Chapter 241: A Complex Man (Patreon)

The firefight inside the corridor was brutal. Bolter shells screamed and detonated in ear-splitting bursts, their detonations rattling the walls. The air was thick with propellant smoke and the stench of burning ceramite. The passageway was flat and barren, with no cover whatsoever. The Astartes had no choice but to brace their armored shoulders against the onslaught, their ceramite pauldrons taking the brunt of the fire.

Grot was downed, one arm and one leg torn apart by explosive bolts. Yet even as his blood sprayed the walls, he had already unleashed the crushing might of the gravitic staff, obliterating an entire squad of enemy Terminators.

Only the life-preservation systems woven into his power armor saved him. The emergency protocols activated the moment he was struck: a "blink"-teleport pulled his shattered body behind the wall; a steel injector stabbed into his spine, flooding him with anesthetics and combat stims; emergency servos locked his torso rigid to prevent spinal collapse, while his severed stumps were flash-frozen to staunch the bleeding.

A field medic was already at his side, slamming a teleport beacon into the floor. Surgical mech-tools and augmetic replacements materialized with a crackle of energy, and the field operation set about the grisly work to keep Grot alive began.

Grey watched his old comrade lying unconscious, stunned for several heartbeats. For a moment, his vision blurred with guilt.

If he hadn’t entrusted Grot with the grav-staff… if he had restrained him from charging ahead… perhaps Grot wouldn’t be broken and bleeding now.

His daze twisted into fury. Grey hurled a beacon down the corridor.

The device glowed like a falling round in the dimly lit passage. Abaddon, the Despoiler himself, snatched it midair with the talons of Drach’nyen’s cursed twin, the Talon of Horus.

The beacon pulsed in the daemon-wrought gauntlet, tethered to the bioprocessor embedded in Grey’s skull. Anywhere within fifty meters of its radius could become a teleport strike point.

A shimmer of light and Grey burst into existence above Abaddon, chainblade already in motion.

The Despoiler saw him, but even he could not react in time. From behind him, Kossolax, standing at his Warmaster’s back, hurled his chainaxe in a vicious arc toward Grey.

At the very instant the weapon should have bitten into him, Grey phased out again, teleporting behind Kossolax, and as he tore free from the space he swung, severing the traitor’s right pauldron and arm in a single stroke.

“CURSED DOG!” Kossolax roared, the Butcher’s Nails thrumming inside his skull, driving him into a frenzy. He lashed wildly with his chain-axe, carving the air where Grey had already vanished again.

“Withdraw!” Abaddon bellowed, sweeping Drach’nyen in broad arcs. The daemon sword howled with every swing, though no foe stood within reach. It was a crude but effective defense, covering every angle, a desperate attempt to deny his teleporting foe an opening.

But Kossolax ignored the command. He was panting, blood-mad, eyes searching for the enemy, intent on rushing the corridor to spill blood until death claimed him.

As one of Angron’s sons, Kossolax bore the Nails and their screamed for slaughter. Even dulled by the passage of millennia, their cruel bite still drove him. His warband, too, were seized by that rising frenzy. They smashed into the Black Legionnaires at the front ranks, forcing them aside, charging down the tunnel into bolter fire.

“Obey the Warmaster!” Typhus snarled, bringing the haft of his manreaper down onto Kossolax’s helm. The blow rattled the Nails, jarring him back to some semblance of clarity.

Snarling, Kossolax whipped around and roared at his berserk subordinates, ordering them back. With ill grace, the Forsworn and their brethren pulled away.

The retreat was sounded. Soon Abaddon and his retinue broke from the corridor into a vast, open chamber.

When the firefight ceased, Grey reappeared beside the medics. He scanned Grot’s wounds through helm optics and confirmed, barely,  his old friend would live.

Grot stirred, leaning heavily in the arms of Lute, the Ogryn who served loyally at his side. His one remaining arm was mangled, three fingers severed by shrapnel. Yet he still clutched the grav-staff in a death grip.

“You should never have carried this,” Grey muttered, wrenching the bloodied relic from his friend’s grasp. He had intended for Grot to wield it only as a last resort, to buy himself a chance at survival. But Grot had charged ahead, striking first with suicidal zeal.

“Ha… ha ha ha…” Grot’s broken face lit with a savage grin. “Did you see it? Six Terminators! I killed six!”

Gaius stepped beside Grey and tugged him away, lowering his voice. “Your friend’s mind is... unsound. He courts death as if it were salvation.”

Grey nodded grimly. "How could a mentally healthy person give up his job repairing machinery for the Guard?”

He shook his head, bitter. Ten years had passed since Talon II, yet Grot had not changed. Still broken. Still suicidal.

Greyfax, ever the inquisitor’s eye, watched in silence, her gaze colder than the void. She thought the same as Gaius: there was something wrong in the man’s soul. Perhaps even corruption.

“Take your Colonel back to the planet,” Grey ordered Grot’s bodyguards coldly. “Your mission here is over.”

“I can still fight,” Grot rasped. Fresh augmetics hissed and clicked where limbs had been replaced. His voice carried no doubt.

“You’ll obey your superior,” Gaius loomed over him, towering like a living fortress, “Soldier.”

“I say let him stay,” Greyfax interjected suddenly. Her tone was unreadable.

“Back. Now.” Grey’s voice hardened to steel. He raised his arm; the scatter-laser integrated into his vambrace aimed straight at Grot. “This is an order. Disobey me and you know the punishment for disobeying orders.”

Grot met his gaze, utterly unafraid. He sank against the wall, breathing raggedly. “Then kill me.”

Grey faltered. Lowering his weapon, he tried again, this time with pleading. “Please… Leave. I’m begging you.”

But Grot only shook his head slowly. “They’re all dead.”

“What?” Grey frowned.

“The 44th Regiment. We rebuilt before Talon II. Now, ten years later, they’re gone again.”

The words came like a curse, spilling out of him in a fevered murmur. He clutched at his hair, anguish etched into every line of his face.

“I thought Cadia was the fiercest war I’d ever see. But on the Celestial Engine… I saw titans duel. As we materialized, I watched a Warlord’s volcano cannon fire. Emperor’s blood, it was like the eruption of a mountain. The blast shook worlds. And then... the return fire hit it mid-shot. The titan staggered. Its gun swung towards us…”

Grey’s gut sank. The 44th hadn’t fallen to Chaos blades or bolter fire. They had been annihilated by stray titan fire, reduced to ash in a battle between gods of war, dead before their boots even touched the ground. Only the Colonel and a ragged handful of bodyguards had survived.

No wonder Grot was breaking.

“This is war,” Gaius said grimly, his eyes distant. “Your gear is fine, yes. But against wars of this magnitude? It matters little. In the Great Crusade, my brothers and I, Legionaries, transhuman killers, were nothing more than tally marks, casualties ticked upward with the passing of hours. Even the Primarchs themselves could not stand alone against Titans. And Titans? Even they fall, regiment by regiment, in wars greater still. Has no one told you of the Titan Graveyards?”

He paused, then seized Grot by the scruff, hauling him to his feet. His tone was not cruel, but mercilessly direct. “If you are not ready to die, then go home. Go turn bolts in a manufactorum. You have no place commanding men.”

“He’s long been ready,” Grey cut in quickly. He wouldn’t let Gaius brand Grot a coward.

Because Grot was not. He was a contradiction.

He loved battle. He was always ready to die. But he was also gentle, sentimental, even kind.

Grey remembered Talon’s underhive. Grot had answered more distress calls than any other Thunderborn. After every victory, he would stand among the corpses, staring, murmuring: “If I’d come faster… if I’d killed quicker… maybe they would’ve lived. Maybe he’d see his family again instead of bleeding out in a crater.”

And Lute, the goodhearted Ogryn, trusted him. That said enough.

“I just want it to end,” Grot whispered, limping toward the passage’s edge.

“End what?” Grey asked.

“All of it.” Grot’s new augmetic legs caught rhythm, his limp fading.

Grey clenched his fists. Anger warred with sorrow. But in the end, he let him go, and together they advanced once more, hunting the Despoiler.