Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 108
Once more the sudden sensation of dizziness, a feeling of falling down a funnel and the crushing weight of a million gravities. He was being squeezed to death, unable to breathe, unable to think. Only this time he wasn't alone, there was something else in the nothingness, a hungry predator searching for him, eager to devour his soul. Raw terror filled his being as the Daemons of the Warp scented a living being passing through their realm. Vanderspeak was totally exposed, if they found him he would suffer a fate worse than death, but then the moment passed and he was elsewhere.
They crashed back to reality in a master bedroom, long since abandoned. Vanderspeak's knees hit musty carpet, followed a second later by his face. Dust flew up his nostrils and the scent of neglect filled his sinus. He coughed as his throat was scraped by dust mites and his larynx tightened instinctively. The room couldn't have seen a cleaner in a decade, the bed was drab brown with damp and the wallpaper was peeling off in ragged threads. Another sign of how lacking the Tellarites had become, but the decor was the least of their concerns.
Von Tor thrashed upon the floor, his spine arched in a rictus of agony. The Eversor's toxin dart was embedded in his shoulder, filling his veins with lethal concoctions. His eyes bulged and his teeth ground together so hard blood wept from his gums, as his shoulders and hips beat upon the carpet in a rapid tattoo. He was seconds away from death, and yet his hands clung to each other, desperately trying to grip one of his rings. He couldn't quite manage it, his hands quivered, but he pressed on, fighting with the fury of a dying man.
"Von Tor!" Vanderspeak cried as he tried to grab an arm.
"Gnnngggh!" the Disquisitor snarled in torment.
"Quit trashing," Vanderspeak hissed as he got a grip on the hand, "This ring yes, but what do I do?!"
"Hrrraaagh!"
Vanderspeak had to drop his weight onto the Disquisitor's chest to hold him down. The man couldn't stop thrashing but the General got his fingers around a bulbous ring and squeezed. A tiny needle shot upwards, sticking out like a pin from a cushion. Some form of antidote, perhaps, or maybe an even more lethal dose that would end his suffering. Either way it was better than this. Vanderspeak rammed his elbow down into the shoulder, heaved the arm back and drove the point into Von Tor's neck. The Disquisitor jerked wildly, eyes nearly popping out of his skull, but then he sagged and went limp.
Vanderspeak rolled off, waiting to see if the man was dead, but Von Tor's chest continued to rise and fall. He looked wasted, his strength spent, but he was alive. Whatever was in that ring had saved his life. Vanderspeak collapsed back, feeling his own heart pounding against his ribs. The rush of adrenaline was ebbing, leaving him cold and drained. Fearful memories came back in a torrent, the Eversor's assault, the carnage it left and the sheer speed of events. How long had the fight lasted, ten seconds, not even that. The Eversor had been beyond them in every way imaginable.
"My... thanks..." Vont Tor wheezed painfully.
"You are blessed your ring contained a cure," Vanderspeak gulped.
"Not luck," Von Tor grunted, "Distilled Varsine cranial fluid, able to regenerate one of their warriors even when almost dead. I lost a hundred agents to a Bloodflock to get that single dose. Thought I'd save it for when I was an old man, but I'm glad I kept it near."
Vanderspeak turned his head to take in the room, "We're among the highest levels."
"Then it won't be long till the Eversor catches up," Von Tor grunted.
"My father," Vanderspeak guessed.
"The final target."
"I have to warn him."
"You won't make it alive, here take the Displacer field, it should have one more charge left," Von Tor offered.
The Disquisitor slipped a bulbous ring off his middle finger and held it out. Vanderspeak grabbed the ring and slipped it onto his left hand. Von Tor was too weak to walk but the General heaved himself to his feet and staggered to the door. The cold aftertaste of spent adrenaline left him feeling unstable as a newborn, his feet blocks of ice, but he forced himself on. The danger was not past and he had no illusions that the remaining defenders could stop an Eversor.
He stumbled out into a corridor and ran as best he could. Every step felt laggard and slow, but his muscles remembered their strength and he soon picked up speed. He was far outside the parts of the High Plutocrat's dwelling still in use, and the dilapidated state of the palace was far worse than the sections he'd seen, but this was no time to despair over rotting furnishings.
Down a once grand staircase and he finally found people. A knot of bureaucrats, medicaes and officiants, lingering about in terror. He cast about for a genuine soldier but found not a one, merely useless holy men, political leeches and flatterers with more money than talent. Throne damn it, this was no defence at all.
"Where are the guards?!" Vanderspeak barked.
"General?!" the crowd squawked, "Where did you come from? What's happening?! We heard nothing!"
"Never mind that, where are my father's guards?!"
"They went forth to protect us," a priest in in gilded hat informed him.
"Then they're dead already, quickly into the bedchamber. Now!"
His tone forced the crowd into motion and they piled through a broad double door. A sumptuous bedchamber lay beyond, broad and with a window that boasted a commanding view of the isthmus. The decor hadn't decayed nearly so much within, and Vanderspeak was glad of it. He slammed the doors shut and dragged a heavy couch over, jamming it against the frame.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Horace barked from a bed broad as a Chimera transport was long.
"We need to brace this door, you lot stop gawping and drag all the furniture over."
"Tell me what's happening now Throne-dammit!"
"The High Lords have sent an assassin to kill you, it's already wiped out Holorus command to the last man and all our highest staff officers."
Horace blanked for a second then barked, "Stop lollygagging and get that damned furniture piled up!"
The useless lackeys busied themselves dragging seats, cabinets and stone busts, forming a rude barricade. Vanderspeak was under no delusion the tangle would stop the Eversor but the heap might just slow it down. His Inferno Pistol had hurt it already, if he could pin it for a mere second then a clean hit might finish the job. One shot, God-Emperor, that was all he needed.
Barely had the last chair been thrown on the pile when the door rang with an almighty blow. The crowd shrank back in terror as Vanderspeak levelled his pistol. Again the door rang and the piled furniture shivered, toppling a stone bust of Severcole's grandfather to the floor. Everyone trembled as the doors boomed a third time, then silence, mysterious baffling silence.
Horace was fumbling with a Xenoslock pistol he'd pulled out from under his pillow, he couldn't stand but he grumbled, "Always thought they'd come for me in my bed, damned cowards."
"Where'd it go?" Vanderspeak muttered as he tracked his aim across the door.
"The guards probably scared it off."
"I don't think it can be scared, if it's not coming through the door then..."
Before he could finish his sentence the window exploded inward. A thrown melta-charge blasted the armourglass, weakening it enough for the Eversor to swing bodily about, smashing through feet first. Flying glassic shards diced two officials standing near the blast and they went down screaming. A woman in a healer's tunic had her spine shattered as booted feet slammed into her and the Eversor landed on top, crushing her ribs into the marble floor.
The crowd panicked but there was nowhere to flee. The Eversor had holstered its pistol and held the sword in the free hand, lashing out in a blur of bloodshed. A man was stabbed in the back of the head, the gleaming point emerging from his mouth like a silver tongue, before being whipped out. A boot to a belly ruptured internal organs, dooming a man to die vomiting black bile. A lateral slice of the sword removed a jaw entirely, a thrust with the clawed gauntlet injected potent neurotoxins into another and a closed punch to a head reduced a skull to mush. Most curious was the woman who received an almost gentle chop to the jugular, she looked unharmed but wilted anyway in death. The Eversor had sent a blood clot right into her brain, killing her with an aneurysm.
Vanderspeak tried to track the assassin, yearning for a clear shot. It was a fool's hope. The Eversor was in the middle of the crowd, eviscerating men and women with disgusting ease. Images Vanderspeak knew would be etched into his dreams played out in seconds, but he held his aim steady. He knew what had to be done, God-Emperor forgive him, there was no other choice. Everyone was dead anyway, so he lined up his shot and fired.
Concentrated melta-fire struck a priest in the back and flash-fried him to vapour, another man lost an arm and a woman in rich attire was burned alive as her robes caught fire, but for all that their bulk did little to dissipate a beam intended to penetrate plasteel. The beam tore through the crowd and clipped the Eversor, searing bodyglove and layers of skin from its frame. He'd hurt it, he'd actually hurt it, but now he had to survive.
Vanderspeak threw himself aside a second before the Eversor grabbed a screaming cleric and hurled him at the General. Too slow he evaded, too damned slow, the pair collided and went down in a tangle of limbs. Vanderspeak hit the floor on his back, arm outstretched. He saw the Eversor coming at him, a blur of black and silver, intent on his death and silent as a gravestone. A heartbeat left to act, so Vanderspeak did the only thing he could, he squeezed the trigger and fired flat.
The fusion beam ripped across the floor, melting marble and vaporising stone. The Eversor's foot came down a heartbeat later, punching into the molten mess with inhuman force, breaking through the surface and plunging downwards. Fickle mischance, the kind of freak circumstance that can only occur on the battlefield saw the Assassin's leg crash down to the hip, leaving it sprawled awkwardly in a split pose. The coal eyes flashed, the hands came down to right itself, in a moment it would spring back into action, but then a purple streak of energy punched into its chest. The Eversor rocked back, wounded badly then a second and a third beam lanced into its mass.
"Take that you knave!" Horace yelled from the bed.
Severcole pushed the heavy body off his legs, "Father?"
"Thought you could take me on did you, ha! I can still shoot straight!"
"Is it dead?"
"No man can cross me and live, I'll send a message to Tera they better try harder next time!"
"Father, I don't think we're safe yet."
The Eversor was fatally wounded, but this possibility had been predicted by the cold minds that wrought it. Failing biological processes unleashed chemical byproducts, blindingly corrosive and terrifyingly potent. Exotic compounds fashioned by mad genius met the alchemical technosorceries already pumping through its veins, boosting combustibility to insane degrees. Cruel spite and relentless logic had allowed for only one outcome should an Eversor fall in the execution of its mission, a sure way to ensure the secrets of the clade remain inviolate and that those who brought it down would not live to tell the tale.
The Eversor juddered, shaking out of control as its head whipped about in distress. Fingers melted off, skin burned from within and a red glow leaked around the seams of the skull-helm as its brain caught fire. Bones dissolved into goo, adding carbon to the slurry and fat sloughed off and mixed with the synskin of the bodyglove, making an explosive compound unique in the galaxy. Vanderspeak turned to yell for his father to run, but it was too late, the Eversor exploded like an artillery shell going off, incinerating everyone within the chamber. The High Plutocrat died in his bed, his career as an interstellar conqueror ending in ignominious humiliation. Severcole Vanderspeak however did not see it the Displacer field whisked him away an instant before the blast overtook him, flinging him across the surface of the warp, far from his failure.