Chapter 284: The Duel, Part 5
The moment every screen in the Hive showed Kian losing, the moment the Captain's hand moved toward his terminal to call in the orbital strike, Kian decided the performance had run long enough.
The Aeldari warrior had her blade through his abdomen and was already thinking about which direction to drag it. One clean pull and she'd open him from side to side.
Her hand didn't move.
Kian's fingers had closed around her wrist like a hydraulic vice. The wraithbone armour groaned under the pressure. The blade was locked in place, buried in him, going nowhere.
She had one arm. She threw everything into breaking free. It wasn't enough.
Kian laughed. It was not a warm sound.
He tilted his head and let the helmet connector disengage. The faceplate swung loose and he shook it free, revealing his face to the cameras on the shuttle.
He glanced at the nearest lens. Spat a mouthful of blood. Arranged his expression: one part exhaustion, one part pain, one part iron resolve, seven parts absolute loyalty to something larger than himself.
Scene set. Time to end it.
He looked at her from centimetres away.
"You thought you could kill me, xenos? You thought I would lose? From the moment I accepted this duel, I knew I wouldn't. Ten million souls stand behind me. Ten million people your reactor killed. I carry their hatred for everything you are. How could I lose? How could I ever lose?"
He raised the power sword slowly.
And then something happened that Kian had not entirely planned.
The Emperor's psychic presence, the current that had been flowing through him since the blessing, reached down the blade. Golden fire bloomed along the sword's length with a sound like wind through a cathedral.
Nine billion viewers felt their hearts stop.
Every Imperial citizen alive had grown up with that image. The God-Emperor, wielding a blade wreathed in golden psychic flame. It was on every statue, every mural, every devotional banner in the Imperium. Gold-flamed weapons, gold eyes: these were the recognised marks of a soul the Emperor had personally touched.
The commentary booth went silent for a full three seconds. Then everyone started screaming at once.
In the Planetary Bishop's residence, a flustered aide burst through the door mid-document-review.
"Your Excellency. You need to see this. Right now."
Deep inside the Planetary Governor's Spire, in a room decorated with more gold and gemstone than some planetary treasuries, a heavy man reclined on a silk sofa, wine glass resting in ringed fingers, eyes fixed on a 240-inch screen.
Those eyes, which had not shown genuine interest in anything for a very long time, lit up.
"Well. Is that real Emperor's blessing, or a very good trick? A living saint? Or a very ambitious fraud?"
The Planetary Governor, who had not been seen in public for years, spoke to the screen quietly.
Back at the duel site, Kian held the Aeldari warrior's weapon arm locked with one hand and raised the golden blade high with the other.
"In the name of His Most Sacred Majesty! For every Imperial citizen you took from us! Die, xenos!"
The blade came down.
From her neck, through her collarbone, through her chest, through her torso, all the way down to her hip, the golden disruptor field cutting without resistance. Then he wrenched the blade sideways and pulled it free.
A spray of blood. The Aeldari warrior in two pieces: the upper half, still held at arm's length by his grip on her wrist, and the lower half, which fell and took most of her internal architecture with it onto the valley floor.
The Hive detonated.
Every speaker, every street, every hab-block on every level erupted simultaneously. The sound of ten billion people hitting the same emotional peak at once was something that had no comparison.
The PDF forces that had been advancing from their staging positions arrived at exactly this moment, hundreds of light vehicles, motorcycles, and armoured transports cresting the ridgelines and flooding the valley. Atmospheric fighters swept overhead in low passes.
As always, the cavalry arrived the moment the fighting was over.
Kian stood in the centre of it all, surrounded by converging headlights and rotor wash, and felt what it meant to have the full attention of an entire world.
He let the golden fire die on his blade.
Then he let the power sword drop.
He pressed one hand to the glaive still embedded in his abdomen, let his knees buckle, and went down.
Vehicles stopped. Soldiers poured out, formed a perimeter, weapons raised, protecting him from nothing. Rejuvenat physicians sprinted through the cordon with their equipment, reached him, and immediately began assessment. He was loaded onto a stretcher.
Journalists ran alongside with cameras the size of small artillery pieces.
Kian lay on the stretcher, one hand pressed around the blade still in his chest, and turned his head toward the nearest camera.
"The bounty. One hundred billion. Every single Agri-Scrip to the radiation patients. Every single one. Promise them. Tell them I said so."
He took a long, shuddering breath, tensed his core muscles, and vomited blood at the lens.
Then his eyes rolled back, his tongue lolled out, his legs went straight, and he performed the most committed dramatic death scene the forty-first millennium had witnessed in some time.
The physicians on scene lost all composure and began screaming at each other to do something immediately.
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