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him a glancing blow on his right greave, scoring a jagged gash through the black armour, exposing the suspensors and stabilising gyros within.
    Falling to his back, Cassius had his pistol pointed at the doorway within a double-beat of his hearts, ready to fire again.
    The doorway remained empty for several seconds, but Cassius knew better than to believe the lictor had fled. Its presence known, it was biologically programmed to finish the hunt, eliminating all witnesses to ensure it could disappear once more. Cassius had seen such attacks first hand on Macragge and Ichar IV and half a dozen other worlds, and read treatises detailing the same from others who had faced the tyranids. He would not be fooled by a few moments' pause.
    Then the lictor came on, ripping a hole through the wall to Cassius's left rather than coming through the doorway, scattering chunks of plasterite across the room. The tyranid creature burst into the clerk's chamber at the heart of an expanding cloud of dust, jabbing wildly with its scythe-talons, ripping gashes across the floor.
    Surging to his feet, Cassius narrowly avoided the next attack, the illuminator's desk behind him detonating in a shower of wooden splinters, coloured inks splashing across the floor and walls. The Chaplain swung his crozius, one wingtip of the powered mace's head burying itself into the wound opened by the Chaplain's first shot.
    The lictor made no noise as it spasmed in pain, lashing out with its lower set of claws, tearing three lines across Cassius's right shoulder plate. Twisting the crozius arcanum deeper into the lictor's innards, the Chaplain pushed himself closer to his foe, underneath the deadly sweep of the beast's upper limbs. He brought up his pistol and fired into the cluster of feeder tentacles pawing at his helmet. The lictor's head split apart from within, spraying thick ichor and globules of brain matter across Cassius's armour.
    Still off balance, Cassius found himself borne to the ground by the weight of the dying lictor, the servos of his armour whining in protest for a moment before he crashed sideways into the bare ferrocrete. He lay there, pinned down by the lictor's corpse, the floor beneath him vibrating gently from the roar of the cataract while the creature above twitched and spasmed.
    With a grunt, Cassius managed to heave himself onto his front, pushing the lictors body aside. Gaining his feet, the Chaplain fired three more rounds into the creature, targeting the brain stem, secondary neuroprocessor at the base of the spine and the ventricle chambers within its abdominal cavity.
    'Enemy destroyed,' he announced over the comm. 'Be vigilant. The first attack wave will not be far behind.'
     

CHAPTER IV
     
    AS DAY BECAME night, a total of four lictors were discovered and destroyed inside the Cordus Via perimeter, though not before accounting for the death of two Ultramarines and the serious injury of three others. Brother-Apothecary Valion converted a floor of workers' dorms into a field surgery, located close to the centre of the settlement, but his ministrations were not enough to keep the wounded brethren battle-ready. The dead were relieved of their battle gear and ammunition and along with the wounded were taken by Thunderhawk back to the strike cruiser. Cassius marked the names of the fallen in his battle litanies that night, and reminded the rest of the strike force that there was no greater honour than to die in battle against the enemies of the Emperor.
    With the sky swiftly darkening, Cassius faced a thorny decision: whether to bring the outer patrols closer to Cordus Via or not. The further the patrolling squads - three of them in total - were from the settlement, the more warning and information the main force would receive in the event of a tyranid assault. Counter to this, the likelihood of any patrol surviving such a first encounter was greatly reduced if they were beyond the range of swift support from their