Table of Contents

Cover

With Baited Breath – Extract

Legal

eBook license

With Baited Breath

George Mann

The corpse was staring at him from across the floor of the ruined acropolis. Its one remaining eye was yellowed and fixed, and Trooper Sergei Asdic thought he could still see the terror etched into the dead man’s expression, his mouth set in a rictus howl.

Could the dead still judge? Perhaps they could. Sergei couldn’t help but feel his fallen comrade was somehow appraising him as he lay there, watching him die. Wondering how he had ended up dead, while he was still – just about – drawing breath. Perhaps that was just wishful thinking on his part, ascribing some modicum of continued existence to the deceased. He supposed he’d find out, soon enough.

He was slumped against a heap of fallen masonry, his now-useless legs splayed out before him. He was beginning to feel light-headed, now, and everything had taken on a slightly unreal aspect. He coughed, and bubbles of bright blood burst on his lips. The movement made his belly spasm in pain, and his hands went involuntarily to the site of his suppurating wound. He moaned as he attempted to shift himself, in order to better prop himself up and minimise the bleeding. Not that it would do him much good. He knew he was beyond saving now, even if there had been anyone there to help.

Around him, the acropolis was littered with the deceased. His corpse would soon be one among many – just another anonymous statistic, nameless in death. He almost wished the Plague Marine had finished him off swiftly, like the others. That way, at least he wouldn’t have to sit there awaiting the inevitable, wracked with pain and fear.

Sergei surveyed the remains of his fallen comrades, a sea of limbs upon the broken flagstones. In their midst was the enormous, festering corpse of the Plague Marine, its outstretched fist still clutching the blade that had pierced his guts only a short while earlier. Its power armour was rusted and broken, its necrotic, bloated flesh pushing out through the cracks and seams like malleable, festering putty. Its helmet was half corroded where its acid breath had chewed large chunks in the vents. The head was lolling to one side, almost separated from the shoulders by a fortuitous, desperate shot from Sergei’s lasrifle. Strange circular symbols had been daubed on its shoulder plates in livid green paint, and maggots still picked their way through its exposed, blackened entrails. The stench was nauseating. Sergei averted his eyes.

Behind the bloodied litter of the dead, above the jagged teeth of the shattered wall, the sky was the colour of burnished gunmetal, as if the war raging below had in some way scorched the very air itself.

The distant howl of projectiles and the scream of rending plasteel told him that the battle still raged on outside the strange, tomblike atmosphere of the acropolis. He would not see it end, but he knew that he had done his duty, and that the drop pods which had fallen from the sky only a few hours earlier had brought not only reinforcements, but hope of salvation. The Emperor’s finest warriors had come amongst them, thundering out of the void itself, and they would drive the foul taint of Chaos from Andricor and the entire Sargassion Reach. He took comfort in that, at least. Andricor had not been forsaken.

Sergei sensed movement and turned his head toward it, wincing as the motion set off another burst of pain in his guts.

There was no one there. He fumbled by his side, his fingers searching out the barrel of his lasrifle. He snatched it up, placing it across his lap.

‘Who’s there?’ he asked. ‘Show yourself!’

Click here to buy 'With Baited Breath'.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published as an audio drama in 2012.
This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

© Games Workshop Limited 2012, 2015. All rights reserved.

Black Library, the Black Library logo, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy logo, The Horus Heresy eye device, Space Marine Battles, the Space Marine Battles logo, Warhammer 40,000, the Warhammer 40,000 logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated brands, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer 40,000 universe are either ®, ™ and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2015, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world.
All rights reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78251-682-8

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 You attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.