This is a teaser for my next major project. The Orrax Regiments are about to clash horns with the Tyranids.

Enjoy!

Bellicus Company rolled into Gourangi at 0800 hours. Wolfe jumped down from the back of the Salamander command APC to waltz in ahead of the column. He could see from the moment he entered that this was no place to stage a last ditch defence.

'Get everyone out of the tanks,' he bellowed, sending his adjutant scrambling to get the men deployed.

The Waystation of Gourangi was in turmoil. The settlers were trying to pack as much of their personal possessions into what transport they had. Eight-wheeler flat-bed's were piled high with junk. Furniture and cogitator units, surveying equipment and all the paraphernalia of their daily lives. These were the thing that were most precious to them. So precious that they obviously intended on walking out of Gourangi to the evacuation point.

Deacon jogged up from the rear to join him.

'What's the plan, Captain?'

'You seen this?' Wolfe gestured in disdain at what he was seeing. Children cried on the side of the main thoroughfare as their parents panicked over getting the Salicar rug loaded onto the back of a survey crawler. 'Frakkin' nuits, the lot of them.'

Deacon nodded his agreement.

'Come with me.'

They approached a man who looked to be in authority. He was coordinating a group of rangy forest-men in loading up the survey equipment they carried out of the central lab-dome.

'Are you in charge around here?' Wolfe bellowed. The man turned and his face lit up with joy as he finally noticed the arrival of the troops.

'I am, are you here to...' he didn't get to finish his sentence before Wolfe laid him out with a roundhouse punch.

'Not any more, you're not. Deacon, round up your platoon and get these vehicles unloaded. They'll make much better time if they're carrying people instead of all this crap.'

'You're assigning me guard duty?'

'No, you'll stay here to get them shipped out but then I want you nto hold out here until I get back.'

'What are you going to do?'

Wolfe favoured him with the toothy grin that likened him to his namesake.

'Well, staying here would be the quickest way to get us all killed. They'll roll right over us and barely even slow down. I intend to go out to meet them. We'll make them think there's more of us than there are by spreading out, hitting them as they roll up and bolting back here for a last stand. That should buy more time for these fools to get to the evac point and for our reinforcements to get organised.'

'But I can help, you need men with jungle-smarts out there...'

'Sure, Gabes will lead second platoon, Starkey'll take third and Harko with fifth. They'll make sure the fall-back is as tight as possible but I need someone with jungle-smarts back here too, to make sure we don't get blasted when we crash through those thickets.'

'I've got your back, Wolfe.'

The two men clasped hands. Deacon got the sense that it may be for the last time.

'Gabes, Starkey, Harko, saddle up and get you men moving!' Wolfe bellowed, catching the lascarbine tossed to him by his adjutant.

He shot Deacon one last wry glance as he jogged out into the jungle with the rest of Bellicus at his heels.

xxx

Three hours later Deacon squatted at the edge of the makeshift little settlement, staring out into the jungle as though his Catachan-bred eyes could pierce the green depths.

The settlers were well on their way back, by now. Deacon had sent six good men to guard them. The jungle would likely be crawling with the enemy all around, by now. Invisible stalkers such as Deacon had faced before and barely lived to tell of.

The men were edgy. They started to murmur as the sound of lasguns rose in the distance, accompanied by the muffled shouts of soldiers and the screams of wounded men that for all their potency never lasted for more than a couple of seconds.

The sounds came steadily closer.

'Hold your nerve, boys,' Deacon murmured. 'They'll be here soon enough.'

The cacophony of war came closer and rose in volume. But as it came nearer even the din of men and their technological weapons of war couldn't drown out the rustling undertone that reached their ears. Like the wind in the trees it hushed and shushed, resonating louder, now softer, now louder again like breakers on a sandy beach.

Deacon knew that sound.

White-armoured men broke from the treeline, caked with mud and tree-sap and many of them bloodied too. Starkey led his men in, a look of grim determination on his face contrasting starkly with the numb terror on the faces of his men, precious few of whom had survived.

'Where's Wolfe,' Deacon cried.

'He was right behind me. God-Emperor, Deacon they rolled right through fifth platoon. Harko's dead and I don't know where Gabes is...'

The answer came seconds later as Gabes plunged out of the jungle with two men on his heels. One of them screamed as he disappeared back into the green, swallowed with nothing to tell them what had take him but a green haze and the tell-tale signs of something moving through the underbrush.

'Stalkers!' Gabes screamed.

'Covering fire,' Deacon replied and the two survivors dove to the ground as lasfire sheeted out into the jungle. After seven seconds of free-for-all Deacon called a cease-fire and ran out to bring Gabes and his cohort into cover behind the pathetically thin metal sheeting that surrounded the settlement.

'They're coming... they're coming...' gasped Deacon's fellow Catachan, his eyes rolling back in his head as battle-shock set in. Deacon punched him in the face to bring him round.

'We don't have time for this, Gabes, pull yourself together!'

The hissing of the forest was gaining volume more steadily now, enervating the men so that they could hardly sit still. The waiting was shredding their nerves. Deacon wished for the cold, bloody comfort of having something to shoot at, even if it was only so he could get his guts ripped out and strewn about the glade. Anything was better than this.

Wolfe emerged from the jungle, walking backwards, his lascarbine firing on full auto into the brush. He ejected a spent clip and slammed another home, baying with maniacal rage the whole time and ignoring Deacon's shouts to get into cover.

As the last clip drained out he turned and they saw his exultant expression limned in the fading daylight, Demoniac and utterly blasted clean of any sanity he might once have owned.

And then the tide of xenos flesh rolled over him, turning the tree-line into a writing mass of chitinous anathema. Claws and teeth flashed white in the dusk-light, horned carapaces gleamed purple and blue and a hundred hues in between. Writhing limbs and tentacles tore up the undergrowth and the earth beneath it in a tide of senseless consumption.

The Tyranids had come to Gunga IV and Bellicus Company was the first Imperial unit to clash heads with them.

Bellicus Company was damned!