‘Bio matter,‘ thought Lotros Annorax as he prodded at the brown plod on the hardened desert floor. ‘Fecal,‘ he confirmed as the steam emanating from the freshly dropped turd formed visible vapours in the cold air of the desert too far from any sun. Lotros was in the desert of Mefacteron Prime.

He was alone on Mefacteron Prime which was rare for a traitor Astartes of the Iron Warriors, but he had hedged his bets. His battle brothers would realise he was missing soon enough, and he would be censured for sure, however; if what he had suspected was on Mefacteron Prime actually was and he could return with the artefact intact. The Chaos Lords he bowed to would look upon him favourably and perhaps even grant his ascension. If only he could find it! 

As he continued on, he continued to find elements of the biomatter. More scat, a puddle of what he assumed was phlegm and some drops of blood. Lotros followed the trail until a solitary cave manifested before him upon the horizon. It was the only land marker he had seen since making planetfall, aside from the biowaste loosely littering the desert floor, which confirmed that he was not alone and that someone else was also hunting his quarry. Lotros sighed as he had no other option but to enter what he knew was a trap!

‘Show yourself Hexol,’ he bellowed into the guts of the cave as he ventured deeper and deeper. A massive ‘bwoom’ echoed throughout the chamber; the noise coming a second before the projectile hit its mark.

‘Thwack!’ Its mark was the Iron Warrior’s side. His armour hissed and sparked as a mixture of blood, oil and lubricants spattered from the wound.

‘Here I am,’ said Hexol as he slowly made an overhead chop with his plague blade, cutting deep into the space between the Iron Warrior’s pauldron and gorget.

‘The flesh is weak,’ said Lotros as he hacked upwards with his double-headed power axe. He made quick work of the limbs of the Death Guard, first going up and across, separating the Death Guard from his arms; then, whilst still on his knee, swung back around and severed the flesh at Hexol’s knees, leaving the Death Guard plague marine as nought but a stump within the cave. Hexol laughed as the Iron Warrior left him to stumble deeper into the cave. He had taken but a step when he realised his readouts were all over the place. 

‘You can’t find it without me,’ Hexol called out to Lotros. The little blob of rotting flesh was right and so the Iron Warrior turned back.

‘Why should I trust you?’ he asked. 

‘Because I’ve already lost and the grandfather’s garden is calling me,’ Hexol replied. 

‘Lead the way,’ he said and plunged his axe deep into the chest of the Death Guard blob, lifting him off the floor and brandishing him like a lamp before venturing deeper into the cave. 

Whether the inference was being caused by the warp or by the lack of a magnetic field on Mefacteron Prime, Lotros had no choice but to trust the Death Guard as he tried to keep a mental record of the twists and turns of the caverns and shafts they traversed. 

‘Almost there,’ Hexol slurred as a faint, red LED light blipped in the distance, slowly growing brighter but never getting bigger.

‘We’re here,’ he finally said as Lotros heaved him off the axe and onto the floor, focussing on the relic before him.

‘CB-618,’ he said. ‘Finally.’

Hexol groaned amongst the dirt and stones as the Iron Warrior stepped to the side of the Man of Iron and began to manipulate a control panel to gain command over the relic.

‘You can’t,’ said Hexol. ‘It won’t work,’ though his words were hollow and something about them erred Lotros. Their need for dialogue over, Lotros plunged his power axe deep into the back of the Death Guard’s head as brain matter sizzled across the live blade and filled the cavern with the aroma of barbecued rot. 

As if in response to the Iron Warrior’s violence, the Man of Iron suddenly whirred and before Lotros could turn around, his flesh had been filled with precisely placed bolt rounds and his cybernetics made selectively redundant by a controlled EMP burst. Hexol chuckled as the lights in the Iron Warriors visor blacked out and he slumped to his demise.

‘You’re welcome,’ said Hexol as CB-618 began to dismantle the Iron Warrior’s armour.

‘Objective complete. Our pact is over,’ said the Man of Iron from his distorted, pre-recorded script.

‘What good does it do me?’ asked Hexol.

‘The planet is yours,’ said CB-618 as he began to fasten the Iron Warrior’s armour to himself, leaving what little chunks of bionic matter still present in Lotros as wet chunks of meat crumbed in the grime of the cavernous floor.

‘The flesh is weak, ‘intoned CB-618 repeatedly in his robotic voice as the newly learned script played through a variety of pitches and distortions until finally mimicking that of the voice of Lotros.

‘You can’t hide yourself amongst them,’ said Hexol as his limbless body jittered and spasmed on the floor with the power axe still firmly lodged in his head. CB-618 said nothing as he turned and began to make his way past Hexol’s wounded and rotting torso stump. 

‘At least put me out of my misery!’ he called out to the Man of Iron. CB-618 said nothing and Hexol chuckled to himself as he noticed a trifling patch of rust forming precisely where his plague blade had penetrated the Iron Warrior’s armour when he had ambushed him in the cave.

‘Perhaps not so weak after all,’ he said to himself as the Man of Iron left him behind to perish in the cave, making his way to forge a future disguised as an Iron Warrior; if the entropy didn’t eat through him first!