Apex Predator - Gavin G Smith by Warhammer 40K

Author:Warhammer 40K [40K, Warhammer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789997958
Published: 2019-10-02T10:00:14+00:00

About the Author

Gavin G Smith is the Dundee-born author of, amongst others, the science fiction novels Veteran and War in Heaven, the survival horror novel Special Purposes: First Strike, the fantasy novella Chivalry and the short story collection Crysis Escalation. 'Apex Predator' is his first story for Black Library.

An extract from Kingsblade.

Danial Tan Draconis, kingsward of House Draconis and heir to the throne of Adrastapol, willed himself not to throw up. He was strapped firmly into his throne mechanicum at the heart of his Knight Errant, Oath of Flame. His throne’s neural jacks were plugged into his cranial augmetics and its armaplas webbing cradled his body tight. The Knight itself – a forty-foot-tall, roughly humanoid war machine – was mag-locked within its armature, one of a dozen looming metal giants dominating the debarkation deck of the drop keep. Still, Danial was shaken like a ragdoll. The turbulence of the combat drop was savage, the pressure of gravity scarcely less so. And then there was the disorienting sensation of the ghosts within his throne. It was a little like standing alone with his back to a curtain, knowing that just beyond it crowded dozens of whispering strangers who might at any moment reach through to grab his shoulder. There again, it was like staring into a mirror and feeling his reflection looking back through his own eyes. Then it felt like embracing myriad thoughts and dreams, only to endure the jarring dislocation of realising that not one of those mental fragments was his. It was like all those things, but not them. Every effort he made to rationalise the sensation only added to his nausea. Danial battled the sickness with the grim desperation of a drowning man clinging to his last spar of driftwood. If he couldn’t even win the fight with his own biological failings, or master his throne before his first true engagement, how was he to win a real battle on the glorious field of war? Besides, he wasn’t about to give Markos the satisfaction of seeing him fail.

‘A bracing plunge, isn’t it, Da?’ Luk’s voice crackled over the vox-net. Exhilarated. Of course he was. Nothing fazed Luk Tan Chimaeros. At least nothing Danial had seen yet.

‘It is,’ he managed, biting out the words.

‘Hah! That a little drop sickness I hear in your voice, Da?’

‘Not at all,’ Danial replied, before pressing one gloved fist to his lips in desperation. His Knight’s machine-spirit responded with a sympathetic churning of internal gears, a slight shudder running through its hull-plates.

‘Honoured ward of House Chimaeros,’ came a firm, female voice over the vox. ‘We are about to enter a live warzone. I would ask that you refrain from any further squiresyard banter at my brother’s expense.’

‘Apologies, lady’ responded Luk, only slightly mollified. His Knight, Sword of Heroes, inclined its helm with a whine of servomotors. ‘You’re right, Jen. No distractions.’

‘Her title,’ came a heavy, gravelly voice over the vox, ‘is Jennika Tan Draconis, Gatekeeper of the Exalted Court. When in panoply I would remind you to address her as such, lad.

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