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The Shadow of the Beast – L J Goulding

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The Shadow of the Beast

L J Goulding

It had become habit, Hornindal realised, to stand before the great lancet ports of the observation deck and measure his breathing against the urgent thrum of the ship’s engines. The adamantium null screens were locked firmly in place, so he could see nothing of the void beyond. Moreover, his eyes were closed.

He gripped the forward rail with both hands, his boots planted squarely on the deck beneath him. Tension gritted his teeth and made a taut rod of his spine.

Habit. Nothing more. It served no purpose.

Even had he been able to see beyond the crystalflex ports, it was unlikely that the sight would have satisfied his desire – nay, his demand – for haste. Warp space was tricky and dangerous stuff, and rarely gave any sense of real forward momentum; depending on the prevailing currents, it might seem to him as though the Xenophon were utterly becalmed. Or worse still; travelling sideways, or in reverse.

Immortal and beneficent Emperor, grant us speed enough to answer this call.

Hornindal wanted to feel the wind upon his scalp, the crush of inertia pulling him back as they hurtled onwards. He wanted the reassurance that they were making the best possible speed. He wanted to see it with his own eyes.

And since he could not, he stood alone on the shielded observation deck and imagined all of these things. He needed that distraction. He had not slept in a long time.

He knew that it was only right and proper that he be burdened so; Hornindal stood apart, both philosophically and oft-times literally. He was the bedrock of his brethren; the presence of the Emperor’s guiding light made flesh. He was the example to which they all might aspire. He would not, therefore, demonstrate feelings of doubt or uncertainty, nor give voice to any such concerns. They would arrive in time. Of course they would arrive in time, by His grace.

We are His sword, we are His shield. His benevolence. His wrath.

The vox-bead hung loosely from Hornindal’s ear – though he knew that the Chapter serfs of the small crew were among the best in the fleet, he could no longer listen to the comm-traffic. They worked diligently, burning the ship’s reactor white hot in their attempts to coax more speed from the engines, yet to his transhuman ears their mortal prattling made them sound… inefficient. Amateur. Unworthy of the duty that might soon fall to them, if his most dire projections were proven to be accurate.

It had been almost a year since Captain Theodosios had taken the Fifth Company out onto the periphery – astropathic reports of unrest and civil disobedience to the galactic south-east had prompted their noble Chapter Master Thorcyra to make a show of force, hoping to restore order before it could grow into any real rebellion. But as the weeks turned into months and more desperate calls began to come from across the sector, Thorcyra himself had taken his honour guard and the First and Second Companies into the north, towards the stricken worlds of the Saphir Cluster.

It was as though the Eastern Fringe was erupting into madness, and to those who had witnessed such things before, it was a grim portent indeed. When the final, garbled communication was received from Theodosios and the Fifth, a general recall was issued to the entire Chapter spread throughout the Ultima Segmentum.

‘Sons of Sotha, return home with all haste.’

The entire Chapter. Every last battle-brother, every last serf and retainer.

Not lightly would they be summoned back. Not lightly would Chapter Master Thorcyra have his warriors abandon the myriad crusades and conflicts to which they had been set. As Reclusiarch, Hornindal had been engaged in the liberation of the reliquary world of Egottha, and in his fiery rhetoric he had sworn that this was the gravest duty to which the Scythes of the Emperor could be called. Would Thorcyra now make a liar of him?

It was true that the enemies of the Imperium were many, and strong, and while he and his brothers had nev–

A tremor ran the length of the Xenophon’s hull, and Hornindal’s eyes snapped open. He felt a slight rise in the note of the engines.

The lumen strips on the observation deck flickered and went out, followed by another tremor. With a series of creaking judders, the ship began to list to starboard – the drunken roll of a rudderless wetland skiff.

Without thinking, he replaced the vox-bead in his ear.

‘Shipmaster Kaeron, report immediately.’

No response. Only a cacophony of frantic exchanges. Warning chimes. Tinny, distorted screams.

The Navigator. The Navigator was dead.

An almighty bass rumble shook the deck, echoing through the tortured superstructure, and klaxons blared. The heavy doors ground shut, sealing the chamber and the various other compartments of the ship, and Hornindal felt a familiar electric pressure in the base of his skull as the crew made an emergency jump back into realspace.

He gasped, sensing the unclean touch of the warp as it slithered away from his mind and off into the ether, before being almost pitched from his feet by the ship’s sudden deceleration. Natural laws reasserted themselves, though it took him only a moment to recover, and he threw back the deep hood of his robe.

His vox-bead crackled.

‘Lord Reclusiarch, to the bridge!’ came the shipmaster’s voice. ‘We’re moving to evade hostile… objects.’

The twin slaved servitors at the helm chattered wordlessly as they made correction after correction, binaric cant tumbling from their withered lips and only occasionally slurred by ropes of drool. Since they were almost completely immobile in their wired thrones, their increased vocalisation was the only way to gauge the speed of their actions and reactions. For all their vacant, slack-jawed appearances, their internal systems were processing the manoeuvres at incredible rates.

The howl of proximity alarms was deafening in the enclosed space. As the null screens slowly retracted, Kaeron bellowed his orders to a crew that were trying hard not to be transfixed by the horror blooming in the darkness before them.

‘Take us between them! Hard to port, hard to port!’

Behind the command dais, Sub-lieutenant Goss stood bathed in the ruddy glow of the bridge’s emergency lighting, a data-slate gripped tightly under his arm and his mouth agape.

‘Holy Terra,’ he muttered. ‘What are they?’

The shipmaster whirled around to face him.

‘Deck officer. Return to your post immediately,’ he barked over the din.

Another minor impact reverberated through the lower decks, and Goss snapped back to attention. He thrust the data-slate at Kaeron and reached for the edge of his tactical console, hauling himself through the ship’s weakened gravity.

‘Someone call up the system charts. I need local cartography, right now.’

The main bulkhead to the bridge opened with a swirl of equalising pressure, and Goss saw the robed giant Demetrios stride through. The Chaplain made straight for the central dais, but stared all the while out through the armoured viewports before the helm. His eyes were wide and unblinking.

Not in alarm, but in pure, unbridled hatred.

Where Goss and the rest of the bridge crew might be gripped by fear, this mighty hero of the Chapter was filled with a righteous indignation. It was clear enough in his fiery glare and the grim set of his jaw – what right did these monstrosities have to exist in the Emperor’s own universe, let alone to present a direct threat to a ship of the Adeptus Astartes?

As the stars wheeled beyond the frontal ports, the things hung in the void – great organic medusae, each the size of a large hab-block and trailing sickly tendrils hundreds of metres long that grasped at the frozen nothingness. Their livid bodies were bloated and bulbous, ridged with what looked like horned chitin, and yet they each pulsated with an obscene internal rhythm. Even as Goss and the other crewmen looked on, the closest of the things convulsed spastically and swept its tendrils out in a flailing arc, which only narrowly missed the Xenophon’s bladed prow as she banked away.

The helm servitors were running at the limits of their programming merely to avoid each new collision as the things drifted closer. There were thousands of them, and precious little clear space between.

‘Void-born filth!’ Demetrios spat, gripping his rosarius tightly in one hand and pointing defiantly through the main viewport. ‘Shipmaster, ready all weapons.’

Kaeron did not take his attention from the data-slate.

‘My lord, we are too close to obtain a firing solution. I’m working on–’

‘Too close?’ the Chaplain interrupted him. He stalked around the shipmaster’s command throne, gesturing out with a broad sweep of his fist. ‘With all respect, Kaeron, we’re right on top of them! Open the voidlock and I could smite them myself.’

Kaeron held up the data-slate, though Demetrios regarded it coldly. ‘With all due respect, my lord, that is precisely why we must not open fire.’

‘Explain yourself. The Emperor’s will demands that we end these abominations.’

‘Our auspex is still clouded, but short-range scans would suggest that these constructs contain a highly volatile atmosphere within their bodies. Explosive even. If we launch torpedoes or fire the main batteries then I am confident that we could easily destroy them, but the resulting blast would tear this ship apart. Each one of them is almost as wide around as the Xenophon is amidships.’

As if to illustrate his point, the ship soared beneath another raft of tendrils which slithered and twitched over her starboard flank. The contact rang dully through the superstructure, a slew of sensor vanes breaking free of their mountings and clattering against the Xenophon’s armoured skin before they tumbled away into the darkness.

‘And so you allow these unspeakable things to caress our hull, shipmaster?’ Demetrios growled. ‘I will not tolerate this sacrilege.’

Goss glanced over the data scrolling down his console screen. His heart was pounding in his chest.

‘Master Kaeron, the objects are beginning to close in on us. It’s like they’re trying to block our–’

‘Power down the engines.’

All three of them turned to the open bulkhead portal, and Goss saw Reclusiarch Hornindal hunched down beneath the reinforced lintel. He was staring out at the bloated constructs, a look of grim acceptance on his face, almost as though he had been expecting to find just such a nightmare waiting for them.

‘Do it now. They are drawn to the heat and motion.’

Kaeron nodded, and brought the vox-hailer to his lips. ‘This is the shipmaster. Cut main thrust immediately.’ He called out to the enthroned servitors. ‘Helm, set a final escape vector. Short correctional bursts only.’

The pair halted their burbled cant and spoke in eerie mechanical unison.

‘Compliance.’

The vibration of the engines through the deck fell away to almost nothing, and Kaeron silenced the alert klaxons. The Xenophon careened onwards, seeking any gap through which they might make their escape.

Seemingly in response, one of the constructs pulsated one last time before detonating like a gigantic fleshy mine in the void. The blast hurled out cartilaginous shrapnel and slathers of bio-acid in all directions, in a kilometre-wide burst of green flame that licked hungrily at their void shields and rocked the ship from side to side.

Hornindal stepped in behind the shipmaster’s throne. Even as the Xenophon dropped in a slow spiral through the encroaching swarm, he did not let his eyes fall from the grasping, heaving things that reached out towards them as they passed.

‘Shipmaster Kaeron, bring us clear. We must send word to Sotha.’

Kaeron turned to him. ‘Of course, Lord Reclusiarch. It is…’ He paused, appearing unsure whether to speak the words aloud. ‘It is the Great Devourer, is it not?’

Demetrios rankled at the mention of the name. Hornindal merely nodded.

‘Aye. The xenos have returned. Of this alone, I am certain.’

Goss started at the sudden chime of his vox-link, and he realised that he had been holding his breath for several long moments. He listened for a moment. ‘Master Kaeron, I have a report from the sergeant-at-arms. His team cannot gain entry to the Navigator’s chambers. Her killer has likely barricaded himself inside.’

Hornindal shook his head.

‘There is no killer. None but the Navigator herself.’

Another of the giant mines detonated off to their port side, taking out three more in a rapid chain of linked explosions, but the Xenophon had slipped beyond their reach.

‘My lord? Do you mean to say that the Navigator took her own life?’

Ignoring Kaeron’s query, Hornindal placed his immense hand on Goss’s shoulder.

‘Sub-lieutenant,’ he said, grimly. ‘Have the sergeant’s team secure the choir chambers. The astropaths will also be at risk.’

‘At risk from what?’ Kaeron demanded, rising from his seat.

‘See for yourself,’ growled Demetrios, gesturing to the frontal ports.

Cries of dismay and horror spread across the bridge. Goss envied those crewmen who laboured below decks, those who would be spared the sight.

As the Xenophon approached the edge of the vast, living minefield, the kilometre-long Hunter-class destroyer was cast into the shadow of a monster – a true terror of the deep, like the leviathans of legend. It clawed at the void fore and aft with great tentacular limbs many thousands of metres in length, spines running the length of its segmented body and trailing clouds of unwholesome vapour.

‘A hive ship,’ said Hornindal. ‘I had hoped never to see another in my lifetime.’

Lesser vessels clung remora-like around the beast’s great fanged maw, clearly visible even at such immense distance. As the Xenophon’s auspex pulled clear of the minefield, thousands of smaller sensor returns chimed across the board. The space around the hive ship was alive with xenos activity.

Kaeron sank back into the command throne. ‘The void…’ he murmured. ‘It crawls.’

Straightening, Hornindal looked to Demetrios.

‘Brother-Chaplain, call the squads to arms.’

Deep within the belly of the Xenophon, more than thirty Scythes of the Emperor had been billeted for the return journey to Sotha. The Chapter dormitories were sparse and functional, as befit the ethos of the Adeptus Astartes. Each warrior was assigned only a sleeping pallet and an arming post. Their empty suits of power armour would stand silent vigil over them on the rare occasion that they entered a full sleep-state, their weapons lying clean and freshly oiled beside them. The scent of incense and lapping powder hung in the air, though it failed to mask the heady aroma of transhuman hormones and acrid sweat that followed them no matter how often they bathed.

Where the human crew filled their own bunk spaces with personal effects and Imperial devotionals, the Space Marines knelt in silent prayer upon the bare floors. Where the Chapter serfs might seek distraction, recreation or sleep during the long hours of the night watch, their masters sparred relentlessly and ate only sparingly, like the ascetics and penitents of monastic tradition.

Many months ago, they had been dispatched across the sector to Egottha, where the bones of Segas, the Chapter’s first honoured Chaplain, had lain in state for centuries. Reclusiarch Hornindal had ignited their faith and led them down to the surface of the contested planet, only to receive word from Sotha of the general recall on the very eve of battle. Like a bolt pistol primed and ready to fire, the Scythes had been holstered once more without unleashing their righteous fury upon the foe.

So it was, that when Chaplain Demetrios summoned his warriors for combat, they were only too ready to respond.

Three full squads now stood assembled in the marshalling hall, in an interlocking sickle formation with armourer serfs scurrying between them. Thirty of the Chapter’s finest, their yellow-and-black battle-plate gleaming in the chamber’s flickering light; casting giant shadows upon the deck.

It was in the shadow of these giants that Milus Ogden felt that he had lived his whole life.

As the Xenophon’s sergeant-at-arms, he and his team had been summoned to the hall along with their Space Marine masters, though it had felt almost like a courtesy. An afterthought. As if they would not also be required to fight and to die, when the time came.

They had abandoned their efforts to break into the Navigator’s chambers, though he had left a pair of his men to watch over the quaking, bleating astropaths in the chantry. At Shipmaster Kaeron’s command, the psykers had attempted to establish communion with noble Sotha, but as they had opened their minds to the warp they began shrieking and wailing, prostrating themselves upon the deck and begging for deliverance from the insidious alien presence that overwhelmed their thoughts.

Even as Ogden stood in the shadow of the Chapter, so now did the shadow of the beast hang over them all. It had blinded them, and silenced their cries in the darkness. Most chillingly, it was possessed of an undying, insatiable hunger, the haggard chief astropath had assured him in no uncertain terms.

It meant to devour every last one of them.

The arched bulkhead doors at the head of the marshalling hall slid open on heavy motors, and Reclusiarch Hornindal entered with Demetrios and a handful of robed Reclusiam serfs. Though their faces were bare, the two Chaplains were decked out in their ebon plate, Hornindal also framed with a great ceremonial cloak of ochre velvet embroidered with the Chapter’s twin-scythe emblem. The thud of their armoured boots upon the deck rang throughout the chamber; every one of the assembled Space Marines stared ahead with impassive ruby helmet optics as they passed, though Ogden could feel the sense of expectation in the air.

Hornindal wasted no time on ceremony or introductions.

‘Brothers. We exited the warp just over twenty-seven minutes ago, approximately six and a half days short of our destination, somewhere between systems in the vicinity of Artaxis. It is my belief that in answering the Chapter’s recall we have encountered the vanguard of a new tyranid hive fleet within Ultima Segmentum, and that their malign psychic presence is responsible for the sudden death of our Navigator.’

Though the Scythes of the Emperor remained characteristically stoic, a few murmurs ran through Ogden’s security officers. He glared sidelong at them, a terse reminder that they stood under the gaze of their masters – Chaplain Demetrios in particular was known to have little patience for ill-disciplined serfs.

‘Though I no longer have any doubt that the xenos’ arrival is in some way linked to the recent troubles along the Eastern Fringe,’ the Reclusiarch continued, ‘this craven, scattered deployment of their forces does not fit with previous models of tyranid fleet activity. The alien is cunning. It learns from its defeats. It already knows that it could not conquer the glorious Imperium with a singular frontal assault, and so now it seeks an alternative.

‘The shipmaster and his officers assure me that no logical trajectory could bring this hive ship and the accompanying swarm so far into the subsector, either from Saphir or the Eastern Fringe regions, without encountering at least some Imperial resistance along the way. Therefore we must assume that the wretched xenos have divided their forces, seeking to harry us along many different fronts and spread their foul influence as widely as possible. They have spawned a vast spore-minefield to blockade the system. Their psychic shadow is growing.’

Ogden felt a curious mix of horror and anger at those words. Though the tyranid menace of Hive Fleet Behemoth was already long vanquished before even his great grandfather had entered the indentured service of the Scythes, whispered tales had spread from battlefronts throughout Ultima Segmentum and gone on to become the stuff of legend. As a child, his cruel siblings had terrified him with stories of the unseen, multi-limbed xenos creatures that they insisted lived in the tunnels beneath the hab-centre and would gladly feast upon the flesh of soldiers and little boys alike. On many a cold Sothan night, the young Milus had cowered beneath his blanket and started at every imagined noise in the darkness – a far cry from the stern officer who now wore the heraldry of the Chapter with pride.

There was something else, though. Perhaps a more primal fear.

It was akin to the revulsion he felt when even a harmless domestic arachnid would scuttle across the floor of his quarters – the irreconcilable hatred that humanity had nurtured for non-mammalian life since the dawn of time. If that arachnid could master interstellar travel and demand an empire of its own, where then might its predatory gaze fall? What ‘foul influence’ might it exert over the worlds of man?

Ogden steadied himself. He forced his attention back to the grim-faced Reclusiarch, who seemed to tower above even his Space Marine brethren as he spoke.

‘In issuing the general recall, Chapter Master Thorcyra likely summons us to defend the Chapter’s territories to the galactic east from the xenos incursion. However, his eye may have been diverted away from the far greater threat that we have uncovered, here and now – based upon our current position, Shipmaster Kaeron has calculated that our noble homeworld of Sotha already lies within the projected engagement zone.’

Only now did the assembled Space Marines visibly react, with stifled curses and cries of defiance as their tight ranks faltered.

‘Stoke your hatred, brothers!’ cried Demetrios, his gauntleted fist raised high. ‘Save it for the bastard Devourer!’

Many of the mortal serfs were far less restrained in their outcry, and Ogden found himself joining them. Among other less coherent threats that echoed in the chamber, he hefted his lascarbine above his head and vowed the death of the entire tyranid race.

It was unthinkable. Sotha could not fall.

The world was the ancestral home of the Chapter, true, but for many of those present – human and posthuman alike – it was also their birthplace, and for the rest it was at the very least the home of their blood-kin.

In spite of the uproar, Hornindal calmly took up his crozius arcanum from the robed armourer standing ready beside him. With a simple gesture, he ignited the weapon’s crackling power field and held it defiantly aloft, bringing the hall to silence once more. When he spoke again, Ogden noted the old, familiar flicker of restrained zeal in the Reclusiarch’s voice.

‘Brothers, praise be to Him-on-Terra – you and I are of the same mind. We will not allow the hated xenos to lay even a single claw upon our home world! Forewarned, the Scythes of the Emperor will repel any foe, and Chapter Master Thorcyra will lead us in driving the damnable hive fleets from the face of the galaxy forever!’

Cheers, and cries of ‘For Sotha! For the Emperor!’ erupted from the assembly. Chaplain Demetrios bared his teeth in something like a grin, and donned his skull-faced helm before approaching the squads to begin his battle ministrations; first Brother-Sergeant Certes, and then Edios, readily knelt before him to take their solemn oaths.

Turning to marshal his team, Ogden was surprised to see Hornindal approaching him directly. Though he still bore the active crozius, the Reclusiarch did not carry in his manner the same ever-present threat of violence as Demetrios.

‘This duty weighs heavily upon us all, serf-sergeant,’ he said. ‘Without a Navigator, we cannot risk any warp jump to relay our warning to Sotha ourselves. We must, therefore, move through the swarm and beyond the psychic shadow of the hive ship. We must re-establish astropathic communications as soon as possible.’

Ogden nodded. ‘Indeed, my lord… Though that may be just as dangerous as heading back into the xenos minefield…’

He waited for some kind of response, but Hornindal only stared impassively back at him.

‘Where would you have my men deployed, then?’

‘You should prepare for boarding actions.’

‘Board a tyranid vessel, my lord?’ Ogden asked, incredulous. ‘Is such a thing even possible?’

‘No. You misunderstand.’ The Reclusiarch watched absently as the third squad leader, Hekaton, took the knee before Demetrios. ‘If we are not vaporised by bio-plasma or torn apart in the vacuum, then the xenos will try to board us.’

Ogden considered this for a long moment. He could not decide which fate sounded worse.

Like a blade aimed at the heart of the swarm, the Xenophon soared onwards. Her weapons batteries fired until the barrels glowed hot, dashing smaller xenos vessels against the blackness with las-fire and bursts of ordnance; driving the hideous things back in waves.

To Goss’s eyes, they were not even ships in any sense of the word that he could justify. The way they skipped and swam put him in mind of shoals of aquatic hunters, twisting and pirouetting between the Xenophon’s streaking missiles, before wheeling around to strafe her shields with their return fire. They hounded the ship relentlessly, probing the limits of her defences even as they died upon them.

The gunnery officers could not hope to target the vessels with the same fire-patterns they would use to engage traditional craft. The damned things were too fast, too unpredictable; it was like using a boltgun to swat flies. Instead, Shipmaster Kaeron had ordered them to create a kill zone three hundred metres out beyond the ship’s prow – a wall of random fire and timed detonations that would defy whatever morphic intelligence guided the abominations, and either force them aside or tear them to pieces. It was now just a question of whether there was physically enough ordnance on board to see them through to the far side of the swarm. It was far more likely, Goss knew, that the guns would run dry long before that.

As if in confirmation, a warning symbol flashed on the oculus’s hololithic overlay and lent another insistent chiming to the myriad combat alarums that filled the bridge space.

‘The starboard missile racks are empty, sir. We’re down to the reserve magazines.’ He hesitated for a moment, before muttering under his breath. ‘She’s only a destroyer. She’s not built to repel this kind of sustained attack. We’re not going to make it through.’

Kaeron stood in front of his throne, staring up at the tactical display. He replied without shifting his gaze.

‘You don’t know the Xenophon, then. The old girl’s fast, and she’s still got teeth.’

As the hololith refreshed on its three-second combat cycle, flocks of fresh contacts entered the display at the boundaries of auspex range – hosts of new organisms spawned by the larger carriers, or maybe even by the gargantuan hive ship itself? With so many returns it was difficult to tell. Some seemed only to circle at a distance, never even committing to an attack run.

At the centre of the tableau hung the flashing scythe icon representing the beleaguered destroyer, a lone speck of green in an ever-growing ocean of red.

The shipmaster gritted his teeth. ‘Order the starboard crews to reload. I don’t want both racks down at the same time.’

‘Aye, sir.’

A succession of strafing impacts rang through the hull, and one of the foul vessel-creatures swooped in through the void shields to buzz the forecastle before disappearing overhead. Reflexively, several of the bridge crew ducked, but in the instant that it passed the frontal viewports Goss saw a flash of twisted chitin, fused carapace and ice-rimed, horned flesh.

Throne, the horrid thing had even had little leathery fins…

Though the swarm engulfed them, beyond it all lay the lolling bulk of the hive ship; a grossly distended, living horizon. Its great tentacle arms moved languidly in comparison to the rest of the fleet, highlighting the unimaginable difference in scale between them as the Xenophon sped closer. Like some bloated, coddled kraken, the hive ship seemed to watch the unfolding battle with a casual disinterest, the way a fattened Radnarian courtesan might regard a scurrying colony of ants.

Choking back his disgust, Goss reviewed the course that he and his fellow officers had plotted to bring them out of the thing’s shadow. By pulling in close to the gravity well of the planetoid Sigma-Tumbus IV – which was now almost completely eclipsed in their view by the hive ship – they aimed to accelerate beyond the capabilities of the smaller, organic vessels and race for the deep-range shipping lanes beyond. There, Kaeron had reasoned, the astropaths would be free of the alien horror that clouded their minds and could send word to another ship.

Assuming that any ship would hear them.

A renewed proximity alarm sounded, and the Master of Signal called out from his console. ‘Large xenos craft, on direct intercept!’

Coming about from beneath them, a huge, bladed monstrosity turned with surprising agility to bear down into the Xenophon’s kill zone. Seeming to manoeuvre using the largest of its curved appendages, the vessel opened its blunted bow to the void in a silent roar, revealing a fleshy gullet lined with thousands of razored spines. Goss’s stomach lurched as he realised that the thing could likely swallow the ship’s prow and the main batteries along with it.

Kaeron turned and threw himself into the command throne. ‘Finally, something we can target.’ He brought the vox-hailer to his lips with obvious relish. ‘Helm, maintain ahead full. Weapons, make ready for torpedo launch, on my mark.’

Adrenaline surged in Goss’s veins. The razored fiend grew ever larger in the oculus view, scattering the smaller vessels as it came, and the Xenophon was racing to meet it head-on.

‘Enemy vessel at three-fifty metres,’ he said, managing to keep his voice steady.

As the huge creature broke through the edge of the kill zone, las-fire stitching its flanks with deep burns and blasting chunks from the ridged carapace, Kaeron slammed his fist down and shrieked into the vox.

‘Fire! All tubes, fire now!’

The ship lurched as four mighty torpedoes burst from her prow and raced towards the target, though they barely altered her forward velocity.

A seemingly prescient smaller tyranid vessel dived in front of the first projectile, sacrificing itself to save its larger cousin in a burst of ruined flesh and bony shrapnel, but the second, third and fourth found their mark easily. Huge warheads, designed to bring down renegade capital ships, detonated in the monster’s gullet, blasting the foul thing apart in a flaring bloom of catastrophic, organic ruin. Slathers of flesh and ropes of bloody fluid dozens of metres in length crackled through the Xenophon’s void shields and splattered over her pockmarked hull, to the cheers of the bridge crew.

Kaeron turned to Goss, the thrill of battle written all over his face. ‘She’s got a taste for their blood now, eh?’ he yelled over the furore.

Goss barely heard him, his eyes wide in horror.

One of the dead creature’s wing-like blades, easily two hundred metres long on its own, had spun loose from the bio-wreckage and whirled towards them.

He had meant to call out to the helm for ‘evasive manoeuvres’, but before he could even utter the words the thundering jolt of the impact threw him from his feet. The bone spur sheared through the turrets at the Xenophon’s prow, and cleaved a great gash in the hull-skin down her port flank, before skipping up on the crenellated ridge at her crown and spiralling off into the darkness. Secondary explosions tore through the batteries as their magazines ignited, and warning klaxons howled with renewed vigour throughout the ship.

Ogden was sprinting the length of the ventral transit corridor when the shockwave hit. He felt a ripple of jarred air pressure on his bare face, and just a millisecond later the floor was yanked away from his feet.

He and one of his men – now wearing ship’s issue flak vests and their yellow-striped helmets – had been managing to keep pace with one of the armoured battle-brothers from Sergeant Hekaton’s squad as he ran another pair of boarding shields back from the armoury.

All thought of their task vanished as the deck lurched and the two men were catapulted into the ceiling. Ogden’s head skimmed past a ribbed support beam, but poor old Tyek wasn’t so fortunate – he struck it awkwardly, and the force of the collision snapped his neck and sent him sprawling.

In that same instant, Ogden was wrenched from the air by a rough, vice-like grip around his shoulder; the Space Marine caught him mid-flight and hauled him back down onto the rumbling deck before he could injure himself. Officer Tyek’s body crashed down on top of them both.

The hulking warrior crouched over Ogden for a long moment, shielding his comparatively frail mortal form with his own armoured bulk. His pauldron bore the name Mascios.

‘Are you damaged, honoured serf-sergeant?’ he asked bluntly, the words filtered and distorted by his helmet’s vox-emitters.

Winded, and with his heartbeat hammering loud in his ears, Ogden tried to shake his head. The thunder and crash of distant explosions, somewhere topside, reverberated through the walls and deck plates. Decompression alarms were already sounding.

He felt his ears pop. On board a ship in the deep void, that was a bad sign.

From further up the ventral space – possibly one or two levels above – there came another impact on the Xenophon’s outer hull, but it was the grinding shriek of torn metal that followed it which seized their attention: a localised hull breach, without any doubt.

Where, then, was the roar of venting atmosphere?

Mascios rose, his internal vox clicking audibly as he opened a channel, and Ogden realised that he had lost his own vox-bead in the fall. Finally finding his breath, he weakly pushed Tyek’s body aside and raised his hand, pleading for a moment to recover, but Mascios was already retrieving the two boarding shields.

‘No time,’ he said. ‘We’ve been hit. This entire section is–’

A crash of debris from further down the corridor silenced him, and he whipped around with his boltgun drawn. Ogden was beside him in a splintering second.

A bestial, guttural roar echoed in the gloom, followed by the dull creak of twisted plasteel as something huge and organic heaved its way into the ship.

Smoke filled the bridge, and a burst of sparks fell from somewhere in its vaulted reaches. The helm servitors babbled incoherently to one another.

Rising shakily from the floor, Goss became aware of blood soaking the front of his uniform tunic; he had broken his nose on the deck plates as he fell. He pawed at the fabric in a daze. The rest of the bridge crew, including Shipmaster Kaeron, were moving and talking far too quickly for him to follow. He heard screams and cries for aid over the vox as the forward compartments burned.

His gaze settled on the stuttering tactical display, and he saw that the smaller craft that had been circling the Xenophon were no longer hanging back.

They were moving in, at ramming speeds.

He shook his head, trying to clear his senses. Kaeron was shouting his name.

Off to port, he spotted a handful of them. They were barbed and elongated; fleshy, winged harpoons, each the size of a Thunderhawk. Larger, maybe. They swam through the vacuum like coral rays, rippling their fanned membranes against the nothingness and propelling themselves at frightening velocities.

Goss fumbled with his console, imploring the remaining gunnery officers to bring them down. Warning symbols flashed all across the hololith.

Hull breach. Hull breach. Decompression. Hull breach.

The closest harpoon-vessel entered a killing dive, folding its wings behind it and rocketing down hard towards the destroyer’s unguarded aft sections. It disappeared from view just as another twirled down into the forecastle and stuck fast, in plain sight of the frontal port – it was like a feathered dart piercing the hide of a lumbering grox, standing proud from the hull and swaying from side to side in the vacuum.

Tech-adepts and their crews were already moving to seal the damaged compartments or to effect what repairs they could. Where the fires still burned, it would perhaps be simpler to lock off the bulkheads and vent the residual atmosphere into the void…

A single voice cut through the chaos of the vox. It was Reclusiarch Hornindal.

‘Security teams to the engineering decks – we are breached. Scythes, to me. Let us show these xenos which of us is the dominant species.’

Coughing in the lingering smoke of some unseen electrical fire, Kaeron appeared at Goss’s side, his left arm clutched limply across his chest.

‘Deck officer!’

Wiping blood on the back of his sleeve, Goss frowned. ‘Sir?’

‘Our course, man,’ Kaeron growled. ‘Can we still reach the gravity well?’

‘With these… things piercing our hull? It’s possible…’ He ran a hand over the console. ‘We’re restoring atmospheric pressure, at least.’

The shipmaster nodded. ‘All power to the engines. Forget the fight. Proceed with our primary objective – we drop our shields and run.’

Following in the footsteps of the armoured battle-brothers, Ogden’s security officers filed quickly down through the access passage to the aft engineering bays. The stench of smoke and hot bile assaulted their nostrils. A strangled scream echoed down from the upper gantries before being ominously cut short.

Ogden checked and rechecked his weapon’s charge.

In the stuttering light from the lumen strips down here, just above the Xenophon’s bilges, it was all too easy to imagine alien horrors lurking at every gloomy intersection they passed.

The five Space Marines – Brother Mascios and the rest of his combat squad – had taken point as soon as the team had entered the narrow passage; Sergeant Hekaton had taken the rest of his men back to the upper levels, where a fourth tyranid vessel had breached the hull-skin. Though the Scythes, equipped with their hefty boarding shields, sought to place themselves between their loyal serfs and whatever alien threat lay in wait, they would only be able to go so far to protect them. Frantic reports from the other teams spoke of entire crew compartments that had either been flooded with xenos toxins or opened up to the vacuum.

Chaplain Demetrios was leading Squad Certes in a desperate counter-offensive on the observation deck, now overrun by chittering, bladed creatures whose inhuman cries could clearly be heard over the combat channels. Edios had fallen, defending tech-crews in the devastated forward sections, though three of his warriors had survived long enough to drag their dying brethren from the inferno.

On the verge of escape through the Sigma-Tumbus gravity well, the Xenophon was being torn apart from the inside. Now Ogden led his combined team in what would be the final attempt to repel the invaders.

Fourteen of them, standing together as one in the face of an unknowable, alien foe.

‘For Sotha,’ he quietly reminded himself.

A staccato burst of gunfire lit up the junction ahead, and the Space Marines heaved their shields into a defensive phoulkon formation. Ogden brought his lascarbine up reflexively and motioned for his men to hold position.

The heavy thrashing of a large body shook the walls of the passage, followed by a low growl that rapidly turned into a gagging, fluid eruption.

Two crew-serfs in tattered overalls were hurled out into the main passageway by a great gout of bio-acid which scored deep burns into the metal wall. They tumbled to the deck, screaming and clawing at their eyes and mouths even as their flesh came away in sticky handfuls, convulsing their last moments away with rapidly wasting muscles.

Curses and cries of horror among the team were muted as the foul stench washed over them. It smelled like vomit and rotten, burned meat.

Advancing quickly, two of the Scythes turned the corner to block the open junction with their shields while another hurried three of Ogden’s men over to the other side. They picked their way through the growing pool of acidic spoil, hardly daring to steal a glance into the engineering bay as they passed.

Now flanking either side of the tunnel, the two shieldbearers pulled back and hunkered in close to the plasteel uprights as more agitated, titanic thrashing heralded another gout of bio-acid. This time it sluiced over the left-hand wall and corroded the metal plating, and the passageway began to fill with acrid, choking steam.

A series of vox-clicks between the giants betrayed the fact that they were again communicating with one another over closed channels. Frustrated, Ogden used the Chapter’s non-verbal battle language to demand an appraisal from them, his bare hand casting the gesture twice for emphasis.

Brother Mascios stole another glance into the bay, before signing out to the rest of the team.

Single large target. Twenty-five metres, straight ahead.

He leaned towards Ogden, with a gesture of almost paternal concern.

Immobile. Extreme hazard.

Ogden nodded, and divided his men into three fire-groups – one to each flank and one to cover the centre. The Space Marines edged into the groups without instruction, moving instinctively into the perfect tactical deployment.

Frag grenades were suddenly passing between their gauntleted hands. It was to be a frontal assault, then.

At Ogden’s command, the three groups burst from the tunnel by sections, emerging through the shattered remains of the bay’s main hatchway. The fire-groups clustered behind the shieldbearers, keeping their heads down and advancing quickly as the first grenades detonated in the enclosed compartment.

In spite of what they had already heard from the Xenophon’s other security teams and the Space Marine squads engaged throughout the ship, Ogden was still not prepared for the sight that greeted him in that chamber. His pace faltered as his mind tried to process it.

The outer wall, triple-skinned away from the hull with reinforced plasteel and adamantium alloys, had burst inwards where the tyranid ram-vessel had breached the Xenophon, spearing through the inner bulkheads as though they were made from nothing more than wax. Around the breach, amidst the twisted iron debris and jutting rebar, the deck plates were scorched and buckled by the mass of the alien vessel’s living proboscis as it had forced its way in.

And there it lay. A thrashing, mewling thing, easily the size of a great Sothan phantine; recoiling from the frag blasts and bolter fire that peppered its fleshier parts with stinging shrapnel as they began their assault.

Though the majority of its hide was horned and armoured in thick chitin, it had blossomed open to feed upon the soft bodies of the ship’s crew – half-digested human remains and smears of bloody juices fizzed and hissed on the deck before it. Ogden knew that those Chapter serfs who laboured down in the engineering decks under the watchful eye of the tech-adepts would have little access to small arms, and certainly no projectile weapons powerful enough to prevail against a monster such as this. When the main bulkhead portals between sections had sealed in response to the hull breach, they would have been trapped down here with it.

The thing heaved up and roared, its tusked mouthparts snapping wide and lashing at the nearest fire-group as they drew around to the right. It plucked one of them from his feet, to the horror of his comrades, and the man disappeared into the gaping maw with a single ragged scream.

In a panic, the two remaining security officers bolted for the cover of an upended machine cart, their shots flashing harmlessly off the thing’s horned crest as they ran. Their Space Marine shieldbearer bellowed at them to hold position, and in that moment of inattention the beast struck; it splintered the ceramite of his boarding shield and cleaved deep into his armoured torso. The warrior was flung to the deck, choking blood inside his helmet and clutching at his spilled innards.

Horrified, Ogden saw bloated, venous sacs behind the first crest of the proboscis swelling as they filled with liquid. It was preparing to vomit up another gout of digestive acids.

But Mascios had already seen the danger. The armoured giant crossed the wreckage-strewn bay in the space of two heartbeats, avoiding the whipcord feeder tendrils that writhed at the thing’s flanks, and leapt in with his combat blade drawn. With a wordless battle-cry he stabbed down into the lowermost sac again and again, spilling gallons of steaming fluid over his armour and onto the deck, robbing the beast of the fuel for its attack.

The horrid mouth clammed shut, the whole proboscis shaking from side to side in an agonised frenzy, batting the Space Marine away with its sheer bulk.

But it was enough. Between the three groups, they poured bolter and las-fire into the gaps between its segmented chitin plates and stitched the weaker membranous flesh with shots every time it opened its mouthparts to roar. Mascios himself ended it, stuffing a clutch of grenades into the torn flesh behind the armoured crest before diving clear.

The muffled blast almost severed the proboscis entirely. It showered the walls and ceiling with bloody alien filth and sent the slack, ruined mouth crashing to the deck.

They cheered. Between them all, they had brought the mighty beast low.

Brother Mascios rose, his battle-plate pitted and scored where the powerful acid had worked upon it. The bare metal and ceramite rendered him as a ghost, a pale reflection of his glorious Chapter colours and with wisps of steam rising from the more delicate joint seals. He released the catches on his helmet and pulled it off to reveal reddened, sore features and bloodshot eyes.

Another of the Scythes stood tall and honoured him with the old Sothan salute – right fist closed over the primary heart, then swept out before him. The salute of the reaper, the inevitable victor. Mascios returned the gesture with a thin smile, though he appeared pained by his exertions and the loss of his fallen battle-brother.

Behind him, Ogden saw the flesh of the tyranid vessel twitch. Just once – most likely the post-mortem constrictions of its alien physiology.

Then a second time.

And again.

He tried to speak, to yell out a warning, but no sound left his lips.

The dead flesh was writhing. Churning.

The xenos erupted from the body of their vessel like maggots from a sun-warmed carcass. Ogden froze at the sight. Brother Mascios turned, and in that moment they were upon him. Many-limbed horrors of teeth, claws and glittering, savage eyes, they rose up from Ogden’s childhood nightmares and spilled into reality – so grotesque, so inhuman, and yet… so familiar. They moved and killed with a hunched, insectoid gait, and Mascios’s hot blood splattered across the serf-sergeant’s face.

Gunfire erupted, along with cries of terror and alarm as dozens more of the creatures swarmed into the chamber.

Ogden sank to his knees on the deck, his lascarbine clattering from numbed fingers. He simply could not will himself to rise against them; some primitive, animal part of his brain would not allow it. He was utterly entranced as they lunged and shrieked and tore into his comrades and masters.

It was almost a blessed relief when their scything xenos talons pierced his own flesh and carved him to pieces. Yet in that final moment, he nonetheless felt a strange, cold reassurance that he had done his part.

Hornindal was lost once more in the holy fury of combat.

Without conscious thought he struck left, the powered discharge of his crozius shattering a leaping tyranid’s skull into sticky fragments. He raised his bolt pistol to the right and put two rounds into the central mass of another, before whirling on his heel to strike at a third.

Suffer not the alien to live.

Those words might well have been one of the principal tenets of his faith – nay, the word of the almighty Emperor of Mankind himself! – such was the fervour with which Hornindal now fought.

It seemed, though, that this was to be his end. No glorious death alongside his Chapter brothers on the field of war, no last stand worthy of a small monument in the Reclusiam for his successors to revere. Not that he had pursued such things; he had lived modestly, as a Scythes of the Emperor should, always ready to defend humanity and willing to give his life for that noble cause.

He had made peace with it, as he always did, before he had even drawn his weapons and taken his battle-oaths. But he was going to die here, unknown and unremembered, and for that he would make the xenos pay a hefty price in blood. Another wave of the vile creatures – during the Tyrannic War, they had called them ‘gaunts’ – spilled from the ruptured bulkhead portals at the far end of the corridor. He loosed five shots from his pistol with a steady hand, and five more fell dead.

‘Hold, abominations!’ he cried out through his helmet’s enhanced vox-projectors. ‘You will not cross this threshold. Not while I still draw breath, nor after.’

Even without the gruff burr of the dying klaxons that were sounding in every chamber and compartment throughout the ship, he doubted that the things could have heard or understood him.

The Reclusiarch fought with his back to the sealed portal that led to the astropaths’ chambers. He had made the tech-crews weld it shut, before casting off his cloak to await the skittering, living tide.

Beyond all else, the chantry could not be overrun.

They had to send the warning.

He had left a single armed security officer in with them, to ensure that they did not turn upon one another in some alien madness – a stern man who looked like he would do his duty without remorse. The psykers had gone on howling in terror even as the bulkhead had been sealed. ‘Walled in’, they had called it. Walled in with their shadowy nightmares.

His bolt pistol ran dry. He calmly reloaded it, taking the last clip from his belt, and watching the gaunts scramble over the mounds of their dead that clogged the corridor before he opened fire once more.

When he felt the Xenophon’s engines gutter and die for the last time through the deck beneath his feet, Hornindal gritted his teeth and let out a long, slow breath. He turned to the cowering serf, who fired sporadic and wildly inaccurate laspistol shots from his hiding place in the open wall panel beside the sealed portal.

‘Sub-lieutenant Goss, contact the shipmaster.’

When the ship-wide vox channels had gone down, Kaeron had sent the young officer with a portable wired unit to stand by the Reclusiarch until the very end. To ensure that the lines of communication were not broken, no matter what happened.

The terrified serf patched the link through to Hornindal’s internal vox, gripping the channel monitor close to his ear but unable to tear his eyes away from the encroaching xenos creatures.

‘Shipmaster Kaeron,’ Hornindal said, with a degree of finality in his voice.

There was a burst of static, and it was some moments before any response came.

‘Lord Reclusiarch. We have lost the main engines. The aft decks have fallen.’

Hornindal fired another shot, decapitating a tyranid as it crested the mound.

‘Have we reached the planetoid?’ he asked. ‘Can you complete the escape manoeuvre using auxiliary thrusters?’

There was a long pause. Goss stared up at the Space Marine, a plaintive look on his face. The pandemonium of the bridge was still audible before Kaeron replied.

‘No, my lord. We have entered the Sigma-Tumbus gravity well, but we were already off course and underpowered. We won’t be able to pull away on the far side of the elliptic. Our orbit has begun to decay.’

Hornindal sagged. ‘That’s it, then,’ he said without emotion. ‘It’s over. Launch the beacon.’

‘Of course, Lord Reclusiarch. Will you record a message?’

‘I will.’

Goss screamed in frustration, and snapped off a flurry of shots with his pistol.

‘I should have known, my lord!’ he cried. ‘Tumbus. It means tomb…’

Ignoring the serf’s hysteria, Hornindal checked his own magazine. He could feel a deep rumble building in the walls around them; not the rhythmic hum of the Xenophon’s systems, but the inexorable pull of conflicting gravities and the rush of atmosphere over her hull.

Sixty-five seconds to impact.

‘This is Brother-Chaplain Hornindal, Reclusiarch of the Scythes of the Emperor, Adeptus Astartes. Chapter vessel Xenophon has encountered a tyranid vanguard fleet deep in the Artaxian subsector. The local Mandeville point is mined. Do not attempt to recover this beacon, I repeat: do not attempt to recover this beacon. Advise our home world of Sotha it lies in the path of the xenos invaders. Look to our–’

A screeching burst of static cut the channel, followed only a moment later by a reverberating explosion that rocked the ship. The remaining lumen strips went dark.

‘Kaeron! Confirm beacon launch!’ he bellowed. This time there was no response.

Like rats, the gaunts scattered, disappearing into the gloom.

Thirty-two seconds.

The frantic Goss cried out in alarm as the corridor began to tilt down towards them, and even Hornindal stumbled as the mounds of xenos corpses shifted. The two of them would be buried alive, crushed against the bulkhead by the weight of their kills in the enclosed space.

Another blast tore up from the decks below and sheared metal panels from the corridor’s ceiling, hurling the Reclusiarch bodily into the sealed portal. Debris and foul alien carcasses tumbled down onto the two of them as the Xenophon’s angle of descent increased.

Sotha. Oh, noble Sotha… heed our warning.

Hornindal recalled the horrors he had seen unleashed upon conquered worlds during the Tyrannic War. Seas drained, populations consumed. The horizon blighted by vast xenos towers that pierced the heavens.

He imagined this doom for his home world, and he wept.

Seventeen seconds. Sixteen.

The mighty warrior swatted aside the corpses that slipped and skidded down the slope of the ruined corridor, gripping young Goss by his uniform tunic and dragging him up from the crush.

Protect them always. And when you cannot, simply aid their passing.

The far reaches of the corridor buckled with a deafening groan of tortured metal – the Xenophon’s back was broken. It would not be long now. Deck plates popped free in an undulating wave away from the dorsal ridge, firing rivets and corroded debris into the darkness.

The whole ship lurched as something broke away from the outer hull, and roaring flames swept the length of the corridor; they were ablaze with the heat of atmospheric re-entry.

Hornindal clutched Goss tightly against his broad, armoured chest. The bloodied young officer screamed into the white noise of the inferno, his epaulettes and wrinkled collar smouldering in the heat, his bare face blistering.

Hornindal closed his eyes. He imagined the planet’s surface racing up to meet them as they burned. Something in the ship’s superstructure cracked beneath him.

Holy Emperor, I have failed you. I have failed them all.

He braced both feet against the bulkhead.

Four. Three. Two.

About the Author

L J Goulding has written many stories for Black Library, including ‘The Lords of Borsis’, ‘Kaldor Draigo: Knight of Titan’, ‘Shield of Baal: The Word of the Silent King’ and the Space Marine Battles audio drama Mortarion’s Heart for Warhammer 40,000, and ‘The Oberwald Ripper’ and ‘The Great Maw’ for Warhammer. He lives and works in Nottingham, UK.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Hammer and Bolter Issue 21 (2012).
This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

The Shadow of the Beast © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. The Shadow of the Beast, 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.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-297-4

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.