Shocked out of her moment of inaction, she turned and scrambled away from the exit, keeping low. She ducked between cabinets filled with medical supplies, empty gurneys and thrumming, almost silent life-support machinery. She glanced left, glimpsing legionaries moving as one for the far corner of the room, towards the isolation cell that held Khârn, then looked right – straight into the hateful, snarling faceplate of the legionary who had been searching for her.
He was down on one knee, a gauntleted hand touching one of the bloody smears she’d left on the deck. Carved teeth had been affixed into his vox-grille, giving him a vicious, bestial appearance. A black handprint was emblazoned upon the left half of his faceplate.
The legionary saw her at the same moment, but he reacted much quicker. He moved impossibly fast, a blur of movement, rising like a sprinter. A trolley was upended, hurled out of his path as he barrelled towards her, an unstoppable juggernaut intent on her demise.
Skoral didn’t have time to think. She lurched to her feet, shoved a gurney laden with boxes of supplies into his path and ran for an open cell door. He smashed it aside with the back of his hand, swatting it away as dismissively as a mortal would a fly. The gurney hurtled away from him, flipping end over end through the air, sending boxes and supplies scattering.
He covered the distance astonishingly fast. She’d gone only two steps, making perhaps two metres by the time he closed on her, covering easily three times that distance. Nevertheless, she made it into the isolation cell, a square room of armourglass with only a single recovery pod in its centre. There was no way out. She’d backed herself into a corner.
He was close. She slammed her palm against the door’s locking rune. The portal hissed shut instantly. For a horrible moment she thought she’d locked herself in there with him, but no, he was outside. She could see him through the thick armourglass. Up close he seemed impossibly huge. She saw him reach for the door release.
Moving fast, her hand shaking so much that she almost missed it, she thumbed a red key button beside the door. Emergency contamination control. A warning siren began to sound and red lights began to flash. Immediately, a locking mechanism kicked in with a series of grinding turns, sealing the door fast. It could only be opened with the requisite code.
She backed away from the door, staring at the immense Space Marine standing beyond it, glowering in at her. He stepped back two steps and levelled a bolt pistol at her. Without pause he fired. Three shots in quick succession. Skoral flinched.
The armourglass was scarred by the gunfire, but held. The World Eater lowered his pistol, ribbons of smoke rising from its barrel and the holes of its muzzle brake. He stared at her, holding her gaze, then simply turned away, as if judging the difficulty in breaking into the cell more than her life was worth.
Skoral staggered around the single recovery pod centred in the cell and pressed herself against the armourglass wall opposite the door, looking frantically out into the corridor beyond. The ship’s corridor was empty. She began to bang on it, shouting.
‘Anyone!’ she roared. ‘Anyone!’
Her bracelet transponder vibrated against her skin. Dreagher. Finally.
‘What is going on down there?’ he growled.
Movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention.
Two cells down, she could see Khârn sitting unmoving in his throne, as always. Outside his cell, the World Eaters kill-team was clustered.
Contamination protocols. When the emergency contamination lockdown was triggered, all of the cells in the apothecarion secundus were locked down.
She saw the flare of a weld-torch.
‘Legionaries,’ breathed Skoral. ‘Cutting into Khârn’s cell. They’re going to kill him.’
Chapter 9
Dreagher sprinted through the corridors of the Defiant, barking orders. The Emperor’s Children swordsman, Galerius, was a step behind him, his massive curved blade strapped across his back. An honour guard of World Eaters pounded behind in their wake, bolters and chainswords clasped in their hands.
Too long, thought Dreagher. It was taking them too long to get there. There were no legionaries any closer, none that would get there any faster. He picked up the pace, taking five, six, seven metres with each stride. The corridors reverberated with the pounding of footfalls.
He heard the screaming contamination klaxon. It was getting louder. They were almost there. He could see the strobing blood-tinged light up ahead.
He rounded a corner too fast, boots skidding on the metal decking. He hit the wall opposite, his armoured shoulder skidding off its surface. Galerius took the corner more gracefully, using his momentum to step up onto the wall itself. He took two light steps before pushing off the wall and thudding back to ground, maintaining his speed. He pulled out in front of Dreagher and the other World Eaters, arms pumping like pistons.
They raced past the armourglass walls of the apothecarion. He could see legionaries within. At a glance he knew that they were neither his nor Argus Brond’s.
These were outsiders. Infiltrators onto his ship. He felt the rage build within him. The Nails tick-tocked in his mind, lending fuel to his burning muscles, granting him strength and speed.
He saw Skoral in one of the isolation cells. She was standing up against the glass, pounding on it and shouting, though nothing of that could be heard from the corridor itself. His gaze met hers, briefly. Then he was past her. The final corner. Beyond it, the entrance to the apothecarion.
A deafening torrent of heavy fire met him as he rounded the corner. High-calibre rounds caught Dreagher high on the left shoulder. They ripped great chunks from his ceramite and spun him half around, making him stumble. Galerius threw himself into a roll to avoid the incoming fire, but he too was hit, the streaming heavy weapons fire scoring a series of gouges across his pristine purple chest plate.
A legionary stood before the entrance to the apothecarion, legs braced in a wide stance. He wielded a bucking, belt-fed autocannon, the huge twin-barrelled weapon fighting him with every pounding shot.
One of Dreagher’s World Eaters dropped instantly, his helmet exploding in a shower of red. Two others fell as the booming autocannon rounds churned across them, gouging massive craters in their armour. They were sent reeling back, stumbling into the path of those behind them.
Another World Eater died, cut in two at the waist by the sheer force of the autocannon’s barrage before Dreagher took the legionary down. Two shots, fired in quick succession. The detonation virtually tore the legionary’s head off. The murderous weapon fell silent, the dead warrior’s thumb finally releasing the pressure of the trigger.
Dreagher was up and moving even before the warrior fell. He and Galerius were the first to the entrance. The head of the servitor built into the door frame had been ripped clean off. Dreagher pushed into the confines of the antechamber beyond, his bolter raised, the bayonet chainaxe slung beneath the barrel churning the air. Galerius was a step behind, holding his blade Argentus in both hands.
Dreagher slammed his fist onto the door release. Nothing happened.
‘They’ve sealed it,’ said Galerius, nodding his chin towards the scorch marks at the door’s join.
‘The autocannon,’ ordered Dreagher, stabbing a finger at one of his legionaries. ‘Quickly!’
The World Eater tore the heavy weapon from the grasp of the dead legionary, and brought it up to bear on the sealed door. Dreagher and Galerius stepped aside, turning their heads away, and the legionary depressed the thumb trigger.
A hail of fire impacted with the burn-sealed door, crazing the glass portal, but not breaking it. The legionary emptied the autocannon’s ammunition bank in seconds, firing on full auto. The barrels were glowing red-hot by the time he was done. The door was a mangled ruin, but still it held.
Dreagher stepped forward and slammed the flat of his boot into the door’s glass centre. It shattere
d inwards and he moved in, firing, bolter pressed to his shoulder.
A pair of grenades bounced towards him, and he threw himself aside, taking cover behind an overturned bench. The explosions, coming so close together as to almost be a single detonation, sent shards of burning frag bursting out in every direction. The antechamber had taken the full brunt of the explosions. He had no time to check on his legionaries.
He rose, and took in the room at a glance. The enemy legionaries were clustered at the far starboard end, standing outside Khârn’s armourglass cell. One of them held a bulky combi-bolter in two hands, and he sprayed fire at Dreagher as he rose from cover.
He stayed low and stepped sidewards, returning fire.
They were still cutting their way into Khârn’s cell, he saw, but they were almost done. Even as he ducked from a heavy barrage of incoming fire, they finished the job. A pair of them grabbed the door, hauling it open. Two World Eaters remained in the apothecarion, weapons raised, to slow Dreagher and his legionaries. The others moved into the armoured cell to deal with Khârn.
From his kneeling position, Dreagher sighted one of the legionaries advancing, and fired off two bolts. He took the World Eater in the left knee, ripping the leg clean off, and he rose to finish him. He leapt a fallen gurney and kicked the legionary’s weapon away before ramming his chainblade bayonet into the warrior’s throat. The bladed links tore through the flexible, rubberised armour and into the flesh beyond, ripping it to shreds in a hot spray.
Two of the World Eaters within Khârn’s cell were dragging the door shut, and Dreagher shouted out, launching himself forward, desperate to stop them.
Galerius was closer.
The Palatine Blade spun as he closed on the last World Eater standing in their path, who was chasing the purple-armoured legionary with the fire of his combi-bolter. Too slow, he brought it around to bear.
Galerius made two cuts, each flowing smoothly into the next, wielding his two-handed blade with blinding speed. The first disembowelled the World Eater, slicing him open to the spine. The second neatly decapitated him, sending his helmeted head toppling backwards. It rolled and bounced back into Khârn’s isolation cell before coming to rest on the floor, staring vacantly upwards.
The headless body of the legionary dropped to its knees, blood fountaining from the stump of its neck. Then it too toppled backwards. Blood pumped back into the isolation cell, liberally spraying the legionaries within and splashing across Khârn’s face before the doors slammed shut.
Fusion strips were affixed across the door’s join from within, and Dreagher roared in anger and desperation as the cell was effectively sealed off.
‘Melta charges!’ he roared. ‘Bring them!’
He smashed his fist ineffectually against the armourglass, knowing that it would take far, far too long to bring forth a weapon or charge capable of breaching the barrier before the infiltrators finished what they had come to do. Dreagher roared, smashing his fist against the armourglass once more.
Two cells along, Skoral watched in helpless anguish, feeling the desperation of her master. Within the cell she could see the five remaining members of the kill-team encircle Khârn. Each of them held arms at the ready: bolters, chainswords, power axes, mauls.
The legionary directly behind the comatose equerry was a hulking giant, chains hung with skulls pulled taut across the curved plates of his shoulders. The faceplate of his helm was bronze and fashioned in the likeness of a daemon. Ribbed, curving horns rose from his temples.
This warrior holstered his sidearm, and drew a short gladius from a scabbard at his hip. This task would be done with cold steel. It was an old, well-worn weapon, simple and unadorned, with nothing ornate about it. It was purely functional, and its blade had spilled the blood of countless hundreds.
He drew the gladius back for a fatal strike aimed at the back of Khârn’s neck. He reached out with his free hand, as if to grab hold of the equerry’s shoulder to help his aim. He thought better of it at the last second, and pulled his hand back. He shifted his stance and his grip on his gladius, placing the palm of his free hand on its pommel instead.
The tip of the gladius was centimetres from Khârn’s neck, ready for the killing thrust. The World Eater closed his fingers around the pommel.
The others stood with weapons in hand, witnesses to Khârn’s death.
Skoral sucked in her breath.
Dreagher roared, smashing at the armourglass.
This was not how it was meant to end, he told himself. This was not how it was meant to end.
There was hot blood splattered upon Khârn’s face, droplets on his cheek, brow, eyelids and mouth. His lips parted ever so slightly, the movement imperceptible. A scarlet droplet touched his tongue. Lifeblood spilled in battle. Lifeblood spilled in anger.
Behind him, the World Eater drew the point of his gladius back, ready to deliver the killing blow.
Khârn opened his eyes, and blood began to flow.
Chapter 10
It should have been a fatal stroke. There was no way that the veteran legionary could miss his target at such range. But then, this was Khârn.
It all happened in a matter of heartbeats. It was stunning in its brutality and its speed, leaving the onlookers wide-eyed, frozen in surprise and shock.
Khârn leaned to the side, moving just enough so that the blade of the gladius sliced by his bare neck.
His hands came up from the arms of his throne, grabbing the surprised warrior by the wrists.
He twisted, savagely. Snap.
The World Eater released his hold on his weapon, snarling.
Still seated, Khârn grabbed the gladius by the hilt as it dropped from his enemy’s armoured grip.
His arm whipped out, and he flung the gladius away from him. It embedded itself in the throat of one of the other Bloodborn, sinking deep. The warrior clutched at it, blood gurgling.
The Bloodborn were battle-hardened veterans, however. They were surprised by Khârn’s sudden revival, of course, but their instincts had been honed by endless warfare. Their reactions – already far beyond those of mere mortals – had been sharpened to a razor’s edge by constant battle and exacerbated by the Nails thundering in the back of their skulls.
Already their systems were being pumped with stimms, synapses flaring as adrenal spikes surged through them, flooding them with strength and speed.
They were not frozen into inaction as Khârn awoke. Far from it. They responded instantly and without hesitation. Blades were levelled at their singular foe. Barrels were raised.
They were five legionaries against one – four now, as the one with the blade embedded in his neck was already dying. Still, they were armed and fully armoured, they were in an enclosed space, with no way out, and they surrounded a lone, unarmoured, unarmed opponent. There could only be one possible outcome to this fight.
And yet, the outcome of the fight was anything but certain. Even alone and unarmed, Khârn was never an opponent to be taken lightly. He’d already killed one of their number in the blink of an eye.
He rose from his throne, moving with ungodly speed, even for one of the Legiones Astartes. He still had a hold of the broken wrist of the warrior who had tried to execute him. He twisted it sharply as he came up, turning him. In one smooth movement, Khârn was behind him, even as a bolt pistol raised by one of the other Bloodborn fired.
The sound was deafening in the enclosed space of the isolation cell. The shot struck the Bloodborn Khârn was using as a living shield square in the chest. It detonated with a concussive thunderclap. Khârn kicked the World Eater away, planting a bare foot square in the small of the warrior’s back, sending him stumbling directly into the shooter, even as Khârn claimed a plasma pistol from the veteran’s holster.
He drew and fired smoothly, straight into the back of the helmet of the warrior he’d just kicked away. An oscillating
scream accompanied the stream of blinding white-blue plasma as the weapon discharged, blasting through the horned helmet and liquefying his head. Hissing coolant vapours vented from the plasma pistol’s reactor chamber.
Two down.
A movement to his left. Khârn dropped to one knee, and a hurled throwing axe, spinning end over end, sliced over his head. It embedded itself in the headrest of his recuperation throne. Khârn’s pistol came around as he dropped, swinging towards his next target.
A spiked power maul smashed the pistol from his hand, then came back around to crush Khârn into the wall. He rose to meet the blow, darting forward with blinding speed to put himself inside his attacker’s effective range. He caught the warrior under one elbow and turned him, taking the Bloodborn off balance. Using the warrior’s momentum against him, Khârn rammed him back into the armourglass wall. The sheer transparent panel shuddered under the impact.
Khârn punched upwards with his fingers outstretched, driving up into the warrior’s throat like a blade, crushing his windpipe.
Feeling a movement behind him, he swayed to the side, narrowly avoiding being impaled upon the roaring tip of a chainsword. He grabbed the legionary’s arms as he followed up on his failed strike, pulling him off balance and driving the blurred chain-links into the belly of the warrior he’d just slammed against the wall. Ceramite and plasteel were churned away in a screech of protesting metal, and blood sprayed.
Spinning, Khârn elbowed the chainsword-wielding Bloodborn square in the face, cracking one of his visor lenses. As he reeled back, Khârn spun, grabbing the throwing axe embedded in his throne. It was a brutish, barbaric killing implement, with a heavy curved blade and jagged teeth.
The chainsword roared as it swung it at him. Khârn hurled himself into a roll, avoiding the madly spinning blade-links. The legionary with the bolt pistol was rising now, pushing off the dead weight of the World Eater whose head Khârn had blasted off.
Khârn: Eater of Worlds Page 10
