Chapters Due by Graham McNeill

Author:Graham McNeill [McNeill, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Action & Adventure, Space Opera, Military
ISBN: 9781844168613
Google: r_GGcgAACAAJ
Publisher: Games Workshop
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

WHEN URIEL OPENED his eyes, he felt as though the world had lurched out of focus. His right eye burned with fire, a hazy rippling static filling his head with a noise like a thousand angry wasps. He sat up, suddenly aware he was lying on a metallic slab like a mortician’s table. Bright light speared into his eyes and he swung his legs out.

“Easy there!” said a gruff, comradely voice.

Uriel shook his head, and immediately regretted it. Hammer blows of pain and bright lights exploded within his skull and he reached out to steady himself. A strong hand grabbed him, keeping him upright. He held on to it, feeling as though his balance were shifting in and out of kilter.

“Be still,” advised another voice, one with a soft mechanised burr to its syllables. “It will take a moment for the ocular implant’s nerve fibres to mesh with your own organic tissue. Be not afraid, the discomfort and nausea will pass.”

“What is happening to me?” demanded Uriel, fighting down a wave of sickness. Shapes moved around him, but he couldn’t make any of them out. They were familiar, but what they were took a moment to return to him, as though the vast amounts of information required to process his visual input were somehow blocked. He leaned against the slab, taking shallow breaths to calm himself.

“You took a bolt pistol round to the head,” said the voice. “Fortunately the angle at which your helmet was positioned as the round struck deflected much of the kinetic energy.”

Uriel reached up to his right temple, feeling cold metal where he expected flesh. He recoiled from the touch as his balance returned. He remembered fractured images of facing the creature that wore his face, its words of hate and the booming thunder of a gunshot.

After that, all was confusion. His vision flooded with red, then grey, then black. He remembered shouting voices, desperate cries and blaring warning bells. Selenus’ voice cut through it all, the crisp declarative commands of the Apothecary bringing order to the chaos. Soothing warmth seeped into his limbs and he remembered the soporific effects of a strong pain balm spreading through his system.

Then this. Grainy static-laced vision and a numbing loss of awareness. He gasped as the floor suddenly snapped into focus and he saw the cracked tiling clearly, every split in the ceramic and every imperfection in the mortar bedding as clear as though he studied it through a microscope.

He reached up again, this time more carefully, and explored the side of his head with his fingertips. His close-cropped hair had been shaved on the right side and he could feel a number of raw scar sutures running from the edge of his eye socket to his ear.

Uriel looked up to see Pasanius, Magos Locard and Apothecary Selenus standing before him. He was in a long medicae bay of some kind, one dedicated to augmetics by the look of the patient stations, workbenches, tools and half-built limbs lying scattered around.

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