03 - Savage Scars (31 page)

Sarik’s Rhino rolled forwards, picking up speed as it cleared the end of the
bridge, a dozen others, as well as Predators, Whirlwinds, Dreadnoughts and land
speeders, following close behind. Sarik ordered the grav-attack speeders to
range forwards, to scour the ruins for any sign of surviving tau, while the
vehicle column formed up into an advance pattern before plunging into the ruins.

“All squad leaders,” Sarik said into the vox-net. “We need to get clear so
the main body can cross the bridge. Spread out as soon as you are across.”

There was a brief pause, then Sergeant Lahmas of the Scythes of the Emperor
came on the channel. “Brother-sergeant,” Lahmas said. “I’m at the rear. I have
no visual contact with following forces, over.”

“What?” Sarik said as he turned in his cupola towards the column’s rear.
Through banks of drifting smoke and dust he could just about make out Lahmas’
carrier at the far end of the bridge, but virtually nothing beyond it for the
smoke was too thick.

“Confirmed, brother-sergeant,” the pilot of one of the circling land speeders
reported. Sarik glanced up and located the speeder. “I have visual contact on
the approach. There are no Imperial forces visible at all, over.”

“Where the hell are they…?” Sarik growled. If the army did not cross River
992 at Erinia Beta and take Gel’bryn before Grand’s ultimatum expired, they
would all be dead.

Several kilometres east of Sarik’s position, Lucian pushed his way through a
crowded regimental muster. Grumbling Chimeras filled the air with acrid exhaust
fumes and the shouts of hundreds of Imperial Guardsmen assaulted his ears.
Hospitaller staff in a hastily erected medicae station did their best to succour
scores of wounded troopers, and winding processions of Ministorum preachers
threaded their way through the masses, dispensing the Emperor’s blessings to all
and sundry. Haphazardly parked armoured vehicles and knots of exhausted troopers
spread out across a wide expanse of land, and evidently, they were going nowhere
in a hurry.

By the time Lucian had located Colonel Armak, the commander of the Brimlock
2nd Armoured and brevet-general of the ground force, Gurney’s transmissions had
abruptly cut out. The cardinal’s vox-servitor had been discovered and
deactivated, and the Imperial Guard’s command channels were finally clear of the
incessant phono-looped sermons.

“Why aren’t you moving?” Lucian bellowed as he crashed the colonel’s orders
group. Armak and his subordinates were clustered around the flank of the
colonel’s command tank, a huge map suspended from its side. A dozen heads turned
towards him as he approached.

“I said—”

“Lord Gerrit,” the colonel interrupted, removing his peaked cap with one hand
and sweeping back his stark white, sweat-plastered hair with the other. “It’s a
miracle we’re here at all and the entire army isn’t hightailing it for Sector
Zero. You were saying?”

Lucian forced his way into the throng of commanders and aides, coming to
stand in front of the colonel. “Good answer, colonel,” he grinned. “But we need
to get this force moving again, or we’re all f—”

“Thank you for your astute observation, Lord Gerrit,” Colonel Armak said, a
wry smile touching his lips. The distant roar of a Titan’s gatling cannon
thundered across the land from the south, and Armak continued. “This is a mess,
Gerrit, but I’d appreciate your input.”

“Well enough,” Lucian replied, coming to stand by the tactical map hanging
from the command tank’s side. He consulted his chrono, then looked to the map to
locate the phase line the army should have reached. “We’re well behind…” he
said.

“And the Space Marines and Titans are pushing forwards,” the colonel replied.
“Word’s just come in that they’ve taken the bridge and are pushing towards the
city.”

“Then we have some catching up to do,” Lucian said. The commanders exchanged
surreptitious glances. “Well?” Lucian continued. “What’s the problem?”

Colonel Armak sighed as he replaced his battered cap. He looked around at his
subordinates, before answering “Morale is the problem, Lord Gerrit.”

“Gurney,” Lucian said flatly, noting that many of the assembled officers were
now looking at their feet, the ground, or anywhere other than their commander.
“His departure.”

“Yes,” Armak replied. “His sermons bolstered the advance, got it going, kept
it going when the enemy counter-attacked…”

“But now he’s gone,” Lucian finished for the colonel. “And without him, the
men have lost their spirit.”

Colonel Armak held Lucian’s gaze for a moment, then nodded. Lucian understood
then the colonel’s problem. The Brimlock commander and all of his staff knew
that Gurney’s departure had caused the advance to falter and stall, yet they
could not bring themselves to say as much. These men were from the same world as
Gurney himself, had in all likelihood grown up with his planet-wide sermons. It
had been his words of fire and brimstone that had instigated the Damocles Gulf
Crusade. He had been the Brimlock regiments’ totem, and they had been his
favoured sons and his praetorians. When their home world’s planetary forces had
been raised to the Imperial Guard, they had been proud to pledge themselves to
his service, and follow him into the xenos-pyres across the Damocles Gulf.

Now, he had left them.

Cardinal Gurney’s departure had left behind it a vacuum. A grin split
Lucian’s face, for politics, as with nature, deplored a vacuum.

“Then we need to resurrect that spirit, Colonel Armak,” Lucian said.

The officer remained blank-faced, his eyes darting around the group to meet
the gazes of several of his subordinates. “How?” he said finally.

“Someone needs to speak to the men,” Lucian said. “Whatever it was the
cardinal gave them, they need to get it back.”

The colonel’s eyes narrowed. “Who?” he said.

Lucian recognised the officer’s disquiet, and trod gently. “You?” Lucian
said. “A commissar? That’s what they’re trained for…”

“Or you,” Armak said flatly. “Is it command you seek here? You’re known as an
ambitious man, Lord Gerrit.”

Lucian forced himself not to appear too triumphant as he answered, “That’s
been said, I’ll grant you that. But I know my limits. I have no desire to take
over your command, Colonel Armak. And none to preach against the cardinal.”

“Then what do you propose, Lord Gerrit?”

The scream of a mighty salvo of missiles being fired by the Titans rolled
across the land and receded into the distance. Lucian turned towards the battle,
marked as it was by a column of black smoke where Erinia Beta burned. He fancied
for a moment he saw the dark shapes of Battle Titans moving amongst the dark
stain.

“That we follow the example already set us,” he answered, gesturing with a
nod towards the battle. “You command, and I’ll lead.”

Colonel Armak nodded, at first a slight gesture as if he were considering
Lucian’s words. Then the motion became more resolute, and he held his hand out
towards Lucian.

The rogue trader took the proffered hand, and the two men shook on it. “Let’s
get things moving then,” Lucian said, casting a glance heavenwards as he
imagined Inquisitor Grand’s gnarled hand hovering impatiently over the command
rune that would doom them all.

Brielle held her breath as another tau technician walked past the recess that
had become her hiding place. She had infiltrated the communications bay with the
intention of disabling its systems so that Aura could not contact the human
fleet, but getting in had been the easy part. Carrying out her plan, which in
truth she had not entirely thought through, was proving far harder. She glanced
back along the service passage, the bay entrance through which she had come now
impossibly distant. At ten metre intervals, the passageway’s walls were inset
with a recess like the one she was hiding in now providing access to machine
systems, and it had taken her far too long to penetrate as far as she had. But
now she was committed, for she was nearer to the communications control system
than she was to her escape route.

Not for the first time in the last few months, Brielle questioned her
seemingly unerring ability to get herself into the most ridiculous of
situations…

The technician was gone and the passageway was clear again. Brielle peered
cautiously along its length. No more crew were in sight, so she carefully eased
herself out of the recess, keeping her back to the wall and her eyes on the far
end of the communications bay. She darted forwards silently on bare feet, and
ducked into the last recess.

Peering from her hiding place, Brielle confirmed that the communications bay
was empty. As she had proceeded along the service corridor she had noted the
comings and goings of the tau. It appeared that regular checks were made on the
bay’s systems, but it was not permanently attended. Such a location on an
Imperial vessel would be staffed by dozens of crewmen, and its systems
maintained by even more man-machine servitors, many hard-wired directly into the
machinery. The tau utilised what they considered to be highly advanced
technologies, reducing the reliance on living and breathing, and fallible, crew.
The Imperium warned against the folly of relying too heavily on machine
intelligence, many considering it a blasphemy capable of bringing about the doom
of the entire human race. Indeed, Brielle had read texts that claimed that such
a thing had come about in humanity’s pre-history, texts that ordinary men and
women had no access to whatsoever. She shook the apocalyptic visions that text
had described from her mind, offering thanks to the God-Emperor of Mankind that
the path ahead was clear.

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Brielle checked the charge on the
compact flamer hidden in the workings of her ring. It read the same as it had
the last dozen times she had checked—one shot left. She had not used the
weapon in months, not since the deed that had forced her to flee from the
crusade into the all-too-ready arms of the tau. She had been cornered by
Inquisitor Grand, who had been intent upon probing her mind for signs of the
traitorous thoughts he, quite correctly, suspected that she harboured. She had
unleashed a blast from the disguised flamer, immolating the inquisitor almost
unto death, and fled in the aftermath.

Judging that the way ahead was clear, Brielle slipped from her hiding place
and entered the communications bay. It was a circular area, a good twenty metres
in diameter, the ceiling a solid white light source. The circular walls were
lined with large screens, across which endless streams of tau text scrolled. The
characters meant very little to her, though she had learned a little of the
aliens’ script. Five narrow access ways led from points around the wall, and
Brielle could see that each led into the bowels of the communication bay’s
systems. Picking one at random, she made towards it, then came suddenly to a
halt.

The slightest of movements had caught her eye, and she slipped sideways,
ducking into the next access point along. As she sank into the shadows, she
watched as a small, disc-shaped drone, floating two metres from the deck,
emerged. The tau, Brielle had learned, made extensive use of such
machine-intelligent devices, some for basic security tasks, but many more for
maintenance and other menial jobs. The heaviest examples carried weapons
underslung beneath an armoured disc. Fortunately, this one must have been a
maintenance drone, for while it was equipped with a jointed appendage beneath
the disc, it carried no obvious weapons.

The drone floated on its anti-grav field into the centre of the bay and
stopped. Its single, red-lit eye blinked slowly as it revolved on the spot, its
machine gaze lingering on each of the access points.

Brielle looked behind her, desperately seeking any implement she could use as
a weapon should the need arise. She cursed the tau’s efficiency, for there were
no loose objects to hand. As the drone completed its scan of the bay, its
lens-eye turned on her, and the blinking turned into a slow pulse.

She made a fist, ready to activate her concealed flamer, though she was loath
to use its last charge. But how else could she defeat the drone if no other
weapon was to hand?

Two million, three hundred thousand kilometres was impossibly far from a safe
distance from a planetary body for a vessel to break warp and translate back to
real space. Not even the most legendary of Navis Nobilite master Navigators
would attempt such an operation, for in all likelihood their vessel would be
smeared across interplanetary space, and every soul on board smeared across the
depths of the empyrean.

Nonetheless, at a point in space two million, three hundred thousand
kilometres coreward of Dal’yth Prime, a wound was ripped in the flesh of
reality. Were it not for the vacuum of space, the gibbering of ravening, hungry
monsters and the wailing of every damned soul ever to have lived and died might
have echoed from that wound, and driven any mortal that heard it utterly insane.

Writhing aetheric tentacles quested forth from the wound, some impossible
leviathan sensing the lush feeding grounds on the other side of the gate. Then,
as by a surgeon pulling tight on the sutures around an incision, the wound was
drawn shut, the tentacles, if they were ever really there, slurping back inside.

The blackness of the void reasserted itself once more. But the starry
backdrop of space was somehow darker than before, a patch of stars missing.
Stars do not simply go missing, of course, but they can be obscured.

A black patch of space started moving, slowly at first, but rapidly
gaining speed. Whatever systems propelled the sleek black form, they cast no
signature on any spectrum the human race could read, though several older races
might have detected them. It angled towards the distant globe that was Dal’yth
Prime, and speared silently through space towards its destination, two million,
three hundred thousand kilometres away.