The crowd saw the doors swing open, and a swarm of monsters writhing in the darkness crawled toward them. The reeking wind and bloody rain that assaulted them were like the saliva and stench spewed from the doorway.
"Open fire! I don't care what those things are! Open fire!"
The captain was the first to snap out of his terror. His carbine shattered the deep, shadowy light at the doorway. That unnaturally black point had been far too conspicuous; in an instant, the darkness and light in the room returned to normal.
Only then could they clearly see what the attacking monsters truly looked like.
They were a twisted mass of T'au, mixed with a great many Gue'vesa—the T'au term for human auxiliaries. None of these distorted people were missing arms or legs.
Instead, each had grown extra organs and limbs. Some were made entirely of hands, pairs upon pairs sprouting from unimaginable bodies and clasping one another tightly as they slowly rolled closer like writhing balls.
Others were covered in eyes. Their eyeballs slid from their sockets, falling to the floor and bouncing. With every bounce, new eyes grew from the old ones.
A whole tableau of endlessly changing horrors battered the T'au's minds.
One Water Caste member could not bear such terror and distortion. He covered his mouth, bent over, and tried to vomit.
But the more nauseated he became, the stronger the urge to vomit grew. His stomach convulsed violently, the spasms spreading until his whole body trembled.
"Hey! Are you all right?! Shoot, damn it!"
A colleague noticed something was wrong and approached to inject him with a sedative. But before he could take out the syringe, the Water Caste member suddenly vomited.
First, he emptied the food from his stomach. Then even the undigested remnants