A/N - changed the name of the previous chapter as it seemed to suit this one better, sorry for any confusion this may cause. Enjoy the final installment of BtDYK Part 2!

The Orrax troopers stood in tense, close-packed ranks, forming a wide semicircle almost surrounding the far smaller Catachan outfit. Deacon squared up to Wolfe at the centre with Corgan and Vaughn off to one side. The Catachans were murmuring amongst themselves, aghast at what they saw to be brothers turning on one another. Corgan was just confused.

'I can take you both,' Wolfe declared.

The Catachans became even more agitated. Corgan shook his head, trying to make sense of what was happening. He knew he'd won Deacon over to his camp, but not in such a way as to engender loyalty like this. Biggs explained to him later the dynamics of Deacon's relationship with Wolfe.

There was no love between them. Deacon's loyalty to his own was born on Catachan, where the act of turning upon your brother was bound to have the direst of consequences. That loyalty had been eroded throughout the term of their exile. Jamma had perpetrated the decline, leading them to desert the Imperial Guard, abandoning their brothers. Wolfe had been the worst affected by what they'd done, but his upbringing prevented him from venting his anger and bitterness on their leader.

Instead, he'd transferred that bitterness onto Corgan himself after the events that had brought about Jamma's death and their internment on Orrax. Since then Deacon had watched him send men to die in doomed attempts at revenge, knowing all along that Wolfe was afraid to bring about Corgan's death. Where else would he find another outlet for his building frustration?

Deacon had been straining at the end of his tether, fighting to see the right in what they were doing and failing. Wolfe had let them down as surely as Jamma had. It was time to set things straight. He'd finally found the strength he needed to break the bonds holding him back.

Corgan stepped forward, resting a placatory hand on Deacon's massive shoulder.

'We don't have time for this, fellas. In case you hadn't noticed, we're in kind of a hurry…'

'Catachan justice won't wait, Major,' came a new voice. From the murky green depths of the jungle came a second platoon of green-camoed soldiers, slightly larger than the first. The man that had spoken approached Corgan and proffered a meaty hand in greeting.

'Hrothgar Hammer, Captain of the Twelfth Company Fire Starters, Catachan Third. I'm here to escort your boys out of here!'

Corgan shook his hand. This was the man that was supposed to have met them at the translocation point. From the looks of his unit they'd been fighting hard to break through. With the pleasantries done with, Hammer turned to Deacon, a glimmer of sad recognition in his eyes. Unspoken questions passed between them and went unanswered.

'This bears little resemblance to the kind of Catachan justice I remember.' He grumbled. 'But then you boys have been gone a long time. I guess you've forgotten most of your deathworld etiquette. On Catachan, disputes within the kithvan were resolved in the simplest way possible.'

A murmur of agreement rippled through the Deathworlders. They came to some kind of accord that went so far over Corgan's head he almost missed it completely. One of them spoke, uttered the words they were all thinking for the benefit of the soft-worlders.

'Let the jungle decide!'

xxx

Vossman Trae picked off another Carnifex with his autocannon, chewing up ground and puncturing the creature's thorax, slamming back into his seat as he pulled up and away. The Terminator armoured Astartes below him ploughed on, abandoning the corpses of two of their brothers. As long as the transponders in the suits were still intact the bodies of the fallen could be teleported back to the Battle Barge, otherwise the loss of those suits of armour would cost them dear.

Things were progressing reasonably to plan, so far. The Tyranids were nothing if not predictable, but under the circumstances he understood why. If the hive ship was lost then the world could be saved, the Tyranids would no long be able to procreate. The disease they had infected the jungle with could be isolated and eliminated. They hadn't done enough yet to tip the balance.

And yet still two of his wingmen were dead.

One of them had mistimed a manoeuvre and slammed into the body of the hive. It was a stupid, rookie mistake. Selwyn had flown several void missions under Trae's wing. He'd been good, an instinctive void-pilot. He just hadn't quite got the knack of atmospheric combat manoeuvres. Such a waste.

Eydvald, on the other hand, had been mobbed by winged Tyranids. He'd been coming out of a strafing run when they'd flocked unexpectedly, rising up like a curtain across his escape vector. The xenos had dragged him from the firmament at great cost to both sides. The shattered wreck was still burning.

Trae would feel their loss keenly, but later. For now, there was work to be done. The Marauder Bombers would soon be en route with their deadly payload. The Astartes didn't have long to place their charges.

xxx

Ascertes Greathammer was like a whirlwind on the battlefield. His massive brazen hammer smote his enemies all around him, pulverising Tyranids in clouds of blood-mist, sending chitinous shrapnel flying in lethal kinetic explosions.

His personal bodyguard worked around him, filling the gaps in his armour, as any good bodyguard should. Their chainswords bit deep, adding to the lingering cloud of vaporised ichors, littering the jungle with corpses. Perseus, the Chaplain, spurred them on.

The Astartes were late to the field of combat, but they were making up for that now, coming in on the Tyranid flank. Initially they crushed all before them, advancing deep into the Tyranid force until the larger bioforms turned on them. These managed to slow their advance and reap casualties of their own, but the resulting crossfire from the Imperial Guardsmen was lethal.

The front line Guardsmen had fallen back to their slower moving armour, forming a solid fighting line for what was essentially a short-range firefight. The Pardus ordnance was ploughing the jungle up in great fountains of loamy earth, mingled with broken alien flesh. The Catachan Hellhounds were bringing fire down on their heads. Heavy weapons teams guarded the flanks, eviscerating anything larger than a warrior that managed to get close and letting the infantry do the rest.

Working together, these two arms of the Imperium closed around the Tyranid counter-attack in a vice-like grip. They took their losses, but the Tyranids were fighting a battle on two fronts and even their alien determination couldn't stand up to the kind of punishment they were taking.

Their withdrawal was sudden. Ascertes let his hammer fall to his side as the Tyranids before him melted away, turning tail and fleeing. He knew this was unusual behaviour, especially when there were still synapse creatures alive to relay the hive-mind's imperatives. But then he also knew that this was no cowardly retreat in the face of overwhelming odds. The swarm must have received the signal that indicated their hive was under attack. They were rushing home to defend it.

The Chapter Master of the Extartes gripped his hammer below the head and raised it high over his head.

'For the Emperor!' he cried and was echoed by a hundred of his battle brothers. The Guardsmen took up the victory cry. Some of them rushed forward in pursuit of their foe but their commanding officers reeled them in. They knew what was coming.

Ascertes signalled the withdrawal.

xxx

Corgan hunkered down in the undergrowth in response to Captain Hammer's signal. The jungle was writhing around them. Tyranids broke from cover by the swarm. He raised his rifle to fight, his heart in his mouth and his stomach cold. But Hammer held out a hand to stay him.

'Watch…' he said. 'They see us but it's not us they want. The hive needs them and we are not the immediate threat. They will pass us by.'

Corgan watched with naked awe as the tide of alien flesh ebbed and flowed around them, bypassing them with little more than a warning hiss.

'Come,' said the Catachan. 'We still have some way to go before we are out of danger.'

xxx

Deacon and Wolfe fought like Catachan Devils, fast and furious, each with a deadly sting, their faces curled into rictus masks of hatred. Wolfe's sword was lighter than Deacon's and he was faster, but Deacon was a master swordsman. Both men had been tempered on a thousand battlefields. Both had survived the rigours of Catachan, the Necromundan Underhive and the ice mines of Orrax, deadly environments that only the strongest could endure. The scales were evenly balanced.

Deacon was nude from the waist up, his powerful torso slicked with sweat that diluted the blood trickling from several minor scratches his former brother in arms had inflicted. Sweat matted his short-cropped hair, running down into his eyes. But you learned to live with that when you were born on Catachan. He built a shake of the head into the structure of his economical movements, flicking the sweat from his brow.

Wolfe was grimly silent. He didn't even grunt with exertion as he pressed home with his offensive swordplay. He didn't glorify in the sight of Deacon's blood because he knew he hadn't yet inflicted a telling wound on his opponent. He had Deacon on the defensive, as was to be expected from the older, more experienced man. But the other man's defences were formidable. His control over the mercury filled blade was consummate. Wherever Wolfe put his sword it came up against a steel barrier.

The sound of metal upon metal absorbed into the dense jungle. Deacon's grunting barely registered over the thrumming sounds of life. But as the dance dragged on and both men began to tire, the sounds of life faded to nothing and were replaced by a much different reverberation.

They knew that sound. It caused them to break off, their disputes forgotten, tuning into the frighteningly familiar vibration that rattled the leaf-mould at their feet and shook the trees by the roots. They were the telltale signs of a jungle-stampede! On Catachan it would be the native wild boar that caused this sound and they were bad enough. Here it could only mean one thing.

It had seemed a bitter joke to utter those ominous words: Let the jungle decide! To the Deathworlders this place was as tame as the garden worlds of Ultramar. The only decisions here would be made at the edge of a sword. But now it seemed that the jungle was indeed taking an interest. The quaking of the trees, the vibrations of the earth, these things held meaning for a man of Catachan. It was the sound of judgement made manifest. The verdict had been passed upon those cast out.

Xenomorphs broke from cover, smaller forms before the larger as they struggling to keep up with their diminutive cousins. Gaunts and Genestealers swirled around them, heedless, ignoring them. Their instincts kicked in and they lashed out, taking Tyranids down as they fled past the two men. Then they found themselves in the path of a lumbering screamer-killer, its fore-swept talons flailing. It came upon them so quickly it took them by surprise.

Deacon felt himself shoved roughly aside. He rolled in the crushed undergrowth, trampled by straggling Gaunts and becoming coated in vine-sap and jungle detritus. He stayed down, curling himself into a ball, making himself as small as he possibly could as the stampede raged around him.

He didn't see what it was that knocked him unconscious.

xxx

Ursos sneered in disgust as he laid eyes upon the honeycombed cells that formed the ceiling of the birthing chamber. The massive construct receded into the fluorescent gloom, vast and vile and monstrous. Most of the cells were empty, their silken canopies prematurely burst as the malformed xenos crawled forth to defend the hive. The floor of the chamber was littered with tattered silk and slick with amniotic fluid.

Many of the cells were still sealed, their hideous contents twitching as the Terminators' high-intensity torches dissected the gloom. The Astartes ignored these, time did not allow them to purge every living organism in this place, they would achieve that goal soon enough.

Ursos led the way, coming near to a clutch of cells in which hungry grubs scraped rhythmically at their narrow cylinders, demanding food. These he shot dead out of a sense of caution, spilling maggot innards across the canted floor.

His men moved up behind him, one of them carrying the huge incendiary device across his back. The others covered him, watchful for the soldiers of the hive. But the swarm, such as it was, held back. They hissed in rage as their young were slain, but the invaders could do so much more damage and for the time being, the loss of a few grubs was deemed negligible.

There would be a turning point. Ursos knew this. The moment would come when their presence could no longer be tolerated, when the vast intellect that ruled this place would be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to purge the hive. He was ready for that turning point. He would sell his life dear to ensure the completion of his objective. And that was the only thing that mattered.

They reached the waypoint.

The squad formed a bastion around Brother Cantrell as he lowered himself to his knees. Brother Latros uncoupled the device from its harness on Cantrell's back. The Techmarine initiate, Valian, began the incantations of awakening, drawing hexes in the air over the device and running nimble fingers over the control panel set into the metallic shell.

The device awoke. It spoke in binary form, confirming the programme laid into its memory chip. A powerful void shield shimmered into existence around it. Valian nodded his affirmation.

'It is done!' he intoned.

'Very well,' Ursos replied. 'Let us leave this place.'

The moment they moved away from the device was the turning point. Brother Turgon's heavy flamer gurgled to life. Salvanti's assault cannon chattered into motion, propellant flaring as he opened up with a fury. The chittering hordes, given lease to do what came naturally to them, closed on them in a solid mass, numbering many more than they had thought.

The Terminators didn't stop moving, they fought their way steadily, unstoppably towards the outer shell of the hive ship. The horde crashed against them like waves against a mighty atoll. They carved their way through with their guns, their power gauntlets and chainfists.

Ursos laid about him with his lightning claws charged to full capacity. He pushed his tactical dreadnought armour forward, increasing his momentum into what passed for a run. He cleaved the swarm in two, tearing through the tide of living abomination like the prow of a mighty warship parts the void. His squad followed in his wake, adding their weight to his advance.

When they reached the outer hull the squad formed up around Ursos and he went to work, slicing great chunks of igneous chitin from the outer crust with his powered claws. It seemed to take forever.

Meanwhile, Salvanti's rate of fire faltered and failed as a gout of powerful bio-acid melted through the chinks in his armour. Incapacitated, the rest of the squad stepped up their efforts, pushing themselves to the very limits of an Astartes' prodigious endurance. They were titans amongst men, the living embodiment of the Emperor's wrath. They were as invulnerable as any man could be, and yet not invulnerable.

Cantrell lost his footing, barged from his fighting stance by the weight of his aggressors. Turgon tried to reach him as they started to drag him away and almost lost his own life in the process. Cantrell was folded into the morass, never to be seen again.

It took Ursos seven minutes to hack his way through to the outside, creating a hole in the upper surface of the hive ship. He waved the squad through, Latros and the Valian supporting Salvanti's unconscious bulk between them. Ursos was the last to make his exit, barely managing to keep the Tyranids at bay with all the accumulated experience of his centuries of close-quarters fighting.

The squad turned to cover the exit, destroying anything that emerged from the hole and spraying gore across the charred surface of the hive ship.

'Nassus, this is Ursos. Our charge is set!'

'Acknowledged, Captain, the other teams have been retrieved already, prepare for translocation!'

'Understood!'

Seconds later the warp swallowed them whole to belch them out again on the teleportation deck of the Fury. Their work done, they placed themselves in the Emperor's hands.

xxx

Fleet Captain Tarkon drifted. The infection in his veins had spread throughout the narrow corridors of his metal body. The void was in his belly and it was cold, so cold.

He slumped in his throne of wood and steel, crippled, a cadaver waiting for the cold sleep of death. He slouched and drooled and watched in dumb reverence as the hive ship convulsed. Explosions blossomed along her flanks. Massive constructs of flesh and bone slumped and broke apart. Polyps of gelatinous material belched out into the frozen emptiness of space.

Smaller vessels swarmed around the foe, punishing it, fanning the flames that boiled within. Fleet Captain Tarkon watched the death of the hive ship through machine eyes, witnessed the cataclysmic explosion caused by a critical torpedo strike from the Cobra Destroyer, Eagle's Wing. He rejoiced within himself, his fleshy self virtually comatose, as the bloated abomination burst apart and immolated from within.

Victory then, but at what cost? Tarkon mourned. Not for himself or even the Justice of Terra. The ship would be recovered and refitted, no doubt. No. He mourned for the crew. He felt their deaths, every one, through the hypersensitive organs of his metallic body. He saw Lieutenant Brady's lying prone in a corridor awash with blood and alien ichors, his heart fluttering but still beating. He felt his cooling systems bleeding out, billowing through the engineering section, enveloping brave sergeant Holst whose exploits had saved the Justice from total immolation. He agonised as the bridge crew suffocated, their life support systems failing.

Within his sealed sarcophagus, the fleshy cadaver that was Tarkon's own body was sheltered from the depredations of the void. He longed to join them in death.

But Fleet Captain Tarkon drifted. His engines deactivated as the failsafe kicked in, a precaution triggered by the loss of seventy five percent of life support systems throughout the ship. His body cooled, hollow corridors booming with the sound of his metal skin contracting. One by one the lights that glittered like yellow stars along his flanks were extinguished and went out, like the snuffing of a thousand candles.

Eventually Fleet Captain Tarkon drifted into the next life. A hero. A martyr.

xxx

Lieutenant Brady was Warrant Officer aboard the Justice of Terra, responsible for internal security. He was a father of two and a loving husband to a beautiful wife. He had graduated from the Naval Academy of Bakka with first class honours. He lay on his back in a pool of blood, most of it his own.

His hand held up a crumpled photopict. The face of his beautiful wife was smeared with a red thumbprint. His two babies stared happily out of the picture, proud of their papa. Soon they would know of his failure. All that effort in vain. He hoped the navy would make the effort to lie about the manner of his demise. He hoped they would send his medals home to Anise and the girls with a letter that lauded him as a hero of the Imperium.

He'd known the risks, of course. And he'd done all that he could to stop the aliens from overrunning the ship. He'd stemmed the tide for a while, along with his hard fighting security forces and with a few ancient servitors along for the ride. But he'd known that it could come to this. He'd known, but he'd been foolish enough to hope… Hope that he would see his family again. That was not going to happen now, not with his lungs so full of blood and his rib cage torn open.

The corridor was blurring around him. The photopict was the last thing in his world to lose clarity.

xxx

Sergeant Holst fought the pain, fought the spreading numbness as it worked its way up into his torso. He sat with his back to the frigid shielding that protected him from the radiation of the massive plasma reactor. The cowling was over three metres thick, solid steel with adamantium supports. Massive cooling systems ran their serpentine limbs across the face of the cowling, penetrating it at intervals, injecting the plasma-core's jacket with super-cool chemicals and preserving what life remained in the Justice of Terra.

One of those snakes had ruptured. The breach had saved Holst's life and soon it would take it away. The jet of coolant had killed the last survivors of his platoon along with the brood of vicious gaunts that had threatened to overwhelm them. It had also turned Holst's legs to ice from the hips down.

He could barely feel it. That must be the shock. He knew with great clarity that if he moved, his legs would stay exactly where they were. They might even explode into a thousand red fragments.

But the core was safe. The Justice of Terra would survive even if her crew did not. Holst had brought this about.

He reached for his shotgun, cradled it in his arms, and waited. He would wait until the shock killed him, or the coolant filled the compartment and suffocated him, or perhaps it would freeze him dry, preserved until the slightest jolt caused him to collapse into a pile of red ice. He would wait until the rescue parties turned up and then he would say goodbye to his legs, perhaps also to his life.

xxx

As he came back to his senses Deacon realised that the stampede left him virtually unscathed. His ribs were bruises and his skin abraded, but he was essentially still in one piece. He struggled to his feet, still dazed by the scale of his experience.

Wolfe lay a short distance away, on his back, his torso crushed, blood seeping from his mouth and nose. He was still breathing, shallow, painfully, spitting bright blood. His eyes were open to the sky, revealed through a gap in the canopy. Deacon dropped to his knees beside him, took his hand in his own.

At the last, Wolfe had saved his life. It had cost him his own. Deacon had no words.

'Looks like home, doesn't it?' Wolfe's voice was ragged, barely above a whisper.

Deacon looked up. It looked nothing like Catachan. This jungle was tame. And yet it had still rendered justice just as Catachan would. Deacon nodded, tears springing to his eyes.

'Just like home, brother. Just like home.'

Wolfe's eyes glazed over. The life went out of him. All that hatred, all that self-destructive frustration lost into the ether.

Deacon hoisted the broken husk of his fellow Catachan over his shoulders. Putting his unerring sense of direction in charge he and trudged in the direction of Gurshun.

xxx

It was to be the last sortie of the day.

Lieutenant Commander Vossman Trae fired his burners in order to catch the tail end of the bomber wing. Epsilon Wing was already providing cover, but command wanted all their flyboys along for the ride. Everything was riding on this operation and the bombers were more vulnerable to winged bioforms.

He arrived in time to take command just as the hive ship loomed over the horizon, backlit by the flames that still raged around it, dark and malignant beneath a dark haze of smoke, ash and alien spores.

The bombers had been loaded with air bursting napalm bombs, designed to carpet the hive and the surrounding jungles, keeping billions of spores from bursting free. They would excise the greater part of the disease, giving them time and opportunity to prevent the spread of those spores that would inevitably escape.

It was likely that Gunga IV's ecosystem would never fully recover from the damage done by the invasion, but the Imperium would still be able to reap the resources the world had to offer.

'Angry Aces, this is Trae, we are on station. Keep us advised and we'll watch your backs, over!'

'Good to have you with us, Voss. The Emperor Protects!'

The target loomed larger, filling their field of vision. Specks of deeper blackness became visible in the haze, circling. The hive was waiting.

'Be advised, flight, looks like the airways are busy today. Let's fire up those burners and take the fight to the enemy!'

The Thunderbolts surged ahead of the Marauders, afterburners flaring bright in the fading light, leaving just three to fly top cover in case of surprises. Trae rocketed into unfriendly airspace, his autocannons spitting fire.

Winged warriors caught in his cone of fire dropped like rag-dolls, their wings and bodies ruptured. A brood of Gargoyles stooped down from his three, their small arms scoring his bird's armour but unable to penetrate. They were too slow to get in his way, organisms getting into his forward cone where they might be able to latch onto him or blow out his intakes presented the only real risk.

He ducked and dived, picking off the larger xenos and scattering the thicker flocks of Gargoyles. His wingman followed him through, taking warriors apart with pinpoint bursts of cannon fire. The carrion birds of the hive were scattered to the four winds as the Angry Aces lined up for their attack run.

'We're on our way in, Voss. Watch out below.'

'Acknowledged. Flight leader to flight, be advised; we have bombers inbound. Make sure you don't get caught in the fallout.' The Thunderbolts pulled out, gaining altitude, drawing some of the Tyranids with them as the Marauders started to drop their payload.

The larger part of the xenos flyers homed in on this new threat, mobbing the lead bomber in the hope that they would be able to peel the crew out of their tin-can. The bomber's hard points opened up, streams of stubber fire tearing into the flyers and picking them out of the skies. Very few got through and the small number of Navy Marines allocated to each bird quickly dispatched these.

A pair of winged Tyrants rose from the hive. They had avoided the aerial combat until now. They were too intelligent to pit themselves against the snub fighters but these lumbering birds were more like easy meat.

Trae spotted them first, calling his wingman in and executed a long dive, trying to judge the bomb-fall at the same time as lining up his guns. He switched over to the quadruple lascannon array for a bit more punch and opened up.

His first attempt missed, but his wingman was on target, taking one of the creature's limbs off. Trae's second burst tore through its left wing, sending it spiralling down in a writhing tangle.

The second Tyrant reached its intended target even as the bomber started to unleash hell. It wasn't even slowed by the stubber fire and proceeded to remove the forward canopy with its rending claws, spearing the pilot and co-pilot simultaneously with its primary limbs. The navigator fired his navy revolver at point-blank, punching a hole in the Tyrant's thorax, but it was too late. The bomber dropped its nose, curving away to port, payload scattering haphazardly. Half way down as it stuck its tail up in the air, the remaining bombs, jammed in their cradles. The detonation tore the bomber apart, sending fire and shrapnel cascading to the ground.

Meanwhile, the Thunderbolts flying cover had managed to break the victorious Tyrant apart. It followed its prey down into oblivion.

One bomber lost wasn't nearly enough to thin out the Imperial bombardment. The Tyranids were hopelessly outmatched. They hadn't had time to adapt to this aerial assault. Fliers they had aplenty, but they were dedicated to close-quarters fighting, only a few were armed with projectile weapons and these were woefully inadequate to the task set before them.

The firebombs blossomed at five hundred feet, spreading flaming propellant over a wide area. The hive ship itself was enveloped in broiling flames. The army that had returned to combat the Terminator assault was caught in the conflagration. They writhed with torment, limbs outstretched to the uncaring sky.

The bomber wing broke off, curving around in a broad turn to head back to base. Two were trailing smoke where flying Tyranids had managed to inflict damage. Another found it was unable to turn, more concerned with a brood of Gargoyles that had smashed their way inside, overwhelming the crew. The plane never returned to base. All they ever found was a charred out scar in the jungle where it had come to rest.

Trae and his remaining fighters took the rearguard, seeing off any of the swarm that tried to follow. They were the only ones to bear witness to the implosion of the hive.

The devices planted within were timed to perfection, detonating in sequence, vomiting a phosphoric chemical and igniting it. There were no massive explosions, such would only serve to spread the spores. Instead they were killed in the flames along with every other living thing within the hive. Half-formed grubs, metamorphosing Tyranid constructs, the Norn Queen herself ensconced at the heart of the massive organism, all were purified in the flames of Imperial retribution.

The charred dome of her hull cracked as the heat assaulted it from within. Hairline fractures limned in molten fire spread across the black expanse, barely visible through the hungry fires of the bombing.

Suddenly the highest point of the dome slumped inward, collapsing in upon itself as the honeycomb structures within lost their structural integrity. The collapse continued in spastic bursts, little by little, until the weight of the structures above could not be supported by those on the lower reaches and the whole bloated thing deflated in a cloud of soot and ash.

The battle for Gunga IV was won.

xxx

Corgan sat alone on a stretch of abandoned rockrete barricade, charred and stained by the rigours of battle just as Corgan's armour bore the scars of conflict. Just as he wore the scar upon his cheek.

He'd removed his helmet and rebreather mask. His weapons lay forgotten at his side. He was resigned to his exhaustion, his brain virtually dormant. He breathed. He lived. But at that moment he didn't have the capacity to do anything more.

His regiment was in billets. Most of them would be sleeping off the battle. A good many of them would be getting much needed medical attention. They would be recovering from this battle for a long time. The microscopic Tyranid organisms would have to be flushed from their bodies before they could take root. But they had been taking drugs to slow down the metabolism of those invasive alien spores so it could wait.

As Corgan waited now. He didn't know what for. He just instinctively knew that he was waiting for something.

It was dark when Deacon materialised out of the gloom with his heavy burden. He was pale and drawn, physically wrecked by his forced march. He dropped the sack of flesh and bone in front of Corgan, fixed him with empty eyes.

'It's finished!' he said, moving to sit next to his commanding officer on the barricade.

Corgan nodded inanely, looking down at Wolfe with emotions he didn't understand bubbling beneath the surface.

'What happens now?' Deacon asked.

Corgan looked up, staring out at the creaking, hissing jungle. He forced himself to think through his exhaustion, his numbness, the feeling of dislocation.

'Do you want to go back to your regiment?' he asked. 'I could fix that for you…'

Deacon shook his head slowly, straightening with something akin to pride in his tired out posture.

'No. This is my regiment, now. I don't belong anywhere else!'