Maria (Human)

Mary? We need to finish up this search quickly so we can report back to headquarters. Nothing in here anyway."

You look back down at her. Her uniform lies in shreds around her body, torn off by your claws, and her eyes are glass and vacant. There's no way her friends would see her as anything but tainted and a threat, without mental trickery you don't have the power to do.

Instead, you open up a mental link with her mind. As a cultist, she's a lot easier to control than a normal human. Lie to them, you tell her, tell them nothing's wrong.

"Everything's fine." she says. "I just had a bit of a problem with the wreckage, tripped over some of it."

"But the container's intact." Her friend outside says, a suspicious note in his voice.

"The wreckage inside. I think they were transporting Chimera parts or something. Whatever it was, it's a metallic mess now."

Good, she's lying well. While she's talking to her friend outside, convincing him nothing's wrong, you probe her mind.

She's a PDF member (Planetary Defense ****), 4th Platoon, 2nd Company, Verda Tertius Rifle Battalion. The world is an Agri-World, Verda (filled with biomass for the swarm) and it's military is organised into a single rifle battalion defending each continent and an armoured company and two artillery companies kept in the capital as reserves.

"It's okay, you don't have to come in. I'll just finish looking, even if there's nothing in here."

Nice to know, but you need to know what's happening closer to home. You probe a different area...

Half her platoon is searching these containers, eight women, four men. The other half is investigating another landing site (nothing there, this was the only infestation site). The man outside is Artimer, who she's got a crush on. There's a mental image of her sucking his cock. Huh, might have to get her to try that...

"Okay, Maria, I'm coming in to help you finish the search."

You hiss out a word in Tyranid-tongue. To any prey, it would simply be a four-syllable meaningless mess of sound, but to your broodbrothers, it translates to "Shit. Shit shit shit. This was not what I needed."

"Huh?" Artimer says, as the lock on the door clicks open...