Adrian raised his lasgun and opened fire before the Tyranids could fully close the distance.
Several searing red beams lanced out across the battlefield.
A handful of Hormagaunts and Termagants dropped instantly, their skulls punched through where chitin did not cover them.
[Codex Unlocked: Hormagaunt, Termagant]
Adrian had no time to read the system notification.
He saw clearly what happened next.
The fallen gaunts were immediately swarmed by smaller Tyranid Rippers crawling over the battlefield. Flesh vanished in seconds, devoured and recycled into fresh biomass.
Before long, that biomass would become more Tyranids.
That was the true horror of the swarm.
In a war of attrition, few species in the galaxy could rival the Tyranids. With their ability to reclaim and repurpose every corpse, every scrap of organic matter, they turned death itself into reinforcement.
Adrian kept firing, burning through wave after wave of charging gaunts. Hormagaunts and Termagants fell in numbers, but there were always more.
Then, with a hollow click, his lasgun's charge pack ran dry.
At almost the same moment, about twenty meters away, two Astra Militarum troopers manning a heavy bolter emplacement were struck by fleshborer rounds from the advancing Termagants.
Chunks of their bodies were torn away.
They died instantly.
The moment the heavy bolter fell silent, the Tyranid advance surged forward with renewed ferocity.
Adrian's eyes sharpened.
Without hesitation, he sprinted toward the abandoned weapon.
Enhanced by the Super-Soldier Serum, he crossed the distance in barely two seconds and threw himself behind the heavy bolter just as the swarm neared the trench.
He seized the grips and opened fire.
The heavy bolter roared.
Explosive shells ripped into the front ranks of the Tyranid wave, blasting apart gaunts in sprays of ichor and shattered chitin. For the moment, the collapsing line stabilized.
A nearby Guardsman noticed what Adrian had done and immediately ran over to assist, hauling ammunition into place while keeping his lasgun ready to cover the trench.
Adrian gritted his teeth and kept firing.
Shell after shell thundered from the heavy bolter as he cut down the charging Tyranids in brutal, mechanical rhythm.
Then [Combat Instinct] screamed a warning through his mind.
Every nerve in Adrian's body ignited.
He let go of the trigger and dropped flat into the trench, instinct taking over before conscious thought could catch up.
At the same time, he grabbed the assisting Guardsman and yanked him down beside him.
A heartbeat later, a glowing green crystal slammed into the heavy bolter emplacement.
The steel weapon did not explode.
It melted.
In an instant, the entire emplacement collapsed into a bubbling pool of half-liquefied metal.
Adrian's expression darkened.
A Venom Cannon.
Only a Tyranid Warrior wielding a Venom Cannon could produce something like that.
The weapon fired highly corrosive bio-crystals, each one packed with venom capable of dissolving armor and flesh alike. Even those who survived the initial impact often died screaming afterward, their bodies shredded by crystal fragments and toxin.
Had [Combat Instinct] not warned him, Adrian knew exactly what would have happened.
Even with the Super-Soldier Serum, he would have been reduced to sludge.
And now the worst had happened.
Without the heavy bolter's suppressive fire, the Tyranids crashed into the trench.
"Damn it."
Adrian snapped up his lasgun and fired point-blank into the swarm.
A dozen Hormagaunts shrieking as they leapt over the parapet had their skulls blown open one after another, their bodies tumbling into the mud.
The Guardsman beside him also fired wildly, emptying shots into the press of claws and teeth.
His aim was rougher than Adrian's, but at this range, that hardly mattered.
Several gaunts still fell.
It made no difference.
For the Tyranids, such losses were meaningless.
More creatures poured into the trench behind the dead.
Once the fighting reached close quarters, the fate of an ordinary Guardsman was all but sealed. Against Tyranids in melee, most humans lasted only moments.
Adrian drew the salvaged combat blade at his side and cursed the command staff for not ordering a retreat sooner.
A Hormagaunt lunged.
Under the guidance of [Combat Instinct], Adrian sidestepped with uncanny precision and drove the blade straight through its eye socket.
The creature convulsed.
At that same instant, another gaunt slashed at him from behind.
The sharpened bonesword missed by a hair's breadth, carving into the dirt where he had stood a fraction of a second earlier.
Adrian's heartbeat pounded like a drum in his ears.
Adrenaline flooded his system.
The world around him seemed to slow.
He pivoted sharply and drove the knife downward through the second Hormagaunt's skull. Its grotesque body spasmed twice before going limp.
He yanked the blade free, spattering the mud with red and white pulp.
With his enhanced body, Adrian could kill a Hormagaunt in close combat without too much difficulty.
But he could not keep this up forever.
The swarm never stopped.
And so far, only gaunts had breached the trench.
The true threat had not yet arrived.
The Tyranid Warriors—larger, tougher, faster, wrapped in thick chitin and armed with symbiotic weapons—had not entered the position in force.
Adrian had no confidence that he could bring one down with nothing more than a standard lasgun and a bayonet.
More importantly, a battlefield was not an arena.
The Tyranids were not honorable duelists who would wait their turn.
If a Warrior entered the trench, it would not come alone.
The only real chance of survival was to withdraw and regroup with a stronger Imperial position further back.
But among the Astra Militarum, unauthorized retreat was desertion.
And deserters were often killed by their own side before the enemy ever reached them.
Even if he escaped the Tyranids, there was every chance he would be shot by a commissar or executed later.
As Adrian fought off another charging Hormagaunt, desperately searching for some way out, a thunderous engine roar suddenly rolled across the battlefield overhead.
He looked up.
A massive Thunderhawk gunship, marked in blue, tore through the smoke-filled sky.
Ignoring the Tyranids' withering fire, it rained devastating volleys down on the swarm below.
The effect was immediate.
The Tyranid advance faltered under the gunship's assault, and the pressure on the trench eased at once.
At last, Adrian no longer had to fend off Hormagaunts while also dodging fleshborer rounds, venomous spikes, and strangler projectiles from the rear.
Most of the Tyranids' ranged biofire was now turning upward, trying to bring down the Thunderhawk.
The gunship pressed through the storm regardless, hammering the hive below with relentless firepower.
Then, as it hovered low over the battlefield, the assault ramp beneath its belly began to open.
Six towering figures dropped from the hold.
They hit the ground like meteors, throwing up clouds of mud and dust.
Then came the roar of revving chainswords.