M41.250 — Planetfall: Myrrak
Orbital Time Stamp: +00:03:41 from Drop Initiation
The gunship rattled as it punched through the upper atmosphere, buffeted by heat shears and turbulence. Outside, the clouds bled a dull amber. Rain laced with acid pattered against the armor-plated hull, leaving foaming streaks that hissed with corrosion.
Inside, the nine-man strike team waited in silence.
Each was a warrior of the Ultramarines Second Company, helmed and armored, bolters mag-locked, eyes fixed on the deck or one another. They didn't speak — not yet — but tension sat in the hold like another passenger.
Lieutenant Caelan stood at the head of the ramp, unmoving, mag-locked to the deck. The green glow of his visor lit the edges of his helm, and his hand rested on the pommel of his chainsword like a man not expecting to sheath it again.
He didn't speak until the nav-light flashed red-to-blue — target lock confirmed.
"Touchdown in sixty seconds," the pilot voxed, his voice clipped and distorted. "Noisy readings all over the zone. Auspex is garbage."
Caelan's voice came across the squad-vox like a blade drawn in a quiet room.
"We don't need auspex. We know what waits below."
A few of the brothers shifted, checking seals, recalibrating optics. Brother Dravon, youngest among them, broke the silence.
"With respect, my lord—what kind of xeno leaves its biomass inside bedrock? I've seen Genestealer infestations, but nothing like this."
Sergeant Varras, two places down, answered before Caelan could.
"They're adapting," he said. "Always adapting. Every vanguard strain worse than the last."
Brother Maedon snorted. "If they're adapting, let's hope they haven't learned to pray. Because they'll meet the Emperor today."
Caelan turned his helm slightly toward them.
"Focus. No chanting. No bravado. This is extermination, not glory."
The squad fell silent again.
Outside, lightning forked through bruised clouds. The jungle loomed below like something alive, twitching beneath the wind.
"What do we know of the node's defense?" asked Varras.
"Minimal ranged signatures," Caelan replied. "But biomass density is high. Expect ambush patterns. Lictor-grade stealth is likely."
"Perfect," muttered Maedon. "Hate those bastards."
"Then kill them faster," Caelan said flatly.
The Thunderhawk groaned as it dipped, compensating for a pressure spike. The light above the ramp turned green.
"Ramp drop in ten," the pilot voxed. "Good luck down there."
Caelan's chainsword detached from his side with a low hum.
"Luck is for those who lack doctrine."
He turned to the squad.
"Squad divide. Orven, Veyl, Dornas, Brannic — once we hit ground, break off and take the outer perimeter sweep around the node structure. Eyes open, no contact unless provoked. Maintain vox silence unless you engage. Report at thirty-minute intervals."
The four designated battle-brothers gave curt nods.
Caelan looked to the rest.
"Varras, Maedon, Tyrax, Dravon — with me. Node breach. We do this quiet."
He stepped toward the ramp as it hissed open.
"Remember your training. Follow my lead. And if you die—die silent."
He leapt.
---
M41.250 — Surface of Myrrak
+00:09:12 from Drop
The impact of nine boots hitting jungle earth came like thunder.
The Ultramarines landed in formation, knee-deep in a mire that stank of iron and rot. Their ceramite boots hissed with each step through the steaming mud, acid rain pitting even Astartes armor as it fell in slow, hissing sheets.
Caelan was the first to move, blade humming low at his side. His helm swept across the treeline, scanning, analyzing. Nothing moved.
"Secure perimeter," he ordered. "No vox chatter unless contact is made."
The four battle-brothers at his side fanned out in silence, while the other team peeled off, veering into the jungle undergrowth without a word. Their outlines faded into the rain-drenched foliage like ghosts.
Above them, the Thunderhawk engines screamed and faded into the stormclouds. No more sky. Just black trees and twitching light.
---
The jungle pressed close. Trees towered in crooked shapes, bark scored with deep, clean cuts — not natural. Not old. The foliage was thick, but dead-looking. Colorless. As though drained.
Brother Tyrax knelt beside a cracked root, fingers brushing something pale.
"Carapace," he murmured. "Split down the middle. Still wet."
Dravon shifted behind him.
"Lictor?"
"Could be," Tyrax said. "Could be worse."
Caelan didn't speak. He simply turned and walked.
The squad followed.
---
The deeper they pushed, the less the jungle resembled anything natural. Plants leaned toward them — not by wind, but by instinct. Ground pulses echoed through the muck beneath their boots.
Varras spoke over short-vox.
"Auspex is still blind. Static from the storm is saturating return."
"It's not the storm," Caelan replied. "It's the ground. The node is bleeding."
He stopped at a ridge — a shallow rise of cracked stone and slime-covered roots.
Below them, the old mining facility stretched out like a corpse half-digested. Its spires were buried in Tyranid growth: bone towers, tendrils like wet veins pulsing around steel skeletons. Bio-luminescence pulsed across the structure like a heartbeat.
"Throne..." Dravon breathed.
"Keep your voice," Caelan snapped. "We finish this."
He turned to the squad. The storm howled around them. Lightning struck far off — and for a moment, the shadows of things moving across the canopy danced like claws.
"We go in silent. Kill the node. Burn the corpse. No delays. No missteps."
He paused, then added:
"And if you feel something watching you—"
"—it is," Maedon finished, raising his bolter. "Let's get it done."
---
They moved down the ridge like shadows with weight, their footfalls lost in the wet soil. The jungle thinned here — not from natural clearing, but as if the plants themselves had retreated from the structure ahead.
And still, the deeper they advanced, the heavier the world felt.
Not in gravity.
In silence.
There were no insect sounds. No wind. No shift of leaves. Even the storm, now behind them, had gone quiet. All that remained was the soft crunch of ceramite boots and the irregular pulse of Tyranid biolight, dimming and flaring like a dying star.
Dravon shifted at Caelan's flank.
"Feels like a tomb," he muttered.
Caelan didn't answer.
He turned slightly, watching how the light on Dravon's armor flickered out of rhythm with the jungle pulses. A false shadow passed across the younger Astartes' helm — fast, too fast — and was gone.
"Eyes open," Caelan ordered. "The node's psionic field is affecting light vectors. Expect visual dissonance."
Brother Tyrax let out a low exhale.
"First time I've seen light cast a shadow."
A minute passed. Then two.
No contact. No movement. Just the low, creeping sense that they were already inside something's body. That the jungle was not jungle. That the facility was not a structure. That they were not advancing into it — but being drawn down.
"Sir," said Varras suddenly. "My auspex just registered... me."
Caelan turned his helm sharply.
"Repeat."
"It showed my own signal. Three meters ahead. For half a second. Then nothing."
Caelan's voice dropped.
"They're watching."
"Lictors?" asked Maedon.
"Worse," Caelan said. "Memory predators. Shadowforms. Tyranid constructs we don't have names for yet."
"How do you fight something you can't see?" Dravon asked quietly.
"You don't," Caelan said. "You kill the thing making it."
The squad fell into silence again.
The spire entrance loomed ahead — half-flesh, half-metal, yawning open like a maw. Bio-luminescent glands pulsed along the ceiling like lanterns made of nerves.
Caelan stood before it for a long moment, unmoving.
He stared into the dark.
Then he stepped through.
---
Caelan stepped through the threshold.
The spire swallowed him whole.
The world beyond the entrance was silent — not empty, but still. The air pressed in like water, thick and sour. His autosenses adjusted slowly, compensating for shifting light, ionized spores, and faint psionic interference crawling across the HUD.
He didn't pause. He didn't look back.
Behind him, the squad followed, one by one. Their boots struck unnatural flooring — not stone, not metal, but something grown. Something that pulsed when touched. Faint echoes of footfalls came a second too late. Off-beat. Mimicked.
"Inside," Caelan voxed. "Sweep formation. No lights unless I order it."
They advanced.
The walls were half-dissolved ceramite from the old mining structure, wrapped in coils of Tyranid secretion, bone, and muscle. Here and there, human tools were fused into the growth — lascutters, cogitator panels, vox-units still blinking as if someone had used them hours ago.
"Bio-constructs are fusing with the station's infrastructure," said Tyrax. "It's replicating our tech. Or mocking it."
"It doesn't matter," Caelan replied. "We're burning it all."
They descended deeper, the walls narrowing. The bioluminescent glow changed color — green to blue, then briefly red — then stuttered into ultraviolet pulses that made their visors blur at the edges.
Somewhere ahead, a heartbeat, not their own, echoed through the floor.
Caelan raised a fist. Halt.
The squad froze.
He turned his helm slightly, scanning the passage ahead. Movement. Not fast. Not direct. Something watching, then slipping away. Heat traces in the walls. Vibrations in the floor.
He raised two fingers — combat ready.
Then pointed forward.
"It knows we're here."
Then he moved.
---
The tunnel tightened. Walls closer now, slick with translucent resin. The smell shifted — from wet earth and bile to something colder. Oily. Metallic. Hungry.
The squad moved in disciplined silence, bolters half-raised, visors sweeping.
Maedon fell behind by half a step. He didn't say why. He didn't need to.
"Something's pacing us," he said, low.
"Left flank," Tyrax added. "Two meters in the wall. Tracking our rhythm."
Caelan slowed, lowering his chainsword until the tip scraped lightly against the floor. Not enough to spark — just enough to echo.
He listened.
There it was. The echo came back wrong — delayed by a breath, then snapped into place. Something was matching them. Not mirroring. Hunting.
"Eyes on every wall," Caelan ordered. "They want us jumpy. Don't give them what they want."
The lights shifted again — a flicker like a pulse through bone. Then something moved. Just ahead. Fast. Too fast. A blur of chitin. A shimmer.
Gone.
"Lictor," Varras voxed. "Has to be."
Caelan didn't respond. His helm tilted slightly, gaze locked on a turn in the tunnel — where the shadows didn't sit right. The wall breathed when it shouldn't have.
"Hold," he said. "Wait."
The squad stopped mid-step. Tension coiled like a trigger spring.
The air grew still.
Then came the sound — faint, soft, deliberate.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Like claws on metal. Not coming toward them — circling. Climbing. Above.
A single droplet of slime struck Caelan's pauldron.
He looked up.
Nothing.
He had already seen it: the condensation on the ceiling plating, the faint heat shimmer beyond the pulse glow.
"Lights," he said, voice flat.
Their visors flared white for a fraction of a second.
The shadows screamed.
A shape exploded from the ceiling — claws and death, shrieking in psionic silence.
"Engage!" Caelan barked.
The Lictor dropped like a blade — all claws, teeth, and chameleon shimmer — aiming straight for Tyrax. Too fast. Too quiet. It would've bisected him at the waist.
But Caelan was already moving.
He had marked the moment — the shimmer, the angle, the silent pause before the strike.
His chainsword ignited mid-stride, roaring as it met the creature in a brutal arc.
Steel met carapace.
The Lictor's shriek was psychic — inaudible, but like fire through the vox. It twisted mid-air, claws flaring, tail lashing like a whip of bone.
Caelan didn't retreat. He stepped into the blow.
The tail struck his vambrace and skidded aside — he caught the momentum and used it, slamming his shoulder into the creature's chest and driving it back into the wall. Stone and resin buckled.
"Anchor the corridor!" he voxed, voice like stone breaking.
The squad moved without hesitation. Varras and Maedon fanned left, laying down overlapping fire. Bolter rounds tore chunks from the Lictor's limbs — but it was already moving again, claws slicing into the wall, bouncing off the floor with spider-quick agility.
It launched again — but not at the squad.
At Caelan.
It had learned.
And that was its mistake.
Caelan waited — just long enough to see the angle. The twitch in its right claw. The way it favored its left leg.
He ducked low, inside its reach — close enough to see the reflection of his helm in the creature's dull, black eyes.
"You're slower than the last."
His chainsword ripped up through its torso, biting deep. The creature spasmed. He didn't stop. He pressed forward, pinning it to the wall, blade screaming as bone and meat gave way. It clawed at him — scoring his pauldrons, gouging his chestplate.
He didn't flinch.
He twisted the blade once — hard — and the Lictor's back broke with a wet snap.
Caelan stepped back as the body slid down the wall and hit the floor with a twitch.
He deactivated the chainsword.
Silence.
"One," he said, scanning the corridor.
"There will be more."