by Gav Thorpe
‘Your turn,’ Lorenzo said.
‘Negative,’ replied Leon. ‘Eighty rounds remaining. Insufficient for enemy numbers.’
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LEON TURNED TO face the oncoming genestealers pouring in a swarm from two corridors. He double-checked his ammunition gauge and held his fire. The genestealers circled rapidly, darting in from the left and the right. Leon felt the first leap upon his left shoulder. Another slashed its claws into his back.
‘The Angel avenges!’ he bellowed, clamping his finger onto the trigger of the assault cannon.
The torrent of shells tore into the ground at Leon’s feet, the barrels of the weapon glowing red-hot. The mechanism jammed and the rounds left in the weapon exploded, shearing off Leon’s right arm.
The resulting detonation engulfed dozens of genestealers and the plascrete beneath them cracked and crumbled. In a huge explosion of dust and rocky shards, the deck collapsed, plunging Leon and the genestealers to a bone-breaking death many metres below.
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CALISTARIUS HAD NO time to spare a thought for Leon’s sacrifice. Lorenzo approached the Librarian and took the tissue sample from his belt.
‘Protect this,’ said the sergeant, holding out the device. Calistarius took the sample without comment and turned towards the evacuation point.
‘Go with him,’ he heard Lorenzo say and Claudio appeared by his side.
The two of them picked their way through the rubble-choked passage, Lorenzo close on their heels. Occasionally they turned to fire at the pursuing genestealers, cutting down any that came within sight.
They were barely ten metres from the venting shaft. Calistarius could see the maintenance access hatch they needed to break through to get inside.
‘I’ll watch your back,’ volunteered Claudio, indicating to Calistarius that he should cut through the hatchway.
The Librarian turned towards the square door and plunged his force sword into the locking mechanism. He trembled as he allowed his psychic power to surge along the blade, melting the bolts of the lock. With a clang, the hatch fell free, revealing the dark shaft beyond.
Calistarius felt the broodlord before he heard or saw it. Its presence was suddenly there, just behind the Terminators. The Librarian turned in time to see Lorenzo flung out of the alien’s path, still firing his storm bolter. The veteran crashed through a half-ruined wall and fell out of sight.
Claudio launched himself at the monstrous creature like a wild cat, his claws severing an upraised limb. The broodlord brought its other three clawed hands together, grabbing hold of Claudio’s arms. With sickening twists and wrenches, the genestealer ripped the Terminator’s left arm out of its socket. Claudio’s right arm snapped in several places despite the protection of his armour.
Not content, the broodlord closed its massive jaws on Claudio’s head. A few of its fangs snapped, but some managed to punch through Claudio’s armoured helm. Arching its neck and back, the broodlord pulled off the Space Marine’s head with its jaws, splinters of eye lenses and ceramite showering to the ground amidst the arterial fountain from Claudio’s ravaged body.
Calistarius knew that he should escape. The tissue sample in his belt was more important than the death of a single creature. He was about to turn when the broodlord focussed its alien gaze upon him.
With a shock that stunned his system, the Librarian found his psyche swamped by the malignant power of the brood mind. As it penetrated the psyker’s brain, Calistarius felt a jolt of connection with the amorphous thoughts of the genestealers.
Space and time took on a new perspective, all emotion drained from his soul. He was timeless, endless, immortal. One of countless billions, a mote in a hurricane of minds. Fleeting yet eternally reborn. The broodmind linked him to the other things, sharing his thoughts, his hunger, his instinct to reproduce and grow.
But they were not his thoughts. They were alien. Calistarius could not sense where he ended and the broodmind began. He struggled to resist. He felt a tugging on the edge of his personality, a great psychic beacon that flared in every direction. It was like the Astronomican he used to guide ships through the warp, yet far weaker and far fouler. It was a cancer, now small, much reduced by the deaths the brood had suffered.
He realised that far out in the depths of space there were other dark beacons, other broodminds. And something larger. Something that swallowed everything in its path. Something mankind had never seen before. Impossibly distant and impossibly ancient. A shadow in the warp.
The connection broke and Calistarius found himself looking at the broodlord’s face, barely half a metre from him. It was transfixed on a glowing blue blade and Calistarius realised the light in the creature’s eyes were not of life, but simply reflections from the humming power sword.
Lorenzo pulled his sword free from the creature and it slumped to the ground. The sergeant then proceeded to calmly and methodically chop off its remaining three arms, both its legs and, finally, its head.
‘Just to be sure,’ Lorenzo explained. His left arm hung uselessly by his side and he stood with a strange stoop. A warning tone sounded from the sensorium. Another wave of genestealers had been following the Broodlord and was now barely twenty metres away.
Lorenzo turned towards them and awkwardly raised his sword. The Librarian sheathed his own weapon and turned the sergeant to face him, ‘This is victory,’ Calistarius said, holding up the tissue sample.
‘After you,’ said Lorenzo, pointing his sword towards the open exhaust shaft.
The Librarian clambered through the hatchway while Lorenzo opened fire at the approaching aliens.
‘Time to leave, sergeant,’ said Calistarius.
Lorenzo hesitated, gunning down another genestealer. He wanted to stay and fight. He wanted to kill more of the foe. His every instinct told him not to turn away and leave. It felt too much like a retreat. The Angel had given his life for the Blood Angels and Lorenzo could do no less.
With a parting shot, Lorenzo pushed himself into the exhaust duct.
To live and fight again, to remember the sacrifice made this day and six hundred years ago, that was true victory. To survive and allow the memories to live on when so many had not, that was the ultimate triumph.
There was no failure in that.
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