalt intelligence is a powerful one. The broods I'd encountered on Viridia and Keffia should have taught me that, but the individual purestrains behave so much like predatory animals that I'd fallen into the trap of believing them to be little more than mindless beasts - an error pointed out to me in the most stark and graphic manner possible, as the door slid smoothly open again, and an entire pack of the creatures boiled into the room.
NINETEEN
'PERIMETER BREACHED!' I yelled, opening up again with my laspistol, and wishing I'd replaced the powerpack while I'd had the chance. Jurgen flicked the selector of his lasgun to full auto, no doubt reflecting that if we didn't manage to check the creatures' headlong rush, running out of ammunition was going to be the least of our worries. The leading one fell under the hail of las-bolts, not a second too soon, still reaching out for me, and I swatted its wickedly taloned hand aside with the blade of my chainsword as I retreated.
118
Though Cain seems unaware of it, this was almost certainly Blain's blood, that of Astartes being modified to coagulate instantly on exposure to air in order to seal wounds which would incapacitate a normal man without impairing their fighting ability. That the Terminator had lost enough of it to leak out of his suit would indicate severe trauma, even by Space Marine standards.
119
Or, perhaps, by Jurgen's proximity: although his peculiar anti-psychic talent had yet to be revealed, some time later on Gravalax, it could well have been disrupting the brood mind, isolating and disorientating any of the genestealers incautious enough to venture close enough to him to become affected.
120
That he was evidently monitoring the condition of the other Astartes in the boarding party can be taken as a fairly reliable indicator that he was in overall charge of it; unless, as the de facto artificer responsible for their maintenance, he was more concerned with the condition of the Terminator suits than their wearers.