'What the hell…' he muttered.
'What's up, chief?' asked Halan.
'Look,' said Pren, pointing in the direction of the mysterious lights.
'What the hell…' said Halan.
'I know,' said Pren. 'I thought we were all done for today.'
'We are, I don't know what that is.'
The men watched as the two points of light drew closer through the night's darkness, their sense of apprehension growing with their brightness. As the lights got closer, they came within the glow cast by the tower lights. Halan and Pren both breathed a sigh of relief as they saw the sleek shape of a land train glide smoothly into the station, its sides and roof coated in a thick layer of frost.
The train slowed and came to a complete halt at the end of the furthest platform, its doors jerkily sliding open. Pren and Halan waited for the inevitable crowds to emerge, but nobody disembarked from the train. It simply sat, silent and unmoving on the far end of the platform, steam venting from the grilles around its engines and the track.
Both men shared an uneasy glance.
'I guess we should go down and have a look,' suggested Pren.
'I just knew you were going to say that,' said Halan, pulling on his winter coat and gloves.
Pren grabbed a portable illuminator and donned his winter gear, following his deputy outside into the biting cold. He clambered down the frosted ladder and trudged alongside Halan through the fresh snow towards the unmoving land train. As they drew nearer, they could see the windows of the train were dark and opaque with frost, even those of the driver's cab, and their sense of unease grew stronger.
The darkness and silence of the docking station, normally a relief after the hectic bustle of a day's work now pressed in around them and Pren wished some of the provosts were still left in the station. At least they were armed.
He gripped Halan's arm and the man nearly jumped out of his skin.
'Guilliman's oath!' swore Halan. 'Don't do that!'
'Look, you can see the train's number on the engine.'
'So?'
'Well we can tell which bloody train this is and why it's here now, you idiot.'
'Oh, right,' said Halan, pulling out a data-slate from his coat and scrolling through a list of numbers, eventually stopping at the train's designation.
'Got it. This was due in last week.'
'Last week? And no one noticed it was missing?'
'I guess not, we've been pretty busy here you know.'
'True,' said Pren. 'Well, where's it come from?'
'According to this, it was under the supervision of a Lieutenant Quinn from the Logres regiment. They were picking up refugees from across the north-eastern districts. Their last stop was at Prandium and they should have been here six days ago. I guess the train must've come in on auto.'
Halan tucked away the slate and the pair gingerly continued towards the train, their steps cautious, hearts beating faster. The train's doors stood open, but still no one got off. A light flickered inside, briefly illuminating the train's interior and a tinkle of broken glass made both men jump.
Steam gusted from the engine, melting the ice coating the train and cold water dripped from around the opened doors. Pren and Halan reached the doors and warily stepped into the darkness of the train.
Pren flicked on the illuminator and swept the beam around the interior of the carriage.
He heard Halan cry out in horror and fell to his knees as his mind attempted to cope with the butchery he saw all around him.
Bodies. Hundreds of gutted, flensed, dismembered and partially devoured bodies filled the carriage, like hunks of meat in a coldroom. Strung from the walls on resinous streamers of glistening mucus, their dead flesh hard and unyielding, their frozen eyes staring down in mute accusation at the station operators.
Stalactites of frozen blood reached down to the uneven floor and Pren felt a suffocating fear swell in his chest. He dropped the illuminator and it rolled down the carriage floor, casting lunatic shadows across the interior of the frozen charnel house, the spinning beam giving the rictus features of the corpses a hideous animation.
'Sweet Emperor—' wept Pren. 'What happened here?'
But the dead had no answers to give him, merely frozen eyes, emptied bellies, shorn limbs and gnawed flesh.
And further back along the train, a creature that had first come to Tarsis Ultra many months ago ghosted from its lair and vanished into the warm labyrinth of Erebus city.
The combined naval might of the Imperial defenders of the Tarsis Ultra system hung in orbit around the world that gave it its name. A chain of linked space stations ringed the planet's equatorial belt, towed into position to face the approaching tyranids by a host of tugs and pilot boats. Dozens of defence monitors and system ships lumbered into their position in the battle line alongside Admiral de Corte's flagship Argus, the battlecruiser Sword of Retribution, and the Dauntless cruisers Yermetov and Luxor.
Gathered around the hulking form of the carrier Kharloss Vincennes were the Cobras of Cypria squadron, together with the one surviving vessel of Hydra squadron. The two strike cruisers of the Space Marines anchored in the shadow of the Argus. Lord Inquisitor Kryptman and the Space Marines had already deployed to the surface of Tarsis Ultra, their presence there deemed more vital than aboard their vessels. As a result, the Mortis Probati and the Vae Victus would stand off from the main engagement and utilise their fearsome bombardment cannons, rather than entering into the thick of the battle. With only a limited number of thralls and servitors to defend them, there would be no possibility of them repelling boarders and such ancient craft were too valuable to be lost in such a manner.
The tyranid fleet first appeared as a sprinkling of light against the velvet backdrop of stars, its scale magnificent and terrible. Reflected starlight gleamed from city-sized chitinous armour plates and glittered on trailing tentacles that drooled thick, glutinous slime. Swarms of smaller creatures, their fronts crackling with twisting arcs of electrical discharge, surrounded the hive ships, surging ahead of the main fleet with a speed hitherto unseen among the organisms that made up the alien fleet.
Under the power of dozens of straining servitor-crewed tugs, the hydrogen-plasma refinery drifted forward to meet the tyranids. Its hull was packed with yet more explosives and volatile plasma cells, and the magnitude of the resultant explosion was sure to dwarf the detonation of the previous refineries.
Admiral de Corte watched the tyranid creatures close on the refinery with a feral smile on his lips. Though tens of thousands of kilometres away, the refinery still dwarfed everything around it, and de Corte knew that the blast was certain to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of alien organisms. If they were lucky, perhaps another hive ship would be drawn to attack the refinery and yet another of the masters of this fleet could be destroyed.
Swarms of aliens surrounded the refinery, many passing close, but none yet attacking. De Corte resisted the temptation to order the Argus's nova cannon to fire until one of the larger beasts moved in to attack. His practiced eye watched the vanguard of the alien creatures smoothly part as they swept past the refinery, their movements as precise as the finest naval squadron's display manoeuvres.
'They're not attacking it,' said Jex Viert.
De Corte chewed his bottom lip, pondering whether to order the nova cannon to fire. So long as the refinery drifted before his fleet, he was reluctant to order a general advance and the damned aliens weren't taking the bait.