Fame Cimex Chapter 10
The orbital lanes around Angle's Redoubt were always choked with traffic. On any given day the Hive World would be ringed by clouds of transport ships and Mass Conveyors. Orbital docks would bustle with activity as vessels jostled for berths, while civilian crews would argue with dock masters over priorities and the size of the bribes necessary to be moved up the queue. Swarms of shuttles and cargo lighters would stream to and from orbit, taking heavy loads of raw material down to the hungry manufactories in the cities and bring up refined goods and weapons in return.
It would not be just civilian ships either, for there were thousands of defence units in orbit. There were scores of minefields and patrolling squadrons of strike craft, clunky boats of the System Defence Force, brutal Defence Monitors and deadly orbital gun platforms that eternally gazed out into the stars. Greatest of all were a dozen drifting Starforts, each a bastion of power and might standing vigil among the stars. One of these was set aside for the exclusive use of the Inquisition and it sat alone in its own vector, not because of any law or decree but simply because no pilot wished to pass under the gaze of those who considered themselves the Left Hand of the Emperor. Angle's Redoubt was a world of productive industry and busy labour, a lynchpin of Imperial power, both for its manufacturing capacity and its crucial strategic position on the Warp Routes. The local nobility even dared to harbour delusions of the planet rising to such prominence that they might one day eclipse the Sector Capital of Tectum. A farcical dream for there was no way the Sector Lords would let any lesser pretender steal their status. This was the typical state of affairs for the Hive World, yet today everything had changed.
Today the swarms of shuttles rising from Angle's Redoubt were not filled with manufactured goods but crowds of fearful and desperate people, fleeing before the horror could engulf them. Word had come that the Great Devourer was on its way and terror had swept the Hive Cities. The richest aristocrats had fled to their private lighters and orbital yachts, paying exorbitantly for passage on any Warp-capable ship that would take them. Those slightly less well connected had resorted to bribing their way onto shuttles and cargo lifters, forsaking all that they had for a chance to flee before the nightmare came. As for the common folk, they were left to rot by their betters, abandoned and uncared for by those they had served for generations.
Fear and panic soon swept over the abandoned masses, riots and looting breaking out everywhere to overwhelm the local constables and even the Adeptus Arbites. Within six hours of the news breaking the Planetary Governor had been forced to declare martial law, deploying the Imperial Guard and the PDF onto the streets to restore order. Yet even now there were those who did not flee, some whose ignorance or greed told them that the situation was not all that dire, that there would be a time for rebuilding after the crisis had passed and life would continue. These people immediately began hoarding everything they could, stockpiling food and resources on the gamble that they might yet live.
The whole situation was a powder keg, one that could explode at any moment and there was no telling what might set it off. Amid all this calamity it was hardly surprising that a small, inert object would slip the orbital net. A tiny little spore drifting serenely through the jostling orbital lanes, completely unobserved and unnoticed. It was a fleshy ovoid, covered in blisters and lumps with trailing tendrils floating behind it: a Mycetic Spore. The lone spore drifted right past the guns of the orbital platforms and straight through the clouds of minefields, all of the world's guardians were expecting an avalanche of Bio-ships and so they missed the tiny little spore.
The spore floated downwards, unobserved and unchallenged, bypassing the defences meant to protect against this very threat. Soon it brushed the atmosphere and lit up as it began to decelerate, ablative layers of fleshy matter burning off like an organic heat shield. Now at last the spore drew notice, its fiery re-entry tripping the Auspex in a remote monitoring station, located in the wastelands between cities. A servitor awoke and began intoning warnings in a monotone chant, but sadly the man assigned to that watch was absent, frantically trying to reach his family on the public vox and the warning went unheeded.
The Spore was no more intelligent than a plant and yet as it descended it instinctively avoided the ashen wastelands, the polluted and poisoned wilderness utterly useless to it. Instead it turned towards the largest Hive City, attracted to the concentrated Biomass as a plant is to the warmth of the sun. Fleshy tendrils began to billow out behind it, spreading large membranes to act as a crude parachute. The spore was far too small to trigger the city's air defences or the Void shield so it descended unopposed. It was almost serene in its graceful fall, yet its landing was anything but serene. The spore hit the ground in the outer slums, demolishing a derelict hab block that was now home only to blissful Obscura addicts and burnt out Slaught junkies. The walls imploded under the force of the impact and the interior was gutted, leaving a hollow shell of a building, around a demolished centre.
The destruction was utterly unnoticed by the Hive's great and good, who wouldn't have cared if they had seen it. Peace fell as the dust rained down on the shattered rubble, the quiet broken only by the occasional falling brick and the distant rumble of uncaring traffic. The peace didn't last for long though, for slowly the rubble began to shift, piles of debris moving as something began to force its way up out of the depths. Suddenly a single elongated claw burst up out of the ground, reaching for the air like a pine tree stretching for the light. It was followed by another and then a pair of clawed hands, that fought to clear a path for the body that followed it. Slowly a creature emerged from the site of the Mycetic spore's impact, a strange being that walked on backwards jointed legs and had large claws overarching its shoulders. Its head was a mass of sensory blisters, with enlarged scent organs and it had a frond of tendrils where its mouth should have been. It was a Lictor, a Tyranid scout organism, sent ahead to blaze a trail for the coming of the Hive fleet.
Though only a few minutes old the Lictor immediately shifted its chameleonic skin to suit its surroundings, instinctively blending in to avoid predators. Inside its head was nothing that could be considered intelligence, yet there was instinct, honed to create the perfect predator. The Lictor squatted amid the ruins as it took in its surroundings, scenting the air and feeling for vibrations. Inhuman sensory organs scoured the surrounding space, making the Lictor totally aware of its environment in a way no mere human could comprehend. It sat for long minutes, merely feeling the movements of the wind and the vibration of distant traffic, but then it felt an intrusion. Passing along the ground was the faintest rhythmic vibration, a growing hammer beat that announced the footsteps of prey, heading this way.
Instinctively the Lictor moved, shimmering in the dark cavity like oil on water as it squeezed itself into a tiny hiding space. The Lictor virtually disappeared as a group of new animals intruded into the smashed building, moving in a loose pack with weapons held slackly in their grips. The Lictor had no words to describe an underhive gang of juvies, but it instinctively recognised a pack when it saw one, drawn to the collapsed building to look for salvage. The prey stumbled into the ruin without hesitation, more concerned with rival gangs beating them to the prize, than worried about predators. The beasts seemed half-blind in the dank interior, flashing thick lumen beams about as they entered. The Lictor watched them spread out among the broken remnants of rooms, shuffling debris aside and turning over crushed bodies in the hope of finding unused narcotics or currency. The Lictor was utterly still and silent as the prey walked about, passing by its hiding place without even the slightest hint that they were aware of its presence.
One of the prey broke off, looking to mark its territory by urinating loudly in a corner. Silently and without moving a single stone the Lictor emerged, creeping up behind the animal without it being the slightest bit aware. In one bound the Lictor pounced on the beast, claws plunging into its chest before it could scream. Quivering muscles trembled in death, but the Lictor held it off the ground so it didnt make a noise until the motion ceased. The Lictor instinctively dragged the prey away, taking the bleeding body with it as it retreated. Without being able to say why it headed upwards, pulling the corpse along until it was poised over a large cavity in the centre of the building. The Lictor took the corpse and hung it by its heels from a broken beam, leaving it to dangle in the hole. Driven by an undeniable instinct the Lictor settled down to wait and sure enough after a few minutes a female stumbled upon the dangling corpse.
The female did not scream or panic at the sight, but reacted by lifting two laspistols and setting off a blaze of fire that riddled the corpse and sent it spinning. The noise attracted the other prey and they came running, guns held tight with fingers on triggers. The crowd gathered to inspect the corpse and they made mewling sounds as they realised it was one of their own. The air filled with the musk of fear as their sweat glands released pheromones and hearts thundered in their chests.
The Lictor however was already moving, crawling above their heads, completely unnoticed as they fearfully swept about with their guns. The prey looked all around the space, into every nook and cranny, but none of them thought to look upwards. The Lictor waited until they were all facing outwards and then it let go, dropping silently into their midst with claws outstretched. The first two died before they even knew it was there, falling headless to the ground as it silently landed on its back-jointed legs. The next few seconds were a confusing jumble of light and noise as the prey panicked, firing in every direction save at the creature in their midst. The Lictor in return scythed them apart, taking them down with great slashes and tears of its claws, its every move saw a beast fall and not one of them landed a blow in return. In five seconds the Lictor had slaughtered every single one of its prey, leaving a stinking abattoir in its wake, grizzly silence fell but the Lictor wasn't done yet.
One of the prey still was still breathing, mumbling to itself as it fumbled at an icon on a chain around its neck. The Lictor closed in and the prey screamed, but it could not stop the predator from opening its mouth tendrils wide and engulfing its head. In one swift move, the Lictor snipped off the top of the skull and swallowed the brains within. The Lictor sat back and went still as an internal process began, one that was remarkably similar to that used by the Astartes, not that the Tyranid could have comprehended such a thing. Memories were sorted and ingested at a rapid pace as the Lictor looked for the information it needed. Thoughts of a plump mate and mewling offspring were discarded, religious doggerel passed by without the slightest hint of understanding, but then it found what it needed.
In a nearby location a prominent leader-beast made routine pauses, enforcing its position as Alpha with chanting and long sermons given to the beta and omega animals. Such a leader-beast would inevitably return to the greatest concentrations of Biomass, the very heart of the defences, right where the Tyranids needed to go. Silently and without a thought for the dead beasts, the Lictor moved out, it was on the hunt and nothing would stand between it and its prey.