ship for safety. If it dies, the tyranid link is shattered.”
“Thank you, major,” Hussari said. “I have an idea, but I’ll need to speak to Colonel Dakar first.”
“Certainly, but one more thing: I suggest you withdraw back to the Sentinels. Some tyranids are
capable of flight, but others… they’re chameleons.”
3
“I won’t lie to you,” Hussari said, “we face a grim task.”
Sixteen men stood in a semi-circle around Major Hussari. Their Sentinels waited behind them,
close to the ground and idling, ready for action at a moment’s notice.
“The outpost needs more time to shore up its defences, and they need us to buy them that time,”
Hussari said.
“My father would disown me if he knew I was saving a bunch of Turenag,” Corporal Ziya
Rawan, one the men, quipped. The others laughed.
“My mother would shoot me for helping you Banna,” Qubak said, taking the joke in his stride.
“She’s done it before.”
More laughter followed, and Hussari allowed the men their moment. He was asking much of
them, and a little levity was the least he could do to repay their sacrifice.
“You can tell your fathers and mothers,” Hussari said, finally, “that you were protecting the men
of the Banna tribe. The Turenags just happened to be hiding behind us.”
The men roared with laughter or nodded their appreciation. This pleased Hussari; they were
ready.
“Many of you have participated in the desert races of Skakar or Harneel. This is no different.
Your priority isn’t to engage the enemy; it’s to outrun them, while keeping them close enough for
them to continue chasing you. Use your weapons to draw their attention or to save a fellow pilot. Do
not stand your ground. Race, and race as a squadron. Use cross-patterns to draw enemies away from
you and to create the mother of all sandstorms. The Aba Aba Mushira willing, I will see you when
this is done.
“But,” Hussari added as a sombre afterthought, “if your bird is brought to the ground and escape
is impossible… nobody will think less of you if you save the last shot for yourself, just don’t tell
Commissar Rezail I said that.”
The men nodded, their enthusiasm dampened by the gravity of what lay ahead. But, they
remained steady.
“Who do we war for?” Hussari shouted.
“We war for the Emperor, aya!” each man shouted back. Without a word, Hussari sank to his
knees and faced east with his men. They prayed, opening their arms to the sky to receive the
Emperor’s blessing, and kissing the ground where they believed His feet rested, in absolute
submission to His will.
4
The venting gas from the snail-craft cooled the glass fields, solidifying them enough to support
weight. Soon, more tyranids would emerge from the spawning chambers, and the horde would begin
its spread across the planet, seeking out organic material to digest and add to their birthing
54
factorums. The tyranids on the ground already seemed eager and skittish. They appeared to smell
the air, drawing on some scent that drove them to a greater frenzy.
Major Hussari prayed they couldn’t smell the fear impregnating every drop of his sweat. The
tyranids remained in their clusters, however, agitated but otherwise disciplined.
The opening salvo caught the tyranids by surprise. Six birds from the various squadrons Cadianand
Armageddon-pattern Sentinels, swooped over the lip of a dune and opened fire with their longrange
guns. The air crackled with the energy fire of the lascannons, while the fast revolving
chambers of the autocannons spewed out a steady chain of rounds. The Sentinels continued running
along the dune’s ridge, their guns swivelled towards the tyranid mob and firing blindly with accurate
devastation.
Tyranids exploded from the autocannon fire, the stream of shells stitching its path through their
ranks and tearing craters in carapace, bone and glass. The lascannon unleashed steady beams into
more creatures, vaporising smaller targets and punching searing holes through the larger ones. The
tyranids were so tightly clustered, it was easy shooting. Almost every second drew its share of
tyranid ichor.
Major Hussari could have stayed on the dune’s lip for a long while, strafing the enemy lines and
venting the lethargy of the last few months, but the tyranids were reacting far too quickly for his
taste. From the moment the first shots landed, the tyranids shrieked in a cacophony of voices, and
began moving as one. The glass field cracked and broke under the combined weight of the tyranids
moving with a united purpose. Some were already firing back with electrically charged rounds.
Many shots landed comfortably short of the birds, but a cluster of tyranids with simian-like
swaggers and limbs carried mounted cannons on their backs, their ammo sacs pulsing and throbbing.
They braced, and the tendon pistons on their organic cannons contracted. Blue electricity enveloped
the cannon muzzles as the creatures fired clustered spores at the Sentinels.
“Scatter!” Hussari said into his micro-bead. A volley of electrified shots sailed through the air,
almost lazy in their arcs. The birds broke formation down the dune slope, each of them scrambling
to rejoin their squadrons for the mad run.
Hussari silently blessed each man for his skill as the birds half ran, half skated down the dune’s
back. Pistons whined and contorted metal groaned as the Sentinels moved in ways they weren’t
meant to move. They should have tripped and fallen, but the pilots were trained for desert combat,
trained to stay on their feet in the most uneven of terrains.
Behind them, the spores hissed and popped. Hussari glanced backwards and saw the spore pods
explode on their descent. They unleashed a sudden rain of long needles that peppered the sand,
missing all but one Sentinel, a straggler that had reacted too slowly to the danger. Hussari watched
in horror as the needles imbedded themselves into the steel chassis of Corporal Kadi Y’dar’s bird.
Several shots breached the canopy and impaled Kadi’s flesh with fifteen centimetre-long needles.
Even from where he was, Hussari saw the needles spinning, drilling through steel and skin.
Kadi screamed and contorted in pain inside his cockpit. His bird toppled end over end down the
dune, towards Hussari and others.
“Move!” Hussari shouted as Kadi’s bird barrelled down on them. Hussari pushed his bird into a
long stride and jumped down into the trough between the dunes. His actuators and pistons rattled
hard, and Hussari was wrenched down tight by his safety harness. The birds scattered in tight turns
along the trough, almost being upended in the process, but Kadi’s Sentinel rolled past them, kicking
up sprays of sand, and barely missing the other pilots.
Hussari groaned with relief before yelling into his micro-bead: “Go, go, go!”
The Sentinels split to rejoin their squadrons. The dunes shed sheets of sand from the
approaching tyranid stampede.
Corporal Elaph Cartouk, squadron leader of the Burning Falcons, lay on his stomach at the edge of
the dune and stared through his magnoculars. He felt exposed outside his bird, so close to the snail
55
ship, but as Major Hussari had promised, their attack was drawing the tyranid horde away. He
watched as the swarm streamed over and around the dunes, in the opposite direction. Cartouk
breathed a sigh of relief, and stared at the snail ship. Only a handful of the creatures remained.
“What now?” Private Dubar Iban Dubar whispered. He was a young man, barely a campaign
old, but already familiar with fighting the tyranids.
“Emperor willing, Hussari will keep the tyranids busy long enough for reinforcements to arrive.”
“So we wait?”
“We wait.”
After a moment, Dubar whispered, “I never thought I’d be hoping for a Banna to succeed.”
5
To the untrained eye, the squadrons didn’t appear to be operating together, but then again, this
wasn’t tank warfare. The Sentinels used their speed to their advantage, weaving around one another
and hopefully raising enough dust to blind the enemy behind them. The Sentinels were in contact
with each other, each squadron watching out for its own, and the squadron commanders answering
to Hussari.
Sergeant Cortikas Iath’s squadron, the War Chasers, split to the east, taking a portion of the
tyranid brood with them. He manoeuvred through the troughs of the dune sea, his general course
already determined. At first the tyranids tried overtaking him by mounting the dune crests, but that
slowed them even further. Eventually, the tyranids learned, and funnelled through the maze of
furrows, following the squadron like the head of a flood.
“Sergeant!” a voice cried over the micro-bead. It belonged to Private Deeter Mohar, a spotty
pilot with one campaign under his belt already. “They’re splitting off!”
Iath pivoted in his seat to look, the Sentinels moving and rattling too much for him to make use
of rear-reflectors. Behind him, a group of creatures was veering off into a connecting channel. They
were quick runners, their six legs barely touching the sand, their squat barrel bodies compacted with
muscles. Every so often, they generated a burst of leaping speed that propelled them ahead of the
pack.
“They’re trying to outflank us,” Iath said. “Mohar, on my left flank, and make ready.”
The three Sentinels shifted position, moving around one another with barely a break in their
speed. Rounds whipped past their open canopies and slapped off their metal skins. Some shots
looked jagged and barbed, and others consisted of super-heated matter. What distressed Iath were
the splat sounds he heard as rounds struck his bird’s chassis. He knew they were organic in nature,
and prayed they didn’t eat through the Sentinel’s plate, or remain volatile for long.
Fortunately, it took almost all their speed to keep pace with the Sentinels, so whenever a tyranid
fired at them, it also fell back.
“Get ready, Mohar!” Iath shouted. “They’re going to flank us.”
The squadron was just about to intersect a channel to their left. The pack of runners emerged
around the shrinking edge of the dune, their toothy maws open and their long red cartilage tongues
whipping around in their open maws. They were almost on top of Iath’s squadron, their speed
blinding, their piercing howls startling.
“Now!” he screamed, perhaps more loudly than he intended.
Mohar swivelled in his Catachan-pattern bird and opened up with his only weapon, his flamer,
spewing out a gush of promethium fuelled flame. The gel fire washed over the runners and clung to
their skin as it burned. They screeched and dropped to the sand, writhing in agony. One collided
with another pack on the heels of the War Chasers, setting several of its compatriots ablaze. It
writhed around momentarily, before a larger tyranid with cloven hooves and two scythes for upper
arms sliced into the beast and dismembered it with a handful of blows.
56
The last thing Iath saw before turning his attention forward was the remaining tyranids
devouring their dead compatriots. No living matter was left behind in battle. Everything was
devoured, everything reclaimed.
6
Sergeant Umar Hadoori of the Heretic Slayers squadron played games with the tyranids, trying to
keep them off balance. He had to continually remind himself that because of their hive instinct, the
tyranids could transmit vital information to one another almost instantly. Any ploy he used would
have to be quick… quick enough for him to fire a couple of rounds before veering away and running
for dear life.
Private Damask’s death had already put him at a disadvantage, his squadron of three birds now
down to two, but Hadoori prided himself on his cunning and quick wits. At his signal, the other
Sentinel split from him around a dune. The two birds raced parallel to one another, straddling and
flanking either side of the dune as it rose between them. They succeeded in shearing the tyranids
into two groups.
At the next channel, as one dune tapered away and another began, the two Sentinels suddenly
wove past each other. The manoeuvre was so sudden that the tyranids stayed on their targets and
tried to switch over. The chasing mobs collided with one another, all manner of beast slamming into
allies and tripping over each other. To their credit, only the front wave collided. The rear guard
merely ran around or climbed over their companions, and began following the new targets.
Sergeant Hadoori was pleased. “Well there’s a trick that will never work again.” But it didn’t
need to for the time being. The tyranid mob had fallen back, giving Hadoori the breathing space he
needed to concoct some other plan.
7
“Not again,” Hussari moaned. He’d managed to pull up alongside Corporal Tanis “Mad”
Maraibeh’s Sentinel. Mad was an apt description for the squadron’s maverick and unhinged pilot.
Maraibeh was driving with his bare feet, pushing both steering levers forward and making
minute shifts in direction with skilled practice. Hussari knew better than to chastise the grizzled old
man with his dark skin and thistle of tribal scars knotted on his face. He had a well-chewed cigar in
his mouth, unlit. He enjoyed the taste of them, he said.
“How far behind us do you think they are?” Maraibeh asked over the micro-bead.
Hussari peered back and adjusted his running path so that he was clear of his own dust cloud in a
moment. They’d entered a long, wide river bed, and the running was smooth. After checking the
green auspex screen to confirm, “I’d say two minutes,” he responded, running close to Maraibeh
again. “Set the timers for two-and-a-half.”
Maraibeh nodded, and cranked the screw timer atop his home-made pipe bomb. He tossed it out
of the open-topped cockpit and primed two more tubes, which followed the first.
About two-and-a-half minutes later, the three charges detonated in fifteen second increments.
Hussari was far enough away from the squadron’s dust trail to see the explosions blossom in the
heart of the tyranid mob. Beasts were thrown into the air, and the remaining group spread out further
across the river bed’s width.
“Did I get ’em?” Maraibeh asked over the micro-bead.
“Confirm that. You can probably shave ten seconds off the first timer, but they’ve spread out.
You won’t snare as many next time.”
“Smart bastards,” Maraibeh grumbled.
“Too smart. How many bombs did you make?” Hussari asked.
57
“Eighteen… fifteen now.”
