The Enigma of Flesh, page 4
The last of the larger tyranids refrained from firing the long, thorn-like weapon it gripped in its secondary arms. Hissing, the beast lunged, driving the weapon like a lance into the robot. The power field crackled and sizzled as the huge thorn breached its protective energies. A ghastly tearing sound rose from the out-thrust bio-weapon as it slammed into the Kastelan. Marhault expected to see the robot impaled upon the alien spear, to see its metal body pierced by the fury of the tyranid’s attack. The robot’s thick armour was stronger than the alien’s weapon. A spider-web of cracks and fissures snaked across the length of the spear. A moment later it disintegrated into a cascade of fragments, destroyed by the shock of its own impact against the Kastelan’s impenetrable hull.
The tyranid didn’t retreat, and nor did the destruction of its bio-weapon seem to faze it. Shrieking in bestial savagery, the creature swung a massive, sword-like length of bone at the Kastelan’s head while the segmented lash it carried whipped at the machine’s leg. The blade flashed through the power field, scraping against the Kastelan’s cranium and digging an ugly groove into the metal. The lash flared through the protective energies with such violence that the defensive mechanism was overwhelmed. A sickening howl rose from what Marhault judged to be the field generator. With a last flare of light, the field dissipated into a sputtering haze that stank of ozone and burned copper.
Snarling, the tyranid pressed its attack, lashing out with sword and whip. Without the field to blunt their impact, the full force of the alien’s ferocity struck the Kastelan. Each swing of the sword tore the robot’s armour, each crack of the whip ripping a new gouge into its hull. Slowly, the hulking machine was being forced back, staggering away from its xenos tormentor.
Then the Kastelan’s promethium projector seared across the tyranid’s sword arm, boiling every fluid flowing within it. The arm sagged uselessly against the alien’s side, the sword frozen in its paralyzed hand. The segmented lash fared better, coiling about the robot’s leg and grinding away at the armour plate. As the whip bit into its frame, the Kastelan reached out with its claws and took hold of the tyranid’s secondary arms. There was a sickening crunch and a revolting pop before the Kastelan ripped one of the alien’s limbs from its body.
The creature struggled to free its other limb from the steely grip, but its efforts were as vain as those of the smaller xenos that scurried from the grass to rescue it. Phosphorescent spheres from the other Kastelan burned the aliens in droves while the other robot’s claws adjusted to hold the creature immobile. It lowered the alien to a level where Livia could reach it. From beneath the sleeve of her robe, the datasmith produced a taser goad, shocking the creature with blasts of crackling energy. The more damage inflicted against the tyranid, the less concerted the attacks of the smaller creatures became. Instead they became disorganized, losing the focus that had compelled them to ferociously charge the maniple again and again. Even the snake-like burrowers lost their initiative, withdrawing back into the earth without completing their encirclement of the Kastelans and their master. When the creature was stunned senseless, the robot began to carry it back towards the outpost.
Marhault glared at the captured creature as the enormous robot lumbered past. Was this the leader of the swarm that had come to attack Outpost Nymue? Coldly, he aimed his pistol at the mangled tyranid.
‘If you kill it now, it will all have been for nothing,’ Livia’s cold voice warned him. The datasmith was aiming her own weapon, but not at the tyranid. Behind her, the other Kastelan was slowly falling back, its guns continuing to melt elements of the xenos horde.
Expecting to feel the disintegrating energies of Livia’s gun scorching through his body at any instant, Marhault lowered his pistol.
‘What does this mean?’ he asked.
Livia stared at him, her eyes as cold as the rest of her transcended body. Then, with shocking abruptness, her gun sent a blast of searing energy hurtling towards the captain. Marhault clenched his eyes tight against the blinding flare from the datasmith’s pistol. He expected it to be the last thing he ever saw.
Marhault was stunned when a powerful grip seized him by the shoulder. Blinking, he saw that he was being dragged back towards the perimeter. Blood was streaming down his leg; the burned stump of a tyranid claw was embedded in his hip. He glanced aside; he was being half-carried by Livia. The shot she had fired had not been for him, it had been for a lurking stabber tyranid that had pounced on him.
‘Curiosity is what lends human existence its purpose,’ Livia said when she noticed the captain looking at her. She was following the two Kastelans as they lumbered back towards the perimeter. The claw-handed robot was carrying the still-living remainder of the tyranid it had injured and captured. ‘It is not within my discipline to explain. You must speak with Magos Procrustes.’
Around them, the attacks of the smaller tyranids had collapsed. The creatures had lost none of their ferocity – the Kastelans were still compelled to burn the beasts back. What the aliens had lost was their cohesion, their sense of unified purpose. By eliminating the bigger monsters, Marhault dared to wonder if the robots had saved the entire outpost. When he asked as much of Livia, the datasmith’s answer was discouraging.
‘A respite,’ she said. ‘Time to accomplish the objective. There is no salvation for Outpost Nymue. The xenos will come again. Eventually they will overwhelm this position.’
‘Then what is the objective?’ Marhault gasped. The shock of his injury was beginning to dissipate and he was feeling the pain of his wound. The Kastelans were at the saw-wire now. A few metres beyond would be the trenches. Balduin and Peredur had reinforced the breached section and brought whatever resources they could scavenge to hold the line. Marhault almost dared to anticipate one of his medics rushing out to assist him.
What he saw instead was the black-clad Nazhir. The commissar had his bolt pistol drawn. Marhault couldn’t make out what Nazhir was shouting, but he did catch the words ‘traitor’ and ‘Children of Iron’ in his tirade. Suddenly Datasmith Livia stumbled as a shell from Nazhir’s gun slammed into her. Marhault cried out as she dropped him and he slammed into a barbed strand of wire lying on the ground. Lubricants jetted from a smouldering hole in the datasmith’s chest, sparks crackling up and down her right arm.
Before Nazhir could fire again, the commissar vanished in a burst of burning phosphorescence. The gun-handed Kastelan marched through his charred husk, scattering fiery fragments of the officer in every direction. A stunned silence gripped the men and women in the trenches, awed by the suddenness and completeness of Nazhir’s destruction.
Livia struggled back to her feet, moving with a jerky, awkward shift of her body. Some internal components were fused by Nazhir’s shot, but she still stooped and lifted Marhault from the ground with a mechanical gracelessness. She glanced down at him as she carried him once more.
‘It is regrettable that was necessary,’ she said. ‘The loss of the commissar will decrease the performance of your soldiers. You must survive, captain, otherwise their efficiency will degenerate further.’
Marhault had an answer for the datasmith’s cold, analytical pragmatism. But the pain from his hip made it impossible to put the thought into words.
Servitors relieved the claw-handed Kastelan of the hissing tyranid it carried. The nearly mindless man-machines emerged from the old processing plant, seized the creature in their metal claws, then disappeared back into the building. It was eerie watching the precise, emotionless procedure. As soon as the xenos was removed, the robot turned and lumbered back towards the grox pens to rejoin the other member of the maniple in defending the perimeter. Already, the alien attacks were picking up again. Marhault thought perhaps other ‘command tyranids’ were moving to join this swarm and assume control over it.
Livia carried the captain into the building, her steel feet ringing as she marched across the stone floor. The hallway hadn’t changed since Marhault had used the place as his command post, but when they reached the factory itself, he was struck by how rapidly and completely the Adeptus Mechanicus had transformed the place. Everywhere he looked he saw banks of machinery. Some he recognized as cogitators, while others looked to be communication relays, although on far greater scale than the one that kept him in touch with the colonel. Much of the factory’s industrial machinery looked as though it had been moved and altered, repurposed to perform whatever new functions the tech-priests had requested from their machine-spirits.
As they advanced into the factory, Marhault saw the crippled tyranid set down on the flat surface of a hydraulic press that had once been employed to smash grox dung into cakes for easier transport. While the servitors held the alien in place, robed acolytes secured it to the slab with heavy chains. Once the xenos was secured, the servitors withdrew, filing back across the factory floor.
Marhault’s eyes gaped wide in shock as he saw the servitors walk to one of the vats that had once been used to provide a chemical preservative to the cakes of dung. Now an entirely different mixture filled the vats: a terrible acid that, as he watched, consumed the flesh of each servitor as it threw itself into the bath. Even though the servitors didn’t possess anything like genuine life, it still made for a sickening tableau.
‘Their function has been fulfilled. Resources must be denied to the enemy.’ The words issued from the vox-caster set into the body of Magos Procrustes. The tech-priest trundled towards Marhault. There was a laser scalpel in one of his hands. As he drew close, the optic set into his face narrowed and focused upon the chitinous claw embedded in the captain’s hip. ‘You are still essential. At least for a few more hours.’
Before Marhault knew what was happening, Procrustes activated the scalpel and drew it across his wound. With a deftness impossible to merely organic hands, he used the instrument at its maximum setting to saw through the claw while employing its softer energies to cauterize torn veins and arteries.
‘This will stop the bleeding,’ Procrustes declared. ‘Your medics will have the stimulants on hand to maintain your functionality in the little time that is left.’ The magos shifted his attention away from Marhault to Livia. ‘The Kastelans have been issued their final orders?’
Livia bowed her head. ‘They have been given their commands.’ She hesitated for an instant. ‘Do you think it will be possible they might be recovered afterwards?’
‘Possible but not feasible,’ Procrustes declared. ‘The lower orders of tyranids might not recognize them as a threat once they enter hibernation. Any of the higher organisms will destroy them.’ A slight touch of empathy entered the tech-priest’s voice. ‘Know that the objective has been worthy of the sacrifice.’
Marhault pulled away from Livia’s grip. ‘Sacrifice?’ he growled. ‘You’re worried about a few machines when my soldiers are being killed?’
‘All of us were brought here to facilitate this objective,’ Magos Procrustes stated. The tracks on the left side of his carriage rotated, turning him so that he could gesture towards the press where the tyranid was chained. Half a dozen tech-priests were surrounding it, cutting into it with a deranged assortment of tools and instruments. ‘That creature is what has been designated as a tyranid prime, a recently observed evolution of the common tyranid warrior. It is the lowest order of tyranid organism that has exhibited advanced neurology. Vivisection of its brain and nervous system may offer a clearer understanding of the hive synapse that guides their species.’
‘You are sacrificing my people for that?’ Marhault gasped. ‘They are dying for… for this?’
‘From the moment the hive fleet arrived in orbit around Thain, all who set foot upon the planet were doomed,’ Procrustes explained. ‘But disaster sometimes heralds opportunity. What we can learn from that specimen may be the first step towards eradicating that foul xenos breed! What does the termination of you or me matter compared to that, captain? Already a tech-adept with a neural imprint of my brain has been prepared. He will use the transmissions of this vivisection to continue my work. We will perish on Thain, but the work will live on.’
Marhault could see some of the acolytes leaving the vivisection. Their roles in the study completed, they were following the example set by the servitors and dumping themselves into the acid bath. His body shook with horror and revulsion.
‘Their purpose is fulfilled,’ Livia said, noting the direction of Marhault’s gaze. ‘Now all that is left is to deny their essential proteins to the xenos.’
Procrustes waved one of his metal talons. ‘Not possible, I fear. A residue is always left behind, but these chemicals ensure that what remains is difficult for the tyranids to assimilate.’ The magos considered Marhault for a moment. ‘Why does that solution offend you? It is the enigma of flesh that the individual promotes its own survival before that of the species as a whole. It is a failing that humanity must overcome if we are to thrive. The irrational and the obsolete must be discarded.’
‘I… am not ready… to be discarded,’ Marhault shivered, unable to take his eyes from the vats of acid. It was infernal. Obscene. Inhuman.
‘No, you aren’t,’ Livia said. The datasmith’s arm closed around him. Despite the damage from Nazhir’s shot, she had no problem drawing Marhault away from the command post and the macabre labours of the Adeptus Mechanicus. ‘You still have purpose. You must rally the Guardsmen. You must give them the motivation to endure long enough for the study to be completed.’
Marhault stared at her, incredulous. ‘You’ll die too?’ he asked. ‘You’ll dive into Procrustes’ acid?’
Livia gazed back at him, and for once there was something approaching compassion in her eyes. ‘Flesh is transient. It is metal that endures – metal and the knowledge that endows it with shape and purpose. All else is but a distraction from the purity of the Omnissiah.’
About The Author
C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax, the End Times novel Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang, the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Time of Legends: The Black Plague series. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000.
A discovery of ancient technology sends a skitarii legion, commanded by Alpha Primus Haldron-44 Stroika, into battle on a forge world overrun by Chaos.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS UK.
Cover illustration by Slawomir Maniak.
The Enigma of Flesh © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. The Enigma of Flesh, Adeptus Mechanicus, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.
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ISBN: 978-1-78251-698-9
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
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