10: Chapter 10: Eight Holy Hammers Against a Single Insect, the Insect Escapes Unscathed

The moment the Thunderhawk Gunship tore through the atmosphere, the Brood Queen deep within the catacombs had already calculated its trajectory.

Not by scanning. The Swarm was three hundred meters underground; active scanning would expose its position.

The Brood Queen relied on vibrations—every change in the thrust vector of the Thunderhawk Gunship's engines generated elastic waves on the planet's surface.

These waves traveled through rock layers, soil, and creep, finally being captured by sensory cells at the tips of the mycelia, converting them into a set of data precise to three decimal places: speed, altitude, heading, and projected landing point.

The landing point was four hundred and twenty meters from the catacomb entrance. Standard assault distance.

"The Grey Knights are here." Caroline Valen's voice came from the direction of the iron cage.

She hadn't seen the data or heard the engine noise, but she saw the Brood Queen's reaction—the grey-purple armored creature had suddenly gone still, and the lattice structure of her entire body began to emit an extremely faint resonant light.

She recognized this reaction. On the battlefields of Cadia, veterans would have similar reactions before every orbital strike. It wasn't fear; it was absolute focus.

"How many?" she asked.

The Brood Queen did not answer. But she used her forelimbs to draw two lines on the creep—the number for "a squad" in Imperial Guard tactical sign language. Five to ten people.

"A squad of Grey Knights." Caroline's lips went dry. "Do you need to retreat?"

The Brood Queen drew one line. No.

The Thunderhawk Gunship hovered four hundred and twenty meters from the catacomb entrance. The hatch slid open, and eight silver figures jumped directly down from a height of ten meters, landing without bending their knees to cushion the impact—the power armor's servo systems absorbed all the force, leaving eight shallow pits in the gravel ground.

Grey Knights. The Holy Hammer of the Inquisition.

The leader was a Justicar, the Holy Hammer emblem on his shoulder pad intentionally retraced with gold thread, indicating that he had once killed a Greater Daemon single-handedly.

Silver psychic flames burned on the blade of his power halberd, the flames illuminating the red glow of his helmet lenses. The other seven Grey Knights deployed in combat formation behind him, the muzzles of their storm bolters pointed at the catacomb entrance, and on each of their left shoulders glowed a psychic ward—protective equipment blessed by the Emperor's holy power, specifically designed to counter Warp corruption.

"Target: Underground catacomb system." The Justicar's voice was transmitted via comms to the Emperors Hammer in orbit. "Entrance confirmed. No life signs in the perimeter. Preparing to breach."

Marcus Aurelian listened to the comms on the bridge, his gaze locked on the real-time scan on the tactical table. The Grey Knights' psychic wards appeared as eight bright white dots on the scanner, while the depths of the catacombs remained a blur—the creep's scattering layer was still functioning, refusing to yield internal information.

"Tell them to be careful," Marcus said.

"Justicar Byrne has forty years of purging experience," the Tech-Priest said.

"I don't care about his years of service. This thing hid itself long before we scanned it; it knows we are approaching, it knows we are scanning, and it hasn't run." Marcus tapped his fingers on the tactical table three times. "An enemy that doesn't run is either stupid—"

He didn't finish. Everyone on the bridge knew the second half of the sentence.

Justicar Byrne stood before the catacomb entrance, tapping his power halberd on the ground three times. It was an ancient habit—before entering any space that might be tainted by corruption, one would tap the entrance with the Emperor's holy instrument to declare the arrival of the Emperor's judgment.

The catacomb entrance had no door. There was only a blast-opened breach, with the eight-pointed star symbol carved by Chaos Cultists remaining on the edges. Bern glanced at those symbols, confirmed this was a ritual site for a branch of Slaanesh worship, and then made a gesture. Two Grey Knights entered first, their storm bolter tactical lights sweeping through the darkness.

The first level of the catacombs was empty.

The remains of the Chaos Hounds had long been decomposed and absorbed by the creep. The corpses of the Chaos Cultists were piled to one side, but they had not rotted—the creep had bypassed those corrupted remains, leaving them in the middle of a thin layer of purple mycelia, like discarded waste that had been deliberately picked out. Bern crouched before the pile of bodies and used his power halberd to turn over a Chaos Cultist's skull. The cracks from self-bashing were still on the skull, but the pink-purple flames in the eye sockets had extinguished.

"Someone has fought here. Not Imperial forces," he said.

Then his psychic perception touched something else. Not vision, not hearing, but that extraordinary sense acquired by Psykers through long-term training—he could sense the existence of a consciousness. Not an individual, but a collective. Not chaos, but unity. It was like walking into a silent forest where all the trees had the same face.

"The target is in the deepest level underground." Bern stood up, the psychic flames of his power halberd suddenly brightening. "Not Tyranids. The consciousness of the Tyranids is noise. This is order."

He paused for a second and added, "Pure order."

The eight Grey Knights began to advance toward the second level. Passing through the remains of flesh walls and the traces of ash swamps, the storm bolter tactical lights cut through the darkness, illuminating the passage to the third level. The passage was narrow, allowing only two people to walk side-by-side; the rock walls on both sides were covered with a layer of purple mycelia, which reflected a metallic luster under the lights.

Bern lightly touched the mycelia with the hilt of his halberd. The instant the psychic flames made contact with the mycelia, they suddenly lit up, and the mycelia on the entire wall activated simultaneously like nerve endings, sending a pulse of energy conducting along the mycelia deep underground.

"A trap," Bern said.

But he did not retreat.

The Grey Knights never retreat.

The eight men formed two columns and entered the third level. The space of the third level suddenly opened up—an underground catacomb converted into a Hive core. creep covered the entire floor, purple light seeping from the ground, illuminating the eight-pointed star symbols on the walls covered by mycelia. Thirty meters away, a creature never before seen in Imperial archives was staring at them.

Grey-purple carapace, sleek body design, the surface of the carapace shimmering with the same metallic luster as the mycelia. Her eyes were two orbs of orange light, with no pupils; the pupils were holographic projections—containing a real-time 3D map of the entire catacomb. It was a Brood Queen.

Behind the Brood Queen was a passage sealed by mycelia. Behind the passage was the gene sample repository, containing all the research results the Brood Queen had transferred in the last few hours. The Brood Queen did not step aside from that passage; she simply stood there.

Bern raised his power halberd.

"Xenos. In the name of the Emperor—I purify you."

The Brood Queen moved. Not a charge, but a dodge. By the time Bern said the second syllable of "purify," the Brood Queen had already left her spot. Her movement had no warning—no buildup of shifting center of gravity, no signal of tensing muscles, because her muscle structure did not require a wind-up like humans. The Brood Queen shifted four meters laterally in 0.3 seconds, precisely avoiding the first strike of Bern's power halberd.

The psychic flames struck the creep, burning a charred trench. The Grey Knights reacted quickly—seven storm bolters fired simultaneously, the bolter shells carving seven trails through the air. The Brood Queen shifted laterally a second time, but bolter shells were not straight-line weapons; they had tracking capabilities. Three bolter shells caught up to the Brood Queen's movement trajectory, exploding on the carapace of her left shoulder.

The new type of carapace, exclusive to the Warhammer 40k setting, withstood the first round of testing. The armor-piercing cores of the bolter shells penetrated the first layer of the carapace but were enveloped by the second, gelatinous buffer layer, unable to penetrate further. The cores were rapidly corroded by the creep's digestive fluids within the gelatinous layer, losing their ability to detonate. A charred mark remained on the Brood Queen's left shoulder, but her mobility had not decreased in the slightest.

"It withstood the bolters." Bern's voice held no panic. He was stating a fact that needed to be recorded. Then he issued a new order: "Psychic lock. Do not use ranged weapons—this thing's carapace has been optimized against ranged weapons. Melee."

Eight power weapons simultaneously ignited with psychic flames. The Grey Knights closed their combat formation, with Bern as the core, forming a semi-circular encirclement, and advanced toward the Brood Queen.

The Brood Queen emitted her first insectoid cry. Not a roar, but a signal. The creep ground suddenly bulged—six Zerglings burst from beneath the surface of the creep, each Zergling's carapace bearing the same grey-purple metallic luster as the Brood Queen. They did not attack the Grey Knights but instead cut directly into the gaps of the Grey Knights' formation—not a random insertion, but a deliberate disruption of the line of sight between the Grey Knights. The Grey Knights squad was split into four independent combat units, each unit unable to see the others.

Tactical slicing. The standard tactic used by the Imperial Guard when fighting Chaos Space Marines.

The Brood Queen had learned this tactic from Caroline Valen's oral account. In the hours before the battle, she had translated this tactic into the movement patterns of The Swarm, distributing it to every Zergling via the Hive Mind. The Zerglings did not understand tactical theory, but on the creep, they could arrive at any position with precision, with an error margin of no more than five centimeters.

By the time Bern realized the formation had been cut, it was too late.

The individual combat capability of the Grey Knights far exceeded that of the Zerglings—every hit from a power weapon could kill instantly, and their psychic wards allowed them to withstand surprise attacks from the Zerglings. But they were split into four groups, unable to support each other. More fatally, the creep was constantly secreting high-concentration digestive fluids, and the ceramite on the feet of the Grey Knights' power armor was beginning to show signs of corrosion.

"The goal is not to defeat us," Bern realized after cleaving the third Zergling. "She is stalling for time."

He looked up toward the Brood Queen. The Brood Queen had not run; she was still standing before that mycelial passage. But something was happening behind her—the mycelia within the passage were rapidly withering, and the faint light of the creep was fading. She was destroying her retreat route. She was preparing to leave. Or rather, she was ensuring that the Grey Knights could not get what was behind her.