Feeling his grip on the queen's flesh sliding free, he pulled the trigger.
He felt a blast of unimaginable heat as the hrud mechanism activated, lancing a column of fire, hotter that the heart of a star, through the thick flesh of the Norn Queen. A fraction of a second later the pistol bucked in his hand as the shell containing the gene-poison fired into its body.
He dropped the pistol and felt himself sailing through the air as he finally lost his grip on the queen's hide. Uriel twisted as he fell, splashing into the slimy floor of the chamber. He screamed in pain as noxious fluids spilled into the wound on his chest.
He rolled, crushing the scavengers beneath his weight and weakly tried to rise to his feet. He saw Damias destroy the creature he fought with repeated blows of his power fist. Pasanius was hauled from his feet by his blazing foe and lifted high above the ground. Henghast hacked at the beast's legs, but it refused to die.
The beast's claws crushed Pasanius's silvered arm, the metal buckling under the creature's incredible strength. Uriel reached for his sword, before realising it was still embedded in the tyranid warrior creature.
He looked up at the hissing shape of the Norn Queen's head and felt a terrible despair flood through him.
The gene-poison had had no effect on the monster.
They had failed.
Trask lifted the backpack, its contents spilling from the tears like glittering, precious rain. His ugly swollen features were twisted in hate and anger.
He kicked Snowdog in the ribs and again in the face.
'You stupid bastard,' he snarled. 'Did you really think I was gonna take all the crap you kept shovelling me? Two years I gave you and this is all I get?'
Snowdog looked up through a mist of tears and his own swelling features. Over Trask's ranting he could hear the door several floors below finally give in to the inevitable. He pressed his back to the wall in an attempt to push himself to his feet. Trask kicked out at him again, but Snowdog rolled aside and Trask's boot smashed into the stone of the wall.
He howled in pain, but recovered before Snowdog could do much more than slide over on his side beside the supine Jonny. The big man was still alive, saw Snowdog. Bleeding badly, but still alive.
Not for much longer if he couldn't deal with Trask.
Hideous screeching filled the stairs below, and he could imagine the aliens scrambling over one another as they leapt and bounded towards the upper levels. He fumbled around beneath Jonny's body, smiling to himself as he felt metal and wood in his grip.
He twisted his head to look at Trask.
And suddenly it all made sense. The swelling on Trask's face wept a purple pus and Snowdog knew that the lone creature that had attacked the column of refugees must have sprayed Trask with some kind of scent that drew these aliens to him like flies to shit.
He smiled at the aptness of the phrase.
'What the hell you smiling at?' said Trask, reaching for fresh shotgun shells.
'You, man. It's been you they've wanted all along.'
'Huh?' said Trask as Snowdog rolled to face him, Jonny's hunting rifle held out before him.
'You want him?' he yelled to the aliens below. 'Well, here he is!'
Snowdog fired the huge rifle, feeling the monstrous recoil crack yet another rib. The impact hurled Trask back down the stairs, a huge portion of his torso simply blasted away by the shell. He crashed down onto the landing below, his body a mangled mess. Tyranid beasts swarmed over the landing, but halted at Trask's body, hacking and slashing it to shreds.
While the scent of whatever was on Trask was keeping the aliens busy, Snowdog used the rifle as a crutch and painfully got himself to his feet. Briefly he considered trying to lift Jonny, but quickly dismissed the idea as insane.
He heard more footsteps above him and laughed in relief as Tigerlily and Lex sprinted downstairs.
'What the hell's going on?' yelled Tigerlily.
'Later,' said Snowdog as he fought through the pain and climbed the stairs. Between them, Tigerlily and Lex managed to lift Jonny and the battered foursome limped up the final set of stairs to the top level of the medicae building.
Snowdog had never been so glad to reach somewhere in all his life.
'Where's Silver?' he said.
'She's safe,' said Tigerlily, pulling him onwards. 'Come on, the entrance to the caves isn't far. Let's get the hell out of here.'
'Best idea I've heard all day,' said Snowdog.
Less than twenty Space Marines remained. Heroism the likes of which Learchus had only read about in history had kept them alive for nearly forty minutes, but the end was drawing near. Horrified men of the Guard watched the Space Marines' last stand from the District Sextus wall, unable to help them. Learchus would not have wanted their help anyway.
This was a glorious battle, a fitting way for any servant of the Emperor to meet his end. He and Chaplain Astador fought back-to-back, killing aliens with ferocity and skill.
A mound of alien corpses surrounded the Space Marines, hundreds deep, and the shrinking ring of fighting warriors stood atop the mound, battling like heroes of legend.
Another warrior fell, dragged down by alien claws and Learchus felt the spirit of the martyr move within him. As he hacked down another hissing beast, he began to sing, a rousing hymnal from the dawn of the Imperium, a battle song to stir the hearts of all who heard it.
Astador joined him and soon every one of the Space Marines was raising their voices to the heavens in praise of the Emperor as the tyranids closed in for the kill.
Pasanius kicked the guardian beast in the face, crushing its skull and pulverising its brain as Henghast finally drove his sword through its guts. Its claws spasmed and released him. He fell to the floor with a splash.
Uriel saw the golden hilt of his sword protruding from the corpse of the warrior organism. He struggled to his feet to reach it, wishing no more than to die on his feet with a weapon in his hand. He wrenched it from the dissolving flesh of the beast and limped to stand beside Pasanius and the gore-streaked Damias and Henghast.
The four Space Marines stood with their weapons facing outwards, ready to fight and die like men. Hissing creatures closed in on them, fangs bared and claws poised to strike.
A sudden, violent tremor shook the chamber and a tormented, animal wail built from behind Uriel. The smaller creatures dropped to their haunches in terror as the throat of the Norn Queen, silent for hundreds of years, gave voice to a screech of unimaginable pain.
Its body convulsed, tearing free of its egg sac and mucus-hardened limbs fused to the walls broke with the violence of the spasms. Huge tears in the queen's belly ripped open, mutant growths erupting from every one. The queen's flesh boiled and ripped as her evolutionary genome was thrown into anarchy and stimulated beyond all control by Magos Locard's gene-poison.
Every creature in the chamber took up the wailing screech of agony as evolutionary imperatives were passed through the gestalt consciousness which linked every creature in the hive ship and every creature connected to the overmind.
The chamber shook, the very structure of the ship screaming as every creature was driven into a frenzy of uncontrolled mutation.
Uriel watched as creatures convulsed so violently they snapped their own spines, frothing at the mouth with aberrant growths and genetic deviancy.
'It's working!' shouted Uriel as portions of the chamber erupted in white-hot fluids and acidic slime fell from the ceiling in enormous clumps.
'Aye, it worked,' agreed Pasanius, cradling his mangled arm, 'but let's get out of here before it claims us as well.'
The Space Marines fought their way through the rapidly disintegrating chamber of the Norn Queen, the aliens jerking spastically as they died.