Blood Gorgons - By Henry Zou Page 0,91

Barsabbas raised his head to see Sindul sprint through the door. The dark eldar raider had salvaged a splinter rifle and fired it on automatic, whistling splinter shots into the room.

It was not much, but it gave Barsabbas the brief opportunity he needed. Reeling, he withdrew from the maul of incubi, ejecting his spent clip and slamming home a fresh one.

Vomit drooled from his muzzle grille. He cleared his head and unhinged a grenade cluster from his chain loops.

‘Down, Sindul, down!’

Tugging out the top pin, he allowed the grenades to cook off for a half count. The delay cost him a splinter shot to the neck seal. Hissing with agony, Barsabbas launched the grenade as a reflex action, skipping it across the rockcrete at an awkward angle. Turning his back to the grenade, he hunched down to make himself a small target.

There was a string of clapping eruptions. It felt like someone had pushed him from behind. He turned into the smoke and began firing. But there was little need. The half-dozen incubi had been crumpled, their bodies contorted on the ground, their limbs rearranged and pockmarked with shrapnel holes.

Above the muffled quiet of the aftershock, Barsabbas heard Sindul stir some distance away, coughing and spitting words in his harsh language. Parting the smoke with his hands, the bond‐brother staggered towards his captive. Although he had taken multiple lacerations and some minor internal injuries, Barsabbas felt no pain. He could only concentrate on the pain that ached in his primary left lung – Sargaul’s pain. The cold often made it worse. It was a good pain, for without it, there would be no Sargaul.

‘Brother Sargaul,’ Barsabbas called out.

The solitary figure in the distance raised his head, as if startled from sleep. Even at a distance, Barsabbas could recognise the deep‐set eyes, the heavy brow and the missing ear.

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‘Sargaul,’ Barsabbas said, drawing closer. He peeled off his helmet, sucking in deep breaths of dirty, smoky air.

Sargaul looked at him vacantly, expressionless. Finally, he opened his mouth as if finding the right words was an intense focus of will.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

SHAFTS OF SUNLIGHT, paper‐thin, glowed between the cracks of the boarded windows. They rendered the room in shades of brown, black and a hazy, egg‐yolk yellow. The generator silos waited in the back, sleeping giants that had not stirred for centuries, their turbines suffocating under bales of dust. There, chained between two iron cylinders, sitting upon the tiled floor, was Bond‐Brother Sargaul.

His armour had been shed in a dismembered heap nearby and a red shuka, salvaged and ill‐fitting, was coiled around his waist. Track marks – bruised, ugly holes that scarred his neck, abdomen and wrists – contrasted with his white skin. Parts of him had been surgically tampered with, the sutured slits in his skin still clearly visible. The stitch marks were long and some were infected. Barsabbas could feel his own skin tingle in sympathetic horror.

‘Who are you?’ Sargaul repeated, words slurred by a swollen, irresponsive tongue.

‘It’s me, brother,’ Barsabbas answered tentatively. ‘Barsabbas.’

Sargaul’s eyes rolled lazily in his sockets, losing interest in his bond‐brother. ‘I have to find their gene‐seed,’ he muttered to himself.

Barsabbas shook his head in disbelief. Sargaul was a veteran Astartes. His mind had been clinically, surgically and chemically conditioned. His mind had been tested through constant, rigorous stress for years before his induction. In fact, most Astartes were, to a minor degree, psychically resistant. Surely, this would be a temporary, a fleeting illness, for nothing could break Sargaul’s mental wall for good.

‘Reverse it!’ Barsabbas shouted, grabbing Sindul by the arm and pulling him close.

‘Reverse it!’

‘I cannot!’ Sindul squealed. ‘His mind is ruined. There is nothing I can do.’

‘Look at me,’ Barsabbas commanded Sargaul, but his bond wasn’t listening. Fitful and barely lucid, Sargaul seemed oblivious to his environment. Physically his body was there, but his mind was broken.

‘Where is the gene‐seed?’ said Barsabbas.

Sargaul’s eyes widened. ‘You found the gene‐seed! We can return, then.’

‘No, brother. I have not. I need your help.’

Sargaul didn’t seem to be listening any more. ‘I must find the squad’s gene‐seed. We need to report back.’

‘The haemonculi would have been thorough,’ Sindul observed.

Barsabbas punched the ground. ‘Impossible. We are Astartes.’

‘Especially Astartes. Your pain thresholds are so high, you are every haemonculus’s greatest fantasy.’

‘What did they do to him?’ Barsabbas asked quietly.

‘I don’t know. It is dependent on the creativeness of the torturer and the hardiness of the recipient,’ Sindul said, licking his lips. ‘Injecting mercury into the liver, pumping glass filings