The sheer multitude of monstrosities led the T'au commander to wonder if they had stumbled upon some new strain of Tyranid. The rats moved to a cacophony of chattering shrieks and guttural, hissed speech that set the T'au's nerves on edge.
The Skaven swarmed into the city in an instant. To cover the evacuation of their civilians, the Fire Warriors were forced into a brutal urban meat-grinder against these verminous horrors.
"Move, move! This way!"
A Fire Warrior and his team of four urged civilians to flee toward the extraction point behind them. No sooner had the screaming non-combatants vanished around the corner than a wave of several dozen ratmen lunged from the shadows.
"Kal'va, do not fall back! We must hold this intersection for at least three minutes!" his teammate roared over the whine of pulse fire.
"For the Tau'va!" Kal'va raised his pulse rifle, picking off the gaunt, mangled ratmen with disciplined marksmanship. The blue plasma bolts punched through the Skaven bodies like hot needles through curd, leaving gaping, cauterized craters of blackened flesh.
Their supporting Tactical Drones had long since been downed while shielding the civilians, leaving the squad without their most vital mobile support.
At that moment, several small, dog-sized rats began gnawing at Kal'va's ankles. Though his nano-crystalline alloy greaves held, the distraction was enough to break his rhythm.
The Skaven were lightning-fast. In that single heartbeat of lost focus, two ratmen pounced onto Kal'va, pinning him down while hacking frantically with rusted, filth-encrusted blades.
Fortunately, they struck his shoulder guards. Though the blades bit into the armor, they failed to fully penetrate the high-grade T'au alloy.
Kal'va jammed his pulse carbine upward and fired point-blank. A wet screech echoed as one ratman's torso vanished in a spray of foul blood. He then unsheathed his ritual bonding knife, driving it through the chest of the second attacker and hurling the dying creature aside.
His teammates were not so fortunate. Kal'va watched in horror as one was swamped and his throat torn open by jagged knives; another was turned into a sieve by a hail of erratic, high-velocity slugs from crude Skaven pistols.
"Don't hesitate, Kal'va—FIRE!"
The teammate being hacked by the Skaven gurgled the command through a throat filled with rising blood. With his final strength, he lunged forward, dragging the four rats clinging to him into a cluster of a dozen more, pushing the swarm away from his last surviving squadmate.
Blinded by fury, Kal'va unleashed a continuous stream of pulse fire, cutting down his comrade and the surrounding vermin in a single, mercy-killing sweep.
But before he could mourn, the air filled with a deafening chorus of squeak-squeak-squeak, followed by the thunderous rhythm of a thousand scurrying feet.
"Enough. We withdraw, the Tau'va needs every warrior!" the Shas'ui of the remaining trio shouted. He tossed a pulse grenade into the approaching tide and signaled a tactical retreat.
The three survivors turned to sprint toward the next fallback point.
Suddenly, a heavy, rhythmic thudding shook the ground. The wall ahead of them disintegrated like foam board as a mountain of stitched muscle and cybernetic limbs burst through the masonry.
Kal'va and his team stared up at a five-meter-tall nightmare. The creature possessed four grafted arms: one ending in Warp-forged talons, one in a heavy flail, one in a chemical projector nozzle, and the last integrated with a six-barrel rotary cannon.
Its body was a grotesque tapestry of bulging muscle covered in grey-brown chitinous plates, with a cluster of twitching rat tails trailing behind. Most abhorrent of all were the two heads on its shoulders: one a massive, scarred rat-skull that roared incessantly, the other a normal-sized Skaven head that never stopped chattering.
"What is that monster? Kill it!"
The Fire Warriors opened fire in a panic. The seemingly mindless beast used its Warp-talons to slice a section of the wall free, using the slab as a makeshift pavise to soak the pulse rounds. Simultaneously, its other arms lashed out, one spewing a torrent of sick-green flame, the other erupting in a rhythmic thud-thud-thud as it spat a line of emerald tracers.
Instantly, one Fire Warrior was reduced to a pair of smoking legs; another was engulfed in the green fire, his screams tearing through the air until Kal'va ended his agony with a single shot.
As the beast hurled the stone slab at him, Kal'va dove into a roll. He surfaced with a roar of vengeful fury, his pulse rifle barking. He no longer cared about the retreat; he would sell his life dearly against this xenos filth.
A dozen pulse rounds shattered the creature's chitinous shell, weeping dark, oily blood. Yet the monster seemed indifferent to the pain. It lunged with impossible speed, its Warp-talons impaling Kal'va through the chest.
"Hehehe…Yes-yes! Rat-Nest Horror, good-strong! YES!" The smaller head atop the stitched monstrosity gave a sibilant, cruel laugh as it hoisted the dying T'au to its face.
"Go to hell, monster... For the Tau'va!!" Kal'va snarled, ripping the pins from every pulse grenade on his belt.
BOOM.
A brilliant sphere of cold-light explosion engulfed the area. When the glare faded, the Rat-Nest Horror still stood, though three of its four arms were shattered and a third of its muscular torso had been vaporized.
"No! No! Moulder's masterpiece!" the Packmaster fused into the Horror shrieked, as if mourning a beloved pet. In this state, the Horror would have to be dragged back to the Master Mutators for a complete re-stitching.
…
As the retreating Fire Warriors and civilians converged on the spaceport, the massive localized energy shields hummed to life.
From behind the shimmering walls of the Great Shield, the T'au looked out in stunned horror at the encroaching sea of vermin. The madness in those filth-smeared faces and their incessant chattering filled the T'au with dread, but the sight of the rats devouring the fallen who hadn't made it in time turned that dread into cold, righteous fury.
The Fire Warriors leveled their rifles, unleashing a torrential rain of fire. The T'au weaponry was devastating, powerful enough to punch through Astartes power armor. Scores of Clanrats and Rat Ogres were liquidated in seconds.
But no matter how many they slew, more surged from the ruins.
Mountainous Hell Pit Abominations lashed at the energy shield with multi-jointed Warp-claws, their horrific roars sounding like the birth of a nightmare.
Finally, the shield buckled and shattered. The tide of rats and monsters spilled inside.
"Twenty minutes! We only need twenty minutes for the Earth Caste and civilians to clear the pads!" the Commander shouted. He piloted his Riptide Battlesuit to the fore, leading a desperate charge of XV8 Crisis Suits. Their jetpacks flared as they plunged into the thick of the swarm.
At the gates of the spaceport, the battle devolved into a savage, desperate melee.
High in orbit, Throt the Unclean watched dispassionately, recording the combat data of his various "products." Those that underperformed would be re-mutated or simply rendered down. The Skaven Empire had no use for failures.
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