First Contact

The ground shook.

It wasn't an aftershock of their landing. It was a rhythmic thumping, deep in the bedrock. Thump*, thump. Thump, *thump. Like a heartbeat the size of a city block.

"Seismic activity!" Vos shouted, backing away from a sewer grate. "Something is moving in the pipes!"

The purple vein on the Governor's tower swelled. It burst, spraying a thick, yellow ichor across the white stone.

"Movement!" Thrace roared, spinning his rotary cannon toward the darkness of an alleyway. "Twelve o'clock!"

Draven raised his rifle. "Identify!"

Out of the shadows, a shape skittered. It was the size of a large dog, but it moved with the jerky, unnatural speed of an insect. It had chitinous armour plating that shifted in colour, and limbs that ended in serrated bone blades. It had no eyes, only a gaping maw filled with needle-teeth.

It wasn't a rebel. It wasn't human.

The creature paused, its head twitching as it tasted the air. It let out a shriek, a high-pitched chattering sound that clawed at the inside of Draven's skull.

SCREEEEEEE!

As if in answer, the city exploded with noise. From the sewers, from the ventilation shafts, from the windows of the skyscrapers, the shrieks answered. Thousands of them.

"Swarm!" Draven yelled, the training taking over. "Defensive perimeter! Back-to-back!"

The lone creature charged. Thrace didn't hesitate. His rotary cannon spun up with the sound of tearing canvas. 5000 rounds loaded. BRRRRRT.

The heavy tungsten slugs tore the creature apart, spraying green blood and chitin across the plaza. But before the body hit the ground, three more dropped from the streetlamps. Then ten. Then a hundred.

They poured out of the buildings like a flood of oil. Swarm Drones. Cannon fodder. But there were so many of them.

"Open fire!" Draven commanded. "Hellfire, light them up!"

Lira Vos laughed, a manic sound over the comms. She pulled the trigger on her flamer. A jet of liquid promethium arced across the plaza, turning the front rank of the creatures into screaming torches. "Burn, you ugly bastards! Burn!"

The smell of cooking ozone and burning meat filled the air. Draven fired controlled bursts with his railgun, each shot punching through two or three of the creatures. They were mindless, charging directly into the wall of fire and lead.

"Command was wrong!" Rael's voice cut through the chaos. She was firing dual machine pistols, her movements a blur as she decapitated a drone that leaped at her. "This isn't a revolt! It's an infestation!"

"It's an extermination!" Thrace yelled.

Draven watched the radar on his HUD. It was a solid wall of red dots. They were surrounded. The Shock and Awe doctrine relied on breaking the enemy's morale. But these things had no morale. They had no fear. They simply consumed.

"Rylos!" Draven screamed into the comms. "We are engaging hostiles! Non-human entities! We need orbital-strikes on the city perimeter, danger close!"

"...cannot lock..." Rylos's voice was fading. "Interference...* bio**-spores blocking targeters...** you are on your own, Commander**...**"*

The link died.

The sudden silence wasn't interference; it was a deliberate severing. The fleet had the power to reach them; Valka simply chose not to use it.

Draven looked at his squad. They were the best Orion had to offer. The Voidborn. They stood in a circle of fire and death, their weapons churning through the endless tide of chitin.

"We hold here!" Draven ordered, slamming a fresh magazine into his rifle. Power at 92%. "We hold until the ammo runs dry or until we're extracted! For Orion!"

"For the Corps!" the squad shouted back.

But as Draven looked up at the Governor's tower, he saw a silhouette standing on the balcony where the human administrator should have been. It was taller than the drones, armoured in heavy plates, watching the battle with a cold, terrifying intelligence. A Primarch.

It raised a hand, and the swarm shifted tactics. They stopped charging blindly. They began to flank.

Draven felt a chill that had nothing to do with the suit's cooling system.

"They're learning," he whispered.

The frontier revolt was a lie. The pacification was a trap. The routine deployment had just become a war for survival.

"Reload!" Draven screamed as the second wave hit. "And pray to whatever god you believe in, because Orion can't hear us now!"