Hammer and Bolter Presents: Xenos Hunters

by Edited by Christian Dunn

  This surge is dangerous, he warned himself. I mustn’t let it get out of control.

  Automatically, he began reciting the mantras Master Cordatus had taught him, but the effort of wrestling to maintain his equilibrium cost him an opening in which he could have killed his foe with a stroke. The ork bodyguard, on the other hand, did not miss its chance. It caught Karras squarely on the right pauldron with the head of its hammer, shattering the Deathwatch insignia there, and knocking him sideways, straight off his feet.

  The impact hurled Karras directly into Rauth’s opponent, and the two tumbled to the metal floor. Karras’s helmet was torn from his head, and rolled away. In the sudden tangle of thrashing Space Marine and ork bodies, Rauth saw an opening. He stepped straight in, plunging his shortsword up under the beast’s sternum, shoving it deep, cleaving the ork’s heart in two. Without hesitation, he then turned to face the remaining bodyguard while Karras kicked himself clear of the dead behemoth and got to his feet.

  The last bodyguard was fast, and Rauth did well to stay clear of the whistling hammerhead, but the stabbing and slashing strokes of his shortsword were having little effect. It was only when Karras joined him, and the ork was faced with attacks from two directions at once, that the tables truly turned. Balthazog Bludwrekk had stopped laughing now. He gave a deafening roar of anger as Rauth and Karras thrust from opposite angles and, between them, pierced the greenskin’s heart and lungs.

  Blood bubbled from its wounds as it sank to the floor, dropping its mighty hammer with a crash.

  Bludwrekk surged upwards from his throne. Arcs of green lightning lanced outwards from his fingers. Karras felt Waaagh! energy lick his armour, looking for chinks through which it might burn his flesh and corrode his soul. Together, blades raised, he and Rauth rounded on their foe.

  The moment they stepped forward to engage, however, a great torrent of kinetic energy burst from the ork’s outstretched hands and launched Rauth into the air. Karras ducked and rolled sideways, narrowly avoiding death, but he heard Rauth land with a heavy crash on the lower floor of the bridge.

  ‘Rauth!’ he shouted over the link. ‘Answer!’

  No answer was forthcoming. The comm-link was useless here. And perhaps Rauth was already dead.

  Karras felt the ork’s magnified power pressing in on him from all sides, and now he saw its source. Behind Bludwrekk’s mechanical throne, beyond a filthy, blood-spattered window of thick glass, there were hundreds – no, thousands – of orks strapped to vertical slabs that looked like operating tables. The tops of their skulls had been removed, and cables and tubes ran from their exposed brains to the core of a vast power-siphoning system.

  ‘By the Golden Throne,’ gasped Karras. ‘No wonder Sigma wants your ugly head.’

  How much time remained before the ship’s reactors detonated? Without his helmet, he couldn’t tell. Long enough to kill this monstrosity? Maybe. But, one on one, was he even a match for the thing?

  Not without exploiting more of the dangerous power at his disposal. He had to trust in his master’s teachings. The mantras would keep him safe. They had to. He opened himself up to the warp a little more, channelling it, focusing it with his mind.

  Bludwrekk stepped forward to meet him, and the two powers clashed with apocalyptic fury.

  Darrion Rauth was not dead. The searing impact of the ork warlord’s psychic blast would have killed a lesser man on contact, ripping his soul from his body and leaving it a lifeless hunk of meat. But Rauth was no lesser man. The secret rites of his Chapter, and the suffering he had endured to earn his place in it, had proofed him against such a fate. Also, though a number of his bones were broken, his superhuman physiology was already about the business of reknitting them, making them whole and strong again. The internal bleeding would stop soon, too.

  But there wasn’t time to heal completely. Not if he wanted to make a difference.

  With a grunt of pain, he rolled, pushed himself to one knee, and looked for his shortsword. He couldn’t see it. His bolter, however, was still attached to his thigh plate. He tugged it free, slammed in a fresh magazine, cocked it, and struggled to his feet. He coughed wetly, tasting blood in his mouth. Looking up towards the place from which he had been thrown, he saw unnatural light blazing and strobing. There was a great deal of noise, too, almost like thunder, but not quite the same. It made the air tremble around him.

  Karras must still be alive, he thought. He’s still fighting.

  Pushing aside the agony in his limbs, he ran to the stairs on his right and, with an ancient litany of strength on his lips, charged up them to rejoin the battle.

  Karras was failing. He could feel it. Balthazog Bludwrekk was drawing on an incredible reserve of power. The psychic Waaagh! energy he was tapping seemed boundless, pouring into the warlord from the brains of the tormented orks wired into his insane contraption.

  Karras cursed as he struggled to turn aside another wave of roiling green fire. It buckled the deck plates all around him. Only those beneath his feet, those that fell inside the shimmering bubble he fought to maintain, remained undamaged.

  His shield was holding, but only just, and the effort required to maintain it precluded him from launching attacks of his own. Worse yet, as the ork warlord pressed his advantage, Karras was forced to let the power of the warp flow through him more and more. A cacophony of voices had risen in his head, chittering and whispering in tongues he knew were blasphemous. This was the moment all Librarians feared, when the power they wielded threatened to consume them, when user became used, master became slave. The voices started to drown out his own. Much more of this and his soul would be lost for eternity, ripped from him and thrown into the maelstrom. Daemons would wrestle for command of his mortal flesh.

  Was it right to slay this ork at the cost of his immortal soul? Should he not simply drop his shield and die so that something far worse than Bludwrekk would be denied entry into the material universe?

  Karras could barely hear these questions in his head. So many other voices crowded them out.

  Balthazog Bludwrekk seemed to sense the moment was his. He stepped nearer, still trailing thick cables from the metal plugs in his distorted skull.

  Karras sank to one knee under the onslaught to both body and mind. His protective bubble was dissipating. Only seconds remained. One way or another, he realised, he was doomed.

  Bludwrekk was almost on him now, still throwing green lightning from one hand, drawing a long, curved blade with the other. Glistening strands of drool shone in the fierce green light. His eyes were ablaze.

  Karras sagged, barely able to hold himself upright, leaning heavily on the sword his mentor had given him.

  I am Lyandro Karras, he tried to think. Librarian. Death Spectre. Space Marine. The Emperor will not let me fall.

  But his inner voice was faint. Bludwrekk was barely two metres away. His psychic assault pierced Karras’s shield. The Codicer felt the skin on his arms blazing and crisping. His nerves began to scream.

  In his mind, one voice began to dominate the others. Was this the voice of the daemon that would claim him? It was so loud and clear that it seemed to issue from the very air around him. ‘Get up, Karras!’ it snarled. ‘Fight!’

  He realised it was speaking in High Gothic. He hadn’t expected that.

  His vision was darkening, despite the green fire that blazed all around, but, distantly, he caught a flicker of movement to his right. A hulking black figure appeared as if from nowhere, weapon raised before it. There was something familiar about it, an icon on the left shoulder; a skull with a single gleaming red eye.

  Rauth!

  The Exorcist’s bolter spat a torrent of shells, forcing Balthazog Bludwrekk to spin and defend himself, concentrating all his psychic power on stopping the stream of deadly bolts.

  Karras acted without pause for conscious thought. He moved on reflex, conditioned by decades
of harsh daily training rituals. With Bludwrekk’s merciless assault momentarily halted, he surged upwards, putting all his strength into a single horizontal swing of his force sword. The warp energy he had been trying to marshal crashed over him, flooding into the crystalline matrix of his blade as the razor-edged metal bit deep into the ork’s thick green neck.

  The monster didn’t even have time to scream. Body and head fell in separate directions, the green light vanished, and the upper bridge was suddenly awash with steaming ork blood.

  Karras fell to his knees, and screamed, dropping Arquemann at his side. His fight wasn’t over. Not yet.

  Now, he turned his attention to the battle for his soul.

  Rauth saw all too clearly that his moment had come, as he had known it must, sooner or later, but he couldn’t relish it. There was no joy to be had here. Psyker or not, Lyandro Karras was a Space Marine, a son of the Emperor just as he was himself, and he had saved Rauth’s life.

  But you must do it for him, Rauth told himself. You must do it to save his soul.

  Out of respect, Rauth took off his helmet so that he might bear witness to the Death Spectre’s final moments with his own naked eyes. Grimacing, he raised the barrel of his bolter to Karras’s temple and began reciting the words of the Mortis Morgatii Praetovo. It was an ancient rite from long before the Great Crusade, forgotten by all save the Exorcists and the Grey Knights. If it worked, it would send Karras’s spiritual essence beyond the reach of the warp’s ravenous fiends, but it could not save his life.

  It was not a long rite, and Rauth recited it perfectly.

  As he came to the end of it, he prepared to squeeze the trigger.

  War raged inside Lyandro Karras. Sickening entities filled with hate and hunger strove to overwhelm him. They were brutal and relentless, bombarding him with unholy visions that threatened to drown him in horror and disgust. He saw Imperial saints defiled and mutilated on altars of burning black rock. He saw the Golden Throne smashed and ruined, and the body of the Emperor trampled under the feet of vile capering beasts. He saw his Chapter house sundered, its walls covered in weeping sores as if the stones themselves had contracted a vile disease.

  He cried out, railing against the visions, denying them. But still they came. He scrambled for something Cordatus had told him.

  Cordatus!

  The thought of that name alone gave him the strength to keep up the fight, if only for a moment. To avoid becoming lost in the empyrean, the old warrior had said, one must anchor oneself to the physical.

  Karras reached for the physical now, for something real, a bastion against the visions.

  He found it in a strange place, in a sensation he couldn’t quite explain. Something hot and metallic was pressing hard against the skin of his temple.

  The metal was scalding him, causing him physical pain. Other pains joined it, accumulating so that the song of agony his nerves were singing became louder and louder. He felt again the pain of his burned hands, even while his gene-boosted body worked fast to heal them. He clutched at the pain, letting the sensation pull his mind back to the moment, to the here and now. He grasped it like a rock in a storm-tossed sea.

  The voices of the vile multitude began to weaken. He heard his own inner voice again, and immediately resumed his mantras. Soon enough, the energy of the immaterium slowed to a trickle, then ceased completely. He felt the physical manifestation of his third eye closing. He felt the skin knitting on his brow once again.

  What was it, he wondered, this hot metal pressed to his head, this thing that had saved him?

  He opened his eyes and saw the craggy, battle-scarred features of Darrion Rauth. The Exorcist was standing very close, helmet at his side, muttering something that sounded like a prayer.

  His bolter was pressed to Karras’s head, and he was about to blow his brains out.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Karras asked quietly.

  Rauth looked surprised to hear his voice.

  ‘I’m saving your soul, Death Spectre. Be at peace. Your honour will be spared. The daemons of the warp will not have you.’

  ‘That is good to know,’ said Karras. ‘Now lower your weapon. My soul is exactly where it should be, and there it stays until my service to the Emperor is done.’

  For a moment, neither Rauth nor Karras moved. The Exorcist did not seem convinced.

  ‘Darrion Rauth,’ said Karras. ‘Are you so eager to spill my blood? Is this why you have shadowed my every movement for the last three years? Perhaps Solarion would thank you for killing me, but I don’t think Sigma would.’

  ‘That would depend,’ Rauth replied. Hesitantly, however, he lowered his gun. ‘You will submit to proper testing when we return to the Saint Nevarre. Sigma will insist on it, and so shall I.’

  ‘As is your right, brother, but be assured that you will find no taint. Of course it won’t matter either way unless we get off this ship alive. Quickly now, grab the monster’s head. I will open the cryo-case.’

  Rauth did as ordered, though he kept a wary eye on the kill-team leader. Lifting Bludwrekk’s lifeless head, he offered it to Karras, saying, ‘The machinery that boosted Bludwrekk’s power should be analysed. If other ork psykers begin to employ such things…’

  Karras took the ork’s head from him, placed it inside the black case, and pressed a four-digit code into the keypad on the side. The lid fused itself shut with a hiss. Karras rose, slung it over his right shoulder, sheathed Arquemann, located his helmet, and fixed it back on his head. Rauth donned his own helmet, too.

  ‘If Sigma wanted the machine,’ said Karras as he led his comrade off the command bridge, ‘he would have said so.’

  Glancing at the mission chrono, he saw that barely seventeen minutes remained until the exfiltration deadline. He doubted it would be enough to escape the ship, but he wasn’t about to give up without trying. Not after all they had been through here.

  ‘Can you run?’ he asked Rauth.

  ‘Time is up,’ said Solarion grimly. He stood in front of the open elevator cage. ‘They’re not going to make it. I’m coming down.’

  ‘No,’ said Voss. ‘Give them another minute, Prophet.’

  Voss and Zeed had finished slaughtering their attackers on the lower floor. It was just as well, too. Voss had used up the last of his promethium fuel in the fight. With great regret, he had slung the fuel pack off his back and relinquished the powerful weapon. He drew his support weapon, a bolt pistol, from a holster on his webbing.

  It felt pathetically small and light in his hand.

  ‘Would you have us all die here, brother?’ asked the Ultra-marine. ‘For no gain? Because that will be our lot if we don’t get moving right now.’

  ‘If only we had heard something on the link…’ said Zeed. ‘Omni, as much as I hate to say it, Prophet has a point.’

  ‘Believe me,’ said Solarion, ‘I wish it were otherwise. As of this moment, however, it seems only prudent that I assume operational command. Sigma, if you are listening–’

  A familiar voice cut him off.

  ‘Wait until my boots have cooled before you step into them, Solarion!’

  ‘Scholar!’ exclaimed Zeed. ‘And is Watcher with you?’

  ‘How many times must I warn you, Raven Guard,’ said the Exorcist. ‘Don’t call me that.’

  ‘At least another hundred,’ replied Zeed.

  ‘Karras,’ said Voss, ‘where in Dorn’s name are you?’

  ‘Almost at the platform now,’ said Karras. ‘We’ve got company. Ork commandos closing the distance from the rear.’

  ‘Keep your speed up,’ said Solarion. ‘The stairs are out. You’ll have to jump. The gap is about thirty metres.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Karras. ‘Coming out of the corridor now.’

  Solarion could hear the thunder of heavy feet pounding the upper metal platform from which he had so
recently leaped. He watched from beside the elevator, and saw two bulky black figures soar out into the air.

  Karras landed first, coming down hard. The cryo-case came free of his shoulder and skidded across the metal floor towards the edge. Solarion saw it and moved automatically, stopping it with one booted foot before it slid over the side.

  Rauth landed a second later, slamming onto the platform in a heap. He gave a grunt of pain, pushed himself up and limped past Solarion into the elevator cage.

  ‘Are you wounded, brother?’ asked the Ultramarine.

  ‘It is nothing,’ growled Rauth.

  Karras and Solarion joined him in the cage. The kill-team leader pulled the lever, starting them on their downward journey.

  The cage started slowly at first, but soon gathered speed. Halfway down, the heavy counterweight again whooshed past them.

  ‘Ghost, Omni,’ said Karras over the link. ‘Start clearing the route towards the salvage bay. We’ll catch up with you as soon as we’re at the bottom.’

  ‘Loud and clear, Scholar,’ said Zeed. He and Voss disappeared off into the darkness of the corridor through which the kill-team had originally come.

  Suddenly, Rauth pointed upwards. ‘Trouble,’ he said.

  Karras and Solarion looked up.

  Some of the ork commandos, those more resourceful than their kin, had used grapnels to cross the gap in the platforms. Now they were hacking at the elevator cables with their broad blades.

  ‘Solarion,’ said Karras.

  He didn’t need to say anything else. The Ultramarine raised his bolter, sighted along the barrel, and began firing up at the orks. Shots sparked from the metal around the greenskins’ heads, but it was hard to fire accurately with the elevator shaking and shuddering throughout its descent.