Plasma Cannon
Gouts of hissing steam spurted from the edge of Felix's plasma cannon. His weapon was running hot, very hot. His hud was flashed a warning that bubbles had been detected in the feed between the tremendous gun and his backpack fuel reserves. He pushed aside memories of old comrades exploding in flashes of blinding white. Felix wasn't a blue helmet any longer, he would not fail his battle-brothers like that. He bled the vents until his indicators transitioned from red to yellow.
There were only three sons of Sanguinius standing now. They crowded behind the burning remains of brother Agamemnon's dreadnought sarcophagus and the pulpy chitonous remains of the carnifex that had ended the old one's second life. Veteran brother-Sergeant Ardito's gauntlet was scorched black from his refusal to vent his energy pistol as the aliens came teeming out of the woodwork. His side arm shot blue fists of smoldering hate that reduced the aliens to a smear. Brother Vincent loosed long volleys from his boltgun with one hand and held his next magazine in the other. The mutilated parts of perhaps a hundred scuttling Tyranid lay strewn in the clearing before them. Yet more and more xenos poured out of the jungle.
Then there came a rumbling as something toppled trees as it moved nearby. The bone rattling roar of the Tervigon sent a chill down Felix's spine. It was not fear, but cold wrathful remorse. If the beast still lived, then the Death Company had failed. As his plasma cannon hummed Felix heaved his oversized weapon over Agamemnon's mechanical arm.
"South-west! Incoming!" Ardito bellowed.
Friendly gun fire flew over Felix's head. Felix whipped about in time to be showered with a rain of purple gore as bolt rounds ripped a xeno out of the air. More were scurrying out of the underbrush around them. Genestealers! He fought the impulse to fire his weapon at point blank. And in that heartbeat of indecision the spindly terrors were upon them. In the blink of an eye a claw-fiend slashed at him with three of its arms. Its talons stabbed at his helmet, shattering his right lens piece. Red filled half his vison, and he lost sight of the thing. But Felix pivoted and thrust the molten barrel of his plasma weapon against the weight if the xeno. Screaming and hissing it thrashed as Felix tried to smash it into the ground.
"Back!" Brother Ardito stepped in front of Felix's blind side, swinging his growling chainsword in furious arches as he went.
Felix couldn't help his commander fight these unseen foes. He could only jab his cannon downward until the sensation of squirmy resistance ceased. Felix stomped on the fiend for good measure.
A brother cried in pain and Felix, swinging his head from side to side, could not seem to move quick enough. To his horror, he watched Ardito's biting blade tear a xeno in half only after its claws had gouged all the way through his neck. Felix turned his head again to see one last abomination pulling the entrails from a toppled brother Vincent. With a bloody tear in his eye Felix fired an orb of blue light on his brother and the murderous stalker. Both silhouettes disappeared in a thundering flash that peeled the proud red paint from Felix's armor.
The lone Blood Angel blinked with his one good eye. There was nothing alive around him. But he could hear chittering all around, and the booming hoof falls of the Tervigon had drawn close. Felix hoisted his weapon back over his small and smoldering cover. With his left eye he picked out the flickering shadows through hateful jungle. Dozens of gleaming eyes like pinpricks bounced forward in the darkness. They hissed and chirped as their abominable weapons spit slimy death. Felix ignored them, their mother was coming.
"By the blood of Sanguinius," Acidic maggots peppered his leading shoulder and vambrace. "steady my hands,"
From behind the lesser creatures a single red eye pressed forward through the darkness of the jungle floor. She was ten time Felix' height and glared with willful malice down on that last space marine. Her face was marred, half ruined with what Felix knew to be chainsword wounds. And her great birthing belly was torn form hip to sternum. Half formed spawn, dripping with her viscus essence, flopped forth from her sundered womb. Even as the towering monster wailed damnation at him, Felix smiled as he saw what the Death Company had carved into her.
"And fortify my soul that the enemies of your light should be brought low."
Air whooshed back over Felix to sting his wounded eye as super-heated plasma launched from the tip of his weapon. The arch was true. With a pop of white in her face and neck, half the beast's skull boiled away. The tremendous brither crashed to the ground with rumbling convulsions. That baleful intelligent red eye still held Felix in its gaze as it began to glow orange and yellow. A halo of sick light rose to wreathed its open head and its spasms crescendoed into violent wrenching. Felix could even feel a rising hum in his own ears.
Then, the brood mother's head burst, her psychic link to the hive mind exploding. Through the whistling sound of xeno witchcraft Felix could hear a hundred alien throats cry out. Through their connected minds they felt their mother's death as their own. Xeno bodies began to fall limp as their commanding consciousness was snuffed out.
Felix didn't hesitate to open his vox channel. "This is squad Ardito, sector epsilon, two-two. We… primary target is down. Near one-hundred percent casualties."
++Epistolary Gioele. We are still evacuating non-combatant H.V.I. to secondary landing zone. Pickup available on your location at, Oh-Two-Fifty mission time. For the Emperor and Sanguinius.++
"The Emperor protects."
As the words passed his lips Felix heard a soft reptilian purr come rolling from behind him, and felt a cold talon reach over his blind spot to snare his helmet.