Wiping grimy sweat from his brow, Direnc pushed a deep breath from between his teeth. The entire situation was insane. The idea of anyone coming close enough to be boarded by the Pit Cur and its cohort of geneforged killers was as good as suicidal. The very notion that anyone would board such a ship themselves was beyond ludicrous. Direnc was strong enough to survive aboard the Pit Cur. His large, muscular frame ensured that he could keep himself alive as well as haul the fuel lines and ammunition hoppers used to rearm and refuel the masters’ war machines housed in the primary landing bay. He stood a head taller than most of the other men and women around him, but he was still a child in comparison to one of the legionaries.
The walls around Direnc heaved as a shell struck the hull nearby, filling the air with the sonorous screech of protesting metal. Another, greater impact followed, right at the end of their corridor. Direnc managed to seize hold of an exposed pipe threading the wall to remain upright, just keeping him from joining several of the slaves around him who were dashed against the walls and deposited on the deck. Dazed men and women pushed themselves shakily back to their feet, while others, their bodies bent and folded at unnatural angles, remained unmoving on the grate.
Deep, resonant clunks issued from the end of the corridor, underpinning the shriek of shearing hull plating. Faint pinpricks of light appeared against the far wall, multiplying and merging together as the metal began to glow. Acrid smoke billowed down the corridor as the wall melted into slag, slopping down onto the deck in hissing, golden lumps.
Direnc’s blood froze. He had spent enough time maintaining the warband’s attack craft to recognise the tell-tale effects of a melta cutter. The enemy had attached a boarding ram to the Pit Cur. Right here.
The slaves began to look behind them, instinct and the animal urge to flee for their lives taking hold over their minds. The air grew thick with the sour reek of adrenaline. Panicked chatter broke out, as more and more of the thralls backed away from the rapidly growing breach in the wall at the end of the corridor.
The overseer standing behind them with the shotgun barked a threat, firing his weapon into the crowd. A man thudded to the deck, his chest ripped open by the blast. The mob reeled, looking back to see the last of the wall boil away.
Silence filled the corridor for a handful of moments. The slaves jumped as a low hiss issued out from the site of the breach. A thick, rolling mist billowed down, a deep rose in colour. Slowly it filled the corridor, curling towards them in soft pink tendrils.
The slaves began to see shapes form in the depths of the mist. Large things clad in spiked armour. Legionaries. And these were not their masters.
Pandemonium gripped the serfs. Frantic, they turned upon the overseer en masse. He issued a command to halt, his voice cracking from panic, and fired the shotgun into the crowd again. Aiming was unnecessary against the frenzied press advancing on him. Men and women were flung back, shredded by the booming blasts, and all the while the mist crept closer.
Direnc leapt at the overseer, twisting himself aside just as the shotgun fired again. The bulk of the shot missed him, but a handful of razored pellets stitched across his side in puffs of dark blood. Pain exploded, ripping out from Direnc’s ribcage and spreading like fire over his body. Rage willed him to his knees, and he grabbed the panicked overseer around the waist and hauled him to the ground. The man thrashed and kicked, struggling to level the shotgun at Direnc’s head as the mist drifted nearer.
Direnc smashed into the overseer with a brutal headbutt. He felt his nose break, mashing flat to his face in a starburst of black, hot pain, but also felt something shift in the overseer’s skull. Dazed, the man loosened his grip on the shotgun, and Direnc wrenched it from his grip. Reversing his hold on the weapon, he smashed its buttstock down into the overseer’s face. He brought it down again, and again, and again, until what he was hitting lost any semblance of having ever been human. Blood, spongy globs of flesh and splinters of bone covered the buttstock, slippery in Direnc’s grip as he stood, whirling around and bringing the weapon up to his shoulder.
The mist had reached him. It rolled forwards like a living thing of rosy smoke, surging up and into his mouth and nostrils. It filled his lungs, passing through the membranes to spin through his bloodstream.
For a moment, Direnc was perfectly still. The shotgun clattered to the deck, utterly forgotten as he fell to his knees. His pupils dilated, growing so wide that his eyes appeared to have no irises at all. His hands shook. Tears streamed down his face, carving lines through the gore as he both laughed and sobbed at the same time.
Bliss enveloped Direnc, utter, unrestrained and complete. He felt it pass into his heart and radiate out in ripples of ecstasy with every pulsing beat. It felt like being wrapped in warm silk, like the kiss of a roaring fire in the ship’s freezing lower decks. It felt like love, honest and asking nothing of him. It only gave, true and unending.
The dark, rust-pitted corridors of the Pit Cur, slathered with blood and sweat and curses, melted away. The stale, earthy scent of poorly recycled air was replaced by rapturous perfume. Direnc’s pain, his fear, his loneliness, all evaporated. A song filled the air, the purest, most beautiful music he had ever heard. Direnc wanted to drown in it, forgetting everything but the unimaginable pleasure he was sinking into.
Nothing else mattered. Nothing could ever matter as much as the waves of elation washing over his senses. Curled into a ball beneath the mist, Direnc giggled softly as pinkish foam boiled from between his lips. To him, the clanging tread of armoured boots felt kilometres away as they passed him by, barely registering in his mind as they crushed corpses into paste on their way to the heart of the Pit Cur.
Click here to buy Lucius the Faultless Blade.
To Hannah, for her patience.
A Black Library Publication
First published in Great Britain in 2018.
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Cover illustration by Jake Murray.
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