Warhammer 40k - Deathwatch - Mark Of The Xenos.pdf -

Aldric’s voice came back, strained. “Can you destroy the crystal?”

Ordo Xenos Inquisitor Lord Helix Vaun, a gaunt man whose left arm had been replaced with a crystalline augmetic that wept slow oil, convened his Deathwatch kill team within the hour.

Silence. Then Karn’s voice, savage with joy: “Then we give them something better to eat.” Karn ripped off his helmet. The ammonia-laced air seared his lungs, but he laughed. “Brothers, follow me. We’re going hunting.”

Brother Vorek knelt, scraping a sample. “Bone. Human. Calcium-phosphate matrix reconfigured into hexagonal silica. This is not a xenos technology. It’s a biological process .” Warhammer 40K - Deathwatch - Mark Of The Xenos.pdf

The kill team formed a killing zone. Xavian’s heavy bolter roared, tearing through the first wave in a spray of crystal shards and blue ichor. Karn leaped into the fray, twin claws shredding thralls into ribbons. Zephyr’s stalker bolter picked off those attempting to flank, each round a precision detonation.

“They’re learning,” Vorek said, his voice calm even as a shard lodged in his chest. “The neural matrix is updating their combat protocols in real time.”

“Then we blind it,” Aldric said.

It was a cathedral of flesh. A single immense xenos organism—if it could be called that—filled the hive’s central geothermal shaft. It had no head, no limbs, no recognisable organs. It was a neural matrix : a continent-sized brain made of woven nerve-cords, each one terminating in a human skull. Thousands of skulls. Hundreds of thousands. All fused by crystal, all still alive—their eyes moving, jaws clacking silently.

“You’ll have an orbital strike,” Aldric said. “The Spear of Absolution is positioning for a lance bombardment. Get clear in fifteen minutes.”

But for every thrall they killed, two more rose from the crystal formations. The spires themselves bled fluid, and from that fluid, new bodies coalesced. Aldric’s voice came back, strained

Zephyr nodded. “I will request execution.”

The crystal screamed. Not audibly, but psychically. Every human skull in the matrix opened its mouth in a silent wail. The thralls on the surface froze, twitching.

He found the .

It was waiting.