03 - Savage Scars (41 page)

Sarik had been correct; there were no tau gunners within, merely an
automated, machine-controlled gun system. “Go!” he ordered, and three Assault
Marines stepped past him and lobbed their armour-piercing krak grenades inside.
The charges detonated with the ear splitting report that gave them their name,
and the sound of the twin cannons instantly stopped. Thick black smoke belched
from the wound, and the line was silenced.

Now the breach in the bunker line was sufficiently wide for the entire Space
Marine force to break through. The Predators ground forwards and assumed
overwatch positions, their turret weapons tracking back and forth ready to
engage any enemy that counter-attacked from the star port. Rhinos and Razorbacks
followed, while the first eight dismounted tactical squads formed two assault
groups that pressed left and right along the bunker line to suppress and destroy
any bunkers that had the arc and range to harass the force’s flanks. Within
minutes the sound of melta bombs and krak grenades being brought to bear on more
bunkers filled the air, and the bunkers fell silent.

“Brother Targus,” Sarik addressed a Techmarine of the Red Hunters Chapter.
The warrior was studying the line of energy shield projectors that lay beyond
the bunkers, his articulated servo-arms stretched out from his backpack, the
sensors at their ends blinking. “Mines?”

The Techmarine’s sensors tracked back and forth for a moment, before the
warrior answered, “None detected, brother-sergeant. But the xenos may have some
method of hiding them from the gaze of the Omnissiah.”

“Understood, Brother Targus,” Sarik replied. “Please continue your vigil.”

“Predators forward,” Sarik then ordered. “Breaching duty to positions.”

Five of the battle tanks not standing overwatch moved forwards through the
breach, their dozer blades lowered. Behind each, a tactical squad took position,
the battle-brothers equipped with extra supplies of krak grenades.

Sarik moved up to join a squad from the Aurora Chapter, the green-armoured
warriors in position and ready to advance. “Be advised,” he said into the
vox-link. “If this is a minefield, it does not register. Advance.”

The Predators gunned their engines and lurched forwards, and immediately a
torrent of burst cannon fire rippled through the air overhead. The flyers
overseeing the extraction of the last tau warriors had opened fire, but were
remaining protectively close to their charge.

“Your status, brother?” said Sarik.

Brother Qaja’s voice came back straight away, “Enemy infantry have reached
the landing pad, brother-sergeant. Crossing towards the lander now.”

“Let’s get moving then!” Sarik bellowed, and the Predators began their
advance. The tanks moved slowly but surely across the flat expanse of ground
between the bunker line and the shield projectors, their dozers lowered and
scraping across the packed earth in order to trigger mines that might be waiting
just below the surface. Sarik studied the ground at his feet as he strode behind
the Predator, looking for tell-tale signs of booby traps amongst the tilled
soil.

More rounds screamed in, thudding into the ground behind the Space Marines.
The enemy flyers were increasing the volume of their fire, sensing that the tau
warriors would soon be overtaken. But the angle was poor and the shots whined
harmlessly by over the Space Marines’ heads.

It was only when the breaching group was exactly half way across the open
ground that the first mine detonated. The ground a mere three metres behind
Sarik erupted in a geyser of dust and a mine spat directly upwards. It exploded
at a height of two metres, a blinding pulse of booming energy radiating
outwards.

One of the Aurora Chapter Tactical Marines was almost directly beneath the
explosion. He was slain in an instant, his armour transformed into a deadly wind
of razor-sharp shrapnel that tore into a battle-brother nearby. The fragments
buried themselves in the warrior’s armour, penetrating it in a dozen places and
passing straight through in several locations. Another Tactical Marine further
out from the blast wave was blown clear, his helmet and half of his face torn
from his head by the raging energy pulse.

Sarik had time to turn his shoulder into the blast and brace himself against
the wave-front. He felt the hot, actinic energies wash over him, his already
ruined shoulder plate absorbing the worst of the damage. As he straightened up
again, a second detonation sounded from further along the line, right in the
midst of Sergeant Rheq’s Scythes of the Emperor tactical squad.

Realising that the mines must have been command operated, Sarik opened the
vox-net to address all commands. “All overwatch units. Locate enemy spotters.
Someone must be calling in the detonations.”

The weight of incoming fire redoubled as the tau flyers sought to pin Sarik’s
force down in the open. Ordinarily, an assault group exposed in such manner
would be forced to take cover or retreat in the face of such overwhelming odds.
But the Adeptus Astartes rarely began an assault they could not complete, and
there were precious few such missions.

The advance continued, not one of the vehicle or squad commanders even
contemplating halting unless issued with a direct order to do so. Energy bursts
spanged
from the Predators’ frontal armour and hammered into their
turrets, then another mine sprang from the ground and exploded directly above an
Iron Hands tactical squad further down the line. The explosion sounded like a
sonic boom, the rapidly expanding ball of energy casting a luminous blast wave
in a wide circle. Three more Space Marines fell, one of them having sustained a
fatal wound.

“Lahmas to Sarik,” the voice of the Scythes of the Emperor Devastator
sergeant came over the vox-net. “Enemy spotter located. Engaging.”

The air above the Space Marines was lit by a hail of heavy bolter fire as
Lahmas’ Devastators hammered the position from which the enemy had been
observing the advance. But Sarik was not taking any chances. “Breaching duty!”
he yelled. “At the double!”

The Predators’ engines roared as they lurched forwards at combat speed, the
Space Marines behind them increasing their own pace to keep up. Sarik glanced
behind him, noting sadly that the broken forms of at least five fallen
battle-brothers littered the open ground. He made a silent promise to avenge
their sacrifice now, and return for their bodies later.

A sharp explosion halfway up the side of one of the landing pad’s supports
drew Sarik’s attention back to the assault. The entire side of the structure was
peppered with ugly black scars, the unmistakable sign of massed heavy bolter
fire.

“Spotter neutralised, brother-sergeant,” Lahmas reported curtly. “Resuming
overwatch.”

Sarik’s force crossed the remainder of the open ground without incident,
weathering the constant hail of fire incoming from the prowling tau flyers.
Within minutes, the breaching duty squads had planted dozens of krak grenades on
the nearest three energy shield projectors, and the way into the Gel’bryn star
port was at last clear.

Sarik dived to the left as a wave of energy bolts screamed in, rolling across
the hard white surface of the landing pad and coming up in a kneeling position,
boltgun raised. With a flick of his thumb he set his weapon’s shot selector to
full auto, and squeezed off a rapid-fire burst at the three tau warriors.

The bolts hammered through hard shell armour and detonated in soft flesh. The
first tau was blown backwards into the warrior behind by the impact, then
exploded as the bolt-rounds detonated inside his chest, showering his companion
with purple gore. The second tau took a round to the throat between helmet and
chest armour, his hands grasping the wound instinctively. When the round
exploded the warrior’s head was torn right off, and sent spinning across the
hardpan..

The third tau tried to fall back, firing as he went, but the last of Sarik’s
burst stitched across his shoulder armour and down his right arm, the
detonations blowing the limb away in a shower of vaporised blood, and the weapon
it had carried clattered to the ground. The warrior turned to run, and two shots
to the back took him down for good.

“Hunters!” Sarik called into the vox-net as he glanced upwards at the
circling tau flyers. “Bring them down!”

The Whirlwinds’ commanders acknowledged Sarik’s order, and two seconds later
a wave of a dozen missiles streaked in from below the raised landing pad, their
engines bright in the dawn sky. The tau flyers saw the danger and began to turn,
but not before the wave of missiles had split into two, each group arrowing in
on one of the nearest two targets. The two flyers were struck simultaneously.
The first was hit square in the flank, spinning crazily around as its pilot
fought for control. Its engines screamed as they fought for lift, and the craft
was soon lost to view. The second was hit directly in the cockpit, the entire
front of the vessel exploding outwards and showering the landing pad with
white-hot debris. What little was left of the airframe appeared suspended in the
air as its anti-grav systems remained online a few seconds more, then it simply
dropped, like a boulder, straight down as its systems failed. The wreck struck
the edge of the landing pad and sheared in two, touching off a secondary
explosion before disintegrating.

Only two flyers remained, one circling back and around the opposite end of
the landing pad, its chin-mounted cannon sweeping back and forth. Sarik judged
it had been ordered to hold back to protect the lander when it finally launched,
which Sarik was determined it would never do. The other was moving forwards
towards the hatch, its nose dipped as its multiple-barrelled cannon cycled up.

“Ancient Mhadax to Sergeant Sarik,” the mechanical-sounding voice of the
Scythes Dreadnought came over the vox. “Engaging.”

The entire front section of the flyer erupted in pinpoint explosions as the
Dreadnought opened up with its assault cannon. So heavy was the fusillade that
the craft’s forward momentum was arrested, a thousand solid rounds hammering
into it in seconds. The armoured nosecone splintered under the relentless
assault and was eaten away in an instant. The Dreadnought focussed its fire on
the penetrated segment, a hundred more rounds chewing into the flyer’s exposed
innards.

The flyer disintegrated in mid-air as the assault cannon rounds hollowed it
out from within, the rounds now passing straight through its ruined frame. The
flyer did not even explode—it literally disappeared before Sarik’s eyes,
reduced to fragments that scattered wide and fell as hard rain across the entire
landing pad.

“Go!” Sarik called to the Space Marines pouring out of the access hatch. Then
he was up and running towards the next group of tau backing across the landing
pad towards the open rear hatch of the lander. At least thirty tau warriors were
at the top of the ramp, keeping up a constant rain of fire intended to suppress
the Space Marines and keep them at bay as the last few squads dashed for safety.

Sarik and his squads were halfway across the pad when the four huge,
downturned thrusters mounted at each corner of the lander cycled deafeningly to
full power. The air rippled as the thrusters powered up and anti-grav projectors
thrummed into life with a rolling, sub-acoustic drone..

The Space Marines fired from the hip as they pounded across the hardpan,
gunning down the last group of tau left on the pad. The shuttle bounced as the
anti-grav cradle took hold, and the thrusters reached full power with a
deafening wail.

“Rapid fire!” Sarik bellowed over the howling of the quad thrusters, raising
his boltgun to his shoulder and squeezing off a staccato burst right into the
gaping rear hatch. Two of the tau warriors were slammed backwards, and the fire
of the rest of the Space Marines took down three more and peppered the bulkhead
with explosions.

With a tortuous wail, the shuttle wallowed, then began to lift. The last
surviving tau flyer banked protectively overhead, its chin-mounted cannon
pulsing blue as it opened fire.

The surface of the landing pad was chewed up as burst cannon fire swept in
towards Sarik and his warriors.

But Sarik stood his ground. “No mercy,” he growled, and reached for the melta
bomb at his belt. Twisting the plunger, Sarik set the fuse to three seconds, and
hurled the charge in an overhead throw that sent it sailing upwards straight
towards the lander’s open rear hatch. The flyer’s fire scythed in towards Sarik,
but only when the melta bomb was clear did he dive to one side.

Sarik hit the surface hard, rolling over to look directly upwards as the
melta bomb arced through the air and disappeared into the shuttle’s hatch.

Time slowed to an impossible crawl as Sarik awaited the melta bomb’s
detonation. The shuttle laboured upwards, its thrusters at full power as the
anti-grav cradle kicked in. The shuttle was twenty metres up and climbing when
it suddenly trembled, its progress abruptly arrested. The underbelly swelled
grotesquely as nucleonic energies distended the airframe, like a dead thing
bloated by corpse gas. Fierce energies raged inside the distended hull, visible
through the taut fabric of the distorted armour. The illumination grew,
spreading outwards until the entire swollen underside was aglow, the air
distorted in a baleful shimmer.

The doomed shuttle shook again, and a mass of flame coughed outwards from the
open hatch, followed by a rain of debris and the flailing, flaming bodies of
several dozen tau warriors.

Even as blackened body parts slammed down all around, the shuttle exploded.
Sarik turned his head away as the sky was turned orange. He screwed his eyes
shut, feeling the nuclear wind tearing at his armour and exposed skin. The
landing pad shook violently as fragments of the lander hammered downwards and a
million red-hot pieces of shrapnel scoured its surface.