Secret War: Warhammer 40,000, Ben Agar [list of ebook readers .txt] 📗

did this to me, too, Darrance. My most loyal servant..."

"Shut it!" he snarled. "No one did anything to you! This is your fault! I think this isn't you being driven insane I bet this is you! The real you! I bet you lost your sanity a long time ago and have been putting up a mask ever since!"

Much to my shock, I saw Darrance had tears in his eyes.

"I looked up to you! Hell! I even think I loved you! But now I realise just how stupid I was; I put you on a pedestal. I lied to myself for so long about who and what you truly were! But I see the truth now! I see you're nothing but a pathetic old woman who is so overtaken by hate and the lust for revenge there's nothing else left! I...I"

Darrance clenched his free hand into a fist as tears flowed freely down his face.

Glaitis raised an eyebrow. "So? Are you done now?"

Darrance grinned through the tears. "Yes, and I'd like to thank you, thank you for being stupid enough to listen to my rant rather than just killing us."

Glaitis' eyes widened, and she turned just in time to dash out the path of the Las fire erupting from the left side corridor.

The fire strafed after her, and she slid to a stop, her power sword a blur of motion as it smashed aside the shots raining her way.

Then I heard the familiar sound of a shotgun firing and watched as she sidestepped through the shot gunshots, all the while still deflecting the laser fire.

Cursing and snarling, she darted back, trying to get some range from the shotgun, then the attackers emerged into view.

It was Garrakson, Torris and Arlathan. Both Garrakson and Arlathan laid down the constant barrage with their lasguns, Torris, with his shotgun.

"H-how!" I said.

Darrance grinned. "As you just sat there watching and looking like an idiot, I raised those guys over the vox, told them what was going on. You know, like a smart person would."

I frowned. "I hope you're aware I can't move, not even slightly, right?"

Darrance shrugged. "You still didn't think of it, did you?"

I just clenched my jaw and said nothing.

Verenth and the other Hammer got to their feet, grasping their useless, bloody arms and watched with expressions of awe.

"Is she...is she even human?" asked the Hammer.

"Yes," I said without hesitation. "As much as she wishes she wasn't."

Both Verenth and the Hammer furrowed their brows and exchanged bemused looks.

Glaitis snarled; I could she was gasping for breath and slowing down now. Not even she could keep this up for much longer.

I grinned to myself. If she hadn't stupidly killed the Mimic, she wouldn't be in this predicament.

But soon, Garrakson and Arlathan would run out of ammo, and I had a bad feeling that'd come first.

As if on cue, almost simultaneously, their guns clicked dry, then Glaitis was on them.

Her front kick knocked Torris' shotgun from his grasp, and he barely managed to back-peddle her throat punch. Arlathan, reacting with impressive speed, swung the butt of his lasgun at her skull, but lightning-fast, she darted back, then in again and cut his rifle in half. Arlathan countered with a hook punch she barely weaved under, then she threw a roundhouse kick he just managed to block with a forearm, but I heard a crack, and he cried out in pain, grasping at his limp limb and stumbled away. This left him open for the killing thrust.

Before she could, Torris was on her flank and throwing a powerful front thrust kick, a disparagingly reckless attack that made me involuntarily hiss through clenched teeth.

Glaitis leaned out the way and slashed horizontally at his stomach, forcing Torris to throw himself clumsily backwards to keep from being disembowelled.

All of this time, Garrakson reloaded and moved away a few metres. His blurt of las was what kept Glaitis from decapitating Torris with her next attack.

"So finally, I get to meet the infamous bitch in person!" he roared.

Glaitis didn't deign to reply; she only got to full height and eyed him contemptuously.

"You're the one responsible for the death of Taryst!" he snarled.

Glaitis still didn't say anything; she just glanced sidelong at the Mimic's corpse pointedly.

Trying to use Glaitis' distraction Torris lunged at her, throwing a punch straight at her head, but in the blink of an eye, she drew a knife and stabbed him in the arm before sidestepping and smashing a front kick into his side. The sickening crack of his breaking ribs made me wince in sympathy, and he slid on the floor before stopping, curling up and crying out in pain.

"Bitch!" he snarled and fired another flurry, which she simply smashed aside with her powerblade.

"Could you please say something original? Please?" she sighed breathlessly.

"Shut! Up!"

"Or what?" she snarled. "You'll kill me?"

Glaitis threw back her head and burst out in laughter. "Do you really think you're capable of it? I am Glaitis! A master assassin with decades of experience in bloodletting! I have trained my body and mind beyond the capability of normal humanity! You! You are just some pathetic ex-guardsman; nobody like the dozens, no! Hundreds of others that I have slaughtered over the years!"

Garrakson clenched his teeth and fired again, forcing Glaitis to sprint sidelong his fire, strafing her wake.

"How does it feel, Jeurat Garrakson?" she yelled. "How does it feel to know you're incapable of killing the one who is responsible for the death of the one you loved? How does it feel to be incapable of killing the one responsible for the death of your last remaining war buddy? The man who was the only other survivor of your regiment? The comrade, who was your commander?"

Garrakson's reply was only an enraged roar and more las rounds.

"That's right!" she laughed. "Major Olinthre once of the 801st Cadian regiment! It was my loyal servant who strangled the life from him, just like he did to Taryst! The man you loved! The man who saved you and him from the Nightlord ambush that slaughtered the rest of your regiment!"

"Shut up!" he roared.

"On second thought, I won't kill you, Jeurat!" she laughed as she darted and flipped through his withering bursts. "Not yet! Along with the pathetic Inquisitor, I'll make you watch as I kill your comrades, your friends! Marcel Torris! And the apprentice! I'll make them suffer slowly and die in front of you to make up for you being unable to watch the deaths of Taryst and Olinthre! Once you're broken, only then will I kill you! It'll be beautiful! Amazing! Oh, I can't wait!"

Abruptly Garrakson stopped shooting, ejected the lasgun's clip and slammed another home despite not being out of ammo. The look of anger and determination on his scarred face was terrifying.

Glaitis tilted her head and smiled. "Oh, what's this now?"

Garrakson clenched his teeth, and tears rolled abruptly down his face. "This is for you, Taryst and you too, Olinthre."

Then he flicked his lasgun onto 'full auto' and, with a roar, charged, firing a constant stream from the hip.

Glaitis laughed, dodging and parrying the shots. "What do you want to die now?"

Garrakson just roared and continued forward, firing and firing.

"Jeurat! No!" I heard Torris yell.

As he closed in, Garrakson suddenly dropped his rifle and drew his knife; then, with one swift stroke, Glaitis decapitated him.

In shocked silence, I watched, and it took me a good few seconds to realise I was crying. He was my friend, a good friend who I'd fought alongside for months. A friend who'd tried to help me, a true friend.

"Garrakson!" I roared.

Glaitis stood stock still, grinning from ear to ear, then suddenly she screamed a shrill scream of utter agony and abruptly she fell to the floor. Writhing, trying to reach behind her back.

My shock was replaced by confusion, then I saw it, the bloody hilt of Garrakson's knife jutting from the base of her back.

For a good ten minutes, Glaitis lay screaming and writhing as she slowly, painfully died. No one moved to put her out of her misery. It was the very least she deserved.

"So passes master Seylit Glaitis of the cult of the Blades of Vengeance," intoned Darrance. "May we never see her likes in this galaxy ever again."

 

Chapter 26

We waited for more reinforcements to arrive as Verenth, Arlathan and the Hammer pulled out the Glaitis' sword pinning Brutis to the floor. Then began to take off his armour so the medicae could stem the blood flow once they'd arrived; everyone else was too hurt, too exhausted to do anything.

The place stunk of blood, of defecation—the familiar stench of the recently dead.

Darrance and I sat on the stairs watching on. I'd stopped crying but was forced to war with the exhaustion, my eyelids constantly wanted to close, and my head was a whirl with sickening dizziness.

Arlathan, holding Glaitis' still bloody blade, approached us, looking at me intently. "I'm sorry, Attelus," he said with surprising sympathy. "I know he was your friend and..."

"Yeah...Yeah, Jeurat was my friend," I interrupted sadly. "But I'm not the one you should be talking to," I said this while indicating poor Torris with a tilt of the head.

Torris still was curled up in a ball and hadn't made a sound since Garrakson's death.

Arlathan saw this immediately, nodded and turned to descend the stairs but stopped and looked back at me. "He talked fondly of you," said Arlathan. "I could see you were true friends; I've lost more than a few comrades too, you know. Many friends...comrades from the precinct."

I inhaled sharply and looked down, remembering the many Magistratum marshals killed by Etuarq's daemons only a few short hours earlier.

"I'm sorry, Arlathan," I said.

Arlathan shook his head. "There's no need to apologise, kid. If it weren't for you, they would all be dead. I just wish, I just wish I'd have done more, y'know? Instead, like a weakling, I'd fainted and stayed that way through the entire conflict. I wish I had the guts you've got; if I did, maybe I could've saved a few, maybe. Like you saved all of us."

I was shocked into silence, only able to gape idiotically as Arlathan started down the stairs again. Then someone began to laugh, a throaty, gasping, deep sound, and it took me a second or two to realise it was Torris.

"So! So he's got you fooled too!" Torris gasped as he slowly, laboriously climbed to his feet.

"What?" said Arlathan, and everyone else looked on in silence.

"I saw what you were doing!" yelled Torris with watery eyes. "I saw you were manipulating him! I saw it! Back in Vex's office, you said to him, 'you'll get your revenge' or something like that, and you smiled! Smiled as you frigging said it! I knew! I should've stopped you! I should've stopped him! But why? I don't understand. Why did you manipulate him? I don't understand why?"

I swallowed, and my eyes widened as I remembered what the Mimic had told me in Taryst's bunker, that an apprentice in her organisation was never allowed to kill their master or invite their ire, or some eerie, scary shit like that. Did I sub-consciously manipulate Garrakson to kill her in my place? Did I?

Torris smiled, but it held no warmth; it was the smile of someone