Part 16
The Tyranid War
Chapter 108(orphan)
In the dark and festering slums of the Ebony Stiletto territory in Low Commorragh, amid the shadowy 3 dimensional vastness of impossibly interconnected rusting decaying metal starscrapers and sky bridges, the echoing sounds of gunfire and mayhem were endless.
Countless billions of the twisted lesser servants of the fell Slaanesh Daemon Princess the Sevenson Matriarch battled viciously against endless armies of Ork, Kroot, Human and other fouler races of mercenaries. Bullets, missiles, laser beams, hypertoxin splinters, energy weapons discharges and other stranger projectiles, all shot through the air, as bombs and grenades of all sorts exploded with deafening blasts.
Flying vehicles, both antigravity and conventional, faced off in insanely fast aerial dogfights in the tight confines between the twisted 3 dimensional tangle of intertwined metal towers, lighting up the hungry darkness with brief fiery explosions, as shots hit home, or even more spectacularly, when unwary pilots crashed into the thick 3 dimensional tangle of buildings with jarring speed.
The violence was spectacular and brutal, exhilarating bloody and eternal, millions of souls fought and died in gigantic bitter battles, a million acts of heroism or butchery, courage or suicidal folly, sacrifice and honour... but for all of this blood and violence and waste of life, the front line hadn't moved even a single inch at all in several weeks... the fighting was at an eternal impasse...
Every single tangled intertwined building and sky bridge, along the entire incomprehensibly immense three dimensional planet-sized spherical front line, was now impossibly heavily fortified after the sacrifice and toil of countless billions of lives. Sand bags and armoured plates were set up in every conceivable place on the front line that could fit them, billions of brutal automated gun turrets festooned every strategic location, and twisted sinister mutant horrors lurked with excessive firepower in every shadow. Even a mouse couldn't sneak past these impenetrable defences unnoticed.
Facing off against these impossible defences was a shot up no mans land, where millions of soldiers on both sides waged futile fruitless battles to capture ground, and beyond this was the dark twisted counter-defences of the enemy's fortified front line, an endless wall of armoured plates, heavily protected gates, and huge blazing gun emplacements. Shadow fields and meshes of thick razor wire filled every conceivable gap in this nightmarish defensive line, and nothing bigger than a flee had a hope of penetrating through unseen.
The forces of the Matriarch daemon princess were innumerable and terrible, their war engines and daemonic forces mighty and horrifying, but even these twisted hell spawned horrors could not breach defences of this might and magnitude. Even nuclear weapons had not breached them, at least not any of small enough yield and power to not obliterate the Matriarch's defences along with them, nor had traitor Titan legions, virus bombs, or any other weapon the Matriarch dared to employ.
It was, quite simply, impossible. The war had reached an eternal stalemate, an absolute and unassailable impasse. Not one single inch more of the nightmarish twisted 3 dimensional maze of Low Commorragh would the Sevenson Matriarch control. It was simply impossible.
The exalted Slaaneshi daemon princess the Sevenson Matriarch, dreaded uncontested ruler of all the Sevenson Night Lords, did not enjoy losing...
It was not the way of the Night Lords to earn victories the hard way, through honest blood and sacrifice, not their way to pay for every slight victory with gallons of blood. The Night Lords only fought to win, and win easily, to strike from behind in the dark at an enemy that didn't even yet know they were at war. Terrorising defenceless nuns in the dark was their style, hitting the weakest targets at every stage. Hitting an impenetrably strong front line that could easily defend itself just wasn't their style.
But for all that, the Sevenson Matriarch had certainly at least *tried* to win the hard way, as novel as this idea was to the Night Lords.
The Sevenson Matriarch had very quickly tired of the earlier ineptitude of the extremely mediocre Ebony Stiletto forces, tired of the masses of poorly trained newly recruited kabalite warriors getting themselves pointlessly slaughtered in continual gradual defeats, and the Matriarch had decided to solve this entire mess herself.
Fully 95 percent of the Matriarch's entire armed forces from the multiple daemon worlds she ruled were now stationed in Low Commorragh, her best mortal generals and officers were all present, as were her most highly trained and capable mutant hordes and traitor guard regiments, cultists, heretics and slavering horrors. And, of course, a sizeable force of horrifying Sevenson Night Lords now also stalked the twisted darkness of Low Commorragh, bringing never ending terror and brutality to the no mans land between the two front lines.
The resulting violence had been quite astonishing, even by Night Lord standards, countless billions of lesser soldiers were dead on both sides, even more were viciously maimed and wounded. Even the elite Night Lords themselves had suffered heavy numbers of wounded, and more than a few dead, it was butchery for all involved.
The Sevenson Matriarch had opened up Her entire incomprehensibly vast reserve armoury, flooding the theatre with guns and ammunition, equipping her armies and troops with excessive firepower. Armoured vehicles rumbled on the sky bridges just behind the front lines, huge ordinance cannons pummelling far distant targets through firing holes in the fortifications with the help of front line spotters.
Artillery and even chaos titans joined in blasting death at the enemies in a never ending firefight, but still the front line did not move. The fighting was as mentioned at a complete and total stalemate.
Far behind the front lines, countless trillions of gleeful half born dark eldar farmers worked feverishly to tend to unprecedented harvests of black Tygo's Omega cabbages, their crudely home made enclosed light boxes glowing brighter than ever before, cabbage growing speeds accelerated to maximum, germinating from tiny cutting to maturity in under an hour in the intensely bright light boxes.
7.6 billion terawatts of power was now flowing through the Ebony Stiletto territory power grid, the entire electrical output of the Sevenson controlled solar Dyson swarm around the star "You-Bitch", (which was currently behaving itself without any annoying sunspots), and with this insane amount of power, the teeming multitudes of malnourished slum farmers were having the best harvest of their entire miserable lives.
The Sevenson controlled territory in fact now had so many Tygo's Omega cabbages being harvested, that many farmers no longer had the room to store anymore inside their dark and squalid twisted metal towers, the cabbages growing faster than they could be transported away. The logistics of moving so much harvest so quickly during a war was a nightmare that even Wendy herself couldn't solve, there were just not enough logistical vehicles available to move so much so fast. Even the Matriarch herself had never seen anything like this before.
The Sevenson Matriarch's vassal the Ebony Stiletto Kabal was selling cabbages on her behalf by the countless trillions as food to the slave labor industries of distant neutral kabals, and in turn continuously buying from them the military technology, supplies and equipment needed to keep the front lines perpetually impenetrable.
Innumerable heavily guarded webway gates transported this endless cargo to the most far distant parts of Commorragh, bypassing the impassable front lines, and the costs of this hugely expensive war were FINALLY breaking even with the profits from the Tygo's Omega cabbages.
Despite the complete lack of progress in capturing any new Low Commorragh territory, the Ebony Stiletto territory was now at least secure long term after weeks of the most terrible fighting imaginable, and the Sevenson Matriarch could finally relax somewhat, knowing that her prized foothold in holy Commorragh had been secured for blessed Slaanesh. Trillions of dark eldar souls were now available to the Sevenson Matriarch, a brimming chalice of eldar soul stuff for her to drink deeply from forever more. It was the dream!
The colossal Sevenson Matriarch Daemon Princess decided that she had done enough for now.
The Sevenson Matriarch sighed, and stretched her jiggling pale naked six breasted body erotically on her towering golden command throne, moaning with blissfully exquisite relief as she was finally able to just relax her focus after weeks of nonstop leadership without rest. She was a daemon, her kind needed no actual sleep, but the fatigue had still been dull and burdensome, blasphemously consuming all time for pleasure!
The Matriarch was deep in the very heart of the Ebony Stiletto territory, currently occupying the Ebony Stiletto Archon's sinisterly dark yet luxurious giant baroquely decorated throne room for her own exalted self, the heavily filtered refrigerated air inside the throne room deliberately kept chilly cold for her pleasure, the Matriarch being eternally tended to by dozens of slavishly obedient Night Lord Terminators who obeyed her slightest whim without question.
The original ebony painted metal throne of the Archon had been callously removed from it's place, atop a tall dark metal ziggurat that completely dominated the shadowy sinister throne room, and replaced by a much bigger solid gold throne especially built by master craftsmen to the Matriarch's gigantic scale, which she currently lounged provocatively upon.
The Sevenson Matriarch was intoxicatingly beautiful, in the extreme way that only a creature of blessed Slaanesh can be, her flawless daemonic face horrifying yet at the same time potently arousing, her six massive breasts jiggling enticingly with every tiny motion of her body. She was incredibly, primally fuckable, an erotic siren of mouth watering sexuality, her body a beacon to carnal passions.
Her four giant pale vaginas were flawlessly shaped, hairless and smooth, oversized clitorises prominent and inviting. Oh how wet those four vaginas were, perpetually, unceasingly wet and flowing, constantly weeping copious fragrant clear lubricating fluid, eternally generously dribbling on the floor to dissipate away into daemonic mist a moment later. The Sevenson Matriarch was always wet all the time, a creature of Slaanesh whose immortal lust could never calm, a raging raw Slaaneshi sexual excess that made the beautiful immortal fountain with wetness at all hours day and night.
Likewise her twin towering pale veiny penises were eternally raised skyward and erect, giant pale pink heads throbbing and engorged, gently and eternally weeping out a slight trickle of pre-cum, never limp for a single second ever since her daemonic ascension. She had no visible testicles marring her erotic beauty, but deep within her body was bucketloads of semen in some hidden reservoir awaiting release, yearning even now to be unleashed.
She had no arms on her flawless immortal body, a relic from her mortal days as a mutilated sex slave of the Night Lords legion, back before she fucked her way to power. The Night Lords of old had cut her mortal body to pieces, mutilating it for their own psychotic pleasure as they gang raped her in the dark as a cowering naked slave, back before she started bearing children for her dreaded Astartes masters. Centuries ago she had learned to use her feet in place of hands, and by now she all but forgot what it even felt like to have arms.
In place of arms she had giant silky smooth armpits extending to her shoulders, flawless and fragrant, highly erogenous and sensitive to the tickles of her pleasure slaves and husband, not to mention the enthusiastic sadistic ministrations of her exquisitely beautiful tickling-fetishist daughter-in-law Octavia, oh such delectable bliss.
The Sevenson Matriarch's legs were very long and multi jointed, flawless mouth wateringly smooth perfect skin, intoxicatingly feminine and erotic. Her shapely pretty feet were completely prehensile, able to grip objects and strangle men with equal ease, toes ending in wickedly sharp claws that could cut ceramite, such was their unnatural diamond hard sharpness, but for all this her feet were maddeningly erotic, exquisitely perversely beautiful.
Her scalp was crowned with long flowing pale dreadlocks of flesh, fragrant and feminine, repellent but obscenely arousing to mortal eyes. Each one of these dreadlocks was shockingly sensitive to the slightest touch, able to smell, taste, feel and hear, see and even several other senses unknown to mortal human. These fleshy dreadlocks were intensely erogenous like a sexual organ, and could reach blissful orgasm if handled.
She had no wings, unusual for a daemon princess but not unheard of, her pale naked back unblemished by the ugliness of the mighty wings sported by so many others of her kind. She was an exalted pampered palace queen, not some itinerant vagrant who went gallivanting off in the grubby great outdoors like a homeless tramp. When she travelled, she did it in style surrounded by a vast entourage of fawning servants and attendants, she neither wanted nor needed ugly wings spoiling her exquisite beauty.
Lastly of particular note on the Matriarch's exquisite perfect body was her many crimson full lipped mouths all over her body, erotic and enticing, filled with razor sharp fangs and each containing an astonishingly long tongue, strong as steel and serpent quick, tongues that could taste souls and thoughts and memories, as well as blissfully taste the deepest depths of her lovers' bodies. With these strong dexterous tongues, the Sevenson Matriarch could hold and manipulate objects as though with tentacles, perfectly compensating for her lack of arms.
The Sevenson Matriarch was quite simply an immortal majestic queen, beautiful and terrible, exalted on high. No pleasure was ever denied her, no being questioned her authority, she reigned supreme with complete and absolute power, she was the terrible uncontested supreme Mistress of her slavishly obedient Sevenson brood, and mortals could naught but grovel before her for mercy.
Far below her towering raised throne ziggurat, down on the cold hard polished dark metal floor, just beyond the protective ring of slavishly submissive Sevenson Terminator bodyguards, currently grovelled the Archon of the Ebony Stiletto Kabal, the pitiful worm grovelling down on his face in humility, terrified for his very soul, utterly dominated and subservient to his dreaded new master.
The dark eldar Archon was a male of his species, named "Izengahn" something. Archon Izengahn currently had his tall ornate bladed helmet removed in respect for the Sevenson Matriarch, showing his long main of silvery grey-white hair.
Archon Izengahn's ebony black coloured mesh armour body glove was extremely ornate, covered in many decorative blades and spines, complete with a currently deactivated built-in shadow field generator, and all of it quite obviously new and extravagantly expensive, no doubt purchased with the Archon's own share of the incalculable wealth currently controlled by the Ebony Stiletto kabal.
At his belt the Archon had holstered some strange pistol type weapon of the incomprehensibly sophisticated technology of the dark eldar race, alongside several grenades, and over his right hand was a hugely bladed black painted metal glove of some sort that seemed to resemble a lightning claw, comprised of more incomprehensible dark eldar technology.
The Archon grovelled alone on the chilled cold hard metal floor, his usually inseparably present incubi bodyguard squad waiting fearfully at the threshold of the distant doorway to the room, and even the Archon's loyal naked mutilated masochist female dark eldar consort was waiting at the threshold, terrible fear of the soul draining power of Slaanesh written all over her beautiful young heavily scarred masochistic face.
The Sevenson Matriarch was a mighty daemon princess of Slaanesh, and could very easily rip out these dark eldars' souls instantly on a whim from a considerable distance away, killing them instantly and hurling their souls into the most horrific Slaanesh hells for all eternity. The dark eldar all knew this fact, and they were mortally afraid in the presence of this daemon of the great enemy of the eldar race. They were very wise to be afraid...
The mortal dark eldar Archon worm had been grovelling like this on the cold hard floor for over an hour now, the Matriarch had not yet deigned to acknowledge him, nor given him permission to rise from his face on the floor before her exalted self ever since approaching her throne. The floor was a fitting place for an insignificant insect, and the Matriarch enjoyed seeing her Archon slave-thing so humiliated, it gave her a wonderful feeling of arrogant satisfaction to keep her servant grovelling on his face unacknowledged for an embarrassingly long time.
The Sevenson Matriarch continued to ignore the grovelling worm far down before her throne, and gazed with arrogant relaxation around her vast dark high ceilinged throne room, her radically sharp Slaaneshi senses drinking in every detail with extreme clarity.
Her protective ring of terminators snapped to attention instantly, looking up at their exalted supreme Mistress with open submissive worship, adoring her utterly, ready to suffer and die at her slightest whim, just to make her smile. These terminators were utterly dominated, intoxicated by the mere presence of the dominant object of their desire, all of them sexually aroused and utterly overwhelmed by her overpowering proximity.
The terminators stood transfixed by her momentary attention, yearning just to please her, no matter what she asked of them. Their souls blazed with raw sexual arousal to her warp senses, all had erections over her right now, all desired her above all other things, utterly enslaved to their beloved Matriarch.
The Matriarch let her bodyguard of terminator playthings bask under her imperious gaze for a while, and one by one, her radically sharp senses detected the terminators ejaculating hard inside their armour, the mere attention of their intoxicating dominant Matriarch enough to excite them to delectable orgasm. The Matriarch moved her gaze from one terminator to the next, letting all of her worshipful bodyguard climax from her mere attention, before lazily moving her gaze to the room beyond them.
Around the edges of the gargantuan throne room was set up a high tech military command centre of tables and cogitators, military maps and holographic projectors, screens and Vox units, all manned by vast numbers of high ranking Sevenson women, with multitudes of lesser heretics and dark eldar slaves attending to these Sevenson women, as well as the occasional Night Lord. This military command centre was the strategic command of the Matriarch herself, relaying her orders to all of the vast military forces under her command.
Leading this massive military command centre was her beloved son Luke the Chaos Lord, to whom she had entrusted with delegating some of the military leadership to save her from tedium. He currently stood in his baroque midnight blue suit of defiled Night Lord terminator armour, festooned all over with tiny snarling gargoyles and engravings of skulls and other images of death and terror. His armour was immense and sinister, it's very shape and ornamentation designed to give nightmares to those who saw it, raw terror in mechanical form.
In one gauntleted hand Luke held a brutal double barrelled combi-bolter, the metal surface painted midnight blue like his armour and covered in engraved Slaanesh symbols and a few decorative spikes, the twin barrels carved like the open fanged maws of screaming daemonic terrors. In his other gauntleted palm, Luke toyed with the phallic shaped pommel of a massive scabbarded power sword hanging from his belt, the sword bedecked all along it's currently scabbarded blade length with engraved Slaanesh symbols. Luke seemed to like to alternate between melee weapons, sometimes favouring a lightning claw and sometimes favouring a power sword, depending upon his mood at a given time.
Luke's brutal killer face was bare without a helmet, intensely masculine and dominant in a way that made many a woman instantly wet, his giant pupilled dark eyes hard and commanding, not even slightly submissive...
Beside her son Luke stood her beloved daughter and personal champion, Wendy, her hugely busty intensely fuckable pale body barely contained in her spiky ornately engraved shiny black leather dominatrix corset, massive breasts poring out the top of tight cleavage, her tiny waist belt hung with intimidating whips and chains, long straight brown hair flowing down her back like a glorious silken waterfall.
As always, Wendy was wearing her back to front shiny black leather G string, the string lost from view between her vaginal folds, a true devotee of the sexual excess of blessed Slaanesh. Her copious juices ran down the inner legs of her extremely tight fitting shiny black leather loin high kinky boots, her arms sheaved from wrist to shoulder in more spiky tight shiny black leather. She was an exquisite dominatrix of intoxicating eroticism, the dim pink glow of the Slaanesh Champion's mark on the right cheek of her face making her sinister erotic dominance all the more potent.
The Matriarch admired her beloved personal champion, her favourite mortal servant. Wendy was beyond just being "pretty", she was maddening raw sex appeal in human form, a raging homosexual sadomasochist with a bottomless lust for ever more extreme lesbian depravity, the very epitome of what an administrative chaos champion of Slaanesh should be. The Matriarch couldn't be prouder of this beloved daughter of hers.
On Luke's other side stood the towering robed form of the Matriarch's second in command, the Tzeentch daemon princess TigerLily. TigerLily was almost impossible to describe to the Matriarch's supernatural daemon sight, an eternally changing entity of pure Tzeentch energy, her physical appearance to mortal eyes a lie. TigerLily was a formless being of energy who looked like whatever she wanted to, she had no set shape beyond any she chose to have, and that shape and form could be treacherously changed in an instant, to trust her physical form was perilous, and the Matriarch was not so foolish.
TigerLily certainly had a form she had kept for a long time around mortals, as mortals responded best when presented with a recognisable enduring form, but the Matriarch saw through it. TigerLily had simply taken the unimaginative outward appearance of an average greater daemon of Tzeentch, given it female human sexual anatomy, and changed the head and face to look like an enlarged blue skinned version of her mortal head and face.
It was a lie, TigerLily could look like anything else she chose, and the Matriarch didn't look at the form at all. The Sevenson Matriarch knew TigerLily's true daemonic name, one of the only beings in the universe who did, and with this terrible knowledge the Matriarch had some measure of control over the fickle Tzeentch daemon princess, and could always recognise her no matter what disguise she took.
TigerLily was ultimately subject to the will of her god Tzeentch, more subject to this god than to the will of the Matriarch. The Sevenson Matriarch therefore generously bribed Tzeentch with sacrificial souls every year to remain on good terms with this god, and this, combined with knowing TigerLily's true daemonic name, kept the fickle TigerLily at least as loyal as a daemon of Tzeentch *could* be.
Together these three were delegating a multitude of tasks for the exalted Matriarch, letting her make commands without the tedium of then working out how to implement said orders. Luke handled the military, Wendy handled the civilian administration, and TigerLily provided precognitive advice and handled all sorcery related tasks. The Matriarch had other servants of course, but these 3 were her most prized and valued, her most useful servants.
The Matriarch sighed indulgently and finally deemed to acknowledge the existence of the terrified Archon grovelling before her throne.
"Yes servant?," the Matriarch said simply, gazing down condescendingly at the mortal worm far below her.
The Archon did not dare rise off his face, but spoke in a trembling terrified voice, the smell of his obvious fear even stronger to the Matriarch's heightened senses than the stench of the terrible cologne he wore.
"Exalted Queen, the Ebony Stiletto Kabal, which you rule, *humbly* requests permission to perform real space raids to acquire more slaves and plunder," the Archon begged fearfully.
The Matriarch sneered down at her grovelling servant, an eyebrow cocked in slight incredulity at this request.
"You wish to take *my* kabal on a military raid, using *my* dark eldar forces?," the Matriarch hissed dangerously.
"Ye-Yes exalted queen! Yo-*your* dark eldar forces are now at full recruitment numbers, bu-but lack tra-training in combat. A real space raid wi-will go a long way to improving yo-*your* warriors!" The Archon stammered frantically.
The Matriarch did not reply to this, but instead looked to her son Luke for his opinion on this military matter. Luke had been following the conversation, and paused briefly in thought, before giving a slight nod of agreement with his brutal head.
The Matriarch turned her attention back to her grovelling Archon servant-thing.
"Very well servant. You shall take my forces... To Dark Tropic! The tyranid infestation is proving quite... Irritating. Cleanse *my* world of the tyranid filth, but do *not* enslave my servants or plunder their properties! This will provide ample combat training, yes?", The Matriarch commanded imperiously.
The Archon blanched, just as the Matriarch knew he would, but he was too terrified to disobey.
"Yes my queen! The Ebony Stiletto will liberate your planet from the tyranids!" The Archon agreed frantically.
"Good. My son Luke and 500 of my currently unneeded reserve Night Lords will go with you, as well as 6 regiments of my Kilimanjaro Cultist militia infantry forces, and one Kilimanjaro armoured vehicle regiment. Show Luke the same respect you would show me," The Matriarch said delightedly.
"Ah... Yes! Yes my Queen!" The Archon said enthusiastically after a brief unhappy pause.
"Why the hell do *I* have to go Mother?! I am needed *here* directing the defences! You sure as shit shouldn't give up 5 entire companies of Night Lord reserves from the defences, not for this sort of ridiculous grox shit!" Luke brazenly defied her right to her face.
A collective gasp of disbelief from Sevenson women filled the air, followed by stunned silence.
The Matriarch looked at her son with irritation, he alone of all her male brood was even capable of defying her will like this.
"You don't need me or my Night Lords to hold the dark eldars' hands. The Ebony Stiletto kabal numbers over a billion half born warriors, *easily* enough expendable bodies to handle the tyranids. Low Commorragh is *far* more strategically important to us than a single island on Dark Tropic, send the worthless expendable cannon fodder to the island all you like, but such an errand is a waste of precious Night Lord reserves we may sorely need at any time without warning, I don't condone this." Luke pressed belligerently.
"I *want* some Night Lords present, to keep an eye on my *loyal* Archon servant here," the Matriarch hissed angrily at her uncooperative son, indignantly disliking having to explain her decisions to anyone.
Luke's brutal face twisted slightly, half head cock and half sneer, understanding filling his foul mind.
"You don't trust this maggot... Can't say I blame you... Well then why allow him to go at all?, Why not eat his soul right now and be done with it?," Luke sneered, soft and slow, but with a deep harsh cruelty to his distorted daemonic voice.
The grovelling Archon flinched violently at the words.
The Matriarch chuckled softly, lyrical and melodic yet cruel.
"To find an adequate replacement for this worm would be... Irritating. Far better to keep him alive, for now at least... His loyalty without a blade to his throat is faltering at best, this is true enough, but with you present to remind him of his terror, I trust that his loyalty will be somewhat stronger," the Matriarch purred silkily.
"I live to serve you, exalted one!" The Archon proclaimed in undisguised naked terror.
Luke grunted, clearly both amused and irritated.
"At any rate, why send *me* of all people, and why send so many of our Night Lords?, A single squad led by an Aspiring Champion would do to watch this maggot, a company at the most. Five hundred Night Lords and a Chaos Lord is just overkill, a fucking waste of resources," Luke criticised her belligerently.
The Matriarch hissed warningly at her arrogant son, not caring at all for his extremely insolent tone towards her. Her bodyguard of terminators raised their deactivated lightning claws at Luke in warning at the sound of the angry hiss of their beloved Matriarch.
"Hiss all you like Mother, you know I am right." Luke casually dismissed her discontent!
The bodyguard of terminators barked in outrage and activated their lightning claws with explosive crackles of baleful energy, awaiting a single gesture from their Matriarch to kill this insubordinate irritant.
"Why must you always do this Luke?, Of all my many sons and grandsons, you alone question my will. Is my command not enough?, I have made my decision, that should be enough for you," the Matriarch sighed with open exhaustion, utterly tired of this exasperating exchange by now.
Luke snorted gruffly, considering his reply for long moments of silence.
The Matriarch looked at her son, her irritation growing as the moments of silence stretched on.
Luke finally sighed deeply in a low daemonically distorted sigh.
"As you wish Mother. I will go with this maggot and watch him conduct this tiresome pest control. Keep me in the loop with the *real* fighting here in Low Commorragh, I don't want things turning to shit in my absence, let me advise you from afar," Luke conceded, naked contempt for this task dripping from every word!
The Matriarch bared her needle fangs at this raw insolence!
Immortal rage filled her, how DARE he!
The Matriarch paused, intense anger reverberating through her mind like a tempest, her beautiful face filled with fell wrath, the desire to kill this arrogant little mortal whelp powerful and strong.
A moment passed, and this rage simmered down, definitely not gone, not even close to gone, but manageable, her emotions no longer ruling her.
The Matriarch regained her composure, her face calming, becoming unreadable.
She gazed at Luke, at her *son*, kith and kin, born from her own loins and suckled from her own breasts back when she was mortal, and her desire to murder subsided.
Even a Slaanesh daemon princess gave pause before willingly murdering her own child on a mere whim, some mortal bonds endured even beyond daemonic ascension.
She would not simply murder him for the sake of petty rudeness...
"Go", the Matriarch hissed simply in a cold voice, letting Luke escape her wrath unharmed despite his galling hubris.
"As you wish," Luke told her calmly, before harshly saying to the grovelling Archon, "on your feet maggot, we have work to do".
The Archon staggered to his feet like a whipped dog, and cowered away out of the throne room ahead of Luke as quickly as respectful politeness to the Matriarch allowed.
The Sevenson Matriarch watched the pair leave in silence, shaking her head slightly at Luke's insolence. That boy had a serious attitude problem...
***...
It was dark on the tyranid infested Muntilliko Island, the capital city of Dark Tropic, absolutely dark. Not a single star was visible through the inky blackness of the volcanic ash clogged skies, the ash of untold thousands of giant volcanoes filling the upper atmosphere of the planet, so thick that the clouds of ash swallowed all the light.
The planet of Dark Tropic was young and violent for a planet, even if desperately old by human timescales, as was the entire star system it inhabited. Less than a billion years ago the entire system had formed from the gravitational collapse of a thick dusty nebula, the nebula that still surrounded the system to this day, blocking out the magenta glow of the Maelstrom with its thick molecular clouds of nebula dust, and this young solar system had yet to fully stabilise, making its volcanoes spectacularly violent.
The planet Dark Tropic was far from its tiny red dwarf star, far far out beyond the habitable zone, out among the handful of feebly small Neptune-like mini ice giants that naturally formed in the outer orbit, where Dark Tropic's orbit had migrated to during the general orbital chaos and instability of a relatively young solar system. Dark Tropic was far out beyond the reach of the regular atmosphere stripping solar flares of the tempestuous red dwarf star, protecting its atmosphere from the usual horrific consequences of orbiting a red dwarf star.
Dark Tropic would normally be a frozen ball of ice given it's outer orbit and the extremely small and feeble star it orbited, and eventually this would indeed be it's inevitable fate, but for the short term at least it was balmy and warm due to the extreme tidal interactions with its glowing hot moon "Burning Hell".
In geological timescales the moon Burning Hell would eventually bleed out enough kinetic energy as heat to stabilise in its orbit, and Dark Tropic would become a frozen ball of ice, but the planet was still very young, the orbit of its equally young moon very close and highly elliptical, so for the next few million years at least the temperature would remain absolutely ideal for life.
The planet and it's entire solar system might be young as planets measure age, but Muntilliko Island was still ancient by human standards, older than the human species had existed in the universe, and was itself not even the oldest volcano on Dark Tropic. The planet had no continental land masses, the dark seas far too deep for that, abyssally astonishingly deep, but the volcanism of the planet was so extreme from the titanic tidal forces that thousands of especially wrathful volcanoes had managed to grow all the way to the surface, roaring their defiance to the deep sea into the dark sky as they broke the surface of the lightless waters.
Dark Tropic, it's young solar system and it's cradle nebula had only relatively recently migrated into the warp saturated Maelstrom, and had not migrated in very far at all, just a few light years from the outer edge. For most of it's existence Dark Tropic had existed outside the Maelstrom, it's solar system and cradle nebula simply orbiting around the super massive black hole in the centre of the galaxy the way nebulas do, fully within the reach of all space faring races during this time.
Many sentient races had visited this strange planet over the last few million years, intrigued by such an unlikely planet as this, some staying longer than others, but few staying long. The process of terraforming the atmosphere to make it breathable had not been easy, nor had it been quick. The impenetrably deep oceans had proved to be a massive oxygen sink that dissolved in oxygen and other gases quicker than they could be produced, and the volcanoes relentlessly spewed out toxic gases, making a mockery of most atmospheric terraforming.
Most of the early alien visitors had given up in their terraforming efforts. The seas had defeated them, just too deep and too ravenous for oxygen, greedily sucking the gases down into its unfathomable depths.
When one race gave up and left, another eventually came along to continue the terraforming attempt, filling the hungry seas with yet more oxygen, building on the work of their predecessors for a while, before then giving up and departing.
For millions of years at one time or another, some race or other attempted to process the stubborn atmosphere. It wasn't all the time, sometimes hundreds of thousands of years between brief terraforming attempts, but slowly and gradually, the combined efforts filled up the ravenous oxygen sink of the oceans more and more, until finally and without fanfare, the abyssal oceans were filled to capacity with dissolved oxygen, and could consume it no more.
The air of Dark Tropic was fully breathable now after these millions of years of effort, and to this day giant artificial atmosphere processors oxygenated and detoxified the volcano polluted air, keeping the air breathable and smelling nice.
The original alien colonists were long gone, abandoning the planet as it entered the terrible chaos hells of the Maelstrom, and the forces of chaos had inherited this marvellous jewel for themselves, and infested the planet with chaos worshipping hordes of humans and mutant things that had descended from humanity.
Little beyond the atmosphere remained of the original alien terraformers, lava and the elements had buried or destroyed almost all trace of their ruins or technology, and all but the simplest bacterial alien life had starved to death in the absence of technology to bring light and nutrients to the inky black waters.
The mermaids and stranger things that now swam in the inky black depths had come much later, with the chaos worshipping humans ten thousand years ago. They had been humans once, devolved by chaos mutations into horrific new forms to please the dark gods. These many strange swimming things now infested the dark oceans, acting as ever present pests to the huge floating chandelier farms, stealing their food from the rich patches of seaweed and algae, letting these mutated creatures multiply furiously.
The ancient seawater canals underneath Muntilliko Island had always been a major breeding ground for the pale 6 breasted mermaid creatures, for at least the last ten thousand years, a place of safety to rear their young, deep dark tunnels where few people came to bother the mermaids and their young. It wasn't the only island that mermaids used to breed, but it was the only breeding ground in easy swimming distance for the millions of mermaids who inhabited this particular patch of sea, the nearest other island being over a thousand kilometres away from Muntilliko Island.
At this exact moment, most of the pale eel-like mutant mermaids in this part of the sea were extremely distressed and alarmed.
Horrific ripper larvae and hormagaunts now infested the ledges along the traditional breeding tunnels of the mermaids, nasty hungry hostile things that had killed and eaten multitudes of the helpless mermaid young!
Distressed mermaid mothers swimming into the canals from the sea moaned out in vain for their eaten young, their desperate Slaaneshi moans filled with rising panic, as the mermaids darted swiftly through the canal water as tyranids splashed into the water trying to bite them.
The moans of maternal panic and sadness echoed through the dark canal tunnels under Muntilliko Island, mixed with the hissing of tyranids and splashing sounds of swimming.
The tyranids were fast, but these hormagaunts and rippers were a land breed, capable enough swimmers but not adapted for swift swimming, and the lithe graceful mermaids easily evaded and outpaced them in the water, with only the occasional lucky bite of a tyranid hitting home and filling the lightless canal water with unseen red blood.
This canal system was vast, a branching interconnecting maze of sea water canals, beginning at many thousands of inlet mouths on every shore on every side of the island, these canals both big and small, some shallow some deep, all heading inland from the shore, heading towards the interior of the massive volcano island.
These canals were all the same level all the way, perfectly sea level, letting the water passively find its own way inside with the aid of just gravity and the massive tides of the fearsomely close moon. The canals went right through the island and out the other side, becoming tunnels when the ground level rose, carefully dug to avoid a few places like the central lava tube and smaller natural vent tubes of the volcano, the canals branching out more and more, like the blood vessels for the entire island, providing seawater access to the entire island.
The tunnels were ancient, built by the first chaos worshipping colonists, and absolutely essential to the continued life inside the subterranean hive city that was Muntilliko Island.
As the wise Wendy Sevenson had noted in the past, thermodynamics was an unbreakable rule of nature in the real universe outside of the bizarre webway.
All work produced heat, and all heat had to go somewhere. Every single living adult human being was effectively a 100 watt space heater, every single engine produced heat, every light, every appliance, every single thing that used any energy whatsoever produced heat, and all of that heat had to go somewhere. The somewhere that this heat went was the seawater of these canals.
Huge surf and even huger tides forced vast amounts of water through these canals, in one side of the island and out the other, flushing away terawatts of waste heat, keeping the hive city from cooking to death from its own thermodynamic entropy.
The passive flow of cooling water wasn't enough of course, vast amounts of water was also pumped into completely automated massive evaporative heat exchangers, a labyrinthine maze of steam tunnels linking countless heat exchangers together, venting this hot steam away out a system of huge tall steam chimneys that dotted the slopes of the volcano.
The amounts of heat purged each hour by the automated cooling systems was staggering, keeping the hive city cool enough to keep everyone alive, these dark canal tunnels were absolutely essential, the sweat glands of the entire island, without which the entire island population would die.
Few other than maintenance workers had ever routinely visited these canal tunnels, for the hot steamy water made the air unbearably humid to ordinary humans. The mermaid young liked the hot humidity, but unfortunately so did the tyranids...
The dark canal tunnels were now completely infested with hormagaunts and their ravenous larvae, basking in the gloriously humid hot air, attempting to bite chunks of flesh out of the seething swarms of distressed mermaid mothers that continually swam past, searching for infants that had already been eaten.
Genestealers, hybrids and infected cult brood brothers stalked the maintenance access walkway ledges beside these dark canals, even the brood brothers ignored by the ravenous ripper larvae as they smelled like members of hive fleet leviathan.
The genestealer cult was elated with the progress so far. The entire island was now infested with hormagaunts and rippers, every single district was now filled with them.
Billions of enemy civilian humans were still safely barricaded inside their various homes, alive for the moment but cut off from any additional food supplies beyond whatever they already had stored inside, and the rippers were very gradually gnawing their way inside these dwellings, frantic to get at the edible human biomass they could smell inside.
The genestealer cult themselves had plenty of food, many many vast hidden underground silos of food in fact, and the overpowering will of the local brood mind, projected by the psychic synapse organ of the genestealer patriarch brood lord, prevented the rippers from eating this stored food, the command of the small localised hive mind of the genestealer cult brood mind stronger than even the overwhelming hunger of the rippers.
The brood mind sensed everything that every tyranid within synapse range of the genestealer patriarch sensed, a few lictors and the brood telepathy of every genestealer cult member on the planet extended this gestalt sensory net even further, even to other more distant parts of the planet.
The brood mind saw much, but also had many gaps in its ken, many more than might be expected at first glance.
The seething multitude of hormagaunts and rippers that filled the island to bursting point were for the most part out of synapse range of the single brood lord, and no other synapse creature currently existed to extend this synapse connection to the hormagaunts beyond this. For maybe a few hundred meters in all directions the synapse organ of the brood lord had complete control of the rippers and hormagaunts, but beyond this distance the control steadily weakened.
The synapse signal steadily weakened beyond this, but still gave some information. For about a kilometre in all directions the brood lord detected very faint thoughts and feelings from the swarm, unable to control them but still sensing vaguely what the creatures sensed and felt, getting steadily weakened with distance, the sights becoming more blurred and smudged, like looking through cloudy eyes at an object far far away, until finally becoming so faded after a kilometre to become just unintelligible nonsense static.
Muntilliko Island was a lot wider and longer than a single kilometre unfortunately, towards the upper limit of how big a deep sea volcano island could be, and the vast majority of this area was hidden from the collective sight of the brood mind, the uncountable multitudes of hormagaunts and rippers completely outside the brood mind and reverted to instinctive behaviour.
The brood lord however could not move far from the genestealer cult's heavily concentrated cluster of secret underground food storage silos, as his synapse organ alone was preventing the rippers from eating all their food stores, trapping him in place, keeping the brood mind blind over the vast majority of the island...
Small gaggles of genestealer cult members were therefore forced to patrol throughout the island and hive city, on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary, serving as the eyes and ears of the brood mind, the genestealer cult brood telepathy being long range enough to work anywhere on the planet.
The brood mind observed these sentry patrols like a circle of very feeble flashlight light playing slowly across an extremely dark room, everything in the circle of light visible and unhidden, but all outside the circle lost in darkness.
Hundreds of these sentry patrols were happening at a given moment, the patrol paths decided by the collective will of the brood mind rather than by any one individual, the patrol paths changing on a whim, sometimes predictable and sometimes seemingly completely random, trying to detect any enemies that must surely be coming eventually to reclaim the city.
The collective brood mind was optimistic but cautious, elated but wisely fearing an attack at any moment. At present there was no evidence of any enemy at large on the island, no hostiles beyond those already trapped inside various homes and buildings.
The grand waterfront palace of the Sevenson Matriarch still held out, every conceivable entry to the graceful building blocked by terrible energy fields, horrific curtains of energy that reduced invading tyranid bodies down to atoms. The personal dungeon skyscraper home of the Matriarch's personal Champion Wendy Sevenson was likewise impenetrably protected by deadly glowing energy curtains, as were many other highly strategic buildings or dwellings of the particularly rich and powerful.
Carefully hidden genestealer cult sentries watched these important buildings and dwellings at all times, alert for the slightest hint of any sort of activity. Not only did these places most likely contain armed resistance inside but even worse, the enemy Night Lords would likely value these places as critical locations of high priority, making constant watch of these places absolutely essential.
The calm darkness continued unabated without any sign of enemy attack. The daemon possessed automated subway trains mostly still operated, mindlessly stopping at stations along their routes as they were programmed to, completely oblivious to the lack of passengers and the infestation of tyranids, all the subway tracks outside of synapse range now heavily smeared with pasted rippers and hormagaunts that had strayed onto the rails.
The hormagaunts and rippers without the guidance of the brood mind were attracted onto the subway tracks by the smell of the pasted meat remains, too hungry and stupid to suspect danger, and themselves getting hit by trains and adding to the pasted remains. A few particularly popular tyranid splattering locations had gotten so bad that trains had even been permanently derailed from hitting so much meat at once.
Extremely high voltage electrical connections were also proving quite deadly to the stupid instinctive behaviour of unguided tyranids, rippers hungrily gnawing into the tyranid-edible plastic insulation of wires, getting instantly electrocuted, and other rippers smelling the sizzling electrocuted meat and trying to eat the high voltage meat, getting instantly electrocuted to death and adding more meat to attract even more rippers.
Rippers frequently smelled small vermin or other biomass lurking in the tight gaps between walls or under floors, crawled in not quite fitting to try to eat the biomass, and getting themselves stuck and starving to death in the tight spaces. Their starved to death dead bodies then attracted even more rippers to crawl in and get stuck, over and over again until the tight spaces were stuffed completely full of them.
All over the island rippers and hormagaunts were finding ever more imaginative ways of getting themselves killed in stupid ways, the creatures not very intelligent at all, and the genestealers and brood mind could do very little to protect their wayward fellow tyranids from their own stupidity. The swarm was just too big and too numerous, it was just impossible to manage a swarm this big without the vast numbers of synapse creatures a tyranid hive fleet would usually deploy.
Out on the surface it was currently raining heavily, rain hissing away loudly over the huge raised lava pipe, and puddling everywhere else it fell. The weather patterns on Dark Tropic were extremely weird compared to other habitable planets, the lack of any noticeable sunlight heating meaning that the weather systems were generated by a complex combination of the surface heat and tidal forces, making the weather systems particularly complicated.
Visibility in the infrared spectrum was terrible outside with all the heavy rain, the cool pelting rain drops absorbing infrared light, reducing visibility terribly.
The hidden genestealer cult sentries out on the surface provided little bubbles of visibility for the brood mind, what they sensed depending on their exact species. The infected human brood brothers could only sense their surroundings with ordinary human senses, seeing only the highly visible glow of the glaring energy shields and hearing the tapping roar of the heavy rain.
The human-genestealer hybrids and pure genestealers on the other hand could see not merely visible light but also infrared and ultraviolet light as well, and had far better senses of hearing and smell than any mere human. These could see their dark surroundings in the deep crimson hues of infrared heat vision, seeing the temperature of everything around them in slight variations of deep crimson.
The sentry parties always included at least one genestealer or hybrid to act as the spotter for the rest, the human brood brothers were basically blind in the dark, but the brood telepathy let them see what the spotters saw, letting them walk with confidence in even the most inky blackness. Most importantly this spotter vision let the extremely heavily armed brood brothers aim their excessive weaponry...
Apart from the rain outside, today was completely unremarkable as the various sentries stood watch or patrolled around.
The rippers were hungry as ever, thickly carpeting the floor and ground absolutely everywhere in a seething hungry swarm. The rippers were not all the same size, the size depending upon how much biomass they had found to eat. Most of the rippers were small and poorly fed, most would never find enough food to pupate into adult hormagaunts, but a lucky few were larger and more well fed, some very very close to being big enough to pupate.
The hormagaunts were far less numerous than the endless carpet of rippers, but still extremely plentiful. A patrol couldn't go ten meters in any direction without encountering at least one adult hormagaunt, and in some places it was thick with them.
In one particular underground residential corridor, a patrol group consisting of two first generation human-genestealer hybrids and eighteen heavily armed human brood brothers was making a patrol.
All around them were securely locked metal doors to either side of the dark tunnel, and rippers were desperately biting and scratching at the hard metal, smelling human civilians cowering within.
The brood brothers saw nothing at all, as this corridor was utterly dark, but the pair of hybrid spotters saw everything in the deep crimson light of infrared, brood telepathy letting the brood brothers use this vision to find their way.
The brood brothers all wore heavy plates of partially gnawed carapace armour complete with fully enclosed helmets, gnawed metal boots, and gnawed metal chain belts that hung ammo and other supplies, (all of it partially gnawed), but the rippers had already eaten all their other clothing and edible possessions, leaving them naked under this scratched and gnawed inedible gear. The rippers were absolutely feral with hunger, they wouldn't eat the actual flesh of anything alive that smelled like a member of their same hive fleet, but they frantically consumed any edible clothing or equipment these tyranid forces carried, and even gnawed experimentally at stuff they couldn't eat.
The brood brothers of the patrol all carried slightly gnawed brutal Gos-19 battle rifle auto guns, locally manufactured high caliber raw steel firearms capable of killing an ork, these particular ones each fitted with a custom high capacity ammo drum for prolonged firing. These guns were rugged and extremely reliable weapons with a high rate of fire, built in highly automated local factories by the trillions to serve as reserve weaponry for the mortal servants of the Sevenson Matriarch. The entire planet was swamped in these surplus firearms, and the genestealer cult had had no trouble at all acquiring them.
The two hybrids were completely naked, the rippers having eaten not only their fabric robes but even their ballistic polymer flak armour as well! The hybrids' hunched alien bodies had regrettably not been able to fit inside the inedible carapace armour, and the hungry rippers could eat and gain nutrition from every other type of armour the hybrids could wear.
The hybrids were almost identical to pure genestealers, only slightly smaller and having very slightly more human faces, terrifying six limbed alien horrors with terrible claws capable of ripping through space marine power armour. They each carried an auto pistol of dull slightly gnawed metal, large pistols of the Gos pattern with capacious ammunition drums to allow extended fire.
The group of sentries looked sympathetically at the frantically hungry rippers trying to dig their way inside the numerous metal doors, the brood mind pitied these poor young tyranid children.
The pair of hybrids paused and sniffed at the doors, determining what was inside.
Inside some of the dwellings was the distinctive smell of living humans holding many firearms. The hybrids shunned away from these dangerous doors. Behind other doors the hybrids smelled only dead bodies inside, the human occupants having already died of starvation or suicide, no one left alive inside to put up a fight. The hybrids eagerly tore into these doors with their armour piercing claws, slicing deeply into the metal, ripping the doors apart to reveal barricades of metal furniture behind.
The rippers surged desperately inside, mad with hunger, and easily climbed through the crude barricades of furniture and gorged themselves on the rotting dead bodies inside.
The brood brothers compassionately cleared away the barricades so the rippers wouldn't get trapped inside, and the hybrids ripped through more doors, showing mercy on these hungry rippers.
The sentry patrol moved on after this brief good deed to poor unfortunate rippers, moving deeper underground, passing yet more civilian dwellings.
Interestingly, not all of the civilian doors were actually closed.
In any lockdown situation, there were always some members of the population who were too stupid and too psychologically weak to remain safely indoors, and these men had actually willingly opened their doors and been instantly eaten.
The Khorne worshippers had been the first to die, there wasn't a single Khorne worshipper left alive anywhere on the island as far as the brood mind was aware. Khorne was the god of weaklings, the god of weak pathetic stupid men who couldn't control their own emotions, the god of men too weak to endure to sit safely inside for a while even to save their own lives.
Khorne might be the strongest of all the chaos gods, but his worshippers were the psychologically weakest of all chaos worshippers, they simply lacked the emotional strength and maturity needed to survive in a lockdown type situation. The fact that Khorne was the strongest of the four chaos gods actually said a lot about how utterly pathetic most sentient creatures were, and the tyranids mocked this pathetic weakness.
The Khorne fools had not even lasted a week of lockdown before hurling open their doors in a rage to fight the hormagaunts. The rippers had instantly swarmed all over these foolish men, dragging them down and eating them alive before they even reached the hormagaunts, and swarms of other rippers had surged inside these fools' open doorways to eat their wives and children too.
It had been pathetic, utterly pathetic, and the brood mind mocked this unfathomable folly. The rippers had eaten well from that.
The Khorne worshippers hadn't even been the only insane fools to open the door to death. Quite a few Slaanesh worshippers had gotten so bored of the lockdown that they had opened their doors to experience "the pleasure of being eaten". Most Slaanesh worshippers had simply remained inside and spent the entire lockdown feverishly fornicating with each other or with summoned daemonettes, but a sizeable minority had been too weak to endure lockdown, utterly pathetic.
Even more ridiculous, a political faction calling themselves "libertarians" had also willingly opened their own doors, stating over the vox just prior to this that they "had rights" and that the lockdown was "hurting business". The rippers had eaten these pathetic idiots even faster than they had eaten the Khorne and Slaanesh worshippers.
The genestealer cult had been monitoring the local vox channels, and had witnessed no end of insanity and pathetic psychological weakness, from a surprisingly large minority of the population even beyond the Khorne and Slaanesh worshippers and the libertarians.
Astonishing numbers of people had claimed that the entire tyranid infestation was a made up hoax, and argued over the vox that there were no rippers at all and the experts were all wrong and/or lying. These "tyranid hoaxers" promptly opened their doors to prove that the tyranids were a hoax, and the rippers immediately ate them. (The rest of the population over the vox was apparently glad that this particular segment of the population was now gone).
Other people on the vox had decided that tyranids were not a hoax but were simply not dangerous and would "only kill 0.1 percent of the population". These idiots had all been eaten too.
For some time the more mentally defective members of the population had willingly opened their doors and given the tyranids a free meal, and the hormagaunts had had a population explosion from so many lockdown defying idiots. Sadly for the tyranids, almost every single idiot on the entire island was now eaten, and only the smart people were left, making food much harder for the rippers to get at.
Now the rippers could only get food the hard way, very very slowly gnawing through doors and barricades to reach people who were no fools.
The sentries passed many wide open doorways as they passed through a district that had once had a large libertarian population, the dwellings completely stripped of all biomass, even the foam mattresses and plastic items having been eaten by the remorselessly hungry rippers. Few dwellings remained intact here, the especially vast numbers of tyranids resulting from the feast of libertarians had naturally doomed all their poor innocent neighbours as well, the hormagaunts numerous enough here to simply break the doors down with their combined mass.
The sentries moved even deeper now, entering an area the brood mind had not explored much.
The walls of this underground area were all of stone and mortar, with decorative arches and statues everywhere. It was a necropolis district, few had ever lived here and it had no apparent strategic value. The rippers would have already eaten all of the dead bodies buried here long ago, it would be empty of biomass now.
The patrol group explored this massive underground necropolis anyway, commanded by the brood mind.
The vast utterly dark necropolis was an utter mess as the patrol moved throughout the dusty old stone crypts. Every single grave and casket and tomb had been obviously broken into, leaving stony debris everywhere in piles of gritty dust. Tyranid footprints were everywhere in the untidy dust and grit that covered the floor, and not so much as a bone remained of the original dead.
Even here in this cleaned out necropolis, the sentries found a few malnourished rippers, the rippers gnawing at the mortar between the stonework for the feeble weak nutrients the cement contained.
The sentries ignored these poor half starving rippers, working their way past smashed tombstones and upset funeral urns all over the desecrated resting place of the dead.
The patrol found nothing but dust and stone, empty tombs and a few rippers, this old place was empty.
The patrol turned a corner and even the rippers ceased all together, the tunnels and corridors completely deserted of all life here.
This lack of even rippers was extremely odd, and the brood mind was intrigued. No where else on the island had the brood mind encountered a complete absence of rippers.
The patrol group could feel some strange urge to flee tugging at their minds, a sense of extreme danger up ahead, the primitive instinctive parts of their brains wanted to flee for reasons unknown.
The brood mind simply overrided this inexplicable fear in the minds of the sentries, urging them forward slavishly.
The patrol continued on deeper into the necropolis, and the temperature strangely got colder, the scarlet infrared getting darker as the temperature dropped.
The patrol members breath was coming out in unseen white plumes, the air chilly and damp.
Around the next bend frost crunched underfoot, the air so cold that it frosted the stone floor.
This was extremely unusual for Dark Tropic, perhaps a refrigeration system was working too hard?
The sense of fear was becoming ever more extreme now, the brood mind needed to exert more and more will to keep the sentries from fleeing away.
The temperature was steadily dropping, and the scarlet infrared light was fading away, with only the bright body heat of the patrol members to light the way in this freezing cold place.
It was so dark and cold now, the patrol was nearly blind in here.
Fear and adrenaline surged through the quaking brains of the sentries, the sense of unknown danger was palpable.
(Faint human baby cry)
The fretful patrol stopped suddenly!
(Very faint human baby cry)
The keen ears of the hybrids could hear a human baby!
The spooked sentries tried to flee.
The brood mind immediately rallied them.
The patrol anxiously crept forward.
The brood mind was exerting maximum willpower now to maintain the morale of the sentries.
They turned a few more corners.
What was that smell?
The patrol paused again, the hybrids sniffing the freezing cold air.
It was hormagaunt and ripper meat!
The patrol crept forward again, their infrared vision reduced to almost nothing in this incredibly cold air.
(Baby crying faintly in the distance)
Tyranid statues loomed up ahead in the dark. What?
The patrol was spooked.
The vague outline of hormagaunts in the poor visibility slightly encouraged them.
The patrol regained enough nerve to continue.
The patrol moved forward, and a vast assembly of hormagaunt and ripper statues stood before them.
The patrol paused, sniffing uncertainly.
The statues were meat, frozen tyranid meat!
The patrol broke and fled.
The sentries desperately fled away from this terrible horror!
The brood telepathy of the brood mind irritably rallied the frightened sentries after a few dozen steps.
The quaking unhappy sentry patrol slavishly returned.
The dead tyranids still stood unmoving...
The brood mind was puzzled, had these tyranids frozen to death on their feet?
The frozen tyranids were dark in the infrared spectrum, exactly the same temperature as the freezing air all around them. They were not alive...
The assembly of dead tyranids was gigantic, tens of thousands at least!
The sentries didn't want to go near these dead, something about them radiated primal terror.
The tightly on edge sentries stood unmoving, just watching the standing stationary dead.
The dead did not fall over, not a single one was off its feet...
The sentries would approach no closer without breaking and fleeing, genestealer brood telepathy could only do so much.
The brood mind wanted to know more about this extremely unusual situation, what was keeping these dead upright?
Could these bodies be knocked over somehow from a distance to see what happened?
How would they do this?
The opinions of many individual tyranids filled the brood mind, many creatures weighing in on what to do. A hive mind by its very nature was highly democratic, the combined mind of many brains all working together as one.
The hormagaunts and rippers in synapse range of the brood lord formed a large part of this local hive mind, but these brains had very little intelligent opinion on this theoretical discussion, the abstract concept of doing anything at a distance completely lost to the minds of these melee close combat specialists.
The brood brothers, genestealers and hybrids had more opinions however, and a vague set of options presented itself.
Many many brood brothers had seen television action programs, where the actors in the shooting scenes were forcefully knocked back by normal bullets hitting them...
One of the brood brothers in the sentry patrol blindly opened fire in the general direction of the nearest standing dead hormagaunt with his Gos-19 battle riffle auto gun, firing a single burst of three high caliber bullets.
The brutal high caliber bullets hit true, striking the hormagaunt in the chest, but it didn't even rock slightly from the bullets?
The brood mind thought about this...
The bullets each weighed a few grams, the hormagaunt must weigh at least 40 kilograms. A bit of mental maths and physics calculations showed that an object as low weight as a bullet had no where near enough mass to alter the resting state of motion of a 40 kilogram body, even when travelling the speed of a bullet...
Brood brothers protested loudly, this contradicted all the gunfire scenes in the television programs, surely the film industry couldn't be simply making this up to make scenes look more exciting!
The brood mind quickly calculated that a bullet of this mass would need to be travelling at around orbital speeds or higher, just to have enough kinetic energy to even knock someone over...
The brood brothers were terribly disappointed...
The sentry patrol was still standing there, as this absurd discussion filled the brood mind. Hive minds could be extremely silly places sometimes...
The brood mind refocused itself with effort, and returned to thinking about what to do.
The patrol hybrids could see a large chunk of broken masonry laying on the icy floor.
One of the brood brothers was directed to blindly pick it up, the frost and ice crackled as the stone chunk was ripped free of the frozen floor.
The brood brother tested the weight in his hands, the chunk of masonry seemed to weigh around ten kilograms.
This object would have enough mass to knock over a hormagaunt...
The brood brother used the brood telepathy to see through the eyes of the hybrid spotters, and clumsily aimed a throw at the standing dead hormagaunts.
The chunk of masonry arched through the air, and thudded into the side shoulder of one of the hormagaunts.
The chunk of masonry transferred much of it's kinetic energy into the hormagaunt it hit, and the hormagaunt toppled over sideways, feet ripping free of the icy floor with a crackling sound.
The hormagaunt lay still on it's side among the crowd of it's fellows...
The dead hormagaunt twitched!
The sentries flinched in alarm.
With an icy crackling sound the limbs of the hormagaunt moved, frozen muscles crackling with every motion!
The dead hormagaunt unsteadily got back to it's feet!
The sentries shot it with bursts of auto gun fire!
The dead hormagaunt completely ignored the gunfire, not even swaying slightly!
The sentries shot more bullets into it, aiming at the legs now.
The legs broke from the bullets scything through them, the legs bent horribly at the breaks and the hormagaunt fell down, legs useless...
That had taken a lot of bullets!
The sentries looked nervously at the tens of thousands of other dead hormagaunts...
The sentries backed away.
(Crackle)
The sentries flinched.
(CRACKLE)
The frozen dead hormagaunts were starting to move!
The crackle of frozen muscles moving was deafening now.
The sentries panicked and ran for their lives, even the brood telepathy couldn't rally them now.
The crackling sound thundered behind them!
One of the hybrids suddenly went dark to the brood mind!
The second hybrid spotter went dark!
The two infrared vision spotters were dead!
The human brood brothers staggered around in the absolute darkness!
They couldn't see!
Claws stabbed into the carapace armour of the brood brothers!
Freezing jaws mauled at their armoured limbs!
The brood brothers opened fire at random in the dark!
Flashes of muzzle fire lit up the darkness.
Hundreds of freezing dead hormagaunts flashed in the muzzle light all around them!
The hormagaunts were biting them!
The gunfire raked across the dead hormagaunts.
It didn't even slow them down!
The beheaded body of a hybrid spotter showed in the muzzle flashes, it was laying dead!
Brood brothers were bleeding out from bites!
The carapace armour was excellent protection but had gaps the hormagaunts could bite through!
The survivors desperately pushed through the swarm, desperate to find the malnourished rippers they had seen earlier.
Controlled bursts of muzzle fire lit the way.
Hormagaunts were thickly scrumming around them on all sides.
The brood brothers couldn't push through the wall of bodies!
Brood brothers went dark from the brood mind, falling dead.
The survivors grouped together in an armoured huddle, trying to protect the gaps in their armour.
"Reinforce us!" The brood brothers screamed into the brood telepathy.
The brood mind was already scrambling nearby patrol squads to mount a rescue.
The nearest reinforcements were over ten minutes away...
Half the brood brothers were dead, bled to death from pierced arteries in the gaps between the armour plates!
The survivors fired desperately into the attacking dead hormagaunts.
The gunfire had no noticeable effect!
Waves of supernatural terror filled their brains, driving the survivors weeping to their knees.
The brood brothers curled up in defensive balls on the floor, limbs tightly tucked to close all the gaps in their carapace armour.
It was utterly dark without the muzzle flashes.
The brood brothers could feel cold frozen teeth and claws scraping at their armour, could hear the crackling of frozen muscles and the screeching of chitin scraping their carapace armour plates.
Sharp chitin stabbed through armour gaps into naked flesh beneath, terribly cold blades stabbing into flesh, searching for arteries.
The brood brothers screamed and held their armour gaps tightly closed.
Blades stabbed through, hacking into the flesh, unable to quite reach any arteries as the brood brothers shrieked in agony and terror.
They were a mass of cuts and bleeds!
The cold blades were terrible!
Another brood brother died, succumbing to his blood loss.
All was utter darkness, cold, and blades in the darkness.
More died.
The nightmare went on and on.
The survivors were half insane with terror now.
The reinforcements were still not arrived.
(Sudden pink light)
The brood brothers could see!
A pink glow filled the air!
(A bird like female voice chanting in the distance)
The pink glow was growing stronger!
(The name Slaanesh and evil daemonic words of power chanted by the voice)
The pink glow was painfully bright now, burning their eyes.
It was getting even colder now!
The pink glow was sucking away heat!
Snow was falling all around in the tunnel from the chilling glow!
(Filthy words of power getting louder)
Dead sentries were starting to twitch!
The two headless hybrids rose to their feet!
The brood mind saw nothing from them, they were still dead.
Dead brood brothers rose to their feet among the swarm of walking dead!
The hybrids leapt upon the survivors!
Genestealer hybrid claws penetrated easily through the protective carapace armour!
The survivors were being ripped apart by the headless hybrids!
The reinforcements were arriving now, the brood mind could see clearly again.
The reinforcements shot at the legs of the walking dead, dropping them gradually with sustained fire.
The walking dead turned and stampeded towards the reinforcements!
The hybrid spotters of the reinforcement squad tore viciously at the dead, amputating limbs with rending talons.
All was slashing claws and snapping jaws!
Another squad of sentries arrived, half of the entire genestealer cult on the island was on its way now.
The brood mind saw terrible violence and confusion, a swirling melee of living and dead.
The initial survivors were crawling away, ignored by the distracted dead.
(More filthy words of evil power)
The sense of supernatural terror was stronger than ever in the minds of the reinforcements!
Several fled in panic.
The air was absolutely freezing, the evil magic was sucking all the heat from the air.
Dead brood members were steadily rising to their feet and shambling forwards!
Gunfire from the guns of the dead sentries pounded off the carapace armour of brood brothers.
The original survivors crawled past the melee and fled away to safety.
About a hundred reinforcements had now arrived, almost all human brood brothers with a few hybrids to spot for them.
The brood brothers laid down a suppressing fire at the legs of the dead.
Dead fell limbless, more kept coming.
This was hopeless!
The brood fell back in stages.
The dead followed!
The brood retreated around a corner...
The dead came to the corner.
The dead halted!
The dead pulled back just behind the corner, pursuing no further!
Hundreds of brood brothers now gathered, the brood mind indecisive what to do now.
They waited pensively.
More and more reinforcements arrived, soon thousands were assembled.
The living rippers and hormagaunts seemed to be repelled by the supernatural terror generated by this obvious sorcery, none would go near this place. If this dangerous force of walking dead advanced, this witchcraft might drive away all the hormagaunts that might have helped to defeat it!
This was a catastrophic security threat!
The brood mind mustered still more forces, hesitant to attack just yet.
Groups of patrols were now scouting all through the surrounding tunnels, trying to learn what exact area this dead horde occupied and the general tactical situation.
The brood mind was blind to much of the rest of the island right now, the sentry patrols congregating en mass to this hostile force, but the brood mind was not so unwise as to remove the sentries completely, other threats may well exist.
The scouts had now mapped out the entire dead horde. They were concentrated in a small area deep inside the underground necropolis district.
The brood mind now knew every way in and out of the danger area.
Brood brothers got to work fortifying tunnels with heavy stubbers and heavy bolters, laying lines of stone caskets and other solid objects down as makeshift walls of heavy cover to hide from gunfire behind.
Soon the brood would be ready to attack...
***...
(Authors note, sorry for the massive delay in chapters, 2020 has been a terrible year. We were lucky to escape the Australian bush fires, then COVID hit the world. Add to that a toddler who is now walking and talking, it has been very difficult to focus on writing. Hopefully I can slowly grind out more chapters, but expect massive delays this year.)
