fire at their own battlements the moment the tyranids began scaling the walls.
“Sir,” the forward observer said. He was a nervous looking boy who had been steady and clear
in his instructions throughout the engagement. “Those gun-beasts that the major warned us about, I
see more of them approaching from the east. I also see something the size of a small building. It’s
moving around us with a sizeable contingent.”
“Is it now?” Abantu asked. “Moving around us? To flank us, perhaps?”
“Sir, I think that group’s avoiding the battle deliberately. I think they’re heading to the caves.”
Abantu sighed. How the creatures knew about the caves, he didn’t know, but if they managed to
get inside, they could build a brand new army with all that rich bio-matter, and he doubted the others
could do anything to stop them. They needed more time.
“Direct the Basilisk’s fire against that large creature and his group. Alert Major Hussari to the
approaching gunbeasts, and tell the heavy gunners to fire on the fliers when they get within range.”
“Yes, sir.”
The first tyranids made it over the south wall at the same time the fliers swooped into the fray. All
twelve ball-mounted guns over the command bunker began chattering at that moment, in between
the heavy artillery salvos aimed at the large tyranid force that was north of the compound.
It was nothing short of spectacular chaos, with the fight disintegrating into a three hundred and
sixty degree free-for-all. A bipedal tyranid with a scorpion’s tail mounted the southern battlement
and swung its scythe blades, disembowelling one Guardsman and amputating the arm of another.
Two ball mounts above the command bunker swung towards the warrior and unleashed a fusillade
of shots that dismembered it and chewed through the ichor and blood-soaked duckboards, before
blasting chunks off the walls.
Fliers swooped down at the Guardsmen on the battlements. Kortan barely managed to duck as the
blade-tail of one sliced at him. Laspistol in hand, he fired at it as it swooped skyward again, but it
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moved too fast. Kortan checked the sky and headed for a group of soldiers shouting for more
ammunition.
Major Hussari watched as a flyer with insect-like wings skewered a tripod gunner on its lance arms
and raised him into the air. The man screamed as the tyranid lifted him up and sank his teeth around
the man’s face. There was a brilliant explosion of red as the creature’s cartilage tongue burst out
through the back of his skull. Hussari screamed in anger and fired his lasgun. Crackling shots tore
through the creature’s wings, and both it and its prey dropped into the compound below. The
surviving mortar crews shot the creature with their laspistols until it stopped jerking. Grim-faced,
they returned to their steady salvos.
Hussari ran to an abandoned tripod mounted cannon and fired into the unending sea of enemies
that was scaling the battlement’s walls. The cliffs were thick with tyranids.
Dashour briefly took note of the chaos around him. The ball-mounted guns were filling the sky with
tracer fire, felling several of the fliers, and doing their best to keep them away from the wall crews.
One occasionally managed to dart past the screen of fire, however, impaling a Guardsman or
knocking him off his perch into the forest of claws and stingers below.
We’re losing through attrition, Dashour thought, before turning his attentions back to the west
wall. Here, the litter of corpses served as a ramp for their compatriots, and the tyranids were getting
close enough to swing their bladed arms at the Guardsmen. To Dashour’s right, a trooper wielding a
melta gun fired a hissing thermal blast of ignited gases, striking a frog-like creature with powerful
leaping legs and hooks for arms. The blast vaporised it and flash burned several leapers around him.
Before he could fire again, a dozen small tyranids, each with four clawing arms and reverse joint
legs, managed to bound up from the ramp, to the backs of their dead companions and over the walls.
One tackled the Guardsman with the melta gun and pushed him off the wall. As they fell, the leaper
slashed at the soldier, shredding the man before either of them hit the ground.
The tyranids scattered through the compound like a small plague, going after mortar crews and
lone Guardsmen.
“The walls are breached!” someone yelled over the micro-bead.
“The northern tyranid mass is inbound,” Abantu said over the channel.
Dashour realised they were being overrun, the western wall moments away from being
swarmed. The mortal and artillery crews stopped firing as they dealt with the leapers that were
tearing into them. Another soldier on the southern wall was impaled on the scythe blade of a large
bipedal tyranid that reached the battlements. The creature pulled him over the side before anyone
could react.
Dashour scrambled to grab the dropped melta gun and brought it to bear. He fired thermal blasts
at the enemies, vaporising those about to scale the walls. Another one of his men simply toppled
over, a buzzing tyranid round leaving a hole through the chest.
“Prepare to retreat to the fire-direction centre,” Major Hussari yelled into the micro-bead. “We’ll
make our last stand there! Emperor love you all for your bravery!”
Kortan back-pedalled along the wall, his bags empty of munitions and grenades, his laspistol
depleted, though he was hard pressed to remember when he’d fired it and what he’d hit. He jammed
in another power core, his last, and began firing to cover the retreat of the other men. Any notion of
saving himself was somehow distant, and he felt invigorated by his actions.
He fired shot after shot, as tyranids scaled the battlements and threw Guardsmen to the ravening
hordes below. All their screams melted together until they sounded like one unending cry that never
drew breath. Kortan continued backing towards the fire-direction centre as men ran past him.
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Tyranids overtook the southern wall entirely, the last soldier torn in half between two snake-like
beasts with four arms apiece. They slithered along the battlements and on the wall, clinging like
spiders, as they rushed the other positions. Men leapt to the courtyard below, to escape the attack.
The mortar and Basilisk crews, and other Guardsmen were fighting back to back in small clusters,
shooting up at the walls as leapers and runners cleared the parapets.
“Retreat!” Dashour cried, though he had no intention of surrendering his position along the west
wall. Men ran past him, some cut down by bone rounds or grabbed off the walls by harpoon lines.
He continued firing his melta gun, even after tyranids scaled the walls on either side of him. He was
determined to stand his ground, to match his faith against theirs. He knew he was dead… there was
no other end today but death. But he wanted to die facing them. He wanted them to see the same
conviction of purpose that he saw and so feared in them.
“Come on!” he screamed, his controlled then finally broken on the back of his bloodlust. As he
fought, the last man at the western wall, a pack of small, dog-sized tyranids leapt at him. They
seemed to be comprised mostly of a large head with overly-developed fangs, a long skull crest of
bone plates and six legs to scuttle about on. They bit and latched on to the meat of his arms, thighs,
back and neck. Dashour screamed in pain, trying to whip them off, but more of the creatures leapt at
him, biting whatever remained exposed.
Dashour fired a melta round at his feet, his last act of spite for an enemy twice faced and twice
feared. The blast vaporised his lower body along with his attackers, and his lifeless torso fell off the
wall into the courtyard below.
Major Hussari saw Dashour plummet from the walls, and wished him peace in the Emperor’s care.
Hussari was one of the last Guardsmen left on the wall, with Kortan standing at the entrance to the
fire-direction centre, trying to get the remaining men inside. The Guardsmen trapped in the
courtyard skirmish circles were stranded, the tyranids pouring into the compound and cutting them
off from retreat. One soldier pressed his laspistol to his temple and fired, dropping immediately. The
others continued firing at anything that approached them. Runners, centipede floor skimmers and
frog-like leapers rushed a smaller skirmish circle of three men, and dragged them down with claw
swipes and tail stings.
“Go inside and close that door!” Hussari cried into his micro-bead. Kortan saw him and
motioned him over, but it was too late, there were too many tyranids on the wall between him and
sanctuary. He waved Kortan off and continued firing his lasgun. “Go! That’s an order!”
Not waiting to see if Kortan obeyed, Hussari made a run for the nearby roof of the vehicle
stable. He’d planned this route out a few hours ago, not to save himself, but to inflict as much
punishment on his foes as possible. He landed on the metal roof, a storey below the battlements, and
continued running for the edge. He felt the roof shake and the metal groan as tyranids leapt after
him. He didn’t bother looking behind. Either he’d make it or he wouldn’t.
Hussari glanced up once and was glad to see the door to the fire-direction centre close, the
FDC’s ball-mounted guns still blazing. He leapt off the roof and onto the metal frame of Damask’s
idling Sentinel, left next to the vehicle stable. With practiced ease, he slipped into the cockpit and
revved the engine. The barrel of the multi-laser began spinning, and within seconds, unleashed a
steady torrent of electrified las-fire. Hussari strode into the courtyard, crushing smaller tyranids
underfoot, while raking the area with crackling blasts. For the first time, the tyranids scattered, the
Sentinel a surprising arrival.
The Sentinel continued moving around, trying to help the three or four skirmish circles fighting
for dear life. They fought with renewed vigour at the sign of the bird, its gun blazing, but the
tyranids showed no hesitation as they clambered over the walls. Several leapt for the Sentinel’s
cockpit, but Hussari was faster. He sidestepped them entirely, or blasted them from the air. Still, it
was growing more difficult to move, the tyranids swamping at his feet, many of them trying to
clamber up the moving legs.
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Hussari saw one skirmish circle overran, a brood of tyranids breaking through the soldiers and
cutting them down with their scythes and sprays of acid. The circle crumbled. There was nothing he
could do, except continue holding down the trigger and obliterating as many of them as he could. He
squeezed the trigger hard, his fingers aching. He squeezed it after his Sentinel could no longer move
through the bodies of the enemies; he squeezed it as a half-snake tyranid pulled itself up to eye level
with him, its pincer tail poised above its head; he squeezed it as the tail slammed into his chest, and
broke through his sternum and spine with a loud crack.
Still the multi-laser fired as the Sentinel pivoted, Hussari’s dead fingers unwilling to release the
trigger or the pivot lever. The tyranids had to rip him out of the cockpit, before the laser whined to a
stop and the Sentinel stopped turning.
Fifteen Guardsmen, including Abantu, were inside the centre when Kortan shut the doors. Several
men, with nothing left to hold the strength in their legs, collapsed to the ground, exhausted. The
gunners on the ball mounts continued firing at the enemy below. They were safe for the moment,
but this was their end. Everyone knew it.
“The charges,” Kortan said, stumbling over to Captain Abantu.
“Not yet,” Abantu said. He pointed to the periscope at the centre of the room. Kortan stared
through the rubber-ribbed eyepiece, and was startled by the giant tyranid that seemed to engulf the
magnocular enhanced view. At first, he thought he was staring at something standing right in front
of the hooded prism on the rooftop, but then he realised that he was staring at something that
measured the plateau in height, something that was lumbering straight for them like some
unstoppable juggernaut.
“We cannot detonate the charges yet,” Abantu said. “We must wait.”
The creature was huge, its head topped with the wicked spike of a ramming horn. Rows of sharp
teeth, each the size of a man, filled its distended mouth, while a thick shell from which protruded an
assortment of bone ridges protected its back. It walked hunched over, two gigantic scythes of its
upper arms capable of splitting a tank in two. Wicked-looking claws stretched out from its lower
hands, which were opening and closing in anticipation of the slaughter. Tentacles writhed from the
gaps in its armour.
Kortan’s throat went dry, the hope sucked out of him. He stepped away from the periscope.
“How long?” he asked.
“A few minutes longer,” Abantu said, “and then paradise awaits us for our great deeds.”
Kortan nodded and silently prayed that he was indeed meant for such a place. Unfortunately, the
tyranids had other plans.
The ground shook and rumbled. Suddenly, the floor ruptured. Half-snake tyranids had bored
through the rockcrete floor from the lower levels, and burst up to grab anyone close to them.
Captain Abantu and two others vanished into the large hole, pulled down by long claws and scythes
that skewered them through. The men resting on the floor scrambled to their feet, and opened fire on
the tyranid centipedes skittering up through the hole. The ball mount gunners abandoned their
position and followed suit. They pumped round after round of las-shot and bolter fire at whatever
horror tried crawling up. Everyone was screaming, venting their anger and fury at what they knew to
be their last stand.
Kortan backed up against the wall, his left hand with his thumb poised over the detonator and his
right firing his laspistol. One of the walls simply melted, its edges gummed by some substance that
hissed and popped, and several of the smaller tyranids dragged another soldier out. The room
seemed to be haemorrhaging monsters from the floor, walls and finally, the ceiling.
Guardsmen died quickly. Several dog-like hunters ran for Kortan’s corner. He fired his last-shot,
bringing one down, before he brought the switch up, ready to flip it.
The floor evaporated from beneath him before he could, however, and something pulled him
down with its sharp claws.
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Kortan was dazed. He was distantly aware of some sharp, intense pain at his feet and a horrid
