As Duvall continued to read the journal in his hands, an impossibly shrill scream erupted beside him.
It was the little girl.
She had curled up on the floor, both hands clamped over her head, her whole body shaking violently.
Just as Duvall was about to ask what was wrong, his heart clenched. At almost the same instant, the scarlet haze in his vision flared into blinding brilliance, and countless red points welled up at the far edge of the darkness like a surging tide of blood.
An ancient roar burst forth, raising gooseflesh across Duvall’s skin. He knew that sound.
A chainsaw engine revving to life.
"Enemy attack!" Duvall roared.
Before the words had left his mouth, the howl of a heavy stubber devoured them.
Muzzle flashes exploded in the darkness. Thumb-thick rounds scythed through the chamber on crimson trails.
Duvall felt an immense force slam into his side, hurling him violently towards one of the grain depot’s support pillars. He rolled across the ground, his back striking the pillar hard enough to drive every breath from his lungs.
When he coughed and raised his head towards the place where he had just stood, the soldier who had shoved him aside at the final instant was already gone from the waist up, consumed by a fog of blood. His lower body remained standing for a moment, swayed in place, and then collapsed.
Duvall roared, his eyes crimson with fury.
"Get to cover!" He dragged himself upright, his lasrifle already in his hands.
But it was too late.
The heavy stubber’s killing web had fully opened. Bullets poured down like a storm, striking the support pillars in showers of brilliant sparks and shrieking impacts. Splinters and fragments flew everywhere, stinging against exposed faces.
Duvall ducked behind a pillar as the numbers in the upper-right corner of his vision began to plummet.
[Remaining Personnel: 37... 32... 28... 25... 22]
Fifteen soldiers were gone in mere seconds.
His throat was dry. His fingers clenched tightly around the weapon’s frame. The heavy stubber’s suppression did not slacken for a heartbeat; no one could expose himself long enough to return fire. Rounds continued to hammer the pillars around them, making the whole subterranean complex tremble.
Then he heard heavy, impossibly swift running—and gunfire distinct from the heavy stubber’s. Bolter fire. Each report marked another life extinguished.
The rising casualty count, the sound of it all—everything within Duvall told him the same truth.
A Chaos Space Marine.
The instant that conclusion formed, his breathing stopped. Despair washed over his chest like an icy tide. He forced himself to remain calm and swept his gaze rapidly across his vision.
Evan and his sister were still alive. Several soldiers had, in their final moments, pulled them behind another support pillar.
Anderson had taken the surviving men into the grain storage area on the left. Using the storage tanks and pillars, they had formed a makeshift defensive line—but the heavy stubber was already swinging its fire towards them.
Stroud...
Duvall’s heart sank. Stroud’s green name was nowhere in sight, yet the soul-link between them remained upon the Legion Blade System. Stroud was not dead.
There was little time. [The God-Emperor’s Gaze] had only three minutes left.
Worse still, the slow, ponderous footsteps, accompanied by the roar of a chainblade engine, were drawing closer. The Chaos Space Marine was accelerating.
The slaughter was about to begin.
Then, at the edge of Duvall’s vision, a flash of green passed by.
He looked up sharply.
On top of a metal storage tank nearly ten metres above the ground, atop the grain depot on the far side, a green name appeared.
[Stroud Hammer]
He had climbed onto the roof. In the darkness and confusion, no one had noticed him.
Before Duvall could issue an order, a blinding las-beam ripped through the dark.
It struck the heavy stubber emplacement with perfect accuracy. A metallic shriek came from the shadows, followed by a muffled explosion and the screams of cultists. The heavy stubber’s roar ceased at once.
Stroud’s elated shout crackled through the vox. "Chief, I fucking did it!"
Just as a sliver of hope rose within Duvall’s heart, a bolter barked.
An explosion erupted atop the grain depot. Stroud’s name instantly turned into the red marker for grievous injury, and his body plummeted from ten metres high, striking the concrete floor with a heavy, sickening impact.
"Fuck these Chaos dogs!" Duvall burst from cover. "Return fire!"
The remaining soldiers opened fire together. Las-beams and solid rounds tore into the darkness, suppressing the cultists’ remaining firepower. But Duvall’s gaze was fixed upon the front.
The Chaos Space Marine had emerged from the shadows.
A World Eater.
Blasphemous runes covered his deep crimson power armour. Skulls and spikes adorned his pauldrons and power pack. In his right hand, the engine of his chainaxe screamed at full power, its teeth spinning in a frenzied blur.
Duvall raised his lasrifle and fired. The beams were aimed precisely at the lenses and joints, but the World Eater twisted aside with impossible speed. Even with Duvall’s accuracy, every shot missed.
"Damn it all!" Duvall knew that an Astartes’ neural reactions far surpassed those of a mortal, but seeing it with his own eyes still defied belief.
The enemy charged at him like a heavy locomotive with its engines driven to their limit.
Twenty metres.
Fifteen.
Ten...
Then a deafening roar erupted from behind the support pillar to his left.
The heavy logging gun.
Anderson Walker strode from cover like a great bear, gripping the massive weapon in both hands—a weapon that should have required a vehicle mount. He did not seek a brace or stand. He simply planted his feet and pulled the trigger.
Half a metre of flame burst from the muzzle. Solid rounds poured forth at hundreds per minute, while spent casings rained onto the ground.
The World Eater stopped sharply and darted behind the support pillar directly before Duvall. Bullets hammered against the column in a rattling barrage, blasting out countless craters and showers of sparks.
Even Ceramite power armour could be threatened by the heavy logging gun’s firepower. Joints, the neck, the eye-lenses—if those relatively weakly protected points were hit, they could still be penetrated and grievously damaged.
Anderson did not stop. Roaring with rage, he advanced with the screaming heavy logging gun in his hands. The storm of metal kept the World Eater pinned behind the pillar, while the ammunition belt visibly shortened before his eyes.
Concealed behind cover, the World Eater fired bolter rounds towards Duvall to keep him suppressed. He did not expose himself carelessly.
He was waiting.
Waiting for the ammunition to run dry.
The heavy logging gun roared for a full ten seconds.
Then, with a crisp click, the gunfire stopped.
The ammunition belt was empty.
At almost the same instant, the World Eater leaned out from cover. Bolter raised, aimed, fired—the entire motion took less than half a second.
The bolt round, trailing crimson, struck Anderson in the chest.
The flash of detonation swallowed his figure. Fragments of armour plate and flesh scattered in every direction. The huge man pitched backward, crashed heavily onto the ground, and did not move.
The World Eater cast aside his empty bolter, turned once more towards Duvall, and his chainaxe began to roar again.
He knew who the leader was.
Duvall revved the engine of his own chainsword. Its teeth began to spin with a shrill scream. He drew a deep breath, both hands trembling uncontrollably. He did not know whether it was fear or adrenaline flooding his veins, but he prepared to make his final stand, even knowing it was futile.
The World Eater charged.
Five metres.
Three.
Just as the chainaxe was about to fall, the "corpse" on the ground nearby moved.
Anderson Walker sat up.
Several severely deformed armour plates clanged down from his chest. He had tied the other soldiers’ Ceramite armour plates across his torso with rope, fashioning a crude breastplate. The bolt round had penetrated the outer layer, but the force of the blast had been dispersed by the layers beneath.
He was not dead.
Anderson swayed to his feet. Blood had soaked the front of his uniform, and his massive wounds alone proved that he had suffered injuries severe enough to kill any man. Yet perhaps it was the crude alterations once made to his body—or perhaps simply the strength of his will.
Anderson roared again, like a wounded beast, and charged the World Eater at full speed.
The World Eater had plainly not expected this. He froze for an instant, only managing to turn and swing his chainaxe towards Anderson.
Duvall did not see exactly what happened. He only saw both figures fall at once.
Anderson was hurled backward, crashing to the ground five metres away. The status bar above his head showed the grievous injury marker.
But the World Eater—the warrior of Khorne—staggered and lost his balance. He fell to one knee, one hand braced against the ground to keep himself from collapsing completely.
A demigod in power armour had been knocked down by a mortal.
Duvall did not waste the opportunity. He set his lasrifle to maximum power, raised it, aimed, and pulled the trigger.
The overcharged las-beams struck at the World Eater’s joints, one of the weak points in his power armour.
The first shot was deflected by the armour.
The second grazed past.
The third struck the gap in the joint.
The World Eater let out a furious howl and fell again. He tried to force himself upright, but the damaged joint gave off a shrill grinding sound.
The other soldiers were still exchanging fire with the remaining cultists, las-beams crossing through the dark. Yet every gaze was fixed on the fallen Astartes.
Duvall gripped his chainsword and prepared to advance. He knew this was their only chance.
Then a boy’s shout came from behind him.
"Sir, get down!"
Duvall turned instinctively.
Evan leaned half his body out from behind a support pillar and hurled a metal object with all his strength. It arced through the air, landing near the World Eater.
A melta grenade.
The last one in the squad.
Duvall’s first instinct was to run. Then he changed direction at once and sprinted towards the grievously wounded Anderson.
He threw himself beside Anderson, seized the man’s arms in both hands, and dragged with all his strength away from the grenade. Anderson’s immense weight nearly exhausted him, but Duvall did not stop.
The melta grenade’s fuse gave a faint, ticking sound.
The final second.
Duvall clutched Anderson’s collar and barely hauled him into the dead angle behind cover.
A white radiance hot enough to melt through a heavy tank instantly swallowed everything around them. Heat expanded outward like a solid wall, and the grain storage tanks collapsed with a piercing, tortured scream.
Burning agony ripped across Duvall’s back. His head struck the concrete, and his vision blurred into nothing.
The ringing in his ears lasted for several seconds.
As his hearing gradually returned, the first thing he heard was his own ragged breathing, followed by scattered gunfire in the distance...
He coughed out dust streaked with blood and looked back. Then a hoarse laugh, mingled with pain and wild, absolute exhilaration, rose from the depths of his throat and echoed through the blood-soaked ruins of the grain depot.
That monstrously arrogant creature was dead.
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