Void Stalker by Aaron Dembski-Bowden Page A

time.
    Deltrian paused a moment to regard the emblem on a dislocated shoulder guard. A white triangle, crossed by an inverted sigil. Their armour was a proud, defiant red.
    ‘Recorded: Genesis Chapter. Thirteenth Legion genestock.’ How delightful. A reunion, of sorts. He’d last encountered these warriors – or their genetic forefathers, at least – in the Tsagualsan Massacre.
    ‘Phase One: complete,’ he said aloud, as he pulsed the affirmation code to the surviving servitors’ waiting minds. ‘Commence Phase Two.’
    The cyborgs fell into step, continuing the execution of their previously laid out order rotation. Half of the dozen remaining would move through the ship in a pack, carrying out seek-and-destroy subroutines. The other half would walk with Deltrian, back to the Hall of Reflection.
    The ship quivered, hard enough for one of his servitors to miss its footing and emit an error message from its cybernetic jaw. Deltrian ignored it, tapping back into the vox.
    ‘This is Deltrian to Talos of First Claw.’
    Bolter fire answered, distant and crackly over the vox. ‘He’s dead.’
    Deltrian hesitated. ‘Confirm.’
    ‘He’s not dead,’ came another voice. ‘I heard him laughing. What do you want, tech-priest?’
    ‘To whom am I speaking?’ Deltrian asked, not bothering to inflect his voice with any aural signifiers of politeness.
    ‘Carahd of Sixth Claw.’ The warrior broke off, replaced for a moment by bolter chatter. ‘We’re holding the port landing platform.’
    Deltrian’s internal processors required a fraction of a heartbeat to recall Carahd’s facial appearance, Legion record, and every modification made to his battle armour in the last three centuries.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘your situational update is fascinating. Where is Talos of First Claw?’
    ‘First Claw is engaged on the primary concourse. What’s wrong?’
    ‘I have discovered and analysed the flaw in void shield function. I require the lord’s order, and an escort, to–’
    Carahd’s vox-link deteriorated, breaking apart with the sound of furious screaming.
    ‘Carahd? Carahd of Sixth Claw?’
    Another voice took over. ‘This is Faroven of Sixth Claw, we’re falling back from the landing bays. Anyone still breathing in the sternward concourses, link up with us in New Blackmarket.’
    ‘This is Deltrian, I require a Legion escort to–’
    ‘For the love of all that is sacred, shut up, tech-priest. Sixth Claw falling back. Carahd and Iatus are down.’
    Another voice crackled in reply. ‘Faroven, this is Xan Kurus. Confirm Carahd is down.’
    ‘I had visual confirmation. One of these aquila-bearers took his head off.’
    Deltrian listened to the legionaries as they defended the ship. Perhaps their disrespect was excusable, given the circumstances.
    Walking around the organic refuse that had once been loyal soldiers of the Golden Throne, and the mortuary of modified bodies that had been his own weaponised minions, Deltrian decided to take matters into his own hands yet again.
    Lucoryphus of the Bleeding Eyes wasn’t limited to the decking in the same way as his lesser kindred. He couldn’t run though, not as he once might have done. His retreat was a surprisingly agile and unarguably feral race on all fours, his hands and foot-claws clanking on the deck grilles in bestial rhythm. He ran as an ape would, or a wolf, or – as he was – a warrior who’d not been fully human in many years, thanks first to Imperial genetic redesign, and later to the shifting tides of the warp.
    Lucoryphus, perhaps more than most of his brothers, wanted to live. He refused to die for their cause, and refused to stand his ground in a hopeless battle, let alone one he was ill-suited to fight in the first place. Let the madness of futile last stands be something his brothers embraced. He lived his life, twisted as it was, by a code of abject rationality. Thus, as he fled, he felt nothing in the way of shame.
    Responding to his feverish