“Save them for when we really need them.”
“Yes, sir,” Maraibeh reported back. “That should keep them angry for a while.”
Hussari strode back into formation, the striding rumble of his squadron comfortably familiar. He
noticed, however, that Maraibeh was still steering with his feet, cradling the back of his head with
his hands.
8
Corporal Rawan led his Holy Striders through the uneven dune canyons. His auspex was a collision
of topographical information, a mess of orbital resonance taken when they landed over three months
ago and the current data streaming through auspex. With an angry snarl, he shut off the old intel; the
dunes shifted quickly around here and the orbital scans were no longer valid. He’d have to rely on
auspex to navigate through the maze of dunes, regardless of how limited its range.
More shots screamed by Rawan’s bird. He glanced back and realised that the tyranid swarms
chasing him were only metres behind. The damn things were fast, and no matter what he did, his
squadron couldn’t shake them. The beasts were relentless, and for the past couple of hours since this
began, they’d been gaining steadily.
The collective shrieks startled Rawan as six-legged runners launched themselves at the
Sentinels. Rawan watched in horror as two of the creatures latched on to the rearmost Sentinel,
piloted by Private Elma Taris. One of the creatures tried to grab an exhaust stack and pull itself up,
but burned its hand on the super-hot metal. It let go with an angry cry, but held on to the multi-laser
cannon and its battery packs with its other three arms.
The second runner was already atop the canopy frame, unbalancing Taris’ bird. Taris fought for
control, and the last thing Rawan saw before turning away was the creature atop the canopy
plunging two spiked pereopods into the cockpit. A geyser of arterial spray followed. The Sentinel
fell, and Rawan prayed that Taris would be dead long before the devouring horde swept over him.
Rawan’s auspex picked up more movement along the adjacent dunes. The tyranids were moving
along the ridge crests, firing down at them. This time the pack consisted of larger creatures: clovenhoofed,
bone-crest swept brows, multi-jointed legs, upper arms that seemed to melt into scythes and
pairs of lower arms that held bone-guns. What they lacked in speed, they made up for in range.
“No!” Rawan cried, giving voice to his worst fears. The Holy Striders were about to be
overtaken.
The tyranids opened fire, peppering the Sentinels with a salvo of shots. Rawan managed to pivot
his bird’s cabin in time, allowing the twin exhaust stacks behind his cockpit to shield him. Private
Damous Obasra, in the Sentinel ahead of Rawan, wasn’t so lucky. He spun his frame around, but a
round splattered against his canopy frame, and his face. He screamed as the acidic globules
destroyed his oculars, and then attacked flesh and bone. Within seconds, his entire skull appeared to
collapse, right before Obasra’s death spasms sent his Sentinel crashing to the ground.
Rawan tried to avoid the fallen bird, but he clipped the Sentinel on his way past, tangling his
legs with Obasra’s. The steering levers whipped out of Rawan’s hands and his Sentinel fell hard. It
crashed and rolled a couple of times before finally coming to a stop.
Despite the safety harness locking him in place, the fall knocked the wind from Rawan’s lungs.
He was rattled and on his side. He knew enough to know that he was in trouble as he fumbled for
the holster snap of his laspistol. The tyranids were bearing down on him, the critters running full
bore on all six legs to reach him. They were a handful of metres away when Rawan managed to pull
his pistol. Unfortunately, instinct took over when the creatures launched themselves at him, their
mouths open wide and their cartilage tongues wet with clear mucus. Rawan fired two crackling lasshots
that ionized the air with yellow beams. The first shot bounced off a beast’s exoskeleton
58
armour, but the second shot caught it in the mouth. The dagger of light punched through the back of
its skull.
A large tyranid landed atop the Sentinel, rocking it with its weight. Its scythe arm stabbed
through the canopy frame, and through the meat and muscle of Rawan’s thigh. He tried to scream,
tried to draw his pistol up to his temple, but the monster vomited on his arms. The yellowish mucus
began to dissolve his body. Rawan’s hand fell off, dropping the pistol, the caustic bile instantly
disintegrating the exposed bone. It was breaking him down into bio-soup. Rawan continued
screaming as the tyranids arrived to lap up the remains of his dissolving body, their heads fighting to
push through the frame of his exposed canopy.
9
They were over a dozen kilometres away from the snail ship when the small caravan of two
Hellhounds and six Sentinels came to rest. The Hellhounds were modified troop carriers, each
equipped with an inferno cannon and a turret-mounted heavy bolter. The two squadrons of Sentinels
consisted of Catachan- and Mars-pattern birds, short-range vehicles designed to spread terror
through the ranks of an enemy that felt no fear.
Corporal Cartouk was at the crest of the dune, staring out at the tyranid ship through his
magnoculars, when the vehicles arrived in the dune trough below his perch. He slid down the sand
slope, demanding, “Is this it? Is this our support?”
“It’s all you’re getting,” Sergeant H’lal Odassa of the Dust Marauders squadron said, standing
up in his cockpit. He stretched out his back. “And, as senior officer,” he grunted, “you’re my
support, as of now.”
Cartouk ignored Iban Dubar’s quick indignant glance at him. Now was not the time to indulge
the typical Banna/Turenag rivalries. “Yes, sir,” he said.
The two Turenag mounted their birds and wheeled them around to follow in step behind
Odassa’s Dust Marauders and the second squadron, the Blight Thorns.
The plan was simple, conferred over micro-bead on their way to the snail ship. The Blight Thorns
would strafe the small swarms still milling about the base of the tyranid vessel and draw them into
giving chase. The Burning Falcons, the Dust Marauders and two Hellhounds would then attack the
ship and attempt to gain entry. Given the size that some tyranids reached, Odassa reasoned that they
could enter the vessel with their vehicles and destroy both it and any hive-mind driving the swarms.
Cartouk disliked the plan immediately and expressed his doubts, as one of the only veterans to
have faced the tyranids. Nobody, in his experience, had ever entered a tyranid vessel, and nobody
knew what to expect inside. Moreover, any number of the enemy could be waiting within, and only
the Emperor knew what shapes and horrors awaited them.
Odassa had his orders, however, and he was dead set on killing the tyranid mind beasts, and
proving the hero of the day. Not that Odassa said that, but Cartouk assumed as much.
So… just out of sight of the ship, nestled between the bosom of dunes, the squadrons and
Hellhounds waited. The Blight Thorns’ pilots, quiet to the last, streamed past the dunes and built up
steam on their run for the ship. Cartouk listened over the vox, and to what he could hear within
earshot.
“Contact!” a voice said over the vox.
The whoosh of promethium-driven flamers, and the steady pulse of las-fire being spewed out
from the rotating barrels, sounded over the dunes, followed by the echoes of terrible screeches. A
rumble filled the air, and the ground shook, the dunes sloughing off sheets of sand.
“We got them mad,” the vox chatter said. “Disengage and run!”
59
Cartouk and the others listened, their collective breaths held and their plan hinging on this
precise moment. After what seemed like forever, the rumble faded, the sand no longer shook and the
shrieks grew distant.
“Report,” Odassa said, his voice hushed over the vox. “How many did you pull away?”
“I don’t know,” the voice rang back, “a good number. “There’re far less of those bastards there
now, I know that.”
Odassa waited another gruelling half-hour before deciding that the swarms were far enough
away. The blue sun had dipped down to the horizon, but the air would not be cool for some time.
The glass fields were still hot, despite the jets of gas belched out by the ship.
On Odessa’s order, Cartouk and Iban Dubar followed the Dust Marauders around the dune and
out into the open. The ship loomed into view, suddenly larger and more sinister against the setting
sun. The glass field, cracked and broken by the weight of the tyranid swarms, reflected the dusk
light like a thousand lakes. The pilots fumbled for the diffusion oculars and swung a wide are
around the ship, making it look as though they were going to strafe and run.
Small swarms of tyranids, numbering in the dozens, immediately moved to intercept from their
nests around the vessels. These beasts were larger and slower than their comrades. They were
scorpion-like with eight pereopods that ended in wickedly curved scythes that clacked against the
glass fields. Their bodies were long and segmented, and measured up to the Sentinel in stature,
when they rose on their back four legs and lunged to attack the birds with their front four. Segments
of long bone-plate ran from their heads, down the length of their spines, and ended in long tails and
bulbs of thorn barbs.
Several of what Cartouk called “scorpions” lashed out with their tails, firing a spray of barbs at
the Sentinels. A pilot screamed over the vox, and Cartouk turned in time to see a Dust Marauder
tumble to the ground and crack the glass. The pilot was riddled with the spines and screaming, his
skin bulging under the strain of the hundreds of welts that were merging and growing, and tearing
the skin open.
Cartouk looked away. He had his own problems, more scorpions were chasing them, a good
three dozen by auspex count. Two new runes also appeared on auspex, coming up fast behind the
swarms. It was working, Cartouk thought. They hadn’t spotted the Hellhounds sneaking up.
The Sentinels wove in between each other, trying to trip up their pursuers. This strategy was far
easier when used against the orks, whose vehicles were not as nimble as the tyranids and more prone
to collisions. It didn’t matter in this instance, however. The two squadrons were merely the head of
the snake, weaving back and forth, distracting the tyranids from the real threat behind them.
The two Hellhounds suddenly announced their presence. They pulled up alongside the rear-most
scorpions, flanking the train on either side, and fired with their inferno cannons. Sticky promethium
flame swept over the swarms, engulfing them before they could react. Even ahead of the mob,
Cartouk could feel the heat surge at his back, blistering the paint job on his bird. His ears ached with
the death cries of his pursuers.
“Now!” Odassa screamed over the vox.
The four Sentinels broke formation and scattered in different directions. The swarm was
distracted, trying to escape the hellish onslaught of the inferno cannons. The Sentinels decelerated
and spun around, adding their own promethium to the mix, or opening fire with their multi-lasers.
Tyranids in flight made for good target practice, and for the first time since fighting the beasts
on Absolomay, Cartouk laughed and whooped as his las-fire brought scorpions down, one after the
other.
It was over all too quickly, however, and the sense of danger returned.
“Hurry, find a way inside,” Odassa ordered. “The tyranids won’t let that go unanswered for
long.”
60
The sun had almost set, and everything was deathly quiet, the tyranid rock apparently casting a hush
over the winds and the sands. Night was already throwing its starry cloak over the heavens when
they finally found an accessible door into the ship.
Not a door… a sphincter, Cartouk corrected himself, and shivered.
The oval-shaped orifice puckered out against the skin of the vessel. Many like it honeycombed
the ship’s surface, but this was the only one level with the ground. It opened into an organic-looking
tube that angled upward into the darkness. There didn’t appear to be any lights inside the vessel. But
then, Cartouk reasoned, the tyranids no more needed to see to navigate their ship, than blood did
inside one’s body.
“The Hellhounds can’t fit inside,” Odassa grumbled over the vox. “Stay outside and secure the
door. Sentinels, with me.”
Odassa’s beacon torch flashed on as he entered the dark tube. Cartouk followed, instantly
cringing at his surroundings. The dark grey walls seemed to glisten and envelop him. The curved
floors felt spongy beneath his bird’s feet, and the air smelt humid and fetid in a way that dug deep
past his nostrils. Cartouk pulled his kafiya over his nose and mouth, grateful that the stench he
smelled was that of his own unwashed body.
They moved slowly through the tubes, past intersections, and up some steeply angled passages
and down sharp slopes. What guided them wasn’t any sense of direction, but the size of the
corridors. No two tubes were exactly alike, differing from each other in dimension and composition.
Some tunnels seemed to breathe, the air inhaled and exhaled, the vein-like walls pulsing and
glinting. Other places seemed more like a proper ship, the walls and floors made from hardened
resin with the coolness of steel.
Throughout it all, there were no signs of life, at least nothing that proved a threat. Small
cockroach and crab-sized tyranids scurried about on mysterious business, moving from underfoot
when approached, falling back in place when the Sentinels passed. For all that, Cartouk could not
help but feel they were somehow witnessing some grand orchestra of purpose, a symphony they
would never see or hear entirely. And, for that, he was grateful.
“By the Emperor,” Odassa whispered, stepping into a large chamber. “This can’t be.”
At first, Cartouk didn’t understand Odassa’s shock. It was hard to see the chamber’s true size in
the darkness, but it appeared no different than the corridors, fleshy walls and coats of hardened resin
melting over everything. Then, Cartouk stepped onto the chamber’s tilted floor and heard the
metallic ring to his footfall. Slowly, the chamber came into focus in his mind as their torches swept
the emptiness. The floor was grated, the holes plugged with detritus. Arched cathedral struts that
