With the lictor's capture, Magos Locard's work had professed with a new urgency following the failed attempt to destroy both hive ships between the defence lasers and the Imperial fleet. Things had gone from bad to worse when the cowardly Simon van Gelder had attempted to flee Tarsis Ultra and treacherously shut down the valley's defences.
The aerial exclusion zone had eventually been re-established, but not before hundreds of gargoyles and their monstrous brood-mothers had penetrated deep into the valley of Erebus. It appeared that they were without the controlling influence of the hive mind, as the majority of the creatures had reverted to their basic, animalistic instincts, nesting in the caves of the valley sides and attacking small groups of civilians. Others had rampaged through the densely-populated quarters of the city, killing in ah orgy of random violence for two days before being hunted down by volunteer groups from the Erebus Defence Legion.
The fighting at the District Quintus wall raged with undiminished ferocity, the tyranid swarm almost doubling in size with the addition of yet more creatures as they were drawn to Erebus by the single remaining hive ship. Time was running out for the defenders of Tarsis Ultra and Magos Locard was their last, best hope.
Deep in one of the Adeptus Mechanicus vivisectoria, Magos Locard held forth to an assembled audience of Colonel Stagler, Major Satria, Lord Inquisitor Kryptman, Chaplain Astador and Uriel. A blank-faced servitor with augmented bionics grafted to its head and upper body stood in attendance to the magos, carrying a silver pistol case. They watched the lictor through the armoured glass with revulsion, its physiology repugnant, its mental processes beyond their comprehension.
'As you can observe,' began Locard, 'the lictor organism, even restrained by level three xeno-containment - unfortunately the highest level available in these facilities - is still 45.43% lethal.'
'So why are you keeping the damned thing alive?' demanded Stagler. 'Why not just kill it?'
'To defeat these aliens, we must first understand them,' explained Kryptman. 'When fighting the ork, the hrud, the galthites, the lacrymole we do so armed with knowledge of their undoing. To fight one tyranid is not to know another. Their adaptive nature is what makes them such superlative predators. It is their greatest asset and, potentially in this case, the one weakness we might exploit.'
'In what way?' asked Uriel.
'Tell me, Captain Ventris, have you heard the phrase "to turn an enemy's strength against him"?'
'Of course.'
'That is exactly what we intend,' said Kryptman with a sly smile. 'Magos Locard, if you please.'
Locard nodded and turned to the servitor, his mechadendrites unlocking the pistol case with precise turns of cog-toothed keys that slid from their tooled digits. He lifted a magnificently crafted silver pistol and a large calibre glassy bullet from the foam interior. With exaggerated care he slid the bullet into the breech and handed the weapon to the servitor as his mechadendrites relieved it of the case. At a nod from Kryptman, he spun the locking wheel that led into the lictor's cell and said, 'Proceed with instruction one.'
The servitor turned and pushed open the heavy door, marching to stand beside the dissection tables. Locard sealed the door as the lictor renewed its efforts to break free. The servitor approached and raised the pistol, pressing it against the fleshy portion of the lictor's midsection.
'What in the name of the Emperor is it doing?' asked Uriel.
'Observe,' said Locard, with more than a hint of pride in his voice. He pressed a thumb to the intercom and said, 'Perform instruction two.'
The servitor pulled the trigger, firing the glassy shell into the lictor. Ichor spilled from the wound, hissing on the vivisectoria's floor. Without pausing, the servitor placed the pistol carefully on the floor as Locard released the dissection table restraints.
In a blur of motion the lictor pounced, its severed upper claws smashing the servitor across the room. Its heavily augmented body cracked the glass, drawing cries of alarm from the observers.
Uriel and Astador unholstered their bolt pistols and aimed them through the glass.
'Wait!' cried Kryptman.
The lictor charged the servitor, its lower arms tearing into its grey flesh in a frenzy of violence. Blood sprayed the walls as the beast ripped its victim to shreds, tearing and gouging its body until mere was nothing even remotely humanoid remaining. The beast reared up and hammered against the glass. Fresh cracks spread wider, rapidly spiderwebbing across its surface.
'Kill it! Kill it!' shouted Colonel Stagler.
Before Uriel and Astador could fire, the lictor doubled up, dropping to the floor of its cell. The beast let out a keening wail, its entire body convulsing as a frenzy of rippling motion undulated within its flesh.
'Ah yes, now it begins,' noted Locard. 'Resilient, but I expected that, what with its genome being relatively fixed.'
'What's happening to it?' said Uriel, staring in disgust at the convulsing monster.
The lictor fell onto its back, wracked by massive spasms, its body heaving into a giant inverted ''U''. Even through the glass, Uriel heard a loud crack as its spine snapped. The lictor's flesh split and monstrous growths erupted from within, its flesh writhing in uncontrolled evolution. Semi-formed limbs writhed from its viscera and other unnameable organs swelled from its mutating body.
The monster let out a final, tortured screech as an explosion of black blood vomited from its every orifice. Finally it was still.
Uriel was repulsed beyond belief. The lictor was undoubtedly dead, but what had killed it? Simple poison? Sudden hope flared in him as he realised that they might have a weapon with which to defeat the entire tyranid race.
'Excellent work, magos,' said Kryptman as the servitor's blood dripped from me cracked glass.
'Thank you, my lord.'
'What did you do to it?' said Astador.
Locard smiled. 'Using the lictor's genetic sequence, I was able to isolate the base strands of this splinter fleet's original mutation. With that "key", if you will, I was able generate a massive over-stimulation of its adaptive processes. In effect, I drove it into a frenzy of hyper-evolution that not even a tyranid's body could stand. A lictor's genetic structure is normally extremely stable, hence the infection took a little longer to take effect than I anticipated, but I think you'll agree that the results speak for themselves.'
'This is incredible,' breathed Uriel.
'Indeed it is, Captain Ventris,' agreed Locard, with no hint of false modesty.
'With this weapon we can finally defeat the entire tyranid race!'
'Ah, regrettably, that is not the case,' explained Locard. 'Each hive fleet's gene sequence is vastly different and it was only due to the capture of such an early generation of creature that we were able to isolate this hive fleet's genetics at all.'
'So we can only utilise this weapon on this fleet?' said Stagler.
'Regrettably so, and it may not prove effective against these aliens either. Many of the creatures on Tarsis Ultra have evolved to the sixth or seventh iteration and may have deviated too far from the base strand to be affected.'
'So it may not work at all?' asked Uriel.
'I believe it will, though of course I cannot be certain,' answered Locard.