The Beast Arises

‘Well, something’s happened,’ said Slaughter, cutting them both off. ‘That’s a dead ship up there, and a big one too. The magos is right. If the Chromes couldn’t hit it, that leaves accident, or coincidence. And coincidence means—’

‘What?’ asked Laurentis.

‘Someone else,’ said Slaughter.

A noise burst filled the air. Outdoors, in the stinking open air, it was like the booming of a warhorn, the braying of some daemonic voice. The air seemed to shudder. All four Imperial Fists winced as it stripped through their helmet vox-systems and assaulted their ears. Laurentis felt it prickle his skin. The hairs on his arm rose, despite the rain. Static. Ozone. Around the distant, broken steeples at the blisternest heart, chain lightning flickered and crackled in a sickly yellow display. Two more noise bursts followed. Laurentis felt the actual structure of the blisternest beneath them resonate with the plangent sound.

‘The Chromes are capable of a great deal more than we realise,’ Laurentis told his guardians. ‘These noises… these bursts of noise… They are why your Chapter Master has charged you to protect me. I have a theory—’

‘Tell us,’ said Slaughter bluntly.

Laurentis nodded and shrugged.

‘I will, sir. I think it’s communication. I think the Chromes are trying to communicate with us. We understood them to be non-sapient animals, but we may have been very wrong about that. I wish to test the communication theory, and that is why I need to get to the drop-point to access specialist equipment.’

Slaughter nodded. He checked the auspex mounted across his left forearm.

‘Tracking the drop. It’ll be down at DZ 457 in the next twenty minutes. Let’s move.’

They started off, crossing the oddly ridged humps and rain-slick gullies of the blisternest’s upper surface. The Fists, with their strength, long stride and armoured feet, had no trouble negotiating the unpleasant material. Laurentis kept slipping and slithering. He was wet, and cold to the bone. Woundmaker kept picking him up by the scruff of his robes and setting him back on his feet as if he were some clumsy toddler.

‘The point of the communication,’ said Laurentis, out of breath and struggling to keep up. ‘I mean, the point I was making was that if the Chromes are capable of communication, if they are capable of language, then they may be capable of much else besides. They can clearly cross between worlds and star systems in ways we cannot divine. Maybe they can take out ships. Maybe they have potent weapons for void fights.’

‘Ships of their own, after all,’ said Slaughter.

‘Perhaps.’

‘If they are capable of communication,’ said Slaughter, pausing for a moment to look at the magos biologis. ‘If you prove your theory…’

‘Yes?’

‘What are they trying to say?’

Laurentis paused.

‘I first presumed, captain, that they might be trying to negotiate surrender. That was when they seemed to be at our mercy, when their nest seemed to be toppling under assault.’

‘And now?’

‘Now, I wonder if it might not be a warning. A cry of defiance. A challenge. Now I wonder if they might not be demanding our surrender.’

‘Because they are hurting us?’

Laurentis sighed.

‘They are, it seems, taking out our starships. They are harrying our ground assault. The successful outcome of this undertaking is not as clear-cut as we first imagined.’

They followed the rim of the nest down, along to the ugly, chordate ridges that pressed like giant finger-bones into the mud of the river’s edge. The noise bursts continued to bark across the smoke-wrapped distances, causing the rain to squall and billow. Laurentis tried to keep a basic log of observable details on his data-slate as he struggled to keep up with his transhuman bodyguards. Fountains of ash and light vomited into the air from regions on the far side of the central blisternest, and the concussive booms reached them a moment later.

‘Major munitions,’ said Slaughter.

‘Orbital strike?’ asked Cutthroat.

Woundmaker shook his head.

‘Looked like… subterranean.’

‘So… our enemy has further weapons we don’t know about?’ asked Stab.

‘That they destroy their own nest with?’ asked Cutthroat.

‘Don’t argue. Don’t debate,’ Slaughter snapped. ‘Get moving.’

Another blast rocked the ground and a huge plume sheeted into the dismal sky six or seven kilometres away. The Fists of Daylight Wall stoically and obediently ignored it and started moving onwards. Laurentis hurried with them.

‘It could be a new weapon,’ conjectured the magos biologis, a little out of breath. ‘They might, I suppose… They might destroy their own nest if there was nothing left to be gained from protecting it. It might be… uhm, intended to create confusion and disarray, to take as many of us with them as possible.’

‘For what purpose?’ asked Slaughter, getting his hand under Laurentis’ armpit and frog-marching him over a stretch of mud so slick it was like quicksand.