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Torvann Lokk slides in and out of consciousness. His secondary heart and multi-lung labor painfully, taking up the slack for ruined primary versions. His Predator can't move, though the fires have gone out without, mercifully, reaching the promethium tank. He doesn't think he can move either; at least, not enough to do him any good. His helm is awash with blood. It stinks, metallic and bitter with injected drugs.
If this were an ordinary battle he would do as his training urges and allow his sus-an membrane to engage: suspend, wait for rescue, trust in the rest of his Legion to win the day and recover him. What is happening on Isstvan V is nothing like an ordinary battle. Lokk fights to resist the sus-an coma. Artillery thunders in the distance, a few kilometers off from the sound of it.
He gets the restraints on the driver's throne unlatched and pulls the connection cables out of his spine, and then everything goes staticky and gray. Lokk breathes, waiting for his vision to clear. From iron cometh strength. From strength cometh will.
He has to get free. The vox is static and chaos. The battle still rages. Even with numbers on their side, they fought against the better part of three of the Legiones Astartes (and he sees in his mind the stark monochrome of Corax's face, the fury and disbelief). The costs will be steep, and he is but a single warrior amidst wreckage. He tries to lift himself from the throne.
He loses more time.
A dull, rhythmic ringing brings him back to himself: a soft impact against the hull of his tank, ceramite on ceramite. "War-brother," comes a voice from outside. "Torvann Lokk, are you there?"
Lokk's hand comes up as if to grab the medallion around his neck despite the armor in the way. "Kar-Gatharr?" he croaks. He can't tell if his voxcaster is still working.
"Praise the gods," Kar-Gatharr says. "I am here for you, brother." More clanging noises as he climbs up onto the tank and lets himself in through the ruined hatch. Lokk's nape prickles with the awareness of his presence, the sense of something uncanny and magnetic that he knows now is the touch of the Warp.
"You came looking for me?" Lokk asks. "In all that?" He doesn't think his own squad would have done as much, and he wouldn't have blamed them. He feels unaccountably warm toward his friend.
"I followed where the gods led me." Kar-Gatharr looms over the driver's throne and Lokk still sitting in it. "Hells, that looks bad. What happened?"
"Feels worse," Lokk assures him. "Angry primarch happened. Down a heart, lungs, maybe more."
Kar-Gatharr swears, throaty Colchisian invective. "I'm getting you out of here. This is not where you die."
It's nice that one of them is confident about that. Lokk nods. He tries to help as Kar-Gatharr pulls him to his feet and starts to maneuver him toward the hatch. There's a roaring in his ears that isn't the constant gunfire. His extremities are tingling. He tries to say as much to Kar-Gatharr but his tongue feels heavy and clumsy in his mouth.
He gets a reply, but the words seem distant, and all he really comprehends is the sense of calm certainty in his friend's voice. Lokk decides to trust him. Kar-Gatharr is good at answers. If there is a way to save Lokk from the roaring darkness, the approach of duty's end, out here with no medical support—Kar-Gatharr will find it. Lokk can close his eyes, let his guard down.
He hears Kar-Gatharr's voice again, strident. Insistent. Then a screech like wounded metal, like the attack on the tank earlier. His helm chimes to tell him stabilizers have been activated, and then there's movement anyway. He's being dragged clear.
Cold air seeps into his armor where it was punctured, pulling him back toward consciousness. He opens his eyes, squinting up at the sky, where the haze of artillery smoke obscures the stars. Kar-Gatharr is moving around him, arranging his limbs, touching his armor. "What are you doing?"
"Calling for help," Kar-Gatharr says. "Stay right there."
"Nnh," Lokk agrees. It's moving that would be the problem.
Kar-Gatharr starts to... chant? sing? His voice rises and falls in a rhythm that never quite settles. The words have a harsh feel to them, full of fricatives like the Colchisian of the rites used in the lodge—but it must be some dialect other than the standard, for the words twist as much as the rhythm does.
A Presence fills the air around them, something so raw and so vivid that it raises gooseflesh on Lokk's skin. It's blood and iron and gun oil, the colors of the Empyrean behind his closed eyes, the meaning of the words he can't comprehend. Kar-Gatharr's voice grows more strident and the Presence coils around Lokk, looking through him, and he understands at once that it's weighing his soul.
An instant later pain slams into his flesh, seeking, burrowing, probing through muscle and bone. This is a test. The gods that Kar-Gatharr's Legion have found give nothing away for free. Lokk is no psyker, nor has he trained in spiritual disciplines, but he is an Iron Warrior and he will fight anything that seeks to breach his defenses. He pushes it away in his mind, imagining a fortress between him and the invader. But every wall can be brought down by a determined enough siege, so he pictures weak spots deliberately, making them invitations to the invaders and filling them with reservoirs of all the frustration and hatred he can summon. The Presence breaks through, into his trap—and transforms, the clawing sharpness becoming a softer heat, judgment becoming satisfaction, as though he's pleased it with his resistance.
It still hurts, but now it hurts the way healing always does, damaged tissues forced to knit back together so they can work again. Lokk's punctured heart begins to beat again as the wound from Corax's claw seals shut. Astartes are built to survive superhuman amounts of damage, but this is beyond what should be possible even for them. Lokk inhales and feels his original lungs fill.
A moment later they seize, muscles spasming. Lokk rolls over onto his hands and knees, coughing violently and bringing up thick clots of blood. He spits, milks his betcher's gland and spits again so the acid will help clear his helmet grille. Congealed blood splatters the black sand beneath him.
His helm registers Kar-Gatharr's presence just before he feels the hand on his arm. "Lokk? Are you all right?"
"Getting there," Lokk rasps. His mouth tastes like dead blood but his primary heart is steady and breathing is getting easier.
"May I take off your helm?"
Lokk tries to laugh and feels more blood shake loose in his chest. "Please do. It's disgusting." He sits back on his heels and lets his friend unlatch his helm and lift it free. The night air smells of fyceline smoke and promethium, ugly but familiar. Lokk hawks up one more mouthful of blood and spits it to the side.
Kar-Gatharr is watching him, bareheaded, smiling just enough to crease the tattoos on his cheeks. "You're a mess."
"Like to see you look better after getting stabbed by a primarch," Lokk says. He wipes his mouth on the back of his gauntlet, then looks down—there's a gouge straight through the chestplate and a splatter of more of his blood running down from it. But there are also Colchisian runes written on either side in a hasty scrawl. "Your handiwork?"
"Asking for aid, for a warrior not ready to die," Kar-Gatharr says. He clasps Lokk's hand and pulls him close. "I'm glad to have reached you in time."
"So am I." Lokk leans forward so their foreheads touch. "I owe you my life."
Kar-Gatharr shakes his head. "I only do the gods' bidding," he demurs. "And I would have hated to lose you, my friend."
"And you won't," Lokk says, even though he knows full well how impossible that is to guarantee. He'll do what he can to make it true. Perhaps Kar-Gatharr's gods will help.
"Good," Kar-Gatharr says, as if Lokk said something reasonable. "Are you ready to move? We should head back to the lines."
"Right." Lokk nods, letting Kar-Gatharr haul him to his feet. "We have a war to win."