Chapter 64: Portent
Lord Militant Frederick Morrison stood in his senior commander's suite.
The climate system produced a barely perceptible hum. The air carried the smell of expensive incense. Neither of these things had any effect whatsoever on the tension he was carrying.
He stood with his brow drawn down and his expression heavy, staring at the holographic tabletop and the muster order pulsing on it in blinding red.
This was a highest-priority red directive that had come directly from Macragge's supreme command, bypassing every layer of bureaucracy between them.
Its requirements were unambiguous: all local auxiliary forces within the Realm of Ultramar, and all Astra Militarum units within reach, were to proceed immediately to Parmenio for assembly and reorganization, then set course for Macragge without delay.
Looking at the order, Morrison found his mind returning to the warning the one-eyed Lord Inquisitor had given him before her departure.
In recent weeks, something had emerged from the deep void beyond Ultramar's outer limits. Something extremely dangerous and entirely unlike anything the Imperium had catalogued.
According to Inquisitorial intelligence, wherever this threat moved, it left nothing behind it. Hive worlds. Agricultural worlds. Whatever had been there before, no matter how populous or prosperous — the result was always a barren, lifeless sphere of stone, consumed to the last organic molecule.
Based on the world where the Imperium had first identified traces of this threat, it had been formally designated: Tyranids. The red muster order arriving from Macragge, unprecedented in his career, was without question a response to a full-scale Tyranid invasion.
Morrison let out a slow breath and walked to the wide viewport with his hands clasped behind his back. Below, the Shrine World's ground war had gone quiet.
All Astra Militarum regiments had completed their embarkation. The rubble-clearing and defense handover for the Shrine World was now the local PDF's problem to inherit.
His force, exhausted from the bloodletting it had just survived, had to enter the Warp at maximum speed and reach Parmenio for assembly.
Outside the viewport, the void fleet was taking shape. A large Imperial cruiser at the center, three frigates and two destroyers flanking on both sides — the sector patrol fleet's escort formation. In orbit not far off, the Ultramarines' strike cruiser and battle barges had also taken position, ready to depart alongside them.
Looking at the considerable firepower represented by that formation, Morrison still could not shake the ill feeling that had settled in him.
This was not some vague unease of the mind. It was a physiological fact: his palms were faintly sweating. A tension deep in his stomach was producing a dull, persistent pain.
There was also the report he had received from an adjutant thirty minutes ago, delivered quietly and without witnesses: the astropaths and Navigators aboard the ships — the psykers responsible for transmitting messages through the Sea of Souls and threading vessels through the Warp — were collectively exhibiting symptoms of extreme anxiety and fear.
Taken together, Morrison understood with uncomfortable clarity what it all meant. Whatever they were about to face, it would exceed every crisis he had encountered in the entirety of his command career.
---
Meanwhile, on the lower decks of the Siren's Fury.
The air carried the familiar blend of engine oil, sweat, and ozone. The low-frequency vibration of the ship's engines traveled up through the metal deck and into the soles of everyone's feet.
Evan walked back to his cabin with the kind of step that comes from someone who has given everything they have and has nothing left to give. Every movement felt heavier than the one before it.
Because of his sister Lena, the 101st's soldiers had, out of quiet generosity, cleared one of the lower deck cabins — space that had previously housed several people — and given it over to the two siblings alone.
In a universe where a human life was worth very little, that consideration meant a great deal.
Toward everyone in the 101st, Evan carried a gratitude that went past anything words could do justice to. But in the Ork fighting that had just ended, the regiment's losses had been severe. Many of the veterans who had looked after him and Lena without being asked had not come back from the battlefield. What Evan had been able to bring back for them was nothing more than their identity tags, cold and stained.
His sister Lena, at least, was unharmed. During the fighting she had remained aboard the troopship, watched over by two 101st logistics personnel.
When Evan saw she was safe, he stopped thinking about anything else. He went to her and held on.
He was exhausted in a way he could not describe. He had been in that meatgrinder from beginning to end. He had witnessed too much death. What he wanted now was to lie down and stop being conscious for a while.
The fatigue settled over him like deep water coming in. Evan lay down on the bunk with its rough blanket and was asleep almost before he had finished the thought.
Sleep did not bring any peace.
In the dream he was falling through something thick and dark, and the darkness had a texture to it, a resistance that was not quite physical. There was no light anywhere. There was only a crushing pressure and the certainty that something was present in the dark with him — something vast and terrible and entirely beyond the scale of anything a human mind was built to process. It was the kind of nightmare in which the fear exists at a level below conscious thought. A fear that reaches the soul directly.
A scream tore him awake.
Sharp. High. Coming from somewhere very close.
Evan came off the bunk and turned toward the other side of the cabin. Lena was in the corner of her bunk, both hands clamped over her head, screaming with a terror that had nothing controlled in it, her body and her blanket both soaked through with cold sweat.
"What happened, Lena? What is it?" Evan's pulse was hammering. He scrambled across to her and got his arms around her. He could feel her heartbeat against his chest — far too fast, as though something in her chest was trying to break through.
Lena's screaming carried through the cabin door. Outside, 101st soldiers who had been resting were already on their feet, clustering at the entrance and looking in.
The crowd at the door moved aside.
Duvette came in.
His expression was set. He crossed straight to Lena and crouched down beside her. The girl was still not back from wherever the nightmare had taken her, her small body shaking continuously in Evan's arms.
Duvette softened his voice. "It's all right, Lena. We are all here. Nothing can reach you."
He waited a moment. His eyes held the girl's.
"Tell me what you saw."
Lena turned her face into Evan's shoulder. Her voice came out between sobs. "We're all going to die. Everyone is going to die. There are creatures that blot out the sky and they are going to devour us..."
Duvette's eyes narrowed. He knew exactly what the girl was describing.
Could the Shadow in the Warp have already begun to reach this far? They had entered Warp transit. That should have placed them beyond where a Tyranid advance fleet's influence could arrive from realspace.
He turned it over and reached a conclusion.
This was not the Shadow itself descending on them. This was Lena's particular precognitive ability working ahead of the Shadow — sensing the terrible future coming toward them before the Shadow of the Great Devourer had closed the distance.
He stayed until her breathing had steadied and the shaking had slowed. When he was satisfied she had settled, he stood and left the cabin.
Walking back along the corridor toward his own quarters, Duvette's expression did not improve. If anything, it went the other direction.
This was not good news. The time left to them was almost certainly less than he had been counting on.
****
50+advance chapters at patreon.com/Eatinpieces