The Core (Night Lords short story) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Author:Aaron Dembski-Bowden [Dembski-Bowden, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2011-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

VII

The Eldest rounded a corner, clinging to the walls with claws that crunched purchase in the arched, ancient steel. It didn’t slow down, not even for a fraction of a heartbeat. Burning saliva stung its jaws as it drooled down its chin.

Prey.

Two. Ahead.

The Eldest leaped over the bodies of fallen kin, moving its headlong dash to the ceiling as it tore forwards, still not slowing in its stride. Claws ripped handholds in the corridor’s roof with vicious speed. Bodily, it shoved its lesser kin aside, bashing through those tall enough to obstruct its passage. In better times, their links to the Eldest’s mind would have sent them scurrying aside respectfully, sensing their lord’s approach.

‘Reloading.’ Mercutian dropped to one knee and ejected a spent ammunition belt from the massive heavy bolter.

At his side, Cyrion took aim with his own weapon, and the corridor echoed with the familiar crashing of a bolter letting loose on full auto.

‘Reload faster.’

‘Keep shooting,’ Mercutian snarled.

‘It’s on the damn ceiling…’

‘Keep shooting.’

Beneath and around, the hard bodies of its kin were shattering and bursting under the prey’s defences. The prey ahead – two of them – unleashed a sickening stream of burning anger that blasted the Eldest’s kin apart.

The heated projectiles began to crash against the Eldest’s skin.

It suddenly remembered what pain felt like.

Mercutian buckled the ammo feed into place and lifted his heavy bolter again. It took three awful seconds to power up again, then its internal mechanisms clunked into life.

An instant’s glance saw Cyrion’s bolter fire laying waste to the weaker creatures, but the huge beast was shrieking its way through a volley of bolter fire, still sprinting across the ceiling, eating up the metres between them.

He didn’t rise to his feet. Remaining where he was, he pulled the trigger handle and felt his armour’s stabilisers kick in to compensate for the cannon’s recoil.

The heavy bolter shook as it disgorged a stream of high-velocity explosive bolts, each one pounding chunks of chitinous meat from the creature’s exoskeletal flesh.

As the twelfth bolt struck home, the beast fell from the ceiling, plunging into the seething mass of lesser creatures below. Mercutian lowered his aim, and let his cannon chew into them next.

The Eldest smelled its own blood, and this was somehow more shocking than the pain of its burst-open, bleeding wounds. The scent overpowered the wounds of its kin, eclipsing them in richness and potency.

The lord-creature drew in its damaged limbs, curling them close to its body. It had misjudged the prey. The prey was fierce. The prey could not be battled as equals, but must be stalked as meat to be hunted.

This was the Way. The Eldest’s hunger had blinded it to the Way, but the pain of its mistake served as the most forceful of reminders.

Hunched and defeated but utterly devoid of shame, the Eldest tore its way back down the passageway, slaying its own kin in its need to retreat from the prey.

Minutes later, in the silent darkness again, it uncurled its wounded limbs, waiting for the blood to stop flowing.

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