Chapter 305: You Lot Are the Worst I've Ever Had to Lead
A Primarch was an entity to be feared. The dread they inspired was like a series of cold steel needles, driven one by one into the very marrow of your bones.
Unlike those warriors whose heads were filled with notions of honour, who dared to challenge a Primarch on a personal level, and unlike those fools drunk on the power of Chaos who were arrogant enough to believe they could shake a demigod, Khârn possessed a crystal-clear understanding of what a Primarch was.
It was not fear, but a lucid awareness. The instinctual tremor of a creature facing its natural predator. He had seen these beings, whose power transcended mortal comprehension, crush half a galaxy and extinguish stars. A Primarch was not an opponent. A Primarch was a natural disaster, the scythe of fate itself.
Thus, when a Primarch was about to arrive, retreat was not only an option, it was the correct one.
So when the first ripples disturbed the Empyrean, when the veil of reality was torn by an unseen hand and the attendant sorcerers began to shriek at the approaching golden light, Khârn's nerves were drawn taut as a bowstring. His first instinct was to inform his so-called allies, who were still busy reveling in their plunder.
"My brothers—"
Before he could finish, the agony of the Butcher's Nails exploded in his mind once more. It felt as if someone had driven a red-hot iron spike into his brainstem and was now twisting it with savage glee. Khârn's knuckles cracked as he clenched his fists. His vision swam with layers of clotted blood, and every muscle fought the overwhelming urge to tear itself apart.
The Butcher's Nails! Those barbaric contraptions from Nuceria, the leashes used by slave masters to tame their beasts. Once implanted, they became irrevocably fused with the brain, lashing their host with a whip of neurochemicals, rewarding bloodshed and punishing cowardice until the soul was reforged into a perfect vessel for slaughter. And after Angron's daemonic ascension, the Nails had become a shadow from which no World Eater could ever truly escape. The esoteric sorceries of the warp could raise the dead and regrow flesh from bone—Khârn himself had witnessed Lucius the Eternal reborn from the body of a slave after being utterly annihilated by ship-board macrocannons—but every single attempt by a World Eater to remove the Nails had ended in failure.
No one could escape the Blood God's grasp now. No one could inflict more suffering upon their own sons than Angron had.
Khârn's resentment seethed within his skull, his blood boiling with rage. The Butcher's Nails hummed with satisfaction, a sated parasite making a wet, gurgling sound amidst his pain.
"Lord Regent!" At his side, Shalok the Skull-Taker, one of his lieutenants, grinned with sadistic glee, spittle dripping from his chin like a slavering hound. The warriors of the World Eaters were exquisitely sensitive to emotion, a trait that often drove them into a berserk frenzy on the battlefield. It also, however, created a unique cohesion that had once earned them the praise of even the Lord of Iron, Perturabo. On the battlefield, they were butchers who followed orders without question. Off the battlefield, they were kennel-hounds, placidly awaiting the next conflict, obedient only to their master's will. They were the Legion that had won the admiration of even the exacting Lord of Iron.
Once.
Shalok's gaze roamed over the mortal slaves on the bridge, even lingering on the Warsmith responsible for maintaining the ship's command nexus. He had sensed Khârn's anger, but possessed none of his leader's restraint. Only the frenzy catalyzed by the Nails boiled in his veins.
Khârn rose to his feet. His body bore few of Chaos's blessings, yet it was an iron wall that now stood between the Skull-Taker and his prey, blocking his bloodthirsty gaze. A flicker of lucidity returned to Shalok's eyes. Though he was far larger than the Regent before him, his muscular frame capable of engulfing the other in shadow, his posture was that of a slave looking upon his master. The violent rage within him was suppressed by something deeper, something older.
After exchanging a glance with the Warsmith, who remained impassively manipulating the ship's controls, Khârn raised a trembling hand, forced it into a fist, and brutally crushed the urge to kill.
"Use the open channel," he commanded, ignoring Shalok's frustrated growl. "Driven by our common purpose—" He paused, the taste of blood in his throat. "It is time to withdraw."
The Conqueror obeyed. The iron leviathan slowly turned its prow, its engines spewing a sickly, violet-red exhaust. The three captured Ramilies-class Starforts, chained to it like slaves, were dragged through the void, scarring the emptiness of space.
Khârn's gaze swept past the viewports. The ghostly blue silhouettes of the Night Lords fleet moved like deep-sea predators, while the filth-caked, dark green ships of the Death Guard lurked further out. Most of the warbands were already crowded onto their returning gunships, impatiently counting their spoils. From time to time, disputes over loot would erupt into firefights, the transport craft and gunships exploding into silent fireworks in the void. Light cruisers were firing on one another, attempting to settle their arguments through force.
Click… click…
The Butcher's Nails throbbed. But Khârn ignored the sensation. One gets used to it.
He had no illusions about his control over these disparate forces. He held them together with a careful balance of reward and threat, trying to make them as useful as possible. It was something he had always excelled at.
"Go to the fighting pits and claim your reward," Khârn said to his lieutenant, no longer able to tolerate the hungry snarls at his side. Though confident in his own martial prowess, Khârn had to admit that these beasts, who had completely surrendered to their desires, were formidable in one-on-one combat. And in the treacherous world of Chaos warbands, he needed a strong lieutenant to ensure his safety.
"Yes, Lord Regent." The Skull-Taker swallowed the saliva that had pooled in his mouth and turned towards the great maw in the bridge that led to the pits. They followed Khârn because he always rewarded their loyalty with blood. On the knife's edge between risk and reward, Khârn was a master of balance.
"Khârn." A voice crackled over the command channel. Khârn shifted his gaze. It was a Chaos Lord, the master of this particular Night Lords warband. "I want ownership of one of the starforts."
The greedy declaration made everything clear. It explained why the Night Lords' fleet had disengaged so quickly, and why they were now closing on the Conqueror like sharks that had scented blood.
A cold smirk touched Khârn's lips. "These are spoils of war for Lord Perturabo. I will present them to him, and the great Primarch will decide their disposition."
Before the words had even faded, the Conqueror itself let out an eager war-cry. Its macro-cannon batteries opened like hungry maws, and the hum of its charging lance weapons vibrated through the deck plates. The iron beast was already displeased with the hasty retreat; now it was itching to tear something apart to vent its fury.
But the Night Lord was not one to be deterred by a simple verbal threat. As the Butcher's Nails began to squeeze the nerves in his brain, Khârn slammed his fist onto the armrest of his throne, the armoured knuckles denting the adamantium surface. His roar echoed across the bridge: "Kill that ship, Conqueror."
The Conqueror roared and opened fire. The shells, trailing comet-like tails of energy, each possessed the power to destroy a city. Void shields evaporated before them like morning dew, and armour plate was pierced as easily as parchment.
The target was a Retribution-class heavy cruiser. Its eight-kilometer-long hull was a patchwork of repairs, the scars of a thousand years of war having long since deviated from its original Martian template. Every seam of its armour told a story of countless refits, its surface covered in scars and grafted-on weapon emplacements. Seventy thousand souls toiled in its iron belly: servitors, slaves, crew, and, as was the tradition of the Night Lords, about a hundred of the blue-armoured bringers of fear. They were probably sharpening their blades for the next boarding action, or pleasing the Dark Gods with the screams of their victims.
Its death lasted less than a minute. Each of the Conqueror's salvos tore away huge chunks of its superstructure. The reactor bay was the first to go, and a chain reaction of explosions ripped along its keel, tearing the entire vessel into a burning wreck.
Khârn stared at its icon on the blood-pool display as it was annihilated by the Conqueror's overwhelming firepower. No ship dared to provoke a Gloriana.
"If you persist in your greed, Lord," Khârn said, his gaze turning to the Chaos Lord who was still on the open comm-link. The blood-pool rippled, reflecting the image of an even larger warship. It was a trophy they had taken from the Imperium in the last system, a Retaliator-class battleship, granted to the Night Lords as a reward for their allegiance. "I will be forced to reclaim my gift."
He had no desire to waste blood on the foolishness of his allies, but such was the law of Chaos warbands: chaotic, greedy, and short-sighted. These beasts, bred by the Dark Gods, always placed personal plunder above strategy. Their slaughter-filled skulls only understood how to submit to a greater violence. And now, Khârn had to speak to these greedy worms in the only language they understood.
What I have given, I can also take away. My blade is not yet dull.
"…" The Chaos Lord on the other end of the comm-link fell silent. He had clearly not anticipated Khârn's threat to be so direct, so… reasonable. Yes, very reasonable. After a long pause, he finally spoke, his voice tight with suppressed anger and grudging submission. "I accept your decision."
And so, a confrontation steeped in the very essence of Chaos came to an end. Khârn clenched his jaw, forcing the murderous rage boiling in his skull back into the cage of his neural implants, and settled back onto his adamantium throne. If he could have, he would never have allowed a glorious heavy cruiser to be destroyed like that. But Chaos, and the fools who served it, had shown him through their actions that he had no other choice.
He stared at the blood-pool, at the icons of the Dark Mechanicum still dawdling, the World Eaters still slaughtering, the Emperor's Children still extracting pain from their mortal victims.
Click… click…
The Butcher's Nails began to throb again, uncontrollably.
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