However Small, However Hidden (The Award-Nominated Anthology Series)
HattyUK for Connor Daly
Connor Daly [Adult Male] – Less than domineering, he has left many of the hard decisions in life to his wife Imogen Daly. His zest for fatherhood, however, cannot be questioned, and he passionately cares for his boy, Jatrus. Upon the arrival of the Tyranid hive fleet, he must summon a courage he doesn’t at first recognize to escape the horrors above and below.
The Imperium runs on fathers. The cosmic symbol of stability. Our sector has constellations named after them. Cepherian. Oridion. Fathers raise their families and sons to be strong. The Father of Mankind is supposed to protect us from holy Terra… but Terra is far ways away…
I look up and see it, looming overhead. A shadow. It has no features, but I can feel its presence fixated on me. The veil pulls back and a thousand eyes open, starved and hungry. The shadow opens its mouth and with a lash of its tongue tears the stars to shreds.I recognize the man, I knew him briefly. He was a soldier, a decorated war veteran. Broad-chested. Handsome. He had fought countless battles, Saved millions by waging war across the stars. By all accounts, he was a good and virtuous man. Before he killed himself.
That’s when I see it… the patriarch of these creatures. Hard plates of blue rustle over discolored flesh as it crawls from the shadows. The creature is hunched over, perched on a pipe looking down at the congregation. It raises its left arm, a hairless thing that trails droplets of mucus, and it taps its curved hook to its forehead. From behind its hard plates, its brain emerges, pulsating and malformed.
