They must be unflinching. They must be impervious to fright.
And Gage thought he was. He really thought he was. Fear was a stranger to him.
Sweat begins to bead on his forehead. He struggles to get up, but he can’t. There is a lesson here, he considers, the practical application of a theoretical paradigm. Pride is our weakness. Over-confidence. We are so sure of ourselves and our vaunted fearlessness, of such conviction that the galaxy no longer contains anything that can scare us, we make ourselves vulnerable.
Gage is sure that Guilliman has already thought of this. He is sure that Guilliman has already written the notion down somewhere in his codification notes. The sin of over-confidence. Yes, Guilliman has definitely schooled against this in his writings. He has admonished the XIII not to assume mastery of anything, including fear, because that instantly creates a vulnerability.
Now Gage thinks of it, the primarch certainly has said this several times.
Certainly. Certainly, he has.
He has said it.
He has warned. Warned of it.
In case he hasn’t. In case. In case he hasn’t, in that case, Gage hopes he can get to... He can mention it to Guilliman. Mention it later.
Except. Except there may not be a later.
Guilliman.
On the bridge when... The bridge just...
That thing. That thing.
So much blood. Then open to the void. That thing. There may never be a chance now. Guilliman. Guilliman may be... He was ripped into space when the ports blew.
He may be...
Guilliman may already be dead.
That thing.
That damned thing.
He–
–comes back out of the blackness. Acid bile in his throat. Tears in his eyes. Agony in his back and ribs where that thing bit him.
He blacked out there. Blacked out. Slid away into a red fog of unconsciousness as the toxins momentarily overwhelmed him.
Gage is breathing hard. Every push of his lungs is a neural fire. He looks down the hallway.
There’s smoke in the air. It’s moving like a river along the ceiling, gusted by the steady breeze. The flagship’s air pumps are fighting to restore onboard atmospheric pressure after the bridgespace voided. Hazard lamps flash. He can see an Ultramarine dead about five metres away. The fellow’s head is twisted the wrong way. Beyond him, three bridge officers sit with their backs against the bulkhead wall, resting against each other like comrades back from a drunken night’s shore leave. They are entirely covered in blood, every shred of them apart from the whites of their glazed, staring eyes.
Beyond them, there’s a bloody ribcage with one arm attached to it. Beyond that, a second Ultramarine has been split open like a fibrous seed.
Then he sees the thing.
Gage isn’t sure if the thing on the bridge, the thing that… killed Guilliman… Gage isn’t sure if it was one thing, or many in one amorphous shape. The thing picking its way towards him might be one of the many, or a piece of the whole.
It’s humanoid, roughly, and about twice the size of a legionary. Its proportions are simian, though its true outline is hard to discern. Reality seems to contort around it. The air festers. It moves like a fog of the unreal, like the fluid black flow of the deepest, most subterranean nightmare.
Like a great ape, it shambles on all fours, its massive arms like tree trunks. It is bristled black, like a blowfly, but its flesh between the coarse bristles is iridescent.
It has no eyes. Its skull is all jaw and no cranium. Its face is a shrivelled grey scrap of skin drawn tight over a deformed human skull, the empty eyes like lunar craters. Its mouth is an eruption of curved tusks and huge yellow teeth like chisel blades. Venom, like sticky brown syrup, droops from its lipless gums.
It is making a snuffling sound. It smells of battery acid and spun sugar.
Is it the same thing that bit him? He doesn’t want it to bite him again. He wonders if it can see him.
Of course it can see him. He’s sprawled out in the open, right in its path.
But it hasn’t got any eyes, so–
Gage takes a deep breath. He appreciates that the venom is making his mind swim. He knows it’s making him think stupid, illogical, foolish things. He knows his transhuman metabolism is fighting it, but he’s not sure if it will win the battle.
If it does win, Gage isn’t sure it will win it in time.
The thing is right on him.
He reaches for his boltgun.
The weapon is long gone. He realises that several of the fingers of his gun-hand are missing too.
His power sword is on the deck near his outstretched left leg. He leans and reaches for it. He stretches. He strains. By the old gods of Terra, he has barely the strength to move!
Gage utters an involuntary bark of frustration.
The thing hears him. It turns its tusked maw towards him. It bobs its head slightly, a feline habit, and then pounces.
Gage screams in rage and horror. He lashes out with his right hand to try to catch its throat and keep it at arm’s length before it lands its full weight on him. If that happens, he’s done.
His hand misses the throat. He manages to ram it up to the forearm in the thing’s mouth.
The thing bites.
There is a crack of armour shattering, a crunch of forearm bones shearing. It bites his hand off beyond the wrist. There is a generous spill of blood. Pain cores up his arm like a hot wire. Gage howls. His heart rates spike.
The savage pain jacks up his metabolic reaction so hard it clears the fog of the toxin from his befuddled mind. He smashes around with his left fist, and cracks the thing in the side of the skull, knocking out two molars in a squirt of pink saliva.
The blow drives the thing back and to the side. Its mouth is still full of his hand. Gage rolls to grab his sword, but the thing is standing on his knee, and he can’t twist far enough.
It opens its mouth impossibly wide and comes in for his face. He can see his severed hand flopping down its gullet.
Blue impact slams it aside. Black ichor is suddenly painted across all the nearby surfaces, including Gage’s face. The thing is down, cut badly. An Ultramarine stands over Gage. He’s a sergeant. His armour is battered. His helmet is painted red, indicating he has been marked for censure. He has an electromagnetic longsword in one hand and a Kehletai friction axe in the other.
‘Go back to hell!’ he tells the thing. It is screaming and caterwauling, its black shape swirling and re-forming, as though reality is trying to heal itself.
The sergeant puts the axe into it. The Kehletai, before they were extinguished during the bitter Kraal Compliance, made paper-thin blades that cut on a molecular level. The nanoedge blade of the axe is huge, bigger than a Fenrisian battle axe. It goes right through the thing, exploding rotten gore in all directions.
For good measure, the sergeant spears it with the longsword. Dead, it is nothing more than a stain.
The sergeant turns.
‘Move up!’ he yells. A fighting party appears, moving urgently down the corridor. There are several Ultramarines in it, but it is also composed of Army troopers and Navy personnel, including at least one abhuman stoker. They are armed with the most mismatched and exotic weapons Gage has ever seen outside Guilliman’s private arsenal of–
They are all from the primarch’s private arsenal.
‘Move up. Secure the section!’ the sergeant yells. ‘Brother Kerso, scope the next corridor. Flamers to the front! Apothecary Jaer, get to the Chapter Master! Right now!’
He bends down beside Gage, setting his weapons on the deck where they will be in easy reach. Close up, Gage can see the scratch marks adorning the sergeant’s armour.