+++Inquisitor Kryptman+++

This story was written by Lindsey Paton and first appeared in White Dwarf 130 and 131.

"You know what you must do, Borshak?" Inquisitor Kryptman asked sternly.

The psyker nodded shakily. "I-I must read this alien artifact and t-tell you what I find."

Kryptman nodded. He mistrusted Borshak - like all empaths, the psyker was highly strung but there was more to it than that. There was a weakness about the skinny youth that made Kryptman suspect that Borshak might be receptive to malign influence. He resolved to watch him closely.

They made their way down the cold corridor of the Talasa Prime base. The two black-robed security novices saluted Kryptman at the door. He answered their salute by punching his fist against his chest.

"Password?" asked one of the novices. Ordinarily Kryptman would have been unfazed by the need to give the code words. Even here in one of the most heavily-guarded citadels of the Inquisition he could understand the need for vigilance. However, he was nervous about the alien artifact and the circumstances it had been discovered in..

Coupled with the reports of sector wide unrest, it had set his nerves on edge. He wondered if the appearance of this strange creature was the harbinger of some new threat to the security of the Imperium.

"Opus Dei," he said testily. The cold-eyed novice stepped aside. Kryptman raised his ring and pointed at the door seal. "No barrier stands in the way of the truly faithful," he said. The red jewel set on his ring pulsed. The runes on the door flared to life and the door dissolved. Kryptman gestured for Borshak to proceed then followed him into the secured area. He knew they were safe in isolation. The secret of the dissolving door was one of the Inquisition's most carefully-guarded secrets and he was one of the few men privy to it.

The artifact sat on a plinth in the centre of the room, the eerie blue aura of the stasis field glowing about it. They moved across to the dais and looked down upon it. "I-it l-looks alive," muttered Borshak. He clawed at his shaven head with one dirty nail-bitten hand. "I-I d-don't like it."

"It doesn't matter whether you like it," said Kryptman.

He understood Borshak's unease. The fleshy, pulpy appearance of the thing set his stomach turning. During his own novitiate he had studied torture techniques. The appearance of the thing reminded far too much of an arm from which the flesh had been flayed to reveal muscle. "Just read it."

"Y-you say that this was taken from the wreckage of the freighter H-hammer of F-foes?" Borshak asked.

"Yes, it was stored in stasis."

This was more like it. The psyker had begun to collect information in order to facilitate his reading. "And that there w-was n-no crewmen on board."

"No living crewmen. Many of the escape pods were fired. They have yet to be found About three of the crew have still to be accounted for. We found the bodies of the others. They had been killed with something that appeared to be organic material. Eaten right through as if by a combination of acid and giant worms. The ship had been decompressed. We found the body of its Astropath floating near the stasis chamber. He had died of oxygen starvation. The artifact was in the chamber."

Borshak took a deep breath. His lined face looked even more worried and careworn than usual. He peeled off his gloves resignedly. "I-I'm ready," he said.

Kryptman intoned the litany. The stasis field de-activated. For a long tense moment they waited. At first nothing seemed to happen and they relaxed slightly. Kryptman checked the readings on the brass-rimmed screen of the wall monitor. The techpriests had been correct, no biological contamination. So far, so good.

He became aware that Borshak was looking at him. He nodded. The psyker proceeded; a grimace of distaste passed over his face as he touched the mucus-coated thing.

He pulled his hand back. A thin film of slime glistening on his skin. "Urgh," he said.

"Get on with it."

With a slight shudder he grasped the thing once more. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, settling down into the trance state needed for psychic receptivity. A faint nimbus of light played around the eye symbol tattooed on his forehead. When he spoke his voice seemed deeper and more confident.

"I-it is alive," he said calmly.

"Sentient?" asked Kryptman.

"B-barely. I'm receiving conflicting impressions of the thing. I've just barely made contact. I-it's so - alien. It's like trying to read the mind of a s-spider."

"Try for a deeper reading." Borshak nodded.

His breathing slowed. If Kryptman had not known better he would have said Borshak was asleep. He noticed a small tic had appeared far back in the psyker's jaw.

"I-it's alive and part of it h-hates. I-it's so fierce. N-no. One of them is so fierce. It lives to bite and claw and spit, it chews up the other part, the little part and makes it into sh-shrapnel. Th-there's three of them. One bites, one guides and o-one - and one dies."

"One dies?"

"Y-yes, one lives to die. I-it's odd. The small one is many. It lives to die. It is chewed up and turned into projectiles and it i-infects the target."

"Speak sense, man."

Borshak had started to sweat. The strain of contact with the alien thing was starting to tell. "I-it's a weapon a-and i-it's alive. The bullets are alive. The firing mechanism is a-alive and the gun's alive. It's a kind of symbiotic organism l-like the martian tree-crab. I-it's alive and we - it hates you - us."

Kryptman's mind reeled. A living weapon? A living rifle? He tried to think of how such a creature might evolve? It was madness - weapons were designed not born. "Try psychometry - find out what happened on the Hammer."

"We are picked up by the sensitive one, the one who speaks at distance. He senses our hate and he responds. At first he is curious then he grows to know and love us. He is united with us. He senses our bloodlove and we hunt - we hunt the meat-things, the enemies of our makers. He knows our need to plant our seed within them. He knows we hunger to spurt forth the little hungry ones who eat the meat. He carries us and we seek our prey through the red dark of the long-long corridors."

Kryptman noticed how agitated Borshak had become. The gun had started to throb in his hand. The fleshy muscular sacs pulsing like the valves of a great exposed heart. He senses that something was wrong.

"Put the thing down, man. It's doing something to your mind."

"We h-hunted the meat-things, to lay the young-eggs within their flesh. Again and again we send them forth, pleasure bursting through us mixed with the pain as we send the little eaters out their way. Fire them out to bore through the meat."

Borshak swivelled the huge gun to bear on him. Kryptman threw himself to one side. The thing in Borshak's hands spasmed. There was a terrible tearing grinding sound..

Kryptman remembered that Borshak had said about the grubs being chewed up and spat out. There was a sound like a man vomiting. A burst of mucus sprayed out. Something hard cracked on the wall behind him. A stink, as of excrement mixed with bile, filled the air.

"Yes-yes, we hunt the meat-things - but they flee into the great dark and they trap the ship - soon it is hard to breathe but the meat-thing, our carrier, our partner, places us in stasis so we might live. Now we have new partner. Groupmind complete."

Kryptman rolled behind the dais, drawing his pistol. The grinding sound continued. A burst of shrapnel tore into the dais. Steam rose from the stone where the acidic mucus eroded rock.

Kryptman leapt up and blasted. The bolt flew straight and true in Borshak's chest. His rib cage exploded. What was revealed within reminded Kryptman oddly of the weaponf alling from the psyker's dead hands. He fought to control the urge to pump bolter-shells into it.

It lay there dormant. Borshak's mouth continued to open like a fish's would when out of water. The Inquisitor understood now what had happened on the Hammer. The ship's astropath had melded with the weapon and hunted the unarmed crew. They had fled in the escape pods, after decompressing the ship. Rather than let the weapon die, the astropath had put it in stasis and suffocated himself. That question answered, Kryptman could hand the artifact over to the techpriests for dissection.

There were still other questions that needed answers though: who had made the gun, there had it come from, were there any more?

Kryptman had a premonition that he and the whole Imperium would soon need to know the answers. Inquisitor Kryptman would find those answers, he had to.

* * *

Inquisitor Kryptman pushed back the huge pile of papers, removed his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes wearily. He had been working all night trying to make sense of the mass of reports coming in from all over the sector.

As usual, the room was chilly. His young aide Carel had lit a small fire, but it wasn't vigorous enough to warm the high-ceilinged office. He got up from his straight-backed chair, stretched his long sinewy limbs, and walked over to the window. It was a cold winter afternoon and would be dark in a couple of hours.

Kendrick's World was an unwelcoming place, its people backward and intensely superstitious. The Imperial presence here was only a gesture; this world had nothing much to offer. Except solitude perhaps, since it was located on the fringe of one of the spiral arms of the human galaxy. Kryptman had travelled here to continue the Inquistion's investigations into the phenomenally high level of unrest in the sector. The reasons were far from clear, and now a missing Marine chapter had to be added to the ever-growing list of planetary revolts and Genestealer infestation. Still, at least the austere regime of the Imperial stronghold, a converted monastery, was to be welcomed. He had imposed a rigorous new timetable on the staff and discipline had been greatly improved as a result.

Since the discovery of the strange organic weapon and Borshak's unpleasant death, he had been uneasy. Kryptman was not psychic himself, but he trusted his intuition. He couldn't help feeling that all these events were somehow related but so far the connection had eluded him, and Borshak's dying face continued to haunt his dreams.

He looked through the narrow window and saw a shower of meteors arcing through the pale sky, dark trails of smoke spiralling behind them. They had been falling for a week now and the locals had been getting very excited - spouting all sorts of stupid nonsense about the end of the world. Four hundred year's instruction in the Imperial Cult had obviously been a complete waste of time. With a snort of disgust, Kryptman turned his attention back to the tottering stack of reports.

* * *

Ten miles down the valley, a lone meteor shrieked through the cold evening air. Its impact with the hillside created a small crater and its heat charred a black ring in the surrounding heather. A nauseating smell like carbonised meat rose from the meteorite, which was roughly ovoid in shape, and about two feet high. Curiously, its ridged and warty form was more like some bloated, alien organ than a lump of sterile rock. After a few minutes, the meteorite toppled over on its side. A large native game bird approached and peered at it with one greedy eye. The cancerous looking thing shook again, faint sounds emanating from within. The bird stalked closer, until it was right beside the meteorite, which still trembled spasmodically.

The bird raised its beak and plunged it straight down into the meteorite, splitting it open like an overripe fruit. A spray of yellow sputum burst out and a formless creature catapulted onto the bird, engulfing it in a glistening organic mass. It was all over very quickly. The creature wrapped itself tightly round its prey, compressing it, absorbing it. No feather or claw was wasted. As it contracted round the bird, a trickle of blood and bodily fluids dribbled out, turning the charred ground into a disgusting bloody-black mud.

Slow changes rolled over the creature's body as it developed a more consistent appearance: an embryonic spine and rib cage erupted from amid obscenely pulsating organs, its pallid skin darkened and sprouted stubbly feathers. With prolonged sucking noises a thick neck and head worked their way out from the top of the creature, while strong clawed legs sprouted from underneath. A stubby tail elongated from its spine and two beady eyes popped into existence.

For an hour or so it lay on the ground, twitching its new limbs, recovering from the ordeal of its metamorphosis. Finally it lurched unsteadily to its feet and shook its body like a wet dog might do - shaking off a little hail of ash, bone fragments and bloody saliva. The creature now resembled a hideous mismatch of embryo bird and insect. Raising its powerful head, it sniffed the air, then loped off over the heather and rocks into the twilight gloom.

Cold, this place is cold. Cold and hard. Clear air, carries scent well. Little life all around, animals, birds. Stupid, slow, good for eating. Hungry, need more food, need more bulk. We must hunt. Many large life upwind. Find the place-of-stone. Find and kill the prey.

* * *

Kryptman did not look up at the knock on his door.

"Come in!" he shouted, irritated.

Carel, his young aide, came into the office, carrying a pile of papers in his thin arms. He shut the door quietly and advanced in silence to Kryptman's desk, too much in awe to speak. Kryptman scratched his signature on the bottom of the form and replaced the pen in the gargoyle-shaped inkwell.

"Well, what is it?" he asked, looking up.

"The latest batch of reports from the outlying posts. The communications problems is getting worse; we've lost contact with four more outposts. The engineers we sent out haven't been heard from since they left."

Kryptman didn't like this at all. News from the outposts was invariably tedious and inconsequential. He wouldn't miss it. What did increasingly worry him was why there was no communication. The comm-lines on this world were so simple that they almost never malfunctioned.

An oppressive sense of foreboding weighed down on the Inquisitor. Everything was falling to pieces around him - equipment malfunctioning, locals becoming hysterical, communication through the warp being obstructed. Most worrying of all, the Lamenters Marine chapter was missing, and couldn't be contacted. The Imperial stronghold was becoming increasingly cut off - from the rest of the planet, and now from the Imperium as well.

Kryptman didn't believe in coincidences.

But it was times like these that tested the mettle of loyal servants of the Imperium. He straightened his black damascene jacket, adjusting the formal collar so that it lay more comfortably about his neck.

"Put the reports down here."

He indicated a free space on his cluttered desk . Carel looked more worried than usual. The boy was a born worrier, but had a good, tidy mind for one so young. Given time, the Inquisitor knew he could mould this young man into a loyal and dependable Imperial servant. Feeling a little guilty for his earlier abruptness, he asked

"What's the matter, Carel. Is something troubling you?"

"I know you told me not to mention local gossip, sir, but its the meteor storms, and all the other odd things which have been going on."

"Things. Be more specific, Carel. Inexactitude is a sign of confused thinking."

"I can't sir, its only rumours. A number a locals horribly murdered, that lambs over Rakkish way that bit a boy's head off, a monster dog had been terrorising hill farmers on the Westside Moor...."

"Enough! It's just the odd incident which has been blown out of proportion by the farmers. You shouldn't take it so seriously, Carel. Meteors are simple astronomical phenomena, they don't signify the end of the world. In future, please try to raise yourself above the level of your superstitious ancestors. I suggest you learn the first seventy verses of the Canticles of Catechism to clear your head. I'm far more concerned about what's happening to the Lamenters and what's causing this communication breakdown. Have Astropath Faren reports to me immediately. Hurry now!"

Carel gave a half bow, then scuttled off, the studded wooden door banging heavily behind him. Alone, Kryptman's feeling of foreboding returned. He'd told Carel that all these stories of mutilated corpses and rampaging monsters were sheer superstitious hysteria, but who was he trying to convince, Carel or himself? The locals, though superstitious, were remarkably pragmatic and unimaginative. These strange happenings must have some basis in fact, though he couldn't begin to imagine what.

Everything was so vague. Were the meteors carrying some sort of virus that infected animals and turned them mad? Should he, ought he, overlook the possibility of some sort of Chaos activity in the region? There was only a tiny incidence of emergent psykers on Kendrick's World, so it seemed unlikely they would have attracted any attention from the warp. And the sparse population and relative unimportance of the world suggested it would be of little interest to Chaos cultists.

The light flickered, and dimmed. The shadows of the winter evening drew close around the Inquisitor. He wearily opened the next report and tried to concentrate.

* * *

The creature galloped tirelessly up the valley, racing over the scree, bounding over rocks and streams. It broke its course once to devour a large grazing rodent, and by the time it had finished absorbing its bulk and reforming its body, the sun was setting. Its body was now larger, thicker, less suited for speed, more suited for attack. The creature's neck was losing definition, causing its head to recede into its shoulder; its maw deepened and widened, drool running off ranks of long sharp incisors. It now somewhat resembled a crudely-flayed wolf.

The old monastery squatted at the head of the valley, limned in blood by the setting sun. It was a huge, sprawling edifice, built centuries ago by a dour people with more interest in solidity than aesthetics, and more zeal for truth than comfort - men much like Inquisitor Kryptman in fact. Built into and onto a massive granite crag, it almost seemed a natural extension of the rock itself. When the Imperium rediscovered Kendrick's World, it was decided to use the empty building as their primary communication and administrative stronghold.

The creature crouched behind a rock, spying out the place. Its eyes had widened to cope with the fading light, and organ buds waved from its forehead, reading the scents on the air currents. With a soft ripping noise, long hooked claws shot from its paws. Its tails shortened and thickened and sprouted a cruel stinger. As the sun finally sunk behind the monastery, the creature leapt onto the rocks, propelled upwards on its powerful hind legs.

Hunger, hunger! Small large life above. I go up! We recognise this place-of-stone. Our prey is here. Remember his scent!

* * *

Far above a young guard patrolled the parapets of the monastery, rubbing his hands together to warm them. His lasgun weighed heavily across his shoulder and he shifted it into a more comfortable position. From his vantage point, he could see down the barren valley to the ranks of mountain beyond, a dreamscape of misty greys and browns in the fading light.

The glow-globes sputtered into life, their feeble light making the place surreally two-dimensional. Defaced statues of forgotten native gods crowded the walls, their shapes worn by weather and time.

The young guard paced restlessly up and down his stretch of battlements. He been on patrol for three hours and the cold winter night had set in. Hearing the wind moan and wail, he shivered and pulled his cloak more tightly around him, feeling hemmed in by stone and shadows.

He did not hear the approach of Death.

As he turned away, something catapulted over the parapet and smashed into the back of his neck, knocking him to the floor. Its warm body enveloped his head. The musky stench was disgusting. He dropped his lasgun and flung his arms up to his head trying to tear the creature away. Savage claws raked at his throat, ripping open his windpipe.

He tried to scream but all his horror and pain just came as a racking gurgle. His questing hands pulled at the thing, futilely trying to pull it off, but is was slippery with a corrosive fluid. Razor-sharp teeth flayed the skin from his fingers. The pain was terrible, building up inside him with no release. Fire seared through the back of his neck as claws cut deep through the top of his spine, cracking his vertebrae apart. Sensation flared and dimmed. The last thing he felt was something punching through his eye sockets.

* * *

Food, warm food. Eat and absorb. Grow larger, grow larger. Teeth to tear, claws to rend. Our enemy is here. We hate him, we will find him and destroy him. Enter the place-of-stone. Seek out our enemy, hunt him and destroy him..

The creature reared up its body and stretched open its jaws, revealing row upon row of dripping needle-sharp teeth. Swishing its tail from side to side, it went down the steps into the monastery. All that remained of the guard was a messy pile of torn and bloody clothing, a slimy smear on the stone, and a lone disconsolate eyeball.

* * *

The door to Kryptman's office swung open admitting a worried Carel.

"Where's Astropath Faren?" demanded Kryptman. "Didn't you give him my message?"

"Yes, sir. Astropath Faren said to give you his apologies but he couldn't leave the Astral Chamber, they were too busy. He's sent you a coded message scroll and the latest batch of off-planet reports. Astropath Merril had a fit, sir. He was foaming at the mouth..."

"Yes, Carel, that'll be enough. Stay here while I look through the reports."

Carel obediently stood to attention by the door, while Kryptman scanned the coded scroll from Faren. Kryptman knew that the Astropath would have come if he could.

There must be a major crisis to prevent him.

He picked up the scroll and pressed his long index fingers to the runes on either end. The cylinder hummed softly and split open, disgorging a thin sheet of vellum.

Kryptman peered at the Astropath's spidery writing, difficult to read in the dim light.

The message read:

"Kryptman, too busy too see you. Worsening problems with astro-telepathic communication. Everything is fragmentary, distorted. It's worse trying to send. There's a great impenetrable presence, a psychic void. Not a warp storm, something else. Something utterly alien, like nothing we've ever experienced before. A solid darkness, a shadow in the warp. And it's growing. We recoil before it, we cannot fight it. We dwindle before its might. Astropath Merril has foreseen a time of darkness. Come to the Astral Chamber as soon as you can."

Kryptman put down the vellum with a shaking hand. As he released it, the paper discorporated itself in a puff of acrid smoke. Why did he have this sense that events were speeding up beyond his capacity to understand them? And what did he mean, the Shadow in the Warp? Why did Astropaths always have to use such flowery language, why couldn't they just tell you the plain facts?

Kryptman picked up the other comm print outs and scanned them as fast as he could. Loss of contact with Darson VI following increased reports of Stealer activity in the sector. Not the slightest trace of the Lamenters. It was as if they had been wiped out, which was, of course, so unlikely as to be considered impossible - under normal circumstances. What force could possibly cause an entire chapter of Marines to disappear? A cold fear was growing in the pit of his stomach.

He was just starting to read an incomplete account of a devastated research station on a planet in the next system, when a dishevelled guard burst in.

"Inquisitor Kryptman, Haral's been killed!" he cried, white-faced with shock. "There's nothing left but -" Clutching his mouth, and making swallowing noises, he blundered back into the passage.

"Carel, go with him. Find out what's going on, and get back to me as soon as you can."

Carel left the door open, and Kryptman heard alarms go off, their wailing muffled by the labyrinthine corridors and the thick stone walls. He opened a drawer and took out his bolt pistol It was a beautiful weapon, thousands of years old, passed on from Inquisitor to Inquisitor. Its familiar heavy weight in his hand, the fine carvings on its barrel, reassured him, gave him strength. After checking the purity seal was intact, he broke open a case of bolter shells and loaded fifteen of the brass shells into the gun. The shells were heavy and cold, stamped with the mark of the weapon factories of Mars. He placed the gun on the table, ready.

* * *

The creature padded awkwardly down the gloomy corridors of the old monastery, vent-like nostrils flaring, reading the scents carried on the sir currents. It was the height of a tall man, but with a much thicker body, its centre of gravity lower than a human's. Its two upper arms were short and coarse, glistening with raw tendons and skinless muscle. Neck and shoulders had virtually fused together, and its face - mostly composed of its ferocious gaping maw - seemed to be sinking down to its torso. A rudimentary limb stood out from the top of its head, from which extended a crude three-fingered clawed hand. Its back legs too had shortened and broadened, and a secondary tail reached forward from between them, tipped with a hard, horny substance. The protuberant backbone also ended in a muscular tail, which curled upwards and backwards. Corrosive venom dripped from its tip, leaving tiny pockmarks in the flagged stone floor. Flexible chitinous plates ran down its back, and when it moved, pulsing, phosphorescent organs showed through. It exuded a disgusting slime continuously, occasionally shaking off the excess and leaving a rank and slippery trail in its wake.

Man body good food, easy to absorb. I am strong, I shall destroy. The prey is close, I have tracked him down. I am the living weapon. We remember this place of cold stone darkness. We remember Kryptman. We come. We are retribution.

* * *

Kryptman returned to the reports. There were numerous accounts of extra-normal occurrences, disturbingly similar to those on Kendrick's World. Contact with the Scythes of the Emperor erratic but possible - just. Some mention of unidentified alien craft spotted by a Space Wolves patrol on the edge of the spiral arm, but then communications lost (always this problem with communications). Three more merchant space ships were missing, not in the warp, but normal space. New outbreaks reported of Stealer cult activity.

All these things could be taken as isolated incidents, but he was convinced there must be a connection. Why couldn't he see it, understand the pattern? Everything whirled round in his head: Genestealers, the Lamenters, meteors, monsters, mutilated bodies, the Shadow in the Warp. His head ached trying to contain all of it,.

Carel returned to the office, out of breath.

"The monastery's not under attack?" asked Kryptman.

"No sir, but whatever killed Haral is now in the building. There was a slimy trail of footprints leading down the tower steps. All the guards are looking for it, but it could be anywhere."

He made an encompassing gesture of helplessness. Kryptman understood the problem. The monastery was so huge and rambling that they were still discovering new areas in it. Assuming the invader didn't lose itself and starve to death, it could hide out indefinitely.

Carel dropped three heavy iron bars across the door to secure it. Drawing his laspistol from its concealed holster under his robes, he took up guard by the door, weapon in hand.

Kryptman hoped the guards could deal with the invader quickly. He should be supervising the hunt himself, but he had to go talk to Astropath Faren first.

With a sudden wrenching impact, the door splintered open, throwing splinters of wood and steel across the room. The creature leapt in, and gathered itself to attack. Kryptman was stunned by the creature's dramatic entrance and horrific appearance - he stood motionless for a couple of fatal seconds. Looking into its glittering black eyes he saw himself, his scarred face broken into a myriad of tiny images. He knew this creature wanted him, wanted to kill him. And the creature knew it had found its prey.

He grabbed wildly for his bolter, and knocked it off the desk onto the floor. Seeing its opportunity, the creature started started towards him, propelling itself forwards with an odd bounding, striding motion.

Carel leapt between the monster and Kryptman, firing his laspistol at point blank range. It turned on him with incredible speed for its ungainly shape, clasping his head, crushing his skull. Gobbets of brain and bone fragments fountained across the room. Continuing the tremendous force into the ceiling, breaking his bones with a sickening crunch. Instinctively, he kicked over his chair, flung himself to the ground, and rolled under the desk as the creature landed on top of it with a crunch. He fired blindly up through the wood, and rolled out the other side. He came out of his roll in a fluid motion, simultaneously firing another shell at the creature, which had jumped down to the other side of the desk. This attack had some effect, ripping away part of its spine to expose the muscles and spraying the far wall with red mucus. Enraged, the creature opened its mouth and screamed a horrid, gurgling cry, then lifted the edge of the desk and sent it crashing towards the Inquisitor.

Kryptman couldn't move out of the way fast enough, he was knocked over, one of his legs caught under the heavy desk. He fired wildly as he fell, but his shot missed, and exploded through the window, spraying shards of glass everywhere. Before he could pull his leg free, the creature had jumped on him, scrabbling and clawing at his body, trying to pinion his arms.

Mighty Emperor, give me strength, prayed Kryptman, struggling to escape the steely grip of the claws. As the creature's grip on him tightened, it stabbed at him with its forward-thrusting tail, trying to spike open his chest. Kryptman realised that the creature was slowly,, inexorably drawing him closer to it, towards its gaping maw. The foetid rank odour it exhaled made him gag. As the creature forced him up to its mouth, Kryptman, with a superhuman effort, managed to free his right arm and fire his boltgun straight into the creature's mouth. The shell shot down the creature's throat and exploded inside its body.

The creature was torn apart from the inside: chunks of flesh and bone rained over the room. Kryptman was flung violently back against a wall; he felt his ribs go in a lance of pain.

The whole attack had taken but a few seconds. Kryptman fumbled through the wreckage looking for stimm-pills and painkillers. His foot slipped on some bloody bit of the alien carcass and he fell into the chair, gasping with pain.

What was this creature? Why had it been sent to kill him, and who had sent it? He had no doubts that the creature had been instructed to do this. Unlike a mindless monster, it had attacked with ruthless efficiency, refusing to be distracted, as though guided by some cold and calculating alien intelligence.

The mixture of stimulants and painkillers was making him feel heady. A terrible understanding assailed his consciousness. This creature is the link, he realised. Somehow this creature connects all these events, all the weird happenings. He could almost see the pattern. The Imperium must be warned! Clasping his tattered black jacket about him, Kryptman staggered painfully out of his office, heading towards the Astral Chamber.

* * *

Astropath Merril was lying in a cot outside the Astral Chamber, the white of his eyes rolled up, mumbling endlessly about the Shadow in the Warp. Kryptman tried unsuccessfully to soothe him, then gave up. Merril was beyond any help he could give.

The Astral Chamber was a great spherical vault, its high ceiling lost in shadow. Ornate marble couches, evenly spaced against the outer wall, pointed into the centre of the room, where the podium of the Chief Astropath was positioned. On every couch but one lay an Astropath. The ends of couches were inset into the wall, so the psykers' heads were hidden. The chamber was lit with dim red light, and when Kryptman entered he had the impression that the grey-clad bodies of the Astropaths were floating in a great circle around him.

Faren, looking harassed, strode down from the podium to greet him. He looked very old and tired, his fine grey hair all dishevelled.

Kryptman quickly explained the situation, outlined his theory, stressed the gravity of the threat. To his surprise, the astropath took him perfectly seriously, saying nothing, just nodding his head thoughtfully. As they discussed how best to communicate the situation to the Imperium, they were interrupted by the Astropath who had finally managed to contact the Scythes of the Emperor.

"The Scythes of the Emperor are under heavy attack, they don't know how much longer they can hold out. Their situation is critical. They must have support. Wait - they're sending us a warning...."

The Astropath's breathing was fast and laboured. Sweat dripped from his forehead, as he struggled to maintain contact with the beleaguered Marine chapter. Faren reached out a hand to support him.

"Warn them, warn them, the Tyranids are coming! THE TYRANIDS ARE COMING!"

With a hoarse scream, the Astropath fell to the floor, clutching his head. Simultaneously, the bodies of the other Astropaths jolted on their couches as they too broke psychic contact, the strain too great for them to bear any longer. One of them plunged over to Faren and Kryptman.

"The shadow! The Shadow in the Warp! It's too strong, we can't break through. It's inhuman!." He broke down and slumped to the floor, sobbing.

The lights in the Astral Chamber flickered and went out. Faren and Kryptman stood in the middle of the room, the shadowy forms of the Astropaths lurching and moaning around them like lost souls.

They looked at each other, their grim faces illuminated by the runes of the machinery.

"Tyranids?" breathed Kryptman in horror. "Another hive fleet?"

For the first time in his life, the Inquisitor was truly afraid.