The Flight of the Eisenstein Read Online Free PDF Page B

half metres tall, moving on three legs with three joints that radiated from their lower torsos like the spokes on a wheel. Apart from the extensile neck, the upper body of the aliens resembled the lower, but here the three limbs ended in hands with six digits.
    The egg-shaped head had deep-set, rheumy eyes and fleshy notches for a nose and mouth. They had skin like Terran lizards, all scales and tiny horns of bone. However, there seemed to be no such thing as a 'natural' jorgall. Every single example of the xenos species yet encountered and terminated by servants of the Imperium, from immature cubs to infirm elders, was modified with implanted devices or cybernetic proxy mechanisms. The slate showed oddities such as spring piston legs, feet replaced with wheels and rollers, knife claws, sheets of subdermal armour plating, telecameras inside optic cavities and even ballistic needier weapons nestled within the hollows of bones.
    The similarity in intent between the alien implants and the engineered organs that he possessed as an Astartes was not lost on Garro, but these were xenos, and they were invaders. They were nothing like him and as the Emperor had decreed, they were to be chastised for daring to venture into human space.
    Near to the sluggish waterline, a horde of clawed jorgalli, most likely some kind of hand-to-hand variant, hacked at a dreadnought from the Second Company. The venerable warrior had become bogged down in the chemical slurry at the lake's edge and Garro saw it spin on its torso axis, clubbing at them with a chainfist. A white flash fell from nowhere into the heart of the jorgall rippers and the captain heard Ignatius Gralgor bellow with wild laughter. Grulgor came to his feet surrounded by the xenos and threw back his head.
    The commander of the Second had gone barefaced; the foul air of the bottle-world did not concern him. In either hand he carried a regulation Mars-pattern bolter, and with delight, Grulgor unloaded them at point-blank range into the enemy.
    The sheer velocity of the shots chopped the jorgall into reeking gobbets of flesh, giving the dreadnought valuable seconds in which to extract itself. In moments, Grulgor stood at the centre of a circle of alien carcasses, vapor coiling from the barrels of his guns. The commander saluted the primarch, and flashed a sly, daring grin at Garro before moving on in search of new targets.
    'He's so artless, don't you think?' murmured Hakur. The esteemed Huron-Fal would have fought his own way out of that mess, but Gralgor wades in, more concerned about showing his mettle to the primarch than where best to spend his ammunition.'
    We're Death Guard. We're not supposed to be artists,' Garro retorted. 'We are craftsmen in war, nothing more, direct and brutal. We don't seek accolades and honours, only duty.'
    'Of course,' said the veteran mildly.
    Decius came bounding up to Garro, kicking away the corpse parts from his kill. 'Ugh. Do you smell that, sir? These things, their blood stinks.'
    The battle-captain didn't answer. He hesitated, his attention drifting, watching Mortarion in the thick of his cold fury. At the primarch's side, Typhon and the twin sentinels of the Deathshroud were whirling and culling, their manreapers moving unhindered through a milling, screaming pack of jorgall. The Death Lord himself had clearly deemed these inferior strains of xenos to be unworthy of his scythe, and instead was at work putting them to the light of his Lantern.
    Hard-edged white rays keened from the stub barrel of the huge brass pistol, leaving purple after-images on Garro's retina despite the enhancements of his modified eyesight. Wherever the Lantern's punishing beam struck, jorgall defenders became charcoal sketches, twisting, then turning to smoke.
    Mortarion reached into a hooting scram of aliens and ripped an injured man from their midst, batting them effortlessly away as he hauled the wounded Death Guard to safety. The primarch spared the man some unheard words