by Nick Kyme
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Polixis said. ‘But you will not leave the side of this tank. Consider it under your protection until its crew can refit. I will not lose any more of the Fulminata on this campaign.’
‘I’m no use here,’ Priscor growled.
‘You are,’ Polixis said. ‘You can tell me where Brother Ovido is.’
Priscor pointed towards the melee, his voice shot through with an angry regret.
‘He was still with Nerva when I saw him last. If he has fallen, it will be in amongst that.’
‘Then I am needed elsewhere, brother,’ Polixis said, removing the plasma node and capping it, cutting off the transfusion. ‘A week in the Spear of Macragge’s medicae bay and I will have you fully fitted with bionic substitutes. You’ll be back down here with the rest of Nerva before the last of the xenos have been purged.’
‘I’ll take that as an oath, Brother-Apothecary,’ Priscor said sternly as Polixis stood. ‘For Ovido’s sake.’
‘For Ovido,’ Polixis agreed. He turned west, towards the edge of the square and the battle still raging there, and broke once more into a run.
As he went, he unclamped his Absolver bolt pistol.
It was clear to Polixis that the greenskins were on the verge of breaking. He saw a detonation rip through the rear of the aliens’ mob, wicked metal slicing thick green flesh and sending blood and limbs skywards. He realised that their own artillery across the river had attempted to shift its target zone to account for the Imperial push across the square, but with typical orkish inaccuracy, was overcompensating and now hammering the mobs in the rear still trying to force their way to the front. At the same time, Intercessor squad Nerva and the single Leman Russ that was still fully functional had been reinforced by a company of Voitekan infantry, who were now pouring las-fire down the streets branching from the western side of the square. Faced with the choice of dying beneath their own barrage or throwing themselves at the steadily advancing Imperials, the greenskins had chosen the latter.
As Polixis ran he located the company banner of the Fulminata. Its blue-and-white silk fluttered proudly exactly where he’d expected to see it – at the point where the greenskins had reached the Imperial line on the rubble-choked corner of one of the refinery blocks, unleashing a swirling melee that threatened to drag in the Voitekan platoons on either side. Amidst the flashing blades and churning bodies, the Apothecary caught the actinic flash of power weapons and heard a familiar bellow ring out, audible even over the crash of the nearby shelling.
He very nearly smiled as he ran.
Then the fury of close combat hit, and the honed skills of a warrior bred for nothing but total war took over. Ahead, a greenskin hefted its crude axe to cleave the skull of a wounded Zoitekan Guardsman. Polixis fired, his bolt detonating inside the creature’s guts, shredding its lower torso. It went down with a bellow next to the Guardsman, and Polixis finished it with another shot to the skull. Directly ahead, Brother Tarquin grappled with another greenskin, the Primaris’ gladius lodged in the beast’s chest. Despite this, it tried to grind its own cleaver deeper into the space where the Space Marine’s pauldron met breastplate. Polixis shoulder-charged the ork, throwing it back with a grunt and dragging both weapons free. Before it could recover its balance, he fired again, blowing away half its face in a spray of foul alien gore.
‘Brother Ovido?’ he demanded, half turning to grasp Tarquin’s shoulder.
‘The captain,’ he grunted, opening fire with his own bolt pistol, aiming past the Apothecary as another ork rushed at them, bellowing.
Polixis pressed on. All around him men, beasts and the Adeptus Astartes grappled and hacked, stabbed and spat, but it was a blur even to his hyperactive senses. His eyes were fixed on the company banner, grasped high in the fist of Ancient Skyrus, lit by the lightning of Captain Demeter’s power sword and the blazing crozius arcanum of Chaplain Kastor. As he broke through to them, he noticed a crumpled body at Skyrus’ feet.
‘Ovido,’ the standard bearer said.
Polixis didn’t require his prognosticator to know that the Primaris was dead – two heavy slug rounds had punched through his breastplate, cracking the Space Marine’s fused ribcage and almost certainly rupturing both hearts and lungs.
‘Brother-Apothecary,’ said Demeter. The captain was half facing away from him, dragging his power sword from another greenskin corpse. ‘Kindly perform your rites.’
Polixis knelt beside Ovido. He activated his narthecium, the advanced medicae tool that encased his left gauntlet, muttering the Litany of Recovery as he did so. A glance told him the sternal progenoid, the gene-seed buried in Ovido’s chest, had been damaged beyond recovery by the two shots that had killed him. The secondary cervical progenoid, however, was not beyond saving.
He accessed the emergency sealants around Ovido’s gorget, unclamping his helmet with a quiet prayer to the armour’s machine-spirit.
‘Blessed battleplate, yield your fallen brother to me now.’
The fallen Ultramarine’s face was revealed – wrathful in death, pale and stony-eyed, as though still damning the xenos that had shot him. Mag-locking his bolt pistol to his thigh, Polixis used two fingers to close the Ultramarine’s eyelids, before triggering his narthecium’s carbon alloy chainblade.
Combat recoveries were unpleasant at the best of times. The reverence and care that the body of any fallen member of the Chapter deserved had to be set aside in favour of measured haste. Polixis sliced the tip of the chainblade along Ovido’s throat, cutting the white flesh with a practised stroke. Blood welled bright from the small incision as he deactivated the chainblade and extended the narthecium reductor’s extractor tube and flesh hooks, sliding it into the cut and keeping the wound from sealing. The thumbnail-sized pict-caster above the tube’s tip linked with his helmet display, showing him the grey, fleshy gland he sought in Ovido’s neck. With a blink-click he triggered the extractor tube’s scissor end after it had slid over the progenoid, neatly severing the gland from the connective tissue embedding it into the larynx.
With the gene-seed disconnected, Polixis activated the reductor’s suction valve. There was a whirring noise as the gland was dragged free from Ovido’s flesh and shunted up the extractor tube into one of the sealed cryo-receptacle vials at the narthecium’s rear.
As Polixis worked, the slaughter around him continued. His transhuman senses were aware of it, capable of splitting focus between the probing of the extractor and the surrounding thump of axes and the clang of steel on ceramite. He pulled a mortis tag from his plastek medicae webbing and inserted it into Ovido’s primary breastplate port, just to the left below his fused rib-plate, providing a beacon to locate the body later now that the battle-brother’s auto-senses were offline. As Polixis stood, a spray of blood splattered his white armour, a greenskin’s severed head flying past him from the direction of Captain Demeter.
‘He is recovered,’ the Apothecary said, speaking the rite of the fallen. ‘His legacy endures.’
‘Brother Priscor?’ Demeter asked.
‘Stable.’
‘Then let us press on,’ Demeter continued, switching to address both the Primaris and the Guard over the vox. ‘The Gorgon lies just ahead, my brothers. Forward!’
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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
First published in Great Britain in 2019.
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Cover illustration by Mauro Belfiore.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Backlist
Title Page
Warhammer 40,000
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Part Two
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
About the Author
An Extract from ‘Blood Of Iax’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
Table of Contents
Cover
Backlist
Title Page
Warhammer 40,000
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Part Two
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
<
br /> Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
About the Author
An Extract from ‘Blood Of Iax’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
Table of Contents
Cover
Backlist
Title Page
Warhammer 40,000
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Part Two
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen