03 - Savage Scars (30 page)

Then where was he? Concerned that this rumour would undermine morale,
commanders and commissars alike hounded their vox-officers to seek
clarification. But every channel was filled with Gurney’s sermons, and no other
transmissions could penetrate.

The rumour spread far and wide, sowing confusion in its wake. Where Guardsmen
had fought with righteous fury, now doubt gnawed at the edges of their courage.
Where previously las-rounds had flown with vengeful and unerring accuracy, now
they wavered. Where men had stood firm in the face of overwhelming odds, now
they cast wary glances backwards. Where the order to fix bayonets and charge
into the very teeth of the enemy had been obeyed without question, now men
hesitated.

And still, none could locate the cardinal.

Runners were sent from regimental commands, intelligence cell liaison
officers seeking out their opposite numbers in the other units. Where is Gurney?
Is he with the armour? The infantry? The artillery?

He was nowhere to be found, for he had indeed quit the field of battle. His
transmissions were recorded phono-loops, broadcast by a vox-servitor left at the
landing zone while Gurney sped away in his gold-liveried personal shuttle
towards the waiting
Blade of Woe
. This fact took longer to discover and
disseminate than the previous rumour, but despite the best efforts of the
Commissariat, it could not be contained for long. As the runners returned to the
regimental commands and informed their superiors of what they had heard, others
overheard and repeated the tale.

Gurney was gone, so the initial rumours stated. Gurney was dead, so others
said, but that could not be so for his voice still rang out from the vox-horns,
dominating every channel. Gurney had fallen hours before, others said, and his
sermons were being looped over and over so that none would ever know. Gurney was
dead, still others claimed, and was preaching to the faithful from beyond the
grave!

Regardless of the exact rumour men heard, the effects were universal. The
advance lost momentum even as the Titans closed on the nearside shores of River
992 and prepared to wade across. First the armoured and mechanised units slowed,
the gap between them and the Titans increasing all the while. Then the infantry
faltered as first confusion, then panic swept through the ranks. Men refused to
advance, and the commissars were forced to execute dozens.

As the advance stalled, the tau redoubled their attacks on the army’s flanks,
and men previously galvanised by the cardinal’s presence were suddenly terrified
by his absence. Those platoons at the battle’s leading edge began to fall back,
and soon entire companies were retreating in the face of an enemy they had
previously had no fear of whatsoever.

It was midday, and Operation Hydra hung in the balance.

Sarik yanked his screaming chainsword from the torso of a tau warrior, the
screeching teeth back-spraying a torrent of purple blood as he used his armoured
boot to force the body down. The far end of the bridge was less than thirty
metres away, but the tau were making his force bleed for every metre the Space
Marines took. Already, over a dozen battle-brothers lay slain on the
once-pristine, now bloody and scorched surface.

“Missile launcher!” Sarik bellowed as yet another battle suit dropped out of
the air, coming to a smooth landing thirty metres in front of him. Sarik was
learning to recognise the tau’s weapons, and their capabilities. This one’s arms
were twinned fusion blasters, each capable of melting a fully armoured Space
Marine to bubbling slag.

“Ware the fore!” a battle-brother yelled, and Sarik pushed himself sideways,
right to the edge of the bridge. He turned his head, and for an instant looked
directly down into the glistening waters of River 992. Then the missile screamed
overhead, and Sarik gritted his teeth against the imminent explosion.

But none came. He rolled over, raising his boltgun as he looked back towards
the end of the bridge. The battle suit had leaped high, the missile streaking
beneath it and off into the roiling smoke beyond the bridge. It was coming down
to land right in front of Sarik, its deadly blasters locking onto him.

Sarik squeezed the trigger of his boltgun, unleashing almost an entire
magazine of mass-reactive explosive bolts directly into the enemy’s torso. The
first shots sent it reeling off-balance and it stumbled backwards on its
claw-like mechanical feet. As more shots impacted against its armour, detonating
with furious staccato flashes, it swivelled around again, bracing itself against
the fusillade as it raised its blasters.

Then a crater appeared in the centre of its torso armour, and Sarik
concentrated his last few rounds on that exact spot. Round after round buried
themselves in the wound, and detonated as one. The battle suit quivered as its
systems sought to respond to the nerve signals coming from the dying pilot’s
mind; then it shook violently as a jet of purple blood and gristle spurted out
of the wound.

The battle suit collapsed in a still-quivering heap in front of Sarik, and in
an instant he had leaped upon it and was brandishing his chainsword high. Utter
savagery filled Sarik’s heart, his conscious mind struggling to maintain control
over his battle-rage. That part of him that was a supremely trained, genetically
enhanced, psycho-conditioned warrior-champion of the Emperor of Mankind was
fighting a constant battle against the other part, perhaps the greater part,
that was a wild, untamed, undisciplined son of the windswept steppes of the
feral world of Chogoris. No amount of conditioning or training could entirely
rid a son of the steppes of that warrior spirit; indeed, it was the very heart
of all that the White Scars were.

At times such as these, it was the savage that won the battles.

Sarik swept his chainsword down, pointing it directly towards another squad
of enemy warriors rushing forwards in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to hold
the far side of the bridge. He snarled an incoherent oath, and leaped forwards
as his warriors joined him. As Sarik and his battle-brothers closed the last
thirty metres of the bridge, the tau opened up with a fusillade of energy bolts
so dense it felt as if he were charging through raging sheet lightning. A
brother went down, his head split in two; Sarik could not see who it was. He
bounded over the body even before it came to rest, gunning his chainsword to
full power as he closed the last few metres.

Then he was in amongst the tau. His chainsword hacked left and right, and
aliens died with its every stroke. Purple blood sprayed in all directions and
stringy gristle threatened to jam the blade’s action. He roared with savage
battle lust as enemies fell at his feet to be crushed to paste beneath them. The
white-armoured forms of his battle-brothers pressed in, and behind them came
warriors bearing the deep blue of the Ultramarines and the black and yellow of
the Scythes of the Emperor. Bolt pistol fire rang out from all about and combat
blades flashed in the midday sun. The white of the bridge’s surface was stained
purple with tau blood and the air was filled with the mingled sounds of the
Space Marines’ battle cries and the aliens’ terrified screams.

Quite suddenly, there were no enemies within Sarik’s reach. Those not slain
in the charge were fleeing headlong towards the ruins of Erinia Beta. Sarik
bellowed in frustration and denial, and sprang forwards after them, cutting the
closest down from behind with a horizontal sweep of his chainsword that hacked
the alien’s legs from out beneath it.

Not breaking stride, he powered onwards, the remaining tau fleeing before his
wrath. The first aliens to reach the ruins turned to raise their weapons to
cover their companions’ retreat, but upon seeing Sarik’s fury abandoned the
notion and fled deeper into the wreckage and out of his sight.

As the last of the tau disappeared into the smoking ruins, Sarik came to a
halt. His breath came in great ragged gulps. He spat, surprised to see blood in
the spittle, and wiped his bloody face with the back of his gauntlet as a hand
settled on his shoulder plate.

“It is done, brother-sergeant!” shouted Qaja.

Sarik stared his battle-brother in the eye, but it took him a moment to
recognise his old friend. Then reason dawned on him and the red mist lifted.
Qaja’s face was stern, his eyes dark and unreadable. After another few seconds,
Qaja nodded back across the river, and Sarik followed his gesture.

The Warlord-class Battle Titan was striding through the ruins of eastern
Erinia Beta, every tread of its huge mechanical feet crushing an entire
building. The settlement, already reduced to ruins by the crusade’s bombardment,
was now flattened to rubble as the engine strode forwards towards the edge of
River 992.

The ground trembled with the Titan’s every step, the waters of the river
quivering as crazy patterns sprang into being across its surface. Its sculpted
head gleamed blindingly bright in the harsh noon sun as its gaze swept across
the scene on the far side of the bridge. It looked to Sarik as if that beatific
face was casting its benediction on the battle fought to capture the bridge,
granting its approval of the alien blood spilled in the Emperor’s name.

The Warlord came to a halt at the river’s eastern shore, its Reaver-class
consorts stepping to its side, three on its left and three on its right. The
seven Titans halted, forming a towering line along the river as solid and
massive as a fortress’ curtain wall. An odd stillness settled upon the scene as
the Titans stopped moving, the only sound that of pulsing plasma generators and
sizzling void shields.

Then the sirens spoke. The Warlord’s voice was deep and resounding, its war
horn filling the air with a slowly rising and falling dirge that sounded to
Sarik like the dying cries of a gargantuan beast. But this was no mournful
lamentation; it was a warning, and a dire one at that.

Friend or foe; be warned. I am the God-Machine, and I am your doom.

“All commands,” Sarik was forced to shout over the terrible drone. “Heed
their warning and get your heads down!”

Then the six Reaver-class Titans added their own voices to the Warlord’s, and
now it sounded like the end times were truly come to Dal’yth Prime. Space
Marines boarded their Rhinos, which made for the one place nearby they knew the
Titans would leave untouched—the bridge. As the apocalyptic chorus wailed on,
the Space Marines formed up in a long column along the bridge, the vehicles
packed closely for mutual cover. The assault squads, who did not have their own
transports, swept down amongst the armoured vehicles, each Assault Marine taking
what cover he could find.

Then the sirens powered down, the pitch and volume falling to the subsonic. A
brief moment of utter silence stretched out, and then the line of Titans opened
fire.

The first weapon to fire was the Warlord’s gatling blaster. Rounds the size
of men were cycled into the weapon’s chamber, and fired with explosive force
before the next barrel rotated around to fire the next shot. If a man-portable
assault cannon sounded like a bolt of silk being torn in two, then the Titan’s
equivalent sounded like the air, the sky, the very fabric of reality being torn
apart.

Round after round hammered from the rotary weapon in impossibly fast
succession as the Titan swept its fire from right to left across the far bank.
Each round was as powerful as a heavy tank shell, blowing out the already
damaged structures across the river one by one as the line of fire swept along
their length in seconds. Sarik had only previously seen such devastation from a
low-level bombing run conducted by an entire wing of fighter-bombers, each
successive explosion coming microseconds after the last as the detonations
walked across the line. It was an impressive sight, even through his Rhino’s
vision block, and his transport shook violently with successive blast waves.

As each shell pummelled into its target, a blinding white blast preceded a
rapidly expanding cloud of dust and rubble. Seconds later, shrapnel and debris
began to fall on the Space Marine vehicles, some pieces razor-sharp fragments
that zipped through the air and pinged on armoured plates, others large chunks
that clanged heavily upon upper hulls.

Within seconds, the entire line of buildings on the Gel’bryn side of the
river were reduced to dust. The Titans’ sirens started up again.

The Warlord stepped forwards first, one foot setting down into the waters of
River 992. As its armoured shin sank, the waters churned, huge waves crashing
around. The tidal effect caused the waters to surge up and over the riverbanks,
flooding either side of the settlement and dousing many of the fires with a
billowing of white steam. The waters rose up the bridge’s pilings, but the
bridge was just high enough over the river to avoid being swamped.

The engine’s leg sank down to its knee, and then it set its other foot down
and set out across the river. A moment later, the six Reavers waded in too, the
waters coming right up to their waists and completely swallowing the heraldic
pendants slung between their legs. The Warhounds appeared on the shore at the
formation’s flanks, their torsos swivelling left and right as they maintained
overwatch for their far larger companions. The river was too deep for the Scout
Titans to wade across safely, for the waters would swamp their arm-weapons. They
would have to cross via the bridge, once the Space Marines were clear.

Though the warning klaxons still howled their doom-laden song, Sarik judged
that it was time to get moving. As the Titans passed the midway point of the
churning river, he opened the vox-net to order his units forward. “All commands,
Predators forward. Column, advance.”

As his driver gunned the Rhino forwards, Sarik hauled open the hatch above
his head and took position at the cupola’s storm bolter. In the open, the
Titans’ klaxons were all but deafening, drowning out the roar of the Space
Marines’ armoured vehicles. The Titans passed the middle of the river, huge
bubbles and gouts of steam churning from the waters all around. Then the air was
filled with multiple howling shrieks as the Apocalypse launchers atop each
Reaver’s carapace shell unleashed a salvo into the settlement. So dense was the
smoke enveloping the shore Sarik could not see their targets, but the Titans
were gifted with arcane sensorium systems capable of detecting a target in the
most adverse of conditions. With each salvo, distant buildings erupted in
seething explosions and defenders died by the score.