STAR OF IPPICRUS

5


THE CHAOS CHAMPION STRUCK SERGEANT RAPHAEL WITH SUCH RAPIDITY TARS KNEW IN THAT BLINDING MOMENT HIS SQUAD WAS DOOMED.

He watched as his battle-brother and mentor, a warrior three hundred and sixty-three years in the making, was struck an awful mortal wound by Draznicht. It sent the Dark Angels veteran flying through the air like a ragdoll. Tars watched as his battle-brother's body landed upon the sands, then slid gently, silently, to the very bottom of the dune.

Tars howled in rage and charged. Aramon was right behind him.

The two Dark Angels flung themselves upon Jibbek in tandem - Draznicht just out of their reach - sending the screeching traitor lieutenant crashing facedown upon the sands. But before they could finish him off Draznicht was upon them.

'You children are way out of your league?' the Chaos Champion growled in amusement.

He swung his power-maul as he spoke and the Dark Angels floundered backward from its crackling path.

Tars caught a blow upon his pouldron and felt the concussive energy within the weapon stitch through his bones. It shocked him to the boundaries of pain and unconsciousness - even as the combat stimms from his autosenses flooded his system to keep him cognizant.

Aramon blocked a second and third strike across the adamantine bracing of his plasma cannon, barely protecting his younger brother from their Sergeant's fate. The power-maul popped and shrieked across his makeshift shield. With a wild swing of his own Aramon managed to force Draznicht back several steps.

'You'll find us worthy enough!' Aramon growled. 'We were created just as the Emperor of all Imperium was created! You gave up such graces to become the foul abomination that you are.'

'We shall see whose graces fair better then, shall we?' Draznicht snickered back.

Tars shook his head clear where he lay sprawled in the sands. He could see where his gauntleted fingers were splayed in the red iron-rich dust Sergeant Raphael's chainsword lay near him. He snatched it up and launched to his feet. Even in death the brother-sergeant was saving his little battle-brother's life.

The chainsword roared in his fist. Jibbek came rushing at him, power-axe crackling through the air.

The young marine side-stepped the savage cut and allowed its weight to overextend the traitor lieutenant's balance. But the creature was cannily practiced, and the overextension that should have come did not eventuate. The mistake almost cost Tars his life.

Before the young marine could push his weapon through Jibbek's neck the Ravager snapped a deadly backhanded swipe behind him. This time the axe barely missed Tars's helm.

He felt the jarring wash of the weapon's energy field cut across his nose and mouth, rippling needles of pain through his teeth as the tip of the axe cleaved open his respirator grill. The facial wound was immediately cauterized by the power weapon's energy and knitted together by the Larraman Cells hurtling through his blood system. The pain was a startling flash of fire, but it was all Tars needed to find his range.

Tars lunged. Jibbek howled.

The chainsword swept up through the Ravager's midsection. The inch-long teeth ate their way through the tainted and warped ceramite plating, shrieking in concerto with the screams of its victim. Then the weapon's teeth caught and the blade rushed inward through the armour to devour the carapace, flesh and bone within.

Blood rained over Tars as he angled the chainsword deeper into Jibbek's convulsing body. The sword was relentless in its toil, digging out bone, artery, lung and heart. He would have cut Jibbek completely in half if Draznicht had not launched across the sands to interrupt his triumph.

Tars turned the Ravager's twitching corpse into the oncoming assault. It was like a whirlwind of limbs coming at him. He stepped back as Draznicht's power-maul sent Jibbek's body flying from his grasp. The Ravager's internal organs spilled across the sands. The unholy offal writhed as lively as fish might when thrown upon a hotplate in wanton cruelty - revealing the dark taint of Chaos existed as much within the body as it did without.

Draznicht was furious over the loss of his lieutenant - perhaps even more furious at Jibbek's foolishness for dying at the hands of such a young marine. In that moment the Chaos Champion wanted nothing more dead in this galaxy than the young marine standing before him. A boy, seven-feet tall, as misshapen by his Emperor's genetic tweakings as Draznicht was by his own dark and ruinous masters, wearing the dark green and pale bone power armour of the Chapter Draznicht had sworn to destroy since his fall, clasping his sergeant's chainsword in both hands. Nothing else mattered to the Chaos Champion than that boy's swift demise.

Aramon brought his plasma cannon crashing down upon Draznicht's back. He roared as he fell upon the enemy. Together they sprawled across the sands, limbs and weapons twisting violently.

Tars leapt forward to finish the Chaos Champion off. As he charged forward he could see from the corner of his eye their Librarian, Turmiel, stumbling drunkenly toward them, shaking his head and pointing his force sword at them. But there was no time to determine what the Librarian wanted.

Draznicht rolled out from beneath Aramon. The Chaos Champion snarled in rage and swept his power-maul upward in a vicious arc.

Before Aramon could lift his plasma cannon as a shield the power-maul struck its mortal blow. The crackling energy-field of the weapon pulverized the big marine's helm like a melon, ripping it asunder before arching around to deflect Tars's attack in the same fell swing.

The two weapons crashed and rattled together. Their owner's pushed against one another with baleful hatred as Aramon's body collapsed to the sands beside them.

Tars and Draznicht stood knee to knee, battle helm to twisted, warp ridden face.

'I'm going to cut your corrupted gene-seed out with my bare hands, you bileous leech!' Tars screeched.

'And I will feed yours to my masters!' Draznicht snarled in reply.

The Chaos Champion flung the boy away, sending the Dark Angel crashing onto his back. He danced forward and swung his power-maul down, hoping to finish the marine off as swiftly as he had his battle-brothers. But Tars rolled and twisted from its deadly descent.

Three times the sands exploded near Tars's head. He lunged upward with the chainsword but the weapon was deflected with ease. Then another wild swing sent it flying from his grasp.

'Now you die, boy!' Draznicht spat.

The shimmering tip of a force sword shot out through the Chaos Champion's chest. Behind Draznicht lolled the drunken looking Turmiel, staggering to his knees as he struggled to push the blade deeper through his enemy.

Draznicht's two eyes and one cyclopic demon eye flared wide with pain and shock. But only for the briefest of moment's. For pain and misery were all such creatures longed to feel.

Tars noticed the flickering of a cruel and gleeful smile begin at the edges of Draznicht's twisted mouth. Then the champion spun around, even with the mortal wound draining his lifeblood from him and the swirling flames of the force sword's empyric energy burning through his organs, he dashed the Librarian's head in with one clean, backward stroke.

Tars watched Turmiel's body topple to its side. He scrabbled forward, screaming his anguish - the last of his squad, the last of his brothers.

Tars caught hold the force sword's padded hilt with its golden Psy-Link wires encircling it and twisted it out. Even as the last of its warp-ridden energies suffused and burned through him, he hauled it out wrenching and twisting as he went. He fell backward as consciousness fled his mind and body and his very soul seemed to tear its way out into the screaming, cackling Immaterium.

As the last of the Dark Angels fell at his feet Draznicht clutched the gaping hole of his chest. He staggered backward. The swirling black liquid that was all that was left of his human lifeblood vomited from his chest down across his boots.

Draznicht laughed. 'They nearly ended me,' he coughed and more of the black, bilious blood frothed across his lips. He spat it out.

The creature caught in his boot greave cackled incredulously along with him, happy to still yet live. Drinking the liquid raining down upon it at the same time. The eye in the centre of Draznicht's forehead rolled down along with his own to glance at the fell wound slowly sealing itself closed and healing over. 'They nearly ended us, my kin. So close. But not quite enough, the green-handed fools.'

Then he heard the rip-roar scream of the chainsword.

Draznicht did not move quite as fast as he should have. His injuries were too immediate, far too grave. He turned upon the screeching noise and raised his power-maul in defence, but it was ponderously too slow.

The Chaos Champion caught sight of the Dark Angels Veteran Sergeant, risen from the dead, standing right there behind him swinging his weapon with a determined grimace.

How? Was all Draznicht had time to think. He saw it all, just in time, before his world toppled end over end. Then he realised the Dark Angel had cut his head clean from his hulking, armoured shoulders.

Before everything darkened and the howling laughter of Ruin and Chaos came rushing to snatch away his soul, Draznicht saw the Veteran Sergeant cleave off both his arms and run his body through with the chainsword. Then his hulking corpse collapsed atop its own head. Darkness and all the hells of misery and confusion consumed the last of all that was left of Draznicht, Chosen Chaos Champion of the Fallen...