FEAR ITSELF
Juliet E. McKenna

THE LIGHTS IN this basement where they'd set up their medicae station were too bright for sleep. Catmos dropped onto a spare mattress and closed his eyes all the same. He needed rest to do his duty by the next batch of wounded. Of course, the fluorestrips would be less intrusive if he rolled over to face the wall, but Catmos would no more leave his back exposed than he would unstrap his laspistol.
He crooked an arm to shade his eyes. If he couldn't sleep, he could escape the stifled moans, the dull reek of blood pierced by counterseptic. On Alnavik, he would look up at cold blue skies instead of stained rockcrete. To the north, the Marble Mountains held back the grinding glaciers stretching across the horizon. To the south, muted conifers cloaked the valleys running down to the coastal plain and the berg-strewn Broken Sea.
Catmos felt the weight of the modified long-barrelled bolter in his hands, the cold ring of its magnification scope just touching his eyelid. He scanned the outcrops above the broad scar of the quarry. Even in this frigid air a man worked up a sweat wrestling machines that sliced the white stone like a power claw through ork armour. Waking with the spring, marble bears were drawn by the scent. Twice as tall as a man and six times the weight, their white fur was threaded with grey, all the harder to see among the barren mountains. They were stealthy despite their size, driven by unstoppable hunger after their hibernation. Their long talons could disembowel a man, slashing through chainsheet work gear. Catmos was there to stop them.
His thoughts might return to the home he'd never see again but his ears were still attuned to the aid station. Soft footsteps hurried towards him. Not another attack. He'd have heard the emplacement's lascannons. Something else.
'Field surgeon!'
A wounded man murmured at the urgent whisper.
'This had better be good, squid-sucker, or I'll stamp on your tentacles,' growled Catmos.
Mathein stifled a chuckle. Catmos moved his arm, glad to see the young orderly was finally learning to take a joke.
'Commissar Thirzat has arrived with a squad of cadets.' As Mathein jerked his head towards the entrance stairs, the harsh light glinted on his bionic right eye. A muscle spasm rattled the augmented fingers of his replacement arm.
He was nervous. Hardly surprising. Catmos didn't recall this particular commissar but he knew the breed. He got to his feet, stripping off the stained meditunic covering his mottled-grey uniform. 'I'll make sure everything's in order.'
He headed for the rear storeroom he had claimed for the medicae support squad. His two junior surgeons, Etrick and Tind, were snoring on the floor, exhausted. Etrick's orderly, Haux, was wearily opening a ration pack. Catmos retrieved his data-slate and quietly closed the door.
Turning, he saw a Guardsman in the room opposite, shoving lasgun powerpacks into the recharging rack. The man's hands were shaking. He dropped a pack and swore as he bent to retrieve it.
'Not that one.' Catmos stepped forwards to take it. 'The casing's cracked.'
The last thing they needed was men injured by their own weapons exploding.
The youthful Guardsman looked at him numbly before blinking as if he'd just woken. 'Sorry, sir.'
Catmos recognised him now. The medical support squad he commanded had been attached to Captain Slaithe's company before. 'It's Nyal, isn't it?'
'Yes, sir.' Nyal's face slackened with dread. 'What happens when the tyranids come back, sir?'
'We fight,' Catmos said steadily.
Hollow-eyed, Nyal grimaced. 'We killed hundreds today and they kept on coming.' He glanced at the charging lasgun packs. 'What if they cut the power? What happens when the heavy bolter and mortars ran out of ammo? We can't recharge those. The Sentinels-'
'We're being reinforced,' Catmos reassured him. 'A commissar unit has arrived.'
'Oh.' Nyal didn't look entirely relieved.
Suddenly, the walls of the narrow corridor seemed to press in on Catmos. He couldn't face the breathless basement until he'd had some fresh air.
'You've more powerpacks to collect?' He nodded at empty slots in the rack.
'Yes, sir.' Nyal squared his shoulders.
'Come on then.' Catmos headed up the emplacement's rear stair. Their boots rang on the newly installed metal, the sound echoing off the older stone walls.
As Nyal hurried inside the circular tower's middle tier, Catmos went onto the railed balcony. Above his head, the lascannons hummed, alert. He gazed out over the courtyard of this six-pointed star-fort, relic of the planet's continental wars, a century before the victors sought the Imperium's advantages for Shertore.
Thirty metres or so away, heavy bolters were stationed on each bastion, their crews ready to spring into action. Down in the courtyard, Guardsmen were resting: Captain Slaithe's battered platoons and the ragged remnants of Captain Kelloe's company.
Catmos glanced down at his data-slate. Fifty-six dead and wounded in total. Slaithe's company had taken heavy casualties and they had been inside the fort. Kelloe's men had been caught outside, so more than half had fallen victim to tyranid teeth, claws and obscene bioweapons. Only Captain Slaithe's valiant charge had allowed the survivors' retreat to the gates.
The surgeon gazed over the outer wall, towards the sunset's afterglow beyond the bridge this fort had been built to defend. Those soldiers had never imagined a foe as fearsome as tyranids. He contemplated the silent, fallen Sentinels. They'd fought valiantly to cover Captain Kelloe's retreat, flamer and autocannon obliterating countless vermin. Until they had been overrun, their ammunition exhausted. Because the tyranids could spare a hundred spawn to kill a single Guardsman.
Only yesterday, Catmos had been enjoying this new world, enchanted by Shertore's scented forests. Captain Slaithe was expecting an easy deployment training the Planetary Defence Force. Before dawn orders to hold this river crossing had rushed them to the star-fort.
'Sir?' His orderly, Mathein, appeared on the stair.
'I'm coming.' Catmos headed down.
'Who's in charge?' A commissar stood in the centre of the basement, glaring around.
'Vox-sergeant Biniam, please let Lieutenant Jepthad know reinforcements have arrived,' Catmos said calmly.
The burly vox-sergeant nodded, his scarred face impassive. Shoving through the cadets crowding the stairs, he headed for the uppermost observation platform.
'Who are you?' Thirzat's accent was that of the shore, like Mathein. His sneer suggested the coaster's contempt for anyone who didn't brave lethal storms and bergs to wrest glitterfish from shipslayer whales and killer squid.
'Field Surgeon Catmos of the 19th Alba Marmorea.' Donning his own peaked cap, he smiled at the commissar.
The pristine folds of the man's greatcoat hinted he insisted on uniform regulations. Despite the balmy evening air, he wore the cape of marble-bear fur favoured by the general staff. On the other hand, enamelled studs on Thirzat's collar indicated active service in the regiment's most dangerous campaigns, including the bloodbath of Narthil III.
'Captain Slaithe?' Thirzat surveyed the wounded men.
'He died this afternoon. Borer beetles.'
The recollection nauseated Catmos; slicing open suppurating channels drilled by the beetles, trying to pierce them with his electroscalpel before they shredded some vital organ. He had been too slow. There had been too many.
'Borer beetles!' Commissar Thirzat rounded on the wide-eyed cadets. 'Flesh worms that burrow through your nerve-fibres to consume your brain. Deathspitter maggots melting your armour. Strangler seeds, growing thorns to rip a man to pieces before he takes two steps. You must not flinch! Not if that man's your lifelong friend, your brother. Not if he's saved your life ten times over. You let him fall without a second glance!
'You must not fail. This enemy won't: the 'gaunts, the raveners, the rippers, whatever vile perversion of flesh and bone these tyranids send. If this corruption gets a single toehold on this world, every living thing is doomed.' Thirzat's sweeping gesture encompassed Shertore, mild, verdant, fertile from pole to pole.
'The Hive Mind seeks the utter destruction of humanity!' the commissar roared at the cadets. 'Tyranids will slaughter every man, woman, child and animal, down to skippermice hiding in ditches. They are fearless, merciless, unrelenting. Their sucking weeds will wither every tree, every shrub, every blade of grass. They won't stop till every last scrap of bio-mass is rendered down in pools of living acid. If you fail, your death will be the ultimate treachery, nourishing the loathsome monstrosity that spawned them.'
Even under the harsh fluorescents, Catmos could see the cadets pale. Whatever they'd learned in their schola progenium lectomms, now they faced the murderous truth of battle.
'So we will not fail,' Thirzat growled. 'You will man this emplacement and shoot down tyranid spores before they spew their poisons in the air. You will destroy tyranid pods so no more perverted beasts pollute this planet. You will slaughter the vermin already here. We will secure this agri-world for the Imperium, to the eternal glory of the God-Emperor. You will count your life well spent if that's the cost of doing your duty!'
A wounded man lying on a sensor-blanket moaned. 'No!'
The commissar loomed over him, plasma pistol in hand. 'What did you say?'
'Not again.' The casualty tried to shield his face. Stinking pus oozed through the dressings on his arms as his fleshworm wounds broke open.
'You refuse to serve?' The plasma pistol whined in Thirzat's hand. 'You know the penalty for cowardice?'
'Only when facing the enemy. He's on an aid station mattress.' Catmos stepped so close that Thirzat was surprised into a pace backwards. 'Judge him by his actions. He was wounded fighting to save Captain Slaithe. Now that tyranid poisons infect his blood and brain, you cannot read cowardice in his ravings.'
'We'll see about that,' hissed Thirzat. 'Out of my way, surgeon!'
As the commissar gestured with his pistol, Catmos had no choice but to step aside.
Bending over the wounded man, Mathein looked up. 'I'm sorry, sir.' Soft-footed as ever, he had come up unseen behind Catmos. 'He's unconscious.'
'Who are you?' Thirzat demanded.
Not about to let his junior face the commissar's wrath, Catmos answered. 'Corporal Mathein. His service as a platoon medic was so distinguished that the Officio Medicae took a special interest in his recuperation after Narthil III.'
'I just did my duty, like the rest of my squad, Stone Bears, every man of us.' With a crooked smile of embarrassment, Mathein quoted the Alba Marmorea's motto. 'Never Found Wanting.'
Catmos saw Thirzafs wolf-pale gaze take in the young man's augmetics and the Medallion Crimson stud on his collar. He only hoped the commissar didn't see the glistening hypo-needle still protruding from Mathein's mediplas thumb.
Thankfully, voices sounded on the stairs.
'Commissar? I'm Lieutenant Jepthad.' The young officer saluted crisply.
Catmos stepped backwards, gesturing to Mathein to do likewise. He made a mental note to adjust the patient's medication after the tranquillium the orderly had administered.
'Let me show you our dispositions, sir, and review the tyranids' last attack,' Jepthad said with a hint of entreaty.
Catmos busied himself redressing the casualty's wounds.
'Vox-sergeant, let Headquarters know we're here.' Thirzat was clearly unimpressed. 'I'll make my full report later.'
'At once, commissar,' Biniam said promptly.
On his way to the stairs, Thirzat paused to look at the heavy-set man. 'Your reputation goes before you, vox-sergeant.'
Biniam looked the commissar straight in the eye. 'Argene Prime, sir?'
Thirzat didn't blink. 'That and other things.' He held Biniam's gaze for a moment before turning to Lieutenant Jepthad. 'Show me your defence lasers' field of fire and the terrain.'
Kicking aside an acid-etched flak-armour breastplate, he strode towards the stairs. The lieutenant and the cadets all followed.
Catmos checked his patient was sleeping soundly. Biniam strolled over to join him rather than heading for the vox-caster in the corner.
'Do you think he considers himself a Stone Bear?' he mused.
'I don't imagine he's much for nicknames.' Catmos said, though he imagined the cadets had some choice names for Thirzat behind his back.
'You were at Argene Prime?' Mathein asked, awestruck.
'He only wears his Honorifica Imperialis stud when he's in trouble with regimental command.' Catmos checked the coloured telltales on the sensor-blanket's corner. The wounded man's heart rate, blood-oxygen and pressure were satisfactory.
'We were both there. Not much to tell,' Biniam said repressively.
Catmos could see Mathein was still desperate to ask. Thankfully he didn't. Catmos had no wish to relive that campaign against the orks. Not when he and Biniam were the only two survivors from their entire company. The Alba Marmorea always boasted Alnavik gave far more than it accepted from the Imperium. They certainly had in the Argene System.
'How's the lieutenant?' Catmos asked in low tones. Jepthad had been expecting to learn from Captain Slaithe, not to replace him within three days of planetfall.
But the universe isn't fair and doesn't care. Every Alnavik child knew that.
Biniam shrugged again. 'He's doing well enough, for a valley whelp.' Like Catmos, he'd been raised in the Marble Mountain quarries. 'As long as his nerve holds.' He looked searchingly at Catmos. 'What about these lads you're patching up and sending out?'
The field surgeon knew what he meant. They couldn't afford to lose men to battle shock, not here, not now. Never mind Commissar Thirzat executing men he accused of cowardice. To have any chance of withstanding the tyranids, every man must hold his ground or die trying, for the sake of all the rest. Thirzat had only spoken the brutal truth. But what good was the truth if it only dismayed already-dispirited men? Fear could be as contagious as blister-pox. If it took hold, it would destroy them as surely and swiftly as any tyranid swarm.
Catmos had been thinking about that. 'Bin, the engineers refitting this place dumped every vox, pict and data-slate they broke down here. Can you scrounge what you need to make a starchaser?'
'A starchaser?' Biniam cocked his head. 'Where's your helmet? What hit your head and how hard?'
Catmos smiled. 'Just do an old comrade a favour.'
Biniam pursed his lips. 'All right, I'll bite, just to see what you want it for. As soon as I've reported in.' He headed for the vox-set, light on his feet for a big man.
'A starchaser?' Mathein was bemused.
'I have an idea. It may not work, even if Biniam can make the thing,' Catmos said evasively. 'Now, let's see who can be holding a lasgun by morning.'
He didn't need to tell Mathein they would need every mattress for casualties from the next tyranid attack.

THE FIELD SURGEON was wrapping the last of the night's dead in his sleepsac when dawn light spilled down the stairs to the basement.
'Ailure?' Biniam tugged at the fold over the man's face. 'He promised his marble bear pelt to Tremarc.' The shoulders of Biniam's own uniform were striped with bear fur.
'Tremarc is over there.' Catmos nodded towards another shrouded corpse. 'Help me get them upstairs.'
'Can't those puking cadets do some work?' Biniam took the dead man's feet nonetheless.
Emerging into the Planetary Defence compound, Catmos blinked in the strengthening sunshine. 'Where to?'
'Over there.' Biniam nodded to a hastily dug trench, paving slabs stacked beside it. The dead were being dumped, stripped of their weapons and gear. A Guardsman sprayed promethium over the corpses and ignited it with a flamer burst.
Catmos's throat tightened, but it was the only way to stay free of insidious tyranid organisms. He looked at more pits covered with habitents pegged flat. 'This can't help morale.'
Biniam scowled. 'Would letting the lads watch their dead pals twitching, splitting open to spill poison-maggots into the soil?'
Catmos looked towards the outer wall. Those lightly wounded the day before, whom he and Mathein had discharged, were arming to rejoin their comrades. Guardsmen unscathed in the first assault stood ready on the rampart. Lieutenant Jepthad was consulting the sentries.
'Still no foe in sight?' Catmos wondered how long it would be.
Biniam nodded northwards. 'Vox-chatter says their main assault hit Yota City. Whatever stink tells them their hivemates are in trouble here is blowing out to sea.'
'How are the other emplacements faring?' This was one of eighteen forts ringing this continent's only city. Catmos didn't imagine the companies sent to hold them were laughing and passing round lho-sticks.
Biniam shook his head. 'Some have dropped off the vox-net-'
Shouts from the rampart interrupted him. Catmos saw Lieutenant Jepthad raise a hand to his ear, intent on his micro-bead.
'Here they come,' breathed the vox-sergeant.
Guardsmen on the walls clustered around their heavy bolters. The weapons' racking cough sent deadly explosive rounds ripping into the tyranids. Oxy-phosphor flares indicated at least one heavy bolter loaded with Inferno ammunition.
In the paved hollow of the compound, mortar squads deployed in unhurried routine. One man dropped a shell in the gaping weapon. The other yanked the firing lanyard and the stubby barrel spat explosives high over the wall. Catmos saw the crews swiftly adjusting azimuth and bearing as spotters on the ramparts relayed details of each detonation. Every round must extract the maximum death toll from the tyranid multitude. Guardsmen resupplying the ramparts with ammo dodged around the mortars.
Retreating to the top of the steps, Catmos was about to go back down to the basement. He changed his mind. His first duty in a battle was assessing the wounded who needed skills and time the medics couldn't spare. He could do that as well if not better up here.
Despite all the heavy-weapon crews' efforts, the first wave of tyranids reached the walls. They leaped into the gaps between the heavy bolters, propelled by powerful hind legs that were bent and angled like a dog's, ending in a bony excrescence that was part hoof, part claw. Talons on their middle limbs hooked securely onto the rampart. They heaved themselves up, hissing and spitting, their forelimbs brandishing bony scythes as long as a man's arm.
One skewered a Guardsman under the chin, his face disappearing in a wash of blood. The creature lifted him off his feet, shaking him to free its claw. Neck snapping, the man's body fell away, limp in death.
The creatures' carapaces were segmented like some giant, loathsome insect. Overlapping plates jutted upwards from their backs, the colour of old rust and dried blood. Beneath, their skeletal limbs and thorax were the sickly white of leprous skin. Grotesquely swollen, red chitin-plated heads roved from side to side. Slime dripped from thrusting jaws, myriad teeth like a needle-shark's. Catmos locked gazes with one of the repellent creatures. Its cat-slit eyes were fever-bright, intent only on mindless murder.
How could they possibly survive? His chest was an empty hollow. Bolter rounds were falling like winter hail and they still could not prevail. Their lasgun power packs would fail before this onslaught faltered. If they killed these vermin till the corpses were piled as high as the rampart, that only gave the tyranids an easier way into the compound.
Catmos's heart raced with panic but his limbs were frozen with fear. He couldn't run. He couldn't reach his laspistol. What was the point? Even the men on the walls were huddling behind their heavy bolters. Seductive despair beckoned, a black blanket to hide beneath.
The lascannons ringing the tower's upper levels burst into life. The alien exploded in a reeking shower of bony fragments and cauterised gobbets of flesh. The same laser blast blew apart the handful following the trailblazer. The air rang with deafening shrieks as beam after beam of brilliant death cut a swathe through the chittering hordes.
The close-packed Guardsmen on the battlements were firing their lasguns. Pinpoint beams severed limbs and gouged deep into those swollen heads. They blinded noxious eyes and slashed flickering tongues clean through. Lieutenant Jepthad stepped out of a heavy bolter's shadow and calmly focussed his fire on one murderously flailing tyranid after another.
Catmos drew a shuddering breath. He felt like some fool turning his back on a winter blizzard to huddle over a petrosene stove, not caring that blocking winter's draughts through his house was starving the heater of fresh air. Not knowing the glowing element would burn all the oxygen, condemning everyone to sleep-sick death. Now he felt as if someone had kicked open the door and dragged him out, letting the biting wind scour the toxins from his blood.
Squad medics were patching up wounded men and sending them back. No one expected different. Back on Alnavik, if a marble bear chased you, you climbed a razor pine and didn't complain about your cuts. You were alive, weren't you? Catmos ripped his laspistol from its holster, ready to offer covering fire to a pair of medics carrying a casualty down from the rampart. The man clutched at his broken breastplate, blood oozing over his fingers. 'The gates! The gates!'
Men on the walls were yelling. Lieutenant Jepthad slid down a ladder and raced across the compound. Something hit the outer face of the gates, fifteen metres in front of the tower. The impact was deafening. The layered plasteel buckled but didn't break. Catmos's relief was short-lived. As the gates twisted, a narrow gap opened by one hinge. A massive barbed claw carefully explored the weakness.
There was a second explosion; something detonated right against the entrance. The plasteel held but gaps were opening all around the gates. Bubbling black acid oozed, weakening the ceramite plating.
The lascannons on the tower would defend the entrance if the gates gave way. Catmos looked around, shielding his eyes from the blinding beams. But the lascannons were aiming higher, not lower.
Bat-like shadows blighted the sunshine. These tyranids flew on leathery wings, membranes spread between the splayed bones of their mutated middle limbs. Their evil gaze searched for targets, their fore-limbs clutching weapon-symbiotes. Catmos tensed as the monstrosities flew high above the ramparts, their viciously barbed tails lashing between their atrophied hind legs. Would they hover and fire or stoop like a hawk for the kill? Either way, the Guardsmen on the walls couldn't take their eyes off the tyranid ground assault, not if they wished to live.
Lascannons burned through the warm air. The flying tyranids caught in their crosshairs disintegrated. Any of the vermin too close to those initial casualties fell too, wings shredded by razor shards of shattered chitin. But as they tumbled from the sky, their weapon-symbiotes still spat borer worms at the mortar crews. Crashing onto the paving, their twisting tails cut Guardsmen's legs from under them. Contorted spines embedded in men's thighs as the flying tyranids flailed in their death throes.
Those monstrosities still aloft vomited lurid gobs of bio-plasma. Catmos saw one spatter a grey-haired Guardsman. Clinging green fire ignited his flak-armour, his hair. Snarling with agony and hatred, the man kept firing, bringing down the alien who killed him. The merciful ignition of his lasgun's powerpack freed him from his torment, an instant before Catmos's finger tightened on his laspistol trigger.
The twisted gate screeched. Massive russet claws slid through the foaming black acid. Barbs dug deep as whatever was outside pulled harder, inexorably widening the gap. Ceramite began to rupture.
'With me!'
Commissar Thirzat charged out of the central tower, flak-armour over his tunic, his plasma pistol in one hand, a power sword in the other. Cadets followed carrying flakboard. Others hauled rockcrete beams. Rallying to Lieutenant Jepthad, the Guardsmen in the compound began forcing a path to the entrance, despatching wounded tyranids fallen from the sky, stamping on ravenous borer beetles scuttling round their boots. Mortar crews dragged their weapons aside, sacrificing range and aim. Undeterred, they resumed firing blindly.
Catmos and every soldier on the tower's platforms concentrated their fire on the scything tyranids still scrambling over the wall. Up on the ramparts, men fought and bled. If those vermin attacked the Guardsmen and cadets, their attempt to reinforce the entrance was doomed.
Guardsmen and cadets formed a solid wedge, Thirzat at its tip. Step by dogged step, the commissar led them forwards. Catmos could see the shimmer of heat from weapons rising above the cadets in the centre, still grimly dragging forwards materials to repair the breach. Lieutenant Jepthad was walking backwards, resolute in command of the rear.
Too late. With a mighty heave, those monstrous claws ripped the left-hand gate in half. Unlike the creatures scuttling over the compound paving, this creature stood upright: a repellent parody of a man with its fingered hands clutching a weapon-symbiote. It was twice the size of the tallest Alba Marmorean, even standing on its bent legs. Its massive carapace and the chitinous plates jutting from its head were the putrid brown of rotten fruit. Its uppermost pallid limbs bore massive talons brandished high above its broad shoulders.
Catmos recalled an Officio Medicae briefing, longer ago than he could guess. This was a tyranid warrior. One of the most deadly creatures the Hive Mind spawned, dominating lesser progeny and driving them to do its will.
Smaller tyranids were fighting to get through the gap behind it. Scurrying across the compound paving, they reared up on mid- and hind-claws, forelimbs clutching fleshborers and devourers.
For an instant that seemed half a lifetime, the tyranid warrior surveyed the carnage. As the closest Guardsman levelled his lasgun, a new horror sprang out from behind it, so fast Catmos took a moment to realise what had happened.
This was a different monster, more slightly built with twice-jointed uppermost limbs studded with fang-like claws to pierce and crush. It wasn't using those, flinging out its clawed hand instead. For an instant, Catmos allowed himself to hope. It had no hope of reaching the Guardsman. Then he saw that didn't matter. Bony hooks shot out from the tyranid's skeletal flanks, embedding in the Guardsman's arms and face. The creature raised its clawed limbs again. Sinews linking the hooks to its narrow body contracted. Despite his frantic struggles, the hapless Guardsman was drawn into the tyranid's grotesque embrace.
The hooks were already tearing him to pieces. Dripping tentacles hanging from the alien's maw caressed his head. Their tips slithered into his ears, his mouth. As the man writhed, the creature's grip tightened. Now the tendrils thrust into his eyes, his nostrils. Blood and mucus gushed as spasms wracked the dying man.
The vile tyranid shivered with obscene satisfaction, throwing its victim aside. Its gory tentacles gently licked each other clean of brain tissue. Jaundiced gold, its luminous eyes fastened on a new target. Another abrupt gesture flung its flesh hooks to snare the soldier.
Commissar Thirzat was charging towards it. His power sword cut through the sinews. A plasma pistol shot took it straight in the face and its seared tentacles shrivelled. The monster staggered backwards to collapse in a thrashing heap.
The massive tyranid warrior rounded on Thirzat with a roar, as soldiers, mortar crews and medicae were all turning their lasguns on the tyranids in the compound. The alien vermin shrieked and died as their armoured exoskeletons fractured under ceaseless las-fire. The heavy bolters on the ramparts were still mowing down the swarms attacking the outside of the walls.
No one could help Commissar Thirzat fighting the tyranid warrior. His plasma shots targeted its mouth, its eyes, the underside of its joints every time it swiped with a murderous claw. His power sword cut deep in its forelimbs as he ducked and weaved. Catmos hadn't ever seen a fighting man so quick on his feet.
With an ear-piercing shriek of fury, the monstrosity took an unexpected step back. The lesser tyranids behind it wavered. The warrior slipped on some fallen flyer's wing membrane, giving Thirzat the chance to break away. Jepthad and the rearguard fired a concentrated volley at it. Ichor glistening on its carapace, the massive creature retreated, lashing out indiscriminately at the milling cohorts outside the gate. As it vanished, the assault slackened, not much but just enough.
'Secure that breach!' Thirzat bellowed, near-breathless.
The cadets were already busy with their flakboard and rockcrete as Jepthad's men blasted the lesser spawn to bloody ruin. While the rest of the Guardsmen killed those tyranids trapped inside, Catmos assessed the most grievously wounded. A cut to the thigh, bright with arterial blood. He pressed a suction-dressing down hard. A hand half-cut, half-tom from its wrist. A styptic-bandage and some tranquillium and that could wait. A grey-faced Guardsman with bloody froth on his bluish lips. Priority Red: his first patient. Etrick and Tind were responsible for the wounded who could be returned to the battle. Catmos fought to save the worst injured for medevac.
Hurrying down to the basement, he found Mathein and the other two orderlies had shifted the recovering wounded to sit on rolled sleepsacs, leaning against the walls. On the mattresses, sensor blankets gleamed with fresh counterseptic, telltales blinking in readiness. Thermosealed trays of servoclamps and electroscalpels were stacked high. Etrick and Tind were ready at their operating tables and the blood recycler hummed. The resuscitrex diodes indicated it was fully charged.
'Let's get to work,' Catmos said grimly.

ONCE UPON A time, the field surgeon had kept a tally of the wounded he tended. When medics serving the Alba Marmorea were summoned by the Officio Medicae, to be shown advances in battlefield surgery, orderlies compared notes. This many wounded, this many saved, so many restored with bionics, so many dead, the fallen toasted with shots of amasec.
Now Catmos simply concentrated on the patient bleeding beneath his electroscalpel, no thought for the body he'd just mended, for whoever the orderlies might bring next. His whole world was the life trickling through his fingers unless he could find the way to stop it.
He packed a wound with gauze. 'Next!'
Danger, hunger, weariness were all irrelevant until every wounded Guardsman was treated.
'That's all,' Mathein said wearily as he lifted the casualty away, his bionic arm making light work of it.
'Truly?' Catmos looked up, startled to see evening shadows clotting the stairwell. He had completely lost track of the passing day.
His meditunic was stiff with dried blood and discarded plastek gloves lay in drifts round his feet, along with a stray finger. It had been ripped from a Guardsman's hand, caught in his trigger guard when a tyranid smashed his weapon aside. A tattooed arm wrapped in mediplas was set to one side. The bone had been so mangled that amputation was the only option. The wreckage of an eyeball glistened in a steel dish, ruined by a boring bio-worm. At least cutting it out had saved that Guardsman's life. But a clotted tangle of entrails was testament to failure. The patient had bled out from a lacerated liver as Catmos fought frantically to kill all the borers wriggling through the man's abdomen.
Mathein would have an accurate tally. Catmos might not count them but someone had to. No, that could wait.
'Field surgeon?' Lieutenant Jepthad was coming down the steps.
'Sir.' Catmos saluted the young man, belatedly realising his arm was aching.
'How are the men?' Jepthad asked quietly.
Catmos considered his reply. 'Every man of Alnavik accepts life is lethal, whether he stays dirt-side or becomes a Stone Bear. So we stand firm when lesser regiments fail. But this enemy-' He shook his head. 'It's a sore trial.'
The lieutenant surveyed the wounded, on the mattresses and sitting by the walls. Unexpectedly, he smiled.
'It's said the tyranid are fearless,' he remarked. 'They're not. They're mindless. Did you see that today? There's no spark of independent thought in their eyes, and that's why we will prevail.'
Catmos covertly surveyed the Guardsmen's faces. They didn't look convinced, though plenty looked curious. At least that was better than exhausted dejection.
'Tyranids cannot think for themselves,' the young officer said scornfully. 'They're puppets doing the Hive Mind's will. We're men. We think for ourselves. Yes, we're scared.' Jepthad surprised everyone with that bold declaration. 'And we know why. Because those abominations somehow reflect the evils of the warp to cast this fearsome shadow over their foes.'
His voice was calm, reassuring. Valley-dwellers always prided themselves on their wisdom, Catmos reflected. Of all the descendants of Holy Terra hardy enough to colonise the ice-bound planet, they had the wit to claim Alnavik's sheltering dales. They didn't have to prove themselves quarrying the fine white marble that adorned Imperial temples across half the sector. They saw no merit in measuring themselves against the perils of the sea. Squid didn't care.
Jepthad walked round the room, entirely at ease. 'I could do without their psyker spite gnawing at my thoughts,' he said frankly. 'But we won't be found wanting. We have the intelligence to see that fear for a mindless lie. We know what we face. We know we can trust our weapons and our comrades. Best of all, we know help's coming.'
He gestured upwards. 'That's a single hive ship in orbit, some lost remnant of a splinter fleet that's been drifting through empty space since Hive Fleet Kraken was broken. I don't say it's no threat,' he allowed. 'Never underestimate tyranids. That's why the Praetors of Orpheus are on their way.'
Catmos was encouraged to see smiles of relief and hope. The Praetors of Orpheus had fought heroically on Narthil III. The Stone Bears recognised their debt to the awe-inspiring warriors.
After acknowledging the exultation that news prompted, Jepthad continued. 'So our task is to hold out against the tyranids till the Praetors of Orpheus attack them from space. Then the vermin will be crushed between us!'
'Then you'll be needing this, sir.' Biniam strode forwards from the stair. He held out a power claw. A bear's mask snarled above the three shimmering blades.
For the first time, Jepthad was shaken. 'That's Captain Slaithe's-'
'You've earned it,' Biniam insisted.
All the wounded shouted agreement. Several brandished the brass bear claws favoured by the rank and file: knuckledusters adorned with talons.
'It was damaged.' Reluctant, Jepthad accepted the fearsome plated gauntlet.
Biniam shrugged. 'I saw to that.'
Catmos reckoned the vox-sergeant could restart a stricken Imperial Navy cruiser with the wires from half a pict and some Sentinel datachips.
'I will wear it with pride.' Jepthad thrust his hand inside and flourished the weapon. 'To kill any tyranid that comes within reach, in Captain Slaithe's memory!'
'Stone Bears!' a man shouted. 'Hard enough to eat rocks and shit gravel!' yelled another.
The cheers and laughter broke off as a cadet hurried down the stairs.
'Commissar Thirzat's compliments.' He saluted Jepthad. 'Please compile your report for the vox-sergeant to transmit with his.'
Jepthad nodded. 'Sergeant?'
Biniam nodded at the resuscitrex. 'I just need to look at that.'
'Orderly.' Catmos glanced at Mathein. 'It's time the men were settled.'
As Jepthad headed for the stairs, Biniam came over to the operating table.
'To amuse yourself when you can't sleep?' Pretending to examine the resuscitrex, he passed Catmos some mongrel offspring of a pocket data-slate and a handheld pict.
'Drop by later and you'll see.' The field surgeon nodded to the storerooms by the rear stairwell. 'Just don't interrupt. And thanks for this.'
'What would you do without me?' Biniam sauntered after the hurrying lieutenant.
Seeing the junior surgeons making checks on the casualties, Catmos went to the storeroom where they'd dumped the junk from the rest of the basement. By the time he'd made space for two chairs Mathein appeared with the day's full report.
'Nine more dead, eighteen wounded.' The orderly looked expectantly at the curiously rigged data-slate, the screen barely the size of Catmos's hand. 'So what's that for?'
'Who's at worst risk of battle shock, among the men fit to fight tomorrow?'
Barely half were left unscathed now, of the comrades who'd been ordered to hold this emplacement. How many would freeze tomorrow, Catmos wondered, overwhelmed by fear, by recollection of the slaughter they'd already seen, by the sheer impossibility of their task? Until they were slaughtered by the tyranids or cut down by the commissar's pistol?
Mathein thought. 'Otharen.'
'Bring him here.' Catmos switched on the data-slate and smiled as coloured lights darted round the black screen. He quickly set the simple game's parameters.
As Mathein opened the storeroom door, he indicated a chair. 'Guardsman, please, sit.'
Otharen lowered himself down. His torso was swathed in bandages. 'Sir?'
'Report, Guardsman,' Catmos said briskly. 'Tell me exactly what happened to you today.'
'I crew a mortar,' Otharen said uncertainly.
Catmos took the other chair. 'You were close by when the gate was breached?'
Now he recognised the young man. He'd nearly been the second victim of the lanky tyranid the commissar had killed.
'Talwhit, he was my crewmate.' Rimmed with white, Otharen's eyes bored straight through Catmos, seeing only horrors. 'It ate- it ate-'
'Guardsman!' Catmos clapped his hands. 'Look at me.'
Otharen dragged himself back from the terrifying memory, though he was helpless to stop the shudders wracking him.
'Stand up.' Without asking Catmos, Mathein draped a sensor blanket over Otharen's chair. 'Now sit.'
As the Guardsman numbly obeyed, Catmos handed him the rigged data-slate.
'Otharen, I want you to tell me everything that happened, everything you feared and felt. But while you're doing that, you must play the starchaser.' He reached over and double-tapped the screen. 'Like when you were a cub.'
'Sir?' The Guardsman was utterly confused.
The starchaser beeped reprovingly. Otharen had failed to follow the pattern of lights with his finger.
'Just do it, soldier,' Catmos said sternly.
Ingrained habits of obedience set Otharen tapping the screen. Yellow top, blue left, green right, blue left catching out Otharen's finger anticipating the next light at the bottom. Red at the top, Otharen only just holding back in time. Red for danger, tap that and the game was over. The lights sped up, green, orange, purple, darting into the corners, each one needing a tap before the next one blinked into view. White, a double tap for that, the star itself.
'Tell me everything that happened,' Catmos repeated. 'No, don't stop. Keep chasing the stars.'
Otharen swallowed. 'Me and Talwhit were firing the mortar.'
This time he managed a few more sentences before the horror choked him.
The sensor blanket telltales were glowing red. Mathein stepped forwards but Catmos held him back with a raised hand.
The starchaser bleeped insistently. Otharen blinked and focussed on the screen. 'Sorry,' he mumbled.
'Reset the game,' Catmos insisted.
'We were firing the mortar.' Otharen doggedly obeyed, prodding the screen with a numb finger. 'Reynas was spotting for us, up on the walls.'
Catmos didn't know how many false starts and repetitions it took. But Otharen was finally able to endure reliving the terror of Talwhit's death. The sensor telltales still showed amber but his panicked brainwaves had subsided, the racing heartbeat and the sweating. The young man's voice was steady, his gaze fixed on the starchaser, his finger steadily following the flickering lights.
The device acknowledged his success with a sweet chime. Otharen looked up at Catmos and scrubbed tears from his stubbled cheeks with his other hand. 'Sir?'
'Very good, Guardsman.' Catmos smiled as he took the starchaser. 'Now get some sleep.'
Mathein was standing behind the chair, carefully watching the sensors. As he turned, he stiffened to attention. Thirzat was in the doorway.
'Orderly,' the commissar said curtly. 'See your patient to his mattress.'
Mathein looked uncertainly at Catmos.
'Go on.' The field surgeon nodded.
As Mathein escorted Otharen out, Thirzat entered the storeroom and closed the door. 'What was that?'
'A treatment for the mind, now we've tended his body.' Catmos spoke with more confidence than he necessarily felt. 'Like the lieutenant said, tyranids are mindless. We're not.'
'Some unsanctioned psyker trick? I'll break you if it is,' Thirzat warned, with more than the usual distaste for psykers.
'Check my records. I've no hint of psychic potential.' Catmos held up the starchaser. 'It's a variation on an old trick of my mother's.'
That prompted surprise in the commissar's cold eyes. 'Explain.'
Catmos gestured to the empty chair. 'My mother was a healer on Alnavik.'
'In the quarries?' Thirzat sat down, stiff-backed.
'Accidents are a fact of life, like ships going down in the ocean.' Catmos shrugged. 'She mended broken bones and amputated crushed limbs. Then there were the nightmares tormenting men and women who'd been digging out the dead and injured from under a rockfall, as well as crippling those who'd been trapped. The same as battle shock in the Guard.'
'Afflicting those lacking resolve.' Thirzat was wholly unsympathetic.
'You might think so,' Catmos said mildly, 'if you didn't know a person had been brave and steadfast before. My mother wouldn't abandon someone she knew to be true steel. She swore getting someone to talk through their trials enabled them to defeat their fear. When they could do that without flinching, they could face the terror again.'
Thirzat looked at him unsmiling. 'I'm waiting for your explanation.'
Catmos wondered briefly how the Commissariat surgically removed a sense of humour.
'Getting someone to talk through their fears is impossible if the fear's all they have to focus on,' he said crisply. 'Giving them something else to do with their hands, with their eyes, distracts them just enough to take the edge off the terror. I can't explain the whys and wherefores of it. I just know it works. My mother would give her patients a rhythm to tap out, one of the mountain songs everyone knows.' He held up the rigged data-slate. 'I don't know any music from the dales and the coast. But everyone plays starchaser.'
Thirzat looked at the field surgeon for a long moment. 'Will that boy hold his ground tomorrow?'
'I don't know,' Catmos said honestly. 'But the odds are better than they were before.'
'How many will you play this game with?' the commissar demanded.
'As many as I can. Why not?' Catmos challenged. 'If it does no good, can it do any harm?'
'Beyond depriving the wounded of sleep?' Thirzat grunted. 'We need every man standing.'
'We need every man holding his ground.' Catmos threw the commissar's own words back at him. 'And if that boy dies, I want him to die with honour, not condemned as a coward by your pistol. In the meantime,' he pointed at the sensor blanket's telltales, 'why don't I dress your wounds?'
'It's nothing.' A muscle flickering in his jaw, Thirzat rose to his feet.
'Commissar, don't be a fool,' Catmos said curtly. 'How will the men hold out without you?'
The first hint of a smile lightened the commissar's expression. 'Lieutenant Jepthad will do his duty.' But he shrugged off his greatcoat.
The commissar had removed his uniform tunic earlier. Despite Thirzat's skills and agility, Catmos saw the tyranid warrior's claws had sliced deep in a few places. 'Take off that undershirt.'
Mathein was waiting anxiously outside the door. 'Sir?'
'It's all right.' Catmos fetched counterseptic and suture-glue. 'Let me patch him up, then fetch another showing signs of battle shock.' He paused. 'Find a Guardsman called Nyal. See how he's faring.'
He went back and tended Thirzat's injuries. The wounds cut through old scars. It would be easier to dislike the commissar, Catmos reflected, without incontrovertible proof of his courage. Thirzat's back had no scars at all.
'So, can I continue?' Catmos scoured a red-rimmed gash, swollen with tyranid venom.
'If I thought we'd live to see the Praetors of Orpheus arrive, I'd forbid it, and report you to the Officio Medicae.' Now Thirzat's smile reminded Catmos of a death's head. 'Since I doubt I'll get the chance, you may as well carry on.'
'You don't think we will get out of here?' Catmos concentrated on matching the edges of the wound as he applied the suture-glue. 'We drove that monstrosity back, didn't we? A tyranid warrior, if I recall my training?'
'It didn't yield that ground,' Thirzat said through gritted teeth. 'The Hive Mind called it off once that other creature had learned what it needed. The one with the tentacles, that was a lictor.' He nodded with satisfaction when he saw Catmos's belated recognition. 'Not all tyranids are puppets, whatever the lieutenant says.'
The commissar rose and picked up his greatcoat. 'The bigger ones know what they're doing. That warrior will be back, or something worse, with a new plan to overwhelm us and ten times the vermin following.'
'What did they learn that could help it?' Catmos tried to hide his dismay.
'Doubtless we'll find out tomorrow.' Thirzat shrugged. 'Make sure your orderly knows what to do.'
'In case of the worst.' Catmos knew his duty. He swallowed hard. 'But I'll still hope for the best.'
'It's best not to hope. Then there's nothing left to fear.' Thirzat opened the door and strode through the basement, head high, shoulders back, exuding confidence.
While he was expecting everyone to die? Suddenly Catmos was furious. No. He wouldn't accept the commissar's dire prediction.
'What did he have to say?' Biniam approached from the shadowed back stairs.
Catmos was chilled by his friend's grim voice. 'What news on the vox?'
'HQ's astropath just died, screaming about shadows in the warp, bleeding from his eyes and nose,' Biniam muttered. 'No one knows where the Praetors of Orpheus are.'
'What about the other emplacements?' Catmos contemplated the wounded men.
'Six more dropped off the vox-net.' Biniam shook his head. 'No word from Yota City.'
'So we hold out 'til we're relieved or we're all dead.' Catmos beckoned to Mathein.
Which wouldn't be long, given they'd taken such devastating casualties in two days. But there was still work to do, to stop him succumbing to his own fear, if nothing else.

BY DAWN, CATMOS was confident nineteen more men were safe from paralysing terrors, Nyal among them.
'Thank you, Mathein.' As the orderly escorted the patient out, he carefully closed the door. Then he hurled the starchaser at the storeroom wall. It shattered, useless fragments bouncing everywhere.
Those men might be safe from their fears but what could save them from being eaten by lictors? What use could twenty more lasguns be against numberless tyranids? Were his night's endeavours a waste of time? Was Commissar Thirzat right?
Catmos was too exhausted to decide. Still, there was nothing of the tyranids' insidious dread about his apprehension. He knew it for clear-eyed understanding of their mortal peril. But as his mother always said, if he understood his fear, he could fight it.
Leaving the storeroom, he saw Biniam hunched over the caster. The vox-sergeant looked up at Catmos and briefly shook his head.
The lascannon on the tower's upper tier opened fire. Everyone in the basement froze.
Catmos swiftly assessed the bedridden patients, counting those who could handle a weapon. He beckoned to a sergeant waiting with the men fit for the ramparts.
'Ask Lieutenant Jepthad for thirty lasguns or pistols down here,' he said briskly.
'Not sure if we have that many to spare, sir.' The sergeant's bleak face told Catmos how truly dire their situation now was.
'Field surgeon?' The skin around Mathein's augmetic eye was pale and taut, the other sunk in a bruise of weariness.
'Come with me.' Catmos went to the resuscitrex. He flicked switches and the machine hummed ominously.
Mathein looked at him with misgiving. 'What-'
'If the tyranids overrun the emplacement, give the most seriously wounded the Emperor's benediction,' Catmos ordered. 'A jolt stops a beating heart as surely as it restarts a dead one. Anyone capable of holding a weapon must save a shot for themselves.' Unlocking a panel in the resuscitrex, he removed two glass vials. Drawing the contents of one into a hypostick, he handed the other to Mathein. 'This is for you. Pruscyan. Quick and painless.'
'What are you going to do?' Mathein asked, alarmed.
Pocketing the lethal hypostick, Catmos walked towards the storeroom. 'If this is the last day I see, I'll die with a weapon in my hands.' He found his own kit, mismatched reminders of decades of travel and war. There were still a few things he'd brought from Alnavik.
'What's that?' Mathein looked wide-eyed at the unfamiliar weapon.
'A long rifle.' Catmos checked the ammunition before offering his hand. 'It's been an honour to serve with you.'
Mathein stepped back, shaking his head. 'I'll find a lasgun.'
'You will stay here and save our patients from the enemy,' Catmos said sternly.
The young orderly would be safer in the basement, if by some caprice of the uncaring universe, any of them lived through this day. Then there would be wounded to treat, Catmos reminded himself. He wasn't about to spend his life for no purpose, while that duty remained.
Mathein nodded, unable to speak.
Catmos hurried away up the back stairs though. He couldn't face walking through the wounded.
Heavy footsteps rang on the metal steps behind him. He turned, levelling the long rifle.
'Stone Bears!' Biniam held up his hands in mock surrender. 'Where are you going, scat-face?'
'I've done all I can for the wounded 'til this battle's over, one way or the other.' Catmos scowled. 'You should be on the vox.'
'Listening to dead air?' Biniam shook his head. 'I'll die with a gun in my hand.'
'Come on then.' Catmos turned and they headed upwards.
The warm sunlight on the topmost platform mocked their fatigue. This high above the reeking tyranid dead, fallen thick as autumn leaves as far as the eye could see, Catmos realised forest scents were sweetening the breeze. He took a deep, fragrant breath then looked down into the compound.
Not all the mortars were manned this time. Lacking ammunition or trained crews? Ammunition, Catmos guessed, seeing Otharen standing by one, lasgun in hand, ready to defend it or take over firing, depending on how the fight went. At least all the heavy bolters on the thrusting bastions were crewed. But how long before they emptied their remaining magazines? They couldn't hold these walls with valour alone.
'Here they come.' Biniam readied his lasgun.
Leaping, scything tyranids attacked from all sides. No matter how many the wall-mounted heavy bolters cut down, more followed. They flung their bony hooks, scrambling up the twisted sinews linking the living grapnels to their bodies. Once up on the ramparts to right and left of the gates, they hurled themselves at the bolters. For every five shot down by the Guardsmen desperately defending the weapons, ten more followed.
These were different beasts to the previous day's assailants. Their carapaces thicker, they clutched stubby symbiotes that spat seemingly insignificant glittering showers. The Guardsmen screamed in agony out of all proportion to their tiny wounds. Dropping their lasguns, they clawed at their faces and scraped their hands against the rockcrete, not caring as they spilled their own blood. Then racked by sudden convulsions, every man fell to lie rigid and helpless.
Some toppled from the ramparts, making no effort to save themselves. Catmos winced as skulls shattered on the paving. Others sprawled broken-legged, splinters of bone piercing their clothing. Those lying stiff on the ramparts were ripped to pieces by the tyranids. But the bolter crews on the neighbouring bastions swiftly turned their fire on the vermin, to deny those weapons to the enemy as well as avenge their comrades. The bolter to the left of the gate exploded, the remaining ammunition deliberately detonated in a Guardsman's dying defiance.
Biniam was cursing, repetitious, monotonous as he fired shot after shot with his lasgun. Catmos rested his long rifle on the platform's rail and carefully took aim at a sturdy tyranid with a blotched head. It disappeared from his reticule in a shower of slime.
Below, the lascannons on the tower swivelled on their mounts. Taking his eye from the scope, Catmos searched the sky. He couldn't see any of the flying vermin today. The defence lasers hummed and Catmos realised they were levelling at the ramparts on either side of the gate.
The lascannons opened fire, sweeping from one side to the other. Because no friends were holding those forward walls, any Guardsmen still alive was a helpless victim of the tyranids' paralysing, agonising poisons.
'With me! With me!'
Lieutenant Jepthad was down in the compound with a squad of veteran Guardsmen. They took a stand between the tyranids leaping down from the ramparts and the single-minded mortar crews still clustered in the centre, firing salvo after salvo aimed just outside the gates. Shoulder to shoulder, the Guardsmen didn't flinch, steadily pouring las-fire into the chittering, flailing beasts. The compound paving was littered with broken chitin and slick with ichor spewed by dying tyranids.
The gates abruptly disintegrated in a cloud of black dust. No explosion, it was a sigh of defeat. The deadly pall swept into the compound and Guardsmen caught up in it collapsed, choking, unable to even gasp a last curse.
As the dust settled, a new horror stood in the entrance. One clawed hand held a monstrous sword of blackened bone. The other brandished an obscene lash, whips of living muscle twisting around each other, tipped with razor talons.
Biniam swore.
Was it the same tyranid warrior as yesterday? Catmos couldn't tell and it really didn't matter. He found it with his scope and saw murderous purpose lighting the amber eyes beneath the fanned chitin plates protecting the creature's head.
He recalled the commissar's words. The big ones know what they're doing. Thirzat was shouting something else now but Catmos couldn't make it out over the din of battle.
The tyranid warrior brandished its sword and threw back its head, shrieking. Every creature in the compound answered with a cry of bloodlust. The sound went beyond simple hearing, lacerating every Guardsman's resolve. The tyranids resumed their attack, even more deadly than before.
Biniam's voice shook. 'Kill the big ones, the commissar's saying.'
He had the weapon to do that and crucially he had the skills. Catmos concentrated and drew a long breath. Exhaling till his lungs were empty, counting his pulse to fire between heartbeats, he gently squeezed the trigger. He missed. Of course. The breeze.
'How far off?' Biniam demanded.
'No idea,' Catmos spat. Pain in his shoulder from the weapon's vicious recoil was nothing to the lash of failure.
'I'll spot for you.' Biniam snatched up his magnoculars.
Catmos shot a second bolt.
'Three marks off to the top-right,' Biniam advised. 'Wait! No shot!'
Through his scope's narrow view, Catmos saw Lieutenant Jepthad attacking the tyranid warrior.
The monster brandished its bony sword. The officer dodged the black blade, but was lashed by the living whip. He flung up his arms to defend his face. Merciless loops tightened round his chest, squeezing the life from him, dragging him towards the beast's glistening fangs.
Guardsmen racing forwards to his aid were forced back by a slavering wave of lesser tyranids. The lieutenant wasn't struggling in the whip's coils now. Arms hanging limp, he was dragged towards the massive creature's lethal talons.
Catmos steadied the long rifle. His whole universe was the view through the scope. One bolt would release Jepthad to a merciful death and still kill the monstrous warrior.
He frowned. He could see Jepthad's face. The officer's eyes were alert. The creature stooped, dagger-toothed mouth gaping, reptilian tongue tasting the air. Jepthad's hands were still free. Captain Slaithe's power claw crackled with blue lightning. With a convulsive effort, Jepthad brought up his arm and drove the coruscating blades deep down the tyranid's throat.
The monster died with a screech of agony that sent a shiver of uncertainty through every single tyranid. Guardsmen still fighting in the compound seized their chance and took every shot they could.
But Catmos saw a new horror. The habitents covering the pits of the dead were heaving. Serpentine tyranids ripped through the fabric with twin pairs of rending claws. Scattering rotting limbs and heads, they undulated across the paving. As the Guardsmen ran to attack, the creatures reared up on a thick twist of their muscular tails or used the pincered end to murderous effect. One man lost a foot, his boot cut clean through.
Catmos spared a moment to wonder if that's what the lictor had learned, when it had devoured poor Talwhit's brain. This new way to get inside their defences, which it shared with the Hive Mind that spawned it.
The wriggling tyranids fanned out across the compound, some heading for the mortar crews now standing back to back, some attacking the Guardsmen still desperately trying to reach Lieutenant Jepthad, half-crushed beneath the fallen monster. Others writhed towards the steps that would take them down to the basement and the wounded lying there.
Catmos recognised a voice shouting defiance down below. A Guardsman planted himself solidly in the tyranids' path. It was Otharen, rallying as many men as he could, his lasgun firing steadily. As long as he was standing, the wounded would be defended.
Surely that was Nyal beside him? It was hard to tell, with every man in armour and helmet, but the tilt of his shoulders was familiar.
The young Guardsman ran forwards, dodging the slashing talons of a ravening tyranid. Firing his lasgun one-handed momentarily kept the foe at bay. He had a tube-charge in his other hand. Letting his lasgun hang loose on its sling for an instant, he twisted the tube's cap and threw the explosive hard into one of the pits. Corpses and tyranids alike were blown to pieces.
But Nyal didn't retreat. Cutting the tyranid still menacing him down with a final lasgun shot, he twisted the cap of a second tube-charge.
Catmos's heart pounded, his pulse counting off the seconds of the fuse. Then Nyal stooped and threw it, long and low, aimed right into the far end of the pit. This time the explosion was muffled, the compound paving buckling and then sagging as the tyranid tunnel was destroyed. Catmos allowed himself a breath of hope. Until he realised a second tyranid warrior stood in the ruined gateway.
Raising a massive weapon in its middle claws, it fired a metallic stream of crystals at a lascannon. The weapon exploded in a deluge of sparks. Its crew fell backwards screaming, shining acid stripping flesh from their hands and faces, eating away bone beneath.
Thirzat led a squad down the tower steps, his power sword levelled straight at the creature. The men charged towards the warrior. Otharen and the mortar crews followed, lasguns blazing. Lesser creatures invading the entrance died in droves.
No, Catmos decided. The tale of this day's heroics belonged to Jepthad, even if no one lived to tell it. He rested his rifle on the rail, focussed through the scope and carefully judged the breeze. This time his first shot sent a deuterium bolt through the warrior's eye.
He reached into his pocket for the deadly hypostick. 'Pruscyan. Enough for two.'
'Keep it for another day.' Biniam's magnoculars tilted upwards.
Down in the compound, the tyranid incursion had lost its deadly purpose. Commissar Thirzat was rallying the surviving Guardsmen to secure the gate. Bolter crews on the bastions were holding their own. The tower's lascannons angled downwards, blasting open the tyranid tunnels to reveal countless twisted corpses.
The breeze shifted and Catmos smelled the scorch of ozone. He looked up to see pinpricks of light piercing the cloudless blue as thrusters fired. Drop-pods screamed through the fragrant air. As the Guardsmen holding the compound began cheering, the Praetors of Orpheus landed on all sides beyond the walls. Tyranids scattered in every direction. None was fast enough to escape the righteous fury of the Space Marines and their murderously accurate fire.