[Ultramarines 4] Killing Ground - Graham McNeill by Graham McNeill

Author:Graham McNeill
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction. warhammer 40000
ISBN: 9781844167258
Publisher: Games Workshop
Published: 2009-05-25T23:00:00+00:00

THREE FIGURES WERE arranged in a triangular pattern in a cramped chamber of heat-resistant tiles, each facing the centre of the room. The first of the figures was a young man who lay strapped to an upright restraint couch, his limbs bound by silver chains and his head held fast with clamps that prevented it from moving so much as a millimetre.

Hissing atomisers moistened gaping, empty eye sockets, the lids of which were held permanently open by ocular speculums, and gently swaying pipes fed him nutrients while others disposed of his bodily waste. Behind him, a clicking, whirring bank of machines monitored his vital signs, the rhythmic pulse and bleep the only signs that he lived at all, so shallow was the rise and fall of his chest.

A meshed vox-capture unit was fitted over his mouth, connected to a series of golden wires that coiled and looped across the floor before arriving at the second occupant of the room.

This figure was likewise restrained, though there was precious little need for it as every limb save his right arm had been surgically removed. He sat in a mechanical cradle of brass armatures and pulsating cables, and, like his opposite number, matter was delivered and retrieved through gurgling pipes. The golden wires from the room's first occupant ran across the room's floor and up over the back of his skull before dividing and plugging into iron sockets grafted where his ears had once been. His eyes had been sewn together and tiny script had been tattooed over the withered, sunken lids.

A wooden lectern sat to one side of this individual, upon which rested a sheet of yellowing parchment dispensed from a roll that sat below a glowing pict recorder. The figure's only remaining limb lay unmoving beside the parchment, a long, feathered quill held tightly between the forefinger and thumb of its spindly hand.

The room's final occupant was also a meld of flesh and machine, but where its fellows were bound to their task through restraints and wards, he was simply obeying orders hardwired into his brain through lobotomy and instruction wafers fed to him by his masters.

A gun-servitor, he had no mind left to call his own and was simply a living weapon-bearer with no will to perform any task other than that which was ordered. Though more humanoid in form than the other two occupants of the room, his body had been enhanced with bionics, muscle stimulants, balance compensators and targeting hardware to allow him to bear the weight of the enormous incinerator unit that replaced his left arm.

The weapon alternately tracked between the room's other occupants, the gun-servitor's brain primed for any of the warning signs that would trigger its attack response and fill this chamber with blessed fire and immolate everything in it, including itself.

The incinerator swung to aim at the figure in the restraint couch as his chest began to heave with effort. The bleeping noises from the machine behind him increased in frequency, becoming shrill and warning.

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