03 - Savage Scars (42 page)

Then there was quiet. Sarik rolled over and opened his eyes, the dawn sky
lightening overhead. Painfully, he came up onto one knee and scanned the landing
pad. Not a single square metre of the surface had been left untouched by the
explosion, the pristine white turned to scorched black. Flames licked the
hardpan and fragments of debris were scattered all about. Some were just about
recognisable as parts of the tau lander, while others, Sarik guessed, belonged
to the smaller escort flyer, which must have been caught in the devastation.
Most of the debris was so distorted it could have been anything.

A curse sounded from nearby, and what Sarik had at first taken as a mass of
debris rose up, revealing itself to be a battle-brother of the Scythes of the
Emperor Chapter. The warrior’s formerly black and yellow armour was now simply
black, its every surface caked in dust and debris. The Scythe reached up and
unlocked the catches at his neck, removing his helmet. His face looked
startlingly white compared to the condition of his armour.

“Your orders, brother-sergeant?” the brother said dryly.

A burst of laughter rose unbidden to Sarik’s throat, and he grinned widely
despite himself as he looked around. The rest of the battle-brothers that had
charged at his side across the hardpan were slowly regaining their feet, bolters
raised as they tracked back and forth across the scene of utter devastation.

“My orders?” said Sarik, wiping a gauntlet across his blackened face. “Inform
crusade command,” he said.

“Operation Hydra primary objective secure.”

When the top of the raised landing platform had been engulfed in flame,
Lucian had thought that everything and everyone up there must surely have been
slain. Battlegroup Arcadius had been closing on the wrecked bunker line when the
dawn sky had been consumed by the destruction of the tau shuttle, and the hot
shrapnel had rained down on bodies nowhere near as well protected as a Space
Marine’s. Three riflemen had been injured by the shrapnel, one severely, and the
tanks of the 2nd Armoured, engaging bunkers the Space Marines had bypassed, had
been peppered with potentially lethal fragments.

It was only as Lucian was climbing over the ruined fortifications that his
vox-bead burst to life, the news not only of Sarik’s victory, but of his
survival filling every channel. The 2nd Armoured had secured the minefield
between the bunkers and the shield projectors, and Lucian had made his way to
the landing pad..

“A great victory, my friend,” Lucian said to Sarik as the two stood upon the
platform looking out at the aftermath of the destruction. “A truly great
victory.”

“Aye,” Sarik replied, his gaze sweeping outwards past the still-burning
hardpan to the city beyond. The sun was rising and the eastern skies were a
blaze of luminescent turquoise, their tranquillity marred only by the scores of
black, smoking columns rising kilometres into the air. “I only pray it achieves
the desired outcome.”

Lucian glanced upwards into the sky, thinking of the Exterminatus which might
rain down upon Dal’yth Prime at any moment. Then he thought of his son, Korvane,
who was up there now, on the same vessel as the murderously insane Inquisitor
Grand.

“We’ll soon find out,” said Lucian. “Gauge wants a conference, right away.”

“Where?” Sarik said.

“Armak’s command vehicle,” said Lucian. “Coming?”

“Aye, I’m coming,” said Sarik, turning his back on the wreckage-strewn
landing pad and the burning city beyond.

Sarik stood aside as Colonel Armak’s adjutants and subalterns tramped down
the ramp of the Brimlock command Chimera, then ducked inside. The interior was
cramped, especially for a Space Marine in full battle plate, and lit solely by
the illumination of two-dozen flickering readouts.

Sarik seated himself as best he could, and Lucian and Armak followed him in.
The colonel of the Brimlock 2nd Armoured and Gauge’s chief officer on the
surface hauled a lever on the bulkhead over the rear hatch, and the ramp rose up
with a hiss of pneumatics. Only when the hatch had slammed shut and the
vehicle’s overpressure systems sealed it entirely from the outside did the
colonel speak.

“Gentlemen,” said Armak, then he paused as he looked towards Sarik.
“Brother-sergeant, can I get you some water?”

Sarik snorted in amusement, though he appreciated the sentiment. He nodded,
and Armak tossed him a half-full canteen. Instead of drinking from the vessel,
he sluiced it over his face, ridding himself of just a small portion of the
grime and dried blood caking his features.

Sarik set the canteen down on a nearby tacticae-station, and Armak reached
across to a command terminal and entered a code into its keyboard. “I’m opening
the most secure link I can, one normally reserved for Codes and Ciphers.” The
terminal lit up as reams of data script scrolled across its surface.

Sarik and Lucian exchanged dark glances, the rogue trader raising his
eyebrows to indicate he had no idea what Armak was about.

“How secure a link do you need?” asked Sarik. “And why?”

“You’ll see, brother-sergeant,” said Armak. “One moment, please.”

The terminal droned and chirped for another ten seconds, then it chimed to
announce its system had achieved machine communion with another. All of the
tacticae-stations in the Chimera’s passenger bay burst into life as one. Half of
them showed General Gauge seated in a chamber equally as dark as the Chimera’s
interior, while the other half showed Captain Rumann, standing at the command
pulpit of the
Fist of Light
.

The Iron Hands captain was entirely immobile, his augmetic features
unreadable. General Gauge appeared gaunt and washed out, though his eyes still
shone with the cold, steely light that was so familiar to Sarik and Lucian.

“Veteran Sergeant Sarik,” Gauge said. “Please accept my congratulations on
your victory, and my commiserations on your losses.”

“Both are welcomed,” said Sarik. “Though neither is necessary.”

Gauge nodded, expecting the response, then addressed Lucian. “Lord Gerrit.
Your rallying of the ground forces in the aftermath of Cardinal Gurney’s…
withdrawal, contributed greatly to the capture of Gel’bryn, and averted a rout
of catastrophic proportions. Your deeds shall be remembered.”

Lucian made a dismissive gesture with his hand, but Sarik knew better. The
rogue trader was rightly proud of his actions.

“Colonel Armak?” said Gauge.

“Sir?” Armak replied, as if he had not expected to be addressed by his
commanding officer.

“You have been serving as brevet general. That rank is confirmed.
Congratulations, General Armak.”

The officer’s expression told of his genuine surprise, but Gauge continued
before the officer could reply. “Now, to the real reason I have called this
gathering.

“The Damocles Gulf Crusade has reached a critical juncture. We are faced not
with one enemy, but two. Though the tau have fallen back from Gel’bryn, a
massive war fleet is in orbit already, and Grand might unleash his Exterminatus
at any moment.”

Gauge allowed his summary of the strategic situation to sink in, then
continued. “I propose we muster all forces at Gel’bryn star port, and evacuate.”

Sarik took a deep breath, the blood and sacrifice of the last few days
flooding his mind. Then, Captain Rumann spoke for the first time, his
machine-wrought voice sounding all the more metallic across the clipped and
distorted channel.

“No,” Rumann stated coldly.

General Gauge nodded sadly, evidently expecting the captain’s reaction. Then
Lucian cut in. “Wait,” the rogue trader said. “All of you, just wait. Wendall,”
Lucian used the general’s first name, “tell us the truth. How bad is it?”

Gauge nodded his thanks towards Lucian. “When the tau were first encountered,
by Lucian and other rogue traders, they were deemed a low-level threat. They
were found only in small groups, coreward of the gulf, and usually acting as
mercenaries or advisors to planetary governors who had… strayed, to a greater or
lesser extent, from the rule of the Imperium. But that was uncovered as a ruse.
They were acting as fifth columnists, infiltrating system after system in an
effort to expand their sphere of influence. The crusade was raised to put that
threat down. Every shred of intelligence and analysis available to us indicated
they could hold no more than a handful of worlds. When they were first
catalogued, millennia ago, they were no more than over-evolved dromedaries with
no technology more advanced than sharp sticks.”

Gauge let that hang for a moment, then continued grimly. “Yet here they are,
in control of an entire star cluster, possessed of a substantial fleet capable
of interstellar travel, unheard-of tech, and weaponry that, frankly, outguns
most of our own.”

“Sedition,” Captain Rumann said flatly. “No inferior xenos can stand before
us…”

“But that’s it!” interjected Lucian. “Quite clearly, the tau are not
inferior, and they
are
standing against us.”

“We’ve given them a bloody nose,” said General Gauge, smiling wryly at his
unintentionally ironic turn of phrase. “But their reinforcements are here
already, and despite previous promises, ours are not. We pull out now, or we
spend the rest of our lives as their prisoners.”

“No Astartes will allow that to happen, general,” said Sarik. “As well you
know.”

“We all know you’ll never surrender,” said Lucian. “But is it not true that
all your doctrines teach that futile expenditure of life is as great a sin as
surrender?”

“Do not presume to preach the
Codex Astartes
to us, rogue trader,”
Captain Rumann growled. The captain’s anger was expressed as much by distortion
and feedback as by any change in his mechanical voice patterns.

Sarik could no longer contain his annoyance. “Let him speak.”

“What?” said Captain Rumann.

“Lucian is correct,” said Sarik. “Our doctrine states that a tactical
redeployment to muster for further action is preferable to a hollow last stand,
if at all possible.”

“You intend,
Sergeant
Sarik, to stand by them in—”

“I do,” growled Sarik, aware that the others appeared uncomfortable to be
witnessing the confrontation. He was also aware, painfully aware, how divergent
the views of his Chapter and the captain’s were. The White Scars’ methods of war
were born of the noble savages who had made war across the steppes of Chogoris
for millennia, masters of the lightning strike that was reflected in the
Chapter’s very symbol, which he wore proudly on his shoulder. When facing a
larger foe, the Chogorans would strike, then pull back, then strike again, until
the enemy was bled to death one drop of blood at a time.

Captain Rumann on the other hand was a product of the Iron Hands Chapter.
Their determination and resilience was born of their own beliefs about the
frailty of the flesh, which they replaced with iron by augmenting their bodies
with bionic components. Within each burned a heart as fierce as molten iron. But
now, the Iron Hands’ legendary determination was, to his mind, in danger of
turning into blind stubbornness.

“What sense is there, what
honour
is there, in the crusade
overstretching itself and being cut off?” said Sarik. “I propose that we do as
the general says: evacuate, consolidate, and return with a war fleet capable of
fulfilling the bold promises made at the outset of the crusade.

“That way,” Sarik concluded, “will we find honour.”

A tense silence descended, disturbed only by background static churning from
the vox-horns. Then Rumann answered. “I will not order my forces to retreat.”

“Then order them to re-deploy, brother-captain,” said Sarik. “A great victory
may be won here. But not now, not like this.”

Captain Rumann simply nodded.

“Then we are in agreement on this?” said General Gauge.

“We still have the issue of the Exterminatus,” said Lucian. “If that goes
ahead, even after we’ve evacuated, all of this will have been for nothing.”

“That, gentlemen,” said Gauge, “is another matter, which forms the basis of
the reason for Admiral Jellaqua’s absence from this conference.”

“Explain,” said Rumann.

“Right now, I cannot,” said Gauge. “Not even on this channel.”

“Why can you not…?” said Sarik, but his words trailed off as every pict
screen at every station in the Chimera’s passenger bay flickered with static,
went blank and then returned. The faces of General Gauge and Captain Rumann had
been replaced by that of another.

“Because,” said Inquisitor Grand, “he is a traitor… As are you all.”

In the hours after its capture, Gel’bryn star port came rapidly to resemble a
makeshift Imperial Guard muster point. The 2nd Brimlock Armoured quickly
established a cordon around the entire complex, their tanks and support vehicles
acting as bunkers with their weapons trained on any approach a counter-attack
might develop from. The Rakarshan Rifles of Battlegroup Arcadius were the next
regiment to move in. Major Subad dispatched the light infantry companies to
secure the complex’s many buildings, towers and storage facilities, in case the
tau had left their carnivore allies as stay-behinds.

The Brimlock regiments poured into the complex after the Rakarshans had
spread out, the flat expanse of ground beneath the raised landing platforms soon
filling with grumbling armoured vehicles. Hydra flak tanks tracked their
quad-barrelled autocannons back and forth across the skies, anticipating a tau
air strike at any moment. Thankfully, the sacrifice made by the aircrews of the
Imperial Navy at the very outset of Operation Hydra had severely punished the
tau flyers, and none appeared.

As the regimental provosts set about marshalling the huge numbers of men and
machines flooding into the star port, attached tech-priests invaded the control
towers. Ostensibly, the adepts of the Machine-God were tasked with fathoming the
operation of the star port’s anti-grav cradles, which would speed up the landing
and liftoff of the hundreds of troop transports that would soon be in operation
immeasurably. It took the tech-priests less than an hour to master the anti-grav
generators, and another for them to begin disassembling at least one of the
devices for later study.