Stranded Among the Ghoul Stars

[argulus]

Hello everyone, I'm new here and I thought I'd try posting a story.  If things go as planned, it will be a story posted in ten parts.  While I don't want to give the entire plot away, I will say this much.  Most of the story will be told from the point of view of a tyranid.  I hope folks will excuse a bit of creative license on my part as I try to do this.

Anyway, here is the prologue.  Hopefully it's a decent read.  I'll try to get chapter 1 posted soon.

Prologue – Musings Beneath a Desolate Sky

A lone figure strode across a desolate plain, moving steadily beneath the baleful heavens. Clouds of dust drew thinly across the sky, their edges luminous in the fading daylight. The sun blazed wearily on the horizon, rusty hues spreading upwards into the blackening night. High above, half hidden among the clouds, she could see the violet curvature of the gas giant this moon orbited. Its ring system glittered menacingly, poised like a dagger towards the horizon.

She looked forward again, her goal now in sight ahead. A monolith of worn obsidian stood out against the jaundiced sands, a blackened fang pointing to the few scattered stars above. The air was calm for the moment, though she knew how quickly this could change. Her pace quickened, and soon she was standing beneath the massive shape.

How many times had she stood here, working through the symbols? How deeply had she peered into the abyss? Yet it was necessary. She paused a moment, looking to the reddening horizon, and a flash of memory came to her unbidden and unwanted. Dried blood on shattered wraithbone. She looked quickly back to the dark stone before her, and another image flashed in her mind. A mask cracked and ruinous, its half grin warped and twisted by the clawed hand grasping it. Her eyes closed behind her own mask, and she meditated awhile to drive these apparitions off. She could not afford to be distracted now.

When her eyes opened, it was with renewed purpose and serenity. With careful precision, her motions flowed between the symbols on the stone. Though most were half worn away, she could still see them clearly. She understood enough now, and she was ready. A sickly glow began to emanate from the depths of the corrupted monolith, and a sudden shard of cold light speared upwards into the sky. The world shook around her for a few seconds, with sufficient violence to almost bring her to her knees. When she regained her footing, she saw a steady pillar of vile luminescence rising up to profane the tortured sky.

Quickly she turned and began walking away from this place without so much as a backward glance. The beacon had been lit, and soon it would draw new life to this forgotten corner of the galaxy. This long uninhabited moon would become a crucible. So many years of preparation, and at last she would see a new weapon forged, here among the ghoul stars.

[argulus]

Chapter 1 – A Fall from Grace

Consciousness stirred in new forms, awakened by distant lights among the void. The ship sang its ceaseless hum, steady and comforting about her. It had been a recent thing, this ship, and her own existence. A new vessel for the Hive to think within, a new mother to birth whatever forms would be needed. She felt the ship about her as it swam placidly through the emptiness, toward the distant lights.

Time flowed as consciousness ebbed. To sleep was the thing, in the long strides between living worlds. Silence between spans of feeding and growth, with great distances unmarked and all but forgotten. What was there in the void to regard? Only a gap from prey to prey. The Hive knew well enough, the Hive guided. For her, it was enough to mother the needed forms. So onward her ship traveled, through the great emptiness, as she half dreamed of the distant lights.

After a time, she was roused from dreaming to waking, and the first thing in her mind was the realization that it was her own mind, and not the Hive. She could still feel the Hive, but it was distant and muffled, half fading beneath a curtain of darkness. The smaller ships were still about her own, and they too were restless. They too, felt the emptiness. The wrongness. Her mind reached to them, calming their instincts, retaining formation, placing order upon what had threatened to become bedlam.

Her senses reached through her ship’s, and she gained perception of what was about them. This part of the void was illuminated by an aged star, its feeble light flowing out in longer wavelengths. It had blazed when this galaxy was young, and it would live yet a little longer. Beside its gravity she felt another well, smaller but much nearer. An orb of slowly turning gases. Spheres of stone orbited this in turn, most of them barren and cratered, useless and meaningless.

Yet there was one of these lesser spheres that bore a light. A strange light. With the Hive, she might have looked at it clearly, but the Hive was almost gone from her mind, and she found she could not bear to gaze at the light for very long. It was an illness, yet it was what had drawn the ships to this place.

She cast outwards, trying to sense other ships, but most others she had traveled with had drifted far off. It was only her vessel now, and a handful of smaller ones to guard and guide. Even with these, the sense of being alone began to pervade her. She knew, somehow, that this place was wrong. She should leave, push away, seek other lights, and leave this false beacon to lie alone in the void.

Even as these thoughts moved her ships, turning them away from the ancient star, she felt sudden danger. Pain lashed through one of her smaller ships, and as she drew her senses out to look, she saw the cause. This ship had drifted close to the rings of debris about the gaseous world. Among the thin pieces of rock scattered wide, things were now moving. Things of metal, bearing claws that burned. They swarmed over the ship, covering its surface as they ate into its hull. She felt its screams of anger and fear.

Fear.

The Hive would not have allowed for fear. The Hive was not with her now. Even its distant whispers were gone, lost in the blackness of the void. Quickly she turned away from the rings, away from the swarming metal predators. Yet with her other ships’ senses, she knew they were hunting her now. The lifeless metallic hunters were leaving the debris of the rings. Rushing towards the surviving ships. Rushing to her.

The other ships she placed in the way, her own ship moving with as much speed as possible. This was a fight that could not be won, but perhaps it might be escaped. Again the world with its diseased light fell into her view, and half by instinct she moved towards it. Her ship could sense the life there, and even amid the false light the life was true. Feeding might be possible, if escape could be managed. Ships might be regrown, replaced. A world to harvest, possibly.

She felt the bite of cold metal and burning claws on other ships’ hulls now. The forms sleeping within them had been roused, and claw met claw inside the ships’ corridors. She saw through their eyes, up close now, what things had been awakened in the planetary rings. It was a parody of life, machines bearing repeating patterns on their bodies. The circles and straight lines were familiar, from memories of the Hive, before she had been cut off. There was no food here, only a predator to be either destroyed or escaped.

Still the swarms came, and she felt each of the other ships die. She saw, from her own ship, their bodies ruptured into the void, torn asunder by blackened swarms of mechanical horror. And then, the machines came for her.

She felt the bite of claws once more, and rallied her forms to defend the breaches in her ship. She had gathered knowledge from the conflicts in the other ships, and fed it to her offspring as they awoke. This time it was not a quick slaughter. The machines were held back, but she felt the injuries to the ship worsening from moment to moment.

The world of false light lay ahead, a yellowed brown sphere lit by the ruddy star. Life was definitely here, abundant but simple. No cities, no signs of sentience or sapience, no resistance. Yet the sand held dark smears, spreading out as only life could. She felt her ship’s pains as her offspring began to fall to the machines, yet these enemies were also faltering.

She could not remain in the void much longer, with the damages sustained. The world below was her only chance to continue, and so she pushed her ship to enter its atmosphere. In other circumstances it might have been possible to land without damage. Now, this was beyond hope. The air burned against the hull, scalding and melting some of the machines that remained on the outside. She gathered her offspring close in by herself, away from the outer hull as its chitin and bone began to crack and smolder. The ship cried out in her mind, and she felt every bit of its pain.

A large body of water was within sight on the ground, and she aimed as best she could, pushing her ship’s bestial instinct with all of her mental fortitude. It obeyed, as best it could in its broken state, veering uneasily towards this sea.

As the descent continued, so too did the fighting. Most of the machines were destroyed now, but so too were most of her progeny. Only a few remained close about her, fighting desperate battles to protect her chamber. Her consciousness rested between their struggles, and the struggles of the ship as it reached towards the water’s edge.

When the ground impacted, she felt many things break. Parts of her broke, but she did not care any longer. The ship’s hull shattered against the soft, wet sand, leaving a streak of ichor in its wake as it passed. The pain was everywhere, within and without, deep enough to drown in, and drown she did. Darkness came, and stilled the world.

[argulus]

Chapter 2 – Alive, but not Unbroken

She was alive, at least in part. That was her first awareness, as she regained her mind.

Her mind.

The Hive was gone. Only darkness and silence answered from the void, now. She turned her senses inward, and felt the stirrings of myriad tiny creatures crawling over and within her. Not creatures of metal, but rather flesh, bone, and chitin. Her smallest of children. Pain was still present, but her flesh was being repaired. Reaching out further, with some effort at first, she felt the ship was also barely alive. It was also being repaired, and the dead portions were being consumed. Time passed, and the sky wavered between several cycles of light and darkness as she slowly regained her senses.

In that time, she came to understand a number of significant things. Her children were all but gone, slaughtered by the machines, but the last of these metallic enemies was broken and stilled at her chamber entrance. The Hive was not only gone from her mind, but parts of her own mind were missing now as well. Several nerve clusters had been damaged or destroyed in the impact. She could not remember things clearly. Things that she knew she should have remembered. Some of the shapes she should have been able to birth were now lost to her. Yet there were enough remaining in her mind, and in her flesh, for her to create.

She could hear waves of water washing across the sand outside, the faint sounds coming in through several gaps in her broken and half-dead ship. She could feel the wind on its outer hull, and the scrape of sand against its wounded body. The first thing would be to facilitate the repairs, though the ship would never swim the void again. Still, it could be a shelter to weaker, smaller forms in this place.

With this in mind, she began to work. Her body trembled as she struggled to create forms that would heal and disinfect, shapes that would cleanse and eat away the unsalvageable tissues. Shapes soon issued forth from her own flesh, and began their tasks. The sky darkened again as this wretched orb turned within the void, and as the chill of night set in, the norn queen began to salvage what she could.

When the sun rose again, she not only felt the warmth against the ship’s hull, but she had regained enough of its senses to see the light break over the horizon. The air was clouded today, with a light rain falling almost hesitantly from above. Her children capitalized on the clean water, imbibing deeply before feeding it to the ship, and ultimately to her. She would live, and the ship would live, but neither would be entirely whole. Not until she rejoined the Hive. Then, perhaps she would be repaired or perhaps she would be absorbed. With an odd sensation of surprise, she felt a strange preference for the former option, and an aversion to the latter.

It was not important.

Things were stable enough now, but things could not remain as they were. The dead tissues and ruined organs would do for food, for a time. However, they would not last all that long. More material needed to be gathered. More forms would need to be bred to do this.

As she considered her options, she became more aware of the heaviness over her mind. The Hive was absent, but not because it did not exist. It was still there, but veiled now. Something about this world occluded it. This strange property was not limited to the Hive, though. She felt a quietness over the minds she was connected to. Even a short distance was enough to dull their thoughts to her. By estimations, ten ship lengths would be distance enough to darken simple minds completely to one another.

Two things would be needed, then. First off, autonomy. There were a few forms that were uniquely able to function without a greater mind to guide them. These would serve as scouts, at least until more material could be obtained. The second thing would be synapse, as much as she could imbue. Creatures with their own mental strength, to reach out through the fog of this world and pierce the veil. Children that would carry her thoughts and her will to any lesser forms around them. That could wait, though. First, the simpler scouts would need to be shaped.

She sifted through her fragmented mind, gathering shapes and patterns as best she could. In all, roughly three quarters of the standard genestealer patterns remained available. She took other scraps as she found them, gargoyle and gaunt, mere remnants at best, and welded them into these patterns. The results were promising as she felt new life taking shape within her. Claws and talons, and bladed tails to meet the unknown. Large and complicated neural centers to grant intellect and cunning. With a shudder, she felt the first of these forms push its way free to crawl up into the open air.

Within a fair distance she could see through their minds, using their senses as if they were her own. The ideas flowed easily between them, and almost immediately they understood her will. With the grace of a single organism, they navigated the usable passages of the ship and stepped through a breach into the outside. She felt something like pride at these creations. What was pride?

It didn’t matter.

They climbed out onto the wet sand, and looked over their surroundings. The sea beckoned to one side, while dunes stretched out to the other. One of the creatures reached down and took a handful of sand into its mouth, tasting its qualities. Salt was here, but so was life. Algal forms, from what she could discern, and tiny invertebrates scurrying between the sand grains. Satisfied, the children began to move towards the sea.

They moved swiftly, unencumbered over the sands, meeting no resistance in this empty place. When they reached the water’s edge, they saw films of blue-green sludge gathered up in the waves. Another sample, another taste, a bloom of healthy algal life. Simple, but more than adequate as raw material. Her children filled their bellies until they could pack no more matter into their digestive organs. Then, moving somewhat more slowly, they began moving back to the ship.

Most of the contents were disgorged into digestion pools, with these scouts retaining only enough for their own metabolism. They departed to gather more, as what they had left began to break down for consumption. The queen felt the nutrients entering her ship and her body. More than that, she began to read and understand the genetic code of what had been brought back.

It was strange. These tiny, simple creatures had too much complexity in their DNA. There were patterns enough here to build large, complex forms with ease. Yet no trace of these forms was in evidence. Only the small, mindless, simple things that crept through the sand and drifted aimlessly in the water. Mysterious, but of no great matter. Patterns and materials had been obtained. Soon it would be time to spawn greater things.

From this chapter onward, I hope to be able to include a few small model images along the way.  So hopefully this works.

[argulus]

Chapter 3 – An Eden of Monsters

Many days had passed since the arrival on this world. The ship had been little more than a broken heap of organic materials then. Now its wounds were healed and its breaches closed, though it could hardly be considered to be a functioning ship any longer. It had been repurposed, and what had once been a form to swim through the void had now become a home and shelter to the queen and her children. It had grown roots to dig into the sand, and found bedrock not too far beneath.

The queen had not been idle with her new patterns. The algal forms she’d absorbed could be recreated and built upon, giving rise to larger more complicated autotrophs. Of course these non-motile patterns would need something to set them in place, but this was no great challenge. The spore mines were simple things easily produced, and nearly all of their information had survived the crash. It was easy to repurpose them from weapons into spore distributors.

Thus the surrounding sands had been permeated with new life, and all around the ship a blue-green garden was beginning to proliferate. The photosynthetic pigments had been perfectly optimized for the long wavelengths from the ancient star, and the vitality of some of the norn queen’s own patterns had guaranteed rapid and vigorous growth. Between the harvests from this new garden and the simple algae scavenged by her genestealers, she had accumulated a considerable stock of organic material.

It was time to create again.

As the days and nights passed by, she had noted certain instabilities in the local weather. Storms would often lash the surface. Between the wind, the salt water, and the scouring sands, the former ship had needed to grow a thick outer shell. New forms would need to be toughened for proper prolonged exploration, but heavy armor would weigh them down and reduce their efficiency. The solution was obvious.

She began sifting through her patterns to make forms that could burrow through the sand. Most of the ravener genes were present, and any gaps were filled by more recent acquisitions. The sand in this place was filled with tiny animals, and each bore patterns that could be integrated and improved upon. So it was not long before serpentine shapes grew within her, and emerged into the sheltered depths of her living home.

These particular raveners had been designed and grown with special chambers in their thoracic cavities. These were meant to house colonies of smaller vermiform creatures. In a conflict, these tiny things would burrow into prey to end their struggles. In this place, they would be released into the sand to aerate it with a multitude of tunnels, and feed upon whatever microscopic life they encountered along the way. With such alterations, the garden would flourish all the more.

As for the raveners themselves, they were simpleminded things with little more than instinct driving them, and that was a problem in the long term. Still, it was no matter in the short term. She would keep them close by for now, having them excavate tunnels directly beneath her and beneath the surrounding garden. By the time they had finished with this work, something else would be joining them.

As part of her mind directed the brood to tunnel through the wet sand, another part was guiding a new form’s development. This shape would be like the raveners, yet unlike as well. It would be a vastly larger creature, with a highly developed nervous system. It would be her first child, since arriving in this place, to have something like a true mind of its own. Moreover, it would have a presence sufficient to guide and command its smaller siblings.

With great care she wove the many segments of bone and muscle, and chitinous carapace. She stitched the neurons in place, and watched them proliferate and spread. Electrical energies surged through the embryonic form as it grew, gathering strength and intelligence along with its growing size. She felt a mind reach for hers, and drew it in close to teach it. Ideas flowed freely between them, and she felt an unexpected solace in the company. She was no longer quite so alone.

The moment came, and massive claws tore their way free from the incubating membranes. With a triumphant shriek, the trygon prime emerged into the world. Immediately it knew what was needed, and understood how to go about its work. It slipped easily into the sand, its mind reaching out to the smaller forms nearby and gathering them into a cohesive team. Together they began to tunnel farther outwards on all sides, preparing the ground for an expanding garden. Material would continue to flow to the norn queen, and she would continue to generate forms to survive in this almost empty world.

She felt a sudden call, faint in the distance, but familiar. Her scouts had sensed something, and quickly she directed her trygon to go to them. It swam effortlessly through the sands, breaching the surface when it had drawn near to the place. Towering over the smaller creatures, it looked down at them and she saw through its eyes. A few genestealers had gathered around a jagged shape of blackened, worn rock. Raveners emerged behind their leader, and slithered close about this stone.

The raveners could sense nothing but simple rock, but the genestealers could feel something more. The trygon saw clearly that this stone was in some way alive. It had a presence in the creature’s mind, almost a mind of its own, and this mind was reaching out in all directions with hungry claws. Quickly the trygon and the other burrowers descended into the sands, taking the measure and scope of this rock formation. It was soon clear that this was a massive thing, with only the smallest portion protruding above the sands.

More worrying, the presence within the rock was growing stronger. It seemed almost luminous to the trygon’s subtle senses. When she ordered a withdrawal, there was no resistance.

Why should there be?

Her children returned homeward, though her mind remained partially focused upon the distant stone formation. It was possible that if there was one, there were others. The information gathered by her children seemed to imply this. The overall shape suggested a part of some larger structure, rather than a structure unto itself.

She would need to devise more forms to explore deeper into her surroundings. This world did not feel safe, as it had before. Even at this great distance, she could now feel the stone presence. The other mind. She could feel it slowly growing in both strength and malevolence. More material was needed. More children to spawn. Scouts at first, and soldiers soon.

[argulus]

Chapter 4 – Treading the Heavens

A night had passed since the discovery, a night spent gathering biomass and planning. The queen had tapped into the gathered knowledge and mental capacity of her children through much of the night, leaving them sluggish and distracted for the most part. It was just as well that the genestealers were all gathered within the ship home and the surrounding tunnels for the time being. A particularly violent storm had descended shortly after their return. Even now, it was only just beginning to ebb.

She knew that, given the rate of this unknown presence’s growth, she would need to gather information rapidly. She would not be able to rely upon her genestealers, as they needed to return to close range in order to properly report information. She needed something with stronger synapse. The trygon was viable, but it could be in only one place at a time, and making such a large form was costly. More raveners alone would not suffice, as they would need to be near the trygon to be of any use.

The smallest forms with the synapse she now required would be warriors, but these would not travel fast enough to be of much use. They could not be modified to burrow, at least not very successfully, but there was another modification that might possibly work.

She began to gather patterns for limbs with toughened membranes stretched between elongated digits. A single pair of limbs might be sufficiently converted, but there was the matter of the storms to consider. One pair of wings large enough for flight would be cumbersome and awkward, and torn to pieces if a storm should descend. Two smaller pairs might work, but this left precious little in the way of available limbs for defense and manipulation. The pattern was always six.

But why?

She looked into some of the small invertebrate patterns she had drawn from the creatures living between the sand grains. One in particular seemed most intriguing, an arthropod form with each segment bearing a pair of bifurcated limbs. One part of the appendage was a proper leg, but alongside it was a feathery gill. The pattern could be adapted, modified, integrated, she was certain.

So she began to gestate a most unorthodox brood of children. They would be warriors for the most part, each able to operate alone and scout over wide ranges if all went to plan. Four leathery wings would carry them aloft. A pair of short, strong talons would be tucked close against the body during flight, and below them would be a pair of short, strong claws much like those of the genestealers. If a storm should threaten, the smaller wings could be folded away close beneath the carapace. The talons and claws could then be used to dig a shallow burrow, deep enough to shelter in until the storm passed.

Eagerly she felt the new life taking shape within her, and she meticulously sculpted their flesh into precisely what would be needed. She made three in all, and when they emerged to take their first breaths she felt a surge of maternal pride.

Pride?

Quickly she gave them instructions, and just as quickly they were away. The trygon had shown her what lay in one direction, but there were three other cardinal directions to seek. She felt her new children taking to the air. Their flight was not so agile as what a gargoyle might accomplish, but they moved swiftly and steadily enough through the atmosphere. Seeing through their senses, for the first time she viewed this place properly from the air.

Below, a dark azure stain was spreading out from the chitinous bulk of the former ship. The garden was thriving, and she was pleased by the searching tendrils many of the plant forms were sending into the unclaimed sand at the perimeter. Further out, she saw the sea with its white breakers frothing at the shore. The waters were troubled, giving some indication of the remnants of the night’s storm.

On the land, new patterns began to become apparent to her expanded senses. She saw the one stone in the distance, and soon spotted others much like it. As her warriors drew nearer to these other stones, she felt the same mental presence that had so disturbed the trygon. It soon became apparent that the stones were part of a massive structure almost entirely buried in the sand. What was more troubling, they seemed to extend outward as far as she could sense. They were widely scattered, but omnipresent.

This world was old, that much was clear by its star. These stones were not natural, that much was obvious by their arrangements. Something intelligent had lived here, once. Lived here, and either left or been destroyed. Furthermore, and more perturbing, life had been reduced to the simplest and most tenacious of forms burrowing through sand and drifting through water.

A conclusion came, and though it was not absolute it did seem probable. Something in the stones had destroyed all intelligent and complex life on this world, leaving only a desolate remnant. Something had slept for what may have been many eons. With her arrival, and the presence of her mind, something had changed. With the sudden presence of complex forms of life, with the appearance of creatures bearing a clear intelligence, an ancient predator was awakening.

She did not intend to become its prey.

[argulus]

Chapter 5 – The Gathering Storm

Light and darkness had passed across the sky again, and all the while the tension from the stones had been steadily worsening. The warriors had kept watch on several of the more distant stones, while a handful of genestealers were observing the nearest stone from a ways off. None of her children had lingered very close to any of the stones, and they had been moving slowly further away as the subtle energies had become more and more intense.

During this time, the queen had not been idle. There were so many gaps in the available genetic patterns, but the local biomass had provided means to work around most of these missing pieces. Now she could feel new slender shapes gestating, their bodies weaving together cell by cell. They were more complicated than the genestealers, and not quite so autonomous. Autonomy was not their purpose.

Roughly half of the new creatures were grown with relatively simple minds. Some of their genetic makeup was derived from the far simpler spore mines, but these forms were a distinct improvement in several regards. Their bodies contained sacs of low density gases, suffused with myriad spores. This would allow for more efficient seeding of the local sand and sea, allowing a more rapid proliferation of the garden.

She felt the first of these creatures stir, then slip gracefully free from its birthing chamber. Long, barbed tendrils instinctively extended to take hold of anything within reach. Membranous sacks puffed out from narrow recesses in the upper carapace as the thing inhaled. Tendrils located about its mouth twitched anxiously, tasting the warm, humid air within the ship home. All that was needed now was a little bit of prompting, and the simple mind turned its focus to the outside.

The newborn venomthrope slithered sinuously along through the surrounding passages of bone and flesh. Its strong, tentacled limbs held it almost upright as they carried it along. By the time it was near to one of the exits, the creature had become nearly weightless in the thick atmosphere. This was due to the buoyant gases filling its dorsal sacs. The buoyancy was not the primary function, though. These volatile gases provided the perfect medium for spore production.

She felt the touch of its spores as it exhaled a great billowing cloud into the ship interior. The ship breathed, and most of these spores were carried the short distance to the outside. The venomthrope emerged shortly thereafter, and began drifting placidly among the garden vegetation. There was another great exhalation of spores, and the thing was entirely obscured for a time in a spreading yellowish cloud. It was beautiful.

What was beauty?

Soon the others of the brood would hatch, each of them steadily producing spores enough to veil the garden entirely from hostile eyes. The coming predators might have other senses, of course, but that could not be helped. Even if such cover proved ineffective, the garden would still spread all the swifter, and grow all the more verdant. With sufficient biomass, she might produce offspring plentiful enough and powerful enough to mount an adequate defense.

As if in answer to these thoughts, she felt the other brood of nascent creatures beginning to stir. These were similarly slender, but that was perhaps their only point of similarity. The limbs of these beings were atrophied and all but useless, while their nervous systems had been elaborated into a remarkable state of complexity. Each had a brain to rival that of the trygon, and even exceed it by some measures. Already, she could feel their sleeping thoughts clearly and distinctly.

When the first of these beings awoke, there was a faint tremor felt throughout the ship. It pushed its way free from the womb, rising smoothly and serenely into the air. As it hovered upright, its mind reached out towards its surroundings. In an instant it had contacted her own mind, and she felt the strange comfort of its company. Their thoughts blended together, as she taught it all that it would need to know of this world, and the current situation.

As the last of the information was digested, the zoanthrope’s cranium crackled with visible surges of luminous energy. It moved steadily towards the outside, then reached its mind out towards the distant stones. Even from far off, it perceived things as clearly as her other children had from much shorter distances. It called softly to the rest of its brood, and one by one they also began to awaken. A single voice quickly became a choir, and for a passing moment the queen reveled in their shared song.

She watched as each of the remaining zoanthropes emerged, and then began to guide the emerging venomthropes along the ship’s inner passages. New spore clouds were breathed into being, and in the presence of the collective minds, the spores swirled and swam in shifting patterns through the air. A calm resonance settled over the garden as it became veiled within a living cloud. The queen almost felt safe.

Yet she could not ignore the growing shadow from the distant stones, made all the clearer by her new brood’s perception. There was a sickening familiarity to the shape of whatever was gathering about those stones. It was not so different to the birth of her own offspring. Something was longing to be birthed into reality. Something terrible and formless was striving towards a form. Perhaps many forms. They were nearly ready.

She felt something break.

Near and far away, above and below, without and within, reality seemed to change. It was as though something had snapped. No. Something was being born, out there among the looming black stones.

[argulus]

Chapter 6 – The Storm Descends

The queen watched through the eyes of her brood as doubtful shapes shimmered on the horizon. They seemed to be living things upon first sight, yet the scent they gave off was not that of any organic being. Their minds, what little she could discern, were almost incomprehensible. They seemed like little more than small shards, each reflecting a greater power still lurking beyond mundane reality.

No time to dwell upon this.

The shapes were moving now, converging upon the garden, coming in from all sides with malign intent. Some of these shapes were gaunt things, with prominent horns adorning elongated heads. Each grasped a large weapon in its hands, wreathed in dark fire. The deep, reddish skin of the wielder was illuminated by these dull, angry flames.

They marched forward, seeming at once mindless and single-minded. From what little she and her brood could sense, their only thought seemed to be focused upon destruction. They intended to bring the fiery weapons to bear, cutting into any and all living things. A singular idea seemed to brand itself upon her mind, as the queen focused her attention upon them. It was an image of red fluid, surging from grievously wounded tissue. This shifted into an image of cranial skeletal forms stripped bare and gathered into a pile. Last of all there was a lingering image of a vast, dark shape crouching in the midst of eight titan pillars.

She turned her focus from this image, banishing it from her mind. Her attention, and the attention of her brood, turned to the other strange beings gathering behind these red-hued soldiers. They seemed far less interested in anything, and their thoughts felt jumbled and altogether without purpose or pattern. Their actions also seemed almost entirely random as they flopped and danced about. Their bodies were nearly shapeless, continually shifting as new limbs sprouted while others were reabsorbed. Perhaps the only constant feature was the glistening pink skin, and even this faded through innumerable hues of pink.

Their mouths gibbered out various noises that seemed incompatible with any form of coherent information. Multicolored flames sprouted from the vile things, often accompanied by strange noises that didn’t seem to be entirely composed of sound. As her attention focused upon these creatures, another image began to coalesce. Luminous crystals, ever changing, and in their midst, an indescribable shape that whispered nonsense in a thousand tongues.

She turned her attention away from this image as well, feeling an unpleasant sort of buzzing in her neural clusters as she did so. This quickly faded, and she began to bolster her mind and the mind of her brood. The choir began its song as they spread out among the garden. Commands were carried effortlessly to even the simplest of minds.

Raveners erupted from the sands, their claws tearing into the red-skinned enemies. They seemed to feel no pain as they turned their blazing weapons on their attackers. She felt the fierce tenacity of her children as they writhed and clawed at their foes. Yet in spite of this tenacity, one by one their bodies became too damaged to properly function. At the same time, the enemy shapes were beginning to waver and dissolve back into whatever outer realm they had come from. It wasn’t long before all of the raveners were dead, having destroyed several of their opponents in turn. But there were a great many enemies, and most still remained.

The genestealers were next, springing from the midst of the concealing spore clouds. Their ferocity was no less vehement, and their tactical cunning was somewhat better than that of their serpentine siblings. Even so, the enemy continued to advance in greater and greater numbers.

The pink, shapeless things came near, and the sporadic jets of brightly hued fire were turned upon her brood. She felt their bodies burn, and then she felt them begin to mutate. Such perfection of genetic form, so carefully grown and sculpted, now twisted into meaningless tangles of warped flesh. Then the living gibberish turned upon their former siblings, and the queen felt enraged at the sight.

The Hive did not know anger.

Her children were being corrupted. The choir sang out as one, focusing the energies of their minds into lethal manifestations of energy. The pink creatures were seared and scattered, torn to pieces by intangible fury, and even the pieces laughed mockingly as they shifted and stretched. Shades of blue replaced the pink, as smaller creatures took shape in place of their predecessors.

These still held the misshapen nature of those that came before, but there was no exuberance in them. No random action, not a single moment of wasted movement. Rather they simply burned, lashing out with fire in a mood that seemed far more akin to that of the crimson things. The red soldiers, with their burning weapons. She felt those weapons hacking into the outer edges of her garden now.

She would not allow this.

Instinctively, she began to weave a new life together within the birthing chambers. It was similar to the winged warriors she had spawned, though it lacked wings itself. It was not built to scout the surrounding regions. It was not meant to travel swiftly through the air. Blades of bone took shape, grafted into its limbs. The brain coalesced in a state of cold fury, with layer upon layer of neural tissue elaborating upon this central pattern.

It was with satisfaction that she felt the alpha warrior rip its way free of its womb. The bioforms within the ship would soon repair the damage. She felt its fury, and goaded it onward as it rushed out into the billowing clouds of spores. It didn’t need to see in order to fight. Its siblings could sense the enemy, and soon its own mind perceived them directly. With a single call, it drew the other warriors down from the air to stand at its side. They raised their claws and talons as it readied its blades.

The attack was swift as her children fell upon the red attackers. They turned immediately to fight this new threat, but her warriors were too quick. Many of the invasive things fell apart, fading from existence almost before they were aware of what had happened. Those that remained turned upon the warriors without hesitation, or the slightest hint of fear.

Her attention turned again towards the outer perimeter. The trygon prime was burrowing beneath the largest group of blue invaders. She watched it burst from the ground, roaring as electrical energies coruscated across its body. Most of the comparatively small creatures around it were caught in this living storm, their bodies burning and fragmenting.

Yet, these fragments did not altogether vanish. They continued to burn, and cackled spitefully as they began swarming across the trygon’s carapace. The pungency of sulphur and smoke filled its senses, as it felt the flames bite unnaturally deep into its armor. It unleashed another surge of electrical energies, and the little creatures at last dissolved into nothing.

She called out to the trygon, pulling it back beneath the sands. Its wounds were surprisingly severe, and it would take some time to repair them. The Hive would have simply reabsorbed the creature, but she did not have the luxury of growing a new trygon from nothing. There were too many of her children dead as it was.

Her attention returned to the garden, where the warriors’ bodies rested broken among the azure undergrowth. The last of the crimson defilers had been banished, but this had come at a high price. Already, the garden was feeding upon the fallen defenders. Their flesh was being absorbed into roots tipped with rasping teeth, their ichor spreading into the sand to be taken in by the tiny vermiform burrowers. Soon their biomass would be reclaimed.

There had been other casualties. Only a couple of genestealers yet lived, and these had serious wounds. The raveners had been completely destroyed. One of the zoanthropes had exploded as its mental focus had wavered in an inopportune moment. Half of the venomthropes had been found by the red soldiers amid the fog, and quickly torn to pieces. So many gone, so few left. Yet the enemy had stopped coming, for the moment at least. Even so, the dark, distant stones still sang with unholy malice.

It wouldn’t be long before the next attack.

[argulus]

Chapter 7 – The Inexorable End

The norn queen meditated upon the recent battles, analyzing and information taken in through the varied senses of her progeny. If the invaders held to the same tactics, she could adapt easily enough. If they changed, she might be unable to adequately defend. Even if they merely invaded in greater numbers, that alone might be enough to end her.

She did not want to end.

Night had fallen outside, and a cold wind was whipping across the landscape. Beneath the darkened sky, the survivors of her brood had gathered what they could of the dead. Even now, she could feel the reclaimed biomass flowing into her. Some forms could be recreated quite easily. The genestealers had done well, and the raveners had not been ineffective. They merely needed to attack simultaneously in a coordinated effort.

It would take more to regenerate the lost zoanthrope. The warrior alpha would be difficult to duplicate as well, and its attacks had proven somewhat insufficient in any case. Even the fiercest bioform would have difficulty fighting those crimson beings at close range. It was unfortunate that so much memory of the weapon symbiotes had been lost in the crash. Still, the raveners had housed vermiform things. Perhaps this could be adapted.

Warriors could be improved upon, and even zoanthropes could be replaced using the available biomass. Yet, a new thought was occurring to her now. If she was going to expend such efforts, perhaps it would be better to create something a little more elaborate. There was sufficient biomass, after all, and she had learned much during the creation of her previous children. New forms began to take shape within her mind, and then within her flesh.

Hours passed as the red sun ascended into the dull sky. She spent the time half in trance, utterly focused upon her newest works. Yet a fragment of her attention lingered over the trygon, coiled up and hibernating within the ship as miniscule forms clambered across its body. Wounds were cleaned, flesh was replaced, armored carapace was regrown.

Outside, the choir kept a wary watch on the distant stones, their slender bodies hovering within the thickest portions of the spore clouds. The first priority was to bolster these defenses. She turned her attention inward again.

It had taken considerable effort to reclaim even a couple of weapon symbiont patterns, but one in particular had been especially effective. As with her other children, she had filled in the gaps with the latent genetic patterns scavenged from this world. Hopefully, it would be enough.

What did it mean to hope?

A new clutch of children began hatching from their chambers. They were squat creatures, well armored and lacking in eyes. Each held a symbiote grafted to two of its limbs, and these living weapons twitched eagerly as they cradled their special ammunition.

Together, the brood marched out into the garden to take up positions among the zoanthropes and venomthropes. Then their minds faded into something like a waking sleep, almost a hibernation as they conserved energy. The weapons were pointed outward, towards the distant stones to all sides. The hive guards were ready.

Back within the ship, another form stirred in an uneasy dream as the last of its flesh was woven into place. It was something like the zoanthropes, with a mind even more clearly apparent to the queen. Almost before it began to emerge, it reached out to its lesser siblings. The song of the choir changed as its consciousness fully awoke, growing more powerful and coherent. The neurothrope drifted calmly through the living chambers, then joined its siblings amid the fog of spores.

Biomass was running low again, after all of these spawning efforts. One last form remained, and it was her most ambitious attempt thus far. Genestealers harvested what they could from the garden, feeding the biomass into the internal digestion pools. Rippers joined these efforts. They were small creatures, easy to spawn, and capable of reproducing on their own. Several had been prowling the garden almost since its initial seeding. Now many of these creatures willingly gave themselves up entirely to the digestion pools. The sight made her feel a little sad.

Why should it, though?

Once more she focused her attention upon the final creature, its body and mind steadily taking shape beneath her care. In more peaceful circumstances, it could still act as a unifying point of consciousness for the brood. Its weapon symbiotes, elaborated and extrapolated from the raveners, could seed the ground with multitudes of burrowing things. For the time being though, its mind would be used to lash out at the enemy, as the tiny creatures from its weapons burrowed into their unnatural flesh.

She felt the familiar, distant flare of the dark stones, carried into her mind by the choir as they kept watch. The enemy was coming again. Her final work could not be rushed, but she hurried it along as best she could. She felt the hive guards launch the first salvoes into the invaders, the spikes impaling their targets with perfect precision. The choir lashed out as before, though now the neurothrope that led the song was able to draw life directly from the encroaching enemies.

She watched as her children took wound after wound, and one by one they began to fall again. The enemy had returned in far greater numbers now. It would not be enough. Yet, she would not simply die. One last struggle remained.

Her mind reached out to the large creature that was nearing readiness. She felt the raw strength of its mind, as well as its body. For a time she had considered trying to grow a carnifex or two. However, this would cost too much biomass for a thing too lacking in intelligence. Brute strength alone would not suffice.

Her child opened its eyes, and its mind reached out across the ship and surrounding region. Immediately it perceived, and understood. Commands began to flow instinctively from its consciousness. A single prominent horn cleaved its way through the wall of the birthing chamber, and the hive tyrant emerged with a bellowing roar.

Half the garden was burning by the time it emerged from the ship, and it wasted no time. Already the choir had adjusted its tactics. Together, her children delivered death to the enemy from a distance. Yet there were always more enemies. Larger creatures had now appeared amid the seemingly endless ranks of the smaller ones. Each was an elaboration upon the others’ simpler forms, and she could sense their greater intelligence. The norn queen could see her own encroaching death. For a moment, she felt something like peace at the thought.

Then something unexpected happened. Something slammed into the ground from orbit. It was a compact, metallic object. As the dust settled to reveal the shape half buried in the sand, the surrounding crater began to slowly fill with water. Doors opened in the strange object, and several large creatures emerged.

They moved with surprising speed and purpose through the slowly rising waters, the red sunlight reflecting off of their silver armor. Bits of gold were visible amid this silver, and each creature bore a separate slab of metal adorned with patterns of red, white, and black. Scraps of dried, fibrous material hung from their armored bodies, each secured in place with what seemed like spots of applied lipids stained red. The scraps themselves were dyed in patterns that suggested language of some kind.

In their hands they clutched long, slender weapons with luminous blades at one end. The pink and crimson enemies at the crater’s edge began to fade and flicker strangely as these silver things approached them. As they climbed out onto the level sands, her brood heard some form of spoken language coming from the apparent leader. It took her a few moments of drawing upon the memories left to her by the Hive before she could translate it.

“Suffer not the daemon to live.”

[argulus]

Chapter 8 – An Impossible Redemption

The queen watched through the senses of her children, observing curiously as the new arrivals began to tear into the enemy. The attack on her garden quickly faltered, with the invaders abruptly drawn away to bolster their comrades. A tide of crimson and pink gathered up around the small force that had landed, and thus far they seemed to actually be holding it back.

The Hive might have allowed these two forces to fight one another until one side was destroyed. There was no cause to ally with prey, or with competing predators. All was either biomass to eventually be overpowered and consumed, or else unnatural things to be eliminated. As she lay there, cradled in the heart of her living ship, the norn queen pondered uneasily. She could not be certain what the Hive would do, but that did not matter.

The Hive was not here.

The command went out to her brood, and the choir answered, carrying her orders to the tyrant and the trygon. The logic was examined, and quickly accepted. The hive guards and venomthropes were held back as defenders, but her other children marched out of the garden and onto the open sands. As soon as they were within range, they unleashed the full measure of their collective strength against the unnatural enemies.

Orders were seared into the minds of her children, strict commands not to harm or provoke the silver ones. It was possible that they might turn on her brood if the other enemy was defeated, but that was not her primary concern for the moment. The essential thing was the elimination of the more immediate and obvious threat. The tyrant was doubtful, but agreed with the understanding that any hostilities from the silver ones would immediately be met in kind.

The common enemy fell by the hundreds, falling to pieces and fading back into the nothingness that had apparently spawned them. Yet there were always more. The vile things began to encroach upon the garden again, but not in great numbers just yet. All that came too close were soon riddled with cruel spikes, fired unerringly by the hive guards from within the concealing clouds of spores.

Suddenly the queen perceived a small shape descending slowly from the sky, at the far edge of her children’s senses. It landed on the ground quite close to one of the distant stones, and something emerged to stand close at the foot of the looming monolith. Minutes passed, and suddenly the world began to shift in a strange, almost undetectable sort of way.

She watched as the legions of invaders abruptly started to fade into nothing. The distant stones to all sides grew quiet, then cold and dormant. Her children advanced cautiously towards what had once been the heart of the battle, looking for some trace of the silver ones that had fallen from the sky. What they found were the torn remnants of a small number of robust creatures. Not a single one had survived, but it appeared that all had sustained remarkably violent wounds before succumbing.

Her children looked to the distant shape beside the dark stone, now grown quiet. What lingered beneath the stone was not approaching. It was not advancing. It was not retreating, either. It seemed almost as though it might be waiting for something.

It was just another confusing event, one of several experienced upon this world. The queen needed answers to at least some of these mysteries. She commanded her children to begin retrieving the remains of the silver ones. At the same time, a new form began to gestate beneath her careful attention. It would not require much biomass, and could be shaped rather quickly. It would be based upon a genestealer. Time was important, as was information. She would only have enough material to make one properly, especially with so many modifications.

Wings took shape in place of the front pair of limbs, their leathery membranes delicately folded within the amniotic fluids. The creature’s skull swelled with a large, complicated brain as feeding tendrils sprouted in place of the more conventional jaw structure. Exquisitely sensitive neurons blended together, and the thing’s mind began to stir.

Before it was even born, she planted deep commands within its very nature. It was not to attack except in defense. It was to move stealthily, in the presence of the unknown. It would seek to learn all that it could, and readily transmit that knowledge to the communal mind of its family.

The thing emerged, its single pair of wings flexing a few times as it scurried through the ship. As soon as it was outside, its powerful legs launched it straight into the air. The wings extended, and the creature began to glide swiftly over the ground. It kept low, not wanting to draw the attention of the distant ones. When it neared its siblings, it landed and crouched eagerly over the remains they had brought.

Feeding tendrils went to work, and it quickly began to taste the nature of these beings. They were human, and yet not. There were many organs that seemed oddly incongruous, grafted into place much as a weapon symbiote might be. Yet there was not the same harmony in the joined flesh. No matter. One of the creature’s skulls was intact, with a brain almost entirely pristine.

The tendrils went to work, sinking greedily into the skull through any available opening, and making a few new openings as well. Memories began to flicker through the creature’s mind, and the other children nearby perceived them. Together they refined the scattered scraps of sensory information. The queen watched eagerly as remembered events began to take shape.

A distant world, shrouded in orange yellow fog. A titanic building carved from the frozen rock. Many brothers, chanting sacred syllables. Long established rituals, and at the center of their worship was the Emperor. The glorious, golden light at the heart of the Imperium.

The memories shifted. Glimpses of countless battlefields, innumerable worlds, where daemons tore into reality from the cursed depths of the warp. Always the brothers stood against the monstrous things, driving them back to the nethermost hells that they had crawled up from. Others stood alongside them. Clever humans that did not shine nearly so brightly, but their eyes were often dark and deep.

One such clever human approached them, carrying scraps of paper marked with the seal of the Holy Inquisition. They were to go to battle again, perhaps. Brought out to a distant, forgotten corner of the galaxy. Signs and portents had been read, so the clever one claimed, and there would soon be an incursion of the warp in that distant place. If they could stop it in time, half a subsector might be saved from ruin. Yet, it was a largely empty subsector.

One did not question. Duty was everything, so the small squad of veteran brothers would go to answer this threat. Upon arrival, they gazed down at the empty moon. Empty, apart from a dark bloom of xenos life. On all sides, this singular patch of growth was threatened. Daemons were encircling it in a great horde. That was where the battle was to be fought. The xenos could wait, the clever one said. Priority went to holding off the daemons. The brothers agreed.

So they crowded into the drop pod, ready for orbital insertion. The rest of the memories were of fury and strife, as bloodletters marched alongside capering horrors. Their fire was drawn, so the clever one could close the gate. The cost had been dear. There would be no entombment of the honored dead. There would only be an open grave on a nameless world, forgotten by the Imperium that they had served for so long in secret.

The queen’s thoughts drifted away from the memories. There would be no decay. No loss. The tendrils had revealed many genetic treasures in the strangely augmented flesh. At her command, her children continued bringing the remains towards her. They marched in a strange procession, reminiscent of the funerary glimpses she had seen in the salvaged memories.

The remains were devoured and digested with the greatest of care, the flesh honored as its secrets were integrated into her knowledge. New children would be spawned from this world’s biomass, each carrying a fragment of the legacy the silver ones had brought. She now understood what a daemon was, and her children would soon know all the better how to fight them.

One day she would gather sufficient biomass, and her brood would grow new ships. She would carry the salvaged life of this world safely out into the void, and find her way clear of this cursed star. Then, perhaps, she would rejoin the Hive, and take her place once more within the great chorus.

Perhaps.

At last, we're nearly at the end.  All that remains is the epilogue.

[argulus]

Epilogue – The Conspiracy of Enemies

The inquisitor looked out over the bleak landscape, watching the sand caught up in errant gusts of wind. Another storm was on the horizon, but he didn’t intend to linger here much longer. He glanced back at the interior of his landing craft. Grey knights had traveled in this hold, half a galaxy away now. They had been brought into the ship that now waited in orbit above this desolate moon. He had memorized their names and faces, and such histories as they were willing to share.

He had followed them down to this cursed place, letting them draw the enemy’s ire as he had lulled the blasphemous stone ruins back into an uneasy sleep. Now, he had only the servitors for company. That, and the distant xenos that he had sense enough to keep well away from. His gaze turned upward, and he could just barely discern the tiny outline of his waiting ship. He would need to have a convincing story to explain the loss of even a handful of grey knights. Thankfully, he was good at that sort of thing, and his retinue that remained in orbit was loyal to him.

A shimmer in the air nearby caught his attention, and his hand instinctively went to his bolter pistol. A moment later, a familiar gaunt shape clad in faded cloth and a drab cloak emerged. She moved gracefully, as one might expect, but there was a heaviness in her bearing as well.

“A squad of grey knights lost takes a lot of explaining,” he muttered. “This had better be worth it.”

In answer, she advanced and held out a small metallic object. Taking it in hand, he saw the sleek construction clearly enough, right up to the jagged break at one end.

“As promised,” a feminine voice intoned crisply from behind a faceless mirrored mask, “one of the STC fragments so rare and prized by your imperium.”

He nodded, carefully securing the object in a hidden chamber built into his modified power armor. “I don’t suppose it’s any good asking where it came from.”

“Information such as that, has a price too high for you to pay.”

Again, he nodded slightly. “And why you’d be willing to part with it?”

“The Aeldari are not moved by simple toys as your kind are,” she said with sudden callousness.

“I will assume our business is concluded, then, but tell me, as a simple, mon keigh, what were you hoping to accomplish with all of this?”

She stood a moment, still as a statue, silently considering. He heard something like a sigh from within the mask, and felt a strange impression of fatigue and sorrow reaching out from the alien mind. Instinctively he shielded his thoughts, and listened as she spoke in a whisper.

“For the sake of your honorable fallen, I will share some fragments at least. I sought you out because we have a common enemy. I chose you, because you would not balk at dealings with xenos, in the service of your crusade. You also would not object to utilizing other, more vicious forms of life.” She turned back over her shoulder, gazing towards the far distant tyranid landscape spreading out from the ruined ship. “I drew them here, and they fell into the trap of this world. An ancient trap, but one no less lethal for all the long years. And now they thrive in the very shadow of chaos, destined to evolve in their way to fight it.”

“The tyranids already evolve ways of fighting chaos,” he remarked, distinctly unimpressed. “There are reports of entire hive fleets that seek out warp storms these days, and fight even the greater daemons with ease.”

She shook her head. “Yet it is not enough. Those are part of their great communal mind, they fight as a predator fighting another predator over a carcass. Here, these are isolated. They are cut off by the remnants of the yngir, left keeping their eternal watch upon this once disputed ground. These new creatures will learn to fight the implacable enemy in ways they could never conceive, were they tied down to the single consciousness.”

“And the knights,” he grimly muttered. “Were they needed as, material for this evolution?” The question left the taste of bile in his throat.

“Few are so proficient at fighting this enemy. These can learn much, from such remains.”

“You understand nothing,” he spat, causing her to turn back to look towards him. “Tyranids know only the genetics, only the physiology. These men who died for your experiment fought the daemon with the power of faith above all else. These monsters know nothing of faith, or duty, or devotion.”

“But they might learn. Who knows what they might become, cut off from the unifying directives?”

He laughed, and it was a bitter, empty laugh. “Then if they learn such things, they may well become susceptible to the corrupting influences of chaos. As they are, they do not think or feel in terms that allow them to be seduced, or damned. If that were to change.” He sighed and shook his head.

“You understand so little,” she said, her voice sharp and cold. “They may learn faith without learning desire, or fear. They know no anger, only hunger, so the blood god goes hungry. They adapt endlessly to pathogenic assaults, so the father of decay has no hold on them. They care nothing for pleasure, so she who thirsts cannot entice them. They do not seek power over one another, so what use have they for the lord of schemes?”

He looked at her, listening to this little rant, and felt a dark smile hidden by his helmet. “And what of your schemes, witch?”

Silence drew out between them, until she turned and vanished once more. With nothing left to say or do on this cursed moon, he entered his ship at last and closed the hatch. Servitors began their simple functions, and he felt the acceleration as the ship rose from the sand.

As he worked with a cogitator, compiling data collected on this venture, he found his thoughts dwelling upon the demented plans of this witch, and the moon she had chosen to carry it out with. Everything was wrong about this place. It wasn’t merely the presence of artifacts that called daemons from the warp.

Simply put, the moon itself should not have been able to exist. No place with gravity so weak should have an atmosphere so thick. No celestial body of this size and age should have a core molten enough to generate a magnetic field. The answer was doubtless in whatever long buried technology lay hidden here, but it was a mystery he had no desire to uncover. Madness and death lurked behind every shadow out here, in the ghoul stars.

His landing vessel docked easily into the larger ship that had carried him to this system. He was anxious to be carried back out again, and gave the commands to depart at the maximum possible speed, keeping well clear of the planetary ring system all the while. Even with such an order, it would take some time to travel far enough away for the astropaths to be able to see the Emperor’s light again. One of the other moons here was apparently generating a massive warp null, a phenomenon he had seen only once before on an awakening tomb world.

As he turned his back on this system, he couldn’t help but hope that the mad scheme would bear fruit one day. Perhaps the tyranids could be crafted into a weapon against the warpspawn, in ways only this isolated system would permit. Regardless of the outcome, he would purge the data for this place. One last service agreed upon, so long as the STC fragment yielded something of value. He had a feeling it would. The Adeptus Mechanicus would provide payment enough to clear any suspicion of his dealings in this remote system. Let this purgatory of monsters remain isolated and forgotten, until long after he was dead.

Well, this is the end.  Hopefully the story was an enjoyable read.  If not, oh well.  It's not a perfect world, I suppose.

[hivefleetazathoth]

Great read man!. Loved the plot twist in the end. I found the series of events really weird until I read the epilogue lol.
About the development of the bioforms, don't forget that microbes and spores could have been birthed in the early stage of the story to scout the neighborhood, or even rippers (adapted for sea life), long before genestealers (since the queen was low on biomass).

Not a critic, just a suggestion for future stories, that I hope you'll write!

[argulus]

Thanks for the feedback, nothing wrong with a bit of criticism as long as it's constructive.

I will agree that rippers, or smaller bioforms, would have been more efficient for scouting the place in some regards.  Still, the system has that weird psychic dampening field going on (I figure it's from leftover necron tech, thinking maybe something big happened in the system back in the "war in the heavens" era).  So, cut off from the hive mind, and with a severely curtailed psychic range (along with a rather busted central nervous system on the norn queen for a while there), I figured synapse would be vital for early scouting.  Otherwise, the critters might just end up lurking endlessly about the landscape.  The cheapest things I could think of that still had some form of synapse were the genestealers.  As for the biomass shortage, it was a long-term concern, but in the short term, the dead and dying parts of the crashed ship could be cannibalized to make a few bioforms.

Of course it could also be due to the fact I had genestealer models handy, but no ripper bases painted up. 

All that being said, you do make some good points, and I appreciate you taking the time to comment with a few thoughtful observations.  It is always interesting to hear another perspective.  Glad the epilogue explained things well enough.  Looking back, I could see things being a bit weird and random in places until that point.  Funny how my knowing where the story would ultimately go ended up giving me a blind spot for confusing patches while I was writing.

If I figure out something else to write here, I'll try and take that advice onboard.  Until then, glad you enjoyed the overall experience.  Incidentally, I like the name.  Always fun to see a little Lovecraft nod in a place like this.

[hivefleetazathoth]

Glad you noticed, Lovecraft is my favorite author! And I have always been fascinated by the Blind Idiot God, whose dream is our reality, so I tributed him my beloved Hive Mind.
Maybe in the future I'll tell its story here too

[kociamafia]

Great read, I really enjoyed it.

There arent enough Tyranid-related books / fan-written stories, that's for sure.

[argulus]

Much appreciated.

I tend to agree, it's like the Tyranids are the forgotten children over at GW these days.  Can always hope for that to change, I guess.