The Apex

39 Pages·2014·0.81 MB·English

by  Frost Toby

THE APEX
Toby Frost
Hard rain battered the mansion of the Assistant Governor of Signis VII. Colonel
Straken stood in the former dining room, now heaped with boxes of ammunition
and sensoria, listening to the drumming against the boarded windows. The
tyranids would be attacking the defences again – they always came when it
rained. Perhaps they thought the noise would hide their approach.
The strategos called it a ‘splinter fleet’, as if it was only a little thing.
‘Infestation’ would be a better word.
They could do with a tour in the jungle to see how it really is, Straken thought.
And then, looking around the plush, protected surroundings, so could I.
A soldier in full dress uniform opened the door. ‘The general will see you
now,’ he said, and Colonel Straken followed him into what had once been the
grand ballroom.
Tropical rain drummed on the roof. Batteries of sensor gear stood in the
corners of the room, humming and flickering. Servitors checked the machinery
like peasants tending a fire. Behind a table in the centre of the room, the officers
of Sector Command waited. They looked like liveried servants, not soldiers,
Straken thought – absurdly ornate, flimsy-looking in comparison to the
Catachans that he commanded.
General Mari Delacor stood up, the light of the chandeliers catching the gold
braid of her epaulettes. She was thin, about sixty, dark-skinned and hard-eyed,
and she waited as if daring Straken to approach.
He saluted with his flesh-and-blood arm.
‘Colonel Straken,’ said General Delacor. ‘Welcome.’
‘I heard you had work for me, general.’ On a screen behind the table, blips
moved out from the centre, plotting the course of a Valkyrie wing on standard
anti-tyranid patrol. A servitor raised a steel claw and turned a dial.
‘Yes,’ the general said. ‘I gather that the Catachan Second have seen some
hard fighting of late.’
‘Until two hours ago, yes.’
Delacor glanced at one of her aides. ‘What happened two hours ago?’
‘I was told to come here. Then I waited.’
Light flashed above the ballroom, throwing the room into hard relief. Straken
wondered whether it was lightning or distant anti-aircraft guns, blazing at some
huge flying-beast.
‘Things are hard here,’ Delacor said. ‘Until we’re reinforced, policy remains
that of containment and defence.’
Straken managed not to make his thoughts show on his face. ‘Containment’
meant delaying the inevitable. He’d heard the aliens rushing the edges of the
Imperium’s ‘safe zone’ night after night, helped his fellow Catachans man the
guns, and thirsted to leave the compound, to slip into the jungle and take the
tyranids on among the trees.
‘We have to be realistic,’ Delacor continued. ‘We have to hold that which we
can feasibly keep, and make sure that the xenos can’t get anything from what
they do capture.’
One of Delacor’s entourage poured wine into a small cup and set it in front of
her. She paused and sipped.
‘We’re losing a lot of officers. Squad leaders, sergeants, lieutenants.’ Her
mouth moved as if she tasted something bitter. ‘There are some who think that
the tyranids are deliberately targeting them. You’ve fought tyranids before. Is
that possible?’
Straken said, ‘Maybe. People say they’re like animals, but… they’re smarter
than that. They’re as organised as we are – maybe more.’
The general nodded. ‘Wilkes?’ A captain at the far end of the table stood up
and helped a servitor pull a screen forward on a long metal arm.
The captain wore polished riding boots, Straken noticed. Riding boots in the
jungle, he thought. High command never changes.
A map appeared on the screen. Wilkes pointed, his gloved finger tracing the
contours. ‘Ninety-five kilometres north-east of the safe zone is an outpost: H-93.
Since the first tyranid landings, H-93 has been garrisoned by two squads from
the Thirty-Eighth Massadar Rifles. They’re protecting a significant asset. Your
primary objective is to recover the asset before the enemy overrun the outpost.’
‘And the secondary objective?’
‘Get out alive.’
Straken snorted, amused. ‘So what is this asset? I want to know what my men
are fighting for.’
Wilkes glanced at Delacor. She said, ‘A magos biologis of the Ordo
Mechanicus. His name is Jarv Bardex. He has been studying tyranid attack
techniques. It’s been three weeks since we heard from him. Comms appear to be
down. We need him brought back.’
Straken nodded. He wondered who had called this mission in: Sector
Command, wanting the magos’s research, or the Mechanicus itself, demanding
Command, wanting the magos’s research, or the Mechanicus itself, demanding
the safe return of its hierarch. Right now, with guns and tech at a premium, the
Guard would not want to make the Adeptus Mechanicus unhappy. Not at all.
He said, ‘What about the squads guarding the outpost?’
Wilkes glanced at the general, then back to Straken. ‘That’s not your concern.
Arrangements will be made for them.’ He took a breath, and resumed. ‘The
extraction team will be dropped in thirty-two kilometres south of the outpost, via
air transport,’ Wilkes put in. He indicated a route on the map. ‘They’ll move in
on foot – the xenos seem to be watching our air traffic. If they know that people
are heading to the outpost, the tyranids will mobilise and try to swamp it. So,
you’ll be moving quietly through the jungle. We expect your men will need two
days to get from the landing point to the outpost.’
Straken looked at the map. ‘Twenty miles? One day.’
Wilkes raised an eyebrow. ‘Then you’ll have an extra day to kill when you get
there. On arriving, you’ll secure the location until the magos is ready. Then call
for extraction and we’ll send a ship to pick you up. Once the magos’s research is
secured, the outpost is to be abandoned.’
‘Right,’ Straken said.
Rain drummed on the roof. ‘Excellent,’ Delacor said. ‘It’s going to be a pretty
tough job, colonel. Your people may be up cut off until they can be lifted out.
Do you know someone suitable to lead the extraction team?’
‘Yes,’ Straken replied. ‘Me.’
The safe zone was quiet, but never truly safe. The great sloping walls were like a
cliff of dark blue slate. Soldiers waited at gun embrasures while their comrades
spooned down rations or snatched a few moments of sleep. Harsh lights picked
out details: a little shrine; the head of a hunter-slayer, jammed onto a spike; a
patch of ground where thirty Catachan knives stood driven blade-first into the
earth, red bandanas wrapped around the hilt of each weapon to mark its owner’s
passing.
Captain Ban Corris waited at the wall, staring out into the warm night.
Something cried out among the trees, either an avian or a wounded animal. He
knew that, further down the perimeter, among the other regiments, men would
be wondering whether to shoot. None of his own soldiers would waste
ammunition like that. When you grew up on a death world like Catachan, you
soon learned that getting jumpy got you killed.
Corris was massive, broad and heavily-muscled like all Catachans. He wore a
vest and fingerless gloves, his rank and achievements tattooed on his arm. Like
vest and fingerless gloves, his rank and achievements tattooed on his arm. Like
the men around him, he wore a red bandana, the symbol of the blood-oath that
had inducted them into the Imperial Guard.
He turned, knowing that someone was coming. He saw the bulk of Straken’s
body, the light catching his metal arm and eye.
‘Everything alright?’ Straken asked.
‘Quiet,’ Corris replied, ‘comparatively.’
‘Get fifty good men together,’ Straken said. ‘We’re heading out.’
‘Out there?’
‘Daybreak. They’re fuelling up a transport. I’ll brief the team in flight.’
‘Right.’ Corris had a long, lined face, seemingly made to look gloomy.
Compared to many of the men he commanded, he was thoughtful and pious.
‘Best place for a jungle fighter. I’m sick of standing behind this damn wall.’
Straken leaned forwards, against the wall, and boosted the vision in his
mechanical eye. The trees appeared in green, bleached and sinister.
‘Time to get our hands dirty,’ he said. ‘The sooner we’re back in the jungle,
the better.’
The transport was a huge brick of a thing made bulkier with improvised armour.
As soon as it landed, Straken ordered his men to embark.
‘Move it!’ he yelled over the roar of the transport’s engines. The sound of
boots on the entry ramp was lost to engine noise. ‘Do I have to do everything on
my own? Get in there!’
He watched the team disappear into the dark hold of the flyer. Already, a
Vendetta escort hovered over the encampment like a nervous chaperone,
watching for tyranid air attacks. Damned stupid idea, Straken thought. What
better way to let the xenos know that something was going on than to stick a
gunship in the air? The tyranids had flying creatures big and fast enough to
knock a Vendetta straight out of the sky.
‘That’s it,’ Corris called. ‘All in.’
‘Let’s go.’ Straken signalled to the east wall while his other second in
command, Captain Tanner, grinned and saluted. Tanner would be commanding
the remainder of the Catachan II, and had made no secret of wanting to be back
in the jungle again instead of watching the compound walls.
A siren howled. Suddenly, voices rang out as loud and urgent as the cries of
the jungle avians. The vox-caster squealed and crackled. ‘Attention west
perimeter!’ a woman’s voice announced. ‘All soldiers on west perimeter ready
yourselves for xenos contact.’
Men scrambled to their posts, boots thumping on the parapet. Mounted guns
Men scrambled to their posts, boots thumping on the parapet. Mounted guns
swung to cover the jungle, searching for targets. A preacher called out a
blessing, his voice strained and hoarse.
Tanner turned and shouted to his men. They stayed put, facing the trees,
knowing from experience that the attack on the west was likely to be a feint. The
crack of lasguns came from the western wall: one or two at first, swelling into a
crescendo of laser fire. Straken ran up the ramp into the transport, and the door
slammed behind him. Suddenly he was in the cramped hold, stooped, the rumble
of engines shaking the walls.
The transport shuddered, and with one great heave of its thrusters it was
airborne. Straken looked through the tiny window set into the rear door. The
western side of the compound was a wall of fire. The green of the jungle was
pulsing with alien bodies. A huge beast, glistening like a beetle, lumbered
through the jungle, trees collapsing around its bulk. Its forelimbs ended in
dripping tubes, and as the transport gained height, the alien hosed the wall down
in purple acidic sludge. Thick smoke billowed from the battlements.
The flyer turned north. Straken saw the first shots from the Catachans on the
eastern wall, and wondered whether the western attack had really just been a
pretence.
Tyranids were smart like that. Maybe Magos Bardex knew why. Straken sat
down and strapped himself in.
The engines rumbled in the belly of the ship. For men as big as Catachans, the
hold was cramped. In the red light, Captain Corris pulled a data-slate out of his
thigh pocket and thumbed the controls at random. He peered at the screen for a
minute then nodded as though he had only just understood it.
Straken sat opposite. ‘Got something?’
Corris leaned forward. ‘It’s a hymnal,’ he said, holding up the data-slate. ‘A
missionary showed me this, for luck. You read a random passage, and if the
Emperor’s with you, he might grant you a look into the future.’
A superstition, Straken thought, but sometimes you need them. Corris had been
religious ever since he’d left Catachan; once he had told Straken that the
moment he saw one of the Emperor’s cathedrals, he had known for sure that the
Master of Mankind was watching over him. Given that the only large buildings
on Catachan were fortifications, it was easy to be impressed. Straken
remembered the first spacecraft he’d seen, when he had been half-savage and
newly inducted to the Guard. He had not believed that mankind could build
something so large.
‘What’s it say?’
Corris passed it over. They shall have eyes, Straken read, yet use them not.
They shall speak, but none will hear. They shall come in numbers, yet you will
walk among them. ‘The tyranids,’ Corris said.
Or High Command, Straken thought.
The vox-link crackled and the pilot’s voice filled the hold. ‘We’re approaching
the drop zone.’
Time to move. Straken unclipped the harness and stood up. Time to move.
‘Five minutes, Guardsmen! Look sharp! I want dispersal as soon as we hit the
ground.’ He nodded to the colour sergeant, a wild-looking, bearded man. ‘Halda,
keep the colours furled. Your squad takes the left flank. Pharranis?’
Sergeant Pharranis, his shaven head criss-crossed with scars, looked up. His
massive hands were locked around his plasma gun as if to strangle it.
‘Your squad will be on the right. I’ll be at the front.’ Straken felt the flyer
begin to sink in the air. The needle in the pressure gauge beside the door started
to spin. Straken flexed the fingers of his metal arm and gripped his shotgun
tightly. ‘Two minutes, Catachans!’ he called.
The transport hit the ground and the ramp dropped open. Straken was first out.
He ran down into the blazing sunlight, his boots hit the ground and he glanced
left and right, quickly checking for enemies. He scanned the trees, saw nobody
behind the huge, turquoise leaves and turned back to his men as they scrambled
out of the flyer. ‘Move it!’ he barked. ‘Spread out in teams!’
They split into squads, as they had done many times before: Straken’s squad
advancing in the centre, the two flanking teams checking the edges as they
scurried towards the treeline. ‘Follow me,’ Straken said, and he ran to the edge
of the jungle.
The Catachans reached the trees and slipped between them like water flowing
between the trunks. Suddenly the jungle was close. The fronds of great ferns
brushed their arms and shoulders as they moved. The heat and vegetation closed
in on them, and the canopy muffled the roar of the transport as it pulled away
and left them behind.
Straken checked his chrono and the position of the sun above them. He had
memorised the terrain – now lines on the map turned into hazards on the ground.
Visibility was suddenly down to a dozen yards. Tree trunks blocked their view
like bars in a prison door. Straken peered between the greenery, looking for the
glistening armour of the tyranids. The aliens were master hunters. The fact that
glistening armour of the tyranids. The aliens were master hunters. The fact that
the area hadn’t been declared under xenos control might well be because nobody
had spotted them yet, or returned alive to tell about it.
To the south, an avian screamed in the treetops, eerily like a child. The team’s
sharpshooter, a scar-faced man called Serradus, pulled up his sniper rifle and
checked the upper branches through his telescopic sights. He shook his head and
Straken gave the hand-signal to quicken the pace.
They crept between clumps of foliage. Where they could not pass unnoticed,
they drew their fang-knives and carved a path with razor-sharp blades.
Guardsman Logan, a new addition to the regiment, sliced his arm as he brushed
past a leaf with edges like cut glass. He pulled a rag from his pack and tied it
around the wound without breaking stride. As the Catachans advanced, the
temperature rose. Red bandanas caught their sweat. A couple of soldiers took
swigs from their canteens.
Night fell, although under the thick canopy it made little difference. They
advanced through the dim forest, climbing over fallen branches, slipping through
curtains of dangling vines. A family of tiny apes watched them from the
treetops, huge-eyed and fanged like vampires.
Straken heard raging water. The trees parted and he stepped onto the shore of a
broad, foaming river.
A pale, spined lizard the size of a bull grox crouched in the shallows. An eel as
thick as a man’s leg thrashed in its clawed fist. It looked up, glared at the
Catachans and contemptuously bit off the eel’s head.
Straken stared into its tiny, yellow eyes. ‘Back off,’ he growled.
The lizard took a long look at Straken and the Catachans then lumbered away.
Straken turned to his men. ‘Hartigan, Reese, get that heavy bolter set up to
cover the other side. The rest of you, follow me.’
The colonel went first, the weight of his bionics anchoring him against the
roaring water. His men waited on the bank, watching the river like fishermen,
guns ready. Straken coiled out a rope behind him. As he reached the other side,
he smelt something bad. Rotting meat.
Quickly, he tied the rope around a thick root and slipped into the jungle,
towards the smell. It didn’t take long. Under a heap of branches lay the decaying
body of another huge white lizard – and beside it, the remains of a man.
Corris was next across the river, using the rope to keep his balance. He arrived
as Straken was searching the dead man.
‘Who was he?’ Corris asked.
Straken stood up, holding dogtags in his metal fist. ‘Looks like one of the