James Swallow: The Flight of the Eisenstein

The battle-captain grimaced and patted his face, content to find he had gained no new scars from the encounter. Getting to her feet, the witchseeker walked to him and presented Garro with his helmet, ripped

back from the jorgall claws. It was badly damaged, but the symbolic gesture was an important one. The woman looked up and inclined her head. With her free hand she touched her heart and her brow. The meaning was clear. My thanks to you. Unsure of the correct protocol, Garro simply nodded in return, and that seemed enough. The women moved on, leaving him behind. It was only as he saw their backs that Garro noticed the plume of dark hair issuing from the Sister's golden helm, and the red aquila etching across her shoulder blades.

He moved down to the core of the fighting, over a dunescape littered wim jorgall dead and on rare occa­sions, fallen figures in pale grey power armour. Each brother perished here ground Garro's rage like stone on stone, for every one of them was worth a thousand of the freakish intruders.

The captain heard the slamming crack of Mortar-ion's Lantern once again, and looked up to see the primarch sweep it through the air like a searchlight, catching aliens afire, turning them into a rain of ashen fallout.

Typhon's harsh growl sounded on the general vox channel. 'If this is all we have to face, I question if our might will even be tested today!'

'My father sent me here.' Mortarion's words were mild, but heavy with intent. 'Do you think him wrong to do so, first captain?'

Another man might have baulked at the veiled threat, but not Typhon. 'I only chafe at such poor sport, lord commander. We dally here too long, sir.'

Garro caught a grunt of agreement. 'Perhaps we do, my friend.' When he spoke again, the primarch did it aloud, eschewing the vox to broadcast his voice. 'Sons

of Death! You know your objectives! Take your units and prosecute the foe! Typhon, with me; Gralgor, the drives; Garro, the hatchery. Go now!'

The elements of the Seventh Company came to him and the battle-captain was pleased to see that there had been few losses among them. The Apothecary, Voyen, looked him up and down, silently comment­ing on the state of his helmet where the headgear hung from his belt. Decius too was unhooded and his pale face was split with a murderous grin. The stain­ing of viscera on his power fist was mute testament to his kills so far.

He nodded to them, and the men of the Seventh took up their formation. They moved, letting Grul-gor's company mop up the last of the airborne jorgall. They crossed out from the crystalline dunes at a quick pace, and into groves of tall tree-like forms woven from some kind of rough fibre.

Sendek ministered to his auspex. Tactical plot shows heat sources comparable to jorgall hatchery constructs in this direction.' He pointed. 'That way The virtual compass is having difficulty assimilating the internal structure of the bottle-world.'

'How current is that data?' asked Hakur. 'The sense-servitors neglected to tell us we were landing in a chem-lake. I find myself wondering what else they may have missed.'

Sendek frowned. 'The readings are… contradictory.'

'Best we be ready for surprises, then/ noted Rahl, hefting the combi-bolter in his grip.

'Do not allow yourself to be lulled into complacency by the name of your target, captain.' Mortarion had spoken the words without looking at him, as Garro stared into the hololith in Endurance's

assembly hall. This so-called hatchery is not only the creche for the jorgalli young, but also a place of modification. You will probably find eggs filled with armed adults as well as their larvae.'

Garro recalled the primarch's words as he looked up at the towering fibrous trees. Further into the 'for­est' where the stalks were planted in dense, regular rows, the tree-things were heavy with great grey orbs that hung like monstrous fruits. Some showed signs of motion inside, things shifting about in lazy thrashes. Here and there were pools of watery fluid that Sendek immediately designated as 'yolk'. Voyen agreed with the description, pointing out dripping orbs up above that hung ragged, formless and clearly empty. 'The roots of the trees drink the liquid back in to the system/ noted Sendek. 'Quite efficient.'

Tm rapt with fascination/ Rahl said, in a tone that indicated the reverse.

Decius kept his bolter close. 'Where are the defences? Do these xenos care so little about their spawn that they leave them open to any predator that happens by?'

'Perhaps their children are the predators/ offered Hakur darkly.

One of the men from the veterans' squad halted and gestured ahead. 'Captain/ he asked, 'do you see this?'

'What is it?' asked Garro.

The Astartes bent and gathered up a shiny metallic object, roughly oval in shape. He turned it over in his hands. 'It's… sir, It's a helm, I think.' He held it up to show them, and Garro's blood chilled at the sight of a Silent Sister's wargear. Something shifted inside it and a severed head dropped from the helmet to the ground, trailing a plume of blonde hair.

'Clean cut/ noted the Astartes. Very fresh.'

Voyen's eyes narrowed. Where's the… the rest of her?'

Decius used his bolter to point towards different branches of the trees. 'Here, there and there. Over there as well, I think.' Wet rags of red and gold were visible on each.

'The Sisters came to the hatchery?' Hakur cast around, looking low. 'Why would witchseekers come here?'

Decius gave a dry chuckle. 'That, old man, would seem to be secondary to the question of what it was that killed her.'

From ahead of them where the trunks were thickest, there came a ripple of bolter fire. Garro spied the glit­ter of sporadic muzzle flashes even as a low rumble spread through the sandy dirt beneath his boots. Cracking sounds, sharp as snapping bone, reached him as trees in the middle distance shook and bent, the tops of them fluttering and falling as something large knocked them down.

'You're about to get your answer/ Rahl said, raising his bolter.

The Sisterhood came through the egg-trees, moving like dancers, harrying the jorgalli enhancile with their weapons. It was the largest of the xenos that Garro had encountered onboard the bottle-world, and of a design that had not been in Sendek's documentation. Outwardly it resembled the form of a jorgall in a basic sense, but it was perhaps ten times their mass. As high as the canopy of the trees, the thing appeared to be an agglomeration of scaled flesh and metals, a jorgall deformed by gigantism and then improved by technology to be larger still.

The battle-captain could make out fleshy matter inside a glass orb at the middle of the cyborg's mass,

perhaps, he reasoned, whatever remained of the jor-gall's original form. It had no arms. Instead there were writhing clusters of grey iron tentacles sprouting from each of its upper limb sockets. Some moved like striking serpents, snapping out at the Sisters, while others knotted around an unseen burden that the thing clasped desperately to its chest.

'Some sort of guardian?' offered Voyen.

'Some sort of target! retorted Decius and opened fire.

The Death Guard moved in to assist the Sisterhood, firing on the approach, adding their shots to the storm of bullets that haloed the cyborg. Garro had the fleeting impression that the machine-form was trying to escape, but then it turned around and threw any notion of fleeing aside. Perhaps it might have got away from the women, but with Garro's arrival it had no other choice but to stand and fight.

Metal feelers lashed out across the ground, keen-edged tips slicing furrows in the dirt. They flexed and moved, ripping up divots and roots. Hakur was caught off-guard as a tentacle lashed at him and threw the Astartes aside, rolling off the trunk of an egg-tree. Garro saw another rip the leg from one of the troopers and put him down in a welter of blood. The captain ducked away from the questing appendages as they hissed over his head.