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.''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, l/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 thereversing 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.The rating crossed his guard again, switching hands like a juggler, to the right and then back to the left, reversing the blade direction with each return.He feinted, sliced in low at Gaunt's belly with a left-hand pass and then pushed himself at the commissar.Gaunt stabbed in to meet the low cut, and caught the point of his silver blade through one of the perforations in the ceramic blade.Instinctively, he wrenched his blade back and levered at the point of contact.A second later, the ceramic tech-knife whirled away across the Glass Bay and skittered out of sight over the cold floor.Suddenly disarmed, the rating hesitated for a heartbeat and Gaunt rammed his Tanith knife up and in, puncturing the man's torso and cracking his sternum.The rating reeled away sharply, sucking for air as his lungs failed.The silver knife was stuck fast in his chest.Thin blood jetted from the wound and gurgled from his slack mouth.He hit the deck, knees first, then fell flat in his face, his torso propped up like a tent on the hard metal prong of the knife.Gaunt stumbled back against the rail, gasping hoarsely, his body shaking and burning pain jeering at him.He wiped a bloody hand across his clammy, ashen face and gazed down at the rating's body as it lay on the floor in a pool of scarlet fluid.He sank to the deck, trembling and weak.A laugh, half chuckle, half sob broke from him.When next he saw Colm Corbec, he would buy him the biggest-The rating got up again.The man wriggled back on his knees, rippling the pool of blood around him, and then swung his body up straight, arms swaying limp at his sides.Kneeling, he slowly turned his head to face the prone, dismayed Gaunt.His face was blank, and his eyes were no longer pleading and trapped.They were gone, in fact.A fierce green light raged inside his skull, making his eyes pupilless slits of lime fire.His mouth lolled open and a similar glow shone out, back-lighting his teeth.With one simple, direct motion, he pulled the Tanith knife out of his chest.There was no more blood, just a shaft of bright green light poking from the wound.With a sigh of finality, Gaunt knew that the psychic puppetry was continuing
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