The Greater Good

EIGHTEEN

I reacted instinctively, cracking off a couple of shots from the laspistol in my hand which struck the ghastly thing squarely in the middle of its armoured chest, leaving cauterised craters of vaporised chitin as visible evidence of my marksmanship, but either the thick plates protecting its thorax were holding, or I’d failed to hit anything vital behind them. Jurgen began shooting too, with scarcely any greater success, but at least the burst of automatic fire managed to check its rush sufficiently for me to reach for my chainsword. Not that I expected to hold my own against something so monstrously fast and agile, and with so great an advantage in reach, for long, but it was clear I wasn’t going to bring it down with the laspistol.

At which point I found the habitent, which I’d slung from my shoulder on that side, was impeding my ability to draw the close combat weapon. Without even thinking about it, I grabbed the bundle and threw it at the lictor, an impulse which undoubtedly saved my life. At that instant, a volley of viciously-edged barbs erupted from somewhere in the centre of its las-bolt-pocked thorax, hissing through the air towards me. By great good fortune my fumbling throw had caused the packed survival shelter to erect itself, the thin dome of weatherproofed fabric popping out of its cover in mid-air, and the flesh hooks snared it, ripping it to shreds as the thin ropes of sinew they were attached to attempted to drag it into the reach of the lictor’s writhing feeding tendrils.

‘The melta!’ I shouted, knowing that was the only weapon we possessed capable of bringing the hideous creature down reliably.

‘Right you are, sir,’ Jurgen responded, leaving off trying to find a weak spot with his lasgun in favour of unslinging the heavy weapon from its awkward position across his back. Even for a marksman of his exceptional skill, the chances of felling a lictor with the small-arm alone were miniscule; we’d have needed a whole squad concentrating their fire to be certain of bringing something that size down with las-weapons. All I had to do was buy him the few seconds he needed to ready a shot, and try not to get ripped to shreds in the meantime.

Which was a lot easier said than done. I took advantage of the lictor’s confusion to get in closer, behind the tattered remains of the habitent, which it seemed to be having some difficulty disentangling from its flesh hooks: a fortuitous development for me, because until it managed to do so it wouldn’t be capable of winding them in again for another go, and while the fabric and memory polymer frame were still flapping about in front of its face its vision was partially obscured. Something else I could make good use of.

I leaped aside, just in time to evade a strike from the inner edge of one of its wickedly serrated scything claws, which, had it succeeded, would have snapped closed along the surface of its upper arm, cutting me in half. As it was, the deadly limb passed harmlessly over my back, close enough for the breeze of its passing to stir my greatcoat, raising a cloud of dust as it did so. I lunged with the whirling blade of my chainsword, driving in for a thrust to the pit of its middle arm, only to realise that the hand at the end of it was lashing out to grab me. Changing direction at the last moment, I narrowly evaded a grip tipped with talons capable of puncturing ceramite, and although it cost me the chance to plunge my blade deep into one of the towering creature’s few vulnerable spots, my hasty deflection robbed it of three of its fingers, leaving only a solitary thumb behind.

Surprised and hurt, the lictor roared, giving me the benefit of a blast of halitosis compared to which Jurgen’s exhalations carried the sweetness of a spring breeze, and charged in again, but this time I got the distinct impression that its attack was more cautious. The tyranids breed their scout organisms to remain hidden, attacking from ambush only when they’re certain of success, and when they don’t manage to make a quick kill it disconcerts them. This one seemed to be thinking[122] that it might have made a mistake in picking on me, and I was keen to reinforce that impression. If I could throw enough of a scare into it, its instinct to run and hide might cut in, preferably before it dealt me a mortal wound.

So, in spite of all my own instincts urging me to turn and flee, I did the one thing it would never expect prey to do, and charged in, bellowing like a berserk ork, swinging the chainsword in the loose horizontal figure of eight old Myamoto de Bergerac[123] used to refer to as the floating leaf (although in my case, he used to say, it was more like a plummeting brick[124].) At worst, the flickering blade would create a barrier between me and the lictor, across which it would be unable to strike without the risk of further pruning, and at best it would allow me another chance to do some serious damage. I didn’t expect to be able to kill it, of course, but I could certainly make it decide that this particular meal wasn’t worth the effort of trying to eat.

I seemed to succeed beyond my wildest dreams. As I bore in, the ghastly creature actually flinched, rearing back as I slashed at its belly, the tendrils around its mouth thrashing as its head rose up, then, to my horror, began to descend. I’d overreached myself, something my old schola tutor had chided me for on more than one occasion, and now I was about to suffer the consequences. If I raised the blade to protect my head from the descending feeding tendrils, the lictor would disembowel me with its talons. With nowhere else to go I threw myself flat, buying a couple more seconds…

Then the landscape vanished in a vivid glare of light, and the stench of charred flesh. Jurgen had fired the melta, in the nick of time. I looked up to see the hideous creature toppling to the sand, a hole big enough to punch my fist through seared deep into its gut.

‘Look out, sir!’ my aide warned, and I rolled aside as the thrashing, kicking monstrosity slammed into the ground exactly where I’d been a moment before, its death throes raising a pall of dust which uncannily echoed the slowly-dissipating shroud around the last remaining remnants of the bioship which had sired it[125]. I rose to my feet, skirting it as widely as I could, and went to join him.

‘Thank you, Jurgen,’ I said. ‘Impeccable timing, as always.’

‘Looks like the tent’s had it,’ he said, with a venomous glare at the now still cadaver.

‘It does indeed,’ I agreed, allowing the full realisation of just how badly we were frakked to settle over me. Without some kind of shelter, we couldn’t hope to survive a night in the toxic wasteland which surrounded us. Which left only one option, particularly as the gathering twilight was now definitely shading into night. ‘We’ll have to bunk down in the Aquila tonight, and make a fresh start in the morning.’

‘Right you are, sir,’ Jurgen agreed, as though our chances of actually making it to the safety of the hive were no worse now than they had been when we first set out. ‘At least we’ll have something solid between us and the ’nids if any come calling.’

‘There is that,’ I agreed. ‘We’ll take two-hour watches, turn and turn about.’ Of course we were both so exhausted we needed far more sleep than that, but right now I didn’t give much for my chances of staying awake any longer than a couple of hours in any case, and if we both fell asleep at the same time, neither of us were likely to wake. Ever.

‘I’ll take the first watch,’ Jurgen volunteered, as we scrambled up the slope we’d both slithered down a few hours before. At least we had the bent and rent metal of the fuselage to provide hand and footholds, so it wasn’t so tortuous a process as clambering up the side of the dune had been, but the effort still left us gasping in the foetid air. The wind was beginning to rise as the ground cooled with the onset of night, and the hissing, slithering sound of the sand grains drifting had intensified, rather more so than I would have expected, given my experience of nightfall in the deserts of Perlia. Right on cue, the palms of my hands began to itch.

And with good reason. From the elevated perspective of the Aquila’s half-buried rump, the desert beyond seemed to be moving, with clear, malign purpose. A score or more hormagaunts were scuttling over the crest of the adjacent dune, to join easily as many again already milling around the corpse of the lictor, and I belatedly remembered something else the camouflaged killers were known for. Leading the swarm to fresh prey.

‘It laid a trail,’ I said, hoping Jurgen would attribute the huskiness of my voice to the dehydration of my throat. ‘We have to get out of here now.’ But a single glance at our surroundings was enough to demonstrate the sheer futility of that hope. We were already surrounded, a tiny island of life amidst a sea of tyranids, and that, I knew, could only end one way.

At first, the ghastly horde seemed not to notice us, being completely absorbed in the feeding frenzy which rapidly removed all traces of the deceased lictor, not to mention that of the trio of gaunts we’d killed before setting off on our futile circular stroll. They probably devoured the last mortal remains of our late pilot, too, although I tried not to look too hard in that direction.

‘At least they can’t shoot at us,’ Jurgen murmured, hunkering down in the lee of the wedged-open cargo ramp, which had already acquired a thin coating of gritty sand, but not yet nearly enough to soften the edge of the metal beneath it. He braced the melta against a convenient stanchion, steadying the bulky weapon as best he could, and carefully laid his lasgun down next to it. Continuing to work methodically, he replaced the partially discharged power packs of both weapons with fresh ones – keeping the weaker for later, as we’d certainly need every single shot we could get before long – and opened the flap of the pouch in which he kept his grenades. ‘Lucky I stocked up again on these.’

‘How many?’ I asked, keeping my voice as low as possible. I didn’t know how acute the gaunts’ hearing was, and I had no desire to find out the hard way[126].

‘Three frag, two krak,’ Jurgen said, equally quietly, pushing the two anti-armour charges to the bottom of the pouch, and laying the others out ready for instant use. I could hardly blame him for bringing the krak ones along, we’d been more than glad of their extra punch often enough before now, but I’d cheerfully have traded them for another couple of the anti-personnel devices given the chance. Come to that, I might just as well wish the Aquila intact and the pilot back from the dead, ready to fly us out of here, into the bargain. But since none of these were about to happen, we’d just have to make the best use of the few grenades we had.

‘Let’s hope it’s enough,’ I said, knowing it wouldn’t be, and followed my aide’s lead, snapping a fresh powercell into the butt of my laspistol, stowing the used one in a convenient pocket in the faint hope of ever getting a chance to reload. Not wanting to find myself unexpectedly running dry, I made sure it went into a different one from the fully charged clips. I’d scabbarded my chainsword to make scrambling up the side of the Aquila a little easier, and drew it stealthily now, careful to make sure it didn’t betray our whereabouts by clinking against any of the metal surrounding us. After some internal debate I started the teeth spinning, on the lowest setting, partly so the characteristic keening wouldn’t be too loud, and partly to conserve the power, as I had no means of recharging it, nor time enough to do so[127].

Despite my obvious fears, it was the wind rather than any noise we made which was to be our undoing. It continued to freshen as the temperature plummeted to levels which made me glad I hadn’t discarded my greatcoat during the heat of the day (which the constant flurrying of abrasive sand would have made most unwise in any case), and which left Jurgen looking a good deal more comfortable. Not that he’d be really happy unless there was a dusting of frost on the ground, but, as he’d remarked in the storage facility where so many of these hideous creatures were being kept dormant, being able to see his breath was always a considerable fillip to his spirits. Unfortunately for both of us, the direction of the breeze was slowly changing, so that after a quarter of an hour or so, during which time the twilight deepened so much it became almost impossible to distinguish the gaunts as anything other than an inchoate mass, it was unquestionably blowing past us in their direction.

Dimly, in the gathering gloom, I saw first one brutally elongated head rise, sniffing the air, then another, and another, each turning in our direction as they caught our scent. As the first few to detect us began bounding in our direction, with the fast, loping stride of their kind, others turned to follow, until the whole pack of the monstrous, misshapen creatures was swarming towards us.

‘Wait till you have a good target,’ I counselled, all too aware that every shot would have to count if we were to stand even the slightest chance of keeping that solid mass of chitin-armoured death from rolling over us.

‘This one’s good enough,’ Jurgen said, squeezing the trigger of the melta and sending a roiling mass of superheated air into the heart of the swarm. It punched a hole clean through the onrushing mass, felling several of the brutes, and crippling others, which fell, disrupting the charge. Jurgen followed up with another three shots in rapid succession, but for every one which fell another handful leapt over the resulting carnage, powering up the dunes towards our fragile refuge. The main advantage the melta had given us was flash-burning a handful of ’nids just outside the cone of destruction it wrought, setting fire to their spasming corpses instead of simply vaporising them. Now the scene was dimly lit by the flickering flames of their immolation, which allowed us the dubious privilege of being able to see what was about to kill us.

I cracked off a few laspistol shots, which must have hit something in so tightly-packed a swarm, but the gaunts continued galloping towards us, utterly heedless of whatever damage I may have been able to inflict. Catching a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, I turned, to find that a second group had flanked us, and was now bounding up the slope in a haze of scattered sand, barely slowed by the treacherous footing. Thrusting the pistol back in its holster, I picked up the frag grenades from Jurgen’s pitifully small pile of ordnance, and lobbed one into the middle of the pack. It detonated loudly, its payload of shrapnel scything through the chittering host and felling a gratifying number, but still the rest came on, and I was forced to follow up with the other two before the charge was broken. Meanwhile, Jurgen continued to squeeze the trigger of the melta almost without respite, the actinic flash of the successive discharges even more blinding than usual in the deepening darkness, adding lightning to the thundercrack of the grenades’ detonation.

With nothing else to do, I drew my laspistol again, and flourished the chainsword, using it to drive back one of our would-be flankers, which had persisted in trying to scale the dune despite the reduction of so many of its companions into their component parts. It met blade with scything claw, just as I’d expected, and I was forced to dispatch it in a flurry of blows.

‘That’s it,’ Jurgen said, dropping the melta and seizing his lasgun.‘I’m dry.’ No point in even considering reloading, by the time he’d grabbed a fresh powercell from the storage pouch the survivors would have rolled right over us. Even before he’d finished speaking, the crackle of his lasgun was echoing round the dunes, firing short, precise bursts designed to save as much ammunition as possible. What would happen when that ran out, I didn’t dare think.

Engaged as I was in fighting for my life, I had little opportunity or inclination to pause and admire the havoc he’d wrought among the first wave of the swarm, but he’d undoubtedly bought us a handful of precious moments and I felt a few words of appreciation wouldn’t come amiss, particularly as I was unlikely to be able to defer them until later.

‘Good shooting, Jurgen,’ I said, lacking the time for anything more effusive; besides which, we’d fought together for over seventy years by that point, and I wouldn’t want his last emotion to be embarrassment.

‘You’re welcome, sir,’ he replied, as phlegmatic as ever, continuing to fell tyranids as he spoke. Then the lasgun went silent, and he ejected the powerpack in one fluid movement, his hand already swooping towards the pouch in which he’d cached the reloads.

He was never going to make it, that much was clear, the leading gaunt was already leaping into the attack, and my chainsword was stuck in the belly of the one I’d just dispatched. I desperately yanked the weapon clear of its toppling corpse, and turned, expecting to see the top of the downed Aquila liberally decorated with my aide’s intestines, and his assassin already turning its attention to me, but instead a blizzard of lasgun fire echoed across the dune field, and the leading gaunt was falling, almost cut in half by the hail of las-bolts. Huge, multi-limbed creatures were cresting the surrounding dunes, and, for a second, I quailed, wondering what new horrors were about to be unleashed on us, then realisation dawned. They were horses, protected like their riders from the hellish environment by respirators, and thick barding in lieu of the greatcoats worn by their masters.

‘It’s the Death Korps!’ I called, exultantly, as the column of riders wheeled and began to advance down the side of the dunes towards the milling mass of the surviving gaunts; quite a hazardous undertaking, it looked to me, but the horses seemed to know what they were doing, keeping their footing well enough on the treacherous sliding surface, and leaving their riders free to get on with the important business of potting ’nids.

‘So it is,’ Jurgen agreed, as though I’d pointed out a casual acquaintance in a crowded mess room. Not all our rescuers were armed with lasguns[128], a fact which became clear when launched grenades and gouts of blazing promethium from a flamer began to fall among the milling hormagaunts, along with the withering barrage of las-fire which continued unabated.

After that, the battle became a massacre, the Death Korps mopping up the last few ’nids in pretty short order, displaying the fine disregard for their own survival which so characterised the Guardsmen from that regiment as they did so. Indeed, they got so close that more than one of the gaunts finally expired under the hooves of their mounts, after first being brought down by close-range weapons fire, and, in at least one case, an explosive-tipped lance through the chest[129]. Feeling it politic to show willing, now that someone else was getting chewed up on our behalf, I took a few laspistol shots at likely targets, although, truth to tell, I doubt that they added much to the general sum of hurt being dished out to the scuttling horrors. Jurgen had much better luck with the melta, as soon as he’d changed the power pack.

At length, the field was ours, the only ’nids in view were dead or dying, and the sergeant in charge of the detachment spurred his horse up the side of the dune to stand next to the crashed Aquila. Bloodshot eyes regarded me through the round lenses of his full-face breathing mask, the pachyderm snout of the air tube snaking up over his shoulder to the filter pack on his back, his head almost on a level with my own, since I was still perched on top of the crumpled fuselage.

‘Commissar Cain?’ he asked, in the flat voice of someone knowing it was a bloody stupid question, but determined to go through the formalities in any case.

‘That’s me,’ I agreed, unable to think of anything else to say that didn’t sound equally inane. I tilted my head in Jurgen’s direction. ‘And that’s my aide, Gunner Jurgen[130]. We had a pilot, too, but the ’nids ate him. Never caught his name.’

‘Ridemaster Tyrie.’ The death rider sergeant nodded a perfunctory greeting, clearly a man of few words. ‘Lost our vox-man a couple of days back, or we’d have told you we were coming.’

‘I’m just glad you got here when you did,’ I told him, truthfully enough.

The eyes behind the lenses regarded me for a moment, and blinked, as if registering my dilapidated condition for the first time. ‘Least you had the sense to stay put and wait,’ he said.