Dan Abnett - First and Only

'Don't be a fool! You've got this wrong! This isn't about some stupid regimental rivalry!'

'I have?'

'Think hard, fool! Think why this might really be happening! I want you to understand why you are about to die!' The weight of the blade against his throat shifted slightly. It didn't lessen its pressure, but there was a momentary alteration in the angle. Gaunt knew his comments had misdirected his adversary for a heartbeat.

His only chance. He struck backwards hard with his right elbow, simultaneously pulling back from the blade and raising his left hand to fend it off. The knife cut through his cuff, but he pulled clear as his assailant reeled from the elbow jab.

Gaunt had barely turned when the other countered, striking high. They fell together, limbs twisting to gain a positive hold. The wayward blade ripped Gaunt's jacket open down the seam of the left sleeve.

Gaunt forced the centre of balance over and threw a sideways punch with his right fist that knocked his assailant off him. A moment later the commissar was on his feet, drawing the silver Tanith blade from his belt.

He saw his opponent for the first time. The navy rating, a short, lean man of indeterminate age. There was something strange about him. The way his mouth was set in a determined grimace while his wide eyes seemed to be… pleading? The rating flipped up onto his feet with a scissor of his back and legs, and coiled around in a hunched, offensive posture, the knife held blade-uppermost in his right hand.

How could a deck rating know moves like that? Gaunt worried. The practised movements, the perfect balance, the silent resolve – all betrayed a specialist killer, an adept at the arts of stealth and assassination. But close up, Gaunt saw the man was just an engineer, his naval uniform a little tight around a belly going to fat. Was it just a disguise? The rank pins, insignia and the coded identity seal mandatory for all crew personnel all seemed real.

The blade was short and leaf-shaped, shorter than the rubberised grip it protruded from. There was a series of geometric holes in the body of the blade itself, reducing the overall weight whilst retaining the structural strength. And it plainly wasn't metal; it was matt blue, ceramic, invisible to the ship's weapon-scan fields.

Gaunt stared into the other's unblinking eyes, searching for recognition or contact. The gaze which met him was a desperate, piteous look, as if from something trapped inside the menacing body.

They circled, slowly. Gaunt kept his body angled and low as he had learned in bayonet drill with the Hyrkans. But he held the Tanith blade loosely in his right hand with the blade descending from the fist and tilted in towards his body. He'd watched the odd style the Ghosts had used in knife drill with interest, and one long week in transit aboard the Navarre, he had got Corbec to train him in the nuances. The method made good use of the weight and length of the Tanith war-knife. He kept his left hand up to block, not with a warding open palm as the Hyrkans had practised (and as his opponent now adopted) but in a fist, knuckles outward. 'Better to stop a blade with your hand than your throat,' Tanhause had told him, years before. 'Better the blade cracks off your knuckles than opens a smile in your palm,' Corbec had finessed more recently.

'You want me dead?' Gaunt hissed.

'That was not my primary objective. Where is the crystal?'Gaunt started as the man replied. Though the mouth moved, the voice was not coming from it. The lip movements barely synched with the words. He'd seen that before somewhere, years ago. It looked like… possession. Gaunt bristled as fear ran down his back. More than the fear of mortal combat. The fear of witchcraft. Of psykers.

'A commissar-colonel won't be easily missed,' Gaunt managed.

The rating shrugged stiffly as if to indicate the infinite raging vastness beyond the glass dome. 'No one is so important he won't be missed out here. Not even the Warmaster himself.'

They had circled three times now. 'Where is the crystal?' the rating asked again.

'What crystal?'

'The one you acquired in Cracia City,' returned the killer in that floating, unmatched voice. 'Give it up now, and we can forget this meeting ever took place.'

'Who sent you?'

'Nothing in the known systems would make me answer that question.'

'I have no crystal. I don't know what you're talking about.'

'A lie.'

'Even if it was, would I be so foolish to carry anything with me?'

'I've searched your quarters twice. It's not there. You must have it. Did you swallow it? Dissection is not beyond me.'

Gaunt was about to reply when the rating suddenly stamped forward, circling his blade in a sweep that missed the commissar's shoulder by a hair's breadth. Gaunt was about to feint and counter when the blade swept back in a reverse of the slice. The touch of a stud on the grip had caused the ceramic blade to retract with a pneumatic hiss and re-extend through the flat pommel of the grip, reversing the angle. The tip sheared through his blocking left forearm and sprayed blood across the deck.

Gaunt leapt backwards with an angry curse, but the rating followed through relentlessly, reversing his blade again so it poked up forward of his punching fist. Gaunt blocked it with an improvised turn of his knife and kicked out at the attacker, catching his left knee with his boot tip.

The man backed off but the circling did not recommence. This was unlike the sparring in bayonet training, the endless measuring and dancing, the occasional dash and jab. The man rallied immediately after each feint, each deflection, and struck in once more, clicking his blade up and down out of the grip to wrong-foot Gaunt, sometimes striking with an upwards blow on the first stroke and thumbing the blade downwards to rake on the return.

Gaunt survived eight, nine, ten potentially lethal passes, thanks only to his speed and the attacker's unfamiliarity with the curious Tanith blade technique.

They dashed again, and this time Gaunt jabbed not with his knife but with his warding left hand, directly at the man's weapon. The blade cut a stinging gash in his knuckles, but he slipped in under the knife and grabbed the man by the right wrist. They dendied, Gaunt driving forwards with his superior size and height. The man's left hand found his throat and damped it in an iron grip. Gaunt gagged, choking, his vision swimming as his neck musdes fought against the tightening grip-Desperately, he slammed the man backwards into the guard rail. The rating thumbed his blade catch again and the reversing tongue of ceramic stabbed down into Gaunt's wrist. In return he plunged his own knife hard through the tricep of the arm holding his throat.

They broke, reeling away from each other, blood spurting from the stab wounds in their arms and hands. Gaunt was panting and short of breath from the pain, but the man made no sound. As if he felt no pain, or as if pain was no hindrance to him.

The rating came at him again, and Gaunt swung low to block, but at the last moment, the man tossed the ceramic blade from his right hand to his left, the blade reversing itself through the grip in mid air so that what had started as an upwards strike from the right turned into a downward stab from the left. The blade dug into the meat of Gaunt's right shoulder, deadened only by the padding and leather of his jacket. White-hot pain lanced down his right side, crushing his ribs and the breath inside them.

The blade slid free cleanly and blood drizzled after it. The hot warmth was coursing down the inside of his sleeve and slickening his grip on the knife handle. It dripped off his knuckles and the silver blade. If he kept bleeding at that rate, even if he could hold off his assailant, he knew he would not survive much longer.