Predator, Prey Read online

  Helped up onto the pontoon by one of the Lord Governor’s spire guardians, Allegra looked up, searching for Chief Gohlandr. Greenskins were clambering up the rusted metal drums and flotation tanks, only to meet the barrels of assault lasrifles pointing down at them. A number broke through and charged wildly about the corrugated habs, multi-shacks and hovels, but were blasted off-board by the two remaining enforcers. The pontoon shanty was floating away from the hive, but not nearly fast enough. The blood-splattered landing craft now belonged to the orks, and the cutter was sinking. The monstrous greenskin that had done for the vessel was aflame; there was fire on the water, with the inferno cannon’s ruptured tanks bleeding promethium across the surface of the sea. With the craft conquered, the beast disappeared below the flickering waves, dousing its flame-tangled form.

  The Thunderbolts were banking for another run and orks were leaping from the blasted city-shell. Flailing green bodies tumbled the lethal distance to the roofs and rockcrete below. Some creatures made it, however, latching on to drifting gunships and carriers with claws and brute prosthetics, before smashing though into the cockpits and bringing the aircraft down. Worst of all, the hive was drowning in alien filth. Like a rampant mould growing up the city walls, greenskins were swarming the shell, rabid and unstoppable. The pontoon shanty would share a similar fate.

  A beast erupted from the water like a carnivorous fish, its jaws snapping. Pulling hard on the trigger, Allegra unloaded the rest of her power pack into the thing’s face. Another had torn through the rickety walkway and was cannoning towards her. Las-bolts from nearby guardsman plucked at the monster, but did little to stop it. The patchwork floor bounced with its footsteps. Dropping the empty pistol and grabbing the wobbly support, Allegra leapt the rail, allowing the creature to thunder past.

  Just as she was about to climb back, a meaty claw grabbed her by the leg. An ork had her. She could feel the feral fury in its grip, its filthy fist enclosing the whole of her booted calf. It hauled itself up to meet her, its tusk-thronged maw mumbling some alien insanity. Allegra snatched for the only weapon she had left: her officer’s hanger. It was a polite weapon, nothing like the brute blades she used in her former life. Its single monomolecular edge was serviceable, however, and cleared its stubby scabbard with oiled ease. The blade slashed though the greenskin’s exposed throat, giving even the mindless monster pause. It released her and with the sole of her boot against its cavernous chest she pushed it back into the water with a grunt.

  As she climbed up onto the pontoon shanty, the commander felt the structure lurch. A rock or capsule had plunged into the water nearby, rocking the section and knocking several terrified inhabitants into the water. It wasn’t stopping the greenskins, however, who were surfacing from sinking pods and descent craft and climbing up the nearest structures they could find.

  ‘Lux!’ she heard as she wiped and resheathed her bloody hanger. It was Gohlandr. The chief was on a bent and rusty balcony above, tangled in washing lines and rags. Gunner DuDeq was with him, and the Lord Governor’s skeletal arm was draped across the vox-officer’s shoulder. Gohlandr dropped DuDeq’s assault rifle down to Allegra and she caught it in both hands. She called up to him.

  ‘Get Borghesi higher,’ she ordered.

  ‘What about you?’ the chief roared back over the chaos.

  ‘I’m coming,’ she told him. Checking the lasrifle’s depleted power pack and priming it to fire on full automatic, Allegra shouldered the weapon and began a messy climb of the shanty structure.

  Two floors up, and the profusion of purchase offered by the ramshackle hab-shacks and walkways allowed the commander to make good progress. Occasionally, she hooked her flak armour on protruding struts or exposed rivets of the structure. In the background she could still hear the bark of enforcer shotguns and the staccato drum of las-bolts above. Greenskins, frothing at the maw, had made equally economic climbs and were savaging the dwindling party of guardsmen and survivors making their way up through the shanty. Risking a glance below, Allegra saw that the pontoon levels were completely overrun. Like Hive Tyche, the shanty had succumbed to the greenskin swarms.

  The structure suddenly staggered, knocking Allegra from her precarious purchase. This wasn’t the shockwave from a plunging rock or pod: something had hit the shanty. Her arm slipped out of her rifle strap. She snatched for the stock, and dangled from the lasgun’s pistol grip by one hand. The strap had been caught on a rusted nail. As the shanty rocked, Allegra bounced off the corrugated wall of a shack.

  A greenskin – black, scarred and charred – had surfaced like a behemoth and punched through the pontoon hull of the shanty. As water cascaded from its gargantuan body, the beast swept derelict shacks and habs aside with one furious arm, knocking mobs of its own xenos kin back into the shallows. One monster had the rabid audacity to roar its frustration, and the larger beast snatched it up in one titanic claw and snapped its carping head clean off its shoulders.

  Reaching up for the rifle with her other hand, Allegra found her way back to hand- and boot-holds on the shanty wall. Slipping the blessed rifle back over her shoulder, the commander climbed for her life, with the greenskin starting its own shanty-listing ascent behind her.

  The chief had reached the topmost hovels. In imitation of the hive cities they emulated, the highest habshacks boasted the most room and even welded terrace-overhangs. They were like palaces compared to the corrugated coffins below. Gohlandr and the remaining Marineers were sending a storm of light down at the monstrous creature. Climbing up onto a creaking walkway, Allegra took her assault rifle and buried the stock in one shoulder. She could not allow the greenskin to reach the upper levels. It had not yet noticed her, the colossal ork’s attention remaining firmly on its infuriated ascent and the stabbing burn of las-beams into its already roasted flesh.

  Leaning into the rifle, the commander started to hammer the green, uncooked flesh of the beast’s exposed belly. The searing wound eventually got the monster’s attention and it brought the full ugliness of its scorch-smeared face and blackened tusks down to the walkway.

  ‘That’s right,’ Allegra spat, sending a fresh volley of fire into the beast’s melted maw. ‘On me, you bastard. On me!’

  The giant greenskin took the bait and roared a foetid gale of flesh-breath at the commander. One huge fist smashed through the walkway. Allegra felt the wire mesh beneath her boots disappear, and instinctively turned and clawed for the collapsing walkway. Her fingers found grating and she clung on, allowing her rifle to drop with the debris. The beast had not only knocked out the walkway; its fist had ripped away the entire corner section of the shanty-level. Crawling up to where the walkway was barely hanging onto the collage-walls, Allegra saw that the destruction had revealed the structure’s innards. A little slum-girl sat in the corner of her hovel, her eyes wide and white against the dirty mask of her terrified face. Allegra stared from the girl to the greenskin. The monster waded inwards through the dilapidated wreckage, forcing its mangled face through the jury-rigged architecture.

  ‘Here,’ Allegra soothed, opening her arms to the small, stricken child. The girl didn’t move. The greenskin monstrosity was a nightmare spectacle that demanded her full attention.

  ‘Now!’ the commander roared. There wasn’t time for assuaging comforts. The creature closed. The child ran – straight into Allegra’s arms.

  ‘Hold on,’ she told the child, as the slum-girl wrapped her arms around Allegra’s neck and clung to her back. Allegra stepped up onto the walkway rail and began climbing for the shanty-stack. A monstrous growl built up within the great greenskin and echoed about the dereliction before the beast withdrew itself from the ruined structure.

  Allegra felt the rumble of the monster’s movements on the other side of the accretion. She climbed for all she was worth, with the child hanging from her back.

  ‘Chief?’ she called up at the terrace. But he was nowhere to be seen. ‘Anybod
y?’ The gunfire had stopped also. Allegra began to imagine the worst. Gohlandr and the rescue party dead. Greenskins waiting for her at the end of an exhausting climb.

  The monster ork was suddenly there beside her. Both commander and child were suddenly enveloped in the thing’s bestial roar of triumph as it clawed its way around the corner of the shanty.

  ‘Lyle!’ Allegra screamed, but there wasn’t anyone above her. The beast reached out for her.

  The shanty-stack shook with sudden violence. The gargantuan greenskin was lost in a raging fireball. As the flame evaporated and the black cloud cleared, Allegra saw the waspish outline of a Maritine Guard gunship drift clear. Its nosecone flashed with the revolving barrels of its gatling cannon. The greenskin monster, its back flayed of flesh from the gunship’s rocket attack and drowning in fresh flames, retreated back around the corner, away from the punishing cannon fire.

  Stunned by the explosion and with her ears still aching from the blast, Allegra scrambled up the last few levels of the shanty accretion. A few agonising moments from the top she found Gohlandr and Gunner DuDeq. They were saying something, but she couldn’t make it out. As they hauled her and the child up onto the scrap-metal terrace, she saw Capricorn-Six hovering just above and Undine Maritine Guard helping the Lord Governor and what remained of his inbred family aboard. DuDeq went to take the child but the girl wouldn’t let go, instead crawling around to the commander’s flak-armoured front.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said as Gohlandr helped her towards the Valkyrie carrier. Only a few of her men remained – grim-faced but glad to see their commander. One of Szekes’ enforcers had made it also, surrounded by a cluster of terrified slummers and urchins Gohlandr had picked up on their ascent through the shanty-stack.

  An officer jogged down the ramp and saluted Allegra. He introduced himself.

  ‘Lieutenant Kale.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lieutenant Kale,’ the officer repeated. ‘I have orders to take you and the Lord Governor to the general.’

  Allegra nodded and went to step on board.

  ‘I’m not cleared for unauthorised civilians,’ the lieutenant said, indicating the child in the commander’s arms and the shanty folk staring up at them, waiting to be slaughtered by climbing greenskins.

  Allegra went to reply but a voice from behind beat her to it.

  ‘Let the hivers aboard.’

  As Lieutenant Kale turned, Allegra saw Lord Governor Borghesi, strapped into a stretcher. ‘That’s an order, lieutenant.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Kale replied, ordering his Marineers to admit the wretches.

  Lux Allegra collapsed against the troop bay wall with the little girl still in her arms. She felt Capricorn-Six ascend, leaving the pontoon shanty to the rabid swarms of greenskins, and carry them high up into the Undinian skies. She felt the assault carrier bank from side to side as it negotiated the ork capsules and rocks raining from the heavens. Chief Gohlandr allowed his flak-armoured back to slide down the bay wall opposite. He watched Allegra with the slummer girl and found his way to a grizzled smile.

  Allegra smiled back. She enjoyed the moment of calm. The feeling of safety. The last few days had been a nightmarish hell. She’d found Borghesi as she had been ordered and got him out of the hive. As the odds had grown against them and as the alien apocalypse engulfed Undine, Allegra came to realise that she had not fought her way through the city, negotiated the flooded underhive and fled the burning shore because of orders. She had fought to survive – just like she had always done. Somewhere along the way, she came to realise that it was no longer her survival that mattered. It wasn’t even the survival of the child in her arms, freshly plucked from calamity.

  It was the child growing in her belly. Lyle Gohlandr’s child. The pair stared at each other across the beautiful silence of the troop bay.

  ‘Commander,’ DuDeq said. The silence shattered. Allegra watched the chief’s smile widen. The gunner was standing at the narrow observation port in the bay wall. Heaving the slummer girl’s head up onto one shoulder and getting to her feet, she joined DuDeq by the port. Gohlandr moved up too.

  Capricorn-Six was flying high above the chromatic sheen of Undine’s chemical seas, flanked by two gunships. Below, the commander and the two guardsmen could see a fleet of ocean-going vessels. There were fat troop carriers and medical freighters, escorted by sliver-hulled monitors and heavily-armed corvettes. Multi-hulled launch carriers bearing arc-platforms of Avenger Strike Fighters dominated the armada, trailing squat bomb vessels and torpedo boats in formation, while gunships and carriers ferried surviving personnel and materiel back to sleek gunboats and pocket frigates.

  Lux Allegra slowly shook her head. Ordinarily such a gathering of local defence force and Undine Maritine vessels would have been an impressive sight. Allegra thought on the trap-jaw moon glowering down on them and the vanguard hordes of greenskin monsters they had faced at Hive Tyche. She thought on the alien swarm raining down on the ocean world and the billions she suspected were to come.

  ‘It’s not enough…’ Lux Allegra murmured, the ghost of the smile fading from her lips. ‘It’s not nearly enough.’

  FOUR

  Incus Maximal – Hyboriax Cryoforge

  Incus. Malleus. The hammer and the anvil.

  The forge-worlds Incus Maximal and Malleus Mundi hung in the darkness of the void like a pair of pearls. Orbiting in synchronous rotation, the planets pirouetted each other and their distant star like spireball dancers. Their thousand-year performance came to an end, however, with the intervention of a third astral body. A planetary interloper. In the cryovolcanic haze between the two frozen worlds appeared a junker moon, the rusted plates and rivets of its impossibly armoured surface dusted with ice. The rogue body materialised between the binary forge-worlds, throwing the Adeptus Mechanicus planets into uncharacteristic chaos and disharmony.

  The hololithic representation crackled and warped before fading. Moments later, the planets seared back to full resolution.

  ‘Have the High Enginseer report to section nineteen and reroute power through the generatoria,’ Altarius Phylax ordered. The algorithoria was situated forty-seven ice-crafted sub-levels below Incus Maximal’s frozen ammonia surface but that didn’t stop the resonant boom of detonations reverberating down through the structure.

  Phylax processed the cold code-equivalent of incredulity. It was difficult to believe that the great ark ships of the Adeptus Mechanicus were shelling their own forge-world. His frost-bitten face might have still been his own, but the fibre bundles beneath were enhancements that required a moment to catch up with Phylax’s rapid train of thought and occasional feeling.

  In the ice-carved chamber adepts and servitors fussed about him, slipping the multi-limbed fusion of metal and flesh that was his body into his new robes: the hallowed red robes of the Fabricator Locum of Incus Maximal, a position Phylax had inherited a mere fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds before. Fabricator Torqsi had been lost to the Mechanicus when Vostox Mons unexpectedly and explosively erupted, blowing its cryo-magma stack and accompanying forge complex clean off the face of the planet. Mistress Celestika had believed in meeting the xenos invasion head to head. She had led her temple tech-guard from the front, out onto the spotless plains of Freon-Astroika, at the head of two thousand deep-freeze adapted Kataphron battle-servitors fresh off the assembly lines. Warrior specimens of Veridi giganticus arrived on the ammonia flows in incalculable number, however, and the beast-forms had smashed Mistress Celestika and her Kataphron columns to smouldering scrap on the plain. Phylax’s predecessor, Moritor Vulk, had simply locked himself away with a congressium of logi and calculus-engines while the alien invaders overwhelmed cryoforge after cryoforge across the ice world’s surface. Concluding their statistical analysis of the invasion and associated factors, the congressium disbanded. Moritor then returned to his forge temple, disabled his aegis protocols a
nd voluntarily uploaded a nano-infection that reduced the magnificence of his augmented form to rust and steaming spoilage. As next in runic line, the young but brilliant Magos Altarius Phylax became Fabricator Locum of Incus Maximal.

  Servo-skulls and technodrones swarmed and swooped through the crackling hololithic display.

  ‘Siege-Savant Entaurii,’ Phylax addressed the Master of the Auxilia Myrmidon. ‘Is it entirely necessary to have our own vessels execute an orbital bombardment right above our heads?’

  ‘Entirely necessary, my lord,’ Entaurii replied.

  ‘That is the Hyboriax Forge Temple up there,’ Phylax reminded him. ‘The Mons Primus and planetary capital. It honours the Omnissiah as a technological wonder and it is bare-faced blasphemy to demolish it with our own guns.’

  Borz Entaurii was a squat, heavily augmented soldier – more pneumatic piston than man. His hydraulics and barrel chest were encased in bronze plate and buried in broad, hooded robes that were dyed an Omnissiah-pleasing crimson. He was a veteran, blunt and lacking in imagination.

  ‘Without the Contrivenant firing down on our position, my Lord Fabricator,’ Entaurii said, ‘there would be no position. The enemy xenos would already have breached our sub-levels.’

  ‘Could the great ark’s weaponry not find better purpose and employment in firing on the junker moon itself?’ Phylax pressed.

  ‘Both the Aetnox and the Melanchola were lost in such an experiment,’ Entaurii said. ‘The body’s defences are too thick: armour, shielding and presumed moon rock beneath. Even the greatest of the Machine God’s blessed weapons have failed to make an impression.’

  ‘And what of our ground troops?’ Phylax said.

  A skitarii officer stepped forwards with his gas-masked head bowed. He was dressed in a mixture of ceremonial chainmail and white camouflage robes lined with fur. He had clearly seen recent action. Like Phylax himself, the skitarii officer’s promotion had also been an impromptu necessity.