The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,34

not have fled shrieking then, but these flesh-automata just kept on coming, zeroing their targeting sensors and blundering to get a shot. He barrelled in among them, now twisting, now lunging, slicing his blade clean through the knots of grey flesh and burning metal. Another servitor was hurled into the air, limbs cartwheeling, before it crashed into the floor in a cloud of splintered tiles. Two more were decapitated with a two-handed heave, then more were blasted apart by the bolter. He worked almost casually, and yet nothing was casual at all – it was choreographed with such remorseless precision that it was more art than combat.

And it only lasted seconds. That was all he needed. The echoes of his destruction took longer to die down, drifting over a smouldering scene of absolute annihilation. I had barely even fully registered his entrance before I was trying to make sense of what had just happened, marvelling at the volume of wreckage generated in such a tiny slice of time.

Afterwards he stood at the centre of it, his spear held loose, his black cloak sinking back around his shoulders. His helm-lenses glowed like rubies in the dark, giving a faint red tinge to the baroque majesty of his closed-face helm. His armour was even finer and more intensely adorned than Valerian’s had been – a veritable hulk of heavy gold, emblazoned with thunderbolts and lightning strikes, the oldest of our ancient symbols, surrounded by astrological embellishments that seemed to writhe and grin in the flickering gloom.

The guards beside me had not even had the chance to open fire. They were as stunned as I was, but then they had never been a significant factor here. The only two souls who mattered in that room were him and me.

He knew what had happened even before his blade’s energy field had kindled. That had always been the risk, and there were more risks to come, but desperate times required desperate remedies.

He walked towards me. Every move he made was still bleeding with barely contained menace. I wanted to throw up then. I could feel saliva pooling at the back of my throat, and swallowed thickly.

‘Get out,’ he said.

He wasn’t talking to me. The Palatine Sentinels obeyed instantly, clattering out of the chamber in disciplined files. To their credit, my own guard hesitated for a moment or two, but their resolve was only human, and so they too withdrew.

I was left looking up into the helm-visor of Trajann Valoris, Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes, perhaps the deadliest individual warrior in the entire Imperium, and one whom I had just made very angry indeed.

I started to blurt something out.

‘Silence,’ he commanded, and I stammered to a halt. ‘How did you know?’

Somehow my external comm-feed had been closed by then – I assume he’d done that – and I felt terribly vulnerable. His voice, booming out of a vox-emitter, made my bones shiver. I wanted so badly to kneel, though that gesture would have achieved nothing.

‘Forgive me, lord, I–’

‘How did you know?’

I swallowed again. I felt light-headed. This was a gamble too far, and I cursed myself for daring it. Perhaps it would have been better to acknowledge defeat.

‘I arranged the transit of the Fabricator General’s entourage to this zone,’ I said, trying to keep a lid on my fear. ‘He was the last one to arrive. I knew you would have been overseeing the security for his installation in person. I also knew the access codes, and had the means to circumvent the security protocols. I needed to get you here – you and me.’

By then he was standing over me. I could smell the blood and oil from the servitors slowly cooking on his still-hot blade. I could feel the actinic tang of the energy field. I could trace the lines of that impossibly crafted armour, and see just how achingly beautiful it was up-close. I wondered if it might be my last sight. Not a bad one, I thought, grimly.

‘I have killed men for less than this,’ he said.

‘I know,’ I said.

‘Your rank will not protect you.’

‘I know.’

‘Then why do it?’

That was the question I’d been waiting for. If he’d truly made his mind up to execute me then and there, he would not have asked it. It was my only way in, though whether I would be able to take it was still very much moot.

‘Because my life really means very little,’ I said, trying my best to hold things together. ‘Almost nothing,