Blood Gorgons - By Henry Zou Page 0,119
vox‐link as his armour’s spirit responded to the oncoming threat. Scrolling overlays of system reports, core temperature and power output streamed across his visor. The power armour wasn’t calmed until Barsabbas loaded his bolter with a salvaged clip and clicked the magazine into position. Only then did the machine spirit settle, minimising its report tabs and replacing the data streams with a single targeting reticule that bounced from periphery to periphery.
The entire wall on Barsabbas’s left was pushed in. All of it. A thirty‐tonne section of plasteel bulkhead peeled inwards. Metal groaned in discordant protest as it was sheared from its structure. Warping and twisting, it finally folded diagonally, crushing the ancient cogitator banks beneath it.
Through the shorn wall came Muhr and the Nurgle Overlord, Opsarus.
For a brief moment, Barsabbas froze. He was occupied by the most curious feeling.
Almost foreboding, dashed with a fleeting pall of hopelessness. Was this fear? Barsabbas could not be sure. Was this what it felt like, to be a pure human, at all times?
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Opsarus crunched through the debris on legs like basalt columns. A behemoth, wading through the wreckage, deliberate and unsinkable. Behind him he dragged a wrecking ball of spherical metal, its solid weight keeping the chain taut.
He seemed to ignore Barsabbas entirely, not even dignifying the battle‐brother’s presence with a glance. Instead, he crashed towards where Gammadin squared up to meet him. Only then did Barsabbas realise that perhaps he did not feel fear of the enemy, merely fear that he would not be able to do his enemy enough harm.
Gammadin, the Arch‐Champion of the Blood Gorgons, was physically smaller. Opsarus stood over him, his Tactical Dreadnought Armour almost eclipsing Gammadin from view.
Even his cherubic deathmask, set in the centre of his hunchbacked chest, stood at a higher eye level than Gammadin’s defiantly raised head.
Muhr glided to circle Gammadin’s left. The witch was stalking him and cutting off his angles of manoeuvre. By his movements, Barsabbas could see that they were preparing to execute Gammadin at close quarters. There was no other way. Mere small‐arms would be insufficient against constructs of warfare such as these. Such gods of war could not be felled by the cowardly shot of pistol or rifle.
Almost fifty metres away from Barsabbas, Gammadin adopted a low grappler’s crouch, his monstrous pincer raised high like the striking tail of a scorpion. Opsarus circled steadily closer, dragging a wrecking ball on a high‐tensile chain with one hand.
Barsabbas knew he could not face Muhr or Opsarus in open combat. His bolter would not fell such flesh of the ancients. But if Barsabbas could not overcome them, he could prevent at least one of them from engaging Gammadin.
Firming his resolve, Barsabbas raised his bolter, took aim and waited.
Ever the aggressor, Lord Gammadin launched himself to meet the Nurgle warlord.
There was a brief, glancing impact as Opsarus pivoted, their shoulders colliding. It sounded like a light tank had just collided with a super‐heavy on full acceleration. The command bridge reverberated with the transfer of their kinetic force.
Muhr stood aside, his eyes rolling as he began to enter a sorcerous trance. Barsabbas had seen the coven work often enough to know their weakness. The brief seconds before a sorcerer could channel the warp were his most vulnerable. If Barsabbas still had a role to play, his time would be now.
Barsabbas banged off three shots at Muhr. They were straight and true, a tight cluster all connected with the target’s centre of mass. Yet, as Barsabbas had dreaded, a shield of force solidified before the bolt slugs made impact. The sorcerer turned, snarling.
His visage almost startled Barsabbas. He could barely recognise the witch‐surgeon.
Muhr’s skin, once white and taut, had become black and sallow. His rubbery face was framed by a matted shock of white hair. The eyes that transfixed him were yellow, lacking any iris or pupil.
Barsabbas withdrew, hoping to lure the witch into pursuit. He sprinted to a side exit, barging through the carved wood with his shoulder. Shrieking, the witch pursued.
Barsabbas dared to turn at the tunnel entrance. Anko Muhr’s dead face filled his vision with a maw of long teeth and white hair. Barsabbas fired twice, turned, and without looking back, sprinted off with Muhr on his heels.
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GAMMADIN CHANNELLED HIS vengeance. There was a stranger standing in his home, taking his birthright. When he unleashed his psionic fury, it coalesced into a rolling sphere that rippled the air like an expanding ball of water.
The sound could be heard throughout the ship. The psychic