The Sergeant stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, chainsword firmly held with both hands. With the throttle pulled back ever so slightly, the blades softly whirred – slow enough that each individual tooth was visible.
Behind the Sergeant raged the cracking sound of lasfire, the rush of a flamer, and the roar of a wounded Ork. Before him the hiss and slippery noises of abomination.
Across the shifting shadows of an industrial vent came the creature, slipping and sliding across the pitted and rusty decking. With rolling eyes and shuddered breaths, its bestial features carried a look of depraved pleasure. Its horrific pink tentacles slapped and dangled; it’s claws dragged and grated.
A lesser man would be afraid. A lesser man would run in horror. But the Sergeant gazed on with cold eyes. The sounds of his wounded men gave him no pause. The bellows of Orks did not caused him to flinch. Veteran of a hundred battles, witness to the galaxy’s most horrific sights, his gazes met the abomination with nerves of ferracrete and steel.
The creature ran to meet him, its own chainsword spinning to life with a shriek. The Sergeant pulled the throttle, thumbed the activator, and met it head on.
There’s is no elegance to a dual with chainswords – only brutality. Sparks flew and plasteel teeth shattered, sending shards of metal in all directions. The Sargeant brought his laspistol to bear, only to be thwarted by a sliding tentacle wrapping around his wrist and holding him firm. At the same time, the creature’s terrible claws extended to crush his leg, only to crack harmlessly against his bionic leg.
Locked in their violent struggle, neither combatant could gain the upper hand; the creature’s horrible mutations a full match for the Sergeant’s grizzled determination.
Cruel and tilted laughter burst from the Shadows, accompanied by quick feet and a lunging blade. The Sergeant turned ever so slightly to accomodate this new attacker, and was caught off guard.
This was all the creature needed. A slipping tentacle wrapped around the Sergeant’s neck, pulling him backwards onto the floor. The hilt of a chainsword thumped him in the face, crushing his nose. Before he could be taken captive, the Sergeant rolled towards the open ventilation shaft, dropping down into the decks below. . .
