Finis Fide Chapter 10
Through the burning and rubble strewn streets a man ran, dashing from doorway to doorway, a rag clasped to his face trying to keep the smoke at bay. He flinched at every distant explosion and sounds of shots ringing out, punctuated by inhuman shrieks as Psybrids were cut down. He was wearing muddied fatigues, splattered with blood and he had dropped his weapon long ago, abandoning anything that slowed his cowardly bid to escape. Fire lapped at his heels as he ran over the piled bodies of men, some in fatigues others in filthy rags, all locked together in death. The man paused in a blackened doorway and doubled over as he struggled for breath; then he pulled his rag away for a moment revealing the face of Phelps.
Phleps looked around, barely able to grasp what he was seeing. The battle was going all wrong, it was supposed be a swift defeat but the tide had unexpectedly turned. The natives were sweeping aside all resistance and undoing decades of occupation in a day, yet of the Psybrids barely a handful had been seen. He had seen their overwhelming hordes before but today the vast majority of them were absent and without their power he knew the Kerns had no chance of victory. Yet the worst moment of all was when the rumour had gone round that the Space Marines had made into the Governor's Palace unopposed. That wasn't right, they were supposed to have been ambushed in the sewers so Phelps had instantly realised that his treachery must have had been exposed and knew he had to make out of the city before anyone came looking for him. He knew that if he could just make it to the forests then he could disappear, living off the land until this all died down and everybody forgot about him.
Ahead he saw his kin beset by mobs of hissing Kerns. These were men he had known for decades, he had eaten and fought besides them, but they were not his friends, no never friends. So he just stood and watched as they fought off wave after wave of Kerns, the emancipated bodies falling to their disciplined waves of fire from Las-locks. He saw a tight knot of mindless slaves running straight towards them, with numbers too great to whittle down but then he saw one man holding a flame to the wick of a clay bottle. The jar was thrown into the knot just before they reached the line and it smashed, dousing them in burning alcohol. Thrashing bodies went down as the flames spread over their wasted frames and the Kerns finally lay blessedly still, death freeing them from their nightmarish enslavement.
One group had been defeated yet the fight was far from over, for Phelps heard the pounding clangs of a Psybrid Mech stamping nearer. The militia scattered but before they could reach safety Heavy Bolters fire came down the street and two men were blown apart as mass-reactive shells detonated inside them. The natives were blooded but not beaten, and Phelps saw from their lines three men charging forwards, roaring in defiance. The heavy bolters barked again, unleashing their power and Phelps flinched as another man was disintegrated before he could reach the machine.
The noise and violence were shocking but the other two dived underneath the mech's bulk and in their hands they held large woollen socks. Socks Phelps knew were packed with sticks of mining explosives and dipped in congealing engine grease. They paused as they slapped the sticky bombs onto the hull of the mech and then ran onwards, barely making it out of blast range before the timers went off. The mech leapt upwards on column of fire as the bombs exploded, smashing it apart and ripping the machine to shreds. One of the runners was caught by the flaming debris and fell shrieking to the ground as fires burned on his fatigues. His friend dived upon him and rolled him over and over in the dirt and mud trying to smother the flames as the wailed in agony.
Watching from afar Phelps turned his back on the fight and dashed down an almost intact alleyway mumbling to himself "It's not my fault, it's not my fault", as if that would make it true. He walked into the darkness between the walls muttering, "Sure I had to give up the occasional patrol, but we had to keep people from getting suspicious… Better to lose a few than be wiped out totally… I only ever gave them the fools, those who wouldn't listen or share their beer with me… It's those damn Imperials' fault. Yeah they messed it up, coming here and upsetting everything… I said we didn't need them but nobody would listen… everybody'd still be alive if they had just listened to me."
So intent was Phelps on convincing himself he was blameless that he failed to notice the gloom in the alleyway was not just darkness it was mist: green Mist. Suddenly out of the gloom rushed a sinuous figure, with enlarged eyes and a lamprey mouth. Its hairless head was pallid and clammy and instead of arms it had whipping tendrils with metal claws at the tips. Phelps yelped at the sight of the Psybrid coming straight at him and backed away rapidly before its advance. Phelps frantically beat at his fatigues, then pulled out a strange green device that pulsed and throbbed like a living thing. He held it up between himself and the alien stammering "Look… look, it's me. I am on your side."
The Xeno looked down at the device in his hand then up again at his face. It regarded him for long seconds then its tendrils blurred. Phelps screamed in pain as its claws slashed through his guts, tearing and ripping at his insides. He fell to the ground in a pool of blood, hands grasped to his belly as he tried to keep his entrails from spilling out. He looked up in horror and disbelief as he tried to understand what had happened but the Psybrid loomed over him, jerking from side to side like a bird of prey over wounded vermin. Phelps glanced about but there was no one else present to intervene on his behalf. He looked back up at the Xeno, eyes wide with shock and spluttered, "But… but I helped you."
The Psybrid merely looked down at his slumped body, its enlarged eyes giving away no hint as to its alien thoughts. Then it opened its lamprey mouth wide and Phelps howled in horror as it pounced upon him and began to feed.