782.82 41M
1025/3000
System- Adulon
Planet- Dragus
Sector- Baddeus
Grom Hive
An explosion.
The word came up unexpectedly. Explosion? What is an explosion?
Noise. Light.
PAIN
He woke up. Guardsman Elias Kantor of the Scyllan 41st. Service tag IC3US-41.
PAIN
Light. Bright light. Ringing in his ears, like his stupid alarm clock.
Alarm clock? What is… but no… no time to think about that now. Distant noises. Familiar, but not guardsman. Not guardsman. What?
Xenos…
Tyranids! Attacking. Adulon. Dragus. Therus. Names, names, many names.
The whole world suddenly became visible and audible and overwhelming.
The familiar noise, ticking, the scratching and scraping of talons on rockrete and plasteel. Horrible, soulless screeching. The controlled commands of field sergeant Jarra.
Elias Kantor, service tag IC3US-41, reached up with the arm that didn't bleed and straightened his skull faced gas-mask so that he could see the lights properly.
He heard groaning. Coming from his mouth? Yes. Noted. Ignore. No time.
But PAIN… there was time for the pain. No time to prevent the pain, but too bad.
Noises and screaming and screeching and sick meat noises. Kantor remembered.
He raised his mk. V bulla-class lasgun single-handedly and turned to the noises.
"They got in!"
"What? How- AAAARGH!"
"Johnny! JOHNNY! You frakking BASTARDS!"
Kantor took it in quickly. Two guardsmen down. Two. Four gaunts in the rockrete bunker. Four. Some green stuff remained, fizzing, on the ground. An acidic round from a venom cannon flew through the tiny window, throne knows how- Ah, yes, the shrapnel. That was the source of the pain. Some was still embedded near where his head lay not two seconds ago. A bit more to the right…
Two seconds. He remembered it all in two seconds.
That should be a new record.
As he began plinking away at the screeching creatures, he heard an announcer's voice ringing in his braincase. Two seconds, I repeat, two seconds…
But it wasn't the announcer, just the voxman. Coordinates? He couldn't tell.
Had to be short range vox, otherwise the shadow in the warp would prevent anything from getting broadcast. Was he calling down an air strike? Maybe.
He thought, Aw, come on! You're a Scyllan! It can't just be a couple gaunts that scare you!
One point five seconds. One point five.
He felt more than heard the roar…
Carnifex? Probably. Tyrannofex wouldn't get this close to the city, and would have shot them down long ago; if it was tervigon or Tyrant, they would have been long dead. No wonder voxman was freaked out, but judging by the static, their air strike probably wouldn't be arriving.
Shit; bad as the 'fex was, there has got to be something with a brain controlling it… likely warriors or a zoanthrope. Gotta get out…
He stood up, looked over the bunker quickly. Total guardsmen fatalities- four. Total guardsmen wounded- two, plus himself. Total guardsmen standing- eleven, plus Sgt. Jarra. Two were missing, but he guessed that they were the ones spread throughout the west side of the bunker. Their entrails mixed with the greenish ichor to make interesting, swirling patterns in the sludge. He thought he saw Vee's traditional, handcrafted silver Aquila among the gore.
Dammit. He liked Vee.
The rockcrete bunker's western wall was full of cracks, some of which oozed more of the whitish venom from the carnifex's shot. But it was holding. Sergeant Jarra was standing in the middle of the bunker, fiddling with a broken light fixture. Two guardsmen- Slinky Maten and Fulscape- were at the remains of the steel door. They had managed to fit the bent and buckled piece of junk onto the frame again. Gringo was watching the western peepholes for any sign of the thing again.
He was thinking clearer. That was good. Possibly a side-effect from the venom cannon round. Noxious gas. Maybe the shrapnel in his arm infected him with something. Knowing 'nids, it probably was. Everything they had was coated with some sort of fucking venom.
He heard the roar more clearly this time- definitely carnifex. With a venom cannon and Throne knows what else. Every once in a while, another of the roars was heard, accompanied by the shrieks of smaller organisms. Idly, he thought about how Snakebite squad was doing…
Marko, the patcher, was suddenly at his side. The white cross on the black, skullfaced helmet stood out sharply as he bent his head to take a look at the shrapnel wound. Wordlessly he took a tool- Elias forgot the name- that the medics used to get tyranid shrapnel out. He looked up, and they both nodded. Keeping his eyes on Elias', Marko reached over sharply with the blunt-edged, toothed pliers, and yanked it out fast. Elias didn't cry out; he'd had shrapnel pains before.
Marko got to work fast. Injected vaccines against tyranid pathogens (half of which were only somewhat effective anyway; but it was something) then took out the 'stapler,' the painful machine that clipped rent pieces of flesh together with bits of metal. Elias cried out, and there were reflexive tears of pain in his eyes as he attempted to aid Marko in quickly sewing his under guard against 'nid infection and then his pleather uniform shut.
All in all, he was grateful. He didn't know how Marko knew, but he knew tyranid wounds. Marko had this instinct. Didn't even need a second look to tell the shrapnel didn't get to the bone. Still wouldn't have been their largest problem.
Ha ha… very punny.
Just as Marko replaced his tools in his bag, Gringo hissed at them. There was another squad holed up in the remnants of a hab unit. Elias remembered; Sergeant Seccant Snakebite's squad. They had been deployed together in sub-district fourteen to keep tabs on the eastern fringe of subsector five. Snakebite squad was closer to the fringe; they could spot better. Gringo communicated back to Jarra's squad what Snakebite squad signalled to them; they used a small flashlight, not bright enough for tyranid eyes to detect (at distance, of course) to signal in morse code.
Gringo held up one fist and tapped it once with a finger. Then he uncurled the middle and index fingers, making a 'v', and tapping it three times. After a bit of hesitation, he held up five fingers and tapped his pleather-covered palm four times.
A carnifex, three warrior forms, and approximately twenty gaunts. Not very pretty odds for a pair of recon squads. Shit, they didn't even get their ratlings that were supposedly dispatched to their position. Something about harridan bombing, according to the voxman. Kantor didn't care about the specifics; all he needed to know was that they were dead.
They had to move. The gaunts had seen them; the carnifex had shot at them. The 'nids definitely knew where they are- whatever one sees, they all see. Stupid synaptic link. If only the Imperium was as effective… but this was no time for idle thinking.
He tried to stand up; pretty much fell on his ass. He was still a bit fuzzy from the round. But he'd gotten shrapnel wounds before, which were also treated by Marko, but there was still the risk of infection by phage spores. But he was reasonably sure that he was fine, that Marko's antibodies had done the trick.
They had a history, Marko and him. They could recognize each other from the individual noises their lasrifles made.
The entire squad was silent. That sucked. Elias hated it; throne, they all hated it. But time for talking later, where they were safe from the tyranid's ears. Well, actually, they didn't HAVE ears in the traditional sense; they felt vibrations in the air with organs near their temples. Or something like that. All scyllans were trained in basic tyranid anatomy, but Elias could care less.
Jarra looked up from where he crouched over the light fixture. The blank lenses on his gas mask that covered his eyes roamed around the bunker; scanning it. "We need to move," He stated matter-of-factly, as if nobody knew already. His whisper was a little bit muffled. "Soon as Slinky opens the door, we go left and to that comfy-looking rockcrete hab lying on its side." He stated all of his commands immediately, without elaboration, without waste. "Four hundred paces west, then zig around the light post. Then we zag down the street. All you know which one? Or has the air rotted your brains yet?" He was good at ordering people around quickly, but that was about it, aside from being a crack shot with his bolt pistol. He was a decent Sergeant- you had to be pretty good as a guardsman if you wanted to be a Stormkiller, and he was better than good. But he had a habit of stating the obvious. And though he was stoic and a natural leader, he could be a little of a bitch at times.
Jarra nodded at Garee and Floater, the two guardsmen on the ground. "Marko and Weezer, get G and Floater onto stretchers." Weezer murmured in his underhive accent, "Sure 'ol thing, Sarge." Marko said nothing.
While the pair rushed to get the wounded soldiers set up for the inevitable run, he turned to Bitter and Banger (Their real names were Bater and Bomer, but nobody called them that) - the duo guardsmen currently cleaning their heavy bolter. As they cleaned and blessed the thing, the space around them was filled with shards of reflected light off the polished steel surface and their whispered hymns of purification. They were identical twins; everyone thought they had some psyker in them by they way they did everything simultaneously. They looked up identically at Jarra's whispered command. "B and B- you guys are rear." They nodded and whispered their assent, then resumed their ritualistic cleaning.
"Gringo- let Snakebite know where we're going." Gringo nodded his reply, pulled out a flashlight, and turned to the window.
He turned to Elias. "You good, Ellie?" Elias raised a hand in confirmation. Jarra nodded. He turned and went back to his spot, ordering Gringo to take point when they ran. Gringo waved his hand at him.
Jarra, Gringo, Bitter and Banger, Marko, voxman (nobody knew his real name), Weezer, Slinky, Fulscape, Elias (wounded but holding), Hesston, and Forman were still standing. Garee and Floater lay on the stretchers. Vee and Redo were painted across the floor. Haley, Dromen, Barett, and Johnny were lying in a neat row.
Damn. This was going to be tough.
Jarra, whenever he could, always had people working, something to do. To keep their minds off of the soul-stealing terror that is Hive Fleet Oblivion. That was good, work is good…
Elias' mind was just going in circles. Nowhere. Probably a bit fuzzy still. Might be a problem. But…
No time…
"We go on my mark." Jarra stood up and walked to the door. "I take point."
Throne damn it, but the sarge sure did things a mite too fast. No time to prepare… but then again, these were tyranids. And they were scyllans. Sometimes rapid relocation was necessary- when you fight the 'nids, you need to adapt as fast as they do.
The guardsmen walked to the warped door, ready to take advantage of the precious few seconds of run-time before coming under attack. Another roar was heard, followed by more shrieks. The things were getting closer; they were running out of time.
All guardsmen tensed. Elias checked the power cell in his lasgun; his arm twitched with the pain that the action brought. Almost full. Three cells in his pocket. Good. Jarras unsheathed his custom-made powersword and un-holstered his bolt pistol.
He, at any rate, was ready.
Another roar. Far closer this time. The men crouched down; they were used to Jarra's on-the-spot, without-warning commands. Jarra liked his squad to stay sharp so they were prepared for-
"GO!"
With the one word, time slowed to a crawl. Elias forgot the pain; his instincts, the instincts that guardsmen had beaten into them since their greener days, flared to life. His eyes were everywhere at once, and his mind was focused on one task at a time. The first- to get out of the door alive.
The guardsmen rushed at the steel door. Jarra, who was already there, swung with his suddenly-active sword. The door fell in two pieces to either side. Like a shadow amidst the suddenly-gray, spore-choked permatwilight air, he cut to the left, following the road in front of the bunker.
His guardsmen were right behind him.
The second task- oh, that was a little tricky. Task one was executed in one point five seconds. Task two would take far longer than that. They needed to keep their footing and avoid falling over the gravel and bits of building littering the place- but it was alright. They were used to rubble. It was the 'nids that khekked up their plans. As soon as the warrior forms with their undoubtedly supersensitive hearing noticed them, the shit would hit the fan pretty hard. Hard enough to jam it, maybe, if they were unlucky enough. But twenty gaunts… ooh, that was trickier, but B & B could take them.
Oh, the carnifex. Don't forget the carnifex.
This small tyranid detachment was bred for reconnaissance- Plenty of hormogaunts would mean the warriors would have to keep up with them. Which meant good armour, claws, and probably devourers. And where the warriors go, the carnifex goes. Why a carnifex would get sent with them was a mystery; but then again, with Astartes on the planet, the bugs weren't taking any chances, it seemed. Apparently they'd tangoed with the Emperor's boys before.
Elias turned to assess his surroundings. They were barrelling down a road, enclosed by the remains of habs on each side, pockmarked by the occasional alleyway. Their road was pretty wide, but Snakebite's squad, half a kilometer away to the north, were going to get to the hab through a different route. Their chances of living overall would be better if the squads could get together, but that would mean trying to get through the unmapped, labyrinth, rubble-strewn alleyways. Just the thought of it, fighting tyranids in a place like that-
Astartes, maybe. But even though they had a flamer, Snakebite wasn't going to take a chance like that.
A tyranid vet's worst nightmare.
Elias became vaguely aware of Jarra's shouting. "Move! Move! They didn't see us yet!" As they rushed down the street, everything blurred together. Out of the corner of his eye, Elias glimpsed something flashing down an alleyway.
Seems like Snakebite's squad was moving, too. Unless he was mistaken. That would be likely. The greyness permeated everything. It all looked the same. Habs and more habs.
An alien shriek in the distance, and Elias's brain refocused. They were onto them. Jarra and a few of the men began to scream. "MOVE! MOVE!"
The chase was on.
The dreaded clacking noise became audible. Talon on rock. Such a chilling noise.
Elias heard screaming in the distance. He could hear Snakebite's characteristic baritone among them. The 'nids hadn't caught them yet, it seemed. But Elias didn't dare look to the side. He didn't look back either. Even though Judgement, the twin's heavy bolter, began chattering manically, as if it were laughing hysterically, he didn't dare look back. His eyes were focused on the dull yellow of the street post marking the beginning of the next task.
"Spread out! Spread out, Throne damn you!" Jarra's voice rang out. "Fire at will!"
That was what Elias was waiting for. Without stopping, he turned to the source of the shrieks; the things that kept him awake at night. The things that could even kill your dreams.
If you had seen one, individually, by itself, you would have seen an insectoid creature, about two-thirds the size of a fullgrown man. Its skin was grey; grey as the rock on Scylla itself. Its back was covered in a black, chitinous plate, that would gain a bluish sheen when the light caught it properly. Its eyes would be pale yellow. Dead. Hollow. Not even the spark that an animal would possess.
It had jet-black talons on its forelegs. And jet-black claws on its hindlegs. Its ribcage torso expanded and contracted as it breathed- the spiracles on its head and abdomen drawing in and utilizing almost any form of gas as fuel for its perfectly bioengineered body.
It would twitch, and jerk. Its head would be constantly moving, dead eyes unfocused. Aware of everything. It would never be still- it's chitinous plates clacking and scraping together as it ran this way and that. It's mouth would always be open, salivating, and shrieking. Altogether, it seemed like a dangerous creature, built, [i]designed[/i] to rend, to kill.
Fit only for termination, as was determined by the Emperor, and one did not question His will.
But as soon as you introduce synaptic creatures into its presence, everything changed. It's jerking stopped, limited to ticks and twitters. It's limbs became poised. It became almost attentive, like a small child who realizes there is a teacher nearby. But the eyes- it was the eyes that changed most of all. They narrowed; focused. The iron will of the hive mind made itself known. And instead of looking anywhere else, they focused on [i]you[/i]. And as soon as eye contact was made, you knew inevitability. You saw your fate; all of its body, it's only purpose, was dedicated to rush to you, rend you to shreds, and feast upon your mangled bones. To END YOU. All of their eyes said the same thing, no matter if it was gaunt or carnifex, warrior or hive tyrant, lictor or hierophant.
They all said DEATH.
Hive fleet Oblivion was the end of the galaxy.
Elias saw the gaunts that rushed to him, saw how they moved in a wave towards him. They wanted to end him. He could see it in their eye. And he was scared.
He set his trusty lasgun on full auto and began to scream. Lasbolts screamed into existence from the barrels of their many guns, punctuated from shells from Jarra's bolt pistol and the monstrous bullets from the heavy bolter. There were a lot more than twenty gaunts.
Five lasguns, a heavy bolter, and a bolt pistol managed to cut down thirteen shrieking gaunts. Some just fell over with craters in their heads. Some were blown apart by bolts. Still more skittered towards them.
From the corner of his bloodshot eye, through the plastic eye-visors, Elias saw down an alleyway to the road where Snakebite's squad was running, where a plume of flame cut down gaunts by the score.
A flash of yellow; the light post. Elias turned right at top speed. Saw the ruined hab. Task three- get to the hab alive.
He looked to what his squad was doing. B & B had just rounded the corner, almost slipping on the spent shells from the bolter, ammunition belt clinking. Marko and Weezer behind Jarra, hauling on the stretchers as best they could. Assorted squad mates all around him, holding their fire while the tyranids were out of sight.
All of a sudden, Snakebite's squad exploded out of an alleyway, accompanied by two hormogaunts in the process of burning alive.
Twelve men standing- one with a flamer, two hauling a missile launcher, one dragging another stretcher behind him, and the good sergeant himself. The flamer-wielding man drenched the alley with burning promethium to make sure they weren't being followed, and the two squads rushed to meet up.
Without exchanging words, the second squad assimilated itself into Jarra's formation, lending their firepower to the circus, as it was said.
"Eyes front! EYES FRAKKING FRONT!" Came the command, and all eyes turned to what stood in their way.
And it was then Elias realized that he had not heard the roaring for a while.
Because there was suddenly a carnifex in the way. Right in between them and the hab-block. How it got there was a question; the hive mind had most likely suppressed its instinct to charge directly towards them in order to create a pincer movement.
Elias hated them, hated the fact that they had been outsmarted by mere ANIMALS; they outsmarted even tactica at times.
The thing stood taller than three astartes in power armour. Designed for destruction. Elias had seen carnifexes with claws larger than he was flip over land raiders. He had seen twenty men die gruesome deaths with a single shot from a stranglethorn cannon, the fast growing roots erupting from eye sockets, mouths, flesh. This one had neither of those biomorphs. As if it meant it was any less effective. The slavering monster's black carapace was pockmarked with white spines, vicious spine banks that could unleash salvo upon salvo of deadly, razor-sharp spines, which of course were coated in neurotoxic venom. The pair of scything talons it brandished were held facing forwards, in the direction of its next victims. The venom cannon, green steam leaking out of its firing sphincter, seemed to glare at the doomed squad gleefully, it's eye rolling as the adrenaline from the Carnifex's bloodstream flowed into it as well. Translucent saliva constantly leaked from its maw. A low growling could be heard. Its gun actually had an eye. Freaking eyes on their guns.
Without prompt, Elias heard Ghantous, his instructor for tyranid biostudies, in his head. Tyranids do not have vocal chords- they need all of the space in their mouths for tearing as much food as possible. Their larynx has no room for such things. Instead, they can change how much of whatever that it is that gets expelled from their thorax during respiration to produce noises of differing frequencies. Nobody really knows why tyranids would make such noises, but we believe that it either aids in synaptic communication, or that it is just an engineered instinctual impulse, designed so that it signals as many tyranids as possible that food is nearby.
'Nids behind and 'fex ahead. Damn, this was getting better by the second.
The roaring of the carnifex started up again.
It charged.
Abruptly, the missile launcher crew dropped to their knees and took aim. As the carnifex roared its roar, the men fired a krak missile at it. All eyes followed its trajectory, and all were disappointed. The missile veered and struck a wall; in an eruption of caustic liquid half of the massive steel door of a manufactorium melted away.
The carnifex kept on coming, roaring all the way.
The men were screaming, not with fear, but in anger. How DARE these things, these animals outsmart them? They were the Scyllan Stormkillers! No fucking gaunt, no warrior, no carnifex would bring them down!
Jarra yelled at his squad. "Turn around! Turn around! Shoot the warriors!"
Elias was shocked at what he saw when he turned. He could not believe that he had forgotten about the gaunts behind them. He saw, in the middle of the shrieking horde, the outlines of three warrior forms looming over their brood. Two pairs of scything talons swayed and chopped at the air in front of each warrior, as if they were already amidst the guardsmen and were in the process of flaying them alive.
Behind him, he could hear the shrill cry of another krak round whizzing towards its target. And suddenly, the impact seemed far closer that the last one. It took all of Elias' willpower not to look behind him when the carnifex screamed.
He hoped. But he may have hoped too late.
The clattering of the heavy bolter started up again, almost unbearably loud. It drowned out his screams as he launched red bolt after bolt at his target. The warrior on the far left side of the horde shuddered, but kept going.
The guardsmen without special weapons didn't even try for the carnifex. Red las-bolts streaked past chittering, rapidly advancing gaunts and into the thoraxes of the warriors. One of the things dropped down, shrieking, to disappear underneath the tidal wave of gaunts. The other two warriors shrieked all the louder, and brandished their twin sets of scything talons.
The ground was starting to tremble at the tremendous weight of the carnifex, but Elias did not stop. He could not stop. His mind was fully focused on the next task.
Once the warriors were dead, the rest of them were no threat.
The siren song of another krak round cut through the roaring of the still-approaching carnifex.
Elias' mind locked.
Another warrior fell, but the gaunts were beginning to get too close for comfort.
That was alright. They didn't exist yet.
A high-pitched, familiar whistle.
Elias heard and hurled himself at a near piece of pulverized building, followed closely by Marko and Slinky. Elias needed to pay more attention- he almost shot Marko in his mindlessness.
The venomous shell impacted and left a crater where the bolter brothers had been standing, firing at the carnifex. Shrapnel and greenish, viscous slime flew into the air. Something hit the ground near where Elias crouched, and showered him in red. Elias didn't turn his head, and he screamed again. His throat hurt from screaming so much.
The combined effect of the gaunt's disorienting shrieking, the hearbeat-like thumping of the running carnifex, and the venom shell had been too much for Slinky to take. His hands flew up to his ears, and he began choking. He flopped to the ground and twitched spastically. Blood leaked out of the seam between the gas mask and leather earflap. Elias thought Slinky was screaming, but he couldn't be sure; the whistling of another krak round was drowning it out.
But something changed. Instead of impacting on a rockrete wall or the pavement, the missile made a squishing noise, as if it hit something meaty…
The roaring was silenced, and the ground ceased shaking. The tide of gaunts paused for a moment, and during that lull, a pair of voices called out from somewhere behind him.
"Dead fex! Dead fex!" Cried an unnamed guardsman.
"Gaunts, ten metres, closing!"
The two statements came simultaneously. Elias didn't know whether to feel relieved that they didn't have to worry about a living mountain of flesh and bone tear them apart, or panicked that a tide of swords was about to eat them alive. He forgot about keeping track of time, he forgot of tasks. Now, here, in the middle of a road, about to be overrun by a wave of living fang, this was a matter of survival.
"FIX BAYONETS!" Came the order. Almost on queue.
Elias paused, drew out his bayonet, and mag-clamped it on the lasrifles's undercarriage. He tried to help Slinky up, yelling encouragement over the shrieks and screams and sounds of war. Slinky got up shakily and raised the lapistol he held in his trembling hand.
Elias had time to loose a couple more lasbolts at the one remaining warrior; the other had been brought down by a lucky shot to the eye from Floater while he sat in his stretcher. But still the slavering horde came on, prodded by the immeasurable influence exerted by the hive mind. They just needed to get that one warrior…
Shit, no time, no TIME… we need to get to the hab…
Jarra's words rang out from behind, above the shrill cries of the xenos. "You are warriors of the Imperium, of the Golden Throne of man!"
A small group of outriders reached them before the main swarm. Before the first gaunt got to Elias, a lance of flame speared its side and it fell to the ground, screaming and convulsing and smoking. Elias raised his rifle and shot another gaunt reaching for the flamer-toting guardsman.
"You are the shield the tyranids shall break upon like water!"
A scuttling gaunt leapt at Elias, and he shot it in the face while it flew through the air.
"But above all, you are SCYLLANS! You will STAND YOUR GROUND!"
A roar came simultaneously from the throats of the ragtag group of guardsmen. Jarra waved his power sword in the air. "Now GET in beta form, guardmen!" The GET was punctuated by a sizzling noise as he sliced a hormogaunt's head off. They rushed forward in beta formation. Elias joined the line in the first of the two rows. They aimed.
"FIRE!" Came the order from the rasping throat of Snakebite, and the guardsmen obliged, a roaring tide of red sweeping over the first line of gaunts. A frag round flew above their heads and impacted somewhere in the middle of the swarm, seeking to hit the rogue warrior.
Elias and the others in the first line dropped down to let the second rank fire. The bolt pistol and Snakebite's plasma pistol voiced their own comments, and the next wave of gaunts fell back in disarray, and rejoined, their minds lassoed together by the remaining warrior.
The gaunts were almost close enough to touch. They stank. A sweet, venomous musk began to filter through Elias' rebreather. He reached into his pack, and retrieved a fragmentation grenade. Beside him, a trooper from Snakebite's squad nodded. Elias couldn't see his face, but the trooper's eyes through the darkened lenses revealed his grin. "Lighten the load, eh?" He halfheartedly joked. "Yeah," Elias yelled back. "My pack was getting a bit heavy."
He pulled the pin, screamed a "Frag out!" And hurled the thing like it was a hot coal. The troopers around him crouched lower and held their guns in front of them, bayonets towards the enemy. A small booming noise, and a fountain of grey bodies and green ichor sprayed into the air. Misplaced tyranid limbs arced through the air.
Was it just his imagination, or were the spaces in between the grey bodies getting wider? Elias looked closer and saw that it was; he could pick out individual tyranid bodies. They were winning! Elias almost cried out in exultation, but it turned into a cry of pain at the last moment, as he raised his shrapnel-struck arm, and received a sharp pang of pain as a reward for his forgetfulness. More voices rose above the gaunt's infernal shrieking to join his. The Stormkiller's salute of "Sons of Scylla!" Echoed loudly, amplified by the narrow confine created by the two rows of habs on either side of the road. It reminded Elias of his home, once ravaged by the tyranids, and the drastic measures taken to prevent its consumption. And they had lived; they, the Scyllan Stormkillers had proven their worth.
As Elias dropped down to reload behind the second line of guardsmen, Marko scuttled up to him, and gave him the 'Scyllan smile,' tapping the end of his rebreather. "Hey, Marko," Elias returned the 'smile.' "Hope you're doing okay."
Marko nodded and said nothing.
Elias opened his rifle's carriage, and ejected the spent ppwer cell. "Whoa, there, now, don't go all frakking gooshy with me!" He crammed in a new one, and slammed the carriage shut. He smiled behind his rebreather.
Marko sidled up beside him and tapped his arm. Elias looked at him. "Nah, patch. It's doing okay. Stings a bit, but it'll be alright." Marko nodded and ran to the stretchers.
Elias turned to reengage, and became confused. Why were the gaunts running away? They still had enough to swamp twenty-odd guardsmen.
Tyranids never retreated while under the influence of the hive mind. Did they kill the warrior at last? No, Elias noticed the thing screeching at the gaunts, talons splayed outwards. Almost like it was…
Calling them back…
"Oh, shit," Elias murmured. Around him, troopers were loosing curses of their own as they realized what was happening.
Elias looked up into the sky, normally the permanent dark-gray of spore-choked atmosphere, normally lit up by enormous flashes of light from the guns space fleet Gargantum, now noticing the massive shadow that had obscured the sun behind the clouds. As he watched, the dark grey clouds parted, and dark, round objects began pouring down from the massive bio-ship that had somehow gotten through the orbital defences, not three klicks away.
Elias looked away from the spectacle, looking at his fellow soldiers. Most of them were still staring up into the sky, their eyes hard and steely. A few, including Marko, were rocking back and forth from a sitting position on the ground. A few were weeping, their shoulders heaving with noiseless sobs.
Jarra spoke quietly, but everyone heard what he said.
"This is going to be a long night…"
By now, all of the major hives on Dragus had been secured, but many of the pleasant plains-farming hamlets and lesser hives had been overrun, their crops, livestock, and in many cases their citizens, devoured. Hive fleet Oblivion had spread, threatening two more systems in the galactic east. Inquisitor Magenty now stands as advisor and chief of tacticae in the company of Lord General Egro of the Scyllan Stormkillers.
Tyranid spawn-pools have erupted all over the plains, the abundance of biomass and space begrudgingly wrested from the planet being put to good use.
Space fleet Gargantum and Astartes fleet Domorra of the Hurricanes chapter have prevented the tyranids from advancing further into the galactic east, but are beginning to give ground.
Dragus will live for now, but nobody is willing to vouch for its survival.
Sgt.s Jarra and Snakebite's squads held their ground in the ruined hab against repeated tyranid assaults after receiving reinforcements, and both sergeants have been recommended for the brass skull medals.
Only a quarter of the men originally stationed at southwest Grom hive survived the tyranid assaults.
Elias had a fever, but returned to active duty within weeks.