into the lungs, stimulation of exposed nerves with contact acids, selective lobotomy–’
136
Barsabbas startled Sindul with a roar, sending the dark eldar scuttling for cover.
Enraged, the Blood Gorgon hammered the floor tiles with his fists. The tireless banging split the ceramic and brought down scuds of dust from the rafters. Still howling, Barsabbas rose to his feet and began to beat his own naked face against the generator’s iron bearing covers. The ridged metal scored his cheeks and opened up raw, bleeding lines across his forehead. Sargaul began to bawl too, stimulated by the loud noise. His eyes were fixed upon the ceiling and his clumsy tongue worked in a muted, stifled yell.
BARSABBAS RAGED LONG into the night. He did not stop. Seized by an anguish that had no release, he began to tear down the processing facility with his bare hands. Bones splintered wood, boots dented metal. He raged until his fists were black and bleeding and the ceramite of his gauntlets was textured with scratches. Dust clouds fumed as he broke through the walls.
Sindul sheltered behind a storage locker as the world crashed and shook. The Traitor Marine was like an earthquake or a storm. Sindul had little hope of escaping and was helpless to stop it. Instead he hid and hoped it would pass quickly. The noise had promised such fury that even the warp beasts had fled the area, balking at such raw power.
Gumede, hiding far out in the grass fields, prayed. He thought the end of the world had come. He prayed through the night and did not stop until the first sun crested the horizon.
Finally, as the suns reached first dawn, Barsabbas grew tired. By then, he had levelled almost a third of the abandoned facility. He collapsed as the lactic build‐up in his muscles reached toxic levels, beyond what even an Astartes could ignore.
Throughout all of this, Sargaul was oblivious. He sat with a look of contentment upon his face as his mind drifted.
SARGAUL LAY SUPINE before Barsabbas. Where once Sargaul had been full of martial vigour, the mindless wreck that shivered on the ground could barely be recognised as him.
‘Brother. I have failed.’
Those were the last words Barsabbas said to Sargaul as he stood before him. It was hard to believe there was anything left of Sargaul. Although his body was whole, his mind had been stripped bare.
They had been warriors together. Sargaul who had burned an entire township at Port Veruca just to goad the local garrison into battle. Sargaul who had claimed over a hundred and twenty heads at the Siege of Naraskur. The very same Sargaul who culled slaves unable to lift more than a twenty‐kilo standard load.
Barsabbas unchained him and lifted him unsteadily to his feet. He had almost forgotten how much taller Sargaul stood than he, and for some reason that pained him. Tall, venerable Sargaul.
Although Sargaul had no equilibrium to stand on his own, Barsabbas helped the veteran into his salvaged battle dress. He slowly dressed him in his beaten power armour, a painstaking process without the aid of servitor and retinue.
Barsabbas activated Sargaul’s armour and as the suit hummed to life, the squad‐linked data feed connected between the surviving members of Squad Besheba. Its initial system sweep detected almost no cognitive activity in Sargaul’s brain, as if entire portions of it had been excised.
‘Gene‐seed. I can’t go home without the gene‐seed.’
137
It was the same monotone phrase. Barsabbas decided it must have been Sargaul’s last lucid thought, the last thing on his mind before the dark eldar took it.
Barsabbas pressed Sargaul’s boltgun into his hands and took one step back. In his full battle dress, Sargaul looked whole, if Barsabbas did not look into his eyes. Except that he stood upright only by the power of his armour’s servo motors.
‘Brother, I have failed.’
Barsabbas unscrewed the hilt of his mace. Holding the pommel he slid a slender metal tube from the shaft of the weapon, a device to extract gene‐seed. The removal of the gene-seed was a duty of the Chirurgeon or Apothecary, and so it had been since the early days of the Crusade. But the progenoid gland, as the conduit of genetic data, was held in even greater reverence by the Blood Gorgons. To the bond‐brother, the gene‐seed was one half of their own lifeblood and each carried the device capable of executing the final duty.
He stabbed the tube into Sargaul, in the pit above the collar bone just over the lip of his neck seal.