Ultra Marines 05 - Courage and Honour by Warhammer

Author:Warhammer [Warhammer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

109

and set off towards the nearest blurred outline of his enemies as hot chips of stone

fell around him in a black rain.

The aliens saw him coming and turned their guns upon him, but Gaetan had no

thought for his survival. All that mattered was that the vile xenos be made to pay for

what they had done. Time compressed, and Gaetan knew he would never reach the

alien warriors before they cut him down.

Then, the head of the Emperor’s statue fell from its shoulders and exploded into

shards of hard, hot coals as it struck the altar. The alien warriors were swept away in

the explosion of razor-sharp fragments. The impact hurled Gaetan from his feet, and

he landed on the soft and yielding flesh of dead bodies. He rolled from them in horror

as flames bloomed around him, the heat of them scorching his skin and burning the

hair from his scalp. He surged to his feet, the fabric of his robes ablaze and the pain

unimaginable.

In moments, he was a living torch, a burning fury of insensate agony. He ran, his

limbs obeying the instinctual urge for self-preservation as they carried him along the

nave towards the golden doors that led to the cold night beyond. Gaetan felt the skin

slough from his shins, the fabric of his robes searing to his flesh and the skin of his

face peeling back under the awful, intolerable heat of the merciless flames. His

temple burned behind him, but he had no thought but survival now, and even that

seemed certain to be denied.

He knew not how long he had run for, but he remembered screams of fear and

horror, blessed cool air on what remained of his skin, and the twin joy and pain of

fire suppressants bathing his body. Then he knew darkness, agonising pain beyond

imagining and almost beyond sanity. He knew shouts, lights and stinging needles,

faces peering at him, and voices calling his name.

Hymns. He remembered hymns.

He woke to pain, and wept as it bathed his entire body, knowing that, beneath the

counterseptic-soaked bandages that wrapped him he was barely alive, that his life

hung by the thinnest of threads. Pain balms allowed his mind to wrench itself free of

physical sensation, retreating into the furthest corners of his mind, but, as the agony

overcame each dose, he would be dragged back to his misery.

Rows of beds stretched out either side of him, their wretched, miserable

occupants filling the echoing chamber with their cries. The Sisters of the Eternal

Candle that tended to his ruined flesh mouthed banal platitudes, but he had long since

stopped listening to them, repulsed by the pity in their eyes. All they saw was a

ruined preacher, a man destined to spend the last breaths of his life in terrible,

unendurable agony. They sought to ease him into his death, thinking they did him a

mercy.

Only one visitor to his bedside had come without pity in his heart.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.