With the threat from the horde ended, Eli is able to focus his full attentions on the Tyranid abomination swooping towards them. As he creature's scream echoes across the icy plains, he snaps of another shot with his bolter.
The techmarine fires off a single round at the monstrosity, but the effort does little more than accurately find the range between he and the hive tyrant. Toggling his fire selector, he empties out the remaining Kraken rounds in his his secondary clip in a quick burst.
The adamantium-core rounds are far more effective, ripping into the Tyranid's gargantuan forelimb, punching through overlapping plates of chitin.
The Space Wolf spins away from the towering creature and vaults into the air once again, firing his bolt pistol as he arcs off into the cold gray sky. The round manages to strike Brother Hrothgar's dragon, but does little harm.
Brother Syne, taking careful aim, squeezes off another round from the heavy bolter, and then watches as the Hellfire cannister arcs through the air toward the slavering xenos. The hulking beast belatedly attempts to twist its massive girth out of the way at the last moment.
The Hellfire round explodes against the Tyrant's leg with a percussive crack, the specially formulated acid within scouring the creature's armor and searing the tissue beneath, eliciting a satisfying roar of pain-filled rage.
The great beast strides forward, its clawed legs ripping through the permafrost and collapsing the rough-dug bunkers under its earth-shaking weight. As its vile, anvil-shaped head seeks back and forth between its potential prey amongst the Kill-team, a ratcheting series of guttural clicks thunder from its maw, so powerful that they seem to make the very hearts in your chest shudder from the fearsome vibration.
With the Hive Tyrant in front of me, and the psychic cacophony of the Hive Mind bending its will to oppress all not being a part of it. I can only make out the shadow and the flapping wings of the monstrosity that is before me.
I am focusing on the range and locations of the Tyrant and my Brother Marines as I select the Hellfire rounds that I have been saving for such a monstrosity.
I mutter to myself as I see that 2 of the shells miss completely. I have been getting lax shouting all of these area of effect rounds and weapons. As penance 1000 rounds fired one at a time and any misses causes a restart once we get back to a firing range.
Even over the violent din of the Tyrant's arrival, as the Astartes grimly resign themselves to their final stand, a few of their number begin to hear something other than the omnipresent scuttling insanity of the approaching swarm and the resounding roars of its imposing harbinger:
The sound of engines. Still very faint and still quite distant, but most assuredly it is the sound of engines.
Raising his bolter, the Storm Warden fires a sustained burst of Hellfire rounds. Half of the powerful projectiles go wide in his haste to hit the behemoth before it can attack his closer brethren, but the other half manage to strike true, exploding alongside the reticulated cowl of hardened exoskeleton shielding the creature's head, leaving smoking scars behind.
Seeing how massively huge the creature I again focus my Wrath upon it. Any opening I can give to my Brothers so that we can slay the beast, and complete our mission. I just hope my Will holds out. I have no choice.
The balefire of the Warp streams from Brother Librarian Vex, wreathing the towering foe in a heliotrope halo of energy drawn directly from the Empyrean; pulsating and burning and casting inexplicable shadows across the frozen ground.
Unfortunately, it serves as little more than a small distraction to the rampaging synapse creature, as it quickly folds its wings in and begins slashing in every direction with the serrated boneblade.
The unspeakably terrifying monstrosity is now fully visible to those of the Karlack 2nd that managed to survive the creature's powerful psychic assault, and it inspires a terror that even the onslaught of the countless lesser Tyranid could not.
Impervious to fear at this point, the Commissar exhorts the confused survivors of his company to fight on, continuing to fire his plasma pistol at the beast and managing to score a lucky hit with the underpowered weapon.
The residual effects of the Tyrant's psychic scream causes many of the survivors to either drop to the floor of the hauler unconscious, or, upon seeing their hideously decapitated companions, stumble around in a daze vomiting or screaming incoherently, their minds simply overwhelmed by the neurological onslaught.
Brother Emeric nearly swoons from the jarring burst of repetitious binary feedback that suddenly streams from Magos Vyakai.
With an abruptness that is comparable to losing a limb, the Black Templar is severed from his linkage to the Magos. From the makeshift bunker behind him, he can hear the diminishing, droning hum that signifies that the failing emergency systems the Magos was operating under has forced him to shut down his potentia coil completely to preserve the integrity of his neural systems.
Seeing guardsmen breaking and his brethren flagging, all of them aware of the enormity of the challenge the foe before them poses, Brother Quintus seizes the moment, rallying those under his command with action even as he recalls the wisdom of Roboute Gulliman:
"The warrior who acts out of honor cannot fail. His duty is honor itself. Even his death---if it is honorable---is a reward, and can be no failure, for it has come through duty. Seek honor as you act, therefore, and you will know no fear."
The flames engulf the monstrous xenos, white-hot promethium cascading in a streaming spray over its burnt-orange exoskeleton, blackening it in places as it stomps forward to attack. Unlike anything that Brother Quintus has seen before when combating the hated Devourer's spawn, the Tyrant shrugs off the blooming cloud of superheated flame. Passing through the fire, the Tyrant swings its blade downward.
The Iron Snake takes careful aim at the Tyranid's armor-cowled head as it hunches to rampage through Brother Quintus' fires and snaps off a well-aimed shot with his bolter, aiming for the beast's open maw. The round cracks off the first of many rows of blade-sized teeth, blowing a pair into shattered shrapnel that falls from the thing's jaws to the frozen ground. It is like throwing a rock through a building's window in an effort to knock it down. The thing is not harmed in the least.
Brother Eli feels no fear as the Tyrant draws near, only a limitless disgust at the xenos' very existence.
The thunderous double report of the heavy bolter sounds simultaneously with the guttural roar of pain from the object of Brother Syne's contempt as one hellfire cannister tears through the leathery folds of a wing, and the other penetrates the reticulated carapace of its chest. Wreathed in licking, white-hot flames from Brother Quintus' attack, it crushes the crisping shells of its lesser brood-mates underfoot as it strides forward, bringing the thorny blade down with terrifying quickness.
The marines of Kill-team Umbra need not be a Librarian like Brother Vex to sense the primary fury, the overpowering brutality and single-mindedness of the Hive Mind itself in the imposing entity they face. When it attacks it moves with a fluid grace that belies its great size, each blow landing with the overwhelming force of a siege hammer, cutting through ceramite armor like cloth.
The Blood Angel shoulders his bolter and his chainsword leaps to his hand with blinding speed just as the great serrated blade arcs downward over his head.
The huge bone-blade is barely deflected by Brother Sepheren's chainsword, the storied weapon crumpled and bent out of true by the blow, the chain whirring angrily as it yields and is severed by the iron-hard chitin, unraveling from its track to fall a like slain serpent to the ground in a coil of smoking metal. The bone-blade passes on, cleaving into the Blood Angels armor and ripping through it, cutting deeply into the marine's flesh beneath. The blood angel staggers, turning awkwardly, fumbling for his bolter again as the second blow comes down from above.
Somehow, the Blood Angel rolls away at the last moment, a slick of bright blood spraying in curling ribbons across the pristine snow from his leg behind him.
Trying to come to his brother-marine's aid, Brother Vex is instead met with a huge talon knifing down from above, the razor sharp tip splitting the ice at his feet to the permafrost below, nearly impaling his foot were it not for an intuitive decision to leap to one side. Yanking the talon free from the ground, the Tyrant pivots toward him.
The lash whip snaps out taut from a loose coil of sinuous, ropy biomatter toward Brother Hrothgar as his jump pack carries him backward and up over Brother Sepheren.
The barbed head of the whip snaps closed around the Space Wolf's armored ankle-coupling, but his momentum yanks it free despite the great strength of the Tyranid.
Seeing Sepheren's blood stain the whiteness around me with such a vivid red snaps my mind back to the past. Hearing blood curdling roars and the whine of chain axes on another battlefield of white tapestry long ago. I lost my bond brother there. Brother Somiel Apothecary of the Angels of Absolution. I can still here his gargled scream....
It is Sepheren's roll to carry the fallen, not the other way around. With a roar I squeeze off a round from my bolt pistol as I begin my swing with my force sword.
Although the painful sensation from Magos Vyakai's exo-skeleton shutdown still flickers through my cogitation systems, I manage to pull a Krak grenade from my webbing, flick the activation rune, and heave it towards the upper spine of our foe.
[ooc]BS 41 + 30 (massive target) = 71,
Hearing the distant Thunderhawk engines, I recognize the high-pitched whine of deceleration which indicates the beginning of a landing cycle. I feed my helmet-vox into the caster, "Extraction on this signal, extraction on this signal. Warning: landing zone is hot! Xenos designate, Hive Tyrant!"
I leave the caster on open transmission, hoping to help guide salvation to us.
Brother Vex weaves around the long spur of chitin and bone, coming up beneath the Tyrant's extended forelimb, and fires his bolt pistol into the terror's flank. The hellfire round sizzles and spits after it penetrates, the acid within burning through the xenos' still flaming carapace even as the fire enveloping it begins to gutter out from the cold.
Standing his ground before the gravely wounded apothecary, he dares the monstrosity to challenge him.
Scarce seconds later, the techmarine hurls a krak grenade, the munition bouncing high against the Tyrant's upper body to nestle in a rigid hollow near the shoulder joint of one of its upper limbs, where it rattles for a moment before falling free.
The explosion is tremendous, but the armor piercing grenade does little save char the black and orange coloration of the great beast.
After hailing the Vengeful Lightning, Brother Emeric keeps the comm frequency open, and is rewarded almost immediately with a much clearer signal, and the calm voice of Brother Pellas.
<<<Kill-team Umbra, transmission received and verified, exfiltration zone at grid coordinate [Ɵ,Ɛ]/(76.24°, -94.21°) confirmed hot. We are presently overflying primary Tyranid host at high altitude, and auspex scans verify hostile population in excess of several million organisms. Preliminary estimation of our arrival at extraction site is just over one minute sidereal, and will likely just precede or occur concurrently with the swarm overtaking your position. Again, to repeat, estimated arrival for emergency exfiltration at grid coordinate [Ɵ,Ɛ] is one minutes sidereal time. Weaponry is running hot and is prepared for tactical support role...please provide firing salients if able. Brother Pellas out.>>>
+5
"Gahh!!!! These bullets are bedevilled!!!"
I carefully line up the shot and fire aiming for the center mass but hitting the out stretched left arm of the monster. Better but I need to dial it in more.
As the Hive Tyrant advances, Brother Decius snaps another round off from his bolter, backing away to avoid being trampled under the xenos' long stride. The bolt shell disappears deep into the beast's armor, but is otherwise ineffectual.
Brother Hrothgar twists and spins in midair, throttling up his jump-pack so as to escape the great, barbed whip that ensnares his leg. Struggling against the Tyranid's iron grip and insurmountable strength, he fires at the behemoth, the first shot striking it squarely in the chest. Although it deals no lasting harm, it gives him the distraction he needs to extricate himself from the entangling weapon. Deciding to follow with a quick burst as he vaults backward in the air, he curses as the bolt pistol locks up, a round jammed in the chamber.
Simultaneously from below, the grizzled Storm Warden fires from range, the carefully aimed shot tearing the through the Tyrant's massive forearm with a loud crack, ripping away a sizable plate of armor and contributing to the lash whip's reflexive release of the Space Wolf.
It seems impossible to the Ultramarine, but the white-hot fire of the heavy flamer's maximal settings are simply not hot enough to do anything more than partially melt the synapse creature's bonded exoskeleton.