Day 12
Tide stared out across the hive city. Many of his first puppets had been sent to the outer spires, bypassing the quarantine blockers through a variety of methods. Apparently, locking down a city as old as Malum with countless forgotten corridors and sections was rather difficult. It was almost as easy for his puppets to get past the sealed off areas as it was for his spores to do the same.
He'd stared out upon the world of Monstrum with his own eyes at last and found it… dreary. It was expected, of course, and he had seen the memories of many who had seen the surface.
Monstrum's atmosphere was almost as toxic as the lower levels of the spires were with their factory fumes and chemicals. The sky was hidden behind a perpetual curtain of dark clouds that was really just smog produced by the cities and their factories, which spewed massive columns of shadow-like fog into the sky. For over a hundred kilometers around the hive, there was nothing but more cityscape, though this was less like the hive spires and more like a regular city, albeit scaled to ludicrous proportions. The hive spires could be seen from anywhere in the outer city, its tallest towers stretching nearly a hundred kilometers into the sky before they disappeared above the curtain of smog. It looked like nothing so much as a dark lord's citadel, though even such beings as Sauron might think such a structure to be just a bit overly dramatic.
The landscape that stretched endlessly beyond the outermost reaches of the hive was barren and lifeless, gray and blackened by layers upon layers of soot and ash. In the distance, despite being thousands of kilometers away, the spires of several other hive cities could be seen, just below the dark clouds, lights flickering like beacons in the darkness of Monstrum. Massive railways connected the cities, forming a spiderweb-like network across the planet, capable of moving trains that were nearly the size of skyscrapers and far longer than even the tallest building of Tide's old home planet. The planet's name had never seemed so suitable as it did now.
The only place where the darkness of the sky gave way was directly north of Malum. The barren lands, ironically enough, was the only region of the planet that saw the sun. Tide suspected its atmosphere had massive holes in its ozone layer, with anything that wasn't solid rock being melted under the concentrated power of the sun. Its landscape was not black, but bleached a tan brown, nearly white. Even from such a distance, the shimmering waves of heat could be seen clearly, distorting the air and blinding those who stared for too long.
A single, massive tube reached through that scorched plain, towards the hive city of Moros. It was covered in thick, heat-resistant, reflective material to keep it from melting everything contained within it, where another series of railways ran to and from Malum's northern sister. The tube reflected the light of the sun so strongly that Tide imagined that it was what the Astronomican must have looked like, a golden, fiery pillar. Tide could look at it without too much of an issue, he could repair the damage, but even just momentarily glancing at it would have someone seeing spots for hours afterwards. Anything outside of the tube that wasn't specially designed to deal with the heat would be incinerated.
There were three such tube systems that connected the northern and southern hemispheres and the eleven hive cities spread between them. As the planet was tidally locked, the only part of the planet that was 'livable' in the sense that one would freeze or burn just by existing there was directly north and south of the barren lands. The areas surrounding the more temperate areas, which did not receive even the indirect warmth of the sun via the barren lands, were called the freezing wastes. Travel through them was apparently even more difficult than through the barren lands.
For the moment, however, Tide's attention was not on the north, but to the east. Malum was connected by rail to three fellow hive cities. To the north through the barren lands was Moros. To the southwest was Janus. And to the east was Limos.
The city that had apparently fallen to Genestealers the day before.
Tide had expected a reaction to his presence from the cultists, but this seemed a bit like overkill.
The moment he'd realized something was wrong was when several of the massive trains had come in from Limos, in total violation of the quarantine. The moment he'd realized just how bad things were was the same moment the passengers of those trains had been revealed.
In place of cargo, millions of screaming cultists, wielding knives, autoguns, iron rods, lasguns, or even just large rocks or pieces of scrap, had been stuffed inside. They emerged and fell upon the PDF watching over the transit system, butchering them and thousands of civilians as they swarmed through the city.
Tide's spores had spread almost fully throughout the hive spires, but the outer reaches were taking longer to fill. Something that Malum would suffer for.
Tide considered his options for a moment. In that moment, a plan was formulated.
Sicarus swore under his breath again and again, barely audible even to his own ears through his breathing filter, over the crack of lasfire and the screaming of the horde. His lasgun loosed a flurry of death into the encroaching horde. Crazed bastard fell, one after another. Nearby, his squad mates did the same from their improvised cover behind crates and pillars. The courtyard was littered with dozens of corpses of the enemy, damned if he knew what enemy they were.
They'd barely had enough warning to find this chokepoint in a courtyard before the enemy had come upon them, throwing themselves at him and his squad with abandon. Was this a revolt? Sicarus had no idea, but these didn't seem like rebels. They were poorly equipped, unarmored, many were even in civilian clothes. But they were fanatical, bloodthirsty, and thoroughly insane. He could see the madness in their eyes, in the way they threw themselves headlong into an entrenched position with no thought for their own survival. They screamed warcries, shouted prayers to xenos gods, and Sicarus was scared shitless by it all.
It was only his training and the presence of the Mechanicus that kept him from turning and running. Not because he thought the Mechanicus would give them a fighting chance, but because the red robes Priests of Mars had always been his biggest fear. Their cybernetic limbs, the idea of having his flesh removed or altered, that had always been something that terrified him. It was just his luck that he got assigned guard duty with them, let alone for whatever this damned revolt was. The knowledge that, if he ran, he'd likely be top of the list for getting turned into a servitor was more effective at keeping him facing the enemy than even a Commisar with a bolt pistol pointed at his skull would have been.
Granted, he wasn't so utterly terrified that he wasn't thoroughly grateful for the presence of the priests now. All Sicarus knew about their mission was that it was important and they were surveying the air or something, but the Tech-Priests seemed to have come equipped for war anyways. Their mechadendrites whirred with mechanical precision as plasma, promethium flames, and lightning was loosed upon the enemy from all manner of their arcane weapons, dealing far more damage than Sicarus' lasgun.
But the horde was endless and gaining ground, even as they trampled their slain or wounded allies into paste underfoot. They hauled themselves over the growing mounds of bodies, splashed through the pools of blood, all to just get a bit closer.
Sicarus' lasgun clicked empty and he swore again, dropping behind his cover as he rushed to reload. Stubber fire whizzed through the air above him where his head had been moments before, but he had no time to think about how close he'd come to death.
He emerged from his cover once more, unleashing a new flurry and cutting down a line of madmen, only for them to be swallowed under more and more bodies as their howling allies crashed over them. A grenade was thrown into the midst of the swarm and body parts went flying in a shower of gore and viscera, but it only seemed to drive the insane to further depths of mad fury.
More stubber fire came from the enemy, but Sicarus couldn't make out its source in the swirling mass of flesh, only see its effects as two of his squadmates, Eve and Torrel went down, the former missing most of her head, the latter gurgling as he choked on his own blood.
He saw Eve's grenade fall out of her lifeless hand, missing its pin, but even as instinct drove him to the ground, the cold terror strangled his voice.
The explosion rocked the courtyard and Sicarus felt a flash of pain in his thigh as something embedded itself into his flesh, as well as heavy impacts on his helmet and flak armor. The bang had rendered him deaf, and his vision swam even as he tried to stand, nearly falling over. He brought his hand up to his face and was surprised to feel his fingers trace his lips, which were slick with something that tasted coppery.
Why was he surprised to feel his lips again? He wasn't sure, he couldn't remember, but he felt like it was very important, that something was supposed to be covering his mouth.
He turned his head and nearly puked on the spot as nausea gripped him. He could see shapes growing larger and larger and he heard a loud whine that was slowly deepening. His skull felt like someone was slamming a hammer against it.
He felt the air on his face shifting as something small and fast whizzed past his ears, rustling the small hairs of his face and he smiled at the feeling. It felt nice. Then, he felt things fly back the other way, and he wondered if they were bouncing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
He turned his head the other way, though this time the nausea wasn't as bad, and he saw more shapes, grey shapes coming towards him. They seemed familiar, like he'd seen them before or people like them. One of them came up to him and pushed him down firmly, and the sudden movement was too much for Sicarus, who emptied his stomach on the person's boots.
Sicarus muttered an apology to the person, but the words felt strange on his tongue and he couldn't really hear them well or whatever the person said in response. The whining pitch was all but gone now, replaced by loud bangs and the sound of anger.
Slowly, his sense began to return to him, the nausea dying away, though that only made the pain rise. He could feel someone, the person who had pushed him down, binding his leg in something, a bandage. Eventually, his vision had become coherent enough that he could recognize the woman's uniform as that of Malum's PDF. All around him, he could see dozens of other PDF troopers taking up the positions of his slain squadmates, their autoguns firing endlessly at the enemy. They moved with precision and purpose that Sicarus had never seen in a person before, except perhaps in the Priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus. He must have still been partly out of it.
Sicarus heard the screams of the enemy dying down after what could have been minutes or hours to his mind, even as more and more PDF troops arrived until they practically filled their side of the courtyard. He could make out the words of the shouted cries from the PDF as well, proclamations of the God-Emperor's glory and of the foulness of the traitor and the mutant.
His vision was swimming again and he saw darkness on the edges of his eyes. He felt very tired and the tips of his fingers and toes felt cold. His head nodded, back and forth, and his eyes began to droop. He wanted to sleep and his head rested against the crate he'd been using for cover.
"I want every regiment we have ready to move, immediately!" Ellen spat at General Rasou Monstrum, the brother of the Planetary Governor who she'd all but been saddled with by. The heavyset and man whose mishappen face was the result of having a family that had committed enough incest that they were just short of being labelled mutants and purged, was sweating profusely, practically leaking through his uniform that was decorated with dozens of medals and honors despite its wearer having never even seen a battle let alone fought in one. All granted by a brother that had wanted nothing more than to be rid of a possible rival for his position as governor.
"Madam Inquisitor, twenty regiments are a lot of men to move around just like that!" Rasou replied, wiping his balding head with a hankerchief that came away damp as he spoke of matters that he had no conception of. "Surely Malum's garrison of PDF can handle a small uprising?"
Ellen was just about ready to have the man shot for disobeying a direct order from one invested with the authority of the God-Emperor, but she stayed her itching trigger finger. A 'small' uprising being conducted by genestealers. She would have loved to destroy the man's tiny mind by describing, in detail, just what the foul xenos behind the sudden invasion of a hive city truly were, but her duty prevented her.
"I was not asking for your advice, general." Ellen said with all the coldness she could muster and the man suddenly seemed to recognize how thin the ice he was standing atop had become, swiftly nodding his head.
"Ah, of course, Madam Inquisitor!" Rasou said, bowing low before turning and speedily walking out of her office, just as Vidriov entered.
"Can it wait?" Ellen asked. Although she had asked Rasou to get the regiments mobilized, that had been little more than maintaining the illusion of his importance in the minds of the locals. The man, insufferable though he was, was a strong card she held in her hand against the planetary governor, a constant remainder to him that, if she desired, she could replace him as the head of this world with another. Making the man a General had been a calculated move, even though it had been requested by the Governor. Still, she doubted Rasou would move with the speed or efficiency that was required, hence why she was currently in the middle of starting the mobilization herself, bypassing his authority altogether. She'd just need his figurative rubber stamp to deal with any naysayers claiming he wasn't in command of the guardsmen. Something which required the bulk of her attention.
"I do not believe so, Inquisitor," Vidriov replied. "It is about Malum."
"Have we lost the survey teams?" She asked, already imagining the worst-case scenario. The local Mechanicus was less bothered by her presence than the nobility, but if her actions caused the deaths of hundreds of servants of the Omnissiah, they may join those who were less than pleased with her.
Granted, a Genestealer uprising might be just enough to get them all united under her, if only for a little while. Though they might not be as afraid of the Inquisition as they should have been, the people here were, at the very least, as hateful of the Xeno as an Imperial citizen should be.
None of that was important right now though. For some reason, the Genestealers had decided to move before she'd readied the guardsmen. They shouldn't have conducted any operations of this scale for decades, not until they'd infiltrated more of the hive cities at least. Genestealers didn't raise armies and attack cities, they subverted them and fomented rebellion. This assault was inimical to their methods.
Ellen suspected Vidriov already had theories on why and had come to share.
"Some, yes," Vidriov stated. "Around three percent of those deployed."
That was… much better than she'd feared. Perhaps they'd managed an organized withdrawal?
"Then what is it?" Ellen asked, her impatience shining through for a moment before she clamped down on it. She needed a clear head if she was going to stave off a Genestealer uprising and she was not in the mood for a discussion about Organism-04.
"The Genestealer forces have been repulsed from Malum."
For a moment, Ellen just stared at him.
"What?"
"The Genestealer forces have been repulsed from Malum."
"But-, that's-…" Ellen was speechless for a long moment before finally asking, "How?"
It had been six hours since the arrival of the enemy, counted in the millions! How had such a force been defeated in so little an amount of time?!?
"The local PDF responded rapidly and decimated the Genestealer cultists," Vidriov said and Ellen was about to open her mouth, to say that didn't make sense, genestealers didn't care about things like casualties, but the Genetor continued. "Several thousand of their number were reported to have fallen and begun convulsing before dying for seemingly no reason. There is a rumor spreading that those enemies were struck down by the God-Emperor."
The use of 'God-Emperor' by the Tech-Priest did not escape Ellen, nor the implication behind its usage. Vidriov already knew, as did Ellen, that there had been no smiting, not in the traditional sense at least.
"And, I assume, these cultists fell in areas where Organism-04 was abundant?" Ellen asked, already knowing the answer. Vidriov nodded anyways.
"Affirmative. Areas with the Organism were avoided, but as the PDF carried it within them, it quickly proved effective at pushing them back. Or so I theorize."
A weapon that could kill genestealers and their vile cults. Ellen had already thought about the possibility, but she had not become an inquisitor by being the trusting sort. Was this really a blessing of the God-Emperor? The Master of Mankind worked in strange and difficult to decipher ways and nothing was impossible for Him on Terra. Could her enforcement of the quarantine really be stymying the God-Emperor's plan, His way of shielding them from the foul Xenos?
She shook her head clear of the doubt. She was a member of the God-Emperor's Inquisition, she was His will made manifest! She would never do such a thing!
"I'll have the Guard prepare to move in and purge Limos," Ellen stated. After a moment of thought, she added, "I'll request some Sororitas accompany them. They could use the reminder that they are the Imperium's Hammer when wiping out former citizens."
"And what of Organism-04, Inquisitor?"
Ellen considered for a moment, mulling over her options. Something needed to be done with this information. While she wouldn't be lifting the quarantine any time soon, if ever, it could be the perfect weapon against the Genestealers, possibly even beyond this world.
"Make ready every precaution for one of your test subjects," Ellen stated finally. "I'll have Purilla conduct a more… in-depth reading on Organism-04 and those infected with it."
The Broodmind roared with rage at its utter defeat, furious at its foe even as it felt its terror of it grow. It had been days, days since the first of its forms had been infected, in the depths of one of the spires. None of this enemy, of this rival hive mind had existed outside the towers. Yet now it was everywhere?!?
It had intended to destroy the hive spires with explosive chemicals and acids it had specially prepared, a swift destruction using expendable drones, but that was no longer possible! It couldn't get close to the foundations, to bury its rival under countless millions of tons of ceramite and rockrete!
The Broodmind pulled its remaining forces back, leaving those even slightly infected by this rival behind to perish. A small force remained behind with some of its explosives, swiftly setting them off the moment the bulk of the drones had returned, destroying the rail systems and any of the transports on that side of the system. It dislodged a similar force mid-way back to its subverted city to do the same there to further ensure it could not be followed by its enemy.
It had made a mistake, it recognized that now, but its myriad minds were in conflict over what mistake that had been. It had moved too soon and not soon enough. It had not gained sufficient information on its enemy, not taken the time to scout its foe out enough before attacking, but it had also taken too long. Now the enemy had spread, grown in size and power.
This was not an enemy it could just drown under a tide of bodies, that much was clear now. It needed something else to deal with this rival, a way to strike from a distance. Artillery would be perfect, but such weapons were rare on this world.
A less direct route then? Perhaps a force of drones could be used to begin digging under the city and plant explosives to collapse it that way. It had used the bulk of its explosives to destroy the rail system however and it now lacked the resources to create enough of them to topple the entire hive.
No, it did not lack the resources. It only lacked access to them. The Broodmind's attention turned away from the rival to the prey, the other hives it had yet to subvert. The nearest other than the one its drones called Malum was the hive called Enyo. One of the three connections to the northern half of the planet and its many hives.
Those hives would surely have resources it could use to create more explosives. Perhaps also weapons or other methods of destroying this hated rival. It already had a few agents and drones in Enyo and there was no sign of its rival within that hive.
More of the brood prepared itself, drones gathering gathering more weapons and equipment, even as its drones in Enyo began the process of sabotaging the city's defenses. Though their efforts would have less of an effect than it had in Limos, the Broodmind was sure it would achieve victory. The numbers of its drones had swelled as it preyed upon more and more of its conquered hive's population. Where it could only spare a few million drones to assault Malum, in only a day of moving openly its numbers had increased massively.
The Broodmind was not capable of feeling hope, but if it were, it would have hoped its plan would work. For the Godmind would not be able to save it if it didn't.
Delicious, crisp knowledge.
Tide had galvanized the PDF to respond as quickly as they could move without him just taking direct control, flooding their brains with chemicals that fueled their sense of urgency. He'd even taken the small risk of temporarily taking control of a few of the higher-ranking officers just to hurry things along and try and save as many people as possible.
That said, he wasn't unwilling to take advantage of a bad situation. While he couldn't take most of those slain, particularly those dead cultists that were already being burned in massive piles by the remaining Imperial Guard and Admech agents in the city, he wasn't going to let the dead Tech-Priests and Guardsmen slip through his tentacles.
Twelve Enginseers and three low-ranking Genetors, along with nearly twenty guardsmen, were his prize. Between their collective knowledge, he now had a working understanding of most of the hive city's mechanical sections, how its factories functioned, cybernetic augmentations, and a whole lot more. All of it was relatively basic knowledge, but that was to be expected. It would be delusional to think a random Tech-Priest would have the necessary understanding to build something like a battleship.
It wasn't really what the tech-priests already knew that was of benefit to him. Certainly, the Genetors had very little useful information to impart to him. What he was pleased by was instead having a foundation of scientific knowledge that he could build off. Even these adepts, being only a few steps above servitors or labor units in the Admech hierarchy, had an incredible amount of scientific knowledge. Between them, his understanding of engineering and physics was roughly on par with what he remembered as being possible for his world in his previous life. There were gaps in what they knew even combined and a lot of more esoteric knowledge that could have been equally true or false, but also plenty of areas that they had a more fragmented understanding of that were centuries or even millennia more advanced.
Just as an example, Tide now had an understanding of the innerworkings of autoguns and lasguns and could even design and build such weapons if he desired. He understood the processes necessary to produce ceramite, plasteel, or rockcrete. He understood cybernetic limbs and replacement parts for organs, though he doubted he'd need that particular knowledge. He also understood quite a bit more about the factories that were spread across Malum, about the materials and chemicals they produced, about the possible uses they had.
And he already saw ways he could improve so much of the hive city's engineering, optimize it. Admittedly, many of those ideas belonged to the men and women whose knowledge and experiences he had eagerly absorbed. Despite the Admech's ban on invention, many of its adepts seemed to have at least thought about how some things could be made better. A few had even experimented with the forbidden practice, although only in small ways, and more than one of them secretly had held the belief that their superiors were doing the same if not more.
The guardsmen had also been valuable for their experiences, though in different ways and not to the degree that he'd hoped. Their training, while more intensive than what Arbites or PDF went through, was not that different either.
There was also a frustrating lack of knowledge about just what the Mechanicus was doing in Malum. It was obvious to Tide that they were measuring the spread of his Flood Spores and what he had learned confirmed this, but there was nothing more. The adepts and Guardsmen were both kept in the dark of just what their higher-ups thought Tide was, though rumors were abundant among both groups.
Which meant he couldn't be sure what reaction the Inquisitor would have to the failed Genestealer attack. It wasn't exactly their modus operandi to openly invade a hive, nor to retreat seemingly so easily.
He suspected the Broodmind had underestimated how fast he could spread. All it really knew was that he was another hive mind, after all. Its reaction had been surprisingly simplistic,. Tyranids only appeared animalistic and were really quite intelligent, but perhaps the Broodmind was not quite as capable without a connection to the hive? If so, that was good news for him and for the Imperial forces on the planet.
While he'd taken advantage of the situation, it was still not great that the Genestealers had moved openly against him. He'd been trying his hardest to minimize his own importance. The Genestealers openly rising up in revolt should have been a good distraction, but it wouldn't take a genius to not the unusualness of their actions and connect it to his spores in some way.
Perhaps the Inquisitor would take their hostility towards Malum as a sign of Tide's spores being beneficial or at least dangerous to the Genestealers, but he'd have preferred 'unimportant'. The less attention that was on him the more freely he could operate.
Still, at least he now had more methods to better defend himself against conventional attacks. If the Inquisitor was operating under the assumption of the spores being a threat or even just unsure about it, they would likely be stockpiling breathing filters and similar equipment for their forces in case an invasion of Malum was needed. The failure of the Genestealer attack, which wasn't too difficult to determine as being at least related to his spores, would only reinforce the idea that such equipment was necessary.
The equipment his forces in the Underhive possessed wasn't that much better than what the Genestealer cultists had been working with. He hadn't been able to acquire anything superior without risking attention. Now, however, he could create what he needed.
Well, not quite yet. If he intended to produce weapons for his combat forms and puppets to wield, he'd need an industrial base, not to mention materials. If he took from the city proper, he'd run into the same issues as taking weapons and other equipment from it. The Underhive was, fortunately, filled with both, although its many factories had gone without maintenance or power for, at least, several centuries. There was plenty of scrap metal, old parts, and more that could be salvaged as well, so he likely wouldn't be needing to mine for resources anytime soon.
He set his forms to work, starting with surveying the abandoned factories in the depths of the underhive, what would be needed to repair them, what could be replaced or improved with Flood biomass rather than machinery.
It was clear to him that the Genestealers weren't likely to just give up and he wasn't supremely confident in their inability to find some way of adapting to or at least dealing with his spores as a defense mechanism.
No, this war would not be ending soon.
