than that, Nehari realised, it ate at their wills, robbed them of the mental fortitude they needed to
push forward. That they had made it this far was a testament to their characters, but they were done.
They had completed their task, and thoughts of survival no longer ranked among them.
They sat where they collapsed in the underbrush, under the yellow glow of the overhanging
bulbs. They pulled close to one another, hacking blood and black flecks of what they silently
suspected were their lungs. Their stomachs hurt, the muscles taxed beyond exhaustion and feeling
torn.
“How… how pitiful are we?” Nehari said, his voice raspy, “Like old men.”
The others tried to laugh, but that only generated a new fit of coughing. They patted one another
on the shoulders or grabbed each other’s hands for support.
“So,” another man finally managed to say, “this is paradise.”
Renewed laughter and renewed hacking followed. Nehari smiled and shook his head.
“No… never paradise,” he said in between coughs. “Paradise was never… meant for the… the
living. It’s always been a promise for… the dead.”
The men grew quiet as Nehari spoke, comforted by the timbre of his voice and the certainty of
their fate.
“Glory be… to the Emp-Emperor, and praise be to Colonel Dakar’s wisdom… but we… we
suffer through life so that our paradise is eternal. Paradise is earned… never given… never taken.”
The sound of hissing surrounded them, figures moving through the underbrush. The men could
no longer stir, save to aim their weapons. Nehari quietly pulled the pin on his frag grenade and felt
someone’s grip tighten around his arm. A pack of runners moved into the clearing, sniffing the air
and picking their kills. Cartilage lined tongues licked the air in anticipation.
“There can be no… no death in paradise,” Nehari whispered. He opened his palm and watched
the handle flick off and spin as it fell.
The tyranids reacted by trying to bolt back into the cover of the jungle. They weren’t fast
enough.
2
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“I’ll stay,” Nisri said, reaching for the vox detonator.
“No you will not,” Rezail said. “I’ll be staying.”
Turk shook his head. “Commissar, this is a military officer’s duty, not a polit—”
“Spare me,” Rezail laughed. “This entire expedition has been anything but military in its timbre
and demeanour so don’t you dare use that on me now. Trust me, I don’t wish to die here, but you
said it earlier, lieutenant-colonel… if one of you dies, your men die with you. Besides,” he said,
adjusting his uniform, “it took the both of you three months to finally see eye to eye and put aside
your tribal feuds, and it took the bloody tyranids to do it. If you make it out of here, I expect you to
beat some bloody sense into your bloody tribes so that this bloody disgrace never happens again. Is
that bloody understood, Prince Iban Salid and Prince Dakar?”
“Yes, commissar,” both men replied, trying to hide the hint of their smiles.
“Fine,” he said, taking the vox detonator from Turk.
Turk also fished out one of the explosives from his satchel. “I suggest you find a nice place for
this, commissar. I’ll plant the other one at the escape tunnel.”
Rezail took the explosive and handed it to Tyrell without a second thought.
“Of course, I will be coming with you,” Tyrell said.
“Bloody well better,” Rezail said. “I’ll need an adjutant where I’m going.”
Tyrell smiled and left it at that.
Turk and Nisri returned to the group, which was watching the exchange with morbid interest.
This time, it was Nisri who spoke, his command instinct slowly returning.
“I need five volunteers,” he said, “to help protect the commissar and Sergeant Habass until it’s
time to detonate the explosives.”
There was a pause as the men exchanged glances, uncertain if they wanted to die so close to
escaping.
“I’ll stay,” Duf adar Sarish said, stepping forward. Two more Guardsmen stepped forward
alongside him.
“I guess I’ll stay as well,” Sabaak said. “The only thing I’m protecting is this banner.” He
stepped forward, and for a moment, Turk saw the same look in Sabaak’s eyes as he’d seen in
Kortan’s. That resolute stare and grim hardness ready to face what came next. Sabaak fidgeted with
his Y-Strap and pulled the rolled-up banner from it. He presented it to Turk, who nodded his thanks
and handed it to another Guardsman for safekeeping.
When a fifth volunteer did not step forward, Turk whispered to Nisri. “I think that’s enough,
don’t you?”
Nisri nodded. “Sarish fights like a devil with those two pistols; we’ll count him twice.”
The Guardsmen paused long enough to bid one another goodbye. They were silent farewells,
nothing to be said save for shaking one another’s hands and squeezing each other’s shoulders.
As Turk moved away from the men, Kamala drifted close to him. “I would have stayed had you
stayed,” she whispered.
“I know,” he replied. He watched Rezail and his five protectors turn back the way they had
come, searching for some place to hide their explosives. He turned, shielding them from the others
for long enough to squeeze her uninjured hand. With that, Mousar continued forward, guiding the
remaining survivors to their anticipated rendezvous with Sergeant Ballasra’s squad.
3
Sergeant Ballasra and his four men were shocked by the sight that greeted them at the mouth of the
jungle-rich Golden Throne.
“Is this it?” the young tracker, Chalfous, asked. “Are you the only survivors?”
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“Quiet, boy,” Ballasra said. “You can see it in their eyes.”
Neither Nisri nor Turk had the strength left for words, they merely leaned their backs against the
cool rock of the narrow fissure connecting Caverns Emperor and Golden Throne.
“Come… you don’t have much further to go,” Ballasra said, offering a helping hand to Nisri.
Nisri accepted and grunted heavily as he pulled himself up. He glanced at Ballasra and nodded to
Turk.
“You too, sir,” Ballasra said, offering Turk a hand up.
“Thank you,” Turk replied. “We need to move quickly, there’s no telling when this explosive
will blow up.”
Ballasra’s eyes widened as he looked at the satchel being presented to him. “Then we’d best
move, sir.” He motioned for the others to follow him through a tight corridor in the bramble of
jungle trees and the thick web of hanging vines. The corridor had been hacked and burnt through, its
edges jagged and scarred, but by this point, Nisri no longer seemed to care.
Kamala paused and raised her head to the air, her hair hanging freely. She sighed, the weight of
the world evaporating from her expression. Turk moved to her and whispered, “What’s wrong?”
“The ghosts,” Kamala said. “They’ve gone quiet. We’re almost at the truth of it, my love.” She
sounded relieved, and truth be told, so was Turk.
He took her by the arm and guided her to the path, earning stares from the others in the process.
He no longer cared; being charged for fraternising with an NCO seemed horribly trivial. Almost in
response to his thoughts, Kamala smiled.
4
The howling seemed to be carried on many voices, all of which appeared to be approaching quickly.
The jungle rustled and buzzed, as though someone were taking a chainsaw to the trees. The tyranids
were drawing closer by the moment, and Rezail found his fingers nervously caressing the vox
detonator.
Rezail watched as Sabaak scaled the giant stalagmite-toothed walls, some twenty metres off the
ground, and shoved the explosive into a crevice shared by the wall of Devotion and Emperor. If
anything, Rezail hoped, they could seal themselves off in Emperor and still escape. It was a thin
expectation, admittedly, but it was always human nature to pray against all odds for the favourable
outcome.
Rezail activated his micro-bead. “We’ve planted the explosive. The tyranids are coming.” A
wash of static greeted him in return. “I suggest you get rid of your satchel.”
There was no response. Rezail sighed. The buzzing from the jungle was growing louder, and
Rezail could see the trees quaking under some mysterious force. He held the vox-caster and revved
his chainsword, spinning the teeth counter-clockwise for more cutting power. The other men pulled
their weapons, and silently mouthed whatever prayers brought them the greatest solace. Each of
them prepared in their own way, and then watched the wide tunnel leading to Devotion. The
grinding, buzzing noise increased in pitch.
Sabaak clambered down and pulled out his bolt pistol and scimitar, while Sarish idly spun the
two laspistols in his hands. The other Guardsmen pulled their lasguns and waited nervously.
“Well, commissar,” Tyrell whispered, “any regrets?”
Rezail smiled, his attention focused on the tunnel and the jungle beyond. He revved his
chainblade again. “You’re joking,” he said.
“Not at all. A burdened mind weighs us all down.”
“My burdens are inconsequential,” Rezail said with a smile, “and nothing I can’t shear away
with my chainblade and my faith combined. Prepare yourself… here they come.”
“Hell!” Tyrell whispered, watching the tunnel suddenly fill with the enemy.
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The others were moving quickly along the cavern wall when Turk heard his micro-bead hiss.
“Hello?” he asked, but there was no response. There wasn’t the need for one. “We’d better
hurry!” he shouted to the group ahead, pushing against their backs to move them more quickly.
Ballasra nodded and pointed to the end of their journey: a small fissure angled up into the wall.
They hurried into the high, narrow passage, racing against time that they knew was long past spent.
Turk dropped the satchel at the mouth of the corridor, and hurried after the others as they scaled the
steep and rock strewn slope. He recited a prayer over and over again, in the back of his mind, hoping
he wouldn’t have his spine snapped in the inevitable explosion.
The tyranids screeched and chattered in the jungles behind them, and gave chase. The jungles
were filled with them, probably thanks to the snake breeds that were digging tunnels through every
metre of wall, trying to reach the biomass.
The Guardsmen fired their boltguns as they backed away, trying to stem the wave of the dog-like
beasts, small tyranids that attacked their targets in numbers. With enlarged heads and overly
developed fangs, six spiked legs a piece, and elongated tails, they swarmed over two Guardsmen,
biting and spitting out chunks of flesh and muscle. The sight sickened Rezail, but he’d heard of this
in other furiously carnivorous species; it took longer to chew and swallow than to chew and spit, so
the creatures had grown adept at stripping their targets first and eating later. Both soldiers
succumbed in seconds, screaming and falling to the ground, where more dogs tore into their messy
carcasses.
Sarish was firing both laspistols at the larger runners and centipedes that were heading for him
and the others. With expert shots, Sarish felled them two at a time, while Sabaak finished off the
injured. Tyrell tried intercepting those that slipped through by standing between the commissar and
the tyranids, but the fight was already so wild and chaotic that it seemed as if they were under attack
from all sides. The commissar was already brandishing his chainsword like a true battle-trained
alumnus of the Schola Progenium, his blade revving and whining as it cut through the carapace of a
simian-like creature with barbed arms.
A human cry pierced through the chainsaw’s scream, and Rezail turned to see Sabaak drop his
bolt pistol and stare down at his chest. A fist-sized alien seed had lodged inside his torso. It opened
like a flower in bloom, further cracking the sternum apart, but instead of blossoming with petals,
tiny black beetles poured forth. Sabaak couldn’t scream, the agony so intense that he contorted into
seizures. The bugs ran riot over his flesh, burrowing holes into his skin.
Sarish drew his aim and levelled four shots into the tyranid gunner that had fired the round. By
the time he turned his guns on Sabaak, the young soldier was already falling face first into the jungle
soil. Without a word, the Duf adar continued firing at the advancing tyranids.
Rezail, meanwhile, swung the chainsword into a runner, severing half its limbs. It convulsed on
the ground, spraying yellow ichor on the commissar’s boots. He grunted in disgust.
“Adjutant, shoot that thing, please!” he said.
Tyrell snap-fired a shot into the tyranid before firing on an advancing biped.
“Thank you!” Rezail said, deflecting the biped’s scythe as it swung at Tyrell’s neck, and
opening its torso to Tyrell’s laspistol.
The chameleon appeared out of nowhere, literally. Its two pereopods arched down and impaled
Sarish through the chest, out through his back and into the soil. Sarish never said a word. He grunted
in pain, and fired his two pistols into the chameleon’s face before it could withdraw. Both he and the
creature fell to the side, their mutual deaths equally silent.
“It’s just you and me, commissar,” Tyrell yelled, firing at the incoming flood of dog-like biters.
There must have been a hundred of them swarming towards the two men. “Oh Holy Emperor!” he
cried.
Rezail paused for long enough to cry over his micro-bead. “Get out, get out!”
116
Then the tyranids swept over both men, sharp teeth biting through the muscles in Tyrell’s and
Rezail’s legs. Both men toppled immediately, their voices shrieking in agony. The creatures tore
into their faces, necks, arms and chests, never noticing Rezail’s single arm held high above them;
the one holding the vox detonator.
The micro-bead clicked and hissed again, and Turk screamed for them to move. This was it, he
knew it was. The tyranids behind him were closing fast, but the blinding sunlight above beckoned
and promised safety. He couldn’t see where they were going, but he pushed hard and dragged the
stumbling Guardsman to his feet before he could fall. And then… cataclysm.
The vox-signal reached all the receivers almost simultaneously. The receivers primed the detonators
and the detonators triggered the explosives. The three small explosions did little, other than to
collapse some rock formations. The explosions from the seven Sentinels, however, combined with
the fuel drums, turned the birds into massive frag bombs, incinerating nearby tyranids that were
focused on their diet of the planet.
The pressure wave spread burning wreckage across the caverns, and hammered a mortal blow
