Like a bubble rising to the surface of a pool of sludge, he could feel the knowledge of the ethereal’s whereabouts distending and blooming upwards, thirsting for light, coiling inexorably towards the burning pseudopodia that invaded his brain. Sensing the nearness of his prize, the librarian’s psychic assault strengthened, charring the very skin of Tyra’s face where his hand made contact.

The kor’o was still screaming and flailing when the unhelmeted warrior’s pink features exploded in a gust of blood and brains. Tyra sagged gratefully to the floor, smoke coiling from his eyes and ears.

The other colossi reacted immediately, raising weapons to cover all points of the room, frantic gestures seeming ridiculous without the spoken commands to accompany them. Tyra wondered abstractly, hazy with pain and fear, what they were saying to each other in the insulated sanctity of their helmets. He hoped they were scared.

In an instant the room became a maelstrom of dizzying weaponsfire and detonating shells. Weak from his injuries, bewildered and stunned by the chaos of the combat around him, Kor’o Natash Tyra barely even noticed when one of the Marines carefully stamped on his skull and crushed his brain.

The first one was a gift. He fragmented its ugly, exposed head from his concealment in the space beside the elevator. He ducked back into the recess and waited for the resulting whirlwind of directionless, panicky return fire to abate.

Curled foetally in his concealment, Kais’s ears became his eyes. There was a heavy clang— the dead Space Marine’s body toppling to the deck. Its power output thrummed noisily before hissing away into silence. Kais seized upon the distraction to ease onto his feet, melting into the shadows cast by consoles nearer the centre of the bridge. He stole a single glance at the group, arranged on overwatch as one bent over the body of their dead comrade. He seemed to be pushing some sort of instrumentation into the ragged wound of the corpse’s neck, oozing blood and filth across the deck.

Heavy footsteps clanked nearby, the Marines spreading out to find their prey. Their silence was somehow horrifying, reacting to commands only they could hear, more like machines than organisms. Kais found himself again pondering upon the nature of the tau’va, and whether the cost of efficacy was a lifetime of mechanical hollowness. He eased himself into a crouch and flicked a button-sized signal-flare quietly across the room, not allowing himself the time to worry about what he was planning next. The flare clattered quietly behind the communications consoles and ignited with a fizz.

The firestorm rumbled to life again, gunfire shredding the consoles like a hungry zephyr, an invisible airborne claw raking spitefully at the fio’tak surfaces. Kais didn’t wait, pouncing from his concealment whilst the Marines were distracted and sprinting forwards, assessing as he moved.

Time slowed to a crawl.

There were two to his left, pumping long streamers of bolter fire into the tangled morass of metal where the consoles had once stood. A nebulous orb of plasma distorted across his vision from the right, adding to the wreckage around the flare, now venting purple smoke. Kais rolled as he moved, snatching a glance to his side where two other Marines hulked, plasma-weapons raised.

The final gue’la stood at the apex of the bridge, facing... directly towards him.

Watching him. Unfooled by the distraction. Raising its weapon.

“Death to the unclean!” it roared, voice thick with metallic transmission.

The bolter opened fire and Kais pounced away, tumbling clumsily sideways. Miniature explosions rattled all around him and he scrabbled forwards, racking the carbine’s underslung secondary parts as he went. He had time to squeeze the trigger just once before stumbling aside as the column of detonating shells raked past him.

The gue’la saw a spinning object flipping through the air and caught it instinctively, bringing its gauntleted fist up to its face in confused examination. The grenade blew the top half of its armoured body into fragments of gore and ceramite, transforming the bridge into a bone-pocked atrocity and leaving the Marine’s disembodied legs, like the remains of a vandalised statue, planted stalwartly amongst the carnage. The other humans swivelled towards him instantly, colossal silhouettes hazing through the violet mist like ghosts, eye slits blazing eerily.

He became an animal, sprinting for its life. He was a clonebeast being hunted, a ceremonial preything being stalked by the shas’uis during the festival of T’au’kon’seh. Weapons opened up on either side, invisible traceries whistling past his head, narrowing-in implacably. And all within moments that lasted forever, a single raik’an stretching on glacially for tau’cyrs.

He danced through the purple flaresmoke, lurching and rolling and feinting, wondering abstractly which of the four gue’la — arranged almost formally to either side — would be the first to find their mark. A plasma orb shrieked past within tor’ils, singeing the fabric of his regs at his elbow.

What does the clonebeast do? he asked himself.

It runs. Even when exhausted, foaming and coughing, breaths laboured and bloody. Always away, running from the jeth’ri spears of its pursuers.

And they always catch it, sooner or later...

So what does the clonebeast never do?

He adjusted his angle and, not slowing, sprinted directly at the two Marines on his right. A bolter shell, fired from behind, ripped through the outer layers of his thigh armour and shredded a clod of weave fabric, detonating angrily as it spun away. He kept going, finding time somehow within the adrenaline chaos and insanity of his mind to enjoy the bewildered posture of the Space Marines before him, bending away in astonishment as their easy kill bounded towards them. The bolter fire at his back didn’t stop.

He dived between the legs of the nearest colossus, rolling madly and leaping, cat-like, for the cover of a recess. The two Space Marines across the room, bolters chattering hungrily as they tracked after him, were too late to realise their mistake. The threads of impact fire chased him across the deck until he was shielded by the bodies of their comrades, purple haze wafting around their huge forms. Caught in the crossfire, bolter shells stabbed ugly holes through their armour before they could even protest, leaving ribbon trails of blood hanging in the air. The shells that had lodged inside them detonated one after another, sending the gue’la in an absurd jerking jig as they slumped to the floor, innards pulped, plasma weapons clattering to the deck.

Their comrades ceased fire, rushing forwards through the mist as they saw what they’d done. Kais wished he could hear their vox-exchange, relishing the anger and guilt they must be feeling. Their advance was a riot of clanging footsteps and racking weapons, smashing their way through the shredded remains of consoles and benches. One hulked away towards the side wall of the bridge, moving around to cut Kais off. The other edged forwards, bolter barrel sweeping from left to right hungrily, seeking out its prey.

Kais quit his cover in a flash, muscles bunching. He was past the Marine and sprinting before the colossus could even react. He imagined the figure behind him, gyrating around with that strange mechanical fluidity, weapon raised, to track his movements. This time he would be too close to miss.

Kais’s hand closed over the dropped plasma gun he’d been leaping for, slick with blood from its owner’s mangled body. He turned and fired in a single, leg jarring movement, crying out in desperation.

A bolter shell tore into his helmet.

The impact flipped him backwards like a piece of paper, scattering the pixellated view of his HUD. Before the dark clouds of unconsciousness swarmed into his eyes and mind he heard, far away, the satisfying impact of a plasma orb and the dying screams of a gue’la.