The Prince of Thorns spun on his heel, Shadraith’s blood still running off his blade. A Loyalist charged him from the door, bolter flaring. The rounds cracked and ricocheted from Cull’s armour, shearing off ceramite thorns. Cull snarled and swept his runesword up to meet the Carcharodon as the Loyalist triggered his bolter’s chainblade combat attachment.
Shenzar loomed over the black-armoured Chaplin who had just slain Skorra. The Terminator had mag-locked his combi-bolter in favour of two spiked power maces, the blunt weapons snapping with enough energy to rival that of the Chaplain’s crozius. While the Loyalist maintained his silence, Shenzar attacked with a vox roar that eclipsed even the scream-audios being broadcast by his brethren. The Terminator’s style of fighting was dictated by his brute bulk and strength – he committed to great swinging blows that smashed cogitators and data lecterns, confident that his armour could absorb any counter-strike.
The Chaplain gave ground, his attention fixed on keeping out of the crackling arcs of the two maces as they split the air before him. Shenzar advanced like an implacable colossus of midnight metal, his every step shuddering the floor underfoot. A warrior with less experience might have been tempted to try to lunge in through the Terminator’s open guard, but the Chaplain knew such a move would have only one outcome – him lying, crumpled and broken, beneath the Chaos Terminator.
Cull turned aside the chainblade lunging for his stomach with a dismissive flick of his runesword, stepping inside the Loyalist’s guard to slam his clenched gauntlet into the Space Marine’s helm. The warrior recoiled, one black lens cracked and the ceramite dented by thorns. Cull followed up with a wicked slash that opened the Loyalist’s cuirass, spilling out a stream of blood and intestines. The Space Marine still tried to fight back, the fatal wound not yet registering with the rest of his genhanced body. He tore his bolter’s chainblade attachment across Cull’s left pauldron, seeking to slice into the side of his helm, but the thorns trapped and locked it. Cull snarled and ploughed his runesword two-handed through the Space Marine’s breastplate, punching it out through his back. He twisted the curved hilt so the flesh didn’t grip the metal, and ripped his sword free. Impaled and gutted, the Loyalist slumped onto his knees and collapsed against Cull’s legs. The Night Lords prince placed one spiked gauntlet over the dying warrior’s head, as though in some sort of mocking benediction, before twisting and letting the limp corpse thump to the floor.
Sharr felt the pull of the slaughter around him. The air was thick with the acrid stench of weapon discharges, active disruptor fields and, most maddeningly of all, the metallic tang of blood. It infested the Company Master’s nostrils, passing even his helm’s sealed exterior. Whether it was the actual stink, or his imagination of it, honed by a thousand past encounters, Sharr could not tell. All he knew was that it lent strength and vitality to his limbs, along with a shaking, jaw-clenching need to lash out.
He was done with restraint. He was done with leadership. He was done with being tested. He was not Bail Sharr, Master of the Third Battle Company, any longer. He was Aleph-sixteen-nine the initiate, undertaking his first blooding, his pale features streaked bright red, panting as he quenched the manic frenzy that was his genetic inheritance.
It was the Chaos Terminator that took the brunt of Sharr’s awakened fury. The Raptor he’d engaged had wisely dropped back, slinking like a scavenger beast around the two larger predators as they squared up to each other. He was too slow to intervene when Sharr sprung suddenly into a wild attack, swinging Reaper as though the unwieldy weapon was a perfect example of poise and balance.
The Terminator tried to parry with its mace, but its heavy armour rendered it too slow, and the refractor field that would normally have protected it could do little to stop the whirring, revving death that Sharr unleashed. Reaper thundered down through the Terminator’s helm and didn’t stop until it had carved halfway through its rib plate, the reinforced shark teeth spraying out a stream of gore and scraps of twisted armour. Sharr revved the weapon free and the Terminator went down, painting the quaking floor red.
Sharr advanced over the corpse towards the Raptor, and the Night Lord fell back, in no mood to face the silent, dripping revenant.
On the vox-gallery, Narx and the Loyalist Champion both found the fatal blow. The warrior with the black sword left his guard open for a split second after turning aside a controlled stab by the Night Lords executioner. So focused was the young heretic on the killing blow that he lunged again before he realised it was a trap. The power sword plunged into the Loyalist’s stomach. He grunted as the disruptor field bit through armour and then flesh, even as his backward cut took off Narx’s sword arm. For a second the Night Lord simply stared at the sheared limb, his sword still buried in the Loyalist. Then the grey-clad warrior plunged the wicked black edge of his relic sword into Narx’s faceplate, ploughing it through his jaw. The Night Lord fell. The Loyalist released the clamps binding the ancient shield to his other arm and placed his hand on the hilt of the power sword half buried in his lower torso. Teeth gritted as he fought to stay silent, he deactivated the weapon and dragged it free. Then he collapsed onto his knees beside Narx, his blood spilling down onto the fallen Night Lord.
Kordi thrust himself away from the Terminator as it came at him with its chainfist screaming. Assaulting the brute warrior didn’t seem like such a wise decision, but the Carcharodon refused to disengage. He could smell blood. He hungered for it now, needed to see it spilled by his own hand, red on the floor and on his gauntlets. He reached for a fresh magazine as he put a battered cogitator between himself and the traitor. The Night Lord roared, and slammed straight through it, smashing it to sparking metal with a few rending blows. Its shadow loomed over Kordi as he reloaded, charged with murderous intent.
His mother’s arms embraced him, hugging him close. She would never abandon him.
‘Down, brother,’ said Tonga’s voice over the vox. Kordi, his reflexes honed by decades of combat alongside his Fourth Squad brethren, did so without thinking. He heard the shrieking blast of vaporised air, and his armour systems pinged a warning as they detected a heat spike that left the outer ceramite blistering. When he looked up, through a mist of atomised organic matter, the upper half of the Terminator had been reduced to a bubbling mess of flesh and metal.
Kordi rose, scanning for fresh prey, forcing the memories of a life long lost back down.
Te Kahurangi felt power coursing through him. He’d allowed the traitors to believe they were leading him into a trap, and the psychic awakening of Skell had lowered the void shield protecting the Precinct Fortress for long enough for the teleportation assault. Now, he just had to keep Skell alive. He stood over the unconscious boy and swung his force staff in a blurring green-tipped arc, driving back the Furies flocking towards them. Those that remained were all focusing on the room’s cogitator pit, desperate to get at the boy and the last fragment of their master before it slipped away. Te Kahurangi could hear Bar’ghul’s enraged shrieking in his head, but he drove it out, grunting as he slammed his staff into one daemon that swooped too low. More vanished in dark, swirling clouds as the energies binding them to the material plane dissipated. Without the Dead Skin’s rituals or the attention of the Night Lords, their grip on reality was slipping.
Across the control room, Shenzar caught the Chaplain. One of the few Furies not yet banished from the chamber launched itself at the Loyalist from behind. The daemon snatched and scrabbled wildly, clamping its claws around his waist. He spun and swung his crozius in a tight, vicious arc, the holy weapon blasting the daemon back into oblivion. His guard was back up in an instant, but the brief distraction had been more than enough for Shenzar.
The Chaos Terminator champion smashed his mace into the Chaplain’s left pauldron. There was a hideous crunch and the Loyalist went down onto his knees. A swing of Shenzar’s second mace was met by the crozius. There was a blast of power as the conflicting energy fields collid
ed. Servos locked as they kept the two warriors from being thrown apart by the discharge. Shenzar braced his second mace against the crozius while bringing the first back down into the Loyalist’s side. Wordlessly, the Chaplain crumpled. Shenzar slammed one heavy boot down into his back, keeping him pinned while he assessed the melee tearing the control centre apart.
‘You!’ shouted Cull. He gestured with his runesword at the tall Loyalist with the two-handed chainaxe stalking towards Xeron. The sight of his brother’s blood running off the tainted weapon seemed to make the Loyalist pause.
‘Face me, Silent One,’ said Cull, striding through the wreckage. He grinned as he went, still without his helmet, steel fangs gleaming. He had hungered for a challenge such as this. With Shadraith dead there were no more limits. Killing the grey-clad warrior would cement his place within the warband’s shifting hierarchy. The Loyalist turned towards the Prince of Thorns, Xeron using the opportunity to make for the blast doors.
‘I have enjoyed our little games,’ Cull said, casually kicking aside a broken data lectern. ‘I thought the harvest here would prove to be unfulfilling. How wrong I was.’
The Loyalist said nothing, bringing his great chainaxe up into a defensive combat stance, feet squarely planted, the haft of the weapon guarding his breastplate.
‘Why do you and your brothers not speak?’ the young Night Lord asked Sharr. ‘Are you ashamed to be doing your Corpse-God’s work? Did He make you take some sort of ridiculous oath? That’s why I could never fight for Him. Even the pathetic creatures that put all their faith in these weakling daemons are infinitely more free than you’ll ever be.’
Sharr attacked. In an instant the Carcharodon had gone from static, prepared defence to whirring, slashing assault. The shock of such a violent change would have left most prey helpless, but the Night Lord was not so easily caught. He let the first buzzing swing of the chainaxe pass him by, then darted in while Sharr recovered from the miss, swift as a striking viper.
Sharr, too, had been expecting just such a counter. The Company Master pulled his blow in time to use Reaper’s haft to parry Cull’s strike. The Chaos runesword rang off the adamantium shaft of the chainaxe, jarring the arms of both warriors.
Sharr used his greater strength to thrust the Chaos Space Marine back, giving himself room to swing again. Reaper cracked off one of the traitor’s pauldrons, shearing away its thorns but failing to bite deep. The Night Lord responded with a rapier-like thrust that jarred off Sharr’s side, cutting the grey plate right down to his black carapace. Sharr responded the way any Carcharodon would – by attacking even more violently. Reaper struck one, two, three times, in quick succession, the servos in Akia’s old armour grating as they gave Sharr the speed and strength necessary to wield the great weapon with such apparent ease. The Night Lord gave ground, no longer with the lazy, mocking grace of a duellist, but with the haste of someone desperately trying to buy time.
Sharr purposefully drove himself into the traitor, abandoning the last vestiges of defensive poise as he went for the jugular. He turned the Night Lord’s blade aside with Reaper’s haft and snatched him by the gorget with his other hand, dragging him in close. The traitor, still without his helmet, met the black glare of the Carcharodon with a metal-fanged grin.
‘A poor decision, Silent One,’ he said. He triggered his armour’s ancient power coils. Arco-lightning ignited with a crack, a blaze of light shooting out from the nodes in the Night Lord’s spike-studded battleplate. Sharr was flung back by the sudden discharge, his jaw locking as his body went into spasms, Reaper tumbling from his grasp. The ancient weapon gave a throaty growl as its rotor began to decelerate. It skidded across the control room’s floor. Sharr hit the ground a dozen strides from the Night Lord, cracking the rockcrete, his left pauldron and its bonding studs buckling as they took the full force of the impact. He lay there for precious seconds, paralysed, muscles clenched and unresponsive following the shock of the arco-lightning. The traitor laughed and began to pace towards him, his armour crackling.
‘Too confident, Silent One. Too unrestrained. Now, let us see if I can make you scream.’
‘Even if he did, you probably wouldn’t hear it over your own incessant chatter,’ Te Kahurangi snarled. The Chief Librarian had risen from the cogitator pit, Skell cradled unconscious in one arm, staff in the other. The light blazing from its tip had banished the last of the Furies and torn Bar’ghul from reality.
‘I should have let Shadraith kill you before I cut him down,’ the Night Lord sneered, coming to a halt. ‘No matter. You won’t stop me, old man.’
Te Kahurangi didn’t reply. He was muttering under his breath, breathing words unuttered for the better part of a millennium. The light emanating from his staff throbbed in time with the litany, warp lightning flaring and sparking down its haft. The desperate, savage frenzy of the surrounding melee seemed to fade into nothingness as the Chief Librarian centred the energies coruscating around the command centre.
Cull realised what was happening. He lunged at the psyker, fangs bared in a snarl. He was too late. With a crash the rockcrete floor beneath him surged upwards, impelled by the Librarian’s will. Stone and metal shattered and reshaped itself around the Night Lord, forming into a vast, jagged maw. It snapped shut around the Prince of Thorns with a crash, hammering him from both sides with the broken fabric of the Precinct Fortress. Then the debris fell, plummeting through the hole torn by its displacement, into an auxiliary armoury room below. Amon Cull was dragged down, the cascade of rubble pounding him into the floor below, shattering his armour and breaking his body. His arco-lightning flared and shorted out, seconds before his bloody remains were buried by collapsing debris.
Shenzar had seen Cull’s fatal fall. Even as the great jaw of broken rockcrete cracked shut around him, the Terminator had abandoned the fallen Chaplain’s prone form and headed for the blast doors. As the bloody slaughter in the Centrum Dominus reached its climax, he stomped down towards the precinct’s inner holding blocks and scanned the gene-key taken from the captured warden primary against the precinct’s maximum-security cell access block. Locking bars and hinges grated as the internal mechanisms swung the reinforced hatch open.
Vorfex crouched within the cell, its darkness stripped away by Shenzar’s preysight. The Raptor champion looked up as the Terminator filled the hatchway. Wordlessly, Shenzar unlocked Vorfex’s helm from his mag-belt and tossed it down.
‘I was right then,’ Vorfex said, looking at his crested helmet.
‘They’re both dead,’ Shenzar rumbled.
‘What of the main offensive, against the junctions?’
‘A stalemate. One has fallen. The remaining three still resist, with casualties mounting on both sides.’
‘And the fleet?’
‘Engaging the Loyalists in high orbit. They can break contact any time we desire.’
‘Then our work here is done, brother,’ Vorfex said, scooping his cracked helmet off the cell’s floor. He locked it down over his gorget and gave it a moment for its auto-senses to awaken. Once they were online he activated the warband-wide vox-frequency.
‘This is Vorfex to all Claw champions. The Flayed Father and the Prince of Thorns are dead. One betrayed the Legion with his base bargains, the other was an arrogant youth who should never have been allowed to rise as far as he did. I am assuming command. Shenzar is with me. If any wish to challenge us then they may do so at an opportune moment, but for now all Claws withdraw to the shuttle bays and prepare for a return to orbit. Let us waste no more time on these grey monsters.’
After a while, acknowledgements began to trickle back from the Claw leaders. They knew better than to attempt to upset the situation – one wrong move could see the remnants of the warband tear itself apart even as it attempted to disengage. Vorfex expected at least two of them – probably Artar and Fexrath – to mount challenges as soon as they returned to the Last Breath. He welco
med them. Try all they might, the warband was his now.
The last of First Kill were fighting to the death in the Centrum Dominus. While they inadvertently covered the retreat, Vorfex and Shenzar left the cell and headed for the shuttle bays. The harvest was over.
Nuritona ripped his chainsword free, arterial blood gouting from the savage wound and splattering across his greaves. The twitching cultist died beneath the boot of Second Squad’s strike leader, whilst his fellow traitors fell beneath the bolter fire of Nuritona’s remaining Tactical Marines.
They had come from the north tunnel, supporting a wild rush of four Chaos Space Marines pounding out of the darkness. Clearly the Devourers of Eighth Squad and junction 27-0 had fallen. It was only the brave counter-attack of the surviving arbitrators that had checked the heretical forces long enough for Nuritona to switch from the eastern tunnel’s barricade to cover the breach. The last arbitrators were all dead, cut down in the savage melee close to where the prisoners were being held. The traitors, though, had been halted.
‘East barricade, report,’ Nuritona snapped into the vox, already moving back towards his original position. He was afraid that having left the entrance to the eastern loco rail defended by only three void brothers, the Chaos Space Marines would have renewed their attack there. It seemed, though, that for once the shadowy killers weren’t on hand to take advantage of the Carcharodons’ weakness.
‘They’ve withdrawn,’ came the reply over the vox. ‘No sign of movement and the sensors are functioning again.’
Nuritona realised the statement was true – his auto-senses were fully online once more. Whatever had been scrambling them was gone.
Carcharodons: Red Tithe Page 27