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

down the handrails on my palms to the deck, hitting with a loud clang!

Adelana looked at me with wide, confused eyes, looking like she would ask me something but seemed to think better of it.

"I'll tell you later," I growled and walked past her.

She watched me as I did, looking like she was starting to regret getting involved with us, and I couldn't blame her, in all honesty.

The flier veered steeply to the right, and I joined with Darrance, the Stormtrooper and Verenth, standing at the door. The only four of us the only ones still in any condition to fight, and Darrance was a debatable case at best.

"What's your name?" Verenth asked the Stormtrooper, hauling his inherited Hellgun and adjusting the gun's pack on his back.

"Daylith," answered the Stormtrooper. "Trooper Daylith Vark."

Verenth nodded. "Good to meet you, Vark. I'm Gilret Verenth, good! Can't stand seeing all these guys dying around me who I don't even know their names or even their faces."

Vark nodded back. "I doubt we'll make it any further, those frigging Space Marines. They aren't human."

I couldn't help but smile; now that was the understatement of the millennia.

+Alright!+ came Karmen's voice. +There were eight of the bastards, but I had killed four with the lascannon. It's run out of energy, though. The rest of them have fallen back, their backs to the shield! You're going to have to hold them off until everyone else is off the flier, somehow.+

"Karmen!" I sighed. "Really? Four of them? You're frigging insane; you know that, right?"

"She is a psyker," said Darrance, sounding insufferably calm and cheery about it all. "They usually are."

+I...I know I'm asking much of you...+

"Hell, yes, you are!" interrupted Verenth.

+Just hold them off!+ she snapped. +And this isn't what I ask of you; this is what the circumstance asks of you. Succeed in this, and we live and if you don't...+

She let that hang.

+Once everyone else has disembarked, I'll take care of the rest, okay? Now open the door!+

Vark, his hand visibly shaking even with his thick, armoured gloves on, reached out and, with one swift tug, opened it. We hovered a few metres beside the strange sight of the rubble covered, red-carpeted corridor. A place I'd regularly been in for six months and hated every second of it, now it was destroyed, perhaps I should've been elated, but all I felt was dread.

Vark looked as though he was to jump, but I stopped him with an outreached hand.

"Darrance and I first," I said. "We'll draw their attention, allowing you and Verenth to get on there without being blown into bits, okay?"

The Stormtrooper's expression was hidden, but by how quick his nod was, I could tell he thought it was a damned good idea.

"Everyone!" I yelled over my shoulder and activated my sword in a blaze of blue. "Wish me luck!"

Without waiting for an answer, Darrance and I leapt.

 

Chapter 31

 A microsecond after my feet hit the debris, I was running diagonally across the width of the corridor. My eyes fixed on the Space Marines as their bolters opened up in a deafening crescendo and strafed my wake.

It was only four metres between them and me, but it may as well have been miles. As it was earlier, time seemed too slow. I could see and feel it all innately when they were pulling the triggers and where exactly they were aiming a microsecond before it happened.

I weaved, ducked and darted countless bolter rounds. I'd lost sight of Darrance in the utter chaos of light and sound, being too involved in me living from one split second to the next.

My progress slowed to a snail's pace; I'd barely been at it for a second or two, only made it half a metre before feeling fatigue ebb at my limbs.

Hellgun lasers started to stream overhead and sliced into one of the Space Marine's torsos. The bastard barely flinched and just fired at the shot's source.

I cursed, smashing away a bolt round flying for my head. I needed to get into close combat to stop them from firing at the others, but I couldn't. I knew I couldn't. Even if I did, even with my enhanced abilities, there was no way I could take on four of the Emperor's finest for very long.

"Faleaseen!" I screamed through clenched teeth. "I could really use your help right now!"

There was no answer, nothing, as a bolt round managed to skim my shoulder but luckily didn't detonate, making me reel back. Utter agony and blood abruptly ran down the length of my arm.

I cried out but managed to keep my focus.

"Frig it!" I roared, giving up on trying to advance and purely devoted myself to deflecting the bolt rounds, sending countless of them hurtling away to detonate on the walls or floor.

Another shot skimmed me, glancing off my ribs, throwing me off my feet and to the floor.

Winded, gasping in agony, I kicked out my feet and was up again, darting and winding through the fuselage to draw their fire. I wanted dearly to look back to how my comrades were faring, but frigging didn't dare.

For a split second, the Space Marines seemed surprised at this, then concentrated their fire even more on me.

"You aren't going to kill any more of my friends!" I snarled. "You ugly, misshapen bastards!"

+Attelus!+ Karmen cried. +Everyone is off the flier now! Get back and down, now!+

"Why?" I snapped. "What the hell do you plan on doing?"

+Just do it!+

I threw myself to the floor, screaming at the pain it caused, just a nanosecond before the flier smashed suddenly through the left side wall and into the Space Marines. The impact rocked the whole tower to its very foundation. The integrity of the entire corridor had already weakened, cracked by the Lascannon fire, or else this would've been impossible. The flier's momentum caused it to slide and screech briefly across the floor, then crash out the opposite side of the corridor. It transformed into a hurtling fireball that plunged through the sky like a meteor, and I could see the now laughably small figures of the Marines falling along with it.

It all happened so quickly that it seemed they were there, then they just weren't.

Then the void shield flickered and disappeared.

+Move! Move!+ urged Karmen. +More of them will be here soon!+

Slowly, I picked myself up, still awed by it all as the others hurried past me. I saw much to my surprise that both Verenth and the Stormtrooper (Who I was ashamed to admit, I'd already forgotten the name of) had made it. Verenth was helping the medicae assistant, while the Stormtrooper did the same for Helma.

Arlathan was now up, helping the somehow still alive and breathing Jelket. Darrance walked by too, looking unharmed beside his broken arm and was supporting Hayden, who seemed pale and pained. How the hell the sniper was still conscious after suffering his injury was beyond me.

Next was Adelana, she wheeled Karmen's bed, and I tried to meet her gaze, but her attention stayed firmly forward. Her mask of fearlessness was gone, and she looked terrified, completely, utterly terrified. I had a horrible feeling she was scared of me.

Lastly, it was Vex, and the old woman, both of them had Torris' arms laid across their shoulders. Her attention was to the floor, but Vex was looking at me.

"Remind me to never to punch you again," he said, raising his black bruised knuckles to me. "Still hurts like a trigger, and after seeing you do that..."

I nodded nervously after seeing what I'd just done. Dodging and deflecting all that, they must've thought I was some freak, that I was as unnatural as one of those Space Marines, and I was, to an extent.

With a sigh, I deactivated my sword's power field and sheathed it, slipped my hands into the pockets of my pants and followed them.

I entered through the crimson curtains when I heard the elevator open and turned to see another two Space Marines emerge.

One was wearing very modified power armour and carried a bolter, a large crane jutted from the top of his back, and I could see he had the cog on his left shoulder plate, announcing his allegiance to the Tech-Priests of Mars.

He must've been the one who had hacked the security of Taryst's elevator; that was how they'd been here before we'd arrived.

The other was in very ornate armour; his left hand was a power claw, sheathed in dancing light. His right held a plasma pistol.

I smiled at them, and as they raised their weapons and opened fire, I'd already stepped through the curtains, and the void shield activated.

+Yes, Attelus,+ said Karmen. +Taunt the Space Marines, such a good idea.+

I took out a lho stick, placed it in my mouth with my index finger and thumb then lit it.

"Come on, Karmen," I breathed, even though the very act of speaking hurt. "Allow me some fun in life, please."

Her reply was an exasperated sigh.

 

 

In silence, we rode the elevator down to Taryst's quarters. I sat alone in one of the corners, trying to cope with the constant agony.

All of us were exhausted or injured in one way or another. I was both. There was a massive tear right through the skin and tissue, down to the bone in my left arm. But already, the blood had clotted despite the hideousness of the wound, frig it was agony. It seemed my bone had deflected the bolt before it could detonate, or else I would've ended up just like poor Jelket.

Disarmed, literally, and I couldn't help but smile at the terrible joke.

The bolt round that had hit my side had torn a huge gash in my bodyglove; there, a horrific blue-black bruise was in plain sight. Again my wraithbone bone structure had deflected the shot before it blew a hole in my torso and before the kinetic force could pulp my internal organs into mush.

Adelana was kneeling next to the old woman who was curled up in pain against the opposite wall. I don't know what I'd broken when I'd thrown her, but she'd seemed to be able to cope with the pain it caused until now. She was quite a tough old bird; I had to admit. It didn't lessen the guilt I felt over hurting her, though I'd saved her life. I could've been a bit more gentle in the process. Guess I didn't know my own strength.

Adelana suddenly noticed I was looking at them and looked back at me with wide eyes.

I smiled at her, and despite the pain it caused, I gave her a small wave, but much to my hurt, she flinched, and her eyes abruptly fell to the floor.

Arlathan approached, limping the way while clutching at his side, then sat beside me but said nothing.

I sighed. "What, you think I'm some kind of freak as well?"

"No," he said, and my attention snapped to him, seeing it for the lie it was instantly.

Arlathan sighed too and, with a pained grunt, adjusted his seating, "yeah, alright, maybe a bit. We all saw you do all that stuff, dodging all those frigging bullets. I've never seen anyone move nearly as fast as you. Then we saw you get hit not once but twice, but still, get up