Tyris slotted a rare-pattern tranquilliser round into his bolter, muffling the click of acceptance in his hand.
‘Stalker, positions?’
The vox whispered back.
‘Vega, to your right.’
‘Iaros, second tier.’
‘Nubis and Antares,’ came the voice of the Fist Exemplar, ‘on secondary target.’
Tyris took aim down his weapon scope, the back of the ork psyker’s ugly head blowing up to fill his crosshairs. His finger rested on the trigger. He emptied his lungs. ‘Quick and quiet. On my mark.’
He fired.
Plaeos — Hive Mundus
Check 2, 00:59:13
Seawater geysered from the breach in the flooring. The abhorrent gale that emanated from the maleficar’s throbbing head sprayed it far and wild, but to Kjarvik’s heightened perceptions the individual droplets fell slowly, like snow out of season. The Emperor’s gift to His Wolves was a hunter’s senses. He felt the sting of water on his face. He heard the floodwaters frothing up through the baffles in the floor plates. His boots were already under. He could taste salt in his mouth, on his skin even, the threat heightening his senses to that extraordinary degree. The cracks and flashes of ork weapons lit the rainstorm like subsurface explosions and carved it up with bullet trails.
Baldarich was on the other side of the geyser, black armour drenched. He spread his arms to the enemy fire as though preparing himself for the penitent’s cross. Except that his gauntlets were not empty. One held his greatsword, dropping, the other a bolt pistol, freed from maglock and sweeping up.
Kjarvik was more than human in many ways, and less, arguably, in others, but there were some things that even he could not do.
He could not move faster than a bolt-round.
‘Kneel, witch.’
Time accelerated, and the Black Templar’s pistol kicked out rounds as though it knew it was catching up. The propellant burn was intense, each rapid-fired successor brightening the last. The roar was tremendous.
The ork merely cackled like a drunk entertained by a fool. Its eyes were tranced, black with maleficarum, dark veins sprouting from its head and pulsing. In no world could it have seen what was coming and yet it saw. It saw, and Kjarvik shuddered.
He did not himself see exactly what happened, only that the maleficar appeared to pump its twanging stave once around its head, and the psychic winds were whipped into a shrieking whirlwind. The floodwaters were lifted up from the ground, drawn out of the spray, shaped by the witchstorm into a funnel that enveloped the witch and his monster like a liquid caul. Where bolt-rounds penetrated they were sprayed back, spanking off walls and walker armour and striking orks down with the random hand of a god.
‘Withdraw to my position!’ Kjarvik shouted. A weird alien thought-scream filled the vox. Their harsh insertion into the underhive had spread them too thinly. ‘Draw out the maleficar and capture. The Sisters are one level below with Phareous and Bohr.’
Baldarich paused to reload.
The growing whirlpool shook to the howl of the warp, and broke before a massive fist. It burst through the watery barrier, green, a shade that was darker still seeping between clenched fingers, knuckles dusted with boiled-off salt and trailing greenish ectoplasm and steam. It shot towards the Black Templar.
‘I walk with the spirit of Saint Magneric!’
The ceramite-splitting impact pushed Baldarich through the geyser, diagonally across Kjarvik’s cover with the psychic manifestation crackling against his plastron, and shunted him through the stack of promethium drums that had been built up across the way. The stack came down on top of him, empty drums clangouring out over the walkspace floor.
Kjarvik looked for Zarrael.
The Flesh Tearer pushed into the wind, head down, the scowl on his face rippling in spite of the arm he held protectively out in front. Powered plates rattled and whined. The kill honours affixed to his left pauldron peeled off and tore away. He ground out another step, struggled to raise his eviscerator, dropped to one knee. Waterborne debris roiled outwards from the epicentre and swallowed him. He should have been flung back like scrap metal, and it was testament to the strength of his red fervour that he was not. An ork boss in cumbersome war-plate done out in jagged black and white stripes clumped through, unaffected, leaving the mighty Zarrael kneeling like a frostbitten hopeful before the statue of Russ.
‘To my position.’ Kjarvik dialled up the power of his battleplate vox for an orbital transmission. ‘Aelia,’ he said, addressing the shipmaster of the Dark Angels strike cruiser Herald of Night that was currently in low orbit above Hive Mundus. ‘Send in backup.’ He turned to Zarrael and growled, swinging up his bolt-pistol. ‘Wait for the Sisters.’
He sprayed the witchstorm with fire, ensuring that none struck the weirdboy or his beast. He was unlucky, but he was not careless. Two bolts to the armoured boss’ left shoulder caused enough damage to disable the arm’s crude motors. It did not seem to feel it, and gave a gurgling roar as it formed a fist of its power claw.
‘Waaagh!’
Eidolica — Alcazar Astra
Check 7, 01:02:22
The shot was perfection. A single tranquilliser round to the back of the head, and the ork psyker went down as though its muscles had been turned to jelly. The stalker bolter silenced the report and muffled the flash, and the psyker’s bodyguard were pointing their shotguns at shadows as Tyris ejected the one-shot magazine and slotted in a fresh sickle-mag of more conventional rounds.
Vega and Iaros opened fire from their own positions in hiding. It took Tyris the second or third round to see where they were, hidden behind a ventilation grating and amongst an extractor assembly on the second tier respectively. Tyris had trained them well. They would return to their Chapters better warriors when their work together was done.
By the time Tyris was ready to fire again there were only two orks left, running in opposite directions, which he coolly gunned down with barely a fraction of a second between aim and shot. The Sister beside him signed her approval with a hand gesture, powered her long blade, and rocketed from the gangway on her jump pack. She landed like a cat by the downed psyker, power blade purring as it made bloody mockeries of the gretchin that came running to the psyker’s aid. Two more rocket burns from opposite wings of the hangar, and Vega and Iaros broke cover to launch themselves into the open. The Doom Eagle emptied his bolter’s clip and slammed in another as he flew.
Tyris decided to save the fuel and simply jumped the handrail.
He landed with a mighty clang on the hardened metal deck, his silenced bolter gunning down ork mechanics and their gretchin slaves with calmness and grace. He, Vega and Iaros converged on the Sister at about the same time. They formed a ring and swung their weapons outwards.
‘On three,’ said Tyris.
Orks were charging in, using the aircraft as cover. Ricochets sang from their armour.
‘Two.’
In spite of the tranquilliser round and a dose of soporific that should have placated a bull grox, the psyker was still struggling. It flapped numbly against the Sister as she fixed it to her armour with clips. It must have been four times her weight. Those blows had to hurt, but the woman ignored them. She shot Tyris a look. Ready.