Chapter 280: The Duel
Three hundred kilometres south of Hive Tenebris, beyond the maximum effective range of the Hive's defensive artillery, lay one of the few genuine mountain ranges on the planet: dense terrain, high ridgelines, narrow valleys.
The Aeldari warrior had accepted the challenge the moment it was issued. She didn't trust humans. She never had. But with every one of her companions dead, continuing to run operations inside the Hive served no purpose. Better to go and meet this human fighter. If she died, at least she'd take the killer with her. If she was fortunate, she might reclaim the soul stones.
She ran the entire distance without sleep, covering three hundred kilometres in two days, and arrived at the designated location ahead of schedule.
She didn't rest. Despite her exhaustion she immediately began scouting.
Her concerns were two: a large PDF force concealed in the surrounding terrain, or an air strike timed to coincide with the duel. She worked methodically through the mountain terrain and found neither.
Kian had chosen well. The valley floor was accessible only through narrow passes that would bottleneck any large formation before it got within striking distance. From the high ground she currently occupied she had clear sightlines across every approach for kilometres in every direction. Any PDF regiment moving toward this location would be visible long before it arrived. And the density of the surrounding forest and the abundance of cover slopes meant that if aircraft did appear, she could be inside the treeline before any ordnance reached her.
The location had been chosen to make her willing to show up. She had shown up. She surveyed the site thoroughly, found nothing to object to, and settled onto a high ridge to wait.
When the sun came up on the third day, she heard engines.
From the direction of the rising sun, an Aquila-pattern shuttlecraft came in low and landed on a flat stretch of ground at the base of the valley.
The moment it touched down, every hatch and access panel opened simultaneously: engine bay, cockpit, cargo ramp, crew compartment, all of it flung wide, the interior of the craft fully exposed to open air.
A single figure in full power armour walked out, power sword at his hip, and stood quietly beside the shuttle. Waiting.
"So you've come, human."
She didn't move from her position. She kept watching.
Several large broadcast cameras were mounted on the shuttle's exterior hull, linked into the Hive's public network, transmitting the duel live to every screen in Tenebris. Through her helmet's receiver she could pick up the feed herself. Several presenters were narrating the empty valley, noting that the human champion had arrived but the xenos had not yet appeared. One of them suggested, with barely concealed glee, that the xenos must have lost her nerve.
Down below, the armoured figure had started shouting insults toward the treeline.
"Cowardly xenos! I'm here! Come out and face your death! I'll take your head with this blade!"
She ignored the taunts and kept circling. She moved through the forest in a wide arc around both the shuttle and the armoured figure, watching for any sign of concealed troops or devices inside the craft. The shuttle remained fully open throughout. She found nothing.
What she found instead were the cameras, feeding everything live to nine billion viewers.
The presenters were growing visibly bored. Yawns were audible. One of them remarked that the xenos appeared to have been frightened off by Baron Voss's mere presence.
Still she waited. The armoured figure below eventually stopped shouting and sat down on the ground, resting quietly.
She ran another sweep of the high ground, extending her scan to cover the surrounding terrain for tens of kilometres. Still no large formations. Still no aircraft.
Everything pointed to exactly what it claimed to be: a fair fight with no hidden variables.
Then the armoured figure stood, kicked a stone across the valley floor, and activated his helmet's external vox.
"When the last light leaves the sky tonight, I crush another soul stone."
The rage came instantly. She drew her power glaive, activated the disruptor field, and moved.
She didn't come straight at him. She swept wide, cutting through the trees at speed, coming around toward the nose of the shuttle, approaching from behind the armoured figure. In the low amber light of dusk she was nearly invisible: fast, and completely silent, moving like a breath of still air.
She hit the valley floor running, drove her feet into the ground, and launched upward.
Her body turned in the air, flipped, and her boots came down on top of the shuttle with a sound that was almost nothing. The wraithbone soles had softened slightly on impact, absorbing the landing. She was on the hull and moving before the vibration had time to travel.
One more bound from the shuttle's roof, and she was airborne again, powering down toward the armoured figure at the rear of the craft.
The power glaive came up. Disruptor field at maximum output. A single stroke, downward, fast enough to split the armour from shoulder to hip before any response was possible.
The blade connected.
She felt the rush of a clean kill.
Then her eyes went wide.
The armoured figure shattered rather than split. No blood, no flesh, no resistance beneath the plate. Just a cascade of mechanical components clattering across the ground: servo-motors, armour panels, wiring harnesses, spreading across the dirt like a smashed machine.
Power armour with nothing inside it. A shell.
She was already turning to run when the shot hit her.
A massive las-bolt, superheated far beyond standard rifle output, struck her centre mass and detonated on impact, hurling her through the air.
Three hundred metres away, wedged into a hollow behind a pile of broken rock, Kian lay prone in his Infiltration Reactive Power Armour, the looted Aeldari shadowfield cloak draped over him, both hands on the grip of an oversized sniper lasrifle connected by a thick cable to a dedicated power pack on his back.
The muzzle was glowing red from the inside out, wisps of smoke curling from the barrel.
That single shot had consumed a third of the power pack's total charge.
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you