Corporal Choker's last message to battle-zone HQ was brief and to the point. The static that overlaid his transmission made it difficult to make out his words, and the background noise of a raging fire-fight didn't help.

The Tactical Corpsman looked up from his vox codifier, straight into the eyes of the lieutenant whose watch it was.

'They're coming!'

xxx

Corgan woke to the sound of the Pardus tanks coming to life. The battle cannons raised a booming commotion across the town-scape and the fumes of burnt off fyceline propellant permeated the breeze that teased his curtains.

Wheln didn't bother to knock as he entered.

'The men are mustering out by squads, sir. Arines got back a couple of hours ago but he's not fit to command… you should see the bags under his eyes!'

'Alright, Corporal. Tell him he's got the reserve companies. I'll be down in ten minutes. I'm sure Grein can cope until then.'

'Yes sir! I'll have a Valkyrie ready to ship us out.'

Corgan moved to the window and looked out. He'd specifically requested an east-facing room and he had his magnoculars ready to hand. It was an impressive sight.

Through the fog of the Pardus bombardment he could make out the combined cordon of dun-hulled tanks and infantry, with his own white armoured Orrax rushing to join them at the barricades. Beyond them, only just emerging from the jungle treeline, a living tide of xenos filth was spilling across the grassy plain. Most of the smaller variants he recognised from Gourangi, but lumbering behind them were the larger beasts he'd been briefed on. Carnifexes and Hive Tyrants with their razor-armed bodyguards.

Corgan sniffed his appreciation for their show of force and wondered how long it would take for them to wipe Gurshun of the face of the planet.

xxx

The search of the warehouse was comprehensive. The upper floors were eliminated quickly, dusty and sparsely furnished lofts that hadn't been used in months. The storage barns took longer. Every crate was cracked open and the contents inspected. They had to move a great number of them, requisitioning a fork-lifter to undertake the heavy lifting. Eventually, through their diligent efforts, they found that one of the crates was placed directly over a hole cut into the floor.

'Sergeant Rakjak,' Vaughn called. 'I'm taking my squad down this tunnel. I want you to secure this building. Allow no one in or out unless they come with the express orders of Captain Arines or Major Corgan. Not even your own command cadre should be admitted. Tell them you are acting upon the express orders of the Commissariat. Do you understand?'

Rakjak scowled, but he followed this up with a smartly obedient salute.

Vaughn turned to Lita and the eight members of her squad that could still walk. Jopal was propped against a crate cursing over his wound while a Vandian medic fumbled over it.

'Let's go.'

xxx

The subterranean levels of the structure were even more maze-like than the storage level above. A series of maintenance tunnels criss-crossed with more recent scrapings made for a convoluted network of switch-backs and dead-ends.

Their instruments were useless. Magnetic fields toyed with their compasses and electrical interference muffled their vox signals. Sound travelled haphazardly, making it seem as though they were surrounded by enemies when in fact they were hearing their own footsteps echoing back at them.

'Looks like we'll have to do this the old fashioned way,' Lita remarked, taking a brace of thin phosphorous flares from her belt. She broke one and dropped it to the tunnel floor. The squad began to mark their route, dropping flares at every intersection. It didn't take them long to realise they were going in circles, but it was a simple matter of being methodical. They spiralled out from the entrance tunnel, turning left when a tunnel opened on that side, and only turning right when no other option existed.

Usually they could just about make out the light of their own flares glowing along those tunnels that branched right, telling them that they were still going in circles. They kept going.

They'd been underground for half an hour before they found the exit. It was a fresh tunnel, broader than the rest and lit with hooded gas-lamps. Crates of smuggled weapons and ration supplies sat up against the rough-hewn walls.

'Supply dump,' Lita concluded. Vaughn nodded his agreement.

'At least we've found one of their bolt holes. Advance with caution. We need to take some of them alive.'

Lita led the way herself, with Pars right at her side. The others spaced out behind her. Despite the tunnel being broader than the others, it still afforded plenty of ambush possibilities. When it came, the Orrax would not be taken unawares.

They had gone about three hundred yards down the tunnel when the space above their heads lit up with heavy calibre tracer rounds.

xxx

Rakjak was restless. More accurately, he was pissed off and restless. Guard duty didn't appeal to him.

He patrolled the compound anyway. Every entrance was guarded bu four men, two inside, two outside. The perimeter was being patrolled in pairs, twenty feet apart so that they could always see the guys in front and behind them. He had a full squad with him, ready to respond to any call for help, and another squad covering the windows of the upper floor. A man on the roof stood lookout. It was this man that called in when the first rumblings of the Pardus tanks rippled over their location.

'Looks like the attack has started, sarge. Throne, you have got to see this… I can't even…'

'Alright Bolly, get your cheeks down off the roof,' said Rakjak via the platoon's micro-bead. 'I want all units ready to move at a moment's notice. Rally point is the main loading yard off Via Charmian.'

A round of confirmations came back at him as he waved Corporal Ogrest over.

'Take three men, go pick up a couple of our Chimeras from the marshalling yard and bring them back here. We need to be mobile in case we're called up.'

'Gotta be better than kicking our heels here…' the corporal agreed.

'I wouldn't bet on it, pal,' the sergeant growled. 'Get to it.'

xxx

Peddis went down, his armour ruptured. Fenriss got off a reply with his hellgun before his shoulder exploded and he slumped behind a steel crate. The others dove for cover, Vaughn's bolt pistol barking along to the accompaniment of the squad's snap-cracking hellguns.

'I can't see 'em!' Pars shouted.

'What I wouldn't do for a grenade launcher right now,' Lita replied, tossing her second-to-last frag grenade. 'Fire in the hole!'

Instinctively the squad eased, dropping their jaws with mouths open to relax the Eustachian tubes that would allow the pressure behind their ear-drums to equalise. Any explosion or sudden pressure-change could result in a perforation in such close confines. It was still an uncomfortable experience when the charge denotated, but at least they would still be able to hear when the ringing in their ears died away.

The grenade had barely gone off before Lita and Pars were leading the charge. The stubber opened up again but half-heartedly. Several silhouettes materialised out of the fyceline smoke and put up a paltry defence with small arms fire ripping out at them. Under-powered rounds impacted on Lita's breast-plate and ricocheted from her shoulder guard, scathing the polished surface but without the required force to punch through. The shooters were cut down and the duo leapt a sandbag barricade where the stubber now lay abandoned.

They broke out into a broad, underground chamber and came up against some serious resistance. The enemy were holding the room in force, almost like there was nowhere else to run.

Lita could hear someone bellowing in a ratcheting, barely human voice. Then she had other things to think about as a stream of blue lightning blasted into Pars and sent him flying.

'Psyker!' she cried, ducking into what scant cover she could find behind an old sofa which bucked and spat out its stuffing as enemy gunfire tore into it.

Geddies broke from cover and charged down a trio of shooters that had emerged from hiding. He tagged them but blood and shattered armour fragments erupted from his body as more cultists laid into him with their stubbers. Then he too was targeted by the psyker and his helmeted-head exploded in a shower of ceramite, bone and brain-matter. His sacrifice gave Lita a better idea of where the freak was hiding. She took her last grenade from her belt and cooked it off, tossing it with roughly three seconds to spare.

The grenade him apart, sending his rent carcass arcing out of cover.

'Scratch one psyker,' she whooped into the bead and the rest of the squad emerged from the tunnel mouth with Vaughn, hellguns blazing.

Lita picked off a couple more shooters as her squad moved in. The fight had gone out of the cultists. Those that remained on their feet held up their hands in surrender and moved out of their hiding places. After three paces they began to shake. One by one they fell to the floor and started convulsing, frothing at the mouth.

'What's going on?' Lita cried.

Vaughn shrugged as he prodded one of their erstwhile prisoners with the toe of his boot.

'So much for taking them alive,' he muttered. 'Looks like a conditioned response, they were programmed to die if they were captured.'

'Nice tactic.'

'See to your wounded, sergeant, I'll have a poke around.'

Lita sent Varrin and Quaig to retrieve Fenriss from the corridor while she saw to Pars. Rhys picked over the bodies, making sure they were as dead as they seemed.

'How you doing, ugly-boy?'

'I've felt better…' Pars gasped. His hair was standing on end and his armour was rimed with frost. He was going to be fine, as far as she could tell.

'Sergeant!' Vaughn called her over towards the back of the room. A small valve-hatch was set into the rockrete wall, it was still slightly ajar as though they had been intending to use it to escape when they were caught from behind.

'I know what you're thinking, Kierst, but it's not escape route. Take a look inside…'

She shone her lamp-stick in through the portal. It was a cell, an iron box set into the foundations of some structure built above them. There was a man lying prone within.

'You think that's our man?'

'I hope so, sergeant. I really do. Let's get organised and return to headquarters. Time is of the essence…'

xxx

Lieutenant Commander Vossman P. Trae ran the length of the hangar bay with the effortless pace of a born runner. His wingmen sprinted past him, young, impetuous men who'd never heard of conserving energy for later on. They'd live fast and they'd die, still young.

Trae, on the other hand, had flown Thunderbolts for thirty two years. He'd lost only two birds in that time, one of them to old age, the other to a xenos corsair that had already chalked up the rest of his squadron before wounding him and disappearing into the void. He was still out there, somewhere, beyond the Veiled Region. Trae had been rescued, of course, already having become a valued commodity to the Spades of Bakka with his triple-ace tally.

His latest acquisition, Angelis Incarnadine, or Angie for short, had done him proud these last seven years. He'd chalked up a further eight confirmed kills in that time, making him an ace five times over and putting him well on the way for a sixth.

He arrived at Angie's berth without breaking a sweat. The engineers were running through the last few checks before she was ready to launch. He checked his chronometer, a Lexion piece that his father had given him on graduation from the Naval Academy on Bakka. It had never lost a minute despite the enormous stresses it had been subjected to in Angie's cockpit. He noted that he still had three minutes left until the launch window was closed. It was plenty of time.

He nodded his thanks to his chief engineer, Chenko, who handed him his helmet and mnemo-gloves. Fully kitted up, he climbed into the Thunderbolt's cockpit and strapped himself into the seat. Placing his hands on the specially modified control stick he felt the thrumming presence of Angie's machine spirit ride through him. He'd had Glavian implants grafted into his hands after losing his last bird, hence the nmemo-gloves that helped him plug into the sophisticated machinery of his Thunderbolt. He was more one with his machine than anyone else in the Spades of Bakka wing.

'Power up!' he yelled, giving the required hand-signal in case they couldn't hear him. The engineers opened the cable spliced into Angie's engines and they juddered to life. The deck-crew quickly and efficiently disconnected the starter battery and wheeled the cart away. Chenko moved into the hangar runway to direct him out at in between other taxiing Bolts. He took the opportunity to offer his usual prayers to the Emperor, kiss the photo-pict of his three daughters and touch the rosary beads fastened beside his headrest. Superstitions satisfied, he taxied out onto the launch runway.

Chenko waved a final farewell to his chief engineer as the chain-link embedded into the floor engaged with Angie's undercarriage and ran him out towards the nearest available launch tube. Before long he was subjected to the flash of rotating orange hazard lights. He braced himself for the sudden burst of g-force that pushed him back into his seat as his Bolt was belched into hard vacuum. His stomach, as it was wont to do, turned over for a few seconds as he traversed from the gravity well of his mother ship to the negligible gravity levels of near-system space.

He keyed the squadron vox channel open and spoke to his men.

'Gambit Wing, sound off!'

'Gambit two, check!'

'Gambit seven, I'm here!'

'Gambit three, launched and ready!'

'This is Gambit six, I've been grounded. Something wrong with my internal stabilisation systems.'

'Got you, Gambit six. Stand down.'

'Gambit five, awaiting orders.'

'Gambit four, check!'

'Alright, boys, form up on me and calibrate your re-entry vectors. Let's go kill us some aliens!'

The Navy was still fighting hard to prevent a second seeding ship from making orbit. They'd been unable, or unwilling, to break off from that fight long enough to deploy assault wings to support the ground troops. All they'd had down there were their Valkyrie gunships, little more than shuttles armed with pea-shooters compared to a Thunderbolt. Until now. The Perimedes had been ordered to break off and run in-system to offload several wings of Spades before running back to the blockade.

Trae had been given the auspicious responsibility of commanding one of the detachments that would help to establish air-superiority over the jungles of Gunga IV. Besides his own Gambit Wing, he'd been put in overall command of two more Thunderbolt Wings, another eleven birds flown by men he'd known and trusted for years. If they couldn't give the enemy hell, then the ground forces were just going to have to get along by themselves.

If the second seeding ship made orbit, they were all doomed anyway.

Lieutenant Commander Vossman P. Trae made the sign of the aquila over his breast and punched in the re-entry code. Angie went into a long-burn dive that would punch them through Gunga's dense atmosphere and allow them to take the fight to the enemy.

xxx

The command bunker was little more than a rockrete box, dropped into place by the ever-ready Munitorum, some distance behind the front line. A metal ladder would allow personnel access to the roof for observation purposes or to repair the vox mast and auspex scanning equipment installed up there. Despite having several metres of reinforced rockrete between him and the enemy, Captain Grein didn't feel any safer in here that he had outside.

'Is the Major en route?'

'I presume so, sir,' replied the lieutenant, clad in the black and red uniform of a Tactical Corpsman.

Grein cursed. It was just as he'd always said. You couldn't put an ex-con in charge of a military outfit. Not only did it give him the means to work all kinds of mischief, but you could guarantee he wouldn't be there at the pivotal moment.

Well, he'd just have to lead the defence himself..

'I'm on gamma-pi-epsilon, keep me posted until the bastard shows up, will you? I'll be outside.'

He charged outside, his pistol and sabre in hand. His squad was waiting for him, congregated around the recessed entrance to the bunker.

'What's this, Captain? Since when do the Orrax stand at the rear and let other men do the dying?' Major Corgan was striding towards the front line already, calm-as-you-like with Wheln lugging his master-vox set alongside him.

'Where the hell have you been, Major?'

Corgan spun on his heel, a wry smirk spread across his unshaven countenance.

'Unlike you, my good Captain, I spent all yesterday up to my waist in alien filth. Might I ask, exactly how many hours sleep did you get last night?'

Grein scowled.

'You look to be well rested, to me. Why don't you find your position on the lines and do some damn work for a change, mm?'

Corgan's tones were mild and condescending. Grein was an old-school ex-Arbites and he had always known the Major resented his disapproval over giving him the regiment. Corgan chose to show this resentment by humiliating Grein in front of his men, but Grein had earned his stripes on Fered Roathi alongside the rest of them, he was no soft-bellied uber-bully.

It was testament to his strength of character that he'd stayed on after the emancipation act that saw his men pardoned. Even greater testament to his usefulness was the fact that none of his men had seen fit to cap him yet. The look in Corgan's eyes, contrary to his mild exterior, spoke of his willingness to correct this oversight.

He threw a smart salute and hurried off to find his company on the line.

xxx

The plain had been green with long, verdant grasses, thriving in the rich soil vacated by trees that had subsisted there for millennia before the Imperium's arrival. The first half hour of the Pardus' response to the enemy saw that green felt ruptured and torn up. Alien biomass mingled with the native soil as hi-ex rounds sent fire sheeting up from the shallow crater's they set into in the landscape.

All the infantry could do during that time was wait. Commissars and warrior priests moved up the lines of the overlapping barricades, doing their best to bolster the Vandian troopers' morale in the face of such an overwhelming prospect as facing the oncoming hordes. Ironically, their effect of their efforts paled beside those rendered by the arrival of the Orrax Grenadiers.

The Vandian's had been assigned perimeter duty. All but two of their line companies were billeted on the environs of the town and these had quickly spilled from the barracks to man the barricades when the alarm went up. The Orrax, a much smaller regiment than the Vandians' at just under two thousand bodies, were billeted further into the town. Their response was no less efficient than that of their compatriots. They deployed in neat formation, fully armoured and with lascarbines prepped and ready.

They were inscrutable behind tinted visors and sealed respirator units, silent as the dead as they trotted purposefully into position amongst the Vandians. It was difficult not to be intimidated by their solid presence, but every one of them was heartily glad to have them on their side.

The feeling at the front went from pessimistic to ambivalent. A fatalistic confidence seemed to ooze from the Orrax and infect the men around them, despite the fact that not one of them uttered a word to their fellow guardsmen.

At the centre of the line Major Escabar Corgan picked his spot behind the very first barricade the enemy would have to contest. His armour was still smudged with the purple blood of the 'Nids he had slain the day before. The Vandian lieutenant saluted him and muttered some words of welcome.

Corgan nodded absent-mindedly. His thoughts had run back to Necromunda. He was remembering the smile of a woman he'd known back then. In a moment of uncharacteristic wistfulness he wondered if he'd ever see that smile again.

Then the depleted first waves of the Tyranids came within lasgun range and the crescendo of sound brought him back to Gunga IV with a thud. He felt like he'd been punched in the guts as the air around him thinned and crackled with static discharge. He could hardly breathe. The tang of bittersweet ozone clung to the back of his mouth.

In that moment of regret and reminiscence, he remembered what it was to fear death.