40K - Session 15

A House Divided




Act 2 - The Shadow of the Abyss




Chapter 3 - What Sleeps Below




Part 2 - Fire and Fangs


Aboard the Akan, which floated silently amongst the asteroids on the outskirts of the system, Manus Ashok was troubled.  He had been secluded from his comrades at the order of Roa Mahaka, forced to undergo an arduous process of psychic reconditioning to ensure his recent lapses of control would not continue to jeopardize the rogue trader's operational success.  To accomplish this he had been turned over to the astropathic corps, isolated in their meditation cells, and or weeks he had endured physical and emotional strains unimaginable to anyone who had not seen the inside of a Black Ship before.  He had passed their tests, though at times he felt it would be at the cost of his sanity (if not his soul).  Among the final phases of his reconditioning was a series of meditation drills meant to guide him through common practices among the other schools of psyker disciplines, and he sat in a circular meditation chamber with five astropaths as they guided him through methods of extra-corporeal projection used to train initiates in the ways of navigating the Warp by first imagining themselves adrift and plotting lines across nearby space.

As he set his mind in flight across the system he was drawn irrevocably towards a small planet.  It blazed with life and psychic light beneath a veneer of roiling storms, and upon its surface lay a singular point of gloom that fascinated him.  It was a blemish upon an otherwise vibrant orb of color, like a cancer that incubated in sullen silence beneath the skin.  He peered within, curiosity finally overcoming his hesitancy, and as wave of nauseating revulsion overcame him.  His mind was awash in a sudden desperate need, an overwhelming demand that threatened to undo his delicate control.  The need to feed.  The gloom resolved into a mass of writhing, unfocused animal hunger in which flashes of claw and fang tore at his mind.  And then, to his utter horror, a single eye opened inside his mind.  Lidless and white, it lacked any pupil or defined feature; and yet he knew that it had seen him, just as he now saw it.  The very nature of it was anathema to his finely tuned psychic senses, it's voracious will unbalancing the delicate weave of his mixed realities like an earthquake.  He fled, pulling his senses back from that awful place like a man recoils his hand from a flame.  In his reckless flight he caught, for only a heartbeat, the familiar glimmer of his friends' presence within that writhing presence's shadow.  Whatever was on this planet had been asleep, and now it had awoken to a terrible hunger.

His mind snapped back into his body with such psychic force that he toppled backwards off of his meditation platform, and as he shook his head to clear the residual tremors of his experience he saw that his experience had similarly effected the other astropaths in the chamber.  They sat clutching their heads, blood running freely from their noses and ears as they stared at him with mouths agape.  Remembering his friends, trapped for all he knew, within the grasp of the thing on Cyrix he called for an emergency meeting with the ship's captain and the astropathic corps' leader, hastening to pull himself together as he stumbled through the halls of the ship.  Once gathered he explained what he had felt, impressing upon them the dire nature of his vision.  The captain seemed dubious, but when the astropath confirmed that these visions were true portents, they agreed that immediate action was called for.  Moreover, the astropath had a deep suspicion of what may have been responsible for such visions.  Few things in the galaxy could so completely blind and overwhelm the senses of a trained a psyker in the manner Manus had experienced except for that awful threat from beyond the galactic rim.  The tyranids.

The Akan fired its engines and headed for the interior of the system as Manus worked quickly to formulate a relief mission.  The captain of the destroyer offered him what resources he had.  Manus could elect to bring a full company of his security personnel in drop pods, or take a select team of his best commandos to the surface aboard the Gypsy (which would rendezvous with them in orbit).  Manus mulled the choice briefly, and elected to take the smaller team.  The risk of collateral casualties from the insertion alone was high, and if there were tyranids upon the planet then the fewer people exposed to the threat the lower the risk that one of the insidious lifeforms would unwittingly escape.  Hannibal docked the Gypsy and brought Manus aboard with his strike team.  A grizzled and scarred sergeant named Hauk led the team supported by a heavy gunner named Diesel, a grenadier named Hix, and the twins Lupita and Diego.  As soon as they were securely aboard Hannibal conferred with Manus and they decided to take the Gypsy onto the planet.  It was small enough to descend safely through the hurricane's eye to the surface, and could shelter from the storms in the ravine adjacent to the cave system the party had used to access the cave system next to the Ad Mech facility.

As the storm's eye began to creep towards the cave system the Gypsy began its descent.  Soon it settled into the deep ravine, its wings coming within meters of the stone walls in a daring testament to Hannibal's skill in the cockpit.  With their bodysuits sealed against the corrosive atmosphere the assault team slid open one of the airlock doors and fired pneumatic grappling lines to the cave mouth, swinging over into the darkened mouth with clinical precision.  As they traversed the cave and lowered themselves to the Queen's landing site they took stock of the situation much as the party before them had.  The eerie thrumming, and sullen silence, and the bodies markedly increasing their anxiety.  Manus quickly headed to the Queen, hoping vainly that his friends may still be aboard.  Finding it empty he keyed the radio in the hopes that they were still in range of its broadcast.

Down below, in the darkened secondary reactor room, the party had been stoically taking stock of their situation in an attempt to formulate a plan which would allow them to fulfill Aurelian-913's last request to disable the sound generators that kept the planet's mega fauna at bay.    To their amazement, their vox system suddenly came alive with a familiar voice.  They rejoiced briefly, before quickly deciding that their best hope lay in uniting their two forces.  They gave Manus as detailed of a path to their location as possible, with Grim even hacking the lighting system to ensure that only halls and doors leading to them would be illuminated.  They also gave him a warning that whatever was here stood between the two groups.  Hauk whispered concise orders to his commandos, who fanned out in a silent formation and led the way down through the bore hole.  Once inside the main hangar Muffin slid aside the plasteel plating he had been order to hold over the hole cut through the doors and allowed the strike team into the facility.  After only a brief second of hesitation, they stepped into the jaws of the unknown.

They followed Grim's lighted path as quickly and quietly as they were able, sliding into the adjacent hallway access for the main reactor chamber.  The detritus and debris littering the floor made for slow going, but within moments they were standing outside of the housing unit.  The commandos checked their weapons as Manus began the mantras which would prepare his mind for tapping the Immaterium.  After confirming they were ready, Hauk order the door opened.  The stepped quickly onto the two meter wide catwalk and fanned out into a protective semi-circle with the psyker at the center.  Panning their weapons around they caught flashes of movement that scurried away from the light, and the entire chamber seemed to be alive with the ambient sound of slithering.  Hauk asked if Grim would be able to bring up the lighting inside of the chamber, and when it flickered on their hearts sank.  Dozens of alien creatures had turned to regard them with cold hunger and animal fury.  They were, indeed, tyranids.  A mixture of termagaunt and hormagaunt forms clung to everything in sight.  The floor, the reactors, even the ceiling teemed with the malignant feeding machines as they began to claw and slither their way slowly towards the the meal that had unexpectedly presented itself to them.

The commandos, holding their fire in check through an impressive display of discipline, waited until Hauk had finished barking a quick set of orders before unleashing a withering wall of coordinated fire on the forms around them.  With the battle begun, the tyranids launched forward.  The clawed termagaunts crawled swiftly across the ceiling and down the walls while the hormagaunts lept atop the reactor housing to employ the ranged bio-weapons that grew in place of arms.  Hix launched a spread of high explosive grenades between the reactors to impede their progress and Diego lit his heavy flamer off in controlled spreads of promethium that engulfed the horrid creatures atop one of the reactor housing.  Diesel's heavy stubber spit a stream of high speed death amongst the God-Emperor's foes while Lupita fired surgical bursts on the termagaunts descending the walls.  Manus called for an orderly withdrawal to the adjacent hallway to draw the tyrnaids into a funnel, hoping his comrades below would have the time to exit the secondary reactor chamber and join the fray while the beasts were distracted.

Down below Wu-10 and Grim began to work on the getting the doors open when Vadik had an idea.  If this was a reactor room, then it was likely to have a high power fire suppression system.  Grim, seeing where his comrade with his train of thought, quickly tapped into the system.  It did indeed have a sub-zero, concentrated halon fire suppression system.  Activating it would be lethal to anyone inside the reactor room, but with Manus' strike team pulling back (and wearing environmental bodysuits) the risk was minimal.  He triggered the system and a loud warning beacon began to blare inside of the reactor room, counting down from ten seconds.  Back in the hallway the hormogaunts not consumed by Diego's flamer began to fire volleys of horrific burrowers towards the retreating team, and while Manus focused his powers on slowing or deflecting the disgusting projectiles some few struck home.  Worst of all, with only seconds left before the halon system activated, Lupita fell victim to the tyranids that had begun to flood into the doorway.  A scything claw pierced her leg, drug her back into the reactor room, and flung her into the writhing mass of horror below.  Her death, though grisly, was mercifully quick.

As the halon system activated and highly pressurized Halon as a temperature near zero flood the room Diego howled in rage at his sister's death.  As soon as the flood slowed he stepped back into the reactor chambered and emptied an entire tank of promethium from his heavy flamer into the crystallized masses that were once termagaunts.  They shattered as much as they melted under the assault, and the team below took the opportunity to force the doors and begin climbing back up to assist the strike team.  Cassius gunned his jump pack up the elevator shaft, and once aloft over the reactor housing saw that the majority of the threat had succumbed to the fire suppression system.  Only a handful of hormagaunts remained, doggedly climbing atop the concrete housing units to gain a better vantage.  He fired bursts from his las rifle, but was unused to the coordination required to fly and fire and his shots fell wide.  They were enough, however, to coordinate the fire of the strike team as they took position back out on the catwalks.  Between them, Aurora, and Merrick they made short work of the remaining life forms.  As the two groups finally united on the catwalks they discussed their plans to move forward.

They knew the sound amplifiers generating the sub-sonic impulses that kept Cyrix's "worms" at bay were fed from a chamber directly beneath the main housing unit where the tyranids had been kept.  There was only one confirmed path directly to it, through the Grand Hall and a security processing station.  There were two other suspected paths, from the main reactor room they were in and from the labs.  The tyranids had found some way to tunnel into those areas when they overran the station, but whether they were direct paths back to the housing unit or not was still undetermined.  Grim had tapped again into the system, using access codes he had obtained from Aurelian-913's message, and flicked quickly through the grainy vid feeds still operating in the various parts of the station.  There was movement everywhere, now that the dormant creatures were waking.  The tunnels meant fewer numbers of the horrid xenos could overrun them at once, but it would take time to negotiate those tight confines.  The Grand Hall route was direct, but the open nature of the space meant that they could be swamped quickly if the tide (quite literally) turned against them.  In the end they opted to approach from the Grand Hall.  Time was a critical factor in their success, they wagered, and if they reached the emitter station before the full hive was roused they may be able to trigger it and escape.

They cautiously re-entered the Grand Hall, fully prepared to meet a wall of teeth when the access doors slid open.  What they found was almost as surprising: absolute silence.  Only moments before the vid feeds had shown flickers of motion everywhere, but as they began to fan out the hall was as deathly quiet as it had been when they first entered.  Grim and Wu-10, equipped with magnetic clamps on their frames, climbed the walls as Cassius fired his way up to the girders which supported the massive ceiling.  They settled into position on the wide supports to provide elevated over watch, dropping a line down to their friends should they need it.  They hesitated on how to move forward, with the strike team nervously advancing towards the nearest pile of debris.  Then, the tyranids struck.  The canny beasts had crawled among the strewn debris and long-dead corpses of their own to hide, springing forward and rushing in a wave of scything chitin.

The strike team began to lay down a coordinated field of fire to slow the horde's advance, but their numbers were staggering.  They would shoulder their own falling dead aside in their rabid desire to sink their teeth into soft flesh.  The strike team with Manus covered the southern half of the cavernous chamber as soon as the first wave was brought low, Vadik sprinted for the grapple line as Aurora and Merrick pressed up to hold the northern half.  More of the tyranids dug their way out of their hasty nests in the piles of bone around the Imperial Knights.  Most were brought low before they could get in range to set upon anyone, but when three managed to close dangerously close to Aurora the cyborg Wu-10 decided that he had waited long enough.  He lept from the support beam and descended upon them like the wrath of the Omnissiah.  His maul trailed electricity through the air he crushed one into a pulp of chitin and gore as it lept toward his beleaguered friend.  The others scampered back, hissing and gnashing their teeth, before launching themselves at him instead.  The tide seemed endless, but soon they had whittled down the second wave and began to hope that they would claim the Grand Hall quite easily.  That hope was dashed when a loud booming began to resonate from the opposite end of the hall.

Two massive security doors blocked the way from the Grand Hall to the security processing station that separated the hall from the tyranid housing units.  It began to crumple outwards under the force of titanic blows, and when enough space between the doors had been created two massive scything claws, each as long three men, snaked through and finally thrust the blast doors aside.  Stalking into the hall with thunderous steps a new bio-form emerged.  It was close to twenty feet tall, and looked like a hormogaunt blown up to ludicrous proportions.  A tyranid warrior, one of the synapse creatures that coordinated the hive mind's actions!  Its presence threatened to unnerve everyone present, and worse yet it had the opposite effect on the tyranids emerging from the rest of the room.  Their disjointed and animal behavior seemed to suddenly subside, and they swayed in an eerie form of unison when brought under the warrior's influence.  As one, close to fifty of them clawed free and began to proceed forward across the chamber around the behemoth's legs as it advanced.

Grim, desperate to slow its advance, rushed forward along the rafter and hurled his cry canister, engulfing the warrior and the termagaunts around it in a cloud of cryogenic gas.  It slew a great number of the smaller forms outright, but seemed to only incense the warrior.  Though slowed, it turned the muzzle of its massive bio-gun towards his position and launched a spore grenade that struck the ceiling near the tech priest.  Whip-like tendrils snaked outwards, trying to lash and grapple him, and he was forced to drop from the rafter onto the body piles around the Knights in order to escape.  Vadik, finally securing a stable firing platform for his sniper rifle atop the rafters at the near end of the hall, immediately recognized the threat that the warrior's spore launcher posed.  He called out to his friends to concentrate their fire on it as he took careful shots at the tubular mass it carried slung beneath its towering frame.  Manus, meanwhile, concentrated his will on a discharge of pyschic energy meant to stun and disorient the beast.  He hoped to break its control over the mass of termagaunts, or at the very least slow the monster's advance.  He succeeded in the latter, rippling the fabric of reality around the warrior's mind sufficiently enough to cause the beast to sway and stagger as it came forward across the frozen and unsure ground left behind by Grim's cryogenic canister.

Cassius, firing volley after volley of burst fire into the beast in conjunction with the strike team, narrowly avoided another tendril grenade.  A single lash had wound around his leg and found painful purchase, and he screamed in pain as he fired his engines to retreat and tore the tendril free from the writhing mass that tried to draw him in.  Wu-10, beset by termagaunts, was brought down to the floor by the coordinated attack of no less than three of the scything creatures.  It was only through the keen eye of Aurora and a volley of guided munitions from Grim that he was finally able to force his way back to his feet.  As the third wave was brought low, Vadik finally succeeded in placing a shot perfectly into the pulsating sack that fed the tendril grenades into the warrior's bio-gun, bursting it in a shower of viscous fluids and eliciting a pained roar of hatred.  Incensed to madness and finally clear of both the frozen ground and Manus' mental influence the warrior broke into a full charge, shouldering its way between the fallen Imperial Knights in its desperate bid to feast as the lesser bio-forms swarmed around and over it in like manner.  Manus, though, had been waiting for just such a moment.  With all of the bio-forms so tightly concentrated he summoned a blazing ball of azure fire between his fingers and flung it with snarl into their midst.  It erupted in an apocalyptic blaze that consumed all of the remaining termagaunts, but the warrior still charged forward through the inferno.

Finally passing the gap between the Knights it sets its eyes first upon Grim, fixated upon the pesky tech priest it dove headlong with slavering jaws bared.  Wu-10 however, was not about to let an ordained priest of his order fall prey to such a malignant xenos.  As his friends unloaded a storm of las and stubber fire into it he stoically stepped into its path, diverting its interest as it brought down both of its massive scythe claws.  He deftly avoid them both with almost disdainful ease, and as it lunged its head forward to devour him he thrust the head of his maul between its teeth and pulled the trigger for the single shot bolter built into the artifact weapon's haft.  Its discharge resonated in the chamber like a clap of thunder, snapping back the tyranid's head as black blood poured from its mouth.  It reared up on its hind legs and shook its maw from side to side, as if to cast off the pain, and Wu-10 saw another chance to strike.  He engaged his maul's charge with the flick of a thumb, stored electricity coursing into the weapon's adamantium head.  With an titanic two-handed swing he shattered the warrior's shin, stepping deftly aside as its massive bulk collapsed to the floor before swinging the maul up over his head.  The warrior was sluggishly trying to regain its feet when he blurted a prayer to the Machine God in binary before bringing the maul down with every ounce of power his formidable augmetic enhancements could muster directly between its six eyes.  He spilt the carapace over its head, and as it lay there, stunned senseless or dying, Hauk stepped forward.  He shoved the barrel of his las rifle into the cracked carapace and emptied his entire magazine into the creature's nerve center.  It shuddered once, and then moved no more.

Drawing deep, gasping breaths the party took quick stock.  Wounds were tended and ammunition counted.  They could hear more of the creature skittering behind the doors the warrior had thrust itself through, but none had yet chosen to enter the chamber.  They began to discuss their tactical options moving forward.  It would be safer if they stayed together, but if the Great Hall was their only avenue back towards the tunnel that led to the Queen.  Sergeant Hauk offered to keep his team behind to reinforce the Grand Hall and hold it in place as an escape route.  They would have fewer guns for whatever lay beyond, but they could retreat quickly this way.  As they finalized their plans, Grim suddenly stopped speaking mid-sentence.  He had noticed something gleaming amidst the ruined gore of the warrior's head.  Engaging his dendrites he cut away at the fractured skull plate and laid bare the nerve mass that passed for its brain.  The party gathered around in morbid curiosity as he tore free a mass of wires and electrodes.  Something had been surgically implanted inside the warrior's brain, something of human design.  At first glance it looked like pain stimulators, but at the nodes were something entirely different.  Gleaming black nodes connected the wires, nodes which each bore arcane symbols that Manus had seen carved upon other devices, the kind they kept aboard the black ships to muzzle psykers.

The Adeptus Mechanicus had done quite a bit more with these tyranids than the fragmented reports they had accessed indicated.  They had been performing experimentation that bordered on the heretical.  As the grim import of this discovery settled upon their minds, a strange sense of awareness washed over them all.  The feeling that they were not alone, that they were being watched by sightless eyes.  Whatever slept here was now fully awake, and it was aware of them.  The sounds behind the door to the processing station suddenly ceased, slowly to be replaced by a slow rhythmic clicking that echoed into the Grand Hall.  Manus grimly mused that it sounded as if a thousand jaws were opening and shutting in perfect time, salivating at the prospect of a meal so long denied them.