Venenum Filios Chapter 4
The knife came at Persion's head and he was forced to jerk aside at the last moment to avoid it. The blade scored across the cheek of his helm, eliciting a snarl of frustration from its wielder. Persion blinked and took in his opponent, a vile Chaos Marine in scaled plate holding a knife carved with dark runes.
Persion felt the hatred burning in his hearts, the distillation of ten millennia of war imprinted into his mind by ancient Hypno -indoctrination but reinforced by personal experience. Persion had faced these enemies before and he hated them for their treachery, for their many atrocities but most of all he hated them for their stubborn refusal to lie down and die.
Persion swung his Friction-axe but a slight tremor in his arm threw off his line of attack and the Traitor ducked. Instantly the Chaos Marine sprang at him, knife extended but Persion caught it in the palm of his augmetic hand and stopped the blow. The foe reacted swiftly, twisting about but Persion was faster. He swung his axe in a wide sweep, catching the fiend in the waist and carving him into two. The Chaos Marine fell in two halves, at last reaping the rewards of his heresy and Persion shook his hand. The jump through the void must have taken more out of him than he realised, for his body still felt cold and his organic hand wouldn't stop twitching. He knew that his gene-forged physiology would restore itself eventually but it seemed to be taking its damned time today.
Persion looked about seeing the Storm Heralds battling on. They had split up after entering the starfort, breaking up into teams to fight their way around the gun decks and cripple them one by one. With customary speed they had stormed the defences, wreaking havoc and sowing carnage wherever they went. The cultist crew had been slaughtered in droves and deck after deck had fallen to the Storm Herald's advance, then the Alpha Legion had struck back.
Currently Persion was with Captain Toran's command squad, backed up by Sergeant Matheus' Tacticals. They had made good progress until they had run right into a squad of Chaos Marines. The Traitors coming at them were bedecked with scales and icons of hydras but these were laid over older marks of allegiance. Winged skulls, iron masks, jaws devouring worlds and burning daemon heads, whatever their current allegiance these Traitors had not always been Alpha Legionnaires. The Traitors were outnumbered two to one by the Storm Heralds but they weren't going down easy; in fact the Loyalists seemed to be having trouble finishing them off.
Persion realised that he wasn't the only one wearied by the void jump; it must really have hit them hard. Persion saw Captain Toran swinging the Sword of Thiel in wide sweeps, overextending slightly. He caught a single Traitor in the chest and cut him down but it was clumsily done and the blade looked heavy in his hands. Persion glanced at the blade, the most revered relic of the Storm Heralds, passed down hand to hand from the mythic Aeonid Thiel who had received it from the hand of the Primarch himself. Persion's own Friction-axe shared that noble legacy but could not claim such an awed history. Like most things in the Imperium, his weapon was a copy of a copy of a copy.
Next to the Captain Novak was duelling a turncoat one on one, deflecting blows over and over with his combat shield while he tried to counter with his power sword. Eventually he cut the betrayer down with a thrust into the eye but Persion had never seen him have so much trouble with a single Chaos Marine before. Across from them Jediah and Furion were working together, flanking an Alpha Legionnaire and isolating him from the rest. They trapped the fiend on two sides and Furion smashed him with a blow to the head while Jediah stabbed him from behind with his Fractal-edged short sword. Two of them to take down one Traitor, a poor showing.
The only one who seemed to be acting normally was Bylan, swinging the haft of the Company Standard like a polearm. He used a two-handed grip to beat open an opponent's defence then effortlessly switched to a one-handed grip as he drew a bolt pistol to blast the Alpha Legionnaire in the faceplate. Persion guessed that Bylan's augmetic lungs had coped better with the trauma of void exposure than their organic ones. His recovery was far faster than theirs, but really this was taking too long. They should all be restored by now.
Persion was distracted as one of the last two Traitors standing came at him with a twisted knife. Persion snarled when he saw the turncoat's markings covered up a hacked out Ultima icon. His hatred surged to new heights as he realised that this betrayer had once been Ultramarine, the noble sires of the Storm Heralds themselves. This fiend had spat upon the finest of legacies, were there no lows that the Traitors would not sink to?
Persion swung his Friction-axe but the Traitor swayed back out of the way, then a counter strike scored over Persion's breastplate but fortunately failed to penetrate. Persion pulled back, waiting for his opportunity. Axe work was a delicate balance of speed and power, a dance of strikes where timing was everything; he had to wait for just the right moment to attack.
The Traitor hissed and lashed out but Persion deflected the blow with the flat of his axe and knocked the turncoat back. His boot flashed up and caught the Alpha Legionnaire dead centre, sending him flying. Persion saw his opening and was about to attack, intending to end this with one massive blow but then something totally unexpected happened, something that had never happened before.
A strange cramp seized Persion's guts and wracked his frame with debilitating spasms. His belly seized and stabbed sharp agony into his torso as his stomach clenched and tried to regurgitate its contents. Persion hadn't felt such weakness since his gene-forging and he had to fight the urge to double over in pain. The Traitor saw his moment of distraction and took advantage, diving in to score his twisted knife across Persion's helm. Persion threw his head back and barely avoided having his eye gouged out. His left hand trembled so he hurriedly switched his Friction-axe to his augmetic right hand. He let the Traitor's blow sweep past him then leaned in and swung the axe hard. It caught the Traitor in the crook of his neck and the red-hot axe seared through the ceramite, scything him apart. The ersatz Alpha Legionnaire fell to the ground in a gory heap and was at last still.
Persion had no time to celebrate though for his limbs were wracked with seizures and his guts were churning. He felt a wave of bile travelling up his throat and he felt a desperate urge to get his helm off. He reached up and fumbled with the clasps, jerky fingers unable to release the seals for long moments. Then at last it tore free, just as Persion fell to his knees and vomited up a stream of acidic bile that hissed upon the deck. Persion's hands went limp and his axe fell to the deck, he knew that he should be shamed by that, to lose one's weapon carried grave penance but he couldn't stop throwing up. Over and over Persion heaved up his guts, voiding his stomach until he was empty. He wiped his chin with the back of a hand and felt a rush of prickly heat across his forehead and an itchy burning in his eyes.
Persion's thoughts seemed to be coming slowly but he looked about the gun deck, seeing the other Storm Heralds similarly affected. Blue-clad warriors were strewn everywhere, with helms off as they heaved up their guts and collapsed under their own weight. They rolled on the floor, trembling and shaking like newborns, many had lapsed into unconsciousness and a few were thrashing like they were having seizures.
Persion had never seen anything like it, the Emperor had designed the Astartes to be strong and inviolate, this sort of weakness was alien to their nature. Nothing should be able to affect their gene-forged biology, never had they all been laid low at once and never by such strange symptoms. Everywhere Storm Heralds fell down, dropping their weapons and groaning weakly. Everybody had been affected; all of them save one.
Alone in a corner Brother Bylan fought on, duelling the last Traitor standing. He was alone, unsupported and yet he was undaunted. Bylan was unaffected that was significant Persion knew, but he couldn't quite get his mind to complete the thought, his brain seemed to be filling up with a muffling fog and his vision was narrowing. He watched as Bylan swung the Company Standard, the adamantium haft catching the fiend under the chin and knocking his head back. Quick as a flash Bylan shot the cur through the neck with his bolt pistol, letting the last Traitor fall down dead. Something told Persion he should be congratulating his Brother but right then nothing could have moved him from that spot.
Bylan looked about in confusion, seeing the Storm Heralds strewn about in various states of distress, he saw Captain Toran down on his hands and knees and ran over calling out in worry, "+Captain are you alive, what's going on?+"
Toran looked as bad as Persion felt but the Captain gritted his teeth and with a gurgling rattle spat two words, "Bio… Weapon."
Persion heard the words and somewhere in his sluggish mind he knew what they signified. An impulse told him he needed to relay the message, get the word out but he couldn't get his voice box to work, all he could do was hang onto the deck and fight to stay conscious. The world was spinning around him and Persion felt like he was back in space once more. Could it be, his addled mind pondered, had he been lost in the void. Was he even now drifting off into the darkness, his feverish mind conjuring illusions in its last moments?
It was at that moment that there was a roar from beside him and a sudden blur of movement. Persion looked over and saw Brother Pelial of Matheus' squad rear up, his hands locked about the gorget of his armour as if trying to rip it free. Pelial was screaming in agony, his face bored through by thick red veins which were turning black even as Persion watched. Pelial's eyes were bulging from their sockets, swelling and turning red as blood poured from his tear ducts.
Pelial screamed in a hoarse voice and clawed at his neck, then he choked on a glut of bile. Pelial convulsed helplessly, then he went limp and the light fled from his eyes. He fell over and hit the deck face first, already dead before he was even prone.
Persion knew he should be distressed but his emotions seemed to have stopped working. He was lost in a grey and bland world of muffling fog. As if from a great distance he heard Bylan shouting, "+Bio-hazard alert! All Storm Herald forces come in, I am declaring a Bio-hazard alert. Wherever you are, engage void-seals protocols immediately. Do it, do it now before you are affected!+"
But Persion wasn't listening anymore; the blackness of sleep was looming up within him and carrying him away to a place of dreamless slumber. He collapsed onto the deck, already falling into unconsciousness and in moments he was blind and deaf to this world.