If he could have laughed, he would have.
The gun chattered again, as impotent as drizzle against a steel sheet. He raised his talons and flexed them slowly, one by one, letting the velvet remark of each metal-on-metal hiss echo softly around the room. The enemy was a white heat ghost in his eyes.
He rushed forwards in a storm of clattering footsteps and snick-snacking knives, reaching out in a lover’s embrace to welcome the petulant little creature to its end. Moments before the mantis claws closed on their prey, the figure bounded up the curling ramp to the next mezzanine level, sidestepping clumsily. The Blade-master’s talons lacerated the steel guide rail in a flurry of tube sections and hot-edged piping, leaving him roaring silently inside his mechanical tomb.
The Skaarflax was rotated elegantly towards the ramp, stepping forwards and upwards in a succession of deck-gouging clawsteps. Tikoloshe was in no mood to play cat and mouse.
He spoke to himself as he chased, words silent within his mind. “I will catch you and dejoint you, little thing,” he promised. “I’ll make boneless flesh sacks of your torso and cut out each eye, each ear, each fluid and gristle lump of offal in your guts — before I let you die.”
The figure scrabbled away from its hulking pursuer, rolling a grenade down the ramp. The Blademaster stamped on the bauble nonchalantly and barely even wobbled when it detonated beneath his ablative feet. He stalked onwards, implacable.
Like waves of goosebumps rising in shivery anticipation, the tiny blades covering every centimetre of the dreadnought’s chassis stood upright hungrily. In his mind, Tikoloshe saw giblet filth covering every planet, checkerboard slices on every skin surface. He’d eviscerate the world, dismember the galaxy, slice the universe! He reached the top of the ramp and swivelled again, following his prey.
The figure was hurt, he saw, limping badly on a wounded leg that left a spatter trail of white heat on his vision. It paused against a rail, slumping breathlessly, chest gulping for air. The Blademaster upped the sensitivity of Skaarflax’s audio sensors, perversely keen to hear the figure’s burning lungs pumping and heaving.
It was a dry rattle. A wondrous melody. Music to murder by.
He spread his upper limbs to their full span, mantis claws extended like flesh cleaving wings. And he charged.
It was the simplest thing in the world.
Breathe deep. Groan.
Kais put his weight on his good leg, exaggerating the feeble uselessness of the wounded one.
He craned his neck and gasped for air he didn’t need.
You’re exhausted, he told himself. You’re in pain. You’re ready to give up and you’re shaking. Yes, that’s it. You’re shaking in fear and madness.
And the monster charged.
Like a rampaging grazebeast. It pawed at the ground, articulated at its hips, displayed its glittering galaxy of knifeclaws and hurtled towards him. Every footstep shook the world.
He didn’t know what it was. Didn’t care. It was an obscenity: a hulking corruption of the Machine his father spoke of.
Its claws scissored against each other icily, grinding and hissing.
Not yet.
Highlights shimmered across it in waves, oscillating emergency lights distorted and shattered by each and every cutting edge.
Not yet—
Its spine-encrusted shoulders, vast chassis collar rolling and pistoning furiously, gouted a thick miasma of smoke and spent fuel.
Not yet!
Snick-snack-snick!
He dived aside and rolled and rolled and rolled.
Something slashed at his back distantly, slicing across his pack and flipping him over. It was a knife-tip cut, just beyond the metal monster’s reach, spilling ration packs and ammunition clips across the deck. The beast was moving too fast. It swivelled to follow his sideways movement, motors growling in protest, but it was too late. Its legs kicked effortlessly through the mezzanine-railing and for a second, for a perfect moment of stillness, it hung in the air over the drop to the deck below.
Then it was gone.
When it landed it cracked open like an egg, and when Kais examined the withered thing inside he thought of aborted reptiles and blind, nourishment-starved clonebeasts. It hissed a final protracted breath and was dead.
Was this Mont’au too? A facade of brutality, a sham-devil with razor flesh and bloody claws, concealing within itself a shrivelled thing no more deadly than a corpse. There were too many thoughts in his head, con-flirting and battering one another. A Brownian motion of consequence and consideration, fighting for dominance.
Weary with confusion, exhaustion hanging from every muscle and bone, Kais slumped into the one remaining drop pod and stabbed at the launch trigger.
He slept the whole way down.
VI
16.12 HRS (SYS. LOCAL — DOLUMAR IV, Ultima Seg. #4356/E)
The man in the dark place faced his captives and wet his lips. One of them moaned quietly, chains clinking in the gloom. The man took a deep breath, allowing a predatory smile to spread across his face, and began.
“Now be quiet and pay attention, please. I won’t repeat myself and, let’s be clear about this, one way or another you will listen to me. We can do this the easy way or... the other way. The choice is yours, gentlemen.
“Admiral? Do stop struggling. You’ll miss the good parts.
“Now Where to begin? This is a story, I suppose, so one rather feels the need for a ‘Grand Opening’...”
The man stroked at his immaculately sculpted beard thoughtfully. “People,” he said, with something akin to disgust in his voice, “have skewed views on what makes a story. They forget that everything we do, every day, every second of our small little lives, is part of a story’s middle; its guts, if you like. You’re born, you do things, you die. Where’s the beginning? Or the end? It’s never as simple as it seems.
“Oh, for warp’s sake — Aun! If you don’t stop fiddling with those chains I’ll have your hands removed. You’re putting me off.”
He shook his head, exasperated, and began again.
There was a beginning two days ago, when I captured a high-ranking tau ethereal on behalf of the Imperium. There was a beginning when I contacted Fleet Admiral Constantine to request a squad of specialist troops for that very job. There was a beginning, oh yes, twenty-three years ago when I arrived on Dolumar IV. It hasn’t changed much, this world. Did you know that? Oh, we built the odd factory, the occasional town, that sort of thing. But it’s what’s... underneath that counts.
There was a beginning twenty-one years ago, when Magos-explorator Carneg visited me after a routine survey of the eastern mountains. But that’s a boring beginning and besides... the tedious little man is, I’m sorry to say, no longer with us. So, we can go further back than that.
“There was a beginning, of sorts, in the thirty-first millennium when the Imperium rolled on its belly and realised it had been rotting from inside for years. The Horus Heresy blossomed and caught everyone off guard. Poor little creatures...” He grinned, envisioning the horror and shock that had spread across the galaxy like wildfire.
“Of course your species, Aun, back then, was lurking in a puddle of primordial ooze. Perhaps... Perhaps things would have gone better for you if you’d stayed there.
“But, listen. There’s another beginning. Just over three thousand years ago. The tyranids have not yet reached the galaxy, the orks are busy infesting the Straits of Halk and the tau... well. Maybe — just maybe — they’d mastered the art of simple tools by then. In any case, the eastern fringes were ripe for the taking.