Death Blade

Section One

I. Section 1. An Encounter.

I. Commander Casian:

Darkness, infinite, swirling darkness, the sound of a monstrous fire crackling, the tortured screams of the dying, a deep rumbling in the distance. With a mind rending bellow the hoarse whispering voice began, a dying scream, an insane cackle and a bestial growl crackling and hissing with fatty flames, filling his quivering hearts with an irrepressible dread. It was all around him, taunting him:

Casian…Casian…its almost time…your destiny beckons for you…I’m coming Casian, I’m coming for you… you will set me free…

Laughter boomed threateningly, all encompassing petals of red flame rushed up from the black to meet him. Resting in the centre of them was a great, dark hand, reaching up and chilling his very soul before pulling him down to what was most terrible of all: the face. The great face leered up at him, its single huge cracked red eye aglow, the other merely a gaping pit encrusted with rosy scar tissue. Its skin writhed with maggots and its pallid flesh was torn, rotten and puss covered. He screamed as he was pulled closer to its gaping mouth of broken, mossy teeth.

Hail me Casian, for I am your lord, Orageos, the greater of the twin Gods.

Then there was nothingness. Images began to swim into view… a few blurred shapes…dazzling white brightness…a deep voice in his head… couldn’t quite make out what it was saying… but before it could finish it faded into mirthful oblivion and Casian burst from the depths of insanity gasping for breath, sweat drenched and shuddering.

This time it was worse than ever. He had been cursed with these visions every night since as long ago as he could remember, but never this bad. Night by night they were growing steadily worse, these days Casian avoided closing his eyes until the leaden weights of sleep grew to become an irresistible force.

The Milky Way is a troubled galaxy. Casian knew that better than any man alive. Even as humanity stretched its fledgling wings as it struggled to rise from the shackles of an insignificant, overpopulated solar system, there was war.

Over the following millennia of seemingly endless bloodshed, an order grew, the mailed fist of the bloated and sprawling empire of man.

Casian sighed and ran his hand through his short black hair. Why couldn’t the people of the galaxy see them for what they were? Why revere an order of warriors with eternally bloodied hands? They called them the God-warriors, or Taui-kun. Casian could never understand that. Through his time as Legion Commander of the Angels Of Death he had killed enough men, monsters and aliens to smother a planet and been party to the destruction of entire solar systems. For this he was a Saint.

The drop ship rocked as it plunged violently through the stale atmosphere of a cold and barren planet with no name, nestled in a sector purged from human memory to protect the secrets it contained.

Casian was suspended by his restraints in a jet-black, tear shaped compartment moulded from the synthetic material called Mòrón, light as air, yet harder than diamond. Over the millennia it had become a symbol for the resilience and undefeatable might of mankind, a near indestructible exoskeleton that could turn an industrial cutting laser and remain cool in a storm of plasma.

Soon it would breathe a liquid sigh and remould itself around his naked body, a carapace of black silver to embolden and reinforce his fragile mortal flesh. It was a part of him, the embodiment of his sanctity, able to trickle in through the pores of his skin and crush itself down into a thumb sized organ that slumbered between the cannonaded pounding of his twin hearts.

A sharp beep cut between his eyes like a shard of insanity.

Commander Casian, these are your mission objectives:

And there they were, that chorus of one hundred, sweet, perpetually sedated voices that held the majority of the galaxy in their divine grip. They were the hallowed High Council of Earth, the rays of light that guided an entire race scattered and lost in the boundless infinity of a dark and unforgiving existence. From the ancient and arcane inner sanctums of blessed mother Earth they saw the universe. They were the most highly gifted of a subspecies of mankind who had been born licking the bittersweet juice of the forbidden fruit of knowledge from their greedy infant lips.

They were Psychic. Whilst normal man was rooted to the bank as he leaned forwards to drink the few precious mouthfuls of the water of time that were allotted to him, they swam in it, travelling against the overbearing current to sample the icy source of all things, then riding downstream to find the branch that held no rapids.

Establish a perimeter around the research station that is located at co-ordinates 112-654.
Clean out the corridors.
Protect the researchers.

As usual their orders were brutally skeletal and painfully concise. To Casian they sounded more like a shopping list than military orders. They may have been omniscient, but they were extremely conservative with the number of words they whispered into the brains of their servants. Perhaps because every word they broadcasted required them to surface from their knowledge stream, gasping and flopping like fish out of water.

Casian had a sensation they were toying with him, he could almost hear their childish lulling voices taunting him:

We could tell you exactly how many steps it will take you to reach the research station and how many researchers are still alive. We could tell you what each of your enemy are thinking and where each one stands at this moment. We could tell you the number of shots you will fire from your gun. We could even tell you the exact angle that the shot which will end your life will enter your neck… But it would not be so much fun that way would it?

In the not too distant future Casian would wish that his life had ended this day, because at the end of all things Casian would realise that today was the day that it all began.

II. Darkness:

“Come with me Bicarno… Give in to my will and become my servant. There is no more left for you in the world of mortal man.”

Bicarnos hand shook just a little as he raised the knife that was as black as his soul was becoming. It glinted slightly along its axis in the soft filtered luminescence of three fine slivers of moon.

He didn’t have to do this. He didn’t have to become this. But what alternative was there?

“No Bicarno there is no alternative. I grow impatient. Prove your worth and become your dreams.”

The doors of morality and sanity sighed heavily as the last slices of light flooding from them were extinguished.

“Hail Orageos” Bicarno whispered harshly to the eager ears of his craven deity as he plunged the knife home.


Bicarno stood on the verge of the crater that the research station squatted in far below, a pile of white pebbles. Casian would be there before long.

He pulled his pale withered hands from the sea of charcoaled robes that billowed around his ancient body and fantasised that he could crush those stubborn rocks in his fists and let their chalky dust join the omnipresent white blanket of blinding ash that covered this dead world.

Indeed he mused, caressing his neat triangular beard, was that so far from the truth?
He span smartly on his heels and took a few jaunty steps away from the station, his heavy glossy boots leaving no mark in the ghostly sand.

He watched the sky contentedly as, right on cue, great teardrops of black flame began to scald silently through the atmosphere; almost unnoticeable against the blanket of dark eternity wrapped around the planet.

He chuckled softly to himself and spoke eagerly to his master.
“It is all coming to place my lord, just as you have planned.”
From the very twisted and lightless depths of his soul the one he had devoted his existence to bellowed as deep as the gravity well of a black hole, shaking and crackling with unholy flames that licked the inside of Bicarnos skull like a pack of wolves scrapping the last slivers of meat from reddened bone.

Did you sow my seeds as I instructed?

“Yes my lord” he crooned “They hatched and have done your bidding. I marked the girl in her sleep, she lives yet.” The girl had been beautiful, the tinniest speck of humanity left in Bicarnos body was enough to tell him that. He spat at that notion in disgust. Beauty was immaterial and inconsequential. An enjoyment of beauty was a human phenomenon, the very stinking species Bicarno had barely managed to drag himself free from. The only thing with real meaning was the bidding of his God.
The only thing that was pleasing about the girl was the place she had in the conspiracies his master had been benevolent enough to share with him.

And Casian is coming for her?

“Yes” he hissed like an agitated snake.

Do as I instructed. Make sure that he lives and takes her with him. If you succeed in this I shall bestow further blessings upon you.

“Thank you my lord.” Bicarnos mouth creaked upwards into a twisted smile. He licked his cracked lips knowing he would succeed, there was not an amorphous shadow of doubt that he would fail. Great things were coming his way. He was a child again when he received praise from his lord. At least, that was what he believed, as it had been centuries since the last memories of childhood trickled away, mixing with the stream of his innocence that cascaded from his body as he embraced the damned one.

Now, it is starting now. You know what is required of you. Go.

“That I do lord.” As he spoke he faded away into nothingness and all was quiet once more.

III. Sniper Larian:

Larians pod smashed into the ground with a dull thud and threw up a plume of chalky grey dust. The walls in front of his face shimmered momentarily, then rushed towards him in a tide of glimmering black Mòrón. It collided with him with a quiet slap and clung stubbornly. For a moment it felt cold and then the familiar feeling washed down his body. No matter how many times you did it, it always felt decidedly odd when the material bonded with your skin; it felt as if you were covered with sticky clay that was beginning to dry out.

In less than a second it was over, the procedure was complete and now the material was a part of him once more. He held out his hand, clenched and unclenched it and flexed his fingers experimentally. Everything was normal, he was ready.

He unslung the long, heavy rifle from his shoulder and felt with relief its weight in his hands. He checked the sight, checked its balance, checked the power gauge. He clicked and unclicked the safety catch a few times, eventually leaving it off. His gun was ready for use.

The other pods smashed into the ground behind him while he was inspecting his gun, he didn’t twitch a muscle. He waited for a moment, then turned around; all nineteen of them were there and had fallen into line, ready for orders. He nodded to acknowledge their presence and raised his hand; they reformed, fanned out and ran to the top of the hill in front of them. He raised his hand again and they flung themselves silently onto the floor and snuggled into position behind their raised rifles.

Larian smiled. It always made him proud of the speed and precision with which his men followed his orders. It humoured him to think that he, the son of a contract killer and a woman he’d snatched as payment for one of his jobs would end up here, fighting for humanity, as a God. The lead sniper of the greatest legion of Taui-Kun.

But the memory of his home world and the bitterness of his losses soon quenched his smile and he returned to his usual grimace.

When Larian was nineteen, his home world, Hiran, was attacked by a fiercely hostile alien race known as the Iratui. The Taui-Kun came down from the heavens to fight them, he joined in arms with them, but it was no use. Every Iratui was killed, but in their dying moments they destroyed Hiran and on it everything Larian held dear. The only reason he wasn’t dead now was because Casian took him under his wing, he happened to be on the flagship when his world died.

He lost everything, his family his identity and his heart. Even now, a quarter of a century later the death of his wife, Elaine, still haunts his dreams.

Every night he was forced to kiss blood soaked lips that had once tasted so sweet, every night he would kick the beast that murdered her from her carcass, every night he would wake up with cold death saturating every cell in his body, screaming, sometimes in his head, sometimes not as he watched her last agonised seconds play out.

Since that day, as a symbol of his loss, he has kept his face covered from the universe that stole his love.

He ran his fingers through the dirt, the fine white dust parted easily in five ‘s’ shaped runnels to reveal the surface rock a centimetre or so below, it was like burnt bread dusted heavily with flour to hide the mistake.

He looked through his scope at the bulky research station, nestled at the heart of a gigantic crater, ten kilometres across, yet only three deep. Manmade or natural, it didn’t matter. It looked like a child had been sitting in the heavens playing a solitary game of marbles with several sizes of smooth white spheres, before dropping them down by mistake or design into this massive pit of chalky sand.

He could see Casian and his men heading towards it, tiny black specks against the omnipresent white dust. If no enemy became apparent soon they would enter the research station to clear it out, and Larians squad would become obsolete. The thought irritated him.

Deep down though he knew something would happen, the certainty permeated his whole being. He wondered what those innocuous white spheres could possibly have to throw at them.

Only at the time of his death would he finally realise what the full ramifications of this day were. It was destiny.

IV. Commander Casian:

Casian looked up at the thick black blanket that covered the sky. It was night, but on an industrial scale. This planet never saw the light of day, for long ago man had drawn a brush dripping with black solitude across the sky, blocking out not only the lethal radiation of the cold star the planet circled, but all of its meagre light and heat as well.

This, however, did not bother Casian. As the old mantra went:

Bless them,
Those to whom the darkness means naught,
Revere them,
For the blessed Taui-kun see in more ways than mortal man.

The eyes of the Taui-kun blaze with unnatural light, illuminating a world invisible to lesser beings. They can see in ways that mortals can barely dream of. Heat and density, through rock and flesh, able to spot the tiniest details at unimaginable distances, and all this while their enemy stumbles in blackness.

Rumours persisted that this even allowed a Taui-kun to kill with a glance. Whilst it was possible for Casian to glare at an opponent for weeks on end until he succumbed to radiation induced cancer, there are far more efficient ways to kill a man when you stand almost three metres tall, can crush rock to powder and lift five times your own bodyweight with ease.

He allowed himself the smallest taste of the surrounding air, sensors on the surface of his exoskeleton telling him that whilst near absolute zero in temperature and toxic enough to kill a mortal human in microseconds, it would not damage his augmented body. He had to allow it to warm half way through his exoskeleton, otherwise it would have frozen his mouth and lungs until they were as brittle and hard as slivers of flint. A small fusion unit hidden in the base of his skull provided the necessary heat.

The air was harsh and chalky, permeated with the dust that this planet was in such abundance of. On it he could taste blood, and something rotten and alien, not quite tangible. He could not guess as to what it was, only that it was the object of this mission, and that it had killed most, if not all of the researchers.

The research station dominated the view ahead of Casian, clean white silhouetted against the monotonous black of the sky and the shades of charcoal that made up the walls of the crater, their steep inclination making them the only part of this damn planet to avoid the dust. The largest domes were half a kilometre high, the smallest only about ten metres.

Behind him was the small force he had brought, numbering only one hundred in size, but what they lacked in numbers they made up for in skill, experience and firepower. They were divided into five squads of twenty: Sniper Squad One, Heavy Weapons One and Elite squads One to Three. Casian was at the head of Elite squad one. The snipers and Heavy weapons had gained vital positions on hills on the lip of the valley and were armed with energy cannons, HMG’s, energy lances and ITS (intelligent tracking system) Mortars. They were both ready to give a barrage of supporting fire on his command.

Casian’s and the other two Elite squads fell into formation and began to advance spectre like towards the station, their armoured feet making no sound on contact with the barren rocky surface of the planet.

Casian stopped, sensing something, which he didn’t know how to describe. He signaled for the rest of his squad to stop too. It was like there was someone or something near him. He could feel it; a shiver crawled up his spine; a bead of sweat crossed his forehead.

A flicker of black cloth rustled a few metres away. Casian suddenly felt a profound sense of nausea, his vision a misted mirror in a steamy room. He collapsed to his knees clawing at his skull as if he was trying to break it open. His eyes opened in terror as his vision went blazing white and as if looking through thick misted transparisteel, he could see a courtyard with marble columns. Out of the haziness five glowing figures seemed to glide forwards. Casian could just make out their elaborate gold encrusted ivory armor and mournful helmets. Then the deep voice opened up in his mind, this time he could hear what it said, but it was fuzzy and slightly warped:

“These……the fa……ardians, S……or, the greate……anile hand picked for th……y by the One himself. They……rotect this realm fr……reat with their lives. You must kill……”

The voice faded away with the vision and he was left, once more, with the face. It shrieked and a hoarse cry erupted from his throat as the voices started to scream at him again, louder than ever before

…I am here… I have come… I have come for your soul Casian…it is mine! …Give me your soul! … You will die!… I can show you the truth!… It is time…Casian.

Casian jerked and twitched as the voices devoured his sanity. Blood bubbled up from his mouth.

It would not stop. The eternal march of dementia eroded his consciousness like the tide wearing a cliff face, ever so slowly, but with the sharp edge of certainty.

This false reality you hold so dear will be drowned in blood and devoured by chaos and we shall meet and rejoice once more as father and son. There isn’t much longer left Casian, it begins today, this tale of the end times.

It ended abruptly. His eyes snapped open and a different, much more welcome voice filled his ears. Malian his first officer and close friend was shaking his shoulder

“Sir! Sir are you all right?” He repeated the question with more urgency.

“Yes Malian I am all right, as always.” he said wearily to his old friend. “I can feel it. Something terrible is going to happen this day. I have seen it in a vision. Be alert.”

“As always sir” Malian replied.

Visions were not an uncommon occurrence within the ranks of Taui-kun. Psychic potential was rife among them and it was not unknown for a man to be provided insight that could change the tide of a battle, predict an assassination attempt, or even tell him when to dodge an unseen death blow. To the Taui-kun, this was a gift for their courage, or a benevolent act from the high council. To mortals, it was further proof of their divinity. Casian had had several visions of such in his time, each one had come true in a matter of days, hours, even minutes.

He just hoped he was wrong about this.

V. Linwe:

Linwe crouched in the corner of her office in the deserted research station. Everyone was dead.

It had been horror in its most literal sense, sheer overwhelming terror, the sort of terror that grips you so hard you lose control of your body.

Death came swiftly and silently, it leapt down from no where in a cloud of obscurity, no one had seen them coming. The butchery had began almost without Linwe’s notice, she was in her sleek, surgically white office cubicle on her pulsing computer terminal, the first alarm she got was when a headless corpse was flung through the window in front of her. She screamed and collapsed, retching, struggling to breathe.
Then the screams began, the long tortured screams of people who are being ripped apart by indiscernible assailants. She stood bolt upright, horrified, too caught in trembling madness to move. She watched people torn open like wet tissue paper, heads disappearing with bone splintering crunches into clouds of spurting bright rich redness, limbs flailing, corpses twitching.

A woman she knew just barely ran from her cubicle screaming, her right arm reduced to bloody shreds and glints of reddened bone. She managed several agonised steps after her stomach burst open into a frothy fountain of sinewy gore. Her eyes bulged like over ripe fruit and her mouth sounded silent, unintelligible words of pain as her life streamed from her falling body.

Men and women in their dozens were flung like frail leaves in a storm into rivers of blood that seemed to have condensed from their cries of agony, thick contorted shadows made by heavy overhead lights dancing with them.

The stainless steel floor of the central plaza could not be seen through the rubble of death.

The creatures were almost visible by then, seeing as draped in robes of twitching internals and coated in a second skin of blood you could tell where they were. They seemed to be a vague insect like shape, covered in spines that impaled and tore. It was as if they were distilled from some terrible nightmare.

Friends, people she had almost come to think of as her family went down with the rest of them, Linwe felt every blow inflicted upon their bodies, and realised faintly that she was screaming with them. Any real sorrow she should have felt then was crushed beneath an avalanche of terror. The heart rending anguish of their loss would come later.

Unable to bear anymore, utilising immense force of mind, she broke the paralysis that entombed her body and leapt to the floor to hide behind her desk, shivering and sobbing, trying desperately to block out the screams.

So fixated was Linwe, she never saw the blood stained monstrosity that came for her. She felt burning pain shriek through her arm and realised dully that the redness soaking the floor was her own blood before collapsing.


All was silent now.

She knew she couldn’t stay here forever, she had to do something or they might find her again. Slowly she stepped up, wiped the tears from her eyes and straightened her hair. The wound on her arm made her feel faint all over again, it was at least thirty centimetres long and cut diagonally across her upper left arm almost right down to the bone, thankfully missing any major arteries. It had congealed sickly, by the looks of it badly infected.

Why was she still alive? Why hadn't the beast finished the job? She crawled across the floor, her hands slipping on the icy metal, jolts of pain shooting up her injured arm, and started rummaging around in her smooth pearly drawers. There it was: she picked up the old energy knife. She thumbed it on to see if it was still working, perfect; the dull blue blade blazed into life and hummed with deadly power.

Wishing to conserve what energy she had, she switched it of and the shining blade dulled back down.

It was a family heirloom; it had passed from one generation to the next for nearly a millennia. Once, long ago her ancestors had been space faring pirates, the tale passed through her family was that it had been taken from the body of a Taui-kun warrior, then remodeled to suit the needs of her distant ancestor.

Energy weapons were, and still are, incredibly rare weapons, of exquisite craftsmanship and deadly nature, almost never seen out of the ranks of the Taui-kun.

Its enameled hilt was intricately carved with elegant flowing symbols that spelt out her surname. Above that was her family crest, two sinuous serpents coiled around one another, twin faces glaring up and out of the etched hilt, fangs bared as if to ward off unwanted touch.

The blade was thirty centimeters long, the lethal weight of it in her hand comforted her.

She had never pictured herself holding it in her hands as a weapon of death, to kill an enemy, to sink its pulsing energies into living flesh and watch tendrils of sooty smoke rise from the cauterized wounds. She had even less imagined that she might be prepared to use it to take her own life. And then what? The blade that had been revered and cared for for a thousand years would be lost, clutched in the dead hand of the last of its lineage of bearers, its radiance guttering and fading after a couple of hours. Never to return.

Linwe was a twenty eight year old tomboy with long hair as black as the monotonous sky of the research colony. It tumbled onto her shoulders like a gleaming waterfall of ebony and crept down her back like a serpent. Her eyes were an endless dark green void that could suck the gaze of any man into their bottomless depths where the hapless man would drown in lust. It seemed almost impossible that she had managed to remain virgin after all these years.

“Wait for the right man Linwe. Don’t throw your love away.” Her mother had said as she lay on her deathbed, her voice as soft and helpless as a mewling newborn lamb, bloody blossoms staining the clean sheets she lay on, tears of pain and a sheen of sweat made her face shine in the soft, amiable light of the infirmary.

“But how will I know?” said Linwe, feeling as if leaden hands had her in a chokehold, tears of anguish starting to obscure her vision.

“He will come from the sky…” her mother sighed as her last breath whispered through her trembling lips. Then she was still.

Then Linwe was screaming as she fell to her knees, for a doctor, for her mother, and for herself.

She raised a hand and wiped her eyes. Her hand came away wet. Even after four years the wound was still red and raw. She supposed it always would be, and she wanted it this way, she wanted to feel the pain, she never wanted to forget.

She heard a faint noise and dropped behind her desk again, knife rekindled. She peeked around, she couldn’t see anything. Cautiously she stepped up and looked more thoroughly, it was nothing. She realised she had needed something else out of her drawer. She quickly rummaged around in it again and picked up a compact atmosphere pack. If she ever got out of here alive she would need this, the atmosphere packs on the temperature suits weren't very reliable. She had no plan of action for once she was out of the research station. She decided that she would see if she could get out and go from there, depending on the situation.

It was about five metres from the desk she was crouched behind to the exit from her office, then a further ten or so metres around the rim of the circular central plaza over the crumpled dead, in front of three other offices on the way, watched jealously by three dead occupants. Then she would be in the main corridor. Would everywhere be like this? Was she the only one? Yes to both. She knew it, and it horrified her.

She got up and scampered towards the door like a soldier ducking under a hail of bullets.

As she commanded it to open, a corpse collapsed through the door and stared up at her reproachfully. The carcass had half its head smashed apart like an apple that has been stamped on with hobnailed boots, the remaining half drooling its juices into a mushy puddle of ruined flesh.

The carcass had been eviscerated, the long winding trail of its spilt intestines trailing far out into the plaza. The stench from the puddles of spilt blood and semi-digested food and faeces was rancid, like a kick in the face. Bruised nose, pounding head, blood in mouth from a bitten tongue to suppress the scream that could have killed her. She fell to her knees retching and vomited copiously, then shook and shook as if the heating system were broken and the cold was beginning to make her fingers drop off.

The body was twitching spasmodically, one lifeless eye staring up past her into oblivion. She turned her face away from the corpse. She recognised that face even mutilated as it was, it was a young man named Chad.

“I love you Linwe, don’t you understand?” Chad had whispered once, his lips scant centimetres from hers, eyes wide and damp. She could feel his sweet breath against her mouth and as her gaze locked with his, she knew that she wanted this, she wanted him to be hers, she wanted it so bad she could feel it burning in her chest like a laser wound. But was this right? Was this what her mother had wanted for her? Was he the right man? Oh, how she wanted him to be, but deep inside her she knew that he was not. But did it really matter? What harm could it do? Then she saw her mothers fading eyes, watched her last breath tumble out of her body, never to be replaced, and knew that it did matter. She turned away from Chad, vision obscured by tears.

“I’m sorry Chad.” She choked and walked away, ignoring his desperate attempts to grab her attention. Then she ran.

Linwe realised she was crying, looking down at his corpse again, she felt guilty, then angry, why had she been left alive? Why did she have to live to see such horrors? Why had her mother cursed her to live the rest of her life in celibacy?
Linwe froze, she heard clattering footsteps echoing threateningly, slicing through the tranquillity like a knife. Then a rumbling growl shattered it completely. She felt hot stinking breath on her face, the next thing she knew was she had been lifted of the ground with a strong vice like grip around her neck. She tried to light her knife but she was shook roughly and the blade fell from her grasp and sank to the hilt into the ground, some two metres below.

She tried to scream, but the monster had her in a hold so strong she could almost hear her neck bones crunching under the phenomenal pressure.

She felt numb all over and her vision was starting to become blurry, her jugular throbbed angrily and she felt as though her brain was becoming liquid and sloshing around in her skull.

The last thing she saw before she slipped from consciousness was a huge shining figure in a glowing suit of armour that seemed to be crafted of ruby red flame appear from nowhere and dart gracefully towards her invisible assailant. It drew a shimmering blade and killed the creature with a single blow. Linwe tumbled through the air, unconscious before she hit the floor.

VI. Commander Casian:

The bulbous segments of the research station reached up into the cold dark sky. For a moment he thought he saw a shadowy figure stood atop of one bulb, but it blew apart with the wind.

The air was laced with dire prescience. Sudden pangs bit at his temples and his mind was filled with shrieking fiends, weeping and gnashing of teeth.
A cry went up from his left as Malian was flung to the dust.

A sunrise wash of heat signature rose above him and the vague outline of the spiked chitin horror straddling him became visible. Spindly claw like legs pinned Malian down, one of the blade like appendages had passed clean through his armoured wrist.

The monstrosity barked down at him from a long serpentine neck. Malian swung his remaining arm and struck the creature a harsh blow across its fang filled jaw. The bone shattered with a wet crack. It reared up and shrieked to the starless sky in rage and agony.

A sniper rifle cracked in the distance and its head exploded into sizzling chunks of fibrous brain.

“Must have been Larian, he never misses a chance to shoot something…” He muttered to himself as he kicked the smouldering carcass off of his friend. It was a blade dragon, a creature that was no longer supposed to exist. But if there was one there was likely to be another.

“Form a defensive circle!” he ordered “Fire on sight.”

Instantaneously his men formed a tight circle around him and raised their weapons, looking like a prickled Plison seed and stood unmoving, holy statues of the saints of war.

He knelt by his injured friend.

“That was a Blade dragon” grunted Malian as he heaved himself into a sitting position. The Mòrón surrounding his injured wrist squeezed tight and released a cocktail of coagulants and nanobots into his blood to knit tight the wound with the deftness of a surgeon.

“Yes Malian, I believe it was. There will be others.”

“So much for exterminating them…” he said dryly and flexed his fingers

“It’s a big galaxy, friend, even the most astute maid will often miss a spot.” But why were they here? The campaign of extermination had been almost two millennia ago. How had they not been encountered before now? “Lets get a medic in here, check how that’s healing up” suggested Casian

“No.” Grunted Malian “I can fight.” He grabbed his rifle and heaved himself to his feet.
A shout rose from the defensive circle “We’ve got incoming!” followed by snaps of gunfire and sizzling flesh. Casian leapt up and took a position at the rim next to Calrung, the oldest trooper in the regiment.

“How many?”
“Six so far” growled the ancient soldier huskily. He had been fighting for nearly three hundred years. “They’re testing the circle for weaknesses. We’ll have a proper fight on our hands soon”

A heat-sig flared up scant metres in front of them, Casian swung his rifle up and fired a shot into the haze. The creature shrieked as its ribcage exploded, flipped onto its back by the force of the blow. Its legs spasmed like a headless fly’s as it died.

“They’re cold, so cold… when they’re stalking they can suppress their metabolism for a short while. That’s why they only show up on heat vis when they make a sudden movement” He explained slowly in his worn, gravely voice. Casian fired another shot into the dark, and a monster fell howling.

The Taui-kun stood like silent sentinels as the minutes passed before the next fiend leapt shrieking out of the night. Malian shot it in the neck from behind Casian, leaving a trail of plasmarised air sizzling by his ear.

Casian turned, and Malian lowered his rifle, cocking his head inquisitively.
“Is this all we get?”

“Do you suppose Malian, that the High council, in all their omniscience, sent us all the way out here for that?” questioned Casian.

It was then they heard the shrieks and bellows in the distance, and watched in apprehensive silence as the monsters started to swarm from the research station like a disturbed ant nest.

Larung, a young and headstrong trooper chuckled “It was worth our coming after all hey Casian?”

Casian barely heard him. “Is this how it begins, then?” he murmured, to no one in particular, gazing off into the ranks of slavering jaws and glinting blades.


VII. Sniper Larian:

Larian saw the creature first, he knew it was impossible, but he didn’t let his thoughts get in the way. Larian had already put a bolt of anti-plasma through the beast’s head and splattered its stringy gore everywhere before the rest of the team had undone their safety catches.

The battleground was the only place Larian ever felt truly alive, whenever he was out of combat the pain of his losses came back and had to be promptly drowned in alcohol. Every rifle shot he fired gave him a burst of ecstatic pleasure, the reassuring blip that acknowledged each kill filled him with euphoric joy, the adrenaline pounding through his veins made his hearts race and bought back splashes of colour and warmth into the cold greyness of his existence.
He scanned around with his scope looking for his next target, as the rampaging swarm of screaming aliens filled his view he smiled contentedly, the crop was grown and ready for him to reap.

Some called him sadistic because of the pleasure he took from death and the zealousness with which he hunted for opponents, but this pleasure was only derived from a feeling of vengeance. The aliens that had destroyed his world died with it, but his rage hadn’t. Every shot, every kill, every smoking carcass, was in revenge for the dead on Hiran. It didn’t matter who or what he was killing; it still bought him the same sense of fulfilment.

“Open fire.” He growled to the squad like a ravenous wolf.
He chose a great, bloated beast at the front of the line and locked his aim on its heart.

He pulled the trigger with relish and watched as his victims chest exploded into a plume of plasma and steaming gore. The monster staggered a few pained steps before collapsing to the floor in a lump of its jellied organs, charred ribs sticking from what was left of its abdomen, flesh skewered on the ends like sickly kebabs. It pawed the ground weakly in rage and agony, smoke and vaporised blood billowing into a cloud above it, condensing into gory rain as it was engulfed by the fleshy tide behind it. Larian smiled his killers smile, which was more of a bestial snarl.

The squads shots crackled and howled around him, but he was locked in an almost trance like state, and the vicious sounds almost seemed to bounce off him.
He singled out another of the larger specimens, and fired without hesitation. It stumbled and fell, its spine like legs entangled, kicking and spasming as it died.
Larian fired again and again, with an almost fanatical fervour, and as images of carnage and death filled his soul, the ghostly shell of a smile crossed his gaunt, hidden face.

VIII. Commander Casian:

There were thousands of them, all scuttling towards them, some were crushed beneath the others in a mad rush to be the first to tear at the enemy: them.

At their head ran a flicker of shadow, cloak of malice billowing… a dragon overtook it and it was obscured from him. He could feel chemicals gushing from his enlarged adrenal gland, his muscles strengthening and his multiple hearts raced behind the fused bony carapace of his ribcage. These were just some of the battle preparations going on in his genetically enhanced body, this was a normal procedure.

Casian ordered for the heavy weapons to commence their barrage. At the same time he would have ordered the snipers to begin, but Larian with his usual disrespect for commands had not been able to hold his trigger finger steady and had already started shooting. Far away the heavy weapons roared into life; slowly at first, like a breaking storm. An energy cannon bolt whizzed over his head, accompanied with a harsh wave of heat. It struck a dragon full on in the chest, and the charge blew it and the ten abominations nearest to it into a raging plasma inferno, gradually condensing into a messy, greasy puddle in the centre of the large glassy crater the blast had formed. Glossy black contrasted sharply with the white dust, an offending spot upon the face of a preening slum whore.

Several HMG’s began to chatter; sending thousands of energy shots a second to riddle the front few lines with explosive, energy bolt death. Casian heard the mournful wailing of the mortar shells long before he could see them. They arced gracefully towards the enemy like a swarm of locusts with no end and no beginning, a constant deadly rainfall hundreds thick, exploding in globules of sheer antimatter fury. Throughout the battle they wailed almost non stop, each of the ten mortars they had brought able to put out ten shells in the space of a second.

An energy lance swung in a lazy swipe that cut dozens of aliens into two writhing halves and left a trail of bubbling rock on the ground that quickly cooled into a glassy arc.

Casian got ready to deliver the commands for battle procedure seven, the standard tactics for combating packs of large predatory beasts. There were procedures for almost any kind of foe or situation; it was only rarely that Casian had to think on point, on the rare occasions that he did his decisions were recorded and passed on to the commanders of the other Legions. This would not be should any of his notions failed however… though if that were the case he would not be breathing at this moment.

“Form a battle line” He said clearly into the com system. The men arranged themselves into a perfectly flat unyielding barrier sixty warriors across and raised their rifles with the synchronicity that can only come from decades of drills and battle. Casian took his place and a bright green semi transparent crosshair containing a magnified view superimposed itself over his vision, his neuro-sight.
“Lay a fire wall” commanded Casian, his finger tightening on the trigger. They fired in perfect unison; the combined energy shots roared like a Krion drake. Screaming death smashed into the front row of the aliens, tearing them apart into a cloud of plasma and boiling blood that fried the skin of the nearest aliens and burnt the slices of eye from their heads. They fell down clawing at their ruined razor filled faces.

They waited until the dead were completely obscured before firing the second deafening volley so as to maximise casualties. Another row of aliens fell down in a spray of charred flesh and bubbling blood.

The combined might of the Taui-kuns firepower was enough to form an impenetrable barrier of death. The air was so thick with energy bolts that it shimmered like a desert mirage from the oppressive heat.

The sniper rifles barked in a deathly metronome and the heavy weapons sang their rumbling chorus, feasting on the devastation they wreaked. The hailstorm of mortar shells and HMG bolts shredded the fiends with horrific ease, and the steady eruptions of blinding rage from the energy cannons catapulted lurid plumes of plasmarised rock and flesh high into the sky. The lances lashed their packed ranks like boiling whips.

But despite this punishment they kept on swarming forwards, throwing themselves into the storm. The steaming carcasses lay so thick upon the scorched ground it was like a great carpet of burnt meat and bubbling fat.

But then a dire voice rose upon the intercom.

“Casian, this is Berian.” Berian was in charge of the heavy weapons unit. “There’s a secondary force of the bastards coming up behind us. They’ll be upon us in minutes, requesting to divert fire.”

“Granted. Divert your fire to the secondary swarm. I’m sending E2 to back you up.” Casian switched off his Com and shouted over the din of the firewall. “Malian! Take squad two and back up Berians position!”

“Sir!” he acknowledged. “Two, get on me!” he cried, and nineteen men peeled off of the firewall to follow him as he ran back towards the steep slope of the crater. The reinforcing squad dashed through the dark, kicking up a trail of white dust.

The great guns continued to roar in the distance, but Casians depleted force was no longer receiving the benefits

“We can’t hold them!” Barked Calrung. They no longer had enough firepower to stop the advance of the swarm; the enemy was gaining ground rapidly despite heavy losses. They still had the snipers, but alone they just weren’t useful against these numbers.

He activated his Com. “Larian, this is Casian. How much ammunition do you have?” a few seconds later the cold, dull voice of the sniper came over the Com.

“Enough.”

“We need to thin them out faster, I want you and your men to switch your weapons to full auto and fire into their midst.”

“Sir.” He acknowledged after another languid pause.

They were within five hundred metres, there wasn’t long left. They needed to make as much of an impact as they could before brutal close quarters combat ensued.

“Ready grenades!” Roared Casian. In unison as they had drilled so many times before his squads primed grenades, sliding them down the gaping barrels of their launchers and took aim, their enhanced brains instantly calculating the range and trajectory, greying out the predicted area of effect of the other grenades to maximise casualties.

“Fire!” Casian bellowed, he and his men in unison launched their shrieking grenades into the midst of the enemy.

With a massive roar forty Antimatter explosions went off in huge spheres of pure, volatile energy. Nothing was left but smoking craters, blinding white-hot flame and searing clouds of plasma. The aliens caught in the blast were completely vaporised or blasted into small chunks of burnt meat scattering the battlefield. Many more had been broken on the shockwaves, their contorted forms lay twisted and crushed on the dirt, mewling and thrashing the air weakly as their lives ebbed away.

Dirt, molten rock and small lumps of flesh began to rain down on them, making strange pinging and spluttering sounds.

“Load!” he cried and they slid a second grenade into the smoking barrels, firing an instant later.

They kept the pace up and each man managed to loose all ten of their grenades within thirty seconds of perfectly synchronised launching and reloading.

The aliens were getting too close for comfort now, within three hundred metres. They had to get into a better defensive formation or they would be broken under the impetus of the charge.

“Reform into defensive pattern alpha.” A heartbeat later they had organised into a neat arrowhead, Casian at the point. “Shields!” the outline of the arrowhead drew cylindrical pointed staffs and thrust them into the ground in front of them, these unfurled gracefully like the wings of some great glittering bird, forming an interlocking shield wall of just under shoulder height around them.

It was then that the tank finally chose to appear. At first it seemed like a distant meteor against the dark sky. It sparked ever closer until it was in full deadly sleek silhouette, scythe shaped gliding wings guiding it closer. Its beautiful, graceful curves were fully evident, smooth black Mòrón bristling with antipersonnel HMG turrets. The massive fifty centimetre cannon cocooned in a spherical turret was testament to its awesome destructive powers.

The turret cannon fired and for an instant the world turned to bright blue flame. The explosion shook the ground like an earthquake and the shock waves threatened to tear Casian from the ground and cast him to the wind like a leaf among a storm.
When the blinding light cleared there was a crater two hundred metres across scarred into the ground, at its centre a raging plasma column a hundred kilometres high, the ground around it bubbling and steaming. Casian watched as it sucked itself up higher into the atmosphere, where it hung as if to replace the worlds blocked out sun. It flattened out and dulled down as the icy temperature began to affect it, slowly solidifying into tiny crystallised droplets of matter that whizzed down and struck the ground with dull ‘phuts’, twanged of Mòrón with eerie pings and twangs and bit into alien flesh with immensely satisfying and highly audible splats and cracks. Casian smiled grimly as he watched aliens peppered with these projectiles crawling weakly and snarling as they desperately tried to reach their prey before they were engulfed by the tide of living flesh behind them; relentless beasts.

As if not satisfied with the damage it had wreaked the tank opened up with its multiple HMGs, so close Casian could hear the whine of its Anti-Grav Motors. It whirred over his head blaring away with constant chattering energy fire before crashing into the aliens and crushing many beneath it like insects beneath an iron boot. For a moment it was covered in them, but it soon cleared a wide circumference around it that no living creature could pass.

Even this was not enough to stop their frenzied charge, they flowed around the lethal behemoth, so close now that they filled Casians vision with a bright heat stain, kicking up clouds of dirt as they stampeded towards them: twenty meters.
“Swords!” the outer ring of warriors including himself drew their swords and lit them with a growing whirr of hungry plasma. Fifteen metres, fourteen metres “Fire into their midst!” The remainder of the squad opened up, firing out of the arrowhead in controlled bursts of fury, blowing chunks of rotten flesh into plasma and dropping countless aliens to the dust.

Thirteen metres, twelve meters. Casian stared down into the soulless depths of the swirling vortices of plasma in his blade. He drew it up with a snarl and glared at the abominations surging towards him.

Ten metres, nine metres. Casian began to chant a line of the first battle litany and the others joined him, their voices deep and heavy with zealous joy.

“Face the enemies of humanity with courage,
Purge them with your honour and your strength,
Fear not death,
For it is your ascension to glory!”

The last few words swelled to a rising cry of defiance and rage as the final metres shrank and the exhilaration of battle took its tightest grip.

Four metres, three metres, two metres, time seemed to slow as Casian locked his gaze with a snarling rampaging beast with a lolling tongue poking from the razor sharp cookie-cutter mouth and dull glowing eye slits. The seconds became minutes as the final stage of battle gripped him. He dodged to the right as the abomination swung a blow at supersonic speeds at his head with a scythe bladed claw that could have sliced through a block of titanium. Casian instantly replied, swinging his sword with a savage cry and slicing off its head, sinuous flesh offered no resistance to his energy blade. It crumpled, but its momentum carried it forward and it crashed into the shield wall with a dull crack, coils of dirty smoke rising from the cauterised stump of its neck.

The aliens smashed into them like the breaking tide on a stubborn rock and they were soon surrounded. Casian removed three heads in quick succession with casual swipes of his blade.

The formation was almost invulnerable to their attack, a wall of heavy shields and burning blades, energy bolts whizzing constantly over their shoulders, carefully aimed from the core of the arrowhead. A pile of alien corpses rapidly piled up, he and his men killing again and again and again in a flurry of hacking, slashing and frenzied bloodletting.

The world shook as the tank fired for the second time, Casian could actually see waves shooting across the ground as if the rock had become water.

Casian swung his sword again and again, as if in time to an invisible metronome, and each time one of the alien fiends fell howling its last breaths as its cleaved flesh sizzled like bubbling fat.

The pile of smoking carcasses soon became metres high, but more kept crawling over the top like intrepid mountaineers, only to add a further layer for their followers to traverse as they were hacked down, stabbed or shot.

“Bloody hell! We’re getting buried alive here!” yelled Larung.
Casian stabbed up into the gut of an alien that had crawled to the top of the mound and was about to leap into their midst. He withdrew the blazing blade and decapitated a demon glaring down at him.

As the heavy head thudded to the dirt at Casians feet, he decided it was time to move, or they would literally be crushed under the weight of the foe.

The outer rim of warriors would have to lift the embedded shields and force a path through the blade dragons, dead and alive. They could set back up again twenty metres away or so.

This could be a tricky manoeuvre, but he had faith in his men, they had fought countless battles in thousands of warzones and had come out of far riskier actions unscathed.

He was about to issue the commands, when he stopped, puzzled as the dirt beneath him began to vibrate, flinging up clumps of dust as if the ground was the skin of a great drum. The tank had not fired. What could be happening? He watched, bemused as a hairline crack opened beneath his feet. His expression turned to horror as it grew and widened in rhythmic bursts, as if someone was hammering a chisel into the ground.

“Break formation!” he yelled. But it was too late. The world exploded into red flame and Casian and his men were flung high into the air, twisting and turning, arms flailing helplessly.

Casian landed with a dull thud several hundred metres away, the air rushing out of his lungs like a broken air lock, and immediately an alien was on top of him. He wrestled with it, its malformed face stretched ever closer, thousands of teeth gnashing furiously. Its flesh was torn and ragged, pus leaked from beneath it… just like the face. Casians concentration slipped and the creatures mouth rushed forwards, he stopped it, centimetres from his face. It growled in frustration, cheated of its meal. He grasped for a weapon, grabbed his knife but before he could drive it home a sniper shot the aliens conical head into a plume of plasma. Larian surely, he was always keeping an eye out for his commander.

Casian scrambled up and found a new victim immediately, he thrust the knife in its neck, it went through its jaw and poked out the top of its skull promoting a dying screech from the creature.

His sword was lying a few metres away, he flung himself towards it as a scythe blade bit into the ground where he had been standing a moment before as if it was soft cheese.

As he grasped the sword he found he was under the shadow of a blade dragon, he thrust the sword up into its belly. He rolled over to the right to avoid being crushed by its dead weight as gelatinous organs cascaded from the wound, cutting the legs from beneath another as he did so. He leapt to his feet and hacked one in half at the waist.

And then Casian saw the monster drag its bloated nightmarish form out of the ground.

It was ten times the size of the other aliens and possessed a pair of torn, leathery wings that seemed to cover half of the non-existent sky when it unfurled them fully; it seemed it was stretching millennia of cramp from them, squeezing out every last drop of fatigue.

He watched in sick fascination as several juvenile blade dragons hacked their way out of its bloated belly, which was pockmarked with scarred over tissue.

Casian roared in horror as it casually crushed one of his men, Keljung, beneath a gigantic tri clawed hand the size of a small battle tank and sliced another, Gulung, in half with a lazy swipe of a scythed blade almost twenty metres long. Those were his men, comrades who had fought by his side for the best part of a century, yet it swatted them like bugs.

“Peace be upon your blessed souls brother god warriors, may…” The old prayer began to ring in Casians head as if a bell had been struck. It was small comfort. Just that morning he had laughed and joked with those men, it was a small, routine mission, what could go wrong? They had been together for the best part of a century, they had shared memories of battles long done and partook in gracious and courageous deeds, hid from one another the same pains of constant war.
And now they were gone. In an instant it was as if the century of comradeship they had shared ceased to exist. Ancient and ravenous death had clicked his fingers and taken what had been owed to him since the day they had signed up to fight for mankind. That was the inevitable doom of every Taui-kun warrior.

Casian ignored the massive beast for a moment, paying attention to an enemy that was not an immediate threat could be lethal. Besides, the tank and heavy weapons should have no problem in dealing with it.

Casian shot one in the face with his pistol and swung the smoking pistol back to break a serpentine neck with a brutal backhand blow before carving one in two from its shoulder down to its waist. The prayer for his brothers continued in his mind.

“May you find your paradise and in your…”

But before Casian could finish the old psalm the nightmarish form turned and looked straight at Casian. His eyes widened in terror as the chattering exploded in his head, he fell to the ground retching and into terrifying blood stained unconsciousness. The last thing he heard was the choir of sinister voices:
I have come for you… Casian…

IX. Sniper Larian:

Larian snarled discontentedly. They were snipers, and their rifles were precise instruments of death, not indiscriminate butchers.

“Switch to automatic.” He growled to the squad. Larian ran his fingers gently along the sleek stock of his rifle. How long had he and his gun been fighting together? Curled up close like lovers, glaring haughtily at the violence far away.

He thumbed the selector switch disapprovingly to fully automatic and a bipod kicked out violently from the barrel like a switch blade, burying itself into the chalky dirt to steady the weapon.

“Hiran weeps.” he whispered as he squeezed the trigger. The barrel erupted into blue flame and a lethal salvo of high calibre bolts screamed into the horde below. The kickback was quite ferocious; it hammered the form fitting stock into his shoulder.

Larian had stripped the recoil compensators from his rifle quite some time ago. Over the decades that they had been together he had made it his own, suiting it to his needs. He had become tired of the detached feeling that the recoilless energy rifles gave, he wanted to feel every shot. He needed the visceral and satisfying feeling of the rifle jumping in his hands, it kept his pulse up, and allowed him the extra challenge of compensating for the recoil himself. It made things far more interesting.
When he had made his modifications he had not had fully automatic fire in mind, however. That was not his combat role.

He let off another burst, scattering the heavy stream of shots into the advancing swarm.

He corrected his aim, and fired a longer burst, fighting against the fiercely bucking rifle.

It seemed to make no impact on the massive, spreading puddle of filthy alien flesh below. As soon as one went down, it was almost as if three leapt up in its place.
A wash of red flame suddenly filled his vision, and a brutal shockwave slapped him an instant later. His gun leapt as he scanned the battlefield for its source, but before he could reach it, he spotted Casian pinned down beneath a shrieking beast. Larian felt closer to Casian than any other man alive. He had been there, the day Hiran died. He had saved Larian, from his planets fate and from himself. He had given him his new purpose, all he had left to cling to amidst the solitary blackness of his existence.

He shot the monster atop of his beloved commander in the face, and continued to watch, almost affectionately, to ensure that he was not injured. Only when he was satisfied did he allow his gaze to wonder again.

A wall of torn, weeping flesh filled his scope. He pulled back the magnification with a start and stared somewhat placidly as the hellish gargantuan crawled from the ground. He watched, mesmerised as it crushed two soldiers with earth shattering force.

“By Hirans earth, I will kill this beast.” He whispered to himself, almost reverentially.
The cross hairs wavered over the creatures strange circular mouth, right down its weeping throat. He concentrated and the cross hairs stopped wavering and flowed with the creatures movements. He pulled the trigger. The aim was true but it had absolutely no effect, it blew a hole in the creatures throat and splattered its dark blood into freezing crystals, but the creature shrugged the wound aside as if it hadn’t felt it.

Larian snarled and tried again, putting a shot right through its putrid slice of an eye. A chunk of its was vaporised and the gooey flesh sizzled, but it didn’t even notice.
He cursed and aimed for a third shot. The creature turned and glared at him, its gaze seeming to carry a soul crushing weight. It flapped its wings with a sound like a giant fanning a fire with a mountainous sheet of cardboard and soared right in front of Larian. When it roared it was like ten thousand fighters simultaneously breaking the sound barrier, as if the whole of reality was being ripped in two like a sheet of cloth.

“Sniper Squad one to heavy weapons one, we need cover, I repeat, Sniper Squad one to heavy weapons one where the hell are you guys! We need a hand, take this beast down!” A reply came through almost instantly:

“This is heavy weapons commander Berian, heavy weapons one cannot assist, we are engaged in close combat, I repeat, we are engaged in close combat, we cannot assist.” Larian swore.

Larian and his squad blasted at the creature but the shots never reached it, they dissipated metres away into wisps of energy.

It laboriously dragged itself closer through the air, reached down and plucked Clauren from the ground, Larian shot the wrist of the gargantuan hand holding him, but doing nothing more than enrage the beast further. It raised him towards its massive malformed head. The valiant man, showing no fear in the face of his certain death, ripped a knife from his boot and thrust it into the creatures eye before being squeezed in two. His armour cracked with a sickening pop, staining the creatures hand with his life blood. Larian was shocked. Not that the man just metres away had suddenly died, but at the phenomenal strength that must have been required to crush Mòrón in that way. Mòrón was near incompressible, it could stand up to an atmospheric pressure of one thousand tons per square centimetre, yet this creature had crushed it and tossed it aside as if it were an aluminium ration can.

The creature was distracted for a moment by the tank, with little effort it tore off its gigantic turret as if pruning an offending branch off an ornamental tree. Larian was horrified, that tank had been part of the Angels of Death since their founding, millennia ago, it had survived the destruction of worlds, the fury of bloodthirsty empires, but had finally given up. Would it be reparable? Probably, but it would be a blemish on the vehicles pride all the same.

He was about to give the command to retreat, but as he turned to face down the hill there was nothing but a surging expanse of demonic bodies that stretched on for half a kilometre. There was only one thing left to do.

“My warriors of Sniper squad one, we are cut off, let them taste our wrath in a final magnificent charge to be remembered for eternity in the annals on mother Earth! Death is but a path to glory! With me!” And with that the squad clipped on their bayonets and charged the final twenty metres to the tide of death.

Larian did not fear death; fear was one of the things he had lost the day Hiran died. He had nothing left to lose. For him it was just a matter of when. He did not know if there was an afterlife, didn’t care, but he knew at least he had secured himself a place in memory.

“For Hiran!” Screamed Larian, grinning maniacally as they ploughed into the mass of chattering maws and clanking chitin plating.

Larian ran one through on the end of his blade and pulled the trigger, the point blank blast sent the creature somersaulting backwards, it smashed into another alien, knocked it to the floor, the smouldering wreck that had once been its chest steaming. Larian leapt on to the wriggling creature trapped beneath its corpse and thrust his bayonet through its neck.

He spun around and his blade tore a windpipe open, it hissed out rancid air and boiling blood. Another one fell as he smashed open its ribcage with the butt of his rifle.

But they could not escape the queen now her attention was locked on them; Larian turned to find it towering above him. He snarled as he prepared to fling himself onto it.

So was this it? Was this how he was to die? But before he had the chance to find out, a shining figure in a flaming suit of armour appeared with a flash of red light, floating in mid air. It drew a huge blade larger than itself and darted with liquid grace through the air towards the beast.

When right in front of the creature and barely five metres away from Larian it stopped and raised its blade. The figure was dwarfed by the creature but just stood in the air unflinching. The beast raised its many arms and screamed in pure animalistic rage as it bought them crashing down towards the glowing form. At the last possible instant it darted to one side flung himself behind the creature and plunged its sword deep in its heart. This bought it crashing down; dead before it hit the ground. The victor hovered over its back for several seconds before disappearing.

Larian was jerked back to the moment as a dragon leapt on him and pinned him to the ground; it bellowed in his face splattering drool over his visor and slowly, almost mockingly and brought a massive scythe blade to his neck. It raised it high. It was about to bring it crashing down when someone shot it in the head. The next second strong hands were helping him up, he found himself face to face with Casian.
“Just returning the favour. Come friend, let us finish this together” Larian found himself smiling once more as fifty seven men followed up behind them with swords drawn as side by side they butchered the alien scum.

Larians snipers joined them, shortly followed by the heavy weapons squad, two lost from their number. Casians squad formed a protective circle around them, they set up the mortars and fired HMG and energy lance over their shoulders, the energy cannons remained silent, the range too short for them to be used safely.

Before long the aliens numbers began to thin. There would always be another time to die.

X. Linwe:

Linwe stirred and awoke from the depths of unconsciousness. Her vision was still a bit blurry but it soon adjusted. She could only just bring to mind what had happened before, but it all came flooding back when she saw the gigantic headless corpse of the beast that had attacked her. It seemed to be directly out of some terrible nightmare, the rows of hellish spikes, its oily reddish black blood which had soaked into her clothes and caked her hair, the flesh of its segmented ant like body was pestilent and stank to Earth and back.

She thought of the mysterious being and shivered as the realisation dawned on her. “Project Genesis?” she whispered to herself in awe. But there was no time to stop and wonder. She snatched up her now empty knife from the ground and made a dash for the nearby exit of the research station.

Powerful sounds echoed around the corridors, high-pitched whining, explosions, the splash of bubbling blood and the splatter of sizzling flesh. Weapons fire, surely. Weapons meant soldiers, soldiers meant safety. She started heading down the corridor a bit faster.

Linwe was no weapons expert, but she used to go shooting in her spare time and this sounded nothing like the toned down laser weapons she was accustomed to. The firing was getting closer and more frequent, they were just around the corner. Linwe leapt around the corner with her hands held high up and screamed “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” And was confronted with the most magnificent and intimidating view in her life.

Twenty men were charging down the corridor, no not men, gods. Each towering far above mere mortals, at least three metres in height, each engulfed in a skin of absolute blackness, darker than space, yet gleaming like diamond. It clung skin-tight, etching out the perfect contours of their bodies that seemed to have been carved from stone as the zenith of masculine power and each unnaturally huge muscle in glittering black beauty with perfect clarity. Their faces were almost completely obscured by elegant blood red visors and on their right cheeks in flowing gold script was etched the runes ‘Angels Of Death’ and on their left was the number one.

The warrior at the front was a head taller than the rest and held a gigantic energy sword that filled the corridor with brilliant blue light.

Even though Linwe had been born and raised on a backwater research station at the edge of the galaxy with nothing but basic communication to the outside, she still knew what they were, Taui-Kun, God Warriors, the light of humanity, the pure and the righteous. Linwe was filled with awe, Taui-Kun, here?

“Get down!” Bellowed the one holding the sword in a voice like thunder. Linwe felt compelled to follow his command and without knowing why she flung herself flat on the floor.

Microseconds later a salvo of energy bolts that would have torn her apart scalded through the air half a metre above her, she felt her flesh sizzle like cooking fat, the agony of it drew a moan from her trembling lips. The bolts struck their target, annihilating it instantly.

Moments later they were right in front of her, dwarfing her. She felt herself being lifted single-handedly from the ground with incredible force, before being set back on her feet.

“You are lucky human, a few more seconds and that abomination would have killed you, you did well to run.” This time his voice was infinitely softer, almost hypnotic “Tell me, what is your name” he seemed to radiate strength and courage.

Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke “ My name is Linwe. Can you get me out here?”

“I am Commander Casian of the Angels Of Death” He replied curtly as he had hundreds of times before.

“Casian… the hero of the Dalmos five crusade?”

“If you call bloody murder heroic.” He said resentfully “Come, we must take you from here Linwe.” He paused, Linwe recognised he was probably talking to his Com system.

Pangs of fatigue lanced up Linwes legs as her tiredness and the horrors of the day came back to her. This twinned with her pulsing wounds made her feel faint. She would not let go. She would stay firm and upright…

Yet despite her convictions the world dissolved and she was falling through eternity, to be caught in an iron strong, yet gentle grip. Consciousness left Linwe, but this time she was filled with feelings of excitement and deep peace. She did not awake until many hours later and then she was in Casians ship at the other end of the galaxy.