Secret War: Upon Blood Sands

Chapter 46

Tathe reloaded his laspistol for what seemed the millionth time and blasted a flurry from the hip, taking down about seven Resurrected charging for him, all of them appeared to have Adreen's face, but he ignored it. Did his father think him so sentimental? So pathetic? He was an Imperial commissar; maybe he was a nice one, too nice. But he'd never baulked in the service of the Golden Throne.

He couldn't help flinching a little, but not because he parried the chainaxe of a Resurrected then impaling him through the chest, but because he had realised that wasn't true. He'd baulked from rebelling against Serghar and his cronies.

Well, now he would make sure that wouldn't happen again.

Without the covering fire of the Guncutter, they had slowed down to a jog, but that hardly mattered; the entrance was only ten or so metres away.

'Sir,' came Dellenger's voice over the vox, but Tathe ignored it. 'Sir!'

Tathe decapitated a Velrosian sergeant as he lunged at him with a chainsword.

'Sir!' yelled Dellenger.

'Whaaat?' Tathe roared as he cleaved a cultist's skull down the middle.

'You're laughing.'

Tathe hesitated in pulling the trigger of his laspistol at the Despasian guardsman charging him with a bayonet, so Dellenger cut him down with a single shot.

He was right. How the hell didn't he know that?

'Sir, you're losing it. You and everyone else.'

Tathe roared through clenched teeth as he sliced across the armoured chest of a charging Sovrithian NCO. He wanted to tell Dellenger to shut up. That he was an Imperial-frigging-commissar, and he had no right to speak to him with such egregious disrespect.

But he held his tongue, and he didn't know why.

'Listen to me, sir,' said Dellenger. 'Don't let this get to you. What would Adreen want?'

'Adreen would want us to reach the objective!' Tathe snarled. 'She would want us to slaughter all in our way! Why do you have to ask such inane questions now of all times?'

'Yes,' said Dellenger. 'But would she want you to lose your soul in the process?'

'Lose my soul? What a load of ridiculousness.'

'No!' said Dellenger, and Tathe couldn't help flinching. 'Don't talk like that. You know it's not...You know it's not.'

'Shut up,' said Tathe. 'I am a killer, Dellenger. You are too. Don't think for even a second that we are human. We will reach that tower at any cost, no matter who or what gets in my way. Are you getting in my way, scout trooper?'

There was a long pause, so long that Tathe hoped the scout had actually: "shut up."

'You're right, sir,' said Dellenger. 'It's so true that we are able to kill even while we debate philosophy. But isn't that all the more important that we keep that last small sliver of our humanity? We were humans first before we were shaped into killers. Unlike Space Marines, we never gave up our humanity in His service. Not completely, so we should treasure what we have left and hold onto it until death. This is the precipice, sir. If you keep going on as you are, the corruption will take you and everyone else who fight alongside us.'

Tathe clenched his teeth, unable to find any way to argue with the scout. Even from the founding, Dellenger had known things, things that no normal trooper should know. About the Xenos, the daemon. Tathe had wondered why, but he neglected to push it as his father had always seemed to accept it, even having the scout as an advisor on these matters. It was Dellenger's knowledge that had allowed them to know that fire was so effective against daemons. His almost inhuman fighting skill was also...out of the ordinary.