Chapter 280: The Master of the Swarm (Patreon)

...

The council chamber was quiet except for the muffled thunder of distant artillery. There, surrounded by cracked marble and banners stained by ash, Dante and the gathered Chapter Masters took what rest they could while planning their next steps.

Even the Iron Man and their attendant "Datasmiths" had been summoned to attend this war council. Their brass-and-black armor gleamed dully beneath flickering lumen-strips, and the soft purr of their internal reactors filled the silence between artillery strikes.

Minute by minute, new victory reports arrived: the Sons of the Angel were pushing the Tyranids back from the outworks of the fortress-monastery. Fresh lines of defense had been raised from the rubble, and sigils of the Blood Angels and their successor Chapters had already been repainted on shattered bulwarks.

There was still much to do before the planet could truly be wrested back from the Tyranids, but for the first time in many nights, there was hope.

The Chapter Masters exchanged hard-won congratulatory words. When one spoke to Chapter Master Phoros of the Lamenters, he answered only with a weary smile and a nod, as if his thoughts wandered elsewhere.

Dante noticed, the subtle tightening in Phoros’s jaw, the way his gaze avoided the walls of Baal. His gaze lingered on him. Then he looked to Mephiston, who met Dante’s gaze in silence.

A whisper brushed Dante’s mind, Mephiston speaking without words directly in his mind.

〈“Phoros’s heart is not here. He stands on Baal, but his memory stands on the burning sands of Infernis III. He does not disregard Baal… but his grief for his true homeworld is a wound not yet closed.”〉

Dante gave a slow, somber nod. He knew the weight of worlds lost; the Blood Angels had buried too many histories beneath Tyranid claws.

Brief celebration faded, and the council turned to matters of war.

“We sighted a Tyrant, larger than the others,” Mephiston reported, recalling the vision relayed by Lord Inquisitor Bellona’s apprentice. “It was aboard a crashed bio-vessel. Its presence was… distinct. I cannot yet determine its exact role in the Hive Mind’s synaptic order, but I suspect that killing it would disrupt the swarm significantly.”

The room listened in silence. Even the Iron constructs grew still.

Heatdeath, the commander of the Iron Man cohort paused, accessing stored memory fragments.

During the Infernis Wars, the Iron Man forces had encountered such creatures as well. Not merely a Hive Tyrant by classification, though it shared the form, but something greater. A master of war, engineered by the Hive Mind not merely to command, but to anticipate, adapt, and outthink entire armies. Something the Iron Man archives had recorded under another designation:

Swarmlord.

The tide of battle in that war had not shifted because the Tyranids were destroyed to the last. It shifted because Heatdeath had personally carried out two decapitation strikes, slaying the Swarmlords that served as nodal minds for entire swarms.

Heatdeath cast a glance toward the holo-projected "datasmith" beside him, its form only a drone-projected avatar, a voice wearing the shape of a man.

“Swarmlord,” the datasmith said at last, the synthetic tone echoing through the hall. The word carried no emotion, yet everyone felt its weight.

All eyes turned toward the machine-proxy. The datasmiths had been silent for nearly the entire campaign. The datasmiths and their mechanical warriors had played a significant role in the previous battle, so even though his status was much lower than everyone else present, no one interrupted him.

“What is a Swarmlord, honored sage?” Dante asked.

The title sage was generous, but the machine showed no outward reaction.

“Swarmlord,” it continued, “is a synaptic apex organism. A strategic command-form. I cannot determine the precise number of organisms it governs. But when the Swarmlord is slain, many, many lesser Tyranids fall into chaos.”

Mephiston’s eyes narrowed.

The datasmith’s word choice was wrong.

A Tech-priest would have stated an estimated unit range. They never said “many.” The anomaly was small, too small to accuse, but Mephiston took note.

The Mechanicus’s presence here on Baal was strange already. The deployment of such elite war-automata suggested a Forge World-threatening emergency. Why commit such forces to Baal?

But they were allies, for now, so Mephiston held his silence.

Dante leaned back, fatigue creeping once more into his ancient bones.

Hive Tyrants. Swarmlords. What next? A being greater still? Would this war never end?

How deep did the Tyranid’s well run?

“We will execute a decapitation strike,” Mephiston said.

Dante nodded in agreement.

Every Chapter Master present agreed without hesitation.

The plan to carry out the decapitation strike was unanimously approved.

Dante and Mephiston then began outlining the specific assault plan.

....

Later, beneath the statue of Sanguinius…

Night had fallen, washing the ruins of Baal in cold, black stillness. Ash drifted like snow across the broken plazas, glowing faintly in the moonlight.

Dante and Mephiston stood beneath the colossal statue of their gene-father, the Angel. Moonlight traced the sorrowful curve of Sanguinius’s marble wings. The sculptors had carved him with an expression of hope, but now, under the ruined sky, it looked more like mourning.

Mephiston projected psychic images into the air, maps of the crashed bio-vessel, sketches of the Swarmlord, battlefield vectors. He spoke at length, reviewing each possibility, each risk. Images fluttered like ghostlight moths between them, dissolving as soon as Mephiston shifted his focus.

Dante sat at the statue’s base, silent as he listened.

When Mephiston finally realized Dante was no longer engaged in strategy, he stopped. He sat beside his Chapter Master, and together they looked up at the face of Sanguinius.

“…Thank you,” Dante murmured.

Since the defense of Baal began, Mephiston had restrained himself, kept the beast of rage and power in his blood on a tight chain, to present not the Lord of Death, but a calm, reliable Librarian, someone the successor Chapters could trust.

The meaning needed no further words.

“For Sanguinius,” Mephiston replied quietly. “For Baal. I will give everything.”

Dante nodded, then hesitated. “I intend to send those lost to the Black Rage into the vanguard of the kill-strike.”

Mephiston approved with a solemn nod.

But Dante did not stop. “…Is there truly no saving them? No cure?”

Among every Scion of the Angel, Legion or Chapter, those who fell to the Black Rage were beyond salvation. This was known. This was absolute.

Yet Dante asked because Mephiston had survived the Black Rage. And more than once.

“No,” Mephiston answered. “I am an exception. Not a path. If it could, I would stand beside Corbulo this very moment in constant labor to undo the curse.”

Dante bowed his head.

Corbulo, the High Sanguinary Priest of the Blood Angels, a position known as Chief apothecary in other chapters, had devoted his entire life to defeating the Black Rage and the Red Thirst, to no avail.

Mephiston had given this answer before. Yet Dante asked again and again these days.

Age. Fatigue. Or sorrow. Something weighed upon him that had not before.

“We should finalize the strike plan,” Dante said at last, rising to his feet. “I will lead the attack personally.”

“Your wounds...” Mephiston began, but stopped.

The look in Dante’s eyes was iron.

Mephiston did not ask further. But a question lingered in his mind:

Why does Dante, Lord of the Blood Angels, now insist on fighting at the front of every battle?