“Chimera Two is ready for its bath!” Aba Manar yelled.
“In range now!” Lumak said, spinning the turret’s hand-wheels and swivelling the turret in the direction of Chimera Two. The promethium tanks in the rear of the Hellhound gurgled as the main cannon belched a thick spray of flame. The blast was just enough to lick the tyranids on the hull and paint them with sticky fire. Many leapt off, screaming and ablaze.
Chimera Two opened her gun ports and began firing with her three remaining lasguns.
“Sir,” Aba Manar yelled, “we just lost Hellhound Four and Chimera Six from Squadron Five! The storm is also hampering auspex and vox!”
“How many left?” Euphrates asked. “At last count, five Chimera and three Hellhounds, excluding us.”
“Sir?” Sarrin said. “Our pocket is collapsing. We’re surrounded!”
“All remaining units,” Euphrates yelled into his micro-bead, fighting to make himself heard, “form up. We’re going to try to punch our way out of this swarm… see if we can’t shatter it!”
“Sir, Chimera Two!” Lumak yelled.
Euphrates managed to catch the Chimera through the cupola’s visors. A large hole, melted into the armour plate, had opened up the Chimera’s port side. Tyranids were pouring in, and filling the micro-bead with the screams of the dying crew.
“Burn her!” Euphrates said.
Lumak opened the flamer’s nozzles on full, washing the Chimera in a blistering stream of ignited promethium. The screams ended. The Chimera slowed to a stop, her features melted. Internal explosions rocked her frame, her ammo bins ignited.
“What did that?” Euphrates demanded.
“A beast wielding a cannon on its back,” Aba Manar reported. He aimed and fired the heavy bolter. It struck the simian-like creature as it prepared to fire at Euphrates’ Hellhound. The round detonated inside it, cracking its carapace out and flowering the beast like a bloom of flesh and muscle.
“Form up on me,” Euphrates said.
He received crackling acknowledgement from the various commanders, and within moments, three Chimera and another Hellhound had joined his ranks. The other vehicles were too heavily engrossed in combat, encountering heavier resistance in the form of larger beasts armed with scythes and bio-cannons capable of splitting their armour plating.
Driving in wedge formation, Euphrates and his allies cut a path straight through the horde. The three Chimeras broke the crest of enemies, using their heavy shovels to deflect incoming fire, while the two Hellhounds ran at their wings and used their flamers to protect the wedge’s flanks. The Chimeras’ rear gunners were firing on anything that gave chase, while the storm generated licks of electricity that shot and played off their armour.
The tyranids were blistering the Chimeras’ shovel shields, however, unleashing diamond-hard rounds and acid bolts that weakened the plating or punched through entirely. Three cannon-backed beasts stood in the way of the wedge.
“Cannon beasts!” Aba Manar cried.
“Shoot them, before they fire!” Euphrates said over the vox.
Bolter fire peppered the ground around the three tyranids as they took aim. One exploded from a shell that pierced its back-mounted cannon, but the other two fired before the Chimeras piled into them, shattering carapace and splattering viscera and bio-fluid across the desert. Their salvos, however, struck two Chimeras, melting the shovel off one and the forward superstructure armour plating off the second.
The driver of the first Chimera screamed over the micro-bead, the spray from an acid round melting the windshields and spilling a drizzle of lethal droplets through. The vehicle jerked out of control and slammed into the Hellhound next to it, their treads biting into one another, their links unravelling in a hail of sparks and rent metal. Both vehicles ground to a halt, and the tyranids swept over them.
“Close up formation,” Euphrates ordered, watching both vehicles vanish under a mountain of enemies, “and barrel through them.”
The vehicles did as ordered, with two Chimeras and the Hellhound trying to drive their spear into the breast of the swarm. More shots whizzed past, this time from the rear: a group of bipedal tyranids armed with bio-cannons. Auspex sputtered and flared, the air electrified by the storm of movement.
More acid rounds struck the rear of one Chimera. While they did not eat through completely, they weakened the rear plating enough for the next solid-mass rounds to penetrate the troop cabin. Euphrates could hear the shots ricocheting inside the vehicle over an open vox channel, the Guardsmen screaming in pain or gurgling their last breaths. The Chimera slowed to a stop, and Euphrates watched helplessly as tyranids rushed the vehicle.
Euphrates turned in time for a large tyranid to loom into view. It towered over the vehicles, its four spiked arms spread in what seemed like preparation for a lethal embrace, and its mouth opened in a deafening roar that shook Euphrates. It lowered its head, its turtle-like shell absorbing cratering cannon fire, and rammed its bony horn through the front plate of the last Chimera. The Chimera bucked upwards, its forward momentum brought to an abrupt end, and the treads lifted high into the air before it came crashing down. The creature’s four arms lanced into the vehicle, buckling the plate under the tortured cry of wrenched metal. With a flick of its mighty neck, it lifted and flipped the vehicle over on its back.
Euphrates’ Hellhound speeded past, its flame cannon spinning to douse the great monster in thick coats of fire. The enraged beast spun and followed the Hellhound, its blows missing the tank. It flailed, trying to put out the flames, and Euphrates lost sight of it in the thickening dust cloud.
“What in the Emperor’s name?” Aba Manar said, forcing Euphrates to turn back around. Directly in front of them, the tyranids parted to reveal a creature the crew had never seen before, not even during the Absolomay Crush campaign against the tyranid splinter fleet.
The tyranid that floated into the Hellhound’s path appeared frail, its limbs vestigial-looking, its long tail like a withered spine and its large, elongated head swept back with plate ridges that protected an enlarged brain sac. It hovered above the battlefield, bluish tendrils of lightning snaking off its body and striking the ground. The storm’s electricity seemed to dance around it, lending it a halo of static fire.
Something opened in Euphrates’ mind, some protective cobwebs meant to shelter him from the horrors of the universe, brushed aside. He shrieked, his voice echoing in the screams of his crew. Euphrates found himself hanging over some unimaginable gulf of time and space, a point where sense of self is obliterated and scattered across the endless darkness. They all stared at something ancient, something whose very being opened their perceptions to the great devouring infinity of the hive-mind. It dwarfed them and held their speck-like intellects between the claws of its forefinger and thumb. It drowned them out the same way an ocean might drown one’s thirst.
Sarrin jammed the steering levers in an attempt to escape the presence of the hive brain. Aba Manar and Lumak were pushing themselves away from their stations and writhing on the floor, crying. Only Euphrates continued staring at the creature through the cupola’s visor slits, unable to shear his gaze or his thoughts away from it. Mind lightning slithered around the creature’s body, building to a crescendo. It unleashed a coruscating blast from its forehead that ripped through the Hellhound’s armour, and vaporised Euphrates and his men where they lay.
The blast dissipated, and all that remained of Euphrates was the lingering psychic scream that lay trapped in the ash shadow that had been scorched into his armour.
Kamala Noore was trying to hear the ghosts of the lost expedition, when fresh screams erupted in her mind, tearing through the veil of mental silence that suffocated her. She drew in a sharp gasp, the full breath of the drowning swimmer upon reaching the ocean’s surface. Her mind was finally clear for a moment. She knew the voices that screamed, and saw their terror in the seconds before something obliterated them from reality and imprinted their thoughts into the debris of their ve
hicle. She caught the lingering image of what killed them, an apparently frail creature whose warped body contained unimagined power. She’d heard about tyranid psykers before, heard they were terrible foes, but this was her first brush with one.
She recognised nothing human in its thoughts, nothing familiar. It was an alphabet of xenos thought and words, something that would drive her insane for even uttering their tongue. The psychic scream dissipated and the images faded, the psychic veil pushed back in place. But she felt focused, no longer distracted by the maddening elusive songs of the expedition’s ghosts. She was grateful for the reprieve, and vowed to thank the creature personally. She donned her psyker hood and prepared for its arrival, eager to stretch her mind to this lethal exercise.
6
The last surviving Chimera crew, commanded by Sergeant Abasra Doori, careened off one of the limestone pillars at the mouth of the cave network. The pillar flaked and threatened to topple, but remained standing.
The Chimera was still rolling when the rear door popped open and the crew jumped out. Several soldiers looked back into the vehicle cabin, but the white-haired, white-bearded Doori waved them off. “Go!” he shouted, “I’m behind you.”
Doori turned, trying to help the driver, Private Apaul Wariby, from his seat. Wariby was a light-skinned man in his thirties, and his stomach was wet with blood.
“I can feel it inside me,” Wariby gasped. “It’s moving.”
“We’ll get you to a medicae!” Doori said, trying to pull him.
“I won’t make it,” he said, “and neither will you if you try. Go, you stupid old man. You were a lousy commander.”
Doori grunted. “Fine, but if you’re going to die, then you might as well die useful.” Doori grabbed and pulled Wariby from his seat, dropping him into the cogitator chair next to him. Wariby grunted in pain, his breathing fluttering in rapid strokes.
“You know how to use this?” Doori said, slapping the textured grips of the Chimera’s heavy bolter.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good… shoot at everything coming your way.”
Wariby grabbed the bolter’s grips and stared out through the armoured visors, towards the approaching sandstorm. He was breathing hard, his eyes fighting for focus. “Run, sir.”
“Die well,” Doori said. “Emperor knows you’ve earned the rest.”
Doori ran stumbling for the tunnels when heavy bolter fire rang out across the desert. Three men were waiting for Doori at the mouth of the tunnel and picking off the tyranids that had pulled ahead of the packs with their lasrifles.
“Emperor take you for fools,” Doori barked. “Run!” A dozen metres or so inside the tunnel, the sand petered away, leaving uneven but solid limestone underfoot. Hot on their heels, screaming in hungered fury, were the waves of tyranids that had followed Doori and his men. They were minutes behind, their screeches echoing off the rock walls, but somehow seemed much closer than that.
The tunnels were dark, the only illumination the bright stripes of lume-paint that guided them. Doori pushed his men in the back, forcing them to run faster. They followed the glowing stripes until they hit a painted rune on the wall denoting “one”.
“Base, this is Chimera Five. We’re the last ones through! Passing marker one!”
“Understood,” the voice said. “Marker one is primed.”
The men continued running, the sound of the tyranids growing louder and drawing closer. Suddenly, an explosion rocked the network and shook the heavens of all their dust. Doori and his men stumbled against the walls. Bits of rock and limestone fell, but the roof held.
“Go, go!” Doori rasped, pushing his men along. They followed the turning, winding strips of paint, feeling as though they were doubling back on themselves… until the passage split again. This time, the lume-paint marked a second path. Doori pointed to the passage and pushed two of his men down the second corridor. “Draw them after you and vox in the markers!”
The two soldiers nodded as they vanished down the tunnel. The shrieks of the tyranids, quieter for the moment, increased in pitch again.
A moment later, one of the soldiers shouted, “Marker three!” on vox.
“Marker two!” Doori rasped with his dry throat, followed by the confirmation that the explosives were primed. Moments later, one explosion rippled through the caverns, followed by a second and then a third. More dust poured from the ceiling, while flakes of limestone fell and shattered on the floor.
“That’s one of the dead-end tunnels,” a voice said triumphantly over the vox.
Doori could only grunt his acknowledgement, his breathing turning into burning ragged shreds, his sides aching and his head swimming. He could hear the tyranids’ shrieks over the thundering in his ears. He could feel them behind him, but he dared not turn around. The passageway split again, with paint stripes heading in either direction. Silently, Doori pushed the other soldier down the second passage. The man complied, too exhausted to argue.
He was alone, now, not that it bothered him. Doori continued running, despite two more explosions that rattled the walls and ground. He was slowing, his chest in aching pain and his sides stitched with hot needles. The tyranids were gaining, how could they not? He turned around, and saw nothing at first, but then the lume-paint further down the tunnel was flickering. They were coming.
Doori looked ahead and saw another marker on the wall. It was half a dozen metres away. It was a finish line he would never reach. That realisation drew its surrender from his body, and Doori stumbled to one knee, unable to move any further.
“Marker Five and every marker along this path,” Doori said.
“Un-understood,” the voice replied.
“Stupid old man,” Doori said, chuckling, falling to all fours. The rush of tyranids behind him drowned out the beating thunder in his ears. There was no reason to turn around any more.
The tunnels rocked and shook at the explosions meant to winnow the tyranids’ advance, but with each step, they grew louder and more frightening. It seemed like nothing could hold back their flood.
Two of the Guardsmen barely made it behind the barricades of Tunnel One before the firing started. The third Guardsman was cut down by Captain Toria’s men in Tunnel Three, because the tyranids were too close at his back. He died screaming at the Guardsmen to wait, never realising that his execution saved him from a more brutal demise.
Suddenly, the four chokepoints erupted in simultaneous firefights, the screams and reports peppering the vox-comm channels.
The tyranids jammed into the tunnels, and into the line of fire of autocannon and heavy stubber nests, and the las discharges of staggered firing lines. When one soldier depleted all his magazines, he tapped the leg of the man standing behind him, or the shoulder of the man kneeling before him. He then swapped out of the line with a fresh soldier, while he rearmed himself.
At every tunnel, there was at least one heavy gunner, a member of Nubis’ squad with a flame thrower, melta gun or plasma gun, vaporising any of the fast runners that managed to close the gap quickly. Elsewhere, the dull thud of detonating mines reverberated, claiming a snake or large tyranid that thought of burrowing through the collapsed tunnels. Still, while the chokepoints poured on a steady stream of fire, they realised they were losing through the attrition of centimetres.
The tyranid weren’t merely suicidal, they continued throwing every breed and type of tyranid at the chokepoints, providing just enough cover to drive forward by the barest of margins. Even when they approached the lume-circle marks on the walls and Nubis’ men triggered the shaped charges, the tyranids filled the holes in their ranks within seconds.
Nisri’s men had seen the tyranids attack and regroup before, but the prize of the cave drove them forward with unparalleled frenzy. They had an objective in mind, and nothing would deter them from that goal. The Guardsmen weren’t the goal, they were the obstacle.
Occasionally, an armed tyranid survived long enough to fire back with its bio-weapon. Sometimes th
e round splattered against the tunnel wall or the sand bags, and sometimes the shot struck a Guardsman. When that happened, the wounded Guardsman was pulled from the line and replaced, while medicae did their best to stabilise the patient. Unfortunately, most tyranid ammunition continued inflicting pain and incapacitating their targets, and the medicae could do nothing for the screaming soldiers that bucked and writhed in the crippling throes of agony.
Nisri knelt on the front line, shoulder to shoulder with his best Guardsmen, the ably trained men of E Platoon and the orphaned soldiers of Sergeant Raham. Corporal Magdi Demar now led the platoon that was assigned to protect Tunnel One. But only he felt like he was filling Raham’s large shoes until someone better came along. Still, Raham had drilled his men well, and E Platoon fought with the same ferocity as though their beloved sergeant stood behind them, shouting orders in their ears.
“For Raham!” someone shouted for the fiftieth time, and for the fiftieth time, the squad responded with renewed fervour, filling every centimetre of the tunnel with punishing fire.
The tyranids seemed to be growing smarter with each salvo, however, and they skewered their own dead on their talons, scythes and spike-claws, propping up the injured and dying to act as shields.
As they passed one of the lume-rings indicating where the shaped charges were hidden, Nisri shouted, “Blow them apart!” The shaped charges, angled away from the Imperial skirmish lines, exploded, shredding the shield wall and forward lines of tyranids. The heavy stubbers opened fire and flamer units followed up the attack, washing the exposed corridor with generous gouts of flame. The tyranids shrieked under the promethium blast, their exposed flesh wilting, and their carapace armour blackening. Their numbers seemed to dwindle for a moment, before they swelled forward on another suicidal surge.
It was just enough for Nisri to see what was happening. The chokepoint was a stoopway, which forced the tyranids through on their stomachs. It was narrow enough for some bipedal tyranids to get stuck as they squeezed under. After a while, only runners and leapers ran through, and they pressed forward, obscuring the chokepoint. For a brief instant, however, Nisri could see the stoopway again. Snake tyranids were eating through the rock, widening it and allowing more creatures to stream underneath it.
[Imperial Guard 04] - Desert raiders Page 17
