Space Marine Apocalypse (Extinction Fleet Book 3) Read online

  The marine's vision swam, and his helmet's coms systems erupted with static. Had the warriors not been briefed on the experiences of men like Ford and Jarl Mahora prior to the fight, they might have paused in confusion. As it was, they were prepared for the issue, and each of them paid the static no mind.

  Sharif squeezed the trigger as he ran, knowing that the alpha garm was nearby somewhere, using its power to mask a counterattack. His fire was joined by several others, and the wall of deadly bolts slammed into a stalker that was emerging from the orifice, its spindly body having been somewhat difficult to see a split second earlier. The beast exploded in a fountain of gore that was compounded by the grisly death of a second that had been moving nearby.

  Sharif continued forward as he sustained his rate of fire, and by the time he hit his tenth round the marine was able to set his back against the slick hull of the ship to vent the excess heat. Rama stood next to him and fired two more rounds down the shaft that led into the ship's interior.

  Another marine with the name Duarte stenciled across his chest swiftly pushed his trench spike into what appeared to be the control nodule just inside the orifice. Most garm vessels were based on the same pattern, and if that held true then disabling the nodule would prevent whatever consciousness the ship possessed from closing the orifice.

  Silas was nowhere to be seen, and Sharif looked back to see that they'd lost both him and another marine to battery fire during their mad dash across open ground. He looked further back, taking a moment to sweep his eyes across the battlefield before plunging into the ship, giving his men a chance to vent their weapons and prepare for the next blitz.

  A transport was closing in fast, shrugging off several anti-air bursts. Sharif estimated that if they managed to avoid getting shot down, there would be another fifteen or so marines entering the vessel shortly after him and his men.

  Ravens were making tight circles just at the edge of the lush grain fields, firing their pulse rifles into the thick vegetation, presumably working to reduce the stalker numbers to prevent the enemy from coming in behind the marine assault teams. Just before he called for the men to move, Sharif glanced at their downed transport and saw Harlow's body pinned to the outside of the hull by a veritable thicket of spine projectiles.

  Four men dead by his orders so that three could push inside, thought Sharif darkly, no wonder Jarl Mahora is such a grim bastard.

  "On me," growled Sharif as he rounded the edge of the orifice and rushed inside the ship, followed quickly by Rama and Duarte.

  More than the glistening walls of the living ship, more than the musky scent that hung in the air, it was the ambient lighting that made Sharif's stomach turn. In the rational part of his mind, he knew that the garm ships were covered in a variety of bioluminescent cells, though the primal parts of his brain were screaming at him to either flee or begin attacking the flesh that surrounded him. The marine breathed deeply and flexed his hands on his weapon, inviting the pain of his stab wound to sharpen his focus and keep him ready for action.

  They passed by the orifice style hatch that Sharif thought likely to lead into the multi-organ room, recalling the crude details of Mahora's recollection of the ship's interior. While this ship was still very much alive, and probably not rapidly decomposing like the one on Rakka, Sharif had no desire to disturb the digestion of the behemoth.

  They'd caught the monsters early enough in their raid that most of the stalkers and feeders were rushing back to the hoard vessel only partially filled with biomass, and so the organs were unlikely to have much in them. However, the purpose of this mission lay ahead, closer to the front of the ship.

  Most garm bio-vessels had central nervous systems, and the core cluster was generally located somewhere near the fore side of midship. The Einherjar warships had learned through trial and error the vulnerable parts of the enemy vessels, just as the garm had for them, and it was likely that whatever enabled the vessel to avoid orbital detection would be housed in the core cluster.

  Sharif saw movement out of the corner of his eye, having figured out that if he didn't look directly at the stalkers he could mitigate some of the potency of the alpha garm's stealth emissions. The marine fired three rounds, moving from lower left to upper right, and was rewarded with the blossoming carnage of a solid hit.

  "We might get digested before the day is over," offered Rama from just behind Sharif, his voice light with mirth, though whether it was forced or genuine, Sharif could not tell. "But at least this ship is a simple little monster. Those hive ships are living mazes, this thing is pretty much a stomach with an engine."

  "It makes sense," responded Duarte, his response making Sharif realize that their peer-to-peer was working again, meaning that elsewhere in the ship, or perhaps in the fields around it, the alpha garm had been distracted and dropped or reduced its stealth emissions, "The garm breeds these as specialized vessels. No wasted calories."

  "It isn't crawling with ripper drones because it isn't designed to defend itself from ground assaults," agreed Sharif as he stepped over the smoldering corpse of the stalker. "The stalkers we meet here are probably just the ones that came back early, or maybe the second shift. Those anti-air batteries are mostly to help it escape."

  "So why stay and fight instead of running into orbit like they usually do?" asked Duarte, as he swept his rifle around behind him in response to the sound of pulse rifles being fired.

  "We got to them fast enough, maybe the ships didn't think they could escape in time," mused Rama, "Or weren't willing to leave without at least something in their bellies. Kind of a toddler tantrum move really, not leaving without at least getting a taste."

  "What do you know about kids, eh?" smirked Sharif, happy that Rama had made it this far without dying. The man's cheap humor was a balm against the terror-inducing awareness that they were walking through the body of a giant monster. "Remember having a few?"

  "Nope. I can't even remember what planet I'm from," answered Rama as the trio neared what appeared to be, in the partial illumination of the bioluminescent cells and their own body lights, the bulkhead of the ship and the end of the tunnel. "But this is the kind of face that has a wife and child in every port from one end of the UHC to the other."

  As Duarte gave a half-hearted chuckle, Sharif moved his gun light over the near side of the tunnel wall and found the orifice hatch he'd been expecting. More pulse rifle fire echoed down the tunnel, and the entire ship suddenly quaked violently. The men put their hands on the walls to steady themselves, and Sharif's coms blew out again. The alpha garm was back in the fight, he told himself, and perhaps that what was giving the marines who'd deployed behind his team so much trouble, as at least a few of them should have joined his team by now.

  Sharif reached out and gently massaged the control nodule, feeling so disgusted that he nearly vomited as the alien nerve cluster pulsated under his touch. It felt horrifyingly intimate to stimulate the nodule, but the marine knew from intel reports that this was how it had to be done. He hadn’t survived the assault on the hive ship back on Heorot and had never been on board a garm vessel until today, though as the orifice hissed and the fleshly folds retreated to create an opening, he almost regretted surviving this far.

  The marines pushed in through the opening and found themselves in a tighter tunnel, only able to move single file as they felt the incline of their progress grow steeper. They were moving upwards on a noticeable gradient, and soon the passage opened up to a broad chamber that held what appeared to be a multitude of divets in the walls and floor. Each one appeared to have an array of needles and tubes, all organic, and they reminded Sharif of the body forge in a way. Likely these were the breeding pods for the stalkers so that as the ship moved towards its target the onboard resource stores could be used to birth a legion of stalkers to serve as scouts and warriors. Sharif presumed that somewhere deeper in the belly of the ship, near the giant stomach chamber, was a similar breeding area for the feeder creatures.

  Rama
silently pointed to an orifice on the far side of the chamber, parallel to the one they'd entered from, and the marine surmised that it opened up to the corresponding tunnel on the other side of the ship. Sharif gestured for the men to go forward, and the two marines fell in on either side of Sharif as he marched cautiously to the back of the chamber.

  As he'd half-expected, there was another orifice waiting for them at the end of the chamber. Sharif gingerly reached out and began massaging it again, feeling his guts churning as the nodule responded eagerly to his touch. As the orifice began to open itself to him the closed one they'd noticed on the other side of the chamber burst open. The sound of pulse rifle fire, which had been muffled to the point that Sharif had forgotten about it, filled the room as a dark shape slithered into the chamber.

  Rama screamed as he raised his pulse rifle and began to fire, his bolts chasing the undulating shadow that moved at the edge of their light. His rounds chewed up the deck and the walls, causing the chamber to shudder from the impact, giving Sharif the distinct mental image of a beast groaning from internal discomfort. Rama's voice was raw, emotions running wild, and as the creature he'd been shooting at came into view, Sharif himself could not help but add his voice to the din.

  It was one thing to see the partially destroyed head of the alpha garm that Mahora had slain on Rakka, but another entirely to face down a living monster that appeared to be nothing less than the ghost of Grendel made flesh.

  It was a lesser beast than its ancestor, being smaller in size and despite its near blinding speed, possessed little of Grendel's alacrity. That did not stop it from being a hideous opponent, as evidenced by the way it spat an all-too-familiar projectile from its maw that speared Duarte through the chest. The force of the impact sent the marine sprawling as the eighteen-inch spike punched through his armor and pierced his lungs.

  Rama managed to shear off one of the beast's scything limbs as it rushed him, though he'd forgotten his fire discipline, and as it closed in he squeezed the trigger only to have his weapon seize up. Rama dropped the useless weapon and ripped his pistol from its holster as Sharif cursed that he needed a clear shot, though his voice was lost in the din of combat and the static of their disabled coms.

  Rama managed to get the pistol up, though before he could fire the creature's pointed tail whipped out and impaled him. The marine gurgled wetly as the razor-sharp tip slid through flesh and organs until it penetrated his heart. Sharif half expected the beast to drill into Rama's skull with the proboscis that protruded from its chest until he blinked his eyes and saw, as the beast hurled Rama's body into the shadows, that the creature possessed no such appendage.

  Sharif stepped back two paces as he continued to fire, his memories of the nightmare alpha garm slowly giving way to the reality of the beast he was facing. As more marines stormed into the chamber behind the monster and lent their fire to his, the marine began to notice the subtle differences. It had the same skeletal serpent body as Grendel had, complete with the spiked tail and bio-bladed limbs, though its head was elongated and covered in segmented armor, quite unlike its ancestor. The marine could imagine the misshapen armored skull housing a brain and perhaps some manner of additional organ, like the sonar portions of the ancient dolphins of some ocean-bearing worlds, that allowed it to produce the stealth emissions. Mahora's specimen was too badly damaged to get much data from it, and as several marines filled their sights with the beast, Sharif thought it unlikely this one would survive intact either.

  A storm of bolts pounded into the creature as no less than four marines fired on it, including Sharif, and in seconds the beast was reduced to a mound of smoking gore. The moment its head exploded from a direct hit everyone's coms began to blare with radio traffic. Sharif stepped back again, through the orifice, as he shut his down, the cacophony of gunfire and information threatening to overwhelm his senses.

  The marine turned and swept his gun light in a wide arc to illuminate a small chamber filled with tendrils that pulsed with alien energy. The room gave the impression of a ship's bridge combined with some manner of hideous central nervous system, and he instantly realized that was exactly what he had discovered. Whatever consciousness ruled this bio-ship, he had fought his way to the core of that sentience. The tendrils appeared to function much like network cables, and he was positive that they moved information, either electrical or chemical, or both, throughout the vessel. Clusters of pulsating cells were everywhere, and it was only on his third visual sweep of the chamber that he noticed the true abomination.

  A human skull, with bits of flesh, tendons, and what appeared to be nerve strands, was fused to what Sharif could only think of as a bank of cell clusters covered in thick membranes and assortments of chitinous armor.

  He shook his head as if to clear his sight of the thing, and yet it remained. He could see through the empty eye sockets that a lump of gray and white tissue rested inside it, and yet more tendrils extended out of the mouth and from the base of the skull, where the brain stem should have been. There was no doubt in his mind that the skull and brain were part of the ship's systems, and suddenly all he could do was roar.

  In the back of his mind he could hear other marines speaking to him, but it was lost as a black rage consumed his rational mind.

  Sharif dropped his pulse rifle and leapt at the cell bank as he pulled his trench spike from its sheath. He howled with bloodlust as he drove the tip of the spike under the base of the skull, taking satisfaction as the way the bank shuddered from the wound and the flow of blood and thick viscous fluids that spilled out across his hands. He wrenched the spike back and forth as he drove the armored fingers of his other hand into the eye sockets of the skull and looped his thumb under the roof of the mouth. He pulled with all his might and tore the skull loose from its mount, showering himself in gore as pulsating veins and throbbing tendrils spewed fluids when ripped from their connections to the skull.

  Sharif snarled as he held the skull in his hand and drove the spike up through the bottom of it to pierce the brain within. He twisted the spike several times, forcefully churning the soft tissues inside, and when he pulled the spike-free a viscous gray fluid leaked out of the eye sockets and the hole in the base. More marines entered the chamber, and he only partially noticed as they looked at him in disgust and awe.

  The marine dropped the skull to the deck and knelt to pick up his pulse rifle, setting the fire selector to full-auto as he returned to his feet. Sharif depressed the trigger and sprayed the cell bank with bolts, heedless of the blowback of exploding gases and chitin shrapnel. By the time his vision blacked out from concussion and blood loss, the mind within his own skull was darker still.

  GHOSTS

  Aboard the Bifrost, the briefing room felt cramped, though only three men currently occupied it, the space seemingly taken up by the tangible horror of what was being discussed.

  The Watchman had chosen not to bring any of his attendants, and even his body man, Kohath, had been left on the other side of the sliding metal door. What had been said already was not for the general staff or common marines, and Idris was positive that it was simply by virtue of him being the science officer and resurrectionist of the Bright Lance that he was in attendance at all. Then again, it was always the Bright Lance at the center of such tragedies and discoveries, ever since Heorot, and so it had come as little surprise when the marines of Hydra Company encountered what they did aboard the hoard vessel on Trilicum. Even Jarl Mahora, the company leader who was often elevated to conversations beyond his station because of his intimacy with many of the pivotal events of recent years, was not present. The men of the Bright Lance were on a rest and refit rotation, having just fought the good fight on Trilicum.

  "You have had ample time to investigate the events on Trilicum, have you not, Specialist Idris?" asked the Watchman, his tone even, coldly measured in a way that reminded the specialist very much of the young man's predecessor, whom Idris had encountered but twice during his years of supporting the wa
r effort against the alien invaders, though those brief moments had made a lasting impression.

  "I have indeed, sir. You will find my full report has been uploaded to your network for in-depth analysis and peer review as required," nodded Idris as he became keenly away of the fact that the Watchman and Skald Wallace, the only other occupant of the briefing room, were both sitting while Idris himself had been asked to stand. "I am happy to summarize, so that we may take full advantage of this face to face opportunity."

  "You appear troubled, Specialist," observed Skald Wallace as the grizzled operative set his datapad onto the table at the center of the room and leaned forward to put his elbows on the table, interlocking his fingers as he continued. "I have known you to be an unshakeable individual, well versed in the horrors of our enemy, and yet, in this moment, you appear greatly distressed."

  "We have a saying among the common soldiers, Skald Wallace, that I am positive you have heard expressed either upon the battlefield or during rest and refit, that the garm adapt and marines overcome," Idris said, "And while I tend to agree, crude as such a worldview might be, my resolve has been sorely tested by recent developments, because the way in which we are to overcome, appears to me, to border on madness."

  "Then do begin, Specialist," responded the Watchman.

  Idris took a slow breath as he ordered his thoughts, preparing himself to make his presentation. He had to be careful, that much he knew, given the two individuals in the room. Skald Wallace tended more to the linear thinking of Jarl Mahora than he did Skald Thatcher, and so was unlikely to suspect Idris of anything, though if the Watchman called for it, the operative would not hesitate to kill Idris where he stood. The Watchman was another problem entirely, as the young man was more than capable of piecing together the role Idris had played in Skald Thatcher's escape, and it was up to Idris himself to give the commander no reason to suspect him.