Day 11
Tide considered the Mechanicus survey teams. When first deployed, they'd had PDF troopers escorting them, equipped with less advanced filtration devices, but that had quickly changed. Now, they were protected by dangerous looking men in more advanced equipment, carrying lasguns, men who were not from the PDF, Arbites, or even Malum itself. These were Imperial Guardsmen and not just raw recruits or poorly equipped PDF. They were protected from his Spores by their own filtration devices that fit seamlessly into their Cadian-style helmets. Quarantine was in full effect and enforced by the Hammer of the Imperium.
From what he knew, the Guard regiments raised recently should have been inexperienced. While their equipment and extra training would have made them a grade above any PDF and likely deadlier foes than even Arbites Enforcers, he had not expected them to seem so much more dangerous already.
Granted, he had not seen them in combat and he had few actual warriors to compare them to. However, he suspected the Inquisitor had not allowed the Guardsmen to slack in their training during their time kept grounded because of the Warp Storm.
He wanted that experience, if only because his own combat abilities were relatively shoddy by comparison when it came to actual experience and military training. He had not been a soldier in his past life and he had doubts that half-remembered karate lessons would prove very effective in close quarters against a guardsman, let alone a Khornate Berserker.
All he needed was a single guardsman, but he couldn't risk infecting them for the same reason he had yet to infect a Tech-Priest: The Inquisitor. For now, they were moving slowly, carefully around him. They weren't sure what he was, what he was capable of. They weren't willing to let him spread any further, hence the quarantine, but they hadn't called for the extermination of the infected either. Whether that was due to not being willing to expend the resources on the destruction of a hive city, not having them, or because they were still trying to study him, it all meant he couldn't rock the boat without severe risks.
There were countless ways he could bypass the filters of the Tech-Priests and their escorts, plenty of which could have been conducted without those infected even realizing it. He could have created tiny, insect-like infection forms that could have crawled beneath their clothes unnoticed and used a bit of numbing venom to conceal their entry. He could have made a rat or similar wildlife creature rush one of them and just have it bite their heel or something. He could have even just waited for a single member of a group to become separated and rushed them with Pods, if he wanted a direct route.
But if he did any of those things, and that Altered had gone under observation for signs of infection, as he suspected every one of the survey team members and their escorts were as they routinely had checkups with local Mechanicus geneticists, the alarm bells would blare in the Inquisitor's head. Tide had little doubt that if she learned this 'plague' had managed to bypass the safety measures in place, his threat level would skyrocket in her mind. Tide was aware of his similarities to a certain Plague God and he had little interest in other people making that connection, imagined though it was.
And Tide would prefer the Inquisitor's focus – and wrath – be on the other hive mind that was subverting this planet's defenses. The Genestealers had been strangely quiet. He would have expected some kind of response after the incident with their agent. Perhaps the quarantine had prevented them from getting to him, just as he was prevented from getting out?
Well, he wasn't exactly prevented. With the number of Altered he had, not to mention his Puppets, he was certain he could easily find a way out and into the other hives, but he wanted to remain an afterthought in the Inquisitor's mind. He'd spread throughout Malum but go no further.
Well, visibly in any case. He would not remain caged in a place that could easily doom him if he could help it.
The hive city, metal and rockrete monolith though it was, was a rather significant danger to him. More specifically, to his Gravemind which was located in its Underhive. While he wasn't aware of any single weapon on the planet large enough to actually damage a hive like a nuclear warhead or similar, there were plenty of chemical plants that could easily be slightly revised to produce explosives and acids. If such weapons destroyed the myriad supports that kept Malum from collapsing under its own weight, his Gravemind would be crushed as well or at least catastrophically damaged.
There was also no sure way to determine if there really was a weapon of sufficient magnitude to damage a hive to the same extent. If anyone was going to have such a thing on hand, it would be an Inquisitor.
There were a number of possible solutions. He could have decentralized his key minds, becoming a myriad of smaller Graveminds or even Proto-Gravmeminds, losing the clarity the larger Gravemind brought but ensuring the destruction of even a majority of his key minds would not cause the Flood to revert to their baser instincts. However, there was a much simpler method as well and the one he'd chosen.
Leave Malum.
Obviously, he couldn't just take his Gravemind and stroll out of the hive city. No, if couldn't go out, he'd go down.
Hence why his Gravemind was slowly making its way deeper and deeper into the Underhive. Countless vine-like tentacles slithered through hundreds of corridors, some temporarily disconnecting as they made their way, before reconnecting further down with the main mass. It was heralded by a teeming horde of combat forms, Pure Forms and Puppets, many of which had been changed into the new Sangheili shape, which he had dubbed 'Elites' simply because he had come up with nothing better, and equipped with a variety of spare weapons taken from the Hive Gangs he had Altered. They were low-grade and basic, but all he could gain at the moment and their raw strength and speed made up for it, for the moment anyways.
The Underhive that was left in his wake was remarkably similar in appearance to the Underhive that he'd first found. Wasp hives, spider webs, hive gangers, and other creatures filled the many chambers and junctions. However, the key difference between now and then was that every being there was under his control or influence and the air was filled with Flood Spores. He'd also left a few small tendrils, expertly hidden in various nooks and crannies, which connected to his Gravemind. He would not be blind to his old abode.
Furthermore, he was not blind to the various other sources of biomass he could hijack, even if they were rather disgusting. The sewage produced by the hive city was a figurative goldmine, though he had to be careful with it. Mechanicus survey teams regularly had been examining the pipes and the waste that ran through them, possibly to study the effects his infection had on it, and he could not take too much without alerting them to the disappearance. The same was true to an even greater degree when it came to the food produced by Malum.
Contrary to popular belief, hive cities did not subsist on corpse starch. While the city did have facilities capable of producing the cannibalistic meal, none were being utilized at the moment and most corpses were supposed to be used instead as compost for mushrooms and crops that were grown in massive agricultural facilities housed inside the spires and beyond them in the outer stretches of Malum. While not technically cannibalism, it seemed like a step removed from it at least.
A problem would have arisen that the lack of corpses meant no more compost, which would have eventually caused a food shortage, but Tide had sufficient biomass to gather nutrients from hundreds of sources throughout the hive city to replace the corpse compost as well as fill the odd gap with bits of his forms. Still, he dedicated a few thousand corpses to continue the illusion of compost, a mere drop in the ocean for him now.
It would be many days, close to two weeks, before his Gravemind reached the planet's surface due to the slow and tedious process of moving that much mass through so confined a space. Though he could have simply ripped his way through without doing too much damage, he wanted to leave as little of a mark as possible with his passage. Less to track him by.
Once he had reached the crust, he would begin burrowing his way down to the very foundations of Malum and spread out further below the surface. That way, even if the city above toppled, he would have kilometers of rock and metal to shield him.
Though, that still wouldn't protect him from a cyclonic torpedo, though there was little he could do about that, at least for the moment.
As his Gravemind and hordes journeyed downwards, so did the dead of the city above. Of the near two hundred thousand newly dead that were making their way downwards, around half would be joined to the Gravemind while the other half had a variety of purposes intended for them. As they travelled, the Flood spores grew freely through them, some becoming Pure Forms, others Puppets that would return to the spires, and some into his Elites.
He was considering his options with his newest creation. It would be easy to turn them into a simple patsy, a species of previously unknown xenos responsible for the Flood spores for whatever reason. It would be easy to play on the Imperium's xenophobia to create such a story if needed, but Tide wanted something more for them.
The Elites were warriors, honorable and lethal. Terrifying enemies, but stalwart allies. If he could cultivate a similar image for his Flood Elites throughout the galaxy, perhaps he could create something better than those governments that ruled? At worst, he could try and have them join the Tau and infiltrate the only xenos with a solid grasp of their own technology that way. Still, that was far in the future. In the here and now, there was a limit to what he could do with them without great risks.
He supposed there was one thing he could do with them, something the Inquisitor had inadvertently given him the idea to do.
It was the work of a thought for his Elites to take up their weapons and turn on one another and those human Puppets he'd brought with him. While weapons that required precious ammunition were kept in reserve, there were plenty of rudimentary melee weapons to be fought with. Given the prevalence of that type of combat in 40k, Tide knew it wasn't a poor idea to train his close quarters skills.
He had a solid foundation thanks to the experiences of dead PDF troopers, Hive Gangers, and Arbites, but now he began building on that. He didn't just work on honor duels but pitted his myriad forms against one another in countless practice situations, fighting on both sides in every engagement and learning from every death and kill, even as the slain were resurrected. Sometimes he had his forms fight with all the power and savagery the Flood possessed and at others they fought like they were ordinary humans and Elites that required physical methods of communication to operate in groups and did not possess the strength to flip tanks (in the case of the humans, anyways).
It was sort of like playing chess with oneself but both simpler and not. He was able to separate his myriad thoughts to the degree that he could have one group of forms acting without knowledge of what the rest were doing, overseen by himself, allowing for him to actively fight against himself without unintentionally cheating. He was the commander of both sides and the referee that oversaw each engagement and the analyst that studied it and saw where improvements could be made, all in one.
He was reminded of the training method that a certain spiky-haired blonde had used in another universe, one which required countless clones to pull off. This wasn't far off, though far more complicated, and hopefully even more effective since Tide could make adjustments to the training as soon as a better method was found. Whether it would show promising results would take time, even with tens of thousands of trainees that he was steadily learning from.
If he could manage it, Tide would have liked to acquire armor and weapons designed for the unique bodies of the Elites, but for the moment that would be difficult on any large scale. He would need to wait until he had total control over the hive city and no longer needed to fear the Mechanicus or anyone else discovering him. He had even gained sufficient technical knowledge collected from the tens of thousands of factory workers he'd consumed to create a design for an extremely rudimentary set of powered armor for his Elites, though it required access to Mechanicus miniature power generators which he could not design himself.
Not yet, anyways. While he didn't plan on starting any wars, he knew conflict with the Imperium was all but inevitable. Especially depending on their reactions to his most recent stunt. When he'd felt his spores infect a second Genestealer, this time one in the capital, he'd tried to brush up against the Broodmind again, perhaps gain some inkling of their plans, but they'd cut him and their own agent off before he'd had the chance to make the link.
It was like having a door slammed in one's face before he'd even gotten a word out. Very rude, but he supposed he couldn't expect an eternally hangry hive mind to be polite.
He'd been left wondering what to do with the Genestealer after that. The alien body was still fighting him, though Tide had learned quite a lot from his studies of the first Genestealer he'd slain. The question was whether he simply withdrew his spores from the disconnected Genestealer, who was essentially running on autopilot without the Broodmind to guide it, or did something else. His choice was made with his audience in mind.
He chose violence.
Inquisitor Ellen regarded her two closest advisors. Genetor Vidriov stood on one side of the holographic display and the Psyker Purilla sat in a chair on the other. Though the witch's eyes were looking towards the light shapes, she seemed to be focusing on something beyond the hologram, her hands scratching away idly at the long gloves that covered everything up to her shoulders.
The display was one of the things Ellen had brought off the ship that had delivered her to Monstrum. She'd expected to only be here for a relatively short amount of time, long enough to raise the Guard regiments and then leave, but she'd be operating from another craft, hence why she'd brought the artifact. It was an ancient device, possibly older than the Imperium of Man, a device from the Age of Strife and had been a gift from her former master. She had come to appreciate the device greatly even prior to her promotion to full Inquisitor.
The display currently depicted Malum in green light that varied in shade from light green to dark, with a few large pockmarks of red and a large amount of grey where the Underhive would be. To Ellen's concern, the green light represented the area that was filled with the airborne infections, with the darkest spots being the highest concentration of spores. The red areas were the steadily disappearing parts of Malum that were untouched by the infection, while the grey represented areas too dangerous for the survey teams to enter to study.
"How large of a problem is this?" Ellen said after a long moment of silence.
"Such a disease, were it of the Warp, would have a tangible presence, regardless of how benign its material effects," Purilla said, her eyes not wavering from the middle-distance. "I went to Malum as you requested and sensed nothing. Nor did I sense anything from Vidriov's victims."
"Test subjects," The Genetor said, his monotone voice betraying none of the annoyance Ellen suspected he felt. "Though, you did not engage in close contact with them, did you?"
"On my orders," Ellen stated. "I do not wish to risk my only Psyker getting infected with this disease, whether it is Chaos in origin or not."
"Organism-04 has shown no ability to be transmitted through mere skin-to-skin contact," Vidriov replied. "Nor via more invasive psychic measures. The data from one of Purilla's readings could provide proof that this is indeed the Panacea."
"It is still too soon to take risks, Genetor," Ellen growled. Vidriov had only become more and more convinced that the spores were the cure-all STC or something very much like it. "As far as we know, this could be a Genestealer creation, whether it identifies as Tyranid biomass or not."
"No, Inquisitor, we do know now," Vidriov stated and she cast a hard look at him, waiting for an explanation. "I exposed one of the Genestealers we captured to the organism."
"What?" Ellen demanded, her nostrils flaring. "You did not inform me of this!"
"I had not expected it to be an issue," Vidriov replied cooly, entirely immune to Ellen's anger. "I bring it up now because of the results of the experiment."
With something almost approaching a flourish, Vidriov revealed a data-slate from beneath his red robes. It connected to the display with the press of a button, changing the image of Malum to that of a fourth-generation Genestealer, one who Ellen recognized as from a group that had been captured in Enyo, a hive city believed to be near the stronghold of the Genestealers. The Genestealer was dead, its corpse carved open expertly by the Genetor's knife, and a large amount of data was displayed.
"The effect of inducement with Organism-04 was almost immediate," Vidriov said and the display again changed to a recording of the Genestealer, now whole, restrained in heavy chains. A servitor equipped with a breathing filter administered the infection, unclasping a vial beneath the nose of the filthy xeno, releasing its contents to be breathed in by the xeno. Almost instantly, the creature tensed up, shuddering as though in pain or fear. It fought against its bonds for a few moments, thrashing futilely with strength no normal human possessed. Then, it fell still. No, not quite still, it still shivered.
The recording accelerated, hours passing by in seconds, but the Genestealer remained almost motionless, though it seemed to grow sickly in that time, sweat pouring out of its skin, the tiny beads captured perfectly by the display. Meanwhile, an exponentially growing red light began to spread throughout the inside of its body, like clawed hands reaching for its internal organs. Organism-04 had begun its infection, yet something was strange about it.
"The Genestealer biomass reacted violently to the intrusion of Organism-04," Vidriov stated. "Normally, Genestealers and Tyranid bioforms are immune to diseases of material origin, be they manufactured or natural. However, while the spread of Organism-04 took roughly eighty percent longer to reach the same levels as it would in a human, the Genestealer was incapable of stopping the spread. However, what occurred next was far more noteworthy."
The Genestealer suddenly fell limp and utterly still, its vitals spiking and then flatlining as its bodily functions collapsed one after another.
"Organism-04 also had an extremely violent reaction to inducement in the Genestealer system," Vidriov continued. "In each area, rather than simply maintaining and repairing what was there as it did in human subjects, Organism-04 began systematically damaging the xeno on a cellular level. It quite literally attacked the xenos DNA, destroying the foundation until the body itself collapsed as well. It was able to adapt to the defenses of the Genestealer with astonishing speed and capability."
Ellen leaned against the display, studying the data. She was silent, her anger forgotten.
"I believe this all but proves Organism-04 to be of human design," The Genetor added. "Further tests will of course be required, but the extreme reaction to alien genetics makes me believe that this is not only something akin to the Panacea, but also a bioweapon made to target aliens. A marvelous creation, no doubt the work of one blessed by the Omnissiah."
Ellen was no longer listening, not really. She heard the words, but her mind was elsewhere. Her face was a stony mask, betraying nothing. If this was true…
Her thoughts were interrupted by the anguished cry of Purilla, who stood and gripped her head.
"THEY COME!" The Psyker screamed, blood pouring from her eyes, which sparked with lightning and dilated wildly. "THEY COME!"
The Broodmind was agitated. It was faced by a rival it understood just well enough to know the threat it represented. A threat to its purpose and possibly to the Godmind itself.
This was something it could not abide.
Its instincts drove it as much as a terrifying intellect guided it and those instincts demanded nothing short of complete annihilation of this foe. It was almost counterintuitive to the Godmind's greatest calling, the hunger for all life that drove its universe-spanning hunt. There would be no infection, no subversion. This… thing it faced was not something that could be allowed to escape the biosphere, nor could the Godmind be left unawares of its existence.
Five hundred times, the planet the Broodmind had dwelled upon had fully circled its life-giving star since the arrival of the Patriarch. Every single one of those cycles, there had been a plan, a directive to infect, subvert, and prepare. There was no word or symbol that could represent what they were preparing for. The infected drones, whose alien minds interpreted the signals produced by infection in ways that would ensure loyalty, called it the Day of Ascension, though the Broodmind had little understanding of the connotations or meanings behind such human sentiments. Had the drones been made aware of the truth of what they worshipped, and not been controlled by alien infection, they would understand the horrific irony of such a name.
Yet, now, the Day of Ascension was no longer the goal. A planet's worth of biomass was meaningless in the face of such a threat. The forces arrayed against it had been preparing for were unimportant, afterthoughts now.
In the hive city of Limos, the Broodmind pulsed with psychic power. Were it not for the warp storm that covered the system, such a pulse would have doubled as a beacon, a scent for the nearest hive fleet to mark its next prey. Yet, it instead would serve only its other purpose: a call to action.
It was an instant change, like the flicking of a switch.
Elric was a laborer, returning home after a long shift at work. His back ached with the pain of an old injury, but he had a smile on his face as he laid eyes on his daughter, a young woman named Elia, who grinned back at him as she welcomed him home with a hug. His smile became a confused frown as she slipped a knife between his ribs, burying it into his heart, his mind not comprehending what had happened.
Corla was a trooper in Limos' PDF, on patrol with her squad. She was a mere grunt but happy to be serving the Imperium. She had wished to join the Guard but had not been one of those selected for the Tithe. She was planning on volunteering if they required more Guardsmen. She would never get that chance, as her squad's sergeant fell in behind her, drew his autopistol, and fired a single round into the back of her skull.
Sibel was a preacher, one who brought the word of the Lectitio Divinitatus to the masses. Despite a life of devout service, the increasing number of mutants in Limos had made him doubt the God-Emperor, doubt the Divine Plan, for how could an all-powerful God allow such horrors to roam freely? He kept these doubts to themselves and continued with his work, speaking to another mass of unclean citizens on break from their work shift. Sibel would never get his answer from the God-Emperor, as suddenly the throng rushed forward and tore him limb from limb.
All across Limos, similar occurrences happened in a matter of moments. Brother slew brother, child turned against parent, friend fell upon friend with vicious intent. From the deepest parts of the city's underhive to the highest of its spires. Explosives, planted in days prior in preparation for the uprising, went off in the fortress-jails of the Arbites and those few PDF garrisons not fully subverted.
From the depths of the underhive emerged the true powers behind the cult. Genestealers of every generation rose up and joined in the slaughter and calculated mayhem. Mutants with too many arms, wielding weapons both manufactured and natural to deadly effect.
There was no organized resistance. The attack was too sudden, too savage, too unexpected. Any attempts were quickly shattered and torn to shreds by the Broodmind's infinitely superior coordination.
Many tried to flee, but the routes out of the hive city had been the first target of the Broodmind, taken and held by packs of Purestrain Genestealers. The railways that connected Limos to the other cities had their power lines deactivated by infiltrators. The few air transports were kept grounded as their hangars were closed and locked down or had their fuel lines cut. In case of successful escapes by air, the city's skyfire cannons were manned and guarded by cultists who had slaughtered those operators not under the control of the Broodmind.
Some attempted to contact the other cities for help or just to warn them. Neither was allowed. Mechanicus members, with their Noosphere access, were targeted in the initial onslaught with careful precision, leaving not one alive. The systems that could be used to contact the other hives were destroyed outright.
In a single carnage-filled hour, Limos went from a loyal Imperial hive city to one under the total control of the Broodmind. Tens of millions were slain in moments and many more were taken by the cultists to be infected, to make them see the light of the Broodmind as they had.
Yet, even as the numbers of the Broodmind swelled into the billions and continued to grow, even as its control of the city was solidified, it had already begun the preparations for the next slaughter.
Ten million cultists and Genestealers, some armed with autoguns, others with anything that could be used as a weapon or even just their own clawed hands, turned their many eyes towards the hive city of Malum.
