IV.

Inquisitor Elizabeth Horncastle detested field work. Especially when it was actively trying to kill her.

Spooky shrieked a warning.

A roar boomed from the fog to Eliza’s left, from amidst the charred ruins of a hab-structure. It was answered with the staccato roar of bolt rifle fire, thumping so loud that it made her chest ache. She hunched low, panning a shuriken carbine in that direction. There was a hand on her shoulder, and she looked up and up and up to the hulking form of the Astartes next to her. Their power armor was the dull, olive green livery of the Raptors chapter, and the gold-visored helm they wore obscured their face. Their helm nodded, even as they kept their bolt-rifle trained towards the noise.

“Come on, Inquisitor,” The Raptor boomed through their helmet’s external vox-grille. “Big bug incoming. Move for that burnt out Chimera.”

He indicated the hulked troop carrier, thirty metres distant. Further on, Eliza spied the bulk of an Invictor Warsuit, stomping forwards with its stubbers and autocannon blazing. There was the signature wet popping noise of explosive rounds finding their home in flesh. The answering screeches indicated more – likely some species of smaller Gaunt bioform – were incoming.

The Inquisitor nodded once, and took off towards the tank, behind, the Intercessors of Fireteam Locke opened fire as something huge burst from the ruins nearby. It loosed a deafening roar that thrummed through the air, and Eliza gagged as her mouth went oily – the signature discharge of psychic energy. She didn’t look back to see who the attack hit, but the screams over the vox was enough to know it had. She worked with one hand furiously on a keypad built into her augmetic arm, flying across the glowing green runes before slamming a single button. As she did, a shimmer went up in the air, enveloping the Inquisitor along with her itinerant bodyguards. The Raptors acted in unison, panning their bolt rifles about as their helms swivelled to and fro in momentary confusion.

Their Sergeant, a sombre looking man with a pale, sharp face, black hair and a single augmetic eye, turned to stare suspiciously at Eliza. She just fingered her rosette, and shrugged with a coy grin. She wasn’t sure if it were possible for Sergeant Locke to look more tired, but somehow, he found the strength to do so.

They reached the wrecked Chimera a moment later, Eliza skidding to a halt in the vehicle’s lee, glowing green eyes fixed on her companion servo-skull as it began to work, playing pale blue scanning light over the immediate area.

“Hold here!” She called out to the Raptors. “I’ve found what we seek!”

Fireteam Locke nodded as one, taking up a defensive perimeter. Now and again, their bolt rifles chattered as they engaged a target in the swirling dust. Off in the distance was the familiar whine of plasma discharge – the Hellblasters of Fireteam Baum, no doubt, engaging some hard target as the Raptors made their advance. The area they were in had been the site of some previous battle – ruined buildings to one side, and abandoned Militarum earthworks to the other. Indeed, elements of Mobile Task Force “Birdwatchers” were making good use of the trenches, advancing along it or otherwise using concealed gun positions to bracket the larger war-beasts of Hivefleet Bahamut. The Tyranids were relentless, though, surging against the lines of the Astartes, again and again. They would need to work fast, and by extension, so did Eliza.

The scanning light narrowed to a point, and Spooky chirped excitedly. With a shout of triumph, Inquisitor Horncastle scrabbled at the spot, a patch of loose dirt next tucked within the Chimera’s troop bay whose doors had been blown away when the APC had been destroyed. Her digging revealed a small crystal cube that pulsed with weak blue light intermittently. Whatever it was, it was not built by those who had made the tank that surrounded it.

“E’lara,” Eliza murmured, switching to a secondary vox-channel. “Do you read? I have it.”

Not now. The message rippled into his mind in response.

“Location, E’lara! I’ll route Raptors-”

Out of the question- Fie! There was a flash of panic in the next psychic message, but it continued. Lictor! I must withdraw, Horncastle! Northwest, it’s northwest!

“Locke!” Eliza snapped back onto the Raptors’ vox frequency. “Northwest! Northwest!”

Spooky flitted out of the Chimera, whistling an alert to the Raptors as his indicators pointed in the direction and began scanning for the Tyranid. There was a shout of “Contact!”, and from there, the chatter of bolt rifles began in earnest. Eliza keyed another command into her augmetic arm, allowing a plate just behind her wrist to fold back and into the metal workings of the arm to expose a rack of tiny missiles, each one a tiny dart, about the size of a fingertip.

“Get me visual, Spooky…” She murmured, peeking out into the battle. There was no sign of the Lictor, as Fireteam Locke blanketed the area with suppressive bolt rifle fire. There was the distinctive bloop of an underbarrel launcher as it spat a fragmentation grenade out that sent up a shower of dirt, fifty metres distant. Further on, the Inquisitor spied the armoured form of more Raptors, their weapons glowing blue with plasma discharge. Fireteam Baum, the veteran Hellblasters that had been assigned to this specific Raptors task force. In their midst, directing his soldiers’ fire was one of the force’s leaders, a taciturn Lieutenant by the name of Shugard. The Astartes officer’s non-standard mk7 helm panned left to right, searching for the Astartes’s quarry.

The beast was on them in a split second, rippling out of its camouflage mere moments before Spooky shrieked a warning. It was fast – almost faster than the eye could follow or the Raptors could react. The mantis-like claws mounted high on its torso sprung forth, spearing a pair of Hellblasters through the torso. A third fell to its raking claws, drawn forth so that the wriggling feeder tendrils that lined its jaw could thrust into the dying space marine’s brain matter. The remainder of the fireteam scrambled back in good order, firing from the hip on full-auto with their plasma incinerators, heedless of the building glow in the blue cooling coils atop the weapons. It proved too much for one, as their weapon detonated and took the marine with it in a blossoming plume of blue-white fire. They didn’t stop firing, even as they died. But the Lictor did not fall.

Eliza heard Shugard curse over the vox as the creature reared up to charge once more. But it was then that Spooky chirped, overlaying an icon onto the Inquisitor’s heads-up display: Target Lock.

She rose from the wrecked tank, and raised her augmetic arm to fire.

It had been adapted from recovered T’au technology, referred to as an “Airbursting Fragmentation Projector.” The weapons system was made up of a swarm of miniature missiles, all with a guidance system that rivalled those of much larger Imperial Hunter-Killers. Their payload was a small charge, but the real danger were the submunitions that each would kick out, turning an area into a storm of super-dense shrapnel.

And now, those missiles were darting up into the air, before rapidly changing course as they flitted towards the Lictor, catching it in mid-stride. The Tyranid was wreathed in a dozen tiny detonations, obscured behind the storm of shrapnel. From the wet shriek, the ichor and the body parts that issued forth, Eliza could tell that the weapon had done its job.

“Right, now if we’re quite done-”

“Contact east!” An intercessor interrupted, firing their weapon. “Shift base of fire, there’s a lot of them!”

“-Shit.”

Eliza turned to face where the Raptor had indicated, and she saw it. Hormagaunts, bounding out of the smoke and gloom of the battlefield directly for them. Dozens, perhaps even hundreds, all bounding, scrabbling at the ground with their scythed forelegs, slavering to get to grips with the Inquisitor and her space marine bodyguards.

Locke was at her side in a moment, bellowing over the vox. About them both, Raptors were shifting, displacing to firing positions. Some knelt, while others braced themselves against cover, but all took aim down the reflex sights of their rifles.

“Short, controlled bursts, Raptors! Dorn’s lot aren’t the only ones who know a bolter!”

Unholstering her shuriken carbines, Eliza brought them level with the oncoming horde, determined to add her own fire to the Raptors’ fusilade. Locke gave her weapons another arch look, but said nothing.

As one, they fired. Bolt rifles roared, and Eliza’s shuriken carbines emitted a high sussurating whisper as they sent their razor-edged payload into the oncoming horde. Bolt rounds struck home with nasty explosions of chitin and ichor, splattering the first wave of Hormagaunts as they advanced – sometimes catching more than one beast in the blast at a time. Another snarl of the quick beasts was scythed down by the razor-wind of Aeldari shuriken rounds, dismembered chunks falling to litter the ground next to their exploded counterparts. In the span of a few seconds, nearly two dozen Hormagaunts died.

It was not nearly enough.

The beasts were almost on top of them now, bounding through the fusilade of bolt rounds and shuriken with murder in their eyes. The closest ones stooped low before leaping into the air, scythe-bladed forelimbs rising in preparation for the kill. Eliza winced, instinctively pulling up the command in her HUD to activate her translocation array just as Locke yelled a warning to his squad-

One that was drowned out by the roar of jet engines – as assault marines began dropping amidst the Hormagaunts.

The first wave of Tyranid beasts were crushed under the armoured bulk of the Astartes landing in their midst, before they lashed out with combat blades and chainswords to butcher another mass. This close, it was easy for Eliza to pick out helms carved into grinning skulls. The earmark of the ‘Skullgirls.’ The screech of dying Hormagaunts and the whine of chainswords was joined by a series of thumping booms – close-range heavy pistol fire. At the head of the unit, where the thickest of fighting was, a winged, cloaked figure whirled about, discharging paired Absolvors into any alien who drew too close. They did not bear the drab olive livery of the Raptors, but the black plate of a Chaplain. Protruding from their cowl was the beak of a raven skull.

Chaplain Segador had made himself known to the enemy.

“No mercy for the Xenos,” He rasped over external vox-grilles, dispatching a Hormagaunt with each shot. “Butcher them to the last.”

Eliza gaped at the sight, even as Sergeant Locke dragged her away from the frantic melee – one that was being joined by an Invictor Warsuit and a unit of Raptors in lighter Phobos plate, dispatching stray creatures with quick snap-shots from their bolt carbines.

“Get clear,” Locke was growling, urging Eliza towards an Impulsor as the hovering troop-carrier whined in close, spinning to present its’ open-backed troop bay. “We’ll secure the AO. Do you have it?”

The Inquisitor stared for a moment, stunned, before her thoughts caught up with her. She reached into her coat, withdrawing the cube.

“I have it, Sergeant. Fine work out there.”

Sergeant Locke nodded once, his face inscrutable as he gestured back to the rest of his Fireteam. The Raptors were quick to turn their bolt rifles back to the battlefield, preparing to join it once more.

“Our work isn’t yet done here. I only hope the lives of my brothers were spent well.”

Horncastle nodded back, mounting into the Impulsor’s rear even as Spooky was settling onto one of the benches. “Rest assured, they did not die in vain. I shall make sure of it.”

The whine of the troop carrier’s engines picked up, and it rose up onto its antigrav field even as Sergeant Locke turned to rejoin the battle.