In the battle for survival, all other species are the enemy. Mercy, hesitation, and laxity are weaknesses that are exploited by the cunning and the ruthless. The only way to ensure survival was to dominate, and, if need be, exterminate all rivals. That was true when man first raised his spear to conquer the claws of the beasts, when men paved with brick and mortar to tame the wilds and the storms, when humans lit the fire that burned away dark and warmed the blizzard.

  That was true when the Emperor raised bolter and fleets in defiance against the xenos. The Imperium, before even the founding of the Ecclesiarchy and the teaching of Blessed Lorgar, was founded on this principle: that humanity shall be the predators, never the prey, the conquerors, not the conquered. All xenos encountered, be they nascent or ascendant, were to be put to the sword, so that no human may suffer the alien to live.

  The flamewing marched down the mountain again, pistols drawn. They tried to use the comm-link on the thunderhawk but the long-range signal was jammed. The mist had been dispersed, yet it seemed more suffocating than ever. They had tread up and down this path before, yet the trees seemed taller and the shadows longer, the wind harsh and cold as it seeped through their armor and gambesons to grope at their vulnerability.

  They clung for every guardrail they could: their faith in the tools He designed for them, the bolt pistols in their hands that could fell any foe, the ceramite boots that crushed leaf and twig underfoot, in their sisters at their side that had proven themselves in years of mission, in their Superiors composure, guidance, and auspex that scanned for life signatures.

  The scans picked up none but the average forest animals so far—birds, hares, ducks. Whang let that relieve the rest of the squad, as much as they could use it, but she preferred to know where her enemies were; with how Yoon put it, they could come from any direction, hidden in the mist. Whang, too, was in no hurry to be the test bed for xenos armaments, but the Emperor’s attention was stretched taut across the galaxy, unlikely to spare them any more miracles.

  Yoon flexed her bad hand as much as it would let her. She practiced some swings with her chainsword while her good hand pointed her pistol to the sky. More stiff than she would want to rely on, but it's not like she would be shooting straight with this censor bar over her sight. She could not rely on her aim, but her sword’s bored mouth could be trusted to gorge on flesh, native or otherwise.

  The flamewing stopped with their superior. The village shacks were just barely in sight now. She sent a general pulse all around that picked up the animals behind them. She sent a focused wave scan forward to encompass the village. She sent a focused ping to one of the shacks. Then to the next shack. Then to the next shack. Then to the next shack. Then to every shack. Then to the barns. Then to the gathering complex. Then to the landing pad.

  The flamewing entered the village. Flimsy wooden doors were easily kicked open, and the small interiors of the shacks were quickly surveyed with their own eyes. The barns still had their livestock caged. The sisters released them, then returned to the village. Still, no one came to greet them, not even the dialogus.

  The door to the gathering complex was open. No light was found inside. Upturned, broken tables. Shattered, spilled bottles. But no bodies.

  An auspex pulse picked up a signature over them, and the flamewing formed up around their superior. The second pulse found nothing. Red fog began to seep through the thatched roof. Incapacitating agent. Sleeping gas. That’s how the xeno did it, as cowardly as they were malevolent. Fly out of reach while waiting for the victims to collapse helplessly.

  The power armor’s integral rebreather should protect them from contamination, but the sisters before them had fallen without a fight. Stay in it too long, and the corrosive effects of the xeno technology might damage their seals and subsystems. Walk out, and they might be flushed into a kill zone. The auspex pulse picked up signatures, more of them, overlapping the complex.

  Can’t stay, can’t walk out.

  The flamewing erupted out of the thatched roof, straw and gas igniting by the beat of their wings around them. They rocketed into the sky to greet the signatures: Sickly grey skin, scant black cloth, wielding different melee weapons, riding atop some kind of bat-like hoverboard, unbalanced by the eruption.

  ‘Not human’ was the only part of the snap appraisal that mattered. The sisters opened fire with their bolters. The xenos that were still righting themselves burst into bloody ribbons, the same as any other fleshy thing. The ones with control of their hoverboards, or distance from the barrels, dodged the boltfire and darted for the safety of the mist. Their bodies twisted and bent with unnatural flexibility as their hoverboards rolled and turned with sharpness that would whiplash a human body. Only when no xenos were within sight did the sister land back in the village.

  The mist spat out a hail of sapphire splinters that the sisters took cover from. The thin, flimsy wood of the shacks was undone by the projectiles raking through them, the debris further broken down by acid. Three signatures came closer, spraying their storm the whole way. The xeno passed over with a screech, a single strafe from their guns having shredded the shack. If it continued like this, the sisters would rapidly run out of cover.

  Six of them now, preceded by a sapphire storm that disintegrated another shack. The seraphim counterfired, to the left of the enemy squadron so that they would dodge into the ophanim’s aim on the right, and unleashed a battery of bolts. One of them was too slow, in speed or reaction, to dodge heavy bolter fire. Another three tripped over each other's board-wings in their desperate, uncoordinated evasion, entwined to become a squall of gore and alien circuitry.

  Yoon leapt onto a shack for a better angle and, with a beat of her one wing, pounced up as the alien hoverboarders raced overhead. The rictus grip of her bad hand shook with the chainsword as it swung down onto the outstretched shaft of the alien’s spear. The spinning teeth tore the spear out of the alien’s hand, freeing the passage for her fist to reach its chest. It looked flimsy and was barely an ecranche, but the one piece of armor ate her servo-enchanced punch such that the alien recoiled but did not crumple, somehow locked onto the board so that it would not fall from the impact.

  On the board with each other, the alien held her arm on his chest by the elbow and stayed her sword hand by the wrist. It was stronger than expected, but not enough to push her off. It pulled its board over to its friend, who readied to skewer her, but a quartet of bolts detonated across them, courtesy of the superior. That was all the fire support Yoon would get, as another squadron pinned down the flamewing.

  It spun the skyboard in helical loops in its attempt to shake Yoon off. She lost her footing, but held her grip, and beat her wing, sending them spiraling in a way neither of them could control, too distracted to notice they were hurtling towards the ground. The crash released the xeno’s grip from Yoon and from its board, liberated the chainsword from Yoon, and sent them both tumbling across the grass.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Yoon’s full body armor blunted the impact for her, letting her recover much faster than the xeno. While it was still prone and disoriented, Yoon hefted the board and brought its sharp wing down like a guillotine upon the xeno’s exposed midsection. Blood splattered up the board and across the grass all around.

  She leaned on the board to catch her breath and looked down upon the xeno: its black, beady eyes glowered at her as blood retched up through the obsidian shards it must call teeth. The only armor it had strapped on was the half-chestpiece and spaulder. The tattoo on its face and ridiculous hair, both in garish color, were reminiscent of Underhive gangers. It had no pistol, so the pods under the board must have been what was firing the splinters.

  Taking its body in all, recognizably male, this alien creature was disturbingly similar to the holy human form, such that it could pass for a mutant rather than entirely foreign life. Black eyes and teeth, yes, but its pointy ears, elongated limbs, sickly grey and gaunt skin all seemed to be designed as some cruel parody.

  Mutant, xeno, doesn’t matter; all deviations must be purged. Looking at this mockery, Yoon understood the necessity to prosecute all doubt of purity with extreme prejudice. Leaving no room for trickery, she stomped its head into paste with her boot rather than trusting it to bleed out. She watched his body twitch, sputter, and, finally, fall still.

  Gunfire in the distance lit up the mist with flashes. Her sisters were still fighting. There was no telling how many of these… hellions were left. Exposed and alone out here, she would be helpless if another squadron came for her. No cover, the splinter pods would tear her to shreds and melt the remains, try to fly, and their spears would skewer her.

  She grabbed her chainsword, maglocked it to the back of her ruined jumppack, and hiked back to her flamewing, hoping to make it before she was discovered. The hospitaller’s spare pistol was in her good hand, ready to repay her kindness with xenos kills should the need arise.

  She was close enough to reconnect with her superior’s auspex; a scan outlined the hellions, providing clear targets in the mist. Her sisters' rocketing jumppacks also flashed and roared in the distance, adding to the ostinato of their bolters. An outline occasionally disappeared, either out of range or killed; she chose to believe it was the latter. These xenos preyed upon the defenceless, the helpless, the unaware; they were not expecting a target that could fly to their heights.

  The village was within sight now. Superior, seraphim, ophanim, hospitaller, all fighting within and above the ruins. Yoon leapt onto a shack for a good angle and, with a beat of her one wing, pounced up as the alien hoverboarders raced overhead.

  A dark beam detonated her remaining wing, and onyx talons pierced through her pauldrons and fiberbundles into her shoulders. The talons pulled her up in lurches, taking her beyond the sight of the village, then the battle, then the hills and mountains. The speed of her ascension strained her body and popped her ears.

  She struggled to aim her pistol at whatever was behind, but was tossed forward out of the talon grip. That’s when she saw it: covered in dark, fogged plate; a cannon of a rifle in their arms; zygodactyl feet with onyx talons tinted by her blood; an avian helm with maroon red plumicorns; and great feathered wings that twinkled like night blue. Gazing upon this majesty, Yoon understood: the hellions were the xenos novitiates, sent on menial objectives; this was what a xenos soldier was like.

  A thickset owl came to the xeno to take the cannon off its hands. The xeno flashed its unburdened claws and speared forward, wings folded close. The pistol Yoon aimed with was shredded in a blink, the force of the clawsipe sending her spiraling. As she flailed about in the air, a second impact shredded off the remaining part of her jumppack, exposing her backplate and depowering her armor.

  The cold ceramite stiffened her flailing, though her whole body still spun around. Another impact struck the rerebrace of her bad arm, exposing that length of servomuscle to the chill air. Speaking of, the thinness on its own would make it hard to breathe, and now this ragdolling was beating the oxygen out of her.

  Another soaring slash tore off the greave and renewed her somersaults. It was going fast as a bullet, yet had the precision to only break the layer of ceramite. It was toying with her, and she was utterly helpless to stop it.

  The slashes kept coming as the xeno streaked through clouds. Her coiter. Her tasset. Her remaining vambrace. Her backplate. He was taking his time stripping her. Her sabaton. Her skirt. Her other greave. Her last rerebrace. She was getting nauseous. As if sensing it, she saw the blur of darkness bolt towards her and shatter her helmet so that she may vomit freely as the impact sent her over the edge.

  Sickness out now, it continued. Striking again, and again, and again, smaller pieces now as it savored the torment, again, and again, and again, gave her space to vomit once more, then again, and again, and again, and again until there was no ceramite left.

  One foot of talons caught her by the shoulder, though she was too numb to feel them stab into her and was more thankful that the spinning stopped. She was too fatigued and dizzy to even think of struggling. The owl brought the cannon back and perched on the xenos’s spaulder.

  The xeno lifted its talon to bring her eye level, magenta lenses filled her multiplying vision around the black bar. It took one hand off its cannon to pull down the body suit from her head and free her hair. It seemed to caress her with disgusting gentleness, the way hunters ‘honored’ prey that they gunned down. She would usually spit if someone touched her like this, but the world was spinning, her mouth was dry, and her lips had no strength to even stop its thumb from resting on her tongue.

  The talons released her so that she could fall on something hard. Her dizziness gave way to a brain-splitting headache. Her back was against a sturdy platform, but they were too high up for this to be the ground.

  Her good hand felt around, the platform cold and hard like steel rather than dirt or stone, until she felt some elevation. She probed the shape: a foot she felt up to the ankle, or at least, the armor that was around the shape. Her vision returned a little, and she looked up to see a pair of magenta lenses in a conical, jagged helm made of the same fogged metal as the plate armor. It lounged against something, curiously looking down at her like she was a peculiar rodent.

  Her restored vision took in the situation. Overhead was a mast that hung a sail emblazoned with the assemblage of colored scratches that the xenos must pass for an emblem. The sail did not flutter with the wind; instead, it coursed with ephemeral energies that she instinctively felt were not of this dimension. Surrounding her were more xeno soldiers, covered in armor unlike the helions but lacking the avian appendages and styling of the one before. Some held alien weapons recognizable as rifles and carbines. Others were stationed on mounted cannons similar to the one the Owl Xeno had wielded.

  That very xeno she was thinking of landed on the skyboat. She used what little strength she gathered to turn over and try to crawl away; no matter how hopelessly desperate and pathetic she knew the act to be, the dread she felt pushed her on. Of course, it caught up to her. Its talons wrapped around her throat and dragged her across the floor to the edge under the guardrail.

  As the boat descended, so too did the xeno squat next to her, its foot still on her, holding its cannon with the stock on the floor and its barrel leaning on the rail. The rush of wind was suffocating and blinding at this angle.

  The boat finally slowed, and her eyes opened to her sisters still battling. Before they could react, the gunwale-mounted cannons unleashed an electric fusillade that lanced at every target. The electricity disrupted their armors’ reactors. Roaring jumppacks were silenced. Sisters on the ground slowed as if petrified. That was enough for the hellions to toss metallic, hooked nets. Once upon the target, the nets slithered like a living thing to further ensnare.

  In short order, every sister lay constricted, limbs pressed close by living metal cords, unable to even writhe as they were carried onto the boat. They were piled into a cargo hold, and Yoon tossed like a sack along with them. One of the xeno soldiers held up a metal oval recognizable as a grenade. It dropped the grenade and closed the hold; not an explosion, instead, the release hiss of red fog that lulled the sisters to sleep.