Oblivion was a comfort.
A vast, borderless nothing that made no demand of identity, space or time, it surrounded Canoness Alsatia Du Prillon of the Adepta Sororitas in an unconscious void that released any burden of thought or recognition from her inert mind.
But such peace was not to last. Not on the dying husk of the world once known as Medusa V. The warp storm was close now, very close, but the denizens of that chaotic whirlwind would need little effort to finish off the doomed world. The work of murdering the planet had fallen squarely upon the many armies that swarmed over the corpse of this once great planet, armored maggots chewing each other apart with the same violent hunger that consumed the cities and plains around them.
The warp storm was just a formality, a flashing final curtain of destructive energy that was no more relevant to the planet’s cause of death now than cremation was for the average corpse.
These thoughts returned to Alsatia’s mind in unrelated images and fragments, a dreamy knowing of things that pushed through the gauze of her comfortable oblivion to gnaw her quieted mind awake. Image followed image, sound followed sound, and the detritus of a sleeping mind was cast aside for those things she knew she’d known from flesh and blood experience.
The figure of a tall, aging Inquisitor, feverishly urging the forces of the Inquisition to attack imperial and xeno armies alike – if the former was found guilty of making truce or cooperative plans with the latter.
A Tau deception in the darkened hell of Sybilla Primus flickered past her mind’s eye. The Ultramarines were goaded into assaulting the Sisters of Battle for a time – a time that cost lives on both sides, before a truce was struck and the combined wrath of the Ultramarines and Sisters was turned on their Xeno tormentors. That proud Inquisitor, cut down trying to defend her against a jump-pack equipped Chaplain, had found his body destroyed but cybernetically rebuilt to continue his holy mission.
An asteroid guided to Ice Station Alpha by the Tau in a further attempt to defile an imperial world; the plan hatched by her Inquisitor Lord and herself to repay the Tau in blood by sending prisoners of war there to await the impact of the rock.
Every thought raised her consciousness further from nothing and quickened it towards full consciousness. The momentum of her identity was gaining speed now, pushing through the weight of blackness to rise from beneath it, a bubble of awareness floating to the surface to burst into full realization.
When the bubble burst, Alsatia was wide awake, adrenalin pumping, armored hand clutching the white and gold bolter that had never left her fingers, sitting upright without regard to the wound that had pierced her side through the power armor she wore.
She was in the back of a fleeing Sisters of Battle rhino.
The warp storm was closing in fast. A general retreat had been sounded.
The rescue ships had already left their zones amidst an enemy counterattack that would have cost more lives than it saved if the ships had remained.
And the only way off the planet now was a ship a few miles away, through a decimated cityscape crawling with Tyranids, and their time was very, very short.
Du Prillon swept aside the blonde hair that had sweat-matted against her face and ignored the wound that had knocked her down. She didn’t feel the head wound that had rendered her unconscious, and the sister Hospitaller nearby backed away in the cramped confines of the rhino, knowing her services weren’t needed now. Two armored sisters leaned out the top hatch of the rhino, one sweeping her flamer in broad arcs, the other firing a heavy bolter here and there, shell casings lost in the displaced air of the speeding vehicle.
“What’s our situation?” she asked a nearby sister, who was reloading
her bolter. “How long was I out?”
“Only a couple of minutes, my lady.” Shining fingers locked the
ammo clip in position and cocked the weapon. “We’ve lost one rhino.
Four remain.”
Du Prillon smashed her metal fist into the hull of the rhino, leaving the curved imprint of four fingers behind. Five sisters remained alive
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in this Rhino, not counting herself, and the Inquisitor Lord’s sister Hospitaller.
“Where’s Kurlin?” Alsatia asked.
“Flanking rhino, firing at whatever he can.”
She shook her head. The Emperor be praised, but how much longer can we last?
She hoped the answer that came wasn’t an omen. A shower of blood and torn metal rained from the hatch, and Sister Idwina collapsed, her heavy bolter going silent. It would be little use to her anyway, given the remainder of her head.
Du Prillon jumped to the hatch before any other sister could react, bolter steady, leaning out to meet the oncoming hoard.
Sister Galda kept her flamer sweeping the pursuing masses while the rhino jinked side to side to avoid leaping bugs. The hormagaunts kept pace with the tank effortlessly, but their leaping attacks were having little success against the occupants save for the occasional lucky slice.
Du Prillon leaned beside Galda and swept her bolter fire through the mass of pursuing Tyranids. They jumped aside nimbly, leaping over ruined cars, shattered rock and warriors slain in prior battles. What her bolter missed, the flamer caught, but they occasionally focused on a single gaunt that got too close for its own good.
“How much do you have left?” Du Prillon picked off a gaunt that
had leapt onto a car’s dented roof and sent it splattering against the sidewalk behind it.
“Not much. Another sixty second’s worth.” Galda burned four gaunts
that ran hissing alongside the rhino, pre-empting the leaping attack they braced to make.
Alsatia swept her bolter over three more on the other flank. She called down to the others, “Istra! Take that heavy bolter load out and get it up here now!”
The rhino lurched sideways then, throwing both women’s aim off. A carnifex burst through the side of a building nearby, oblivious to the falling concrete. It screamed and sliced outward with its two sets of scything talons, a glowing burst of green energy rocketing out of its throat.
The reflexive jink of the driver had saved them at the last moment. The bio-plasma missed wide, and the scything blades caught only the top half of sister Galda.
The Canoness grabbed the flamer as it fell and turned both weapons on the approaching hoard, the thundering carnifex lost in the crowd of gaunts that followed. A blur of black snapped into her armor; the living ammunition of the termagant snipers on the third floor of a passing building had failed to cleave through her blessed armor.
We’re running out of options, way too fast. She glanced around quickly, triggering another flamer/bolter burst into the oncoming hoard. The other rhinos were nowhere to be seen, but the staccato echo of bolter fire from nearby city blocks told her they were at least speeding along to her, parallel on the other streets.
The flamer was going dry. One burst of orange went pale blue and parted into nothing but air. She threw it aside and fired the last of her bolter clip.
The deep purr of a heavy bolter next to her disintegrated a hormagaunt leaping at her head. She ducked down into the hatch as sister Istra and sister Hangl used paired heavy bolters to hose down the fleeing bugs.
“Why wasn’t that second heavy bolter up there before?” she asked
the Hospitaller as she ducked down.
“Jammed ammo feed. We’ve been pressed for time and those two sisters aren’t familiar with those heavy weapons.”
Du Prillon nodded once and opened the metal hatch to the driver’s compartment. “Distance to objective?”
“Not close enough. We’ve lost a rhino on the left flank. The carnifex wiped it out before it came for us.”
No survivors, she told herself. Not with that tidal wave of gaunts right behind us.
Alsatia closed the door and checked the computer terminal near the doorway. Green blips marked the rhinos over the next two blocks, swerving and speeding through the urban hell they’d found themselves in. The Tyranids were coded purple and closing in from all angles now; the desperate rhinos speeding toward any break in the enemy lines they could exploit to get away.
Firebase • issue • July 2007Her eyes flicked up at the nav point that arced back and forth at the top of the round radar screen, repositioning with every desperate maneuver.
“Which rhino is Kurlin in?” she asked.
“The one to our immediate right,” the Hospitaller answered.
The radar screen showed the gaunts falling back now, a long stretch of open road giving them valuable distance.
Du Prillon slid on a headset and hailed the nearby rhino. “This is
Canoness Du Prillon calling for Inquisitor Kurlin,” she said calmly.
A burst of static crossed the channel, before the Inquisitor’s low and gravelly voice came back. “Status, Alsatia.”
“We’re only barely outrunning the Tyranids here. I’ve got casualties.”
She knew better than to report her exact strength over the com.
“Pull alongside my rhino at the intersection ahead. We’ll combine efforts.”
“Understood.” She passed the order to her driver.
An open intersection yawned wide, with toppled statues and overturned benches the only real obstacles. The surviving rhinos sped together towards the center, then shifted trajectory down the four lane freeway that led the spaceport – where the shuttles awaited to carry them home.
“Exit the freeway as soon as possible,” Kurlin ordered her. “We’ll shortcut through the countryside.”
The rhinos formed a column with Kurlin’s in the center, jetting onto the exit ramp and bursting through the concrete barriers that kept them from the open dirt plains beyond the road.
The rhino kicked once and landed hard. The heavy bolter sisters stayed at their posts. “Gargoyles coming in,” one of them calmly reported. Alsatia and the Hospitaller reloaded the heavy bolters with the last remaining rounds in the transport. Alsatia picked up two bolters and loaded them full, sliding extra clips into her belt pouches.
She rose through the hatch and watched a cloud of moving blackness coasting towards them from above at an alarming rate. They’re fast. Very fast.
A heavy bolter braced against the top of the rhino. Kurlin rose majestically from the transport nearest her.
He had been gravely wounded in the battle with the Ultramarines; his body mostly bionics and armor plate now. His right arm had been replaced by a large, sleek weapon that combined a bolter with a meltagun. His infamous red bloodcord whipped against his chest with the pressing wind that surrounded them both, his metallic face replacements passive, unexpressive.
“Prepare for contact,” he said through his commline, and the wind
distortion did little to conceal his resolve.
The heavy bolter opened up first. Specks of black fell from the cloud and spiraled into the dirt below. Another few moments and the bolters of the collected rhinos opened up. A toll of butchered gargoyles fell ungracefully from the swarm, awash in blood and mangle entrails.
Fleshborers fired from above. Thankfully among the weakest of the Tyranid arsenal, the weapons were thwarted with thick armor plate and clever evasion of the transports.
A crackle of energy snapped out of Kurlin’s outstretched left hand. Five gargoyles cooked in mid air. He alternated between his elegant weapon arm and the Inquisitorial power known as the Scourge, accounting for more than the flamer equipped sister beside him, he covered the retreat of the vehicles with wide arcs of fire.
“We’re almost there!” her driver called through the comline. The
starport was in the distance now.
So were three carnifexes, thundering towards their position between the rhinos and final safety.
“Inquisitor!” Du Prillon called. “Three marks ahead!”
The gargoyles were parting into two clouds now, racing to outflank the rhinos.
“Circle them, keep them at range,” Kurlin ordered. “We dare not let them follow us to the landing pad.”
The rhinos split off from each other, each facing a carnifex. Two were screamer-killer genus, and boasted two sets of scything talons each. The third carried a barbed strangler and venom cannon. So far its deadly shots missed the rhinos, the barbed strangler wiping
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out huge chunks of terrain with short-lived tentacles that whipped spastically about before withering.
Kurlin’s rhino barreled straight toward the shooting carnifex. The third rhino and Alsatia’s pulled wide of the screamer killer escorts, bio-plasma screeching out of the behemoths but finding no mark.
The sisters were no luckier, their bolters ricocheting harmlessly off the overgrown chitin.
Kurlin’s rhino spun meters away from the gun carrying carnifex. It reared up and swung at the zooming pest of a transport, denting the side and sending it careening on one tread for a moment. Kurlin held fast to the hull with one metal hand clenching the armor, firing his meltagun into the carnifex. It burned deep into the breast of the animal. It roared but fell back enough for another shot. The venom cannons missed, the barbed strangler deflecting off the hull to explode in the distance.
Alsatia’s rhino zipped towards the third rhino. The two passed each other within a couple feet, each firing violently to bring down a carnifex. The carnifex Alsatia and her crew circled was wounded now, heavy bolters chewing up tender spots of its body, purple ichors leaking thickly from the wounds. The third carnifex was untouched and closed ranks with its gunner, teaming up against Kurlin as gunfire erupted harmlessly across its back.
Moments remained as the gargoyles swooped in from two sides to fnish the crew. The third rhino past in close to douse the wounded carnifex with a flamer. The carnifex lurched forward with deceptive speed and tore into the hull with four violating talons, flipping the rhino over and tearing it apart. Its burning bulk cut, stomped and bit the passengers to death before it collapsed from the flames that consumed it.
The other screamer-killer staggered and collapsed from the last of the heavy bolter rounds. Spent, the two sisters ducked into the hatch. Alsatia rose up and began to fire everything she had into the gargoyle swarms that swooped down now. The storm bolter turret coughed its own death into the masses, but a wave of gargoyles was cutting in towards Kurlin totally unchallenged.
Firebase • issue • July 2007The gunner carnifex fired and struck home with the venom cannon shot, the blast piercing the front of the rhino that carried Kurlin and slowing it to a halt.
Kurlin jumped down from the hatch of the rhino as two sisters popped up from inside, and began hosing down the swooping gargoyles. The carnifex stormed towards Kurlin as the gargoyles descended with tooth and claw.
Kurlin spun on one foot, firing his bolter in a wide arc into the assaulting gargoyles. Their claws glanced his armor but cut no wounds for their effort. He grabbed a gargoyle in his metal hand, crushed the neck, and used it as a flail against the others that swirled near him. The carnifex charged him, and Kurlin sidestepped easily, firing his bolter into the monster’s side as he swung the dead gargoyle club to shield against more attacks.
The remaining sisters had exited the wounded rhino and joined the fray, bolters firing, chainswords slashing. The turret mounted storm bolter twitched left and right to track varied targets while a chain of flashing light erupted from Kurlin to scourge a handful of gargoyles from the sky.
Alsatia’s rhino sped straight towards the gunning carnifex, shooting it from behind. Her twin bolters stitched all over the back while the storm bolter freely roamed the creature in search of a weakness. The monster turned with a roar and positioned to fire its venom cannon.
Kurlin fired his bolter up under the carnifex’s chin as it fired, and the shot flew far off the mark. Flesh tore from the carnifex and purple blood leaked from a dozen wounds.
The gargoyles pulled back to regroup their number. Dead sisters and gargoyles alike littered the ground. Kurlin himself had been wounded twice, the red slick against two ugly rents in his armor assuring his human vulnerability.
But the Inquisitor still stood. The carnifex turned towards him, swinging its weapon arms in a blow that could cut a man in half effortlessly. Alsatia’s rhino pulled away at the last moment as Kurlin discharged a powerful burst of the scourge into the wicked beast.
Energy carved into the creature and seared flesh all the way down to its pulsing brain. The animal cut off from the hive mind as cerebral meat popped and melted. Its eyes burst as electrical currents played between its teeth. It hissed and collapsed, barely missing the Inquisitor.
Kurlin fell to one knee, dropping his makeshift club as Alsatia pulled up beside him. The Hospitaller charged out from the rear hatch of the rhino to bring the spent Inquisitor Lord to safety. One wounded sister limped toward the rhino with a hand to her side, staggered, and collapsed into the dirt. The pool of slick blood growing beneath her reflected the flashing wrath of the warp storm as it crept closer to Medusa V in the night sky.
The gargoyles were coming again. Du Prillon and Kurlin braced inside the hatch of the surviving Rhino. Even if the rhino was impervious to the gargoyles’ best attacks, leading the winged terrors to the landing pad could still complicate the rescue of other, unarmored personnel.
Their worries were pushed aside with the arrival of three squads of seraphim. Jet packs blasted their gleaming armor into the gargoyle swarm, flamers firing, bolt pistols kicking, swords cutting down the flying monsters.
“Get to the ships!” the seraphim called. They made no attempt
to join the fleeing rhino, fighting with grace and agility, their faith sustaining them through the whirlwind of tooth, claw and fleshborer, their last stand taking ten times their number from the gargoyles around them.
Alsatia’s rhino launched up the ramp of the nearest armored transport. Sisters inside immediately locked it down whilst the medical teams rushed in to tend to the wounded.