03 - Savage Scars (36 page)

Gauge allowed himself a ghost of a smile as he closed the message and handed
the data-slate back to his aide. He checked his chron again, his mind performing
a hundred calculations and filtering a thousand possibilities all at once.
Inquisitor Grand’s deadline would expire before the sun rose over Gel’bryn, and
the ground forces were within five kilometres of their objective. They could
take it, he knew. If they pushed on, driving the tau ahead of them, they could
take it. The enemy would be forced to abandon the star port, and trapped en
masse against the sea to the south of Gel’bryn.

“Get me Sarik, Armak and Gerrit,” Gauge said to his aide. “I want the advance
moving again and that star port taken.”

“All commands,” Sarik said into the vox-net as he rode in the cupola of his
Rhino. “Objective in sight. Repeat, star port in sight, five kilometres. Form up
on me and advance like your primarchs are watching! Out.”

Sarik’s driver gunned the Rhino’s engine and the transport gained speed.
Sarik’s blood was up, but he had finally mastered the raging berserker fury that
had consumed him earlier. In fact, he now felt as if that fury had been lurking
within him for years, and he had only just acknowledged its toxic presence. He
felt as if he had passed through some form of trial, one that he had come
perilously close to failing. He had walked the precarious line between control
and unfettered rage, and he had seen, with his battle-brother’s assistance, how
close he had come to stepping over an invisible threshold. The previously hidden
delineation was now entirely clear to him, and he knew himself, his limits and
his capabilities, as he had never done before. He would harness this newfound
realisation, nurture the wisdom he had uncovered, and turn it to the execution
of his duty and the pursuance of honour above all things.

Sarik swept his pintle-mounted storm bolter left to right, tracking the
buildings on either side of the road that led as straight as an arrow towards
the star port. The buildings were growing closer together, and every portal and
window harboured deep shadows within which an enemy might be lurking. The
Assault Marines bounded alongside the column, ensuring that no tau spotters
waited to call in the lethal, indirect-firing missiles that had accounted for so
many armoured vehicles, and even a mighty Titan, since the opening of Operation
Pluto. No spotters had been encountered for several hours, yet the Assault
Marines still carried out their task, for even a single spotter left
undiscovered could wreak havoc amongst Sarik’s force.

Sarik reviewed his force’s disposition as the Rhinos, Razorback, Predators
and Whirlwinds advanced. Though many squads of the crusade’s Space Marine
contingent were engaged in detached duties elsewhere, the bulk of the
battle-brothers were under his command. His heart swelled with fierce, martial
pride as he watched the column on its final advance towards the objective. The
white and red livery of his own Chapter was but a small proportion of the
colours displayed by the vehicles of the dozen Chapters, and it was the greatest
honour of his service to act as their force commander. Though many had fallen in
the advance, untold acts of individual heroism had earned every Chapter
represented untold honour. The histories of a dozen Chapters would record the
name of Operation Hydra and the Battle of Gel’bryn as a prized battle honour,
and the chronicles of the White Scars would recall his own squads’ actions for
all time.

The lights of the star port were now coming into view. Sarik recalled the
surveillance images captured by the fleet’s orbital spy-drones, mentally
comparing them to what little he could see in the darkness up ahead. He knew
that the star port was a sprawling complex of raised landing platforms, each
served by a grav-dampener that both cushioned an incoming craft’s final approach
and aided the launching of outgoing ones. The crusade’s Adeptus Mechanicus
greatly coveted those generators, for while their construction was known to
them, they were eager to learn how the tau had come about knowledge of a
technology considered arcane by their order. The star port was lit by intense
arc lights that cast their stark illumination upwards into the night sky,
creating six square kilometres of bright day in the midst of Dal’yth Prime’s
night. Control towers speared the sky, warning lights chasing up and down their
flanks, and the entire complex was ringed by what the Departmento Tacticae
advisors warned were probably automated gun turrets.

Sarik’s vox-bead came to life. “Ancient Mhadax to Sergeant Sarik,” the
machine-modulated voice of a Scythes of the Emperor Dreadnought said. Sarik spun
the cupola around one-eighty degrees, and saw the hulking walker containing the
mortal remains of the celebrated Captain Mhadax striding along two hundred
metres behind. To the White Scars, internment in the sarcophagus at the heart of
the mighty war machine was anathema, for the Chapter far preferred to let its
mortally wounded heroes die, their spirits to return to the wide open steppes of
Chogoris, than to keep them alive indefinitely in such a manner. It was always a
trial to contain such notions when confronted with Dreadnoughts from other
Chapters.

“Sarik,” he replied. “Speak, honoured one.”

“My prey-sense augurs are detecting movement amongst the structures up ahead,
sergeant. Be warned.”

“My thanks, Captain Mhadax,” Sarik said, deliberately using the ancient’s
rank, though the vast majority of those interred in the iron body of a
Dreadnought relinquished their right to command. Sarik was technically Mhadax’s
commander, but it would be hubris of the worst kind not to accept his words.

“All commands,” Sarik said in the vox. “Prepare for contact, minus twenty to
plus twenty.”

Sarik’s driver allowed the Rhino to fall back slightly as two Predators
growled forwards, one bearing the black and yellow livery of the Scythes of the
Emperor, the other the jade green of the Subjugators. Both trained their heavy
weapons on the structures on either side of the road as they pressed on, their
commanders riding high in their cupolas so as to spot any sign of movement in
the shadows.

“Sarik!” Ancient Mhadax’s machine voice cut in urgently. “Zero-seven high,
twenty metres. Beware!”

Sarik spun the cupola round to the position the Dreadnought had indicated,
tracking the storm bolter up the side of a tall structure. The barest hint of
movement caught his eye and he swung the weapon upwards sharply…

With a blink of muzzle flare, something fired from a shadowed recess high on
the side of the rearing structure. An instant later, an energy bolt zipped past
Sarik’s head, so close it made his scalp sting. The round impacted on the
Rhino’s rooftop hatch.

“Contact!” Sarik bellowed, but he had no need to issue any more orders, for
his force was already reacting. Bolt-rounds were stitching through the air,
tracing death across the shadows of the building’s flank. Another enemy shot
whined past, only missing him because the Rhino had bucked sharply at the last
possible instant. This time Sarik caught the exact location of the firer, and
zeroed his storm bolter on the shadows.

More energy bolts rained down on the Space Marine vehicles, and Sarik knew
that multiple firers were engaging the Space Marines. Settling the storm bolter
on the patch of shadow where he knew his assailant to be hiding, he squeezed the
trigger and loosed a rapid-fire volley.

The rounds exploded as they plunged into the target’s position, the backwash
of their detonations casting hellish, strobing illumination on the sniper’s
nest. A body was flung backwards against the wall behind, then flopped forwards
over the edge to plummet the twenty metres to the ground below. Sarik saw
instantly that the body was not that of a tau, but of one of the savage alien
carnivores he had encountered in the plantations what seemed like a week before.

As the alien’s gangly body crunched to the hard surface below, Sarik brought
his storm bolter around, seeking other enemies lurking in similar hiding places.
The Predators were already passing the building, and slowing slightly. Their
sponson-mounted heavy bolters coughed to life as the commander of the
Subjugators tank came on the vox-net. “Brother-sergeant, multiple xenos
carnivores ahead. Engaging.”

“Carnivores” was the term by which these savage aliens were becoming known
amongst the crusade’s army, and it described them well. From his position, Sarik
could not yet see the targets of the Predators’ fire, but he could well picture
the vile creatures as they threw themselves onto the tanks’ guns. While he had
come to afford the tau with a certain amount of respect and ascribe them
something akin to honour, these other aliens were something else entirely. They
were possessed of a fearsome degree of fieldcraft, Sarik granted that, but their
habit of consuming the flesh of the fallen cast them beyond redemption.

“Kill them, sergeant,” Sarik growled to the Subjugators tank commander. “Show
them no mercy.”

As the Predators’ fire redoubled in fury, Sarik opened the channel to address
the entire column. “All commands, heavy contact ahead. All squads dismount to
repel enemy infantry, but do not allow yourselves to get bogged down. Out.”

As Sarik’s Rhino closed on the two Predators, he got some idea of how many
carnivores must be inbound. The tanks’ turret autocannons were belching round
after round of explosive shells, tracking back and forth as they gunned down the
alien horde’s front ranks. The heavy bolters mounted on the flanks of each tank
were keeping up a constant, thunderous fire, a continuous stream of spent shell
casings ejecting from side ports to clatter across the hard white road surface.

Still, Sarik’s view of the horde was obscured by the tanks and the fyceline
haze thrown up by the heavy weight of weapons fire. “Brother Kjanghis,” Sarik
addressed his driver over the transport’s internal vox. “Halt here.”

“Yes, brother-serg—” the driver began, before a sound like a piledriver
hammering into the side of the Rhino cut him off. The Rhino lurched violently
under the impact, throwing Sarik forwards in the cupola. A sharp metallic
clatter sounded from the right-side track nacelle, and Sarik knew instantly the
transport had been struck hard on its tread unit and thrown a track.

As Sarik righted himself, the driver brought the Rhino to a halt, the
right-side track unfurling behind and the foremost road wheels grinding into the
road surface with an ear-rending squeal.

Sarik dropped down inside the vehicle. “Brother Jek,” Sarik nodded to one of
his warriors waiting in the troop bay. “Aid Brother Kjanghis with the track. The
rest of you, with me.”

The warrior nearest to the Rhino’s rear punched a bulkhead-mounted command
rune and the rear hatch thumped downwards to form an assault ramp. The squad was
out in seconds, Brother Qaja’s plasma cannon sweeping left and right as the
Space Marines secured the immediate area.

The air roared as a solid round sheathed in blue energy thundered from the
smoke up ahead and passed directly through the Space Marines’ formation without
striking one of them. Sarik traced the shot’s trajectory back towards its
source, offering a silent prayer as he did so that the huge round had not struck
any of his battle-brothers. The round had been of a type the Space Marines had
not yet encountered, some kind of solid projectile encased in the seething blue
energies fired by many of the tau’s weapons.

As the following Rhinos ground to a halt behind Sarik’s squad, Space Marines
pounding down assault ramps to take position around their vehicles, Sarik waved
his warriors forward. He kept his gaze fixed on the arc the projectile had come
in from as he ran forwards into the smoke, his battle-brothers close behind.

The squad plunged into drifting banks of stinking smoke, made all-enclosing
in the dark night. The thunderous report of the Predators carried weirdly
through the dense smog of battle, and the ringing of brass casings pattering
across the ground was almost louder than the sound of the weapons firing. Then
Sarik heard another sound—a gruff snuffling. A low, birdlike chirrup followed,
and the first sound ceased. The bird sound was undoubtedly that of a carnivore,
but Sarik could not place the other.

He raised his hand to indicate a cautious advance to contact, allowing
Brother Qaja to come level with him. The squad moved forwards with weapons
raised to shoulders, spread out with each battle-brother covering a separate
arc.

Then a gust of wind ghosted across the scene, and the haze thinned for just a
moment. Sarik and Qaja both saw the beast at once as it reared on stumpy hind
legs, its apelike forearms raised high overhead.

For an instant, both battle-brothers took the creature for a
rokchull
,
a demonic beast of their home world’s most ancient legends. Its body was grossly
muscled, its face low between massively humped shoulders. That face was
grotesquely akin to that of the alien carnivores, as if the two were but strains
of the same xenos genealogy. Its face was dominated by a huge, beak-like mouth,
the lower jaw protruding so its jagged edge formed an underbite. Its beady eyes
were aglow with dumb malice and it opened its mouth wide as it reared on its
hind legs.

As Sarik and Qaja brought their weapons up as one, they saw that the beast
had a rider. A single carnivore was clinging onto the creature’s back, manning
an overlarge, crudely manufactured projectile weapon lashed to the mount’s
shoulders by strips of cured hide. It was that weapon that had fired the solid
round at the Space Marines.

Sarik had no need to issue Qaja the order to fire on the beast with his
plasma cannon while he targeted the rider with his boltgun. Qaja’s weapon
completed its power cycle an instant after Sarik’s boltgun spat a full auto
burst that thudded a line of rounds into the rider’s torso. The alien was torn
apart in a welter of gore as the mass-reactive rounds detonated, its arms still
flailing as its limp, broken body toppled backwards from its saddle.