Honourbound - Rachel Harrison by Warhammer 40K

Author:Warhammer 40K [40K, Warhammer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780308692
Published: 2019-01-08T10:09:49+00:00

Eleven

Those who are lost

Cassia Tyl breaks the neck of the Sighted scout with a swift, quiet movement and catches him as he slumps against her, dead weight. The sawn-off shotgun the scout carries swings loose by the strap. Beside her Jeth does the same with the other Sighted unlucky enough to be patrolling the corridor.

Emergency lighting paints everything red as Tyl and Jeth drag the bodies out of the hallway and into an adjoining chamber they have already cleared. The level was once part of the augmetics facility. Chromed surfaces reflect the red light back at Tyl and there are runnels cut into the tiled floor to collect spilled blood and drain it away. There’s a good deal of it blackening the central drain. Bare, wicked instruments are arranged on trays.

Something about it prickles at Tyl’s memories. Something just beyond recall, long buried. She reaches out and touches one of the cutting knives and it spins on the tray, flashing in the light.

‘Ready?’

Jeth’s voice makes her flinch. She turns fast.

‘Whoa,’ he says.

Tyl shakes her head. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘It’s this place.’

He nods. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘There’s a wickedness here.’

Tyl feels a wry smile cross her face at that.

‘We wouldn’t be here otherwise,’ she says.

Jeth laughs at that. Myre doesn’t. She never laughs.

Tyl rounds back out into the hallway with them following her as shadows. In the red light, the Duskhounds could for all the world be inside a dead, desiccated thing. The Sanctum’s arches are like black iron bones. The cracked plaster like skin.

The Sighted are like vermin, chewing their way into the carcass.

Tyl moves up to the next corner and stops, before holding up her hand for the others to do the same. The temperature gauge in her helmet’s display has dropped sharply, just like outside the spire. Like a winter wind. Frost slicks the floor and walls. Tyl picks up noise. Footsteps. Low voices with Laxian accents.

Four targets.

Tyl listens a second longer.

No. Five.

‘Rend and blind,’ she says. ‘Left. Fifty metres.’

Myre and Jeth send bursts of vox back as acknowledgement, then the three of them round the corner.

Five Sighted stand between the Duskhounds and the edge of the shield they have been tasked with dropping. Tyl sees it behind them, catching the light like smeared glass. The Sighted are dressed in heavy boots and helmets. Padded, layered fatigues and flak armour plates hung with feathers and bits of broken glass on dirty cord. None of it does them much good against hellguns on full charge. Two of the scouts go down, punched through with smoking holes before they can react. The other Sighted aren’t quite so slow. Two raise their autorifles and begin to fire as the flash charge that Myre slid along the floor goes off and blinds them. Shots go wild around Tyl as she keeps moving, unflinching. Her visor dips to compensate for the flare of light, which is how she catches the third of the Sighted fleeing towards the shield. He’s the alarm.

‘We’ve got a runner,’ she says, over the internal vox.

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