Chapter 60: I'm Just Gonna Keep Slashing
The coward ran. He scrambled through the dark, his breath hitching in his throat, desperate to find his teammates who were flanking from the left.
He had seen Kian Voss transform into a literal daemon of the blade. He'd watched a teammate's head split like a ration-can and another's neck spray red mist. The logic of greed had been replaced by the primal urge to hide.
He reached the shadows where the three-man flanking team was supposed to be. These three had been moving with "Stealth-Crawl" discipline, trying to mask their heavy footsteps against the metal floor. They heard a sudden, heavy thudding of boots from behind and spun around, weapons raised.
In the dim emerald glow of a distant bubble-lamp, they saw a panicked silhouette.
"Oi! What are you doing?" one of them hissed. "We're supposed to be surrounding the sniper!"
The coward didn't answer. He just stood there, swaying, his eyes bulging and his face the color of a dead man's.
The three scavengers squinted, trying to make out his expression. As he shuffled closer into the light, their hearts dropped.
Kian Voss was standing directly behind the coward, the Antique Longsword pressed firmly against the man's throat.
The three gangers froze. Before they could even scream, Kian's hand moved in a brutal, horizontal blur.
SQUELCH.
The blade tore through the coward's windpipe and carotid arteries. A fountain of hot, metallic-smelling blood erupted. Kian didn't wait for the body to hit the floor. He used the dying man as a springboard, vaulting over his shoulder and lunging at the nearest scavenger.
He drove the point of the longsword forward.
The steel entered the scavenger's abdomen and exited through his lower back. It was a "clean" thrust—no bone, just soft tissue. Kian didn't linger; he twisted the blade and yanked it out, the sound like a wet boot being pulled from the mud.
The man collapsed, clutching his spilling guts, and Kian whirled on the remaining two.
They were fast, but they were humans. Kian was a stimm-boosted juggernaut with 19 Strength. One scavenger swung a rusted machete with everything he had, hoping to catch Kian in the neck. Kian met the strike with the flat of his own blade.
CLANG!
The impact showered the dark with sparks. The scavenger's arms went numb from the feedback, his weapon vibrating out of his grip. Kian followed through with an upward slash that carved a jagged red line across the man's face, splitting his nose and one eye-socket.
The man dropped his weapon and fell back, his screams echoing through the warehouse.
The final member of the squad saw his opening. He held a heavy-duty iron pipe and swung it in a two-handed overhead arc toward Kian's head.
"DIE, YOU BASTARD!"
Kian didn't have time to parry. He ducked his head and arched his back, presenting his most heavily armored and muscled section to the blow.
THOOM.
The pipe slammed into Kian's shoulder blade. Even through the Grade-3 Flak armor, the force was immense. Kian felt his scapula shatter. A normal man would have been paralyzed by the shock.
But Kian was under the effects of the Pain-Suppression Stimm. He felt a dull, distant thud, as if someone had poked him with a finger.
He spun around and delivered a horizontal cleave. The relic blade bit deep into the scavenger's bicep. If the man hadn't twisted away at the last second, Kian would have taken the arm off. Instead, it was a massive, gapping wound that sent blood cascading down the man's side.
These were Underhive dregs. They fought for scraps, not glory. Seeing their "leader" gutted and their friends mutilated, the remaining two broke. The man with the ruined face scrambled away into the dark, wailing like a lost soul.
Kian let out a cold, cynical laugh. "Running just drains your stamina bar, kid!"
He exploded into a sprint, his boots pulverizing the dust as he hunted the survivor through the maze of containers.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the sector, the other three-man flanking team had reached Kian's original position.
They heard the gunshots, they heard the screams, but they didn't care. In the Underhive, there is no such thing as "Battle-Brothers." There is only "Me and the Loot."
They rounded the blue container and froze.
"Throne's mercy..." one of them whispered.
Lying on the floor was the Long-pattern PDF Sniper Rifle, a massive hiking pack, and a smaller tactical satchel.
Greed instantly overrode their caution. They sprinted for the gear. One man, faster than the others, scooped up the rifle and immediately turned it on his companions.
"Back off!" he snarled. "This is mine! This is a ticket to a gang-lord's table!"
The other two raised their hands, their eyes darting to the bags.
"Fine, fine! You take the Hand-of-God rifle," the second man said, lunging for the large pack. "I'll take the heavy stash."
The third man, a skinny scavenger, grabbed the small bag. "I've got the kits!"
They didn't waste a second. They had the prize. They didn't care about the sniper or their friends. They turned and sprinted for the exit—a jagged breach in the warehouse wall that led back to the Safe Zone.
They reached the breach, panting and laughing with the fever of the "Big Score." But as they stepped toward the opening, their laughter died.
Lined up in a neat, perfect row across the threshold of the exit were seven heads.
Seven bloody, raggedly severed heads. They were the faces of their teammates—the coward, the gut-shot leader, the face-slashed warrior... all of them.
The three thieves recoiled, the man with the sniper rifle fumbling to bring the heavy barrel up.
Flick.
The sound of a lighter echoed in the silence.
In a dark corner near the heads, a small flame flickered into life. It illuminated a man drenched in gore, leaning casually against a crate. He had a Lho-stick in his mouth and a gleaming, bloody longsword resting across his lap.
Kian Voss exhaled a long cloud of blue smoke. He looked at the three men holding his gear and gave them a terrifyingly wide grin.
"I told you lot once," Kian said, his voice a rasping growl. "In the Underhive, compared to me... you're all just Little Girls."
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