No sooner had the assassin attacked than the Imperial soldiers clustered around the warp core opened fire. Las-bolts and solid rounds whickered through the ranks of the Iron Warriors, who swiftly returned fire, turning the vast chamber into an echoing cavern of reverberating reports. The Dreadnought loomed above everything, the barrels of its assault cannon spinning as it prepared to open fire.
Grendel picked himself up from the deck with a bellow of anger, a thin line of blood coating his pierced breastplate. Say what you will about Cadaras Grendel, thought Honsou, he’s a tough bastard, right enough.
‘Grendel!’ shouted Honsou, pointing at the defenders. ‘Take them out!’
‘Gladly,’ hissed the warrior, slipping the melta gun from his shoulder. Honsou turned back to the fray as Grendel gathered Iron Warriors, corsairs and the augmented ogre creatures for an assault on the defenders.
Honsou turned back to the battle with the Eversor, meeting its hateful gaze as it fought through the ranks of Iron Warriors. The fiend screamed as it killed, as though every death simultaneously fed and heightened its hatred and battle fury.
The roar of the Dreadnought’s assault cannon echoed in the chamber, but Honsou could not risk taking his eyes from the assassin to see how Grendel and his ad hoc assault force fared. As the assassin cut and sliced with its sword, it fired a needle-nosed pistol, blowing out helmets and kneecaps with every shot. Bullets floated past the Eversor, and blades seemed to drift by it as it wove its dance of death through his fighters. Seven Iron Warriors were dead already, limbless, poisoned, shot or disembowelled, while they had yet to put a mark on the assassin.
Another Iron Warrior died as the Eversor rammed its sword through the weaker armour under his arm and clove both his hearts. It wrenched its sword clear and tossed aside its victim, cutting a path through its foes as though they were no more than irritants. The shock of the assassin’s appearance had broken the momentum of the Iron Warriors’ assault in a heartbeat, and it needed to die. Now.
‘Quite the killer,’ said Etassay between bursts of shots. ‘My blood is afire watching it.’
‘I’m pleased for you,’ hissed Honsou, watching as the Eversor fought its way towards them. ‘It’s coming for us. We’re its targets, no doubt about it.’
‘Oh, I do hope so…’ said Etassay, his expression unreadable behind his smooth-faced mask. The prospect of facing such a highly trained killer did not appeal to Honsou, for he was under no illusions as to his ability to defeat the assassin. Honsou was a fine warrior, but the assassin was another level of killer entirely.
‘You want him, he’s yours,’ said Honsou, content to let the blademaster risk his neck. If anyone stood a chance of killing the Eversor, it was Etassay.
‘Oh yes,’ said Etassay gleefully. ‘I want him, oh yes, I do.’
The blademaster leapt towards the Eversor, his twin swords flashing as he met its charge.
‘At last,’ hissed Etassay, resplendent in his form-fitting bodysuit of black and silver. ‘A worthy partner with which to caress the blade.’
The assassin registered Etassay’s presence, and Honsou watched as blademaster and assassin began their ritual dance of death. Etassay duelled with twin swords of silver steel, while the assassin fought with but a single blade. Steel shimmered and cut the air, bodies flowed together.
Honsou knew he would never again witness such a peerless display of skill, and doubted two such skilled opponents had ever crossed blades in all the long history of the Imperium.
As corrupt as he was, Notha Etassay still honoured the etiquette of the duel, fighting with blinding skill and speed and finesse. The Eversor fought with no such handicap. Its sole driving force was to kill and it clung to no such antiquated or restricting notions as honour or glory. To destroy was its only goal, and that was Etassay’s undoing.
Etassay executed a flawless block, spinning on his heel to lunge at the Eversor’s groin, but his opponent was no longer there. A spinning kick smashed into the side of Etassay’s head, sending him crashing to the deck. He rolled to his knees, agile as a cat and furious that such a low blow had been employed in a duel. Etassay lunged, but the Eversor dived over his blade and, using his shoulders as a pivot, swung up and over the blademaster. The Eversor sailed over Etassay’s head, and a series of glittering needles wired to chemical reservoirs on its arms snapped from its gauntlet.
The needles punched through the neck seals of Etassay’s armour and a lethal cocktail of neurotoxins pumped out. Not even a warrior touched by the Dark Gods could resist the finest work of the Officio Assassinorum’s venom-masters, and Etassay howled in a mixture of agony and ecstasy as they set to work on his body.
Pink froth erupted from the smooth faceplate of Etassay’s helmet and he collapsed to the deck, thrashing in exquisite torment.
‘Incredible!’ he shrieked, as his back arched one last time and Honsou heard a powerful crack as Etassay’s spine broke with the force of his convulsions.
At last Honsou and the Eversor were face to face, and he felt a twist of fear take hold in his gut. The face of the Eversor was the face of death itself, and it flexed the muscles of its shoulders as it advanced grimly towards him. The warriors around him backed away, knowing that to intervene would be the last thing they did.
‘Just you and me,’ said Honsou, readying his axe.
The assassin did not reply, its skull-mask reflecting the blue light of the warp core. Its hate and rage-filled eyes fixed on him with an expression of loathing.
Honsou caught sight of movement above the Eversor and smiled to himself.
‘Or maybe not,’ he said, as the Newborn slammed into the assassin.
Ardaric Vaanes slowed his descent with a quick burst of his jump pack, his boots slamming down onto the deck of the warp core with a metal-buckling crash. All around him, the loxatl of the Xaneant kin-brood swarmed down the sides of the chamber, flechette blasters filling the air with whickering darts.
With the fall of the basilica’s controls to Adept Cycerin’s techno-virus, it had been simplicity itself to find a way in and trace the route of the energy coils back to the warp core. Through twisting passages, humming conduits and shafts of fire, they had negotiated their way through the structure of the basilica until their route had brought them out on a circular gantry overlooking the battle. The warp core ran through the centre of the gantry, and long chains hung from its base, reaching all the way to the deck far below.
He watched Grendel lead his ragtag assault force against the defenders of the warp core and saw the Dreadnought cut many of them down with its deadly gun or crush them beneath the pounding blows of its enormous hammer.
‘Do we not attack?’ asked the Newborn as it watched the black clad assassin closing on Honsou. Vaanes didn’t answer at first, not sure what he wanted to say. The whispering voice of his pride and ambition spoke of a chance for glory, a chance to shine brighter than the greatest supernova, a chance to be the one true champion to emerge from this battle.
Another part of him, the shadow that knew his true soul, reminded him that the path he had chosen had but one outcome.
‘Yes,’ he said to himself, ‘but how we walk it is just as important.’
Misunderstanding his words, the Newborn launched itself from the gantry, swinging out and gripping one of the iron chains and sliding down its length. The loxatl let out hissing breaths of aggression as they slithered down the walls. Bathed in the glow of the warp core, their skin flickered through an unnatural spectrum of sickening colours.
The decision had been made for him, and he hurled himself from the gantry.
The flames and smoke of his landing dissipated and he saw that, incredibly, the assassin still lived. The Newborn was on its knees, the assassin’s needle-tipped gauntlet buried in its chest. Clear tubes pulsed with motion as automatic dispensers pumped toxins from internal reservoirs.
The Newborn shuddered in the grip of the assassin’s poisons, yet it did not relinquish its grip on its attacker’s arm. Held fast, th
e assassin spun its sword up and plunged it again and again into the Newborn’s chest. Blue white light spilled from the wounds, as though the Newborn’s blood ran with the same light as pulsed in the warp core.
Vaanes leapt towards the assassin, his lightning-wreathed claws stabbing towards its neck. Without giving any sign it had been aware of him, the assassin twisted in the Newborn’s grip and blocked his thrusting claws with a dizzyingly swift parry. It launched a riposte and Vaanes only just managed to throw his other claw up to block.
The sword slid between Vaanes’s claws and he twisted his gauntlet savagely, snapping the blade of the assassin’s sword in an explosion of flaring light. The assassin abandoned its sword, but before it could draw its pistol, a black bladed axe slammed into its chest, cleaving it from neck to groin. Hissing, chemically and genetically altered blood sprayed Vaanes, bubbling on his armour as the assassin fell to the ground.
The needle gauntlet tore free from the Newborn and it collapsed, its aberrant flesh fighting to reknit in the face of such dreadful harm. Even its formidable regenerative abilities could barely survive such lethal toxins, and Vaanes wondered if the presence of the daemon lord was helping undo the damage.
Vaanes backed away as Honsou wrenched his axe from the dead assassin, the blade hissing and growling as though angered by the kill.
‘You took your time,’ said Honsou.
Vaanes ignored him, instead staring at the corpse as it bubbled and seethed with chemical reactions. Its flesh sizzled and its blood smoked with acrid venom as the nightmarish collection of toxins, nerve agents and viruses that flowed through its body began reacting with one another. While the killer had lived, that reaction was kept in check, but now…
‘Get back!’ yelled Vaanes.
Honsou looked down at the assassin’s body and immediately saw the danger, hurling himself flat as the corpse combusted in an explosion of virulent chemical fire.
Grendel slammed the butt of his gun against the helmet of a mortal soldier, fighting to reach the Ultramarines sergeant. The warrior fought alongside a woman in black armour with a silver helm. Her sword cut graceful arcs through renegade pirates, and her pistol spat bright bolts of white-hot plasma. They would make good kills.
He had all but exhausted his melta gun’s energy charge, and was saving its last few bursts of energy for the prize kills of this fight. Iron Warriors, ogres, corsairs, pirates and renegades surrounded the warp core, a bastard mix of fighters to be sure, but an effective one.
The Imperials had fought hard, but even with a Dreadnought to anchor their defences, their position was hopeless. A dozen bullet scars creased Grendel’s armour and his chest still ached where the assassin’s sword had skewered him. The blade had punctured his heart, but his secondary organ sustained him while his body repaired the damage.
The Ultramarines warrior noticed him, and Grendel saw the recognition of a fellow killer in his eyes. Grendel paused and ripped off his helmet, letting the electric atmosphere of the warp core stiffen his mohawk. It was foolish to remove his helmet in the midst of a battle, but he wanted to taste the warrior’s blood, feel it spatter his face as he smashed his enemy to ruin on the deck.
He caught sight of a shaven-headed figure in a stained uniform jacket sheltering behind the sergeant, a man working frantically by an opened panel at the base of the warp core. Grendel had no idea what he was doing, but something about the way the warrior and the armoured woman were protecting him made Grendel want to kill him even more.
The Dreadnought let off another burst of assault cannon fire, shredding a dozen of Kaarja Salombar’s corsairs, and crushing one of the ogre beasts with its colossal hammer fist. That was a problem for later, thought Grendel.
He stalked through the swirling combat towards his prey, rotating his neck and swinging his shoulders to loosen the muscles, though he had no intention of going toe to toe with this warrior.
‘I’m going to kill you, traitor,’ said the Ultramarine, dropping into a fighting crouch with a silver-bladed sword held before him.
‘Guess again,’ said Grendel, swinging his melta gun to bear and pressing the firing stud.
A screaming burst of superheated air erupted around the Ultramarines sergeant as Grendel’s melta blast struck him full square in the chest. Armour, flesh and bone melted together as the impossible heat of the melta gun fused the warrior to the deck. Ceramite plates ran like wax, flesh vaporised and hyper-oxygenated blood boiled to steam in an instant.
The woman cried out at his death, and Grendel savoured her horror. She came at him with her sword, but he batted it aside with his melta gun and slammed his fist against her carved breastplate. She was hurled back, tumbling against the shaven-headed man working on the warp core.
She shouted something at him, but Grendel wasn’t listening.
He stepped towards the man, lifting him from the deck and breaking his neck with a contemptuous flick of his wrist. He tossed the limp body aside and turned back towards the woman on the deck, already thinking of the harm he would wreak on her body.
She had scrambled to her knees and scooped up her pistol. Grendel roared and hurled himself at her as she pulled the trigger.
A blazing white light filled his vision, blinding him and filling his world with fire. Searing energies slammed into his breastplate and Grendel roared in pain as the plates of his armour vaporised in the intense heat. The bodysuit beneath melted to his skin and burning blue fire billowed over his skull, burning away his mohawk in an instant and searing the skin of his face and head. Grendel dropped the melta gun and his hands fled to his face, feeling his flesh bubble and run like molten pitch.
‘That hurt, you bitch!’ bellowed Grendel, as the woman desperately twisted a dial on her pistol, the magnetic coils buzzing as they recharged the weapon. Grendel took a step forward and lifted her from the ground, holding her against the glowing plates of the warp core. Her armour began to smoke and the etchings carved into the bronze plates shone with a bitter, golden light.
The woman screamed in pain, acrid fumes hissing from the ruptured joints of her armour. Grendel had no idea what was happening to her, but suspected some enchantment or ward worked into the fabric of the warp core was attacking her. She struggled against his grip, but against the power of a fallen Astartes, she had no chance of breaking free.
The sounds of battle around him continued unabated, but Grendel ignored it, watching in fascination as the woman was burned to death inside her armour. At last her struggles ceased and Grendel dropped her charred and smoking armour, the beatific face carved into the silver of her helmet now sagging and melancholy. An ashen outline of a human form was left imprinted on the bronze of the warp core and he chuckled.
A towering shadow loomed over Grendel and he ducked as a massive hammerblow slammed into the warp core. The bronze plates buckled with the force of the blow and streamers of blue energy spun glittering traceries of light before him.
He rolled before another blow could land, scooping up his fallen melta gun.
Looming over him was the Dreadnought, its colossal, quad-headed hammer rearming for another strike.
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