Multi-barrel metal tubes were spinning at high speed, spitting out a maddening whine.
At the muzzle, alongside a flash of orange, an invisible storm of metal tore the air apart, ripping forward at several times the speed of sound.
That force shredded the misshapen monsters ahead into pieces.
The armor on those creatures went first. Some of it was blown apart. Some of it was blasted inward, embedded straight into rotten flesh.
Once large sections of plating were torn away, the metal storm chewed what remained into minced meat.
A whole swathe of monsters was being reduced to gore across the ground.
Then the ones surging up from behind trampled through it, grinding the flesh and debris into a single slurry. It was a blood-slick scene so nauseating it made the stomach seize.
And that still wasn't the worst part.
"Bastards, these damned things!"
"Aim for the head! Blow the head off!"
"If you don't pulp the skull completely, they just won't stop!"
Several furious roars rose above the metal storm, mixed with curses and the trembling edge of panic.
A unit that had once been over a thousand strong was down to fewer than three hundred.
And among those who'd fallen, more than half had joined the other side, becoming part of the enemy.
Meaning that in the mass they were cutting down, some of those "monsters" might have been their comrades only hours ago.
Worse, if the head wasn't destroyed, the things would drag in other corpses, absorb them, and stitch themselves back together into an even more grotesque shape before lurching forward again.
Then, abruptly, the monsters stopped.
"What's wrong?"
"Scared?"
"Going to run?"
Hollow sockets that had lost their eyeballs dripped some kind of cloudy filth.
Half-rotten eyes clung to decaying arms.
Pupils jammed deep in throats, stuck together with teeth.
Every place that might have been used to "look" at them seemed to be staring with mocking contempt.
A daemon's sneer.
From scraps of limb and ruined torsos, strange, wrong noises seeped out, grating on the nerves.
Their mouthparts, if that's what they were, whispered something.
As if resistance was meaningless.
As if they should embrace it, step into Chaos, and stop suffering.
As if Chaos would bless them, and everything would finally hurt less.
"Idiots, why did you stop!"
"Damn it, do you want to die?"
"Shoot! Keep shooting!"
On the vox-channel, a veteran's hoarse bellow cut through, followed by the answering roar of gunfire.
The new recruits who'd frozen snapped awake and tried to squeeze their triggers.
Too late.
That heartbeat of hesitation gave the monsters their opening.
But the monsters' bodies didn't surge forward.
They exploded.
They were torn apart by countless bullets and shredded by lancing beams of light.
Reinforcements?
No.
This was the monsters' counterattack.
The bullets and laser fire that ripped them apart weren't coming from the defenders. They were coming from behind the monsters.
As those bodies burst, the dense streams of rounds and light, no longer blocked, poured straight into the defenders' line.
Many didn't even have time to react before death harvested them.
Solid rounds struck bare heads. Without helmets, that meant skulls bursting like overripe fruit.
Arms and legs were worse. Limbs were simply blown off.
Even chest plates didn't save them. A few impacts punched straight through, and then the organs inside were churned into pulp.
As for the high-energy beams from lasguns, without armor the body was instantly cored and vaporized along the beam's path.
If a beam hit armor, the lucky ones saw it glance off like a ricochet.
Not the beam ricocheting, but the person.
Some weren't lucky at all. Their armor vaporized outright. That didn't necessarily mean the plate was weak. It could just mean the shot's power output was higher.
In that sudden, brutal burst, men were turned to red mist, torn apart, scattered into chunks, their flesh flung across the mud.
And almost all of those who died in that first exchange were new recruits.
A handful of veterans—those who sensed the danger—had already thrown themselves flat without hesitation.
In the next instant, their bodies were half-buried under a rain of shredded corpses.
The stink of blood and butchered meat.
The sour reek of spilled organs.
The filthy stench from intestines.
The sharp bite of scorched flesh.
Machine oil.
All of it mixed together until the mind swam and the stomach convulsed.
But there was no time to retch.
The veterans, with sheer will, kept pouring fire downrange in desperate reply.
They saw them.
They saw the corrupted bodies.
Rotten flesh seemed fused into uniforms, armor plates, and weapons, as though the meat and the gear had grown into each other.
It was revolting.
They howled.
They reveled.
And they raked the line with fire, laughing as they did it.
The defenders' return fire was weakening.
A veteran risked a glance back.
Further behind, the new recruits had completely fallen apart. No formation. No coordination.
They were retreating in a crush, packing together into a single clump.
A perfect target.
It was over. This section of the line was going to break. It was inevitable.
Huh?
Why was his vision tilting?
Why was the world spinning?
Ah.
He understood.
He was looking at himself.
Smeared and plastered with gore so thoroughly that no one could tell who it was anymore, but he recognized the slight difference in build.
The corpse blown in half, headless, severed at the waist.
That was him.
"No one falls back!"
"Who gave you permission to fall back!"
"Pick up your weapons and fire at the enemies in front of you!"
"Damn it!"
"Fire!"
With the orders barked out, the veterans didn't hesitate. They squeezed their triggers.
Those who snapped back to their senses followed suit, roaring as they worked their weapons.
Their faces were numb as they watched the soldiers trying to fall back into the second defensive line.
Numb as they watched those men get harvested by the death storm they themselves unleashed.
"Bang bang!"
Amid the thunder of massed gunfire, two shots—weak, almost insignificant—still stood out with brutal clarity.
Because those two shots were aimed at their own side.
Two soldiers collapsed as their rebreather masks shattered, leaving gaping holes in their faces, the rounds punching through and out the back of their skulls.
The company captain saw it and went incandescent with rage, raising his boltgun to put a bolt round into the bastard who'd just executed comrades at less than ten meters.
He never got the chance.
A spike of pain tore through his hand, and he dropped the weapon.
A short knife was buried in the back of his hand.
His expression twisted, and he tried to move—
A heavy blow crashed into him, and his body stopped obeying for a moment.
When he came back to himself, he was pinned down.
Used as a human shield.
The attacker's speed was terrifying—fast enough to trigger fear, rage, and disbelief all at once.
And alongside it came something else.
A wrongness.
Like a pressure in the mind, like being scraped raw by an unseen presence.
Just as he was about to bellow for his men to shoot anyway—damn the risk, damn the friendly fire—
"These two have already been bewitched by daemons."
The voice was low and fast.
It made him freeze.
That was absurd. Why would he believe this? Who did this man think he was?
"I'm a Blank."
The added words stopped the shout in his throat.
A Blank?
(End of Chapter)
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